The Thirty-second Word

Third station

In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

There is nothing but it glorifies Him with His praise.

This Third Station consists of two Topics.

FIRST TOPIC: According to the meaning of There is nothing but it glorifies Him with His praise, everything has many aspects, like windows, opened on Almighty God. All truths contained in creation are based on the Divine Names. Each thing owes its existence and essential nature to one or several of God’s Names. The variety of art in things and the sciences also are based on a Divine Name. For example, philosophy, in its true sense, depends on the Name the All-Wise, medicine on the Name the All Healing, and geometry and engineering are based on the Names the All Determining, the All-Proportioning, and the All-Giving of exact measure.

In the same way that all sciences are based on Divine Names, all human arts, levels of human perfections, and the attainments of those who are the most advanced in knowledge and skills have their sources in Divine Names. Some exacting saintly scholars have concluded: “The realities of things consist in Divine Names, and their nature is the inscription of those realities. The manifestations of around twenty Divine Names can be seen in one living creature.” We will discuss this subtle and comprehensive truth through a comparison and an analysis.

When an extremely skillful artist well-versed in painting and sculpture wants to paint pictures of a beautiful flower and a member of the fair sex and to sculpt them, he first determines the general shape of each with a few lines. This determination is based on certain geometrical measurement and planning. This means the measurement and planning depend on knowledge and wisdom or purposiveness. With the compasses of knowledge and purpose (or wisdom), the artist draws the outer lines of the eyes, ears, and the nose, and the leaves and seed-producing parts in a proportionate manner, thereby displaying artistry and accordance with the parts’ functions or vital duties. This shows that it is the artistic skill and the functionalism which use the com passes of knowledge and purpose.

The artist’s skill and following a certain purpose determined by the vital duties and functions of bodily parts show that he pursues excellence and beauty in his art. Therefore, his works—the statute and flower—give the impression of life and happiness. This suggests that the artist is gracious and munificent. These attributes dominate him to the extent that it is as if the flower were an embodied grace and the statute, an embodied munificence. What causes these attributes to display themselves is that the artist wants everyone to recognize and love him so that they may have recourse to him without hesitation whenever they are in need, a desire arising from the artist’s compassion and desire to benefit others. So, he fills the statute’s arms and pockets with all varieties of bounty and attaches jewels to the flower. While himself in need of nothing, it is the artist’s personal perfections and virtues that cause him to do all these. Compassion, love and tenderness, which are the most delightful and the sweetest among human virtues and perfections, manifest themselves in striving for the happiness of others and find the greatest happiness in seeing others happy. In short, human perfection and virtue are both beauty and love. The union of beauty and love stems from this reality. They both love and are loved and they want to be known by others. Thus the lovable bounties which were set on the statute and the extra gifts attached in the form of the flower reflect the artist’s virtues and laudable qualities.

Similarly, the All-Wise Maker creates, determines, specifies, and shapes Paradise and the world, the heavens and the earth, animals, jinn and humanity, angels and spirit beings, and all things whether of universal or particular nature by manifesting His Names. He determines each according to certain measures and gives each a certain form. This displays His Names the All-Determining, the All-Designing, and the All-Fashioning. Determining or giving certain measures, designing and fashioning are based on Knowledge and Wisdom, and therefore point to the Divine Names the All-Knowing and the All-Wise. He begins fashioning everything with the rulers of Knowledge and Wisdom according to the form He has determined for each. He does this in such a manner that He displays the meanings of perfect artistry or making excellent. With the shining hand of art and the brush of munificence, He equips His creatures with all necessary well-pro portioned parts and gives each part many complex functions. He furnishes and adorns human beings with beautiful, well-proportioned eyes, ears and so on, the flower with petals and stamens, the earth with minerals, plants, and animals, and Paradise with gardens, palaces, and houris, each of which has a particular beauty and functions.

The All-Wise Creator equips His creatures in such a fashion and He is so gracious and munificent that it is as if each well-proportioned and richly adorned creature were an embodied grace and munificence and causes the Names the All-Gracious and the All-Munificent recited. What leads His Munificence and Graciousness to such a display is His love of creatures and His will to be known by animate beings and loved by conscious ones. Thus the Names the All-Gracious and the All-Munificent exhibit the Names the All-Loving and the All-Recognized or Known One.

Then, He decorates all beautiful creatures with delicious fruits and agreeable benefits and results in such a way that He makes each decoration or adornment into an item of bounty and each act of grace into mercy. This points to the Names the Giver of bounties and the All-Compassionate, and shows their manifestations from behind apparent veils. The All-Independent One’s will to manifest His Compassion and Munificence is because He has infinite care, kindness and mercy for His creatures, which causes creatures to recite the Names the All-Merciful and the All-Kind and Caring. It is His Essential Beauty and Perfection Which stimulate the meanings of His Mercifulness and Kindness to demonstrate themselves, and cause the Name the All-Beautiful together with the All-Loving and the All-Compassionate, Which are contained in It, to be recited. Absolute beauty is loved for itself, and the One with absolute beauty loves Himself. Therefore it is both beauty and love. This is also true with perfection, which is loved for itself and not because of anything else. Therefore it is both lover and beloved.

Since a beauty of infinite perfection and a perfection of infinite beauty are loved to an infinite degree, they wish to manifest themselves in mirrors according to the mirror’s capacity. As the Essential Beauty and Perfection of the All-Majestic Maker, the All-Wise One of Beauty, the All-Powerful One of Perfection, will to show mercy, kindness and care, the Names the All Merciful and the All-Kind and Caring must manifest themselves. Since the will to show mercy, kindness and care is associated with compassion and bountifulness, it urges the Names the All-Compassionate and the Giver of bounties to be manifested. Compassion and Bountifulness lead to showing compassion and being known and therefore require and cause the Names the All-Loving and the All-Recognized or Known to manifest themselves.

