Take heed, purify your heart, so that this calamity-stricken veil may be lifted from your sight and you may be able to see the truth.
For the kingdom of an exceedingly just, merciful, subject-protecting, powerful, order-loving, compassionate monarch, and a kingdom that displays such manifest signs of progress and perfection, cannot be as your delusion depicts it.
(The Words, 2nd Word, Risale i Nur Collection)
He is Just. He wrongs no one.
He is Merciful. His mercy encompasses everything.
He is Subject-Protecting: He protects and watches over what He has created.
He is Powerful. He has power over everything. And He is over all things capable.
He is Order-Loving. He governs the universe with perfect order.
He is Compassionate. He is merciful and loves His servants.
This maxim shows us how we should read the world and life.
From a psychological perspective, it also carries a particularly striking meaning, especially in terms of anxiety, pessimism, cognitive distortions, and the “catastrophe scenarios” that human beings create in their minds.
What Is Delusion?
The key word here, in my opinion, is “delusion.”
From the perspective of Risale-i Nur, delusion is when a conception or construct that arises in the human mind comes before reality.
A person looks at the pain, loss, uncertainty, or fear they are experiencing and begins to make judgments about life as a whole from it:
“I have a fear that something bad is going to happen to me.”
“The voices in my head do not stop even for a second.”
“I feel as though I am going to lose control at any moment.”
“Even breathing feels difficult; I feel as though I am suffocating.”
“What if something happens to my loved ones?”
“I have a feeling that I am going to do something wrong with every step I take.”
“The storm inside my head never calms down.”
“Everything is getting worse.”
“There is no hope left for me anymore.”
“My future is dark.”
“Something bad is going to happen to me.”
“There is no meaning to my life.”
But with this maxim, Risale-i Nur calls a person to distinguish between the picture produced by their own mind and the reality in the external world.
Because what a person feels and what is true are not always the same thing.
There is a very close counterpart to this in psychology: cognitive distortions.
What Is Cognitive Distortion?
“Cognitive distortion” is when a person, while evaluating an event, unconsciously interprets reality as more negative, threatening, or certain than it actually is.
In other words, the event may be one thing, while the mind’s interpretation of the event may be another.
For example, a friend did not respond to your message:
Reality: “They have not responded to my message yet.”
Cognitive distortion: “They do not care about me. They definitely do not love me.”
Here, the mind has drawn a major conclusion from an event without having sufficient evidence.
In this respect, a similarity can be established between the concept of “delusion” in Risale-i Nur and certain cognitive distortions. Delusion can make a possibility feel as though it were reality. Cognitive distortion can likewise lead us to accept the mind’s interpretation as though it were the truth.
For example:
_“I have a headache. I definitely have a serious illness.” — Catastrophizing
_“I failed at this task. I am an unsuccessful person.” — Overgeneralization
_“They acted a little cold toward me. They definitely do not like me.” — Mind Reading
_“Ten people liked my article, but one person criticized it. So my article must be bad.” — Ignoring the Positive
_“I feel as though something bad is going to happen inside me. Therefore, something bad really is going to happen.” — Emotional Reasoning
The last one is particularly important for understanding the concept of “delusion”:
_“I feel that way, therefore it is that way.”
Yet psychology tells us this: The fact that a thought passes through our minds does not mean that it is true; nor does strongly feeling an emotion mean that the scenario told to us by that emotion is real.
The expression in Risale-i Nur, “cannot be as your delusion depicts it,” can be explained in psychological language as follows:
“Do not immediately assume that the dark picture your mind has drawn for you is reality itself; first look at the evidence and the bigger picture.”
Anxiety, Pessimism, and the World Shown by Delusion
Especially during depressive or anxious periods, the human mind may see certain events as more threatening, more hopeless, or more certain than they actually are. For example, seeing the entirety of the future as dark based on a small negative event is described as “catastrophizing”; drawing a general conclusion from a single bad event is “overgeneralization”; and focusing only on negative things while failing to see positive ones is described as “mental filtering.”
The expression used by Risale-i Nur, “the form shown by your delusion,” is particularly striking from a psychological perspective precisely here.
That is:
“The world your mind shows you may not be the same thing as the real world.”
Sometimes a person suffers not within reality itself, but within the interpretation they have made about reality.
For example, when a person loses an important job, the event is:
“I lost my job.”
