Reading the Universe
My introduction to Ustad’s works.
One Friday I was browsing the bookshops opposite Hacı Bayram Mosque.
Those bookshops have an atmosphere all their own. There a person felt not merely among books, but as if wandering through the centuries.
The red books on the shelves caught my eye. I picked one up. I opened a section at random and began to read.
It recounted an incident that had befallen an Ustad while he was in prison.
A young trainee lawyer had come to visit him. Having heard of Ustad’s renown, he asked curiously:
“My Ustad, do you have any miraculous gifts? For example, can you make this prayer bead move?”
Ustad’s reply:
“My brother,
One day a father took his child to a jeweller’s shop. Inside the shop there were diamond watches, rubies, emeralds, and jewels more precious than one another.
But the child’s eye fastened on a balloon outside the shop, seen through the window. He asked his father for the balloon. Whatever his father said, he could not make the child give it up.”
Then Ustad said this to that young lawyer:
“My brother, I am the herald of a jewel shop like the Qur’an.
I do not sell balloons.”
A Jewel from the Qur’an’s Treasury
When explaining the truths of the Qur’an, the Risale-i Nur gives the example of divers who plunge into a great treasure on the seabed. Each diver sees a different jewel of the treasure and may sometimes suppose that the treasure consists only of the jewels he has seen.
Yet the treasure is filled with countless jewels, each different from the others.
The Qur’an is like that.
Every scholar, every exegete, and every age draws jewels from that great treasure according to their own capacity and need. But the treasure is not limited to what any of them has seen.
It is greater than all of them.
It is deeper than all of them.
A physician may see in the same verse a sign concerning the creation of the human being. A jurist may discern the measure of justice, an educator how a person is to be raised, an oppressed person consolation, an administrator trust and responsibility. None of these invalidates the others. The same light enters in different forms through different windows; but its source is one.
This perspective taught me two things together: not to lose my wonder before the Qur’an, and not to take what I have understood as the whole of the Qur’an.
When a person finds a jewel, they should rejoice; but they should not forget that there are also jewels they have not yet seen. This gives rise both to longing for knowledge and to humility in knowledge.
From Imitative Faith to Verified Faith
The Risale-i Nur does not regard imitative faith as sufficient; it asks that faith be verified.
It does not restrict a person’s asking of questions. On the contrary, it encourages them to think, to investigate, to see the evidences, and to affirm the truth for themselves.
Imitative faith is like accepting what someone else has seen. Verified faith is a person’s opening their own window and seeing the light.
This does not mean that every person must learn all the sciences. But a person should not consent to the truth they believe remaining merely a word carried by habit, environment, or inheritance. Both the heart and the intellect should bear witness to that truth.
The Qur’an says:
“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for those of understanding.” Al Imran, 190
Allah’s existence and oneness appear clearly in His works. The Risale-i Nur invites a person to know the Artist by looking at the works.
The letters of a book show the writer as much as they show the ink. The measure and order of a palace declare the architect as much as they show the stones. The measure, artistry, wisdom, and mutual assistance in the universe likewise make one reflect not only on material elements, but on the power that knows them, measures them, and sets them to work together.
Learning to Read the Universe
The Risale-i Nur teaches one to look at all beings not only with the accustomed eye, but also with the eye of an engineer, a chemist, a physicist, a biologist, an artist, and of people specialised in their own fields.
For in every corner of the universe there is a distinct knowledge, a distinct artistry, and a distinct engineering.
When a person begins to look with this gaze, they no longer see beings as ordinary objects. Each becomes a marvel of artistry that, in its own tongue, speaks of its Creator.
Looking at a leaf merely as “something green” is not the same as reflecting on how it uses sunlight to produce the substances needed for life. Looking at a bee merely as a small insect is not the same as seeing how it finds flowers, returns to its hive without losing its way, and makes honey. As a person knows more, their wonder does not diminish; if they look rightly, their wonder deepens.
Every spring, the fruits, vegetables, and countless blessings needed by human beings and by all living creatures are laid before us as if prepared in another world, loaded onto wagons, and sent to the earth exactly on time.
The cow eats grass and thorns, yet works like a walking factory offering human beings pure milk from between blood and waste. The Qur’an draws special attention to milk:
“We give you to drink of pure milk, easy for drinkers to swallow, from between waste and blood in their bellies.” An-Nahl, 66
The horse and the camel are placed in human service like vehicles that need neither petrol, nor an engine, nor an asphalt road.
The watermelon is created on hot summer days when almost no rain falls, nearly filled entirely with water, suited to a person’s need at that time. By contrast, the grain of rice, which grows entirely in water, does not contain water in the same way.
