Old Age: Consoling Hopes

Furthermore, the pleasures of life that had been reduced to nothing by that terrifying state of heedlessness, the desires that had utterly withered, and the blessings and joys pertaining to my own life that had contracted into an exceedingly narrow circle—or had disappeared altogether—were suddenly expanded through the light of īmān.

As we have demonstrated with convincing proofs in other treatises, that narrow circle surrounding the heart widened until it encompassed the entire universe.

And in place of the former blessings of the Horhor garden, which had withered and lost their sweetness, this world and the Hereafter became two vast tables of blessings and treasuries of mercy.

He showed me that each of the hundred human faculties—not merely ten, but a hundred, including the eye, the ear, and the heart—could be extended like a long hand towards those two tables of the All-Merciful.

And every believer, according to the degree of his īmān, could partake of the blessings spread across those tables.

To express this exalted truth and give thanks for that immeasurable blessing, I said at the time:

اَلْحَمْدُ ِللّٰهِ عَلٰى نُورِ اْلاِيمَانِ الْمُصَوِّرِ لِلدَّارَيْنِ مَمْلُوئَتَيْنِ مِنَ النِّعْمَةِ وَالرَّحْمَةِ، لِكُلِّ مُؤْمِنٍ حَقاً يَسْتَفِيدُ مِنْهُمَا بِحَوَاسِّهِ الْكَثِيرَةِ الْمُنْكَشِفَةِ بِاِذْن ِخَالِقِهِ

In other words, for the blessing of the light of īmān—which reveals this world and the Hereafter as filled with blessings and mercy, and enables every true believer to benefit from those two great tables through the many faculties that unfold and develop by the light of īmān and Islam—I would, were it possible, offer with every atom of my being as much praise and gratitude as this world and the Hereafter could contain.

Since īmān produces such immense effects in this world, it will undoubtedly bear fruits and blessings in the eternal abode so exalted and boundless that the intellect of this world can neither comprehend nor describe them.

O my elderly brothers and sisters, who, like me, feel in old age the pain of separation from so many friends!

Although the oldest among you may surpass me in years, in a spiritual sense I am older still.

For my nature is endowed with a powerful compassion for my fellow human beings, and through this mystery of compassion I bear, in addition to my own suffering, the sufferings of thousands of brothers. Thus, it is as though I have lived for hundreds of years.

And however much pain you may have endured through separation, you have not been exposed to it to the same degree as I have.