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Category: Introductory Essays

What is a human being?

What is a human being?

Published April 25, 2019 by admin

The revelations of God have always taught that humans have an exalted station, far above what we naturally would consider for ourselves.  The Hebrew Bible declares that humans have been made in the “image of God”, after God’s “likeness”. Islam further challenged humanity by saying- “Think thyself a puny form, when within thee we have unfolded the universe”.  Baha’u’llah revealed in the Hidden Words that God has “engraved on thee My image and revealed to thee My beauty”. 

All the revelations have defined humans as primarily spiritual and secondarily material.  But is this just an outworn idea, a relic of times when we didn’t understand the world?  This is not a trivial question as the answers have real-world implications. Are we like animals, engaged in “survival of the fittest”, where it is regarded as almost virtuous to ensure that the strong survive?  A world leader of a respected country recently tweeted a statement reflecting his support of this idea, and one worries if these beliefs color his relationship with other nations and peoples. Survival of the fittest is what we get when we derive our conception of ourselves from our current understanding of the natural world. It was certainly part of the justification of slavery and the imperialist subjugation of native peoples by their colonizers in the 19th century. It remains a background idea in many nationalist ideologies today.

Baha’u’llah’s revelation addresses the nature of human beings more comprehensively than any previous revelation. The insights are found in both the writings of Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha’, his son. When Abdu’l-Baha’ came to America and Europe in 1912, he was faced with audiences that were reeling from remarkable growth of knowledge in the previous 100 years, ideas that challenged their belief in religion and themselves.  Materialism was increasingly ascendent as a philosophy and Darwinism with its survival of the fittest social paradigm was challenging sacred beliefs about the nature of humanity.  In order to explain His Father’s teachings within that context, ‘Abdu’l-Baha used several approaches to explain how human beings were fundamentally spiritual and not material. 

At a talk at Columbia University, ‘Abdu’l-Baha addressed this directly. He first framed it by stating that “if we look at perceiving eye upon the world of creation”, we can classify existing things in specific kingdoms- mineral, vegetable, animal, and human.   In the evolution of matter, they also unfolded in this order. In humans, there is a quality that is “absolutely absent” in the lower kingdoms- “the power of intellectual investigation and science”. He then pointed out that all other kingdoms are captives of nature, saying- “The infinite starry worlds and heavenly bodies are nature’s obedient subjects. The earth and its myriad organisms, all minerals, plants, and animals are thralls of its dominion.  But man through the exercise of his scientific intellectual power can rise out of this condition…and be the breaker of the laws of nature”. ’Abdu’l-Baha’ then reasons that we can do this because humans are endowed with a power of which nature is deprived.  Although “in body a part of nature, nevertheless in spirit possesses a power transcending nature, for if he were simply a part of nature and limited to material laws, he could possess only the things which nature embodies.” That power is the “faculty of intellectual investigation into the secrets of creation, the acquisition of higher knowledge, the greatest virtue of which is scientific enlightenment”.

‘Abdu’l-Baha’ further makes the point that there are forces that exist in the world, gravity for instance, that we know only by their effects.  We don’t know what gravity is, but we know it exists by the force it exerts on objects.  He likens the essence of humans as being similar- we possess an unseen part of ourselves that is not part of nature- namely our soul with its mind and rationality- that can only be known by its effects.  In comparison to the powers that nature manifests in the lower kingdoms, the rational mind- an inherent property of our soul- is “supernatural”, as in outside of nature. It is the source of our creativity, free will, and intelligence- all of which are not manifest in nature, which is wholly subservient to deterministic laws.

This can be a subtle argument, as many of us are so used to thinking in material terms. The natural tendency is to think that we just have more evolved biological structures- bigger brains- than animals and the rest of nature.  But ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ is not pointing to a quantitative difference between humans and nature but a truly qualitative one.  Nature- minerals, vegetables, animals- have no “mind”- they follow the deterministic natural laws and their own instincts and are completely subservient to them.

Animals are magnificent, undoubtedly, and can be clever, but their perceptions and reality is confined to material things. They cannot abstract beyond material things, and therefore their entire thought universe is confined to what they see, feel, and hear.  It’s the quality humans possess of being able to abstract from the concrete that ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ says is qualitatively different from anything in nature and sets humans apart. Humans do science using abstract principles and derived laws, base their civilization on abstract moral principles like justice and equality. Indeed, we live in an abstract thought universe as much as we live in a material one.    

To help us change our perspective, ’Abdu’l-Baha further pointed out that, for a vegetable, an animal is “supernatural”, in that the plant would judge the world from its perspective, regarding only what it knows to be “natural” to be part of the vegetable world. To understand humans only in terms of the lower kingdoms- as Darwinists were wont to do- was to limit one’s conception of humans to an unreasonable degree, as it was evident that humans possessed qualities of which the lower kingdoms were deprived.

It was also to limit the “natural world”, which in reality was more than just the lower kingdoms.

What materialist philosophers called “nature”- and ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ uses the same meaning in the quotes above- was the world of minerals, vegetables, and animals. We still use the term in the same sense today. But for ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ (and religious people generally), the broader “natural world” also includes entities like God- the intelligence that underlies all reality- and even the Manifestations of God- that are levels of consciousness far above even humans.  The natural world then, is one that consists of both material and abstract intellectual realities, and not just matter itself.

Undoubtedly, humans have an animal nature- one that drives our desire for food, sex, and other basic instincts and emotions- and it’s not wrong to think of humans in those terms, but it is wrong if we limit humans to those terms.  The situation is similar in the lower kingdoms. A tree has its roots in the mineral kingdom, and feeds and sustains itself by exploiting that kingdom, though it is part of the vegetable kingdom with powers and properties inconceivable to the mineral.  Humans have their roots in the animal kingdom, but our true reality is a kingdom above that, and we are only truly human when we manifest that which is characteristic of our essence, which is “spiritual” in relationship to the animal, namely, the qualities of our soul- rationality and moral idealism.

How do we reconcile this perspective with our modern scientific worldview?  We first need to recognize that science has no explanation for human consciousness, or even animal consciousness for that matter.  Nobody has any idea how a collection of atoms, no matter how cleverly constructed or how long it took, could manifest the ability to do abstract thought and be self-conscious. There are certainly a lot of speculative theories, but the only thing all those theories have truly proven is how clever humans can be in coming up with them.

The general approach is that humans are a product of a Darwinian evolutionary process, as that is the consensus theory for how biological evolution occurred.  Within this paradigm, animals and humans are like “molecular machines” that have grown more complex and sophisticated as they have- through the mechanism of random variation and natural selection- responded to environmental challenges.  In this scheme, we think of the evolution of humans like we would the evolution of automobiles through the decades of the 20th century, progressively sophisticated machines that are the sum of their parts. 

The Baha’i teachings suggest that we should think of evolution as being more like the evolution of musical instruments.  As instruments became more sophisticated, both in the range of pitches as well as their overall sound, they had the ability to play more sophisticated pieces of music, like, for instance, Beethoven’s 9th symphony.  But the 9th symphony is not contained in the musical instruments themselves. It is an abstract reality, ultimately a mathematical relationship between pitches of sound.  The music is therefore an abstract thing being played on a set material instruments, producing the coherent reality we know as an orchestral performance. Until the instruments evolved to a certain level of sophistication, the 9th symphony could not manifest itself in the world, even though it always potentially existed within the mathematical relationships of the universe.  Human being are like that symphony orchestra.  We are in essence an abstract reality that manifested itself in the natural world when the biology had evolved to the point where it could manifest such powers.

If we did not know a priori how orchestras work, it would be very difficult to figure out this relationship if we only had access to the instruments themselves, a situation akin to our study of human anatomy and physiology.  After all, when a string breaks, the music stops, so the music must be in the cello, right?

This simple analogy, taken from the reality of our natural world, suggest a fundamentally different way to think about human beings and indeed the world itself.  Evolution is the process of unfolding ever more sophistical biological structures, capable of expressing higher and higher levels of abstract reality, higher and higher levels of intelligence. 

It is this abstract essence that human beings are fundamentally made of.  Baha’u’llah described our abstract soul as “a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel”.  Similar to God, our own inner reality- our soul- is not explainable in material terms and the limited ways people think. Concerning the rational faculty within every human being, Baha’u’llah said something remarkable-

Consider the rational faculty with which God has endowed the essence of man…Wert thou to ponder in thine heart, from now until the end that hath no end, and with all the concentrated intelligence and understanding which the greatest minds have attained in the past or will attain in the future, this divinely ordained and subtle Reality, this sign of the revelation of the All-Abiding, All-Glorious God, thou wilt fail to comprehend its mystery or to appraise its virtue. Having recognized thy powerlessness to attain to an adequate understanding of that Reality which abideth within thee, thou wilt readily admit the futility of such efforts as may be attempted by thee, or by any of the created things, to fathom the mystery of the Living God, the Day Star of unfading glory, the Ancient of everlasting days. This confession of helplessness which mature contemplation must eventually impel every mind to make is in itself the acme of human understanding, and marketh the culmination of man’s development

There is a passage in the Quran that similarly expresses the soul to be something we can only understand in limited terms- “And they ask you, O Muhammad, about the soul, Say: The soul if of the affair of my Lord, and mankind hath not been given knowledge of it, except a little”.

In another passage, Baha’u’llah describes how the human essence- our soul- has capacities that are only partially manifest in this world.

Verily I say, the human soul is, in its essence, one of the signs of God, a mystery among His mysteries. It is one of the mighty signs of the Almighty, the harbinger that proclaimeth the reality of all the worlds of God. Within it lieth concealed that which the world is now utterly incapable of apprehending.

