constructed on it. Rather, it is a shell prepared to be split, rent, dissolved; it is a husk, it is froth, it is a form.

Consider the following: a creature so minute it can only be seen with a microscope has such acute senses it can hear its friend’s voice and see its sustenance; it has extremely sensitive and sharp senses. This demonstrates that the effects of life increase and the light of the spirit intensifies proportionately to the reducing and refining of matter. It is as though the more matter is refined and the more we become distanced from our material existences the closer we draw to the world of the spirit, the world of life, and the world of consciousness; and the more intensely the heat of the spirit and the light of life are manifested.

Is it therefore at all possible that there should be so many distillations of life, consciousness, and spirit within the veil of materiality, and that the inner world which is beyond this veil should not be full of conscious beings and beings with spirits? Is it at all possible that the sources of these numberless distillations, flashes, and fruits of meaning, spirit, life and the truth apparent in this material existence in the Manifest World should be ascribed only to matter and the motion of matter, and be explained by it? God forbid! Absolutely not! These innumerable distillations and flashes demonstrate that this material and manifest world is but a lace veil strewn over the inner and spirit worlds.

Second Fundamental Point

SECOND FUNDAMENTAL POINT

It may be said that all the scholars of the speculative and the scriptural sciences have, knowingly or unknowingly, united to effect a consensus in affirming, despite difference of expression, the existence and reality of the angels and spirit beings. One group of Peripatetic philosophers of the Illuminist School even, who made much progress in the study of matter, stated without denying the meaning of the angels that each realm in creation has a spiritual, incorporeal essence. They described the angels thus. Also, a group of the early philosophers who were Illuminists, being compelled to accept the meaning of the angels, were only wrong in naming them the Ten Intellects and Masters of the Realms of Creation. Through the inspiration and guidance of Revelation, scholars of all the revealed religions have accepted that each realm of creation has an angel appointed to it and have named them the Mountain Angel, the Sea Angel, and the Rain Angel, for example. Even the materialists and naturalists, whose reasoning is restricted to what is immediately apparent to them and who have in effect fallen from the level of humanity to that of inanimate matter, rather than being