Similarly, through showing the pleasure of renewed acqaintance, it removes the pain of separation and parting. That is to say, while many pains occur at the thought of the passing of a single pleasure, belief removes them by calling to mind the recurrence of the pleasure. In any event there are further pleasures in the renewal of pleasure. If a fruit has no tree, its pleasure is restricted to and ceases on its being eaten, and its ceasing is the cause of sorrow. But if the fruit’s tree is known, there is no pain when the fruit ceases to exist, for there are others to come in its place.
At the same time, renewal is in itself a pleasure. For what troubles the human spirit most are the pains arising from separation. Whereas the light of belief removes those pains through the hope of renewed meeting and the recurrence of similar encounters.
The things among these beings man imagines to be hostile and foreign, and lifeless and lost as though orphans or dead, the light of belief shows to him as friends and brothers, as living, and as glorifying God. That is to say, a person who looks with the eye of heedlessness supposes the beings in the world to be harmful like enemies, and he takes fright; he sees things as foreign. For in the view of misguidance, there are no bonds of brotherhood between the things of the past and those of the future. There is only an insignificant, partial connection between them. As a consequence, the brotherhood of the people of misguidance is only for one minute within thousands of years.
In the view of belief, all the heavenly bodies appear as living and as familiar with one another. Belief shows each of them to be glorifying its Creator through the tongue of its being. It is in this respect that all the heavenly bodies possess a sort of life and spirit according to each. There is no fear and fright therefore when the heavenly bodies are considered with this view of belief; there is familiarity and love.
The view of unbelief sees human beings, powerless as they are to secure their desires, as ownerless and without protector; it imagines them to be grieving and sorrowful like weeping orphans on account of their impotence. The view of belief on the other hand, sees them as living creatures; not as orphans but officials charged with duties; as servants glorifying and extolling God.