The Deceptions of Satan

The Eighth Sign

The Question: in the preceding Signs, it was shown that many people enter the path of misguidance because it is an easy path consisting only of destructive acts and transgression. Yet in other treatises of the Risale-i Nur, it has been proven with decisive evidence that the path of unbelief and misguidance is so difficult and full of obstacles that no one should enter it; indeed, it is not possible to travel it. Moreover, the path of īmān and guidance is so clear and evident that everyone should enter it.

The answer: unbelief and misguidance are of two kinds. One kind is practical and secondary, consisting of denying and rejecting the truths of īmān. This form of misguidance is easy. It is merely not accepting the truth; it is an abandonment, a non-existence, a refusal to accept. This is the kind that is shown in the Risale-i Nur to be easy.

The second kind, however, is not practical or secondary, but a matter of belief and thought. It is not merely the negation of īmān, but rather opening a path opposed to īmān. This means accepting falsehood and proving the opposite of truth. This kind is not merely the negation and contradiction of īmān; it is the opposite of īmān. It is not a refusal to accept, which would be easy, but the acceptance of non-existence. And it can be accepted only by proving that non-existence. According to the principle, “Non-existence cannot be proven,” the proof of non-existence is certainly not easy.

Thus, the unbelief and misguidance shown in the other treatises to be difficult and full of obstacles to the point of impossibility is this second kind. Anyone with even the slightest consciousness should not travel this path. Moreover, as has been decisively proven in the Risale-i Nur, this path contains such terrifying pains and suffocating darkness that anyone with even the slightest reason would not desire it.

If it is asked: how do most people enter such a painful, dark, and difficult path?

The answer: they have fallen into it and cannot get out. Moreover, because the vegetative and animal powers within the human being do not see or consider the final outcome, and because they overpower the subtle human faculties within him, they do not wish to leave it and instead console themselves with a present, temporary pleasure.

If it is then asked: misguidance contains such terrible pain and fear that an unbeliever ought not only to lose all pleasure in life, but ought not even to go on living. Rather, that pain should crush him, and that fear should cause his heart to burst. For in respect of his humanity, although he longs for countless things and is in love with life, through unbelief he constantly sees before his eyes his own death as eternal execution and endless separation, and the passing away of beings, the deaths of his friends, and all those he loves as annihilation and everlasting parting. How, then, can such a person live? How can he take pleasure in life?

The answer: he deceives himself through a strange satanic sophistry and continues to live. He imagines that he is receiving a superficial pleasure. We shall indicate the nature of his condition through a well-known comparison. It is as follows:

They say that someone once said to the ostrich, “You have wings, so fly.” The ostrich folded its wings and said, “I am a camel,” and did not fly.^[1] But it fell into the hunter’s trap. So that the hunter would not see it, it buried its head in the sand. Yet it left its great body outside and made itself a target for the hunter.