Fourteenth Note
This consists of four short signs alluding to divine unity.
First Sign
O worshipper of causes! You see a wondrous palace fashioned of rare jewels which is being made. Some of the jewels used in its construction are found only in China; others in Andalusia; others in Yemen; while others are found nowhere but Siberia. If you see that as it is being made, the precious stones are summoned that same day from north, south, east, and west, would you have any doubt that the master builder making the palace was a miracle‑worker who ruled the whole earth?
Thus, every animal is a divine palace, and man is the finest and most wondrous of the palaces. Some of the jewels in the palace called man come from the World of Spirits, others from the World of Similitudes and the Preserved Tablet, and others from the world of the air, the world of light, and the world of the elements. He is also a wondrous palace whose needs stretch to eternity, whose hopes have spread to all the regions of the heav‑ ens and the earth, and who has relations and ties with all the epochs of this world and the hereafter.
O you who considers yourself to be a true man! Since your true nature is thus, you can only be made by One for whom this world and the hereafter are each a dwelling, the earth and the skies each a page, and who has disposal over pre‑eternity and post-eternity as though they were yesterday and tomorrow. In which case, the only being fit to be worshipped by man, and his place of recourse and saviour, can be one who rules the earth and the heavens, and holds the reins of this world and the next.
Second Sign
There are certain foolish people who because they do not recognize the sun, if they see it in a mirror, start to love the mirror. With intense emotion they try to preserve the mirror so that the sun within it will not be lost. Whenever the foolish person realizes that the sun does not die on the mirror’s dying and is not lost on its being broken, he turns all his love to the sun in the sky. He understands then that the sun appearing in the mirror is not dependent on the mirror, and its continued existence does not depend on it. It is rather the sun that holds the mirror and supplies its shining light. The sun’s continuance is not dependent on the mirror; the continuance of the mirror’s living brilliance is dependent on the sun’s manifestation.
O man! Your heart, identity, and nature are a mirror. The intense love of immortality in your nature and heart should be not for the mirror, nor for your heart and nature, but for the manifestation of the Enduring One of Glory whose manifestation is reflected in the mirror according to the mirror’s capacity. However, out of stupidity that love of yours is directed to other places. Since it is thus, say: “O Enduring One! You alone are Enduring!” That is, “Since You exist and are enduring, whatever transience and non‑existence want to inflict on us, let them, it is of no importance!”
Third Sign
O man! The strangest state the All‑Wise Creator has included in your nature is your inability to settle in the whole world; like someone suffocating in prison, you gasp for somewhere wider than the world. Yet you enter the minutest matter, a memory, a moment, and settle in it. Your heart and mind which cannot settle in the vast world settle in that jot. You wander about with your intensest emotions in that brief moment, that tiny memory.
And He lodged in your nature such immaterial powers and subtle faculties that if some of them devoured the world, they would not be satisfied; and some of them cannot sustain even a minute particle within themselves. Like the eye cannot bear a hair although the head can bear heavy stones, those faculties cannot bear the weight of even a hair, that is, some insignificant state arising from heedlessness and misguidance. They are sometimes extinguished and die even.
Since it is thus, be careful, tread with caution, be frightened of sinking! Do not drown in a mouthful, a word, a seed, a flash, a sign, a kiss! Do not plunge your extensive faculties, which can swallow the world, in such a thing. For there are things which are very small that can in one respect swallow things which are very large. The sky together with its stars can enter a small fragment of glass and be drowned. And most of the pages of your actions and leaves of your life enter your faculty of memory, tiny as a mustard‑seed. So too there are tiny things that swallow things thus large, and contain them.
Fourth Sign
O world‑worshipping man! You conceive of your world as very broad, yet it resembles a narrow grave. But since the walls of that narrow grave-like dwelling are of glass, they are reflected one within the other and stretch as far as the eye can see. While being narrow as the grave, your world appears to be as large as a town. For despite both the right wall, which is the past, and the left wall, which is the future, being non-existent, they are reflected one within the other, unfolding the wings of present time, which is extremely brief and narrow. Reality mixes with imagination, and you suppose a non-existent world to be existent.
On being spun round at speed, a line appears to be broad like a surface, despite in reality being a fine line. Your world too is in reality narrow, but due to your heedlessness, delusions, and imagination, its walls have drawn far apart. If driven by a calamity you stir in that narrow world, you will hit your head on the wall, which you supposed to be distant. It will dispel the illusions in your head and banish your sleep. Then you will see that that broad world of yours is more confined than the grave, narrower and more forbidding than a rope bridge. Your life passes faster than lightning, it pours away more swiftly than a mountain stream.
Since worldly life and the life of the flesh and animal life are thus, shake free of animality, leave behind corporeality, enter the level of life of the heart and spirit! You will find a sphere of life, a world of light, far broader than the world you imagined was broad. The key to that world is to make the heart utter the sacred words There is no god but Allah, which express the mysteries of divine unity and knowledge of Allah, and to make the spirit work them.