Losing While on the Verge of Winning

“Serving on this path is the noblest of duties. Humanity’s sole purpose is the delight of the Creator, and the end result is eternal bliss in the Hereafter. Indeed, if this purest of pure thoughts is contaminated by even the smallest bit, by personal interest or communal selfishness, then both the individual and the community will lose their way from the Divine path, and the vicious circles of losing while on the verge of winning become active.”¹⁾

“At any rate, if in these critical days we do not turn to real spiritual wisdom by tying all our knowledge, good manners, and experience to the relations among man, the universe, and the Creator, it will be inevitable that we become the victims of some delusions in the name of knowledge. We will lose on the verge of winning and we will fall into the situation of the unfortunate ones described in the verse, ‘Relate to them the story of the man to whom We sent Our Signs, but he passed them by: So Satan followed him up and he went astray’ (Al-A’raf, 7:175).”²⁾

“Our goal in this service, which we set out to kindle the knowledge of God in the conscience and to make our people believe in the things that need to be believed, is Divine knowledge, Divine love, spiritual pleasures, and Divine consent. If we forget the main purpose while serving (may God forbid), become alienated from ourselves, and attach to the simple causes, then it means that we are losing while on the verge of winning. This is the greatest calamity.”³⁾

“The person who loses the sincerity becomes like the lower part of the mountains, no matter which peak he was on before, and he experiences the agony of losing while on the verge of winning. We should remember that the lower part of the spiral of light obtained by sincerity is an abyss.”⁴⁾

“For this reason, as it was also the case with some of the Companions of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, since many perfect human beings, at least many travelers toward God who are candidates for perfection—even though they are favored with knowledge of God and meeting with God—cannot or are not allowed to know the horizon of those who have close relationships with God or the peak where they stand, they may not accept others of the same degree of nearness to God as them, even though the latter are pure, saintly scholars who are heirs to the mission of the Prophets; they may even go so far as to disparage them. This standpoint may sometimes be a risky trial for the travelers on the path toward God. Although, provided they keep silent about others and purify their hearts of bad moral qualities, they are candidates to be the doves of the heaven of sainthood, they suffer losses on the verge of winning, either due to their biased love of their own ways or their hostility toward others or envy of God’s favors on others, and cause the people of heresy and unbelief to rejoice by taking up a stance against God’s close friends. Another cause of loss is that one sees oneself and their group as being great and qualified to guide others, while perceiving of others as insignificant and in need of guidance. There are as many paths toward God as the breaths of creatures and it is possible for everyone who travels toward Him sincerely to attain a certain degree of nearness to God and to realize some sort of meeting with Him. It is not vanity, self-esteem, self-assertion, or pretension, but modesty, self-denial, and mortification that are fundamentally important in traveling toward God. No one knows the number of the people who have been paid no importance by others have reached the Ultimate Truth, while many others who are self-esteemed and hold a position in people’s eyes have remained at the half-way point.”⁵⁾

“There are still others who advance toward their end with knowledge and actions and act dependent on certain degrees of knowledge of God. They sometimes breathe with love, but since they are unaware of heart-felt veneration and reverent awe and are unable to adorn their actions with sincerity, they confuse white and black with one another and usually leave the world suffering losses on the verge of winning, despite the opportunities to gain they were given.”⁶⁾

“If a marriage is based on such worldly values as position, status, money, salary, and beauty, it nevertheless means that you will lose on the verge of winning.”⁷⁾

“In sum, believing that salvation can only be possible through affiliation with a certain Sufi order, religious group or movement, seeing it as compulsory to follow a certain traditional Sufi master, and seeing those who do not follow that person as misguided is absolutely wrong; it denotes losing while on the verge of winning.”⁸⁾

“Similar to an individual, society experiences periods of being constrained and oppressed, symbolized by an iron claw that represents the contraction phase of that society. In our country, such a phase began in the 19th century, where bankruptcies occurred consecutively and we consistently suffered losses on the verge of winning, particularly after the Tanzimat era.”⁹⁾

“One of the most important elements of being tested is decreed in the Qur’an, ‘We try people through one another’ (Al-An’am, 6:53). People are tested with each other. This is the scariest kind of test and the closest to losing while on the verge of winning.”¹⁰⁾

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