Mr. Cat

"Our church is in our hearts and we take it wherever we go."

2010-05-17T09:43:00.008-07:00

When I was first introduced to the Baha'i Faith, the Baha'is I knew were conducting a devotional gathering at a nearby home. The first time I gathered with the Baha'is to pray I was struck by the simplicity and focus of their approach to communal prayer. There were no rituals. Socialization waited until after prayers were done. Participants would recite prayers individually as they felt inspired. They would sing songs even if nobody else knew the words to sing with them. The devotional portion of the gathering focused entirely on prayer and meditation. And because it didn't follow a pre-established program, individuals would participate to the extent that they felt inspired. As a Catholic re-engaging with my faith tradition I found that approach to worship deeply moving. I didn't feel in any way pressured. I didn't feel like a sheep lost in my own flock. Instead, I felt united with those around me in a common purpose of worshipping our creator.

Furthermore, the conditions required for such a gathering are easy to find. All that is needed are souls desiring to commune with God and a time and place to meet together. Certainly, a few candles and some peace and quiet are helpful. But they are by no means necessary. Often when Baha'is introduce the Baha'i Faith to someone they are asked "where is your church?" This can often be a difficult question. Many communities have Baha'is centers. But the function they perform in a Baha'i community is very different than a church building in a Christian community. The best response to this question I've heard is that, "Our church is in our hearts and we take it wherever we go." I think this reply best captures the Baha'i approach to communal worship and community building. Baha'is don't wish to take people out of their neighborhoods to commune with their creator. The aim is to establish a minimal differene between the places we live and the places we worship. Prayer can be performed in a living room, under a tree, in a car, a break room, anywhere. The aim is to infuse a devotional character into day-to-day life. This is the spiritual transformation that always goes hand in hand with the social transformation aimed at in Baha'i efforts toward community building.

The holiness of devotional gatherings comes through the human soul and not from where the participants gather. Where they gather becomes holy through the act of worship performed there. In the front of most Baha'i prayer books there are words of Baha'u'llah that state this well.

Blessed is the spot, and the house,
and the place, and the city,
and the heart, and the mountain,
and the refuge, and the cave,
and the valley, and the land,
and the sea, and the island,
and the meadow where mention
of God hath been made,
and His praise glorified.

The Most Exalted Pen and its Meaning in the Tablet of Ridvan

2008-12-04T11:10:00.002-07:00

Selection XIV in Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, from the Tablet of Ridvan, will suffice for the purposes of this inquiry. It's opening is as follows.

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. (GWB XIV)

Before going any further a few initial observations can be made. This is an announcement
of The Divine Springtime, a period generally accepted as the spiritual regeneration that follows the arrival of a new Manifestation of God. The passage is addressed to a pen, the Most Exalted Pen, Qalam Al-A'la, an expression which is also translated as the Pen of the Most Exalted. The pen is instructed to do three things: 1) to bestir itself, 2) magnify, before the entire creation, the name of God, and 3) celebrate His praise. The effect of these tasks is that all created things may be regenerated and made new. The passage ends at a similar place as it begins. Spring has arrived. In response the Most Exalted Pen is instructed to take action such that the revitalization proper to that season is realized. In the first instance, springtime is an external condition which arrives upon the Pen. But by the second instance it is an event the realization of which it assists. The first condition under which this is possible is that the Pen bestirs itself. The process does not advance automatically. The Pen must be urged on to make itself arise for the accomplishment of the tasks ahead.

Within the text, the addressee is clearly stated, the Most Exalted Pen. At the surface of the text, no reader, presumably, is ever addressed by this text. The only addressee, it seems, is the reed, the dead vegetable matter by which the original manuscript was produced by Baha'u'llah or His amanuensis. One might be led to read this is as a mere spectator, not immediately involved except as a detached observer. In that case it would be a statement of Baha'u'llah on the station of the Word of God. But there is more to the matter than that. The Pen has been commanded to bestir itself. Dead vegetable matter cannot bestir itself. This is a long established conclusion within biology. The only way that it can be moved is if someone or something moves it, a movement over which the Pen has no control. But in the passages that follow, the Pen and it's Lord discuss the reasons for the silence of the former. A few quotes will suffice.

Methinks that thou hast halted and movest not upon My Tablet...

Preferrest thou to tarry when the breeze announcing the Day of God hath already breathed over thee, or art thou of them that are shut out as by a veil from Him?..

No veil whatever have I allowed, O Lord of all names and Creator of the heavens, to shut me from the recognition of the glories of Thy Day—the Day which is the lamp of guidance unto the whole world, and the sign of the Ancient of Days unto all them that dwell therein. My silence is by reason of the veils that have blinded Thy creatures’ eyes to Thee, and my muteness is because of the impediments that have hindered Thy people from recognizing Thy truth...

Arise, and proclaim unto the entire creation the tidings that He Who is the All-Merciful hath directed His steps towards the Ridván and entered it. ...

In short, the Pen has received instructions to magnify the name of God, and celebrate His praise before all people but the desired result has not come about. The discussion is on whether this is due to the Pen's hesitation and unwillingness or purely to the spiritual blindness of the people. It goes without saying that more is at stake in the full selection than the production of manuscripts, and that one of its primary aims is the instruction of the Baha'is in teaching the faith. This is evident to any of its readers who has ever confronted the practical and spiritual issues that arise when the community sets out to bring the faith to the world. So in some way, it is any rank-and-file Baha'i who is addressed as the Most Exalted Pen.

One consequence that immediately follows is that such a person is conceived as an instrument of God, a lesser being by which God commences a different sort of writing, the form one hears in the words: Write down, then, for me the good of this world and of the world to come (PMB CXXVIII) This is the writing associated with a royal edict. It is an indication of power and authority, in this case over the tablet of the world. Say: O people! How can a fleeting fancy compare with the Self-Subsisting, and how can the Creator be likened unto His creatures, who are but as the script of His Pen? (GWB XCIII) The action of such a person is brought under the command of God; He or she becomes the means by which God writes out the Divine Springtime. But one's freedom remains intact. The dialogue, one might even call it a consultation, between the Pen and its Lord presupposes a freedom of decision in the former on how to advance a chosen course of action.

There are two conflicting directions in which this selection leads the reader. One is in the decisive unequal relation of an instrument and its user. In this case the will and thought of one is all that makes a difference. The other is a more equal relation, in which the Lord urges the pen on in a course of action. Execution of the task at hand is not automatic, as in the use of an inanimate pen. Faithfulness to the text requires that the reader not reduce one direction into the other, erasing either the instrumentality of the pen or its freedom. Baha'u'llah presents both to the reader. The truth is in the tension of these two moments, not their resolution.

The matter is not explored theoretically in the algebra of theological discourse but is dramatized in the enactment of its reality, the struggle of the act of teaching. That the pen, in all its absurdity, is the image Baha'u'llah chooses suggests that there are very few images, perhaps none, that can even adequately convey the spiritual event in question. That the freely willed action of one can be the commanding action of another is exceedingly difficult to describe and advance within any metaphor. This is by no means an indication of its error. The mere proposal of a metaphor, however coherent, is no indication of an argument's rigor; So neither is an incapacity to propose an adequate metaphor any indication of error. What is depicted in this selection makes no sense. But this is an instance in which truth breaks away from the shadows of mere sense and its articulation in a body of acquired knowledge. The act of teaching is the enactment of this truth.

Oppression and its Meaning for Baha'u'llah

2008-12-03T16:36:00.003-07:00

The coming of the end and the opening of the new comes about as a reversal of the oppression existing at the time. This is the most enduring feature of this ancient expectation and is for this reason a fundamental context within which to examine the Bab and Baha'u'llah's fulfillment of millenial hope. By examining what Baha'u'llah means by oppression, a Baha'i perspective on justice comes into view. What will become clear is that this pairing is related, fundamentally, to the diffusion, recognition, and application of divine guidance.

Innumerable passages from the world's scriptures anticipate that moment. For the purposes of brevity two will be cited. The first is a saying of Muhammad well known all Shias eagerly anticipating at the time of the Bab the end-times and the arrival of the Qa'im. He [the Qa'im] will then make the earth abound with peace and justice as it will have been fraught before him with persecution and oppression. The second is the passage from the Gospel of Mathew upon which Baha'u'llah comments at length in the Kitab-i-Iqan:

Immediately after the oppression of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken... And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Mt 24.29-30)

Paragraphs 28-31 in contemporary printings of the Kitab-i-Iqan mark out Baha'u'llah's discussion of the above verse. After describing various defining features and examples thereof, Baha'u'llah poses the rhetorical question:

What "oppression" is greater than that which hath been recounted. 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? (KI 29)

There is justice in honoring one response a critic might offer to Baha'u'llah's question: genocide, war, famine, epidemic, racism, sexism, discrimination of any kind. These oppressions are far more grievous that that a person is deprived of spiritual truth. Such pain is irrelevant alongside the excruciating burden of material carnage. Fair enough. Such a critic has a strong sense of the challenges facing humanity today. But the focus on specific crimes is perhaps too narrow to encompass the model presented by Baha'u'llah. In the Kitab-i-Aqdas He writes: They whom God hath endued with insight will readily recognize that the precepts laid down by God constitute the highest means for the maintenance of order in the world and the security of its peoples. (K2) Spiritual prosperity contains within it its material counterpart. By attaining to God's most recent guidance, a soul, and the world more broadly, can make use of the highest means by which to address the horrors recounted above. to return to the Kitab-i-Iqan, one can detect the social consequences of this oppression in Baha'u'llah's introduction to the section on oppression, an unyielding condemnation of the clergy of His day.

Such a condition as this is witnessed in this day when the reins of every community have fallen into the grasp of foolish leaders, who lead after their own whims and desire.

[I]n idle fancy they have found the door that leadeth to earthly riches...

[A] number of voracious beasts have gathered and preyed upon the carrion of the souls of men. (KI 28)

By opposing oppression to the recognition of the newly revealed Word of God, one is correct in observing that, in a narrow sense, the Qa'im is not the one who fills the earth with peace and justice. After all, one of the central problems addressed in the Kitab-i-Iqan is that the Qa'im had come, was martyred, and still only a few had followed after Him. If anybody carries out the prophesied task, it is the believers who accept the new revelation following His death. And this is exactly where the material concrete dimensions of justice come into view. The Qa'im initiates a process, within which He sets the course of action by means of His writings, a process that includes and is advanced by the masses of human believers. Baha'u'llah takes up the same theme later in the Kitab-i-Iqan when He discusses the sovereignty of the Manifestation of God and that it is established only to a limited extent during His own lifetime. (KI 114-117)

One could say that Baha'u'llah dodges the real question: How could the Bab be the Qa'im if he didn't fulfill the prophecy? Fair enough. But Baha'u'llah's move is not a dodge so much as it is a deferral, a deferral to human action that is pivotal to the theological framework He sets out in the Kitab-i-Iqan. Baha'u'llah extends the conditions under which the Qa'im takes action to include the mobilization of His followers in His absence. In this world, the Qa'im is but one man. Barring a catastrophic world-miracle, He is in need of assistants to carry out such a dramatic transformation. God in His essence may be without partner. But insofar as He is made manifest with the form of an ordinary human being, the Qa'im is not.

This human assistance is born out in both Christian and Shia Islamic prophecy. In the gospels of Mathew and Mark Jesus describes His return as being accompanied by angels. And he [the Son of Man] will send his angels with a loud trumpet to gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Furthermore it is understood that the Qa'im will lead armies across the earth in the execution of His mission. After all, He is the Imam Al-Zaman, Leader of the Age. One can only be a leader if there are those, however few at first, who are led. Worth noting is that oppression of those days is delayed beyond the passing of the Manifestation.

By [oppression] is meant that when the Daystar of Truth hath set, and the mirrors that reflect His light have departed, mankind will become afflicted with "oppression" and hardship, not knowing whither to turn for guidance. (KI 30)

Oppression is held back not just by the Manifestation of God but also by the mirrors that reflect His light. Just as in His discussion of sovereignty later on, the influence, in these words the light of the Manifestation, is extended beyond His limited existence by the aid of a supplement, an assistant, a soul that faithfully lives by the teachings of God. The mirror does not give off its own image. It extends that of another. It takes part in the Appearence, the Mazhar of God (Mazhar usually being translated as Manifestation). In this sense there is justice in including such mirrors within the use of the word "He" in the saying of Muhammad: He will then make the earth abound with peace and justice as it will have been fraught before Him with persecution and oppression. Qa'im (He who ariseth) refers primarily to the Manifestation of God but extends to, and is extended by those who arise to serve his His Cause.

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The oppression of the Manifestation of God is comprised not so much of offenses against His person, but of a whole variety of deeds by which humanity is severed from the guidance of His teachings. Justice is the integrity of this connection. When interrrupted it has consequences on both material and spiritual prosperity. Baha'u'llah's initial banishment to Akka was oppressive because lines of communication with Iran were broken; And what accounts did get through contained slanders and news of misbehavior that confused and distracted the Baha'is from the world embracing aims of the faith. The scheming of covenant-breakers and external enemies, the criminal deeds of Baha'is in Akka all produced the same result; attention was drawn away from substantial matters of global significance towards petty controversies. The oppressors were those who squandered, for all humanity, the precious opportunity of a living Manifestation of God. Baha'u'llah was impaired in His ability to raise up a community capable of carrying His mission forward following His death. The triumphs that mark that age are evident; But history will never know to what heights the Baha'is, and with them the whole world, could have soared had the twin Manifestations not been chained up by such small minds.

To Recognize God

2008-10-12T21:08:00.003-07:00

And as for 'irfan, what can it mean? How does Baha'u'llah use this word?

Undoubtedly, one of the few concepts around which the entirety of the Baha'i faith could be said to revolve is 'irfan, typically tranlated as true understanding, recognition, knowledge (of which all could be addended with "of God") It names the point at which a soul enters into a relation of truth with God's manifestation, and initiates a life of service unto Him. How this comes about, when, and what outward signs it produces are currently some of the most fruitful and engaging theological discussions happening at this time within the Baha'i community; for at its heart is an inquiry as to what exactly makes somebody a Baha'i. Without directly engaging these specific discussions (I'd rather defer to "learning in action" taking place all over the world.) I'd like to capture in writing a brief impression left by the Baha'i writings on the meaning of 'irfan: true understanding, the recognition of the Manifestation of God.

It seems 'irfan is a gratification of spiritual sense, analagous to that of the five bodily senses. The parallelism of soul and body, the very invocation of the latter as metaphor, is exactly that which sets them apart, dividing bodily gratification from spiritual gratification. In the writings the turning of a soul towards its lord is indicated by means of a long series of sensual images: the beauty of the beloved, the light of dawn, the warmth of the fire, the scent of the true Joseph's garment. The soul is caught up in the pleasure of an other. These are not moments in which the soul labors for the sake of something else. They are not means towards another end. They are presented as experiences desirable for their own sake. 'Irfan is simple gratification. Each image Baha'u'llah invokes expresses in its own way a founding motivation, a pleasure irreducible to and underivable for any impetus besides itself.

In so many words, 'irfan is what comes first. This priority, this firstness, is the mark of God's sovereignty on the recognizing soul, its commissioning and setting-apart for a life distinguished by service to the object of its desire. In addition, it is the initiation of a relation of truth with the object. Here, at the risk of entrapping the new Beloved within one's own conceptions, the soul begins to learn the other and learn from the other.

Your Cat,
Mirza Qasim Al-Qatt

"Being Human" in the Day of God

2008-05-03T10:25:00.007-07:00

In numerous places, the central figures of the Baha'i faith speak of Baha'u'llah's arrival as the sign of humanity's coming of age. Millennia of practice in the revealed religions combined with greater contact between the world's peoples have uniquely qualified this juncture in history for securing the unity and prosperity of all humanity. This maturity is in some sense already achieved with the coming of Baha'u'llah. But to a large extent it is waiting to be seized. For this reason, a long struggle is required. The following passage charts out the connection between the nobility of the human form and the realization of the new era, the Day of God.

The All-Merciful hath conferred upon man the faculty of vision, and endowed him with the power of hearing. Some have described him as the “lesser world,” when, in reality, he should be regarded as the “greater world.” The potentialities inherent in the station of man, the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality, must all be manifested in this promised Day of God. (GWB CLXII)

Baha'u'llah's designation of humanity as a greater rather than lesser world expresses a basic optimism in human nature. Human beings no doubt are worthy of both praise and rebuke. But its is humanity's power towards good, his divinely bestowed nobility that makes the difference for Baha'u'llah. So in His writings "being human" is not synonymous with lowliness. Exaltation is the rule and not the exception. This is seen whenever the Baha'i writings speak of the human form in general as distinct from particular human actions.

Throughout the Baha'i writings humanity is understood as a high ranking occupant within a cosmic hierarchy of beings. God is at the top, while bare matter is at the bottom. Humanity stands imbetween God and the Animal. Each level of the hierarchy represents a particular quality. Beings exhibit those qualities represented by their level and all levels below them. Abdu'l Baha spoke frequently of this arrangement in His travels through the United States and Europe. Its language is immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with his manner of discussion. At the bottom of the hierarchy is bare matter, the Mineral. Immediately above it is the Vegetable, which in addition to bare matter is also endowed with the power of growth. The Animal in turn possesses the power of sense perception. Finally, the Human consummates and recapitulates these lower levels in the possession of an intellect. For this reason, Abdu'l Baha declares that, [t]he most noble and praiseworthy accomplishment of man therefore is scientific knowledge and attainment. (Foundations of World Unity 48-49) Science then is the expression of humanity's preeminence over lower forms of creation.

Through the possession of an intellect humanity humanity is endowed with what Abdu'l Baha regards as the most praiseworthy power of man, the ability to struggle back against the natural world. He goes on,

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, can modify, change and control nature according to his own wishes and uses. Science, so to speak, is the “breaker” of the laws of nature. (49)

Trans-oceanic sailing, airplanes, submarines, and electric light are all offered as examples of "law-breaking." Humanity is a creature empowered in a wide variety of ways to assert his will to life over and against the natural world. To a large extent He is a creature who by means of himself is empowered to live for himself. Through the bestowal of an intellect humanity can attain to prosperity in this world as well as in the next. That salvation as well comes as a self-salvation is pivotal in understanding the role of human nature in the Day of God. Through the mobilization of powers bestowed innately on the human form the Manifestation of God expresses his dominion over humanity through the ascendency and influence of human servants. Thus the passage: 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. (GWB CXXXII)

In one particularly revealing passage Baha'u'llah rank orders God's gifts to humanity. The first is understanding, the purpose of which is to know and recognize the one true God. (GWB XCV) It furthermore empowers humanity to discern the truth in all things, leadeth him to that which is right, and helpeth him to discover the secrets of creation. Below this is vision and below it the other senses. However, the picture is incomplete if one were to suppose that humanity is his own greatest gift. Baha'u'llah trumps His earlier statements by explaining that Divine Revelation is preeminent above these earlier gifts. He goes on to state that [e]very bounty conferred by the Creator upon man, be it material or spiritual, is subservient unto this. Along the same lines He states in another writing: Neither the candle nor the lamp can be lighted through their own unaided efforts, nor can it ever be possible for the mirror to free itself from its dross. (GWB XXVII) In both passages Divine Revelation is the force activating those energies latent within the human form.

In an almost paradoxical twist Baha'u'llah elsewhere affirms the pivotal role of free choice and human volition in activating these latent energies. Unto each one hath been prescribed a pre-ordained measure, as decreed in God’s mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth. (GWB LXXVII) In the same passage Baha'ullah goes on to state that the foreknowledge of God does not cause human behavior, that it is instead the mere beholding of freely willed acts.

The juxtaposition of humanity's simultaneous dependence on both Divine Revelation and free will to set in motion these latent energies frames effectively the historical destiny the Baha'i writings ascribe to humanity. Though this age has been assigned as the dawning of the Day of God, humanity is not dragged along as a spectator. Action is required. Choices must be made. New beginnings must be called into being.

Number and Manifestation

2008-04-30T17:43:00.005-07:00

The relation between the Manifestations' divine and human natures becomes most perplexing when Baha'u'llah discusses how they fit, or rather don't fit, into the cosmic hierarchy. By denying a clear position within the cosmic hierarchy, Baha'u'llah exposes a certain ineffability to the Manifestation with regard to number. In view is not just the transcendent Essence of God, but His Manifestation in this world, the point of mediation between the Creator and creation. Worth remembering are Baha'u'llah's words: O children of the divine and invisible Essence! Ye shall be hindered from loving Me and souls shall be perturbed as they make mention of Me. For minds cannot grasp Me nor hearts contain Me. (AHW 66)

First, the implications of God's transcendent unity must be made clear. To grasp or contain is to form a bounded unity. As a hand closes around something it restricts its movement within a limited space. It sets an interior apart from an exterior and secures their clear separation. This is the movement of minds and hearts that fails when performed on God. To think of God as an interior thing with a non-Divine exterior is to conceive of Him as one would a body, inasmuch as it is through this interior/exterior distinction that all "bodies" become present in perception. The failure of the grasp is due to the error of conceiving God and bodies horizontally, as comparable beings on a common plane. Under such an assumption God's unity would come about by drawing a distinction between God and not-God. It is a unity that at once requires a multiplicity, a duality with not-God. Consider then these words:

He is a true believer in Divine unity who, far from confusing duality with oneness, refuseth to allow any notion of multiplicity to becloud his conception of the singleness of God, who will regard the Divine Being as One Who, by His very nature, transcendeth the limitations of numbers. (Gleanings LXXXIV)

It should not be concluded though, that God's unity is only possible once any idea of not-God is abolished, thus making all things God. Such a conclusion would wrongly assume that God and any ideas composed about Him perfectly correspond to each other, that their inner orders are interchangable. The alternative, indeed the only one, is to think of God within a provisional but impossible framework for which no possible replacement is conceivable. This is that ideas about God take place within multiplicity but refer to that which is outside this world of distinction, the place of placelessness, the outside of outsideness. With this in mind the unity of God can be thought of as a total absence of distinction, distinguishing it from this world of distinguishability. It might be said that God is invisible not so much because we are blind to Him, but because nothing can be seen in pure light or pure darkness. The contrast between light and shadow is needed to make out, grasp, and contain distinguishable forms. Without contrast it is utterly concealed. Such is the unity of God, a purity which no mind can grasp nor heart contain.

One such provisional but impossible framework is to think of God as occupying a station, a proper place within a hierarchy of the cosmos, that situates Him in relation to other things, each with their own station. Humanity, animals, plants, and minerals can then be thought alongside God within a united and coherent order. Everything within the hierarchy is understandable inasmuch as they can be confined to a particular station. This confinement though is of course the same attempt at grasping and containing encountered in the Hidden Words.

Baha'u'llah features the hierarchical model in His writings. But in a way He undermines it by including within it its very impossibility. He does this by assigning two stations to each of the Manifestations of God, two stations which he at no point condenses into one. This means that the Manifestation of God is not a station. Instead it is the simultaneous occupation of two. The first is the station of essential unity and pertains to that of God made manifest in each of them. From this perspective the Manifestation is sovereign. The other is the station of distinction and pertains to the human aspect of each one. From this perspective they are each the servants of God. (KI 191) The double station of the Manifestation appears as an anomaly, a logical impossibility within the hierarchical model that troubles the entire theological edifice. One must be either here or there. Both cannot be the case simultaneously. But if that is their appearance, their manifestation, then the hierarchical model cannot give an account of the event for which it is deployed to make understandable. In its grasping and containing, the event in question slips through its fingers and is made manifest as a double station. So the double station must be understood as the failure of the grasp rather than its fruit. It is a statement of ineffability and not of systematic structure.

With that in mind, the task of thinking the Manifestation of God must consider the matter that brought about the double station, the question of the Manifestation's number. By exceeding classification within a single station the Manifestation exceeds being grasped as one. Furthermore, the Manifestation exceeds being grasped as the sum of two terms, which itself is a sort of unity. Furthermore, the first term in the equation is God, Who transcendeth the limitations of numbers. One station pertains to the transcendent unity of God. While the other pertains to the plurality of humans who have been the thrones and messengers of that unity. Within each Manifestation there is a tension and overarching embrace between God's transcendent unity and the corporeal nature of each human, which within itself is marked by plurality. Bounded off from other creatures on one end, while open to God on the other, the double station requires the Manifestation to be thought as neither singular nor plural. The "number" of the Manifestation must be distinguished from "numbers." As the form of the grasp, the number one is out of the question. And with it goes any other number inasmuch as it is derived from the addition(s) of one onto itself.

the number of the Manifestation could possibly be left alone as a theological obscurity like the Trinity or the Immaculate Conception were it not for the implications it has on the relationship between the Manifestations of God and the rank and file of the communities they represent. This is because the relation between God and the Manifestation is analogous to the relation between the latter and His believers. Both use the imagery of light in a mirror. The two relations reflect in each other the theme of reflection. Consider this passage of Baha'u'llah.

Every one of them is a mirror of God, reflecting naught else but His Self, His Beauty, His Might and Glory, if ye will understand. All else besides them are to be regarded as mirrors capable of reflecting the glory of these Manifestations Who are themselves the Primary Mirrors of the Divine Being, if ye be not devoid of understanding. (Gleanings XXX)

Both relationships are understood in terms of the reflection of light from another. So it is understandable then that the same perplexities encountered between God and the Manifestation should be reflected in the analogous relationship. If it could be said that the former relationship primarily concerns the Revelation of the Word of God then the latter relationship primarily concerns the believer's action commissioned by that Word. The relation between the designations divine and human should next be considered as it pertains to this action.