It should be noted that, in presenting these issues, neither Baha’u’llah nor ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ are asking us to believe in things that we would regard as exotic. There is no superstition here.  They are simply framing the facts we know from our world, the reality we all experience, in a different light.  Humans do objectively have intelligence that is unexplainable in the terms of nature. We do objectively have spiritual and moral qualities that are distinct from nature, and faith allows us to open doors within ourselves and find treasures that are expressed in our societies in very real ways.  Revealed religion has objectively uncovered spiritual and moral capacities within people that have laid the basis of modern civilization, the effects of which are apparent everywhere- in our churches, our synagogues and mosques, even our Constitutions. And belief in God- even belief in the soul- is native to our consciousness.  Everything Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha describe is part of the empirical reality of our world- part of the experience of almost every human on the planet. They are just giving us a more profound appreciation and understanding of these realities, and discouraging us from being captives of our limited conceptions, materialistic or otherwise.   

With this definition of human beings, Baha’u’llah then encourages us to rise up to our full potential-

O Son of Spirit! I created thee rich, why dost thou bring thyself down to poverty? Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I molded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.

“All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. The Almighty beareth Me witness: To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Say: O friends! Drink your fill from this crystal stream that floweth through the heavenly grace of Him Who is the Lord of Names. Let others partake of its waters in My name, that the leaders of men in every land may fully recognize the purpose for which the Eternal Truth hath been revealed, and the reason for which they themselves have been created.”

It can truly be said that all the teachings of Baha’u’llah derive from this concept of what a human being really is.  Because we are fundamentally spiritual, all considerations of differences based on race, ethnicity, gender, class- and every other superficial element- are subsidiary to the unity based on our common spiritual essence-

“O Childen of Men! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory.

The ethics and laws of Baha’u’llah are themselves all intended to bring out these qualities in us.  For instance, Baha’u’llah prohibited alcohol and drugs and the explicit purpose for this prohibition is that these substances impair our intelligence.

“It is inadmissible that man, who hath been endowed with reason, should consume that which stealeth it away. Nay, rather it behoveth him to comport himself in a manner worthy of the human station…”

Throughout His revelation, Baha’u’llah encourages us to act on the basis of our higher nature- that which makes us distinctly human, our rationality and commitment to abstract moral and spiritual ideals.  He is uncovering for us what it is to be truly human and providing the means whereby we can express that most fully.

”The Purpose of the one true God, exalted be His glory, in revealing Himself unto men is to lay bare those gems that lie hidden within the mine of their true and inmost selves.“

Photo by Chayene Rafaela on Unsplash

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God is not trying to trick us! Part 2

God is not trying to trick us! Part 2

Published April 15, 2019 by admin

In 1970, Thomas Kuhn, an historian of science, published a book called “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that ultimately had an enormous impact on how we think about scientific progress.  Kuhn explained that people used various scientific “paradigms” to make coherent sense of the physical world. At one time, the idea that the world was flat was such a paradigm, and it worked ok for building maps and helping people get from here to there, which was mostly local travel.  As people turned their eyes towards the heavens, and began to sail the open seas, they noticed certain “anomalies”, observations that didn’t make sense under the paradigm that the world was flat.  At first, people try to fit the theory to the new observations, add on corollaries to the theory, modify this or that element, but ultimately someone starts to think outside the box and comes up with a completely new paradigm and a “paradigm shift” results- a new theory is born that explains the broad reality with more clarity and comprehensiveness than the previous theory.  In the case of the shape of the earth, it was that it was actually round and not flat.

A major attraction of new theories is their “coherence”- their ability to explain a broad range of phenomena under one umbrella.  A new theory can be further confirmed in people’s minds when it predicts events and findings that are subsequently confirmed by experience and observation.  Many of the great scientific theories are accepted primarily because of their coherence. Darwin’s theory of evolution is a prominent example of this, as it explains a range of phenomena in a coherent way, even though it is hard to test because the time scales are so long.

In a related approach, scientific theories can be seen as “maps of reality”, lenses through which we come to see and understand the physical world.  They may not be perfect, and will almost certainly be superseded by a more comprehensive understanding, but they work for us in understanding the world for our time in history and our current level of knowledge.

What is not often appreciated is that Kuhn’s approach is equally true of religion, particularly as it relates to the concept of progressive revelation.  A revelation- and the religion it forms- becomes a map for spiritual reality- a way for humans to see themselves within the grand scheme of the universe and live happy, productive, and meaningful lives consistent with their highest values. But as human understanding evolves, certain “anomalies” are noted that don’t fit with their spiritual paradigm.  At first there is the temptation to double down on the current paradigm, make it fit the new observations, or just ignore the new observations entirely, but eventually the questions reach a sufficient pitch that people begin to abandon the religious paradigm they had previously professed, often jumping off into the unknown.  Some stick with it, contenting themselves with the fact that they don’t understand everything but still feel spiritually fed by the faith.

Baha’u’llah descrbes this as a time spiritual oppression-

What “oppression” is more grievous than that a soul seeking the truth, and wishing to attain unto the knowledge of God, should know not where to go for it and from whom to seek it? For opinions have sorely differed, and the ways unto the attainment of God have multiplied. This “oppression” is the essential feature of every Revelation. Unless it cometh to pass, the Sun of Truth will not be made manifest.

Such has been the situation in our world for the last few centuries, as the older revelations have been challenged by the unfolding vistas of new human knowledge. 

The point is that the natural evolution of human knowledge and understanding is going to profoundly impact how we see the world spiritually, just as it does scientifically. If divine revelation is a real thing, it must be progressive, because the nature of the world and humans understanding of it is naturally progressive. As ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ stated so clearly- “Religion is the outer expression of the divine reality. Therefore, it must be living, vitalized, moving and progressive. If it be without motion and non-progressive, it is without the divine life; it is dead. The divine institutes are continuously active and evolutionary; therefore, the revelation of them must be progressive and continuous.”

When a new revelation comes, it is like a “paradigm shift”, a new map of reality through which we see the spiritual universe, one that eliminates the previous anomalies and re-creates a coherent religious worldview. It is a great bounty to live in an era when a new revelation has come into the world. 

God is very kind, and a great Teacher. As any good teacher, He frames His message within the context of our understanding, how we perceive the world at that time in history, and His message is therefore adapted to how we understand the world.  Particularly for religion, which deals almost exclusively with non-material, non-sensible realities- God, life after death, the soul- teachings have to be framed within the metaphysical framework of the people at that time in history, within their map of spiritual reality.  

While the Manifestations of God need to speak within the framework understood by the people, they also have to induce a full and complete paradigm shift that leads them into new truths and understanding.  They have to create a new way of seeing the spiritual universe, one that is more consistent with their time in history.  Such a transformation does not happen easily, and often involves rejection and persecution, as people tend to be pretty invested in their current understanding, but ultimately the Manifestations win out and humanity is weaned from their old paradigm and embrace the new one. 

“…Every time the Prophets of God have illumined the world with the resplendent radiance of the Daystar of Divine knowledge, they have invariably summoned its peoples to embrace the light of God through such means as best befitted the exigencies of the age in which they appeared. They were thus able to scatter the darkness of ignorance, and to shed upon the world the glory of their own knowledge. It is towards the inmost essence of these Prophets, therefore, that the eye of every man of discernment must be directed, inasmuch as their one and only purpose hath always been to guide the erring, and give peace to the afflicted.”

Baha’u’llah gives several examples to explain the reason for the differences between the revelations of God.  In one, He describes them as similar to doctors prescribing a remedy-

The Prophets of God should be regarded as physicians whose task is to foster the well-being of the world and its peoples, that, through the spirit of oneness, they may heal the sickness of a divided humanity. To none is given the right to question their words or disparage their conduct, for they are the only ones who can claim to have understood the patient and to have correctly diagnosed its ailments. No man, however acute his perception, can ever hope to reach the heights which the wisdom and understanding of the Divine Physician have attained. Little wonder, then, if the treatment prescribed by the physician in this day should not be found to be identical with that which he prescribed before. How could it be otherwise when the ills affecting the sufferer necessitate at every stage of his sickness a special remedy?

We see these principles play out in the revelations of the past. 

The people at the time of Muhammad were warring tribespeople with no structured government in their midst.  The tribes were so frequently at war that they had to define a month where you could not war, just to give them all a break!  The tribespeople were not literate, had no philosophical or theological heritage, no commitment to the rule of law, and no scientific activity of any form.  To these people, Muhammad revealed the Quran- speaking a language they could understand, with laws that fit that time in history- and within 100 years they were well on their way to creating the greatest civilization on earth. Islamic civilization was extraordinarily philosophically and theologically rich, with a progressive scientific enterprise, and a united culture despite a tremendous variety of previously antagonistic races and peoples.  And that was all because Muhammad understood the remedy the people of that time needed- the spiritual framework and laws that could pull them all together as a unified community.  The Arab peoples later described their life before Muhammad and the Quran as the “days of ignorance”.

Buddhism is a religion without a strong theological concept of God, and for that reason is often set apart from the other religions.  But the oneness of God had not yet been worked out in Buddha’s time, and the Buddha felt that peoples theological musings were keeping them from actually doing what they needed to do to attain salvation.  For that reason, he refused to answer theological questions, instead focusing on a path of spiritual liberation that had people turn inward, away from the transitory and fleeting nature of the world, to that which is more permanent, giving up their egos and selfish attachments to attain a spiritually developed state known as Nirvana.  In a famous parable, the Buddha described a man who had been shot by a poison arrow. Rather than dealing with the issue at hand, the man was obsessed with who had shot the arrow, what caste he may have come from or other irrelevant facts to his condition. The Buddha said his mission was to get people to stop asking irrelevant questions to their salvation and to remove the arrow. He framed his teachings as being a practical path to liberate a soul from its attachment to transitory realities.  The teachings he outlined are very similar to the ones outlined by Baha’u’llah. Baha’u’llah’s teachings are however framed in a much broader and comprehensive meta-physical world view, as His mission is much broader, but the path for spiritual liberation is very similar.

Both Buddhism and Islam, as well as Christianity, were enormously important and successful spiritual enterprises that laid the foundation for the world we now live in.  In Yuval Harari’s well known book “Sapiens- A Brief History of Humankind”, he comments that only three things have brought human civilizations together- money, empires, and the universal religions of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.  And this was because these religions spoke to people’s conceptions in a way they could understand. 

Baha’u’llah describes that each religion, indeed each Manifestation, has two aspects. The first is the essence, which is eternal and transcendent, and common to each of the revelations of God.  The second is specific and depends on the place of its appearance and the needs of the age in which it appears.  He gives an analogy that the essence is like light-

“Consider the visible sun: Although it shines with the same radiance upon all existence… yet in each place it becomes manifest and sheds its bounty according to the potentialities of that place. For instance, in a mirror it reflects its own disk and shape, and this is due to the clarity of the mirror itself; through a crystal it makes fire to appear; and in other things it shows only the effect of its shining, but not its full disk. And yet, through that effect, by the command of the Creator it trains each thing according to the capacity of that thing, even as thou dost observe….In like manner, colors become visible in each object according to its nature. For instance, in a yellow glass the rays shine yellow; in a white glass they are white; and in a red glass red rays are visible.”

Just as light looks different depending on what reflects it, the differences in the teachings of the Manifestations of God are not due to differences in them, but to the differences in culture, understanding, and spiritual development of the people to whom they come. “The Revelation of which I am the bearer,” Bahá’u’lláh says, “is adapted to humanity’s spiritual receptiveness and capacity; otherwise, the Light that shines within me can neither wax nor wane. Whatever I manifest is nothing more or less than the measure of the Divine glory which God has bidden me reveal.”

Another analogy is that divine revelation is like pure water, but when it comes to humanity it must be received by a vessel from which it is poured and shared with others. That vessel is the community of people who receive the teachings of the Manifestation and therefore the “religion” that results from that pure revelation has the outer qualities of the vessel into which the pure waters of revelation are poured.  But it is the limitations of the people and the community that determine the “form” of the revelation, not its inner essence, which is pure water.  The Bab even said that all waters in the world should never be polluted, because water was the outer symbol of the revelation of God!

Jesus, in describing His revelation said- “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Baha’u’llah refers to water as an analogy for revelation in several passages-

O my servant! Abandon not for that which perisheth an everlasting dominion, and cast not away celestial sovereignty for a worldly desire. This is the river of everlasting life that hath flowed from the well-spring of the pen of the merciful; well is it with them that drink!

O peoples of the earth! God, the Eternal Truth, is My witness that streams of fresh and soft-flowing waters have gushed from the rocks, through the sweetness of the words uttered by your Lord, the Unconstrained; and still ye slumber. Cast away that which ye possess, and, on the wings of detachment, soar beyond all created things. Thus biddeth you the Lord of creation, the movement of Whose Pen hath revolutionized the soul of mankind.

The analogy can be extended to what happens after the revelation comes. Not only is it in a specific form of vessel, unique to each revelation, but as it spreads the followers often add color to the water- theological interpretations, additional laws and principles- that further change the form of the religion. Unfortunately, some can even add dirt to the water, making it almost undrinkable, and even unrecognizable from the pure water that is its essence.  But the universal element of each of the religions is that beautiful pure water that we recognize almost intuitively. 

How do we judge if progressive revelation is a true idea?  How do we judge if a Manifestation of God, like Baha’u’llah, is true?  In many ways, the answer is the same as how we judge scientific theories.  We look for coherence and explanatory power, and ultimately whether the theory is useful in the real world. We can think of this last element as the “fruit” of its teaching and connect it to what Jesus told us about how to distinguish a false prophet from a true one.

“You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

In the next essay, we’ll discuss what Baha’u’llah teaches about us, by asking the simple question- What is a human being?.

Photo by Anvesh Uppunuthula on Unsplash

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God is not trying to trick us!

God is not trying to trick us!

Published April 14, 2019 by admin

We all love science because it explains to us the fundamental forces of life and then we can understand the world in a coherent way.  Gravity causes objects to attract depending on their mass, and it works the same throughout the world. It might cause coconuts to fall off trees in the Caribbean and apples to fall of trees in Vermont but it is still just gravity. At one time, people might have thought that coconuts and apples fall for different reasons, but once we understood what gravity was and how it works, we were able to explain a whole host of phenomena all over the world, because we understood these processes on a fundamental level. We understood a basic and fundamental force of physics.

In the last essay, we started to present the basic principles Baha’u’llah revealed to help us understand religion.  We reviewed how God is an Intelligence at the basis of everything we experience and upon which everything depends.  “Religion” is the expression of the desire by humans to connect with that Ultimate Reality, and two of the main ways we do that is by trying to connect through nature or through internal explorations of our own selves, both of which reflect the revelation of God within them.  We can see the expressions of this in the religions of the past, whether it is the “natural religions” of antiquity that saw the Divine in nature, or more recent religions that were more mystical and focused on finding the Divine within ourselves.  From the perspective of Baha’u’llah, these approaches are both true expressions of humanity’s connection with God.  In an illuminating passage, Baha’u’llah tell his followers to be guided by the “blessed words” that “All things are of God” and says that this “exalted utterance is like unto water for quenching the fire of hate and enmity which smolders in the breasts of men. By this single utterance, contending peoples and kindreds will attain the light of true unity”. God is universal and seeing the different expressions of religion in the world in a universal way is fundamental to creating unity among peoples.

We also noted however, that most people’s experience of God is mediated through revealed religion, based on the claim of an individual, like Christ, Muhammad, or Baha’u’llah himself, to represent God to humanity.  This is where a lot of the confusion and conflict have arisen in religion, and also the part that seems the least coherent, as the followers of the great religions have often interpreted their revelations in mutually contradictory ways.  The incoherence and disunity has led many thoughtful people to reject revealed religion and choose to see God as a more impersonal Force or abstract entity, if they believe in God at all.  “Divine revelation” itself is increasingly seen as a relic of humanity’s past, relegated to an age when we believed in all kinds of supernatural entities, most of which have been debunked by science.

Baha’u’llah’s revelation impacts our consideration of these issues profoundly and adds a significant new factor to the whole equation.  Most significantly, He has brought a new revelation, itself an incredible wellspring of beauty and truth. It might be appropriate to consider “divine revelation” a relic of the past when we are faced with claims that are at least 1400 years old, but if it has happened again, in the modern era, it clearly impacts how we think about the phenomenon of divine revelation itself.

Beyond that, Baha’u’llah has also explained the nature of revealed religion itself and made it coherent.  In contrast to the often conflicting claims of its followers, Baha’u’llah has explained that all the revealed religions are actually part of one unfolding religion- “the changeless Faith of God”- that manifests itself to humanity based on different circumstances, but whose essence is One Reality. Speaking of the Founders of the great religions of humankind, He says-

Every one of them is the Way of God that connects this world with the realms above, and the Standard of His Truth unto every one in the kingdoms of earth and heaven. They are the Manifestations of God amidst men, the evidences of His Truth, and the signs of His glory.

The Manifestations of God have “appeared clothed in divers attire”, and if we “observe with discriminating eyes, thou wilt behold Them all abiding in the same tabernacle, soaring in the same heaven, seated upon the same throne, uttering the same speech, and proclaiming the same Faith.”

He termed this process of the Faith of God unfolding throughout history as “progressive revelation”:

Know thou assuredly that the essence of all the Prophets of God is one and the same. Their unity is absolute…They all have but one purpose; their secret is the same secret. To prefer one in honor to another, to exalt certain ones above the rest, is in no wise to be permitted. Every true Prophet hath regarded His Message as fundamentally the same as the Revelation of every other Prophet gone before.

A review of the world’s scriptures strongly supports the concept of “progressive revelation”. When Christ came into the world, He claimed to fulfill the past revelation of Moses, saying “If you had known Moses, you would know Me” and promised that one would come after Him- the “Spirit of Truth” who would “lead you into all Truth”.  Muhammad recognized over two dozen previous revelations in the Quran, explaining that His revelation was part of one religion- “The same religion has He established for you as that which He enjoined on Noah…and that which We enjoined on Abraham, Moses, and Jesus: Namely, that ye should remain steadfast in religion, and make no divisions therein:…”

In the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu masterpiece, whose origins are unknown but was recorded about 2500 years ago, the Lord Krishna says  “Though myself unborn, undying, the lord of creatures, I fashion nature, which is mine, and I come into being… Whenever sacred duty decays and chaos prevails, then I create myself, to protect men of virtue, to set the standard of sacred duty, I appear in age after age…”  Even in the teachings of Buddha, there is a dialogue about previous “Buddhas” whose “path” had been lost over time and he was renewing it. 

Indeed, the concept of “progressive revelation” is a fundamental element of each of the world’s great scriptures, as each of the Manifestations of God explicitly framed their teachings as the next installment of the same religion that people had recognized in the past. In other words, God is not trying to trick us!

The problem is that the followers and religious leaders of these great religions have chosen not to accept any of the revelations that come after the Founder of their religion.  Traditional Jewish belief is that God revealed Himself to the Jewish people but no claim to revelation after that is true. Christians believe Christ was the fulfillment of the promises of the Hebrew scripture, and that Christ will return, but only to save Christians who believed in his first revelation.  Orthodox Muslim belief accepts all the Prophets that appeared before Islam, but teaches that Muhammad was the “Seal of the Prophets” and that God will not send another revelation to humanity.  In other words, each of the great religions accepts all the revelations before theirs, but none after.

