Yes, what I need is a Creator and Sustainer who possesses the power to know the least thoughts of my heart and my most secret wishes; and as He will answer the most hidden needs of my spirit, so he will transform the mighty earth into the hereafter in order to give me eternal happiness, and remove this world and put the hereafter in its place; and create the heavens as He creates a fly; and as He fastens the sun as an eye in the face of the sky, so he can situate a particle in the pupil of my eye. For one who cannot create a fly cannot intervene in the thoughts of my heart and cannot hear the pleas  of  my spirit.  One  who  cannot  create  the  heavens,  cannot  give  me  eternal happiness. In which case, my Sustainer is He who both purifies my heart’s thoughts, and like He fills and empties the skies with clouds in an hour,  so he will transform this world into the hereafter, make Paradise, and open its doors to me, bidding me to enter.

My elderly brothers who as a result of misfortune, like my soul, have spent part of their  lives on lightless Western materialist philosophy and science! Understand from the sacred decree of “There is no god but He” perpetually uttered by the tongue of the Qur’an, just how powerful, true, unshakeable, undamageable, unchanging, and sacred a pillar of belief it is, and how it disperses all spiritual darkness and cures all spiritual wounds!

I included this long story among the doors of hope of my old age as though involuntarily. I did not want to include it, indeed, I held back from doing so because I thought  it  would  be  tedious.  But  I have  to  say that I  felt  compelled  to  write it. Anyway, to return to the main topic:

In consequence of grey hairs appearing in my hair and beard  and of a loyal friend’s unfaithfulness, I felt a disgust at the pleasures of Istanbul’s worldly life which was so glittering and superficially agreeable and gilded. My soul searched for spiritual pleasures in place of the  pleasures with which it was obsessed. It wanted a light, a solace, in this old age which in  the  view of the heedless is cold, burdensome, and disagreeable. And all praise be to God and a hundred thousand thanks, just as I found true, lasting, and sweet pleasures of belief in “There is no god but He” and in the light of divine unity in place of all those false, disagreeable, fleeting worldly pleasures, so through the light of divine unity, I saw old age which in the view of the heedless is cold and burdensome to be most light, and warm, and luminous.

O you elderly men and women! Since you have belief and since you pray and offer supplications which illuminate and increase belief, you can regard your old age as eternal youth. For through it you can gain eternal youth. The old age which in truth is cold,  burdensome, ugly, dark, and  full of pain is the old  age of the people of misguidance, indeed, their youth as well.  It  is  they  who  should  weep  with  sighs  and  regrets.  While  you,  respected believing elderly people, should joyfully offer thanks saying: “All praise and thanks be to God for every situation!”