The colour of the soil is much the same. The water is the same. The sun is the same. Yet from the same garden come countless fruits differing in colour, scent, taste, and structure. So the apparent causes are materials; they are not the true agent that explains the knowledge and preferences in the work.
The Hand Behind the Causes
One does not thank the tree for a cherry.
Just as we know that a letter brought by the postman does not in fact come from the postman, so the blessings that reach a person do not come from causes alone. The postman is valuable; he does his duty and is thanked. But he is not the author of the letter.
The doctor treats; but it was not the doctor who placed in the cell the capacity to heal. The farmer sows the seed; but it was not the farmer who wrote into that tiny seed the programme of the tree. The mother feeds her child; but it was not the mother who created, by her own hand, motherly love and the composition of the milk.
It is not right to deny the causes. It is also not right to suppose the causes to be the true source.
The blessings are sent to you by a Being who recognises you, knows you, and loves you.
Even at civilisation’s present level, humanity cannot manufacture from nothing any of its most basic needs. A person cannot create a single fruit. They cannot place into a seed the entire programme of a living tree. They can be defeated by a tiny microbe.
In reality they are utterly powerless.
Yet for the most part they do not realise that every blessing they possess is a gift from a Sovereign who knows them and loves them.
The World Is a Guest-House
According to the Risale-i Nur, this world is a guest-house. And the human being is a traveller hosted here for a short time.
At the same time the world is like a great palace. All the works of art and the hospitality within the palace make known the palace’s owner, His wealth, and His generosity.
The guest-house analogy teaches a person both their worth and their limit.
The guest is shown hospitality; but the guest is not the owner of the house. They make use of the room allotted to them; but they do not think they will stay there forever. They cannot treat the furnishings roughly. They must not disturb the other guests. When they leave they cannot take the room’s furnishings with them; but the courtesy they showed there and the friendships they formed go with them.
This palace has its rules. Not disturbing the other travellers is fundamental. And the trade done here wins the eternal homeland to which one will go after this guest-house.
The Risale-i Nur likens the twenty-four hours of the day to twenty-four pieces of gold. It says that at least one of these pieces of gold must be set aside to use in the eternal homeland to which one will go.
That is, time set aside for worship is a person’s most profitable trade.
When a person understands that they are a guest in the world, they do not abandon the world; they put it in its proper place. They work, produce, care for their family, seek justice, and build what is beautiful. But they do not take what is temporary to be eternal; they do not count what they possess as their absolute property.
The Keys Given to the Human Being
The senses a person possesses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—are like keys that open the doors of different worlds.
None of these keys can perform the duty of another.
The ear’s key cannot open the world of colours that the eye opens. The eye cannot see the world of sounds that the ear opens. A colour cannot be fully described to someone who has no eye-key. A sound cannot be tasted. A scent cannot be fully conveyed in words.
For each is a separate world. Each is opened with a different key.
Allah has given the human being very precious keys that will open the doors of these valuable worlds.
To these we may also add intellect, memory, imagination, mercy, and conscience. The eye sees form; the intellect discerns the order within the form. The ear hears a cry; mercy feels responsibility toward that cry. Memory carries the past; conscience draws a judgment from the past.
If a person equipped with such precious keys lives only for material and base pleasures, they lower their own worth. When they do not look to the meaning of existence, they waste the great capacity given to them.
Just as it is a great loss to use keys that could open all the rooms of a palace only to open a small cupboard in the basement, so it is when a person spends their intellect, heart, and senses only on temporary pleasures.
Comparing Human Power with Divine Power
The Risale-i Nur compares the aerodynamic structure in a fly’s wing with the aeroplanes made by human beings. The technology that produces the aeroplane is far from manufacturing even a single wing of a fly as a living thing.
Upon everything in the universe there is a divine seal that cannot be imitated exactly.
Nothing can be manufactured exactly as it is.
Not a fruit…
Not a flower…
Not an insect…
A computer can perform great calculations; but it cannot ask the meaning of its own existence.
The Risale-i Nur invites a person to compare divine disposal with human power.
Even the technology that produces a city containing hundreds of thousands of houses, illuminated, cleaned, and with thousands of vehicles in motion, cannot create from nothing even a single one of the thousands of kinds of trees, leaves, flowers, flies, and insects created all at once in the spring season.
Just as heating, lighting, and cleaning our house do not happen by themselves; heating, lighting, and cleaning our apartment building, our neighbourhood, and our city become harder as the work grows larger. Heating, lighting, cleaning, and keeping the world in a liveable state require an immense power and knowledge.
If a person does not clean their house for a few weeks, they cannot enter it. If the world, our guest-house, were not continually cleaned, illuminated, heated, and renewed, it would become unliveable.
