Then, while that traveller was travelling in his mind through
the mountains and plains, the gate to the arboreal and vegetable realm was
opened before him. He was summoned inside: “Come,” they said, “Inspect our realm
and read our incriptions.” Entering, he saw that a splendid and well-adorned
assembly for the proclamation of God’s unity and a circle for the mentioning of
His Names and the offering of thanks to Him, had been drawn up. He understood
for the very appearance of all trees and plants that their different species
were proclaiming unanimously, “There is no god but He.” For he perceived three
great and general truths indicating and proving that all fruit-giving trees and
plants with the tongue of their symmetrical and eloquent leaves, the phrases of
their charming and loquacious flowers, the words of their well-ordered and
well-spoken fruits, were testifying to God’s glory and bearing witness that
“There is no god but He.”
The First: In the same way that in each of the plants and trees
a deliberate bounty and generosity is to be seen in most obvious fashion, and a
purposive liberality and munificence, so too it is to be seen in the totality of
the trees and plants, with the brilliance of sunlight.
The Second: The wise and purposive distinction and
differentiation, one that cannot in any way be attributed to chance, the
deliberate and merciful adornment and giving of form — all this is to be seen as
clearly as daylight in the infinite varieties and species; they show themselves
to be the works and embroideries of an All-Wise Maker.
The Third: The opening and unfolding of all the separate members
of the hundred thousand species of that infinite realm, each in its own distinct
fashion and shape, in the utmost order, equilibrium and beauty, from
well-defined, limited, simple and solid seeds and grains, identical to each
other or nearly so — their emerging from those seeds in distinct and separate
form, with utter equilibrium, vitality and wise purpose without the least error
or mistake, is a truth more brilliant than the sun. The witnesses proving this
truth are as numerous as the flowers, fruits and leaves that emerge in the
spring. So the traveller said, “Praise be to God for the blessing of belief.”
In expression of these truths and the testimony given to them,
we said in the Sixth Degree of the First Station:
There is no god but God, to the Necessity of Whose Existence in
Unity points the consensus of all the species of trees and plants that are
engaged in glorifying God and speak with the eloquent and well-ordered words of
their leaves, their loquacious and comely flowers, their well-ordered and
well-spoken fruits, by the testimony of the sublimity of the comprehensiveness
of the truth of bestowal, bounty, and generosity, done in purposive mercy, and
the truth of differentiation, adornment, and decoration, done with will and
wisdom. Definite, too, is the indication given by the truth of the opening of
all their symmetrical, adorned, distinct, variegated and infinite forms, from
seeds and grains that resemble and approximate each other, that are finite and
limited.
***
As this traveller through the cosmos proceeded on his meditative
journey, with increased eagerness and a bouquet of gnosis and faith, itself like
a spring, gathered from the garden of the spring, there opened before his
truth-perceiving intellect, his cognitive reason, the gate to the animal and
bird realm. With hundreds of thousands of different voices and various tongues,
he was invited to enter. Entering, he saw that all the animals and birds, in
their different species, groups and nations, were proclaiming, silently and
aloud, “There is no god but He,” and had thus turned the face of the earth into
a vast place of invocation, an expansive assembly for the proclamation of God’s
glory. He saw each of them to be like an ode dedicated to God, a word
proclaiming His glory, a letter indicating His mercy, each of them describing
the Maker and offering Him thanks and encomium. It was as if the senses, powers,
members and instruments of those animals and birds were orderly and balanced
words, or perfect and disciplined expressions. He observed three great and
comprehensive truths indicating, in decisive form, their offering of thanks to
the Creator and Provider and their testimony to His unity.
The First: Their being brought into existence with wisdom and
purpose and their creation full of art in a fashion that in no way can be
attributed to chance, to blind force or inanimate nature; their being created
and composed in purposive and knowledgeable manner; their animation and being
given life in a way that displays in twenty aspects the manifestation of
knowledge, wisdom, and will — all of this is a truth that bears witness to the
Necessary Existence of the Eternally Living and Self-Subsistent, His seven
attributes and unity, a witness repeated to the number of all animate beings.
