lse, he walks upon the earth. This exaltation and this progress are
spiritual states and intellectual realities, but to explain them you are
obliged to have recourse to sensible figures because in the exterior world
there is nothing that is not sensible.

So the symbol of knowledge is light, and of ignorance, darkness; but
reflect, is knowledge sensible light, or ignorance sensible darkness? No,
they are merely symbols. These are only intellectual states, but when you
desire to express them outwardly, you call knowledge light, and ignorance
darkness. You say: "My heart was gloomy, and it became enlightened." Now,
that light of knowledge, and that darkness of ignorance, are intellectual
realities, not sensible ones; but when we seek for explanations in the
external world, we are obliged to give them a sensible form.

Then it is evident that the dove which descended upon Christ was not a
material dove, but it was a spiritual state, which, that it might be
comprehensible, was expressed by a sensible figure. Thus in the Old
Testament it is said that God appeared as a pillar of fire: this does not
signify the material form; it is an intellectual reality which is
expressed by a sensible image.

Christ says, "The Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father." Was
Christ within God, or God within Christ? No, in the name of God! On the
contrary, this is an intellectual state which is expressed in a sensible
figure.

We come to the explanation of the words of Baha'u'llah when He says: "O
king! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the
breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the
knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from Me, but from One
Who is Almighty and All-Knowing."(78) This is the state of manifestation:
it is not sensible; it is an intellectual reality, exempt and freed from
time, from past, present and future; it is an explanation, a simile, a
metaphor and is not to be accepted literally; it is not a state that can
be comprehended by man. Sleeping and waking is passing from one state to
another. Sleeping is the condition of repose, and wakefulness is the
condition of movement. Sleeping is the state of silence; wakefulness is
the state of speech. Sleeping is the state of mystery; wakefulness is the
state of manifestation.

For example, it is a Persian and Arabic expression to say that the earth
was asleep, and the spring came, and it awoke; or the earth was