The Twenty-fourth Word
SECOND BRANCH: Here I will address two subtle matters that contain the keys to many subtle truths.
FIRST SUBTLE MATTER: Why do saints differ greatly in their visions and discoveries of hidden truths, although they all agree upon the principles of belief? Why are their discoveries, mainly based on (direct) witnessing or observation, sometimes opposed to reality and contrary to the truth? Why, in their opinions that they consider as true and based on decisive proofs, do thinkers and scholars draw contradictory conclusions while searching for the truth? Why does a truth appear in different colors?
SECOND SUBTLE MATTER: Why did the early Prophets not focus on some pillars of belief and elaborate upon them as much as the Qur’an? Why were they content with a brief exposition, so that some of their later followers denied them?
Why, among saints well-versed in the knowledge of God, have some advanced only in affirming Divine Unity? They attained total certainty coming from direct experience in the truths of belief, yet apparently neglected some pillars of belief. This has caused later followers to pay less attention to those pillars, which, in turn, has caused some to deviate. Although true perfection is attained through full development in all pillars of belief, why have the people of truth advanced greatly in some while remaining backward in others? What is the reason for all these differences while the noblest Messenger, who was endowed with the greatest manifestations of all Divine Names and was the prince of Prophets, as well as the wise Qur’an, the most luminous chief of all sacred Divine Scriptures, described all pillars of belief in detail, clearly, and in a most emphatic way?
The reason is as follows: Humanity is created with a capacity to be able to receive the manifestations of all Divine Names and attain all perfections. However, we search for truth amid thousands of veils and barriers and with a partial will, a slight power, and variable desires and different degrees of abilities. For this reason, insurmountable barriers intervene while we are trying to discover the reality and find out and comprehend the truth. Abilities and levels of understanding differ. Some abilities cannot encompass certain pillars of belief with all their dimensions. Furthermore, the Names’ manifestations assume different colors according to the people who receive them. Some can receive them in their universal and original forms, while others can do so only in their partial and shadowy forms. In some people, only one Name predominates and prevails over the others.
To understand this profound, subtle matter and reality with extensive wisdom, heed the following comprehensive and meaningful comparison: Imagine a luxuriant flower, a living drop of water in love with the moon, and a simple dew drop that looks to the sun. Each is conscious and has some goal of perfection to attain. Together with pointing to many other truths, they allude to the journey of the soul, mind, and heart on the way of truth, and correspond to the three types of people searching for truth.118
The first group consists of thinkers; those who strive for their particular level of perfection via the physical senses and intellectual faculties only; and those who, keeping their egotism, are preoccupied with and study the physical existence in its elaborate multiplicity and try to reach the truth through deduction and reasoning only. The second group comprises saints or saintly scholars; those who strive through using the mind and refining the soul; and those who search through reason, religious learning, and by acquiring knowledge of God. The third group comprises Prophets; those who pursue the truth through belief, submission, and purifying the heart; and those who travel to the truth swiftly through belief and the Qur’an, and worship and acknowledgment of their poverty and neediness before God.
Under the titles of “Flower,” “Drop,” and “Dew Drop,” I will use a comparison to show how and why these three groups progress [to reach the truth] in their own way. For example, the sun has, by the Creator’s leave and command, three kinds of manifestation, reflection, and radiance: its reflection on flowers, its reflection on the moon and the planets, and its reflection and imaging itself in shining objects like glass and water.
The first is in three ways: a universal and general manifestation and reflection that encompasses all flowers simultaneously; a special manifestation that encompasses each species of flowers with a special reflection; and a particular manifestation, whereby it is reflected in a certain flower according to its individual character.119
The second manifestation or reflection of the sun is the light that it gives to the moon and planets by the All-Wise Originator’s leave. Having received this extensive, universal light and radiance, the moon sends its light, a shadow of the sun’s light, onto the seas, air, and earth. In a particular form, it sends it to bubbles on the sea, translucent parts of the earth, and air molecules.
