The Testimonies of the Globe and the Season of Spring

the sending down of rain, and the direction of atmospheric events, and says آمنت بالله I believe in Allāh’.

The passage in ‘The Second Level’ of ‘The First Station’ conveys the traveller’s foregoing observations about the weather:

لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللهُ الوَاجِبُ الوُجُودِ الَّذِي دَلَّ عَلَى وُجُودِهِ الجَوُّ بِجَمِيعِ مَا

فِيهِ بِشَهَادَةِ عَظَمَةِ إِحَاطَةِ حَقِيقَةِ التَّسْخِيرِ وَالتَّصْرِيفِ وَالتَّنْزِيلِ

الوَاسِعَةِ المُكَمَّلَةِ بِالمُشَاهَدَةِ

There is no god but Allāh, the Necessary Being. The sky

demonstrates the necessity of His existence, with all that it contains,

by the testimony of the sublimity of the all-encompassing reality of

subjugation, change, and sending-down, that are witnessed as being

both of vast reach, and perfected.

Notice: I would have loved to have given some sort of explanation of the thirty-three levels of Unity (tawḥīd) mentioned in the first station. However, my present situation and condition does not allow for that, and so I have been forced to be content with explaining only very abridged versions of the manifest proofs, and no more. For some of these thirty-three levels have been clarified, along with their proofs, in varying ways in thirty if not a hundred epistles of The Book of Light. Thus have their details been entrusted to those epistles.

In the language of its state (lisānu’l-ḥāl), the globe then spoke to this contemplative traveller, who had by now become well-acquainted with contemplative travel: ‘Why are you travelling in the sky and space? Come, I will acquaint you with that which you are looking for. Look at the tasks that I carry out, and read my pages!’ it said. 

The traveller looked, and saw that through its two movements, the earth traces out a circle, like an ecstatic whirling dervish, around the field of the Greatest Gathering, that causes the days, years, and seasons to come into being. He saw that it is a submissive, sublime ship of the Divine, that comprises of a hundred thousand types of living creatures to the particular provisions and necessities suited to them. It travels with them in the sea of space, in perfect balance and order, journeying around the sun.

He looks now to its pages, and sees that every single page of every one of its chapters makes known the Lord of the earth through the thousands of signs inherent in it. Because he has not sufficient time to read all of them, he looks and witnesses instead at a single page, that of the creation and direction of living creatures in the season of spring.

On this page he sees forms of endless individual members of a hundred-thousand species, being opened and disclosed from a simple substance, in a most harmonious manner. They are nurtured with surpassing mercy. Some of their seeds are given utterly miraculous little wings, and are thus spread through their flying to and fro. They are managed in a most excellent way, given provisions and fed with the utmost tenderness.

Their provisions, endless, varied, delicious and sweet, are grown with perfect mercy and in abundance from dry earth, as well as from apparent nothingness; from near identical bone-like roots, fruit kernels, and droplets of water. Every spring is like the coach of a train. From the unseen treasury, it is loaded, in a perfectly orderly way, with one-hundred thousand varieties of food and necessities that are sent to living beings.

Amongst the containers of provision, the receptacles of milk sent to the young are most particularly seen - the sending of little pumps of delicious sweet milk bound to the tender bosoms of mothers.

Tenderness, mercy and wisdom are seen in all this to a degree that clearly proves that this is one of the manifestations of mercy of the Merciful (Ar-Raḥmān), the Compassionate (Ar-Raḥīm), as well as His beneficence, in His surpassing tenderness, and in His training and instruction.

The upshot: This life-page of spring gives a surpassingly clear, concrete explanation of the Qur’ānic verse فَانْظُرْ إِلىَ آثَارِ رَحْمَتِ اللهِ كَيْفَ يُحْيِي الأَرْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَا إِنَّ ذَلِكَ لَمُحْيِي المَوْتَى وَهُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ (a) in its revealing a thousand exemplars and examples of the Greatest Resurrection, this verse also miraculously conveys the meanings of this page of spring. The traveller understood that the globe, to an extent corresponding to its size and power, says لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ هُو (Lā ilāha illā hū) ‘There is no god but Him’, through every one of its pages.

In ‘The Third Level’ of ‘The First Station’, within an abridged testimony of a single of the twenty aspects of only one of the great pages of the globe which contains more than twenty pages, the following was mentioned, according to the meaning of the observations of that traveller, in order to express those observations:

لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللهُ الوَاجِبُ الوُجُودِ الَّذِي دَلَّ عَلَى وُجُوبِ وُجُودِهِ فِي وَحْدَتِهِ الأَرْضُ

بِجَمِيعِ مَا فِيهَا وماَعَلَيْهَا بِشَهَادَةِ عَظَمَةِ

_____

a Look to the effects of Allāh’s Mercy, how He brings the earth to life after its death. That certainly is the Raiser of the dead, and He is capable of doing all things (Qur’ān: ar-Rūm, 30:50)