And when he mentioned the building, he mentioned the bedding and said: "And the earth" [meaning] that which is your bedding, in the manner of the places of your actions by reason in the intended meanings. "And what has spread it" means to spread it out in a way that it encompasses all living beings and is surrounded by it in the concavity of the heavens. And it is [with] its being holding by the power as if it were cast into the current of its seas. And it is the place of distance and destruction and the location of gathering - all of this is what the expression indicates by this wording, pointing to what [is in] the striving of man from such things. The people of insight said: And there is nothing in the expansive world except that there is a counterpart of it in the inner world. They recited in this: Your cure is within you, yet you do not perceive it, And your ailment is from you, yet you deny it. And you think that you are a small part, While the greater world is contained within you.

So the heavens are seven, like the layers of the head that are related to the spiritual and sensory powers (like memory, preservation, imagination, fantasy, thought, and the common sense) and what is for the division of sight in the eye. And the counterpart of the sun is the soul in its radiance and beauty. And the counterpart of the night is the nature, for what it has of light is indeed from the soul, just as the night does not have its light except from the sun by means of its imparting to the illuminating moon and the stars. And the counterpart of the day - which is bright in its essence and clouded by what is imagined to it from the clouds and the like - is the heart, and its clouds are the doubts and psychological illusions. And the counterpart of the moon in its darkness in its essence and its illumination by the sun is the soul. So when the heart, which benefits from the soul, acquires light, it illuminates the entire body. And when it is darkened, everything is darkened. And the internal organs are like the stars; they uphold the body and illuminate its existence by means of the soul and the spirit. And the rains are like tears, and the heat is like sorrow, and the cold is like joy, and the thunder is like speech, and the lightning is like the whisper, and the winds are like the soul - to other such wonders for those who contemplate. And the lower world is also seven layers. Al-Malwi said: "And its counterpart is the layer of skin," and it is three: [the] layer of flesh, and the layer of fat, and the layer of veins, and the layer of nerves. And the mountains are like the bones, and the minerals from them are the waters, and in them is the sweet like saliva, and the salty like tears, and the bitter as in the ear, and the foul from it as in the nose. And from it is what flows like urine, and from it is what is like the eyes, which is blood. And the flood is like sweat, and the minerals that are condensed like iron and lead are the filth of the earth, and they are like the excrement and what comes out of the skin of impurities. And the plants are like hair, sometimes they are shaved [like harvest] and sometimes they are uprooted like plucking. And the animals that are in it are like lice, and their birds are like fleas. And the inhabited part of the body is what comes forward from it, and its ruin is what recedes.