The First Flash

THE FLASHES

Author │BEDĪ‘UZZAMĀN SA‘ĪD NURSĪ (1877-1960)

Written in

Hijri 1352-1355 │AD 1933-1936

The First Flash

of The Thirty-first Letter

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّح۪يمِ (a)

فَنَادٰي فِي الظُّلُمَاتِ اَنْ لَٓااِلٰهَ اِلَّٓا اَنْتَ سُبْحَانَكَ اِنّ۪ي كُنْتُ مِنَ الظَّالِم۪ينَ (b)

اِذْ نَادٰي رَبَّهُٓ اَنّ۪ي مَسَّنِيَ الضُّرُّ وَاَنْتَ اَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِم۪ينَ (c)

فَإِن تَوَلَّوا فَقُل حَسبِيَ اللَّهُ لا إِلٰهَ إِلّا هُوَ ۖ عَلَيهِ تَوَكَّلتُ ۖ وَهُوَ رَبُّ العَرشِ العَظيمِ (d)

حَسْبُنَا اللّٰهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَك۪يلُ (e)

لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ اِلَّا بِاللّٰهِ الْعَلِيِّ الْعَظ۪يمِ (f)

يَا بَاق۪ٓي اَنْتَ الْبَاق۪ * يَا بَاق۪ٓي اَنْتَ الْبَاق۪ي (g)

This part, the first section of `The Thirty-first Letter`, is made up of 'six flashes', each of which shows one of very many lights of each word of the above mentioned blessed words that have many merits to recite at any time, and especially between the Sunset Prayer (maghrib) and the Evening Prayer (‘ishā’) thirty-three times.

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a In the Name of Allāh, the Merciful, the Compassionate. (Qur’ān: al-Fātiḥah, 1:1) 

b He (Yūnus) cried out in the darkness, 'There is no god but You. Glory be to You! Indeed I have been amongst those wrongdoers who have done evil [to themselves] (Qur’ān: al-Anbiyā', 21:87)

c He (Ayyūb) called unto his Lord, 'the harm has truly visited me, and You are the most merciful of the merciful' (Qur’ān: al-Anbiyā', 21:83)

d So if (they do not listen to you and) they turn away (from you O compassionate Prophet), say: 'Allāh is sufficient for me. There is no god but Him. In Him have I put my trust. He is the Lord of the Mighty Throne.' (Qur’ān: at-Tawbah, 9:129)

e Allāh is sufficient for us; the most excellent Guardian is He (Qur’ān: Āli ‘Imrān, 3:173)

f There is no might [in us to abstain from sins] nor power [in us to worship] except for what Allāh gives, Who is the Most High (Al-‘Aliyy) and the Most Grand (Al-‘Aẓīm). (Tirmidhī 3601)

g O Ever-abiding One, You are the Ever-abiding One! O Ever-abiding One, You are the Ever-abiding One! (Arabic invocation)

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The First Flash

The supplication of Prophet Yūnus Ibn Mattā ‘alā nabiyyinā wa ‘alayhi’ṣ-ṣālātu wa’s-salām (may blessings and peace be upon our Prophet and upon him) (1) is one of the greatest of all supplications, and of the most important means to prayers being accepted. 

The essence of the famous story of Prophet Yūnus (‘alayhi’s-salām) is as follows: 

He was thrown into the sea and swallowed by an enormous fish. The sea was stormy, and the night dark and tumultuous, and in every way, hope was lost. In this state, he called out to His Lord, saying لَٓا اِلٰهَ اِلَّٓا اَنْتَ سُبْحَانَكَ اِنّ۪ي كُنْتُ مِنَ الظَّالِم۪ينَ (a) and his supplication swiftly became a means for his safe deliverance.

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a There is no god but You. Glory be to You! Indeed I have been amongst those wrongdoers who have done evil [to themselves]. (Qur’ān: al-Anbiyā', 21:87)

1. Jonah, the son of Amittai

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The sublime secret of this supplication is as follows: 

In that very circumstance, [normal] causes (asbāb) had become totally null and void. That is why he needed someone to save him – [he needed] One who can rule both the fish and the sea, both the night and the atmosphere. It was simply because the night, the sea and the fish opposed him altogether. None could have delivered him to the shore of safety except the One able to subject those three things together to His command. Even were all of creation to be in his service they would not avail him whatsoever; which is to say that ‘causes’ have no [real] effect. 

