Blessings of Prayer — Page 15
15 He considers a fly to have some effect, but he does not believe the same about prayer. The truth is that he is completely unacquainted with this realm. He has neither personal experience in this field, nor kept the company of those who have had such experiences. Now, for the benefit of the general public, I will briefly set out the facts about the acceptance of prayer. Let it be clear that this subject is part of the larger subject of prayer, and it is a matter of principle that one who is not conversant with the fundamentals of a subject is bound to be mistaken and deceived in understanding its branches. This is why Sayyid Sahib has also been mistaken. Prayer, in essence, means a relationship of mutual attraction between a righteous person and his Lord. This means that God’s grace first draws a person towards Himself, and then, through the magnetism of the person’s sincerity, God draws closer to him. In the state of prayer this relationship reaches a point where it manifests wonderful qualities. When a man in grave difficulty falls down in prayer with perfect certainty, perfect hope, perfect fidelity, and perfect resolve; and when he becomes perfectly alert and advances far into the field of self-annihilation, tearing aside all veils of heedlessness, lo and behold, he finds before him the