| gencnurCom | From the Risale-i Nur Collection FRUITS FROM THE TREE OF LIGHT (An Anthology of Writings by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi) The
First Word In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. And
from Him do we seek help. Bismillah,
"In the Name of God," is the start of all
things good. We too shall start with it. Know, O my soul!
Just as this blessed phrase is a mark of Islam, so it is
constantly recited by all beings through their tongues of
disposition. If you want to know what an inexhaustible
strength, what an unending source of bounty is Bismillah,
listen to the following story which is in the form of a
comparison. It goes like this: Someone
who makes a journey through the deserts of
perish
in the face of innumerable enemies and needs. And so, two
men went on such a journey and entered the desert. One of
them was modest and humble, the other proud and
conceited. The humble man assumed the name of a tribal
chief, while the proud man did not. The first travelled
safely wherever he went. If he encountered bandits, he
said: "I am travelling in the name of such-and-such
tribal leader," and they did not molest him. If he
came to some tents, he was treated respectfully due to
the name. But the proud man suffered indescribable
calamities throughout his journey. He both trembled
before everything and begged from everything. He was
abased and became an object of scorn. My
proud soul! You are the traveller, and this world is a
desert. Your impotence and poverty have no limit, and
your enemies and needs are endless. Since it is thus,
take the name of the Pre-Eternal Ruler and Post-Eternal
Lord of the desert and be saved from begging before the
whole universe and trembling before every event. Yes,
this phrase is a treasury so blessed that your infinite
impotence and poverty bind you to an infinite power and
mercy; it makes your impotence and want a most
acceptable intercessor at the Court of One All-Powerful
and Compassionate. The person who acts saying, "In
the Name of God," resembles someone who enrolls in
the army. He acts in the name of the government; he has
fear of no one; he speaks, performs every matter, and
withstands everything in the name of the law and the name
of the government. At
the beginning we said that all beings say "In the
Name of God" through the tongue of disposition. Is
that so? Indeed,
it is so. If you were to see that a single person had
come and had driven all the inhabitants of a town to a
place by force and compelled them to work, you would be
certain that he had not acted in his own name and through
his own power, but was a soldier, acting in the name of
the government and relying on the power of the king. In
the same way, all things act in the name of Almighty God,
for minute things like seeds and grains bear huge trees
on their heads; they raise loads like mountains. That
means all trees say "In the Name of God," fill
their hands from the treasury of Mercy, and offer them
to us. All gardens say "In the Name of God,"
and become cauldrons from the kitchens of Divine Power in
which are cooked numerous varieties of different foods.
All blessed animals like cows, camels, sheep, and goats,
say "In the Name of God," and produce springs
of milk from the abundance of Mercy, offering us a most
delicate and pure food like the water of life in the name
of the Provider. The roots and rootlets, soft as silk, of
plants, trees, and grasses say "In the Name of
God," and pierce and pass through hard rock and
earth. Mentioning the name of God, the name of the Most
Merciful, everything becomes subjected to them. The
roots spreading through hard rock and earth and producing
fruits as easily as the branches spread through the air
and produce fruits, and the delicate green leaves
retaining their moisture for months in the face of
extreme heat, deal a slap in the mouths of Naturalists
and jab a finger in their blind eyes, saying: "Even
heat and hardness, in which you most trust, are under a
command. For like the Staff of Moses, each of those
silken rootlets conforms to the command of And We said, O
Moses, strike the rock with your staffs and split the
rock. And the delicate leaves fine as cigarette paper
recite the verse, O fire be coolness and peace1
against the heat of the fire, each like the limbs of
Abraham (UWP). Since
all things say "In the Name of God," and
bearing God's bounties in God's name, give them to us, we
too should say "In the Name of God." We should
give in the name of God, and take in the name of God. And
we should not take from heedless people who neglect to
give in God's name. Question:
We give a price to people, who are like tray-bearers. So
what price does God want, Who is the true owner? The
Answer: Yes, the price the True Bestower of Bounties
wants in return for those valuable bounties and goods is
three things: one is remem- l.Qur'an,
2:60. 2. Qur'an, 21:69.
brance,
another is thanks, and the other is reflection. Saying
"In the Name of God" at the start is
remembrance, and "All praise be to God" at the
end is thanks. And perceiving and thinking of those
bounties, which are priceless wonders of art, being
miracles of power of the Unique and Eternally Besought
One and gifts of His mercy, is reflection. However
foolish it is to kiss the foot of a lowly man who conveys
to you the precious gift of a king and not to recognize
the gift's owner, it is a thousand times more foolish to
praise and love the apparent source of bounties and
forget the True Bestower of Bounties. O
my soul! If you do not wish to be foolish in that way,
give in God's name, take in God's name, begin in God's
name, and act in God's name. And that's the matter in a
nutshell!
-n- The
Supplication of Yunus In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The
supplication of Hazrat Yunus ibn Matta (Peace be upon our
Prophet and upon him) is a most glorious supplication, a
most effective means for obtaining answer to prayer. The
gist of the celebrated story of Hazrat Yunus (Peace be
upon him) is as follows: He
was cast into the sea and swallowed by a large fish. The
sea was stormy, the night turbulent and dark and hope
exhausted. But it was in such a state that his
suppplication: There
is no god other than You, Glory be unto to You! Indeed, I
was among the wrongdoers1 acted
for him as a swift means of salvation. The
mysterious
property inherent in his supplication was this: In
that state all causes were suspended, for Haz-rat Yunus
needed to save him one whose command should constrain
the fish and the sea, the night and the sky. The night,
the sea, and the fish were united against him. Only one
whose command might subdue all three of these could
bring him forth on the strand of salvation. Even if the
entirety of creation had become his servants and helpers,
it would have been of no avail. For causes have no
effect. Since Hazrat Yunus saw with the eye of certainty
that there was no refuge other than the Causer of Causes,
and unfolded to him was the meaning of Divine oneness
within the light of Divine unity, his supplication was
able suddenly to subdue the night, the sea, and the fish.
Through the light of Divine unity he as able to transform
the belly of the fish into a submarine; and the surging
sea, that in its awesomeness resembled an erupting
volcano, into a peaceable plain, a place of delight and
enjoyment. Through the light of unity, he was able to
sweep the sky's countenance clear of all clouds, and to
set the moon over his head like a lantern. Creation that
had been pressing and threatening him from all sides now
showed him a friendly face from every direction. Thus he
reached the shore of salvation. Beneath the creeping
gourd tree he witnessed the grace of his Lord. Now
we are in a situation one hundred times more awesome than
that in which Hazrat Yunus (Upon whom be peace) first
found himself. Our night is the future. When we look upon
our future with the eye of neglect, it is a hundred times
darker and more fearful than his night. Our sea is this
spinning globe. Each wave of this sea bears on it
thousands of corpses, and is thus a thousand times more
frightening than his sea. Our fish is the caprice of our
soul which strives to shake and destroy the foundation of
our eternal life. This fish is a thousand times more
maleficent than his fish. For his fish can destroy a
hundred-year lifespan, whereas ours seeks to destroy a
life lasting hundreds of millions of years. This being
our true state, we should in imitation of Hazrat Yunus
(Upon whom be peace) avert ourselves from all causes and
take refuge directly in the Causer of Causes, that is,
our Sustainer. We should say: There
is no god but You, Gloi-y be unto You! Indeed I was among
the wrongdoers and
understand with full certainty that it is only He who can
repel from us the harm of the future, this. world, and
caprice of our . souls, united against us because of our
neglect and misguidance. For the future is subject to
His orders, the world to His commands, and our soul to
His rule. -What
cause is there other than the Creator of the Heavens and
Earth who can know the most subtle and secret thoughts of
our heart; who can lighten the future for us by
establishing the Hereafter; who can save us from the
myriad overwhelming waves of the world? No, outside
that Necessarily Existent One, there is nothing that can
in any way give aid and effect salvation except by His
consent and command. This
being the case, considering that as a result of his
supplication, the fish became for Hazrat Yunus a vehicle,
or a submarine, and the sea, a peaceable plain; and the
night became gently lit for him by the moon, so too, we
should make the same supplication: There
is no god but You, Glory be unto to You! Indeed I was
among the wrongdoers. With
the sentence There is no god but You we draw the gaze of
mercy upon our future; with the word Glory be unto to
You! we draw it upon our world; and with the phrase Indeed
I was among the wrongdoers, we draw it upon our soul.
Thus our future is illumined with the light of faith and
the moonlike luminosity of the Qur'an, and the awe and
terror of the night are transformed into tranquillity and
joy. Then too, embarking on the ship of the truth of
Islam, fashioned in the dockyard of the Most Wise
Qur'an, we may pass safely over the sea of this earthly
abode, where corpses unnumbered are borne on the waves of
the years and centuries, of the ceaseless alternation
of life and death, down to destruction. Once aboard that
ship we may reach the shore of salvation and fulfil our
life's duty. The tempest and surging of the sea will
appear a series of pleasing images on a screen, and
instead of inspiring terror
THE
SUPPLICATION OF YUNUS ? 19 and
dread, will delight, caress and illumine the reflective
and the meditative gaze. By virtue of the mystery of the
Qur'an, and the effect of that Book of Discernment, our
soul will ride no longer us, but instead become our
mount. As we ride it, it will be for us a powerful means
for the attainment of life everlasting. To
Conclude: Man, in accordance with the comprehensive
nature of his being, as he suffers and shakes with
malaria, so also will he suffer from the shaking and
tremors of the earth, and the supreme convulsion of all
beings of the Day of Resurrection. As he fears the
infinitesimal microbe, he will also fear the shooting
star that appears among the heavenly bodies. As he loves
his home, he will also love the wide world. As he loves
his little garden he will also ardently love infinite and
eternal paradise. The object of worship, the Sustainer,
refuge, saviour, and goal of man must then of necessity
be the One in the palm of whose power all beings lie, to
whose command atom and planet both will submit of
necessity. Man should then constantly say like Hazrat
Yunus (Upon whom be peace): There
is no god but You, Glory be unto to You! Indeed I was
among the wrongdoers. Glory
be unto to You! We have no knowledge save that which You
have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.2
-III- The
Affliction of
Ayyub In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. When
he called upon his Sustainer saying: "Verily harm
has afflicted me, and You are the Most Merciful of the
Mercifid."1 The
supplication of Hazrat Ayyub (Upon whom be peace), the
champion of patience, is both well-tested and effective.
Drawing on the verse, we should say in our supplication, O
my Sustainer! Indeed harm has afflicted me, and You are
the Most Merciful of the Merciful. The
gist of the well-known story of Hazrat Ayyub (Upon whom
be peace) is as follows: l.Qur'an,
21:83. ~~
While
afflicted with numerous wounds and sores for a long time,
he recalled the great recompense to be had for his
sickness, and endured it with utmost patience. But later,
when the worms generated by his wounds penetrated to his
heart and his tongue, which were the organ for the
remembrance and knowledge of God, he feared that his duty
of worship would suffer, and so he said in supplication
not for the sake of his own comfort, but for the sake of
his worship of God: "O
Lord! Harm has afflicted me; my remembrance of You with
my tongue and my worship of You with my heart will
suffer." God Almighty then accepted this pure
sincere, disinterested and devout supplication in the
most miraculous fashion. He granted to Hazrat Ayyub
perfect good health and made manifest in him all kinds of
compassion. This Flash contains Five Points. FIRST
POINT: Corresponding to the outer wounds and sicknesses
of Hazrat Ayyub (Upon whom be peace), we have inner
sicknesses of the spirit and heart. If our inner being is
turned outward, and our outer being turned inward, we
will apear more wounded and diseased than Hazrat Ayyub.
For each sin that we commit and each doubt that enters
our mind, inflicts wounds on our heart and our spirit. The
wounds of Hazrat Ayyub (Upon whom be peace) were of such
a nature as to threaten his brief worldly life. But our
inner wounds threaten our infinitely long life
everlasting. We need the supplication of Hazrat Ayyub
thousands of times more than he did himself. Just as the
worms that arose from his wounds penetrated to his heart
and tongue, so too the wounds that sin inflicts upon us
and the temptations and doubts that arise from those
wounds will —-may God protect us!— penetrate bur
inner heart, the seat of faith, and thus wound faith.
Penetrating too the spiritual joy of the tongue, the
proclaimer of faith, they cause it to shun in revulsion
the remembrance of God, and reduce it to silence. Sin,
penetrating to the heart, will blacken and darken it
until it extinguishes the light of faith. Within each sin
is a path leading to unbelief. Unless that sin is swiftly
obliterated by seeking God's pardon, it will grow from a
worm into a snake that gnaws on the heart. For
example, a man who secretly commits a shameful sin will
fear the disgrace that results if others become aware of
it. Thus the existence of angels and spirit beings will
be hard for him to endure, and he will long to deny it,
even on the strength of the slightest indication. Similarly,
one who commits a major sin deserving of the torment of
Hell, will desire the nonexistence of Hell
wholeheartedly, and whenever he hears of the threat of
Hell-fire, he will dare to deny it on the strength of a
slight indication and doubt, unless he takes up in
protection the shield of repentance and seeking
forgiveness.
Similarly,
one who does not perform the obligatory prayer and fulfil
his duty of worship will be affected by distress, just as
he would be in case of the neglect of a minor duty toward
some petty ruler. His laziness in fulfulling his
obligation, despite the repeated commands of the
Sovereign of Pre-Eternity, will distress him greatly,
and on account of that distress will desire and say to
himslef: "Would that there were no such duty of
worship!" In turn, there will arise from this desire
a desire to deny God, and bear enmity toward Him. If some
doubt concerning the existence of the Divine Being comes
to his heart, he will be inclined to embrace it like a
conclusive proof. A wide gate to destruction will be
opened in front of him. The wretch does not know that
although he is delivered by denial from the slight
trouble of duty of worship, he has made himself, by that
same denial, the target for millions of troubles that are
far more awesome. Fleeing from the bite of a gnat, he
welcomes the bite of the snake. There
are many other examples, which may be understood with
reference to these three, so that the sense of, Nay
but their hearts are stained2 will
become apparent. SECOND.
POINT: As was set forth concerning the meaning of
Divine Determining, known as destiny, in the Twenty-Sixth
Word, men have no
right
to complain in the case of disasters and illness for the
following three reasons: The
First Reason: God Most High has made the garment of the
body in which man is clothed a manifestation of His art.
He has made man to be a model on which He cuts, trims,
alters and changes the garment of the body, thus
displaying the manifestation of various of His Names.
Just as the Name of Healer makes it necessary that
illness should exist, so too the Name of Provider
requires that hunger should exist. And so on... The
Lord of All Dominion has disposal over His dominion as He
wishes. Second
Reason: It is by means of disasters and sicknesses that
life is refined, perfected, strengthened and advanced;
that it yields results, attains perfection and fulfils it
own purpose. Life led monotonously on the mattress of
comfort resembles not so much the absolute good that is
being, as the absolute evil that is non-being; it tends
in fact in that direction. The
Third Reason: This worldly realm is the field of testing,
the abode of service. It is not the place of pleasure,
reward, and requital. Considering, then, that it is the
abode of service and place of worship, sicknesses and
misfortunes —as long as they do not affect faith and
are patiently endured— conform fully to service and
worship, and even strengthen it. Since they make each
hour's worship equivalent to that of a day, one should
offer thanks instead of complaining. Worship
consists in fact of two kinds, positive and negative.
What is meant by the positive is obvious. As for negative
worship, this is when one afflicted with misfortune or
sickness perceives his own weakness and helplessness,
and turning to his Compassionate Lord, seeks refuge in
Him, meditates upon Him, petitions Him, and thus offers a
pure form of worship that no hypocrisy can penetrate.
If he endures patiently, thinks of the reward attendant
on misfortune and offers thanks, then each hour that he
passes will count as a whole day spent in worship. His
brief life becomes very long. There are even cases where
a single minute is counted as equal to a whole day's
worship. • I
once was extremely anxious because of an awesome illness
that struck one of my brothers of the Hereafter, Muhajir
Hafiz Ahmad. But then a warning came to my heart:
"Congratulate him!" Each minute he spends is
counted as a whole day's worship. He was in any event
enduring his illness in patience and gratitude. THIRD
POINT: As we have pointed out in one or two of the Words,
whenever one thinks of his past life, he will say in his
heart or with his tongue either "Ah!" or
"Oh!" That is he will either experience regret,
or say "Thanks and praise be to God." Regret is
inspired by the pains arising from the cessation of
former pleasures and separation from them. For the
cessation of pleasure is a pain in itself. Sometimes a
momentary pleasure will cause everlasting pain. To think
upon it will be like lancing a wound, causing regret to
gush forth. As
for the lasting spiritual pleasure that comes from the
cessation of momentary pains experienced in the past,
it inspires man to say, "Thanks and praise be to
God." In addition to this innate tendency of man, if
he thinks of the reward that results from misfortune and
the requital that awaits him in the Hereafter, if he
realizes that his brief life will count as a long life
because of misfortune —then instead of being merely
patient he should be thankful. He should say,
"Praise be to God for every state other than
unbelief and misguidance." It
is commonly said that misfortune is longlast-ing. Indeed
it is, but not because it is troublesome and distressing
as people customarily imagine, but rather because it
yields vital results just like a long life. FOURTH
POINT: As was set forth in the First Station of the
Twenty-First Word, the power of patient endurance given
to man by God Most High is adequate for every misfortune,
unless squandered on mere fancies. But through the
predominance of fantasy, man's neglect, and his imagining
this transient life to be eternal, he squanders his power
of endurance on the past and the future. His endurance is
not equal to the misfortunes of the present, and he
begins to complain. It is as if —God forbid!— he were
complaining of God Most High to men. In a most
unjustified and even lunatic fashion, be complains and
demonstrates his lack of patience. If
the day that is past held misfortune, the distress is
now gone, and only tranquillity remains; the pain is gone
and the pleasure in its cessation remains; the trouble is
gone, and the reward remains. Hence one should not
complain but give thanks for enjoyment. One should not
resent misfortune, but love it. The transient life of
the past comes to be counted as an eternal and blessed
life because of misfortune. To think upon past pain with
one's fancy and then to waste part of one's patience is
lunacy. As
far as days yet to come are concerned, since they have
not yet come, to think now of the illness or misfortune
to be borne during them and display impatience, is also
foolishness. To say to oneself "Tomorrow or the day
after I will be hungry and thirsty" and constantly
to drink water and eat bread today, is pure madness.
Similarly, to think of misfortunes and sicknesses yet
in the future but now non-existent, to suffer them
already, to show impatience and to oppress oneself
without any compulsion, is such stupidity that it no
longer deserves pity and compassion. In
short, just as gratitude increases Divine bounty, so too
complaint increases misfortune, and removes all occasion
for compassion. During
World War One, a blessed person in Erzuram
was afflicted with an awesome disease. I went to visit
him and he said to me complaining bitterly: "I
have not been able to place my head on the pillow and
sleep for a hundred nights." I was much grieved.
Suddenly a thought came to me and I said: "Brother,
the hundred difficult days you have spent are now just
like one hundred happy days. Do not think of them and
complain; rather look at them and be grateful. As for
future days, since they have not yet come, place your
trust in your Compassionate and Merciful Sustainer. Do
not weep before being beaten, do not be afraid of
nothing, do not give non-being the colour of being. Think
of the present hour; your power of patient endurance is
enough for this hour. Do not act like the maddened
commander who expects reinforcement on his right wing by
an enemy force deserting to join him from his left, and
then begins to disperse his forces in the centre to the
left and the right, before the enemy has joined him on
the right. The enemy then destroys his centre, left weak,
with a minimal force. Brother, do not be like him.
Mobilize all your strength for this present hour, and
think of Divine Mercy, reward in the Hereafter, and how
your brief and transient life is being transformed into a
long and eternal form. Instead of complaining bitterly,
give joyful thanks." Much
relieved, he said, "Praise and thanks be to God, my
disease is now a tenth of what it was before." FIFTH
POINT, consisting of three matters. First
Matter: True and harmful misfortune is that which affects
religion. One should at all times seek refuge at the Hazrat
Ayyub (Upon whom be peace) did not pray in his
supplication for the comfort of-his soul, but rather
sought cure for the purpose of .worship, when disease was
preventing his remembrances of God with his tongue and
his meditation upon God in his heart. We too should make
our primary intent, when making that supplication, the
healing of the inward and spiritual wounds that arise
from sinning. As
far as physical diseases are concerned, we may seek
refuge from them when they hinder our worship. But we
should seek refuge in a humble and supplicating fashion,
not protestingly and plaintively. If we accept God as our
Lord and Sustainer, then we must accept too all that He
gives us in His capacity of Lord. To sigh and complain in
a manner implying objection to Divine Determining and
Decree is a kind of criticism of Divine Determining, an
accusation levelled against God's compassion. The one who
criticizes Divine Determining strikes his head against
the anvil and breaks it. Whoever accuses God's mercy will
inevitably be deprived of it. To use a broken hand to
exact revenge will only cause further damage to the hand.
So too a man who, afflicted with misfortune, responds
to it with protesting complaint and anxiety, is only
compounding his misfortune. Second
Matter: Physical misfortunes grow when they are seen to
be large, and shrink when they are seen to be small. For
example, a dream enters one's vision at night. If one
pays it attention it swells up and grows; if one does
not, it disappears. So too if one attempts to ward off an
attacking swarm of bees, they will become more
aggressive; whereas if one pays them no attention they
will disperse. Thus if one regards physical misfortunes
as great and grants them importance, they will grow, and
because of anxiety pass from the body and strike root
in the heart. The result will then be an inward
affliction on which the outward misfortune fastens to
perpetuate itself. But if the anxiety is removed by
contentment with the Divine Decree and reliance on God,
the physical misfortune will gradually decrease, dry up
and vanish, just like a tree whose roots have been
severed. I once composed the following verses in
description of this truth: Abandon,
O wretch, thy lamentation; reliance on God shall be thy
refuge! Lamenting
is naught but an increase of woe; woe itself, tlmt is thy
dirge! Find
thy way to the author of woe; thy woe shall then be
-pleasing as the grem verge! But
if thou findest him not then is the whole ivorld one
endless cruel image! Thou
who dost suffer from a worldful of woe —why complain at
one pain? Make God thy refuge! Smile
thus in the face of thy woe; woe itself then shall smile,
and, smiling, shrink and quite change! If
in single-handed combat one smiles at an awesome enemy,
his enmity will be changed to conciliatoriness; his
hostility will become a mere joke, will shrink and
disappear. If one confronts misfortune with reliance on
God the result will be similar. Third
Matter: Each age has particualr characteristics. In
this age of neglect misfortune has changed its form. In
certain ages and for certain persons/misfortune is not in
reality misfortune, but rather a Divine favour. Since I
consider those afflicted with illness in the present age
to be fortunate —on condition that their illness does
not affect their religion— it does not occur to me to
oppose illness and misfortune, nor to take pity on the
afflicted. Whenever I encounter some afflicted youth, I
find that he is more concerned with his religious duties
and the Hereafter than are his peers. From this I deduce
that illness does not constitute a misfortune for such
people, but rather a bounty from God. It is true that
illness causes him distress in his brief, transient and
worldly life, but it is beneficial for his eternal life.
It is to be regarded as a kind of worship. If he were
healthy he would be unable to maintain the state he
enjoyed while sick and would fall into dissipation, as a
result of the impetuousness of youth and the dissipated
nature of the age. CONCLUSION:
God Almighty, in order to display His infinite power and
unlimited mercy, has made inherent in man infinite
weakness and unlimited want. Further, in order to display
the infinite variety of the impress of His Names, He has
created man like a machine receptive to pain and pleasure
perceived from an infinite variety of
directions.
Within that human machine He has placed hundreds of
instruments, and for each instrument He has appointed
different pains and pleasures, duties and rewards.
Simply, all of the Divine Names manifested in the
macrocosm that is the world also have manifestations in
the microcosm that is man. Beneficial matters like good
health, well-being, and pleasures cause man to offer
thanks and prompt the human machine to perform its
functions in many respects, and thus man becomes like a
factory producing thanks. Similarly,
by means of misfortune, illness and pain, and other
motion-inducing contingencies, the other cogs of the
human machine are set in motion and revolution. The mine
of weakness, helplessness, and poverty inherent in human
nature is made to work. Not the tongue alone, but each
limb is transformed into a tongue, begins to seek refuge
and aid. Thus by means of those contingencies man
becomes like a moving pen comprising thousands of
different pens. He inscribes the appointed course of his
existence on the page of his life or the Tablet in the
World of Similitudes; he puts forth a declaration of
the Divine Names; and becomes himself an ode to the glory
of God, thus fulfilling the duties of his nature.
The
Trust Given to Man In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Verily
God has purchased from the believers their persons and
their property that If
you wish to understand how profitable a trade it is, and
how honourable a rank, to sell one's person and property
to God, to be His slave and His soldier, then listen to
the following comparison. Once
a king entrusted each of two of his subjects with an
estate, including all necessary workshops, machinery,
horses, weapons and so forth. But since it was a
tempestuous and war-ridden age, nothing enjoyed
stability; it was destined either to disappear or to
change. The king in his infinite mercy sent a most noble
lieutenant to the two men and by means of a compassionate
decree conveyed the following to them: "Sell
me the property you now hold in trust, so that I may keep
it for you. Let it not be destroyed for no purpose. After
the wars are over, I will return it to you in a better
condition than before. I will regard the trust as your
property and pay you a high price for it. As for the
machinery and the tools in the workshop, they will be
used in my name and at my workbench. But the price and
the fee for their- use shall be increased a thousandfold.
You will receive all the profit that accrues. You are
indigent and resourceless, and unable to provide the
cost of these great tasks. So let me assume the provision
of all expenses and equipment, and give you all the
income and the profit. You shall keep it until the time
of demobilization. So see the five ways in which you
shall profit! "Now
if you do not sell me the property, you can see that no
one is able to preserve what he possesses, and you too
will lose what you now hold. It will go for nothing, and
you will lose the high price I offer. The delicate and
valuable tools and scales, the precious metals waiting to
be used, will also lose all value. You will have the
trouble and concern of administering and preserving, but
at the same time be punished for betraying your trust. So
see the five ways in which you may
lose!
Moreover, if you sell the property to me, you become my
soldier and act in my name. Instead of a common prisoner
or irregular soldier, you will be the free lieutenant of
an exalted monarch." After
they had listened to this gracious decree, the more
intelligent of the two men said: "By
all means, I am proud and happy to sell. I offer thanks a
thousandfold." But
the other was arrogant, selfish and dissipated; his
soul had become as proud as the Pharaoh. As if he was to
stay eternally on that estate, he ignored the earthquakes
and tumults of this world. He said: "No!
Who is the king? I won't sell my property, nor spoil my
enjoyment." After
a short time, the first man reached so high a rank that
everyone envied his state. He received the favour of the
king, and lived happily in the king's own palace. The
other by contrast fell into such a state that everyone
pitied him, but also said he deserved it. For as a result
of his error, his happiness and property departed, and
he suffered punishment and torment. O
soul full of caprices! Look at the face of truth through
the telescope of this parable. As for the king, he is the
Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, your Sustainer
and Creator. The estates, machinery, tools and scales are
your possessions while in life's fold; your body,
spirit and
heart
within those possessions, and your external and inner
senses such as the eye and the tongue, intelligence and
imagination. As for the most noble lieutenant, it is the
Noble Messenger of God; and the most wise decree is the
Wise Qur'an, which-describes the trade we are
discussing in this verse: Verily
God has purchased from the believers their persons and
property that The
surging field of battle is the tempestuous surface of
the world, which ceaselessly changes, dissolves and
reforms and causes every man to think: "Since
everything will leave our hands, will perish and be lost,
is there no way in which we can transform it into
something eternal and preserve it?" While
engaged in these thoughts, he suddenly hears the heavenly
voice of the Qur'an saying: "Indeed
there is, a beautiful and easy way which contains five
profits within itself." What
is that way? To
sell the Trust received back to its true owner. Such a
sale yields profit fivefold., The
First Profit: Transient property becomes everlasting. For
this waning life, when given to the Eternal and
Self-Subsistent Lord of Glory and spent for His sake,
will be transmuted into eternity. It will yield eternal
fruits. The moments of one's life will apparently vanish
and rot like kernels and seeds. But then the flowers of
blessedness and auspiciousness will open and bloom in the
realm of eternity, and each will also present a luminous
and reassuring aspect in the Intermediate Realm. The
Second Profit: The high price of The
Third Profit: The value of each limb and each sense is
increased a thousandfold. The intelligence is, for
example, like a tool. If you do not sell it to God
Almighty, but rather employ it for the sake of the soul,
it will become an ill-omened, noxious and debilitating
tool that will burden your weak person with all the sad
sorrows of the past and the terrifying fears of the
future; it will descend to the rank of an inauspicious
and destructive tool. It is for this reason that a sinful
man will frequently resort to drunkenness or frivolous
pleasure in order to escape the vexations and injuries of
his intelligence. But if you sell your intelligence to
its True Owner and employ it on His behalf, then the
intelligence will become like the key to a talisman,
unlocking the infinite treasures of compassion and the
vaults of wisdom that creation contains. To
take another example, the eye is one of the senses, a
window through which the spirit looks out on this world.
If you do not sell it to God Almighty, but rather employ
it on behalf of the soul, by gazing upon a handful of
transient, impermanent beauties and scenes, it will sink
to the level of being a pander to lust and the
concupiscent soul. But if you sell the eye to your
All-Seeing Maker, and employ it on His behalf and within
limits traced out by Him, then your eye will rise to the
rank of a reader of the great book of being, a witness to
the miracles of dominical art, a blessed bee sucking on
the blossoms of mercy in the garden of this globe. Yet
another example is that of the tongue and the sense of
taste. If you do not sell it to your Wise Creator, but
employ it instead on behalf of the soul and for the sake
of the stomach, it sinks and declines to the level of a
gatekeeper at the stable of the stomach, a watchman at
its factory. But if you sell it to the Generous Provider,
the sense of taste contained in the tongue will rise to
the rank of a skilled overseer at the treasuries of
Divine compassion, a grateful inspector in the kitchens
of God's eternal power. So
look well, O intelligence! See the difference between a
tool of destruction and the key to all being! And look
carefully, O eye! See the difference between an
abominable pander and the learned overseer of the Divine
library! And taste well, O tongue! See the difference
between a stable doorkeeper or a factory watchman and the
superintendent of the treasury of God's mercy! Compare
all other members and limbs to these, and then you will
understand that in truth the believer acquires a nature
worthy of The
Fourth Profit: Man is helpless and exposed to numerous
misfortunes. He is indigent, and his needs are numerous.
He is weak, and the burden of life is most heavy. If he
does not rely on the Omnipotent One of Glory, place his
trust in Him and confidently submit to Him, his
conscience will always be troubled. Fruitless torments,
pains and regrets will overwhelm him and intoxicate him,
or turn him into a beast. The
Fifth Profit: Those who have experienced sapiential
knowledge and had unveiled to them the true nature of
things, the elect who have witnessed the truth, are all
agreed that the exalted reward for all the worship and
glorification of God performed by your members and
instruments will be given to you at the time of greatest
need, in the form of the fruits of Paradise. If
you spurn this trade with its fivefold profit, in
addition to being deprived of its profit, you will suffer
fivefold loss. The
First Loss: The property and offspring to which you are
so attached, the soul and its caprice
that
you worship, the youth and life with which you are
infatuated, all will vanish and be lost; your hands will
be empty. But they will leave behind them sin and pain,
fastened on your neck like a yoke. The
Second Loss: You will suffer the penalty for betrayal of
trust. For you will have wronged your own self by using
the most precious tools on the most worthless objects. The
Third Loss: By casting down all the precious faculties
of man to a level much inferior to the animals, you will
have insulted and transgressed against God's wisdom. The
Fourth Loss: In your weakness and poverty, you will
have placed the heavy burden of life on your weak
shoulders, and will constantly groan and lament beneath
the blows of transience and separation. The
Fifth Loss: You will have clothed in an ugly form, fit to
open the gates of Hell in front of you, the fair gifts of
the Compassionate One such as the intelligence, the
heart, the eye and the tongue, given to you to make
preparation for the foundations of everlasting life and
eternal happiness in the Hereafter. Now
is it so difficult to sell the Trust? Is it so burdensome
that many people shun the transaction? By no means! It
is not in the least burdensome. For the limits of the
permissible are broad, and are quite adequate for man's
desire; there is ¦
no
need to trespass on the forbidden. The duties imposed by
God are light and few in number. To be the slave and
soldier of God is an indescribably pleasurable honour.
One's duty is simply to act and embark on all things in
God's name, like a soldier; to take and to give on God's
behalf; to move and be still in accordance with His
permission and law. If one falls short, then one should
seek His forgiveness, say: "O
Lord! Forgive our faults, and accept us as Your slaves.
Make us sure holders of Your Trust until the time comes
when it is taken from us. Amenl", and make petition
unto Him.
-
V- Proofs
of Resurrection [The
Gate of God's Bestowal of Life and Death; the
manifestations of the Names of Ever-Liying and
Self-Subsistent, and Giver of Life and Giver of Death.] Is
it at all possible that the One Who restores to life the
vast dead, dry earth; and within that restoring to life,
demonstrates His power by resurrecting —like the
resurrection of man— each of more than three hundred
thousand varieties of creatures; and within that
resurrection, displays the His all-embracing knowledge
through differentiating and separating out to an
infinite degree beings infinitely mixed up and
intermingled; Who, with all His heavenly decrees, turns
the gazes of all His servants towards eternal happiness
by promising the resurrection of man; Who demonstrates
the tremendousness of His domini-cality through making
all beings unite and stand
shoulder
to shoulder and assist one another and be subjugated to
one another, and causing them to revolve under His
command and will; Who demonstrates the great importance
He gives to man by creating him as the most
comprehensive, the most delicate and precious, the most
needy and wanting fruit of the tree of the universe, and
by taking him as His addressee, and subjugating all
things to him; —is it at all possible that One Who is
thus All-Compassionate and Ail-Powerful, One Who is thus
All-Wise and All-Knowing, should not bring about the
resurrection of the dead; that He should not bring about
the Great Gathering or be unable to do so; that He should
not raise man to life or be unable to do so; that He
should not institute a Supreme Tribunal; that He should
not create Paradise and Hell? God forbid! Indeed,
the Glorious Disposer of this world creates numerous
examples, signs, and indications of the Great Gathering
and field of resurrection every century, every year, and
every day in this narrow and transitory face of the
earth. For
instance, we see in the Gathering of spring that within
five or six days more than three hundred thousand sorts
of animals and plants, great and small, are resurrected.
The roots of all trees and plants, and some animals are
returned and raised to life identically, while others are
created in a form so similar as to be almost identical.
And while seeds, which differ very little from one
another in regard to their substance, are so
intermingled, they spring to life in six days or six
weeks perfectly distinct and differentiated, and with
perfect order and balance, despite their abundance and
the speed and ease with which they appear. It is at all
possible that anything should be difficult for the One
Who does this; that He should not create the heavens and
the earth in six days; that He should not raise man to
life at the blast of a trumpet? God forbid! Think
of a wonder-working scribe who writes out in one hour on
a single page three hundred thousand books the letters of
which are either spoilt or erased, most beautifully, all
together without error, fault or defect or confusing
them. If someone were to say to you: "This scribe
will write out again from memory in one minute the book
he himself has written and which has fallen into the
water," could you then say: "He can't do it and
I don't believe it!"? Or
think of a wonder-working king, who, in order to
demonstrate his power, or by way of example, or for
pleasure, removes mountains or transposes whole lands.