But intrusive thoughts may add the following:
“I will never find another job.”
“My life is ruined.”
“I am an unsuccessful person.”
“Nothing will ever get better from now on.”
The first sentence is the event.
The others are merely mental interpretations of the event, coming from the whispering station of Satan, known as the satanic center in the heart.”
Not everything we think is real.
Nor is everything we feel an objective description of the external world. That is, it does not actually exist in reality.
However, Risale-i Nur goes one step further than modern psychology here. It does not merely say, “Question your thought”; it invites the human being to look at the entirety of the universe and at Allah, that is, to look with indicative meaning
Look at the Bigger Picture in Everything
Now let us look carefully. The particular ordering of the following attributes in the sentence is important for this reason:
“Just, merciful, subject-protecting, powerful, order-loving, compassionate…”
It says that behind the visible realm there is justice, mercy, power, order, and compassion.
Its psychological counterpart can be thought of as “being able to see the bigger picture again.”
Anxiety narrows a person’s field of attention.
When a person is afraid, they begin to see the threat rather than their entire life.
If there are a hundred beautiful things and one danger in a room, an anxious mind will often lock onto that single danger. This is actually a characteristic of the brain’s survival system. But when it becomes constant, it can distort a person’s perception of the world.
“Almighty God has embedded the instinct of fear to protect life, not to destroy it.”
(The Letters, 29th Letter, Risale i Nur Collection)
When I read it carefully, the following meanings come to my mind:
“Do not look only at the event that frightens you. Look at the whole kingdom.”
In other words, do not look only at the illness; also look at how the body has been functioning for years.
Do not look only at what you have lost; also look at what has been given to you.
Do not look only at today’s difficulty; also look at the changes in your life.
Do not see only death; also see the constant renewal of life.
We cannot make a final judgment about existence merely by looking at the present moment. Because life is a process.
In psychotherapy, too, one of the greatest misconceptions of human beings is to mistake a temporary psychological state for a permanent reality.
Is the Darkness You Feel Real?
My brother! My question is this:
“Is the darkness and pain you feel at this moment truly valid for your entire life, is it the whole truth, or is it a difficulty belonging only to this moment, in which your current state of mind has darkened your world?”
I am not saying, “Do not be sad, everything is beautiful.”
Pain is real.
Loss is real.
Illness is real.
Death is real.
Injustices are also real.
But reaching the conclusion, based on these, that “Therefore, all existence is meaningless, ownerless, merciless, and nothing I do makes anything better” is something else.
The objection in the text is directed precisely at this second point.
Therefore, I read the sentence by combining the psychological and Risale-i Nur perspectives as follows:
When a person is in distress, their mind may draw a dark picture of the world for them. But before accepting that entire picture as reality, they should stop and look at the evidence.
They should look again at the order in the universe, the continuation of life, the extraordinary functioning of the human body, the difficulties overcome in the past, the blessings given to them, change, and development.
Because the darkness a person feels at that moment does not mean that the entirety of existence is dark.
In my opinion, the strongest psychological summary of the sentence could be this:
“Delusion is to mistake a possibility for reality, an emotion for a judgment, and a moment for an entire life.”
Risale-i Nur calls a person to look not at a single dark frame, but at the entire film.
And the emphasis on a “compassionate monarch” in the sentence adds another extremely important meaning to this: A person is not merely consoling themselves by saying, “Everything will get better”;
“Even if I cannot see everything, nothing is without purpose.”
By saying this, they place themselves within a greater framework of meaning that they can trust.
Here is the evidence:
“In His hand is the dominion of everything (the unseen)…”
(Qur’an 23:88; 36:83)
Distinguishing Delusion from Reality
Delusion says:
“My life is terrible and pitch-dark.”
Psychology responds: “Separate the thought you have constructed in your mind from reality.”
Alhamdulillah (thank God), Risale-i Nur, by opening a wider window to these, says: “Do not judge the whole kingdom by looking at a single event; look together at the justice, mercy, power, and compassion of the Monarch, and at all the works visible throughout the kingdom.”
Then the matter ceases to be merely about “thinking positively”; it becomes “reading reality by comparing it with delusion.”
My brother! Read the beauties on the face of the universe and trust in the attributes of that Monarch (the Creator); because His mercy cannot fit into the narrow mold of your delusion (imaginations).
Peace be with you.
