THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH STEPS: Revelations and inspirations

 

 

Then that traveler, who is journeying with their mind and heart, begins to look at the Realm of the Unseen more closely. Knocking inquisitively on the door of that world in order to learn its message, they think to himself: “It is obvious that behind the veil of the Unseen is One Who wills to make Himself known through all these innumerable, finely adorned artifacts in the visible world; He wills to make Himself loved through these countless, sweet, and adorned bounties, and to make His hidden Perfections known through these uncountable, miraculous, and skilful works of Art. It is clear that there is One Who reveals His will to make Himself known and loved, and to make His hidden Perfections known, in a manner more manifest than speech. Given this, just as He reveals His will through acts and deeds, it is clear that He must also make Himself known and loved through speech. Thus, we must know Him from His manifestations with regard to the World of the Unseen.” Thinking this, the traveler enters that world with their heart and sees the following with the eye of their intellect:

The truth of the Revelations prevails at all times throughout the World of the Unseen as the most powerful means of manifestation. A testimony to God’s Existence and Unity that is much more powerful than that of the universe and its contents proceeds from the One All-Knowing of the Unseen through the truths of Revelation and inspiration. He does not restrict the recognition and affirmation of Himself, His Existence, and Unity to the testimony of His creatures alone. Rather, He speaks with a pre-eternal Speech which befits His own Being. The Speech of the One Who is Omnipresent everywhere with His Knowledge and Power is also infinite, and just as the meaning of His Speech makes Him known, His discourse also makes Himself known together with His Attributes.

The truth of Revelation has been established and made clear to a self-evident degree through the consensus of more than one hundred thousand Prophets, may peace be upon them, and through the fact that all the instructions and proclamations of these Prophets are based on Divine Revelation; it has also been made clear through the evidence and miracles contained in the sacred Books and heavenly Scrolls, which are the fruits of Revelation and guides for all human beings, the overwhelming majority of whom have confirmed the truths therein. Realizing this, the traveler understands further that the truth of Revelation sets forth the following five sacred realities.

THE FIRST REALITY: Revelation is a form of Divine kindness or condescension and is described  as “God’s lowering His speech to the level of human capacity so that they can understand it.” God enables all of His conscious creatures to speak and understands their speeches, so it is a requirement of His being the Lord of all creation that He participates in them with His own speech.

THE SECOND REALITY: The One Who, in order to make Himself known, has created a universe filled with miraculous, invaluable artifacts that cause countless tongues to speak of His Perfections, will, self-evidently, make Himself known with His own words also.

THE THIRD REALITY: It is a characteristic of His being the Creator that God responds with His speech, as He does with His deeds, to the supplications and thanks that are offered by the most select, the neediest, the most delicate and the most ardent of His beings—those who are truly human.

THE FOURTH REALITY: The attribute of speech, which is an essential requirement of knowledge and life and a luminous manifestation of both, will by necessity be found in a comprehensive and eternal form in the Being Who has comprehensive Knowledge and eternal Life.

THE FIFTH REALITY: It is a consequence of Divinity that the Being Who endows His most loved and lovable, His most anxious and indigent creatures—those who are most in need of a point of reliance and who are most desirous of finding their Owner and Master—with innate impotence and yearning, poverty and need, worries about the future, and love and adoration—it is a consequence of His Divinity that He should communicate His own Existence to them by way of His speech. Thus, the universal, heavenly Revelations, which involve the realities of God’s lowering His speech to the level of human understanding, His will as the Lord to make Himself known, and His merciful response, majestic conversation, and self-communication as the Eternally Besought One, bear unanimous witness to the Existence and Unity of the Necessarily Existent One. This testimony is a proof that is more powerful than the testimony of the rays of sunlight to the existence of the sun. This is what the traveler has come to understand.

The traveler then considers the gift of inspiration and sees that true inspiration resembles the Revelation in one respect and is a form of the Lord’s discourse. However, Revelation and inspiration differ in two respects:

THE FIRST DIFFERENCE: Revelation, which is much more exalted than inspiration, is generally conveyed by angels, whereas inspiration generally comes directly.

For example, a king has two ways to speak and communicate his orders. The first is that, in the name of the glory of his kingdom and his sovereignty over the whole country, he sends a lieutenant to a governor. Sometimes, in order to demonstrate the magnificence of his sovereignty and the importance of his imperial order, he may hold a meeting with his lieutenant, and then the decree is conveyed to the governor. The second is that he speaks on his private phone, not with the title of monarch or in the name of kingship, but in his own person, to a trusted servant or some ordinary subject with whom he has a special relationship or a particular business.

