For example,  if on the four walls of this finely decorated  room are four full- length mirrors belonging to the four of us, then there would be five rooms. One would be actual and general, and four, similitudes and personal. Each of us would be able to change the shape, form, and colour of his personal room by means of his mirror. If we were to paint it red, it would appear red, if we were to paint it green, it would appear green. Likewise, we could alter it by adjusting the mirror; we could make it ugly, or beautiful, or give it different forms. But we could not easily adjust and change the outer, general room. While in reality the general and personal rooms are the same, in practice they are different. You could destroy your own room with one finger, but you could not make one stone of the other stir.

Thus,  this world  is a decorated  house.  The life of each of us is a full-length mirror. Each of us has a world from this world, but its support, centre, and door is our life. Indeed, that personal world of ours is a page and our life is a pen; many things that are written with it pass to the page of our actions. We love our world, but later see that since it is constructed on our life, like it it is fleeting, transitory, and unstable. We perceive and understand this, and our love for it is redirected to the beautiful impresses of the divine names to which our personal world is the mirror and which it reflects; it switches from our world to the manifestations of the names. Moreover, if we are aware that that personal world of ours is a temporary seed-bed of the hereafter and Paradise, and if we direct our feelings for it like intense desire, love, and greed, towards the benefits of the hereafter, which are its results, fruits, and shoots, then that passing love is transformed into true love. Otherwise, manifesting the meaning of the verse,

Those who forget God; and he made them forget their own souls. Such are the rebellious transgressors,(59:19)

a person will forget himself, not think of life’s fleeting nature, suppose his personal, unstable  world  to  be  constant  like  the  general  world,  and  imagine  himself  to  be undying; he will fix himself on the world and embrace it with intense emotions; he will drown in it and depart. Such love will be boundless torment and tribulation for him. For an orphan-like compassion, a despairing softness of heart will be born of that love. He will pity all living beings. Indeed, he will feel sympathy for all beautiful creatures which suffer decline, and the pain of separation, but he will be able to do nothing, he will suffer in absolute despair.

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