The texts and videos presented explore the existence of angels, their roles in the universe, and the spiritual dimension of creation from the perspective of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi.
While emphasizing that every being in the universe is engaged in its own form of glorification and worship, the text highlights the necessity of appointed angels who consciously represent and carry out these duties on behalf of beings that lack consciousness.
Unlike human beings, angels are described as messengers who seek no personal benefit, obey only Divine commands, and derive a spiritual pleasure from serving in this way.
The text explains that the descriptions in the Hadiths of angels with multiple heads or speaking multiple languages are, in fact, indications of their universal and immense innate duties.
In the final section, drawing upon verses of the Qur’an, the text presents the reality of angels and jinn as servants and officials of the Divine sovereignty.
This work aims to explain, through rational and transmitted evidence, the spiritual order that exists behind the material realm.
Gemini Notebook
THE TWENTY-NINTH WORD
THE ANGELS AND THE UNSEEN
Fourth Fundamental Point — The Angels in the Living Order of the Universe
What if the universe is far more alive than we imagine?
Look closely.
A flower is not merely a flower.
It carries a remarkable pattern of beauty.
Its very existence seems to speak.
It points beyond itself.
And it praises its Creator through the language of its being.
Now look at a garden.
A single flower has its own purpose.
But the garden has a greater purpose.
It becomes like one vast flower.
Its colors.
Its harmony.
Its countless forms of life.
Together, they perform a universal act of praise.
The same is true of a tree.
A fruit appears.
A flower opens.
A leaf unfolds.
Each has its own function.
Yet the entire tree performs a greater service.
It becomes like a single living declaration.
And the pattern continues.
The heavens themselves can be viewed in the same way.
The sun.
The moon.
The stars.
Countless worlds moving through immense spaces.
Each appears like a word.
And together, they form a vast cosmic expression.
A declaration of order.
A declaration of beauty.
A declaration of power.
From this perspective, even what appears lifeless is not without purpose.
Matter may seem silent.
Unconscious.
Still.
Yet it participates in an extraordinary order.
Everything performs a function.
Everything contributes to a greater harmony.
And according to this vision, the angels are connected to this hidden dimension of creation.
They represent the worship and glorification expressed by the universe.
They are, in a sense, the counterparts of these visible creatures in the unseen world.
The universe becomes like a vast palace.
And within that palace, there are many kinds of servants.
Plants and inanimate things perform their duties without knowing them.
Animals serve wider purposes without fully understanding them.
Human beings, however, can recognize the purpose behind creation.
They can understand.
They can choose.
And they can consciously respond.
But there is another order of beings.
Beings beyond physical desire.
Beyond material reward.
For them, the greatest reward is closeness to their Creator.
His command.
His attention.
His favour.
His presence.
Their worship is their joy.
Their service is their perfection.
And their connection to God is their fulfilment.
Their duties are not all the same.
Just as a great government has many offices and many officials, the universe contains different realms of service.
Each has its own function.
Each has its own form of glorification.
Tradition describes the Archangel Michael as having a special connection with the creatures of the earth.
He is associated with the vast processes of life that unfold across the planet.
The animals, too, are described as having their own appointed spiritual guardians.
Different realms.
Different duties.
Different forms of service.
But one greater order.
This helps us understand why angels are described in such extraordinary ways in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.
One narration speaks of angels with enormous numbers of heads.
Each head.
Many mouths.
And every mouth.
Many tongues.
All glorifying God in different ways.
Taken literally, the image is immense.
But beneath the image lies a deeper idea.
The worship of the angels is vast.
Ordered.
Comprehensive.
And beyond our ordinary perception.
Consider the Earth.
From space, it appears as one world.
One living system.
Yet within it are countless forms of life.
Forests.
Oceans.
Mountains.
Animals.
Plants.
Millions upon millions of individual acts.
Each contributing to the greater whole.
In this sense, the Earth itself can be imagined as having countless tongues of praise.
And the angel associated with it represents this vast universal meaning in the unseen realm.
There is an example from nature that makes this idea even more striking.
Consider an almond tree.
A single tree can have dozens of great branches.
Each branch divides into smaller branches.
Those branches carry flowers.
And each flower contains its own intricate structure.
Layer after layer.
Pattern after pattern.
Order within order.
Beauty within beauty.
And each detail points toward a greater meaning.
The question then arises:
Could such a tree perform so many intricate functions…
and yet have no appointed spiritual representative?
