Say: 'My Lord enjoins justice, that is, equity and uprightness. And set upright your countenances, your existing essences, by preventing them from inclination and deviation towards the two sides of immoderation and excess in justice and from [any] variegations in uprightness, in every place of worship, that is, every station of prostration or moment of prostration. Prostration can be divided into four divisions: 1) the prostration of compliance, obedience and establishing the countenance there through sincere devotion (ikhlāṣ) and the avoidance of show and hypocrisy with regard to deeds performed for God and [the avoidance of] turning one's attention to other [than God] in those [deeds], as well as being mindful that the affair and the sincerity of the intention are in harmony, and avoiding contravention [of God] in all affairs, that which is justice; 2) the prostration of annihilation in the acts and the establishing of the countenance there by fulfilling what is due to that such that the person sees no effective agent other than God and sees no effect [as being] from himself or from any other; 3) the prostration of annihilation in the attributes and the establishing of the countenance there by observing its requirements in such a way that he does not see the adornments of his essence therein nor desire or loathe anything, [but] without inclining towards immoderation by abandoning the enjoining of decency and the forbidding of indecency, nor towards excessive wrath against the one in contravention; 3) and the prostration of annihilation in the Essence and establishing the countenance there by being absent from remnants and by being obliterated totally and by refraining from affirming ego and duality so that he does not become insolent by means of the veil of egoism nor engage in heresy by disregarding the law and abandoning obedience; and call upon Him, devoting your religion to Him, at the first station by singling it out for performing deeds for God [alone], and at the second and third [stations] by seeing religion and obedience as being from God, and at the fourth [station] by seeing these through God, such that God becomes the object of his religion and none other than Him having any share thereof. As He brought you into being, by manifesting you and hiding Himself, so you will return, by your annihilation in Him and your becoming hidden so that He might become manifest.
