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 Attributes of God 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.
I said that there was once a person just like him. He was in search of some treasure. He found that this treasure was kept hidden in a palace on the peak of some mountain. And the gate of this palace was locked. This lock did not open with any key, but with a magic formula. Now he went in search of that mantra. He went on seeking and finally reached a place where he met a sadhu who knew this magic formula.
He requested the sadhu to tell him the mantra. The sadhu told him what it was. The sadhu said that, the mantra was “sim sim”. Then the sadhu told him to go to a particular mountain top where he would find the palace with its gate locked and then, in front of that gate, he had to say: “Khul ae sim sim, khul ae sim sim” (Open, O sim sim, Open, O sim sim) and then the lock would open. The seeker then set off. After a long journey, by the time he reached the palace gate, he had forgotten the mantra. He stood in front of the gate, and uttered somewhat similar sounding words like tam tam, dum dum, bum bum. But the gate did not open. Then he came back to the sadhu again. The sadhu told him that the mantra was wrong, that was why he could not unlock the gate. Now he had to go again and say, “sim sim”. This time the man learnt it by rote and again traveled to that place. Now he stood in front of the palace gate and said “khul ae sim sim”, and immediately the door opened.
Many people regard ism-e-aazam, a kind of magical word, but this is wrong. Indeed ism-e-aazam is not a name you will find in a dictionary, it is another name for the internal state of a person. Whenever any true servant of God prays to God with sublime feelings from the heart, he receives the support of angels. At that time, particular spiritual words come to his lips. That is what it is to pray with ism-e-aazam. This kind of dua is guided by divine inspiration and the dua which is said with divine inspiration will definitely come straight from the human heart.
