Fourth ray

For a book to be written by hand requires only a writer and a pen. Whereas, if you get it printed in a printing-machine, then there will have to be as many iron letters as the number of the letters and many people to make those letters and arrange them to print the book. The whole sura Ya Sin is written in very small letters inside the two letters Ya and Sin. If you chose to write a booklet in small, fine letters within a single word, then in order to print that single word you would need as many iron letters as the letters used in the booklet.

So too, if you affirm that the universe is a book written with the pen of a Single One, then you are following the easiest and most reasonable path. If, by contrast, you attribute the universe to nature or material causes, then this is, in fact, the most unreasonable and difficult of ways to follow. For, in this case, to "print" a single living thing would require as many instruments as printing most of the universe would demand. So, this ought to be an impossible supposition.

Suppose you attribute existence to nature or material causes again, for example, in the case of a flower or a fruit. There would have to be in each particle of earth, water and air as many "programs" and hidden factories [to produce it] as the number of all flowers and fruits in the world in all their diversity of color, taste and shape. Or each particle should possess as great power as to make all plants, and as much knowledge as to know all flowering and fruit-bearing plants and trees with all their parts and proportions. For any particle or atom of these three essential elements can be a means for the formation of all plants or most of them.

Suppose you have a pot filled with soil in which seeds of various plants have been buried. Then empty the pot and fill it with the soil taken especially from the surface of the earth. In both cases you will have almost the same result. This is not different from what you observe throughout the earth. Despite their variety in shape, color, taste and appearance, any earth could be the means for the growth of all flowery and fruitbearing trees. Then each seed or fruit-stone, despite their simplicity and similarity to each other in formation, would have to have special machines or workshops to form the tree or plant in its entirety.