In the Seventh Topic, we questioned numerous levels of beings about the resurrection of the dead, but curtailed the discussion because since lhe replies given by the Creator's Names afforded such powerful certainty, they left no need for further questions. Now in this Topic are summarized a hundredth of lhe benefits of belief in the hereafter, including those which result İn happiness in this world and in the next. The Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition leaves no need for further explanation concerning the happiness of the hereafter, so we refer the subject to the Qur'an. And leaving the explanations of worldly happiness to the Risaie-i Nur, here wc shall describe in summary form three or four out of hundreds of results of belief in the hereafter which look to man's individual life and social life.
The First
Just as, contrary to other living beings, man has relations with his home, so he has relations with the world, and just as he has relations with his relatives, so by nature he has earnest relations with mankind. And just as he desires temporary permanence in this world, so he passionately desires immortality in the realm of eternity. And just as he strives to meet the need of his stomach for food, so he is by nature compelled io strive to provide for the stomachs of his mind, heart, spirit, and humanity. He has such hopes and desires that nothing apart from eternal happiness can satisfy them. As is mentioned in the Tenth Word, even, when small, I asked my imagination: "Do you want to live for a million years and rule the world but then cease to exist, or to live for ever but have an ordinary and difficult existence?" I saw that my imagination wanted the latter, feeling pain at the first, and said: "I want to live for ever, even if in Hell!"
Thus, since the pleasures of this world do not satisfy the imaginative faculty, which is a servant of human nature, man's comprehensive nature is certainly attached to eternity. For man, therefore, who despite being afflicted with these boundless hopes and desires as capital has only an insignificant faculty of will and absolute poverty, belief in the hereafter is a treasury of such strength and sufficiency; İs such a means of pleasure and happiness, source of help, refuge, and means of consolation in the face of the endless sorrows of this world, and is such a fruit and benefit that if the life of this world were to be sacrificed on the way of gaining it, it would still be cheap.
Its second fruit and benefit, which looks to man's personal life This is a consequence of great importance which is explained in the Third Topic, and about which is a footnote in A Guide For Youth.
Man's greatest and most constant anxiety is his entering the place of execution that is the graveyard, the same as his friends and relations have entered it. Wretched man, who is ready to sacrifice his very soul for a single friend, thinks of the thousands, millions, or thousands of millions of friends who have been eliminated and have parted for all eternity, and suffers torments worse than Hell. Just at that point belief in the hereafter comes, opens his eyes, and raises the veil. It tells him: "Look!" He looks with belief, and seeing that those friends have been saved from eternal death and decay and are awaiting him happily in a luminous world, he receives a pleasure of the spirit that intimates the pleasures of Paradise. Sufficing with the explanations and proofs of this consequence in the Risale-i Nur, we cut this short here.
A third benefit pertaining to personal life Man's superiority over other living beings and his high rank are in respect of his elevated qualities, comprehensive abilities, universal worship, and his extensive spheres of existence. However, the virtues he acquires like zeal, love, brotherhood, and humanity are to the extent of the fleeting present, which is squeezed between the past and the future, which are both non-existent, and dead, and black.
For example, he loves and serves his father, brother, wife, nation, and country, whom he formerly did not know and after parting from them, will never see again. He would very rarely be able to achieve complete loyalty and sincerity, and his virtues and perfections would diminish proportionately.