You have seen that he has changed the sea into land, and
then you have seen that a mighty rock has rolled down
into a valley and blocked the way of guests he had
invited to a banquet. Should someone say to you:
"The king will remove that rock at a mere sign no
matter how big it is, or else scatter it!", could
you reply: "He can't remove it," or "He
won't remove it!"? Or
if someone were to say of a person who had formed a great
army in a single day from nothing: "That person will
gather together those battalions the soldiers of which
have dispersed to rest, and the battalions will become
part of his troops," and you were to say: "I
don't believe it!", you can understand what
stupidity your behaviour would be. If
you have understood these three comparisons, look: the
Pre-Eternal Inscriber turns over the white page of winter
before our eyes and opens the green page of spring and
summer, and writes in the best of forms on the page of
the face of the earth the more than three hundred
thousand species of beings with the pen of power and
Divine Determining. One within the other, He confuses not
one of them. He writes them all together, yet not one is
an obstacle to another. They all differ from one another
in regard to form and shape, yet He mixes up none of
them. He writes nothing wrongly. So,
can it be said of the All-Wise Preserver Who includes in
the tiniest seed like a point the programme of the spirit
of the largest tree, how can He preserve the spirits of
the dead? Can
it be said of the All-Powerful One Who spins the globe of
the earth as though it were a stone in a sling, how can
He remove or scatter the earth, which is blocking the
path of His guests on their way to the Hereafter? Can
it be said of the All-Glorious One Who creates from
nothing, anew, the armies of all living beings, and,
with the command of "Be! "and it is,1
enrolls and situates the particles with perfect order in
the battalions of all their bodies, —can it be said of
Him, how can He gather together at a single trumpet-blast
those mutually-acquainted fundamental particles and
essential parts through their entering under the order of
the battalion-like bodies? Furthermore,
you can see with your own eyes how many inscriptions He
has made in every epoch, every century, of the world, and
even in the alternation of night and day, and in the
creation and disappearance of the clouds in the sky,
all of which resemble the resurrection of spring and are
examples, signs and indications of the resurrection of
the dead. You may even travel with your imagination to a
thousand years ago and compare with one another the two
wings of time, the past and the future: you will see
examples of the Great Gathering and samples of the
resurrection to the number of centuries and days. So if
you still consider unreasonable and deem unlikely bodily
resurrection despite observing all these examples and
indications, you too may understand what lunacy it is!
Look! See what the Supreme Decree has to say about the
truth we are discussing: So
think on the signs of God's Mercy, how He gives life to
the earth after its death; indeed,
He
it is Who will give life to the dead, and He is powerful
over all things.2
In
Short: There is nothing to prevent resurrection;
indeed, everything necessitates it. Yes, the tremendous
and eternal dominicality of the One Who gives life and
death to this mighty earth — the gathering of
wonders— as though it were a mere animal and makes it a
pleasant cradle, a fine ship, for man and the animals,
and makes the sun a lamp supplying light and heat for
them in this guest-house, and makes the planets vehicles
for the angels — this dominicality, this vast and
all-encompassing rule, cannot be founded and rest only on
the transient, passing, unstable, insignificant,
changing, impermanent, defective, imperfect matters of
this world. This means He has another realm, one
permanent, stable, unperishing, majestic, and worthy of
Him. Another, everlasting domain. It is for this that He
causes us to labour. It is there that He invites us. And
all those with illumined spirits, all the spiritual poles
with luminous hearts, all those with illuminated
intellects who have penetrated from outer appearances to
the truth and have been honoured with proximity to the
Divine Presence, all testify that He shall transfer us
there. They inform us unanimously that He has prepared
reward and punishment for us, and relate that He
repeatedly gives most firm promises and most severe
warnings.
abasement
and degradation. It can in no way be be associated with
His Sacred Glory. As for failing to carry out a threat,
it arises from either forgiveness or impotence. But
unbelief is an absolute crime;3 it cannot be
forgiven. And the Absolutely Powerful One is exempt from
and beyond all impotence. And although the witnesses and
bring-ers of this news all differ as to their ways and
paths, they are united in complete unanimity in the
basics of this matter. As regards number, they are
unanimous. In regard to quality, they have the strength
of consensus. As regards position, each is a star of
mankind, the hope of a nation, the beloved of a people.
As regards importance, they are both experts in this
matter, and they are affirming. And two experts in a
science or an art are preferable to thousands who are not
experts, and in giving news of something, two affirmers
are preferable to thousands of deniers. For example, two
men who report the appearance of
the
new moon of Ramadan invalidate the negations of thousands
of deniers. In
Short: In the whole world there can be no truer report,
no more well-founded claim, no clearer fact than this.
This means that without doubt this world is an arable
field, and the Great Gathering a threshing-floor, a
harvest, and as for Paradise and Hell, they are each a
granary and storehouse.
-VI- Manifestations
of God's Presence [This
consists of a single, brief proof of the pillar of
belief, belief in God, for which there are numerous
decisive proofs and explanations in many places in the
Risale-i Nur.] In
Kastamonu a group of high-school students came to me,
saying: "Tell us about our Creator, our teachers do
not speak of God." And I said to them: "All the
sciences you study continuously speak of God and make
known the Creator, each with its own particular tongue.
Do not listen to your teachers; listen to them. "For
example, a well-equipped pharmacy with life-giving
potions and cures in every jar weighed out in precise and
wondrous measures doubtless shows an extremely skilful,
practised, and wise pharmacist. In the same way, to the
extent that it
is
bigger and more perfect and better equipped than the
pharmacy in the market-place, the pharmacy of the globe
of the earth with its living potions and medicaments in
the jars which are the four hundred thousand species of
plants and animals shows and makes known to eyes that are
blind even —by means of the measure or scale of the
science of medicine that you study— the All-Wise One of
Glory, Who is the Pharmacist of the mighty pharmacy of
the earth. "To
take another example, a wondrous factory which weaves
thousands of sorts of cloth from a simple material
doubtless makes known a manufacturer and skilful
mechanic. In the same way, to whatever extent it is
larger and more perfect than the human factory, this
travelling dominical machine known as the globe of the
earth with its hundreds of thousands of heads in each of
which are hundreds of thousands of factories shows and
makes known —by means of the measure or scale of the
science of engineering which you study— its
Manufacturer and Owner. "And,
for example, a depot, store, or shop in which has been
brought together and stored up in regular and orderly
fashion a thousand and one varieties of provisions
undoubtedly makes known a wondrous owner, proprietor, and
overseer of provisions and foodstuffs. In just the same
way, to whatever degree it is vaster and more perfect
than such a store or factory, this foodstore of the Most
Merciful One known as the globe of the earth, this Divine
ship, this dominical depot and shop holding goods,
equipment, and conserved food, which in one year travels
regularly an orbit of twenty-four thousand years, and
carrying groups of beings requiring different foods and
passing through- the seasons on its journey and filling
the spring With thousands of different provisions like a
huge waggon, brings them to the wretched animate
creatures whose sustenance has been exhausted in winter,
—-by means of the measure or scale of the science of
economics which you study— this depot of the earth
makes known and makes loved its Manager, Organizer, and
Owner. "And,
for example, let us imagine an army which consists of
four hundred thousand nations and each nation requires
different provisions, uses different weapons, wears
different uniforms, undergoes different drill, and is
discharged from its duties differently. If this army and
camp has a miracle-working commander who on his own
provides all those different nations with all their
different provisions, . weapons, uniforms, and equipment
without forgetting or confusing any of them, then surely
the army and camp show the commander and make him loved
appreciatively. In just the same way, the spring camp of
the face of the earth in which every spring a newly
recruited Divine army of the four hundred thousand
species of plants and animals are given their varying
uniforms, rations, weapons, training, and demobilizations
in utterly perfect and regular fashion by a single
Commander-in-Chief Who forgets or confuses not one of
them —to whatever extent the spring camp of the face of
the earth is vaster and more perfect than that human
army, — by means of the measure or scale of the
military science that you study— it makes known to the
attentive and sensible, its Ruler, Sustainer,
Administrator, and Most Holy Commander, causing
wonderment and acclaim, and makes Him loved and praised
and glorified. "Another
example: millions of electric lights that move and travel
through a wondrous city, their fuel and power source
never being exhausted, self-evidently make known a
wonderworking craftsman and extraordinarily talented
electrician who manages the electricity, makes the moving
lamps, sets up the power source, and brings the fuel;
they cause others to congratulate and applaud him, and to
love him. In just the same way, although some of the
lamps of the stars in the roof of the palace of the world
in the city of the universe —if they are considered in
the way that astronomy says— are a thousand times
larger than the earth and move seventy times faster than
a cannon-ball, they do not spoil their order, nor collide
with one another, nor become extinguished, nor is their
fuel exhausted. According to astronomy, which you study,
for our sun to continue burning, which is a million
times larger than the earth and a million times older and
is a lamp and stove in a guest-house of the Most Merciful One,
as much oil as the seas of the earth and as much coal as
its mountains or as much logs and wood as ten earths are
necessary for it not to be extinguished. And however much
greater and more perfect than this example are the
electric lamps of the palace of the world in the majestic
city of the universe, which point with their fingers of
light to an infinite power and sovereignty which
illuminates the sun and other lofty stars like it without
oil, wood, or coal, not allowing them to be extinguished
or to collide with one another, though travelling
together at speed, to that degree —by means of the
measure of the science of electricity which you either
study or will study— they testify to and make known the
Monarch, Illuminator, Director, and Maker of the mighty
exhibition of the universe; they make Him loved,
glorified, and worshipped. "And,
for example, a book in every line of which a whole book
is finely written, and in every word of which a sura of
the Qur'an is inscribed with a fine pen, which is most
meaningful and all of whose matters corroborate one
another, a wondrous collection showing its writer and
author to be extraordinarily skilful and capable,
undoubtedly shows its writer and author together with all
his perfections and arts are clearly as daylight, and
makes him known. It makes him appreciated with phrases
like, What wonders God has willed! and, Blessed be God! And
just the same is the mighty book of the universe; we see
with our eyes a pen at work which writes on the face of
the earth, which is a single of its pages, and on the
spring, which is a single folio, the three hundred
thousand plant and animal species, which are like three
hundred thousand different books, all together, one
within the other, without fault or error, without mixing
them up or confusing them, perfectly and with complete
order, and sometimes writes an ode in a word like a tree,
and the complete index of a book in a point like a seed.
However much vaster and more perfect and meaningful than
the book in the example mentioned above is this
compendium of the universe and mighty embodied Qur'an of
the world, which is infinitely full of meaning and in
every word of which are numerous instances of wisdom, to
that degree —in accordance with the extensive measure
and far-seeing vision of the natural science that you
study and the sciences of reading and writing that you
have practised at school— it makes known the Inscriber
and Author of the book of the universe together with His
infinite perfections. Proclaiming God is Most Great!, it
makes Him known. Uttering words like Glory be to God!, it
describes Him. Uttering praises like All praise be to
God!, it makes Him loved. "Thus,
hundreds of other sciences like these make known the
Glorious Creator of the universe together with His Names,
each through its broad measure or scale, its particular
mirror, its farseeing eyes, and searching gaze; they
make known His attributes and perfections. "It
is in order to give instruction in this matter, which is
a brilliant and magnificent proof of Divine Unity, that
the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition teaches us about our
Creator most often with the verses, Sustainer of the
Heavens and the Earth, and, He created the Heavens and
Earth." I said this to the schoolboys, and they
accepted it completely, affirming it by saying:
"Endless thanks be to God, for we have received an
absolutely true and sacred lesson. May God be pleased
with you!" And I said: "Man
is a living machine who is grieved with thousands of
different sorrows and receives pleasure in thousands of
different ways, and despite his utter impotence has
innumerable enemies, physical and spiritual, and despite
his infinite poverty, has countless needs, external and
inner, and is a wretched creature continuously suffering
the blows of death and separation. And yet, through
belief and worship, he at once becomes connected to a
Monarch so Glorious that he finds a point of support
against all his enemies and a source of help for all his
needs, and like everyone takes pride at the honour and
rank of the lord to whom he is attached, you can compare
for yourselves how pleased and grateful and thankful and
full of pride man becomes at being connected through
belief to an infinitely Powerful and Compassionate
Monarch, at entering His service
through
worship, and transforming for himself the announcement of
the execution of the appointed hour into papers releasing
him from duty." I
repeat to the calamity-stricken prisoners what I said to
the schoolboys: "One who recognizes Him and obeys
Him is fortunate even if he is in prison. While one who
forgets Him is wretched and a prisoner even if he lives
in a palace." Even, one wronged but fortunate man
said to the wretched tyrants who were executing him:
"I am not being executed but being demobilized and
departing for where I shall find happiness. But I see
that you are being condemned to eternal execution and
am therefore taking perfect revenge on you." And
saying: "There is no god but God!", he happily
yielded up his spirit. Glory
be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You
have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.1
-VII- Evidences
of God's Sovereignty In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. So
God sets forth parables for men, so that they may bear
[them] in mind.1 * Such are the similitudes
which we propound to men that they may reflect.2
One
time two men were washing in a pool. Under some
extraordinary influence they lost their senses and when
they opened their eyes, they saw that it had transported
them to a strange land. It was such that with its perfect
order it was like a country, or rather a town, or a
palace. They looked around themselves in complete
bewilderment: if it was looked at in one way, a vast
world
was
apparent; if in another, a well-ordered country; and if
in another, a fine town. And if it was looked at in still
another way, it was a palace which comprised a truly
magnifcent world. Travelling around this strange world,
they observed it and saw that creatures of one sort were
speaking in a fashion, but they did not understand their
language. Neverthless, it was understood from their signs
that they were performing important works and duties. One
of the two men said to his friend: "This strange
world must have someone to regulate it, and this orderly
country must have a lord, and this fine town, an owner,
and this finely made palace, a master builder. We must
try to know him, for it is understood that the one who
brought us here was he. If we do not recognize him, who
will help us? What can we await from these impotent
creat-ues whose language we do not know and who do not
heed us? Moreover, surely one who makes a vast world in
the form of a country, town, and palace, and fills it
from top to bottom with wonderful things, and
embellishes it with every sort of adornment, and decks it
out with instructive miracles wants something from us
and from those that come here. We must get to know him
and find out what he wants." The
other man said: "I do not believe it, that there is
a person such as the one you speak of, and that he
governs this whole world on his own."
His
friend replied to him: "If we do not recognize him
and remain indifferent towards him, there is no advantage
in it at all, and if it is harmful, its harm will be
immense. Whereas if we try to recognize him, there is
little hardship involved, and if there is benefit, it
will be great. Therefore, it is in no way sensible to
remain indifferent towards him." The
foolish man said: "I consider all my ease and
enjoyment to lie in not thinking of him. Also, I am not
going to bother with things that make no sense to me. All
these things are the confused objects of chance, they are
happening by themselves. What is it to me?" His
intelligent friend replied: "This obstinacy of yours
will push me, and a lot of others, into disaster. It
sometimes happens that a whole country is laid waste
because of one ill-mannered person." So
the foolish man turned to him and said: "Either
prove to me decisively that this large country has a
single lord and a single maker, or leave me alone." His
friend replied: "Your obstinacy has reached the
degree of lunacy, and you will be the cause of some
disaster being visited on us. So I shall show you twelve
proofs demonstrating that this world which is like a
palace, this country which is like town, has a single
maker and that it is only he who runs and administers
everything. He is completely free of all deficiency.
This maker, who does not appear to us, sees us and
everything, and hears our words. All his works are
miracles and marvels. All these creatures whom we see but
whose tongues we do not understand are his
officials." FIRST
PROOF A
hidden hand is working within all these works. For
something which has not even an ounce of strength,3
something as small as a seed, is raising a load of
thousands of pounds. And something that does not have
even a particle of consciousness4 is
performing extremely wise and purposeful works. That
means they are not working by themselves, but that a
hidden possessor of power is causing them to work. If
they were independent, it would necessitate all the
works which we see everywhere in this land being miracles
and everything to be a wonder-working marvel. And that is
nonsense. SECOND
PROOF
Come,
look carefully at the things which adorn all these
plains, fields, and dwellings! There are marks on each
telling of that hidden one. Simply, each gives news of
Him like a seal or stamp. Look in front of your eyes:
what does He make from one ounce of cotton?5
See how many rolls of cloth, fine linen, and flowered
material have come out of it. See how many sugared
delights and round sweets are being made. Jf thousands of
people like us were to clothe themselves in them and eat
them, they would still be sufficient. And look! He has
taken a handful of iron, water, earth, coal, copper,
silver, and gold, and made some flesh6 out of
them. Look at that and see! O foolish one! These works
are particular to such a one that all this land together
with all its parts is under his miraculous power and is
submissive to his every wish. THIRD
PROOF
Come,
look at these mobile works of art!7 Each has
been fashioned in such a way that it is simply a
miniature sample of the huge palace. Whatever there is in
the palace, it is found in these tiny mobile machines. Is
it at all possible that someone other than the palace's
maker could come and include the wondrous palace in a
tiny machine? Also, is it at all possible that although
he hasincluded a whole world in a machine the size of a
box,.there could be anything in it that was purposeless
or could be attributed to chance? That means that however
many skilfully fashioned machines you can see, each is
like a seal of that hidden one. Rather, each is like a
herald or proclamation. Through their tongues of
disposition they are saying: "We are the art of One
Who can make this entire world of ours as easily and
simply as He created us." FOURTH
PROOF
O
my stubborn friend! Come, I shall show you something even
stranger. Look! All these works and things in this land
have changed and are changing. They do not stop in any
one state. Note carefully that each of these lifeless
bodies and unfeeling boxes has taken on the form of being
absolutely dominant. Quite simply it is as though each
rules all the others. Look at this machine next to us;8
it is as though issuing commands; all the necessities and
substances necessary for its adornment and functioning
come hastening to it from distant places. Look over
there: that lifeless body9 is as though
beckoning; it makes the largest bodies serve it and work
in its own workplace.
