Eighth phrase:

He is Living and dies not. His life is perpetual and eternal, without beginning or end. Death and non-existence are meaningless to Him, because life originates in His Essence and is indispensable to It. He Who has no beginning has no end. He Who is Necessarily Existent is eternally enduring. How could non-existence befall a Life that renders all of existence its shadow? Non-existence and perishing cannot touch a Life that requires and is required by necessary existence. Cessation and extinction cannot affect a Life through Whose manifestation all lives come into being, on which the universe’s permanent truths depend, and through which they subsist.

One of Life’s manifestations gives uniformity to that which is subject to extinction and decrease in this world of multiplicity. Saving them from disintegration, it gives them a sort of permanence. In other words, life [in the universe, which is a manifestation of the Eternal Life,] gives a sort of unity to multiplicity and a form of permanence to existent forms [either through a species’ life, seed, offspring or in other beings’ memories.] As a result, ephemerality and transience have nothing to do with this Necessary Life, one manifestation of which causes innumerable instances of life.

The universe’s transience and decrease bear witness to this truth. Just as existents bear witness and point to the Ever-Living and Necessarily Existent One’s Life through their own existence and lives, they testify and point to that Life’s permanence and eternity through their decay and death.[5] The appearance of new beings after their predecessor’s deaths shows that an Ever-Living One unceasingly renews life’s manifestation. Bubbles on a flowing river come in great numbers, display the sparkle of the one and same sun, and disappear, while the new, succeeding ones display the images of the sun. This points to a high and enduring sun’s permanence. In the same way, the alternation of life and death in those constantly moving existents bears witness to an Ever-Living, Ever-Enduring One’s permanence.

These beings are mirrors. As darkness is the mirror to light and the more intense the darkness the more brilliantly it displays the light, so do these beings act as mirrors to God’s Names and Attributes through the contrast of opposites. For example, just as beings act as mirrors to the Maker’s Power through their impotence and to His Riches through their poverty, they act as mirrors to His Permanence through their transience. In particular, soil and trees clearly reflect the Power and Mercy of One Absolutely Powerful and Absolutely Wealthy through their poverty during winter and their dazzling pomp and riches during spring. It is as if all beings supplicate in the language of their being, like Uways al-Qarani[6]:

Our God! You are our Lord because we see that we are mere servants. We cannot train ourselves, so train us. You are the Creator, because we are created and being made. You are the Provider, because we need provision and cannot provide for ourselves. Thus You make and provide for us. You are the true Owner, because we are owned. We do not have total control over ourselves, so You are the Owner.

You are the Mighty, having dignity and grandeur. Looking at ourselves, we see a mightiness manifested through us despite our poverty and helplessness. So we are mirrors to Your Sublimity and Might. You are the Absolutely Wealthy, and we are poor but granted riches that we cannot obtain by ourselves. Thus You are the Wealthy, the Giver.

You are Ever-Living, Ever-Permanent, because we are born and die and thereby see the manifestation of a perpetual Giver of Life. You are Ever-Permanent, because we see Your continuation and permanence in our demise and transience. You answer us and grant us gifts because we, all creatures, always call out and request, either through words or in the language of our ways of being. All our desires are satisfied, our aims achieved. Thus You answer our pleas.

Every creature is a mirror having the meaning of supplication and reflecting Divine Power and Perfection through its helplessness, poverty, and deficiency.

[5] While proving God’s Existence, Unity, and absolute Sovereignty over the universe to Nimrod, Prophet Abraham argues that God gives life and causes death, and then mentions that He causes the sun to rise in the east and set in the west (2:258). This transition from a particular to a universal meaning of giving life and death demonstrates that proof’s most illuminating and widest sphere. It is not, as some interpreters of the Qur’an assert, a transition from an implicit to an explicit proof.

[6] Uways al-Qarani is generally regarded as the greatest Tabi‘un [member of the first post-Companion generation]. Although old enough to have seen the Prophet, he had no opportunity to do so. One day while sitting with his Companions, the Messenger advised them: “If you see Uways al-Qarani, ask him to pray for you.” Muslim, Fada’il al-Sahaba, 223-24. (Tr.)