mercy. Indeed, just so as not to spoil my friends' good opinion of me nor offend their sensibilities, despite my being wretched and needy and a beggar at the Qur'an's door and a mere means conveying it to the needy, this wretched person they call Ustad has given up meeting with friends even if not in connection with the work of the Risale-i Nur, and has been obliged to do so by his spirit, for their sake, so as not to appear far inferior to them nor be forced to be false and artificial, which is most painful and burdensome. For to appear more worthy than I am, and to show myself as holding some high rank in order to please those who have too high an opinion of me, and to appear lofty and to seek the harmful, fleeting pleasures of the ego behind the veil of high dignity, which is absolutely opposed to the meaning of sincerity, would reduce to nothing all those pleasures, o my soul!

O my soul! O miserable blind emotions, always seeking pleasure! If you were to receive thousands of worldly pleasures even, they would still degenerate in this situation and turn into pure pain! Since out of a hundred of my old friends, ninety are calling me to the grave — or so it seems, I have to abandon the ten that remain here. Surely, the non-physical life of the Intermediate Realm is a thousand times preferable to this life of old-age and loneliness.

Thanks be to God, the above two facts silenced the second evil-commanding soul completely. It was content with the pleasures emanating from the heart and spirit. Satan was silenced too. Even the physical sickness in my arteries lessened considerably.

In Short: If I die, the work of the Risale-i Nur will unfold with greater sincerity, and without any rivalry or accusations.

Moreover, it means being saved from the burdensome, cold and unpleasant pains of empty formalities and troubles of self-advertisement and harms of artificiality, which usurp the minor, temporary pleasure which I don't seek and the pleasure at seeing with worldly eyes the victories of the Risale-i Nur.

Furthermore, O soul! With your spirit and heart, this year you have travelled both in fact and in the imagination through the regions I passed my old pleasurable life for which you so long, to see the friends with whom I was so familiar and the brothers at the parting with whom I was so sad. But you too saw that in those many regions you could find only one or two out of a hundred of those friends. The rest had departed for the Intermediate Realm, and the pleasing living tableaux had changed and had taken on a dejected, mournful appearance. Never again would one want to see those empty, friendless places. So with complete dignity and self-respect, we