beginning of the prayer until the exit from it. The meaning of that among the people of the inward is the turning of the prayer's face in reality—and he [the prayer] is the Gnostic through his prayer, which is the inquiry into the divine sciences and the hidden secrets—toward the direction of the Intellect [Al-Aql], which is the inward of the House placed in Bakka, and standing by what he was commanded and submitting to it. The Gate [Al-Bab] is the attribute of Knowledge, as we have previously presented. Just as the prayer's turning with his form to other than the direction legislated for facing nullifies his prayer, so too the prayer the inward, its ruling is nullified by the soul's turning toward other than the path of the Intellect, because every legislated outward [form] corresponds to an inward meaning, as we have previously mentioned.

The sixth indication regarding the esoteric meaning of the prayer times and the number of its Rak'abs.

The Sixth Indication: On the inward of the legislated prayer times and the number of its units [Rak'at]

Know—O my brother, may Allah keep you firm upon the knowledge He has bestowed upon you and aid you with an increase of His grace—that the entirety of the obligatory prayer points to the stations of the Intellect in its manifestations. It is placed in correspondence with its five persons, and its seventeen units [Rak'at] point to the seventeen composite letters pointing to its persons. They only become seventeen