Why is Life Valuable? From the Fourth Ray of the Risale-i Nur

Recap of previous session  In a previous related discussion, we saw that ‘materialism’ is unable to provide a proper ontology for things that seem to be immaterial – like pleasure, beauty and love  Materialism has only ‘matter’ to work with. While we can hold matter in the hand, we can hardly hold immaterial concepts like beauty, love and pleasure in the hand.  Since materialism can’t really say ‘what’ these things are, the question of ‘how’ we came to perceive their existence becomes moot

Materialistic view of life’s value  On materialism, life seems to be subjectively valuable given the pleasure we perceive from things in the world  On this subjective model, life is valuable because it is a necessary tool for the perception of pleasure. If a person is deprived of life, they are deprived of all the things they love. Since the things that are loved are considered good, life is good.  Yet materialism fails to account for what love, pleasure or life are in the first place. Thus, it can at best provide a partial view of why life is valuable

The Risale-i Nur view  While it’s true that life is valuable because it’s pleasurable, the Quran and Risale-i Nur offer a deeper view  The human love of life, immortality, beauty and perfection can be seen as an innate disposition that Allah has placed in man’s heart (he didn’t evolve it through random processes)  Because man has life, consciousness, intelligence and senses, he necessarily perceives the evident beauty in the world and loves life (unless he is deluded or has dulled his senses by abasing his soul)

The Risale-i Nur view  Since we sense that immaterial things like beauty, love and life exist, they must be grounded in some immaterial Source. They can’t be grounded in matter  Beings with life/existence, beings who ‘love’, and things with ‘beauty’, all come and go. They are contingent and transitory. Yet beauty itself endures  Thus, the contingent bearers of beauty cannot be the source of their own beauty nor existence. Their source must be the beauty and perfection of some Necessary Being, who endures and possesses beauty in His very Essence

The Risale-i Nur view  The true believer thus directs his love of life and beauty away from the samples and mirrors in the world, to the True Source of Life, Love and Beauty.  Life, beauty and love are not mere abstract concepts, and are not material entities. They are tangible realities that pertain to the Divine Essence of Allah, and which are denoted by the Divine Names of Wadud, Hayy and Zat-i Zuljamal (Love, Life and ‘One of Absolute Beauty’).

Life’s Value  If Allah possesses beauty and perfection in His very Essence, all the Names and attributes that pertain to that Essence – like Hayy & Wadud - must too be beautiful and perfect  Thus ‘life’ is beautiful due to it relation to the beauty of Allah’s Name of Hayy  In addition, life, especially conscious, intelligent life, is valuable because it can know and make known Allah’s beauty  It does so by acting as a ‘mirror’ in three ways

Acz and Fakr  Through his boundless weakness and poverty, man acts as a kind of reverse mirror to the beauty of Allah’s absolute Power and Wealth  The degrees of coldness make heat known, the degrees of darkness make light known and the degrees of weakness and poverty make Power, Wealth and Mercy known  To be a more polished mirror, one should give up egotism and have recourse to the Power and Wealth of Allah, rather than to himself or other weak beings

Mirror to the ‘attributes’  The partial, limited attributes man possesses, like knowledge, sight, will, hearing, speech and life, mirror the absolute attributes of Allah, like absolute knowledge, sight, hearing and will  Man’s attributes are merely a shadow like representation of those absolute attributes – they are not identical – this the concept of tashbih and tanzih

Mirror to the Names  Man looks at himself and the world around him and everywhere sees the impresses and manifestations of the Divine Names, like Rahman, Rahim, Quddus and Kareem.  Man’s body and being is the most comprehensive place of manifestation for the Names. This is whether man is conscious of it or not, or a believer or not  But as a believer, man can act as a ‘conscious mirror’ and can purposely reflect the Names in his own character, choices and actions