The will to be loved and recognized incite manifestations of grace and munificence and cause creatures to demonstrate the Names the All Gracious and the All-Munificent. Grace and munificence provokes the acts of decorating and illuminating and therefore cause the Names the All Decorating and the All-Illuminating to be manifested and recited via the beauty and illumination seen in creatures. Decoration and illumination have the meanings of making artistically and benevolence and therefore cause the Names the Maker and the All-Benevolent to be recited via all creatures’ beautiful countenances. Making and benevolence are based on knowledge and wisdom and show the Names the All-Knowing and the All Wise via the well-ordered and purposeful bodily members all creatures and their harmonious and purposeful organization. Demanding acts of organizing or arranging, fashioning and forming, knowledge and wisdom demonstrate the Names the All-Fashioning and the All-Determining or Giver of measure via all creatures’ general forms.

In short, the All-Majestic Maker has made all creatures in such a fashion that most of them, particularly living ones, display most of the Divine Names. It is as if He clothed each creature in twenty different garments, one over the other, and inscribed several of His Names on each one. For example, as pointed out in the above comparison, there are many layers of loveliness in the apparent creation of a beautiful flower and a member of the fair sex. Compare vast and universal bodies with these two particular examples.

FIRST LAYER: Their general forms and appearances, which recite: “O the All-Fashioning, O the All-Determining, O the All-Arranging.”

SECOND LAYER: Their forms and appearances including all bodily members and parts, that show many Names like the All-Knowing and the All Wise.

THIRD LAYER: The forms of beauty and adornment particular to each bodily member and part, on which are inscribed many Names like the Maker and the All-Holy Creator (the One Who creates subtly and perfectly).

FOURTH LAYER: The detail of ornament, beauty, and elegance given to creatures as if in the embodied form of grace and munificence. They recite: “O the All-Gracious One, O the All-Munificent One,” and many other Names.

FIFTH LAYER: The delicious fruits attached to that flower and lovely children, as well as the laudable virtues given to that woman as gifts, show Names like the All-Loving, the All-Compassionate, and Giver of bounties.

SIXTH LAYER: This layer of bountifulness and benevolence recites: “O the All-Merciful, O the All-Kind and Caring,” and several other Names.

SEVENTH LAYER: The bounties given to them and the results attached to their existence demonstrate such gleams of beauty and grace that they deserve pure gratitude and love kneaded with true eagerness and tenderness. This layer manifests such Names as the All-Beautiful One of Perfection and the All-Perfect One of Beauty.

If a flower and a beautiful woman display so many Names through their outward forms, you may compare how many Names of universal manifestation all flowers, animate beings, and vast and universal bodies demonstrate. You may understand how many sacred, enlightening Names of God (e.g., the All-Living, the Self-Subsistent, and the Giver of life) a person manifests through his or her spirit, heart, reason, life, and all other senses and faculties.

Paradise, the community of houris, the earth’s face, and springtime are all flowers. Heaven is a flower; the stars are its gilded embroideries. The sun is a flower; the seven colors in its light are its dyes. The cosmos is a beautiful, macro-human being; humanity is a normo-universe or micro-universe. Houris, spirit beings, angels, jinn, and humanity have been fashioned, organized, and created as if they were beautiful individuals. As they collectively and individually manifest the All-Majestic Being’s Names, each one is a different mirror to His Beauty, Perfection, Mercy, and Love. Each is also a different and true witness, as well as a different sign, of His Infinite Beauty, Perfection, Mercy, and Love. As all such boundless perfections are possible only in the sphere of Divine Unity and Oneness or Uniqueness, any perfections imagined outside of this sphere are false.

Thus, understand that the realities of things are based on the Divine Names, or rather they are manifestations of those Names, and all things mention their Maker in numerous tongues. Also, know one of the meanings of There is nothing but it glorifies Him with His praise. Say: “All-Glorified is He Who is veiled through His manifestation’s intensity.” Understand the reason why He is the All-Glorious, the All-Wise; He is the All-Forgiving, the All-Compassionate; He is the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful,” and similar phrases repeated at the end of Qur’anic verses.

If you cannot see clearly the Names displayed on a flower, ponder on Paradise, look at spring attentively, or examine the earth’s face. You can read clearly the Names inscribed in those huge flowers of Mercy and see the Names’ distinct manifestations.

SECOND TOPIC: Left without any support, the representative of the misguided reveals his or her real intention: “Since I find worldly pleasure, happiness, and advancement in civilization in denying God and the Hereafter, in loving this world, and in human freedom and self-confidence, I bring others to this path, with Satan’s help, and will continue to do so.”

Answer: I say in the Qur’an’s name: O helpless fellow, come to your senses and do not listen to the representative of the misguided. If you do, you will suffer such loss that the spirit, mind and heart shudder even to imagine it. There are two paths before you: the path of wretchedness offered by the representative of the misguided and the path of happiness described in the Qur’an. You have already seen many comparisons between these two paths in The Words, primarily in the first nine short ones. Now heed only one among a thousand, which befits the occasion:

The path of associating partners with God and other kinds of misguidance, and of transgression and dissipation causes us to fall to bottomless depths of degradation. It places an unbearable load on our weak backs and burdens our hearts with boundless sorrow. For if we do not recognize and place our trust in Almighty God, we become like very weak, impotent, infinitely poor, and destitute animals, or mortal beings afflicted with pain and grief, subject to countless calamities. We suffer incessantly, for we remain separated from all things and people that we have loved and to which we have been connect ed. Leaving all things and people amidst the pain of separation, we enter the grave’s dark depths alone.

We struggle in vain, with a limited will, little power, a short life-span, and a dull mind against infinite pain and ambition. We strive to realize our countless desires and goals, but without any considerable result. While we cannot bear even the burden of our own being, we load our minds and backs with the burden of the world. We suffer Hell’s torments even before going to it.

