The Third Topic

The summary of an instructive incident, the explanation of which is in A Guide For Youth, is as follows:

One time, I was sitting by the window in Eskishehir Prison during Republic Day. The older girls of the high school across the street from the prison were laughing and dancing in the schoolyard. Suddenly, their situation fifty years later appeared to me in a ma’nawî cinema. I saw that forty-fifty of those fifty-sixty girls and students had become earth in the grave and were suffering torment. And ten of them, at the age of seventy or eighty, became ugly because they did not preserve their ‘iffah in their youth; they were hated by those from whom they expected to be loved. I witnessed it with complete certainty and wept at their pitiable states. Some of my friends in prison heard my weeping and came and asked me about it. I told them, "Leave me alone for now and go."

Yes, what I saw was haqiqah, not imagination. Just as the summer and autumn are followed by winter, so the summer of youth and the autumn of old age are followed by the winter of the grave and barzakh. If there were a cinema showing the future events of fifty years later, just as in a cinema, the events of fifty years ago are shown in the present, and if the people of dhalâlah and dissipation were to be shown their situation fifty or sixty years later, they would weep with hatred and sorrow at what they are laughing at now and their haram pleasures.

When I was preoccupied with these observations in Eskishehir Prison, a ma’nawî collective personality that advocates dissipation and dhalâlah stood before me like a human shaytan and said, "We want to experience all the pleasures and joys of life and to make others experience them; don't interfere with us!"

I replied: Since you do not recall death and plunge yourself into dissipation and dhalâlah for the sake of pleasure and enjoyment, you should certainly know that due to the judgement of your dhalâlah, all the past is dead and non-existent; it is a fearsome graveyard inside of which corpses were rotten. The pains that come into your head and your heart, if you have one and it is not yet dead, the pains that arise from those infinite separations and the eternal deaths of those numberless friends of yours, destroy your insignificant and drunken present pleasure in a very short time by means of dhalâlah and due to concern arising from humanity. The future, too, is a non-existent, dark, dead, fearsome and savage place due to your unbelief. And since the heads of the unfortunate, who came from the past, stick out their heads into existence and pass by the present time, are struck off by the sword of the executioner of the appointed time of death and thrown into non-existence due to the concern of your intellect; it continuously rains down grievous worries on your head, lacking îmân, and completely destroys your petty and dissolute pleasure.

If you give up dhalâlah and dissipation and enter the sphere of îmân al-tahqîqî and istiqâmah, through the nûr of îmân, you will see that the past is not non-existent and not a graveyard that rots everything, but an existent ‘âlam full of nûr transforming into the future and a waiting-room for the eternal rûhs who will enter palaces of bliss in the future. Since it appears thus, it does not give pain but, according to the strength of one’s îmân, a kind of ma’nawî pleasure of Jannah in this world. Through the eye of îmân, the future, too, is not seen as a dark, savage place, but a place where banquets and exhibitions of bestowals of Ar-Rahmân, Who is Rahîm Zuljalâl Wa’l-Ikrâm, Whose rahmah and munificence are infinite in His palaces of everlasting bliss, and Who makes each spring and summer tables and fills them with ni’mahs, have been set up. Since, through the cinema screen of îmân, he witnesses that there is a dispatch to that place, he can experience a kind of pleasure of the eternal ‘âlam according to his degree. It means that true pleasure without pain is only in îmân and is possible only through îmân.

Being related to our discussion, we shall declare only a single benefit and pleasure out of the thousands of benefits and fruits that îmân produces in this world, too, by means of a comparison, which was written in A Guide For Youth as a footnote. It is as follows:

For example, when your beloved only child was about to die in the sakarât and you were despairingly thinking of your sorrowful eternal separation, suddenly, a doctor like Hazrat Khidr or Luqman the Wise came and gave your child medicine like a panacea. Your lovely and lovable child opened his eyes and was delivered from death. You can understand what joy and happiness it would give you.

Now, like that child, when millions of people whom you love and are earnestly concerned for — in your view — were about to be rotten and annihilated in the graveyard of the past, suddenly, the haqiqah of îmân, like Luqman the Wise, shines a light from the window of the heart onto the graveyard, which is imagined to be a vast place of execution. Through that light, all the dead were revived. Îmân giving endless joy and cheering in this world, too, which you feel in their saying through the language of their being, "We had not died and shall not die; we shall meet with you again," proves that îmân is a seed that, if it were embodied, a private Jannah would emerge from it; it would be the Tuba-tree of that seed.

The obstinate turned and said, "At least we will live like animals in order to pass our lives in pleasure and enjoyment with amusements and dissipation by not thinking about these subtle matters."

I replied, "You cannot be like an animal because animals have no past and future. It receives neither sorrow nor regret from the past, neither anxiety nor fear from the future, but perfect pleasure. It lives and rests, and offers shukr to its Khâliq. As proof, it may be mentioned that an animal that was laid down to be slaughtered does not feel anything. It even wants to feel when the knife cuts, but that feeling disappears; it is also saved from that pain. It means that the greatest rahmah and compassion of Allah is not informing the ghayb and veiling the things that will befall one. It is especially perfect for innocent animals. But, O man, due to your past and future emerging from the ghayb to an extent because of your mind, you are entirely deprived of the comfort of the animals arising from the ghayb being concealed. The regrets and painful separations emerging from the past and the fears and anxieties coming from the future reduce your insignificant pleasure to nothing and make you fall a hundred times lower than the animals regarding pleasure. Since the haqiqah is this, either throw away your mind, become an animal and be saved, or come to your senses through îmân, and listen to the Qur'an. In this transitory world, too, attain pure pleasures a hundred times greater than those of the animals!" Saying this, I silenced him.

That obstinate person, again, turned to me and said, "At least we will live like foreign irreligious people."

I replied, "You cannot be like foreign irreligious people, either. Because even if they deny one prophet, they can believe in the others. If they do not know the prophets, they may believe in Allah. And even if they do not know Him, they may possess certain moral qualities that are the source of perfection. But if a Muslim denies the Prophet of the âkhirzaman, ‘Alayhissalâtu Wassalâm, who is the final and greatest of the prophets and whose religion and call are universal, and gets out of his (asm) chains, he will no longer accept any other prophet, not even Allah. Because he has learned all the prophets and Allah and all perfections through him (asm); without him (asm), they cannot remain in his heart. It is for this reason that since early times people have entered Islam from all other religions, but no Muslim can be a true Jew, Magian, or Christian. He would rather become irreligious, his moral qualities corrupt; he becomes harmful for the country and nation." I proved this. That obstinate and rebellious person has nothing left to hold on to. He vanished and went to Jahannam.

Thus, O my study friends in this madrasa of Yûsuf (as)! Since the haqiqah is this and the Risale-i Nur proves it so decisively and clearly as the sun, for twenty years it has broken the obstinacy of the obstinates and brought them to îmân. By following the way of îmân and istiqâmah, which is easy, safe and beneficial for both our world, our future, our âkhirah, our country and nation, with ‘amal as-sâlih, such as reciting the surahs from the Qur'an that we know, learning their meanings from friends who teach them, making up the salâhs that we have failed to perform in the past, taking advantage of one another's good characters instead of indulging in distressing fancies in our free times and transforming this prison into a blessed garden raising the seedlings of good character, we should work to make the prison governor and workers, not torturer officials like Zabani standing over criminals and murderers, but mustaqîm masters and compassionate guides charged with the duties of raising people for Jannah in madrasa of Yûsuf (as) and supervising their tarbiyyah.

***