If you want to understand a little about the talisman of the wisdom of the world and the riddle of man’s creation and the mystery of the reality of the prescribed prayers, then consider this short comparison

The Eleventh Word

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
By the sun and its glorious splendour; * By the moon as it follows it; * By the
day as it shows [the sun’s] glory; * By the night as it conceals it; * By the
firmament and its wonderful structure; * By the earth and its wide expanse; * By
the soul and the order and proportion given it.  Qur’an, 91:1-7.

Brother! If you want to understand a little about the talisman of the wisdom of the
world and the riddle of man’s creation and the mystery of the reality of the prescribed
prayers, then consider this short comparison together with my own soul.
One time there was a king. As wealth he had numerous treasuries containing
diamonds and emeralds and jewels of every kind. Besides these he had other, hidden,
wondrous treasuries. By way of attainment he had consummate skill in strange arts, and
encompassing knowledge of innumerable wondrous sciences, and great erudition in
endless branches of abstruse learning. Now, like every possessor of beauty and perfection
wants to see and display his own beauty and perfection, that glorious king wanted to open
up an exhibition and set out displays within it in order to make manifest and display in
the view of the people the majesty of his rule, his glittering wealth, the wonders of his art,
and the marvels of his knowledge, and so that he could behold his beauty and perfection
in two respects:

The First Respect: so that he himself could behold them with his own discerning eye.
The Other: so that he could look through the view of others.
With this purpose in mind, the king started to construct a vast and majestic palace.
He divided it into magnificent apartments and dwellings, and decorated it with every sort
of jewel from his treasuries, and with his own hand so full of art adorned it with the finest
and most beautiful works. He ordered it with the subtlest of the arts of his wisdom, and
decked it out with the miraculous works of his knowledge. Then after completing it, he
set up in the palace broad tables containing the most delicious of every kind of food
and every sort of bounty. He specified an appropriate table for each group. He set out
such a munificent and artful banquet that it was as though the boundless priceless
bounties he spread out had come into existence through the works of a hundred subtle
arts. Then he invited his people and subjects from all the regions of his lands to feast and
behold the spectacle.

Later the king appointed a Supreme Commander (PBUH) as teacher, to make known
the purposes of the palace and the meanings of its contents; to describe its Maker and its
contents to the people, make known the secrets of the palace’s embellishments, teach
what the arts within it were pointing to, and to explain what the well-set jewels were, and
the harmonious embroideries; and to explain to those who entered the palace the way in
which they indicated the perfections and arts of the palace’s owner, and to inform them of
the correct conduct in beholding them, and to explain the official ceremonies as the king,
who did not appear, wished them to be. The teacher and instructor had an assistant in
each area of the palace, while he himself remained in the largest apartment among his
students, making the following announcement to all the spectators.

He told them:
“O people! By making this palace and displaying these things our lord, who is the
king of the palace, wants to make himself known to you. You therefore should recognize
Him and try to get to know Him. And with these adornments He wants to make Himself
loved by you. Also, He shows His love for you through these bounties that you see, so
you should love Him too by obeying Him. And through these bounties and gifts which
are to be seen He shows His compassion and kindness for you, so you should show your
respect for Him by offering thanks. And through these works of His perfection He wants
to display His transcendent beauty to you, so you should show your eagerness to see Him
and gain His regard. And through placing a particular stamp and special seal and an
inimitable signet on every one of these adorned works of art that you see, He wants to
show that everything is particular to Him, and is the work of His own hand, and that He is
single and unique and independent and removed. You therefore should recognize that He
is single and alone, and without peer or like or match, and accept that He is such.” He
spoke further fitting words to the spectators like these concerning the King and this
station. Then the people who had entered the palace separated into two groups.

The First Group: Since these people had self-knowledge, were intelligent, and their
hearts were in the right place, when they looked at the wonders inside the palace, they
declared: “There are great matters afoot here!” They understood that it was not in vain or
some trifling plaything. They were curious, and while wondering: “I wonder what the
talisman to this is and what it contains,” they suddenly heard the speech the Master and
Instructor was giving, and they realized that the keys to all the mysteries were with
him. So they approached him and said: “Peace be upon you, O Master! By rights, a
truthful and exact instructor like you is necessary for a magnificent palace such as this.
Please tell us what our Lord has made known to you!” First of all the Master repeated the
speech to them. They listened carefully, and accepting it, profited greatly. They acted as
the King wished. And because the King was pleased at their becoming conduct and
manners, he invited them to another special, elevated, ineffable palace. And he bestowed
it on them in a way worthy of such a munificent king, and fitting for such obedient
subjects, and suitable for such well-mannered guests, and appropriate to such an elevated
palace. He made them permanently happy.

As for the Second Group, because their minds were corrupted and their hearts
extinguished, when they entered the palace, they were defeated by their evil-commanding
souls and took notice of nothing apart from the delicious foods; they closed their eyes to
all the virtues and stopped up their ears to the guidance of the Master (PBUH) and the
warnings of his students. They stuffed themselves like animals then sank into sleep. They
quaffed elixirs which had been prepared for certain other matters and were not to have
been consumed. Then they became drunk and started shouting so much they greatly upset
the other spectating guests. They were ill-mannered in the face of the Glorious Maker’s
rules. So the soldiers of the palace’s owner arrested them, and cast them into a prison
appropriate to such unmannerly people.

O friend who is listening to this story with me! Of course you have understood that
the Glorious Creator built this palace for the above-mentioned aims. The achievement of
these aims is dependent on two things:

The First: The existence of the Master (PBUH) whom we saw and whose speech we
heard. Because if not for him, all the aims would have been futile. For an
incomprehensible book with no author consists only of meaningless paper.

The Second is the people listening the Master’s words and accepting them. That is to
say, the Master’s existence is the cause of the palace’s existence, and the people’s
listening to him is the cause of the continuation of the palace’s existence. In which case,
it may be said that if it had not been for the Master (PBUH), the Glorious King would not
have built the palace. And again it may be said that when the people do not heed the
Master’s (PBUH) instructions, the palace will of a certainty be transformed and changed.

Friend! The story ends here. If you have understood the meaning of the comparison,
come and behold its reality.

The palace is this world. Its roof is the heavens illuminated with smiling stars, and its
floor, the face of the earth adorned from east to west with multifarious flowers. As for the
King, he is the Most Holy One, the Pre-Eternal and Post-Eternal Monarch, Whom all
things in the seven heavens and the
earth glorify and extol, each with its particular tongue. He is a king so powerful He
created the heavens and earth in six days, then abided on the Throne. One of Power and
Majesty, Who, alternating night and day like two threads, one white and one black, writes
His signs of the page of the universe; One to Whose command the sun, moon, and stars
are subjugated. The apartments of the palace are the eighteen thousand worlds, each of
which has been set in order and decorated in a fashion suitable to it. The strange arts you
saw in the palace are the miracles of Divine power you see in this world, and the foods
you saw there allude to the wonderful fruits of Divine mercy in this world, especially in
summer, and above all in the gardens of Barla. The stove and kitchen there is the earth
here, which has fire in its heart, and the face of the earth. While the jewels of the hidden
treasuries you saw in the comparison are the similitudes of the manifestations of the
sacred Divine Names. And the embroideries there, and the signs of the embroideries, are
the well-ordered and finely worked beings and the harmonious impresses of the pen of
power which adorn this world and point to the Names of the All-Powerful One of Glory.
As for the Master, he is our Master Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him).
His assistants are the prophets (Peace be upon them), and his students, the saints and
purified scholars. The ruler’s servants in the palace indicate the angels (Peace be upon
them) in this world. And the guests invited to the banquet to spectate in the comparison
are the jinn and mankind in this guest-house of the world, and the animals, who are the
servants of mankind. As for the two groups, one of them here consists of the people of
belief, who are the students of the All-Wise Qur’an, the interpreter of the verses and signs
of the book of the universe. The other group consists of the people of unbelief and
rebellion, who follow Satan and their evil-commanding souls; deaf and dumb, like
animals, or even lower, they form the group of the misguided, who recognize the life of
this world only.