EVIDENCES
OF GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY ? 65 Make further analogies in the
same way. Simply,
everything subjugates to itself all the beings in this
world. If you do not accept the existence of that hidden
one, you have to attribute all his skills, arts, and
perfections in the stones, earth, animals, and creatures
resembling man everywhere in this land to the things
themselves. In place of a single wonder-working being,
which your mind deems unlikely, you have to accept
millions like him, who are both opposed to one' another,
and similar, and one within the other, so they do not
cause confusion everywhere and the order be spoiled.
Whereas if two fingers meddle in a country, they cause
confusion. For if there are two headmen in a village, or
two governors in a town, or two kings in a country, the
result is chaos. So what about an infinite, absolute
ruler? FIFTH
PROOF O
my sceptical friend! Come, look carefully at the
inscriptions of this vast palace, look at all the
adornments of the town, see the ordering of this whole
land, and reflect on all the works of art in this world!
See! If these inscriptions are not worked by the pen of
one hidden who possesses infinite miracles and skills,
and are attributed to unconscious causes, to blind chance
and deaf Nature, then every stone and every plant in this
land
has to be an inscriber so wondrous it can write a
thousand books in every letter and include millions of
works of art in a single inscription. Because look at the
inscription on these stones;[1] in each are the
inscriptions of all the palace, and the laws ordering all
the town, and the programmes for organizing the whole
country. That means that to make these inscriptions is as
wonderful as making the whole country. In which case,
all the inscriptions, all the works of art, are
proclamations of that hidden one, and seals of his. Since
a letter cannot exist without showing the one who wrote
it, and an artistic inscription cannot exist without
making known its inscriber, how is it that an inscriber
who writes a huge book in a single letter and inscribes a
thousand inscriptions in a single inscription, should not
be known through his writing and through his inscribing? SIXTH
PROOF Come,
let us go out onto this broad plain.[2] On it is a high mountain
whose summit we shall climb so that we can see all the
surrounding country. We shall take with us a good pair
of binoculars which will bring everything close, for
strange things are happening in this strange land. Every
hour things are happening that we could not imagine.
Look! These mountains, plains, and towns are suddenly
changing. And how? In such a way that millions of changes
are being brought about in a most regulated and orderly
fashion one within the other. The most wondrous
transformations are being wrought as though millions of
various cloths are being woven one within the other.
Look! These flowery things which we know and are familiar
with are disappearing and others have come in their
place" in orderly fashion which resemble them in
nature but are different in form. It is quite simply as
though this plain and the mountains are each a page, and
within them are being written hundreds of thousands of
different books. And they are being written faultlessly
and without defect. It
is impossible a hundred times over that these matters
should have come about on their own. Yes, for these works
which are skilfully and carefully fashioned to an
infinite degree to have occurred on their own is
impossible a thousand times, for rather than themselves,1
they show the artist who fashioned them. Moreover, the
one who did this displays such miracles that nothing at
all could be difficult for him. It is as easy for him to
write a thousand books as to write one book. Look all
around you; he both puts everything in its proper place
with perfect wisdom, and he munificently showers the
favours on everyone of which they are worthy, and he
draws back and opens general veils and doors so
bountifully that everyone's desires are satisfied. And he
sets up tables so generously that a feast of bounties is
given to all the people and animals of this land; each
group and individual is given one particular and suitable
for it, even. Is there therefore anything more
impossible in the world than that among these matters
which we see there is anything attributable to chance,
or that there should be anything purposeless or vain, or
that many hands should be interfering in them, or that
their maker should not be capable of everything, or that
everything should not be subjugated to him? And so, my
friend, find a pretext in the face of these if you can! SEVENTH
PROOF Come,
my friend! Now we shall leave these particular matters
and turn our attention to the mutual positions of the
parts of this wondrous world in the form of a palace.
Look! Universal works are being carried out and general
revolutions are occurring in this world with such order
that all the rocks, earth, trees, everything in this
palace, observe the universal systems of the world, and
conform to them as if each was acting with will; Things
which are distant hasten to assistone another. Now look,
a strange caravan[3] has appeared, coming from
the Unseen. The mounts in it resemble trees, plants, and
mountains. Each bears a tray of provisions on its head.
And look, they are bringing the provisions for the
various animals awaiting them on this side. And see, the
mighty electric lamp[4] in that dome both furnishes
them with light, and cooks all their food so well that
the foods to be cooked are all attached to strings[5] by an unseen hand and held
up before it. And on this side, see these wretched, weak,
powerless little animals; how before their heads are
attached two small pumps[6] full of delicate
sustenance, like two springs; it is enough for those
powerless creatures to only press their mouths against
them. In
Short: Just as all the things throughout the world look
to one another, so they help one another. And just as
they see one another, so they co-operate with one
another. And just as they perfect each other's works,
so they support one another; standing shoulder to
shoulder, they work together. Make analogies with this
for everything; they are uncountable. Thus, all these
things demonstrate as decisively as two plus two equals
four that everything is subjugated to themaker of this
wondrous palace, that is, to the owner of this strange
world. Everything is like a soldier under his command.
Everything turns through his strength. Everything acts
through his command. Everything is set in order through
his wisdom. Everything helps the others through his
munificence. Everything hastens to the assistance of the
others through his compassion, that is, they are made to
hasten to it. Now, my friend, say something in the face
of this if you can! EIGHTH
PROOF Come,
my foolish friend who thinks himself reasonable like my
soul! You do not want to recognize the owner of this
magnificent palace! But everything shows him, points to
him, testifies to him. How can you deny the testimony of
all these things? You have therefore to deny the palace
as well, and say: "There is no world, no
country." Deny yourself, too, and disappear! Or else
come to your senses and listen to me! Now, look, there
are uniform elements and minerals inside the palace and
encompassing the land.[7] Simply,
everything appearing in the country is made of those
elements. That means, whoever those things belong to,
everything that is made of them is also his. Whoever the
field belongs to, the crops are his too. And whoever the
sea belongs to, the things within it are also his. And
look, these textiles, these decorated woven materials,
are being made out of a single substance. It is
self-evidently the same person who brings the substance,
prepares it, and makes it into string. For such a work
would not permit the participation of others. In which
case, all the woven, skilfully made things are particular
to him. And
look! Every sort of these woven, manufactured goods .is
found in every part of the country; they have spread with
all their fellows, and are being made and woven together
and one within the other, in the same way, at the same
instant. That means they are the work of the same person
and the same act through a single command, otherwise
their correspondence and conformity at the same instant,
in the same fashion, of the same sort, would be
impossible. In which case, each of these skilfully
fashioned things is like a proclamation of that hidden
one which points to him. As if each sort of flowered
material, each ingenious machine, each sweet mouthful, is
a stamp of that miracle-displaying person; a stamp of
his, a mark, a decoration; each says through the tongue
of disposition: "Whosever work of art I am, the
boxes and shops where I am found are also his
property." Every inscription says: "Whoever
wove me also wove the roll of cloth of which I am a
part." Every sweet mouthful says: "Whoever
makes me and cooks me, the cauldron in which I am is also
his." And every machine says: "Whoever made me,
also makes all those like me who have spread throughout
the land, and the one who raises us in every part of it,
is also he. That means he is also the country's owner. In
which case, whoever the owner of this country and palace
is, he may be our owner too." For
example, in order to be the true owner of a single
cartridge-belt or even a button belonging to the
government, one also has to own all the factories in
which they are made. If a bragging irregular soldier
claims otherwise, he will be told: "They are
government property." And they will be taken from
him, and he will be punished. In
Short: Just as the elements in this country all
surround and encompass it, and their owner can only be
.one who owns the whole country, in the same way, since
the works of art that are spread throughout it resemble
one another and display, a single stamp, they show that
they are the art of a single person who governs
everything. And
so, my friend! There is a sign of oneness, a stamp of
unity, in this country, that is, this magnificent
palace. For while being the same, certain things are
all-encompassing. And while being numerous, some display
a unity or similarity, since they resemble one another
and are found everywhere. As for unity, it shows One of
Unity. That
means that its maker, owner, lord, and fashioner has to
be one and the same. In addition, look carefully at this:
from behind the veil of the unseen a thickish string has
appeared.[8] Now look, now thousands of
strings have hung down from it. And see the tips of the
strings: a diamond, a decoration, a favour, a gift has
been attached to each. Suitable presents are being given
to everyone. Do you know what a lunatic action it is not
to recognize or thank the one who stretches out from
behind the strange veil of the unseen such wondrous
favours and gifts. Because if you do not recognize him,
you will be compelled to say: "These strings are
making the diamonds and other gifts on their tips
themselves and offering them." Then you have to
attribute to each string the meaning of a king. Whereas
before our eyes an unseen hand is making the strings too,
and attaching the gifts to them. That means, everything
in this palace points to that miracle-displaying one
rather than themselves. If you do not recognize him,
through denying them, you fall a hundred times lower than
an animal. NINTH
PROOF Come,
my unreasoning friend! You do not recognize this palace's
owner, and you do not want to recognize him because you
deem his existence unlikely. You deviate into denial
becauseyou cannot comprehend with your narrow brain his
wondrous arts and acts. Whereas the true unlikelihood,
real difficulties, hardships, and awesome trouble lies
in not recognizing him. For if we recognize him, this
whole palace, this world, becomes as easy, as
trouble-free, as a single thing; it becomes the means to
the abundance and plenty around us. If we do not
recognize him and he does not exist, then everything
becomes as difficult as this whole palace, because
everything is as skilfully made as the palace. Then
neither the abundance nor the plenty would remain.
Indeed, not one of these things which we see would pass
to anyone's hand, let alone our's. Look at just the jar
of conserve attached to this string.[9] If it had not emerged from
his hidden, miracle-displaying kitchen, we could not have
bought it-for a hundred liras, although we buy it now
for forty para. Yes,
all unlikelihood, difficulty, trouble, ardu-ousness,
indeed, impossibility, lies in not recognizing him. For a
tree is given life from one root, through one law, in one
centre, and the formation of thousands of fruits is as
easy as one fruit. But if the fruits were tied to
different centres and roots, and different laws, each
fruit would be as difficult to produce as the tree. And
if the equipping of an entire army is in one centre,
through one law, and from one factory, in regardto
quantity it is as easy as equipping a single soldier.
While if each soldier is equipped from all different
places, then to equip one soldier there would have to be
as many factories as for the entire army. Just
like these two examples, if, in this well-ordered palace,
this fine town, this advanced country, this magnificent
world, the creation of all things is attributed to a
single being, it becomes so easy, so light, it is the
reason for the infinite abundance, availability, and
munificence we see. Otherwise everything would become so
expensive, so difficult, that if the whole world was
given to someone, they could not obtain them. TENTH
PROOF Come,
my friend, who has come a little to his senses! We have
been here fifteen days[10]
now. If we do not know the regulations of this world and
do not recognize its king, we shall deserve punishment.
We have no excuse, because for fifteen days, as though
given a respite, they did not interfere with us. Of
course we have not just been left to our own devices. We
cannot wander around among these . delicate,
well-balanced, subtle, skilfully made and instructive
creatures like an animal and spoil them; they would not
permit us to harm them. The penalties of this country's
august king are bound to be awesome. You
can understand how powerful and majestic he is from the
way he orders this huge world as though it was a palace,
and makes it revolve like a machine. He administers this
large country like a house, missing nothing. See, like
filling a container and emptying it, he continuously
fills this palace, this country, this town, with perfect
order, and empties it with perfect wisdom. Like
spreading out a table then clearing it away, varieties
of foods are brought in turn and given to eat in the form
of a great variety of tables[11]
being laid out by an unseen hand in every part of his
vast country, and then being cleared away. The unseen
hand clears away one, then brings another in its place.
You see this too, and if you use your head, you will
understand that within that awesome majesty is an
infinitely munificent liberality. And
see, just as all these things testify to that unseen
one's sovereignty and unity, so too these revolutions and
changes which pass on in succession like caravans and
are opened and closed from behind that true veil, testify
to his continuance and permanence. For the causes of
things disappear along with them. Whereas the things
which we attribute to them, which follow on after them,
are repeated. That means those works are not theirs, but
the. works of one who does not perish. It is understood
from the the bubbles on the surface of a river
disappearing and the bubbles which succeed them sparkling
in the same way that what makes them sparkle is a
constant and elevated possessor of light. Similarly, the
speedy changing of things and the things that follow on
after them assuming the same colours shows that they are
the manifestations, inscriptions, mirrors, and works of
art of one who is perpetual, undying, and single. ELEVENTH
PROOF Come,
my friend! Now I shall show you a decisive proof as
powerful as the ten previous ones. We shall board a boat,[12]
and sail to a peninsula, far away. For the key to this
riddle-filled world will be there. Moreover, everyone is
looking to that peninsula and awaiting something from
it; they are receiving orders from there. See, we are
going there. Now we have arrived and have alighted on the
peninsula. There is a vast gathering, a great concourse,
as though all the important people of the country have
gathered there. Look carefully, this great community has
a leader. Come, we shall draw closer; we mustbecome
acquainted with him. Look! What brilliant decorations
he has, more than a thousand of them.[13]
How powerfully he speaks! How pleasant is his
conversation! In these two weeks I have learnt a little
of what he says. You learn them from me. See, he is
speaking of this country's miracle-displaying king. He is
saying that the glorious king sent him to us. And he is
displaying such wonders that they leave no doubt that he
is his special envoy. Look carefully, it is not only the
creatures on this peninsula that are listening to what he
says; he is making the whole country hear in wondrous
fashion. For near and far everyone is trying to listen
to the speech here. It is not only humans that are
listening, it is animals too. Look, even the mountains
are listening to the commands he brought so that they are
stirring in their places, and the trees, too, move to the
place that he indicates. He brings forth water from
wherever he wishes. He even makes his fingers like a
Spring of Kawthar, and gives to drink from them. Look, at
his sign, an important lamp[14]
in the dome of this palace splits into two. Thatmeans
this country together with all its beings recognizes that
he is an official and envoy. They heed and obey him, as
though knowing that he is the most eminent and true
interpreter of an unseen displayer of miracles, and the
herald of his dominicality, the discloser of his
talisman, and a trustworthy envoy delivering his
commands. All those with intelligence around him
declare: "Yes, that is right!" about everything
he says, and affirm it. Indeed, through submitting to his
signs and commands, the mountains and trees in this
country and the huge light[15]
that illuminates it, say: "Yes, yes, everything
you say is true!" My
foolish friend! Could there be any contradiction or
deception concerning the miracle-displaying king about
whom this most luminous, magnificent, and serious being,
who bears a thousand decorations particular to the
king's own treasury, is speaking with all his strength,
confirmed by all the country's notables, and
concerning the king's attributes which he mentions, and
the commands which he relays? If there is anything
contrary to the truth in these things, it will be
necessary to deny this palace, these lamps, this
community, both their reality and their existence. If
you can, raise any objections against these; but you will
see that they will be smashed by the power of the proof,
and flung back at you. TWELFTH
PROOF Come,
my brother, who has come to his senses a little! I shall
show you a further proof of the strength of all the
eleven preceeding proofs. See this luminous Decree,2^
which descends from above and which everyone looks on in
rapt attention out of either wonder or veneration. The
one with the thousand decorations has stopped by it and
is explaining its meaning to everyone. The styles of the
Decree so shine they attract everyone's appreciative
gaze, and it speaks of matters so important and serious
that everyone is compelled to give ear to them. For it
describes all the qualities, acts, commands, and
attributes of the one who governs this whole land, who
made this palace, and exhibits these wonders. Just as
there is a mighty stamp on the Decree as a whole, look!
there is an inimitable seal on every line and every
sentence, and, moreover, the meanings, truths, commands,
and instances of wisdom it states are seen to be in a
style particular to him, thus bearing the meaning of a
stamp. In
Short: The Supreme Decree shows the Supreme Being as
clearly as the sun, so that anyone who is not blind can
see it. My
friend! If you have come to your senses, 25.
The luminous Decree refers to the Qur'an, and the seal on
it, to its miraculousness.
this
is enough for now. If you have something to say, say it. In
reply, the obstinate man said: "I can only say this
in the face of these proofs of yours: All praise be to
God for I have come to believe. And I believe in a way
bright as the sun and clear as daylight that this country
has a single King of Perfection, this world, a Single
Glorious Owner, this palace, a Single Beauteous Maker.
May God be pleased with you, for you have saved me from
my former obstinacy and foolishness. Each of the proofs
you showed was sufficient to demonstrate the truth. But
because with each successive proof, clearer, pleasanter,
more agreeable, more luminous, finer levels of
knowledge, veils in acqain-tanceship, and windows of love
were opened and revealed, I waited and listened." Our
story in the form of a comparison alluding to the mighty
truth of Divine Unity and belief in God has now reached
its conclusion. Success
and Guidance are from God alone. %
% %
-
vm- Belief
in the Hereafter In
this section, we will summarize one hundredth part of
the consequences of belief in the Hereafter, and the
benefits accruing from it for felicity both in this world
and the Hereafter. As for the benefits pertaining to life
in the Hereafter, the clarifications given in the Qur'an
of Miraculous Exposition leave no need for further
explanation. We will therfore leave discussion of them
to the Qur'an, and assign tff the Risale-i Nur the
explanation of those benefits that pertain to happiness
in this world. In a brief summary, we will set forth
three or four of the hundreds of consequences of belief
in the Hereafter for man's individual and social life. The
First: in contrast to other living beings, man is
attached to the world as much as he is attached to his
own household, and at the behest
of
his nature, he cultivates serious relations with his
fellow humans, just as he does with his own kith and kin.
