infinite distance from one another, with drawings showing exactly the shape and form of its members, certainly no doubt will remain that the artist sees the concealed tree with an eye that penetrates and encompasses the unseen, then he depicts it.
In just the same way, the discriminating statements of the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition concerning the reality of contingent beings (that is, concerning the reality of the tree of creation which stretches from the beginning of the world to the farthest limits of the hereafter, and spreads from the earth to the Divine Throne and from minute particles to the sun) have preserved the proportion between the members to such a degree and have given all the members and fruits a form so suitable that all investigative scholars have declared when they have concluded their researches into its depictions: “What wonders God has willed! How great are God’s blessings!” They have said: “It is only you who solves and unravels the talisman of the universe and riddle of creation, O All-Wise Qur’an!”
“And God’s is the highest similitude”1 –and there is no error in the comparison– let us represent the Divine Names and attributes, and dominical acts and deeds as a Tuba-tree of light, the extent of whose grandeur stretches from pre-eternity to post-eternity, and the limits of whose vastness spread through infinite, endless space, and encompass it, and the compass of whose deeds extend from,
It is God Who splits the seed-grain and date-stone,2 and, Comes between man and his heart,3 and, It is He Who shapes you in the wombs as He wishes,4
to,
Who created the heavens and the earth in six days,5 and, And the heavens rolled up in His right hand,6 and, He has subjected the sun and the moon.7
The All-Wise Qur’an has described that luminous reality, the truths of those Names and attributes, and acts and deeds, together with all their branches and twigs and aims and fruits in a way so harmonious, so fitting for one another, so appropriate for one another, without marring one another or spoiling the decree of one other, or their being remote from one another, that all those who have discerned the reality of things and penetrated the
Qur’an, 16:60.
Qur’an, 6:95.
Qur’an, 8:24.
Qur’an, 3:6.
Qur’an, 7:54, etc.
Qur’an, 39:67.
Qur’an, 13:2, etc.