In place of the expectation of another revelation similar to the first, traditional religions have forecast a “time of the end”- an “apocalypse”, a “Day of Judgment”, a “Day of Resurrection”- when believers will be rewarded and non-believers punished, usually presented as an other-worldly event that would suspend the laws of nature. The major challenge to this traditional religious worldview is that people have been forecasting such an event for thousands of years and nothing like it has actually occurred. As the centuries march on, it seems more and more like a fantasy. Most people, even most religious people, no longer believe in these ideas at all- but where does that leave traditional religion?  For many people, it leaves them with theologies that no longer seem relevant to the modern world.

Baha’u’llah’s revelation was preceded by the claims of a young Prophet known as the Bab, who proclaimed a new religion within a Muslim society and prepared the way for Baha’u’llah. The Bab deals with these issues directly and pointedly throughout His writings. He taught that progressive revelation was a natural process, that the “Day of Resurrection” was a “day on which the sun rises and sets like any other” and that the descriptions in the scriptures for the “end of time” are metaphorical and represent the spiritual impact of a new Revelation upon human hearts.

“…What is intended by the Day of Resurrection is the Day of the appearance of the Tree of divine Reality (a new Manifestation of God), but it is not seen that anyone of the followers .. hath understood the meaning of the Day of Resurrection; rather have they fancifully imagined a thing which with God hath no reality. In the estimation of God…, what is meant by the Day of Resurrection is this, that from the time of the appearance of Him Who is the Tree of divine Reality, at whatever period and under whatever name, until the moment of His disappearance, is the Day of Resurrection. For example, from the inception of the mission of Jesus..till the day of His ascension was the Resurrection of Moses.”

So the “end of times” is only the end of a religious era. It is a “Day of judgment” on old ideas that no longer meet humanity’s needs, and a “Day of resurrection” as a new Revelation has come into the world to revive human hearts and provide a path back to God after it has been lost. “Resurrection” is like the springtime, when the flowers spring from the ground announcing that a new energy has been infused into all reality. In a wonderful Tablet, God speaks directly to Baha’u’llah- His “Pen”- announcing the Divine Springtime has arrived-

The Divine Springtime is come, O Most Exalted Pen, for the Festival of the All-Merciful is fast approaching. Bestir thyself, and magnify, before the entire creation, the name of God, and celebrate His praise, in such wise that all created things may be regenerated and made new.

The Bab explains that people often miss the significance of a new revelation because they judge it by their own standards-

“Since all men have issued forth from the shadow of the signs of His Divinity and Lordship, they always tend to take a path lofty and high.  And because they are bereft of a discerning eye to recognize their Beloved, they fall short of their duty to manifest meekness and humility towards Him.  Nevertheless, from the beginning of their lives till the end thereof, in conformity with the laws established in the previous religion, they worship God, piously adore Him and bow themselves before His Divine Reality…At the hour of His Manifestation, however, they all turn their gaze towards themselves and thus are shut out from Him, inasmuch as they fancifully regard Him as one like unto themselves.  Far from the glory of God is such a comparison! Indeed the august Being resembles the sun. His verses are like its rays, and all believers, should they truly believe in Him, are as mirrors wherein the sun is reflected. Their light is thus a mere reflection.”

The Bab frequently used the metaphor of the rising and setting of the sun for the revelations of God coming to humanity, saying further that “were the risings of the sun to continue till the end that hath no end, yet there hath not been nor will there ever be more than one sun…”.  The Bab connected the revelations of God to the natural world saying- “The process of His (God’s) creation hath had no beginning and can have no end, otherwise it would necessitate the cessation of His celestial grace.” Just as the natural world is always in motion, creative and evolutionary, revelations were also a natural process and that “God hath raised up Prophets and revealed Books as numerous as the creatures of the world, and will continue to do so to everlasting” as humanity’s knowledge of God always evolves.

He referred to the time a Manifestation was alive on earth as the “day of God”, whereas the time between the revelations was like the “night”, saying that religious leaders were like stars who shine during the night but should “fade into utter nothingness before the dazzling splendor of the Sun” when a new Revelation comes.  Unfortunately, it was often religious leaders who most persecuted the new Manifestation, led people astray, and deprived them of the bounties of the new religion. According to the Bab, it was because people worshipped the outer form of the religion and fail to seek the inner essence of faith, the part that is renewed in each new revelation.  “By adhering unto forms”, He said, people “deprive themselves of the good pleasure of their Lord.”

As the passage states above, it is also because people are trying to do the right thing, to “take a path lofty and high”, to protect what they consider sacred, that they “fancifully regard” the new Manifestation as “one like unto themselves”.  Baha’u’llah, in another passage, points out further why a new revelation is such a challenge to accept for people who are committed to their religion. “Consider how men for generation have been blindly imitating their fathers, and have been trained according to such ways and manners as have been laid down by the dictates of  their Faith. Were these men to discover that suddenly, a man, who has been living in their midst, who with respect to every human limitation hath been their equal, had arisen to abolish every established principle imposed by their faith- principles by which for centuries they have been disciplined- they would of a certainty be veiled and hindered from acknowledging this truth”.  After centuries of belief, the Manifestations become almost mythical, and we forget that they were actually people who lived real lives and, if they came again, and passed us on the street, they would look the same as everyone else. 

It is these kind of challenges that have made it difficult for people to see the revelations of God as part of one process. Even though they are like us, the Manifestations of God are not just human beings. What makes them special is not their outer physical appearance but their inner spiritual reality and the words they speak to attract our hearts. They represent God to humanity and have an essence that it is transcendent.  As the passage states above, their inner reality is the Sun of Truth in relation to us, providing spiritual teachings that provide for our growth and well-being just like the physical sun is the source of life for the planet.

Similar to gravity, which is a fundamental force that manifests itself in various ways by acting on different objects, the revelations of God are also the manifestation of a single Force.  Describing that Force in abstract terms can get pretty philosophical, but it’s worth connecting the dots because it is intellectually and spiritually illuminating. If we go back to our analogy of the painting, with God being the painter, we can think of the inner essence of each of the Manifestations- the Reality that is common to each of them- as being like the paintbrush.  It is the aspect of God that acts in the world, the part that we see most clearly. We can’t see into the mind of the painter, but we see her brush.

The Bab had a name for this force, the “paintbrush” that acts in the “painting” that is the world we live in. He called it the “Primal Will’ of God- “primal” in the sense of “first”- as in there is nothing more fundamental to it except the Essence of God, which is unknowable.  He said that it is the Primal Will that “appears resplendent in every Prophet and speaks forth in every revealed book” stating further that it “knows no beginning” inasmuch as even the very idea of “firstness” owes it existence to it, and “knoweth no end, for the Last owes its lastness unto It.”  The creativity in nature is also fundamentally an expression of the effects of the Will. From the perspective of those living in the painting, the paintbrush is how we experience God. It is God to us, so the inner aspect of the Messengers of God is our true Beloved. It is in this sense that Baha’u’llah states about His own Revelation-

Naught is seen in My temple but the Temple of God, and in My beauty but His Beauty, and in My being but His Being, and in My self but His Self, and in My movement but His Movement, and in My acquiescence but His Acquiescence, and in My pen but His Pen, the Mighty, the All-Praised. There hath not been in My soul but the Truth, and in Myself naught could be seen but God.

For those familiar with Christian theology, the “Primal Will of God” is the same as the “Logos” or “Word of God”, as in the first paragraph of the Gospel of John- “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Baha’u’llah also uses the term “Word of God” to describe the same reality, stating that “The Word of God is the king of words and its pervasive influence is incalculable. It hath ever dominated and will continue to dominate the realm of being… It is an ocean inexhaustible in riches, comprehending all things. Every thing which can be perceived is but an emanation therefrom.” To go back to our analogy, everything in the painting is an emanation of the painters mind and the paintbrush that forms it

Not only is the divine revelation in its essence the expression of the Will of God, nature’s laws are also an expression of it.  Both are natural in the truest sense of the word. It is these connections that the Bab and Baha’u’llah make that allow us to see divine revelation and the creative energies in nature as part of one singular reality, connecting our outer lives with our inner lives in a profound and intensely beautiful way. It is the foundation of the true harmony between the different revelations that have come to humanity, and also between science and religion, as all are fundamentally expressions of the same metaphysical Force. When we turn with our minds to studying the natural world, we are studying the Will of God as expressed in nature, and when we turn our hearts to the Word of God as expressed in each of the revelations, we are experiencing the same reality from a different part of our being.

So if all the revelations of God are in essence the expressions of a single transcendent reality, why do they differ one from another?  Why are the laws that the Manifestations of God revealed different?  Why do they use different theological concepts to explain their teachings, some of them even seemingly contradictory to each other? 

Having reviewed the fundamental unity among the revelations of God in part 1 of this essay, part 2 will discuss why they are different and how those differences can be accommodated within a common framework. 

Photo by Janus Clemmensen on Unsplash

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God is Not Dead- Part 2

God is Not Dead- Part 2

Published April 9, 2019 by admin

Baha’u’llah tells us that the beginning of our understanding of God is that God is unknowable.  Seems like a funny place to start, but the point is that the Intelligence that is at the root of all that exists is not something we can know like we know other things.  We understand ideas and objects by surrounding them with our mind. In the case of material objects, we weigh them, measure them, describe their color…etc, but God is not like that in any way.  God surrounds us.

One of the best explanations of this comes from the great religion of Islam- from the Prophet’s son-in-law and the founder of Islamic philosophy and theology- Ali Ibn Abu Talib (“Ali”). 

God is not like any object that the human mind can conceive.  No attribute can be ascribed to Him which bears the least resemblance to any quality of which human beings have perception from their knowledge of material objects…He is with every object, not from resemblance or nearness.  He is outside everything but not from separation or indifference towards His creatures. He works and creates but not in the meaning of motions or actions….He has no relation to matter, time and space.