Just as he desires a temporary state of apparent
permanence in this world, so too he desires a real
permanence in an eternal realm with an ardour that
borders on love. Just as he seeks to satisfy the need of
his stomach for food, so too he is obliged by his nature
to struggle to provide his intelligence, heart and
spirit, each like a hungry stomach, with a form of food
and nurture that is as wide as this world, and even
extends as far as eternity. He has such desires and
demands that nothing short of eternal bliss can satisfy
him. As indicated in the Tenth Word, I once asked my
imagination in my childhood: "Do you wish to be
given a life lasting one million years and enjoy rule
over the world, but afterwards to be cast into
annihilation and nothingness? Or do you wish for a life
that shall be eternal, but ordinary and
troublesome?" I saw that it desired the secondhand
sighed at the thought of the first. I said: "I wish
for eternity, even if it be spent in Hell." So
if, then, the pleasures of this world cannot satisfy the
imaginative faculty, which is a servant of the essence of
man, then that most comprehensive essence is bound by
its nature to seek a link with eternity. While
man is thus at the mercy of his mfinite wishes and hopes,
and his capital is naught but an infinitesimal and
partial will, joined to absolute indigence, belief in the
Hereafter is so powerful, effective and rich a treasury
for him, such a source of happiness and pleasure, such a
succour and refuge, and such a means of consolation for
the unending sorrows of the world, that if he were to
spend his whole life in acquiring this fruit and benefit
he would not have paid too high a price. The
second fruit of belief in the Hereafter, a benefit
pertaining to individual life: This consequence of
belief, already explained in the third Topic and in a
footnote to A Guide For Youth, is of the utmost
importance. The
most important anxiety facing every man in every age is
the manner is which he, like his relatives and friends,
will enter the place of execution that is the
graveyard. Wretched man, who is ready to sacrifice
himself for even a single friend, imagines that
thousands, or even millions or billions, of his friends
have been parted from him for eternity and sent to their
execution, and this notion causes him a pain worse than
the torment of Hell. While he is enmeshed in these
thoughts, belief in the Hereafter comes, opens his eyes
and lifts up the veil. "Look!" it says, and,
looking with faith, he experiences a spiritual pleasure
—a foretaste of the pleasures of Paradise— and
beholds his friends delivered from eternal death and
decay, awaiting him joyfully in a luminous world. We
curtail our discussion of this matter here, since it is
adequately explained with various proofs elsewhere in
the Risale-i Nur.: The
third benefit of belief in the Hereafter, also pertaining
individual life: The superiority and high rank man enjoys
with respect to other living beings is by virtue of his
lofty qualities, comprehensive faculties, numerous modes
of worship and extensive areas of life and activity.
Now man can acquire virtues such as aspiration, love,
brotherliness and true humanity only in the measure and
amount permitted by the brief present, caught between the
past and the future, which are both non-existent, dead,
and dark. For
example, man loves and wishes to serve the father,
brother, wife, people and homeland that he did not know
in the past and will not know in the future. It is very
rare that he is able to show complete devotion and
sincerity, and hence his virtues and accomplishments will
correspondingly suffer. It is when man is about to fall
from the rank of the highest among the animals to that of
the lowest, when he is about to become the most
wretched and inferior of them with respect to
intelligence, that belief in.the Hereafter comes to his
aid. It transforms his present time, narrow like the
tomb, into a broad and expansive time that embraces both
past and future, and displays to him a sphere of
existence as vast as the world, or rather one that
extends from pre-eternity to post-eternity. Knowing that
his father will still be in a paternal relationship with
him, even while in the Abode of Bliss and the Realm of
Spirits; knowing that his brother will cherish fraternal
feelings for him unto eternity; and knowing that his wife
will be his best companion, even while in Paradise—
knowing all this, he will love, respect, aid and cherish
them. He will not make of the services he performs to
strengthen his relations in that great and vast sphere of
life, tools for the worthless concerns of this world, or
the instruments of petty purposes and profit. Being thus
guided to true devotion and proper sincerity, his moral
accomplishments and virtues will correspondingly
increase and his humanity advance (according to the
degree at which each man finds himself). The result will
be that man, whose pleasures in life are less than those
of a sparrow, becomes exalted above all of the animals,
and becomes the select and fortunate guest in all of the
universe and the most beloved and favoured slave of the
universe's Owner. We will curtail here discussion of this
consequence of belief in the Hereafter, since it too has
been discussed with adequate proofs elsewhere in the
Risale-i Nur. The
fourth benefit of belief in the Hereafter, one pertaining
to the social life of man: the following
is a summary of the discussion of this consequence of
belief contained in the Ninth Ray of the Risale-i Nur. It
is only by virtue of belief in the Hereafter that
children, who make up one fourth of humanity, can live in
a truly human fashion and bear within them the
potentialities of humanity. Otherwise, in order to forget
and obliterate themselves and the painful anxieties to
which they are subject, they will live an idle and
childish life with their toys. For the death of
children like himself all around him will leave such an
effect on the sensitive mind of the child, on his poor
heart that cherishes such hopes for the future and on his
defenceless spirit, that his very life and intelligence
will appear to the hapless child as an instrument of
torment and torture. It is then that the lesson of belief
in the Hereafter will enable him to feel joy and relief
instead of the thoughts from which he wished to hide
behind his toys, and he will say: "My brother or
friend has now died, and become like a bird in The
aged, who make up another fourth of humanity can find
consolation in the face of the impending extinction of
their lives, their burial beneath the soil and the
closing to them of their beautiful and well-loved world,
only in belief in the Hereafter and in no other source.
Were it not for this consolation, those compassionate and
venerable fathers, those self-sacrificing and
solicitous mothers, would suffer such disturbance of the
soul and tumult of the heart that the world would become
a desperate prison for them and life, a tortuous pain.
But belief in the Hereafter tells them: "Do not
fret. You have an eternal youth that is yet to come. A
luminous and infinite life awaits you. You will be
joyously reunited with the children and relatives you
have lost. All of the good deeds you have performed have
been kept for you; you will be rewarded for them."
Belief in the Hereafter thus gives them such consolation
and relief that if each of them is weighed down
suddenly by hundredfold dotage he will still not
despair. As
for the young who make up one third of humanity, their
passsions are in tumult and their tempestuous minds are
often unquiet. If they lose belief in the Hereafter and
fail to remember the torment of Hell, the property and
honour of respectable people, the tranquillity and
dignity of the weak and the old, all this will be
endangered in the life of society. Sometimes a youth will
destroy the happiness of a household for the sake of a
minute of pleasure, and then suffer four or five years in
prison for his crime, descending to the level of a wild
beast. If
belief in the Hereafter comes to his aid, he will swiftly
come to his senses. He will say to himself: "It is
true that the spies of the government cannot see me and
that I can hide from them, but the angels of that
Glorious Monarch whose jail is Hell-fire see me and
record all my evil deeds. I have: not been left to my own
devices; rather I am a traveller entrusted with a certain
mission and duty. Moreover, I too willbecome old and
weak like others." He will begin to feel compasión
and respect for those he wished unjustly to attack. Since
this matter too is set forth with various proofs
elsewhere in the Risale-i Nur, we curtail our discussion
of it here. Another
important segment of humanity is made up of the sick and
the oppressed, of those like us who are poor, and who
have suffered misfortune and been sentenced to
imprisonment with hard labour.[16]
Were belief in the Hereafter not to come to their aid,
the death that appears to them through the constant
reminder of sickness, the arrogant treachery of the
oppresssor upon whom they are unable to avenge themselves
and from whom they are unable to protect their honour,
the painful despair that comes from fruitlessly losing
one's property.and offspring in great misfortunes, the
gloomy affliction that arises from suffering the torment
of five or ten years of prison for the sake of one or two
minutes or hours of pleasure — all of this would of a
certainty turn the world into a prison for those
wretches, and life into a tortuous pain. But if belief in
the Hereafter comes to their aid, they will breathe a
deep sigh of relief; their affliction, despair, anxiety
and desire for revenge will disappear either partialy or
totally, in accordance with their degree of belief. I
can even say that if belief in the Hereafterhad not come
to the aid of myself and some of my brothers, to tolerate
for a single day this unjust imprisonment and appalling
misfortune would have affected us as much as death itself
and inclined us to resignation from life. But thanks be
to God without limit that although I have suffered the
pain endured in this misfortune by many of my brothers
who are as dear to me a my own self; although I have
suffered regret for thousands of copies of the Risale-i
Nur and my precious gilded and ornamented books, weeping
as they were destroyed; although in the past I could
never swallow the least insult or offence —- I can
swear to you that the light and strength of belief in the
Hereafter has endowed me with such patience and
endurance, with such consolation and fortitude, indeed
with such an ardent desire to win through struggle a
still greater reward in this trial and test, that I
consider myself to be in a fine and beneficial school
that deserves the title of Josephian School.[17]
Were it not for occasional sickness and the nuisances
arising from old age, I would work harder still on my
teaching, with utter tranquillity of heart. This was a
digression inspired by the present theme; may it be
forgiven. Now,
the small world and even small But
if belief in the Hereafter enters that household, it
will suddenly illumine it, and noble characteristics
such as sincere respect, love, tenderness, devotion and
forebearance will prosper, for the relations and
affinities, the love and affection, existing between the
members of the household will no longer be measured by
the brief life of this world, but rather by their
continuance in the Hereafter in a state of eternal
bliss. Then the true happiness of humanity will begin
to unfold in that household. Since this matter too has
been set forth elsewhere in the Risale-i Nur with
adequate proofs, we will curtail our discussion of it
here. Each
city is similarly like a household for its inhabitants.
If belief in the Hereafter does not prevail among the
members of that vast household, the place of qualities
which are the foundations of good character, such as
sincerity, devotion, virtue, honour, self-sacrifice,
contentment with God's decree, and desire for reward in
the Hereafter, will be taken by evil qualities such a
opportunism, partiality, wiliness, selfishness,
hypocrisy, cunning, bribery, and deceit. Behind the mask
of apparent tranquillity and humanity, the reality of
anarchy and savagery will reign, and the life of the city
will be poisoned. Children will become idle, young men
will take to drunkenness, the strong will embrark on
oppression, and the old will be left weeping. Each
country may in the same fashion be compared to a
household: the fatherland is like a household populated
by the family that is the nation. If belief in the
Hereafter reigns in these great households, sincere
respect, earnest compassion, disinterested love and
helpfulness, pure service and intercourse, virtue and
generosity without hypocrisy, greatness and loftiness
without egoism, will begin to unfold in the land. Belief
in the Hereafter will say to the child: "There is It
will tell the young man: "There is It
will tell the oppressor: "Intense torment awaits
you, and you will be beaten," and cause him to bow
his head in submission to justice. It
will say to the aged: "Bliss in the Hereafter, and a
new and eternal youth, more exalted and permanent than
all the joys you have lost, await you; so strive to
acquire these benefits," and thus turn their tears
into laughter. Belief
in the Hereafter exercises an analogous bénéficient effect
on all other classses, great or small, and illumines each
member of them. The ears of sociologists and moralists
who concern themselves with social life should now be
ringing! If one deduces the remainder of the many
thousand of benefits that are to be had from belief in
the Hereafter from the five or six examples we have
alluded to, then it will be still more clearly
established that the cause of happiness in both worlds
and both lives is this belief and nothing else. Since
the feeble doubts that occur to man with respect to the
corporeality of resurrection have received powerful
answers in the Twenty-Eighth Word and other sections of
the Risale-i Nur, here we will make only the following
brief reference to the subject. The
most comprehensive mirror of the Divine Names lies in
corporeality, and the most complex and active locus of
the Divine purpose inherent in the creation of the
universe lies in corporeality. The most varied and
multifarious of God's dominical bounties are to be found
in corporeality; and the most numerous seeds of man's
prayer and thanks to his Creator, expressed with the
tongue of need, have also been sown in corporeality. Then
too, the most varied seeds of the inner and spiritual
worlds have been placed in corporeality. It
is because these and hundreds of similar universal
truths have been concentrated in corporeality that the
Wise Creator has, with swift and awesome activity,
clothed unceasing caravans of beings in bodies, in order
to multiply corporeality on the face of the earth and
make it manifest the above-mentioned truths. He
despatches these caravans to this place of exhibition
and then dismisses them, sending others in their place.
He keeps the workshop of the universe in unceasing
operation. Raising corporeal crops, He turns the land
into a nursery of saplings for the Hereafter and for Is
it at all probable or even possible that one All-Powerful
and All-Merciful, Omniscient and Generous should accept
the prayer for sustenance uttered by the stomach and
gratify it with an infinite variety of miraculous and
material food, thus answering its prayer consistently,
intentionally and deliberately —is it at all possible
that having done this, He should not accept the
universal prayer of the generic stomach of humanity —
the supreme result of creation, the Divine vicegerent
on earth, the chosen servant and worshipper of the
Creator— for the continued bestowal in the Hereafter of
those universal and exalted corporeal pleasures which man
constantly desires and seeks out in accordance with his
essential nature? Or that this prayer should not receive
practical answer with the corporeal resurrection, or that
man should not be eternally gratified? It would be like
hearing the sound of a fly, and failing to hear the roar
of thunder. It would be like paying the utmost attention
to the equipment of an ordinary footsoldier, and
neglecting completely a whole army. This is excluded and
impossible to the hundredth degree. Yes, There
will be there all that the souls could desire, all that
the eyes could delight in.[18] According
to the unmistakable explicit sense of this verse, man
will experience and taste, in a fashion appropriate to The
fruits and results of belief in the Hereafter show then
that just as the nature and needs of the stomach, one of
man's organs, demonstrate decisively the existence of
food, so too the true nature of man, his perfection,
natural needs and eternal desires, as well as the truths
and potentialities inherent within him, which require the
above-mentioned benefits and results of belief in the
Hereafter — all of these indicate the Hereafter,
Paradise and eternal corporeal pleasure, and bear witness
to their future realization in still more decisive
fashion. Then also the essential perfections of the
universe and its meaningful creational signs, and all of
the truths connected with the aforementioned truths
inherent in man— these demonstrate and bear witness to
the existence of the Hereafter, its future realization,
the coming of resurrection, and the opening of the gates
of As
for the declarations of the Qur'an concerning Hell,
they are so clear and manifest as to leave no need for
further clarification. There are, however, one or two
feeble doubts which need to be refuted by two or three
points. We will leave a detailed exposition of these
points to other parts of the Risale-i Nur and set forth
here only the briefest of summaries. First
Point: The thought of Hell, with the fear that it
implies, does not negate the pleasures of the fruits of
the belief just mentioned. For the infinite dominical
mercy says to fearful man: "Come, enter by the gate
of repentance." Then the existence of Hell will
serve not to frighten you, but rather to communicate to
you in full the pleasures of Paradise and to give you joy
by seeing yourself and innumerable other creatures,
whose rights have been denied, avenged on your
oppressors. If you sink in misguidance and are unable to
emerge from it, still the existence of Hell is a thousand
times better for you than eternal annihilation. Indeed,
it is even a form of mercy towards the unbeliever. For
men, as well as animals that produce young, gain joy
through the joy and happiness of their relatives,
offspring and friends, and thus become partially happy. O
atheist! This being the case, because of your
misguidance, you will either fall prey to eternal
annihilation or enter Hell. Now as for annihilation,
which is absolute evil, all your relatives and family
whom you love, of whose joys you partake and who give you
some share of happiness, will be annihilated together
with you, and this will cause your spirit, your heart and
your whole being to burn more intensely than will
Hell-fire, For if there is no Hell, there is also no
Paradise, and everything will fall prey to annihilation
by virtue of your unbelief. But if you enter Hell, you
will still remain in the sphere of being, and those whom
you love and your relatives will either be blessed in As
for Hell, it is a most awesome and majestic region of the
sphere of being, which is absolute good, and it fulfils
the function of the wisely and
justly
administered prison of the All-Wise Possessor of Glory.
It has numerous functions in addition to being a
prison, and serves the world of eternity in various ways:
it is, for example, the majestic dwelling place of many
living creatures, such as the angels of Hell. Second
Point: The existence of Hell and its intense torment in
no way contradicts the infinite mercy, the true justice
and the balanced and perfect wisdom of God. Indeed, it
is precisely His mercy, justice and wisdom that require
the existence of Hell. For to punish the oppressor who
tramples on the rights of a thousand innocent men, and to
kill a savage beast that tears apart a hundred meek
animals, is a form of mercy for oppressed beings, one
exercised in all justice. By contrast, to forgive the
oppressor and let the savage beast roam free would mean
showing mercy to the criminal and mercilessness to
hundreds of hapless creatures. So too, the unbeliever
who enters the prison of Hell has, by virtue of his
unbelief, transgressed against the rights of the Divine
Names through his denial of them; he has transgressed
against the rights of those beings who bear witness to
the Names by his rejection of them; he has transgressed
against the rights of those creatures who proclaim God's
glory by his spurning their duty and function; and he has
also transgressed against the rights of the whole
cosmos, by denying its function of reflecting and
mirroring, by way of worship, the manifestation
of
Divine dorainicality, which is the purpose of creation,
and the cause of all being and its preservation. All
this constitutes so grave a crime and offence that there
can be no possibility of forgiveness; and the sinner
deserves the threat contained in the verse: God
forgives not [the sin] joining other gods with Him.4 Not
to cast him into Hell-fire would be a misplaced act of
mercy to him, and multiple and infinite mercilessness
to those countless plaintiffs whose rights have been
outraged. Those plaintiffs not only demand the existence
of Hell, but also require that it should be most majestic
and utterly awesome. If
some arrogant rebel oppresses the people and insults the
dignity of a majestic judge by telling him, "You
cannot put me in jail or make a prison for me," even
if there is not a jail in that city, the judge will have
one constructed for that shameless criminal and have him
cast into it. So too, the absolute unbeliever insults the
supreme majesty of God with his unbelief, challenges His
ineffable power with his denial, and offends His perfect
dominicality with his transgression. Even if Hell had not
been created for various functions and numerous
providential purposes, it would become incumbent on God's
dignity and majesty to create Hell for such unbelievers
and to cast them into it. The
very nature of unbelief in itself conveys an idea of the
existence of Hell. In the same way that if the nature of
faith were to take on external form, it would assume the
shape of a miniature Paradise, together with all of its
pleasures, thus implicity declaring the existence of
Paradise, so too unbelief (and especially absolute
unbelief), hypocrisy and apostasy contain within
themselves such dark and awesome pains and inner torments
that were they to take on outward form, they would become
a private Hell for the apostate, thus implicitly
declaring the existence of Hell. Just as the minute
truths and realities sown in the seedbed that is the
world grow to maturity in the Hereafter, so too the
poisonous seed of unbelief is the herald of the infernal
tree of Zaqqum. "I am the substance from which
Zaqqum is fashioned," it says, "and my fruit is
a specimen of the tree of Zaqqum, destined for that
luckless individual who bears me in his heart." If
unbelief constitutes transgression against innumerable
rights it follows that it is a crime of infinite
porportions, and that it is deserving of a punishment of
similarly infinite proportions. If man's sense of justice
is able to accept and regard as being in the public
interest the penalty of fifteen years' (or close to
eight million minutes') imprisonment for a murder that
takes but a minute, then it is in full conformity with
justice that a minute of absolute unbelief, which is
equivalent to one thousand murders, should be punished
witha torment lasting almost eight billion minutes.
