Prayer does not mean that you should be standing, bowing, and prostrating yourself all day long; the object is that the state that manifests itself during prayer should remain with you constantly, whether asleep or awake, whether writing or reading. In no state should you be void of the remembrance of God...
Petition Him every moment for your needs and be not without remembrance of Him, for the remembrance of Him is strength; it is a wing to the bird of the spirit. If that goal is fully attained, it will be light upon light (Koran 24:35). If you are mindful of God, little by little your interior will be illuminated and you will attain release from the world.
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, pp. 182-183)
Anything that can be vocalized and has a beginning and an end is a "form", a "shell"; its "soul", however, is unqualifiable and infinite, without beginning and without end... We know that the "soul" of prayer is not only its external form but also a state of total absorption and unconsciousness during which all these external forms ... remain outside.
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 13)
A naked man jumped into the water to escape the stings of hornets. The hornets circle around him; when he shows his head, they do not let him go. The water is God's remembrance, and right now the hornets are the remembrance of this woman and that man. Hold your breath in the water of remembrance and be patient, so that you may be freed from old thoughts and inward whisperings! After that, you will gain totally the nature of pure water from head to foot.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 159)
Everyone has turned his face toward some direction, but the saints have turned in the direction without directions.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 23)
Return to yourself, oh heart! For from the heart a hidden road can be found to the Beloved. If the world of the six directions has no door, then come to the heart -- you can make a door. Come into the heart, the place of contemplating God! Though it is not so now, it can be made so.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, pp. 37-38)
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