THE TENTH STEP: Spiritual guides

 

 

As the reflective traveler, who eagerly desires to see the lights and pleasures in the strengthening and development of belief and in the progression from the degree of certainty that arises from knowledge to certainty that comes from vision or observation, is leaving the school of religious sciences, they receive another invitation. This time, it comes from the thousands, indeed, millions of spiritual guides who are working for the truth and have attained the rank of certainty of vision or observation along the highway of Muhammad and in the shade of his Ascension, upon him be peace and blessings. They invite the traveler into a vast, light-diffusing school of spiritual training, a place of the remembrance of God, which has been formed from the merging of countless small schools of spiritual illumination.

Entering here, the traveler sees that these spiritual guides, who are the masters of extraordinary deeds and adept at unveiling the Divine truths and spiritual mysteries, are proclaiming in unison “There is no deity but He” on the basis of their unveilings, visions, and wonder-working, and to the entire universe they announce the necessary Existence and Unity of the Lord. The traveler sees here how clear and self-evident this truth is, a truth upon which all of these sacred genius and luminous savants have achieved total consensus, even though they follow numerous different spiritual paths. The traveler sees how, in the same way that the sun radiates seven colors in its light and is known through them, these luminous individuals are, in their knowledge of God, holding fast to an array of colors emitted by the Sun of Eternity, as great in number as the All-Beautiful Names of God Himself. The traveler sees that the supreme consensus formed through the unanimity of the Prophets, the agreement of the purified and veracious scholars and the accord of the saints is more brilliant than the daylight which makes known the existence of the sun.

In a brief reference to the rays of light received by the traveler from the school of spiritual training, in The Tenth Step of The First Station it was said:

There is no deity but God, Whose Necessary Existence in His Unity is demonstrated clearly by the agreement of the saints with their manifest, verified, and confirmed spiritual discoveries and extraordinary deeds or achievements.

Said Nursi