How Should I Believe it? What Does it Mean to Cover a distance of Thousands of Years to a Lord Who is Nearer to All Things than Themselves and to Meet with Him after Passing through Seventy Thousand Veils?

 

Almighty God is nearer to everything than itself but everything is infinitely far from Him. Consider that if the sun had consciousness and the power of speech, it would be able to converse with you by means of a mirror in your hand. It would have the power of disposal over you as it wished. Although it is nearer to you than the pupil of your eye, which is like a mirror, you are millions of miles away from it and could in no way draw closer to it. If you rise to a position corresponding to the moon and come to the point of being face to face with it, you would still only be able to be a kind of mirror to it.

Likewise, the Majestic One, Who is the Sun of Eternity, is nearer to everything than itself but yet everything is infinitely distant from Him. In order to be honored with some sort of nearness to Him, one should pass through all the levels of existence, and being freed from the restrictions of being a single particular to rise higher and higher beyond thousands of veils in the degrees of universality, draw near to a Divine Name encompassing the whole of the creation, and then traverse many other degrees beyond it.

Again, for example, as mentioned above, a private is far below the rank of the Commander-in-Chief. He views him through an insignificant sample of command that he sees in a corporal, at a great distance and beyond many veils. In order to be nearer to his position, the private should be promoted to the higher and comprehensive ranks of lieutenant, captain, major, and so on. Whereas the Commander-in-Chief is always present with the private through his rules, decrees, knowledge, and commanding. Since this truth has been convincingly argued in The Sixteenth Word, I cut short the discussion here.

 

This article has been adapted from Risale- i Nur Collection.