Recognizing that God is not something we can conceive of in our minds is a really critical idea.  Baha’u’llah’s son ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ made this point several times in his presentations in the West.

…That which a human being would conjure up in his mind is but the fanciful image of his human condition, it doth not encompass God’s reality but rather is encompassed by it. That is, man grasps his own illusory conceptions, but the Reality of Divinity can never be grasped: It, Itself, encompasses all created things, and all created things are in Its grasp. That Divinity which man doth imagine for himself exists only in his mind, not in truth. Man, however, exists both in his mind and in truth; thus man is greater than that fanciful reality which he is able to imagine.

What we see in the world is not God himself but the attributes of God, like how a painting reflects the qualities and attributes of the painter.  Sometimes referred to as the “names and attributes of God”, these qualities- that everything in creation possesses- are the essential reality of every “thing”.  Everything in creation, including us, is in its essence a reflection of the qualities of God that exist within it. 

Let’s go over this again with a different framing.  The Baha’i Writings tell us that, while God is beyond our ability to understand, the entire creation is itself a “revelation” of the qualities of God in all creation.  The qualities of God are revealed to us through the world itself. In the passage below, Baha’u’llah gives an analogy that God is like the sun and the everything we know is the light that emanates from the sun.

God is immeasurably exalted above all things. Every created being however reveals His signs which are but emanations from Him and not His Own Self. All these signs are reflected and can be seen in the book of existence, and the scrolls that depict the shape and pattern of the universe are indeed a most great book. Therein every man of insight can perceive that which would lead to the Straight Path… Consider the rays of the sun whose light hath encompassed the world. The rays emanate from the sun and reveal its nature, but are not the sun itself. Whatsoever can be discerned on earth amply demonstrates the power of God, His knowledge and the outpourings of His bounty, while He Himself is immeasurably exalted above all creatures.

Baha’u’llah also tells us that “nature is, in its essence, the expression of” God’s will.  This is a very important idea because people have a tendency to look for God in “miracles” or other events that break natural law.  With this one simple statement, we are being told that nature itself is the miracle, that the world as we know it itself is the expression of the Divine Intelligence that underlies all reality. 

So imagine you are a drop of paint living in a painting created by a painter you can never know directly.  Or, to use a modern analogy, you are living in a video game, a virtual reality. What could you know about the video game maker?  Since you are living in a different dimension of reality, you simply can’t know the creator directly, but you can connect to the qualities of the painter or video game creator as they are reflected in the world you live in. 

This is what Baha’i Writings tell us- that God is “revealed” to us through creation itself- “to His creation through His creation”. Some people express that they feel God within nature and the beauty of the environment.  That feeling is actually us sensing the presence of God in the grandness of creation. 

Every created thing in the whole universe is but a door leading into His knowledge, a sign of His sovereignty, a revelation of His names, a symbol of His majesty, a token of His power, a means of admittance into His straight Path… (Baha’u’llah)

But the most profound sense of God we can have is the revelation of God that exists within our own selves-

“Behold with the eye of the heart. Verily, thy truth, the truth of thy being, is the divinity of thy Lord revealed unto thee and through thee. Thou art He Himself, and He is thou thyself, except that indeed thou art that thou art, and He is that He is.” (The Bab)

The purpose of life is for us to connect with our Creator and express the “revelation” of God within us most fully and most perfectly.  When we do this, we are at the same time coming closer to God and coming closer to our own innermost true selves- as our essence is itself a revelation of God’s beauty.  Humans are like “homing pigeons” for God, those birds that, wherever you take them in the world, they always find their way back home. 

We are not born with these realities evident to us. We need to be taught.   As we have observed, many people have a sense of God, a feeling of something transcendent within nature and within themselves, but it can remain undefined and veiled to us, and have no impact on how they behave or treat others.  Baha’u’llah describes us as “unlit candles” who don’t realize the flame potentially within us.  Imagine a child, a girl, in a poor ghetto of the world who is actually the most naturally gifted mathematician who has ever lived. Without some education, the child can never demonstrate the powers that lie within her. She could go through life completely unaware of her ability.  But she is lucky and gets a good teacher who, through education, brings out the qualities that she inherently possesses and makes them manifest to others.  This is where revealed religion comes into our understanding of God because the founders of the great religions are the educators that bring out the qualities that lie within us.

Let’s make a simple observation.  Think of the people you know who believe in God and have an active spirituality.  If you are like most people, your friends who do have a close relationship with God are aligned with one of the great religions of humanity- they are Christian, or Muslim, or a religious Jew, or Hindu.  In other words, the energy for their belief and enthusiasm about God is not coming from some philosophical reflections, but a spiritual connection with a religion- in most cases- a revealed religion.  There are always exceptions, but it is fair to say that people who have a strong belief and conception of God are almost always connected with a Christ, or a Muhammad, or one of the other founders of the other great religions.  People who aren’t connected have a belief that tends to be more latent, if they have a belief at all. 

There is actually a profound statement about the nature of humanity’s relationship to God in that simple observation.  While the universal revelation of God is present in all creation and within ourselves, and has been for all time, it is so general that we might not even recognize it, nor does it necessarily lead to a change in how we act or treat each other.  For that reason, God  speaks to us again “through His creation”, in the form of a human being who speaks our language and  can manifest to us the Will of God in a manner we can easily understand and appreciate.  These are the Revelations that have founded the great religions and make God “manifest” to us in a specific sense.  That is why Baha’u’llah referred to the “Prophets” or “Messengers” of God as “Manifestations of God” because they manifest God’s will to humanity in a specific sense.  Through them, humans learn to make these spiritual connections with themselves, with others, and with nature. 

Baha’u’llah describes these Manifestations of God in many ways, using far more descriptive terms than just “Prophet’ or “Messenger”.  Describing the Manifestations of God, He says-

“These sanctified Mirrors, these Daysprings of ancient glory, are, one and all, the Exponents on earth of Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose. From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived their sovereignty. The beauty of their countenance is but a reflection of His image, and their revelation a sign of His deathless glory. They are the Treasuries of Divine knowledge, and the Repositories of celestial wisdom. Through them is transmitted a grace that is infinite, and by them is revealed the Light that can never fade.…”

In another passage, He says they “are the channels of God’s all-pervasive grace. Led by the light of unfailing guidance, and invested with supreme sovereignty, They are commissioned to use the inspiration of Their words, the effusions of Their infallible grace and the sanctifying breeze of Their Revelation for the cleansing of every longing heart and receptive spirit from the dross and dust of earthly cares and limitations. Then, and only then, will the Trust of God, latent in the reality of man, emerge… from behind the veil of concealment, and implant the ensign of its revealed glory upon the summits of men’s hearts.”

The revelations of God are a natural phenomenon, as natural as gravity and the second law of thermodynamics. Actually, they are more like the spring time, which periodically comes and refreshes the world, causing flowers and trees to blossom and grow. A new Revelation is like a “divine springtime”, causing faith to again awaken in people’s hearts and reminding us of the spiritual connections at the root of who we are.

It is also what essentially defines our conceptions of God.  So, for a Christian, his or her conception of God is formed by Christ himself, as Jesus said- “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship to the Father, has made him known”.  And in another passage- “If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but God who sent me.  For when you see Me, you are seeing the one who sent Me. I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in Me will no longer remain in the dark.”

Christ turned a nebulous abstract entity that we can’t quite grasp, into a reality that was palpable, that we could love in the way we love other people, a reality that was personal.  In that way, by speaking to our humanity, we could then find the revelation of God within ourselves, in others, and in the rest of creation.  How many people read the stories in the Gospels and found  their inner selves as a result?  It’s influence has been almost inconceivably great.  And this all happened because God spoke in a way and through a medium we could understand. This truth was not confined to Christ, but to all the Manifestations of God. It is through them that our concepts of God are given form. It is through them that we know God’s will in a personal and specific way.  As Christ said- “I am the Way, the Truth, and Life and nobody gets to the Father but through Me.” The Manifestations are not God, but they are God to us.

This fundamental principle is enormously important in understanding humanity’s relationship to God, both in history and in the modern day. Because it is the Manifestations of God that make God real to us, turn God from an abstract philosophical entity to something we can love and serve, the presence of God in our lives primarily means the presence of one of these Revelations in our hearts.  They are the ones who make that intellectual and spiritual connection between the Supreme Intelligence at the root of all existence, and a good and moral life. When their power and influence on humanity wanes, so does belief in God as we no longer have the primary path we used to find Him in the first place. The reason less people believe in God today is because the religions that represented Him on earth no longer have the intellectual and spiritual power they once did. The Revelations of the past have become old.

As humanity’s knowledge of God is constantly growing and evolving, the religion of God also must be renewed. Baha’u’llah’s Revelation is the renewal of religion for our time. As He states-

“Know thou that they who are truly wise have likened the world unto the human temple. As the body of man needs a garment to clothe it, so the body of mankind must needs be adorned with the mantle of justice and wisdom. Its robe is the Revelation vouchsafed unto it by God. Whenever this robe hath fulfilled its purpose, the Almighty will assuredly renew it. For every age requires a fresh measure of the light of God. Every Divine Revelation hath been sent down in a manner that best befitted the circumstances of the age in which it hath appeared.”

We’ll go into more detail on the concept of “progressive revelation” in the next essay, but before we leave this topic, we need to address an area of discomfort for many people with revealed religion.  Appropriately, we naturally repel from the idea that we are worshipping a “man”, as opposed to a Force or some other abstract reality. A person who claims to be God seems too personal, and a part of us would probably rather keep our conceptions of God more universal.  Plus, for every Christ, Muhammad, or Baha’u’llah, there are scores of pretenders who make claims to divinity, some for sincere reasons, others not.  It can be truthfully be said that the overwhelming majority of people who make claim to some form of divinity are deceiving themselves and deceiving others.  How do I know I’m not worshipping some crazy guy?

