The Thirteenth Word

A warning and lesson to a group of unhappy young people

One day several bright young people came to me. They were seeking an effective deterrent to the dangers arising from modern worldly life, youth, and animal desires. I spoke to them as I had spoken to a group of young people who had previously sought help from the Risale-i Nur:

Your youth will definitely disappear. If you do not remain within the bounds of what is religiously lawful, it will be lost and, rather than pleasure, it will bring you suffering and calamities here, in the grave, and in the Hereafter. But if you adhere to Islamic discipline and spend it chastely, uprightly and in worship in gratitude to the blessings of youth, in effect, your youth will remain perpetually and be the cause of gaining eternal youth.

A life without belief, or with belief rendered ineffective by rebelliousness, only produces pain, sorrow, and grief that far exceed the superficial, fleeting enjoyment and resulting pleasure. This is because humanity has intelligence and, unlike animals, is connected to the past, present, and future, and derives both pain and pleasure from them. Whereas animals have no intelligence and therefore neither sorrows to arise from the past nor fears and anxieties concerning the future spoil their present pleasure. But such sorrows and anxieties plague the misguided and heedless, marring their pleasure and diluting it with pain. If this pleasure is illicit, it becomes like poisonous honey.

Given this, we are far lower than animals when it comes to life’s enjoyments. In fact, the lives of misguided, heedless people consist only of the day in which they find themselves, as is the case with their entire existence and world. According to their misguided belief, that which is past no longer exists. But their intellect, which connects them to the past and the future, produces only darkness, and their lack of belief in eternal life makes the future non-existent for them. It is this non-existence that makes separations eternal and continually darkens their lives. In contrast, a life built upon belief results in the past and the future being illuminated and acquiring existence through the light of belief. Such a life also provides exalted spiritual pleasures and lights of existence for their spirits and hearts.

This is the reality of life. If you want to enjoy life, animate it with belief, adorn it with religious obligations, and maintain it by avoiding sins.

As for the fearsome reality of death, which is demonstrated by deaths everywhere and always, the following parable will suffice: Imagine that we are facing a gallows. Beside it is a lottery office selling tickets for truly high prizes. Each of us, willingly or not, will be invited there. Since our appointed hour is unknown, they will call us any time, saying: “Come to the gallows for execution!” or “You have won a huge prize! Come and collect it!” While we are waiting, a woman and a man approach us. The woman is scantily clad, beautiful, and alluring. She holds in her hand some apparently very delicious, but in fact poisonous, sweets and offers them to us. The man, who is honest and solemn, comes up behind her and says: “I have brought you a talisman, a lesson. If you study it and don’t eat the sweets, you will be saved from the gallows, and you will receive the winning ticket with this talisman. You see that those who eat the sweets inevitably mount the gallows, and further, they suffer dreadful stomach pains from the poison of the sweets until they mount them. Those who receive the ticket also mount the gallows, but millions of witnesses testify that instead of being hanged, they use the gallows as a step to enter the prize arena easily. So, look from the windows! The highest officials, the high-ranking persons connected with this business, proclaim: “Just as you see clearly those people mounting the gallows, so be certain that those who have the talisman will receive the ticket for the prize.”

Thus, the dissolute, religiously forbidden pleasures of youth are like poisonous sweets. Since they cause people to lose their belief, their ticket to an eternal treasury and a document for everlasting happiness, those who follow them are subject to be hanged on the gallows and suffer the tribulations of the grave, which is the door to eternal darkness for them. As the hour of death is unknown, the executioner may come at any time without differentiating between young and old. But if you abandon religiously forbidden pleasures and acquire the Qur’anic talisman (belief and performing religious obligations), 124,000 Prophets and innumerable saints unanimously inform us that you will receive the ticket for the treasury of eternal happiness from the extraordinary lottery of Destiny. They also show its signs and proofs.

In short, youth passes. Wasting it results in infinite misfortune and pain in both worlds. If you want to understand how many of such youths end up in hospitals with mental and physical diseases, mainly because of their abuse, in prisons or hostels for the destitute due to their excesses, and in bars because of the distress provoked by their spiritual unease, go and ask at those places. As you will hear from the mute eloquence of hospitals’ tongue the moans and groans of those who pursued youth’s appetites, so will you hear from prisons the regretful sighs of unhappy people imprisoned mainly for illicit actions due to their “youthful excesses.” You will also understand that most torments of the grave are due to a misspent youth, as related by saints who can discern the life of the grave (the Intermediate Realm), and affirmed by all scholars of truth.

Further, consult the elderly and the sick. Most of them will answer you with grief and regret: “Alas! We wasted our youths in frivolity. Be careful not to do as we did!” Those who do not control the illicit passions of five to ten years’ youth bring upon themselves grief and sorrow in this world, torment and harm in the Intermediate Realm, and the severe punishment of Hell in the Hereafter. Although they might be in a most pitiable situation, since they freely chose to pursue such a path, they are not worthy of pity. For one who is freely resigned to harm is not worthy of pity. May Almighty God save all of us from the alluring temptations of this age and preserve us against them. Amin.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi