Our situation has not changed at all as regards birth and death. Although contained by an infinitude, we are still finite beings who cannot escape being stirred by our very nature to try and understand the Infinite and Absolute. With regard to the Absolute and all states of being comprising the universe, we are what we have always been and always will be: the fairest creatures and the highest point of creation, yet possessing the potential to fall to the lowest point.

The Qur’an states that the process of creation is circular: As He brought you forth in the beginning, so unto Him shall you also return (7:29). Thus creation ends at the point from which it started. Atheists believe this as well, but conceive of matter, space and time, or something presentable in terms of four dimensions as the process’ starting and ending points. Matter has the least degree of perfection, and yet atheists hold it, in its most chaotic condition, to be the beginning and end of creation, which they consider accidental and purposeless. The Qur’an, however, says that existence starts with the highest state of perfection, proceeds downward to matter, and then turns upward to the point from which it started:

He regulates the affair from the heaven to Earth, then shall it go up to Him in one day the measure of which is a thousand years of what you reckon. (32:5)

The Creative Will designs and administers this process, and Divine Love, Grace, and Compassion are a priori factors in this Will’s manifestation. Therefore Compassion is the principle of the Infinite’s manifestation, which is why Sufis call the universe “the Breath of the Compassionate.” Each particle of existence is immersed in this Breath, which endows it with a sympathy for and attraction to other beings, and above all with its source: Divine Compassion. 

And so each atom is regarded as the theophany of the Divine Names and Attributes. Mahmud Shabstari, in his Gulshan-i Raz (The Mystic Rose Garden), expresses the Divine Being as manifested in everything:

Know the world is a mirror from head to foot,
In every atom a hundred blazing suns.
If you cleave the heart of one drop of water,
A hundred pure oceans emerge from it.
If you examine closely each grain of sand,
A thousand Adams may be seen in it.
In its members a gnat is like an elephant;
In its qualities a drop of rain is like the Nile.
The heart of a barley-corn equals a hundred harvests,
A world dwells in the heart of a millet seed.
In the wing of a gnat is the ocean of the life,
In the pupil of the eye a heaven;
What though the grain of the heart be small,
It is a station for the Lord of both worlds to dwell therein.
— (Translated by E. H. Whinfield)

Since existence manifests God’s Grace or Compassion, creation’s order and hierarchy begin with the highest and most comprehensive created entity. This being is the compassion unto all worlds or beings, the possessor of all excellences in their highest degree of perfection. This entity, the most comprehensive in perfection and embodiment of God’s Compassion, is presented in various terms. However, the most appropriate ones are the Muhammadan Light or the Muhammadan Reality. Like sunshine radiating through everything that exists, the Muhammadan Light is actually the theater of the theophany of all Divine Names and Attributes, as well as the archetype of the cosmos.