Your Cat

Transcendence and Manifestation

2008-04-17T09:18:00.004-07:00

Any examination of salvific action, of any sort of interpenetration of divine and human action, must proceed from its theological basis in divine transcendence. This is the logical order expressed in the opening paragraphs of the second part of the Kitab-i-Iqan, the most well-known, concise, and perhaps most comprehensive explanation Baha'u'llah offers of these themes. It is these passages that provide an effective starting point for pursuing salvific action throughout Baha'ullah's writings, from Baghdad to Bahji.

Baha'u'llah argues that God in His essence is absolutely different from His creatures. Corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress are human forms that do not apply to Him. He standeth exalted beyond all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. All creation and its accompanying order has come into being through His Primal Will. Because He is the one who decides upon the form and content of the law He is not bound by it. But knowledge is only possible where such law is binding. For this reason, God is invisible to His creatures as their creator even though He is the one that makes their vision possible. The unreciprocality of this arrangement is well stated in the Quranic verse Baha'u'llah quotes, no vision taketh in Him, but He taketh in all vision. He is the Subtle the All Perceiving. (6.103) The transcendence of God rules out any sort of direct one-to-one encounter between the Creator and creation at the Day of Judgment. (K104 p.90)

The manifestation of Divine Sovereignty must in some way be from creation-to-creation so as to remain visible and knowable, but at the same time remain in the necessary downward motion of Creator-to-creation. Baha'u'llah lays out His doctrine of the Manifestation of God in the tension between these two dynamics. There must then be a mediator who represents both the Creator and creation. Baha'u'llah writes,

The door of the Ancient of Days being thus closed in the face of all beings, the Source of infinite grace...hath caused those luminous Gems of Holiness 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. (KI106 p.91)

The divinely ordained Founders of Religion are made to stand at the threshold of the visible and the invisible so as to mediate between God and other humans. They are the mouthpiece of God in human history and the pivots on which turns His manifest sovereignty. Baha'u'llah uses the metaphor of a mirror reflecting the light of the sun to explain the mediating role played by such souls. The central concept undergirding this doctrine is Baha'u'llah's understanding of the names and attributes of God.

Within the metaphor the essences of God and the human correspond respectively to sun and the mirror. The names and attributes of God correspond to the light that originates in the former and is reflected in the latter. All knowledge, dominion, and love come from God, the unknowable essence. But they can be made manifest in this world making them the content of manifestation and the bridge that crosses the otherwise unbridgeable void between the Creator and creation. This is the model Baha'u'llah adopts for explaining how a transcendent god manifests His will within His creation.

Baha'u'llah outlines three levels at which the names and attributes of God are made manifest. The first of which is all things. He writes, within every atom are enchrined the signs that bear eloquent testimony to the revelation of that most great Light. Methinks but for the potency of that revelation, no being could ever exist. (KI107 p.92) The second of which is humanity, who not only manifests the names and attributes to a supreme degree but is also capable of manifesting all of them. For in him are potentially revealed all the attributes and names of God...All these names and attributes are applicable to him. Baha'u'llah supports these assertions using a number of Quranic verses and Islamic traditions, including the saying He hath known God who hath known himself. After repeating the capacities of all things and humanity, He explains a third and final level, the Manifestations of the Sun of Truth. (KI109 p.94-95) Whereas all names and attributes are potentially revealed in man, they are actually revealed in the Manifestations. Furthermore, all else besides these Manifestations live by they operation of their Will, and move, and have their being through the outpourings of their grace, all of this in the noble form of the human temple. So pervasive a power and so universal an influence is all potentially revealed in the spiritual form given to all humanity by God.

Your Cat

an Interlude

2008-04-17T08:29:00.004-07:00

The Bab witnessed entry of the masses into His movement even without the wide dissemination of His writings. Because of this, those entering the movement lacked a sense of the future. For they had little to no framework by which to determine its shape. The Babi possessed only a tradition based on promise, and even at that, a suspended tradition of an uncertain destiny. Centuries of waiting had prepared people for little more than more waiting. So the promise's very fulfillment brought about the tradition's transfiguration beyond recognition. The task of the Babi was to walk by the light of a darkened tradition towards a light still below the horizon.

Your Cat

a Theory on the Indiscernability between Divine and Human Action

2008-04-14T10:47:00.012-07:00

One key aim of the Kitab-i-Iqan is to diminish to an extent the uniqueness of the end-times by positioning it as the coming of a divine Revelation resembling those of the past. Because the physical creation is not destroyed, any prophecies of divine justice in those days must then be projected across the surface of human history yet to come. The long-awaited millenium, the period of divine justice following the end-times would then arrive without the cosmic annhilation expected by most. But by projecting divine justice across an earthly future, Baha'u'llah's framework raises questions as to who is to be enacting this salvation. At no time did Baha'u'llah ever perform a sort of world-miracle by which all society is instantly transformed into a world of justice. This appears to leave humanity the task of accomplishing such justice. That Baha'u'llah's writings give such voluminous instruction on the establishment of a global civilization backs this up. But all along He continues to ascibe its arrival to divine action.

Curiosity demands that a way be found to understand the relationship between human and divine action in the plan for salvation. Mutual exclusion is unsatisfactory. It's not enough to say it's one or the other. What follows is a theory of salvific action, the will towards salvation, that charts out one way that spiritual and material prosperity is accomplished in this world.

Salvation in this world by the Baha'i understanding cannot be attributed exclusively to either divine or human action. Neither should it be regarded as the sum of these two components. Rather, one form of its manifestation is as the product of an ineffable power that both embraces and exceeds the designations "divine" and "human." It embraces inasmuch as neither God or humanity take on an entirely passive instrumental role, subsuming one into the other. Both retain their distinctive agency. And it exceeds inasmuch as neither designation can provide by itself an exhaustative account of the action in question. If this form of salvation is always both divine and human, but never one or the other, then one is led to speak of some sort of unified reality, however ineffable, distinct from the two-ness of the previous formulation, however real that two-ness might be. An insistance on the unconditional applicability of numbers to this ineffable power is an impediment to its understanding. This has enormous consequences for how to think the spiritual dimensions of social action in a Baha'i context.

4) Preliminary Thoughts on Human Nobility

2008-03-29T23:35:00.002-07:00

Everyday all around the world students in Baha’i children’s classes learn about unity by standing side by side with another person, tying their inside ankles together and walking around as if they shared three legs between the two of them. At first they walk together only awkwardly. The two feet that make up the middle foot brush past each other in opposite directions. One kid tries to go too fast and falls down. The other is jerked forward by the momentum of the fall. After some giggling they figure out that they need to coordinate their movements if they are going to walk together. Once on the same page they advance in one forward motion. The rag that binds their ankles together no longer jerks and pulls. It rests comfortably on the children’s ankles. For they have become as one body, harmoniously directed by two distinct minds. One way that Baha’u’llah explains spiritual knowledge follows the same pattern.

With regard to the saying, He hath known God who hath known himself, Baha’u’llah has written,

I swear by God, O esteemed and honoured friend! Shouldst thou ponder these words in thine heart, thou wilt of a certainty find the doors of divine wisdom and infinite knowledge flung open before thy face. (KI 108 pp.93-94)

Hmmmm……sounds like a dare.

Perhaps the saying could be rephrased: If one has self-knowledge then he has attained as well to the knowledge of God. Knowledge of oneself is a condition that once met results in knowledge of God. Couple that then with the Qur’anic verse Baha’u’llah quotes immediately before the above saying. And be ye not like those who forget God, and whom He hath therefore caused to forget their own selves. (59.19) In this verse forgetfulness of God results in forgetfulness of self. Or to rephrase it in the positive: remembrance of God makes possible the remembrance (knowledge) of one’s own self. In both of these, a person’s knowledge of oneself and of God are bound together. Though Baha’u’llah is always quick to point out the transcendence of God above His creatures, he is not deterred from conveying that in some way the knowledge of both are united. As one rises, so does the other. As one falls, the other quickly follows. God and humanity retain their distinctive conditions. But knowledge of each depends on the other. Knowledge of self and of God are not mutually exclusive realities. They are not opposing ends of a spectrum. Instead, spiritual knowledge is a heterogeneous condition embracing both Creator and creation, uniting the two, but retaining the distinctiveness inherent to each. This too is a lesson in unity.

________________

Every prophecy of the end-times shares in common the arrival of a sovereign lord who establishes God’s order by shattering to some extent the world’s order. For it is God’s re-appropriation of what is properly His. So no explanation of end-times prophecy as comprehensive as Baha'u'llah's could be complete without giving a proper account of God’s sovereignty, how it is established at the time of the end, and by implication, how it in some way had been lost. There is good sense then that Baha’u’llah begins the second part of the Kitab-i-Iqan with an explanation of the sovereignty that God exercises in each of his Manifestations, among whom is the Qa’im. He is quick to point out to the reader that each of these figures becomes manifest by means of a human form. That the human condition is essential to understanding God’s sovereignty is born out by the effort Baha’u’llah makes to convey it's nobility while still in the process of explaining His doctrine of the Manifestation of God. These two ideas are tied together very closely....perhaps at the ankles.

to be continued,
Your Cat

3) on Welding, that from the Word springs Unity

2008-03-28T00:43:00.002-07:00

In the transition from one religious arrangement to another each person walks the path of consternation individually. This is why the opening passage of the book No man shall attain... is written in the singular rather than the plural. Because the Word of God is empowered to tear apart the social fabric, the basic unit of divine judgment is progressively individuated. But the Kitab-i-Iqan is by no means an unconditional affirmation of individualism or a sacralization of divisions. The same Word of God that tears sons from their fathers, students from their teachers also binds believers into a new unity, a new community. After explaining the divisive power of the Word of God Baha'u'llah directs the reader towards its goal. Of Muhammad He writes,

On the other hand, consider the welding power of His Word. Observe, how those in whose midst the Satan of self had for years sown the seeds of malice and hate became so fused and blended through their allegiance to this wondrous and transcendent Revelation that it seemed as if they had sprung from the same loins. Such is the binding force of the Word of God, which uniteth the hearts of them that have renounced all else but Him, who have believed in His signs, and quaffed from the Hand of glory the Kawthar of God’s holy grace. (KI 118 pp. 103)

By noting the forging of a new community as a result of Muhammad's revelation, Baha'u'llah foreshadows His later teachings on global civilization and the power of His own Word to bring it about. With the privilege of our 20/20 hindsight the imprint of Baha'u'llah's Akka writings is unmistakable. He continues,

Furthermore, how numerous are those peoples of divers beliefs, of conflicting creeds, and opposing temperaments, who, through the reviving fragrance of the Divine springtime, breathing from the Riḍván of God, have been arrayed with the new robe of divine Unity, and have drunk from the cup of His singleness! (KI 118 pp. 103)

At this point Baha'u'llah has a fully-fledged account of the transition from one religious arrangement to another. The Word of God both tears down and builds up the heavens and the earth, enacting an event that cuts through and rejuvenates the spiritual body at both individual and collective levels.

Your Cat

2) on Consternation, that there must be Division

2008-03-27T23:08:00.005-07:00

One of Baha'u'llah's key aims in the Kitab-i-Iqan is to diminish (to an extent) the uniqueness of the Qa'im's exercise of divine sovereignty. He writes, This sovereignty hath not been solely and exclusively attributed to the Qa'im. Nay, rather the attribute of sovereignty and all other names and attributes of God have been and will ever be vouchsafed unto all the Manifestations of God. (KI 113 pp.98) The effect of this claim is to transform the Qa'im in the minds of His readers into a figure after whom there is a future, who is an initiator as well as a destroyer, and whose mission would bear resemblance to those of figures who have come before. Baha'u'llah takes Muhammad as an example.

Rather than just positioning the Day of Judgment in the future Baha'u'llah argues that the coming of Muhammad, a moment in the past was a Day of Judgment. The defining event of such a Day is the demarcation between the righteous and the wicked, which according to a particular tradition referenced by Baha'u'llah was accomplished through the utterance of one verse. Some accepted and received the spiritual life that comes from faith. The rest rejected the word of God and were thus abandoned to the death of unbelief. (KI 118 pp. 102)

Notable in Baha'u'llah's interpretation is the location of judgment on the aforementioned Day. God does not pronounce a verdict upon passive defendants in His cosmic courtroom. Instead, He sets up a situation by means of His Word in which those involved must come to a judgment regarding whether or not God has spoken and whether or not to obey. The people decide for themselves. This is absolutely crucial. It is the entrance of human agency into the end-times drama of divine justice. People do not just go where they are led. They are forced to think, decide, act, and deal with the consequences of this sequence in this our earthly life. In other words, a Day of Judgment is not the end of human agency. But rather it is its coming of age, a coming into one's own. Creativity is an essential virtue in the end-times, for it gestures at once to the promise of a new creation and as well to the human capacity for innovation and productivity. Interaction between divine and human agency is thus an essential characteristic of divine justice.

______________

Another example from the life of Muhammad to which Baha'u'llah refers is the changing of the Qiblih, the point on the Earth towards which certain prayer is directed. Once again, people are forced to think, decide, and act, producing a demarcation between the faithful and the unfaithful. Under increasing pressure from the Jews of Medina for Islam to more exactly reproduce Jewish tradition, Muhammad abruptly changed the Qiblih from Jerusalem, the seat of Judaism, to Mecca, the seat of Arab religion, during communal prayers. Suffice to say, this was deeply unsettling to these Jewish followers of Muhammad. Many left Islam on the spot. After all, at Medina this is nearly a 180 degree turn away from Jerusalem. Muhammad was literally turning his back on the symbol of all Jewish memory, pride, and hope. Even worse, He was turning in the direction of the Ka'bih shrine which at that point had not yet been cleansed of its idols. In Baha'u'llah's interpretation the consternation caused by this event is not an undesirable side effect of a necessary action. It is the decisive play within a general strategy of demarcation that is deployed within every Revelation. He writes, Yea, such things as throw consternation into the hearts of all men come to pass only that each may be tested by the touchstone of God, that true may be known from the false. (KI 55 pp. 48) In the image of Muhammad and His Jewish followers turning towards each other and against each other, towards separate Qiblihs is found a tearing, a friction, a painful tension that cuts straight through the spiritual body at both the individual and communal levels. It is the inner and outer cleaving that defines the spiritual terrain of the Kitab-i-Iqan's end-times perspective.

Earlier, I wrote of an explosive reversal of received wisdom within the Kitab-i-Iqan: that the destruction and re-creation spoken of in end-times prophecy corresponds to the arrangement of the human person and not of the physical universe. Consternation can be seen as the turning point of this event. For, it makes possible a radical transformation of the individual, the primary site of which is the inherited tradition of law (perhaps law of tradition) inasmuch as it defines his or her existence.

Baha'u'llah interprets the Quranic verse when the heavens shall be cloven asunder (82.1) as a reference to the setting aside of a previous Revelation in favor of a new one along the terrain of religious law and tradition. He writes,

That a divine Revelation which for years hath been securely established; beneath whose shadow all who have embraced it have been reared and nurtured; by the light of whose law generations of men have been disciplined; the excellency of whose word men have heard recounted by their fathers; in such wise that human eye hath beheld naught but the pervading influence of its grace, and mortal eye hath heard naught but the pervading influence of its grace, and mortal ear hath heard naught but the resounding majesty of its command- what act is mightier than that such a Revelation should by the power of God be "cloven asunder" and be abolished at the appearance of one soul? (KI 46 pp. 41-42)

Having become the common sense, any alteration of the established Revelation appears to its deepened practitioners as a violation of religion itself, a cleaving in the very fabric of sense. The new Revelation then appears to be quite "senseless." After all, what's wrong with the old one? Has it not been given to us by God? Historically speaking this cleaving of the inherited common sense is the Bab. There are few better ways to describe His incorporation of just about every major heresy from that part of the Islamic world: Hurufi numerology, Ismaili continuing revelation, native Iranian fire imagery, not to mention His iconoclastic and provocative approach to His claim to be the promised Qa'im of Shia Islam. His method of awakening the people of the world could be likened to the sharp sting that is best induced by a well-timed bucket of icy water. A hardening tradition of Islam had seized Iran and it was the place of the Bab to rattle the world into a new era. The site of this struggle was the communal conception of spiritual reality that structured people's conceptions of their very selves and strategic consternation was an invaluable instrument.

Upsetting old patterns of life, the cleaving of the heavens sets the stage for new patterns, new life, within each person. Baha'u'llah makes this move in His interpretation of the Quranic expression changing of the earth. Know thou that upon the hearts the bountiful showers of mercy, raining from the "heaven" of divine Revelation, have fallen, the earth of those hearts hath verily changed into the earth of divine knowledge and wisdom. (KI 48 pp. 42-43) And later, Reflect thou, how, in one hand, He hath, by His mighty grasp, turned the earth of knowledge and understanding, previously unfolded into a mere handful, and, on the other, spread out a new and highly exalted earth in the hearts of men. (KI 51 pp. 45) The human person, transformed by the Word of God, is then the new creation promised in end-times prophecy. Divine justice arrives as a person, one who far from being terminated, has come finally into a new maturity, a coming into oneself as human.

Your Cat

1) on the End, that there is a Future

2008-03-27T10:16:00.007-07:00

No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth.

Thus begins Baha'u'llah's Kitab-i-Iqan, the central aim of of which is to explain and defend claims made by the Bab that He fulfills Shia Islamic end-times prophesies of the Qa'im. Central among the prophecies is that the Qa'im will fill the earth with justice even as the earth is currently filled with injustice. In fact, it is this expectation of divine justice that undergirds every prophecy of "end-times," Shia Islamic or not. Baha'u'llah may not directly address in the Kitab-i-Iqan what we moderns would call "social justice." But in an Islamic context, the end-times is the topic par excellence within which to address such concerns. The Kitab-i-Iqan should then be interpreted as a foundational text on social justice, rather than a catalogue of specifics.

Traditionally, the end-times are thought of as a transformation, even a destruction of the physical world. It is in keeping then with this end-times context that Baha'u'llah begins with a statement on a person's relationship with heaven and earth. Furthermore the end-times are traditionally regarded as free will's expiration date, when all the choices one has made in life are added up and a place is assigned for their possessor among either the righteous or the wicked. What will be seen though is that the attainment of these shores speaks more to a beginning than it does to an end, and that it is in this that Baha'u'llah charts out a distinctively Baha'i world-view.

______

Juan Cole interprets Baha'u'llah's message as the reversal of various traditional arrangements at the time within Islam and contemporary cultures. He identifies five. But others are clearly implied by other arguments in Modernity and the Millennium.

Where Religion had mandated war, it now mandated peace;
where it had ordained a lesser status for non-believers, it now required equality;
where it had persecuted the non-conformist, it now guarenteed freedom of belief;
where it had sought to rule, it now left government to civil authorities;
where it had viewed non-believers as the Other, it now promoted political union among the earth's diverse peoples.
(Modernity and the Millennium 138)

Furthermore, Baha'u'llah argued for the equality of men and women, mandated the equitable distribution of wealth, and prophesied the demise of various elites, along with the triumph of popular sovereignty. Cole's analysis is sound but he restrains his analysis of the theme of reversal to writings that come after Baha'u'llah's Ridvan declaration. While recognizing that the Kitab-i-Iqan is an important move towards separation of religion and state, he fails to recognize in the book the explosive reversal of received tradition from which all the above reversals must be derived: that the destruction and re-creation spoken of in end-times prophecy corresponds to the arrangement of the human person and not of the physical universe. The first implication of this foundational truth is that the Day of Judgment tests revitalizes and unleashes human freedom and power rather than terminating it in an all-consuming annihilation. The reversals that take place in Baha'u'llah's later writings are only coherent with His end-time claims within the context of this assertion that our life in this world has a future worth seizing.

Your Cat

Dispersed Thoughts towards Something Bigger

2008-03-26T14:42:00.003-07:00

As internet access allows I will be using this space more and more for discussing Baha'u'llah's understanding of human nature especially as it relates to divine nature. I'll be putting the most focus on the Kitab-i-Iqan, but it's centrality to the Baha'i message means that many other Baha'i writings will be brought into view. Right now it is my contention that the whole faith revolves around the principle elaborated in verse 22 of the Arabic Hidden Words: O Son of Spirit! Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou was created. Building off of this idea, the Kitab-i-Iqan is then one long ode to this fundamental nobility. Furthermore it is His last major work before His declaration as the world-messiah promised by the Bab. So for that reason its revelation stands at the threshold of Baha'u'llah's transition from the foremost Babi, to the expounder of His own faith, which itself is a sort of extended elaboration on the principle enshrined in the words, Rise then...

But before I do any of that I want to blather on for awhile about a debate within Baha'i scholarship.

Unmistakably, there is an evolution in the tone and content of Baha'u'llah's writings as His ministry continues. Earlier writings are first and foremost mystical treatises. Writings after his declaration tend to emphasize his station as a world-messiah in whom all history past and future is consummated. Later writings then focus on providing guidance for a global religious community and New World Order.

Traditionally, it has been assumed that these different periods are different aspects of one universal message. But In recent years, the unity and coherence of this diversity has been called into question. This has most been the case among the Talisman scholars, particularly Juan Cole. Whether it be the abrogation of Islamic-Babi principles and worldviews, changes in political strategy, or sudden interest in new foreign influences, changes in tone and content were interpreted more as repudiation rather than development of past beliefs. Among others, Nader Saiedi has contended with this view by pointing out passages that either hearken back to, or foreshadow themes that appear in far greater prominence at other periods of Baha'u'llah's writings, e.g. world unity in the Baghdad writings, or Sufism in the Akka writings. His view is that Baha'u'llah's writings build upon each other and that all other stages of His ministry are present at any one moment if only as hidden supports of surface content or foreshadowing of future development.

As much as I enjoy reading tension and ambiguity into places where others want coherence and certainty, I am most persuaded by Saiedi's approach to Baha'u'llah's writings. While his engagement with the non-Baha'i context of the Writings is far weaker than any of the Talisman scholars, he makes up for it with his in-depth analysis of the internal Shaykhi, Babi, and Baha'i contexts of Baha'u'llah's writings. After all, when it comes down to it, Baha'u'llah is a Baha'i, and patchwork references to gnosticism, reformism, or "Jeffersonian democracy" are of rather limited use at charting the depths of such a complex body of writings.

It is within this debate about the evolution of Baha'u'llah's writings that I would like to frame my discussion of the Kitab-i-Iqan. Saiedi sees the historical and evolutionary nature of religion as the book's central message and the bridge that unites the spiritual writings of the Baghdad period with the world order writings of the Akka period. In this we are more or less agreed. But one thing that I think is lacking in his analysis is proper attention to the one who is born along and advances this historical process: the human being. As I've said it is my contention that the book from beginning to end is one long ode to the nobility of the human person. O Son of Spirit! Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created. What I'm going to show is that Baha'u'llah's understanding of human nature is pivotal to everything else in His writings. Namely, that it is we human actors who must will divine justice into being. God has laid down the guidance and will provide assistance both seen and unseen. But other than that, He has thought highly enough of our freedom that He has left it up to us to make it happen. In this destiny there is something divine. But it is this divinity that makes us our most human.

Your Cat

Human Power - Divine Power

2008-02-15T08:55:00.001-07:00

Chart out this constellation of verses appearing in the heaven of Baha'u'llah's Revelation. Note the interplay in these three passages between Baha'u'llah's understanding of Man, the manifestation of the names and attributes of God, and modern science and technology (referred to as "arts" and "crafts"). As for now I'll just leave the passages to speak for themselves, a rare favor from me.

In this connection, He Who is the eternal King—may the souls of all that dwell within the mystic Tabernacle be a sacrifice unto Him—hath spoken: “He hath known God who hath known himself.” I swear by God, O esteemed and honoured friend! Shouldst thou ponder these words in thine heart, thou wilt of a certainty find the doors of divine wisdom and infinite knowledge flung open before thy face.
From that which hath been said it becometh evident that all things, in their inmost reality, testify to the revelation of the names and attributes of God within them. Each according to its capacity, indicateth, and is expressive of, the knowledge of God.......Also in the tradition of Kumayl it is written: “Behold, a light hath shone forth out of the Morn of eternity, and lo! its waves have penetrated the inmost reality of all men.” Man, the noblest and most perfect of all created things, excelleth them all in the intensity of this revelation, and is a fuller expression of its glory.

Kitab-i-Iqan 107-109

Through the mere revelation of the word “Fashioner,” issuing forth from His lips and proclaiming His attribute to mankind, such power is released as can generate, through successive ages, all the manifold arts which the hands of man can produce. This, verily, is a certain truth. No sooner is this resplendent word uttered, than its animating energies, stirring within all created things, give birth to the means and instruments whereby such arts can be produced and perfected. All the wondrous achievements ye now witness are the direct consequences of the Revelation of this Name. In the days to come, ye will, verily, behold things of which ye have never heard before. Thus hath it been decreed in the Tablets of God, and none can comprehend it except them whose sight is sharp. In like manner, the moment the word expressing My attribute “The Omniscient” issueth forth from My mouth, every created thing will, according to its capacity and limitations, be invested with the power to unfold the knowledge of the most marvelous sciences, and will be empowered to manifest them in the course of time at the bidding of Him Who is the Almighty, the All-Knowing. Know thou of a certainty that the Revelation of every other Name is accompanied by a similar manifestation of Divine power.

Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah LXXIV

The first Taráz and the first effulgence which hath dawned from the horizon of the Mother Book is that man should know his own self and recognize that which leadeth unto loftiness or lowliness, glory or abasement, wealth or poverty. Having attained the stage of fulfilment and reached his maturity, man standeth in need of wealth, and such wealth as he acquireth through crafts or professions is commendable and praiseworthy in the estimation of men of wisdom, and especially in the eyes of servants who dedicate themselves to the education of the world and to the edification of its peoples.......

We cherish the hope that through the loving-kindness of the All-Wise, the All-Knowing, obscuring dust may be dispelled and the power of perception enhanced, that the people may discover the purpose for which they have been called into being. In this Day whatsoever serveth to reduce blindness and to increase vision is worthy of consideration. This vision acteth as the agent and guide for true knowledge.

Tablets of Baha'u'llah "Tarazat" pp. 34-35

Revelation and Concealment: a Scandal

2007-12-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

Below are three quotations. The first is by the Bab and is from His crowning work "the Persian Bayan." The second is from the book "Colonial fantasies: Towards a feminist reading of Orientalism" by Meyda Yegenoglu. Her book is a study of colonizer attitudes towards veiled women within their imperial holdings. The passage is a summary of the problem that colonizers faced in the veiling of the "oriental woman." The third is from Baha'u'llah's "the Seven Valleys" and is easily one of His most perplexing statements in the book if not in the whole sum of His writings already translated into English. All three quotations deal with the dynamic of revelation and concealment. The theme of veiling is important inasmuch as it is one of the most important images used in Sufi and Baha'i writings to illustrate the transcendence of God, and the romantic relationship we have with the veiled Beloved.

The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation. That which is intended by ‘Revelation of God’ is the Tree of divine Truth that betokeneth none but Him, and it is this divine Tree that hath raised and will raise up Messengers, and hath revealed and will ever reveal Scriptures. From eternity unto eternity this Tree of divine Truth hath served and will ever serve as the throne of the revelation and concealment of God among His creatures, and in every age is made manifest through whomsoever He pleaseth.

-the Bab from the Persian Bayan

The veil gives rise to meditation: if they wear a mask, or masquerade or conceal themselves, then there must be a behind-the-mask, a knowledge that is kept secret from us. The mystery that is assumed to be concealed by the veil is unconcealed by giving a figural representation to this mask and to the act of masquerading as an enigmatic figure. However, what is thus unconcealed, i.e. the "masquerade," the "veil," is the act of concealment itself. The veiled existence is the very truth of Oriental women; they seem to exist always in this deceptive manner.

-Meyda Yegenoglu in Colonial fantasies: Towards a feminist reading of Orientalism

Pay particular attention to the term veils of light in this final passage.

In this city, even the veils of light are split asunder and vanish away. “His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation.” How strange that while the Beloved is visible as the sun, yet the heedless still hunt after tinsel and base metal. Yea, the intensity of His revelation hath covered Him, and the fullness of His shining forth hath hidden Him.

-Baha'u'llah in the Seven Valleys: the Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness

Light, a symbol of Divine Revelation, and its reflection in creation is the image at the heart of Baha'u'llah's doctrine of the Manifestation of God. If the Manifestation is the light of God, then this final passage raises strange questions about what is meant by the veils of light are split asunder and vanish away. Suddenly, the moments of Revelation or Manifestation (these two terms are not necessarily used in the same way) are not so simple. Just look at it! Light is the barrier and not the intermediary! In Baha'i writings that's scandalous! But multiple passages bear witness to this stunning assertion. After all, the revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation.

So what does this make of the Manifestation of God? Is He a partial Manifestation, e.g. in Exodus 33.23 when Moses is shown God's "back" (Exodus 33.23)? Is the Manifestation of God an outright deception, a mask, a surrogate, something put in place of a full Revelation which in numerous places Baha'u'llah states would result in one's....well.....uh....."physical and/or psychological undoing?" In other words, is the Manifestation of God a means of approach or an actual detour? Perhaps my formulation of this dilemna is entirely misguided. Regardless, Baha'u'llah's writings give no easy answers. Instead, the series of passages bearing on these issues raise more questions than answers.

Unity, Teaching, and the Definition of a Baha'i

2007-12-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

Below are two quotations. One from Baha'u'llah. Another from Abdu'l Baha. Both speak of an age in which the human race will all be part of one religion. The latter is most likely a commentary on the former. Both of these passages are followed by scathing criticisms of the clergy who in both past and present have obstructed the unifying missions of the Manifestations of God. Together they can support a very lively discussion on Baha'i teachings on the unity of religion.

That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith.

(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 90)

The day is coming when all the religions of the world will unite, for in principle they are one already. There is no need for division, seeing that it is only the outward forms that separate them. Among the sons of men some souls are suffering through ignorance, let us hasten to teach them; others are like children needing care and education until they are grown, and some are sick -- to these we must carry Divine healing. Whether ignorant, childish or sick, they must be loved and helped, and not disliked because of their imperfection.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 120)

The above quotation from Baha'u'llah can often be rather intimidating. No doubt the scariest part is His apparent rejection of religious diversity, that all people will share one common Faith. In this interpretation, the healing of all the world would be that everybody would be Baha'i and that Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, etc. would disappear from the face of the earth. This of course would cause major chafing with Baha'u'llah's other teachings on the importance of good-will towards the followers of other religions.

Abdu'l Baha though articulates this future unification in a different way. All the religions of the world will unite. As Baha'u'llah's right hand man throughout His ministry and as the authorized interpreter of His words this passage from His Paris Talks should be taken very seriously in understanding the above quotation from Baha'u'llah. Rather than the domination of one central position outward over all others, Abdu'l Baha sees this event as a merging inward of many different positions into one. The old religions remain intact. They still exist. But the important part is that they come to an understanding of themselves as fundamentally united. That this has not already happened (as it should have) is the result of ignorance. This leads Abdu'l Baha to the exhortation, let us hasten to teach them.

The important word here is teach. Typically this word is associated with efforts to expand and consolidate membership in the Baha'i community. But in this context its not really about membership. It's about the diffusion of Baha'u'llah's teachings as they apply to other religions. Abdu'l Baha is not interested in poaching people from other religions. In this passage this is not teaching. Rather, teaching is acquainting people with the essentials of their own religion as revealed again by the Manifestation of God for this day, Baha'u'llah. And if this is what is meant by teaching the Cause of Baha'u'llah in the mind of Abdu'l Baha then that brings into view the very definition for being a Baha'i.

Below is another passage, this time from the collection Abdu'l Baha in London.

A student of the modern methods of the higher criticism asked 'Abdu'l-Bahá if he would do well to continue in the church with which he had been associated all his life, and whose language was full of meaning to him. 'Abdu'l-Bahá answered: "You must not dissociate yourself from it. Know this; the Kingdom of God is not in any Society; some seekers go through many Societies as a traveller goes through many cities till he reach his destination. If you belong to a Society already do not forsake your brothers. You can be a Bahá'í-Christian, a Bahá'í-Freemason, a Bahá'í-Jew, a Bahá'í-Muhammadan. The number nine contains eight, and seven, and all the other numbers, and does not deny any of them. Do not distress or deny anyone by saying 'He is not a Bahá'í!' He will be known by his deeds. There are no secrets among Bahá'ís; a Bahá'í does not hide anything."

(Abdu'l-Baha, Abdu'l-Baha in London, p. 97)

The fascinating line here is the Kingdom of God is not in any Society. The usage here of the word "society" is that of an organization, a concrete gathering of people with membership rolls, meetings, dues, etc. i.e the National Geographic Society. In this sense the Baha'i teachings are not constrained to any one organization or society, but are instead free to be applied in their fullness within a variety of already existing communities. Certainly there is a specifically "Baha'i" community. Its maturation into a distinct body was only just beginning when Abdu'l Baha made these statements in London. But that does not detract from the wide applicability that Abdu'l Baha saw for His father's teachings. The triumph of the Baha'i faith in this context does not necessarily mean universal membership in the Baha'i World Faith. So what it means is a coming age in which the practitioners of the world's religions look upon each other as companions on a common spiritual journey and co-workers on a single divine project.

Abdu'l Baha and the Religious Society of Friends

2007-12-04T22:13:00.000-07:00

For some time I've wondered about the compatibility between Baha'i and Quaker teachings. Certainly, there are many areas of overlap, the emphasis on social justice, the lack of a clergy, spirit-led decisionmaking, and a vision of the end-times that places the action of an individual soul at the center of God's saving plan. But one point at which I thought the similarity ended was the means by which God reveals His will to humanity. For Baha'is, God reveals His will through His Manifestations. This happens only once in a great while. For Quakers, the will of God is revealed through the leadings of the Spirit. And this can be as commonplace as eating or waking. Certainly I've butchered and way oversimplified each tradition's understanding of divine Revelation, but up until now I've always had to rely on my own endeavor to explore this issue. I have long suspected that at some point in his travels to the West Abdu'l Baha came across Quakers, and might have said a thing or two about their faith. But I've never come across anything specific. As it turns out though, such an encounter is recorded in the most obvious place to look: Paris Talks, a compilation of talks he gave while in Europe.

So here it is.

http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/PT/pt-55.html

As it turns out, Abdu'l Baha seems to regard Baha'i and Quaker conceptions of Divine Revelation as more compatible than I personally have given them credit for. As for the Persian "Society of Friends" that he mentions, I have no idea who he's talking about. They sound cool though, just like their English counterparts.

Baha'u'llah and Divine Conquest

2007-11-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System -- the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.

(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 85)

More and more I keep coming back to this conception of the Baha'i faith as a revolutionary movement. Reference to the many passages in Baha'u'llah's writings enjoining obedience to one's government are insufficient to deter me from this understanding of the faith's activity as one of resistance. The only reason for this is that it is His writings themselves that keep goading me on. Passages enjoining obedience have their place. But they are far from all Baha'u'llah has to say about revolutionary social change. Baha'u'llah clearly did not support insurrection against established authorities. That was implied by his prohibition against holy war in 1863 at his Ridvan declaration. But the imagery employed and the analogies used in His writings from that same period present an understanding of a Baha'i community that carries on a spirit of resistance against those who seek to obstruct the mission of Baha'u'llah. Domination, punishment, and revenge are ideas clearly expressed in the text itself. Far from distancing himself from historical instances of holy war in His writings from the years immediately following his Ridvan declaration Baha'u'llah goes so far as to compare his own ministry and the efforts of His followers with some of the most venerated and explosive moments of holy war in Shia Islamic memory. Holy war may be out. But religious resistance has by no means gone with it. Instead it is stirred to new life through a fresh reformulation that while shutting down some possibilities for social change opens up new ones as well. Below are some passages that have led me in this direction.

That which hath befallen Us hath been witnessed before. Ours is not the first goblet dashed to the ground in the lands of Islam, nor is this the first time that such schemers have intrigued against the beloved of the Lord. The tribulations We have sustained are like unto the trials endured aforetime by Imam Husayn......

By the righteousness of God! Through his deed the fragrances of holiness were wafted over all things, the proof of God was perfected, and His testimony made manifest to all men. And after him God raised up a people who avenged his death, who slew his enemies, and who wept over him at dawn and at eventide. Say: God hath pledged in His Book to lay hold upon every oppressor for his tyranny, and to uproot the stirrers of mischief. Know ye that such holy deeds exert, in themselves, a great influence upon the world of being -- an influence which is, however, inscrutable to all save those whose eyes have been opened by God, whose hearts He hath freed from obscuring veils, and whose souls He hath guided aright.

The day is approaching when God will have raised up a people who will call to remembrance Our days, who will tell the tale of Our trials, who will demand the restitution of Our rights from them that, without a tittle of evidence, have treated Us with manifest injustice. God, assuredly, dominateth the lives of them that wronged Us, and is well aware of their doings. He will, most certainly, lay hold on them for their sins. He, verily, is the fiercest of avengers.

(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, Suriy-i-Muluk p. 204, 206)

Baha'u'llah understands the sacred history of his own movement as a reflection of events from early Islamic history. First, there is the appearance of a heroic figure whose efforts are struck down by an evil persecutor. Second, there is a movement which rolls back the oppression of the persecutor, gets avenges the suffering of the former, and establishes a new order of divine justice. The Imam Husayn and the overthrow of the Umayyads are the twin moments Baha'u'llah references.

Muhammad's grandson, the Imam Husayn led a failed attempt to overthrow the Muslim Caliph Yazid of the Umayyad dynasty. Engaged in battle at Karbala before gathering his troops he and his 72 companions were grossly outnumbered by the 40,000 troops amassed by Yazid. Following his death, Husayn was immortalized as the archetypical Muslim who sacrificed everything he had in the name of God and His justice. Furthermore his martyrdom became a rallying cry for all who regarded the family of the Prophet as the rightful heirs to leadership of the Islamic world. Today they are knowns as the Shia, the branch of Islam from which the Babi and Baha'i movements emerged.

In the above passage on the Imam Husayn, Baha'u'llah has this to say. And after him God raised up a people who avenged his death, who slew his enemies, and who wept over him at dawn and at eventide. If there is anyone in history who could be said to have fulfilled this role it is Abu Muslim, his warriors, and all other revolutionaries involved in the overthrow of Yazid's dynasty, the Umayyads. Upon spreading the word that a member of the Prophet's family was willing and capable to take up the Caliphate Abu Muslim and others led a broad-based revolt to restore that sacred office to its rightful owners. In large part this was understood as revenge for those members of the family who had been martyred in the past, including the Imam Husayn and his father Ali. Dyeing their clothes black and marching behind banners of the same color the forces of Abu Muslim took their stand against the Ummayads. Beginning from the region of Khurasan to the east of the Caspian sea, Abu Muslim and his troops swept across Iran all the way to Egypt, deposing the caliph, and inaugurating the era of the Abbasid dynasty.

Though Baha'u'llah does not specifically name Abu Muslim in the above passage, the interpretation that it refers to him is born out by more than a lack of more plausible historical alternatives. Abu Muslim and the war against the Ummayads had already been memorialized within the Babi-Baha'i community as its predecessor. When Mulla Husayn one of the Bab's leading disciples waged holy war in defense of their faith, he did so in the Iranian province of Khurasan. And sealing the Abu Muslim analogy he and his troops marched behind black banners, just like the 8th century revolutionary. At the time this was intriguing enough. The Bab had not forbidden holy war, as did Baha'u'llah a generation later. To follow in the footsteps of Abu Muslim made quite a bit of sense. But for Baha'u'llah to endorse this analogy after his prohibition of holy war indicates a strong continuity of thought on the subject of religious struggle even though there was a clear break from physical violence.

In both instances the idea of revenge is crucial. That the memory and teachings of Baha'u'llah are lifted up means that someone else is cast down. One could limit this deposition to those individuals who persecuted Baha'u'llah in His lifetime. But the Abu Muslim analogy does not require that. Yazid was long gone by the time the Umayyads were deposed. But the descendants and the social arrangement he represented lived on. It was this state of heresy and injustice that Abu Muslim deposed. In Baha'u'llah's writings the individual persecutors are times only symbols of a broader injustice that embraces a wider context. Take the quotation with which I began this entry. The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System -- the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed. Baha'u'llah has in mind far more than struggle against the ruling classes of the Ottoman or Persian empires when we He speaks of revolt, triumph, and revenge. What He has in mind is a transformation, indeed a revolution, of affairs that embraces all of humanity. That Baha'u'llah still takes seriously the Abu Muslim analogy indicates that this turn from one age to the next bears resemblance to the switch from the Umayyad to the Abbasid dynasties. Overturning the reigning the religio-socio-political arrangement, the servants of God labor to install a new one in line with God's justice.

Below are two passages that help illustrate the means by which the Baha'i community is to accomplish this transformation.

[to the kings of the Earth] By the righteousness of God! It is not Our wish to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men.

(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 49)

Beware lest ye shed the blood of anyone. Unsheathe the sword of your tongue from the scabbard of utterance, for therewith ye can conquer the citadels of men's hearts. We have abolished the law to wage holy war against each other. God's mercy, hath, verily, encompassed all created things, if ye do but understand. Aid ye your Lord, the God of Mercy, with the sword of understanding. Keener indeed is it, and more finely tempered, than the sword of utterance, were ye but to reflect upon the words of your Lord.

(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, Suriy-i-Haykal p. 22)

Rather than directly confronting the kings of the earth on the battlefield, Baha'u'llah chooses to bypass their thrones in favor of the hearts of humanity. Rather than unsheathing swords of iron He admonishes His followers to unsheathe swords of utterance and understanding. Swords are still unsheathed. Struggle goes on. But it is no longer a physical battle. Instead, Baha'is are sent forth to compete for the allegiance of people's hearts. They are instructed to edify minds and souls, not to destroy bodies in the name of God.

The loss is that this may deprive Baha'is of immediate means by which to overthrow unjust governments. The upshot though is that this allows Baha'is to operate in a far larger number of localities. No government wants to host movements with insurrectionary tendencies. For better or worse they want subjects who will not take direct action against their rule. Some may call this appeasement of oppressors. But on the other hand it allows for the wider propagation of Baha'u'llah's message of global justice. Immediate action against state-actors has its appeal. But if it results in the widespread suppression and mistrust of the vehicle of God's justice then such violent action can be regarded only as a distraction, a dissipation of resources, and a squandering of vital opportunities. Baha'u'llah presents a vision of holy war that eschews these immediate political diversions. He goes straight to the heart of the matter, the diffusion and consolidation of His guidance, setting the stage for the emergence of God's justice.

It is the establishment of this new World Order that is the revenge he seeks against His enemies, those who stand in the way of His justice. Some people and the attitudes they represent have a place in that world. Others do not. For these there are swords of utterance and understanding. He, verily, is the fiercest of avengers.

and now for a quote from Shoghi Effendi.....

2007-11-17T23:55:00.000-07:00

Nor does the Bahá’í Revelation, claiming as it does to be the culmination of a prophetic cycle and the fulfillment of the promise of all ages, attempt, under any circumstances, to invalidate those first and everlasting principles that animate and underlie the religions that have preceded it. The God-given authority, vested in each one of them, it admits and establishes as its firmest and ultimate basis....Far from aiming at the overthrow of the spiritual foundation of the world’s religious systems, its avowed, its unalterable purpose is to widen their basis, to restate their fundamentals, to reconcile their aims, to reinvigorate their life, to demonstrate their oneness, to restore the pristine purity of their teachings, to cöordinate their functions and to assist in the realization of their highest aspirations. These divinely-revealed religions, as a close observer has graphically expressed it, “are doomed not to die, but to be reborn… ‘Does not the child succumb in the youth and the youth in the man; yet neither child nor youth perishes?’”

-Shoghi Effendi

from the essay "the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah" in his compilation "the World Order of Baha'u'llah"

Dropping the (s) in Religion(s) of God

2007-11-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

Below is link to an essay by leading scholar of the Baha'i faith today, Moojan Momen. I don't really get his choice of title, Beyond Pluralism. But the essay expresses much of what I've been tossing around in my head for sometime anyway. It considers the incorporation of pre-Baha'i spiritualities into Baha'i communities. If I had to summarize his argument it is that Baha'is' narrow focus today on their own history and their own texts is only a temporary feature of the faith's development and that in time the faith will more and more express the richness and diversity of the world's religious expressions. Thus, the Baha'i principle of the unity of the world's religions is something yet to be expressed concretely in a mode of global community life.

So go ahead, read the essay. It's rather short and only takes a minute or two to read.

http://bahai-library.com/file.php5?file=momen_beyond_pluralism&language=All

If I had to add anything to Momen's argument, it is that the relative smallness of Baha'i communities is a major factor preventing the emergence of the faith as a "metareligion." While religious communties are still small there is a great pressure on individuals to uphold the essentials: in this case the Revelation of Baha'u'llah and contemporary efforts to propogate His message. If Baha'is do not promote the central core of the faith, then this runs the risk of the faith losing its focus, momentum, and possibly even its existence. Thus, there is an almost existential imperative for all Baha'is to represent the faith as a whole and not just as a facet.

But as communities grow and become more firmly established, individuals have a greater luxury of individualizing their religious experience. In this case, a larger Baha'i community can accommodate for those among its ranks who want to pursue things like Buddhist medititation, Sufi mysticism, indigenous art, or any number of things in a Baha'i context. Since recognition and understanding of Baha'u'llah is firmly established, there is then greater freedom for people to branch out and explore the relationship of the faith to assimilate "non-Baha'i" aspects of their heritage or interests into their Baha'i experience. This does not mean that such branching does not exist. Certainly, every Baha'i community, indeed every person, embodies this process of individuation and exploration. But this has only been made possible on past growth and will only become more possible in the future on the basis of further expansion and consolidation.

I observed this first hand as I made my transition from Catholicism (1 billion strong globally) to the Baha'i faith (6 million strong globally). Whereas in the past I saw myself as a counterbalance to the excesses of others in the Church, I quickly found that there was no room for such specialization in my immediate Baha'i community. I could no longer be a mere gadfly. I had to take the position of Baha'i normalcy and hold to it. In a way, I had to be the Baha'i faith in general. Any sort of specialization would only manifest as a distortion, inasmuch as the branch would predominate over the trunk.

If anything, I hope that Momen's thoughts can contribute to a greater understanding of Baha'i teachings on the unity of religion. Most important of all, a possible Baha'i future can not be imagined as an extension purely of the existing Baha'i present. The evolution of no community is ever complete. The appearance of the Baha'i faith today as "just another world religion" cannot be assumed as an adequate understanding of its future, and thus by extension, its present. The spiritual unity of the human race is possible in ways as yet unexpressed and unthinkable.

to be oneself

2007-11-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

The following two paragraphs are the preface to Niezsche's Genealogy of Morality, a book with which I've had an on and off love affair since I first read it back in the spring. It points to a particular lack of mindfulness, of daydreaming through life without ever waking up, a postponement of reality in favor of its knowledge.

____________________________________

We don’t know ourselves, we knowledgeable people—we are personally ignorant about ourselves. And there’s good reason for that. We’ve never tried to find out who we are. How could it ever happen that one day we’d discover our own selves? With justice it’s been said that “Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.” Our treasure lies where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always busy with our knowledge, as if we were born winged creatures—collectors of intellectual honey. In our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to “bring something home.” As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call “experience”—which of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time? In these matters, I fear, we’ve been “missing the point.” Our hearts have not even been engaged with that—nor, for that matter, have our ears!

We’ve been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at once wakes up and asks himself “What exactly did that clock strike?”—so we rub ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and completely embarrassed “What have we really just experienced?” And more: “Who are we really?” Then, as I’ve mentioned, we count—after the fact—all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of our experience, our lives, our being—alas! in the process we keep losing the count . . . So we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we have to keep ourselves confused. For us this law holds for all eternity: “Each man is furthest from himself.” Where we ourselves are concerned, we are not “knowledgeable people.”
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This blog received most of my attention over the summer when it was a scratchpad for a commentary on the Baha'i Long Obligatory Prayer. Its founding assumption was that spirituality is always in some way a movement of thought. The objective of the project was simple: to think the Long Obligatory Prayer. The hope was that an exploration of the ideas conveyed and referenced in the prayer could breathe new life into the spiritual practice of its performers. Now, after all that work I have a 70 odd page manuscript sitting on my bookshelf, waiting for a revision at some point in the future. But something is terribly missing.....besides readers. I still stand by my founding assumption, that spirituality is a movement of thought. But the execution seems to have profoundly missed a fundamental point. And I think Niezsche's preface hits it on the head.

What is at stake is the very experience of prayer, of mindfulness towards one's condition, and most importantly of being the one who offers the prayer. I am prompted to pursue this not because of a basic failure in my argument but rather because of a basic failure in my practice. If I, the one who "wrote the book" on the Long Obligatory Prayer is unedified by the whole process, then how edifying could the book be in the first place? Now, as much as ever I feel disconnected and divided against myself as I perform the prayer. It is not I who offers it, but someone else who moves my body and my lips. I observe the whole thing. But rarely do I believe it, or even know it. It is not my anguish to which I testify when I say my blood boileth in my veins. In fact there is no anguish, only a passive looking-on. If there is any anguish it is that of a text, a text whose "I" has no referent but its own grammatical structure. "Is there anybody alive in there? Nobody but us in here!" As if in an out-of-body experience the soul strives for anything but to be present to and as itself as a sign of the Revelation of God. If the performer becomes present to oneself then he or she comes face to face with the burden of responsibility that comes with one's freedom. The reality of free choice and the demand for decisions come surging forward where otherwise there was only the mechanical repetition of ritualized gestures. But that is too terrifying a prospect. So the performer drowns his or herself in the vast ocean of sidenotes, details, and anectdotes. Anything is acceptable, just so long as it helps one hide from the responsibility that comes with human freedom.

For this reason, we must stare this fundamental responsibility in the face without flinching or looking away. My hope is little more than simply to look outward from myself, rather than at myself, from the outside, as if I am another person. For it is Baha'u'llah who says, every one of you knoweth his own self better than he knoweth others. And this is a far subtler exercise than the mere exploration of ideas. A person is not an idea. To engage with oneself as an idea is to put oneself at a distance and be consumed in the "beehives of our knowledge." To be present as oneself requires a more intuitive, possibly even more common-sensical approach to this whole project. It requires an ability to regard the movement of thought constitutive of spirituality independently of its crystallization into a constellation of ideas. It requires thinking the very experience of life, free of the ideas we use to understand it, and in so doing to flee it. But that is only the intellectual project. The spiritual project is little more than just "being there." In this way, there is no time for running away. There is only time for standing one's ground and coming to grips with one's own freedom before a mighty and empowering God.

