various, contiguous seven levels from the centre to the outer crust, which have been established by science; and the famous seven universal elements called the seven levels, which comprise the seventy simple elements that are the means of perpetuating animate creatures’ lives; also the four elements of water, air, fire, and earth, together with the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, making seven levels and realms; also the seven realms of the earth verified by those who uncover the secrets of creation and the people of witnessing, who are very numerous, their testimony that they are the worlds and habitations of jinns, demons, and other various sentient and living creatures; also the seven levels indicating that seven further globes exist resembling our globe, and that they are the dwelling places of living creatures – from these indications it has been understood from verses of the Qur’an that the earth too has seven levels.
It thus becomes clear that the earth has seven sorts of levels that exist in seven ways. The eighth, which is the final meaning, is important from another point of view; it is not included in the seven.
T h e T h i r d : Since the Absolutely Wise One wastes nothing and creates nothing in vain; and since creatures exist for conscious beings and find their perfection by means of conscious beings and rejoice through them and are saved from futility by means of them; and since observedly the Absolutely Wise One, the All-Powerful One of Glory, fills the element of air, and world of water, and layer of earth with innumerable living beings; and since just as air and water are not an obstacle to the movement of animals, so dense matter like earth and stone do not form obstacles to the passage of matter like electricity and X-rays; for sure the All-Wise One of Glory, the Undying Maker, will not leave empty and uninhabited the broad spaces and worlds and caves and seven contiguous layers from the centre of our globe to the outer crust, which is our habitation and centre. He has certainly populated them and created and settled there conscious beings appropriate to those worlds. Since those sentient creatures must be angels and spirit beings of a sort, the densest and hardest layer even will be to them as the sea is to fish and the air is to birds. The awesome heat at the centre of the earth even must be for those conscious creatures like the sun’s heat is for us. Created from light, for those sentient spirit beings fire is like light.
T h e F o u r t h : Mentioned in the Eighteenth Letter is a comparison about the depictions made by the people of illumination of the strange wonders of the earth’s levels, which are outside the bounds of reason. A summary is this:
In the Manifest Realm the globe is a seed, while in the World of Similitudes and Intermediate Realm it is so vast as to be equal to the heavens. If