How do beings manifest God's names?

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

There is nothing that does not glorify Him with praise.

Everything has many aspects like windows opened on Almighty God

According to the meaning of There is nothing that does not glorify Him with praise, everything in the universe has many aspects like windows opened on Almighty God. All the truths contained in the whole of the creation are based on the Divine Names. Each thing owes its existence and essential nature to one or several Names of God. The varieties of art in things are also based on a Name. Even the sciences depend on the Divine Names. For example, philosophy in its true sense depends on the Name the All-Wise, medicine on the Name the All-Healing, and geometry and engineering are based on the Names the All-Determining, the All-Proportioning, and the All-Giving of Exact Measure. Also, all the human arts and the levels of human perfections have their sources in Divine Names. Even, the exacting saintly scholars have concluded: ‘The reality of things consists in Divine Names, and their nature is the inscription of those realities. It is possible to see the manifestations of twenty Divine Names in a single living creature.’ We will try to make this subtle and comprehensive truth understandable by means of a comparison and analyze it as if sifting it. However lengthy it seems, it should not bore you.

When an extremely skilful sculptor wants to make pictures and statues of a beautiful flower and an extremely beautiful woman, he first determines the general lines. This determination depends on exact measures and planning. The measures and planning are according to the sculptor’s aim in making the statues and based on certain knowledge of engineering or design. Now he is beginning to draw the outer lines of the eyes, ears, and the nose, and of the leaves and seed-producing parts with the pair of compasses of knowledge and purpose, or wisdom. We see that all the members or parts are quite proportionate: they display the degree of the sculptor’s art and are in accordance with their functions in the body. This shows that the sculptor is really a great artist and does everything for a purpose and in its proper place. He also attaches great importance to the beauty and adornment of his works, a fact which greatly contributes to his art. Besides, this artist is a benevolent one and desires to see every-body happy. That is why both the pictures and statues he is making give the impression of pleasure and happiness, and therefore suggest that their artist is a kind and gracious one. His kindness and graciousness originate from his love of beings. He also desires that beings should recognize him and love him so that they might appeal to him for help. Of course, this desire comes from his compassion and his desire to do people good. This desire has led him to fill the arms of the statue with varieties of all things from which people benefit, and to attach jewels to the sculpture of the flower. It is his personal perfections and virtues which arouse in him compassion and tenderness for others. He unites in him-self beauty and love, and since all those sublime feelings of his are pure to the degree that he becomes happy and exhilarated only when he sees others happy, he desires himself to be known by others. That is why he has made the pictures and statues, which reflect all his virtues and laudable qualities.

The All-Wise Maker has created Paradise and the world, the heavens and the earth, animals, jinn and men, and angels and spirit beings, through the manifestations of His Names.

Similarly, the All-Wise Maker has created Paradise and the world, the heavens and the earth, animals, jinn and men, and angels and spirit beings, through the manifestations of His Names. He determines each according to certain measures and gives each a certain form. This displays His Names the All-Fashioner, the All-Determining and the Giver of Measure. Fashioning, determining and giving a measure are based on Knowledge and Wisdom and therefore point to the Divine Names the All-Knowing and the All-Wise. Through the manifestations of His Names the All-Munificent and the All-Gracious, He equips His creatures with well-proportioned parts and members, such as eyes, ears and noses, and if they are flowers, with petals, sepals, and seed-producing parts, and attaches to each many complex functions. Also, through the manifestations of the same Names, He furnishes and adorns the earth with minerals, plants and animals, and Paradise with gardens, palaces and houses, each of which has a particular beauty and functions.

The Creator equips His creatures with such systems and faculties that it is as if each were an embodiment of munificence, grace and adornment.

The All-Wise Creator equips His creatures with the results of the manifestations of His Names the All-Munificent and the All-Gracious, to the extent that it is as if each were an embodiment of munificence, grace and adornment. What leads His Munificence and Graciousness to that degree of manifestation is His love of creatures and His desire of being known by animate beings and loved by conscious ones. That means the Names the All-Munificent and All-Gracious exhibit the Names the All-Loving and the Recognized or Known One. Also, He adorns all the creatures with delicious fruits and the lovely benefits there-from, bestowing on them all kinds of bounties. This points to the Names the Giver of Bounties and the All-Compassionate, and shows their manifestations from behind apparent veils. What leads the One Who is absolutely independent of the creation to manifest His Munificence and Compassion is His desire to show His Mercy and Affection, which causes creatures to recite the Names the All-Merciful and the All-Affectionate. It is His Essential Beauty and Perfection which stimulate Him to manifest His Mercy and Affection, and exhibit the Names the All-Beautiful together with the All-Loving and the All-Com-passionate contained in it. Absolute beauty is loved because of itself and the One with absolute beauty loves Himself. Therefore it is both beauty and love. So is perfection. It is loved because of itself, not because of anything else. Therefore it is both lover and be-loved.

