itself; indeed, they bear within themselves laws of life more subtle than those of the tree. Similarly, the seeds and roots left by last autumn, before the present spring, as well as the seeds and roots that will be left to subsequent springs after this spring has departed – they all bear the manifestations of life, just like this spring, and are subject to the laws of life. In just the same way, all the branches and twigs of the cosmic tree each have a past and a future. They have a chain consisting of past and future stages and circumstances. The multiple existences and stages of each species and each member of each species, existing in divine knowledge, forms a chain of being in God’s knowledge, and like its external existence, its existence in God’s knowledge is a manifestation of universal life that draws all the aspects of its life from these meaningful and vital Tablets of divine determining.
The fact that the World of Spirits – which is one form of the World of the Unseen – is full of the essence of life, the matter of life, and the spirits, which are the substances and essence of life, of a certainty demands and requires that the past and future – which are another form of the World of the Unseen and its second segment – should also receive the manifestation of life.
In addition, the perfect order, the meaningful circumstances and vital fruits and stages inherent in the existence of a thing within God’s knowledge, also demonstrate the manifestation of a sort of life. Such a manifestation of life, which is the light emitted by the sun of eternal life, cannot be limited to this Manifest World, this present time, this external existence. On the contrary, each world receives the manifestation of that light in accordance with its capacity, and the cosmos together with all its worlds is alive and illumined through it. Otherwise, as the misguided imagine, beneath a temporary and apparent life, each world would be a vast and terrible corpse, a dark ruin.
One broad aspect of the pillar of belief in divine determining and decree is, then, understood through the mystery of life and is established by it. Just as the life and vitality of the Manifest World and existent, visible objects become apparent from their orderliness and the consequences of their existence, so too past and future creatures – regarded as belonging to the World of the Unseen – have an immaterial existence and sort of life, and a spiritual presence in God’s knowledge. The trace of this life and presence is made manifest and known by means of the Tablet of divine determining and decree and through all the stages and circumstances of their external lives and existences.