The Existence of God

with ism-e-aazam and such a dua is always in one’s own mother tongue, rather than in any other language. Prayer from the Heart Once I happened to meet a person, who told me that he had been seeking the answer to a question for the last ten years, but he had not yet succeeded in finding it. I asked him what his question was? He said, “I want to know what ism-e-aazam is?” Ism-e-aazam means a prayer that invokes God’s greatest name. He told me that he had read many books, he had met many religious scholars and saints, but he had not yet received any satisfactory answer to the question. He said, “Now I have come to you. If possible, please give me the answer and ease my tension.” I said, “Your anxiety is purely self-induced. You have supposed that ism-e-aazam is like a mantra, that is, a magic formula. Now you want to know that mantra, but this will never happen.” I said that ism-e-aazam is not the name of some words but is rather the name of some state or feelings. The prayer said from the heart is prayer with ism-e-aazam. It is in actual fact the feeling of your own heart which makes a prayer a prayer of ism-e-aazam. No human word has the power to become God’s ism-e-aazam, because it cannot encompass the unlimited being of God.