The Second Issue

The Second Issue

The Summary of the Second Issue

As A Guide for Youth (12) from The Book of Light has explained beautifully, death is so certain and evident that just as night is coming after this day and winter after this autumn, so will death come for us all [in the end].

Now, just as this prison is a temporary guest house for the continual [stream of] people entering and leaving it, so too is the face of the earth a rest house upon a road of fast-moving caravans, for arriving, staying over a night and departing. Death, then, that a hundred times makes [the entire population of] every single city flow down to the graveyards, doubtlessly demands of us far more than this mere life of ours. The Book of Light has treated and solved the mystery of this tremendously terrifying reality. A very short summary of it runs as follows:

Since death cannot be killed, and the door to the grave cannot be closed, and if there is a way to escape from the hand of fate’s executioner and from the prison of the solitary confinement of the grave, there is no doubt that this is man’s greatest and most important worry and concern, overshadowing all else.

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12. A Guide for Youth: A book from The Risāle-i Nūr Corpus that aims to guide young people. It comprises a selection of various topics from the Corpus - like youth, faith and the hereafter. 

Yes! There is a way out! The Book of Light has established it, as conclusively as two and two is four, by means of the secret of the Qur’ān; what follows is a short summary of this way out:

Death is either eternal execution, and a gallows to hang human beings along with their loved ones and relatives or it is a certificate of release allowing one to travel to another, endlessly eternal world and to enter into the palace of bliss by means of the permit of faith. And the grave is either a dark, solitary confinement and a bottomless pit or it is a door opening from the dungeon of this world onto a feasting hall and gardens that are ever-abiding and luminous. A Guide for Youth has established this reality by means of an illustration:

Numerous gallows - for example - have been erected in the yard of this prison. Behind the wall against which the gallows rest, quite a large office has been set up for a lottery in which every single individual in the world is taking part. It is inescapably the case - without exception - that one by one, they will summon to that yard all five hundred of us in this prison. In every place it is being announced ‘Either come and receive the execution warrant and ascend to the gallows or grab onto the permit needed for solitary confinement and enter through this open door’. Or, ‘There is good news for you! You have secured a ticket that wins you millions of gold coins! Come and take it!’

We, too, with our own eyes, are seeing them ascend one after another to the gallows. We witness a group of them being hanged. 

Due to the news given by highly ranked and serious officials, we know as certainly as if we had seen it that another group of people are making those gallows into a ladder and going into the lottery office on the other side of the wall. Meanwhile, two delegations have entered into this prison of ours.

The first of the two groups have musical instruments and alcoholic drinks in their hands, and they try to get us to eat the apparently very delicious sweets and desserts in their hands. Yet those sweets are poisoned. Satans in human form have placed poison therein. The second group hold in their hands books and treatises meant for training, as well as ḥalāl food and beverages blessed. They gift them to us, all saying in agreement and perfect seriousness and certainty:

“If you accept the gifts presented to you by the first group to test you and you eat them, you will be hanged on the gallows just like those hanging now upon them in front of you. Yet if, instead of those that were brought by the first group, you accept the gifts that we have come with under the authority of a decree from the Ruler of these lands, and if you read the supplications (du‘ās) and litanies (awrād) contained within these training books and treatises, you will escape from that hanging. Believe with a certainty as great as the clarity of the morning and [believe] as if you have seen it that each of you will take a ticket by which you will win millions of gold coins in this lottery office, as a special bestowal [from that Ruler.] Yet we and these decrees certainly report in certainty and perfect agreement that if you have eaten those forbidden, dubious, poisoned sweets, you too will suffer from pain in your stomach from the effect of that poison, until you ascend to the gallows.” 

Just as in this illustration do one hundred and twenty four thousand prophets report, in agreement, carrying the limitless miracles in their hands that constitute signs of their truthfulness, that a ticket will appear by which the people of faith and obedience will, with a one hundred percent likelihood, win an endlessly eternal, inexhaustible treasury from the lottery of human destinies behind the gallows of fate that we see at all times - with the condition only of having a good end. [On the other hand,] those who persist in shamelessness, ḥarām activity, brazen sin and unbelief, shall receive either a warrant for eternal execution, should they not turn to Allāh in repentance, for those who believe not in Allāh; or a warrant for perpetual, dark solitary imprisonment and an eternal deprivation of happiness for those who believe in the ever-abidingness of the spirit yet persist in futile amusements.

