and the earth, and who has relations and ties with all the epochs of this world and the hereafter.
O you who considers yourself to be a true man! Since your true nature is thus, you can only be made by One for whom this world and the hereafter are each a dwelling, the earth and the skies each a page, and who has disposal over pre-eternity and post-eternity as though they were yesterday and tomorrow. In which case, the only being fit to be worshipped by man, and his place of recourse and saviour, can be one who rules the earth and the heavens, and holds the reins of this world and the next.
S e c o n d S i g n
There are certain foolish people who because they do not recognize the sun, if they see it in a mirror, start to love the mirror. With intense emotion they try to preserve the mirror so that the sun within it will not be lost. Whenever the foolish person realizes that the sun does not die on the mirror’s dying and is not lost on its being broken, he turns all his love to the sun in the sky. He understands then that the sun appearing in the mirror is not dependent on the mirror, and its continued existence does not depend on it. It is rather the sun that holds the mirror and supplies its shining light. The sun’s continuance is not dependent on the mirror; the continuance of the mirror’s living brilliance is dependent on the sun’s manifestation.
O man! Your heart, identity, and nature are a mirror. The intense love of immortality in your nature and heart should be not for the mirror, nor for your heart and nature, but for the manifestation of the Enduring One of Glory whose manifestation is reflected in the mirror according to the mirror’s capacity. However, out of stupidity that love of yours is directed to other places. Since it is thus, say: “O Enduring One! You alone are Enduring!” That is, “Since You exist and are enduring, whatever transience and non-existence want to inflict on us, let them, it is of no importance!”
T h i r d S i g n
O man! The strangest state the All-Wise Creator has included in your nature is your inability to settle in the whole world; like someone suffocating in prison, you gasp for somewhere wider than the world. Yet you enter the minutest matter, a memory, a moment, and settle in it. Your heart and mind which cannot settle in the vast world settle in that jot. You wander about with your intensest emotions in that brief moment, that tiny memory.
And He lodged in your nature such immaterial powers and subtle faculties that if some of them devoured the world, they would not be satisfied; and some of them cannot sustain even a minute particle within themselves. Like the eye cannot bear a hair although the head can bear heavy stones,