O thou who art voicing the praises of thy Lord! I have read thy letter,
wherein thou didst express astonishment at some of the laws of God, such
as that concerning the hunting of innocent animals, creatures who are
guilty of no wrong.
Be thou not surprised at this. Reflect upon the inner realities of the
universe, the secret wisdoms involved, the enigmas, the
inter-relationships, the rules that govern all. For every part of the
universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very powerful
and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever. In the physical
realm of creation, all things are eaters and eaten: the plant drinketh in
the mineral, the animal doth crop and swallow down the plant, man doth
feed upon the animal, and the mineral devoureth the body of man. Physical
bodies are transferred past one barrier after another, from one life to
another, and all things are subject to transformation and change, save
only the essence of existence itself--since it is constant and immutable,
and upon it is founded the life of every species and kind, of every
contingent reality throughout the whole of creation.
Whensoever thou dost examine, through a microscope, the water man
drinketh, the air he doth breathe, thou wilt see that with every breath of
air, man taketh in an abundance of animal life, and with every draught of
water, he also swalloweth down a great variety of animals. How could it
ever be possible to put a stop to this process? For all creatures are
eaters and eaten, and the very fabric of life is reared upon this fact.
Were it not so, the ties that interlace all created things within the
universe would be unravelled.
And further, whensoever a thing is destroyed, and decayeth, and is cut off
from life, it is promoted into a world that is greater than the world it
knew before. It leaveth, for example, the life of the mineral and goeth
forward into the life of the plant; then it departeth out of the vegetable
life and ascendeth into that of the animal, following which it forsaketh
the life of the animal and riseth into the realm of human life, and this
is out of the grace of thy Lord, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
I beg of God that He will assist thee to comprehend the mysteries that lie
at the heart of creation, and will draw away the veil from before thine
eyes and thy sister's, that the well-guarded secret may be disclosed unto
thee, and the hidden mystery be revealed as clear as the sun at noonday;
that He will aid thy sister and thy husband to enter the Kingdom of God,
and will heal thee of every ill, whether physical or spiritual, that
assaileth one in this life.