I saw that singly and in groups they were being thrown into that black well.

On seeing the world of humanity in this darkness I was about to cry out with my heart, spirit, and mind, and all my subtle inner faculties, indeed all the particles of my being, when the light and power of belief proceeding from the Qur’an smashed those spectacles of misguidance, giving me insight. I saw the Divine Name of AllJust rising like the sun in the sign of AllWise, the Name of AllMerciful rising in the sign of Munificent, the Name of AllCompassionate rising in the sign of, that is, in the meaning of, AllForgiving, the Name of Resurrector rising in the sign of Inheritor, the Name of Giver of Life rising in the sign of Bountiful, and the Name of Sustainer rising in the sign of Owner. They lit up the entire world of humanity and all the worlds within it. They dispelled those helllike states, opened up windows onto the luminous worlds of the hereafter, and scattered lights over the world of humanity. I declared: “Praise and thanks be to God to the number of particles in existence!” I understood with complete certainty that in belief is a sort of paradise in this world too and in misguidance, a sort of hell.

Then the world of the earth appeared. On that journey of the imagination, the dark, hypothetical rules of the philosophy which does not obey religion depicted a ghastly world. Voyaging through space on the ship of the aged earth which travels seventy times faster than a cannonball a distance of twentyfive thousand years in one year, ever disposed to break up, its interior in a state of upheaval the situation of wretched human kind appeared to me in a desolate darkness. My eyes darkened