doubt. Indeed, the fact that they are agreed in the principles and pillars of belief, despite their differences in capacity and outlook, and that each of them relies on a firm and certitudinous proof, is in itself such evidence that it can be doubted only if it is possible for a similar number of intelligent and perspicuous men to arrive at a single result. Otherwise the only way for the denier to oppose them is to display his ignorance — his utter ignorance — and his obstinacy with respect to negative matters that admit neither of denial nor affirmation. He will in effect be closing his eyes but the one who closes his eyes is able to turn day into night only for himself.

The traveller learned that the lights emitted in this vast and magnificent classroom by these respected and profound scholars had been illumining half of the globe for more than a thousand years. He found in it moral and spiritual force that the combined strength of all the people of denial would be unable to shake or destroy. In brief allusion to the lesson learned by the traveller in this classroom we said in the Ninth Degree of the First Station:

There is no god but God, to whose necessary existence in unity points the agreement of all of the purified scholars, with the power of their resplendent, certain and unanimous proofs. ∗ ∗ ∗

10. Degree: Spiritual Guides and Their Agreement {10}

Our contemplative traveller came forth from the classroom, ardently desiring to see the lights that are to be observed in the continuous strengthening and development of faith, and in advancing from the degree of the knowledge of certainty to that of the vision of certainty. He then found himself summoned by thousands or millions of spiritual guides who were striving toward the truth and attaining the vision of certainty in the shade of the highway of Muhammad (PBUH) and the ascension of Muhammad (PBUH). This they were doing in a meeting-place, a hospice, a place of remembrance and preceptorship, that was abundantly luminous and vast as a plain, being formed from the merging of countless small hospices and convents. Upon entering, he found that those spiritual guides — people of unveiling and wondrous deeds — were unanimously proclaiming, "No god but He, " on the basis of their witnessing and unveiling of the Unseen and the wondrous deeds they had been enabled to perform; they were proclaiming the necessary existence and unity of God. The traveller observed how manifest and clear must be a truth to which unanimously subscribe these sacred geniuses and luminous gnostics. For, like the sun is known through the seven colours in its light, the saints' luminous colours, their light-filled hues, their true paths and right ways and veracious courses are manifested from the light of the Pre-Eternal Sun through seventy colours, indeed,