The atmosphere circulates the air. Rain cleanses the water and redistributes it. The soil prepares dead matter for new life. Seas, forests, and countless living creatures, while appearing unaware of one another, serve the same order of life.
To deny the existence of a Being who does throughout the entire universe the works we would not leave to chance in our own home, and to leave those works to chance, is not something the intellect can accept.
Everything Is Connected
You can see the divine manifestation even in a single flower.
For that flower’s existence depends on its connection with the sun, the wind, the cloud, the rain, and the soil. Without any one of these, that flower’s existence would not be possible.
Behind a morsel of bread stand the sun, rain, soil, seed, farmer, transport, and the human body’s capacity to digest it. Even a simple morsel that reaches our table requires the whole universe working together.
For life to continue, just as all the cogs of a watch must work in harmony, the systems in the universe must also operate in flawless accord.
From the sun’s distance from the earth to the earth’s rotation on its own axis, from the properties of water to the structure of the atmosphere, everything is within a precise measure that serves the continuation of life.
The Qur’an recalls this measure thus:
“You will see no disharmony in the creation of the Most Merciful. Turn your eye again and look: can you see any flaw?”
Al-Mulk, 3
Just as a luxury hotel shows the value it gives its guests through the services it offers, so the Sovereign of this great guest-house shows the value He gives the human being through the countless blessings He has placed at their command.
For the human being to be able to live, the entire universe has, as it were, been mobilised. From the sun to the air, from water to the soil, everything has been created with measure for their living.
No particle moves without wisdom. Not even a single leaf falling from a tree falls outside His knowledge and will.
The provision a person pursues, the events they encounter, their fears and their hopes are all within Allah’s knowledge and will.
Just as there is no place for chance in the universe, there is no place for chance in a person’s life.
The Human Being Is a Mirror
According to the Risale-i Nur, the universe is filled with countless large and small mirrors in which Allah’s Names and attributes are manifested.
Just as countless water bubbles on the sea each reflect the sun separately, while the sea itself reflects the same sun more widely and differently…
All beings become mirrors to the manifestations of the divine Names and attributes according to their own capacities and potentials.
Even a tiny flower shows Allah’s Names.
So does a great sun…
A drop of water also points to Him.
So do the vast oceans…
The human being, too, is a mirror.
But each reflects those Names according to the measure of its greatness and capacity.
None of them is the sun. But all of them are evidence of the sun’s existence.
All of them bear witness to Allah’s existence, oneness, power, knowledge, mercy, and artistry.
In the expression the Risale-i Nur often uses, all beings are ayinedar—that is, each is a mirror showing Allah’s Names and attributes according to its own capacity.
When a person learns to look at these mirrors, they begin to read in everything a manifestation of Allah’s Names. Then the universe becomes a great book that, with every being, speaks of its Creator. The person begins to see the Artist behind the works.
The admirable qualities we see in people—a beautiful voice, superior talent, intelligence, artistry, knowledge, and skill—are also reflections given to them from Allah’s infinite treasury.
These are not a person’s absolute property. They are small gleams of the divine Names manifested in the human being as a trust.
Just as water bubbles do not carry the sun’s light as if it were their own property, but only reflect it, so people, by the beauties they possess, give us an idea of Allah’s infinite treasury.
This perspective protects a person from two errors: idolising someone they admire by taking them to be the source of beauty, and denying the true beauty in a person because of resentment felt toward them.
When those people leave this world, the attractive gleams do not vanish with them. Just as the same sun continues to be reflected in other bubbles after a vanished water bubble, the manifestations of Allah’s Names and attributes continue to appear in other people.
Water bubbles come and go.
But the sun is everlasting.
People are transient.
But the treasury of Allah, the true Owner of beauty, knowledge, power, mercy, and all attributes of perfection, is everlasting and eternal.
A person also has the will to choose to reflect Allah’s Names in their own character. One who knows mercy strives to be merciful; one who knows justice, to be just; one who knows generosity, to be generous. The mirror is not the source of the light; but to the extent that it is clean, it reflects the light more truly.
Preparation for the Storms
Looking back today, I understand that what I read years ago did not only fill my youthful searching; it also prepared me for storms that would come years later.
For a person’s possessions can be taken from their hands.
Their position can be taken.
Their standing can be taken.
But if they have once learned where to place the truth, even when everything collapses there remains a place to hold on to.
A person may suppose their ship is sound on a calm sea. When the storm comes, it becomes clear which part is decoration and which is load-bearing. If faith remains only beautiful sentences spoken in times of ease, it may not carry a person in the storm. If the truth has been settled beforehand at the centre of the heart, when outward supports are withdrawn an inward direction remains.
The Difference Between Pleasure and Truth
A person sometimes circles around the truth but does not enter it. They remain within beautiful words, habits, and—most importantly—their surroundings.
Sometimes they do not notice; but what they defend ceases to be the truth. The pleasures, people, groups, and attachments that surround them come before the truth.
The group they feel they belong to, and the people they follow, become more valuable than the truth without their realising it.
Ustad called this partisanship...
If a person defends the wrong of someone from their own group, and refuses to accept the right of someone from the other side merely because of their identity, they have centred not right but belonging. If they apply one measure to a friend and another to a rival, truth has ceased to be a principle for them and has entered the service of their side.
“The claim of truth is exalted; it is sacrificed for no one’s favour.”
Defending the truth is something else. There, for the most part, there is no pleasure. According to its degree, there is a heavy cost and hardship.
There is a great difference between being religious for the sake of pleasure and giving up pleasure for the sake of religion.
Whatever a Person Pursues, They Serve
Whatever a person runs after, they sometimes enter its service without noticing.
If a person who pursues pleasure, in that pursuit, moves away from right and truth, their god begins to be pleasure.
If they do everything for their interest and do not care about others, their god becomes interest.
If they overlook oppression in order to protect their position, their god becomes position.
And for the person who does everything for money, their god becomes money.
A person may not prostrate before these; but if these entirely govern their decisions, they have placed them at the centre of their life.
Today we may also add fame, applause, and visibility to these. If a person says what will be liked instead of saying what is true, does good not because Allah knows but so that people may see, and fears being forgotten when they remain silent, they may have placed people’s gaze at the centre of their heart.
According to Ustad, every circle in which right and truth are not at the centre makes a person a servant not of Allah, but of the idols they have made with their own hands.
Those Who Paid the Price of Truth
Looking at the lives of the scholars of religion, one sees the prices paid for the sake of truth.
From Imam-i Azam (Imam Abu Hanifa) to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, many great scholars suffered torture. From Imam Rabbani to Bediuzzaman, many great persons lived in exile, in prisons, and in courts.
None of them said, “Let us compromise and be at ease.”
Truth became like a coal in their hands; it burned them, yet they did not let it go.
This does not mean a person’s declaring every opinion of theirs to be the truth and stubbornly insisting on it. Paying a price for the sake of truth and quarrelling for the sake of one’s own ego’s opinion are not the same thing. The measure of this is: being open to evidence, being able to turn back when mistaken, wanting justice in the same way for oneself and for one’s rival, and making oneself pay the price first, not someone else.
The real matter concerns what you are able to give up in order to stand with right and truth.
Can you give up your habits?
The pleasures you love…
Your comfort…
Can you push your interest aside?
Can you put your position, your money, and your ease into second place?
This is where a person’s quality becomes clear.
Deciding What Will Stand at the Centre of My Life
What I understood was this:
The path of truth begins not where a person places themselves and their pleasure at the centre, but where they place what is right at the centre.
A person sometimes imagines that great decisions are made only in great arenas. Yet the centre of life changes in daily choices. In whether to stay silent or speak before an injustice, in whether to approach the forbidden where no one sees, in whether to accept a truth that goes against one’s interest, and in whether to do a kindness without expecting a return…
Every small choice makes the qibla of the heart a little clearer.
All the windows the Risale-i Nur opened for me finally looked toward the same place: Read the universe, recognise the true Owner of blessing, do not forget that you are a guest in the world, do not waste the capacities given to you, connect the beauty in beings to its source, and hold the truth above your own comfort.
This Lesson’s Heart Key
The Qur’an is an inexhaustible treasure; what I have seen is not the whole of the treasure.
Faith is not merely a word inherited, but a truth verified with intellect and heart.
The universe is a great book; every being is a word that speaks of its Creator.
Causes are the postman; the true Owner of blessing is Allah.
The world is a guest-house; what is given here is a trust, and the good deeds done are earnings sent to the eternal realm.
The human being is a mirror; beauties and capacities are not theirs, but gleams of the divine treasury manifested in them.
Truth is more valuable than my group, my comfort, my interest, and my position.
The claim of truth is exalted; it is sacrificed for no one’s favour.
Prayer
O Allah,
grant us to read the universe as a book that speaks of Your Names.
Carry our faith from imitation to verification, from knowledge to state, and from word to sincerity.
Grant us to know blessings as from You, not from causes; and not to forget that we are guests in the world and trustees of what is in our hands.
Protect us from being servants of pleasure, interest, position, and partisanship.
Make us among Your servants who hold the truth above our own selves and our comfort; who, even if there is a cost, do not leave what is right.
Amin.