More than one hundred and twenty four million righteous saints report the same (qaddasallāhu asrārahum) - saints who after having witnessed them by means of mystical unveiling (kashf) and spiritual tasting (dhawq) endorse and attest to the traces and shadows of that which those prophets have reported, as if in a cinema. So too do billions of past and present scholars of critical verification (muḥaqqiqīn), (Footnote) independent jurists (mujtahidīn), as well as the elite subtle sages (ṣiddiqīn) verify those reports.

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Footnote: The Book of Light is [itself] one of those critical verifiers (muḥaqqiqīn), which has for twenty years, in all its parts and in full view of all, silenced and through logical arguments compelled obstinate philosophers and stubborn atheists. Anyone can read it, and no one can deny [this]. 

They demonstrated this with conclusive rational proofs, and strong reflective evidence both intellectually and in terms of scholarly consensus, within a certain, evident form; they attest to it, and endorse it.

Whoever does not hearken to that which has been reported by consensus and unanimous testimony and that rests upon decrees by these three great groups - the individuals of which are suns, moons and stars of humanity, these three categories of the people of [Divine] reality, these three lofty, sublime delegations, who are all righteous leaders of mankind; there is no doubt that the person who does not take the straight path that extends onto endless bliss, the path shown by them all and the one who is not concerned by the ninety-nine percent likelihood of awful danger, although were even a single person to report ‘beware, this road is dangerous!’ he would leave the path and instead travel down another, longer path, there is no doubt then that the situation of such a person is absolutely and certainly as follows:

According to the conclusive reports of a limitless number of people, such a person has left the shortest, easiest way, and one hundred percent likely to lead to paradise and eternal bliss. 

He chooses a way that is the most troubled, difficult and long - a road that is ninety-nine percent certain to lead to the prison of hell and to the perpetual deprivation of happiness.

Despite the fact that in this world, he was willing to leave a shorter way for a longer way due to [the claims of] only a single reporter - who could be lying - reporting that that way is dangerous, when the likelihood of that report is only one in a hundred, and the shorter way holds only the possibility of a month’s imprisonment. As a result, he chooses a longer way that is of no benefit to him, only in order to avoid harm. His similitude here is that of demented, wretched, drunk men who care not about the terrifying dragons that they can see in the distance about to overcome them, preferring instead to occupy themselves exclusively with the flies [around them] to the extent that they give importance solely to them, as if they have totally lost their minds, their hearts, their spirits and indeed their humanity.

Since this is the reality of this situation, it is incumbent upon us prisoners to accept the gifts presented by that second, blessed delegation, (13) in order that we are able to fully avenge the tribulation of our having been imprisoned here. That is, this tribulation has put us into this prison for a period of fifteen, or indeed a mere five or ten, or even two or three years, all for the sake of the pleasure of taking revenge that lasts only a single minute or for the sake of the pleasures of shamelessness that last only a few minutes, or at most an hour or two. This has made our world into prison.

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13. This refers to one of the two delegations previously mentioned in the allegory - one holding musical instruments and alcoholic drinks in their hands, and the sweets are poisoned, while the second is holding books and treatises meant for training, as well as ḥalāl food and beverages blessed.

We must then take full revenge upon this tribulation, despite all its best efforts [to prevent us from doing so], by turning an hour or two of our prison time into the worship of a day or two, and by turning two or three years of our punishment into twenty or thirty years of eternal life – by means of the presents given to us by the blessed caravan – by making our ten or twenty year punishment in prison a means to our being saved from the prison of hell that endures for millions of years, making our eternal life laugh in return for the crying of this transient world of ours.

We must show that this prison is a place for training and we must strive to be people who are courteous, trustworthy and beneficial for our country and our nation - such that even the officials, governors and guards of the prison know that the people they thought were criminals, bandits, wretches, killers, shameless and foolish sinners and people who are harmful to the country, are [now], in actual fact, students studying in a blessed school, such that the officials proudly thank Allāh.