gnostics. For, like the sun is known through the seven colours in its light, the saints’ luminous colours, their light-filled hues, their true paths and right ways and veracious courses are manifested from the light of the Pre-Eternal Sun through seventy colours, indeed, through colours to the number of the Divine Names, and are all different. He saw that the unanimity of the prophets and the agreement of the purified scholars and accord of the saints forms a supreme consensus, more brilliant than the daylight that demonstrates the existence of the sun.
In brief allusion to the benefit derived by our traveller from the Sufi hospice, we said in the Tenth Degree of the First Station:
There is no god but God, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity points the unanimity of the saints in their manifest, well-affirmed and attested divinations of the truth and wondrous deeds.
Now our traveller through the world, aware that the most important and greatest of all human perfections, indeed the very source and origin of all such perfections, is the love of God that arises from belief in God and the knowledge of God, wished with all of his powers, outer and inner, to advance still farther in the strengthening of his faith and the development of his knowledge. He therefore raised his head and gazing at the heavens said to himself:
“The most precious thing in the universe is life; all things are made subordinate to life. The most precious of all living beings is the animate, and the most precious of the animate is the conscious. Each century and each year, the globe is engaged in emptying and refilling itself, in order to augment this most precious substance. It follows, then, without doubt, that the magnificent and ornate heavens must have appropriate people and inhabitants, possessing life, spirit and consciousness, for events relating to seeing and speaking with the angels —such as the appearance of Gabriel (Peace be upon him) in the presence of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) and in the view of the Companions— have been transmitted and related from the most ancient times. Would, then, that I could converse with the inhabitants of the heavens, and learn their thoughts on this matter. For their words concerning the Creator of the cosmos are the most important.”
As he was thus thinking to himself, he suddenly heard a heavenly voice: “If you wish to meet us and hearken to our lesson, then know that before all others we have believed in the articles of faith brought by means of us to the prophets, headed by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), who brought the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition.