Yunus 31: (Oh My Messenger!) Say; “Who is giving you provisions from the sky and the land? Or who has control over ears and eyes? Who brings forth the living from the dead and the dead from the living? Who governs over (all) matters?” They will say; “Allah!”. Say; “If so, won’t you abstain (from being rebellious against Allah)?”

Surah Yunus, we have come to verse 31.

My Messenger, say: Who provides for you from the sky and the earth? Allah Almighty is now addressing the mind here. What does He say? Do you never use your minds? Do you never reflect? Yes. Our Lord now begins to address the mind, the mind of every human. Allah Almighty gives every human a mind that will know His Self, grasp how it was created, and know by whom it was brought from nothing into being; such a mind He gives to man. If man did not have such a mind, being created incomplete, man could not know his Lord. In that case Allah Almighty would not blame man either. Now what does He say? My Messenger, say: Who provides for you from the sky and the earth?

Yes.

Or who owns and rules over the ears and the eyes? The ears and the eyes. Who owns and rules over them? I mean, this eye I have given you takes a picture instantly, takes it in and passes it on. It does not take a second, a second.

If seeing happens below one sixteenth of a second, if seeing happens below one sixteenth, it sees people one by one, image by image, like this. One by one. The moment it goes above sixteen, the moment it goes above sixteen per second, it sees it like a film strip. Now, within what fraction of a second it takes you in and sees you instantly! Today even the most modern Polaroid camera takes time to take you and give you out.

Yes. By giving you life with a soul in this way, He has equipped you with knowledge. So your ears and eyes, who owns and rules over them? Your ears and your eyes.

How do the ears hear sound? The breath you take, as it leaves your throat, strikes the vocal cords. There it creates vibrations and turns into sound. With the (?) of your tongue, when you produce in your mouth the letters according to the words, through the air it reaches the anvil and hammer in your ear. When that membrane, the anvil and hammer in your ear receive the strokes, like a (?) it passes it to the brain, the brain (?) those words and brings them to your understanding. Who does this for you?

Does this happen by itself? What a beautiful comparison Allah Almighty gives. Of the existence of His Self, and of how and with what you are (?). Can you do such a thing? Does anything come into existence by itself? Is this order set up by itself?

Yes.

Those who turn their back on Allah, those who say there is no Allah, those who say fifty thousand years ago this dinosaur's state lasted, then these conditions changed and it became this,

who try to prove to people not the existence of Allah but that nature shaped itself by itself, that beings changed and this order came about: wretched people who expose their own ignorance, people devoid of reason. Yes.

Who brings forth the living from the dead? Well Hodja, is there someone dead, that you say the living comes forth? You sow seed in a field. You took that seed. The seed is dead right now. It is waiting. Exactly. Just as when our bodies die, the life, the spirit, the nafs go out and in the barzakh wait.

That seed too comes from its branch, from that vegetable, from that fruit, my friends. And you wait. (?) You keep it waiting in your store, in your silo. The Hour came. You planted it in the soil. From there (?) gives it life. It comes out again. That is how you too will be resurrected there.

Yes. Events in the world are laid out before your eyes. Just as that seed, planted in the ground, (?) finds life, tomorrow, when He says We will create you exactly, down to your fingertips, if the fingerprints of the billions of people who have come do not match each other, in the same way He says I will resurrect you in the same form, down to your fingerprint. With what? With that cell in you that does not burn, vanish or decay; when on the sixth level He waters you with that sea of secrets called the sea of life, only the water in it will make that seed sprout, and like plants from the earth you will come out again.

When paired with the spirits, the frequency of the body and that of the spirit, like receiver and transmitter, will find each other. That is when you come before Me with a driver, He says. Yes. How beautiful. The verses always confirm each other just as they are.

Who brings forth the living from the dead, He says? Who brings it forth? Who brings forth the dead from the living? Then who makes it die? Who manages every affair?

Did you think this universe is empty? When He says every affair: the galaxies in the sky, the seven heavens, the seven heavens; within the destinies of all these people, throughout their lives, within the lifespan they will live, within that lifespan no accident befalls them; that is, before their time is fulfilled, their death is not possible. Their death. Did you think you would die without proving yourselves? According to the verse. Even these accidents we know: one must know that a person's lifespan was that long, and that too within his covenant, within his destiny.

In this case Allah Almighty says: who manages every affair? He has programmed everything, and it continues within that program. They will say Allah, He says. They will say Allah. Say: Then will you not beware of rebelling against Him? Of rebelling against Allah. Of not seeing all the provision He gave; of His granting you a life, of His giving you a part of Himself, of His addressing you to the secret of His Self, of His creating you as the noblest of creatures, of His making you the caliph of this universe, that is, of this world, are you not ashamed? Yes. A person needs a conscience. Conscience.

Conscience. What is conscience? Feelings of mercy. What? A (?) feeling. Let's say mercy, a feeling that (?) what is right. This thing called conscience. For example, Ahmet Efendi did me a favour and I do him harm. You say: how can there be such lack of conscience? I mean, how can there be such injustice? How can you treat him like this in return for the good he did you? Well, Allah Almighty has given you so much life, addressed you to His Self, laid so many blessings before you; although He (?) nothing from you, although for your saying Allah once He grants you paradise, eternal life as a gift, have you no conscience at all, that you turn your back on Allah and are ungrateful for what He has given?

Yes.

Our child (?) says: Peace be upon you, Hodja. (?), but it must be, well, that. A few atheists I know say, as you described, that both paradise and hell are here. I kiss your hands, he says. I mean, you explained it well. You told us what paradise and hell are like. That life he lived here, my friends, which he calls a hell, is actually his paradise; when they see that punishment in the hereafter, they are people who will understand what hell is. People who will understand what that punishment is. Yes.

These (?) who deny Allah: if you asked them who sends down water from the sky, who makes the rain fall, who brings forth provision from the earth, who gives these? Ask. It is neither Ahmet's doing nor Mehmet's; whose doing is it? This is Allah's doing. Oh, are we going to bring Allah into everything? Of course we will bring Allah into everything. What did we say in the last lesson? To seeing eyes We will show some things, we said. When ill-intentioned people are in charge, aren't there times when we suffered thirst, drought, want? And when those who say Allah are in charge, isn't there a world lived with plenty, with water, with every kind of abundance?

Yes, if you say Allah, Allah will not leave you wronged. Having known this much, let us go further back: the people of Thamud, how were they destroyed? By a mighty cry. How were the people of Salih destroyed? By drought. The sun comes, the sun; drought begins. After this goes on for days, they see a cloud ahead. Fine, they say, we'll take shelter under the cloud, under this cloud. As the cloud approaches they go under it, and there for seven days, eight days, seven nights they are destroyed by a storm. Eight days, seven nights.

Yes. So there is a wisdom of Allah in everything.

Who owns the ears and the eyes?

Who owns them? Allah owns them. Well, how does He own them? If you make your ear hear bad words, it is written down. If your eyes see bad things, that too is written down. Tomorrow, when He brings you before the Supreme Court, if He did not own your eyes and ears, He would be unaware of these too. Yes.

(?) the meaning of 'who owns the ears and the eyes': Allah, who created all creatures and people, although He knows all He created and owns them, refers only to people's ears and eyes. People hear and understand with their ears, or see and understand with their eyes. Those without eyes and ears are unaware of life. They have only bodies; they are like a plant. In this respect Allah, by addressing the ears and the eyes, means their grasping by hearing or by seeing. So who is it that looks into their ears and eyes, into the state of all people, and is aware of it? The living from the dead, plants from seeds; who is it that in winter makes the trees shed their leaves, making everything bone dry, then in spring revives them, makes all plants grow and flourish, then turns them into a dry branch again, and creates them?

You look

at a tree: a tree. It has no mind. It has life, but not life as we know it. It has life. There is life, but not as we know it, not like our life: plant life. I mean, (?). Because we have a nafs, the nafs does not accept plant life. The nafs will eat, drink, have intercourse, reproduce, wander about, always selfishly taking the best for itself. Yes. The other is plant life. Now, this tree takes its food from the soil, grows, and at a certain time gives its fruit. Leave that aside.

How does it know winter has come? It sheds its leaves, goes to sleep, protects itself.

The tree I know, the plants I know,

how do you know spring has come? The plum trees have begun to blossom.

Is it the soil nudging it? Or is it counting its days in the soil? What kind of program is this?

Allah has coded it.

Allah Almighty reveals to the earth. O earth! To the earth! We, He says, revealed to it, the earth, what it will consume of a person, in the world, in his body, and what it will not consume, He says. Just look. To the earth, to the soil. So in the human body there is a seed it cannot consume. With that seed, in the same state down to the fingertip, in the hereafter Allah Almighty will resurrect us. Yes. So Allah Almighty, who seems as if He were nowhere, makes His existence felt among us so strongly, though He calls it merely a realm of the unseen, that is, a realm where His Self is not seen. But a realm that subsists through His Self.

Because Allah has the attribute Hayy, the Living. All His creatures need Allah. Allah, however, is free of His creatures.

Thus, from the atom to (?), to the globe, everything needs Allah. So if Allah Almighty sent us to an unseen realm, it is not possible that in this realm Allah's Self is not seen, or that He is cut off from the world.

If it were so, we could not live.

Is Allah Almighty present and watching in every particle of it? Present and watching. You say this. If He is present and watching, how can you cut Allah off from the world and, calling it the unseen realm, not fit Allah into the world?

Yes. In this case, if Allah Almighty said the unseen realm,

the eyes see Him but cannot grasp Him. They grasp Him but cannot see Him. Take a factory.

Ahmet Efendi owns ten factories. Owns twenty factories. Ahmet Efendi. He has put managers at their head.

Whose are the factories? Ahmet Efendi's. So does Ahmet Efendi never visit those factories? Does he not call them to account?

Hodja, are you now comparing Allah with that man in the world? Well, I will give the example now. Who is it He says descends and ascends for every affair on the Night of Power in Ramadan? Who is it He calls the angels and the spirit? Is it Gabriel you (?) as the spirit?

Yes. That is where they go wrong. So Allah does not leave this realm alone. Even if He Himself is not seen, He creates a human from mankind who will be seen. From mankind. Like Ahmet Efendi, like Mehmet Efendi; having made a covenant with him first in the barzakh, when He brings him into the world He raises him well with teaching and training. After that He speaks (?) to you. He speaks in His place. He makes him speak. His manifestation, yes. Must you see with these very eyes? His Self, (?) to His Self: His Beloved, whom He created in order to see as the same, creating millions, billions of people from His forms, giving them a part of Himself and addressing them to His Self, would Allah Almighty leave this world of yours empty?

If He had left it empty, when He was far from people, people would devour each other. And can you prove that He is with people? How much more shall we prove it? They set a trap, and We, He says, set a trap for them, but We are the best of those who set traps, He says. So He is with us. With us. Yes. If in the verses He says who gave you ears, who gave you eyes, then He is with us. Yes.

If people had known the meanings of the verses, if so many people who pass for scholars had explained the verses properly, had made people love Allah and His Messenger, had not, holding up Ahmet and Mehmet as examples, told stories, these people would not have become so corrupt.

But you will say, Hodja, everyone lives their own destiny. Of course everyone lives their own destiny. So they too hold themselves as witnesses like this. I am a scholar like this, he holds himself as witness.

Yes.

Managing every affair, that is: if you ask who creates the heavens and the earth and what is between them, who keeps their course until a time He has decreed, who knows of all living beings until the Hour, of those to come, where and when they will live and die, what they will do, how much provision they will get, who manages these, they will say Allah. Then will you not beware of rebelling against Him? Against Allah. Yes.

So this is the difference between people's words and their actions; this difference is that, though a person knows in his nafs of Allah's existence, though he knows he was created by a God, the person is hesitant and lives in (?) toward Allah.

People have been favoured with Allah Almighty's address. Allah Almighty created people close to His Self. Non-Muslims, and those before them too, people who do not believe in the Prophet and in Allah, although they do not recognize Allah Almighty as Allah, that they themselves were surely created, they know; (?).

But since such a Lord did not appear, still waiting for the Lord they expect by their own minds, out of arrogance and pride they denied Allah who created them. These traits were written for them as their destiny. Since they are in the same (?) in the world too, although they know they were created, because they could not see the Allah they had expected earlier by their own minds, they are in doubt and hesitation. They are in doubt and hesitation. This doubt and hesitation makes these people say Allah. Allah. But being rebellious against the books and prophets of Allah who created them, and against Allah, they cannot (?) the Lord who created them.

Because they wait for the Lord of their own imagination. Yes.