the future, they surely infer that they are miniature collections of divine commands. For example, it may be said that a seed resembles the programmes and indexes which will impart order to all the parts of the tree, and is like a miniature embodiment of the creative commands that specify the index and programme.
In short, the Clear Record resembles a programme or index of the tree of creation, the branches of which have spread throughout the past and the future and the World of the Unseen. In this sense it is a notebook of divine determining and a collection of its principles. Minute particles are despatched to their duties and motions in the bodies of things through the dictation and decree of those principles.
As for the Clear Book, it looks to the Manifest World rather than the World of the Unseen. That is, it looks to the present more than to the past and the future. It is a title, a notebook, a ledger, of divine power and will more than of divine knowledge and command. If the Clear Record is the notebook of divine determining, the Clear Book is the notebook of divine power.
That is to say, the perfect art and order in the beings, essences, attributes, and qualities of things show that they are being clothed in existence through the principles of a perfect power and the laws of a penetrating will. Their forms are determined and specified, each is given definite proportions and a particular shape. This means the power and will have a universal, general collection of laws, a great ledger, according to which the particular existences and forms of things are cut out, sewn, and clothed. The existence of this notebook, like the Clear Record, has been proved in the discussions about divine determining and man’s will. So see the foolishness of the people of misguidance, heedlessness, and philosophy, for they perceived the Preserved Tablet of creative power and the manifestation, reflection, and similitude in things of that perspicuous book of dominical wisdom and will, but, God forbid, calling it “nature,” they made it blind. Thus, through the dictation of the Clear Record, that is, through the decree of divine determining and according to its principles, on creating, divine power writes the chains of beings, each of which is a sign, on the page of time known as the Tablet of Appearance and Dissolution (Levh-i Mahv, Isbat), and causes the motion of particles.
This means that the motion of particles is a vibration, a movement, arising from that writing and copying, as beings pass from the World of the Unseen to the Manifest World, from knowledge to power. As for the Tablet of Appearance and Dissolution, it is an ever-changing notebook, a slate for writing and erasing, of the Supreme Preserved Tablet – which is fixed and