The Second: There appears from the distinction made among those
infinite beings and from their adornment and decoration in a fashion by which
their features are different, their shapes adorned, their proportions measured
and symmetrical, and their forms well-ordered — there appears from this a truth
so vast and powerful that none other than the One Powerful over all things, the
One Knowledgeable of all things, could lay claim to it, this comprehensive act
which displays in every respect thousands of wonders and instances of wisdom; it
is impossible and precluded that anything other than such a one could lay claim
to it.
The Third: The emergence and unfolding of those countless
creatures, in their hundreds of thousands of different shapes and forms, each of
which is a miracle of wisdom, their emergence from eggs and drops of water
called sperm that are identical with each other or closely resemble each other,
and are limited and finite in number, all this in the most orderly, symmetrical
and unfailing fashion, is so brilliant a truth as to be illumined with proofs
and evidences as numerous as the animals themselves.
By the consensus of these three truths, all the species of
animals are engaged together in testifying that “There is no god but He.” It is
as if the whole earth, like a great man, were saying “There is no god but He” in
a manner befitting its vastness, and conveying its testimony to the dwellers of
the heaven. The traveller saw this and understood it perfectly. In expression of
these truths, we said in the Seventh Degree of the First Station:
There is no god but God, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity
points the consensus of all animals and birds, that praise God and bear witness
to Him with the words of their senses, their faculties and powers, words
well-balanced, ordered and eloquent; with the words of their limbs and members,
words perfect and persuasive; by the testimony of the sublimity of the
comprehensiveness of the truth of bringing into being, making, and creating,
according to will, the truth of distinction and decoration according to purpose,
and the truth of proportioning and forming according to wisdom. Definite too is
the indication given by the truth of the opening of all of their orderly,
distinct, variegated and infinite forms, out of identical or similar eggs and
drops of sperm, that are finite and limited.
***
That meditative voyager, in order to advance farther in the
infinite degrees and countless luminous stages of knowledge of God, then wished
to enter the world of men, the realm of humanity. Humanity, headed by the
prophets, invited him, and he accepted the invitation. Looking first at the
stopping-place of the past, he saw that all of the prophets (Peace and blessings
be upon him), the most luminous and perfect of human kind, were reciting in
chorus, “No god but He,” and making remembrance of God. With the power of their
brilliant, well-attested and innumerable miracles, they were proclaiming God’s
unity, and in order to advance man from the animal state to angelic degree, they
were instructing men and summoning them to belief in God. Kneeling down in that
school of light, he too paid heed to the lesson.
He saw that in the hand of each of those teachers, the most
exalted and renowned of all celebrated human beings, there were numerous
miracles, bestowed on them by the Creator of All Being as a sign confirming
their mission. Further, a large group of men, a whole community, had confirmed
their claims and come to belief at their hands; a truth assented to and
confirmed by these hundreds of thousands of serious and veracious individuals,
unanimously and in full agreement, was bound to be firm and definitive. He
understood, too, that the people of misguidance, in denying a truth attested and
affirmed by so many veracious witnesses, were committing a most grievous error,
indeed crime, and were therefore deserving of a most grievous punishment. He
recognized, by contrast, those who assented to the truth and believed in it, as
being the most true and righteous, and a further degree of the sanctity of
belief became apparent to him.
Yes, the infinite miracles bestowed by God on the prophets
(Peace be upon them) each one being like a confirmation of their mission; the
heavenly blows dealt to their opponents, each being like a proof of their
truthfulness; their individual perfections, each one being like an indication of
their righteousness; their veracious teachings; the strength of their faith, a
witness to their honesty; their supreme seriousness and readiness to
self-sacrifice; the sacred books and pages held by their hands; their countless
pupils who through following their paths attain truth, perfection and light,
thus proving again the truthfulness of the teachings; the unanimous agreement of
the prophets —those most earnest warners— and their followers in all positive
matters; their concord, mutual support and affinity — all of this constitutes so
powerful a proof that no power on earth can confront it, and no doubt or
hesitation can survive it.
Our traveller understood further that inclusion of belief in all
the prophets (Peace be upon them) among the pillars of belief, represents
another great source of strength. Thus he derived great benefit of faith from
their lessons, in expression of which we said in the Eighth Degree of the First
Station:
There is no god but God, to the Necessity of Whose Existence in
Unity points the unanimity of all the prophets, through the power of their
luminous miracles, that both affirm and are affirmed.
