After my return from captivity, I was living together with my nephew Abdurrahman in a \illa on the hill at Çamlıca in Istanbul. From the point of view of worldly life, my situation could have been thought to be the most happy for people like us. For I had been saved from being a prisoner-of-war and in the Daru'l-Hikmel we were being successful in propagating knowledge in the most elevated way suitably to my profession, the learned profession. The honour and esteem afforded me was far greater than my due. I was living in Çamlıca, the most beautiful place in Istanbul. Everything was perfect for me. I was together with lhe late Abdurrahman, my nephew, who was extremely intelligent and self-sacrificing, and was both my student, and servant, and scribe, and spiritual son. But then, knowing myself to be more fortunate than anyone else in the world, I looked in the mirror and I saw grey hairs in my hair and beard.
Suddenly, the spiritual awakening Ī had experienced in the mosque in Koşturma while in captivity recommenced. As a result, I began to study the circumstances and causes to which I felt geniune attachment and which I supposed were the means to happiness in this world. But whichever of them I studied, I saw that it was rotten; it was not worth the attachment; it was deceptive. Around that time, I suffered an unexpected and unimaginable act of disloyalty and unfaithfulness at the hands of a friend whom I had supposed to be most loyal. I felt disgust at the world. Ī said to myself: "Have I been altogether deceived? I see that many people look with envy at our situation, which in reality should be pitied. Are all these people crazy, or İs it me that has gone crazy so (hat I see all these worldly people as such?"
Anyway, as a result of this severe awakening caused me by old age, first of all I saw the transi-toriness of all the ephemeral things to which I was attached. And I looked at myself, and I saw myself to be utterly impotent. So then my spirit declared, which desires immortality and was addicted to ephemeral beings imagining them to be immortal: "Since I am a transient being with regard to my body, what good can come of these ephemeral things? Since I am powerless, what can I await from these powerless things? What I need is one who is Eternal and Enduring, one who is Pre-Eternal and All-Powerful, who will provide a remedy for my ills." And 1 began to search.
Then, before everything, I had recourse to the learning I had studied of old, I began to search for a consolation, a hope. But unfortunately, up to that time I had filled my mind with the sciences of philosophy as well as the Islamic sciences, and quite in error, had imagined those philosophical sciences to be the source of progress and means of illumination. However, those philosophical matters had greatly dirtied my spirit and been an obstacle to my spiritual development. Suddenly, through Almighty God's mercy and munificence, the sacred wisdom of the All-Wise Qur'an came to my assistance. As is explained in many parts of the Risale-i Nur, it washed away and cleansed the dirt of those philosophical matters.
For instance, the spiritual darknesses arising from science and philosophy plunged my spirit into the universe. Whichever way I looked seeking a light, I could find no light in those matters, I could not breathe. And so it continued until the instruction in Divine Unity given by the phrase 'There is no god but He" from the All-Wise Qur'an dispersed all those layers of darkness with its brilliant light, and 1 could breathe with ease. But relying on what they had learnt from the people of misguidance and philosophers, my soul and Satan attacked my reason and my heart. All thanks be to God, the ensuing debate with my soul resulted in che victory of my heart. Those exchanges have been described in part in many parts of the Risale-i Nur. And so, deeming them to be sufficient, here Ī shall explain only one proof out of thousands in order to show one thousandth part of that victory of the heart. In this way it may also cleanse the spirits of certain elderly people which have been dirtied in their youth, and their hearts sickened and souls spoilt, by matters which though carted Western philosophy or the sciences of civilization, are in part misguidance and in part trivia. And through Divine Unity, they may be saved from evil of Satan and the soul. It is as follows: