THE SECOND AIM
The representative of those who ascribe partners to God could in no respect prove that way, and so, although despairing, since he wanted to destroy the way of those who affirm Divine Unity, he tried to sow doubts in their minds by asking the following question:
The Second Question: "O people of Unity! You say, 'Say: He is God, the One and Only. God, the Eternally Besought One.'18 That the Creator of the universe is one, He is single, He is eternally besought by all creatures. And that the Creator of everything is He. That He is one in essence and at the same time the reins of everything are directly in His hand, the key to everything is in His grasp; one thing cannot be an obstacle to another. And you say that at the same instant He has total disposal over all things and all their states. How can such a far-fetched fact be believed? How can a single individual be in innumerable places and do innumerable things at the same time with no difficulty?"
The Answer: This question may be answered through explaining an extremely profound, subtle, elevated, and comprehensive mystery concerning Divine Oneness and Eternal Besoughtedness. Man's mind can only look at this mystery through the telescope and observatory of comparison and allegory. While there is nothing similar or analogous to God Almighty's Essence and attributes, the functions of His attributes may be looked at to a degree by means of comparison and allegory. And so, we too shall point to that mystery through comparisons of a material nature.
First Comparison: As is proved in the Sixteenth Word, a single individual may attain universality or comprehensiveness through the means of different mirrors. While actually being a particular or part of something greater than itself, it is as though it becomes a universal with numerous qualities and functions.
Indeed, matter like glass and water may be a mirror to physical objects, and one such object may attain universality in such a mirror. In the same way, air, ether, and some creatures from the World of Similitudes are like mirrors to lucent objects and spirit beings. Each of those mirror-like creatures passes with the speed of lightening or imagination to the form of being a means of travel and spectating, so that the lucent and spirit beings travel with the speed of imagination in those spotless mirrors, those subtle dwellings. In the space of a single instant the spirit beings can enter thousands of places. And because they are lucent and because their reflections are the same as them and have their qualities, they are as though present in person in every mirror, everywhere, as is contrary to the case with physical beings.
The reflections and likenesses of dense corporeal beings are not identical to the corporeality of those beings; they do not possess their qualities and may be thought of as dead. For example, although the sun is a particular and a single individual, it becomes like a universal by means of shining objects. It reflects its image, a sun like itself, in all shining objects, drops of water, and fragments of glass on the face of the earth, according to their capacity. The sun's heat, light, and the seven colours in its light, a sort of likeness of the essential sun, is found in all shining physical objects.