The Rays | The Second Ray | 34
(11-52)

Through the ‘command of “Be!” and it is,’13 the Maker brings into external existence from apparent non-existence things whose plans, programmes, and shapes and proportions are present in His knowledge.

If it is in the form of composition and art, and not creating from non-existence and nothing, and in the form of gathering together from the elements and surroundings, it resembles the members of a regiment mustering at the call of a bugle after having dispersed to rest, and the soldiers collecting together in regular and orderly fashion, and in order to facilitate this exercise and preserve their positions, the whole army being like the power, law, and eye of its commander. In exactly the same way, as though they were the power, law, and officials of the Monarch of the Universe, the minute particles under the command of that Monarch —together with the beings with whom they have contact— are mobilized according to the principles of His knowledge and determining and the laws of His pervasive power. In order to form a living being, they assume a specified measure and proportion, which resembles an immaterial mould specified by Divine knowledge and determining, and there they stop.

If things are referred to different hands and causes, and to nature, then as all the reasonable agree, no cause can in any way create from nothing and non-existence. For causes do not possess comprehensive knowledge and all-pervading power, and non-existence would not be only apparent and external, it would be absolute. And absolute non-existence can in no way be the source of existence. It which case, creation would be in the form of composition. But if in the form of composition, the particles of a fly or a flower could come together only with innumerable difficulties after collecting the body of a fly and parts of a flower from all over the earth and passing them through a fine sieve. Even having come together, since there would be no immaterial moulds existing as knowledge to preserve them in orderly form without dispersing, physical, natural moulds, in fact moulds to the number of their members, would be necessary so that the particles that had come together could form the bodies of those living creatures.

Thus, the ascribing of all things to a single Being is so easy as to be necessary and the attributing of them to numerous causes so

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