Could all this order exist…
without a deeper dimension?
For the believer, the answer is no.
The visible world is not the whole story.
It is only the surface.
Behind the visible form lies another dimension.
A dimension of meaning.
A dimension of worship.
A dimension inhabited by beings we cannot normally see.
And now…
we are invited to look beyond the visible.
To open the doors of the Qur’an.
To enter a world where angels are not distant ideas…
but part of a living cosmic order.
The Qur’an speaks of them.
It describes their movements.
Their obedience.
Their duties.
Their worship.
It presents them as servants who act only by divine command.
They do not act independently.
They do not rebel.
They carry out what they are commanded.
The Qur’an says:
“Glory be to Him!
They are but servants raised to honour.
They speak not before He speaks.
And they act by His command.”
These words offer a powerful image.
A universe filled with obedience.
A universe filled with service.
A universe in which countless beings perform their duties…
even when human eyes cannot see them.
And then there is another unseen creation.
The jinn.
The Qur’an tells of a group of them listening to the revelation.
They hear the recitation.
They recognize its guidance.
And they respond.
They say that they have heard a wondrous recitation.
A recitation that guides to what is right.
And they believe in it.
They refuse to associate anything with their Lord.
So the Qur’an opens another door.
Beyond the world of matter.
Beyond what our senses normally reveal.
A world of angels.
A world of jinn.
A world of unseen realities.
Perhaps the universe is not silent after all.
Perhaps the silence is only our limitation.
Perhaps every star…
every ocean…
every tree…
every living creature…
is part of a greater order.
An order we can observe…
but cannot completely see.
And perhaps, beyond the visible universe…
there is a world that is constantly praising its Creator.
A world of beings whose existence is hidden from our eyes…
but whose purpose is deeply connected to the meaning of creation.
The visible world may be only the beginning.
The unseen…
may be far closer than we think.
ChatGPT
Original text
The Twente-Ninth Word
About the Immortality of Man’s Spirit, the Angels, and the Resurrection of the Dead
…
First Aim
To believe in the angels and affirm that belief is a pillar of faith. There are four fundamental points in this aim.
…
FOURTH FUNDAMENTAL POINT
If the creatures of the universe are observed with care, it may be seen that like particulars, universals have collective identities, each of which appears as a universal function; it is apparent that each performs a universal duty. For example, just as a flower as itself displays an embroidery full of art and with the tongue of its being recites the Creator’s names, so the garden of the globe resembles a flower and performs an extremely orderly, universal duty of glorification. And just as a fruit issues a proclamation expressing its glorification of God within an order and regularity, so does a mighty tree in its entirety have a most orderly natural duty and worship. And just as a tree glorifies God through the words of its fruits, flowers and leaves, so do the vast oceans of the heavens glorify the All-Glorious Creator and praise the Sublime Maker through their suns, moons, and stars, which are like words; and so on. Although external beings are outwardly inanimate and unconscious, they all perform extremely vital, living, and conscious duties and glorification. Of a certainty, therefore, just as angels are their representatives expressing their glorification in the World of the Inner Dimensions of Things, so are they the counterparts, dwellings, and mosques of those angels in the external and manifest world.
As is explained in the Fourth Branch of the Twenty-Fourth Word, the first of the four categories of workers employed by the All-Glorious Maker of the palace of this world is that of the angels and spirit beings. Since, without knowing it, plants and inanimate beings perform extremely important though wageless duties at the command of One Who does know; also without knowing it, animals serve extensive universal aims in return for an insignificant wage; and since, observedly, in return for two wages, one immediate and the other postponed, human beings, knowing the All-Glorious Maker’s aims, are employed by their conforming to them, their taking a share of everything for themselves, and their supervising the other servants; it will certainly be the first category, as well as the fourth, which will constitute the servants and workers. They both resemble human beings in that knowing the universal aims of the All-Glorious Maker, they conform to them through worship, and they are contrary to them. For being beyond sensual pleasure and some partial wage, they consider sufficient the pleasure, perfection, delight and bliss they experience from the All-Glorious Maker’s attention, command, favour, consideration, and name, through their perception of Him, connection with Him, and proximity to Him. They labour with the purest sincerity, their duties of worship varying according to their different kinds, and according to the varieties of the creatures in the universe.
