Establish prayer from the sun's decline. Know that prayer is of five types: the prayer of intimate connection and tender talk at the station of hiddenness, the prayer of presention vision at the station of the spirit, the prayer of intimate communion at the station of secret, the prayer of presence at the station of the heart and the prayer of obedience and yielding at the station of the soul. Thus the sun's decline is the indication of the setting of the sun of unity from its even presiding upon the existence of the servant by means of pure annihilation. For there is no [obligation of] prayer in the state of this presiding [of the sun of unity], as prayer is a deed that requires existence and in this case the servant has no existence until he engages in prayer, as is mentioned in the interpretation of His words and worship your Lord until Certainty comes to you [Q. 15:99]. Do you not see that the lawgiver [Muḥammad], peace be upon him, forbade prayer during the time of [the sun's] even presiding [in the sky]. But at the point of [the sun's] decline, if there falls a shadow of the servant's existence, whether it be upon his becoming veiled by creation at the point of separation after the union or upon subsistence at the point of separation after union, then prayer becomes obligatory, until the dark, of the night of the soul, and the recital [of the QurÌān], at the dawn of the heart. Thus the first prayer and the most subtle is the prayer of intimate connection and tender talk, and the most excellent one is the prayer of presential vision of the spirit, the one alluded to by [the words] 'the afternoon prayer', as is understood from 'the middle prayer', meaning the most excellent prayer, where He says, exalted be He: Maintain the prayers and the middle prayer [Q. 2:238]. The most revelatory and the lightest is the secret prayer through intimate communion at the first moment of being veiled by means of the manifestation of the heart, [and that is] because of the speed with which the moment for it passes. That is why it is preferred that one lightens the recitation [of QurÌānic passages] during the sunset prayer and others, since it is an indication of that [veilingḍ].
