Tenth phrase:

He is powerful over everything. As everything is easy for Him, He easily clothes everything with existence and creates everything by saying: “Be.”

If a very skillful artist only has to stretch out a hand to make something and everything operate as he or she wills, we may express such speed and skill by saying that the artist controls that work to such a degree that it seems to come into existence by a single touch or command. His command when He wills a thing, is only to say to it “Be” and it is (36:82) also declares that the Power of the All-Powerful One of Majesty controls everything and operates with utmost ease. The following five points explain five of this comprehensive truth’s countless mysteries.

First point: The greatest and the smallest thing are equal for Divine Power. Creating a species is as simple as creating an individual, creating Paradise is as easy as creating spring, and creating spring is as easy as creating a flower. This mystery has been explained in The Tenth Word and The Twenty-ninth Word, which prove that Divine Power creates stars, particles, and all individuals as easily as one individual.[7]

Second point: Animals and vegetation, which contain infinite multiplicity and liberality, display the highest degree of mastery and artistry, the greatest degree of distinction and differentiation within utmost profusion and intermingling, and the highest degree of artistry and beauty of creation with the greatest abundance and profusion. Furthermore, although their creation seems to require vast amounts of machinery and time, they are made with utmost ease and speed, as if suddenly and out of nothing. This seasonal activity proves that size and number do not affect Power’s ability to create.

Third point: The All-Powerful Maker’s Power creates the highest universal as easily as the smallest particular, and with the same artistic value, due to the assistance coming from Divine Unity, the facility originating in the unity of the center governing the universe, and the manifestation of Divine Uniqueness or Oneness.

The assistance coming from Divine Unity—God’s universal disposal through the overall manifestation of His Names: If one being owns and commands all things, such oneness enables him to concentrate the power of all things behind one thing and so manage all things as easily as one thing. Consider the following comparison:

A king, being the country’s sole authority, can mobilize the army’s moral strength behind every soldier. This enables a soldier to capture another king and command him in the king’s name. Being the sole sovereign, that king also can manage the army and officials as easily as he uses one soldier and administers one official. As administrative power belongs to him alone, he can send everyone to aid one soldier, which allows each soldier to rely on all soldiers. But if his unique sovereignty and authority are nullified, each soldier would lose his limitless strength and become a weak, ordinary individual. And, administering them would cause as many difficulties as the number of soldiers.

Similarly, the Oneness of the universe’s Maker allows Him to concentrate the manifestation of all His Names operating on all things together upon one thing, thereby creating it with infinite and valuable art. He causes all things to help, thereby strengthening other things when necessary. Through His Unity, He also creates, controls, and administers all things as if they were one thing. This Divine Unity ensures that the universe contains the highest degree of art and value within utmost abundance and variety.

The facility originating in the unity of the center: Everything becomes easy if things are managed from one center, by one hand and one law. For example, applying this to equipping an army, it becomes as easy to equip all soldiers as it is to equip one soldier. Otherwise, equipping one soldier is as difficult as equipping an army. Also, thousands of fruits easily grow on a tree that depends on one law and one root. But if only one fruit could be grown on each tree, it would be as hard to produce a fruit as it is to grow a tree. It also would require the presence of all elements necessary for the tree to live.

Thus, because the universe’s Maker is Single and One, He acts through Unity. Given this, all things are as easy for Him as one thing, and He makes one thing as artistically valuable as all things. Furthermore, by creating a limitless profusion of valuable individuals, through the tongue of boundless abundance, He displays His absolute liberality and manifests His infinite generosity and creativity.

The manifestation of Divine Uniqueness or Oneness: As the Majestic Maker is not physical or corporeal, time and place cannot restrict Him; nor can space interfere with His encompassing all things at the same time and witnessing all events; and means and mass cannot veil His acts. Both He and His acts are free of fragmentation or division. His acts do not impede one another, and so He performs innumerable acts as if they were one act. Thus He makes an individual contain a world, just as He encapsulates a huge tree in its seed, and directs and controls creation as if it were one individual.

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. If it were possible for everything to directly receive the manifestations of the sun—its image, seven-colored light, and heat—the sun could demonstrate its effects in each and every thing in all of its magnitude, and enter many places simultaneously as easily as one place. Similarly—for God’s is the highest similitude—the Majestic Maker of the universe has, due to His Uniqueness, such a manifestation through all of His Attributes (which are pure light) and Names (which are luminous) that He is ever-present and witnessing everywhere, although He is nowhere. He does every act at the same time, in all places, and without any difficulty or obstruction.

It is due to these three means, namely, the assistance coming from Divine Unity, the facility originating in the unity of the center, and the manifestation of Divine Uniqueness or Oneness, that if creating and administering all creatures is attributed to One Maker, then they become as easy to create and administer as one thing only. Also, a single thing becomes as valuable in art as all things together.  This truth is demonstrated by each individual’s innumerable subtleties of art in the midst of creatures’ endless abundance. If creation is not directly attributed to a single Creator, then creating each creature is as hard as creating all creatures, and the value of all creatures falls to that of a single creature.

This is why the Sophists, the most advanced in using reason among the philosophers, felt compelled to “renounce their intellects” and deny everything’s existence. Realizing that the path of associating partners with God is infinitely harder to follow than that of the truth and affirming God’s Unity and, because they already rejected the latter path, they fell into denial.

Fourth point: Creating Paradise is as easy as creating spring for the Power of the All-Powerful One Who administers the universe with readily observable acts. Likewise, a flower can be as delicate, beautiful, and valuable as a whole spring. This truth comes from three sources: the Creator’s necessary Existence and total detachment from creation, the complete otherness of His Essence and His unrestricted Being, and His not being bound by space and His indivisibility.