Similarly, one who spends one year of his life in
unbelief, will be deserving of a torment lasting almost
two trillion, eight hundred and eighty billion minutes,
and the sense of God's words They
will dwell therein for ever[19] will
be made manifest in him. The
miraculous explanations of Paradise and Hell contained in
the Wise Qur'an, and the proofs of the existence of
Paradise and Hell to be found in the Risale-i Nur, which
is a commentary upon the Qur'an and derived from it,
leave no need for further clarification. They
reflect on the creation of the heavens and earth, saying,
"O our Sustainer! Indeed You have not created this
in vain; Glory he unto You; and protect us from the
torment of the Fire!"[20]
* O our Sustainer! Avert from us the torment of Hell;
indeed its torment is a grievous affliction, and evil
it is as a resting-place and abode.1 The
content of numerous verses such as the above, the
frequent use by the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be
peace and blessings) and all the prophets and people of
the truth of phrases such as: Protect its from the Fire;
deliver us from the Fire; save us from the Fire, in their
prayers and their repetiton of the plea "Preserve us
from Hell" because of certainty based on visible
revelation — all of this shows that the greatest
concern of man is to escape the torment of Hell. Hell is
an imperious, majestic and awesome truth for all beings;
some, the people of witnessing, uncovering and
realization, observe it directly, and others perceive
only its traces and shadows, and awestruck by these,
cry out "Deliver us!" Yes,
the opposition and interaction throughout the cosmos of
good and evil, pleasure and pain, heat and cold, beauty
and ugliness, guidance and misguidance, is inspired by
great and wise purpose. Were there no evil, good could
not be known. Were there no pain, pleasure could not be
perceived. Were there no darkness, light would have no
value. Degrees of heat can be established only by
reference to cold. By means of ugliness, the essence of
beauty, as well as its thousand degrees, comes into
being. So too without Hell, many of the pleasures of
Paradise would remain unknown, and in general it can be
said that everything is made known by its opposite, and
that from one truth, numerous truths blossom forth and
emerge. Now
all of the complex phenomena that exist must depart from
the transient realm for the realm of eternity. Things
such as good, pleasure, light, beauty and faith are
directed by their nature to O
fellow pupils of mine in this Josephian school! An easy
way to escape from the awesome and eternal prison of Hell
is now made available to us. We may make use of our
imprisonment in this world by seeking forgiveness for our
past sins (being in any event compelled to refrain from
committing new sins), by performing our fundamental
religious duties, by turning every hour of our life in
prison into a day spent in worship, and thus come to save
ourselves from eternal imprisonment and enter Paradise.
If we squander this opportunity, we will weep both in
this world and in the Hereafter; and the verse: He
has lost this world and the Hereafter* will
be like a blow descending upon us. While
these lines were being written the Festival of
Sacrifice arrived, and it occurred to me, with absolute
certainty, that the utterance of "Allahu akbar,
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar" by one fifth of
humanity; the proclamation of "God is Most
Great!" by three hundred million people; the
re-echoing of this sacred phrase —God is Most Great!—
by the vast earth, in a manner proportionate to its
size, as if to convey the cry to its companions, the
planets traversing the heavens; the proclamation "God
is Most Great!" at Arafat, on the day of the
Festival, by more than twenty thousand pilgrims; the
utterance and propagation of this great phrase —God is
Most Great!— by the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be
peace and blessings), together with his Family and
Companions, thirteen hundred years ago —it occurred
to me that these manifold declarations of "God is
Most Great!" are like an echo of the universal
manifestation of the Divine dominicality that is
proclaimed under the title of Sustainer of the Earth and
Sustainer of All the Worlds, like a cosmic response of
worship and servitude to that manifestation. It
then occurred to me that this sacred phrase might have
some connection with the topic we are discussing.
Suddenly it crossed my mind that all the sacred phrases
that are called "permanent good deeds," headed
by God is Most Great! and including, Glory be to God! and
All praise be to God! and There is no god but God! do
indeed contain an indication of our topic and its
realization. For example, one part of the meaning of God
is Most Great! is that God's power and knowledge are
greater than and exalted above everything. Nothing can
leave the sphere of His knowledge, and nothing can escape
or be delivered from the grasp of His power. He is
greater, too, than the greatest things that we fear, and
greater than the resurrection he brings about, the
salvation from annihilation he bestows upon us, and the
eternal felicity with which he endows us. He is greater
than every wondrous and incomprehensible object or act,
for according to the explicit meaning of the verse, Your
creation and your resurrection is but as a single soul,9 the
gathering and resurrection of the whole human race is as
easy for His power as the creation of a single soul. It
is on account of this truth that when faced with great
misfortunes and afflictions people repeat, as if it were
a proverb, "God is Most Great! God is Most
Great!" thus gaining consolation, fortitude and
support. In
the Ninth Word it was shown that this phrase, together
with its two companions is like the seed and the essence
of the five daily prayers, which in turn are like an
index of all the forms of worship. These three phrases
occur within the prayers and in the recitations that
follow them in order to emphasize and strengthen the
sense of the prayers. They are, too, like powerful and
convincing answers given to the questions that arise in
man as a result of the wonderment, pleasure and awe that
he experiences from the numerous remarkable, beautiful
and great phenomena that he beholds in the cosmos and
induce those three states within him. We
explained, too, at the end of the Sixteenth Word, that
just as on festive occasions an ordinary infantryman
will enter the presence of a king together with a
marshal, but grant him the respect due to his rank at all
other times, so too during the Hajj, everyone becomes to
some degree like the saints, and begins to know God by
His titles of Sustainer of the Earth and Sustainer of All
the Worlds. As those degrees of majesty begin to reveal
themselves to his heart, he answers all the repeated and
fervent questions that overwhelm his spirit simply by
repeating "God is Most Great!" At
the end of the Thirteenth Flash, it was also explained
that the decisive answer to be given to the most
threatening stratagems of the Devil so as to cut them at
the root is God is Most Great! so too the phrase All
praise be to God! is a brief but convincing answer to any
question about the Hereafter, and a pointer to
resurrection. For it tells us: "I
have no meaning if there is no Hereafter. I convey this
sense, that 'from whomever and to whomever praise and
thanks have gone forth, from pre-eternity to
post-eternity, all of it in reality belongs to Him.'
The foremost of all bounties, that which makes of them
true bounties and saves all conscious beings from the
innumerable catastrophes of annihilation, can therefore
be none other than eternal felicity. It is also eternal
felicity which corresponds to my general sense." Now
every believer says "All praise be to God! All
praise be to God!" in obedience to sacred law, at
least one hundred and fifty times a day. The phrase has
the sense of an extensive, indeed infinite expression of
thanks and praise, from pre-eternity to post-etemity, and
is therefore like a price paid in advance, a fee offered
in expectation, for eternal felicity and As
for the sacred phrase Glory be to God!, it means to
proclaim God Almighty free from and exalted above the
possession of a partner, defect, shortcoming, injustice,
powerlessness-, mercilessness, need, craftiness, and
indeed all failings contrary to His Glory, Beauty, and
Perfection. Thus it points to eternal felicity, the
Hereafter and Paradise, because it is these that
demonstrate the splendour of His Glory, Beauty, and
perfect Sovereignty: As already proven, if there was no
eternal bliss, God's Sovereignty, Perfection, Glory,
Beauty, and Compassion would be disfigured by the stain
of defect and lack. These
three sacred phrases, together with other blessed phrases
such as In the Name of God and There is no god but God are
each like the core of one of the pillars of faith; they
are the concentrated form both of the pillars of faith
and of the truths of the Qur'an, and thus resemble the
concentrated foods that have been invented in our time. They
are the seeds of the prayers, and of the Qur'an and
appear like brilliants at the start of some of its Suras,
and are also the true sources and foundation of the
Risale-i Nur, many inspired sections of which begin with
the proclamation of God's Glory, and are the seeds of its
truths. They
are also the litanies prescribed by the Muhammadan Path
(Upon its master be peace and blessings) in accordance
with this sainthood, worship and servitude of the
Messenger, for recitation after the five daily prayers in
a vast circle of remembrance that embraces more than one
hundred thousand believers, repeating "Glory be to
God!" "All praise be to God!" and "God
is Most Great!" thirty-three times, while passing
prayer-beads through their fingers. You
will now be able to understand of a certainty how
valuable and meritorious it is to repeat after the
prayers thirty-three times each, those three blessed
phrases which are the essence and substance of the
Qur'an, of faith, and of the prayers, to repeat them,
moreover, in so glorious a circle of remembrance. In
the same way that the First Topic that introduced this
part of the Risale-i Nur provided a fine lesson
concerning the prayers, its conclusion, without any
thought or intention on my part, has
110
? FRUITS FROM THE TREE OF LIGHT come
to be a valuable lesson concerning the recitations that
follow the prayers. Praise
be to God for His bounties. Glory
be unto You! We have no knowledge save tlmt which You
have taught us; indeed You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.™ %
H:
-IX- The
Necessity of Prayer In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. For
such prayers are enjoined on believers at stated times.1 One
time, a man great in age, physique, and rank said to me:
"The prayers are fine, but to perform them every
single day five times is a lot. Since they never end, it
becomes wearying." A
long time after the man said these words, I listened to
my soul and I heard it say exactly the same things. I
looked at it and saw that with the ear of laziness, it
was receiving the same lesson from Satan. Then I
understood that those words were as though said in the
name of all evil-commanding souls, or else they
had been prompted. So I said: "Since my soul
commands to evil, one who does not reform his own soul
cannot reform others. In which case, I shall begin with
my own soul." I
said: O soul! Listen to Five Warnings in response to
those words which you uttered in compounded ignorance,
on the couch of idleness, in the slumber of heedlessness. FIRST
WARNING O
my wretched soul! Is your life eternal, I wonder? Have
you any incontrovertible document showing that you will
live to next year, or even to tomorrow? What causes you
boredom is that you fancy you shall live for ever. You
complain as though you will remain in this world to enjoy
yourself eternally. If you had understood that your life
is brief and that it is departing fruitlessly, it surely
would not cause boredom, but excite a real eagerness and
agreeable pleasure to spend one hour out of the
twenty-four on a fine, agreeable, easy, and merciful act
of service which is a means of gaining the true happiness
of eternal life. SECOND
WARNING O
my stomach-worshipping soul! Every day you eat bread,
drink water, and breathe air; do they cause you boredom?
They do not, because since the need is repeated, it is
not boredom they cause, but pleasure. In which case, the
five daily prayers should not cause you boredom, for they
attract the needs of your companions in the house
of
my body, the sustenance of my heart, the water of life of
my spirit, and the air of my subtle faculties. Yes, it
is by knocking through supplication on the door of One
All-Compassionate and Munificent that sustenance and
strength may be obtained for a heart afflicted with
infinite griefs and sorrows and captivated by infinite
pleasures and hopes. And it is by turning towards the
spring of mercy of an Eternal Beloved through the five
daily prayers that the water of life may be imbibed by a
spirit connected with most beings, which swiftly depart
from this transitory world crying out at separation. And
being most needy for air in the sorrowful, crushing,
distressing, transient, dark, and suffocating conditions
of this world, it is only through the window of the
prayers that the conscious inner sense and luminous
subtle faculty can breathe, which by its nature desires
eternal life and was created for eternity and is a mirror
of the Pre-Eternal and Post-Eternal One and is infinitely
delicate and subtle. THIRD
WARNING O
my impatient soul! Is it at all sensible to think today
of past hardships of worship, difficulties of the
prayers, and troubles of misfortune, and be distressed,
and to imagine the future duties of worship, service of
the prayers, and sorrows of disaster, and display
impatience? In being thus impatient you resemble a
foolish commander, who, although the enemy's right flank
joined his right flank and became fresh forces for him,
sent a significant force to the right flank, and
weakened the centre. Then, while there were no enemy
soldiers on the left flank, he sent a large force there,
and gave them the order to fire. No forces remained at
the centre, and the enemy understood this, and attacked
it and routed him. Yes,
you resemble this, for the troubles of yesterday have
today been transformed into mercy; the pain has gone
while the pleasure remains. The difficulty has been
turned into blessings, and the hardship into reward. In
which case, you should not feel wearied at it, but make a
serious effort to continue with a new eagerness and fresh
enthusiasm. As for future days, they have not yet
arrived, and to think of them now and feel bored and
wearied is a lunacy like thinking today of future hunger
and thirst, and starting- to shout and cry out. Since the
truth is this, if you are reasonable, you will think of
only today in connection with worship, and say: "I
am spending one hour of it on an agreeable, pleasant, and
elevated act of service, the reward for which is high and
whose trouble is little." Then your bitter
dispiritedness will be transformed into sweet endeavour. My
impatient soul! You are charged with being patient in
three respects. One is patience in worship. Another is
patience in refraining from sin. And a third is patience
in the face of disaster. If you are intelligent, take as
your guide the truth apparent in the comparison in this
Third Warning. Say in manly fashion: "O Most Patient
One!", and shoulder the three sorts of patience. If
you do not squander on the wrong way the forces of
patience Almighty God has given you, they should be
enough to withstand every difficulty and misfortune. So
hold out with those forces! FOURTH
WARNING O
my foolish soul! Is this duty of worship without
result, and is its recompense little that it causes you
weariness? Whereas if someone was to give you a little
money, or to intimidate you, he could make you work till
evening, and you would work without slacking. So is it
that the prescribed prayers are without result, which in
this guesthouse of the world are sustenance and wealth
for your impotent and weak heart, and in your grave,
which will be a certain dwelling-place for you,
sustenance and light, and at the Resurrection, when you
will anyway be judged, a document and patent, and on the
Bridge of Sirat, over which you are bound to pass, a
light and a mount? And are their recompense little?
Someone promises you a present worth a hundred dollars,
and makes you work for a hundred days. You trust the man
who may go back on his word and work without slacking.
So if One for Whom the breaking of a promise is
impossible, promises you recompense like Paradise and a
gift like eternal happiness, and employs you for a very
short time in a very agreeable duty, if you do not
perform that service, or you act accusingly towards His
promise or slight His gift by performing it unwillingly
like someone forced to work, or by being bored, or by
working in half-hearted fashion, you will deserve a
severe reprimand and awesome punishment. Have you not
thought of this? Although you serve without flagging in
the heaviest work in this world out of fear of
imprisonment, does the fear of an eternal incarceration
like Hell not fill you with enthusiasm for a truly light
and agreeable act of service? FIFTH
WARNING O
my world-worshipping soul! Does your lax-ness in worship
and remissness in the prescribed prayers arise from the
multiplicity of your worldly occupations, or because you
cannot find time due to the struggle for livelihood? Were
you created only for this world that you spend all your
time on it? You know that in regard to your abilities you
are superior to all the animals but in regard to
procuring the necessities of worldly life you cannot
even compete with a sparrow. So why can you not
understand that your basic duty is not to labour like an
animal, but to strive for a true, perpetual life, like
a true human being. In addition, the things you call
worldly occupations mostly do not concern you, and are
trivial matters which you confuse and meddle in
officiously. You neglect the essential things and pass
your time in acquiring inessential information as
though you were going to live for a thousand years. For
example, you squander your precious time on worthless
things like learning what the rings around Saturn are
like, and how many chickens there are in If
you say: "What keeps me from the prayers and worship
and causes me to be lax is not unnecessary things like
that, but essential matters like earning a
livelihood," then my answer is this: if you work for
a daily wage of one hundred kurush, and someone comes to
you and says: "Come and dig here for ten minutes,
and you will find a brilliant and an emerald worth a
hundred liras." If you reply: "No, I won't
come, because ten kurush will be cut from my wage and my
subsistence will be less," of course you
understand what a foolish pretext it would be. In just
the same way, you work in this orchard for your
livelihood. If you abandon the obligatory prayers, all
the fruits of your effort will be restricted to only a
worldly, unimportant, and unproductive livelihood. But
if you spend the rest periods on the prayers, which allow
your spirit to relax and your heart to take a breather,
then you will discover two mines which are an important
source, both for a productive worldly livelihood, and
your livelihood and provisions for the Hereafter. First
Mine: Through a sound intention, you will receive a share
of the praises and glorifications offered by all the
plants and trees, whether flowering or fruit-bearing,
that you grow in the garden.[21] Second
Mine: Whatever is eaten of the garden's produce,
whether by animals or man, cattle or flies, buyers or
thieves, it will become like almsgiving from you. But on
condition you work in the name of the True Provider and
within the bounds of what He permits, and see yourself as
a distribution official giving His property to His
creatures. So
see what a great loss is made by one who abandons the
prescribed prayers. What significant wealth he loses, and
he is deprived of those two results and mines which would
otherwise cause him to work eagerly and ensure his morale
was strong; he becomes bankrupt. Even, as he grows old,
he will grow weary of gardening and lose interest in it,
saying, "What is it to me? I am anyway leaving
this world, why should Tput up with this much
difficulty?" He will sink into idleness. But the
first man says: "I shall work even harder at both
worship and licit activities in order to send more
abundant light to my grave and procure more provisions
for my life in the Hereafter." In
Short: O my soul! Know that yesterday has left you and as
for tomorrow, you have nothing to prove that it will be
yours. In which case, know that your true life is the
present day. So throw at least one of its hours into a
mosque or prayer-mat, a coffer for the Hereafter like a
reserve fund, set up for the true future. And know that
for you and for everyone each new day is the door to a
new world. If you do not perform the prayers, your
world
that day will depart dark and wretched, and will testify
against you in the World of Similitudes. For everyone,
every day, has a private world out of this world, and its
nature is dependent on the person's heart and actions.
