With their heart at rest and an expanded breast as a result...

With their heart at rest and an expanded breast as a result of relying on God’s imperishable power, the unleveled paths of life will become smooth for them, hence, they are prepared for fighting the hardships and creating an ideal life for human beings.

Nevertheless, attaining the life-giving impact of religious acts in general and the Hajj rite in particular depends on full attention to the philosophy of these great heavenly instructions, or an act devoid of spirit will evidently not yield any sublime socio-humane result. Perhaps one can assert that the main reason we, Muslims, are deprived of the effects of our religious instruction is lack of attention to the spirit of divine laws. We are only content with their external forms.

We notice that certain Muslims go to perform Hajj and Umrah. They know the Hajj rites very well but, amazingly, there is neither revolution in them in terms of evolution of spirit and connection with God nor have they been disciplined from the viewpoint of social relations and rights of human beings.

In the same way, they are deprived of spiritual effects of such other religious acts as prayer, fasting, visiting the holy shrines, mourning for Imam Husayn (as) and holding sessions or learning the Holy Qur’an and other religious rites. Having the greatest intellectual and spiritual assets, this deprivation of sublime human virtues is regrettable, for it has no justification other than failing to know the truth of Islam and the spirit of the Qur’anic teachings.

It is regrettable to see that Muslims work hard to learn about issues related to prayer, the rules of reciting the Holy Qur’an but fail to learn about the spirit of prayer and the aim behind this divine injunction to nourish their soul in the light of those injunctions, to make their heart turn into a mirror to reflect God’s manifestations and to purify their individual and social life from the filth of all vices thanks to prayer.

It is seen that Muslims perform prayer, take part in congregational prayers, invoke, and supplicate, but remembrance of and spiritual attention to God and abstinence from indecency and evil, which are the ultimate goal of prayer, are missing in most worshippers. The prayer of most people is mixed with wrongdoing and is not different from ignoring God and not praying attention to Him. This is because we have failed to understand the ultimate goal of prayer as part of our religious program.