Veils of Self, Fires of Madness

One of the more joyful fruits of becoming Baha'i, besides for meeting all the people, has been meeting the Long Obligatory Prayer. Just like a good friend, our relationship began exuberantly as we both got to know each other for the first time. And just like any good friend, there are easy times and there are rough times, times when we're soul mates and times when we've grown apart. In tough times though, I can always fall back on the rapport that we've developed over time. Home is whereever I say the Long Obligatory Prayer. Once the prayer has been said, then it can be said that I have come home.

Just in case you've never met my friend I figure I should give you a pen portrait. She takes about seven minutes or so to recite. She is a series of 13 passages of paragraph length, each one recited in a different posture than the one previous, including standing, seated cross-legged, or in full prostration. Each of these passages has a central theme. One passage expresses gratitude for the gift of prayer. Another expresses gratitude for scripture. One is a petition for nearness to God, another is a testimony recognizing the impossibility of actual reunion. A variety of theological and spiritual themes are weaved together into a rich, textured whole. My friend will display some of the depth of her personality at first glance. But she won't spill her inner secrets to total strangers. One must develop a good rapport first.

I'd like some feedback on my writing style. The way I've written this commentary is by going through line by line expression, by expression, interpretting everything. My fear is that it sucks the life out of the passage I'm trying to interpret. My goal is to bring it to life, when otherwise it might be obscure to people. So any feedback you have for doing that would be great.

The first passage in the Long Obligatory are these. They are said standing and facing Akka in Northern Israel.

O Thou Who art the Lord of all names and the Maker of the heavens! I beseech Thee by them who are the Daysprings of Thine invisible Essence, the Most Exalted, The All-Glorious, to make of my prayer a fire that will burn away the veils which have shut me out from Thy beauty, and a light that will lead me to the ocean of Thy Presence.


First things first, the prayer begins with an invocation of two titles, the Lord of all names and the Maker of the Heavens.

In this context a name is not just any name, or word. In an Islamic context to speak of names in prayer is to speak of the 99 names of God, such as the Beneficent or the Merciful. Each of these names express some reality about God that humans can understand. For Baha'is these are the attributes of God that are manifested by His Messengers. Furthermore, we too are called forth to manifest these attributes. They are the means by which we know of God, because all the while he remains in his essence transcendent above any description or knowledge. In this way, Essence is sovereign over attributes/names. This is my estimation of why God is referred to here as the Lord of all names.

As the Maker of the heavens God is not just the one who rears up the physical world, but also the spiritual world. In the Kitab-i-Iqan Baha'u'llah explains how in past scriptures the heavens are used as a metaphor for the Word of God and the means by which we obey God. Before modern transportation and navigation systems were developed people used to look to the skies to find their bearings. Depending on what time of day it was, people could look to the sun, moon or stars to figure out what time it was or which way to go. In the same way, the Word of God is the means by which we get our spiritual bearings. That God is the Maker of the heavens illustrates the way in which we depend on him for guidance in our lives. This is my estimation of why God is referred to here as the Maker of the heavens.

In Baha'i Prayer it is important to look at what or who a petition is made by. I don't really know the Arabic etymology behind this by. But as near as I can tell it is a rhetorical strategy that invokes the good pleasure of God associated with that entity, so as to give one's prayer more force. In this passage, the petition is made by them who are the Daysprings of Thine invisible Essence, the Most-Exalted, the All-Glorious. These last two names refer respectively to the Bab and Baha'u'llah. The birthname of the Bab is Ali-Muhammad. Ali is a form for the Arabic word for exalt. to refer to him as the Most-Exalted is a play on words that Baha'u'llah frequently uses when speaking of his forerunner. The All-Glorious is of course a reference to Baha'u'llah, whose name means Glory of God. In fact most of his life he was referred to simply as Baha (Glory). Thus, this petition is made by the twin Manifestations of God, the Daysprings of Thine invisble Essence. A dayspring in Baha'i writings generally means a point at which something of God is transferred from His worlds into ours. In this case it wouldn't mean that God's invisible essence is being transferred to our world. That is impossible. Instead, I think its meaning might be more akin to mouthpiece. The essence remains transcendent, while the dayspring manifests the divine attributes.

Finally, we have the petition itself, to make of my prayer a fire that will burn away the veils that have shut me out from Thy beauty and a light that will lead unto the ocean of Thy Presence.

As is often the case with Baha'i writings we come across the metaphor of the veil. Or should we say hijab? I'm not really sure. I don't know the Arabic. But if my inclinations are right, and I think they are, Baha'u'llah is refering to God in the feminine using the image of a veiled beautiful woman, who in the event of spiritual reunion is unveiled before the eyes of the seeker.

So what are the veils that shut us out from God's beauty?

Typical answers are such things as arrogance, greed, lust, or attachments to knowledge or leadership. It wouldn't exactly be controversial to sum up all of these things under that umbrella concept of "self." But what is self? If I had to give a hasty answer (and I will) I would say that it's not the body, or the basic biological and psychological capacity to utter the word "I" and recognize mentally that this has happened. Rather, the self is the constellation of habits, assumptions, knowledge, and desires that define what it is to be oneself. It isn't just something to be possessed by an I. It is the I itself as it takes shape in a field of social relations. Often when we speak of veils that hold us back from God, we're not just talking about things at a distance from ourselves. We're talking about things that we cannot imagine living without. This is because they are in fact who we are. If I have been raised to be greedy from before I even knew my own name then it is impossible for me to overcome greed without in fact overcoming my own self. When would I have been otherwise? For me to not be greedy would in a way to not be me. In fact that's what all of my friends would say. "You're a new cat, Mr. Cat." And they would be precisely right.

This is what makes the petition to burn away the veils so potentially radical. It is possible that the fullfillment of this petition would involve a certain sort of death. One's body and mind would remain intact, but one's spirit would be transformed beyond beyond recognition. From the perspective of one's former mindset, such a transformation would appear as a loss of oneself, maybe even a descent into madness. For so often, what is sanity in the eyes of the world is madness in the eyes of God, and what is sanity in the eyes of God is madness in the eyes of the world.

Such a radical event may not be what God has in mind for everyone (What if he did?) but at the very least this prayer asks God for a change of oneself in which the identity of that self might be undermined. We cannot expect God to always come to us. We must go to him. Therefore, we must leave the comfort zone of our present self and encounter God outside, whether we choose to or not. Only then can we come into new life.

in other words:
Resurrection is only possible as the flipside of crucifixion.