The first house established for the people: they say that it was the first house to appear on the surface of the water at the time of the creation of the heaven and the earth. He created it 2000 years before the earth; it had been a clear froth on the surface of the water under which the earth was then spread out. The House then is an allusion to the real heart; its appearance on the surface of the water constitutes its attachment to the drop of [creational] fluid at the heaven of the animal spirit and the earth of the body; its creation before the earth is an allusion to its eternity and the temporal incidence of the body; the specification of 2000 years is an allusion to its precedence over the body in two modes, the mode of the soul and the mode of the heart, a precedence of level, since 1000 constitutes one complete level, as has been alluded to before; its being a clear froth is an allusion to the purity of its substance; the spreading out of the earth below it is an allusion to the engenderment of the body by effect and the fact that its [the body's] figures, delineations, and the forms of its limbs follow on from its configurations. That is the interpretation of the narrative. Know also that the locus for the attachment of the spirit to the body and the joining point of the real heart to it is at first the formal heart, which is the first of the organs to undergo engenderment and the first to function and the last to become still, hence its being the first house established for people: was that at Bakka, the breast as a form, or the first locus of worship and place of prayer established for people, [that is] for the real heart that is located in the Bakka of the spiritual breast. That [spiritual] breast is the most noble station of the soul and the place in which swarm the faculties that are oriented towards it; a blessed place, possessing divine blessedness emanating from the effusion that it connects to all existence, faculties and life. For all of the faculties that are contained in the organs proceed to these [organs] first by way of that [place]; and a guidance to all worlds: a cause of guidance and a light by which one is guided to God.
