The Third Letter
In His Name, be He glorified!
And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.
Part of a letter sent to the well‑known student of his.
Fifthly: You wrote in one of your letters to me that you wanted to share my feelings here, so listen now to one thousandth of them.
One night at the height of a hundred‑storey building in my tree-house at the top of a cedar tree, I looked at the beautiful face of the heavens gilded with stars and saw an elevated light of miraculousness and brilliant secret of eloquence in the All-Wise Qur’an’s oath of, So verily I call to witness the planets ❋ That recede, go forth, or hide.
This verse, which refers to the planets and their being concealed and spread abroad, displays to the gaze of observers an elevated embroidery full of art and an exalted, instructive tapestry.
The planets emerge from the sphere of the sun, their commander, and entering that of the fixed stars, display fresh embroideries and instances of art in the skies. Sometimes they come shoulder to shoulder with another star like themselves and display a beautiful situation. At other times they enter among the small stars and assume the position of commander. Especially in this season after evening, Venus on the horizon, and before the early dawn one of its shining companions, display a truly graceful and lovely scene. Later, after carrying out their duties as inspectors and acting as shuttles in the tapestries of art, they return, and entering the dazzling sphere of the sun, hide themselves.
Now they demonstrate as brilliantly as the sun the majestic dominicality and glittering divine sovereignty of the One who spins this earth of ours and the planets described in the above verse with perfect order in space, each like a ship or aeroplane. See that majestic dominion which has under its sway ships and aeroplanes a thousand times larger than the earth, and that travel thousands of times faster.
You can see from this what an elevated happiness, what a great honour, it is to be connected to such a Monarch through worship and belief, and to be his guest.
Then I looked at the moon and saw a shining light of miraculousless in the verse, And the moon, We have measured for her mansions till she returns like the old lower part of a date stalk. Indeed, the determining, rotating, regulating, and illuminating of the moon, and its positioning in regard to the earth and the sun with precise reckoning is so wonderful, so astonishing, that nothing at all could be difficult for the All‑Powerful One who orders and determines it thus. It instructs all beings with intelligence who behold it, conveying to them the idea that the One who makes it thus can surely do everything.
It follows the sun and does not deviate from its path even for a second, or lag behind one iota in its duties. It makes those who observe it carefully exclaim: Glory be to the One whose art bewilders the mind! Especially when like at the end of May it comes into conjunction with the Pleiades in the shape of a fine crescent, appearing as the curved white branch of a date‑palm, and the Pleiades appear as a bunch of grapes, it conjures up in the imagination the existence of a huge luminous tree behind the veil of the green heavens. As if the pointed tip of one of the tree’s branches had pierced the veil and stuck out its head together with its bunch of grapes and become the Pleiades and the crescent moon, and the other stars had become the fruits of that hidden tree. See the subtlety and eloquence of the metaphor of: Like the old lower part of a date stalk.
Then this verse occurred to me, He it is who has made the earth submissive to you, so traverse you its tracts, which suggests that the earth is a mastered ship or mount. From this I saw myself high up in a huge ship speeding through space. I recited the verse, Glory be to Him Whom has subjected these to us, for we could never have accomplished this, which it is Sunna to recite when mounting such means of transport as horses or ships.
I saw that with its motion the globe of the earth had assumed the position of a projector showing images as in the cinema; it brought into movement all the heavens and began to mobilize all the stars like a magnificent army. It shows such lofty scenes that it intoxicates those who think and fills them with wonder. “Glory be to Allah!” I exclaimed, “What numerous, vast, strange, wonderful, and elevated works are performed at so little expense!” Two subtle points concerning belief occurred to me after this: