The Third Sign

O human being! One of the most remarkable conditions that the Fātir-i HakīmAllah, Who creates all things from nothing with perfect wisdom. has placed within your nature manifests itself as follows:

At times, this world becomes too narrow for you. Like someone whose throat is being constricted within a prison, you long for a space greater than the world itself. Yet at other times, you become absorbed in the smallest matter, occupation, memory, or moment, and find room for yourself within it. Your heart and thoughts, which cannot find firm ground in this vast world, settle within something exceedingly small. With all your faculties and efforts, you become immersed in that single moment or memory.

Moreover, He has equipped you with subtle spiritual faculties and instruments, some of which cannot be satisfied even by the whole world, while others may be overwhelmed by the smallest thing. Just as the head can bear heavy burdens, while the eye cannot endure even the weight of a single hair, so too some spiritual faculties cannot bear even the slightest burden. They may be affected by the smallest degree of heedlessness or misguidance, and may even be extinguished and die.

Therefore, beware, take precautions, and fear ruin. Do not allow yourself to be carried away by trivial matters, and do not let your exalted faculties, which cannot be satisfied even by the whole world, drown in things of no significance.

For there are many seemingly insignificant things that can, in a sense, contain and overwhelm things of immense magnitude. Just as the heavens with all their stars can fit within and be swallowed up by a small mirror, and just as most of your deeds and the events of your life can be contained within your memory, which is no larger than a mustard seed, so too something very small and insignificant may, in a sense, contain and swallow up something very great.

The Fourth Sign

O human being who attaches such great value to the world! Your personal world, which you imagine to be exceedingly vast, is in reality as narrow as a grave. Yet because the walls of that confined personal world are made of mirrors, they reflect one another and cause your world to stretch out before you like a boundless expanse. Though it is as narrow as a grave, it appears as vast as a city.

The right and left walls of that world—the past and the future—do not exist in the present. Yet they are reflected within one another, and thus the wings of the exceedingly brief and confined present seem to unfold. In this way, reality becomes mingled with imagination, and you see the non-existent worlds of the past and the future as though they were present and real.

For example, if you spin a thin line rapidly, it appears as broad as a wide surface. In the same way, through heedlessness and false imagination, you expand your world, for these act like mirrored walls that make your confined world appear exceedingly vast.

But when calamity strikes you within that narrow world, you suddenly dash your head against the wall you had imagined to be far away. It shatters your dreams of the future and casts you into distress. At that moment, you realise that your spacious world is in fact narrower than the grave, and that your time and lifespan pass more swiftly than lightning and flow away faster than a river.