FIFTH SIGN
Also, it was said concerning the sixteenth property of life that when life enters a thing, it makes it into a world; if a part, it affords it the comprehensiveness of a whole; if a particular, the extensiveness of a universal.
Yes, life possesses such extensiveness it is simply a comprehensive mirror of divine oneness, showing in itself most of the divine names manifested throughout the universe. When life enters a body, it makes it a small world; like a sort of seed of the tree of the universe, containing an index of it. In the same way that a seed can only be the work of a power capable of making the tree that bears it, the one who creates the tiniest living beings has to be the Creator of all the universe.
Thus, through this comprehensiveness, life demonstrates in itself a most obscure mystery of divine oneness. That is, like the mighty sun is present with its light, reflection, and seven colours in every drop of water and fragment of glass facing it, so the divine names and attributes which encompass the universe are manifested together in all living beings. From this point of view, in regard to creation and dominicality, life makes the universe into an indivisible whole, a universal whose being broken into parts and in which others can share is outside the bounds of possibility.
Yes, the stamp on your face shows self-evidently that the One who creates you is the One who creates all humankind. For the nature of man’s creation is the same; it cannot be split up. Also, by means of life the parts of the universe are like the individual members of mankind, and the universe, like the species. It shows the seal of divine oneness and stamp of eternal besoughtedness on every individual, the same as it shows them on the whole, thus in every way repulsing the associating of partners with God.
Also, there are such extraordinarily wondrous miracles of dominical art in life that one, a power, that cannot create the whole universe cannot create the tiniest animate creature. Yes, a pen that inscribes in a tiny seed the index of the huge pine-tree, and the programme of its life, like writing the whole Qur’an in a chickpea, can surely be none other than the pen that writes the heavens together with the stars. And the one who places in the tiny head of a bee the ability and faculties to know the flowers in the garden of the universe, be connected with most of its realms, convey a gift of divine mercy like honey, and know on the day it comes into the world the conditions of life, can surely be none other than the Creator of the entire universe.
I n S h o r t : Life is a shining seal of divine unity on the face of the