The reply to a two‑pronged question that I have been asked tacitly.
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
The First: Why is it that apart from work related to the Risale‑i Nur, you don't want to meet personally with people who have a good opinion of your person and look on you as holding a high station, yet have powerful relations with the Risale-i Nur and whom you love dearly? Why do you prefer to meet with those who don't nurture such a high opinion of you and you pay more attention to them?
The Answer: As I said in the Second Letter of the Thirty‑Third Word, people at this time sell their favours very expensively to those in need. For example, they suppose an unfortunate like myself to be righteous or a saint and give me a loaf of bread, then they want an acceptable prayer in return. But rather than paying such a price, I don't accept the favour. Just as I cite this as a reason for not accepting gifts, so people other than the special students of the Risale-i Nur display powerful interest and services thinking that I hold a high station. In return, in this world they want luminous results like the saints (ehl-i velâyet). Then they perform services for us and evince interest and this implies favours. But because I don't possess the price they want in return for favours of this sort, I am ashamed. Then they are disillusioned when they realize my unimportance and even become slack in their service. It's true that ambition and lack of contentment are acceptable in some ways in matters pertaining to the hereafter, but on our way and in our service — due to certain faults — it leads to complaint and hopelessness arising from disillusionment instead of thanks, and even to the abandonment of service. For this reason, because the contentment of our way leads always to thanks, steadfastness and resoluteness, we are obliged to be content with the fruits and results of our service although we are ambitious and aspiring in the performance of it.
For example, thanks to the service of the Risale‑i Nur, this result has ensured for thousands of believers in Isparta and its environs an extraordinary strength of belief, and is sufficient for our extraordinary service. Even if someone were to appear who was as illustrious as ten spiritual poles and were to raise a thousand people to the level of sainthood, he still could not lower this degree of the Risale-i Nur's achievement. The true students of the Risale-i Nur content themselves with results like this. In place of the heartfelt contentment of that lofty pole's followers, ensured by his extraordinary station and his rulings, the Risale-i Nur's unshakeable proofs satisfy its students to a far greater degree, and, moreover, their state of mind and belief spreads to others and is beneficial for them. The satisfaction of those followers, however, is particular to them and personal.
In fact, what they call in logic qaziye‑i makbûle, that is, accepting without proof the words of the great, does not in logic express certainty and surety; it is only a probable assumption. The certain proofs of logic do not look to the good opinions of people and people who are generally accepted, they look to irrefutable evidence; all the proofs of the Risale-i Nur are of this conclusive type.
For exactly like the realities and truths of belief which the saints experience through their pious acts and worship and asceticism, and on their spiritual journeyings, and which they observe behind veils, the Risale‑i Nur has opened a way to reality in knowledge in place of worship; it has opened up a way leading to the essence of reality within logical proofs and scholarly arguments in place of spiritual journeyings and recitations; it has opened up a way of the greater sainthood directly within the science of theology (kalām), the science of the tenets of belief, and the science of the principles of religion, in place of the science of Sufism and the tarikat. It has conquered the misguidance arising from [modern] science and philosophy, which this age has defeated the currents of Sufism (hakikat ve tarikat cereyanları), as is clear for all to see.
Let there be no mistake in the simile, just as the powerful, logical truth of the Qur'an has delivered other religions from the assaults of naturalist philosophy and its overwhelming them, becoming a point of support and to an extent preserving their fundamental principles, which are based on compliance and not reason; so too, the Risale‑i Nur, a miracle and light of the Qur'an at this time, has saved the imitative faith of the ordinary believers from the assaults of the misguidance arising from materialist philosophy, and as a point of support for all believers, has become an unassailable citadel for those near and far. In the face of today's awesome, unprecedented misguidance, it preserves the ordinary believers' belief from doubts and their Islam from baseless scruples.
Just at the time the believers everywhere, even in India and China, are being shaken by the predominance of the fearsome misguidance of the age, and they are falling into doubt as to the truth of Islam, they hear that a work has appeared that proves conclusively all the truths of belief, and defeating philosophy, silences atheism. Their doubts and scruples disappear, and their belief is saved and strengthened.
The Second Part of the Question: In one of your letters, you described seriously a poetical subtle point, that some birds came to you and your students when your letters were being read and written out. But birds aren't acquainted with the state of the world and don't know the usefulness of the Risale‑i Nur in the face of it, do they?
The Answer: At the divine command and with divine permission and through dominical power and strength, all animals have a shepherd or supervisor from among the angels, as do the birds. Even if they are not aware of it, at the divine command and through dominical inspiration, their shepherd drives them on. That natural impulse results from the inspiration that comes to the birds; they manifest the inspiration. A day‑old bee flies a day's distance in the air through that natural inspiration; through that dominical impulse it returns to its hive without losing its way.
Indeed, just as the globe of the earth objected to the oppression visited on the Risale‑i Nur and its students, and the atmosphere responded with lack of rain and cold to its confiscation, and the clouds applauded with rain on its being returned; so too, the birds may well take interest.
For sure, in the face of the crimes of men which destroy a village and kill a thousand people with the egg of a bomb laid by artificial birds, and those destructive human birds which lay those hellish eggs, and the tyrannous, cruel ruination of the globe and of humankind, those animate birds will applaud the Risale‑i Nur, which illuminates the future so effectively. It is these very subtle points that those letters contain.