The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 300
300. Essence of Islam II perfect inebriation with the love of God in their hearts. . They do not desire to be separated from it for a single moment. They suffer for it and endure torments on its account but do not wish to be separated from it for a moment, and are constantly watchful of their prayers. . This becomes natural for them, inasmuch as God has made the Ṣalāt, which is their loving remembrance of. Him, an essential nourishment for them, and by manifesting His personal love for them has bestowed upon them the delicious delight of Divine remembrance. In this way the remembrance of God becomes as dear to them as, and even dearer than, life itself. The personal love of God is a new soul that falls on their hearts like a flame and makes. Salāt and the remembrance of God a nourishment for them. Thus they believe that they live not by bread and water but by the Ṣalāt and the remembrance of Allāh. Şalāt Strengths a Believer's Spiritual Faculties. The remembrance of God charged with love, which is called the Salāt, truly becomes their food without which they cannot survive and which they guard and watch constantly, like a traveller who in the midst of a stark wilderness guards his scanty supply of bread and water. . The Absolute Bestower has appointed this condition also as a stage in the spiritual progress of man which is the last stage. The remembrance of God charged with love, the technical name of which is Ṣalāt, truly becomes for a worshipper a substitute for nourishment. . Indeed he repeatedly seeks to sacrifice his physical soul in return for this nourishment and cannot survive without it, as fish cannot survive without water. He deems a single moment away from God as death itself. His soul is always in prostration at the threshold of God and he finds