In order to avoid feeling such a painful spiritual torment, people of misguidance seek out heedlessness as a kind of anesthesia. But they begin to feel this pain most acutely as they approach the grave. Not being true servants of Almighty God, they believe that they own themselves. In reality, however, with their limited free will and insignificant power, they cannot govern their being in this tumultuous world. They encounter many enemies from harmful microbes to earthquakes ready to attack them. They look at the grave in fear and terror.

As human beings, they are related to humanity and the world. But since they deny that the world and humanity belong to and under the authority of the One Who is the All-Wise, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, the All Compassionate, and the All-Munificent, they attribute their existence and lives to chance and nature. And so the world’s fearful events (e.g., convulsions, earthquakes, plagues, calamity, death, and famine) and humanity’s conditions and experiences always trouble them. Moreover, they must con tend with their own pain and the troubles that other creatures cause them to suffer.

As their own unbelief brought them to this deplorable state, how can they deserve mercy and affection? This reminds us of The Eighth Word’s parable of two brothers who fell into two wells. If one, without being content with a fine banquet’s agreeable and lawful enjoyment and entertainment among honest friends in a beautiful garden, drinks wine to obtain an unlawful pleasure and, imagining themselves surrounded by wild beasts in a dirty place on a winter day, trembles and cries in fear, they will not deserve pity. For they see their honest friends as wild beasts and insult them. They see delicious food as foul; clean, fine plates and bowls as worthless, dirty stones; and attempt to break them. Moreover, they judge the invaluable, meaningful books that they are to read and study as ordinary, meaningless collections of sheets, and tear them up and scatter them. Such people are not merely unworthy of pity, rather, they deserve to be punished.

Similarly, unbelief and misguidance arise from abusing one’s willpower. Such people assert that the All-Wise Maker’s guest-house of the world is a plaything of chance and nature and that the transference of beings to the World of the Unseen, after completing their duty of refreshing the Divine Names’ manifestations, is going into absolute non-existence. Also, they judge beings’ glorifications and recitations of the Divine Names as outcries of death and eternal separation; sheets of creatures, each being a missive of the Eternally Besought, to be confused, meaningless collections; the grave’s door, which opens onto the World of Mercy, as opening onto a dark world of non-existence; and death as separation from—not re-union with—all friends and beloved ones. Thus, they deliver themselves to an extremely painful punishment. Since they also deny, reject, and insult all creatures, the Divine Names, and His inscriptions and missives, they deserve punishment. They are in no way worthy of pity.

So, unfortunate people of misguidance and dissipation, can any of your progress, evolution, science, technology, and civilization compensate for such a terrible loss, collapse, and crushing hopelessness? Where can you find the true consolation that the human spirit urgently needs above all else? What nature or causality, what thing upon which you rely and to which you attribute His works, bounties, and favors, which of your discoveries, inventions, idols, and fetishes can save you from the darkness of death, which you suppose to be eternal extinction? Which one can take you through the Intermediate World of the grave, the Place of Resurrection and Supreme Gathering, and over the Bridge to the Abode of eternal happiness? Since you cannot close the grave’s door, you are bound to travel and tread this way (passing through the stations mentioned.) To travel it safely, you must depend on the One Who commands and controls all those worlds and abodes.

O unfortunate, misguided, and heedless people. Any love directed to other than that which deserves it brings suffering. In view of this, misusing the potential of loving and knowing given to you to know and love God and His Attributes and Names, you love your selves and the world. This, as well as your similar misuse of your body and faculties that were given so that you could worship and thank Him, causes you to suffer deserved punishment. Assigning to your selves the love that must be felt for Almighty God, you suffer the resulting troubles. You are suffering the endless troubles that your own selves cause you. You do not provide true peace and happiness for what you adore: your soul or self. Since you do not submit and entrust it to the Absolutely Powerful One, the True Beloved One, you always suffer pain.

Since you assign the love belonging to Almighty God’s Names and Attributes to the world and attribute the works of His Art to causality and nature, you are suffering the resulting pains. That which you love either leaves you without saying good-bye or does not recognize you. Even if it recognizes you, it does not love you. Even if it loves you, it gives you no benefit. You always suffer from incessant separation and death without hope of re-union.

This is the reality of what the people of misguidance call the happiness of life and human perfection, beauty of civilization, and pleasure of free dom. Dissipation and drunkenness temporarily veil the suffering and pain that eventually will come upon them.

As for the Qur’an’s light-diffusing way, it heals the wounds afflicting the misguided with the truths of belief, disperses the darkness enveloping them, and closes the doors of misguidance and perdition.

This way removes our weakness, impotence, poverty, and need, for it enables us to trust in an All-Powerful One of Compassion. Submitting the burden of being and life to His Power and Mercy, we are saved from their mount; instead, we transform the self and life into a mount for us. We learn that we are true human beings and the All-Merciful One’s welcomed guests, not “speaking animals.” Showing the world as the All-Merciful One’s guest house, and its creatures as mirrors of Divine Names and ever-recruited missives of the Eternally Besought, it heals perfectly all our wounds caused by the transience of the world, the decay of things, and love for mortals. It also saves us from the darkness of whims and fancies. Also, showing life as the prelude to re-union with deceased friends and beloved ones, it heals the wounds of death, which the misguided regard as eternal separation, and shows that separation is actually re-union.

By proving that the grave is a door opened onto the World of Mercy, the Abode of Happiness, the gardens of Paradise, and the luminous Realm of the All-Merciful One, the way of the Qur’an removes our greatest fear and shows that our journey in the Intermediate World, which seems to be most depressing and troublesome, is really most pleasant and exhilarating. It demonstrates that the grave is not like a dragon’s mouth, but rather a door opened onto the gardens of Divine Mercy. It informs believers:

If your willpower is very limited, entrust your affairs to your Owner’s universal Will. If your power is slight and insignificant, rely on the Absolutely Powerful One’s Power. If your life is short, consider eternal life. If your mind is dull, come into the Qur’an’s sun, and look with the light of belief, so that in place of your mind, which gives light like a firefly, each Qur’anic verse gives you light like a most shining star. If you have endless ambition and pain, boundless reward and infinite mercy await you. If you have limitless desire and aims, do not be anxious, for you cannot realize all of them here. This is only possible in another realm, and the One Who gives them to you is not yourself.