Mr. Cat has an epiphany

2007-11-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

This morning I came to a realization. It brought together a wide number of observations on all sorts of things ranging from environmental degradation, American foreign policy, the punctuality of college professors, and my job search here in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

One significant attribute of social power is the right to be irresponsible with impunity, while simultaneously demanding full responsibility as a matter of principle from those lacking in power. In this way, rules of responsible behavior, i.e. doing things in a timely manner, working towards a reasonable balance of one's own needs with the needs of others, "cleaning up one's own mess" etc. are set up as universal obligations by which all need to abide in order to make it in the world. But these supposedly universal obligations are only enforced or recognized as such at the convenience of the powerful.

I'd go into more detail, but I think anybody who would ever read this can probably think of plenty of examples when double standards are used by the powerful to entrench their own positions.

Rant over, and quite briefly at that.

the Significance of this Age: part 2

2007-11-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

This was originally an addendum on the end of the previous entry. But I decided to give it a space of its own. It builds on the ideas presented in the first entry's long quotation from Abdu'l Baha.
______________________________

Central to Abdu'l Baha's claim is that the world has shrunk in size. Whereas in past times a day's journey might have brought a traveler as far as the next town, now it might bringe the same traveler as far as another continent. But the immediate conclusion of this development is not necessarily that it will produces peace and prosperity for all people. After all he goes no further than stating the unity of all mankind can in this day be achieved. He does not say that it is being achieved. This is because old ways of doing things, developed while the peoples of the earth were still in relative isolation from each other, do not tend towards harmony and good will. They can also excite violence any disagreements or conflicts of interest that will always naturally arise. But the more that diverse peoples recognize their unavoidable interdependence the more that they recognize the need to get along.

So although the human race has been plunged into more famine, epidemic, warfare, and ecological destruction than at any point in its history, this does not mean that modernization and globalization are a straightforward fall from grace. It can also mean that humanity is merely in a process of transition, one fraught with opportunity as well as with pain. In 1936 Shoghi Effendi writes, We stand on the threshold of an age whose convulsions proclaim alike the death-pangs of the old order and the birth pangs of the new. Global unity here is not a distant dream to be realized but rather a concrete opportunity to be seized right now. And make no mistake about it, it is possible to fail to seize this opportunity.

The prolongation of this period of transition and adolescence is unnecessary. Globalization has made the unity of the human race a concrete reality. Whereas once we were strangers, now we are family. The choice before us is what to make of this new family arrangement. Will we manifest this new unity in its fullness through its recognition as the basis of a world order? Or will we continue to ignore it as the backdrop of increasingly internal conflicts, prolonging their corrosive effects. Forces beyond any individual's control have propelled us into a new era. But it is through the power of human choice that its actual content will be firmly determined.

In this way we return to the quote that introduces the previous entry.

the Significance of this Age

2007-10-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

O CONTENDING peoples and kindreds of the earth! Set your faces towards unity, and let the radiance of its light shine upon you. Gather ye together, and for the sake of God resolve to root out whatever is the source of contention amongst you. Then will the effulgence of the world's great Luminary envelop the whole earth, and its inhabitants become the citizens of one city, and the occupants of one and the same throne.

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 217)

At the heart of the Baha'i teachings is that the time has arrived for the appearance of what Baha'u'llah called the Day of God and that his teachings are to serve as the animating spirit of this Kingdom of God on Earth. Whereas in the past humanity had lived apart from each other, in the coming age the organic unity of the human race would be the basis for a global civilization of divine justice. Pivotal to this idea is a single illuminating passage from the writings of Abdu'l Baha. Nowhere else do the Baha'i writings state so clearly the relationship between the Revelation of Baha'u'llah and the time period in which he conducted His ministry. Rather than an arbitrary imposition from on high, this passage imagines God's coming justice as something arisely organically out of the present structure of human civilization. In this entry I want to build up towards this passage which I quote in a rather extended form.

One of the first things to know about the Baha'i idea of the Day of God is that it is not brought about through cataclysmic supernatural forces. The prophecies of the Messiah, the Armageddon, or of the Qa'im may all contain images of warfare led by a divine figure. But their significance is limited to the perennial struggle between good and evil and the justice that God accomplishes by means of human beings. Physical warfare is only a metaphor, not the prophesied event. Thus, there would be no messiah coming out of the stratosphere, or a 9th century Arab returning to wage a global war against unbelievers. The Bab and Baha'u'llah came and went without the cataclysmic spectacle so widely expected. But their appearance did mark the beginning of a new era. And it is up to humanity to labor for the civilization initiated by the Baha'i Revelation. This enormous effort is the event prophesied through the image of war.

The Baha'i writings call their reader to imagine the Kingdom of God as beginning with a day like any other day that is in fact a day unlike any other. But it is no easy task pin down what makes such a day so unique. After all, life seems to go on just as it always has. The rich dominate the poor. Wars get started over greed, prejudice, and religion. And somehow the majority manage to eke out a decent lives for themselves. Such is certainly the case. But the big picture can easily be lost if one only focuses on the details. After all, a fish never knows when its wet. So it's certainly possible that the limitation of a person's experience to one period can blind him or her to enormous changes that have happened in the past. The world is always changing. But some changes are more radical than others. With this in mind, some people may notice this in their own day. Abdu'l Baha is one such person.

I contend that the below passage from his writings is absolutely essential for understanding Baha'i teachings on the Day of God. It shows the ways in which modernization and globalization have radically changed the way human beings relate to each other It shows how Baha'u'llah's teachings on global unity are not just an arbitrary imposition from on high. But rather something that is organically emerging as we speak. The passage's argument is simple. But its effects are profound.

__________________________

O honoured lady! For a single purpose were the Prophets, each and all, sent down to earth; for this was Christ made manifest, for this did Bahá'u'lláh raise up the call of the Lord: that the world of man should become the world of God, this nether realm the Kingdom, this darkness light, this satanic wickedness all the virtues of heaven -- and unity, fellowship and love be won for the whole human race, that the organic unity should reappear and the bases of discord be destroyed and life everlasting and grace everlasting become the harvest of mankind.

O honoured lady! Look about thee at the world: here unity, mutual attraction, gathering together, engender life, but disunity and inharmony spell death. When thou dost consider all phenomena, thou wilt see that every created thing hath come into being through the mingling of many elements, and once this collectivity of elements is dissolved, and this harmony of components is dissevered, the life form is wiped out.

O honoured lady! In cycles gone by, though harmony was established, yet, owing to the absence of means, the unity of all mankind could not have been achieved. Continents remained widely divided, nay even among the peoples of one and the same continent association and interchange of thought were wellnigh impossible. Consequently intercourse, understanding and unity amongst all the peoples and kindreds of the earth were unattainable. In this day, however, means of communication have multiplied, and the five continents of the earth have virtually merged into one. And for everyone it is now easy to travel to any land, to associate and exchange views with its peoples, and to become familiar, through publications, with the conditions, the religious beliefs and the thoughts of all men. In like manner all the members of the human family, whether peoples or governments, cities or villages, have become increasingly interdependent. For none is self-sufficiency any longer possible, inasmuch as political ties unite all peoples and nations, and the bonds of trade and industry, of agriculture and education, are being strengthened every day. Hence the unity of all mankind can in this day be achieved. Verily this is none other but one of the wonders of this wondrous age, this glorious century. Of this past ages have been deprived, for this century -- the century of light -- hath been endowed with unique and unprecedented glory, power and illumination. Hence the miraculous unfolding of a fresh marvel every day. Eventually it will be seen how bright its candles will burn in the assemblage of man.

Behold how its light is now dawning upon the world's darkened horizon. The first candle is unity in the political realm, the early glimmerings of which can now be discerned. The second candle is unity of thought in world undertakings, the consummation of which will erelong be witnessed. The third candle is unity in freedom which will surely come to pass. The fourth candle is unity in religion which is the corner-stone of the foundation itself, and which, by the power of God, will be revealed in all its splendour. The fifth candle is the unity of nations -- a unity which in this century will be securely established, causing all the peoples of the world to regard themselves as citizens of one common fatherland. The sixth candle is unity of races, making of all that dwell on earth peoples and kindreds of one race. The seventh candle is unity of language, i.e., the choice of a universal tongue in which all peoples will be instructed and converse. Each and every one of these will inevitably come to pass, inasmuch as the power of the Kingdom of God will aid and assist in their realization.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 31)

the Manifestation of Divine Unity

2007-10-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

I don't really have a clear agenda for this entry. I have no particular point that I want to argue. So, what this means is that I'm running low on blood sugar and I don't have the presence of mind to pull everything together into a coherent whole. Regardless, I thought that I'd use this space to vent my appreciation for a particular theme within the Baha'i writings: that the unity of God is not just His transcendence above His creation, but that it is also regarded in Baha'u'llah's writings as an attribute of His that can be manifested by his creatures alongside other divine attributes such as love, wisdom, or creativity. In the first passage, unity is synonymous with fellowship and peace between people. In the second passage, the unity that is manifested is a unity of purpose, a single minded focus on living by divine guidance. Beyond these passages I want to take up a reflection on how love and unity between people is most effectively produced.

The first quotation that students of Baha'i children's classes ever learn is this quotation: So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth. It comes from Baha'u'llah's Epistle to the Son of the Wolf. In its original context it is as follows.

The utterance of God is a lamp, whose light is these words: Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship. He Who is the Daystar of Truth beareth Me witness! So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth. The One true God, He Who knoweth all things, Himself testifieth to the truth of these words.
(Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 14)

The passage is a good choice on the part of the Ruhi institute as an introduction. For one, it focuses on the importance of unity within the Baha'i faith, and its need in this day. Secondly, it introduces the theme of illumination and manifestation from above that is a key component of Baha'u'llah's worldview. Though it is not immediately clear that this spiritual light is divine in origin, the imagery is a clear reference to the Surih of the Troops from the Qur'an.

And the trumpet shall be blown, and those who are in the heavens and in the earth shall swoon, save whom God pleases. Then it shall be blown again, and, lo! they shall stand up and look on. And the earth shall beam with the light of its Lord, and the Book shall be set forth, and the prophets and martyrs shall be brought; and it shall be decreed between them in truth, and they shall not be wronged!
(The Qur'an (E.H. Palmer tr), Sura 39 - The Troops)
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Another passage in which God's creatures are said to manifest divine unity is in Baha'u'llah's address to the Ottoman Sultan Abdu'l Aziz, contained in the Suriy-i-Muluk.

Return, then, and cleave wholly unto God, and cleanse thine heart from the world and all its vanities, and suffer not the love of any stranger to enter and dwell therein. Not until thou dost purify thine heart from every trace of such love can the brightness of the light of God shed its radiance upon it, for to none hath God given more than one heart. This, verily, hath been decreed and written down in His ancient Book. And as the human heart, as fashioned by God, is one and undivided, it behoveth thee to take heed that its affections be, also, one and undivided. Cleave thou, therefore, with the whole affection of thine heart, unto His love, and withdraw it from the love of anyone besides Him, that He may aid thee to immerse thyself in the ocean of His unity, and enable thee to become a true upholder of His oneness.
(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 214)

Though in the previous passage unity refers to fellowship between human beings, in this instance unity refers to a person's whole-hearted commitment to divine guidance. One thought that might pop into one's mind is that these two passages are slightly contradictory. In particular it doesn't immediately make sense how the unity of the human race is promoted by withdrawing one's heart from the love of anyone besides Him as is prescribed in the second passage. They come together though if one considers the type of love that we ought to display. Rather than love people for themselves, it makes more sense to love God with one's full heart. When that is accomplished that love will overflow into our relationships with all people. For we will see the light of the Creator that is present within each of his creatures. Abdu'l Baha writes,

Love the creatures for the sake of God and not for themselves. You will never become angry or impatient if you love them for the sake of God. Humanity is not perfect. There are imperfections in every human being, and you will always become unhappy if you look toward the people themselves. But if you look toward God, you will love them and be kind to them, for the world of God is the world of perfection and complete mercy.
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 92)

In conclusion, unity is not so much a worldly condition that God has prescribed for his creatures. It can also be seen as a divine attribute which overflows into creation when a person shows forth a deep love for the one Creator. In this way, the earth shall beam with the light of its Lord.

Santa?

2007-10-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

The paragraph below is from an account of Abdu'l Baha's visit to Great Britain in 1912. Suffice to say, It is highly amusing.

Later, on Christmas day, He visited Lord Lamington (see p. 8). In the evening He went to a Salvation Army hostel, where some five hundred of society's wrecks were gathered. He spoke to them, and donated twenty guineas to the hostel to provide them with a good meal and another night, as His guests. He also inspected the sleeping accommodation of the hostel, and a children's home as well. When He reached Cadogan Gardens that night, it was apparent that the sight of the condition of the unfortunate had distressed Him. A good many of His talks, in His drawing-room during the Christmas week, were concerned with the Birth and the Advent of Christ and the significance of baptism. One day He walked for an hour or so in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Afterwards He went to a Christmas party for the impoverished. Wherever He came across children He showed them such kindness and consideration that some of them thought He was Father Christmas, and sang a song in His praise.

(H.M. Balyuzi, Abdu'l-Baha - The Centre of the Covenant, p. 350)

Some thoughts on Islamic objections to Baha'i obligatory prayer

2007-10-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

This following paragraph is taken from an anti-Baha'i poster distributed in the Iranian city of Karaj, quoted on the website bahairights.org. It repeats a common criticism among Muslims of the laws of Baha'u'llah.

Obligatory prayers should not be offered in congregation, except the Prayer for the Dead. Baha’is have three obligatory prayers. First one is the long obligatory prayer which is to be offered once in every 24 hours and has completely invented genuflections and verses. The second obligatory prayer is the medium one, offered in the morning, noon and night. The third is the short obligatory prayer and offered at the time of sunset. Of course reciting one of these three prayers will suffice. And if one were to chose the short obligatory prayer it is almost like not praying at all. The Qiblih [the Point of Adoration] is the burial spot of Mirza Husayn-Ali Baha in Akka, Israel.

This is part of a broader critique of Baha'is that since Muslims pray five times a day that this is better than one or three times a day: the more the holier. This simplistic view, I think, is in need of a thorough dismantling. It is recounted in Islamic tradition that God at first enjoined upon Muhammad that the Muslims should pray fifty times a day, but that with negotiation Muhammad talked God down to requiring it only five times a day. One part of this episode is recounted in the following hadith.

Allah gave this joyful news along with the reduction to the Prophet Allah that: “Oh my Prophet! The word is never changed in my presence. You will take the benefit of fifty times of Salah in return of performing five times a day of Salah” (İbn-i Mâce, İkâmetü's salât, 194) http://www.namazzamani.net/english/what_is_salah.htm

That the five times could take on the benefit of the fifty is certainly an example of the Islamic-Baha'i principle "Verily, God doeth whatsoever He willeth and ordaineth whatsoever He pleaseth." That something is good is not so because of inherent qualities, but because of those graces that have been bestowed upon it by the will of God, a will that is not constrained by any other standard of righteousness.

If Muhammad decrees that it be five times a day, then yes, it is the law of God regarding obligatory prayer. If Baha'u'llah says one or three times, then yes, that is the law of God regarding obligatory prayer. Indeed if both declared none, then that too would be the law of God. Verily, God doeth whatsoever He willeth and ordaineth whatsoever He pleaseth. In this light whatever is the law is irrelevant. What matters is whether or not something is revealed by the will of God. And this cannot be determined by investigating how often the believers are instructed to pray.

Similarly, the reasons behind the divine laws can exceed the understanding of human beings.

It is nonetheless indisputably clear and evident that the minds of men have never been, nor shall they ever be, of equal capacity. The Perfect Intellect alone can provide true guidance and direction.
-Baha'u'llah in the Tabernacle of Unity p.29

There is in addition a second weakness in the claim "if one were to chose the short obligatory prayer it is almost like not praying at all." This is that for Baha'is, this word is the Word of God. That this doesn't occur to the writer is evidenced by the claim that the long obligatory prayer "has completely invented genuflections and verses." What is meant by this is that the Baha'i obligatory prayers do not come from the words of Muhammad. Instead, they are those of Baha'u'llah, whose words for Baha'is are the Word of God. Such an objection is no different than a Christian denouncing Islamic Salaat as completely fabricated because their words are not Biblical in origin. But I digress. Given that the words of the Short Obligatory prayer are those of God by way of Baha'ullah, then there should be no concern regarding its efficacy, for the word of God is not just any word. It contains a power far exceeding the limitations of merely human speech. The following is one place where Baha'u'llah speaks of the efficacy of the Word of God.

Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is endowed with such potency as can instill new life into every human frame, if ye be of them that comprehend this truth.

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 140)

It should be noted that in the original Arabic, the Short Obligatory Prayer consists of 28 words.

Baha'u'llah also explains the efficacy of the Word of God in this way,

Intone, O My servant, the verses of God that have been received by thee, as intoned by them who have drawn nigh unto Him, that the sweetness of thy melody may kindle thine own soul, and attract the hearts of all men. Whoso reciteth, in the privacy of his chamber, the verses revealed by God, the scattering angels of the Almighty shall scatter abroad the fragrance of the words uttered by his mouth, and shall cause the heart of every righteous man to throb. Though he may, at first, remain unaware of its effect, yet the virtue of the grace vouchsafed unto him must needs sooner or later exercise its influence upon his soul. Thus have the mysteries of the Revelation of God been decreed by virtue of the Will of Him Who is the Source of power and wisdom.

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 295)

In conclusion, all of my objections to the above poster revolve around one single point, that it is irrelevant to look at the details of religious laws when looking for their authority. Rather, one must examine first and foremost, whether or not their source is in fact a Revelation from God. This can only come through an unbiased examination of the life of the one making the claim. Perhaps I will touch on this last point more in the future.

What am I?

2007-10-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I wrote this post twice. The first time I lost my internet connection not long after I started. Thus, there was no autosave function and once I hit publish it went to a new screen, losing the old one without it ever going anywhere. But rather than go into a fit of anger and frustration at technology I was instead filled with a cold-hearted determination to recover the entire damn thing from memory. This is what I churned out in the half an hour that followed. Sadly, the argument does not feel as tight as in the first draft. But that may be because I was only more aware after making it a second time and becoming more attuned to its problems. Ten points to anybody who can figure out what's nagging me that I can't put my finger on.

I was reading some pretty funky stuff on Academic Search Premier (God bless my still- active Earlham library account) when a rather strange thought in my head. This post is the explication of that thought. It concerns the possibility of free choice. But I do not want to pick sides in the free will-determinism debate. That would be rather…well…lame. Instead I will explore the experience of being a freely willing I and the conditions that make that possible. Perhaps it will help me understand what I am.

“I have made choices in the past and will continue to do so in the future.” This is the manifesto of the freely choosing I. At first glance it appears obvious. But open closer examination its basic assumptions turn upon themselves with such strength that it’s a bit of a wonder the experience of freedom remains intact all the while.

On the one hand to be an I is to be a unity that gathers together and fuses a multiplicity of singular moments. Once together they form a temporal sequence, a unified field that cuts across variations in time and place. Insofar as their I-ness is concerned, each moment is equal. They all partake on a level plane of the I that unites them. In this way, a person distinguishes oneself from things. I alone am conscious. I am different. My existence transcends my immediate presence and extends outward into past and future. Across time, I am the same I.

But on the other hand, that sameness and continuity can be the very failure of a person to distinguish oneself from mere, inanimate things. In this model to be human is to be able a choose between a multiplicity, to determines one’s own destiny in one direction rather than another, and by extension to make changes to oneself. After all, we are the choices we make. To fail to determine one’s own destiny is to be stripped of his or her humanity and to become a mere function of who or whatever does. Everyone has experienced this in one limited circumstance or another, as a slab of meat in a hospital bed, a sex-object exploited for another’s pleasure, or an assembly line worker whose occupation is to be little more than a carbon-based robot. In such situations a cold indifferent unity is projected upon one’s existence. The fork in the road is erased, and replaced with the bare necessity of a straight path. To change oneself and one’s surroundings in such contexts is not an option. But to do so is the very means by which one distinguishes oneself from mere things. To establish one’s freedom of choice is to cut against the unity of necessity and choose one path over others. It is to establish oneself as an empty and surging contingency in the space between a multiplicity of options. If there was only one option then there could be no space to insert oneself, only the overbearing presence of destiny.

So, on the one hand, to be a freely choosing I requires a unity for its very constitution. This is what makes consciousness rise above the singular nothings of which it is formed or are immediately present as things set before us in experience. But on the other hand if I am to be in control of my destiny there must be a possibility of change in myself, and thus of violation to that unity. One must be situated between a multiplicity of options so as to surpass the dead unity of thingness. To choose is to tie off the unity of the already-is so as to open up the new reality of the just-now. To be an I requires that one bridge the gap between these two moments, while the reality of that choice depends upon the substantiality of their difference. To be a freely choosing I requires both a unity and a fracturing of that unity, opening the space for choice between the multiple.

“I have made choices in the past and will continue to do so in the future.” Caught between the one and the multiple, the necessary and the contingent the freely choosing I is a far odder terrain than at first imagined.

What on earth is meant by Spirituality?

2007-09-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

The coherence, unity, and integrity of one's very self is brought into question upon the realization that one knows how to use a word, and can bandy it about with the utmost freedom and conviction, but is absolutely stupefied when challenged to actually explain its meaning. This is not to say that there is a precise meaning to the words we use, and from which we arrive at understanding. But nonetheless there is a sort of holy terror in the realization that the I does not even understand what it itself is saying. If this tragic gulf is in fact the case, why even claim a unified I in the first place?

This state of perplexity was unexpectedly thrust upon me once while attending Quaker meeting for worship. That particular week we were presented with queries upon which to meditate. Each one dealt with something "spiritual" e.g. whether or not we do our part to nurture a "spiritual " community, or whether or not when we speak during worship it comes from a true "spiritual" leading. The excess with which that word showed up in the queries led me to ask if anyone could illustrate the meaning of this indispensable word. In so doing, since whether or not something is spiritual is the criterion for speaking or not speaking I experienced an enormous feeling of liberation. For the very criterion for appropriate speech had been brought into question. All speech had become fair game. Upon inquiry no one felt capable of determining what was meant, though in fact the queries assumed that it is in fact possible to recognize the difference between something that is spiritual and something that is not spiritual. A state of perplexity had descended upon the entire congregation. No conclusions were reached at this meeting, only more questions, and a desire to pursue them. Because of this I was immensely satisfied with the outcome of the meeting. This was how I came to be possessed by a seemingly indispensable question: "what do we mean when we invoke the word spiritual?"

What is sought by this question is not the true meaning of the spiritual divorced from what people think it is. Rather, what is sought is the precise way that I think a great deal of people, myself included, use this word and know what is meant upon its invocation. In this case, I don't think I am foisting my own meaning upon others but rather am pointing out the unexpected versatility of an already widespread usage. Towards this end I would like to share another story from a Quaker meeting for worship. Hopefully, it will provide a clear understanding of what exactly is at stake when we inquire as to the boundaries of the spiritual.

A few months before the above meeting I was privileged to hear a short message delivered by a dear acquaintance of mine, a Unitarian-Universalist, Alex Winnett. In his message he defended eagerly the spiritual stature of secular humanism, a viewpoint that loosely categorizes a wide variety of people who have a passion for life, and the upliftment of all people but do not necessarily believe in or rely upon a higher power for their inspiration. In particular he lamented the exclusion of secular humanists from interfaith gatherings. The point he was trying to drive home is that such people are just as worthy to take part in such gatherings. Their relationship to the divine might be different than other participants, but with regard to interfaith gatherings the inclusion of different viewpoints is precisely the point. But what is it that unites all these different groups, Muslims, Christians, Baha'is, Buddhists, Hindus, Secular humanists, etc.? (It is with great pain, mind you, that I lump in "everyone else" with that "etc." As a a Baha'i I know all too well the frustration of such erasure and marginalization.) Surely, there is something that binds all these different groups together, gives them something to talk about, and provides the common language to do so. It is this unifying element that is the central concern of this essay.

Towards this end, I will advance a working definition for the elusive word in question. As a domain of human life, Spirituality is the engagement with the profound. Any question regarding the spiritual pertains to those things that are deep, affecting, and powerful. In this way spirituality refers to those things that are most foundational, most fundamental to who we are. This interest in the foundational is what makes spirituality so "deep." Furthermore, spirituality refers to the relationship between profound matters and particular situations in which they would become manifest. It is about the relationship between those things that are most essential about us, our "spirit" if you will, and how it is expressed in the particularity of any given moment. In this way, spirituality is persistently obsessed with the question of putting things into practice and letting deeds not words be your adorning. In addition, when the foundations change, the rest of the edifice changes with it. Such is the power of the profound. In still another light spirituality regards our inquiry of the very assumption of a relationship between a personal essence and the particularity of any given moment. This is the question of self and non-self, a subject that is foundational to so many great spiritual traditions.

One might be led to wonder, "where is God, or a higher truth, in all of this?" The answer is that theism, and its expression in a particular tradition is only a form of spirituality and not spirituality as such. In this understanding, to become spiritual wouldn't mean to begin praying, to get baptized, or read scripture. All it would mean is to become self-aware and to inquire into the nature of oneself and of the world. What this means is that what I have seen many people mean by spiritual can be applied in a wider set of circumstances then conventionally understood. Indeed, "the profound" exceeds its articulation as such. The implications of this can be explored by way of example.