***
That questing traveller, having derived a lofty taste of truth
from the power of belief, found himself invited, while coming from the assembly
of the prophets (Peace be upon them) to the classroom of those profound,
original, exacting scholars who affirm the claims of the prophets (Peace be upon
them) with the most decisive and powerful proofs and who are known as the
purified and most veracious ones.
Entering their classroom, he saw thousands of geniuses and
hundreds of thousands of exact and exalted scholars proving all the affirmative
matters connected with faith, headed by the necessity of God’s existence and His
unity, with such profound demonstrations as to leave not the least room for
doubt. Indeed, the fact that they are agreed in the principles and pillars of
belief, despite their differences in capacity and outlook, and that each of them
relies on a firm and certitudinous proof, is in itself such evidence that it can
be doubted only if it is possible for a similar number of intelligent and
perspicuous men to arrive at a single result. Otherwise the only way for the
denier to oppose them is to display his ignorance —his utter ignorance— and his
obstinacy with respect to negative matters that admit neither of denial nor
affirmation. He will in effect be closing his eyes but the one who closes his
eyes is able to turn day into night only for himself.
The traveller learned that the lights emitted in this vast and
magnificent classroom by these respected and profound scholars had been
illumining half of the globe for more than a thousand years. He found in it
moral and spiritual force that the combined strength of all the people of denial
would be unable to shake or destroy. In brief allusion to the lesson learned by
the traveller in this classroom we said in the Ninth Degree of the First
Station:
There is no god but God, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity
points the agreement of all of the purified scholars, with the power of their
resplendent, certain and unanimous proofs.
Our contemplative traveller came forth from the classroom,
ardently desiring to see the lights that are to be observed in the continuous
strengthening and development of faith, and in advancing from the degree of the
knowledge of certainty to that of the vision of certainty. He then found himself
summoned by thousands or millions of spiritual guides who were striving toward
the truth and attaining the vision of certainty in the shade of the highway of
Muhammad (PBUH) and the ascension of Muhammad (PBUH). This they were doing in a
meeting-place, a hospice, a place of remembrance and preceptorship, that was
abundantly luminous and vast as a plain, being formed from the merging of
countless small hospices and convents. Upon entering, he found that those
spiritual guides —people of unveiling and wondrous deeds— were unanimously
proclaiming, “No god but He,” on the basis of their witnessing and unveiling of
the Unseen and the wondrous deeds they had been enabled to perform; they were
proclaiming the necessary existence and unity of God. The traveller observed how
manifest and clear must be a truth to which unanimously subscribe these sacred
geniuses and luminous gnostics. For, like the sun is known through the seven
colours in its light, the saints’ luminous colours, their light-filled hues,
their true paths and right ways and veracious courses are manifested from the
light of the Pre-Eternal Sun through seventy colours, indeed, through colours to
the number of the Divine Names, and are all different. He saw that the unanimity
of the prophets and the agreement of the purified scholars and accord of the
saints forms a supreme consensus, more brilliant than the daylight that
demonstrates the existence of the sun.
In brief allusion to the benefit derived by our traveller from
the Sufi hospice, we said in the Tenth Degree of the First Station:
There is no god but God, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity
points the unanimity of the saints in their manifest, well-affirmed and attested
divinations of the truth and wondrous deeds.
***
Now our traveller through the world, aware that the most
important and greatest of all human perfections, indeed the very source and
origin of all such perfections, is the love of God that arises from belief in
God and the knowledge of God, wished with all of his powers, outer and inner, to
advance still farther in the strengthening of his faith and the development of
his knowledge. He therefore raised his head and gazing at the heavens said to
himself:
“The most precious thing in the universe is life; all things are
made subordinate to life. The most precious of all living beings is the animate,
and the most precious of the animate is the conscious. Each century and each
year, the globe is engaged in emptying and refilling itself, in order to augment
this most precious substance. It follows, then, without doubt, that the
magnificent and ornate heavens must have appropriate people and inhabitants,
possessing life, spirit and consciousness, for events relating to seeing and
speaking with the angels —such as the appearance of Gabriel (Peace be upon him)
in the presence of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) and in the view of
the Companions— have been transmitted and related from the most ancient times.
