What Is Life?

Life is the most luminous, the most beautiful of the miracles of Dominical Power. It is the most powerful and most brilliant of the proofs of Divine Unity. It is the most comprehensive and most shining of the mirrors displaying the manifestations of the Eternally Besought One. Yes, on its own, life makes known a Living and Self-Subsistent One together with all his Names and acts. For life is a light, a medicine, like a potion blended from numerous attributes. Just as the seven colours are combined in light, and various drugs are blended together in a medicament, so also life is a reality made of numerous attributes. Some of the attributes in its reality expand by means of the senses; they unfold, and are differentiated. However the greater part make themselves perceived in the form of the emotions; they make themselves known by welling up out of life.

It is as if life fastens them on behind it and draws them into the place it enters. For example, when life enters a body, the Name of All-Wise is also manifest; it makes its home well and orders it with wisdom. In the same way, the Name of All-Generous is manifest, and it organizes and decorates its dwelling according to its needs. At the same time, the manifestation of the Name of All-Compassionate is apparent; it bestows all sorts of bounties for the continuance and perfection of life. And again at the same time, the manifestation of the Name of Provider appears; it produces the sustenance, material and immaterial, necessary for the perpetuation and unfolding of the life, and in part stores them up within its body. That is to say, life is like a point of focus; various attributes enter one another, indeed, they become one and the same. It is as if in its entirety life is both knowledge, and at the same time power, and at the same time wisdom and mercy, and so on..

electrocardiogram

Electrocardiogram

Thus, with regard to this comprehensive essence, life is a mirror of the Eternally Besought One reflecting the essential Dominical attributes. It is due to this mystery that the Necessarily Existent One, Who is the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One, creates life in great abundance and plenitude, and scatters it far and wide and broadcasts it, and gathers everything around life and makes it serve it. For life’s duty is great. Yes, it is not easy to be the mirror of the Eternally Besought One, it is not some petty duty.

Thus, the sudden and continuous coming into existence from nothing of these countless, numberless lives which we all the time see before our eyes – and of spirits, which are the origins and essences of lives – their being sent, demonstrate the necessary existence, sacred attributes, and Most Beautiful Names of a Necessarily Existent and Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One as clearly as rays show the existence of the sun. Just as someone who does not recognize and accept the existence of the sun is compelled to deny the light which fills the day, so also one who does not recognize the Sun of Divine Oneness, Who is Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent and the Giver of Life and Death, has to deny the existence of the living creatures which fill the earth and even the past and the future; he has to fall a hundred times lower than an animal, to fall from the level of life to become something utterly ignorant and lifeless.

By Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

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