Imagine a young woman who dedicates a lot of energy towards advancing her career and becoming successful. Naomi reads books on time management, attends classes to sharpen her business skills, and puts in extra hours at work to impress the boss. She is very focused at making all of these pieces in her life fit together. This is how she advances a broader goal of attaining a certain position in her company by a certain date. In this way, she will feel accomplished. But then one day, she realizes that the success that she has already gained has not made her happy, and that gaining more is unlikely to make her any happier. Naomi then goes through a bit of a personal crisis wondering what to do with her life. As a way of pursuing a greater happiness, she takes up Vipassana meditation. With practice she gains greater and greater insight into the causes of suffering, and the ways to undo their painful effects upon one's psyche. In this way Naomi gains a greater happiness than she ever would have gained from obtaining the position she wanted in her company.

Conventionally, people would say that Naomi became spiritual during the course of this story. They would imply that only the meditation was properly spiritual. Instead, I would like to interpret this story as a transition from one spirituality to another. The reason I say this is because both lifestyles involved an engagement with the profound and a concern for its manifestation in the particular moments of one's life. One was based on vision of happiness derived from having influence over the world around oneself, and the salary that comes with that power. The other is based on a vision of happiness that involves uprooting the causes of psychological pain. In this light Naomi did not change by becoming spiritual. Instead, she spiritually changed by switching out the foundations that guide her daily life.

One difficulty in accepting this understanding of spirituality is that people who regard themselves as spiritual don't want to think of careerism as "an engagement with the profound." They would much rather consider it as an intoxication with the superficial. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it discounts the profound degree of "spirit" that it takes to ascend the corporate ladder. It requires the summoning of inner resources to power through obstacles and fulfill one's "deepest" desires. It may result in a lot of stress and psychological frustration, but this is the lot of anyone who sets out on a profound endeavor. Furthermore, this world-view has ways of dealing with these problems, oftentimes explicitly spiritual and religious. That these should be regarded as unspiritual is a curious double standard.

That this wide dispersal of spirituality has not been recognized is because those spiritual traditions conventionally recognized as such are accustomed to holding a near monopoly on spirituality. Between them, any discussion of the profound usually took place within at least one of them. Certainly, these discussions did take place outside of religion, i.e. a merchant explaining to an apprentice the prerequisites for financial success. But in the modern age these discussions have proliferated in the "secular" realm and have increasingly sought the types of public attention once reserved for the major religions. An excellent example of the way in which "the profound" had parted company with the major religions while still retaining its "spiritual forms" is in the birth of psychoanalysis and its appropriation from Catholicism of the act of confession before a confessor. It should be noted however that this secularization is only superficial. Inasmuch as a person engages with the profound he or she commits an act of religion and sets out on a path well worn by the world's major religions.

Little wonder then, that atheists and agnostics should be inquiring into the traditional subjects of religion, the prerequisites of justice, true happiness, the meaning of life, etc. That they are spiritual creatures is unmistakable. Indeed, their spirit is at least as strong on most occasions as those who identify as religious. To regard secularism as a spiritual wasteland is to lose sight of the rich manifestations of vitality happening outside the bounds of the conventionally spiritual. This is well-understood by anybody who has known someone who is "a good person" even an excellent person but who doesn't consider him or herself as spiritual.

If I want the reader to come away with anything it is this, that those "fruits of the spirit" exceed the boundaries of where and when people conventionally use the word spiritual, and that this exclusion privileges the recognition of those fruits within the fold of those regarded as spiritual. Furthermore, I think this demonstrates the need for a rather "spiritual" endeavor." Since spirituality concerns the relationship between the foundational and the particular that it supports, I believe there is a need for "putting into practice" an engagement with the profound across spiritual lines, that those conventionally included and excluded from term "spirituality" discover through fellowship that they have more in common than they thought. This in turn can open up avenues of exchange by which we can enjoy the profound benefits of each other's deepest treasures.

the Narcissism of Worship

2007-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Suratu'l Haykal: Epistle to Pope Pius IX 109

Say: Take heed lest your devotions withhold you from Him Who is the object of all devotion, or your worship debar you from Him Who is the object of all worship. Rend asunder the veils of your idle fancies! This is your Lord, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, Who hath come to quicken the world and unite all who dwell on earth.

Certainly, prayer and worship would be spectularly unorthodox if its purpose is to worship oneself and not God. But strangely enough, there is plenty of reason to believe that this is very common, if not the norm. The above passage from the Suratu'l'Haykal is a warning against this problem, highlighting the way that the very means of approach towards God can become obstacles to accomplishing their specific purpose.

If we take Baha'u'llah at his word in the Kitab-al-Iqan, then human beings can never engage with God as the absolute. This would be impossible because the two are essentially different from each other (think oil and water). Any engagement that humans would have would always be at the level of his manifest attributes and virtues (his "Names" in Islamic-Baha'i parlance). These are not God, but they are the signs of his dominion, and the effects of his "will." I want to frame this discussion in terms of this distinction between God as the absolute and God as manifest Names. Worship of God in this context would then be a sort of engagement with the divine attributes: his mercy, his wisdom, his justice, etc. After all, in the Long Obligatory Prayer the performer testifies Too high art Thou for the praise of those who are near unto Thee to ascend unto the heaven of Thy nearness. I know that this claim isn't exactly air tight, that prayer and worship is always an engagement with the divine names rather than the essence. But at the very least it helps show that Baha'i spirituality isn't so much oriented exclusively at a single transcendent being that is above and beyond all creation, as it is about the play of His "Light" within creation. Within the Baha'i faith this is usually associated with the Manifestations of God, and their unique gift of manifesting the divine spirity. But all people, and indeed all of creation is also involved to some extent in the manifestation of these same attributes and virtues. Below are two verses from the Arabic Hidden Words. They help illustrate the complex role that one's own self plays within this arrangement.

11
O SON OF BEING! Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor upon thee.

69
O YE SONS OF SPIRIT! Ye are My treasury, for in you I have treasured the pearls of My mysteries and the gems of My knowledge. Guard them from the strangers amidst My servants and from the ungodly amongst My people.

In both instances, the self is regarded as a sort of vehicle for the divine and that one's effectiveness as a vehicle is dependent upon one's spiritual efforts. Clearly, this possession of divine attributes is something that occurs in this world. It either is or is not happening right now within oneself and in one's surroundings. The divine is immanent, as is the capacity to protect and manifest that divinity. Since the ferrying of the divine attributes is dependent upon one's own efforts, the engagement with the divine is in many ways an effort to make one's self more effective at protecting and manifesting those signs of God within us. The great danger is that one might take a narcissistic pride in one's own success. At which point, prayer and worship can become the very barrier to submission before God. Here is another passage from the Suratu'l' Haykal.

Bring then into being, by Our leave, resplendent mirrors and exalted letters that shall testify to Thy sovereignty and dominion, bear witness to Thy might and glory, and be the manifestations of Thy Names amidst mankind.... Warn, then, these mirrors, once they have been made manifest, lest they swell with pride before their Creator and Fashioner when He appeareth amongst them, or let the trappings of leadership delude and debar them from bowing in submission before God, the Almighty, the All-Beauteous.

This isn't just a matter of abstract theologizing that only comes up when considering esoteric points of Baha'i thought. It's a matter that comes up everywhere at all times. It comes up everytime that public prayer is used as a form of social protest. It comes up whenever religious events become an occasion to contemplate how superior "we" are to the "them," whatever pejorative they're assigned. It comes up everytime a person shows satisfaction at the development of their spiritual practice. If I wanted to be more specific, I could continue until I get really, really annoying. All that needs to be said is that any recognition of goodness within oneself, whether or not it be by one's own merits is at the same time a recognition of the evil in others and their failure to come to the good. All of this is just patting oneself on the back, something not too far off from narcissism, which is self-worship almost by definition.

But isn't prayer a time to praise God? Of course it is. But the only means of approach is through the manifestation of his attributes and virtues in creation. And who is it that is most capable of manifesting those attributes and virtues. Chances are any given person is likely to say "people like me," "people associated with me," "People I aspire to emulate." They may even go for the gold and just say "me." As terrible as it sounds that last one just might be the most honest.

Anyhoo, before I wrap this up I want to say that this isn't just a problem for those communities who believe that we aproach God through his manifest attributes rather than directly. It's a problem with anyone who considers themselves or their community as a privileged vehicle or treasury of that which is most necessary, holy, useful, and good. That was the inspiration behind selecting the second quotation from the Hidden words that I used earlier. It shows the way that oneself and the community around it can become treasuries of the divine, which must be protected from outsiders. Furthermore this isn't just about religion. It's about any claim to goodness and its distribution in the world, and that such a claim is usually that it is most concentrated in something closely associated with oneself.

Perhaps I should end with a quote. I'm not going to comment on it specifically. But clearly, it's a response to the same issues I wanted to raise.

Man must be a lover of the light, no matter from what dayspring it may appear. He must be a lover of the rose, no matter in what soil it may be growing. He must be a seeker of the truth, no matter from what source it come. Attachment to the lantern is not loving the light. Attachment to the earth is not befitting, but enjoyment of the rose which develops from the soil is worthy. Devotion to the tree is profitless, but partaking of the fruit is beneficial.

-Abdu'l Baha

From where does God's authority come?

2007-06-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

This entry is in many ways a response to this essay, published in 1995. I didn't read it though until I was well on my way to finishing this post, but we certainly cover much of the same ground, come up against some of the same problems, but still think about these things in very different ways.

http://bahai-library.com/file.php5?file=abizadeh_moral_reasoning&language=All

I've only read through it once. So I don't think I've fully mastered its argument. I'll just say this. It makes me rather uneasy because I don't think it has due respect for themes of self-justifying arbitrariness in Baha'u'llah's writings.

Be forewarned. This is a long entry. It's so long I've actually added two chapter markers.

In Plato's dialogue, the Euthyphro, the character of Socrates asks of his companion a difficult and quite perplexing question: Is piety good because it is pleasing to the gods, or is it pleasing to the gods because it is good? This is just a paraphrase. But it conveys the clear distinction there is between two ideas that are often presented together as if they were not contradictory.

On the one hand is the notion that piety is good because it is pleasing to the gods. This means that something is not good because of any inherent qualities, but rather because they have received endorsement by the sovereign authority.

On the other hand is the notion that piety is pleasing to the gods because it is good. This means that something is good because of inherent qualities that are present in themselves. In this case, the gods are just connisieurs of goodness, a reality that exists prior to the gods and their decrees. In this case, the gods are not sovereign. Rather, the good is the sovereign authority, and the authority of the gods is only in their superior ability to discern goodness.

Socrates argued for this second position. His notion of the sovereign and unified "goodness in itself" displaced the authority of Zeus, Apollo, Athena and the rest of the Athenian pantheon. Understandably this led to a charge that he discouraged the worship of the gods of the city, and promoted new gods instead. For this he was executed, and logically so.

Though this debate within Athenian religion has long since disappeared, the stubborn difficulty of this problem has persisted. Indeed it cuts right through the writings of Baha'u'llah. Taken as a whole his writings never take decisivily one position or the other. Depending on the context he uses either of the positions outlined by Plato's Socrates to defend and justify his mission to the world. The reason I want to explore this issue is because I think it has enormous consequences for how to understand Baha'u'llah, his teachings, and how his followers should relate to his teachings and the world. In particular, this issue concerns how to explain and justify Baha'u'llah's teachings to those who are not acquainted with the faith.

On the one hand Baha'u'llah is fond of remarking that God doeth what he willeth and ordaineth whatsoever he pleaseth. Since there is no higher authority for God to appeal, his action then is justified by his own act of willing it. This of course, would make his actions arbitrary, but that's the point. Something rises above arbitrariness once it can appeal to a higher authority for its judgments. The courts fall back on the law, philosophers fall back on reason, historians fall back on their sources. But this backward citation of authority must come to an end somewhere. At this point, a thing's authority is not from something higher, but rather from its very self. This is what it means to be arbitrary. Furthermore this arbitrariness is inscribed into all judgments that refer back to that arbitrary foundational principle. When Baha'u'llah remarks that God doeth what he willeth and ordaineth whatsoever he pleaseth he declares God is the sovereign authority of all things, the measure by which all judgments are made, and the source of all goodness that can be justified as such.

On the other hand Baha'u'llah cites as his authority that his teachings are in humanity's best interest. Take this passage from the Lawh-i-Manikchi-Sahib the first line is the most important but I've quoted the whole thing just because of how much I love this passage. In fact one of the first entries of this blog was on this passage. I believe it was called the Will to Salvation.

The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.

In this model, the manifestation of God is particularly expert at discerning the needs of a particular time and place. His authority is not so much his will, but the needs-in-themselves that he is so skilled at diagnosing. Such a model relies on a vision of the universe in which everything has within itself a true purpose and nature inherent to it. God would know his creation better than anyone, so thus he would be the most authoritative guide to these "true needs." In this way, the authority of the manifestation is based on the practical efficacy of his teachings, and their harmony with the world, and hence science. God then, would be the superior scientist.

So, as we can see the stance that God ordaineth whatsoever he pleaseth is in clear tension with his claim to being the All-Knowing Physician. I don't want to resolve this conflict as such. For one, I have my doubts that it could ever be sufficiently resolved. At the very least though, I want to highlight these issues and point out how these themes take shape as strategies for explaining the Baha'i faith to oneself and to others.

The rubber hits the road with this distinction when responding to the question: What's so great about Baha'u'llah? If one takes the first perspective then the answer to this question would be a proof that Baha'u'llah was indeed who he said he was, a manifestation of God himself, sent to illuminate humanity with divine instruction. Since he determines what is good without any criteria beside his own will, then there is no other need to explain the social benefit of his teachings. Their authority is in God, and all discussion would only center around whether or not such teachings do in fact come from God. This strategy clearly upholds the authority of God, rather than surreptitiously subordinating his authority to human enterprises such as science, or political ideology, a problem that will be seen with the All-Knowing Physician strategy. But one clear drawback to this first approach is that it makes religion seem quite......pointless. The temptation is to conclude that this life is just a big test to see whether or not humans will do what God tells them to do. That doesn't quite do justice to Baha'u'llah's teachings, now does it?

The other strategy then would be to show that Baha'u'llah's teachings are the greatest hope humanity has to achieve collective happiness and well-being. This of course involves a lot of guess-work, seeing as how it is is extremely unlikely, if not conceptually impossible, to see anytime soon Baha'u'llah's teachings being universally put into practice "in their purity," what ever that is. Anyway, if Baha'u'llah's teachings need to be promoted then that necessarily implies that they are in need of further implementation. Thus, any argument that somebody would make for their value is in one sense a reasonable guess, and in another sense a promise without a strict guarantee. As difficult as this strategy may be, I'm a big promoter of it. Pondering the practicality of Baha'u'llah's teachings is my biggest inspiration for following his exhortation in the Kitab-i-Aqdas to Immerse yourselves in the ocean of My words, that ye may unravel its secrets, and discover all the pearls of wisdom that lie hid in its depths.

One perplexity of this strategy is that it subordinates the authority of divine teachings to whatever is the dominant vision at the time of what is and is not rational, and the people that represent that rationality. As long as their has been thought, it has been used to respond positively to the world. So anyone who is engaged in thought is also at the same time engaged in the question of how best to live in this world. Baha'u'llah is not the only one trying to be viewed as the All-Knowing Physician. This posture and promise stands at the very heart of any pursuit of expertise, whether it be scientific, philosophical, medical, political, etc. Any community from any of these fields has their own idea of what is rational and in humanity's best interest. Their influence on thought should not be forgotten when considering the rational "merit" of any religous ideas, in this case, Baha'u'llah's teachings. It's not unreasonable to argue that any one of these expert visions are arranged in such a way as to necessarily exclude anything that does not fit into their world-view. In fact, I'd say its perfectly reasonable, maybe even tautological.

This admittedly is very difficult terrain, and worthy of a few books itself, certainly its own blog entry. Suffice to say, I'm not eager to explain Baha'u'llah in terms of the world's various ideologies. Many times its tempting to think about how Baha'u'llah would make a fine quantum physicist, post-Gramsci Marxist, or innovative humanist psychologist. But such projects are all just such prostitution in my eyes and I won't stand for it. I'm certainly not in the "it's-true-because-Baha'u'llah-says-so-crowd" (see above link). But as a godfearing monotheist, I will not tolerate subordinating his teachings to the latest whims of the gods of this world: the guardians of rationalities in the university, the think-tanks, government, and media.

Though it is crucially important to demonstrate the benefits of Baha'u'llah's teachings, one must always take into account who it is that influences our vision of what is and is not a "benefit" to the world. For this reason, I put a lot of faith in the assertion that God ordaineth whatsoever he pleaseth. With this principle, arbitrariness isn't a problem to be rectified. It's the logical basis of any justification. Coming to terms with arbitrariness is important inasmuch as it protects against colonization by whatever is the dominant vision of what is rational. In one sense this is about retaining independence and diversity. But in another sense its about protecting those things that are excluded from the contemporary status quo, but whose value will only become manifest in the future. So, a particular teaching may appear arbitrary to some inquiring mind. And that inquiring mind may think it is the most urgent priority to make that teaching "compatible with reason." Towards this end he or she will hammer that teaching this way and that until it is bent into conformity with whatever they regard as most reasonable. But this is always done in terms of self and the present moment. Little to no regard would be given to what may be beyond our understanding or how our prejudice towards the status quo may blind to us to sources of future hope. For this reason, I think that making peace with arbitrariness has a place in protecting the Baha'i faith from colonization by and assimilation into more powerful and influential ideologies in the world today. Not everything is going to make sense. But I don't think that that is necessarily a problem. Part of looking to the future is accepting that.

My Hair is Tall. Praise God!

2007-06-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

In class, we were recently taught a children's song and instructed to memorize it for Monday.

The lyrics are a combination of Arabic and English. In English it reads.

I am small
My head is ball.
My hair is tall.

Praise God!

My eyes are ink.
My cheeks are pink.
My teeth are milk.

Praise God!

After thinking about this song for a while I have taken up a militant confidence in its profundity as an expression of religiosity. I say this for two reasons. For one, it draws a connection between one's basic means of worldly sustenance and God's generosity. Secondly, it violates the postures of maturity and seriousness that hinder one's recognition of this very serious, even grave, matter.

I won't lie. These aren't original ideas (as if such things could ever be conceived or even recognized as such). Rather, I have been fortunate enough to hear that Thich Nhaht Hanh (sp?) uses similar childrens' songs to instill humility and spontaneity among his students. Furthermore, I'm drawing on the Gospels. If I had a Bible with me right now, I'd find a quote. Suffice to say, there are multiple occasions in which the Apostles are arguing amongst each other about who is the greatest among them (typical electoral politics). Jesus then tells them to shut their faces and learn from the example of children. What exactly that means is sort of ambiguous, but I hope to offer an interpretation of that in the course of this entry.

Readers of the Qur'an would know that the earliest portions of the Qur'an, those revealed in Mecca, focus most heavily, and most repititiously on such foundational concepts. They are constantly reminded that God is the one who created humanity, that he is the one who makes the rain fall, and crops to grow. To make a long story short, humanity is dependent on God in all ways. For this reason we should offer praise to the one who has raised us up, and will raise us up a second time on the Last Day.

In simple language the song reminds the singer of various parts of the body that he or she might take for granted, and that they are (usually) in good condition. The song then move effortlessly towards the logical conclusion: Praise God!

Many would accuse me of being silly for writing this entry. They would say that this is all theological child's play and not the domain of serious religion. To them I would say: Stop taking yourselves so seriously, and start taking God seriously, the source of our existence.

There is a proper time for all things. For this reason, children must grow up to be adults, and take up adult responsibilities. But in the discharge of such duties, it is easy to forget the support that we recieve from God. For example, by concentrating so heavily on what "I" need to do I might ignore all those things that have already been done for me. This does not just pertain to God, but to other people as well. After all, God bestows his bounties throughout creation, especially in other people. For that reason, we should respect all people who have made contributions to our prosperity, not just those who are better positioned to claim publicly that it was "their" contribution that made all the difference. The serious business of taking responsibility must then take into account the equally serious matter of honoring contributions in the most appropriate manner.

All things come from God. And to him all things return. All powers that exist in the world are only manifestations of his power in creation. Everything we see in our lives that benefit us owes its existence to God. He is the one who makes the wind blow andthe most any one person can say is that he or she is a sail. It is upon his support that people are allowed to "set sail." Only then can we proceed with power and influence in this world. All expressions of power, even so-called independence, are necessarily dependent on other factors, worldly, or other-worldy that have been brought into existence by God.

This is why children's songs are so important. Childhood is a time when one feels very concretely this dependence on others. It's not that children are more dependent than adults. It's just that its a lot harder to deny this dependence at that age. Everybody at all times is always dependent on someone or something else. This is the reality of the universe. Recognizing it is the responsibility of all serious-minded individuals.

The song is amazing not just because it recognizes the immanence of God's generosity. But furthermore, its very form upsets the spiritual posturing that assumes otherwise. It helps point out the great absurdity of adulthood, especially among the modern middle class: that adults have achieved independence. Could lies more adulterous ever be conceived? Could such seriousness ever be taken seriously? To hell with you hubris-mongerers! From God we have come. And to God will we return. For them this song may be playtime. But for others this is a religious duty of the highest priority.

What other option is there but to Praise God!

I've included an excellent passage from the Lawh-i-Ra'is, a writing of Baha'u'llah. It too is one of the inspirations for this entry. If it helps put the passage in context, I'll say that it is bookended by unrelenting fire and brimstone. This was written immediately following He and his followers exile to Akka. It could be said this was Baha'u'llah's "angry period," and is addressed to an orchestrator of his exile in the Ottoman court.

Have ye fondly imagined your glory to be imperishable and your dominion to be everlasting? Nay, by Him Who is the All-Merciful! Neither will your glory last, nor will Mine abasement endure. Such abasement, in the estimation of a true man, is the pride of every glory.

When I was still a child and had not yet attained the age of maturity, My father made arrangements in Tihrán for the marriage of one of My older brothers, and as is customary in that city, the festivities lasted for seven days and seven nights. On the last day it was announced that the play "Sháh Sultán Salím" would be presented. A large number of princes, dignitaries, and notables of the capital gathered for the occasion. I was sitting in one of the upper rooms of the building 166 and observing the scene. Presently a tent was pitched in the courtyard, and before long some small human-like figures, each appearing to be no more than about a hand’s span in height, were seen to emerge from it and raise the call: "His Majesty is coming! Arrange the seats at once!" Other figures then came forth, some of whom were seen to be engaged in sweeping, others in sprinkling water, and thereafter another, who was announced as the chief town crier, raised his call and bade the people assemble for an audience with the king. Next, several groups of figures made their appearance and took their places, the first attired in hats and sashes after the Persian fashion, the second wielding battleaxes, and the third comprising a number of footmen and executioners carrying bastinados. Finally there appeared, arrayed in regal majesty and crowned with a royal diadem, a kingly figure, bearing himself with the utmost haughtiness and grandeur, at turns advancing and pausing in his progress, who proceeded with great solemnity, poise and dignity to seat himself upon his throne.

At that moment a volley of shots was fired, a fanfare of trumpets was sounded, and king and tent were enveloped in a pall of smoke. When it had cleared, the king, ensconced upon his throne, was seen surrounded by a suite of ministers, princes, and dignitaries of state who, having taken their places, were standing at attention in his presence. A captured thief was then brought before the king, who gave the order that the offender should be beheaded. Without a moment’s delay the chief executioner cut off the thief’s head, whence a blood-like liquid came forth. After this the king held audience with his court, during which intelligence was received that a rebellion had broken out on a certain frontier. Thereupon the king reviewed his troops and despatched several regiments supported by artillery to quell the uprising. A few moments later cannons were heard booming from behind the tent, and it was announced that a battle had been engaged.

This Youth regarded the scene with great amazement. When the royal audience was ended, the curtain was drawn, and, after some twenty minutes, a man emerged from behind the tent carrying a box under his arm.

"What is this box," I asked him, "and what was the nature of this display?"

"All this lavish display and these elaborate devices," he replied, "the king, the princes, and the ministers, their pomp and glory, their might and power, everything you saw, are now contained within this box."

I swear by My Lord Who, through a single word of His Mouth, hath brought into being all created things! Ever since that day, all the trappings of the world have seemed in the eyes of this Youth akin to that same spectacle. They have never been, nor will they ever be, of any weight and consequence, be it to the extent of a grain of mustard seed. How greatly I marvelled that men should pride themselves upon such vanities, whilst those possessed of insight, ere they witness any evidence of human glory, perceive with certainty the 168 inevitability of its waning. "Never have I looked upon any thing save that I have seen extinction before it; and God, verily, is a sufficient witness!"

It behoveth everyone to traverse this brief span of life with sincerity and fairness. Should one fail to attain unto the recognition of Him Who is the Eternal Truth, let him at least conduct himself with reason and justice. Erelong these outward trappings, these visible treasures, these earthly vanities, these arrayed armies, these adorned vestures, these proud and overweening souls, all shall pass into the confines of the grave, as though into that box. In the eyes of those possessed of insight, all this conflict, contention and vainglory hath ever been, and will ever be, like unto the play and pastimes of children. Take heed, and be not of them that see and yet deny.

Our call concerneth not this Youth and the loved ones of God, for they are already sore-tried and imprisoned and expect nothing from men such as thee. Our purpose is that thou mayest lift up thy head from the couch of heedlessness, shake off the slumber of negligence, and cease to oppose unjustly the servants of God. So long as thy power and ascendancy endure, strive to alleviate the suffering of the oppressed. Shouldst thou judge with fairness and observe with the eye of discernment the conflicts and pursuits of this transient world, thou wouldst readily acknowledge that they are even as the play which We have described.