The beauty of divine revelation through a human being is that it makes God personal and connectable on a human level, but that also adds a human factor that can feel strange, particularly before you have had a chance to study the religion in detail. After all, the person of the Manifestation is a man, who comes from a certain culture, speaks a particular language, follows certain customs- all of which may be foreign to you. 

Baha’u’llah assuages our fears in this regard, pointing out that the man is inconsequential to what we are worshipping.  We are actually worshipping the Reality that shines through the man- the Revelation of God itself, and human beings can naturally tell the difference.  Baha’u’llah makes this point again and again in His Writings, like in His Tablet to the King of Persia-

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. And He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven, and for this there befell Me what hath caused the tears of every man of understanding to flow…This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred…The evanescent is as nothing before Him Who is the Ever-Abiding. His all-compelling summons hath reached Me, and caused Me to speak His praise amidst all people.

In another passage, Baha’u’llah states clearly that His whole purpose was not to call attention to Himself as a person, that he “had no intention of establishing any position or distinction for Himself. The purpose hath rather been to attract the souls, through the sublimity of His words, unto the summit of transcendent glory.. Unto this bear witness My heart, My Pen, My inner and My outer Being. God grant that all men may turn unto the treasuries latent within their own selves.”

While the Manifestations of God are human beings, the whole point is to see them in their true transcendent reality-

The door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days being thus closed in the face of all beings, the Source of infinite grace (God), … hath caused those luminous Gems of Holiness (the Manifestations) to appear out of the realm of the spirit, in the noble form of the human temple, and be made manifest unto all men, that they may impart unto the world the mysteries of the unchangeable Being, and tell of the subtleties of His imperishable Essence…From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived their sovereignty. The beauty of their countenance is but a reflection of His image, and their revelation a sign of His deathless glory.

God is our true ‘Beloved” who appears in different “attire”- a different outer form- from age to age, but invites us to recognize that inner reality.

O My servants! It behoveth you to refresh and revive your souls through the gracious favors which, in this Divine, this soul-stirring Springtime, are being showered upon you. The Day Star of His great glory hath shed its radiance upon you, and the clouds of His limitless grace have overshadowed you. How high the reward of him that hath not deprived himself of so great a bounty, nor failed to recognize the beauty of his Best-Beloved in this, His new attire.

Moreover , each of the Revelations also has a common inner Voice that we can learn to recognize and appreciate as being common to all the Revelations.

Strive, O people, to gain admittance into this vast Immensity for which God ordained neither beginning nor end, in which His voice hath been raised, and over which have been wafted the sweet savors of holiness and glory. Divest not yourselves of the Robe of grandeur, neither suffer your hearts to be deprived of remembering your Lord, nor your ears of hearkening unto the sweet melodies of His wondrous, His sublime, His all-compelling, His clear, and most eloquent voice.

As you can see, and will be more apparent as we explore the Writings of Baha’u’llah, He speaks with a Voice that is transcendent and sublime.  You come to not see them as the words of a man at all. The same thing happened with Christ and the words of the Quran.  In the heart of a Baha’i, as with a Christian and a Muslim, the words of the Manifestation of God are the Voice of God, spoken to us in a language and a form that we can understand and connect with.  There is a mystical connection between that inner Voice of God, or the Word of God- as expressed through each of the Revelations- and our own souls.  It’s hard to explain but not hard to feel.  There’s a rhythm to the Word that starts our feet tapping and reverberates with us on a very intimate level.   

So let’s summarize the main points.  We started by reasoning from what we know about the natural world to conclude that it is reasonable to believe that there is an Intelligence at the root of all existence.  We meditated a bit on that Intelligence and concluded It was vast and ancient, and we are completely dependent upon It.  But we also pointed out that such an Intelligence is not the kind of thing we can encompass with our minds or meet face to face like we would something or someone else.  Our relationship to that Intelligence has to be a very unique relationship, unlike any others that we have.  From the Baha’i writings, and this is corroborated in the Quran and the Bible, we learned that the nature of that Intelligence is imprinted on the reality of all creation, including within ourselves, but that truth can be veiled to us without revealed religion. It is revealed religion that helps us make the connections between the spiritual things we natively feel, and educates us about the powers that lie within each of us.  Those Revelations are critical to our belief and relationship to God. Without them, our belief wavers as we can no longer make the intellectual and spiritual connections to the Source of our life.

Photo by Anthony Gibson on Unsplash

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God is Not Dead

God is Not Dead

Published April 8, 2019 by admin

There is a common saying- “The God I believe in is not the same God you don’t believe in”. The saying highlights a fundamental point important in any discussion about God- we have to define what we mean by “God”.  Conceptions of “God” vary greatly and what one person believes in may be nothing like what others conceptualize.  If you define terms and are clear about what you are saying, people often will find that they actually believe very similar things, but label them differently.  Baha’u’llah has given us a more comprehensive understanding of God than any previous revelation, and it is an understanding that is consistent with the nature of our world discovered by science, but ultimately transcends it.  Let’s start with a essay about why it is reasonable to believe that there is a God, an Intelligence at the root of all being, based on our modern scientific worldview, and then we can build other ideas from there.

When we look at the natural world, as presented to us by the intellectual investigations of philosophy and science over the last several centuries, there are certain things we can comfortably conclude.  First, the natural world is rational, meaning it follows consistent and logically derivable rules that are present across the known universe.  Indeed, the nature of creation is mathematical. It is a remarkable and under-appreciated fact that we can make measurements in a laboratory, derive a mathematical equation, and based on purely abstract reasoning from that equation, derive further equations that then we can test back in the lab and find to be predictive of the physical system we are studying. This means that, underlying the physical processes that exist, there are abstract mathematical and rational principles that are discoverable by intelligence. In other words, the world is intelligible, and intelligible to us.  In thinking about God, both of those facts are significant.

13.8 billion years ago- immediately after the Big Bang- matter in the universe consisted of just  hydrogen and helium- two simple and relatively non reactive elements. Natural laws worked on those elements to produce structures of increasing complexity, that progressively manifested higher functions such as the ability to grow, reproduce, and eventually become conscious. The appearance of human consciousness was enormously significant landmark event in the history of the universe.  With the appearance of humans, with our powers of rationality and inductive reasoning, nature had produced an entity that could then turn around and understand nature itself.

Imagine nature and the material stuff of existence are like a book sitting on a table.  The book desired to read itself but had no power to do so, so it rearranged and evolved its own elements- the elements that made up the book itself- to create a reader who could sit beside itself and read the book.  That is essentially what has happened. Nature, by creating humans, created free will, creativity, rationality, and the ability to understand itself.  This simple fact, accepted by every serious thinker and scientist all over the world, is enormously significant when we address the question of what is at the ultimate root of existence.  One can possibly see the natural world as mindless when it produces seemingly mindless entities, but when it produces a mind that can then turn around and explain itself to itself, we’ve crossed a threshold that profoundly changes how we should think about the ultimate nature of the universe itself.

While those observations may strongly lead us to conclude that there is an Intelligence at the root of the universe, that conclusion has a major competitor- materialistic philosophy, and it is related to science. One of the “rules” of science is that we try to avoid metaphysical assumptions about reality when doing science. We assume that the answers for why things are the way they are in the natural world reside in the natural world itself, using materialistic explanations that are confined to that world.  Materialism is therefore a methodological assumption of science, and a highly useful one, because it keeps science as a coherent body of knowledge.  Though highly effective as a “methodological approach”, as the “rules of the game” in science, when we broaden materialism to a philosophy of everything- the idea that nothing exists besides inanimate matter and the natural laws that define their functions- it gets more problematic. Philosophical materialism is very popular right now as it is seen as a simple and rational way of looking at the world. It is that. Moreover, it has a certain coherence that is attractive. The success of the materialistic assumptions that underlie science itself has made it even seem like a proven idea. The problem is that philosophical materialism ultimately has a very limited range of explanatory tools in its tool box to explain the broad picture of reality, seemingly too few to explain what we know about the universe. And the place it really struggles is explaining us. 

Imagine you are walking in the woods and you find an iPhone sitting on the forest floor.  You have never seen such a device but you begin to explore its function and soon find out about its marvelous abilities and the complexity of its structure.  What is the probability that such an object could have arisen there on its own- that the natural elements could have arranged themselves mindlessly to produce such a complex and coordinated entity?  Obviously, the possibility of that happening on its own is so low that nobody would regard it as a serious idea.  But the iPhone is less complex than the simplest level of biological organisms. 

One of the simplest biological organisms is a prokaryotic cell- the kind of cells bacteria are made of.  There are billions of them on and in your body as you read this.  But the prokaryotic cell is not a simple thing.  If you were to shrink yourself and somehow get into a cell, you would find it to be an extraordinary dynamic and organized place.  The average prokaryotic cell produces 2000 proteins/second off its DNA.  Each of those proteins has a particular and very specific function and will be recycled after it completes its function.  It is an environment with a whirring level of activity, all coordinated, regulated, with feedback loops and other strategies to allow the cell to structure its activity and respond to its environment.  And the prokaryotic cell is one of the simplest biological organisms in creation!

The most complex biological entity in creation is the human brain, with trillions of cells, each more complex than the simple prokaryotic cell, and all coordinated together to help you do all the things you do in life.  The vast range of human invention, the products of the work of millions of minds over the course of history, are not even close to creating anything as complex and coordinated as the human brain.  Moreover, there are no convincing materialistic answers for why humans manifest the distinctive qualities that we do- subjective consciousness (your sense of “I”), abstract thought, commitment to abstract ethical ideals like justice and mercy, and complex language.  Even our love of music is a mystery.  One can imagine that answers might be forthcoming as science advances, but we are still left with a fundamental question as to how material things grew to manifest these remarkable qualities on their own. 

