stable and autonomous essence, that lies at the heart of life. So, too, the life of the Prophet Muhammad —Peace and blessings be upon him— in both its outer and its inner aspects is the distilled quintessence of life and the spirit of the cosmos, and the messengership of Muhammad —Peace and blessings be upon him— is the pure and distilled essence of the feeling, the consciousness and the intellect of the cosmos. Rather, the life of the Prophet Muhammad —Peace and blessings be upon him— in its outer and inner aspects is, as the centuries have borne witness, the very essence of the life of the cosmos, and the prophethood of Muhammad —Peace and blessings be upon him— is the very light and essence of the consciousness of the cosmos. The Qur’anic revelation is also the spirit of the life of the cosmos and the intellect of its consciousness.
If the light of the messengership of Muhammad —Peace and blessings be upon him— were to depart from the cosmos and vanish, the cosmos would die. If the Qur’an were to depart, the cosmos would lose its sanity, and the globe would lose its sense and its head. Its dizzy, uncomprehending head would collide with a planet, and the end of the world would result.
Life also looks to the pillar of belief in Divine Determining, and proves it indirectly. Because, since life is the light of the Manifest World, and it dominates it, and is the result and aim of existence, and since it is the most comprehensive mirror of the Creator of the universe and the most perfect sample and index of dominical activity, and —let there be no mistake in the comparison— is like a sort of programme, for sure, the mystery of life necessitates that the creatures in the World of the Unseen, that is, the past and the future, that is, that have been and will come, are predisposed to conform to order, regularity, being known and observed, specific individual existence, and the creative commands, which are their lives in one respect.
The original seed of a tree and its root, as well as the seeds contained in its fruit and final outcome, all manifest a sort of life, no less than the tree itself; indeed, they bear within themselves laws of life more subtle than those of the tree. Similarly, the seeds and roots left by last autumn, before the present spring, as well as the seeds and roots that will be left to subsequent springs after this spring has departed — they all bear the manifestations of life, just like this spring, and are subject to the laws of life. In just the same way, all the branches and twigs of the cosmic tree each have a past and a future. They have a chain consisting of past and future stages and circumstances. The multiple existences and stages of each species and each member of each species, existing in Divine knowledge, forms a chain of being in God’s knowledge, and both its external existence, and its existence in God’s knowledge, is a manifestation of universal life that draws all the aspects of its life from these meaningful and vital Tablets of Divine Determining.