The Angels And Pure Spirits The Concordance Of Their Reports

Now our traveller through the world, aware that the most important and greatest of all human perfections, indeed the very source and origin of all such perfections, is the love of Allah that arises from belief in Allah and the knowledge of Allah, wished with all of his powers, outer and inner, to advance still farther in the strengthening of his faith and the development of his knowledge. He therefore raised his head and gazing at the heavens said to himself:

"The most precious thing in the universe is life; all things are made subordinate to life. The most precious of all living beings is the animate, and the most precious of the animate is the conscious. Each century and each year, the globe is engaged in emptying and refilling itself, in order to augment this most precious substance. It follows, then, without doubt, that the magnificent and ornate heavens must have appropriate people and inhabitants, possessing life, spirit and consciousness, for events relating to seeing and speaking with the angels -such as the appearance of Gabriel (Peace be upon him) in the presence of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) and in the view of the Companions- have been transmitted and related from the most ancient times. Would, then, that I could converse with the inhabitants of the heavens, and learn their thoughts on this matter. For their words concerning the Creator of the cosmos are the most important."

As he was thus thinking to himself, he suddenly heard a heavenly voice: "If you wish to meet us and hearken to our lesson, then know that before all others we have believed in the articles of faith brought by means of us to the prophets, headed by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), who brought the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition. "Then too all of the pure spirits from among us that have appeared before men have, unanimously and without exception, born witness to the necessary existence, the unity, and the sacred attributes of the Creator of this cosmos, and proclaimed this with one accord. The affinity and mutual correspondence of these countless proclamations is a guide for you as bright as the sun." Thus the traveller's light of faith shone, and rose from the earth to the heavens.

In brief allusion to the lesson learned by the traveller from the angels, we said in the Eleventh Degree of the First Station:

لَٓا اِلٰهَ اِلَّا اللّٰهُ الْوَاجِبُ الْوُجُودِ الَّذ۪ى دَلَّ عَلٰى وُجُوبِ وُجُودِهِ ف۪ى وَحْدَتِهِ اِتِّفَاقُ الْمَلٰئِكَةِ الْمُتَمَثِّل۪ينَ لِاَنْظَارِ النَّاسِ وَ الْمُتَكَلِّم۪ينَ مَعَ خَوَاصِّ الْبَشَرِ بِاِخْبَارَاتِهِمُ الْمُتَطَابِقَةِ الْمُتَوَافِقَةِ

There is no god but Allah, to Whose Necessary Existence in Unity points the unanimity of the angels that appear to human gaze, and who speak to the elect among men, with their mutually corresponding and conforming messages.

Then, that ardent and inquisitive traveller, having learned from the tongues of various realms of creation in the Manifest Realm in their material and corporeal aspects, and from the utterance of their modes of being, desired to study and journey through the World of the Unseen and the Intermediate Realm, and thus to investigate reality. There opened to him the gate of upright and luminous intellects, of sound and illumined hearts, that are like the seed of man, who is the fruit of the universe, and despite their slight girth can expand virtually to embrace the whole of the cosmos.