Also, as was proved above, the universe's Maker made it and decked it out in the form of a palace for the aims demonstrated in the answer to the First Difficulty. Since Muhammad (PBUH) was the means of all those aims being realized, he must have been regarded with favour by the universe's Maker before the universe was created, he must have been the first recipient of His manifestation. For the result and fruit of a thing is considered first. That is to say, material existence comes last and meaning comes first. However, since Muhammad (PBUH) was both the most perfect fruit, and the means of all other fruits acquiring value, and the means of all the aims becoming manifest, his Light must have received the first manifestation of creativity.

Your Third Difficulty: This is so extensive that those like us with straitened minds cannot contain and comprehend it. However, we can look at it from afar.

Yes, the immaterial workshops and universal laws of the lower world are in the higher worlds. And the fruits of the actions of jinn and men and the results of the actions of all the innumerable creatures on the earth, which is an exhibition of works of art, are also represented in the higher worlds. Moreover, a great many signs and the testimony of many narrations show that good deeds will take on the form of the fruits of Paradise and bad deeds the form of the bitter food of Hell. The wisdom in creation and the Divine Name of All-Wise necessitate this and the All-Wise Qur'an indicates it.

For sure, the multiplicity on the face of the earth is so widespread and the creation so ramified that its species of creatures and classes of beings are far more numerous than all the beings dispersed throughout the universe. In a state of constant change, they ever fill the earth and are emptied from it. Thus, the sources and mines of this multiplicity and these particulars are universal laws and universal manifestations of the Divine Names.

Those universal laws and universal, all-encompassing manifestations of the Names are to some extent sheer and undifferentiated and each forms a heaven which is like the Throne and ceiling of a world and its centre of direction. One of those worlds is Paradise, the Garden of the Abode at the Lote-tree of the farthest limit. It is established by accounts given by the Bringer of Sure News (PBUH) that the praise and glorification on the earth takes on the form of the fruits of that Paradise.¹⁷ Thus, these three points demonstrate that the treasuries of the results and fruits produced on the earth are there, in the heavens, and that the crops and produce of those results and fruits also return there.

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17.Kanz al-'Ummal, i, 459-60; Manzari, al-Targhlb wa'l-Tarhib, ii, 422-3.