THE THIRD STEP

 

 

And then the earth addresses that reflective traveler, who has now been accustomed to their journey of reflection, in the tongue of its disposition: “Why are you wandering through space, through the heavens? Come, I will make known to you the One Whom you are seeking. Look at the tasks I carry out and read my pages!”

The traveler looks and sees that, like an ecstatic Mevlevi dervish, the earth, having two movements that are the means for the occurrence of days, seasons, and years, is drawing a circle around the Place of Supreme Gathering. They see that it is a magnificent, subjugated vessel which holds within itself hundreds of thousands of species of living creatures together with all the food and equipment needed by them, a vessel that is traveling around the sun in the ocean of space with perfect balance and order.

The traveler then looks at the pages or sheets of the earth and sees that each page of every chapter proclaims the existence of the Lord of the earth in thousands of its “verses.” Having no time to read the entire work, they look at the page which describes the creation and administration of living creatures in spring, and observe the following:

The forms of the numberless members of hundreds of thousands of species are opened up from a simple material with the most extraordinary orderliness and precision; they are then nurtured and raised in a most merciful fashion. Subsequently, the seeds of some of these members are, in a most miraculous fashion, given wings and caused to fly, thus allowing them to be scattered over the earth. All these numberless members of hundreds of thousands of species are directed with the utmost efficiency and fed and nurtured with the greatest affection. Their countless, diverse, and delicious nourishment is provided and made to reach them in the most compassionate manner from nothing more than dry clay, drops of water, and seeds and roots that resemble bones, differing little one from the other. In the same way that cargo is loaded onto a goods wagon, hundreds of thousands of different kinds of food and equipment are loaded on every spring from an unseen treasury and are dispatched with perfect orderliness to living creatures. In particular, the sending of canned milk in these food packages, brought to the mouths of infants in the form of the sweet milk that springs forth from the affectionate breasts of their mothers, demonstrates such affection, compassion, and wisdom that it can clearly be seen to be the gift and most affectionate and attentive manifestation of the Mercy of an All-Merciful One.

In short: By displaying hundreds of thousands of examples of the Resurrection and Supreme Gathering, this living page of spring interprets in brilliant fashion the verse, Look, then, at the imprints of God’s Mercy—how He revives the dead earth after its death: certainly then it is He Who will revive the dead (in a similar way). He has full power over everything (30:50). Similarly, this verse expresses in a miraculous fashion the meanings of that page. The traveler thus understands that with all its pages the earth proclaims “There is no deity but He,” in a fashion and with a strength that is proportionate to its size.

Through the brief testimony of one of the twenty aspects of a single page out of more than the twenty big pages of the earth, in The Third Step of The First Station, the observations the traveler made in the other pages of the earth were expressed as follows:

There is no deity but God, the Necessarily Existent One, Whose Necessary Existence in His Unity is demonstrated clearly by the earth with whatever there is in and upon it. This is testified to by the sublimely comprehensive, vast and perfect reality of subjugation, management, raising, opening up, the distribution of seeds, preservation, administration, and the provision of all living creatures, and the all-encompassing and all-inclusive mercifulness and compassion, all of which are clearly observable.

Said Nursi