FIRST GROUP: These are the felicitous and the good, who listened to the Master,
‘the Possessor of Two Wings.’ He is both the worshipping servant of God; in regard to
worship he describes his Sustainer so that he is like the envoy of his community at the
Court of Almighty God. He is also God’s Messenger; with regard to Messengership he
conveys his Sustainer’s decrees to men and the jinn by means of the Qur’an.
This happy community heeded the Messenger and listened to the Qur’an. They saw
themselves invested with the prescribed prayers, which are the index of all the varieties
of worship, and numerous subtle duties within elevated stations. Indeed, they saw in
detail the duties and stations which the prayers point to with their various formulas and
actions. It was like this:

Firstly: Since they observed the Divine works, and in the form of a transaction in the
absence of the person concerned, saw themselves in the station
of observing the wonders of the sovereignty of dominicality, they performed the duty of
extolling and glorifying God, declaring: “God is Most Great!”

Secondly: Through being seen in the station of herald of His brilliant and wonderful
works, which are the manifestations of the sacred Divine Names, exclaiming: “Glory be
to God! All Praise be to God!”, they performed the duty of hallowing and praising God.

Thirdly: In the station of perceiving and understanding with their inner and outer
senses the bounties stored up in the treasuries of Divine mercy, they started to carry out
the duty of thanks and praise.

Fourthly: In the station of weighing up with the scales of their spiritual faculties the
jewels in the treasuries of the Divine Names, they began the duty of praise and declaring
God to be free of all fault.

Fifthly: In the station of studying the Sustainer’s missives, written with the pen of
power on the plan of Divine Determining, they began the duty of contemplation and
appreciation.

Sixthly: With beholding the subtle, delicate, fine beauties in the creation of things
and in the art in beings, in the station of declaring God to be free of all defect, they took
up the duty of love and yearning for their All-Glorious Creator, their All-Beauteous
Maker. That is to say, after looking at the universe and works and performing the duties
in the above-mentioned stations through transactions in the object of worship’s absence,
they rose to the degree of also beholding the transactions and acts of the All-Wise Maker,
whereby, in the form of a transaction in the presence of the person concerned, they
responded with knowledge and wonder in the face of the All-Glorious Creator’s making
Himself known to conscious beings through the miracles of His art, and declared: “Glory
be unto You! How can we truly know you? What makes You known are the miracles of
the works of Your art!”
Then, they responded with love and passion to that Most Merciful One’s making
Himself loved through the beautiful fruits of His mercy. “You alone do we worship and
from You alone do we seek help!”, they declared.
Then they responded with thanks and praise to the True Bestower’s showing His
mercy and compassion through His sweet bounties, and exclaimed: “Glory be unto You!
All praise is Yours! How can we thank You as is Your due? You are utterly worthy of
thanks! For all Your bounties spread through all the universe hymn Your praises and
thanks through the clear tongues of their beings. All Your bounties lined up in the market
of the world and scattered over the face of the earth proclaim Your praises and extol You.
Through testifying to Your munificence and generosity, all the well-ordered and wellproportioned
fruits of Your mercy and bounty offer You thanks before the gazes of Your
creatures.”
Then they responded, saying: “God is Most Great!” before the manifestation of
Divine beauty, glory, perfection, and majesty in the mirrors of beings, ever changing on
the face of the universe; they bowed reverently in their impotence, and prostrated in
humility with love and wonder.