The third is that under God’s command the sun has a pure, universal, and direct reflection or self-imaging in the atmosphere and on the seas’ surface, which it makes into mirrors. The sun also gives to each bubble, drop of water, air molecule, and snowflake a particular reflection and tiny image of itself.
Thus the sun reflects or images itself on every flower, and in every water and dew drop in two ways in each of the three kinds mentioned above: The first way is direct, without barrier and veil, and represents the way of Prophethood. The second way, that of sainthood, is that in which barriers intervene. The mirrors’ capacities, as well as the objects receiving the images or reflections, add their colors to the sun’s manifestations.
Thus on the first way, each flower, drop of water, and dew drop can say: “I am a mirror to the sun of the world.” But on the second way they can say: “I am the mirror to my own sun only, or the mirror to the sun manifested in my species only,” for that is how they know the sun. They cannot see the sun in its direct, universal manifestation, for it appears to each of them or to its species from behind barriers and under restrictions. And so it cannot attribute to that “particular, restricted sun” the works of the unrestricted, unconfined, absolute sun. It cannot ascribe in full conviction to such a sun, which it sees within narrow confines and restrictions, such majestic works as heating and illuminating the earth, stirring plants and animals to life, and making planets revolve around it.
Even if these three (presumably conscious) things attribute those wonderful works to the sun that they see under restrictions, they can do so only through reasoning and dogmatic or unsubstantiated belief or submission to the fact that that restricted thing is the majestic absolute sun. So the judgment of these three things, which we suppose to have a human-like intelligence, depends on or arises from reasoning and not thorough enlightenment coming from direct witnessing and observation. Their conclusion, which depends on unsubstantiated belief, even may conflict with what they see or observe in the outer world. Thus they can be convinced with much difficulty.
To understand this better, let’s pretend that we are the flower, drop of water, and dew drop, for we receive enlightenment from our immaterial sun in the way they receive it from their physical sun. So, my friend who cannot renounce the world, is preoccupied with physical subjects, and whose soul is dense, you be the flower. The flower assumes a color as an effect produced by a ray of sunlight having a particular wavelength, and makes it an adorned form in which to be clothed. You have the same capacity.
Let that philosopher who has studied secular science and so explains everything in terms of cause and effect, like the Old Said, be the water drop in love with the moon. The moon sends to it the shadowy light it receives from the sun. The drop shines with that light, through which it can see only the moon. Unable to see the sun, it only believes in its existence.
Let that poor fellow who knows everything to be directly from Almighty God, and who considers cause and effect to be a veil, be the dew drop. A dew drop is poor in itself and has nothing to depend on. It does not rely on itself, as flowers do. It has no color through which to display itself, or anything else toward which it should feel inclined. All it has is a sheer purity and simplicity of heart, by which it holds the sun’s image in the “pupil of its eye.”
Now that we have taken the place of these three things, we must ask ourselves: What do we have? What must we do? We see that an All Munificent One, through His favors, is adorning, enlightening, nurturing, and bringing us up. We have an inborn tendency to adore the one who favors us. We want to be close to the one worthy of our adoration and desire to see him. So, in accordance with our capacities, each of us will journey through the attraction of love.
You who are like a flower—you are advancing, so advance as a flower. You have advanced until you reach a universal rank, as if a universal flower to represent all flowers. However, as a flower is a dense mirror in which light is refracted and its seven colors are dissolved, it veils the sun’s reflection and image. As you cannot see the face of the sun that you love, for its restricted colors and qualities draw a veil over and obscure it, you cannot be freed from the separation caused by interposing barriers. But you can be freed if you raise your head (now sunk in the love of your selfhood), with draw your gaze (fixed on the merits you ascribe to your selfhood), and direct it to the face of the sun in the sky. You should also turn your face, looking down to the earth to attract your sustenance, up to the sun, for if you are a mirror of it, you must act as such. Whether you know it or not, your sustenance will come to you from the soil, the door to the treasury of mercy.
