It rescues him from drowning in the sea of self-neglect and...

It rescues him from drowning in the sea of self-neglect and forgetfulness and saves his identity from being lapsed in the world of material things. It is in the mirror of worship and God's remembrance that man can observe himself as he really is and become aware of his failings and faults.

It is in worship that he acquires the true perspective of being, life, space and time, like watching a city from a high mountain, and perceives the insignificance, pettiness and abjectness of his materialistic hopes, desires, and ambitions. It is in worship that a yearning is awakened in his heart to attain to the very core of being. I have always marvelled at the following words of the famous scientist of our age, Albert Einstein.

What adds to my amazement is that he was a physicist and a mathematician, not a psychologist, theologian or philosopher. After dividing religion into three stages, he calls the third stage of religious experience as the one arising from 'cosmic religious feeling.' He describes this religious experience in these words: The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims, and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought.

Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.[^13] William James, writing about prayer, says: The impulse to pray is a necessary consequence of the fact that whilst the innermost of the empirical selves of a man is a self of the social sort it yet can find its only adequate socius (its "great companion") in an ideal world. Most men, either continually or occasionally, carry a reference to it in their breasts.

The humblest outcast on this earth can feel himself to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition. [^14] Iqbal also has something profound to say about worship and prayer and their value for the rediscovery of the self. He writes: Prayer as a means of spiritual illumination is a normal vital act by which the island of our personality suddenly discovers its situation in a larger whole of life. [^15] We conclude our discussion of this extensive subject right here.

Some Relevant Issues: Now that our discussion about the concept of the world in the Nahj al-balaghah is nearing its conclusion, I want to clarify some issues with attention to the principles discussed above.