Third Stopping-Place
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.1
FIRST TOPIC
According to the meaning of And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise, everything has numerous aspects that give onto God Almighty like windows.
The realities of all beings and of the universe are based on the Divine Names. Each being’s reality is based on one Name or on many. The attributes of things and the arts they display are also based on and rely upon a Name. True natural science is based on the Name of All-Wise, true medicine on the Name of Healer, and geometry on the Name of Determiner, and so on. In the same way that all the sciences are based on and come to an end in a Name, the realities of all arts and sciences, and of all human attainments, are based on the Divine Names. Indeed, one group of the most learned of the saints stated that the Divine Names constitute the true reality of things, while the essences of things are only shadows of that reality. They said too that even only apparently as many as twenty manifestations and impresses of the Divine Names may be seen on a single living creature. We shall try to make this subtle yet vast truth easier to understand by means of a comparison, and shall analyze it by passing it through a sieve two or three times as it were. However long our discussion, it would still be short, but one should not become bored.
When a skilful portraitist or sculptor wishes to paint a picture of a beautiful flower or to sculpt a great beauty belonging to mankind’s fair sex, firstly he determines the general shapes of those two objects with a few lines. He determines these by ordering and adjusting them, by estimating and measuring them. And this he does according to rules and limits defined by geometry.
It is clear that this ordering and measuring is carried out with knowledge and wisdom or purpose. That is to say, the acts of ordering and limiting turn on the compasses of knowledge and wisdom. In which case, the meanings of knowledge and wisdom govern behind the ordering and limiting. The compasses of knowledge and wisdom, then, point to themselves and they demon
Qur’an, 17:44.