Second point:

Just as belief illuminates human beings and reveals all the messages inscribed in their being by the Eternally‑Besought‑of‑All, it also illuminates the universe and removes darkness from the past and future. We will explain this truth through what I experienced regarding the meaning of: God is the Protecting Friend of those who believe. He brings them out of the layers of darkness into the light (2:257).

I saw myself standing on an awe‑inspiring bridge set over a deep valley between two mountains. The world was completely dark. Looking to my right, I imagined I saw a huge tomb. Looking to my left, I felt as if I were seeing violent storms and calamities being prepared amid the tremendous waves of darkness. Looking down, I imagined I saw a very deep precipice. My torch’s dim light revealed a dreadful scene. All along the bridge were such horrible dragons, lions, and monsters that I wished I had no torch. Whichever way I directed it, I got the same fright. “This torch brings me only trouble,” I exclaimed, angrily throwing it away and breaking it. Suddenly darkness was replaced by light, as if I had switched on a huge light by breaking my torch. I saw everything in its true nature.

I discovered that the bridge was a highway on a smooth plain. The huge tomb was a green, beautiful garden in which illustrious persons were leading assemblies of worship, prayer, glorification, and discourse. The turbulent, stormy, frightening precipices appeared as a banqueting hall, a shaded promenade, a beautiful resting place behind lovely mountains. The horrible monsters and dragons were actually camels, sheep, and goats. “Praise and thanks be to God for the light of belief,” I said, and then awoke reciting:

God is the Protecting Friend of those who believe. He brings them out of the layers of darkness into the light.

The two mountains are this life’s beginning and end, and the life between death and Resurrection. The bridge is the lifespan, between the two phases of the past (on the right) and the future (on the left). The torch is our conceited ego that, relying on its own achievements, ignores Divine Revelation. The monsters were the worlds’ events and creatures.

Those who have fallen into the darkness of misguidance and heedlessness because of their confidence in their egos resemble me in the former state—in the dim light of a torch. With their inadequate and misguided knowledge, they see the past as a huge tomb in the darkness of extinction and the future as a stormy scene of terror controlled by coincidence or chance. The torch shows them events and creatures. In reality, these are subjugated to the All‑Wise and All‑Merciful, fulfill specific functions, and serve good purposes in submission to His Decree. However, they see such things as harmful monsters. These are the people referred to in:

As to those who do not believe, their protecting friends are false deities. They bring them out of light into layers of darkness (2:257).

If, however, people are favored with Divine guidance so that belief enters their hearts and their Pharaoh‑like egos are broken, thereby enabling them to listen to the Book of God, they will resemble me in my later state. Suddenly the universe will fill with Divine Light, demonstrating the meaning of: God is the light of the heavens and Earth (24:35).

Through the eye of their hearts, such people see that the past is not a huge tomb; rather, each past century is the realm of authority of a Prophet or a saint, where the purified souls, having completed the duties of their lives (worship) with: “God is the Greatest,” flew to higher abodes on the side of the future. Looking to his left and through the light of belief, they discern, behind the mountain‑like revolutions of the intermediate world and the next life, a feasting place set up by the All‑Compassionate One at palaces of bliss in gardens of Paradise. They understand that storms, earthquakes, epidemics, and similar events serve a specific function, just as the spring rain and winds, despite their apparent violence, serve many agreeable purposes. They even see death as the beginning of eternal life, and the grave as the gateway to eternal happiness.