And:

You do not own yourself, but are owned by One infinitely Powerful and an infinitely Compassionate One of Majesty. So, do not trouble yourself by placing your being and life on your shoulders, for the One Who has given and governs your life is He. Also, the world is not without an owner. So do not be anxious thinking of the state of it and load that burden onto your mind, for the world’s Owner is All Wise and All-Knowing. You are His guest in His world, so do not interfere with what is beyond your power and responsibility. Such living beings like humanity and animals are not left to themselves. Rather, they are officials charged with certain duties and are controlled and favored by an All-Wise, All-Compassionate One. He has far more compassion for them than for you. Furthermore, from microbes to catastrophes like plagues, floods, droughts, and earth quakes, which, in appearance, are hostile to you, all things and events are controlled and governed by that All-Compassionate, All Wise One. He is the All-Wise and so does nothing useless, and the All-Compassionate Whose every act contains a kind of grace.

It adds:

This transient world provides the necessities of the afterlife. It decays, but yields everlasting fruits and displays an All-Permanent One’s Eternal Names. In return for its few pleasures, it causes one to suffer many pains and afflictions. However, the favors of the All Merciful, All-Compassionate One are true and lasting pleasures, and its pains cause one to obtain many spiritual rewards. What is lawful is sufficient for the spirit’s enjoyment and pleasures, as well as for the heart and carnal soul, so do not enter upon what is unlawful. Any illicit pleasure results in numerous pains and causes one to lose the All-Merciful One’s favors, which are pure, lasting pleasures.

Misguidance so debases humanity that no philosophic trend, scientific development, or human civilization and progress can lift people out of that deep pit of darkness. It is only the wise Qur’an that it takes us out of the lowest pit and raises us to the highest rank through belief and righteous deeds. It fills that deep pit with the steps of spiritual progress and the means of spiritual perfection.

The Qur’an also facilitates our long, troubling, and stormy journey toward eternity. It shows us how to traverse in a day the distance that normally takes fifty thousand years to cover. By enabling us to know the All-Majestic Being, the King of all eternity, it honors us with being His dutiful servants and guests and secures for us an easy and comfortable journey through the world and through the mansions of the Intermediate World of the grave and the Hereafter.

Just as a king’s righteous, dutiful official travels in his domain in security, via the fastest modes of transportation, and easily cross provincial boundaries, so those connected with the Eternal King through belief, as well as those who show obedience to Him through righteous deeds, travel through the stations and across the boundaries of the world and the realms of the grave and the Hereafter with the speed of lightning or Buraq, the mount of Paradise. Such people find eternal happiness. The Qur’an proves the truth of this, and purified religious scholars and saints see it clearly.

The Qur’an also says:

O believers, do not waste your God-given infinite capacity of loving on your ugly, defective, evil, and harmful carnal soul. Do not adore it or follow its desires and fancies as if it were an object of worship, but direct it toward the One worthy of infinite love, Who does you infinite good and will make you infinitely happy; Who through His favors makes happy those with whom you have connections and whose happiness pleases you; One with infinite perfection and infinitely sacred, transcendent, pure, perfect, and undecaying beauty; Whose every Name radiates numerous lights of beauty and grace; the beauty of Whose Mercy and the mercy of Whose Beauty are displayed in Paradise; and Whose Beauty and Perfection all the beauty, grace, and perfection in the universe, which are lovable, point to and signal. Love Him, and make Him the sole object of your worship.

Furthermore it says:

O humanity, do not use your infinite capacity of loving, which has been given to you to love His Names and Attributes, to love impermanent beings. All that exists, except for Him, is transitory, whereas the Divine All-Beautiful Names displayed on mortals are permanent and constant. Each Name and Attribute has thousands of degrees of favoring and thousands of levels of perfection and love. Consider, for example, the Name the All-Merciful: Paradise is one of Its manifestations, eternal happiness is one of Its radiances, and all provisions and bounties bestowed on worldly creatures are just one of Its drops.

To see how the Qur’an expresses the difference between these two ways, consider: Surely We have created humanity of the best stature as the perfect pattern of creation; then We reduced it to the lowest of the low, save those who believe and do good, righteous deeds (95:4-6); and Neither the heavens nor the earth wept over their destruction (44:29). See in what elevated and miraculous style they express the difference! A detailed explanation of the first verse can be found in The Eleventh Word. Here we present a few remarks on the exalted truth contained in the other verse, which explicitly states that the heavens and the earth do not weep when unbelievers die. This implies that the heavens and the earth weep when believers die.

Unbelievers do not know the meaning of the heavens and the earth, do not recognize their Maker, deny their duties, and so reduce their value. Such insults and hostility cause the heavens and the earth to be pleased when such people die. But they weep when believers die, for believers know the duties of the heavens and the earth and affirm the reality they bear. As their belief enlightens them about these meanings, they say: “How beautifully they have been created. How well they perform their duties.” Believers acknowledge their value and respect them accordingly. They also love them and the Names to which they are mirrors in Almighty God’s name. And so the heavens and the earth grieve for them.

An important question: Loving is not voluntary. I have a natural need to love delicious foods and fruits, my parents and children, my spouse and friends, virtuous people, life, youth, this world, spring, and beautiful things. Why should I not? How can I appropriate all such instances of love only to the Divine Being and His Names and Attributes?

Answer: Listen to the following four points.

FIRST POINT: However involuntary loving is, you can direct it to a certain object. For example, by convincing yourself that something beloved is ugly, or an obstacle to or only a mirror for an object worthy of true love, this feeling of love can be diverted to the true object of love.

