bles a huge, corporeal angel; glorifying and sanctifying its Maker with hundreds of thousands of heads, to the number of species of beings, and with hundreds of thousands of mouths, to the number of members of those species, and with hundreds of thousands of tongues in every mouth, to the number of organs, parts, and cells of those members ─ a wondrous collection of elevated creatures engaged in worship like the Angel Israfil. Through the mystery of Divine unity, the universe is also an arable field yielding copious crops for the worlds and dwelling-places of the hereafter; a factory producing numerous goods, such as human actions, for the levels of the Abode of Bliss; and a movie-camera with a hundred thousand lenses continuously taking pictures of this world to show to the spectators in the eternal realm and especially in Paradise. To ascribe partners to God is to transform this truly wondrous, absolutely obedient, living, corporeal angel into a lifeless, soulless, unemployed, perishing, meaningless, wretched, futile collectivity, revolving in the tumult of events and storms of change and darkness of non-existence; and to convert this strange, utterly orderly, beneficial factory into an idle, confused, unconscious plaything of chance which is without product or result or function; to make it into the playground of deaf Nature and blind force, a place of mourning for all intelligent beings, and the slaughterhouse of all living creatures, and a vale of tears.

In accordance with the verse,

To assign partners to God is verily a great transgression, [^9]

[^9]:Qur’an, 31:13.

to associate partners with God, although a single evil, leads to such vast and numerous crimes that those who perpetrate it deserve infinite torment in Hell. Anyway... since this Second Fruit has been explained and proved repeatedly in The Illuminating Lamp, we have cut short the long story here.

A strange feeling and perception which drove me to this Second Fruit. It was like this:

One time when observing the season of spring, I saw that the successive caravans of beings, and especially living creatures and the small young ones at that, which followed on one after the other and in a flowing torrent displaying hundreds of thousands of samples of the resurrection of the dead and Great Gathering on the face of the earth, appeared only briefly then disappeared. The tableaux of death and transience amid that constant, awesome activity seemed to me excessively sad; I felt such pity it made me weep. The more I observed the deaths of those lovely small creatures, the