The Twenty-eighth Word

Answers to questions about Paradise

In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

Give glad tidings to those who believe and do good, righteous deeds: for them are Gardens through which rivers flow. Every time they are provided with fruit therefrom, they say: “This is what we were provided with before,” for they are given to them in resemblance. Furthermore, for them are spouses eternally purified, and therein they will abide. (2:25)

Below are brief answer to questions about paradise, which is everlasting. The Qur’anic descriptions, which are more beautiful than Paradise, more delightful than its houris, and sweeter than its springs’ pleasant water, leave nothing to be added. We will only point out some steps so that such brilliant, eternal, elevated, and beautiful verses can be understood easily, and explain some fine points, resembling flowers from that Qur’anic paradise, through five significant questions and answers.

QUESTION: What does the defective, changing, unstable, and pain stricken body have to do with eternity and Paradise? The spirit’s elevated pleasures must be enough. Why should a bodily resurrection take place for bodily pleasures?

ANSWER: Soil, despite its darkness and density when compared to water, air, and light, is the means and source of all works of Divine Art.

Therefore it is somehow superior in meaning over other elements. Likewise, human selfhood or soul, despite its density but due to its being comprehensive and provided it is purified, gains some kind of superiority over all other senses and faculties. Similarly, the physical body is a most comprehensive and rich mirror for the Divine Names’ manifestations, and has been equipped with instruments to weigh and measure the contents of all Divine treasuries. For example, if the tongue’s sense of taste were not the origin of as many measures as the varieties of food and drink, it could not experience, recognize, or measure them. Furthermore, the body also contains the instruments needed to experience and recognize most of the Divine Names’ manifestations, as well as the faculties for experiencing the most various and infinitely different pleasures.

The universe’s conduct and humanity’s comprehensive nature show that the Maker of the universe wants, by means of the universe, to make known all His Mercy’s treasuries and all His Names’ manifestations, and to make us experience all His bounties. Given this, as the World of Eternal Happiness is a mighty pool into which the flood of the universe flows, a vast exhibition of what the loom of the universe produces, and the everlasting store of crops produced in the field of this (material) world, it will resemble the universe to some degree. It will preserve all its bodily and spiritual foundations. So, the All-Wise Maker, the All-Compassionate, All-Just One, will give pleasures particular to each bodily organ as wages for their duty, service, and worship. To act otherwise would be utterly contrary to His Wisdom, Justice, and Compassion.

QUESTION: A living body is in a state of continuous formation and deformation, and so is subject to disintegration and is non-eternal. Eating and drinking perpetuate the individual; sexual relations perpetuate the species. These are fundamental to life in this world, but are irrelevant and unnecessary in the World of Eternity. Given this, why have they been included among Paradise’s greatest pleasures?

ANSWER: A living body declines and dies because the balance between what it needs to maintain and takes in is disturbed. From child hood until the age of physical maturity, it takes in more than it lets out and grows healthier. Afterwards, it usually cannot meet its needs in a balanced way, and eventually dies. In the World of Eternity, however, the body’s particles remain constant and are immune to disintegration and re-formation, or the balance between the body’s income and consumption remains constant.158 Like moving in perpetual cycles, a living body gains eternity together with the constant operation of the factory of bodily life for pleasure. In this world, eating, drinking, and marital sexual relations arise from a need and serve a purpose. Thus a great variety of excellent (and superior) pleasures are ingrained in them as immediate wages for the purpose served. Since in this world of ailments, eating and marriage lead to many wonderful and various pleasures, for sure, Paradise, the Realm of Happiness and Pleasure, will contain these pleasures in their most elevated form. Adding to them otherworldly wages as pleasures for the duties performed in the world by them and the need felt for them here in the form of a pleasant and otherworldly appetite, they will be transformed into an all-encompassing, living source of pleasure that is appropriate to Paradise and eternity.