Like a splendid palace reflected in a mirror takes on the
colour of the mirror, if it is black, it appears black,
and if it is red, it appears red. Also it takes on the
qualities of the mirror; if the mirror is smooth, it
shows the palace to be beautiful, and if it is not, it
shows it to be ugly. As it shows the most delicate things
to be coarse, so you alter the shape of your own world
"with your heart, mind, actions, and wishes. You may
make it testify either for you or against you. If you
perform the five daily prayers, and through them you are
turned towards that world's Glorious Maker, all of a
sudden your world, which looks to you, is lit up. Quite
simply as though the prayers are an electric lamp and
your intention to perform them touches the switch, they
disperse the world's darkness and show the changes and
movements within the confused wretchedness of worldly
chaos to be a wise and purposeful order and a meaningful
writing of Divine power. They scatter one light of the
light-filled verse, God
is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth3 over
your heart, and your world on that day is illuminated
through the light's reflection. It will cause it to
testify in your favour through its luminosity. Beware,
do not say: "What are my prayers in comparison with
the reality of the prayers?", because like he seed
of a date-palm describes the full-grown tree, your
prayers describe your tree. The difference is only in
the summary and details; like the prayers of a great
saint, the prayers of ordinary people like you or me,
even if they are not aware of it, have a share of that
light. There is a mystery in this truth, even if the
conscious mind does not perceive it... but the unfolding
and illumination differs according to the degrees of
those performing them. However many stages and degrees
there are from the seed of a date-palm to the mature
tree, the degrees of the prayers and their stages may be
even more numerous. But the essence of that luminous
truth is present in each degree. O
God! Grant blessings and peace to the one who said:
"The five daily prayers are the pillar of
religion," and to all his Family and Companions.
-X
- The
Transience of Life In
the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. And
what are the goods of this world but the goods of
deception?1 [A
slap for the heedless and a warning lesson] O
my wretched soul sunk in heedlessness, which sees this
life as sweet, has forgotten the Hereafter, and seeks
only this world! Do you know what you resemble? An
ostrich! It sees the hunter, but cannot fly, so sticks it
head in the sand so the hunter will not see it. Its bulky
body remains in the open, and the hunter sees it. Only,
its eyes are closed in the sand and it cannot see him. O
my soul, consider the following comparison, and see it! Restricting
one's view to this world transforms a great pleasure into
a grievous pain. For example, there are two men in this
village, that is, in Barla. Ninety-nine out of a hundred
of the friends of one of them have gone to O
my soul! Foremost God's Beloved, and all your friends,
are beyond the grave. The one or two who remain will also
depart for there. So do not be frightened of death,
anxious at the grave, and avert your head. Look manfully
at the grave, and listen to what it seeks. Laugh in
death's face like a man, and see what it wants. Beware,
do not be heedless and resemble the second man. O
my soul! Do not say, "The times have changed, this
age is different, everyone is plunged into this world and
worships this life. Everyone is drunk with the struggle
for livelihood." For death
does
not change. Separation is not transformed into permanence
and does not become different. Man's impotence and
poverty does not change, it increases. Man's journey is
not cut, it becomes faster. Also,
do not say, "I am like everyone else." For
everyone befriends you only as far as the grave. And the
consolation of being together with others in disaster has
no meaning beyond the grave. And do not suppose yourself
to be free and independent. For if you look at this
guest-house of the world with the eye of wisdom, you will
see that nothing at all is without order and without
purpose. How can you remain outside the order and be
without purpose? Events in the world like earthquakes are
not the playthings of chance. For example, you see that
the extremely well-ordered and finely embroidered shirts,
one over the other and one within the other, which are
clothed on the earth from the species of animals and
plants, are adorned and decked out from top to bottom
with purposes and instances of wisdom, and you know that
the earth revolves and is turned like an ecstatic Mevlevi
in perfect order within most exalted aims. How is it
then, as an atheist published, they suppose the
death-tainted events of the earth, like the earthquake,[22]
which resembles the earth's shaking off itself the weight
of certain forms of heedlessness of which it disapproves
from mankind, and especially from the believers,
to
be without purpose and the result of chance? How is it
that they show the grievous losses of all those stricken
to be without recompense and to have gone for nothing,
and cast them into a fearsome despair? They are both
making a great error and perpetrating a great wrong.
Indeed, such events, occur at the command of One All-Wise
and All-Compassionate, in order to transform the
transient property of the believers into the equivalent
of alms, and make it permanent. And they are atonement
for the sins arising from ingratitude for bounties. Just
as a day will come when this subjugated earth will see
the works of man which adorn its face to be tainted by
the attributing of partners to God and not being the
cause of thanks, and it will find them ugly. At the
Creator's command, it will wipe them off its entire
face and cleanse it. At God's command, it will pour those
who attribute partners to God into Hell, and say to those
who offer thanks: "Come and enter
-
XI - The
Requirements of Belief In
His Name, be He glorified. [An
extract from a letter written to some students of the
Risale-i Nur at At
the end of The Staff of Moses, there is the answer I gave
to the question of one of our brothers, Küçük Ali, small
in name but great in spirit. Read it, for some critics
said to him, in an effort to belittle the Risale-I Nur, "Everyone
knows God; the common man believes in God just like the
saint." They wished in this way to present the
exalted, valuable, and most essential discussions
contained in the Risale-i Nur as superfluous. Now top in
tion,
some hypocrites of anarchist persuasion, who have fallen
prey to utter unbelief, wish cunningly to deprive
everyone of the truths of the faith that are contained in
the Risale-i Nur and are as essential to man as bread
and water. They say: "Every nation and every
individual knows God; we have no great need for new
instruction in this matter." To
know God, however, means to have certain belief in His
dominicality encompassing all beings, and in all things,
particular and universal, from the atoms to the stars,
being in the grasp of His power, action, and will; it
means believing in the truths of the sacred words,
"There is no god but God," and assenting to
them with one's heart. For
simply to say, "God exists," and then to divide
His kingdom among causes and Nature and attribute it to
them; to recognize causes as sources of authority, as if
—God forbid— they were partners to God; to fail to
perceive His will and knowledge as present with all
things; to refuse to recognize His strict commands, and
to reject His attributes, and the messengers and prophets
He has sent — this has nothing to do with the reality
of belief in God. Rather the person who does all this,
and says "God exists," does so only in order to
find some relief from the torment he suffers in the world
after his unbelief has made it a hell for him. Not to
deny is one thing; to believe is something completely
different. No
being endowed with consciousness, in the whole universe,
can indeed deny the All-Glorious
THE
REQUIREMENTS OF BELIEF ? 127 Creator
to Whom every particle of existence bears witness. Or if
he does make such a denial, he will be rebuffed by all of
creation, and hence become silent and diffident. But
believing in Him is, as the Qur'an of Mighty Stature
informs us, to assent in one's heart to the Creator with
all of His attributes and Names, supported by the
testimony of the whole universe; to recognize the
messengers He has sent and the commands He has
promulgated; and to make sincere repentance and feel
genuine regret for every sin and act of disobedience.
Conversely, to commit every kind of sin, and then never
to seek pardon for it or concern oneself with it, is a
sure sign of the absence of any element of faith. Thus
my spritual offspring, an important event has become the
occasion for a brief exposition of a long and complex
matter.
Àn
Illuminating Proof of Divine Unity After
my return from captivity, I was living together with my
nephew Abdurrahman in a villa on the hill at Çamlýca in
itual
son. But then, knowing myself to be more fortunate than
anyone else in the world, I looked in the mirror and I
saw grey hairs in my hair and beard. Suddenly,
the spiritual awakening I had experienced in the mosque
in Kosturma while in captivity recommenced. As a
result, I began to study the circumstances and causes to
which I felt geniune attachment and which I supposed were
the means to happiness in this world. But whichever of
them I studied, I saw that it was rotten; it was not
worth the attachment; it was deceptive. Around that time,
I suffered an unexpected and unimaginable act of
disloyalty and unfaithfulness at the hands of a friend
whom I had supposed to be most loyal. I felt disgust at
the world. I said to myself: "Have I been altogether
deceived? I see that many people look with envy at our
situation, which in reality should be pitied. Are all
these people crazy, or is it me that has gone crazy so
that I see all these worldly people as such?" Anyway,
as a result of this severe awakening caused me by old
age, first of all I saw the transi-toriness of all the
ephemeral things to which I was attached. And I looked at
myself, and I saw myself to be utterly impotent. So then
my spirit declared, which desires immortality and was
addicted to ephemeral beings imagining them to be
immortal: "Since I am a transient being with regard
to my body, what good can come of these ephemeral things?
Since I am powerless, what can
I
await from these powerless things? What I need is one who
is Eternal and Enduring, one who is Pre-Eternal and
All-Powerful, who will provide a remedy for my
ills." And I began to search. Then,
before everything, I had recourse to the learning I had
studied of old, I began to search for a consolation, a
hope. But unfortunately, up to that time I had filled my
mind with the sciences of philosophy as well as the
Islamic sciences, and quite in error, had imagined those
philosophical sciences to be the source of progress and
means of illumination. However, those philosophical
matters had greatly dirtied my spirit and been an
obstacle to my spiritual development. Suddenly, through
Almighty God's mercy and munificence, the sacred wisdom
of the All-Wise Qur'an came to my assistance. As is
explained in many parts of the Risale-i Nur, it washed
away and cleansed the dirt of those philosophical
matters. For
instance, the spiritual darknesses arising from science
and philosophy plunged my spirit into the universe.
Whichever way I looked seeking a light, I could find no
light in those matters, I could not breathe. And so it
continued until the instruction in Divine Unity given by
the phrase "There is no god but He" from the
All-Wise Qur'an dispersed all those layers of darkness
with its brilliant light, and I could breathe with ease.
But relying on what they had learnt from the people of
misguidance and philosophers, my soul and Satan attacked
my reason and my heart. All thanks be to God, the ensuing
debate with my soul resulted in the victory of my heart.
Those exchanges have been described in part in many parts
of the Risale-i Nur. And so, deeming them to be
sufficient, here I shall explain only one proof out of
thousands in order to show one thousandth part of that
victory of the heart. In this way it may also cleanse the
spirits of certain elderly people which have been
dirtied in their youth, and their hearts sickened and
souls spoilt, by matters which though called Western
philosophy or the sciences of civilization, are in part
misguidance and in part trivia. And through Divine Unity,
they may be saved from evil of Satan and the soul. It is
as follows: My
soul said in the name, of science and philosophy:
"According to the nature of things, the beings in
the universe intervene in other beings. Everything looks
to a cause. The fruit has to be sought from the tree and
seed from the soil. So what does it mean to seek the
tiniest and least insignificant thing from God and to
beseech Him for it?" Through
the light of the Qur'an, the meaning of Divine Unity then
unfolded in the following way: like the greatest thing,
the tiniest and most particular proceeds directly from
the power of the Creator of the whole universe and
emerges from His treasury. It cannot occur in any other
way. As for causes, they are merely a veil. For in regard
to art and creation, sometimes the creatures we suppose
to be the smallest and least important are greater than
the largest creatures. Even if a fly is not of greater
art than a chicken, it is not of lesser art. In which
case, no difference should be made between great and
small. Either all should be divided between material
causes, or all should be attributed at once to a single
Being. And just as the former is impossible, the latter
is necessary and imperative. For
if beings are attributed to a single Being, that is to a
Pre-Eternal Ail-Powerful One, since His knowledge, the
existence of which certain by reason of the order and
wisdom in all beings, encompasses everything; and since
the measure of all things is determined in His knowledge;
and since observedly beings which are infinitely full of
art continuously come into existence from nothing with
infinite ease; and since in accordance with innumerable
powerful evidences that All-Knowing All-Powerful One is
able to create anything whatever through the command of
'Be! and it is' as simply as striking a match, and as is
explained in many parts of the Risale-i Nur and proved
particularly in the Twentieth Letter and at the end of
the Twenty-Third Flash, He possesses unlimited power —
since this is the case, the extraordinary ease and
facility which we observe arises from that
all-encompassing knowledge and vast power. For
example, if a special solution is applied to a book
written in invisible ink, that huge book suddenly
demonstrates its existence visibly and makes itself read.
In just the same way, the particular form and appointed
measure of everything is determined in the
all-encompassing knowledge of the Pre-Eternal AU-Powerful
One. Through the command of 'Be!' and it is and with that
limitless power of His and penetrating will, like
spreading the solution on the writing, the Absolutely
All-Powerful One applies a manifestation of: His power to
the being which exists as knowledge and with utter ease
and facility gives it external existence; He displays
and makes read the embroideries of His wisdom. If
all things are not all together attributed to that
Pre-Eternal AU-Powerful One, the One Knowing of All
Things, then as well as having to gather together in a
particular measure from most of the varieties of beings
in the world the body of the tiniest thing like a fly,
the particles which work in that tiny fly's body will
have to know the mysteries of the fly's creation and its
perfect art in all its minutest details. For as all the
intelligent agree, natural causes and physical causes
cannot create out of nothing. In which case, if they do
create, they will gather the being together. And since
they will gather it together, whatever animate being it
is, there are within it samples of most of the elements
and most of the varieties of beings, for living creatures
are quite simply like a seed or essence of the universe,
it will of course be necessary for them to gather
together a seedfrom the whole tree and an animate being
from the whole face of the earth sifting them through a
fine sieve and measuring them with the most sensitive
balance. And since natural causes are ignorant and
lifeless, and have no knowledge with which to determine a
plan, index, model, or programme according to which
they can smelt and pour the particles which enter the -
immaterial mould of the being in question, so they do hot
disperse and spoil its order, it is clear how far it is
from possibility and reason to suppose that, without
mould or measure, they can make the particles of the
elements which flow like floods remain one on the other
in the form of an orderly mass without dispersing, for
everything has a single form and measure amid
possibilities without calculation or count. For sure,
everyone who does not suffer from blindness in his heart
will see it. Yes, as a consequence of this truth,
according to the meaning of the verse, Those
on whom you call besides God cannot create [even] a fly,
if they all met together for the purpose[23]'[24]
if
all material causes were to gather together and if they
possessed will, they could could not gather together the
being of a single fly and its systems and organs with
their particular balance. And
even
if they could gather them together, they could not make
them remain in the specified measure of the being. And
even if they could make them remain thus, they could not
make those minute particles, which are constantly being
renewed and coming into existence and working, work
regularly and in order. In which case, self-evidently,
causes cannot claim ownership of things. That is to say,
their True Ower is someone else. Indeed,
their True Owner is such that, according to the verse, Your
creation and your resurrection is as a single soul,3 He
raises to life all the living beings on the face of the
earth as easily as He raises to life a single fly. He
creates the spring as easily as He creates a single
flower. For He is no need of gathering things together.
Since He is the owner of the command of 'Be!' and it
is; and since every spring He creates from nothing the
innumerable7attributes, states, and forms of
the innumerable beings of spring together with the
elements of their physical beings; and since He
determines the plan, model, index, and programme of
everything in His knowledge; and since all minute
particles are in motion within the sphere of His
knowledge and power, He therefore creates everything with
infinite ease as though striking a match. Nothing at
all
confuses its motion so much as an iota. Minute particles
are like a regular, well-ordered army in the same way
that the planets are an obedient army. Since
they are in motion relying on that pre-eternal power, and
function in accordance with the principles of that
pre-eternal knowledge, those works come into existence in
accordance with the power. They therefore cannot be
deemed insignificant by considering their unimportant
personalities. For through the strength of being
connected to that power, a fly can kill off a Nimrod, and
an ant can destroy the Pharaoh's palace, and the minute
seed of the pine bears on its shoulder the burden of
the pine-tree as tall as a mountain. We have proved this
truth in numerous places in the Risale-i Nur: just as
through his enrolment in the army and being connected to
the king, an ordinary soldier can take another king
prisoner, exceeding his own capacity a hundred thousand
times, so too, through being connected to pre-eternal
power, all things can manifest miracles of art exceeding
the capacity of natural causes hundreds of thousands of
times. In
short, the fact that the existence of all things is with
both infinite art and infinite ease shows that they are
the works of a Pre-Eternal All-Powerful One possessing
all-encompassing knowledge. Otherwise, it would not be
coming into existence with a hundred thousand
difficulties, but leaving the bounds of possibility and
entering those of impossibility, nothing at all could
come into existence, indeed, their coming into existence
would be impossible and precluded. And
so, through this most subtle, powerful, profound, and
clear proof, my soul, which had been a temporary student
of Satan and the spokesman for the people rjf
misguidance and the philosophers, was silenced, and,
all praise be to God, came to believe completely. It
said: Yes,
what I need is a Creator and Sustainer Who possesses the
power to know the least thoughts of my heart and my most
secret wishes; and like He will answer the most hidden
needs of my spirit, will transform the mighty earth into
the Hereafter in order to give me eternal happiness, and
will remove this world and put the Hereafter in its
place; and will create the heavens as He creates a fly;
and as He fastens the sun as an eye in the face of the
sky, can situate a particle in the pupil of my eye. For
one who cannot create a fly cannot intervene in the
thoughts of my heart and cannot hear the pleas of my
spirit. One who cannot create the heavens, cannot give
me eternal happiness. In which case, my Sustainer is He
Who both purifies my heart's thoughts, and like He fills
and empties the skies with clouds in an hour, will
transform this world into the Hereafter, make Paradise,
and open its doors to me, bidding me to enter. And
so, my elderly brothers who as a result of misfortune,
like my soul, have spent part of their lives on lightless
Western materialist philosophy and science! Understand
from the sacred decree of "There is no god but
He" perpetually uttered by tongue of the Qur'an,
just how powerful and true and unshakeable and
undamagable and unchanging, sacred a pillar of belief
it is, and how it disperses all spiritual darkness and
cures all spiritual wounds! It
is as though my including this .long story among the
doors of hope of my old age was involuntary. I did not
want to include it, indeed, I held back because I thought
it would be tedious. But I may say that I felt compelled
to write it. Anyway, to return to the main topic. In
consequence of grey hairs appearing in my hair and beard
and of a loyal friend's unfaithfulness, I felt a
disgust at the pleasures of
0
elderly men and women! Since you have belief and since
you pray and offer supplications which illuminate and
increase belief, you can regard your old age as eternal
youth. For through it you can gain eternal youth. The old
age which in truth is cold, burdensome, ugly, dark, and
full of pain is the old age of the people of
misguidance, indeed, their youth as well. It is they
who should weep with sighs and regrets. While you,
respected believing elderly people, should joyfully offer
thanks saying: "All praise and thanks be to God for
every situation!"
