powerful over all things, and knowing of all things; that with His mercy and knowledge and creativity, planning, art, and fashioning He encompasses all things. In relation to His creation, planning, art, and fashioning, the sun is a tiny seed; a star, a flower; the earth, a grain.
For seeds and fruits are mirrors of unity in every part of multiplicity; they point to divine determining; they are signs of power showing the unity of the multiplicity’s source. Proceeding from it they testify to the unity of their Creator’s art and fashioning. Then on their coming to an end in unity they recount the wisdom of their Maker’s creativity and planning.
Seeds and fruits are also allusions of wisdom indicating that the universe’s Creator looks with His all-encompassing view to the particular, then to the parts. For the fruits are clearly the aim of the tree’s creation. Thus, man is the aim of the universe, and the chief aim of the Creator of beings. Man’s heart is like a seed, and the most luminous mirror to the Maker of creatures. It is due to this wisdom that in the universe, insignificant man is the chief means to and reason for the resurrection of beings, and the destruction, transformation, change and renewal of the universe.
God is Most Great! O Mighty One! The mind cannot penetrate the essence of Your tremendousness!
All beings recite together “There is no god but He!”
Perpetually seeking their needs, they declare “O Truth!”
Altogether they recite “O Living One!”
THE THIRD DEGREE1
This is explained at the beginning of the Third Stopping-Place of the Thirty-Second Word.
God is Most Great, may His glory be exalted! – in respect of power and knowledge greater than all things. For He is All-Powerful, the Determiner, All-Knowing, All-Wise, the Giver of Form, Munificent, Gracious, the Adorner, the Bestower of Bounties, Loving, who makes Himself known, Most Merciful, All-Compassionate, Kind, the Beauteous One of Absolute Beauty and Perfection, the Pre-Eternal Inscriber. The reality of the universe as a whole and with its parts, and with its levels and pages, and the reality of beings as a whole and as individuals, in regard to existence and permanence consist of :—
This third degree considers a flower and a beautiful woman. The huge spring is a flower, and so is Paradise. They are the places of manifestation of this degree. The world is a vast, beautiful human being. Houris, and spirit beings, animals, and men, all as realms of being, bear the meaning of a human being; through their pages, they display the divine names this degree depicts.