True Pleasure

( It was written by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi )

True Pleasure ;

.... In the playground of the High School opposite the prison the older girls were dancing and laughing, but they seemed to me to be like the houris of Hell in that worldly paradise.

They suddenly appeared to me as they would be in fifty years' time, and their laughter had turned into piteous weeping. From this the following truth became apparent.

That is to say, I saw them as they would be in fifty years on an imaginary cinema screen.

I saw that fifty of those sixty laughing girls were suffering the torments of the grave and had become earth.

While ten of them were ugly seventy-year-olds attracting only looks of disgust. I too wept for them.

The true nature of the dissension at the end of time appeared to me.

It seemed to me that its most fearsome and seductive aspect would spring from the shameless faces of women.

Negating free choice, it would cast people into the flames of debauchery, like moths, and make them prefer one minute of the life of this world to years of eternal life.

Another day while watching the street, I noticed a powerful example of this.

I felt great pity for the young people I saw.

While thinking: "These unfortunates cannot save themselves from the fire of these seductive temptations which attract like magnets," a sort of embodiment of all the forces urging apostasy appeared before me, which fans the flames of those temptations and that dissension, and gives instruction in them.

I said to it and to those apostates who follow its lessons and deviate from Islam:

Oh you miserable creatures who sacrifice their religion on the way of taking pleasure with the houris of Hell, and loving it perpetrate depravity on the way of misguidance, who accept irreligion and deviation on the way of the pleasures and lusts of the soul, and worship life, are terrified of death, do not want to remember the grave, and have turned their faces towards apostasy!

You should know definitely that, by reason of your irreligion, this mighty world of yours, the previous hour and the coming minute, all this universe of yours and your past and your future, all your species and races of the past and the creatures and generations of the future, and all the worlds and nations that have gone and all the peoples and communities that will come, all these are completely non-existent and dead.

Therefore, because of the form of your misguidance, all these traveling worlds and flowing universes with which you are connected by reason of your humanity and intellect continuously rain down on your head the severe suffering of a worldful of terrible and innumerable deaths.

If you possessed consciousness, it would be searing your heart. If you had a spirit, it would be scorching it.

If your reason had not been extinguished, it would be drowning in grief. If one short hour of your drunken dissipation and filthy pleasure can make up for this boundless grief, sorrow, and pain, then remain in it.

But if it does not, come to your senses! In order to be saved from that hell, enter the paradise which belief ensures in this world also, and taste the happiness of life, take heed of the lessons of the Qur'an, ex- change a partial, transitory minute's worth of pleasure for the universal, unending, eternal pleasures of belief *


* ( Indeed, belief may produce the pleasures of Paradise in this world too. Consider the following single benefit out of hundreds of pleasurable lights. For example, at the very minute you see someone you love dearly in great danger and dying, a doctor who is like both Loqman the Sage and Khidr arrives. Suddenly your friend is restored to life. What great joy you feel. In the same way, belief gives you happiness and joy to the number of the dead whom you love and with whom you are connected. For through the light of belief, millions of people loved by you in the graveyard of the past are suddenly delivered from extinction and death and resurrected before you. They come to life saying, "We did not die, and we shall not die." In place of the numberless pains resulting from those numberless separations, through belief, the innumerable pleasures and joys arising from union and coming to life may be experienced in this world also. Thus, this shows that "Belief is a seed which produces for those who believe the shoots of Paradise together with all its pleasures and properties in this world, and so too will it produce them in the next." )



Also do not say: "I shall pass my life like an animal", because for an animal the past and the future are hidden, as though non-existent.

By not causing them to realize this, the All-Wise and Compassion- ate One has saved them from innumerable pains.

A hen which is being held down to be slaughtered, even, does not feel any pain or grief.

It wants to feel it as the knife cuts, but the feeling passes and it is saved from that pain, too.

That is to say, God Almighty's most vast and perfect mercy, clemency, and compassion do not make the unseen known to them.

They are more complete for innocent animals in particular. And so, in licentious pleasure you can- not reach the level of the animals; you fall a thousand times lower.

For your intellect sees things that are hidden to animals, and receives pain from them.

You are altogether deprived of the total ease to be found in the veiling of the unseen.

Also, since your good qualities, like brotherhood, respect, and zeal, which are a cause of pride for you, are restricted to a minute point of time and the space of a finger out of a vast desert, and are special to only the present hour out of limitless time, they be- come artificial, temporary, contrived, baseless, and most insignificant, and your humanity and achievements diminish proportionately, and are reduced to ' nothing. Whereas, since the brotherhood, respect, love, and zeal of the believers encompass the past and the future, which are existent by reason of their belief, they elevate their humanity and achievements proportionately.


Also, like a crazy Jewish diamond merchant who gives the price of diamonds for pieces of glass, for your worldly success, you have given the price of a long, permanent, and broad life for a brief, short time and life, so of course you will be dominant within those limits.

Since you address yourself to one minute with a year's worth of such emotions as a fierce greed, love and revenge, you will prevail temporarily over the people of religion.

Also, since your mind, spirit, heart, and feelings have abandoned their exalted duties, and shared and assisted in the vile doings of your base soul and filthy lusts, you will be victorious over the believers in this world. And superficially you will appear more lovable.

For your mind, heart, and spirit have declined, degenerated, and fallen to an extreme degree, and have been transformed, deformed, into filthy lust and despicable soul.

For sure, in this respect you will prevail temporarily, which will gain you Hell, and the wronged people of belief Paradise......

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi