Vauxhall Tea Party

Phase 2 · Knowing the self

Week 05

Fitra and the Nafs

The Words · The Thirteenth Word · The Twenty-third Word · The Flashes · The Eleventh Flash

01

Story

  1. 01Ten of us wait in a room. On one side stands a gallows (darağacı); beside it, an office that gives out tickets for a huge prize (ikramiye).

  2. 02Each of us will be called, and the hour is hidden (ecel gizli). Any minute, “Come to the gallows,” or “Come, your prize has come up.”

  3. 03Two visitors come to the door. The first is beautiful and deceiving, holding out sweets (helva) that look delicious and are poisoned.

  4. 04Behind her comes a serious man who neither deceives nor is deceived. “I have brought you a talisman (tılsım). Learn it, and leave the sweets.”

  5. 05“Those who eat, you can see climbing the gallows. Those with the talisman, the witnesses say, go on to the prize, as sure as daylight.”

A parable retold from the Thirteenth Word, Second Station. The wording here is ours, the story is Nursi’s. The first visitor stands for the whole package of instant pleasure, not for women.

02

Meaning

We are made with a nature (fıtrat) that cannot be erased and powers with no built-in limit. The work is not to kill those powers but to steer them to the middle.

Nursi gives the key himself. The gallows is death, which comes for young and old at an hour no one knows. The prize office is what the grave becomes for those who believe: a door. The sweets are forbidden pleasure, which he calls poisoned honey (zehirli bal); the talisman is belief and the basic duties (tılsım-ı Kur’anî). The second picture this week is a seed, whose hidden equipment (cihazat) either rots in the soil or becomes a tree. Phase 2 starts here, with a map of who lives in the house: a nature (fıtrat) that cannot be erased, and a self (nefs) that keeps reaching for the wheel.

Six things about the self

Phase 2 begins with a map of the inner house. Try each picture with your own hands.

  1. turned to its Makerfıtrat · the nature you were made withthe yearsthe citythe habitscovered · not erased

    The nature you were made with, before anything is laid on top of it.

    01 / 06

    The fitra cannot be erased

    The Twenty-third Word opens with the human being made in the finest of forms (ahsen-i takvim) and sent into the world with two roads before him, one rising without end and one falling without end. Because his nature (fıtrat) is so comprehensive, Nursi says, he is drawn to many aims at once and carries the seeds of every perfection (bütün kemalâtın tohumları). The fitra is the given. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing laid on top of it can delete it.

  2. capacity for harm · kabiliyet-i şercapacity for good · kabiliyet-i hayrevils changed into good · 25:70An empty plot

    Build a house, then see how long it takes to wreck it.

    02 / 06

    No built-in limit, in either direction

    An animal’s powers stop where its needs stop. Ours do not: greed can want the whole world and still ask for more. And there is an imbalance. The self that keeps commanding (nefs-i emmâre) has a boundless capacity for harm (kabiliyet-i şer) and very little power to make: it can wreck in one day a house it could not build in a hundred. When it gives up its egoism (enaniyet) and asks God for help, the same capacity turns into a capacity for good (kabiliyet-i hayr). That is the secret of the verse in which God changes evil deeds into good ones (25:70).

  3. towards lasting lifethe narrow soil of this lifethe wants of the selfcihazat · hidden organstrue progress · terakki-i hakikî

    All four organs spent on the wants of the self, under the soil. The seed is starting to spoil.

    03 / 06

    The seed with hidden organs

    This is the picture at the centre of the week. A seed is given hidden equipment (cihazat-ı maneviye) by Divine power and a fine programme by Divine determining. Spent under the soil of this narrow life on the wants of the self (nefsin hevesatı), it spoils like a bad seed. Turned to its real aims (hakikî gayeler), under the soil of worship, it breaks out and becomes a tree. Then Nursi defines real progress (terakki-i hakikî): the heart (kalb), spirit (ruh), intellect (akıl) and even imagination (hayal) each turned towards lasting life, each at its own kind of worship. Harnessing them all to the self is not progress. It is decline (sukut).

  4. too little · tefritthe middle · hadd-i vasattoo much · ifratintellect · akılcunning · cerbezeanger · gazabcowardice · korkaklıkdesire · şehvetlicentiousness · fücur

    None of the three in the middle. Each is either broken or loose.

    04 / 06

    Steer the horse, do not shoot it

    Desire, anger and intellect are not to be killed, only kept from going too far or falling short (ifrat ve tefrit). In the Eleventh Flash Nursi gives each power two corruptions and one healthy middle (hadd-i vasat). Intellect (kuvve-i akliye): too much is slick cunning (cerbeze), too little is dullness (gabavet), the middle is wisdom (hikmet). Anger (kuvve-i gazabiye): rage (tehevvür) or cowardice (korkaklık), and in the middle, courage (şecaat). Desire (kuvve-i şeheviye): licentiousness (fücur) or lifelessness (humud), and in the middle, self-respect (iffet). None of the three is the enemy. Each one needs a rider.