Similarly, the Pre-Eternal Sovereign may either, with the Name, the Lord of all the worlds and with the Title, the Creator of the universe, speak through Revelation or the comprehensive inspiration that has the function of Revelation, or He may speak in a private fashion, as the Lord and Creator of every and each living being, from behind a veil and in accordance with the capacities of the addressee.

THE SECOND DIFFERENCE: Revelation is clear, pure and reserved for the most elect. Inspiration, however, is not as clear as Revelation; colors may intervene in it and it is more general. There are numerous different kinds of inspiration, such as that which comes to angels, that which occurs to human beings, and that which is vouchsafed to animals; inspiration thus forms a field for the multiplication of God’s words to the extent of the drops in the oceans. The traveler understands that the multiplication of God’s words is a kind of commentary on the verse: Say: “If all the sea were ink to write my Lord’s words, the sea would indeed be exhausted before my Lord’s words would be exhausted, even if We were to bring the like of it in addition to it.” (18:109)

Then the traveler looks at nature, wisdom, testimony, and the result of inspiration and sees that they comprise the following four lights:

THE FIRST LIGHT: This emerges because God is the All-Loving and the All-Merciful and thus He makes Himself loved through word, presence, and conversation just as He makes Himself loved by His creatures through His deeds.

THE SECOND LIGHT: This is a consequence of God’s being the All-Compassionate; in the same way that He answers His servants’ prayers in the form of deeds, He also answers them in words, from behind veils.

THE THIRD LIGHT: God’s Lordship demands that just as He responds in deed to the pleas and cries for help of those creatures of His who have been afflicted with grievous tribulations and hardships, He also comes to their aid with words of inspiration, which are like a form of His speech.

THE FOURTH LIGHT: Just as God makes His existence, presence, and protection perceptible through His deeds to those among His conscious creatures who are poor, weak, and most in need of finding their Master, Protector, Guardian, and Preserver, it is also a consequence of His being the All-Affectionate Deity and the All-Compassionate Lord that He should also communicate His presence and existence by speech, through the filter of true inspiration—a mode of His discourse as the Lord—to individuals in a manner befitting them and their capacities, through the “telephone” of their hearts. This the traveler has come to understand.

The traveler then looks at the testimony of inspiration and sees that, for example, if the sun possessed consciousness and life, with the seven colors in its light being its seven attributes— like the seven positive or affirmative Attributes of God—then it would also possess a kind of speech through the rays and manifestations of its light. As it has reflections and images in all transparent things, it would speak to all mirrors, shining objects, fragments of glass, bubbles and droplets of water in accordance with the capacity of each. It would respond to the needs of everything in which it is reflected and all of these would testify to the existence of the sun. Furthermore, none of its acts would form obstacles to other acts, and addressing one object would not prevent it from addressing all other objects simultaneously. Similarly, the Speech of the Sun of Eternity, the eternal All-Majestic Sovereign, the All-Glorious, All-Gracious Creator of all things, Which is universal and all-encompassing, like His Knowledge and Power, manifests Itself according to the capacity of each thing or being. Its response to one request does not form an obstacle to Its response to all other requests, nor does any task It performs prevent Its fulfillment of other tasks. No matter how many beings It addresses, It never becomes confused. The traveler comes to understand, to the degree of certainty based on knowledge and vision, that all these manifestations, conversations, and inspirations—separately and together—bear unanimous witness to the Omnipresence and necessary Existence of that Sun of Eternity and to His Unity and Oneness.

In a brief reference to the lesson the inquisitive traveler has received regarding knowledge of God from the World of the Unseen, it was said in The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Steps of The First Station:

There is no deity but God, the Necessarily Existent One, the Single and the All-Unique, Whose Necessary Existence in His Unity is demonstrated clearly by the consensus of all true Revelations that involve God’s lowering His Speech to the level of human understanding, His glorious discourses, His self-communication as the Lord, His responses to the pleas of His servants as the All-Merciful, and His indications of His Existence to His creatures as the Eternally Besought One. His necessary Existence in His Unity is also demonstrated by the unanimous agreement of all veracious inspirations that involve instances of God’s making Himself loved, His responses to the prayers of His creatures as the All-Merciful, His responses to the appeals of His servants for help as their Lord, and His intimations of His Existence and Omnipresence to His creatures as the All-Glorified.

Said Nursi