-xm- The
Enemies of Aspiration Question:
What is the reason for our falling into the pit of
apathy? The
Answer: Life consists of activity and motion, and
eagerness and enthusiasm are the mount which you ride
through your life. When your aspiration is seated on this
mount and emerges into life's arena of combat, the first
determined enemy it encounters is despair. Despair will
attempt to break its morale, so wield the sword of, Do
not despair[25] against
that enemy. Then the tyrannical force of personal
ambition will attack, seeking to usurp the place of
disinterested service to God. It will strike a blow at
the head of aspiration, and throw it down from its mount.
Send the truth of:
THE
ENEMIES OF ASPIRATION ? 141 Be
for God[26] against
this enemy. Then haste will emerge, urging you to leap
over the succession of intertwined causes, and cause the
foot of your aspiration to slip. Make of, Be
patient, vie with each other in patience, and strengthen
each other[27] a
shield against this enemy. Next you will be confronted
by individualism and self-centredness, something which
defeats the wishes of man; for he is by nature a social
being and bound both to observe the rights of his
fellow-beings and to seek the fulfilment of his own
rights among them. Send out to combat against it that
champion of high aspiration, The
best of men is the one most useful to his fellowsA Then
adherence to mere routine, taking advantage of the
laziness of others, will attack and seek to paralyze
aspiration. Make the impregnable fortress of, Upon
God, and none other, let them place their trust, whoever
so wills[28]
a
shelter for your aspiration. Next comes the treacherous
foe of abandoning tasks to others, a habit arising from
weakness and lack of self
confidence;
taking your aspiration by the hand, it will invite it to
sit and be rested. Send out the luminous truth of, The
one who has gone stray cannot harm you once you are
guided arighft against
this enemy, so that its hand will be unable to reach the
skirt of your aspiration. Then comes the irreligious
enemy that would interfere with the performance of God's
work; he will seek to strike aspiration in the face, and
to pluck out is eye. Send against it the long-labouring
and conscientious truth of, Be
steadfast, as you have been commanded.1 * And
conspire not against your master so
that he is brought up short. Next comes the mother of all
trouble, the source of all.evil, which is the desire for
ease and tranquillity. It tries to bind aspiration and
cast it into the dungeon of lowliness. Send against that
bewitching but heartless enemy, the champion of lofty
fame that is, Man
possesses nothing naught save that which he strives.[29] For
it is in toil that true tranquillity is to be found, for
the ease of man, an unquiet being by nature, is to be
found only in striving and struggle.
*
^ %
An
Appreciation of the Book Received
with many grateful thanks are the copies of the
July-August 'The Nur Magazine' and 'Fruits From the Tree
of Light,' the latter of which is very well translated in
appropriate and beautiful English and the selections from
the Risale-i Nur well chosen. Only a genuine saint whose
heart is iUuminated with the light of Faith could write
like this, the passages have great beauty and spiritual
depth and their eloquence is capable of moving the heart
of any reader except those with a heart as hardened as
stone. Some passages are strongly reminiscent of the
writings and preaching of the great Sufi saint, Shaykh
'Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani. It
is my humble opinion that Bediuzzaman Said Nursi alone of
all the leaders for Islamic regeneration of this
century, can rank with the great Muslim saints of the
past. From what I have read about his life and his
writings, his spritual stature appears superior over all
other of his contemporary leaders for Islamic revival
in the Arab world
and
Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, however sincere, earnest and
valuable their intentions and efforts. He combines in his
venerable person all the qualities of a true saint, mujaddid
and mujahid at once. Thus the legacy of his selfless life
and works cannot be restricted to Turkey or the Turks,
but must become common property shared by Muslims
everywhere throughout the world. The
great strength of Bediuzzaman was his knowledge of his
limitations and realistic assessment of the plight in
which Muslims now find themselves. Unlike other
contemporary leaders for Islamic revival, he did not
formulate grandiose plans for a "universal Islamic
political, economic and social order" which had no
chance of being implemented in the foreseeable future at
a time when the majority of so-called "Muslim?"
rulers persecute Believers ruthlessly, and as a result of
the social corruption, the imposition of an alien
atheistic educational system, and the mass-media from
whose harmful effects it is impossible for parents to
protect their innocent and defenceless children, there
does not exist today a single Islamic state, community,
society, or even a totally Islamic family group anywhere.
When the majority of Muslim youth have ceased to practise
Islam and enthusiastically, blindly and uncritically
embrace Westernism, it is meaningless to talk of the
"Muslim world," the "Muslim Bloc," or
"Muslim Unity." Bediuzzaman
had the wisdom and foresight to
AN
APPRECIATION OF THE BOOK O 145 realize
that to enter the arena of active politics in such an
atmosphere as this would be futile and fruitless. He
realized that the mere capturing of political power would
not suffice to bring about an Islamic renaissance. He
knew that political revolution, which can speedily be
nullified by a counter-coup d'etat, and thus result only
in more violence, anarchy and oppression, was not the
Way. He had the wisdom to avoid a rigid, inflexible,
centralized organization, for the latter can easily be
banned by the dictator in power, its leaders jailed,
executed or assassinated, its offices sealed and its
literature proscribed and that is the end of it. By
establishing the fruits of his works and preachings on
the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Turks, this
movement could not be banned nor could the propagation of
its teachings be stopped even by the most oppressive
despotism. The
methods of the Nursi movement are thus superbly adapted
to working among the people in varied walks of life under
the despotism and tyranny which has become the fact of
almost all the "Muslim" countries today. In
constrast to other Islamic movements elsewhere it has
proved its ability to flourish in a hostile environment.
It is no exaggeration to claim that whatever Islamic
faith remains in Turkey is due to the tireless and the
selfless efforts of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. He
realized that the most crucial necessity of modern man
was a moral and spritual outlook on life, and that what
Muslim youth need above all
else
is conversion from the materialistic to a spiritual
outlook on life. The Risale-i Nur is devoted to this end
and compared with other contemporary Islamic movements
which have either been suppressed by those in power,
become inactive or ineffective, it has achieved, by the
help and grace of Almighty God, impressive success. : MARYAM
JAMEELAH Lahore,
Pakistan September, 1975. *
* s£
Who
was Bediuzzaman
Said Nursi and what is the Risale-i Nur? Bediuzzaman
Said Nursi was born in eastern Turkey in 1877 and died in
1960 at the age of eighty-three after a life of exemplary
struggle and self-sacrifice in the cause of Islam. He was
a scholar of the highest standing having studied not only
all the traditional religious sciences but also modern
science and had earned the name Bediuzzaman, Wonder of
the Age, in his youth as a result of his outstanding
ability and learning. Bediuzzaman's
life-time spanned the final decades of the Caliphate and
Ottoman Empire, its collapse and dismemberment after
the First World War, and, after its formation in 1923,
the first thirty-seven years of the Republic, of which
the years up to 1950 are famous for the government's
repressive anti-Islamic and anti-religious policies. Until
the years following the First World War, Bediuzzaman's
struggles in the cause of Islam had been active and in
the public domain. He had not only taught many students
and had engaged in debate and discussion with leading
scholars from all over the Islamic world, but he had also
commanded and led in person a volunteer regiment against
the invading Russians in
148
? WHAT IS THE RISALE-I NUR? eastern
Turkey in 1914 for nearly two years until taken prisoner.
Furthermore, up to that time he had sought to further the
interests of Islam by actively engaging in public life.
However, the years that saw the transition from empire to
republic also saw the transition from the 'Old Said' to
the 'New Said'. The 'New Said? was
characterized by his withdrawal from public life and
concentration on study, prayer and thought, for what
was required now was a struggle of a different sort. Although
he had paid no part in it, and in fact had strongly
advised its leaders to abandon their uprising against the
government, during the events in eastern Turkey of 1925,
Bediuzzaman was sent into exile in western Anatolia.
Following this, for the next twenty-five years, and to a
lesser extent for the last ten years of his life, he
suffered nothing but exile, imprisonment, harassment and
persecution by the authorities. But these years of exile
and isolation saw the writing of the Risale-i Nur, the
Treatise of Light, and its dissemination throughout
Turkey. To quote Bediuzzaman himself, "Now I see
clearly that most of my life has been directed in such a
way, outside,my own free-will, ability, comprehension
and foresight, that it might produce these treatises to
serve the cause of the Qur'an. It is as if all my life as
a scholar has been spent in preliminaries to these
writings, which demonstrate the miraculousness of the
Qur'an." Bediuzzaman
understood an essential cause of the decline of the
Islamic world to be the weakening of its very
foundations, that is, a weakening of belief in the basic
tenets of the Islamic faith. This, together with the
unprecedented attacks on those foundations in the 19th
and 20th centuries carried out by materialists, atheists
and others in the name of science and progress, led him
to realize that the urgent and overriding need was to
strengthen, and even to save, belief. What was needed was
to expend all efforts to reconstruct the edifice of Islam
from its foundations, belief, and to answer at that level
those attacks with a 'non-physical jihad' or 'jihad of
the word.' Thus,
in his exile, Bediuzzaman wrote a body of work, the
Risale-i Nur, that would explain and expound the basic
tenets of belief, the truths of the Qur'an, to modern
man. His method was to analyse both belief and unbelief
and to demonstrate, through clearly reasoned arguments
that not only is it possible, by following the method of
the Qur'an, to prove rationally all the truths of belief,
such as God's existence and unity, prophet-hood, and
bodily resurrection, but also that these truths are the
only- rational explanation of existence, man and the
universe. Bediuzzaman
thus demonstrated in the form of easily understood
stories, comparisons, explanations, and reasoned proofs
that, rather than the truths of religion being
incompatible with the findings of modern science, the
materialist interpretation of those findings is
irrational and absurd. Indeed, Bediuzzaman proved in
the Risale-i Nur that science's breathtaking discoveries
of the universe's functioning corroborate and reinforce
the truths of religion. The
importance of the Risale-i Nur cannot be overestimated,
for through it Bediuzzaman Said Nursi played a major role
in preserving and revitalizing the Islamic faith in
Turkey in the very darkest days of her history. And
indeed its role has continued to increase in importance
to the present day. But further to this, the Risale-i Nur
is uniquely fitted to address not only all Muslims but
indeed all mankind for several reasons. Firstly it is
written in accordance with modern man's mentality, a
mentality that, whether Muslim or not, has been deeply
imbued by materialist philosophy: it specifically answers
all the questions, doubts and confusions that this
causes. It answers too all the 'why's' that mark the
questioning mind of modern man. Also,
it explains the most profound matters of belief, which
formerly only advanced scholars studied in detail, in
such a way that everyone, even those to whom the subject
is new, may understand and gain something without it
causing any difficulties or harm. A
further reason is that in explaining the true nature and
purpose of man and the universe, the Risale-i Nur shows
that true happiness is only to be found in belief and
knowledge of God, both in this world and the hereafter.
And it also points out the grievous pain and unhappiness
that unbelief causes man's spirit and conscience, which
generally the misguided attempt to block out through
heedlessness and escapism, so that anyone with any sense
may take refuge in belief. TO
CONCLUDE: The
Holy Qur'an addresses the intellect as well as man's
other inner faculties. It directs man to consider the
universe and its functioning in order to learn its true
nature and purposes as the creation and thus to learn the
attributes of its Single Creator and his own duties as a
creature. This, then, is the method that Bediuzzaman
employed in the Risale-i Nur. He explained the true
nature of the universe as signs of its Creator and
demonstrated through clear arguments that when it is
read as such all the fundamentals of belief may be proved
rationally.
When
this method is followed, a person attains a true belief
that will be sound and firm enough to withstand any
doubts that may arise in the face of the subtle attacks
of Materialism, Naturalism and atheism, or the
materialist approach to scientific advances. For all
scientific and technological advances are merely the
uncovering of the workings of the cosmos. When the cosmos
is seen to be a vast and infinitely complex and
meaningful unified book describing its Single Author,
rather than causing doubt and bewilderment, all these
discoveries and advances reinforce belief, they deepen
and expand it. Man's
most fundamental need is the need for religion, the
need to recognize and worship Almighty God with all His
Most Beautiful Names and attributes, and to obey His
laws; those manifest in the universe and those revealed
through His prophets. In explaining the message of the
Qur'an, Almighty God's final Revealed Book, brought and
perfectly expounded by His final Prophet, Muhammad (Upon
whom be blessings and peace), and Islam, the complete and
perfected religion for mankind, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
demonstrated in the Risale-i Nur that there is no
contradiction or dichotomy between science and
religion; rather, true progress and happiness for mankind
can, and will, only be achieved in this way, the way of
the Qur'an. Sozler
Publications ^
^ ^
[1]This alludes to man, the fruit of
the tree of creation, and to the fruit which bears its
tree's prgramme and index. For whatever the pen of power
has written in the great book of the universe, it has
written its summary in man's nature. And whatever the pen
of Divine Determining has written in a tree the size of a
mountain, it has also included it in its fruit the size
of a finger nail. [2]This indicates the face of the earth
in the spring and summer. For the groups of hundreds of
thousands of different creatures are created one within
the other and written there. They are changed without
fault or error and with perfect order. Thousands of
tables of the Most Merciful One are laid out, then
removed and replaced by fresh ones. All the trees as
though bear trays, all the gardens are like cauldrons. [3]These are the caravans of plants and
trees, which bear the sustenance of all the animals. [4]The mighty electric lamp indicates
the sun. [5]And the string, and the food
attached to it, are the slender branches of trees and
their delicious fruits. [6]And the two small pumps allude to
the breasts of mothers. [7]As for the elements and minerals,
these indicate the elements of air, water, light, and
earth, which have numerous well-ordered duties; they
hasten to the assistance of all needy beings with
dominical leave, enter everywhere and bring help at the
Divine command, and raise all the things necessary for
life and suckle living creatures, and are the source of
the weaving and inscribing of the Divine artefacts, and
are their progenitors and cradles. [8]The thickish string alludes.to
fruit-bearing trees, the thousands of strings, to their
branches, and the diamonds, decorations, favours, and
gifts, to the varieties of blossoms and fruits. [9]The jar of conserve indicates the
gifts of Divine mercy like melons, water melons,
pomegranates, and coconuts, which are the conserves of
Divine power, and like tins of milk. [10]Fifteen days indicates the age of
fifteen, the age of discretion. [11]The tables indicate the face of the
earth in summer, during which hundreds of tables of the
Most Merciful emerge fresh and different from the
kitchens of Mercy. Every garden is a cauldron, every
tree, a tray-bearer. [12] The ship indicates history, and
the peninsula, the Era of Bliss or Age of the
Prophet(PBUH). Through casting off the dress of this low
civilization on its dark shore, entering the seas of
time, boarding the ship of history and alighting at the
Arabian Peninsula and Era of Bliss, and visiting the
Glory of the World (PBUH) at his duties, we know that he
is a proof of Divine Unity so brilliant that he
illuminates the entire globe and the two faces of the
past and the future, and disperses the darkness of
unbelief and misguidance. [13]The thousand decorations are the
miracles of Muhammad (PBUH), which according to those who
have investigated them, reach nearly a thousand. [14]The important lamp is the moon,
which split into two halves at his indication. That is,
as Mawlana Jami said: '•"With the pen of his
finger, that unlettered one who knew no writing, wrote an
alif on the page of the skies and made one forty, two
fifties." That is, before it split, the moon
resembled mini, the value of which is forty; and after
splitting it became two crescents, and resembled two mm's,
the value of which is fifty. [15]The huge light is the sun; when it
reappeared on the earth's revolving backwards, Imam AM
(May God be pleased with him), who had been unable to
perform the prayers since the Prophet (PBUH) was sleeping
in his arms, due to this miracle, was able to perform the
prayers on time. [16]At the time these lines were
written in 1944, Bediuzzaman was imprisoned, in Denizli,
awaiting trial on various false charges. [Tr.] [17]An allusion to the beneficial
imprisonment of Joseph (Upon whom be peace) after the
false accusation made by the wife of the Pharaoh. [Tr.] [18]Quran. 43:71. [19]Qur'an, 93:8. [20]Qur'an, 3:191. .7. Qur'an, 25:65. |