mouth and stomach, and comprise very many instances of wisdom like nurturing his life and every part of his body and causing his life to continue. And the food itself rises from vegetable existence to the level of human life; it progresses.
In exactly the same way, when beings are hidden behind the veil of death, in addition to their very many glorifications enduring in their places, they bequeath to the divine names many of the names’ embroideries and requirements. That is to say, they depart entrusting them to an eternal existence. If, then, when a transient and temporary existence departs thousands of existences manifesting a sort of permanence remain in its place, can it be said that the thing is to be pitied, or that it was all for nothing, or why did that lovable creature depart; can it be complained about? For the mercy, wisdom, and love that look to it required and necessitated it to be thus. Otherwise thousands of benefits would have to be abandoned so that a single harm would not come about; in which case the harm would be a thousandfold. That is to say, the names of All-Compassionate, All-Wise, and Loving One are not opposed to death and separation; indeed, they require and necessitate it.
FIFTH INDICATION
Fifthly, so that the divine attributes become apparent and the aspects of divine knowledge.
This section states that on departing from visible existence, beings, and particularly living beings, leave behind them many enduring things. As described in the Second Sign, among the attributes of dominicality (fluûnât-› rubûbiyet) – in a way befitting the sacredness and perfect self-sufficiency of the Necessarily Existent Essence and in a form worthy of Him – are a boundless love, an infinite compassion, an endless pride, and, if the term is permissible, a boundless holy pleasure, a joy, and if the expression is not mistaken, an infinite sacred delight, and a transcendent happiness; the traces of which are to be observed and seen.
Yes, through change and transformation, decline and transience, beings are driven on at speed within the astonishing activity necessitated by these attributes; they are constantly sent from the Manifest World to the World of the Hereafter. Under the manifestations of the attributes, creatures are shaken up in a continual flow and flood, motion and movement, scattering to the ears of the heedless the lamentations of death and separation, and to the hearing of the people of guidance, a clamour of glorification and recital of God’s names. It is by virtue of this mystery that all beings depart leaving