the levels of the heavens and earth, and seeing and inspecting the whole world as a city, he mounted his reason sometimes on the wisdom of the Qur’an, sometimes on philosophy, and gazing at the most distant levels through the powerful telescope of imagination, he saw reality as it is, and in part informed us of it in The Supreme Sign.
Now, of those many worlds and levels he entered on his journey of the imagination, which had the meaning of a comparison and was completely in conformity with reality, we shall explain by way of example only three levels, extremely concisely, in order to illustrate the comparison at the end of Sura al-Fatiha. However, this will be only from the point of view of the power of reason. We refer you to the Risale-i Nur for the other observations and comparisons.
The First Example is like this:
The traveller, who had come into the world solely to find his Creator and become acquainted with Him, said to his reason: “We have asked everything concerning our Creator and have received perfectly satisfying answers. In order to learn about the Sun one has to ask the Sun itself, so now we shall make a further journey in order to find and become acquainted with our Creator through the manifestations of His sacred attributes of knowledge, will, and power, and through His visible works, and through the manifestations of His Names.” So he entered the world. Then the people of misguidance, a second current, embarked on the ship of the earth. The traveller put on the spectacles of the science and philosophy which does not follow the wisdom of the Qur’an, and looking in accordance with the programme of the geography that does not read the Qur’an, saw that the earth was travelling seventy times faster than a cannon-ball, covering a twenty-thousand-year distance in one year in an orbit in the midst of the infinite void. It had taken upon itself myriad species of wretched, helpless living beings. He realized that if it confused its way even for a minute, or if a stray star collided with it, it would disintegrate, pouring all those wretched creatures into nothingness and non-existence. Perceiving the awesome calamity of the currents of
Not those who have received Your anger, nor those who have gone astray,1
and the suffocating darkness of
Or [the unbelievers’ state] is like the depths of darkness in a vast deep ocean,2
Qur’an, 1:7.
Qur’an, 24:40.