|
A COMPARISON BETWEEN LIVES WITH AND WITHOUT
BELIEF
One day a
number of bright young people came to me1, seeking
an effective deterrent to guard themselves against the danger
arising from modern worldly life, youth, and animal desires.
As I had previously told other young people who sought help, I
also said to them:
Your youth
will definitely disappear and if you do not restrict
yourselves within the limits of the lawful, it will be lost.
Rather than its pleasures, it will bring you suffering and
calamities in this world, in the grave, and in the Hereafter.
If under the Islamic discipline, you use the blessings of
youth in gratitude, chastely and uprightly, and in worship, it
will in effect remain perpetually and be the cause of gaining
eternal youth.
As for life,
if it is without belief, or if belief, because of
rebelliousness, is ineffective, it will produce pains, sorrows
and grief far exceeding the superficial, fleeting enjoyment
and pleasure it brings. As an intelligent, thinking
being, man is (in contrast to animals) intrinsically
connected to the past and the future, as well as to the
present time. He derives both pain and pleasure from
them. Whereas, since the animals do not think, neither the
sorrows arising from the past nor the fears and anxieties
concerning the future, spoil their present pleasure. But if
man has fallen into misguidance and heedlessness, sorrows
arising from the past and anxieties about the future, mar his
particular pleasure, diluting it with pains. Especially if it
is an illicit pleasure, then it is like an altogether
poisonous honey. This means that, with respect to enjoyments
of life, man is a hundred times lower than the animals. In
fact, for the misguided, heedless people, their whole life and
existence, their whole world, consists in the day in which
they find themselves. According to their misguided belief, all
of time past and all past worlds have gone to non-existence.
Their intellects, which connect them to the past and the
future, produce darkness for them. Accordingly with their lack
of belief, the future is also non-existent for them. The
separations that become eternal because of this non-existence
continually darken their lives.
By contrast,
if they build their lives upon belief, then through the light
of belief, both the past and the future will be illuminated
and acquire existence. Like the present time, they provide,
through belief, exalted spiritual pleasures and lights of
existence for their spirit and heart.
Where does the enjoyment and pleasure of life
lie?
So, that is
how life is. If you desire the pleasure and enjoyment of life,
animate your life with belief, and adorn it with religious
obligations. Maintain it by abstaining from sins. As for the
fearsome reality of death, which is demonstrated by instances
of death every day, in every place and time, I shall explain
it to you with a parable in the same way as I explained it to
some other youths.
Let us
suppose a gallows has been set up here in front of our eyes.
Beside it is a lottery office, one which gives tickets for
truly high prizes. We are here ten people, and willingly or
unwillingly, shall certainly be invited there. They may call
us (since the appointed time is unknown) at any moment, and
say either, “Come and mount the gallows for execution!” or “A
prize ticket worth millions of dollars has come up for you;
come and collect it!” While we are waiting for either call,
two people suddenly turn up. One of them is a scantily dressed
woman, beautiful and alluring. She holds in her hand and
offers some apparently very delicious, but in fact poisonous,
sweets, which she wants us to eat. The other is an honest,
solemn man. He enters behind the woman, and says:
“I have
brought you a talisman, a lesson. If you study it, and if you
do not eat the sweets, you will be saved from the gallows.
With this talisman, you will receive your ticket for the
matchless prize. You see with your own eyes that those who eat
the sweets inevitably mount the gallows, and furthermore,
until they mount them, they suffer dreadful stomach pains from
the poison of the sweets. As for those who receive the ticket
for the large prize, it seems that they too mount the gallows.
But millions of witnesses testify that they are not hanged on
the gallows, they use them as a step to enter the prize arena
easily. So, look from the windows! The highest officials, the
high-ranking persons concerned with this business announce
with loud voices, ‘Just as you see clearly with your own eyes
those mounting the gallows to be hanged, so also know with
utmost certainty that those with the talisman receive the
ticket for the prize.’”
As in the
parable, the dissolute, religiously forbidden pleasures of
youth, which are like poisonous sweets, are the cause of
losing belief-and belief is the ticket to an eternal treasury
and a document for everlasting happiness. Those who indulge in
them are subject to death, which is like the gallows, and to
the tribulations of the grave, which is the door to eternal
darkness. The appointed hour of death is unknown, therefore,
its executioner, not differentiating between young and old,
may come at any time to cut off your head. Give up the
religiously forbidden pleasures (which are like the poisonous
sweets) and acquire the Quranic talisman (belief and
performing religious obligations). One hundred and twenty-four
thousand Prophets, upon them be peace, together with
innumerable saints, have proclaimed that you will get to the
treasury of eternal happiness if you do so. They have also
shown the signs and evidences of it.
Youth spent in indulgences
In short:
Youth will pass. If it is wasted in indulgences, it results in
thousands of misfortunes and pains both in this world and the
next. Perhaps you want to understand how such youths end up in
hospitals with mental and physical diseases, mainly because of
their abuse, and in prisons or hostels for the destitute as a
result of their excesses, and in bars because of the distress
provoked by their spiritual unease. Then, go and inquire at
the hospitals, prisons and cemeteries.
For sure you
will hear from most of the hospitals the moans and groans of
those ill from dissipation and debauchery resulting from the
appetites of youth. Also you will hear from the prisons the
regretful sighs of unhappy wretches, suffering for illicit
actions mostly resulting from the excesses of their youth.
Again, you will come to know this truth as testified by the
saints who can discern the life of the grave, and affirmed by
exacting scholars of truth. Most of the torments of the
grave-that Intermediate Realm the doors of which continuously
open and shut for those who enter it-are the result of
misspent youth.
Also, ask
the old and the sick, who form the majority of mankind. Most
certainly the great majority of them will answer you with
grief and regret, “Alas! We wasted our youth in frivolities,
indeed harmfully. Be careful, never do as we did!” A man
subjects himself, for the sake of the illicit pleasures of a
short period of youth, to years of grief and sorrow in this
world, torment and harm in the Intermediate Realm, and the
severe punishment of Hell in the Hereafter. Despite being in a
most pitiable situation, he does not deserve pity. For one who
freely consents to indulge in harmful actions is not worthy of
pity.
May Almighty
God save us and you from the alluring temptations of this age
and preserve us against them. Amen.
1.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi |
|