Then announcing their poverty and need, they responded with supplication and
beseeching to the Possessor of Absolute Riches’ displaying the abundance of His wealth
and breadth of His mercy, and declared: “From You alone do we seek help!”
Then they responded appreciatively to the All-Glorious Maker’s displaying the
subtleties and wonders of His antique art in the exhibition of creatures, exclaiming:
“What wonders God has willed!” Observing and applauding them, they declared, “How
beautifully they have been made! What blessings God has bestowed!” Holding everyone
witness, they said in wonder: “Come! Look at these! Hasten to the prayers and to
prosperity!”
And they responded with submission and obedience to the Monarch of Pre-Eternity
and Post-Eternity’s proclamation of the sovereignty of His dominicality in every corner
of the universe and the manifestation of His unity. Declaring: “We hear and we obey!”,
they affirmed His unity.
Then, before the manifestation of the Godhead of that Sustainer of All the Worlds,
they responded with worship and humble veneration, which consists of proclaiming their
poverty within need, and with the prescribed prayers, which are the summary of worship.
Thus, through performing their various duties of worship in the mighty mosque known as
the abode of this world, they carried out the obligations and duties of their lives, and
assumed ‘the finest of forms.’ They ascended to a rank above all creatures by which,
through the auspiciousness of belief and assurance and ‘the Trust,’ they became
trustworthy Vicegerents of God on the Earth. And after this field of trial and place of
examination, their Munificent Sustainer invited them to eternal happiness in recompense
for their belief, and to the Abode of Peace in reward for their adhering to His religion of
Islam. There, He bestowed on them out of His mercy bounties so dazzling that no eye has
seen them, nor ear heard them, nor have they occurred to the heart of man2 – and so He
does bestow these on them, and He gave them eternity and everlasting life. For the
desirous, mirror-bearing lovers of an eternal, abiding beauty who gaze upon it will
certainly not perish, but will go to eternity. The final state of the Qur’an’s students is
thus. May Almighty God include us among them, Amen!
As for the other group, the sinners and the wicked, when they entered the palace of
this world at the age of discretion, they responded with unbelief to
all the evidences of Divine unity, and with ingratitude towards all the bounties, and by
accusing all creatures of being valueless, insulted them in an unbelieving manner. And
since they rejected and denied all the manifestations of the Divine Names, they
committed a boundless crime in a short time and became deserving of endless
punishment. For the capital of life and man’s faculties were given him for the duties
mentioned above.
O my senseless soul and foolish friend! Do you suppose your life’s duty is restricted
to following the good life according to the requisites of civilization, and, if you will
excuse the expression, to gratifying the physical appetites? Do you suppose the sole aim
of the delicate and subtle senses, the sensitive faculties and members, the well-ordered
limbs and systems, the inquisitive feelings and senses included in the machine of your
life is restricted to satisfying the low desires of the base soul in this fleeting life? God
forbid!

There are two main aims in their creation and inclusion in your essential being:
The First consists of making known to you all the varieties of the True Bestower’s
bounties, and causing you to offer Him thanks. You should be aware of this, and offer
Him thanks and worship.
The Second is to make known to you by means of your faculties all the sorts of the
manifestations of the sacred Divine Names manifested in the world and to cause you to
experience them. And you, by recognizing them through experiencing them, should come
to believe in them.

Thus, man develops and is perfected through the achievement of these two basic
aims. Through them, man becomes a true human being.
Look through the meaning of the following comparison, and see that the human
faculties were not given in order to gain worldly life like an animal.
For example, someone gave one of his servants twenty gold pieces, telling him to
have a suit of clothes made out of a particular cloth. The servant went and got himself a
fine suit out of the highest grade of the cloth, and put it on. Then he saw that his
employer had given another of his servants a thousand gold pieces, and putting in the
servant’s pocket a piece of paper with some things written on it, had sent him to conclude
some business. Now, anyone with any sense would know that the capital was not for
getting a suit of clothes, for, since the first servant had bought a suit of the finest cloth
with twenty gold pieces, the thousand gold pieces were certainly not to be spent on that.
Since the second servant had not read the paper in his pocket, and looking at the first
servant, had given all the money to a shopkeeper for a suit of clothes, and then received
the very lowest grade of cloth and a suit fifty times worse that his friend’s, his employer
was bound to reprimand him severely for his utter stupidity, and punish him angrily.

O my soul and my friend! Come to your senses! Do not spend the capital
and potentialities of your life on pleasures of the flesh and this fleeting life like an
animal, or even lower. Otherwise, although you are fifty times superior with regard to
capital than the highest animal, you will fall fifty times lower than the lowest.

O my heedless soul! If you want to understand to a degree both the aim of your life
and its nature, and the form of your life, and the true meaning of your life, and its perfect
happiness, then look!

