Old Age: Consoling Hopes

Then my soul remembered my friends in my homeland, and I imagined myself dying in exile. Longing for my friends, I spoke in the words of Niyazi-i Mısrī:

I left the cares of the world behind,

Spread my wings into nothingness,

And cried out with longing: ‘Friend! Friend!’

In any event, during that long, sorrowful, and melancholy night, my weakness and helplessness became such powerful means of intercession before Allah that even now I recall it with astonishment. For only a few days later, I escaped in a most unexpected manner. Although the distance was equivalent to a year's journey on foot, and although I knew no Russian, I fled alone and was delivered in a wondrous way.

Through a special Divine assistance granted to me precisely on account of my weakness and helplessness, I travelled safely through Warsaw and Austria and eventually reached Istanbul. The ease with which everything unfolded was truly astonishing. I completed that long escape with extraordinary ease—something that even the bravest and most resourceful men who knew the language had been unable to accomplish.

Yet that night on the banks of the Volga had led me to make this resolution:

“I shall spend the remainder of my life in seclusion, in caves. I have had enough of involvement in the affairs of people. Since I shall ultimately enter the grave alone, I must begin even now to accustom myself to solitude.”

But alas, the bustling life of Istanbul, with its dazzling worldly splendour, my many friends there, and especially the excessive and fruitless honour and attention bestowed upon me—far beyond what I deserved—caused me to forget that resolution for a time.

It was as though that lonely night had been the dark yet light-receiving pupil of the eye of my life, while the bright days of Istanbul became merely its unseeing white, causing the light of my life's eye to fade and that eye to fall asleep once more.

Then, two years later, Ghawth al-Gīlānī opened my eye once again through his book Futūh al-Ghayb.

O brothers and sisters who have reached old age! Know that the weakness and helplessness of old age are means of attracting Divine mercy and assistance. Just as I have experienced this many times in my own life, so too does the mercy manifest everywhere upon the face of the earth bear witness to this truth.

For the weakest of all living beings are infants, yet it is they who receive the tenderest and most loving manifestations of mercy.

Consider, for example, a helpless young bird in its nest high in a tree. Precisely because of its helplessness, Divine mercy causes its mother to serve it devotedly, like an obedient soldier. She flies to and fro, bringing it food. But when the young bird's wings have grown strong and it forgets its helplessness, its mother says, “Now find your own food,” and turns away from it.