Just as a flower is a tiny mirror to the sun, so the huge sun is a drop-like mirror to a gleam from the Name of The Light of The Eternal Sun. So, O human heart, know what Sun you are to serve as a mirror, for only after you are conscious of this will you attain the level of perfection assigned to you. However, you cannot see that Sun in Its essential identity, nor grasp Its truth in Its naked form; rather, your attributes give that truth a color, your cloudy telescope attaches a form to it, and your limited capacity restricts it.
Now, O wise philosopher who represents the drop! Through the telescope of your intellect and by the stairway of science and philosophy, you have advanced as far as the moon and landed on it. On its own, the moon is a dense, dark and lifeless object. Your endeavor has been in vain, and your knowledge has proved useless. You can be saved from the darkness of hopelessness, the desolation of loneliness, the pestering of evil spirits, and the terror of frightening solitude only by abandoning the night of scientism and turning toward the Sun of Truth, believing with certainty that the lights of that night are but shadowy reflections of the lights of the “sun of daytime.” If you do this, you will attain to perfection and find the tremendous sun in place of the poor and lightless moon. But like the flower, you will be unable to see the sun clearly, for, you will see it beyond veils with which your reason and philosophy are friendly, behind screens woven by science and learning, and in a color produced by your capacity.
Our third friend, the dew drop, is both poor and colorless. It swiftly evaporates in the sun’s heat and, free of egotism, rises into the air. The dense matter in its structure burns in the flames of love and changes into light. It holds on to a ray from the sun’s light and draws close to the sun. O friend resembling the dew drop! Since you act as a direct mirror to the sun, whatever your rank, you can find a window through which you can look at it without any barrier. You will experience no difficulty in ascribing the sun’s amazing works to it; You will immediately attribute its deserved majestic attributes and the awesome actions of its essential dominion to it. Neither the thickness of barriers, nor the restrictedness of capacities, nor the smallness of mirrors will confuse you or drive you to any falsehood. Since you are turned directly toward it with a pure heart and a sincere intention, you understand that what appears in the objects and mirrors is not the sun itself, but rather its manifestations or colored reflections. Although these reflections describe it, they cannot display all of its majesty’s works in their proper splendor.
This comparison, mixed with the reality, contains ways to perfection. They differ in the merits of the perfections to which they lead and in the details of the rank of certainty ultimately reached, but agree in their conclusion and in submitting to truth and affirming reality. Consider people of the night who have never seen the sun, but only its shadow in the mirror of the moon. They cannot understand the sun’s uniquely splendid light and awesome gravity, submit only to those who have seen it, and imitate them.
Similarly, those who cannot attain to the most comprehensive degrees of the Names’ manifestations such as the All-Powerful and Life-Giver, through succession to the Prophet’s mission, accept the Resurrection and Supreme Gathering imitatively and claim that reason cannot understand it. For the Resurrection and Last Judgment will occur due to the most comprehensive manifestation of God’s Greatest Name and certain other Names. Those who cannot comprehend it are compelled to believe in it by way of imitation. But those who understand it fully see the world’s destruction and the Resurrection, together with the building of a new world, as happening as easily as the alternation of night and day, of winter and spring, and accept it with full conviction of the heart.
The Qur’an speaks of these events most elaborately, at the highest level, and in the most perfect, detailed manner. Our Prophet, who was favored with God’s Greatest Name, taught it. The other Prophets, as required by the wisdom in their mission of guiding people to Divine truths, did not instruct their somewhat simple and primitive communities in the Resurrection at the same level and with the same detail as the Qur’an and our Prophet. Due to the restriction of their capacities and the restricted nature of their mission, some saints have not seen or been able to demonstrate some pillars of belief to the greatest degree. There are great differences in the degrees of those who have knowledge of God. In addition to these, this comparison provides clues to understand many other important issues. However, since the comparison contains only some aspects of reality, and reality is quite extensive and profound, I will content myself with the comparison and not try to explain matters beyond my limit and ability.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
118 Each group has also three subgroups. The three things given in the comparison as representatives of the three groups, in fact, correspond to nine categories.
119 This accords with the claim that flowers get their colors from the changing reflections of the sun’s seven-colored light. So, they are kinds of mirrors to the sun.