The original seed of a tree and its root, as well as the seeds contained in its fruit and final outcome, all manifest a sort of life no less than the tree itself; indeed, they bear within themselves laws of life more subtle than those of the tree. Similarly, the seeds and roots left by last autumn, before the present spring, as well as the seeds and roots that will be left to subsequent springs after this spring has departed – they all bear the manifestations of life, just like this spring, and are subject to the laws of life. In just the same way, all the branches and twigs of the cosmic tree each have a past and a future. They have a chain consisting of past and future stages and  circumstances.  The  multiple  existences  and  stages  of each species  and  each member of each species, existing in divine  knowledge, forms a chain of being in God’s knowledge, and like its external existence, its existence in God’s knowledge is a manifestation  of universal  life that draws  all  the aspects  of its  life  from these meaningful and vital Tablets of divine determining.

The fact that the World of Spirits – which is one form of the World of the Unseen

– is full of the  essence of life,  the matter  of life,  and  the spirits, which  are  the substances and essence of life, of a certainty demands and requires that the past and future – which are another form of the World of the Unseen and its second segment – should also receive the manifestation of life.

In addition, the perfect order, the meaningful circumstances and vital fruits and stages inherent in the existence of a thing within God’s knowledge, also demonstrate the  manifestation  of a sort of life. Such a manifestation of life, which is the light emitted by  the  sun of eternal life, cannot be limited to  this Manifest World, this present  time,  this  external  existence.  On  the  contrary,  each  world  receives  the manifestation of that light in  accordance with its capacity, and the cosmos together with all its worlds is alive and  illumined through it. Otherwise, as the misguided imagine, beneath a temporary and  apparent life,  each world  would be a vast and terrible corpse, a dark ruin.

One broad aspect of the pillar of belief in divine determining and decree is, then, understood through the mystery of life and is established by it. Just as the life and vitality of  the Manifest World and existent, visible objects become apparent from their  orderliness  and  the  consequences  of  their  existence,  so  too  past  and  future creatures – regarded as belonging to the World of the Unseen – have an immaterial existence and sort of life, and a spiritual presence in God’s knowledge. The trace of this life and presence is made manifest and known by means of the Tablet of divine determining and decree and through all the stages and circumstances of their external lives and existences.