Letters ( revised ) | Seeds of Reality | 537
(528-541)

78. If Paradise did not exist, Hell would not be torment.

 

79. As time grows older, the Qur’an grows younger; it signs become apparent. Just as light sometimes appears to be fire, so sometimes intense eloquence appears to be exaggeration.

 

80. Degrees in heat occur through the intervention  of cold; the degrees  of beauty occur  through  the  intervention  of  ugliness.  Pre-eternal  power  is  essential, necessary, and inherent. Impotence cannot penetrate it; there can be no degrees it in; everything is equal in relation to it.

 

81. The sun’s image, which is the effulgence of its manifestation, displays the same identity on the surface of the sea and in all its droplets.

 

82. Life is a manifestation of  unity; unity is also its consequence.

 

83. So long as it remains unknown who are the saints among men, which moment prayers are accepted on Fridays, which night in Ramadan is the Night of Power, and which among the divine names is the greatest name, other things retain their value and importance is given to them. Twenty years of doubtful life is preferable to a thousand years’ life the end of which is specified.

 

84. The consequence of sin in this world is evidence for its punishment in the next.

 

85.  In  the  view  of  power,  sustenance  is  as  important  as  life.  Power  brings  into existence, Divine Determining clothes in form, divine favour nurtures. Life is a summary, a specified product and is apparent. Sustenance is not a summary; it is gradual and widespread,  and provokes  thought.  No one dies from  hunger,  for death occurs before the food stored up in the body in the form of fat is exhausted. That is to say, illness resulting from the giving up of habit kills, not lack of sustenance.

 

86. The licit sustenance of carniverous wild animals are the innumerable remains of dead animals; they both cleanse the face of the earth, and they find their food.

 

87. Before entering the mouth and disappearing down the throat, a mouthful worth one  kurush  and  one  worth  ten  are  the  same.  There  is  only  a  few  seconds’ difference in the mouth. To raise the price from one to ten in order to gratify the sense of taste, which is like an inspector and doorkeeper, is most prodigal and wasteful.

 

88. When pleasure calls, a person should say: “It is as though I ate it.” (Sanki yedim.) For a person who took it as his guiding principle, could have eaten a mosque called “Sanki Yedim,” but he didn’t.[5]

 

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             [5] That is, the person put aside the money saved through his abstinence, and built the mosque with the proceeds. It is in the Fatih district of Istanbul. (Tr.)

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