claws of death. Indeed, just as man is the microcosm and he cannot be saved from destruction, the world too is the macroanthropos; it cannot be saved from the clutches of death either. It too will die and will then be resurrected, or it will lie in repose and then open its eyes in the morning of the resurrection.

Also, just as a living tree, which is a miniature copy of the universe, cannot save its life from destruction and dissolution, so the chain-like universe, which has branched out from the tree of creation, cannot save itself from destruction and dispersal in order to be repaired and renewed. If, with the permission of the pre-eternal will, some external disease or destructive event do not befall the world before the time of its natural death, or its All-Wise Maker does not demolish it, for sure, according to scientific reckoning, a day will come when the meanings and mysteries of the verses:

When the sun is rolled up; ∗ When the stars tumble; ∗ When the mountains are swept away;(81:1-3) ∗ When the she-camels, ten months with young, are left untended; ∗ When the wild beasts are herded together; ∗ When the oceans boil over;(82:1-3)

will become manifest with the permission of the Pre-Eternal All-Powerful One, and the death agonies of the macroanthropos which is the world will commence; it will fill space and make it reverberate with an appalling death-rattle and devastating sound; roaring, it will die. Then, at the divine command, it will return to life once more.

##### A Subtle, Allusive Matter

A Subtle, Allusive Matter

Just as water freezes to its own detriment, and ice melts to its own detri-ment, and a kernel gains strength to the detriment of the shell, and a word becomes coarse to the detriment of the meaning, and the spirit weakens on account of the body, and the body becomes finer on account of the spirit; so too this world, the dense world, becomes transparent and refined with the functioning of the machine of life on account of the hereafter, which is the subtle world. The fact that creative power sprinkles the light of life on dense, lifeless, extinguished, dead objects with an astonishing activity is a sign that it dissolves, burns, and illuminates this dense world with the light of life on account of the subtle world.

No matter how weak reality is, it does not die; it is not annihilated like a form. Rather, it travels in individuals and forms. Reality grows, develops, and gradually expands, while the shell and the form wear out, become finer, and break up. They are renewed in a better form so as to become suitable to the stature of the stable and expanded reality. In regard to increase and decrease, reality and form are in inverse proportion. That is to say, the