Since a beauty of infinite perfection and a perfection of infinite beauty are loved to the infinite degree, certainly they wish to manifest themselves in mirrors according to the capacity of those mirrors. The Essential Beauty and Perfection of the Majestic Maker, the All-Wise One of Beauty, the All-Powerful One of Perfection, desire to show mercy and affection and therefore impel the Names, the All-Merciful and the All-Caring to manifest themselves. Since the desire to show mercy and affection is associated with compassion and bountifulness, it urges the Names the All-Compassionate and the Giver of Bounties to be manifested. Compassion and bountifulness require and cause the Names the All-Loving and the Recognized to manifest themselves. Being loved and recognized incite the manifestations of grace and munificence and cause creatures to demonstrate the Names the All-Gracious One and the Munificent One. Grace and munificence incite the Names the All-Decorating and the All-Illuminating and show their acts through the beauty and illumination in creatures. Decoration and illumination require the manifestations of the Names the Maker and the Benevolent and demonstrate them through the beautiful countenances of creatures. Making and benevolence are based on knowledge and wisdom and show the Names the All-Knowing and the All-Wise through the harmonious and purposeful organization of creatures. Demanding the acts of organizing, fashioning and forming, knowledge and wisdom demonstrate the Names the Fashioner and the Giver of Measure through the general forms of creatures.

There are many layers of loveliness in the creation of things.

In short, the Majestic Maker has made all creatures in such fashion that most of them, particularly the animate ones, manifest most of the Divine Names. It is as if He has clothed each of His creatures in twenty different garments one over the other and inscribed several of His Names on each of them. For example, as is pointed out in the comparison above, there are many layers of loveliness in the apparent creation of a single beautiful flower and a single beautiful member of the fair sex. You may compare vast and universal bodies with these two particular examples.

• This comprises their general forms and appearances, and recites, O Fashioner, O Giver of Measure, O Determiner, O Organizer!
• This is their form and appearance including all the members of their bodies, and manifests many Names like the All-Knowing and the All-Wise.
• This comprises the forms of beauty and adornment particular to each of the members of their bodies, on which are inscribed many Names like the Maker and the One Who Creates Subtly.
• This is the detail of ornament, beauty and elegance which are given to those creatures (the flower and the woman) as if in the embodied form of grace and munificence, and therefore recites O Gracious One, O Munificent One!, and many other Names.
• The delicious fruits attached to that flower and the lovely children and laudable virtues given to that woman as gifts, manifest Names like the All-Loving, the All-Compassionate and the Giver of Bounties.
• This layer of bountifulness and benevolence recites O All-Merciful, O All-Caring! and several other Names.

The bounties given to them and the results attached to their existence demonstrate such gleams of beauty and grace that they deserve pure gratitude and love ‘kneaded’ with true eagerness and tenderness. This layer manifests Names such as the All-Beautiful One of Perfection and the Perfect One of Beauty.

If a single flower and a beautiful woman manifest so many Names through their outward forms, you may compare how many Names of universal manifestation all flowers and animate beings and vast and universal bodies demonstrate. You may also understand how many sacred, enlightening Names of God like the All-Living, the Self-Subsistent and the Giver of Life, a man manifests through his spirit, heart, reason and his life and all other senses and faculties.

Every thing and/or being is a different mirror to God’s Beauty, Perfection, Mercy, and Love.

Paradise is a flower. The community of houris is a flower. The face of the earth is a flower. The season of spring is a flower. The heaven is also a flower and the stars are its gilded embroideries. The sun is another flower and the seven colors in its light are its dyes. The cosmos is a beautiful, macro-human being, while a man is a normo-universe. The company of houris, the community of spirit beings, the assembly of angels, the tribe of jinn, and humankind, have each been fashioned, organized, and created as if they were beautiful individuals. As they manifest the Names of the All-Majestic Being both collectively and individually, they are each a different mirror to His Beauty, Perfection, Mercy, and Love. They are each a different and true witness of His Infinite Beauty, Perfection, Mercy, and Love, and a different sign of them. All those boundless kinds of perfections are only possible in the sphere of Divine Unity and Singleness. Perfections imagined outside this sphere are not true.

Now understand that the realties of things are based on the Divine Names or rather those realities are the manifestations of those Names and all things mention their Maker in numerous tongues. Also, know one of the meanings of There is nothing that does not glorify Him with praise, and say, Glory be to Him Who is veiled through the intensity of His manifestation, and understand the reason why He is the All-Mighty, the All-Wise, and He is the All-Forgiving, the All-Compassionate, and He is the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, and the like phrases, repeated at the end of verses in the Qur’an.

If you are unable to see clearly the Names manifested on a flower, ponder over Paradise or look at spring attentively or examine the face of the earth. You can clearly read the Names inscribed in those huge flowers of Mercy and see the manifestations of the Names distinctively.