According to: The life of this world is but a pastime and a game, but the Abode of the Hereafter—it is all living indeed (29:64), all lifeless and unconscious substances and objects in this world are living and conscious in the other world. Like people and animals here, trees and stones there will, respectively, understand and obey commands. If you tell a tree to bring you such-and-such a fruit, it will do so. If you tell a stone to come, it will come. Since stones and trees will assume such an elevated form, it will be necessary for eating, drinking, and marital relations to assume a form that is superior to their worldly forms to the same degree as Paradise is superior to this world. This includes preserving their bodily realities.

QUESTION: A Tradition states that “a person is with the one he or she loves,”159 and so friends will be together in Paradise. Thus a simple Bedouin who feels a deep love for God’s Messenger in one minute of companionship with him should be together with him in Paradise. But how can a simple nomad’s illumination and reward cause him to share the same place with God’s Messenger, whose illumination and reward are limitless?

ANSWER: I will point to this elevated truth by a comparison. A magnificent person prepared a vast banquet and a richly adorned event in an extremely beautiful and splendid garden. It included all delicious foods that taste can experience, all beautiful things that please sight, all wonders that amuse the imagination, and so on. Everything that would gratify and please the external and inner senses was present. Two friends went to the banquet and sat at a table in the same pavilion. One had only limited taste and so received little pleasure. His weak sight and inability to smell prevented him from understanding the wonderful arts or comprehending the marvels. He could benefit only to the degree of his capacity, which was miniscule. But the other person had developed his external and internal senses, intellect, heart, and all faculties and feelings to the utmost degree. Therefore he could perceive, experience, and derive pleasure from all subtleties, beauties, marvels, and fine things in that exquisite garden.

This is how it is in our confused, painful, and narrow world. There is an infinite distance between the greatest and the least who exist side by side. So, in Paradise, the Abode of Happiness and Eternity, where friends will be together, it is more fitting that each receives his or her share from the table of the All-Merciful, All-Compassionate according to the degree of his or her ability. Even though they are in different Gardens or on different “floors” of Paradise, they will be able to meet, for Paradise’s eight levels are one above the other and share the same roof—the Supreme Throne of God.160

Suppose there are walled circles around a conical mountain, one with in the other and one above the other, each one facing another, from its foot to the summit. This does not prevent each one from seeing the sun. Indeed, various narrations or Traditions indicate that the levels or floors of Paradise are somewhat like this.

QUESTION: Prophetic Traditions say: “Houris are clothed in seventy garments (one over the other), yet the marrow of their leg-bones may be seen.”161 What does this mean? What sort of beauty is this?

ANSWER: This Tradition has a very fine meaning and a lovely beauty. In this world, which is ugly, lifeless, and for the most part just a covering, it is sufficient as long as beauty and loveliness appear to the eye as beautiful and until too much familiarity conceals it. In Paradise, which is beautiful, living, brilliant, and entirely essence or kernel without covering, like

the eye, all our senses and faculties will want to receive their different pleasures from houris and from the women coming from this world, who will be even more beautiful than houris. This Tradition indicates that from the beauty of the top garment to the marrow in the bone, each will be the means of pleasure for a sense and faculty.

It also points out that the houris’ adornment, physical and spiritual beauty and charm, will please, satisfy, and gratify all the yearnings of our senses, feelings, powers, and faculties for beauty, and their great fondness for pleasure and adornment. Clothed in seventy sorts of adornment of Paradise in such a way that one does not conceal another, houris display more than seventy sorts of bodily and spiritual beauty and elegance, and thereby demonstrate the truth contained in: In it (Paradise) is whatever the souls desire and the eyes delight in (43:71).

This Tradition also points out that since Paradise contains no unnecessary, peeled, or shelled waste matter with sediment,162 its inhabitants will not excrete waste after eating and drinking. In this world, trees, the most ordinary of living beings, do not excrete despite taking in much nourishment. So why should Paradise’s inhabitants, the highest category of life, excrete waste?

QUESTION: Some Prophetic Traditions say that some inhabitants of Paradise will be given a place as large as the world, and that hundreds of thousands of palaces and houris will be granted to them. What is the reason for this, and why and how does one person need all these things?

