was born. Indeed, it is clear from Abdurrahman's biography and from his own requests for leave of absence from the Darü'l-Hikmet that from his return he suffered certain difficulties. The strains of war and harsh conditions of his captivity had taken their toll on his health, while the Ottoman defeat and foreign occupation were sources of great distress. However, as we saw at the end of the piece describing his "awakening" in the little mosque beside the River Volga, he considered the first two years of his return, despite all his activities, to be a period of heedlessness during which his fame and the acclaim he received made him temporarily forget his decision to withdraw from social life and concentrate on the inner life. He described the major turning-point that then occurred in some detail in various places in his works, and we shall chart its course from these.

It seems that a few flashes of realization restarted the process of "spiritual awakening". These occurred on high vantage points overlooking the city of Istanbul and took the form of realizing the stark realities of death and separation, old age and the transitoriness of things. Bediuzzaman says that then, before anything, he tried to find consolation and a ray of light in his learning and the things he had studied for so many years. But rather than providing this, he found that they had "dirtied his spirit", and been an  obstacle to his spiritual progress. [^331]

[^331]:Nursi, Lem'alar, 226-228 (Eng. tr.: Flashes, 305).

Until this time, he had "filled his brain with the philosophical as well as the Islamic sciences", for he thought that "the philosophical sciences were the means to spiritual progress and enlightenment." In addition, he was of the opinion that European science and philosophy could be used to "reinforce" and "strengthen" Islam. He described it like this:

The Old Said together with a group of thinkers accepted in part the principles of human philosophy [as opposed to revealed knowledge] and European science, and fought them with their own weapons; they admitted them to a degree. They accepted unshakeably some of their principles in the form of the positive sciences, and thus could not demonstrate the true value of Islam. Simply, they supposed philosophy's roots to be extremely deep and grafted Islam with its branches, as though they were strengthening it. But since the victories were few and it depreciated Islam, I gave up that way. And I demonstrated [in the Risale-i Nur] that Islam's principles are so profound that those of philosophy cannot reach them; indeed, they remain superficial beside them. [^332]

[^332]:Nursi, Mektûbat, 413 (Eng. tr.: Letters, 516).

And, now, when overwhelmed by the realization of his own increasing