He had obtained a copy of the Tenth Word about belief in the hereafter before writing the letter. It was as if it had been a remedy for him curing all the spiritual wounds he had received during those six or seven years. He then wrote the letter to me as if he was awaiting his death with a truly strong and shining belief. Then one or two months later while thinking of once again passing a happy worldly life together with Abdurrahman, alas, I received news of his death. I was so  shaken that five years later I am still under its effect. It afflicted me with a grief, sorrow, and  sense of separation far exceeding the torturous captivity, aloneness, exile, old age, and illness I was then suffering. Half of my private world had died with the death of my mother, and now with Abdurrahman’s death, the other half died. My ties with the world were now completely cut. For if he had lived, he could have been both a powerful help in my duties which looked to the hereafter, and a worthy successor to fill my place completely after me, and  a most self-sacrificing friend and consolation. He would have been my cleverest student and companion, and a most trustworthy protector and owner of the Risale-i Nur.

Yes, in regard to humanity, such losses are extremely distressing and painful for

people like me. It’s true outwardly I was trying to endure it, but a fierce storm was raging in my spirit. If from time to time solace proceeding from the Qur’an’s light had not consoled me, I would not have been able to endure it. At the time I used to wander alone in the mountains and valleys of Barla. Sitting in lonely places amid my sorrows, pictures of the happy life I had  spent in former times with my loyal students like Abdurrahman passed through my imagination like the cinema; since due to old age and  exile  I  was  swiftly affected,  they  broke  my  resistance.  Suddenly the  sacred meaning of the verse,

Everything shall perish save His countenance; His is the command, and to

Him shall you return(28:88)

was unfolded to me. It caused me to declare: “O Eternal One, You alone are Eternal! O Eternal One, You alone are Eternal!”, and truly consoled me.

Then,  inspired  by  this  verse’s  meaning  as  is  described  in  the  treatise,  The Highway of the Practices of the Prophet (UWBP), I saw myself while in that lonely valley and sad state, at the head of three vast corpses:

One was the sight of myself as a gravestone on the grave of the fifty-five dead Said’s of my fifty-five years who had been buried in the course of my life.

The second corpse was the vast corpse of all my fellow-men who had died since the time of Adam (UWP) and had been buried in the grave of the past. I saw myself as a miniscule ant-like living creature at the head of that corpse, wandering over the face of this century, which was like its gravestone.