SECOND POINT: You can love such things, but do so in Almighty God’s name and for His love’s sake. Loving delicious foods and fruits because they are favors and bounties of Almighty God, the All-Merciful and the All Compassionate, means loving the Names the All-Merciful and Giver of bounties and is a sort of thanksgiving. Love, when done in the All-Merciful One’s name and not the carnal soul’s name, is reflected by lawful earning, contentment with what is lawful, and consuming in gratitude and reflection.

Loving and respecting one’s parents on behalf of the Mercy and Wisdom that equipped them with affection and tenderness, and that raised you through their compassionate hands, are included in God’s love. If done for Almighty God’s sake, you must show your parents much more love, respect, and care when they only can cause you difficulty. The verse: If either or both of them reach old age with you, do not say to them “Uff!” (17:23), which tells children to love and respect their parents in five ways and degrees, shows how important parents’ rights are in the eyes of the Qur’an and how degrading and detestable filial ingratitude is.

Since a father typically prefers his children to be superior to him, children cannot claim rights against him. There can be no justifiable cause of dispute between parents and children, for a dispute arises either from envy or a violation of rights. A father never envies his children, and children cannot claim rights against him. Even if they consider his treatment of them wrong, they cannot rebel. Those who do so, or who annoy him, are cruel and ungrateful.

Loving one’s children with utmost care and compassion, as they are the All-Compassionate, All-Munificent One’s gifts, is included in one’s love of Almighty God. The sign that such love is for God’s sake is to show “becoming patience” at their death and not to wail in despair and rebelliousness against Destiny. One should submit to God, believing that judgment belongs only to Him, and think: “My child was a loveable creature of God whom He placed in my custody. His Wisdom required Him to take the child from me and to a far better place. Even if I have one apparent share in that servant of His, thousands of true shares belong to Him.”

Your love for friends, on account of their being believing friends of Almighty God who do good deeds according to the principle of loving for the sake of God, also is included in love of God. In addition, this is true of the love you feel for your spouse, your companion in life, because he or she is a sweet gracious gift of the Divine Mercy. Do not set your heart on his or her transient good looks.

A woman’s greatest charm and beauty lie in her lovable good conduct accompanied with the kindness and grace particular to womanhood, and in her elevated, serious, and sincere compassion. That beauty of compassion and good conduct increase until she dies. It is through the love and respect for her compassion and good conduct that one can observe her rights to the end. If she is loved because of her physical beauty, she is deprived of her rights and the love and respect due to her at a time when she needs them most.

Loving virtuous people like Prophets and saints because they are approved servants of Almighty God, and in His name and for His sake, are included in His love. If you love your life because it is a most valuable capital given by Almighty God to gain eternal life, a treasury containing the faculties with which to acquire all kinds of virtues and perfections, and if you spend it in His service, then this love is included in love of Almighty God, the All-Worshipped One. Loving the prime of youth because it is a sweet, fine gift of Almighty God, and thus spending it in His cause is a sort of lawful love wedded to gratitude.

Loving nature reflectively, especially in spring, because it is a realm displaying the most beautiful inscriptions of the All-Wise Maker’s light-dif fusing Names and the most splendid and embellished works of His Art, means to love Almighty God’s Names. If you love the world only because it is the field to sow for the Hereafter, the mirror of the Divine Names, the collection of Almighty God’s missives, and a temporary guest-house of His, then this love is also in Almighty God’s name—provided you are not under your carnal soul’s influence.

In short, love the world and its creatures not for themselves but in the name of their Creator and the meaning they contain. Do not say: “How beautiful they are!” Rather, say: “How beautifully they have been made!” In your heart, do not love that which is not Him. Do not set your heart on that which is not Him, for the heart is the Eternally Besought’s mirror and belongs to Him. So pray to Him: “O God, provide me with love of You and the love of what will make me near to You.”

And so if all the types of love mentioned so far are in God’s name, then they give a painless, pure pleasure and are the means of a union that does not allow separation. In addition, they cause your love of God to grow and can be considered gratitude that gives pure pleasure and a reflection that is itself pure love.

For example, if a noble king grants you an apple in his presence, you will receive two sorts of pleasure and feel two kinds of love. The first type is your love for the apple because it is an apple. Thus you receive as much pleasure as an apple can give. Such a love is not in the king’s name, but arises from your love of yourself, for you love the apple because of the pleasure it gives you. This kind of pleasure is transient and ends when you finish eating the apple, leaving behind regret for the cessation of the pleasure. Moreover, the king may not be pleased with such an attitude.

The second sort of pleasure and love are directly related to the king. If you love and respect the apple because it embodies the royal compliment to you, then this love is in the king’s name and for his sake. The pleasure arising from such a compliment is far greater than the pleasure coming from eating the apple. Such an attitude is pure gratitude to the king for his gift, and the love shown for the apple is a respectful love for the king himself.

Likewise, loving bounties—all foods and fruits—granted to us because of themselves and the pleasure they give is a carnal love, for it is for the carnal soul’s sake. The pleasure coming from eating and drinking is transient and mixed with pain. If you love the bounties you receive on account of their being favors of Divine Mercy and fruits of Divine Bountifulness and Benevolence, and if you receive pleasure from them and have an appetite for them in appreciation of the Divine grace in them, this love is pure gratitude and pure pleasure without any pain.

THIRD POINT: Love of the Divine Names has degrees and levels. As pointed out above, sometimes you love the Divine Names because you love their works in the universe, and sometimes because they are titles of Divine perfections. It sometimes occurs that you are in limitless need due to your comprehensive nature and love the Divine Names in need of them.

