Mahzarnama (The Memorandum) — Page 42
42 Mahzarnama the One to Whom all affairs return. He is near in spite of His distance and is distant despite His nearness. He is on top of everything, yet one cannot say whether there is anything underneath Him. And He is more concealed than everything, yet one cannot say if there is anything more manifest than Him. He is Self-existing, and everything else exists due to Him. He is Self-Sustaining and sustains everything else. He carries everything but nothing carries Him. There is nothing that was born of itself without His agency, or which can exist of itself, without His agency. He encompasses everything but one cannot conjecture as to the nature of this compass. He is the Light of everything in the heavens and the earth, and every light was caused to shine by His Hand and it is a reflection of His Being. He is the Sustainer of all the worlds: there is no soul which does not receive its sustenance from Him. No soul has any power, which is of itself and which it has not received from Him. His Mercy takes two forms: first, that which has manifested itself since time immemorial, without being the reward for any previous act of anyone, e. g. , the heaven and the earth, the sun and the moon and stars. . . and water, fire, air and all particles of this world which have been created for our comfort. Similarly, everything else that we would have been in need of, was created prior to our own birth—at a time when we were not in existence in our own right, nor were any of our actions. Who can claim that his actions occasioned the creation of the sun, or that the earth was created due to a virtuous act on his part. In short, this is the kind of His mercy the manifestation of which pre-dates the human beings and their actions, and which is not in consequence of any of their actions. Secondly, His mercy that is exhibited as a reward for actions, needs no clarification. Similarly, the Holy Quran states that God is free from all blemishes and without all defects, and He wants human beings to follow His teachings and, in consequence, become free of faults. He says: