nation and justice, and of his certainty that his needs and desires will be met.

When man loses hope, his spirit is drowned and he becomes disappointed. A man should have feelings of mercy, honesty, justice, spiritual loftiness, an ideal to maintain integrity, a love of his nation, neighbours, fellow citizens and his country in his heart.

Allah bestowed upon man a body and spirit when He created him. The individual spiritual strength of men contributes to the moral elevation of a society. If a man is strong spiritually, the society he belongs to will have the same strength.

When one thinks of the concept of time in its peculiar conditions, one can see life shrink into a single entity or being. That being neither speaks nor hears. However it expresses itself through the winds whirling over the endless Garagum desert, and the winds surfing through the peaks of the waves of the Caspian Sea, and the gentle breezes that flow down from Mount Köpet. And this has a bearing on the Türkmen spirit.

The silence that arises from the tongue of centuries rings in my ears; my ancestors whose voices became the sound of the Garagum wind, whose vision turned into the horizon of the Türkmen desert, whose high spirits changed into the clouds in the sky, whose honourable love became springs under the ground, whose painstaking efforts turned into the Türkmen Sun, whose shadows formed the shadow of Mount Köpet, whose bones turned into Türkmen soil, for five thousand years have been making my soul exuberant and adding to my spiritual strength.

Just as the ear of wheat sown into good land comes back to life and gains vitality again, so too are the souls of our ancestors regenerating in my soul. Spiritual ideals transfer from