Like in a government there are various officials in the various offices, so too the duties of worship and glorification vary in the spheres of the realm of dominicality. For example, through the power, strength, reckoning and command of God Almighty, the Archangel Michael is like the general overseer of God’s creatures sown in the field of the face of the earth. If one may say so, he is the head of the angels that resemble farmers. And, through the permission, command, power, and wisdom of the All-Glorious Creator, the incorporeal shepherds of the animals have a head, a supreme angel appointed to the task.
Thus, since it is necessary for there to be an angel appointed to each of these external creatures in order to represent in the World of the Inner Dimensions of Things the duties of worship and service of glorification which it performs, and to present them knowingly at the divine court, the way the angels are described in the narrations of the Bringer of Sure News (UWBP) is certainly most appropriate and rational. For example, he declared: “There are some angels which have either forty, or forty thousand, heads. In each of the heads are forty thousand mouths, and with the forty thousand tongues in each of those mouths they glorify God in forty thousand ways.” This Hadith expresses a truth, and both contains a meaning, and has a form or manner of expression. Its meaning is as follows:
The angels’ worship is both orderly and perfect, and universal and comprehensive. As for the form of the truth, it is this:
There are certain mighty corporeal beings that perform their duties of worship with forty thousand heads in forty thousand ways. For example, the heavens glorify God with the suns and the stars. While the earth, which is a single being, performs its duty of worship, its dominical glorification, with a hundred thousand heads and with the hundreds of thousands of tongues in each mouth. Thus, the angel appointed to the globe of the earth has to be envisaged in this way in order to display this meaning in the World of the Inner Dimensions of Things.
I myself, even, saw a medium-sized almond tree which had close on forty large branches resembling heads. When I looked at one branch, I saw it had nearly forty smaller branches like tongues. Then I looked at one tongue of one of those small branches; forty flowers had opened on it. I studied the flowers considering the wisdom in them, and saw in each close on forty exquisite, well-ordered stamens, colours, and arts, each of which proclaimed one of the All-Glorious Maker’s names and their constantly varying manifestations. Is it at all possible that the All-Wise and Beauteous One, Who is the All-Glorious Maker of the almond tree, would impose this many duties on an inanimate tree, and not mount on it an appointed angel appropriate to it, to be like its spirit, to understand and express its meaning, proclaim it to the universe, and present it at the divine court?
O friend! So far, our explanation has been an introduction to bring the heart to acceptance, the reason to submission, and to compel the soul to surrender. If you have understood it to some degree and wish to meet with the angels, prepare yourself. Moreover, purify yourself of wrongful prejudice. Now look, the doors of the Qur’an’s world are open! Look, the paradise of the Qur’an is with “wide-open gates” (38:50)! Enter and Look! See the angels in beautiful form in the paradise of the Qur’an! Each of its revealed verses is a place to alight, so look from them: By the [winds] sent forth one after another [to man’s profit], * Which then blow violently in tempestuous gusts * And scatter [things] far and wide; * Then separate, one from another * Then spread abroad a message. (77:1-5)
By the [angels] who tear out [the souls of the wicked] with violence, * By those who gently draw out [the souls of the blessed] ,* And by those who gently glide along [on errands of mercy],* Then press forward as if in a race, * Then arrange to do [the commands of their Lord]. (79:1-5)
Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by God’s permission in every errand. (97:4)
… over which are [appointed] angels stern [and] severe, who flinch not [from executing] the commands they receive from God, but do [precisely] what they are commanded. (66:6)
Also listen to:
Glory be to Him! They are but servants raised to honour. They speak not before He speaks and they act [in all things] by His command, (21:26-27)
listen to its praises. And if you wish to meet with the jinn, enter this resounding sura:
Say, it has been revealed to me that a company of jinn listened [to the Qur’an]. (72:1)
See them and listen to what they say. Take a lesson from them. Look, they are saying:
“We have really heard a wonderful recital * It gives guidance to the right, and we have believed therein: We shall not join [in worship] any [gods] with our Lord.” (72:1-2)
SOURCES
Risale-i Nur Okuma Programı 2.1.0, Words[2021] – 544, email: syesilova72@gmail.com
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Words – The Twenty-Ninth Word – About the Immortality of Man’s Spirit, the Angels, and the Resurrection of the Dead, The English translations of the Risale-i Nur Collection, translated by Şükran Vahide and published by Sözler Neşriyat, are an exact printed version of the original text. (erisale.com)
https://erisale.com/index.jsp?locale=en#content.en.201.530
https://beta.erisale.com/tr/sozler/yirmidokuzuncu-soz-birinci-maksad#4163