Chicken!!

2007-06-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

This is me last week, finishing off the essay.....

And now in the great spirit of turning, the performer turns once more, this time from the private to the public, in the spirit of mastery in service, in manifestation, in anticipation of the turning from one age to the next.

This is me this week just starting with Arabic immersion at Beloit....

swinging my arms around exclaiming dashaaj! (arabic for "chicken") with everybody else in my class because we're so excited to pick up at least SOME vocabulary thus far.

Say it with me now.....dashaaj!
Don't forget to swing those arms!

Spirituality and "the World"

2007-06-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

As I have been warning for some time, I am at Beloit college now. I just started a summer immersion program in Arabic. For the past month I have been unemployed and have had nothing to think about all day except what I might want to post on this blog. Today was the first day of classes. Now, my life is filled with verb tables, eager instructors, and desperate attempts to mimic the words coming out of their mouths. I have been meeting lots of cool people and look forward to a month full of bilingual fun.

So, on the one hand I can't offer regular theological musings like I have every night between midnight and two am for the past month. On the other hand, I do want to keep things up. So here's some thoughts that have been running through my head.
________________________

Often there is a tendency in religious communities to think of themselves as interested in other-worldly concerns. Materiality, embodiment, contingency, and temporality are all regarded as inferior to such opposite notions as the Absolute, eternity, ideas, or even better: thought or non-thought beyond ideas. There is also a widespread tendency among the same communities to demand that religion or spirituality be grounded in living practice. Ideally, all life would be guided by these otherworldly ideas. It seems to me that these two tendencies are at odds with each other, that within these tendencies is a half truth that masks the more or less worldly, material, temporal nature of religion.

I raise this issue, not because I take an iconoclastic pleasure in "unveiling the truth about religion" or humiliating particular groups that like to think of themselves as focused on "otherworldly" concerns. Rather, I think that wrestling with this question helps deal with some of the confusion that I should hope comes up in the practice of a particular religious or spiritual tradition.

To give a more concrete spin on this let's take the example of St. Francis of Assisi. I don't think it's that presumptuous to suppose that he was wrestling with this same tension. Late in his life he was caught at a crossroads. Either he could fully devote his life to prayer, or he could continue preaching. He was in such a bind that he not only asked God for guidance, but also his fellow practitioners the Friars Minor (little brothers), something that isn't really associated with Francis' character. One would be the pursuit of a pure engagement with the other-worldly, the other an engagement with the worldly. Eventually, he decided to stick with preaching, a wise move in my opinion.

Another way of looking at this tension is to think about the sacrifices to his spirituality that by continuing to preach Francis might make. Preaching requires a very worldly engagement on a number of levels. It requires thinking about what's going to appeal to certain people, keeping up on the local news to see what topics to avoid, building alliances of friendship with people, etc. If travelling is involved it requires money, yes that disgusting archetype of worldliness, money. It requires figuring out where to sleep at night, for how long, and getting directions to places. The list goes on. And the more practical things a person has to think about, the less time he or she has to pray or meditate. Most of the time, this engagement with the world at some point involves making sacrifices in one's personal spiritual practice.

Anybody, who has ever tried to juggle spirituality and social activism (something often inspired by religious motives) knows the struggle that comes with bringing these concerns into balance with each other. I, in fact, feel a great deal of sympathy for many of the most rabidly political Christian leaders in the United States on this issue. I sympathize with them, not because I agree with their partiular agenda, but because I share the pain of being torn between spirituality and an activism that one regards as essential to spiritual commitments. Nearly thirty years after the election of Ronald Reagan, there is a deep fear among right-wing Christians that the most political churches have lost their soul in the attempt to reform the world. They did not successfully strike that balance. Thus, one was advanced to the exclusion of the other.

At the heart of this argument I would like to problematize the notion that spirituality and activism must be balanced, that they are mutually exclusive, that the progress of one results in the deterioration of the other. I think that this is based on an overextended vision of religion as something other-worldly. I do not promise that I can reconcile these two moments. I only hope to generate thought so that people might ask questions about what it means to "be spiritual."

It is my contention that every religious community worth its salt involves some sort of embodiment in social practice. Actually, I will correct myself. Let's take away the worth its salt. Every religious community necessarily involves some sort of embodiment in social practice. For this is it what it means to be a community. The question of whether a community is either worldly or otherworldly would then change to "what kind of world does this community seek?"

It is only when we recognize the fundamentally worldly nature of spirituality that we can begin to grapple with the tension between spiritual and social concerns. Towards this end, I think it would be valuable to see social interactions in general as the medium for our spiritual activity. The public must gain recognition alongside the personal as a core part of any spirituality.

I'm sure I'll be returning to this issue at a later time. So I will deliberately leave this discussion incomplete.

the Final Turn

2007-06-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

Here is the way I'm concluding the essay for now. It is a discussion of the final section of the prayer.

The themes of solidarity and unity continue into section fourteen, the conclusion of the Long Obligatory Prayer. It reads as follows.

Let him then raise his head, and seat himself, and say:

I testify, O my God, to that whereunto Thy chosen Ones have testified, and acknowledge that which the inmates of the all-highest Paradise and those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne have acknowledged. The kingdoms of earth and heaven are Thine, O Lord of the worlds!

As a way of concluding, the performer steps back and reflects more generally on the affirmations he or she has made throughout the prayer. These include one’s servitude before God, His transcendence beyond thought, His sovereignty, one’s wealth-in-possession of the divine attributes, one’s poverty in origination of those same attributes, that God is greater than every great one!, that the Manifestation of God has been mentioned in all God’s scriptures, that joy is dependent on nearness to the divine attributes, and that the origin of faith is in God. This testimony is not made alone. Thy chosen ones have made it as well. And it has been acknowledged by the inmates of the all-highest Paradise and those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne.

In this last expression we have an image of enduring power: those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne. It is a reference to one of the rituals of the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Pilgrims are required to circumambulate the Kab’ah, the cubical shrine at the center of the city seven times in a counterclockwise direction. This ritual is performed twice in the course of the Hajj. Rather than circumambulating individually, the pilgrims perform this walk all together. Seen from above, pilgrims coming from all over the world, dressed in the traditional white robes of the pilgrimage, blend together in one enormous turning wheel. At times of prayer when these same pilgrims all fall into prostration at once, the earth roars with the sound of so many knees hitting the ground simultaneously. This is the image the Long Obligatory Prayer invokes right at the end. What better way can there be to illustrate the way in which all performers of the prayer serve and worship God together?

Still, consideration should be given for what is meant by the expression Thy mighty Throne. Clearly it refers in some way to God's sovereignty and dominion, but not necessarily to the Kab'ah, Mecca, or even any physical entity. In the Baha'i writings there is a tendency to use the image of a throne to express the ascendency of God in the event of His Revelation. This would sit well with earlier discussions of securing His dominion in creation or the manifestation of His attributes, two things which by now should appear quite synonymous. Take for instance, this passage from the Kitab-i-Iqan in which Baha'u'llah praises Mulla Husayn, the first follower of His forerunner, the Bab, himself regarded by Baha'is as a Manifestation of God.

But for him [Mulla Husayn], God would not have been established upon the seat of His mercy, nor ascended the throne of eternal glory. Kitab-i-Iqan passage 248 (It also might not be a bad idea to discuss this passage way earlier, and set it against His other understanding of sovereignty in the Iqan, maybe even discuss the two clearly different interpretations He gives of the seal of the prophets.)

In this understanding of sovereignty, God does not just ascend to His throne by virtue of his transcendent nature. Rather, God ascends through the recognition of His Revelation by His creation, even if it be a single soul. Soon enough, one by one the wheel builds, gaining momentum as it extends further outwards in His creation. The greater the wheel, the greater the testimony, affirmed in the mastery of service that Thou art God, that there is no God but Thee.

The performer then testifies at last, at the conclusion of the prayer that:

The kingdoms of earth and heaven are Thine, O Lord of the Worlds!

And now in the great spirit of turning, the performer turns once more, this time from the private to the public, in the spirit of mastery in service, in manifestation, in anticipation of the turning from one age to the next.

Turning to Face the Public: part two

2007-06-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation on the previous post, which begins a commentary on section 13. The text of that is as follows.

Let him then repeat the Greatest Name thrice, and kneel with his forehead to the ground, and say:

Praise be unto Thee, O our God, that Thou hast sent down unto us that which draweth us nigh unto Thee, and supplieth us with every good thing sent down by Thee in Thy Books and Thy Scriptures. Protect us, we beseech Thee, O my Lord, from the hosts of idle fancies and vain imaginations. Thou, in truth, art the Mighty, the All-Knowing.

Just to summarize, the performer praises God for two things: that Thou 1) hast sent down unto us that which draweth us nigh unto Thee, and 2) supplieth us with every good thing sent down by Thee in Thy Books and Thy Scriptures. In the first praise, the performer speaks very generally of all things that have brought us nearer unto God. It is a reminder that the spiritual path is not just for one. But that it is walked together. Further, this solidarity cuts also across time and religious boundaries. For in the next praise, the performer thanks God for all the blessings contained in Thy Books and Thy Scriptures. No distinction is made between any one of them so the performer is left to presume that these are the sacred writings of a wide number of traditions, inspired by God in different times and places. The invocation of scriptures calls to mind the public nature of the spiritual journey as exemplified in these words of Bahá’u’lláh from the Lawh-i-Maqsud.[1]

If any man were to meditate on that which the Scriptures, sent down from the heaven of God’s holy Will, have revealed, he would readily recognize that their purpose is that all men shall be regarded as one soul.

God has manifested his blessings around the world from time immemorial. The us in Thou… supplieth us must then refer to the human race in general inasmuch as God has offered his blessings recent and ancient, far and wide.

Following this offering of praise, the performer petitions God to protect us…from the hosts of idle fancies and vain imaginations. In general, these two expressions, idle fancies and vain imaginations refer to a certain overextension of reason, usually arising from a misplaced confidence in oneself. It is often used polemically against those who reject the Manifestations of God when they appear. In another sense, it is used against those ideas that hinder the recognition of the unity of the human race, such as in this passage of Bahá’u’lláh.

Arise and, armed with the power of faith, shatter to pieces the gods of your vain imaginings, the sowers of dissension amongst you. Cleave unto that which draweth you together and uniteth you. This, verily, is the most exalted Word which the Mother Book hath sent down and revealed unto you.

That the performer begins the petition with the words Protect us expresses the way in which certain limits of the us must be guarded from dangerous forces outside of it. Certainly, this is a necessary feature of any community. But if the goal is human unity, then the us must be careful to always in act in respect of that goal. Certain ideas may not contribute to the unity of the human race, but recognition must always be given that those who hold them are also members of that distinguished us. Holding peace together amidst this tension, awful as it may become, is the surest sign that such people are ready to be regarded as one soul.

[1] Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed after the Kitab-i-Aqdas p.162

Turning to Face the Public

2007-06-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

Here is the introduction to my long overdue discussion of the final two sections. It will eventually lead into a discussion of the passage in the final section in which the performer acknowledges that which...those who who circled round Thy mighty throne have acknowledged.

Just as sections ten through twelve represent a more personal tone than sections previous, likewise the final two sections of the prayer, thirteen and fourteen take on a more public, interpersonal tone. As the performer moves closer to the end of prayer, engagement with the world comes closer in a very concrete way. These sections are a reminder that the performer is not alone. Rather he or she serves God and humanity alongside many others with whose cooperation great things can happen.
This is section thirteen. In form it greatly resembles the eleventh.

Let him then repeat the Greatest Name thrice, and kneel with his forehead to the ground, and say:

Praise be unto Thee, O our God, that Thou hast sent down unto us that which draweth us nigh unto Thee, and supplieth us with every good thing sent down by Thee in Thy Books and Thy Scriptures. Protect us, we beseech Thee, O my Lord, from the hosts of idle fancies and vain imaginations. Thou, in truth, art the Mighty, the All-Knowing.

One example of the switch from the private to the public is a very simple and seemingly insignificant choice of words. The alteration though becomes very obvious to anyone who has ever performed the prayer on a regular basis or tried to memorize it. Whereas section eleven begins with Praise be to Thee, O my God…section thirteen begins Praise be unto Thee, O our God. The change is for the most part inexplicable. The content of the praises is very similar. In both cases the performer praises God for the gift of faith. Furthermore, one might think that the prayer would have more rhetorical force if the beginning of the second expression of praise echoed the first. But instead it draws attention to the our where before their had been a my. This change is by no means irrelevant, for it draws attention to the ways in which faith is always enacted in some way at both an individual and a community level.

Turning from father to Father

2007-06-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

This is the section immediately following the last entry. It begins with some stuff I wrote nearly a month ago. Then it moves into a commentary on a line from the second passage that I didn't even touch on in the first draft.

The second section of the Long Obligatory is a prayer of turning, not just for the turn, but a testimony of the turn itself. It is said standing with one’s hands raised in supplication.

It begins: O Thou the Desire of the world and the Beloved of the nations, Thou seest me turning toward Thee.... When one turns ones changes direction, one gains a new perspective. What was once behind is now in front. What was once in front is now behind. The simple gift of faith is to turn to Thy will, and as the prayer continues, to be rid of all attachment to anyone save Thee, and clinging to Thy cord, through whose movement the whole creation hath been stirred up. Here there is a clarity of decision-making, of action, of lifestyle. One is at peace with a life of service in the path of God.

The full text of this section is as follows

O Thou the Desire of the world and the Beloved of the nations! Thou seest me turning toward Thee, and rid of all attachment to anyone save Thee, and clinging to Thy cord, through whose movement the whole creation hath been stirred up. I am Thy servant, O my Lord, and the son of Thy servant. Behold me standing ready to do Thy will and Thy desire, and wishing naught else except Thy good pleasure. I implore Thee by the Ocean of Thy mercy and the Day-Star of Thy grace to do with Thy servant as Thou willest and pleasest. By Thy might which is far above all mention and praise! Whatsoever is revealed by Thee is the desire of my heart and the beloved of my soul. O God, my God! Look not upon my hopes and my doings, nay rather look upon Thy will that hath encompassed the heavens and the earth. By Thy Most Great Name, O Thou Lord of all nations! I have desired only what Thou didst desire, and love only what Thou dost love.

In the second sentence, the performer testifies that I am Thy servant, O my Lord, and the son of Thy servant. This line invokes two hierarchical relationships, master/servant and father/son, and employs them to understand the three way relationship between God, servant, and the servant’s father. In this passage of the prayer God is put in the place of the master. The performer is both servant and son. So the relationship between God and the performer is clear. But the relationships between God and father, and father and son are unclear. For, he is both father and servant, superior and subordinate. The janus-faced nature of the father introduces an uncertainty as to how his son should relate to him. Should he be related to as a father and thus as a superior, or as a fellow servant and thus as an equal before God.

The imagery employed here has a long history and is deeply tied up with the relationship between God’s authority, and worldly authorities e.g. patriarchal obligations to one’s father and by analogy to one’s king. One example of this is in the Gospels where God is referred to as the Father. By no coincidence whatsoever these books represent the most radical rejection of the authority of traditional family relations. For example, Jesus calls a man to follow him, but he replies that he needs to go bury his father first, the greatest duty a son has to his father. Instead Jesus shoots back at him, Leave the dead to bury their dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the Kingdom of God.[1] The relationship between father and son should in no way be read as limited to either males or family relations. Instead it should be seen as emblematic of any authority relationship between humans, especially any relationship that could potentially conflict with a person’s duties to God.

Any uncertainty that could exist in this prayer is immediately cleared up, for the next line of this section reads, Behold me standing ready to do Thy will and Thy desire and wishing naught else except Thy good pleasure. With this declaration, this naught else, the prayer affirms the integrity and cohesiveness of hierarchical relationship. The Master trumps the father. But this is only at the level of affirmation. The father may not go along with this arrangement and may vie for the allegiance of the son/servant/performer. In general, Bahá’u’lláh goes a long way to defuse this, by prescribing for His followers obedience to worldly authorities. But the tension is still there in asmuch as this teaching still assumes the ultimate authority of God. Furthermore, not all worldly authorities agree with Bahá’u’lláh’s message or want their subordinates following him. Thus, for Bahá’is to persist in their practice of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings and work to establish the unity of the human race is an act of resistance and struggle against those worldly authorities, even if they in no way are working to unseat particular people from power. When the performer testifies that I am Thy servant, O my Lord, and the son of Thy servant, he or she affirms the legitimacy of this struggle, and recognizes the need for hands of indomitable strength and arms of invincible might.
[1] Lk 10.59-60

Community of Jihad

2007-06-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

That obligatory prayer is a central element of Baha’i identity has already been established. Furthermore it has been shown that Bahá’u’lláh regards the purpose of religion to be the unity of the human race. What remains to been seen though, is what Bahá’u’lláh regards as the particular destiny of the people of Baha[1] in sacred history. In other words, it remains to be seen what he thinks of His community in particular, rather than just religion in general. The Suriy-i-Haykal, a writing of Bahá’u’lláh from the mid 1860’s, is an indispensable resource on this matter. In its 2002 printing, the Suriy-i-Haykal runs at 51 pages. In that space He prophecies in ten separate places the emergence of a community that would emerge in spite of His persecutions to follow His teachings and espouse His cause. At the time when this was written Bahá’u’lláh had been exiled three times in just over a decade, the first from native Iran to Baghdad in 1853, the second from Baghdad to Istanbul in 1863, and the third from Istanbul to Edirne in European Turkey. Not long after writing it, He would be exiled for the fourth and final time, this time to Akka, in what is now northern Israel. Around ten years after writing the Suriy-i-Haykal Bahá’u’lláh was at work establishing the religious law that would set the Bahá’i community apart from that of His predecessor, the Bab, and from the surrounding Muslim community. A central feature was the revelation of specifically Bahá’i obligatory prayers. Below is one of Bahá’u’lláh’s ten prophecies regarding the future of His community. It is one of the only ones to employ the provocative imagery that it does. But it is in no way uncharacteristic of the other prophecies. It is written in the voice of Divine Revelation with himself in the third person.

Erelong shall God raise up, through Thee, those with hands of indomitable strength and arms of invincible might, who will come forth from behind the veils, will render the All-Merciful victorious amongst the peoples of the world, and will raise so mighty a cry as to cause all hearts to tremble with fear. Thus hath it been decreed in a Written Tablet. Such shall be the ascendancy which these souls will evince that consternation and dismay will seize all the dwellers of the earth.

Beware lest ye shed the blood of anyone. Unsheathe the sword of your tongue from the scabbard of utterance, for therewith ye can conquer the citadels of men’s hearts. We have abolished the law to wage holy war against each other. God’s mercy, hath, verily, encompassed all created things, if ye do but understand. Aid ye your Lord, the God of Mercy, with the sword of understanding. Keener indeed is it, and more finely tempered, than the sword of utterance, were ye but to reflect upon the words of your Lord. Thus have the hosts of Divine Revelation been sent down by God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, and thus have the armies of divine inspiration been made manifest from the Source of command, as bidden by God, the All-Glorious, the Best-Beloved.

The first section of this passage employs an image of the prophesied Bahá’i community as a legion of holy warriors, (mujahiden) engaged in religious struggle (jihad). It calls to mind the wars of conquest launched by Muhammad and His followers to expand the domain of the faith in the earliest years of Islam. Like Bahá’u’lláh, Muhammad encountered persecution and was driven out of his hometown of Mecca. But these early abasements were more than compensated by the political and religious dominance He gained in the region once He became established in Medina. Bahá’u’lláh invokes this proud moment in Muslim memory, while at the same time warning his Bahá’i readers of the difference between the two situations. He specifies that this jihad is to be fought with swords of utterance and understanding. In this way can his followers conquer the citadels of men’s hearts. Persuassion is the means of struggle, not physical violence. This is because the objective is the establishment of unity in the affairs of humanity and not the triumph of a particular religious state. Wars of conquest and terrorism must then fade into the background. Thoughtfulness, dialogue, and education would then become the new instruments of jihad. This is the image that Bahá’u’lláh presents of his future followers, one of stalwart mujahiden with hands of indomitable strength and arms of invincible might. A decade later, he wrote the Long Obligatory Prayer for them to perform daily.

In the above passage one of the prophesied achievements of these Bahá’i mujahiden is that they will render the All-Merciful victorious amongst the peoples of the world. God’s dominion then would become manifest in creation by way of human beings. But it is not the human beings that are victorious. It is the All-Merciful. His weapons of choice are swords of utterance and understanding: the spiritual powers of servants committed to producing peace where otherwise there is hatred and complacency. How this plays out in the Long Obligatory Prayer will become clearer in some of the later sections of the prayer. But as for now, it is imporant to keep in mind that passages such as this are some of the few in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings from that time that show what he was imagining for the Bahá’i community in the more-than-immediate future. Study of these passages is then a glance into the earliest illustrations of a specifically Bahá’i community identity.

[1] In Arabic Baha’i means people of glory (Baha). Throughout most of his life Bahá’u’lláh was known simply as Baha. Thus, his followers by association were called people of Baha, Baha’is. It was only late in his life that he began to be referred to as Bahá’u’lláh (Glory of God).

Baha'u'llah's Purpose of Religion

2007-06-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

This is how I will be introducing discussion of the prayer's first passage in which the performer beseeches God to make of his or her prayer a fire that will burn away the veils that have shut me out from Thy beauty, and a light that will lead me unto the ocean of Thy Presence.

The performance of the Long Obligatory Prayer is not just about communication with God. This would assume that the one who communicates with God is a stable entity who remains a stable entity in the course of prayer. What will be seen though is that one of the prayer’s chief concerns is the cultivation of the performer’s spiritual power. And this involves a fair amount of personal transformation. It is not so much that the performer asks to have something as it is that he or she asks to become something. This becomes crucial when considering the role of the Long Obligatory Prayer not just as a private spiritual exercise but as a strategic feature of the Baha’i community’s public struggle in the name of God. The goal of this struggle is human unity, so as to fulfill the Qur’anic prophecy that the earth be illumined with the light of it Lord.[1] In one of His writings, the “Ishraqat,” Baha’u’llah makes clear His priorities for His newly founded faith.

The purpose of religion as revealed from the heaven of God’s holy Will is to establish unity and concord amongst the peoples of the world; make it not the cause of dissension and strife. The religion of God and His divine law are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men. The progress of the world, the development of nations, the tranquillity of peoples, and the peace of all who dwell on earth are among the principles and ordinances of God.

Baha’u’llah offers many explanations of the purpose of religion, not all of which be easily summed up by one of them. But in almost every iteration, the reader finds an exhortation to human unity and an appeal to make it the organizing principle of Bahá’i community life. The other explanation that Bahá’u’lláh gives of the purpose of religion is that it facillitate creation’s relationship with its Creator. Either way, both of these explanations lead the spiritual seeker back to considerations of oneself and how he or she fits or might fit into human society, and the broader cosmos in general. With this in mind, consider the opening passage of the Long Obligatory Prayer.

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 unto the ocean of Thy Presence.

[1] 39.69

Introductory Remarks on Baha'i Obligatory Prayer

2007-06-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on beginning the essay with a thesis paragraph in which I immediately summarize everthing that I intend to argue. Following that will be these paragraphs. This isn't terribly heady stuff. Most of it is intended for a non-Baha'i audience who doesn't already know the mechanics of Baha'i obligatory prayer. The last paragraph though is intended to replace the first paragraph from the Saturday post entitled "the Place of Human Unity in Obligatory Prayer." It can be thought of as an Islamic/Baha'i challenge to the individualism and internalism of contemporary Western spirituality.

The question guiding this essay is as follows. What does the Bahá’i Long Obligatory Prayer ask of God? And likewise, what does it asks of the one who performs it? While on the one hand the prayer is a petition and testimony offered up to God by the performer, it has on the other hand a standardized text written by Bahá’u’lláh. There is no doubt that it was written with the understanding that it would be performed innumerable times in a person’s lifetime. With this in mind, it is more than reasonable to argue that Bahá’u’lláh intends for the prayer to produce in the performer the spiritual desires that it invokes. In other words, the prayer is a means by which the performer develops desires best suited for Bahá’i spiritual quest.

At no point is a Baha’i required to perform the Long Obligatory Prayer. But all Baha’is are required to perform obligatory prayer. And for that there are three prayers from which to choose, the Short, the Medium, and the Long. Thus, anyone who gets in the habit of praying the Long will most likely perform it an enormous number of times, even though he or she may alternate between other options. The names by which the different obligatory prayers are distinguished are no misnomers. The Short weighs in at 51 words and is to be said once between noon and sundown. The Medium is 490 words. It is said three times in the day, once each between dawn and noon, noon and sundown, sundown and midnight. The Long is a sprawling 1590 words and is said once in the course of 24 hours. The Long Obligatory Prayer consists of 14 different passages ranging in length from one sentence to seven. Each section is divided up by a change in posture. Throughout the course of the prayer the performer is instructed to adopt such postures as kneeling, standing with hands raised in supplication, prostration with forehead against the floor, bowing at the waist and others. In this way, the prayer employs body language in addition to verbal language as part of its performance.

