Vauxhall Tea Party

Phase 4 · The Names and the mirror

Week 13

The Self as a Mirror

The Words · The Thirty-Second Word · Second and Third Stopping-places

01

Story

  1. 01A wide river runs in the sunlight, its surface covered with bubbles (kabarcık).

  2. 02In every bubble there is a tiny bright sun, a gleam (cilve) of the one above.

  3. 03A moment later a bubble bursts, and its little sun is gone.

  4. 04But the bubbles behind it hold the very same sun. The mirrors (âyine) pass, and the light keeps coming.

  5. 05So beings pass over the face of the earth, flashing for a moment with beauty. The flashes are not theirs. They are the light of the Names of an Eternal Sun (Şems-i sermedî).

A comparison retold from the Thirty-Second Word. The wording here is ours, the picture is Nursi’s. The artist who paints a flower, from the same Word, is in Explore below.

02

Meaning

A clean heart reflects the Names as a clean mirror reflects the sun, and different people reflect different Names more strongly.

Nobody on the bank thinks the light belongs to the bubbles. They come and go, and the sun goes on shining in the next ones. That is Nursi’s answer to a quiet worry: if I reflect God’s Names, does that make me something? No. It makes me a mirror (âyine). For three weeks we cleaned the glass of the heart; this week we look at what the glass is for. A clean heart shows the Names as a clean mirror shows the sun, and no two mirrors show them in quite the same colour.

Six things the mirror shows

From two Stopping-places of the Thirty-Second Word. Try each picture with your own hands.

  1. the sun · güneşthe bubbles · kabarcıkthe mirrors pass, the light stays

    The bubbles drift past, each with a tiny sun. Where does their light come from?

    01 / 06

    The light is not the bubble’s

    The beauty that flashes on the bubbles is not from them; it is the sun’s. The proof is the passing itself: the mirrors vanish and the light keeps coming, so it was never theirs. Nursi puts it in one line of Arabic: the mirrors pass away, the beings vanish, and the manifestation (tecellî) goes on (tefâni’l-mir’ât, zevâlü’l-mevcûdât, ma‘a’t-tecellî’d-dâim). A clean heart reflects more of the light, but it is still a bubble.

  2. beauty · cemâla dewdropa flowera birda treethe skya human heartthe most complete mirror · Habîband to others0 / 7

    A beauty, and no mirror yet to show it. Hold one up.

    02 / 06

    Beauty wants to be seen

    Why is there a world full of mirrors at all? Beauty and perfection (cemâl and kemâl) are loved for their own sake, Nursi says, so they love themselves above everything. And since beauty loves itself, it wants to see itself in mirrors (cemâl mâdem kendini sever, kendini âyinelerde görmek ister), and to show itself, each mirror holding as much as its capacity allows. God loves the mirrors of His perfections, and most of all the Prophet, His Beloved (Habîb), the most complete mirror of His beauty and the one who looks at creation and says “Mâşâallah, how beautifully made.”

  3. One flower, twenty shirtsshape · Musavvir, Mukaddirparts · Alîm, Hakîmadornment · Sâni’, Bâri’grace · Lâtîf, Kerîmfruit · Vedûd, Rahîmbounty · Rahmân, Hannânbeauty · CemîlThe face of the earthis a flower, its minerals,plants and animalseach given colourSpring is a flower,countless kindsopened in one seasonThe sky is a flower,the stars are itsgilded embroidery · nakışThe sun is a flower,the seven coloursof its lightare its dyeshidden by its own brightness

    Just the outside of one flower, and already page after page, a Name written on each.

    03 / 06

    Twenty shirts on every creature

    God has dressed each creature, Nursi says, especially the living ones, as if in twenty shirts one over another (yirmi gömlek), and written different Names on each. Take only the outside of one flower: its shape says Fashioner and Determiner, its distinct parts say All-Knowing and All-Wise, its adornment says Maker, its grace says Gracious and Generous, its fruit says Loving and Compassionate, page after page up to the Beautiful. Then he widens the lens: Paradise is a flower, the face of the earth is a flower, spring is a flower, the sky is a flower with the stars for its gilded embroidery (nakış), and the sun is a flower whose seven colours are its dyes.

  4. aş-Şâfîthe Healeral-Hakîmthe All-Wiseal-Mukaddirthe Determineral-Musavvirthe Fashioneral-Adlthe Justal-Alîmthe All-Knowingal-Hasîbthe Reckonerthe reality · hakikatNursi’s own exampleits shadow · zıll

    Choose a field of work, and see the Name it rests on.

    04 / 06

    Your profession rests on a Name

    The realities of all the arts and sciences, Nursi says, and of every human attainment, rest on the Divine Names. True natural science rests on the All-Wise (Hakîm), true medicine on the Healer (Şâfî), geometry on the Determiner (Mukaddir), and so on. Some of the saints went further: the Names are the true reality of things, and the essences of things are their shadows (zıll). So work done well, and done for Him, is one of the ways a person mirrors a Name.