  5. youth · gençlikgoes either waypleasurepainnowlatersweet nowthe bill, with interestkept · an eternal youth

    Youth will go whichever way you spend it. Choose, and watch the line.

    05 / 06

    Youth will go, either way

    The Thirteenth Word is a talk to young people surrounded by temptation who had not yet lost their reason. Its message is plain: your youth (gençlik) will certainly go. Spent outside the lawful, it brings more trouble and pain than pleasure, here, in the grave and after. Spent with thanks (şükür), in chastity and obedience, it stays in meaning and earns an eternal youth (ebedî gençlik). Nursi is not stingy: the circle of the lawful (daire-i meşrua) is wide enough for every real pleasure. What he warns against is the pleasure outside it, poisoned honey (zehirli bal): sweet now, with the pain folded inside.

  6. the pastnowthe futureone grape · üzümten slaps · on tokatsorrowone minute of revenge80,000 hours in prisonfeeling · blind to what comes afterreason · it sees before and after

    Only now is lit. One grape, one minute, and sweet. Feeling prefers an ounce today to a ton tomorrow.

    06 / 06

    The nafs grabs the wheel

    Why does the self (nefs) rule the young so easily? Nursi’s answer: youth listens to feeling (hissiyat) more than to reason (akıl), and feeling is blind to what comes after (âkibeti görmez). It prefers an ounce of pleasure now to a ton of it later. It kills for one minute of revenge and pays with eighty thousand hours in prison. And unlike an animal, a human mind is tied to the past and the future, so a forbidden pleasure always leaves pain behind it. In his words, it is like getting “ten slaps for a single grape” (bir üzüm tanesini yedirir, on tokat vurur). The deep stupor of heedlessness (gaflet) is what keeps us from feeling them.

03

Read

قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا ۝ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ دَسَّاهَا

“Whoever purifies it has succeeded, and whoever buries it has failed.” (Qur’an 91:9–10, of the self)

Here, for example, a gallows (darağacı) has been set up before your eyes. Beside it is a lottery office, but one that hands out tickets for a very great prize (ikramiye). We ten who are here will be summoned there, whatever happens and whether we like it or not; there is no other way. And since the hour of the summons is hidden, at any minute they may say, “Come, take your ticket for execution, climb the gallows!” or, “Come, a prize ticket that wins millions in gold has come up for you. Come and take it!”

The youth in you will certainly go. If you do not stay inside the circle of the lawful (daire-i meşrua), it will be wasted, and in this world, in the grave and in the hereafter it will bring down on your head troubles and pains far greater than its own pleasure. But if, trained by Islam, you spend it in chastity, decency and obedience, as thanks for the gift of youth, it will stay with you in meaning and win you a youth that lasts for ever.

Man is indeed like a seed. Power has given the seed weighty hidden equipment (cihazat-ı maneviye), and determining a fine and precious programme, so that it may work under the soil, come out of that narrow world into the wide world of the air, ask its Creator in the language of its readiness to become a tree, and find the perfection fitting for it. If, from a bad temper, it spends that equipment drawing harmful things to itself under the ground, it will spoil and rot in that narrow place in a short time, to no purpose.

Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, The Words, the Thirteenth Word (Second Station) and the Twenty-third Word (Second Chapter)Working translation from the Turkish, made for this draft. Check against a published edition before release.Read the Thirteenth Word in full, with the Turkish original

04

Explore

Within its banks

Desire, anger and intellect are like the water of a river: the garden needs all of it, inside its banks. Move the slider from too little (tefrit) through the middle (hadd-i vasat) to too much (ifrat), and watch the same water.

Too littleToo much

Too little · tefritThe bed runs dry. Intellect sinks into dullness (gabavet), anger into cowardice (korkaklık), desire into lifelessness (humud). Nothing is wild, and nothing grows.

The middle · hadd-i vasatFull, and inside its banks. The wheel turns and the gardens drink: wisdom (hikmet), courage (şecaat), self-respect (iffet). The same water, steered.

Too much · ifratThe flood breaks the banks: cunning (cerbeze), rage (tehevvür), licentiousness (fücur). The water that fed the garden drowns it.

Nursi draws this from the character of the Prophet, who in every act kept to the middle (istikamet) and avoided both ends, which he calls wrong and darkness (zulüm ve zulümat). Nothing here is to be killed. The question for the coming weeks is who holds the reins.

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