Another question that has guided this essay is this: What would happen to the way we think about prayer if we regarded its influence as at least as much public and external as it is private and internal? One reason I ask this is because the Long Obligatory prayer is not just any prayer. It is one of three whose performance are mandated upon entrance into a faith community. In this way, daily obligatory prayer is closely tied into Bahá’i identity. Obligatory prayers should be expected then to contain certain features whose purpose is to build up this faith community. Although obligatory prayer can only be said in private (a deliberate rejection of Islamic tradition) the public life of the soul is an ever present concern. One is never alone when one prays. For the private life of the soul necessarily concerns the way that we interact with people outside of private space.

Mastery and Service

2007-06-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

I in no way intend to refer to Abdu'l Baha in this passage either subtly or explicitly. It may need some rewriting to make that clear though.

If God secures his dominion in creation through the mediation of human beings, then the proper place of the human is not one of pure submission. Rather, the human is at once both master and submitter. Service to God is the manifestation of His mastery. In this way, the servant of God occupies the space of the Master by the very act of service, no matter how humble or self-effacing he or she behaves. One sense of this is the meaning of Jesus’ saying, anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be slave to all. For the Son of man himself came not to be served but serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.[1] The more one manifests service, the more one manifests God’s mastery in creation. To think oneself as a participant in this arrangement presents a difficult spiritual challenge. For one, to occupy the space of God’s representative is for the most part to position oneself as God. In this case it is a quick leap to unreflectively demand from others their submission to oneself. Certainly, this arrangement only posits that the servant is only a manifestation and not the figure Himself of dominion. Thus, the servant is only that, a servant. Thus, it would be a violation of contract to act as the final word. But it must be said that the instability and fragility of this arrangement introduces the ever present possibility that people will occupy the position of the master so as to actively struggle against the Master as His will becomes present in history.

[1] Mark 10.43-45

This is how I introduce the discussion of passages 1-4. This sets up a discussion in which I show that Baha'u'llah introduces what I'm calling the "arrival of the unconditioned will of God" as a solution to this problem.

And if you really want to see just how screwed up the problem is then go to my post "the Will to Salvation" way back in the first week of this blog. I'm currently at a loss for how to grapple with the problems it introduces.

the Place of Human Unity in Obligatory Prayer

2007-06-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

Daily obligatory Prayer is closely tied into Bahá’i identity by the simple fact that it is enjoined on Bahá’is as soon as the enter the faith. The Long Obligatory Prayer is not itself obligatory. It is only one of the three options that the performer can choose from on any given day. But one of these must be performed. For this reason, obligatory prayer should be expected to contain certain features whose purpose is to build up a faith community.

One of these is that all three prayers have a standardized text. Although they are performed in a number of languages, the basic ideas are held in common by all performers. The uniformity of obligatory prayers can provide a starting point for discussions about differences in interpretation across cultural and linguistic lines. This is particularly opportune for the Bahá’i faith. Despite its small size in comparison to the major world religions, it is easily one of the most diverse communities on the planet. Sizable Baha’i communities are present in almost every nation on earth, coming from all walks of life and a wide variety of religious backgrounds. Baha’i obligatory prayer contains fascinating potential for cross-cultural dialogue inasmuch as its spirituality is a part of daily life for almost every one of these Baha’is, no matter their location. The possibility of such discussions gives concrete form to the unity in diversity of the community.

Another feature of obligatory prayer is that it performed facing a single point on the Earth surface. This is in Northern Israel where Baha’u’llah is buried. It is known as the Qiblih, or point of adoration. For Muslims, the Qiblih is in Mecca. In both cases, the practice represents a form of global solidarity and a world-wide demonstration that God cannot be monopolized by any one nation. At their most immediate level these two features of Baha’i obligatory prayer manifest the unity in diversity of the Baha’i community. But a minimum amount of reflection leads to a broader conclusion: that the unity in diversity of the international Baha’i community is only possible on the basis of the underlying unity of the human race. In this way, the performance of obligatory prayer is tied in concretely to any emercence of global citizenship, and the transformation in human affairs that this necessarily implies.

Finally, obligatory prayer builds up a faith community inasmuch as it is to be performed every day. There are exceptions when one is sick or travelling. But for the most part it is a part of the performer’s daily routine. On the one hand, this runs the risk of undermining the prayer’s spiritual power. If it is performed every day the prayer may have little more impact on one’s life than the grim satisfaction of getting it out of they way. On the other hand, when the prayer is performed with proper reverence it has the power to awaken the performer to his or her duties and responsibilities as a Bahá’i to God and humanity. The daily cultivation of this power holds out the promise of one day breaking the molds that bind us to unjust social arrangements. Like a wedding vow, obligatory prayer is performed to express commitment. But unlike a wedding vow it is said every day. Imagine how marriages might turn out differently if married couples renewed their vows daily, or at least regularly. Such a practice would remind people of the commitments they have made to each other and spur thought on how best to keep them.

between Thought and Emotion

2007-06-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

Guiding this project has been two central convictions, or hypotheses if you will. One is that Baha'i theology and spirituality are totally inseparable from each other, a claim that should in no way be limited to the Baha'i faith. In fact it is a bizarre modern prejudice that these two things CAN be separated. Secondly, I am of the conviction that this prayer is inseparable from Baha'u'llah's social agenda. Namely, that manifestation of God's dominion on Earth takes place through the practice of his social and spiritual teachings. The Long Obligatory Prayer plays an important part in this by being the spiritual incubator if you will of these agents of social action. I am yet to write this second part. It will be long and will probably address Baha'u'llah's fundamental understanding of what it means to be a Baha'i. Anyhoo, this next paragraph is part of the rough draft.

For one, I have been guided by a conviction that the spirituality of Baha'u'llah's prayers is inseparable from His teachings on the structure of the cosmos. Many might skim through His denunciations of pantheism, or His intricate explanations of the Manifestation of God and doubt the usefulness of such abstract intellectual endeavours. But rather than provoking dry academic discourse such ideas provide key structural components to His rich spirituality. For example, large portions of the Long Obligatory Prayer come most alive for the performer when considering God's transcendence beyond human conceptions about Him. So for Baha'u'llah, the prayer life of individuals, social order, and the structure of the cosmos are all interconnected in one unified account of the relationship between Creator and creation. This is in contrast to the modernist tendency to compartmentalize knowledge into distinct "fields" isolated from each other by methodology, world-view, and vocabulary. In this way, Baha'u'llah's spirituality is a movement of thought. Feeling and emotion are central components as well, but their integration into the prayer as a whole depends in many ways on how well they are informed by the theological issues to be addressed in this essay. Hence, my methodology for this project is to examine the ways in which thought and emotion express rather than exclude each other in the performance of the Long Obligatory prayer. This work is personal inasmuch as it is based on my experience performing the prayer. But it is also professional, inasmuch as it draws on long traditions of scholarly writing. As a writer this presents a challenge. Modern school systems train students to express themselves either personally or professionally, but rarely both at the same time, or both as inseparable from the other. In a way, this essay represents an attempt to produce writing that is both "devotional" and "scholarly," while at the same time eschewing both genres. The hope is that this methodology is best attuned to draw forth the power with which this prayer is invested.

Summary of Findings

2007-06-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

This is how I'm going to distill my observations of the prayer in to simple points that readers can take away with them.

In the course of preparing this book I have observed two distinct themes emerge most frequently in the prayer’s petitions. They are not the sum total of ideas contained in the prayer. But they are the dominant threads that weave together the many textures of this rich work. Though these two themes play out on parallel tracks from the prayer’s beginning to its end, it will be shown that they share a common concern with the manifestation of God’s dominion in creation.

First, the prayer’s performer shows a persistant desire that God reveal and carry out his will without restraint by or compromise with the performer’s own hopes and expectations. In this way, obedience to the will of God is not made conditional upon any fulfillment of prior requirements. Instead, it is granted regardless of a person’s expectations of what God would or would not will. This presupposes that there is no law higher than that of God. For this reason, God is above all law, especially His since He is the one who decides the bounds of its authority. This principle is enshrined in the oft repeated saying of Baha’u’llah that God doeth whatsoever He willeth, and ordaineth whatsoever He pleaseth.

Secondly, the performer’s spirituality is oriented around manifesting the divine attributes. Otherwise known as the names of God, these are expressions that help illustrate His relationship with creation. Some examples are the Guide, the Self-Sufficient, the Wise, the Compassionate, the Raiser of the Dead. To manifest these attributes is to reflect God’s goodness, and to present before creation what was otherwise latent and concealed within each person. Pivotal to this vision of spirituality is the idea that God as God transcends creation. Thus, any action that He takes in the world must be under cover of one of his creatures. For this reason He brings forth what Baha’u’llah calls the Manifestations of God, particular human beings, empowered to manifest the divine attributes in a unique way. Each one of the Manifestations is called to a specific mission to found and reform religion so humanity can worship before God and live in harmony with one another. In the same way that Manifestations are commissioned by God, so ordinary humans are commissioned by the Manifestations. They are the manifestations of the Manifestations, and thus also participate in the revelation to creation of the divine attributes. In this way, Baha’u’llah describes a hierarchical model of the cosmos in which lower figures are called by higher figures to carry out particular missions. Furthermore, the purpose of this arrangement is to manifest in creation the dominion of a transcendent God. For the prayer’s performer to manifest the divine attributes is to participate in this cosmic struggle.

the Concluding Passages

2007-06-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here is passage thirteen from the Long Obligatory Prayer. It is said in prostration with one's forehead to the floor.

Praise be unto Thee, O our God, that Thou hast sent down unto us that which draweth us nigh unto Thee, and supplieth us with every good thing sent down by Thee in Thy Books and Thy Scriptures. Protect us, we beseech Thee, O my Lord, from the hosts of idle fancies and vain imaginations. Thou, in truth, art the Mighty, the All-Knowing.

This passage is a clear variation on the offering of praise that was seen a couple of passages before. God out His benificence grants the performer the means to further manifest the divine attributes.

I don't really have anything new to say about this passage besides for this. If anybody wants to throw in their two cents they are more than welcome. Otherwise I think I'm just going to let it be. I'm also at a loss regarding the next passage, the conclusion of the prayer.

I testify, O my God, to that whereunto Thy chosen Ones have testified, and acknowledge that which the inmates of the all-highest Paradise and those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne have acknowledged. The kingdoms of earth and heaven are Thine, O Lord of the worlds!

The final line of this passage and of the prayer is well is a profound affirmation. But I think I've covered everything I'd like to say about it for now already, especially near the end of my post on the twelfth passage. Maybe when I turn this into a more integrated work, I will present one something on Divine Unity and its implications on spirituality.

Other than that, it appears that the "experimental" phase of this project is done. I guess the next step is writing a provisional introduction and conclusion.

What?! Mr. Cat has a cell phone?

2007-06-01T12:24:00.001-07:00

My Dad decided that he would like to have a stable way of contacting me once I leave home. Hence a phone. The number is 812-599-8628.

I'm still not getting on Facebook though.

the Implications of One's own Nobility

2007-05-31T21:01:00.000-07:00

With the tenth passage, the Long Obligatory prayer takes on an increasingly personal tone. Though the whole prayer is infused with intimacy and passion, the admission of shortcoming and inadequacy that takes center stage in passage ten takes it to a deeper level. It invokes those things we'd rather not make public, those tensions between belief and practice that are either inexcusable or intractable. In short, these shortcomings are embarrassing and are most comfortably shared in the context of a loving relationship. Each person who prays this passage knows of what this speaks, even if it is only between oneself and God.

Just to go off on a brief tangent.......Sometime I need to write up a little thing on the spirituality of secrets. It's an interesting theme that weaves together humilty before others, abstinence from backbiting, and the privacy of prayer all in one fell swoop. It might even have some interesting implications for the role of language in spirituality, namely that if something is only between oneself and God it has no need of circulating as public knowledge. This could be a big deal because circulation is always an act that assimilates new and original thought into the status quo. Unspoken secrets could protect the disruptive possibility of the unconditioned will of God. Hmmm.......curious.

Where was I?

Anyway, Jalal has nudged me in the direction of recognizing the continuity between different passages. Up until now I've generally been looking at just the trees, focusing on the internal dynamics of individual passages. But it's always important to keep in mind that the Long Obligatory Prayer is a thickly wooded forest as well. How passages relate to and inform each other is important when considering the role of any one individual.

Following after the admission in passage ten of one's spiritual shortcomings comes an expression of praise and gratitude to God for leading the performer to a life of worship. All of this is shot through with a healthy dose of humility. For when God gives generously from Himself it is always entirely out of His beneficence. One of God's names is the Self-Sufficient. This means that He is in no need of His creatures. So even though we rely on Him for everything, he is in no need of us. Considering these circumstances there is no room for arrogance. Instead, there is only room for a heartfelt gratitude that God has given to us, even though He profits Himself in no way.

The theme of humility and gratitude continues on into passage twelve in which the performer confesses once again to his or her own shortcomings. Whereas the previous passage is said with one's upper half bent down and one's hands resting on one's knees, this passage is said with one's back straightened. Notice way that the change in posture and the opening sentence reflect each other. Here is the passage in full.

O God, my God! My back is bowed by the burden of my sins, and my heedlessness hath destroyed me. Whenever I ponder my evil doings and Thy benevolence, my heart melteth within me, and my blood boileth in my veins. By Thy Beauty, O Thou the Desire of the world! I blush to lift up my face to Thee, and my longing hands are ashamed to stretch forth toward the heaven of Thy bounty. Thou seest, O my God, how my tears prevent me from remembering Thee and from extolling Thy virtues, O Thou the Lord of the Throne on high and of earth below! I implore Thee by the signs of Thy Kingdom and the mysteries of Thy Dominion to do with Thy loved ones as becometh Thy bounty, O Lord of all being, and is worthy of Thy grace, O King of the seen and the unseen!

If it isn't already clear I think I'll state specifically what I think is one of the most important themes of the entire prayer: that the performer cultivates one's wealth-in-possession by recognizing that the divine attributes originate with the Creator, not the creation.

Many might be averse to the above passage because they think it promotes complacency, self-hatred, and bad conscience. If that were the case, then good riddance. These are not attributes that should be encouraged in the servants of God. But I don't think that that is the case with this passage. Instead, I see it as an elevation of standards for ourselves. The performer is less content with oneself, not out of a lack of self-esteem, but out of an appreciation for the depth of one's potential. Baha'u'llah speaks of this in Gleanings CLXII.

The All-Merciful hath conferred upon man the faculty of vision, and endowed him with the power of hearing. Some have described him as the “lesser world,” when, in reality, he should be regarded as the “greater world.” The potentialities inherent in the station of man, the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality, must all be manifested in this promised Day of God.

Furthermore there is the saying in the thirteenth Arabic Hidden word, Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? So any indication of shortcoming in this prayer is only a reflection of the glory to which the performer has been called by Almighty God. We saw the dawning of this glory in the seventh passage when the performer testifies that Thy forgiveness hath emboldened me, and Thy mercy hath strengthened me, and Thy call hath awakened me, and Thy grace has raised me up and led me unto Thee. In this light there is no room for shame, only a conscientious respect for the life-long process of trial and error.

Earlier, we saw the performer begging God not to withhold from me that which is with Thee. It was decided that this refers to the manifestation of divine attributes, even names such as sovereignty or lordship. In this way humanity becomes the manifestation of God's authority, especially when this involves establishing the dominion of His teachings in creation. Throughout His writings Baha'u'llah pushes the limits of the nobility of which humans are capable. After all, he regards humanity as capable of manifesting all the names of of God, even ones such as the Self-sufficient, the Sublimely Exalted, the Judge. One might even go so far as to think that Baha'u'llah regards humans as capable of divinity. His language is so strong in places that this accusation must surely get levelled against Baha'is by Islamic courts from time to time. Nonetheless, the more informed position is that Baha'u'llah has made it clear in his writings that divinity is reserved for Him who transcends His creation. The last line of passage twelve is an example of him reaffirming this point. Its power lies not in the logical development of its ideas, but rather in the spiritual state that it elicits out of its reciters. It reads,

I implore Thee by the signs of Thy Kingdom and the mysteries of Thy Dominion to do with Thy loved ones as becometh Thy bounty, O Lord of all being, and is worthy of Thy grace, O King of the seen and the unseen!

This is of course familiar terrain in the Long Obligatory Prayer. It invokes what I have called the unconditioned arrival of the will of God, in which our own expectations and desires are made fully secondary to His. The performer asks God specifically for that which cannot be specified. Such uncertainty and vulnerability that this introduces upsets any postures of self-mastery that the performer might try to take. Submission to the unknown then defers all sovereign mastery to the will of God, mysterious and untraceable as it can be. Inasmuch as the performer opens up to the will of God, he or she becomes a vast and noble power, born along by forces beyond control, while all the while still capable of exerting this powers rigorously in the path of an unconditioned God.

The performer's power is deployed at the discretion of God, with which He doeth whatsoever He willeth, and ordaineth whatsoever He pleaseth.

Why Praise?

2007-05-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

Moving onward to passage 11. I last posted just a few hours ago, so if you're interested in reading things in order, check to see if you read it. It was a doozy in length. Consider yourself warned. So anyhoo, here's the new passage. It said bending down with one's hands resting on the knees, which I just discovered is news to me. I've always been saying it sitting down. It pays to go back and read the directions every once in awhile.

Praise be to Thee, O my God, that Thou hast aided me to remember Thee and to praise Thee, and hast made known unto me Him Who is the Dayspring of Thy signs, and hast caused me to bow down before Thy Lordship, and humble myself before Thy Godhead, and to acknowledge that which hath been uttered by the Tongue of Thy grandeur.

Very simple!

This passage is an expression of praise. If I had to divide it up I would say that this praise is for four things, all of which are closely related if not synonymous: that Thou hast 1) aided me to remember Thee and to praise Thee, 2) made known unto me Him Who is the Dayspring of Thy signs, 3) caused me to bow down before Thy Lordship, and humble myself before Thy Godhead, and 4) caused me...to acknowledge that which hath been uttered by the Tongue of Thy grandeur.

Wow that was redundant!
We need to report this entry to the Redundancy Department of Redundancy.

The common thread running through all of these praises is that the performer does not come to faith by his or her own merits. Another way of saying this is that the performer is not the origin of faith. He or she is only a manifestation of such qualities. This is because the self participates in an extensive complex of interactions far larger than itself. Contribution to the performer's merit is infinitely dispersed through creation, inasmuch as no created thing can be the sole origin of some effect in the world. This means that a creature can only be wealthy-in-possession of divine attributes. Wealth-in-origination is necessarily reserved for Him who is the ground of being-as-we-know-it.

For example, I could list off various meritorious things that I have done in my life. But that I have done them is due to a whole host of circumstances over which I have no control. I did not choose what nation, class, religion, time period, etc, into which I was born. Instead, these conditions had a profound impact on the direction of my life before I even knew my own name. I am in no way fated towards one ultimate outcome. But nonetheless, my power to freely choose is circumscribed by the conditions that give it to me in the first place. This is the common sensical notion that humans are not capable of controlling every aspect of their lives. This is just as much the case with things a person likes about oneself as much as is it is with those things that are not to like. This is why arrogance isn't just annoying. It's probably incorrect inasmuch as it would be based on the fallacious assumption that the self is the absolute origin of its own merit.

For this reason, the performer praises God, because he or she cannot take account or control of all the factors that have contributed to his or her faith. It is a humble recognition that if certain conditions beyond one's control were changed the performer may not be as grounded in faith as is the actual case. One can take pride in one's faith, but only in possession, not in origination. In this light, condescension is just as misplaced as arrogance, for they are both only possible once a person has disregarded the complex conditions that bring freely choosing people into being.

One of Baha'u'llah's most oft used images is that of the mirror. For one, it is used to explain the Manifestation's relationship to God. And in the same way is used to explain an ordinary person's relationship to the Manifestation. In one sense, the mirror contains an image. But it is only a reflection. By itself, the mirror has no image. It relies on some outside light source to produce it. The mirror is by its nature poor-in-origination. And when it is granted a reflection from an outside light source it becomes wealty-in-possession, even though it is incapable of producing any rays by its own power.

I don't want to just limit this metaphor to the manifestation of the divine attributes. Rather I think it highlights an important aspect of what it means to be a created being. If everything is produced by means of prior conditions, then there is no mirror of which to speak. For even if one is a mirror, one can take pride in one's capacity to reflect light. But the origin of that capacity does not come from oneself. It too is a reflection of the conditions that brought it into being. This would mean that the mirror's very capacity to reflect is only possible as a reflection of some reflectivity. The mirror is just as unstable as the images it reflects. In this way, there is only the play of light, its reflection and counter-reflection, all the while changing and bringing about new forms and configurations. In this sense the self would not be a mirror, a stable concrete entity, prior to the waxing and waning of particular images. It would be the play of light itself: rising, dimming, reflecting, evolving.

So of whose light is the performer a reflection?
__________________________________

That's all for this passage.

Originally, I was going to introduce much of this post using the below quote. But I managed to get through the argument with out it. It's really good, so I thought I'd post it anyway. It's Baha'u'llah saying most of the stuff I've argued above. It is an address from God to Baha'u'llah.

Surih-i-Haykal passages 81-82

O Living Temple! We, verily, have made Thee a mirror unto the kingdom of names, that Thou mayest be, amidst all mankind, a sign of My sovereignty, a herald unto My presence, a summoner unto My beauty, and a guide unto My straight and perspicuous Path......
We have caused the oceans of inner meaning and explanation to surge from Thy heart in remembrance of Thy Lord, the God of mercy, that Thou mayest render thanks and praise unto Him and be of those who are truly thankful. We have singled Thee out from amongst all Our creatures, and have appointed Thee as the Manifestation of Our own Self unto all who are in the heavens and on the earth.

Bring then into being, by Our leave, resplendent mirrors and exalted letters that shall testify to Thy sovereignty and dominion, bear witness to Thy might and glory, and be the manifestations of Thy Names amidst mankind. We have caused Thee again to be the Origin and the Creator of all mirrors, even as We brought them forth from Thee aforetime. And We shall cause Thee to return unto Mine own Self, even as We called Thee forth in the beginning. Thy Lord, verily, is the Unconstrained, the All-Powerful, the All-Compelling. Warn, then, these mirrors, once they have been made manifest, lest they swell with pride before their Creator and Fashioner when He appeareth amongst them, or let the trappings of leadership delude and debar them from bowing in submission before God, the Almighty, the All-Beauteous.

Nearness to an Unconditioned God

2007-05-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

Here's passage ten. It is said standing. BTW this is gonna be another long one.

O Lord of all being and Possessor of all things visible and invisible! Thou dost perceive my tears and the sighs I utter, and hearest my groaning, and my wailing, and the lamentation of my heart. By Thy might! My trespasses have kept me back from drawing nigh unto Thee; and my sins have held me far from the court of Thy holiness. Thy love, O my Lord, hath enriched me, and separation from Thee hath destroyed me, and remoteness from Thee hath consumed me. I entreat Thee by Thy footsteps in this wilderness, and by the words “Here am I. Here am I” which Thy chosen Ones have uttered in this immensity, and by the breaths of Thy Revelation, and the gentle winds of the Dawn of Thy Manifestation, to ordain that I may gaze on Thy beauty and observe whatsoever is in Thy Book.

I think this is the first reference in this prayer to sin. That sure took a while. I feel like at some point I should give a fairly detailed explanation of what is meant by sin in the Baha'i faith. One thing I can say now is that there is no original sin, so human beings start off their life with a clean slate.

What can be gleaned from the Baha'i understanding of sin in this prayer is that it is configured around this idea of proximity/nearness to God. This is from passage 104 of the Kitab-i-Iqan. It's a good explanation of divine transcendence so I thought I'd throw in a little more.

No tie of direct intercourse can possibly bind Him to His creatures. He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. No sign can indicate His presence or His absence; inasmuch as by a word of His command all that are in heaven and on earth have come to exist, and by His wish, which is the Primal Will itself, all have stepped out of utter nothingness into the realm of being, the world of the visible.

Because of this, any talk of proximity or nearness cannot be with regard to His Essence. This is because they are fundamentally heterogeneous. But humans are homogeneous with the divine attributes. One can become nearer to compassion. One can become nearer to wisdom. One can become nearer to patience. The development of these attributes is for one's own well-being. So when we are deprived of them it can be said that separation would destroy us, or remoteness from them consume us, to use the words of the prayer.

When the performer develops these divine attributes, especially wisdom, he or she begins to see that everything in this world is temporary, especially oneself. This is what it means to be a conditional being. For its existence is always conditional upon some other condition, which itself is conditional. To grow attached to these fleeting appearances is to make one's happiness dependent on things that are always in flux. So hence our happiness is in flux as well. As soon as they go one's happiness feels destroyed, consumed. But once a person understands deeply that all things are conditional by nature, then he or she is capable of living joyfully even amidst the storm of relentless flux. In short, I think this part of the prayer refers to the same ideas that are at the heart of Buddhism: desire, suffering, non-self, impermanence, etc.

On a related note, to attach oneself too feverishly to particular conditions is to be closed to the coming of new conditions whose form is not dictated by the former. This is one way that the will of God comes to us, as something foreign and unfamiliar to our expectations of it. Way back in the discussion of the second passage of the prayer, I referred to this revelation of God's will as unconditioned. In the sense employed in the above paragraph, nothing can come unconditioned. All created things are dependent on other conditions. But in another sense, we can narrow our scope and say that one particular thing was not conditioned by another particular thing. For example, I was expecting one thing and was attaching all of these conditions to it in my imagination. But instead, once it came it was something totally different. In this sense, the unconditioned arrival is something that is not constrained or dominated by something previous. It is the establishment of a new condition and new conditioning that breaks with the old. This is how the will of God is revealed when it is not already the will of humanity.

