Glorious Maker's art. Then taking advantage of this situation, my emotions which are so enraptured by worldly life and my heedless and impatient soul aroused objections in my heart, which was wearied by this distressing, sickness-filled life and which had decided to depart for the Intermediate Realm to see the ninety per cent of my friends who were already there, and my soul too began to object, since it seeks permanent pleasures in transitory things, But then the light of belief infused my emotions and those veins of character; it pointed out the following in the face of those objections:

Since the earth displays only materially so much beauty, mercy, life, and fine decoration, it must be a veil to beneficent mercy and nothing that enters it remains idle. There must, therefore, be beneath and behind the veil of the earth some sort of non-material centres and workshops for all these external, physical beauties and decorations, and fine things, loveliness, mercy, and life. So to enter under the earth, our protective mother, and seek refuge in her embrace, and gaze upon those true, everlasting, nonmaterial flowers is far more deserving of love and worthy to be yearned after. This silenced completely those blind emotions and the objections of my world-worshipping soul and repulsed them, causing my soul to exclaim: "All praise be to God for the light of belief from every angle!'

We send endless greetings to all our brothers, and we pray for them.

S a i d   N u r s i ∗∗∗

► (180) ◄

My Dear, Innocent Children!

You are trying to study and to learn the Qur'an, But the new letters, which you know, are deficient, so as far as is possible, it is better not read it in them.

Also, the Qur'an should not be read just to become a hâfız nor memorized in its entirety to win a rank in this world and earn a salary. Rather, one should think that each of its letters yields from at least ten merits to hundreds or thousands of fruits of Paradise and benefits in the hereafter, and read it with the intention of securing the ease and happiness of eternal life.

If the benefits of studying science in school to secure a livelihood and ranks or positions in this brief worldly life have the value of one, learning for eternal life the Qur'an and its sacred words and luminous belief-inducing meanings are thousand of times more valuable. The former resemble fragments of glass, and the latter, diamonds.