worldly pleasures, which are like pieces of glass soon to be shattered. The only way of saving them from this love of the world and from the danger of succumbing to it is by showing them the hellish torments and pains they suffer even in this world. This is the way the Risale-i Nur takes. For at this time, due to the obduracy arising from absolute unbelief and the intoxication caused by the vice and misguidance arising from science, perhaps only one in ten or even twenty can be induced to give up his evil ways by proving the existence of Hell and its torments, after having told him of Almighty God. Having heard this, such people are likely to say: “God is Forgiving and Compassionate, and Hell is a long way off,” and continue in their dissipation. Their hearts and spirits are overcome by their emotions.

Thus, by showing through most of its comparisons the grievous and terrible results in this world of disbelief and misguidance, the Risale-i Nur makes even the most stubborn and arrogant people feel disgust at those inauspicious, illicit pleasures, leading them to repent. The short comparisons in the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Words, and the long one in the Third Stopping-Place in the Thirty-Second Word lead a person to feel repugnance at the vice and misguidance of the way he has taken, and cause him to accept what they teach. As an example, I shall recount briefly the situations I beheld on a journey of the imagination, which were in fact reality. Those wishing for a more detailed account may look at the end of Sikke-i Tasdik-i Gaybi (The Ratifying Stamp of the Unseen Collection).

When on that journey of the imagination I looked at the animal kingdom through the eyes of materialist philosophy and the people of misguidance and heedlessness, the innumerable needs of animals and their terrible hunger together with their weakness and impotence appeared to me as most piteous and grievous. I cried out. Then I saw through the telescope of Qur’anic wisdom and belief that the Divine Name of All-Merciful had risen in the sign of Provider like a shining sun; it gilded with the light of its mercy that hungry, wretched animal world.

Then I saw within the animal world another grievous world which was swathed in darkness and would make anyone feel pity and in which young were struggling in their need and powerlessness. I was sorry I had looked through the eyes of the people of