Fourth Principle
Fourth Principle
What are the fruits and benefits of the Ascension?
The Answer: By way of example, we shall mention only five of the more than five hundred fruits of the Ascension, for it signifies the Tree of Tuba.
First Fruit
FIRST FRUIT
The Ascension brought to the universe and humankind a treasury, a gift of pre-eternal and post-eternal light, which is to see with one’s very eyes the truths of the pillars of belief and to behold the angels, Paradise, the hereafter, and even the All-Glorious One. It raised the universe from an imaginary state of wretchedness, transitoriness, and disorder, and, through this fruit and light showed the universe’s reality, which is its consisting of sacred missives of the Eternally Besought One and being a beautiful mirror to the beauty of divine oneness. It made happy and pleased the universe and all conscious beings.
Furthermore, through this light and sacred fruit, the Ascension showed that man is not merely bewildered, wretched, impotent, impoverished, with endless needs and innumerable enemies, ephemeral and impermanent, for that is the state of misguidance; it showed man in his true form: his being a miracle of the Eternally Besought One’s power on ‘the most excellent of patterns,’ a comprehensive copy of the Eternally Besought One’s missives, an addressee of the Pre-Eternal and Post-Eternal Monarch, the special bondsman, the admirer and friend of His perfections, the lover bewildered at His beauty, and a beloved guest appointed to eternal Paradise. It filled all human beings who are true human beings with infinite joy and infinite longing.
Second Fruit
SECOND FRUIT
The Ascension brought to jinn and humankind as a gift the fundamentals of Islam, and first and foremost the prescribed prayers, which constitute those things pleasing to the Sustainer, the Ruler of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, the Maker of beings, Owner of the universe, and Sustainer of all the worlds. To discover the things that please Him brings such happiness it cannot be described. For how eager is everyone to discover, from a distance, the desires of a powerful benefactor or generous king, and if they find out, how delighted they are. They say longingly: “If only there were some means by which I could communicate with that personage directly. If