Government, prompting them to move against us, have come to nothing and turned out to be false. They are now trying to conceal their lies by accusing us of forming a political society and a secret revolutionary committee, and as a result of this, they do not allow me to have contact with anyone. As though all those who have contact with us join us. High officials too are careful to avoid us, and they try to curry favour with their superiors by harassing us. I was going to add the below passage to the end of my objections, but I had an idea that did not allow me to. The passage was this:
Yes, we are a society and we are a society that every century has three hundred and fifty million1 members. Every day through the five obligatory prayers, its members demonstrate with complete veneration their attachment to the principles of that sacred society. Through the sacred programme of The believers are indeed a single brotherhood,2 they hasten to assist one another with their prayers and spiritual gains. We are members of that sacred, vast society, and our particular duty is to teach the believers in certain, verified fashion the Qur’anic truths of belief, and save them and ourselves from eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement in the Intermediate Realm. We have absolutely no connection with any worldly, political, or intriguing society or clandestine group, or the baseless, meaningless secret societies concerning which we have been charged; we do not condescend to such things.
* * *
My Dear and Loyal Brothers!
Before dawn today I felt real pity for all of you. Then I remembered the Treatise For The Sick (Hastalar Risalesi ), and it consoled me.
Yes, this calamity is a sort of social sickness. Most of the remedies connected with belief in that treatise are in this too. As I told that blessed sick person in Erzurum, the pain of all past tribulations has passed; what remains of it is its good, and its benefits that look to this world, the hereafter, belief, and the Qur’an. That means the single transitory tribulation has been transformed into numerous permanent bounties. As for the future, since it is non-existent at the present, the tribulations that will continue in it give no pain now. To suffer pain due to delusions is to lack confidence in Divine mercy and Determining.
Secondly: Most of mankind on the earth now are afflicted with
Now one and a half thousand million. [Tr.]
Qur’an, 49:10.