The best form of worship is to contemplate about God and His Power.

The best form of worship is to contemplate about God and His Power.[^3] In another hadith , it is stated that an hour’s contemplation is better than a night’s worship.’[^4] And according to a Prophetic tradition, the contemplation of an hour is better than a year’s worship. In another tradition it is stated that an hour’s contemplation is better than sixty years of worship (according to another hadith , seventy years).

And some traditionists and fuqaha ’ have even mentioned it as being better than a thousand years of worship. In any case, there are different grades and levels of contemplation, and every grade gives certain results and consequences. Here we shall mention a few of them.

The first kind of contemplation is about God, His Names, Attributes and His Perfections, the result of which is the knowledge of His existence and His irradiations ( tajalliyat ) from which the archetypes ( ayan ) and the manifestations ( mazahir ) emerge.

And this is the most superior level of contemplation which yields the sublimest of the kinds of knowledge, and the firmest of the arguments ( burhan ) ; for thinking about the essence of the Cause and meditating on the Absolute Cause imparts knowledge about Him and the understanding of the effects.

Such is the outline of the revelations on the hearts of the Truthful ( siddiqun ) , and it is for this reason that it is called burhan al-siddiqin, the Proof of the Truthful; since the Truthful observe the Names and the Attributes, and view the first essences ( a’yan ) and manifestations ( mazahir ) in the mirror of the Names through the witness of the Essence.

The reason, however, that this type of proof is called burhan al-siddiqin is that if a Truthful one ( siddiq ) wishes to set forth his observations in the form of a proof and give his gnostic, intuitive experience the apparel of words, it would appear in this form; not that anyone who gains the knowledge of the Essence and its irradiations through this proof becomes one of the Truthful, or that the knowledge of the Truthful belongs to the category of proofs, even especial ones.

How far from the truth to imagine that their knowledge is of the category of contemplation, or that their cognitions are like arguments and their premises! As long as the heart is covered within the wrapping of arguments and one is in the stage of contemplation, one has not yet reached even the first grade of the Truthful.