So let’s ask that question more directly. What is the chance that all that we know about the world and ourselves came into being on its own?  Materialism ultimately provides only two possibilities for how mindless matter can organize itself into complex structures capable of these extraordinary functions- random chance and determinism (sometimes referred to as “necessity”).  Remember, materialism has no recourse to mind in any form. No explanation can reflect intentionality or purpose.  Things must happen by chance, or they reflect the inherent nature of a piece of matter and the natural laws that act on it. That is, things happen because they are “determined” to happen that way, by an objects inherent nature, which it cannot change.

In answering the question, we can pretty much rule out chance, but will come back to it in a minute. The other possibility- “necessity” or “determinism”- is that these qualities of material things- the ability to form more complex entities that can perform higher functions- is baked into the laws of nature and matter itself such that there are “determined” outcomes that unfold over time.  But what does it say about the laws of nature and matter when it is baked into them to produce mind and consciousness? A system that is set up to produce- deterministically- mind and consciousness is a system that was more likely designed by something with mind and consciousness in the first place.

So then we are back to random chance as the best materialistic explanation, but our world is so vastly improbable to have happened by chance that it’s really not a serious idea. One popular theory is that there are an infinite number of potential universes and we just happen to live in the one in which these highly improbable events have occurred.  Given an infinite range of possibilities, anything is possible!  This is true, but it can hardly masquerade as a serious explanation.  Any detective who came to a crime scene, looked at the evidence before him, shrugged his shoulders and said that maybe there are an infinite number of universes and “anything is possible”, would lose credibility quickly. 

The more one meditates on these issues, the more evident it becomes that material things and mindless laws are not good candidates to be the ultimate root of life. Materialistic philosophy, though useful as a guide for science, is too limited for more fundamental explanations of reality. That is not the fault of science.  Science is only as good as its assumptions, and its assumption is that everything is material, because material things are all science can study!  There’s an old story in philosophy of a drunk who is looking for the keys he lost on the street, but he is only searching one side of the street. When someone asks him why he doesn’t search the other side, he says it is because there is no light posts on that side. Think of science as the light that shines on the street.  It’s natural for materialistic science to look for the kind of answers it can prove are true, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t true answers that are non-materialistic! To look at the world in a purely materialistic way is not wrong- the world is made up of material stuff- but many people are afraid to stray out from under its canopy and find ways to shine light on the other side of the street, thus depriving themselves of a broader picture of reality.

From my personal perspective, the much more coherent view is that the ultimate basis of everything that exists is not material things in themselves, nor the mindless laws that define their actions, but intelligence.  Like chess pieces on a chess board that don’t move themselves, but are propelled by intelligence, nature and matter are similarly the result of intelligence. It is simply a better and more coherent explanation for the reality of the universe and how it has evolved creatures like us. I’d like to say that I’m somehow uniquely clever to come to this conclusion, but I’m not.  Most of the great philosophers and thinkers in the history of the human race have come to the same conclusion.

Now we can ask a second question- what is the nature of the Intelligence that produced the universe we know?  We can say with certainly that it is a vast and ancient Intelligence that far transcends any intelligence we have.  As we meditate further, we recognize that we are all completely and utterly dependent on that Intelligence.  Without it, we would not have lived and nothing else we know would have ever existed. Everything we have ever known is dependent on that Reality for its very existence.  Acknowledging and becoming consciously aware of that truth is not to believe in a “delusion”, but rather it is to awaken to the the true reality of our situation.

There are several analogies given in the Baha’i writings to explain our relationship to the Divine Reality.  One is that our relationship to the Force underlying all existence is like a fish to water.  It goes without saying that a fish depends on water. It is the medium in which it moves, how it gets its oxygen, and water permeates every organ and cell of a fish so completely that it has no life without it.  But is the fish aware of its dependence on the water?  Does the fish even know that water exists!?  It’s so permeated and dependent on water that it might not even realize that it’s there. The relationship of God to us and everything in creation is like that.

There are also a few other simple conclusions we can draw from observations of humans and human societies, that tell us a little bit more about us and our relationship to God. It is clear that belief in an Intelligence or transcendent Force at the root of all being is pretty much universal among humans, even without philosophical consideration of the question.  Virtually all societies had that conception, in some form or another.  We can also say that the desire for humans to connect with that Force is extremely powerful, as manifested by the universal presence of religion in all societies until the modern period.  In other words, we have a “spiritual instinct” that is an inherent part of our reality and consciousness.  For many people throughout history, no more noble thing could be imagined than trying to understand and connect with the Root of all existence.  Religion then is an expression of what it means to be human- truly human.

Many people, including scientists and philosophers all over the world, would not disagree fundamentally with the points above. Indeed, they are not infrequently voiced by leading intellectuals the world over. When Einstein said he wanted “to know God’s thoughts, the rest are mere details”, he was expressing a desire to understand the Root of all existence, which he believed to be intelligent. The issue then becomes, not whether there is a Divine Reality at the root of all life, but the nature of that Reality and Its relationship to us and to nature.  It is in our “concept of God” where humans most often disagree. The belief in God is diminishing in many parts of the world, not because we no longer have a reason to believe in God, but the way we believed in God in the past is no longer coherent with our modern reality. Our concepts of God haven’t evolved as much as our knowledge and understanding in other areas of life.

In part 2 of this essay, we will explore the concept of God that Baha’u’llah brought into the world and how that illuminates our understanding of our relationship to God.

Photo by Adrien Converse on Unsplash

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One God

One God

Published April 2, 2019 by admin

People sometimes ask- why is it important to believe in One God?  It’s a really good question. The Oneness of God is a primary theme in the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism.  Hindus also have a sense of one Force at the root of all existence, and many cultures that believed in many gods still had one God they worshipped above the others. The Oneness of God was an evolution and advancement in humanity’s conception of God and it had a lot of impact on how humans thought about the world. 

Before these great religions, humans tended to see nature as the expression of forces controlled by the “gods”.  It thundered because the gods were angry, rained because the gods were crying…etc.  The perception of people was that they were at the mercy of these gods and the natural forces they controlled.  The gods were not necessarily ethical- they were just glorified human personalities. People would make idols of these gods and sacrifice to them  so that good things would happen and bad things would be avoided. Belief in these gods was more like superstition than anything else.

The Oneness of God was taught by Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as a fundamental doctrine and it made two connections that were significant. The first was that all these other gods were nothing in the face of the true abstract Reality that was the real Source of all being.  Second, that One God was an ethical God who cared about humanity and wanted humans to achieve their full potential. To be like that One God was to take on the highest virtues of humanity.  With the Oneness of God, humanity’s conception of the world also went from one that was very concrete, to one that was more abstract.  Being able to think and see the world in abstract terms is an evolution in human thinking and spirituality that set the stage for other advances, both intellectual and religious. The Oneness of God actually provided the basis for science because it was understood that the world was  a rational place, created by a single rational and benevolent God, and not the playground for a bunch of juvenile divinities that always fought each other.  

There is a story in the Gospels where Jesus is conversing with a Samaritan woman at a well.  Samaritan’s were not Jews and did not worship One God, and she noted that her god was in the mountains whereas Jews worshipped theirs in the temple.  Jesus told her that God was a “Spirit and needed to be worshipped in spirit and in truth”.  It wasn’t the place that was important, but the worship of an abstract reality that was the essence of Truth. 

The Oneness of God was further developed in the revelation of Muhammad and Islam. The fundamental teaching of Muhammad was the “Unity of God”.  To say God was one was even incorrect- God was beyond numbers and shouldn’t even be thought of in those concrete terms. Even idols became non-physical.  An “idol” could be a physical idol, but also an “idol” we created in our minds, anything that caused us to worship something other than One True God who was the essence of compassion and mercy.  As expressed by Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law-

“To know God is to know his oneness. To say that God is one has four meanings: two of them are false and two are correct. As for the two meanings that are false, one is that a person should say “God is one” and be thinking of a number and counting. This is false because that which has no second cannot enter into the category of number…Another meaning is to say, “So-and-So is one of his people”, namely, a species of this genus or a member of this species. This meaning is also false when applied to God, because it implies likening something to God, whereas God is above all likeness. As to the two meanings that are correct when applied to God, one is that it should be said that “God is one” in the sense that there is no likeness to him among things. Another is to say that “God is one” in the sense that there is no multiplicity or division conceivable in Him, neither outwardly, nor in the mind, nor in the imagination. God alone possesses such a unity.”

Baha’u’llah built on these concepts in His Revelation.  God becomes completely abstract, only knowable through the qualities He manifests in all creation, including within us, and in the Revelations that come to humanity and explain His reality and our connection to It.

“Regard thou the one true God as One Who is apart from, and immeasurably exalted above, all created things. The whole universe reflecteth His glory, while He is Himself independent of, and transcendeth His creatures. This is the true meaning of Divine unity. He Who is the Eternal Truth is the one Power Who exerciseth undisputed sovereignty over the world of being, Whose image is reflected in the mirror of the entire creation. All existence is dependent upon Him, and from Him is derived the source of the sustenance of all things. This is what is meant by Divine unity; this is its fundamental principle.”

To worship that one God is to express it in pure and holy deeds of service to all humanity, irrespective of any particular characteristic- race, religion, political party or other divisions. To worship God is to worship love and justice in pure form.

