the_immensity_of_conscience

The Immensity of Conscience

“The immensity of conscience means that a heart full of faith, knowledge, spiritual knowledge, love, reverence, and selflessness embraces all humanity with immense mercy, opens the doors of the heart to everyone, always being forgiving and benevolent, and especially wishing for the guidance of all people and seeking the eternal happiness of everyone. It is such a spiritual sublimity. In other words, ‘the immensity of conscience’ or ‘the unveiling of conscience’ is when a person, who is aware of his own weaknesses and needs and hearing the need to rely on the power and strength that will meet them, seeks refuge in the Divine Essence with faith, surrender and trust, as well as acts in accordance with the social spirit of his nature, by turning to the friendliness at the core of his name, and getting rid of all kinds of selfish attitudes.”¹⁾

“Fine morals come at the beginning of the occasions that make a person’s conscience develop; in this respect, the most important sign of the immensity of conscience is good morality. For example, forgiveness and pardon are some parts of good morality. Forgiving faults and maintaining friendly treatment is the result of a believer with an immense conscience.”²⁾

“Things like ignorance, conceit, pride, and egoism tend to contract, narrow, and turn the conscience into a hall of selfishness. Hearts built with an immensity of conscience, knowledge, spiritual knowledge, love, reverence, and feelings of unselfishness are a celestial gift from God. If a conscience is in love with knowledge, addicted to spiritual knowledge, breathes love, and is interested in everyone for God’s sake, it means that a social spirit has begun to emerge in that conscience, and we call this things immensity of conscience, or development of conscience.”³⁾

“Faith, hope, and the immensity of conscience are what free people from their own constraints and carry them round the comforting and spacious realms of the soul; they enable everybody to take a relieving breath by dispersing the haze and clouds of heresy, unbelief, doubt, and hesitation; they turn dungeons into palaces and make one aware of the heavenly breezes; they elevate petty humankind to an expanse equal to and even transcending universes.”⁴⁾

“… a person can hear God in his heart as a secret if he is able to reach the immensity of conscience that may encompass the universe.”⁵⁾

“… the vastness of Prophethood, the Prophetic immensity of conscience is hidden in the endeavor of respecting everyone, and conveying the feelings to everyone. From this point of view, a person who believes in God and the Hereafter cannot be indifferent to the duty of exalting the Word of God. If he truly believes, he cannot take it out of his heart to convey this to others.”⁶⁾

“Self-conceit is one of the most slippery grounds, particularly for people in our time. Interpreting life according to one’s self, and considering everything in respect of one’s personal opinion and preferences as binding upon all, and narrowing down many vast things by seeing or assessing them through one’s narrow conscience or the conscience that he made narrow, although they are open to public and extremely vast because of stemming from the immensity of conscience, and, in connection with it, closing one’s doors to the rich repository of endeavor and refusing to benefit from it, are all the factors that cause icing on the road to becoming a good believer and result in successive accidents, and all of them are causes for dissipation.”⁷⁾

“The fact that a person is a nation by himself means that he has an endeavor like a nation has. This vast endeavor, which we also express with the term ‘the immensity of conscience,’ is the magnanimity to embrace all humanity, to turn to God for all humanity with a broad conscience and to ask for the guidance and happiness of all humanity. A person who is the representative of such an immensity of conscience becomes almost a nation while he is just an individual; especially he is regarded as valuable as a nation by God.”⁸⁾

“There are few people who can meet even the rudeness they are exposed to with an immensity of conscience, who can easily settle the feeling of anger, and while doing so, who can stay away from excessiveness and insufficiency. Achieving this dependents upon willpower and a special striving is required.”⁹⁾

Footnotes

¹⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Diriliş Çağrısı (Kırık Testi-6) , İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 237.

²⁾

Ibid., pp. 238 –239.

³⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Sükûtun Çığlıkları (Çağ ve Nesil-9), İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 41.

⁴⁾

Ibid., p. 81.

⁵⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Kırık Testi-1, İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 209.

⁶⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Ümit Burcu (Kırık Testi-4), İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 134.

⁷⁾

Ibid., p. 330.

⁸⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, İkindi Yağmurları (Kırık Testi-5), İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 300.

⁹⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Vuslat Muştusu, (Kırık Testi-8), İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 57.

The Immensity of Conscience