In His Name, be He glorified! And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise
Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!
My Dear, Loyal, Blessed Brothers!
Firstly: We considered it appropriate to tell you a summary of a lesson that was given at the request of the leading students of the Medresetü'z‑Zehrâ. The lesson's subject was the Prophet's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) — the Pride of the Universe and Result of the World's Creation — saying the following in place of the greetings on the Night of the Ascension in the divine presence, on account of all the beings in existence and in the name of humankind, indeed, of all living beings and all creatures:
Salutations, blessings, benedictions, and supplications, and good words — all are God's! Since each of these words expresses a universal meaning and all the Islamic community recites them in the prescribed prayers (ṣalāt) many times every day, each of all the believers of all levels has a share in them. In connection with this and with the fact that by means of the radio the element air displays wondrous miracles of power, as was explained previously in the Addendum to the Point About the Air, the following was imparted to my heart:
“It is understood from allusions in the Qur'an that for a believer, the worship he performs in this brief worldly life produces an everlasting domain in everlasting happiness, so when his worship becomes universal, he worships together with his private world and will receive a reward as extensive as his world.” Then the universal meanings of the words: Salutations, blessings, etc., which are explained in the discussion about divine knowledge in the Second Station of The Shining Proof, occurred to my spirit, and when reciting Salutations in the tashahhud of the prayers, the four elements of my private world — earth, water, air, and light — suddenly appeared to my imagination as four universal tongues. Each tongue was reciting through the tongue of disposition millions and trillions of:
Salutations, blessings, benedictions, and supplications, and good words — all are God's!
I saw this with my imagination.
As the tongues of the element earth, living beings are all living words and declare: Salutations! For a handful of earth may act as a flowerpot for most flora and be a source for them. So either there has to be found in every handful of earth miniscule factories to the numbers of all the factories mankind has ever built, which is totally absurd, or this occurs through the limitless power and infinite knowledge and will of an Absolutely Omnipotent One. That is to say, in displaying this ability, the element earth utters with all its parts and particles the words, Salutations to God! (al‑taḥīyyātu lillāh) in uncountable numbers. That is to say, all the gifts living beings offer from pre-eternity to post-eternity through their lives are the Necessarily Existent One's alone.
Then, like in everyone's private world, the second element of my private world, water, with all its atoms and particularly with regard to being the source of living beings and serving their lives, was disseminating through the universe through the tongue of disposition millions and trillions of the blessed word blessings (al‑mubārakāt). For the duties that the droplets of water perform in the awakening of seeds and grains and in the seeds manifesting their innate functions, and in the perfect, orderly duties of those most beautiful and wondrous tiny creatures and young, and in the circumstances of those blessed beings, which cause all conscious beings to exclaim: “How great are God's blessings! What wonders God wills!” — for all those tasks and duties to be performed each atom of the element water would have to possess the knowledge of thousands of Platos and the will and wisdom of thousands of Luqmans the Wise. And this is absurd to the number of atoms of water. In which case, those blessed beings manifest those countless miracles through the boundless power, mercy, wisdom, and will of a Most Powerful One of Glory, a Most Merciful and Compassionate One, and they all utter the words All blessings are God's (al‑mubārakāt li-llāh) to their number. Since this is so, on the night of the Ascension, the Prophet Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the Result of the World's Creation, declared All blessings are God's! in the name of all creatures. That is, since all these states and arts, which prompt acclaim and applause and cause one to exclaim, “What wonders God has willed! All blessings are God's!” proceed from the power of the All‑Glorious One alone, the Prophet (UWBP) offered all those blessings to God Almighty in His presence.
Then, since all the atoms of a handful of the element air in everyone's private world — even those expended when uttering the word “Hū!” (He) declare, All benedictions are God's (al‑ṣalawāt li-llāh), which signifies all the supplications, orisons, entreaties, and worship present in the duties they manifest of receiving and transmitting sounds, and since they offer those trillions upon trillions of words to their Maker and Creator with a universal tongue, the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) offered them and their universal meaning to Almighty God, also saying, All benedictions are God's! That is to say, all supplications and entreaties arising from need, and thanks proceeding from bounties, and worship and prayers, are due to the Creator of All Things alone.
Otherwise, as is explained in the Addendum to the Point About the Air, each atom of air in the handful expended when uttering the word “Hū!” (He) would have to possess absolute power and will with which to know all languages, and see where the speakers are located, and hear everything near and far, and understand all accents and idioms and many other things besides, and do all this without confusing them, which of course is absurd to the number of those atoms. Since this is so, without doubt and of necessity each of those atoms points to and testifies to the All‑Wise Maker together with all His attributes. Simply, each testifies to Him as the great world testifies to Him, but to a lesser extent.
That is to say, All benedictions are God's! was pronounced during Muhammad's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) Ascension, invoking blessings to the number of atoms of air.
