SHUUNAT-I ILAHIYE

A person’s or a thing’s pleasure, good and beauty are judged according to those who receive and manifest them, not according to their opposites. For example, generosity is a beautiful and praiseworthy virtue. Generous people receive far greater pleasure from the happiness of those whom they have favored than from their superiority to others in generosity. Caring and compassionate people feel greater pleasure in proportion to the comfort of those for whom they feel compassion. For example, a mother’s compassion for her children causes her to have such a great and strong pleasure in her children’s happiness and well-being that she nearly sacrifices her life for them. The pleasure of such compassion even causes a hen to attack a dog to protect her young.

Thus, since the true pleasure, beauty, and perfection of laudable virtues and praiseworthy qualities are judged according to that with which they are related, not to their likes or opposites,  for sure, the beauty of the Mercy of One of Beauty, Grace and Perfection, the All-Living and Self-Subsistent, the All-Kind and Caring, the All-Bounteous and Favoring, the All-Merciful and the All-Compassionate, should be considered in view of those toward whom He has mercy. According to the degree of happiness and well-being of those whom He favors with His mercy, particularly their enjoyment of His bounties in Paradise, the All-Merciful and All-Compassionate One feels what we call sacred love, sacred pleasure, sacred exhilaration, and sacred joy. All of these accord with His Holy, Transcendent Being, and are infinitely greater, as well as more sacred, elevated, and refined, than their counterparts in creation.

You may see one manifestation of this mighty truth’s comprehensive meaning via the following comparison: Suppose a kind, compassionate, and generous man wills to feed some very poor, hungry, and destitute people. So, he prepares a banquet on his fine ship and watches them from above while they eat. You may understand how much their enjoyment of the food in gratitude and their happiness in praise and thankfulness please and exhilarate that noble and generous person.

Similarly, the All-Merciful and All-Compassionate One has spread out a vast food-laden table on the face of the earth, which He causes to travel in the space with all of its inhabitants. He feeds all living beings, primarily including humanity, jinn and animals, from the food on this table and invites his hungry and needy servants to Paradise’s everlasting gardens. He prepares each garden as if it were a magnificent table laid out with all kinds of food and drink , which are of pure pleasure and delight. Consider the pleasure and happiness that the above-mentioned person feels at his guests’ enjoyment, although he is not the true owner of what he offers, and then compare it with the indescribable sacred love and pleasure felt by the All-Merciful One.

Also consider this: A skillful technician invents something like a gramophone which plays without records. If it works and gives the desired results perfectly, how proud its inventor will feel and how pleased he will be. He will but utter, “How beautiful! May God bless this!” The All-Majestic Maker has invented the vast universe (in general) and the earth with each creature in it (in particular), especially our head, as such a Divine gramophone or orchestra that science should be lost in admiration. Each creature displays the expected results to the utmost degree and in a very beautiful way. Their obedience to God’s laws of creation and life, which compromise their worship, glorification, and specific praise and exaltation of Him, as well as the attainment of Divine purposes for their lives, please Him to a degree beyond our comprehension.

Or, say a just judge receives great pleasure from doing and establishing justice, and becomes extremely happy when able to restore the rights of the oppressed. Compare with this the sacred meanings arising from the reality that the Absolutely Just Ruler, the All-Majestic Overwhelming One, gives all creatures the right of existence and protects and maintains their existence and lives against aggression, restores rights in the universe, and acts with justice. Compare with this especially the sacred meanings to arise from the fact that he will judge humanity and jinn in the Hereafter and establish absolute justice.

As in the examples above, each Divine Name contains many sorts or degrees of beauty, grace, and perfection, as well as many levels of love, pride, honor, and grandeur. This is why exacting saintly scholars honored with the manifestation of the Divine Name the All-Loving, have concluded: “The essence of the universe is love. All creatures move with the motive of love. All laws of attraction, rapture,and gravity originate in love.” One of them even said:

The spheres are intoxicated, and so are angels and stars; The heavens, the sun, the moon, and the earth are all intoxicated. Intoxicated are the elements and plants, and trees and human beings. All animate beings are intoxicated, and so are all atoms of creation.

Every creature is intoxicated, according to its capacity, with the “wine” of Divine love. People love those who are kind to them as well as true perfection and transcendent beauty. They also love those who are kind to those whom they love and for whom they have mercy.

Given this, we can understand that the All-Gracious and Beautiful One of Majesty, the All-Loved of Perfection, in each of Whose Names are innumerable treasuries of kindness, Who makes all those whom we love happy with His favors and is the source of countless perfections and levels of beauty and grace, is worthy of infinite love and the creation’s intoxication with His love. This is why some saints who have been honored with the manifestation of the Divine Name the All-Loving have said: “We do not even want Paradise. A gleam of the Divine love is eternally sufficient for us,” and why, as Prophet Muhammad said: “All single minute spent in beholding the Divine Beauty in Paradise excels all the bounties of Paradise.”

So, perfect love and perfections attained through love are possible within the spheres of Divine Unity and Oneness, displayed, respectively, through the universal manifestations of Divine Names on beings as a whole and their particular manifestations on individuals, Any perfections imagined outside those spheres are false.

 

 

Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said., The Words, Tughra Books, 2010.