Worship thou God in such wise that if thy worship lead thee to the fire, no alteration in thine adoration would be produced, and so likewise if thy recompense should be paradise. Thus and thus alone should be the worship which befitteth the one True God. Shouldst thou worship Him because of fear, this would be unseemly in the sanctified Court of His presence, and could not be regarded as an act by thee dedicated to the Oneness of His Being. Or if thy gaze should be on paradise, and thou shouldst worship Him while cherishing such a hope, thou wouldst make God’s creation a partner with Him, notwithstanding the fact that paradise is desired by men. Fire and paradise both bow down and prostrate themselves before God. That which is worthy of His Essence is to worship Him for His sake, without fear of fire, or hope of paradise. (The Bab)

The Oneness of God is the truth that connects our spiritual instincts with ethical behavior. It is the basis of all exalted forms of religion.  

 

Quote from Ali from Wikipedia, “Tawhid” article. Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

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The Three Onenesses

The Three Onenesses

Published April 1, 2019 by admin

“Every created thing in the whole universe is but a door leading into His knowledge, a sign of His sovereignty, a revelation of His names, a symbol of His majesty, a token of His power, a means of admittance into His straight Path…” Baha’u’llah

O true companions! All humankind are as children in a school, and the Dawning-Points of Light, the Sources of divine revelation, are the teachers, wondrous and without peer. In the school of realities they educate these sons and daughters, according to teachings from God, and foster them in the bosom of grace, so that they may develop along every line, show forth the excellent gifts and blessings of the Lord, and combine human perfections….(‘Abdu’l-Baha’)

God maketh no distinction between the white and the black. If the hearts are pure both are acceptable unto Him. God is no respecter of persons on account of either color or race…. Inasmuch as all were created in the image of God, we must bring ourselves to realize that all embody divine possibilities. If you go into a garden and find all the flowers alike in form, species and color, the effect is wearisome to the eye. The garden is more beautiful when the flowers are many-colored and different….(‘Abdu’l-Baha”)

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

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The Three Onenesses

The Three Onenesses

Published March 27, 2019 by admin

There is a popular Baha’i children’s song, sung in children’s classes all over the world, that goes like this-

“God is One, Man is One, And all the religions are One,

When everyone learns the three onenesses, we’ll have world unity.”

It’s a simple but profound song in that it expresses the essence of the Baha’i Faith.  Each aspect of the three “onenesses” has deep philosophical roots and important implications for our world- and we will review all of those in these introductory essays- but you don’t have to know that detail to appreciate the fundamental truths and understand Baha’u’llah’s message.

At its heart, the Baha’i Faith is a simple and intuitive religion to understand. There is One God who is the Ultimate Source of all that exists.   All human beings are part of one human race and are all brothers and sisters, a unity in the diversity of peoples and cultures.  In order to educate that one human race, God has sent “revelations” to humanity- that of Christ, Muhammad, and many others- to educate the human race about its true reality and the social and ethical teachings that sustain our lives and promote our unity. Because the reality of the world is dynamic and evolutionary- matter evolves, civilization evolves, and human consciousness evolves- the revelations of God also evolve and are increasingly more comprehensive and broader in scope, revealing to us a greater and greater degree of spiritual and moral purpose. 

Baha’u’llah claimed to be the latest in the series of Messengers of God with a revelation for all humanity.  He said that each of the revelations of God proclaimed the same Faith, like a book with different chapters. Their teachings differ because they are revealed to different cultures and different peoples at different times in history, but their purpose and fundamental truths are the same.  Baha’u’llah’s revelation and teachings represent the Will of God for humanity today. 

Consider the far-reaching implications of these ideas.  What if we all came to recognize that each of the great religions was part of the common heritage of all humanity, and all fundamentally true?  What if we began to see each other, not as separate races and tribes, but as one people, part of one human family?  How much of the conflict and pain that exists in the world are because people are trying to jockey for position and resources, for their people, for their tribe only, protecting only themselves, and not seeing the reality that humanity is one social organism?

Baha’u’llah carried out His mission in the years between 1863 and 1892.  He wasn’t subtle or private about it.  He spoke with the voice of God in writings stretching over nearly 40 years and sent Tablets to all the major leaders of the world at that time, both secular and religious.  In His message to the kings generally, He said “Ye are but vassals, O kings of the earth, for He who is the King of Kings has appeared”.  He urged them to  “reconcile their differences so that their people could find rest” and scolded them for their attachments to their material wealth and war mongering, stating that such activities were unworthy of them, and “like unto the play of children”.  He told them their people were “their treasures” and they should protect that treasure and care for the downtrodden, choosing for them “that which you choose for yourselves”.  Representative democracy was praised but those voted in should “regard themselves as representatives of all that dwell on earth”. He declared the oneness of humanity- “the earth is but one country and mankind its citizens” and urged people to see themselves as “the leaves of one branch and the fruits of one tree”, dealing with each other with the “utmost love and kindness”. He told “contending peoples and kindreds of the earth” to “set your faces towards unity and let the radiance of its light shine upon you”, to “root out whatever is the source of contention among you” and explained that the great religions were all “ordained of God” and “reflected His Will and purpose” and to “cleave unto that which draweth you together and uniteth you”. He said the human race was like the human body, that all the various parts needed to function as a coherent whole for the world to achieve its potential.  He ordained learning and education for all people, for both men and women, and declared that “women and men have always been equal in the sight of God”.  Human beings were not created for conflict and “survival of the fittest”, but that which befitted the dignity of humans was “forbearance, mercy, compassion and kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth”.  Moreover, Baha’u’llah announced that we were living in a very special time, unrivaled by past ages, that the “the whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy” and that the day was approaching “when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung for the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms”. He said the “onrushing winds of the grace of God have passed over all things” and that “new and wondrous sciences”, and “potent and effective crafts” would come into being that would transform the world. 

Baha’u’llah’s teaching and message was so far ahead of their time that it’s ridiculous.  The world leaders to whom He delivered His message ignored it completely. Baha’u’llah knew this would happen, as they were all so caught up in their own magnificence that they “could not recognize their own best interests, let alone recognize a Revelation as bewildering and challenging as this”.  His goal was to warn both kings and priests that the flow of history would soon leave them behind, and set out teachings that could support the new world that would emerge.

Now, 150+ years after Baha’u’llah proclaimed His message, we increasingly live in the world He promised.  Kings and their kingdoms are gone, and science, knowledge, and universal ideals are the most potent forces in our world.  But we continue to want to go backwards, back to the days when we clung to the divisions that separated us. Somehow those still seem comfortable, even though they have been the cause of most of the pain and tragedy humans have experienced in the last two centuries.

Progressive and successful societies are those that have instituted Baha’u’llah’s principles, promoting universal education for men and women, racial and religious equity, justice and fairness, and the spread of learning and science.  Indeed, many of the people of the world hold beliefs, no matter what their nominal religion, that are more consistent with the Baha’i Faith than any traditional religion.  Having said that, traditional religions have nothing to fear from Baha’u’llah’s message. If He is true, then they are true as well, but those truths have been remolded in a newer reality. It is the fulfillment of all the promises of their scriptures.

A simple way to investigate and think about Baha’u’llah’s message is to ask yourself- “If God came down from the clouds and gave a message to all humanity, what do I think he would say? What would I want Him to say?” It’s really just that simple. That’s basically the essence of it, because Baha’u’llah, like Christ and Muhammad, claimed to be doing just that.  It didn’t happen with God writing a message on the clouds (and it never has!) but happened in a way it has always happened, in the flow of history, from a highly unique individual who speaks with a voice that is transcendent and sublime. 

In the following essays, I’m going to introduce you to your religion.  I know that that sounds presumptuous, but if Baha’u’llah’s claim is true, His teachings belong to you. They are for you to use for information and inspiration, to apply to your life.  They are a gift from your Creator, a gift that we want to help you unwrap. 

Photo by Adriel Kloppenburg on Unsplash

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Taking a Broad Perspective

Taking a Broad Perspective

Published February 24, 2019 by admin

One of the wonderful aspects of the Baha’i Faith is that, not only has Baha’u’llah given humanity wonderful and amazing new spiritual insights about the nature of the world and of ourselves, He also did that in the context of teaching the fundamental oneness of the great Revelations of the past. People tend to not stray very far when exploring religion and often will study seriously only the religion of their culture and their parents, and not familiarize themselves with another faith before making decisions about spiritual truth.  This is of course a generalization and there are certainly exceptions.  But Baha’u’llah has taught us that all the great Revelations of the past are true and are essentially for all humanity, even though they appeared within the framework of one particular culture or another.  

In one passage, Baha’u’llah revealed- “Peerless is this Day, for it is an eye to past ages and centuries“.  Today, we can look back from where humanity has come, and see the great Revelations of the past as stepping stones to the point we are at today.  And we can also explore them.  The spiritual insights of other faiths, faiths which had a profound effect on millions of people but may not have been part of our particular culture, will be new and incredibly enriching to us.  People of Christian background can now read the Quran from the perspective of faith, a much different perspective than if you read it with a critical eye.  Muslims, who did not traditionally read the Bible, though they accepted it as true, can now read it from the same perspective of faith and mine its spiritual gems.  And both of them can read the Bhagavad Gita- the spiritual masterpiece of Hinduism- and draw on its insights as they course through life.  

The oneness of religion is an incredibly enriching idea, one that we can use to enlighten ourselves as we strive to bring humanity closer together.  Baha’u’llah told the world’s peoples to “cleave to that which uniteth you” and specifically made the point that “the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from One heavenly source and are the subjects of One God‘ and that most of their religions were “ordained by God and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose“.

God is a really big idea, and maintaining a perspective that doesn’t limit our conceptions of God in any way is usually the path that captures the truth of God most completely. This doesn’t make the Baha’i Faith a potpourri religion. Everything is ultimately judged by the standard of the latest Revelation- as religions of the past were revealed for an earlier stage of humanity’s history. But spiritual truths, as opposed to social laws and customs, are timeless and other religions may have emphasized a spiritual truth in a way that illuminates our understanding beyond what would be attained if we only read about the religion from our culture. 

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