livelihood, up to the sun. For you are its mirror. Your duty is to act as a mirror to it. Whether you know it or not, your sustenance will anyway come from the earth, the door to the treasury of mercy. Yes, a flower is a miniscule mirror of the sun, and the sun too is merely a drop-like flash manifesting in the seas of the skies the name of Light of the Pre-Eternal Sun.

O heart of man! Understand from this, of what sort of a sun you are the mirror. After fulfilling this condition, you will find your perfection. But just as in actual reality you cannot see the sun in that way, so you cannot understand this truth naked; the colours of your attributes give it a colour and your cloudy telescope imposes a form on it, and your limited capacity restricts it.

Now, wise philosopher who has entered into Droplet! You have advanced as far as the moon with the telescope of your droplet of thought and by the stairway of philosophy. You have entered the moon. Look, of itself the moon is dense and dark; it has neither light nor life. Your endeavour has all been in vain and your knowledge has proved to be profitless. You can only be saved from the darkness of despair, the desolation of loneliness, the pestering of evil spirits, and the horrors of that bleakness through these conditions: that you give up the night of nature and turn to the sun of reality, and you believe with complete certainty that the light of this night are the shadows of the lights of the daytime sun. After fulfilling these conditions, you will find your perfection. You will find the majestic sun in place of the poor and darksome moon. But like your previous friend, you will not be able to see the sun clearly; you will see it beyond the veils with which your reason and your philosophy are familiar and conversant, and behind the screens woven by science and learning, and within a colour conferred by your capacity.

And now our Atom-like third friend, who is both poor and colourless. He swiftly evaporates in the sun’s heat, abandons his egotism, mounts the steam, and rises into the air. The dense matter within him catches fire with the flame of love and is transformed into light and radiance. He adheres to a ray proceeding from the manifestations of that light, and draws close to it. O you who resembles Atom! Since you act as a direct mirror to the sun, at whatever degree you are, you will find an opening, a window, looking purely at the sun itself in a fashion that yields the vision of certainty. And you will experience no difficulty in attributing to the sun its wondrous works. Without hesitation you will be able to ascribe to it the majestic attributes of which it is worthy. Nothing will be able to take you by the hand and make you forego ascribing to it the awesome works of its essen-