  5. The hostal-Kerîmthe GenerousThe peacemakeras-Selâmthe Source of PeaceThe one who knowsal-Alîmthe All-KnowingThe one who keeps goingas-Sabûrthe Patientthe whole sun, in each

    One sun, four friends, four colours. Tap one to see which Name it shows.

    05 / 06

    Different mirrors, different Names

    Different people reflect different Names more strongly, and none of it is a contest. Nursi shows why reflecting a Name is joyful: the pleasure of generosity (sehâvet) is not in being more generous than others, it is in the joy of those who receive it. A mother’s pleasure is in her children’s ease, so strong that it makes a hen fly at a lion to protect her chicks. Each person who shows a Name (mazhar) shares in that kind of joy, the joy of the one who gives.

  6. a mirror of the Names · âyinebeautiful, worthy of lovethe field of the hereafter · tarlabeautiful, worthy of lovea toy of the appetites · gaflet perdesiugly, it passes, it hurts, it deceivesone city, three faces

    One city by a river. Nothing in it changes; choose which face you live in.

    06 / 06

    The world has three faces

    Someone objects: the hadith calls the world carrion, and the saints despised it; why does Nursi praise it so? He answers that the world has three faces. The first looks to God’s Names: a mirror of them and countless letters from Him, beautiful and worthy of love. The second looks to the hereafter (âhiret): the field where Paradise is sown, beautiful too. The third looks to human appetites: a veil of heedlessness and a toy for the worldly, ugly because it passes, hurts and deceives. The contempt is for that face only.

03

Read

وَاِنْ مِنْ شَيْءٍ اِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِ

“There is nothing that does not glorify Him with His praise.” (Qur’an 17:44) The verse that opens the Third Stopping-place.

Beings flow over the face of the earth like a great river, shining for a moment with gleams of perfection, and passing on. As that river sparkles with the gleams of the sun, so this flood of beings sparkles for a while with gleams of loveliness, beauty and perfection, and goes. And since those that come after them show the same sparkle and the same gleams, it is clear that the gleams and beauties in the bubbles of the running water are not their own: they are the beauties and gleams of a sun’s light. In the same way, the loveliness and perfection that shine for a moment in the flood of the universe are flashes of the beauty of the Names of an Eternal Sun (Şems-i sermedî).

The pleasure and beauty of a quality look less to its rivals than to those it reaches. Generosity, for example, is a fine and pleasant quality. The generous one takes from the delight and happiness of those he is generous to a pleasure a thousand times sweeter than the pleasure of outdoing other generous people. A mother’s pleasure in her children’s happiness is so strong that she would give her life for their ease; the pleasure of compassion even makes a hen fly at a lion to protect her chicks.

Beauty and perfection, because they are loved for their own sake, love themselves above everything. They are both loveliness and love; that is where beauty and love become one. Since beauty loves itself, it wants to see itself in mirrors (cemâl mâdem kendini sever, kendini âyinelerde görmek ister). The lovely gifts and fruits placed on the work each carry a gleam of that inner beauty, according to their capacity, and show those gleams both to the owner of the beauty and to others.

Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, The Words, the Thirty-Second Word (Second Stopping-place, Third Aim, Third and Fourth Signs; Third Stopping-place, First Topic)Working translation from the Turkish, made for this draft. Check against a published edition before release.Read the Thirty-Second Word in full, in English with the Turkish original

04

Explore

The artist and the flower

A master artist sets out to paint one beautiful flower. Scrub through the work from the first pencil lines to the last touch of light, and ask at each layer what it tells you about the one who made it.

The linesFirst a few lines fix the general shape, measured and ordered. Behind them stand knowledge and wisdom turning the compass (pergel): the Determiner and Orderer (Mukaddir, Munazzım), the All-Knowing and All-Wise (Alîm, Hakîm).

The partsInside the lines the petals, leaves and stamens take shape, each in its place, with craft and care. That shows the Maker and the Generous (Sâni’, Kerîm).

Colour and lightThen he colours and adorns it until it seems to smile and come alive. The flower becomes grace made visible: the Gracious, the Adorner (Lâtîf, Müzeyyin).

The giftHe sets it in a jewel and hangs a fruit on its stem, so the picture becomes a present. Behind it is the wish to be known and loved, which comes from mercy: the Loving, the Known, the Bestower, the Compassionate (Vedûd, Ma‘rûf, Mün‘im, Rahîm).

The beauty behind itBehind the mercy is a tenderness, and behind that the artist’s own beauty, which wants to be seen: the Merciful, the Tender, the Beautiful (Rahmân, Hannân, Cemîl). The light of the flower fills the room and shines back from every mirror in it.

Read the layers backwards and you have Nursi’s chain: the order shows wisdom, the wisdom shows care, the care shows generosity, the generosity shows mercy, and the mercy shows a beauty that loves to be seen. Every flower on the way to work is painted like this, and so, page after page, are you.

Course