For example, while you are seeking help in utter despair for your relatives or for poor, weak, and needy creatures, someone appears unexpectedly and does for them what you wish to do for them. How much would you love such a person for his munificence and benevolence, and always be thankful to him for those qualities? Similarly, consider only the Names the All Merciful and the All-Compassionate. As the manifestations of these Names, Almighty God favors your believing parents and ancestors, as well as your friends and beloved ones, in this world with all His bounties. He will also make both you and them happy in Paradise, in the World of eternal happiness, with all varieties of pleasure and bringing you together. Thus, you may understand how much these two Names are worthy of your love, to what extent your spirit needs them, and how proper and necessary it is to say: “All praise and gratitude are for God for His being All-Merciful and All Compassionate.”

Also, with its creatures being its amiable residents and lovable adornments, with which you feel a profound connection and for whose wretchedness you grieve, the world is like a home for you. Through reflection, you may perceive how much your spirit loves and to what degree you need the Names the All-Wise and the All-Sustaining of the One Who has organized the world and it creatures and thus governs, grows, and sustains them with perfect wisdom. You also may understand to what extent your spirit needs the Names the Heir, the All-Quickening, the All-Permanent, the All Munificent, the All-Reviving, and the All-Benevolent, of the One Who brings all of the people to whom you feel connected and at whose death you are grieved, out of the darkness of eternal extinction and settles them in a place far more beautiful than this world.

Since we, as human beings, are noble, elevated beings with comprehensive natures, our endless needs and aspirations make us needy of one thou sand and one Divine Names in their numerous degrees of manifestation. Compound or intense need is eagerness, compound or intense eagerness is love, and compound or intense love is adoration. In proportion to the degree of the spirit’s perfection, love increases and flourishes in degrees according to the levels of the Divine Names’ manifestations. Since the Names are titles with which the Majestic Being manifests Himself, love of all Names turns into love of the Divine Being. Out of thousands of levels of manifestations of the Names the All-Just, the All-Wise, the (Ultimate) Truth, and the All Compassionate, we present one as an example as follows:

If you want to see the Names the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate, and the (Ultimate) Truth in full manifestation in wisdom and justice, consider the following comparison: Suppose an army formed of four hundred companies. Each company has unique uniforms, rations, weaponry, and medicines. If these companies are situated together mixed with one another without the uniqueness of each considered, and yet, out of his perfect compassion and through his extraordinary power and miraculously encompassing knowledge, and with utmost justice and wisdom, a peerless king equips each with unique uniforms and weapons and provides them with appropriate foods and medicines without mistake or help, you may understand what a powerful, compassionate, just, and munificent king he is.

Similarly, if you want to see the manifestations of the Divine Names the (Ultimate) Truth, the All-Merciful and the All-Compassionate in wisdom and justice, you can look at magnificent armies of plants and animals, which consist of countless different families, genera, and species. All of these set up their tents on the earth’s face in spring, are infinitely mixed with each other, and yet have unique uniforms, provisions, weaponry, instructions, lifestyles, and demobilizations. Although they have no tongues with which to voice their needs and no power to meet them, see how the One with the Names of the (Ultimate) Truth, the All-Merciful, the All-Providing, the All-Compassionate, and the All-Munificent pro vides, maintains, and raises them in perfect justice and wisdom and without confusing and forgetting any of them.

Is it possible that another hand could share in this amazing order and all-comprehensive organization based on an absolute measure and balance? Who other than the Unique One of Unity, the Absolutely All-Wise and All-Powerful One, could share in this art, this regulation and government, and this raising and sustaining?

FOURTH POINT: You ask: “What are the uses and results of my love for foods, and my selfhood, spouse, parents, children, and friends, and for virtuous people, beautiful things like spring and the world if that love must be in line with the Qur’an’s commands?”

Answer: It would take a comprehensive book to explain all of the uses and results of such a love. Therefore I will restrict myself to pointing out briefly only a few of its immediate consequences here and its permanent results in the Hereafter.

As explained above, any love in the carnal soul’s name, like that of worldly, heedless people, causes much pain, trouble, and affliction in this world, and the ease, pleasure and enjoyment it gives is little. For example, compassion turns into a painful affliction because you cannot do something. Love becomes a consuming feeling because of separation. Pleasure becomes like a poisonous drink because it is subject to transience. Since such love is not love in Almighty God’s name, it will be useless in the Hereafter. Also, it will bring torment if it has driven the lover into illicit dealings.

Question: How does one’s love for Prophets and saints become fruitless?

Answer: Love for Prophets and saints, such as that found among Christians who believe in the Trinity, and the Rafidis (a Shi‘a sect) who cherish enmity toward almost all Companions due to their love of ‘Ali, is fruit less.180 Any love in God’s name and in the Qur’anic manner yields good results in both this world and the Hereafter. I briefly mention its worldly results below:

• Loving delicious foods and fruits in God’s name makes them a favor and grace unmixed with pain, an ease that yields pure thankfulness.
• Loving your carnal soul leads you to pity so that you will educate it and prevent it from harmful desires and fancies. When you do this successfully, your carnal soul cannot take you wherever it wishes and enslave you to its desires. On the contrary, you will mount it and guide it to truth, not drive it to passions.
• If you love and has mercy for your spouse sincerely based on her good conduct and her being a mine of compassion and a gift of Divine Mercy, she (or he) will love and respect you. As you both age, this mutual love and respect will grow and increase your happiness. Carnal love based on physical beauty is fleeting. When it disappears, so do your mutual good relations.
• Loving your parents for Almighty God’s sake is an act of worship and increases as they age. With a most elevated feeling and endeavor, you pray for them to live long so that you may get more rewards because of them and receive a pure spiritual pleasure by respecting and serving them. If you find their existence unbearable when they need you and thus desire their deaths, you have descended to barbarism and will suffer a painful spiritual ailment.
• Loving your children because they are Almighty God’s lovable gifts that He has entrusted to you to raise and educate in an agree able way is a love that brings happiness and blessing. You will not suffer much because of the calamities striking them or wail in despair if they die. Since their Creator is All-Wise and All Compassionate, you will conclude: “Since it was better for them to die than to live, Almighty God took them away from me.” Thinking that your patience will draw God’s Mercy and that He will bring [both of] you together in an Abode of eternal happiness, you will be saved from the pains of separation.
• Loving your friends for God’s sake means that separation or death will not break the relationship you currently enjoy. You will benefit from this mutual love and spiritual connection. The pleasure of re union for His sake is lasting. While a second of union for His sake gives the pleasure of a year of union, a year of being together for worldly purposes means a second of union and ends in painful separation.
• Loving virtuous people like the Prophets and saints shows you the Intermediate World of the grave, which appears to the heedless as a dark, frightening solitude, as a mansion illuminated by the existence of those blessed ones. You will not be afraid to go to that world. Rather, you will feel an inclination and eagerness to go there, and the pleasure you receive from your life will not be spoiled. But if you love them as the “civilized” people love famous individuals, you will be grieved at their death, and the thought of their decay and oblivion in the past’s “vast grave” will increase your pain. Thinking that you will enter the grave, which causes even the best people to rot away, you will utter sighs of grief and fear death. But if you love in Almighty God’s name, you will see the grave as a place of perfect rest after discarding the body, and you will look forward to it in warm anticipation.
• Loving beautiful things in their Maker’s name and in a way reminding you of their Creator is a pleasant reflection and will turn your view, which adores beauty, toward the sources of a far more elevated, sacred, and subtler beauty. You will turn from those beautiful works toward the beauty of Divine acts, then to the beauty of Divine Names, and then to the beauty of Divine Attributes and the All Majestic One’s matchless Beauty. This love is pure pleasure, an act of worship, and a reflection.
• Loving youth because it is a fine blessing of Almighty God, you will spend it in worship and not waste it in dissipation. When you do that, the worship done while you are young yields permanent fruits. Youth disappears, but those fruits remain and you will be protected from the evil consequences of a youth spent in rebellion and dissipation. When you grow old, you will concentrate even more on worshipping God and deserve more from Divine Mercy. Unlike the heedless, you will not weep or regret your five or ten years of youthful pleasures as you enter the twilight of your life. You will not be like the heedless, who say: “If only my youth would return, I would tell it what old age has made happen to me.”
• Loving such exhibits as spring because they are works of Divine Art means that the pleasure of observing them does not disappear when they are removed, for you can recall the meanings they have left in your mind like gilded letters. Like movie scenes, your imagination and time enable you to take pleasure in seeing them, and your mind refreshes the beauties and meanings of the past spring. In such a case, your love continues to give pleasure and enjoyment and does not become painful and temporary.
• Loving this world in Almighty God’s name makes all of its creatures like amiable friends. Seeing it as a tillage for the Hereafter, you find in everything a capital that can be used for the good of your afterlife. Calamity does not scare you, and the transience of your life does not trouble you. You will stay in that guest-house peacefully until your appointed hour. But if you love the world as the heedless do, you will suffocate in a troublesome, calamitous, transient, and fruitless love.

If, after indicating the pleasures and benefits that the kind of love taught in the Qur’an will give here, you want to hear and know such love’s other worldly results, read the introduction and nine indications that follow:

Introduction: Through His majestic Divinity, gracious Mercy, supreme Lordship, munificent Caring, vast Power, and subtle Wisdom, Almighty God has equipped the insignificant-sized human body with so many senses and feelings, such a variety of organs and members and systems, and numerous faculties so that He may make each one of us sense and know the innumerable varieties of His bounties, kinds of His favors, and instances of His Mercy. Also, He has done this so that we can measure and love His Names’ countless manifestations. Each bodily member, system, and faculty has different types of service and worship as well as different sorts of pleasures, pains, duties, and rewards.

For example, eyes see the beauties of forms and various miracles of Divine Power in the sphere of sight. Their duty is thoughtful and contemplative observation and gratitude to the Maker. Everyone knows the pleasures and pains particular to sight. Ears perceive different sounds, creation’s sweet melodies, and the subtleties of Divine Mercy in the sphere of hearing. They have their own unique type of worship, pleasure, and reward. The sense of smell is aware of Mercy’s subtleties in the sphere of smelling, and also has its own unique pleasure, duty of gratitude, and reward. Like the others, the sense of taste performs many duties of thanksgiving by being aware of the tastes of everything consumed.

In short, all of our senses, organs, and faculties (e.g., the heart, intellect, and spirit) have unique duties, pleasures, and pains. Almighty God, the Absolutely All-Wise One, will undoubtedly reward all of them accordingly. Everyone is aware of their immediate rewards in the world. As for their rewards in the Hereafter, as they are briefly proved in the Twelfth Truth of The Tenth Word, the six Fundamentals of The Twenty-Ninth Word, and The Twenty-Eighth Word, they are also either stated explicitly or alluded to in the Qur’an, the truest word, the most perfect system, the Word of God, the Sovereign, the All-Glorious, the All-Knowing.

First indication: Lawful love in gratitude for delicious foods and fruits yields paradisiacal foods and fruits in the Hereafter and arouses in us an appetite for them. Even saying: “All praise and gratitude are for God” after you eat something will be returned to you as a fruit of Paradise. As suggested by the Qur’an and required by Divine Wisdom and Mercy, any pleasurable thanks given to Almighty God for His bounties and favors will be returned to you in Paradise as the most delicious food.

Second indication: In return for loving your selfhood or soul in a lawful manner (pitying it and working to perfect it and guiding it to good), you will be given that which you love in Paradise. Since you gratified your soul’s desires and ambitions and used its organs and faculties in the way Almighty God approves of while here, the Absolutely Munificent One will reward your (lawful) love of it by clothing you in seventy different celestial garments as samples of seventy different kinds of beauty and adornment of Paradise. These will please all of your senses. He also will adorn your body with seventy varieties of beauty and present the houris to you, each of whom is like an animate miniature Paradise. Your love for youth in the world, which manifests itself in your using it to worship God, will result in eternal youth in the Abode of eternal happiness.

