His Second Duty

By reason of  his  comprehensiveness,  this  is  for man  to  be  the most  perfect addressee of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One; by appreciating and admiring His astonishing arts, to be His loudest herald; and by offering every kind of conscious thanks, to  give praise, glory, and thanks for all the varieties of His bounties and the limitless different sorts of His gifts.

His Third Duty

Through his life, this is to act in three respects as a mirror to the Ever-Living and

Self-Subsistent One and His qualities and all-embracing attributes.

First Aspect: This is to perceive through his own absolute impotence the absolute power of  his Creator and its levels, and through the degrees of his impotence, the degrees of His power. It is to understand through his own absolute poverty, His mercy and the degrees of His mercy, and through his weakness, His strength; and so on. It is to be a mirror and measuring  instrument for his Creator’s attributes of perfection through his own defective attributes. Just as darkness is a perfect mirror for displaying electric light, the brilliance of the light being  proportionate to the darkness of the night, so man acts as a mirror to the divine perfections  through his own defective attributes.

Second Aspect: Using the universe as a yardstick and with his own partial will,

tiny knowledge, minute power, and apparent ownership, and by building his own house,  man understands and acts as a mirror to the ownership, art, will, power, and knowledge of the universe’s Fashioner.

Third Aspect: Man’s acting as a mirror in this respect has two faces:

First: It is to display in himself the ever-differing embroideries of the divine names. To put it simply, by reason of his comprehensiveness, man is like a tiny index and miniature specimen of the universe and so displays the embroideries of all the names.

Second Face: This face acts as a mirror to the divine attributes. That is to say,

just as man points to the life of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One through his own life, so he acts as a mirror to and makes known such attributes of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One as hearing and sight, by means of his own sense of hearing and sense of sight that develop during his life-time.

Furthermore, man acts as a mirror to the sacred attributes of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One through the very numerous and responsive senses, meanings, and emotions that are present with his life, which do not develop but which boil up in the form of feelings and emotions. For example, as a result of such emotions, through meanings like loving and feeling proud, pleased, happy and cheerful he acts as a mirror to attributes of that sort, on condition they are suitable and worthy for the sacredness and absolute self-sufficiency of the Most Pure and Holy Essence.