BİRİNCİ FEN · ÜÇÜNCÜ BÂB · ONUNCU FASIL · Altıncı Madde
Article Six
It declares that this world has nurtured us like a compassionate mother.
O Noble One! Know that the people of wisdom have said: This world is our compassionate mother. Just as a mother raises and nurtures her child, digesting foods the young child cannot digest, transforming them into nourishment suitable for the child, delivering it to him through her breasts, thus nurturing and raising him, so too this world is our compassionate mother, providing us with appropriate sustenance through plants and animals that are like two breasts. It nurtures us with delicious fruits of various colors and delectable foods of every kind. This world, called "mother," is the opposite of all other mothers. For while all other mothers are directed towards external realms, this world is turned inward. Thus, it watches over us and is present in our upbringing. Therefore, truly we still live within our mother’s womb, as some have interpreted the honorable hadith: “The fortunate one is fortunate in his mother's womb, and the wretched one is wretched in his mother's womb.”
This meaning also corresponds to the noble verse where the Most High says: "Blindness in this world is blindness in the Hereafter, and is far astray" (Isra, 17/72). A perfect person has expressed this meaning in a couplet:
*Whoever does not know God in this realm,*
*Remains forever ignorant, never finding Him.*
This meaning also signifies that there is no cure for those born blind. Therefore, the felicity of both worlds can be attained immediately in this very environment in which we live, because we are still in our mother’s womb – that is, in this world. To be blind here means that a person does not know himself, does not see himself, and cannot reach his own truth. For he who does not know himself is considered a child. He is also deemed to have not known nor found his Lord. Therefore, such a person is blind in both worlds. That is why prophets, saints, and scholars have come to call people to God. The people of the world can only be cured of this blindness through the light of the Quran, the science of Tawhid, insight, and worship of the Most Merciful. They become among the close ones of God’s spiritual nearness and enter the ranks of His chosen servants, abiding eternally with Him.
“O Living One and Creator of all things! O Allah, Lord of dominion, possessor of majesty and generosity! For the sake of Your honor and glory, give life to our hearts and eyes with the light of knowledge of You.”
SECOND SECTION
It explains in five articles the essential nature (keyfiyyah) of the body, the natural essence (mahiyyah) of its internal and external limbs, the truth of a person’s temperaments at various ages, the emergence of the four humors, the causes of those humors, their conditions, their benefits, and what arises from them.