Source Citation: The Flashes, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Eleventh Flash, First and Second Points, Pages 81 to 83.
FIRST POINT
The Most Noble Messenger (alayhissalatu wassalam) decreed: “He who holds fast to my sunnah when my ummah has become corrupt earns the reward and recompense of a hundred martyrs.”
Yes, adhering to the lofty sunnah is most valuable; and particularly at a time when innovations are rife, adhering to it requires an even greater strength of belief and seriousness. Following the practices of the prophet directly calls to mind the Most Noble Messenger, and that recollection is transformed into a feeling of the Divine Presence.
In the most insignificant social transaction, even in the courtesies relating to eating, drinking and sleeping, at the exact moment in which the lofty sunnah is observed, that ordinary transaction and that natural conduct becomes a reward-bearing act of worship and an action in accordance with Sacred Law (shari‘a). For in one’s ordinary actions, one thinks of following the Most Noble Messenger (alayhissalatu wassalam) and pictures in the mind that it is a spiritual courtesy of the Sacred Law and that the one who establishes the Sacred Law is him. And one then orients one’s heart towards Allah Most High, Who is the true Lawgiver, and one thus attains unto a type of experience of the Divine Presence and of worship.
Now, on the basis of this secret, whoever makes the following of the lofty sunnah his own habit, turns his habits into worship, and is able to make his entire life fruitful and rewarded.
SECOND POINT
Imam Rabbani, the Renovator of the Second Millennium, (May God be pleased with him) said: “In the course of my spiritual journeying, I observed that the most brilliant, most elevated, most secure and safest of the paths of the Sufi way was that which was built upon following the sunnah of the prophet. I saw that the saints who had progressed significantly on other ways but had not made the following of the sunnah their guiding principle were in a state of great danger. Their illuminations were in shadow and their progress was subject to obstructions.”
Whenever I ceased this adherence to any degree whatsoever, I felt a sense of severe pressure. I saw a multitude of paths ahead of me of unknown entryways and ways out, the ends of which were not known. The load was very heavy, and I was totally powerless and short-sighted, and the road was dark. Yet whenever I held fast to the sunnah, I felt a state as if the way became illuminated and the safe and peaceful route appeared, the heavy load lightened and the pressure disappeared. In the course of those moments, I confirmed Imam Rabbani’s verdict with my own direct witnessing.
THIRD POINT
When this poor Said was in the process of attempting to withdraw from the state of being the Old Said, my mind and heart rolled about between different truths in an immensely dreadful and spiritual storm because of his having not had a spiritual guide, and because of the deception of the speculative sciences he had studied, and because of the proud and overweening character of his own soul, and because he was seeking a way to reality.
When I saw myself upon this spiritual journey with such severe difficulties and heavy burdens on my shoulders, and I followed the elements and spiritual courtesies of the lofty sunnah concerning that state, I found a lightness and ease as if they had lifted away all of my burdens and removed them from me.
At that time I saw that each of the rulings and courtesies of the sunnah resembled a masterfully ordered compass or a spiritual instrument which clarifies the route for travellers on a dark, uncharted road. Whenever I felt an intellectual doubt or a confusion of the heart during those turbulent transformations, I held fast to the sunnah as my anchor, and immediately found stability and peace.