First source: The Creator’s necessary Existence and total detachment from creation cause infinite ease and facility. Consider the following allegory: Existence has varying degrees and levels, and so the worlds of existence are not the same. Thus a particle from one level deeply rooted in existence can contain a mountain from a less substantial level. For example, the mustard-seed-sized faculty of memory in a head belonging to the manifest corporeal world can hold as much as a library in the World of Meanings. Through reflection, a huge city is encompassed by a fingernail-sized mirror belonging to the external world.

If that memory and mirror had consciousness and creative power, they could use the power of their minute existence in the external world to be endlessly operative and bring about endless transformations in the worlds of meaning and reflection. In other words, an existent’s power is directly proportional to the firmness of its establishment in existence. If existence attains complete firmness and stability, and thus complete detachment from corporeality and is therefore unrestricted, even its partial manifestation can direct many worlds belonging to less substantial levels of existence.

The universe’s Majestic Maker is Necessarily Existent. His Existence is indispensable to His Essence and is eternal, for its non-existence is inconceivable and its cessation is impossible. As it is the most firmly established, fundamental, strongest, and perfect level of existence, all other levels are like pale shadows. His Necessary Existence is so deeply rooted and real, and the existence of all other beings (which are contingent) is so pale and insubstantial, that such discerning researchers as Muhiy al-Din ibn al-‘Arabi  conclude that only He really exists. Thus they reduce other levels of existence to illusion or the imaginary.

Given this, the Necessarily Existent Being’s Power, which is both necessary and substantially related to His Essence, creates the accidental, weak, and relatively stable existence of contingent beings with infinite ease. To resurrect the dead for the Supreme  Gathering and then judge them is as easy for Him as returning a tree to life every spring and causing it to yield leaves, blossoms, and fruit.

Second source: The complete otherness of His Essence and His unrestricted Being makes everything easy for him, for the universe’s Maker differs from the universe. As His Essence is unique, no obstacle or restraint impedes Him or constrains His acts. He has complete and free control over everything. If managing the universe and its events were attributed to the universe itself, the resulting difficulty and confusion would prevent any form of existence and destroy all order and harmony.

For example, could the stones of a fine, vaulted dome fashion and arrange themselves, or a battalion be commanded effectively by the soldiers themselves? Even if such things were possible, everything would be in chaos. If the stones’ arrangement is attributed to an artisan, and the battalion’s command to an officer, both the artistic arrangement and the command are easy, for while the stones and soldiers block each other, the artisan and officer can deal with them from all sides and give orders without obstacle.

Thus the Necessarily Existent Being’s sacred Essence differs from the essence of contingent beings. Rather, all truths are rays from the Truth, one of that Essence’s Beautiful Names. Since His sacred Essence is necessarily existent, completely detached from materiality, and totally unique, that All-Majestic Being’s Eternal Power easily sustains and administers the universe as if it were springtime or a single tree. Also, creating the other world, Paradise, Hell, and the Resurrection are as easy as resurrecting a tree that died last autumn.

Third source: The All-Powerful Maker’s transcendence of space allows Him to be omnipresent through His Power. Being indivisible, He has total control over everything through His Names. As a result, His acts cannot be hindered by existent beings, means, and masses, for they have no need to do so. If there were some such need, then, like electric wires, tree branches, and veins, things would make His control easier, conduct life, and make His acts more prompt and speedy, rather than restricting, obstructing, and impeding such events. In essence, everything obeys and submits to the Majestic All-Powerful One’s Power.

In conclusion, the All-Powerful Maker creates everything in an appropriate form without trouble, swiftly and easily, and without any process. He creates universals as easily as particulars, and particulars as artistically as universals. The Creator of universals and of the heaven and Earth is the Creator of particulars and the animate individuals contained therein, for those tiny particulars are the universals’ fruits, seeds, and miniature specimens.

As particulars are like seeds and tiny copies of universals, He Who creates particulars must be the Creator and Controller of the universal elements and the heavens and Earth. If this were not so, how could He, in accordance with His Wisdom’s principles and His Knowledge’s balances, make particulars encapsulate the contents, meanings, and samples of universal, all-encompassing entities?

As regards their wondrous art or the marvelous creativity they display, particulars are not inferior to universals. Flowers are not lower than stars, and seeds are not inferior to trees. Rather, the meaning of a tree inscribed in the seed by Divine Destiny is more wonderful than the actual, fully grown tree woven by Divine Power. Likewise, creating humanity is more wonderful than creating the universe. If a Qur’an of wisdom were inscribed on an atom in some ethereal substance’s particles, its value would surpass a Qur’an of grandeur written in the heavens’ stars. Moreover, many particulars are superior to universals with respect to their miraculous art.

Fifth point: The infinite ease and utmost speed in creating beings gives this firm conviction to the people of guidance: In relation to the Power of the One Who creates beings, it is as easy to create paradises, springs, and gardens as it is to create spring, gardens, and flowers, respectively. Also, as: Your creation and your upraising are as but a single soul (31:28) states, resurrecting humanity is as easy as making one person die and then live again. As stated explicitly in: It will have been only one cry, then behold, they are all arranged before Us (36:53), resurrecting humanity for the Supreme Gathering is as easy as assembling a dispersed army with one trumpet blast.

Although this utmost speed and ease prove the Maker’s perfect Power, they have led the misguided to attribute the creation of things to the things themselves. Seeing that some ordinary things come into existence very easily, they mistakenly assume that they are self-created. They take what proves an infinite power’s existence for proof of its non-existence! Through this mistaken attribution of perfection (e.g., infinite power and all-encompassing knowledge) to each particle, for all perfections are essential attributes only of the universe’s Maker, they open the door to boundless possibility.