students do not wish for wonders and illuminations for themselves nor run after them. Also, the individual person is not given importance on its way; owing to the spiritual partnership and the brothers' wholehearted identification with each other, such divine bestowals as the thousands of wonders associated with knowledge and the facility in the work of dissemination, and the plenty experienced in the livelihoods of those who work at it, are sufficient for all and they do not seek any personal attainments or wonders.

Fourthly: Because they are short-lived, a hundred gardens of this world are not equal to a single tree of the next world, which is undying. In consequence, since the blind human emotions are captivated by immediate pleasure and prefer an ephemeral present fruit to an eternal garden of the hereafter, the Risale-i Nur students do not seek spiritual delights and illuminations in this world, lest their evil-commanding souls exploit this natural tendency.

In olden times there lived a person who resembled the Risale-i Nur students in this respect. Both he and his wife were of high spiritual rank, but due to their straitened circumstances she remarked to him on their extreme need. Suddenly, a golden brick appeared before them. She exclaimed: "Look! A brick from our mansion in Paradise!" But then the blessed women said: "It's true that we're needy and that we'll have loads of bricks like that in the next world, but this one shouldn't be wasted on this fleeting life so that it's missing from our mansion there! Offer a prayer that it returns to its place; we don't need it!" It disappeared, and it is told that with their spiritual discernment they beheld it in its place.

These two heroic people of truth offer excellent examples for the Risale-i Nur students and their not chasing after the worldly delights of wonder-working!

S e c o n d   M a t t e r

If the coincidences (tevâfuk) [^39] appear in numerous different forms and in such a way as to corroborate one another, they may afford a degree of certainty that is conclusive and explicit. A sign that some of the letters we wrote after leaving prison were both acceptable, and very significant, and that people were very needy for them at this time, was that a sparrow, a kuddûs bird, and some pigeons came into my room most strangely and in a way quite out of the ordinary and all coinciding with the others. Then when

[^39]:Coincidences (T. tevâfukât; Ar. tawāfuqāt) refers to the coincidence of events or to the unintentional correspondence of letters or words in lines or patterns on one or several pages. [Tr.]