The second consists of his speaking privately in his own person, not with the title of monarch or in the name of kingship, concerning some private matter, some petty affair, using for this purpose a trusted servant, some ordinary subject, or his private telephone.
In the same way the Pre-Eternal Monarch may either, in the name of the Sustainer of All the Worlds, and with the title of Creator of the Universe, speak with revelation or the comprehensive inspiration that performs the function of revelation, or He may speak in a different and private fashion, as the Sustainer and Creator of all animate beings, from behind the veil, in a way suited to the recipient.
THE SECOND DIFFERENCE:
Revelation is without shadow, pure, and reserved for the elect. Inspiration, by contrast, has shadow, colours intermingle with it, and it is general. There are numerous different kinds of inspiration, such as the inspiration of angels, the inspiration of men, and the inspiration of animals; inspiration thus forms a field for the multiplication of God's words, that are as numeous as the drops in the ocean. Our traveller understood that this matter is, indeed, a kind of commentary on the verse.
Were the sea to become ink for the words of my Sustainer, verily the sea would be exhausted before the words of my Sustainer.¹²
Then he looked at the nature, the wisdom, and the testimony of inspiration and saw that its nature, wisdom and result were composed of four lights.
The first: it is the result of God's Lovingness and Mercifulness that He makes himself loved through word, presence and discourse, in the same way that He makes Himself loved to His creatures through His deeds.
The second: it is a requirement of His Compassionateness that just as He answers His servants' prayers in deed, He should also answer them in word, from behind veils.
The third: it is a concomitant of dominicality that just as He responds in deed to the cries for help, supplications, and pleadings of those of His creatures who are afflicted with grievous misfortunes and hardships, so too He should hasten to their help with words of inspiration, which are like a form of speech.
The fourth: God makes His existence, presence and protection perceptible in deed to His most weak and indigent. His most poor and needy, conscious creatures, that stand in great need of finding their Master, Protector, Guardian, and Disposer.
It is a necessary and essential consequence of His Divine solicitousness and His dominical compassion that He should also communicate His presence and existence by speech, from behind the veil of veracious inspiration —a mode of dominical discourse— to individuals, in a manner peculiar to them and their capacities, through the telephone of their hearts.
He then looked to the testimony of inspiration and saw that if the sun, for example, had consciousness and life, and if the seven colours of sunlight were the seven attributes, in that respect it would have a form of speech through the rays and manifestations found in its light.
And in this situation both its similitudes and reflections would be present in all transparent objects, and it would speak with all mirrors and shining objects and fragments of glass and bubbles and droplets of water, indeed with all transparent particles, in accordance with the capacity of each; it would respond to the needs of each, and all these would testify to the sun's existence: and no task would form an obstacle to any other task, and no speaking obstruct any other speaking. This is self-evident.
In the same way, the Speech of the Glorious Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, the Beauteous and Exalted Creator of All Beings.
Who may be described as the Pre-Eternal Sun, manifests itself to all things, in general and comprehensive fashion, in a manner appropriate to their capacity, as do also His Knowledge and Power. No request interferes with another, no task prevents the fulfilment of another, and no address becomes confused with another.
AH of this our traveller understood as self-evident. He knew that all of those manifestations, those discourses, those inspirations, separately and together, evidenced and bore witness unanimously to the presence, the necessary existence, the unity and the oneness of that Pre-Eternal Sun with a knowlege of certainty that approached a vision of certainty.
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^12. Qur'an, 18:109.