Would, then, that I could converse with the inhabitants of the heavens, and
learn their thoughts on this matter. For their words concerning the Creator of
the cosmos are the most important.”
As he was thus thinking to himself, he suddenly heard a heavenly
voice: “If you wish to meet us and hearken to our lesson, then know that before
all others we have believed in the articles of faith brought by means of us to
the prophets, headed by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him),
who brought the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition.
“Then too all of the pure spirits from among us that have
appeared before men have, unanimously and without exception, born witness to the
necessary existence, the unity, and the sacred attributes of the Creator of this
cosmos, and proclaimed this with one accord. The affinity and mutual
correspondence of these countless proclamations is a guide for you as bright as
the sun.” Thus the traveller’s light of faith shone, and rose from the earth to
the heavens.
In brief allusion to the lesson learned by the traveller from
the angels, we said in the Eleventh Degree of the First Station:
There is no god but God, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity
points the unanimity of the angels that appear to human gaze, and who speak to
the elect among men, with their mutually corresponding and conforming messages.
***
Then, that ardent and inquisitive traveller, having learned from
the tongues of various realms of creation in the Manifest Realm in their
material and corporeal aspects, and from the utterance of their modes of being,
desired to study and journey through the World of the Unseen and the
Intermediate Realm, and thus to investigate reality. There opened to him the
gate of upright and luminous intellects, of sound and illumined hearts, that are
like the seed of man, who is the fruit of the universe, and despite their slight
girth can expand virtually to embrace the whole of the cosmos.
He looked and saw a series of human isthmuses linking the realm
of the Unseen with that of the Manifest, and the contacts between those two
realms and the interchanges between them insofar as they affect man, taking
place at those points. Addressing his intellect and his heart he said:
“Come, the path leading to truth from these counterparts of
yours is shorter. We should benefit by studying their qualities, natures and
colours concerning faith that we find here, not by listening to the lessons
given by the tongues of disposition as was previously the case.”
Beginning his study, he saw that the belief and firm conviction
concerning the Divine unity that all luminous intellects possessed, despite
their varying capacities and differing, even opposing, methods and outlooks, was
the same, and that their steadfast and confident certainty and assurance was
one. They had, therefore, to be relying on a single, unchanging truth; their
roots were sunk in a profound truth and could not be plucked out. Their
unanimity concerning faith, the necessary existence and unity of God, was an
unbreakable and luminous chain, a brightly lit window opening onto the world of
the truth.
He saw also that the unanimous, assured and sublime unveilings
and witnessings of the pillars of belief enjoyed by all those sound and luminous
intellects, whose methods were various and outlooks divergent, corresponded to
and agreed with each other on the matter of the Divine unity. All those luminous
hearts, turned and joined to the truth and manifesting it, each a small throne
of dominical knowledge, a comprehensive mirror of God’s Eternal Besoughtedness,
were like so many windows opened onto the Sun of the Truth. Taken together, they
were like a supreme mirror, like an ocean reflecting the sun. Their agreement
and unanimity concerning the necessary existence and unity of God was an
unfailing and reliable most perfect guide, most elevated preceptor. For it is in
no way possible or conceivable that a supposition other than the truth, an
untrue thought, a false attribute, should so consistently and decisively be able
to deceive simultaneously so many sharp eyes, or to induce illusion in them. Not
even the foolish Sophists, who deny the cosmos, would agree with the corrupt and
dissipated intellect that held such a thing possible. All of this our traveller
understood, and he said, together with his own intellect and heart, “I have
believed in God.”
In brief allusion to the benefit derived from upright intellects
and luminous hearts by our traveller, for knowledge of belief, we said in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Degrees of the First Station:
There is no god but God, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity
points the consensus of all upright intellects, illumined with congruent beliefs
and corresponding convictions and certainties, despite differences in capacity
and outlook. There also points to His Necessary Existence in Unity the agreement
of all sound, luminous hearts, with their mutually corresponding unveilings and
their congruent witnessings, despite differences in method and manner.