Third indication: In reward for the sincere love you feel for your spouse due to her (or his) delightful compassion, laudable virtues and good conduct, and protecting her (or him) against disobedience to God and other sins, the Absolutely Compassionate One will make her (or him) an immortal friend for you in the Abode of eternal happiness. She will be more beautiful, better dressed and ornamented, and more charming than the houris. Spouses will be seated on thrones face to face and will take great pleasure in relating to each other their worldly lives they spent together.

Fourth indication: As the result of lawful love for parents and children, Almighty God, the All-Merciful and All-Compassionate, will allow them to come together in Paradise and reward them with eternal happy communion, even though the rank and place of each may be different. He will re-create children who died before puberty as the lovable and most beautiful immortal children of Paradise (56:17), in a form worthy of Paradise, and return them to their parents’ arms so that they may enjoy eternally the pleasure of parenthood. Since Paradise is not the place of reproduction, some thought that the pleasure of having children would be absent there. But as Paradise contains every pleasurable thing in its highest degree, the pleasure of having children, at its best, will be there by means of the children who died before reaching puberty. This is a good tiding for those parents whose prepubescent children have died.

Fifth indication: The Qur’an explicitly states that, as the result of loving righteous friends for God’s sake, they will be seated on couches face to face in Paradise (15:47) and will enjoy eternally the pure pleasure of talking to each other about their worldly lives in a most delightful manner.

Sixth indication: Your Qur’anic love for the Prophets and saints will cause you to benefit from their intercession in the Intermediate World of the grave and in the Place of Supreme Gathering. You also will receive enlightenment from their elevated positions. According to the rule that “One will be with whom he or she loves,” each believer can have a part in the highest rank or position through closeness to the one with that position.

Seventh indication: Your love for beautiful things and spring, expressed in seeing them as the Creator’s beautiful works, as well as in appreciating the beauty and harmony of the Acts behind those works, the manifestations of the Names behind those Acts, and the manifestations of the Attributes behind those beautiful Names, will cause you to behold, in the World of Permanence, the manifestations of those Names, which are far more beautiful than their counterparts in this world, and witness His Beauty and Attributes in those Names. Imam Rabbani says: “Paradise’s beauties and subtleties are the embodiment of the Divine Names’ manifestations.” Reflect upon these words.

Eighth indication: Your reflective love for this world, on account of its being the Hereafter’s tillage and the Divine Names’ mirror, will be rewarded with an everlasting garden of Paradise as large as the world. Only the shadowy manifestations of the Names from behind numerous veils result in the world’s amazing beauties. In Paradise, the Names will manifest themselves in a most splendid form. God will give Paradise, in relationship to which this world is like a small seedbed, to those who loved this world as the afterlife’s tillage. Also, as required by Mercy and Wisdom and pointed to in the Prophetic Traditions and some Qur’anic verses, our senses and feelings, which are like small shoots here, will be perfected there; our potentials, which are like seeds here, will develop into varieties of perfection and pure pleasure there.

Since we loved the world only in its two aspects concerned with the Hereafter and the Divine Names and not in its contemptible aspect (the cause of all errors), and caused it to prosper through our worship as if we had spent all our lives and body, senses, and faculties in worship, Mercy and Wisdom require that we receive a reward as great as the world. Since we loved the world as the Hereafter’s tillage for the sake of loving the Hereafter and loved

it as the mirror of Almighty God’s Names for His sake, we will be rewarded with a world-like object of love—a garden of Paradise as vast as the world.

Question: What is the use of such a vast and empty garden?

Answer: If you could travel throughout the world and most of the stars with the speed of imagination, you could assert that the world belonged to you. The fact that angels, other people, and animals share this space with you would not negate your assertion. Likewise, if Paradise is thus full, you would be able to say, “Paradise is mine.” The meaning of the Tradition, “Some people of Paradise will be given a Paradise that would take five hundred years (to traverse on foot),” has been explained in The Twenty-eighth Word and “The Treatise on Sincerity” in The Gleams.

Ninth indication: The result of your belief and love of God is the eternal life of Paradise and vision of Him. People of spiritual unveiling and verification all agree that a thousand years of a happy life in this world is not worth an hour of life in Paradise, and that a thousand years of life in Paradise is not worth an hour’s vision of the All-Majestic One in His absolute sacred Beauty and defect-free Perfection. Seeing Him is established by the Qur’an and authentic Prophetic Traditions, one of which says: “That vision far excels all the other pleasures of Paradise, so much so that it causes them to be forgotten. After the vision of God, the people of Paradise will have increased in beauty and loveliness to such a degree that the couples will be able to recognize each other only with great difficulty.” All people feel in the depths of their being a great longing to see such great people of the past as Prophet Solomon, famous for his magnificent perfection, and Prophet Joseph, distinguished for his beauty. So compare how deeply desired and yearned for, and with what degree of passion, is our desire to see Him. And remember that one manifestation of His Beauty and Perfection contains all the beauty and perfection of Paradise, which are far more elevated than all the beauty and perfection seen in this world.

O God, provide us in this world with love of You and of what will draw us near to You, with the uprightness You command, and in the Hereafter with Your Mercy and the vision of You.

All-Glorified are You! We have no knowledge save what You have taught us. You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

O God, bestow blessings and peace upon him whom You sent as a mercy for all worlds, and upon his Family and Companions. Amin.

NOTE: Do not regard as too lengthy the detailed explanation in this Word’s last section. It is short in proportion to its importance and, in fact, requires further elaboration. Truth speaks in The Words in the name of indications from the Qur’an. Truth speaks the truth. If you see anything incorrect, know that it originated from my mind.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

180 Such love is rooted in love for the person loved. As it is not in God’s name, it leads to unforgivable excesses in belief. Due to such excesses, Christians deified Jesus and the Rafidis broke from the majority Muslim community (Tr.).