The summary of the aims of your life consists of nine matters:
The First is this: To weigh up on the scales of the senses put in your being the
bounties stored up in the treasuries of Divine mercy, and to offer universal thanks.
The Second: To open with the keys of the faculties placed in your nature the hidden
treasuries of the sacred Divine Names.
The Third: To consciously display and make known through your life in the view of
the creatures in this exhibition of the world the wondrous arts and subtle manifestations
which the Divine Names have attached to you.
The Fourth: To proclaim your worship to the Court of the Creator’s dominicality
verbally and through the tongue of your disposition.
The Fifth: Like on ceremonial occasions a soldier wears all the decorations he has
received from his king, and through appearing before the him, displays the marks of his
favour towards him, this is to consciously adorn yourself in the jewels of the subtle
senses which the manifestations of the Divine Names have given you, and to appear in
the observant view of the Pre-Eternal Witness.
The Sixth: To consciously observe the salutations of living beings to their Creator,
known as the manifestations of life, and their glorifications of their Maker, known as the
signs of life, and their worship of the Bestower of Life, known as the aims of life, and by
reflecting on them to see them, and through testifying to them to display them.
The Seventh: Through taking as units of measurement the small samples of
attributes like the partial knowledge, power, and will given to your life, it is to know
through those measures the absolute attributes and sacred qualities of the All-Glorious
Creator. For example, since, through your partial power, knowledge, and will, you have
made your house in well-ordered fashion, you should know that the Maker of the palace
of the world is its Disposer, and Powerful, Knowing, and Wise to the degree it is greater
than your house.
The Eighth: To understand the words concerning the Creator’s unity and Maker’s
dominicality uttered by each of the beings in the world in its particular tongue.
The Ninth: To understand through your impotence and weakness, your poverty and
need, the degrees of the Divine power and dominical riches. Just as the pleasure and
degrees and varieties of food are understood through the degrees of hunger and the sorts
of need, so you should understand the degrees of the infinite Divine power and riches
through your infinite impotence and poverty.

The aims of your life, then, briefly, are
matters like these. Now consider the nature of your life; its summary is this:
It is an index of wonders pertaining to the Divine Names; a scale for measuring the
Divine attributes; a balance of the worlds within the universe; a list of the mighty world;
a map of the cosmos; a summary of the vast book of the universe; a bunch of keys with
which to open the hidden treasuries of Divine power; and a most excellent pattern of the
perfections scattered over beings and attached to time. The nature of your life consists of
matters like these.

Now, the form of your life and the manner of its duty is this: your life is an inscribed
word, a wisdom-displaying word written by the pen of power. Seen and heard, it points to
the Divine Names. The form of your life consists of matters like these.
Now the true meaning of your life is this: its acting as a mirror to the manifestation
of Divine oneness and the manifestation of the Eternally Besought One. That is to say,
through a comprehensiveness as though being the point of focus for all the Divine Names
manifested in the world, it is its being a mirror to the Single and Eternally Besought One.
Now, as for the perfection of your life, it is to perceive the lights of the Pre-Eternal
Sun which are depicted in the mirror of your life, and to love them. It is to display ardour
for Him as a conscious being. It is to pass beyond yourself with love of Him. It is to
establish the reflection of His light in the centre of your heart. It is due to this mystery
that the Hadith Qudsi was uttered, which is expressed by the following lines, and will
raise you to the highest of the high:
The heavens and the earth contain me not;
Yet, how strange! I am contained in the hearts of believers.
And so, my soul! Since your life is turned towards such elevated aims and gathers
together such priceless treasuries, is it at all worthy of reason and fairness that you should
spend it on temporary gratification of the instinctual soul and fleeting worldly pleasures,
and waste it? If you do not want to fritter away your life, ponder over the oaths in this
Sura of the Qur’an, which allude to the above comparison and truths, and act accordingly:
By the sun and its [glorious] splendour; * By the moon as it
follows it; * By the day as it shows up [the sun’s] glory; * By the night as it
conceals it; * By the firmament and its [wonderful] structure; * By the earth and
its [wide] expanse; * By the soul and the order and proportion given it; * And
its enlightenment to its wrong and its right. * Truly he succeeds that purifies it, *
And he fails that corrupts it.
O God, grant blessings and peace to the Sun of the Skies of Messengership, the
Moon of the Constellation of Prophethood, and to his Family and Companions,
the stars of guidance, and grant mercy to us and to all believing men and all
believing women. Amen. Amen. Amen.

From Risale-i Nur Collection  TheWords - 11.Word