Since he saw, with certainty by vision (‘ayn al-yaqīn), that there could be no refuge except to the Cause of all causes (Musabbibu’l-asbāb), and since the secret of singularity (aḥadiyyah) within the light of Divine unity (tawḥīd) was unveiled for him, that supplication suddenly subjected the night, sea and fish together to him. 

It made the belly of the fish to be like unto a submarine by that light of Divine unity (nūru’t-tawḥīd), and it turned the turbulent sea with towering waves like a convulsing mountain, into a peaceful and safe plain and a calm meadow and promenade by that light of Divine unity; and again by means of that light of tawḥīd, the clouds obscuring the face of the heaven dispersed, and the moon over his head became as if it were a lamp. The terrifying creatures, that [once] threatened and pressurised him, now unveiled to him the face of friendship in every aspect. Then, he reached the shore of safety. He beheld that Lordly favour (luṭfu’r-Rabbānī) beneath the gourd tree (yaqtīn).

Now, we are in a situation a hundred times more terrifying than the first situation of Prophet Yūnus (‘alayhi’s-salām). Our night is the future. Our future, due to a heedless perspective, is a hundred times darker and more frightening than his night. Our sea is our globe, that orbits in a state of bewilderment. There are thousands of corpses in each of the waves of this sea, and it is a thousand times more terrifying than his sea. Our hawa’n-nafs (desires of our lower selves) is our fish, for it strives to consume and destroy our eternal life. This fish is a thousand times more harmful than his fish, for his fish terminates a life with a duration of a hundred years, whereas our fish attempts to ruin our life that reaches on for hundreds of millions of years. 

Since this is how our real situation is, we, too, must follow Prophet Yūnus (‘alayhi’s-salām), and renounce causes (asbāb) altogether, and seek refuge directly with our Lord alone, He Who is the Cause of all causes (Musabbibu’l-asbāb), saying, لَٓا اِلٰهَ اِلَّٓا اَنْتَ سُبْحَانَكَ اِنّ۪ي كُنْتُ مِنَ الظَّالِم۪ينَ (a) And we must come to perceive with certainty by vision (‘ayn al-yaqīn) that the one - to ward off the harm of the future, the world, and the caprice of our lower selves which gathered together against us because of our heedlessness (ghaflah) and misguidance (ḍalālah) - can be none other than He under the command of Whom the future lies, and under the sway of the judgement of Whom is this world, and under the direction of Whom are our selves.

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a There is no god but You. Glory be to You! Indeed I have been amongst those wrongdoers who have done evil [to themselves]. (Qur’ān: al-Anbiyā', 21:87)

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I wonder which ‘cause’ other than the Creator of the heavens and the earth would know the most hidden and subtlest thoughts in our hearts, and illuminate the future for us by bringing the Hereafter into existence, and save us from the hundreds of thousands of strangling waves of this world? Far be it from Him (Ḥāshā). No one, under any circumstances whatsoever, other than the Necessary Being (Al-Wājibu’l-Wujūd) can help us without His will and permission and none other than He can be a saviour!

Since this is the reality of the matter, just as the fish took the form of a vehicle and a submarine, and the sea became like a beautiful and gentle plain, and the night took a rather delicate form with moonlight for Prophet Yūnus (‘alayhi’s-salām) as a result of this supplication, so too should we say by the secret of that supplication لَٓا اِلٰهَ اِلَّٓا اَنْتَ سُبْحَانَكَ اِنّ۪ي كُنْتُ مِنَ الظَّالِم۪ينَ. We should attract the gaze of His mercy towards our future by means of the phrase لَٓا اِلٰهَ اِلَّٓا اَنْتَ (There is no god but You), and to our world with the phrase سُبْحَانَكَ (Glory be to You), and to our lower selves with اِنّ۪ي كُنْتُ مِنَ الظَّالِم۪ينَ (Indeed I have been amongst those wrongdoers who have done evil) in order that our future becomes illuminated by the light of true faith and the radiance of the full moon of the Qur’ān, and so that the awful terror and frightful loneliness of our night turn into familiar serenity and delightful excursion.

