“As for the perfection of your life in happiness, it is to perceive and love the lights of the Eternal Sun pictured in the mirror of your life, to display ardor for Him as a conscious being, to be enraptured with love of Him, and to establish His Light’s reflection in the center of your heart.”¹⁾

“The image or reflection in a mirror is one of four sorts: it is either only the identity or the physical form of the thing reflected…”(Ibid, p. 717.))

“The sun’s image is reflected in every burnished and shining object, for its luminosity makes it somewhat non-restrictable. Regardless of how many mirrors are held toward it, each one contains its complete, non-refracted image, without one preventing the other.”²⁾

“Azrail takes the soul of every body. Created from light, he can be omnipresent and simultaneously assume many forms and do countless things. All different forms of such light-created beings have that being’s properties and so are considered to be identical with its essence. As the sun’s reflections in mirrors display its heat and light, the ideal forms of light-derived spirit beings in various mirrors of the World of Ideas are identical with their essences and possess their properties.”³⁾

“… when life rises to the level of human life, it tours the realms with the light of intellect. Just as it exercises power in the physical world, it roams the spiritual realm and travels through the World of Symbols or Immaterial Forms. As a person goes to visit those worlds, so too do those worlds, by manifesting in the mirror of his soul, seem to make a return visit to him. Indeed, a human being may say, ‘Through God’s bounty the universe was created for me.’”⁴⁾

“Know, O Friend, that many ‘mirrors’ reflect the Divine manifestations: glass, water, air, the World of Symbols or Immaterial Forms, the spirit, the intellect, imagination, time, and many other things that we do not know. The reflections of solid, material things are dead, separated, or disconnected from themselves. They do not have the essential characteristics of their originals and therefore are not identical with them. This is indicated when their pictures are taken: They are seen only with their outer, physical forms.

The reflections of luminous things, however, are connected to their originals and bear their characteristics or attributes. [Although not exactly identical with their originals,] they are not other-than-them either. If the Creator had made the sun’s heat its soul, its light, its consciousness, and the sun’s colors its light and its senses, it would have spoken to you through the ‘heart’ of the mirror in your hand.”⁵⁾

“One of the factors that beautify worldly life is the radiant lights of guidance and the beloved, delightful likenesses of great human beings, which shine out by manifesting in the mirror of the world. Yes, the future is the mirror of the past. When the past passes on to the barzakh—the other world—it entrusts its form, shape, and worldly visage to the mirror of the future, to history, to the minds of people. Because of people’s spiritual and imaginative love for them, love of the world becomes sweet.”⁶⁾

“The contingent beings that were manifested in the eternal, all-embracing Knowledge are mirrors and loci of reflection for the luminous disclosures of Necessary Existence. Thus, just as the eternal Knowledge is a mirror to contingent beings, so too are contingent beings a mirror to the Necessary Existent. True, those contingent beings have moved from God’s eternal Knowledge into external existence, yet they have not attained the level of absolute reality.”⁷⁾

“Whatever the form and model of the archetypal, fixed essences, the realm or the mirrors onto which they reflect and manifest is called World of Symbols or Immaterial Forms; the pictures shaped within that realm are called ‘imaginal forms’—later only from our time-bound perspective—the sensory, material forms are the embodiment or shadows of those spiritual configurations. The purely spiritual and subtle sector of these forms has long been termed the ‘absolute realm of images,’ while the detailed, embodied, and densified sector is called the ‘detailed realm of images.’ Some have further explained the imaginal realm as the entrance of beings and events into the world of sensation in the guise of spiritual forms, where they can be seen, felt, and—even with certain effects—make themselves known to our outer or inner senses; the manifestations of spirit and angels in particular forms may be cited as examples.”⁸⁾

“The manifestation of angels and of those in the Intermediate World (barzakh) is the result of their reciting certain Divine Names that God has taught them. Nevertheless, they cannot manifest and appear to us—or see us—whenever they wish; that, too, depends upon God’s permission.”⁹⁾

“Just as angels may assume different forms and appearances by God’s command and permission, so too can spirits, jinn, satans, the laws and meanings that constitute the spirit of things, Qur’anic verses, prayers, and glorification—all may manifest with God’s leave. Everything that appears in human dreams consists of such manifestations. For example, you may see an apple in your dream. In the worlds of meaning and of images that apple represents a reality: an apple can also signify pleasant speech. Thus, if a person sees an apple in a dream, it means that tomorrow he will speak sweet words and win someone’s heart.”¹⁰⁾

“Jinn are invisible beings. It is impossible for us to see them in their true essence and identity; what we may see are only the forms they assume in manifestation. As explained above, the very root meaning of the word jinn contains a sense of hiddenness. Therefore jinn are subtle beings imperceptible to the eye. The Qur’an expresses this as follows: ‘He and his tribe see you from where you cannot see them’ (Aʿraf 7:27). Because of this truth, the community of jinn and the satans see us from points where we cannot see them; they confront us at unanticipated times and places and drive their poisonous arrows into our breasts.”¹¹⁾

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