deny in your dream what the Being saw who manifested the meaning of, “His eye never wavered nor did it swerve”(53:17), and “My eye sleeps, but my heart sleeps not,” [^10] and who was truly awake and aware; interpret it. Yes, if a mosquito bites someone who is asleep, the person sometimes dreams that he has received terrible wounds in war and this has a reality in sleep. If he is questioned, he says: “Truly I have been wounded. Guns and rifles were fired at me.” Those sitting by him laugh at his anguish in sleep. Thus, the sleep-stained view of heedlessness and philosophical thought certainly cannot be the criterion for the truths of prophethood.

[^10]:Bukhārī, Tahajjud, 16; Tarāwīḥ, 1; Manāqib, 24; Tirmidhī, Adab, 86; Musnad, i, 274.

Twelfth Principle

TWELFTH PRINCIPLE: Since prophethood, the affirmation of divine unity, and belief all look to unity, the hereafter, and the Godhead, they see truth and reality accordingly. While philosophers and scientists look to multiplicity, causes, and nature, and see in accordance with them. Their points of view are extremely distant from one another. The greatest aim of the people of philosophy is so small and insignificant as to be imperceptible among the aims of the scholars of religion and theology.

It is because of this that scientists have advanced greatly in detailed explanation of the nature of beings and their minutest states, but they are so far behind the exalted divine sciences and sciences concerned with the hereafter, which are true wisdom and knowledge, that they are more backward than a simple believer. People who do not understand this mystery suppose the investigative scholars of Islam to be backward relatively to the philosophers. But how can those whose minds see no further than their eyes and are submerged in multiplicity reach those who follow elevated sacred aims through the legacy of prophethood?

Furthermore, when something is considered from two points of view, it shows two different truths, and both of them may be the truth. No certain fact of science can touch the sacred truths of the Qur’an. The short hand of science cannot reach up to its pure sublimity. We shall mention an example to illustrate this.

For example, if the globe of the earth is considered from the point of view of the people of science, its reality is this: as a middle-sized planet, it revolves around the sun amid countless stars; it is a small creature in relation to the stars. But as is explained in the Fifteenth Word, if it is considered from the point of view of the people of the Qur’an, its reality is this: since man, the fruit of the world, is a most comprehensive, most wondrous, most impotent, most weak, and most subtle miracle of divine power, the