And our world and earth - the limitless dead bodies of which float upon the waves of years and centuries and are dumped into nothingness as a result of the consistent succession of death and life - should embark upon the reality of Islam which is like a spiritual ship constructed in the workshop of the Wise Qur’ān, so that it navigates safely on that sea and [peacefully] reaches the shore of safety and the duty of our life comes to an end. 

And, rather than causing frightful loneliness and awful terror, the storms and tremors of that sea sweeten and illuminate the sceneries of the promenade as they refresh like cinema screens, making them an enjoyable moral lesson [and a beautiful view] for reflection.

And through this secret of the Qur’ān and that nurture of the Furqān (Criterion), our lower selves should become vehicles that do not ride us, and [that secret and nurture] make us ride our lower selves which thus become powerful means of obtaining our endlessly eternal lives.

The upshot: Now, due to his all-embracing quiddity, (2) just as man is pained by malaria, so too is he pained by the trembling and convulsions of the earth, and by the cosmos’ supreme earthquake on the Doomsday; and just as he fears a little germ only visible with a microscope, so does he fear the comet that appears in amongst the heavenly bodies. And just as he loves his own home, so too does he love the vast world; and just as he loves his little garden, so too with intense yearning does he love endlessly eternal, unbounded Paradise. None, then, can be a lord, object of worship, refuge, saviour and objective of such a man other than He Who holds the entire cosmos in the Hand of His free disposal, and under Whose command are the particles and the planets. Surely, such a man is always in need of saying, like Yūnus (‘alayhi’s-salām), لَٓا اِلٰهَ اِلَّٓا اَنْتَ سُبْحَانَكَ اِنّ۪ي كُنْتُ مِنَ الظَّالِم۪ينَ 'There is no god but You. Glory be to You! Indeed I have been amongst those wrongdoers who have done evil [to themselves].'

سُبْحَانَكَ لَاعِلْمَ لَنَٓا اِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَٓا اِنَّكَ اَنْتَ الْعَل۪يمُ الْحَك۪يمُ (a)

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a Glory be to You! We have no knowledge, except that which You have taught us; surely You are the All-Knowing, the Wise. (Qur’ān: al-Baqarah, 2:32) 

2. All-embracingness (Jāmi‘iyyāh): All-embracingness or comprehensiveness literally refers to the quality of "bringing together" numerous entities or attributes. As a technical term when referring to man, it denotes the manner in which human beings, and most eminently the Holy Prophet have been created by Allāh to possess amongst all creatures the most all-embracing and comprehensive capacity to manifest and reveal the widest range of the Names and Attributes of Allāh within their own beings. This all-embracingness then constitutes the pivot of man's spiritual ascension and his journey to reach maximal spiritual perfection. As Nursī tells us in The Thirteenth Flash, "The Majestic Creator (Al-Khāliqu Dhu’l-Jalāl) of this universe has two types of Names, those of beauty (jamāl), and those of majesty (jalāl); now, these Names of beauty and majesty demand that their spheres of influence (aḥkām) become revealed in particular, independent manifestations. It is for this reason that the Majestic Creator has mixed opposites in the universe with one another, and has placed each one facing the other, and in a state of [attempting to] outdo one another... This is why He made [this] law of competition take an even more extraordinary form in human beings than in other creatures, for [man] is the all-embracing fruit of the tree of creation, and [this is why] He opened the door of spiritual struggle before him, which is the pivot for all [types] of man's spiritual ascension."

The second form of "all-embracingness" enjoyed by man is entailed by the foregoing, and involves the numerous abilities that man possesses (more even than the angels), in virtue of his all-embracing essence, which manifests a more comprehensive variety of Divine Names and Attributes than any other creature. The third form is the manner in which man constitutes a microcosmic encapsulation of the macrocosm, that is, of the cosmos itself. Allāh has placed a sample and exemplar of all of the material and spiritual realms into man's nature; he is as if "filtered cream" of the cosmos, and has thus gathered all of the worlds within himself. 

(For more information about comprehensiveness or all-embracingness, please see The Staff of Moses - The Epistle on Gratitude, The Words - The Twenty-eighth Word and The Twenty-third Word)