Bediuzzaman’s Telescope and NASA Research

 

By www.MalaysiaNur.com

 

In this rapidly changing age, we are witnessing new and fascinating discoveries very often. NASA’ s “planets like earth” discovery can be considered as a big step to observe The Supreme Book of Universe. With the help of Kepler Telescope, NASA experts have found two new planets like earth in a similar solar system with two suns and named these planets as Kepler 47-b and 47-c. Succeeding a great job, NASA is now trying to identify the characteristics of these fresh globes. Further details can be seen here.

Through his inspirations from Qur’an-i Karim, in his Tafseer (Commentary) Bediuzzaman Said Nursi treated of seven further globes resembling our earth 80 years before the NASA discovery. Was he having a telescope? Yes, indeed: but not a physical one!

We have included the related part below from his Tafseer with the aim of providing a unique perspective to the scientists and to our dear readers. You may comment on this post to share your point of view.

 

FIRST IMPORTANT MATTER

This is about the earth having seven levels like the heavens. This matter appears to the philosophers of the present time to be untrue; their sciences about the earth and heavens find it unacceptable, and making it a pretext, they oppose some of the truths of the Qur’an. We shall point out concisely a few points about this.

The First: Firstly, the verse’s meaning is one thing and the parts of the meaning and points confirming it, another. The meaning cannot be denied if one of the many parts of the universal meaning is absent. Of the numerous parts of the universal meaning concerning the seven levels of the heavens and seven layers of the earth, seven points confirming it are clearly apparent.

Secondly, the verse does not explicitly state that “the earth has seven layers.” The apparent meaning of the verse is,

(65:12)

“He created the earth like the seven heavens, and made it a dwelling place for His creatures.” It does not say: I created it in seven levels. Its being similar is in regard to createdness and being the habitation of creatures.

The Second: The globe of the earth is certainly very small in relation to the heavens, but as the exhibition, display, gathering place and centre of countless divine artefacts, as the heart and immaterial centre of the vast, endless heavens, it is equivalent to them, like the heart may be seen as equivalent to the body. For this reason, the earth having seven(1) climes, as was supposed from early times; also the well-known seven continents, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the two Asias, and the two America’s; also together with the seas, the East, West, North, and South, the well-known seven regions of this face and on the face of the New World; also the various, contiguous seven levels from the centre to the outer crust, which have been established by science; and the famous seven universal elements called the seven levels, which comprise the seventy simple elements that are the means of perpetuating animate creatures’ lives; also the four elements of water, air, fire, and earth, together with the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, making seven levels and realms; also the seven realms of the earth verified by those who uncover the secrets of creation and the people of witnessing, who are very numerous, their testimony that they are the worlds and habitations of jinns, demons, and other various sentient and living creatures; also the seven levels indicating that seven further globes exist resembling our globe, and that they are the dwelling places of living creatures – from these indications it has been understood from verses of the Qur’an that the earth too has seven levels.

It thus becomes clear that the earth has seven sorts of levels that exist in seven ways. The eighth, which is the final meaning, is important from another point of view; it is not included in the seven.

The Third: Since the Absolutely Wise One (Hakîm-i Mutlak) wastes nothing and creates nothing in vain; and since creatures exist for conscious beings and find their perfection by means of conscious beings and rejoice through them and are saved from futility by means of them; and since observedly the Absolutely Wise One, the All-Powerful One of Glory (Kadîr-i Zülcelâl), fills the element of air, and world of water, and layer of earth with innumerable living beings; and since just as air and water are not an obstacle to the movement of animals, so dense matter like earth and stone do not form obstacles to the passage of matter like electricity and X-rays; for sure the All-Wise One of Glory, the Undying Maker (Sâni-i Bîzeval), will not leave empty and uninhabited the broad spaces and worlds and caves and seven contiguous layers from the centre of our globe to the outer crust, which is our habitation and centre. He has certainly populated them and created and settled there conscious beings appropriate to those worlds. Since those sentient creatures must be angels and spirit beings of a sort, the densest and hardest layer even will be to them as the sea is to fish and the air is to birds. The awesome heat at the centre of the earth even must be for those conscious creatures like the sun’s heat is for us. Created from light, for those sentient spirit beings fire is like light.

The Fourth: Mentioned in the Eighteenth Letter is a comparison about the depictions made by the people of illumination of the strange wonders of the earth’s levels, which are outside the bounds of reason. A summary is this:

In the Manifest Realm the globe is a seed, while in the World of Similitudes and Intermediate Realm it is so vast as to be equal to the heavens. If the people of illumination have seen a level of the earth particular to demons which has a breadth of a thousand years, it is not in the seed of the earth that pertains to the Manifest World; but is a manifestation of its branches and levels in the World of Similitudes. Since an apparently insignificant level of the earth has such a vast manifestation in another world, surely it may be said that it has seven levels which are the equivalent of the seven levels of the heavens. In order to call to mind the above points, the Qur’an’s verses allude to them by showing in a miraculously concise way that the tiny earth is the equivalent of the seven levels of the heavens. (12th Flash, Risale-i Nur)

(1) The seven repetitions of the word seven here makes a fine ‘coincidence’ (T. tevâfuk; Ar. tawafuq).

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