ANSWER: If we were only a solid object, a vegetable creature consisting of a stomach, or only had a limited, heavy, simple, and transient corporal or animal body, we would not own or deserve so many palaces or houris. But we are so comprehensive a miracle of Divine Power that if we ruled this world and used all of its wealth and pleasure to satisfy our undeveloped senses’ and faculties’ needs, we still could not satisfy our greed during our brief life. However, if we have an infinite capacity in an eternal abode of happiness, and if we knock on the door of infinite Mercy in the tongue of infinite need and with the hand of infinite desires, we will receive the Divine bounties described in such Traditions. We will present a comparison to illustrate this elevated truth.

Like this valley garden163, each vineyard and garden in Barla has a different owner. Each bird, sparrow, or honey-bee, which has only a handful of grain, may say: “All of Barla’s vineyards and gardens are my places of recreation.” Each may possess Barla and include it in its property. The fact that others share it does not negate its rule. A truly human person may say: “My Creator made the world a home for me, with the sun as its chief lamp, the stars as its electric lights, and the earth as my cradle spread with flowered carpets,” and thanks God. This conclusion is not negated because other creatures live in this “house.” On the contrary, the creatures adorn this home and are like its decorations. If, on account of being human, we or even a bird were to claim the right of control over such a vast area in this narrow, brief world and to receive such a vast bounty, why should we consider it unlikely that we will own property stretching for five hundred years in a broad, eternal abode of happiness?

Also, just as the sun is present here in many mirrors simultaneously, so a spiritually enlightened being may also be present in many places at the same time, as discussed in The Sixteenth Word. For example, Gabriel, upon him be peace, can be on a thousand stars while being present at God’s Supreme Throne, in the Prophet’s presence, and in the Divine Presence. Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, can meet with most of the devoted, God-conscious members of his community in the Place of Gathering after the Resurrection, just as he can appear in many places and to numerous saintly people in this world simultaneously. A group of saints (abdal: substitutes) can appear in many places at the same moment. Ordinary people sometimes can do as much as a year’s work or observe its being done in a minute while dreaming, and everyone can be in contact with and concerned with many places at the same time in heart, in spirit, and in imagination. Such things are well-known and witnessed.

Given this, the inhabitants of Paradise, which is luminous, unrestricted, broad, and eternal, will have bodies with the spirit’s strength and lightness and the imagination’s swiftness. They will be able to be in countless places simultaneously, talk with innumerable houris, and receive pleasure in an infinite number of ways. This is fitting for that eternal Paradise and infinite Mercy, and the Truthful Reporter, upon him be peace and blessings, says that this is the reality and the truth. But such truths cannot be weighed on the scales of our tiny minds.

All-Glorified are You. We have no knowledge save what You have taught us. Surely You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

Our Lord, take us not to task if we forget or make mistakes.

O God, bestow blessings on Your beloved, who opened the doors of Paradise through being beloved by You, and through his prayers, and whose community which helped him opening those doors through calling Your blessings on him. On him be blessings and peace. O God, let us enter Paradise among the pure, righteous ones through the intercession of Your chosen beloved. Amin.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

158 In this world, human and animal bodies are like guesthouses, barracks, or schools for particles. Lifeless particles enter them, become worthy of being particles for the eternal world, and then leave them. In the Hereafter, however, according to: The Abode of the Hereafter—it is all living indeed (29:64), the light of life encompasses everything. There is no need for its particles to make the same journey and undergo the same training as particles or atoms in this world must do.

159 al-Bukhari, “Adab” 96; Muslim, “Birr” 165.

160 al-Bukhari, “Tawhid” 22; at-Tirmidhi, “Sifatu’l-Janna” 4.

161 al-Bukhari, “Adab” 96; Muslim, “Birr” 165.

162 al-Bukhari, “Bad’ul-Khalq” 8; Muslim, “Janna” 17-19.

163 The garden of Süleyman, who served this poor one with perfect loyalty for eight years, where this Word was written in one or two hours.