Then, as a universal tongue, the element of light and fire — that is, the element light, physical and non‑physical, with and without heat — utters with the tongue of disposition in boundless and infinite fashion and with countless tongues: Good words — all are God's! That is, all fine words, lovely meanings, and exquisite beauties, and the manifestations of the pre‑eternal Most Beautiful Names whose splendour is seen on the face of the cosmos; and the beauties of the universe and creatures apparent through the belief of foremost the prophets, saints, and purified ones, and of all the believers, and the praise, acclaim, thanks, glorifications, and declarations of God's oneness, unity, and greatness proceeding from their belief, which, in accordance with the verse Unto Him arise all good words , all rise to the Sublime Throne, as do the countless beauties and fine words on the first of the world's three faces, the face which acts as a mirror to the divine names, and the innumerable good deeds and good things and spiritual fruits and beauties on its second face, which is the seedbed for the hereafter. Intending to ascribe all these beauties to the All‑Powerful One of Glory, the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, the Glory of the Universe (Upon whom be blessings and peace) declared: Good words all are God's! offering to the All‑Worshipped One of Glory in the name of all creatures this universal worship offered with the universal tongue of the element of light and fire. For all the duties the element light, both physical and non-physical, performs point to the Necessarily Existent One both all together and singly and testify to Him in countless millions of ways.
Like earth, air, and water, the element light and fire demonstrates self‑evidently and decisively in all those ways that causes are merely a veil. All effects and creations are the All-Powerful One of Glory's. For similarly to existence and life, light is worthy of being touched by divine power without veil and since external causes in no way act as a screen, it displays divine oneness within divine unity. Even in an extremely minor and particular duty, it displays universal and extensive evidence of divine oneness. This has been proved very briefly in A Point About the Air and its addenda. The following are two small examples out of millions.
The First: A small manifestation of non‑physical light in a person's head in the form of knowledge, were the words of the ninety books inscribed in his memory, which is the size a fingernail. He could only complete a reading of them by reciting from the page of his memory a part of them for three hours every day for three months. And the same man could refer at will to the meanings, words, and forms and sounds in his memory that he had heard and seen in his eighty-year lifetime and the things that had excited his curiosity, and could see the things preserved there, so many as to fill a library, all written out and stacked in order.
If it had not been for the vast extent of that retentive faculty, the size of a fingernail, and its all‑embracing light like the sun, and its non-physical luminescence, and its pages as broad as the face of the earth, the man could not do those things. Since it would be totally impossible and absurd, the tiny faculty of memory testifies that the Absolutely Knowedgeable One creates in man's head with His knowledge, wisdom, and power a sample of the Preserved Tablet, which a page of His determining and power.
A Second, Small Example is electricity. A man studied the strange set‑ up of his electric lamp. He saw that although the atoms and materials of its hundreds of buttons and centres and metal wires were lifeless, unconscious, and inactive, on the slightest contact the darkness filling ten square kilometres instantaneously disappeared and in half a second the area was filled with light. The visible darkness suddenly disappearing and the light appearing certainly was not imagination.
Either those lifeless, unconscious atoms that made the contact both carried within themselves a boundless power and light, and suddenly stretched out their hands to places a hundred kilometres away and chasing away the darkness, filled them with light, which all the satans, atheists, and materialists could not make even a Sophist believe, even if they all came together;
or it occurs through the power and wisdom of the All‑Powerful of Glory, the One All-Knowing of the Unseen, the Absolutely Knowledgeable One, whose rule extends over the whole universe, and from whose name of Light all lights receive their effulgence, and is the Light of Lights, the Creator of Light, and the Dispenser of Light. There are countless other examples like these two.
Thus, just as Good words — all are God's! signifies the universe offering to the All‑Glorious One through the tongue of the element light, all the lights, beauties, fine things, good words, virtues, and perfections in all beings; so too, did Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the result of the universe's creation and the reason for the world's creation, declare on the night of the Ascension in the name of all the beings in the universe, of which he was the representative, Good words — all are God's!
After the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace to the number of atoms in existence) had uttered these four meaningful phrases in place of the greetings, as is explained in the Risale‑i Nur, Almighty God responded by saying: Peace be upon you, O Prophet! as though indicating that all his community would utter the same words, and as an order and command, and acceptance. Then by saying: Peace be upon us and upon all God's righteous servants!, he included within the sacred greeting, both himself, and his community, and all his peers who had preceded him, and showing that it was a universal and general greeting, he included also all creatures, of which he was the representative.
When the members of his community say: Peace be upon you, O Prophet! in the prayers, they are complying with the command and decree contained in that divine greeting. They are also paying allegiance to him. And every day they reiterate and renew their allegiance, that is, their acceptance of his office and their obedience to the decrees he brought. Their utterance is also congratulations on his messengership. Also, with these words the whole world of Islam every day express their thanks for his having brought the good news of eternal happiness.
Just as each person feels grieved at the annihilation of his being, so he is pained at the destruction of his house; and he is harrowed at the spoiliation of his country; and he feels grievous pain at the death of his friends and at separation from them; and on thinking of the passing of his personal world, which is as wide as the world itself, and its separations, and that world finally disappearing, his spirit and conscience are seared with hellish pain. So, on condition they are not completely lacking in spirit, heart, and intelligence, all sensible persons will understand the good news of everlasting happiness that Muhammad the Arabian (Upon whom be blessings and peace) saw with his own eyes on the night of the Ascension and the glad tidings of the believers' eternal life in Paradise and that those they love and are attached to have not been annihilated and that it is certain that they will again meet with them after their disappearance. In response to this joyous gift, just as the whole world of Islam every day declares: Peace be upon you, O Prophet! so too, in response to the pages and levels of the cosmos becoming letters of the Eternally Besought One through the gift he brought, and the true value and perfections of creatures becoming apparent through his messengership, all creatures declare tacitly through the tongue of this truth: Peace be upon you, O Prophet!
Furthermore, the members of his community greeting one another with the words Peace be upon you! is a practice of the Prophet (UWBP) (Sunna) and one ray of this vast truth.
The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!Saîd Nursî