The Seventeenth Flash

[This Flash consists of Fifteen Notes taken from Zühre.]

Introduction

Twelve years before this Flash was written,1  I wrote down in note form in Arabic in such  treatises  as  Zühre, Şu’le,  Habbe, Şemme,  Zerre, and  Katre, a number of flashes concerning  divine unity which became clear to me through dominical grace during an unfolding of the spirit and progress of the mind and journey of the heart in divine knowledge. But since they were written to show only one tip of a lengthy truth and point out only one beam of a shining light, and since each was in the form of a memento and reminder for myself only, their  benefits for others were limited, and particularly as the great majority of my most select and special brothers were unable to read Arabic. On their insistent and pressing requests,  therefore,  I was obliged to write in Turkish an approximation of those notes, those flashes, in part expounding them and in part abbreviating them. Since these notes and Arabic treatises form the first of the New Said’s works proceeding from the knowledge of reality, which he to a degree  witnessed  in  the  form  of  illumination,  their  meanings  have  been  written unchanged. Because of this, a number of the sentences are included here despite being mentioned  in others of the Words. And some are not expounded despite being ver y concise, so that the refinement of the original should not be lost.

1   Twelve years previously was 1340/1921.