In this light I don't think it is a coincidence that the arrival of divine revelation receives special treatment in the petition that ends this passage.

I entreat Thee by Thy footsteps in this wilderness, and by the words “Here am I. Here am I” which Thy chosen Ones have uttered in this immensity, and by the breaths of Thy Revelation, and the gentle winds of the Dawn of Thy Manifestation, to ordain that I may gaze on Thy beauty and observe whatsoever is in Thy Book.

This petition is made by four things.

Firstly, it is made by Thy footsteps in this wilderness, a reference to God's manifest action in His creation. This may be a reference to the Genesis account of the creation. After Adam and Eve eat the apple they are said to have heard the footsteps of God moving through the garden. in this light it would be the foreshadowing for a coming revelation of divine judgment. In this sense judgment may not necessarily mean punishment, (though that certainly is the case in the Biblical story) but at the very least it is the revelation of a divine decision, the manifestation of His will.

Secondly, the petition is made by the words "Here am I. Here am I" which Thy chosen Ones have uttered in this immensity. The biblical passage that comes to mind is the third chapter of 1 Samuel. This is the story of how Samuel was called by God to prophethood. At the time he was only a child. As he was sleeping one night the Lord called out "Samuel, Samuel." The young boy then leapt up and ran to his father Eli thinking he had called him saying "He I am, as you called me." Eli then sent him back to bed. Then the same thing happened again, with the same result. When it happened a third time Eli figured out that it must have been the Lord who was calling his son. So he instructed his son that if he hears the voice again he should reply, "Speak Lord; for your servant is listening." In light of this story, "Here am I. Here am I" indicates the response of an eager servant to the first call of God.

Thirdly, the petition is made by the breaths of Thy Revelation. The first image that comes to my mind is one of the accounts in Genesis of the creation of Adam. I suppose I could interpret these lines outside of a biblical context. But I must say that I have grown up in a biblical context. So these are the references that come to mind. In that account God creates Adam by forming him out of clay. He brings him to life by breathing his own breath into him. Thus, there is an association here between God's breath and human life that comes from God, whether we want to think of this as either physical life or spiritual life. Though, for some reason I can't find this passage in Genesis. I know its there. So I'm really confused why I can't find it anywhere between the creation of the plants and animals and the account of the Fall. If somebody wants to find this passage for me that would be great. I have no idea why I can't find it, BECAUSE I'M SURE IT'S THERE.

Fourthly, the petition is made by the gentle winds of the Dawn of Thy Manifestation. I want to put the emphasis on that this is the Dawn, the first appearence, the moment of turning from darkness to light. In this way, the petition is made by the arrival of the will of God that disrupts the previous order to which humans have become accustomed.

Finally, it is time to look at the petition itself: to ordain that I may gaze on Thy beauty and observe whatsoever is in Thy Book. There are two concerns here, one of beauty, the other of obedience. Immediately this calls to mind an exhortation from passage 4 of the Kitab-i-Aqdas: Observe My commandments, for the love of My beauty. In this way mystical seeking and rule-keeping are held together as interdependent pursuits. This is a theme that is invoked elsewhere throughout the Baha'i writings, especially in the final section in the Seven Valleys, the Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness. For this Valley sheds light on what is meant by My beauty.

Now hast thou abandoned the drop of life and come to the sea of the Life-Bestower. This is the goal thou didst ask for; if it be God’s will, thou wilt gain it.
In this city, even the veils of light are split asunder and vanish away. “His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation.” How strange that while the Beloved is visible as the sun, yet the heedless still hunt after tinsel and base metal. Yea, the intensity of His revelation hath covered Him, and the fullness of His shining forth hath hidden Him.

The central idea of this passage is contained in the hadith (reported saying of Muhammad), His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation. A pervasive theme in Baha'i writings is the use of light to describe divine revelation. Any time somebody invokes light as a metaphor, they imply that something is made visible, understandable, and clear. In this case it would be by way of the divine attributes. But in the case of this hadith and this part of the Seven Valleys revelation itself is concealment. the fullness of His shining forth hath hidden Him. As argued before this is because the divine attributes are creation, and are thus heterogeneous to God's transcendent Essence. From this I think it can be said that this Valley is the awareness of the necessary gap between Essence and attributes, Creator and creation. God' beauty then would pertain to that unknowable essence, something that is concealed by the appearence of intelligibility.

It's a difficult passage so I get an uneasy feeling whenever I think I can explain it clearly and simply. After all, not long after this passage Baha'u'llah writes,

Ecstasy alone can encompass this theme, not utterance nor argument; and whosoever hath dwelt at this stage of the journey, or caught a breath from this garden land, knoweth whereof We speak.

Nonetheless, I believe this helps us understand the importance of gazing upon Thy beauty, even though it may be a beauty that eludes all gaze.

The divine attributes are not set entities. People can have different ideas about what it means to be merciful or what it means to be life-bestowing. So these are in no way safe approaches to Thy beauty. Furthermore people can become so blinded by their own conceptions of the divine attributes that they mistake what is human for what is God's and what is God's for what is human. Thus, we must develop a love for the unconditionality of God's essence and its manifestation in the oft repeated Baha'i principle God doeth whatsoever He willeth, and ordaineth whatsoever He pleaseth.

For these reasons, the performer must pursue the will of God however best it can be discerned. This can offer a safer pathway away from our own understandings and expectations and towards the will of God whatever that may be. The best repository for this is in sacred writings. This is why the performer hopes to observe whatsoever is in Thy book.

the Testimony of Creation

2007-05-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

This is the ninth passage of the Long Obligatory Prayer. It is said seated, just after coming out of prostration.

I testify unto that whereunto have testified all created things, and the Concourse on high, and the inmates of the all-highest Paradise, and beyond them the Tongue of Grandeur itself from the all-glorious Horizon, that Thou art God, that there is no God but Thee, and that He Who hath been manifested is the Hidden Mystery, the Treasured Symbol, through Whom the letters B and E (Be) have been joined and knit together. I testify that it is He whose name hath been set down by the Pen of the Most High, and Who hath been mentioned in the Books of God, the Lord of the Throne on high and of earth below.

Just to simplify things a bit, the performer testifies to three things: that 1. Thou art God 2. there is no God but Thee 3) He Who hath been manifested is the Hidden Mystery, the Treasured Symbol, through Whom the letters B and E (Be) have been joined and knit together.

What I find most interesting about this passage is that all created things are also said to have made this testimony. In light of this, I want to make a simple claim. That inasmuch as we witness the conditioned and circumscribed nature of the world around us, even our very selves, this bears witness to an unconditionality that is necessarily the flip side of conditioned existence. This is what it means for all created things to testify that Thou art God.

Further on, the performer testifies that He Who hath been manifested (presumably the Manifestation of God) is the Hidden Mystery, the Treasured Symbol. This image of the Treasured Symbol is the one that most interests me. For some time we have been pursuing this prayer in terms of the 99 names of God, and their manifestation in creation. To invoke the Manifestation as a symbol is to set up a distinction between the symbol and that to which it refers: the referent, in this case God. The referent cannot become intelligible as Himself. This is because He is heterogeneous to being-as-we-know-it, which becomes demarcated in thought through language. Hence, the need for a symbol, who is homogeneous in some way to being-as-we-know-it, hence the Manifestations of God, the historical founders of the world's religions.

Once these images have been invoked the performer testifies that the Hidden Mystery, the Treasured Symbol is one through Whom the letters B and E (Be) have been joined and knit together. Being then is somehow produced by way of the Manifestation of God. I don't know the Arabic for this passage. Someday soon I will. For one, I'm not even sure if the Arabic translates roughly into the English verb Be. I wonder about this because the sentence is so dependent on the specific form of the language in which it is spoken. For example this wouldn't translate so well into a language that doesn't really even use letters, Chinese comes to mind. (Thanks Shannon for the tip on that one. BTW Correct me if I'm not getting this right.) Anyway, regardless of what it says in the Arabic it is still very revealing in the English. If the word Be is in the imperative, and thus a commandment (Hey you, Be!) then this would be a direct reference to the Qur'an. On numerous occassions the claim is made that God's utterance of the word Be! brought the universe into existence. Since the letters B and E have been joined and knit together through the Manifestation of God this would indicate that they have a part in the production of all created things. Baha'u'llah states this elsewhere. One of these instances is in passage 109 of the Kitab-i-Iqan.

Man, the noblest and most perfect of all created things, excelleth them all in the intensity of this revelation, and is a fuller expression of its glory. And of all men, the most accomplished, the most distinguished and the most excellent are the Manifestations of the Sun of Truth. Nay, all else besides these Manifestations, live by the operation of their Will, and move and have their being through the outpourings of their grace.

That's all I have to say regarding this passage for now. I've tacked on another quote which I thought last night that I might want to include in this entry. It obviously has a lot to do with the ideas expressed above, but it stands on its own in the way it invokes the name of God, the Educator.

Gleanings XCIII

He is really a believer in the Unity of God who recognizeth in each and every created thing the sign of the revelation of Him Who is the Eternal Truth, and not he who maintaineth that the creature is indistinguishable from the Creator.
Consider, for instance, the revelation of the light of the Name of God, the Educator. Behold, how in all things the evidences of such a revelation are manifest, how the betterment of all beings dependeth upon it. This education is of two kinds. The one is universal. Its influence pervadeth all things and sustaineth them. It is for this reason that God hath assumed the title, “Lord of all worlds.” The other is confined to them that have come under the shadow of this Name, and sought the shelter of this most mighty Revelation.

So how about that. Teaching the faith of God, and God's maintenance of creation are akin to each other inasmuch as they both derive from the name of God, the educator.

A Look at Praise

2007-05-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

Rather than totally move on to a new passage. I thought I'd begin by looking at the next one in the context of the last few lines in the passage just studied. I quoted this from reference.bahai.org so it contains the instructions on posture that are included in the text.

Thine is the command at all times, O Thou Who art the Lord of all names; and mine is resignation and willing submission to Thy will, O Creator of the heavens!

Let him then raise his hands thrice, and say:

Greater is God than every great one!

Let him then kneel and, bowing his forehead to the ground, say:

Too high art Thou for the praise of those who are nigh unto Thee to ascend unto the heaven of Thy nearness, or for the birds of the hearts of them who are devoted to Thee to attain to the door of Thy gate. I testify that Thou hast been sanctified above all attributes and holy above all names. No God is there but Thee, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious.

This should look like familiar ground. First the performer testifies to an unconditional commitment to God. This is then followed by a prostration as if before a king in which the performer testifies to God's transcendence beyond the created world. This passage is thus, very similar in content to the third passage and what comes immediately before it.

One new theme that comes in with this passage is the implications of divine transcendence on engagement in acts of praise. It comes from the recognition that praise is a creation, and thus isn't exactly going to "move" God. Furthermore, the primary way that a person would praise God is to invoke his names and attributes. But these too are creations. They pertain to God and the way he engages with His creation, but they are distinct from God inasmuch as they are bounded and conditioned by being-as-we-know-it. In this way, the radical difference between Creator and creation is felt when a person tries to engage in prayer. I could explain this in greater depth if I really wanted to, but this following selection from a prayer of Baha'u'llah does a far better job of that in His own words then I could do in mine.

Praised be Thou, O Lord my God! Every time I attempt to make mention of Thee, I am hindered by the sublimity of Thy station and the overpowering greatness of Thy might. For were I to praise Thee throughout the length of Thy dominion and the duration of Thy sovereignty, I would find that my praise of Thee can befit only such as are like unto me, who are themselves Thy creatures, and who have been generated through the power of Thy decree and been fashioned through the potency of Thy will. And at whatever time my pen ascribeth glory to any one of Thy names, methinks I can hear the voice of its lamentation in its remoteness from Thee, and can recognize its cry because of its separation from Thy Self. I testify that everything other than Thee is but Thy creation and is held in the hollow of Thy hand. To have accepted any act or praise from Thy creatures is but an evidence of the wonders of Thy grace and bountiful favors, and a manifestation of Thy generosity and providence.

__________________

That's all I have to say for this particular passage. But before I finish this post I want to begin to think about the distinction between Creator and creation. I've been realizing how pivotal it is for understanding the Long Obligatory Prayer. But as of yet, I haven't presented any systematic understanding of how I am using these terms. I didn't want to introduce philosophy jargon. But I'm afraid it might be easier than constantly opting for words used outside of the philosophy community.

For two things to be homogeneous is for them to be of more or less the same nature. This means that they would be constituted in a similar way. The opposite of this is for two things to be heterogeneous. This would mean that they are of more or less different natures. This means that they would be constituted in different ways.

Creation is homogeneous to creation. Creator and creation are heterogeneous to each other.

The way I'm using these terms, Creator and creation refers to the way in which they do or do not have their being. Creation is for something to be present in thought. It means that it is bound as a thing by differentiation from other things. This thing is this. It is not that. Creation is synonymous with another of my expressions: being-as-we-know-it

The Creator is not a thing. He transcends all thingness, especially all He-ness. He is present in thought as a thing. But this thought is only a creation. It is a way of thinking in terms of creation about what is heterogeneous to it.

The Creator is a being beyond being-as-we-know-it, who thus has no being for us. He is the ground of being-as-we-know-it. But not in a homogeneous relationship. Rather, they are radically heterogeneous. He is not transcendence as such, but merely transcendent.

of Origins and Power

2007-05-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

This is the seventh passage of the Long Obligatory Prayer. It is said standing, coming out of kneeling. The hands are upraised two separate times, once for each of the the first two sentences.

There is no God but Thee, the Almighty, the All-Bountiful. There is no God but Thee, the Ordainer, both in the beginning and in the end. O God, my God! Thy forgiveness hath emboldened me, and Thy mercy hath strengthened me, and Thy call hath awakened me, and Thy grace hath raised me up and led me unto Thee. Who, otherwise, am I that I should dare to stand at the gate of the city of Thy nearness, or set my face toward the lights that are shining from the heaven of Thy will? Thou seest, O my Lord, this wretched creature knocking at the door of Thy grace, and this evanescent soul seeking the river of everlasting life from the hands of Thy bounty. Thine is the command at all times, O Thou Who art the Lord of all names; and mine is resignation and willing submission to Thy will, O Creator of the heavens!

To testify that There is no God but Thee is a variation on the classical affirmation of Islamic monotheism: There is no God but Allah. It is a statement of the fundamental unity of divinity: that dominion over the world is not divided among a variety of figures but is instead unified under one absolute creator of all. This affirmation of divine unity helps bring together the various themes encountered throughout the prayer. But in particular it helps illustrate the spirituality behind this passage and the one previous. To think about the One Creator as absolute origin helps negotiate the difficulties I ran into with last night's entry on wealth and poverty.

In the course of commenting on the sixth passage of the prayer I ran into an apparent contradiction. God was described as wealthy in the divine attributes and humanity as poor. My concern was that this assumed too much commonality between Creator and creation to simultaneously maintain that the former utterly transcends the latter. The metaphor seemed to suggest that the differences between God and humanity can be reduced to one of degree: That God and humanity are both possessors of the same thing, but the former has more than the latter. The way that I resolved this was by arguing that the divine attributes are part of creation in the same way as humanity. Thus, any variation in the two can be reduced to one of degree while still maintaining the transcendence of God. (Though, I must say it opens up an interesting dilemna inasmuch as it sets up a radical difference between the Essence and attributes of God.)

I still think that this explanation works. But I don't think it fully does justice to the usage of wealth and poverty in this prayer. Instead of linking wealth and poverty to the actual possession of the divine attributes, I think it is also appropriate to link them to the capacity to originate divine attributes. In this way I want to make a distinction between wealth-in-possession and wealth-in-origination. This makes a difference when we think about how we explain ourselves and the world around us. To assign the origin of some thing is to interrupt the linear nature of time, cause, and effect. It is to say that something is a cause without prior causes. In other words it is to disregard the contributions of any others to the emergence of the thing that is originated.

This gains spiritual import when we look at how we think about origins in our immediate lives. For example, a businessman could say "I am the reason this company is successful. Before I came this place was going down the tubes. Now it is a booming enterprise because of my expertise." This is to locate something within him, in this case his expertise, as the origin of the company's success. The introduction of that expertise interrupted the downward spiral and set the company on an upward course. There is probably a grain of truth in that businessman's assertion. Because he probably participated in some important way in turning that company around. But to speak as if he is the sole reason for that turnaround is a different matter. It ignores the contributions that other people almost certainly made. On an aside, this has big implications on the way people think about class, race, gender, religion, etc. I'm sure his secretary would agree. A more reasonable way of looking at this situation is to say that an infinitely complex web of interactions resulted in the company's success. And that many of those forces were localized in the figure we call the businessman. Thus, the businessman can say that he participated in the success of the company but it would be a lie to refer to him as the origin. If he were the origin of company success it would imply that his contributions came out of nowhere, owe nothing to the world around it, and initiated a sequence of cause and effect that was otherwise not in progression. In other words, to pose as the origin, is to pose as God. And not just any god, but the One God who is the Absolute origin and transcendent beyond creation.

To be the Absolute origin is not to be at the beginning of a sequence of time. But rather to be the generating impulse of the entire sequence that all the while remains outside of that sequence. Rather, than a point at the end of a line. It is the point outside the line that makes every point in the entire line possible.

In this way God is outside of time. So long as something is "in time" it cannot be an origin, for there is always a prior moment that anticipates its being. The only way to be an origin is to be outside of this sequence. But to be outside of this sequence is to be outside the logic of befores, afters, causes, effects, and being as we know it. For being-as-we-know-it is always characterized by time and causality. In this way the Creator and creation do not share a common being. Rather the being of the Creator is fundamentally different than the being of the creation.

How did we get here? Oh yes, I was discussing the divine attributes.

In the context of the Long Obligatory Prayer, to be poor in the divine attributes means that one is unable to produce them out of nothing. Rather they are necessarily acquired from elsewhere inasmuch as one is a part of creation. A human cannot be an origin, a god. That distinction is reserved for the God, the Self-Sufficient, the Majestic, the wellspring of being-as-we-know-it and thus the divine attributes.

Following the testimony in this passage that There is no God but Thee the performer testifies to a certain wealth-in-possession, but not in wealth-in-origination. In other words, the performer testifies to the possession of the divine attributes while maintaining a dependence on God for the origination of those attributes.

O God, my God! Thy forgiveness hath emboldened me, and Thy mercy hath strengthened me, and Thy call hath awakened me, and Thy grace hath raised me up and led me unto Thee. Who, otherwise, am I that I should dare to stand at the gate of the city of Thy nearness, or set my face toward the lights that are shining from the heaven of Thy will?

Though poor-in-origination the performer is emboldened, strengthened, awakened, raised up and led unto Thee, by the influence of Thee. The performer is a dense concentration of power and enlightenment ready to face the world and whatever it throws at him or her. The next few lines appear at first to be a crude self-laceration of the soul, referring to oneself as a wretched creature, and an evanescent soul. But the otherwise in the last line quoted above indicates that this poverty is only one of origination and not of possession. Pay close attention to that last line. Who, otherwise am I that I should dare to stand at the gate of the city of Thy nearness.... This line doesn't say that the performer is unworthy to stand at said gate. It only says that this worthiness is conditional upon the above influence of God: of being shown Thy forgiveness, Thy mercy, Thy call, and Thy grace. Indeed, the performer has been empowered by that which is with Thee to stand proudly as one of God's creation, not by one's own merit, but by the merit of God, the Originator.

Passage Six: part two

2007-05-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I love, in this state, O my Lord, to beg of Thee all that is with Thee, that I may demonstrate my poverty, and magnify Thy bounty and Thy riches, and may declare my powerlessness, and manifest Thy power and Thy might.

Here we have that expression from the previous passage: that which is with Thee, appearing once again in its ambiguity regarding everything except its relationship to God. Once again, we'll postulate that it refers to the divine attributes, especially those most suited to humans: love, wisdom, patience, creativity......

In this passage the performer confesses to love, not so much the divine attributes themselves, but rather the very act of begging for them from God. The result of this is an increased awareness of the contrast between Creator and creation, namely that in the former there is a fullness where in the latter there is a lack. This opens up an interesting theological quandary, which will undoubtedly require more research and meditation.

The distinction between God and humanity in this context is one of degree. One is wealthy the other is poor. This assumes a consistant entity that can ebb and flow between particular circumstances while remaining essentially the same in both. In other words, there is some thing in which God is rich and humans are poor. This may potentially run up against any doctrine of God's transcendence. In that model there would be no consistant medium between Creator and creation because they are two essentially different figures. One way of dealing with this tension is to think of God as an absentee landlord. God's would posess those attributes in fullness. but it would be at a distance. The attributes would be in creation and thus created, while God's ownership of them is from the perspective of the Creator. It could be said that the divine attributes are only created effects in creation of the Creator's will. In this way they are not God, but they still pertain to God inasmuch as they help articulate a human conception of His action in creation. In this way God's wealth , in those things that humans are poor is in creation, not in his position as Creator. In this case this would be with regard to the divine attributes.

But enough already!

What's important in understanding the spirituality of this passage is that the sharp contrast between Creator and creation is in some way inspirational for the creation. The joy is in the performer's very poverty in relation to God. For some people this might be an instance of despair or helplessness. But in this instance it rejuvenates and excites the soul.

I might say more regarding this passage, but it is to a large extent beyond me. I can disect what it means conceptually. But I have not been granted the gift of understanding's its spiritual import. In other words, I can say what it means to me. But I cannot say what it means for me.

Or it may just mean I'm tired. We'll see tommorow.

Passage Six: part one

2007-05-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

The sixth passage of the Long Obligatory Prayer is as follows.

Thou seest, O my God, how my spirit hath been stirred up in my limbs and members in it's longing to worship Thee and its yearning to remember Thee and extol Thee; how it testifieth unto that whereunto the Tongue of Thy Commandment hath testified in the Kingdom of Thine utterance and the heaven of Thy knowledge. I love in this state, O my Lord, to beg of Thee all that is with Thee, that I may demonstrate my poverty, and magnify Thy bounty and Thy riches and may declare my powerlessness, and manifest Thy power and Thy might.

In this passage, the performer expresses love and gratitude for the act of prayer itself.

The first sentence is a recognition of the way in which the desire for prayer is felt throughout the body. This is because it too takes part in the lifting up of the prayer. As a whole, the Long Obligatory Prayer is very physical. Each passage is broken up by changes in posture. Sometimes one is standing with arms raised in supplication. Other times one is in prostration with the forehead to the floor. Other times one is sitting crosslegged. Each one of these postures is in its own way suited to the passage that is then recited.

In the third passage of the prayer we saw how God's transcendence above description is part and parcel with his sovereignty. But only the first part of this equation, the transcendence above description is contained in the words of the prayer. The recognition of his sovereignty enters the equation through the posture of the body. In that particular passage, body and mind testify each in their own way to some aspect of divinity. This is the most obvious example. But the theme of the body's silent participation is consistant throughout the Long Obligatory prayer.

In the next entry I'll take a look at the second line of this passage. It continues the expression of gratitude for prayer that begins in the first sentence. But it stands very much on its own. In fact, it is easily one of the most fascinating sentences in the entire prayer.

Long Obligatory Prayer: passage five

2007-05-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm trying to stay concentrated on moving through the Long Obligatory Prayer. I think if I stick to it I can get through the whole prayer before I leave for Beloit. Once I get up there I'll definitely have less time to spend on this project.

This is the fifth passage from the prayer. It is said standing like the previous passage but in this one with arms raised in supplication.

O Thou in separation from Whom hearts and souls have melted, and by the fire of Whose love the whole world hath been set aflame! I implore Thee by Thy Name through which Thou hast subdued the whole creation, not to withhold from me that which is with Thee, O Thou Who rulest over all men! Thou seest, O my Lord, this stranger hastening to his most exalted home beneath the canopy of Thy majesty and within the precincts of Thy mercy; and this transgressor seeking the ocean of Thy forgiveness; and this lowly one the court of Thy glory; and this poor creature the orient of Thy wealth. Thine is the authority to command whatsoever Thou willest. I bear witness that Thou art to be praised in Thy doings, and to be obeyed in Thy behests, and to remain unconstrained in Thy bidding.

Though this is one of the longest passages without a change in posture, it contains only one petition:....I implore Thee.....not to withhold from me that which is with Thee, O Thou who rulest over all men!

The prayer does not specifically state what is meant by that which is with Thee, but the opening invocation gives a possible hint. First off, the invocation is of one in separation from Whom hearts and souls have melted. The implication being that it is something of God that holds hearts and souls together, such that when separated they lose their structural integrity. Furthermore the invocation is of one by the fire of Whose love the whole world hath been set aflame. Here the love between God and humanity is represented as spreading its energy throughout creation. It isn't secret. For the whole world hath been set aflame. Rather it is something that is felt in public life. As seen earlier, fire can here have a destructive connotation. But it destroys only for the sake of life. It is energetic, dynamic, spontaneous. It is life, lit, kindled and fanned into flame by the love of God.

In the wake of these twin images of extreme heat the performer implores that God not withhold from me that which is with Thee, O Thou Who rulest over all men! The flow and energy that carries over from the invocation suggest that that which is with Thee is something akin to the fire of God's love.

For the sake of getting through the whole prayer, I want to make a bit of a leap in my argumentation that I don't think I can yet fully justify.

As far as I can tell that which is with Thee refers to the 99 names of God, that attributes of His that illustrate his relationship with creation. Here is the Wikipedia link to read more, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Names_of_God_in_the_Qur'an (This is the point where I REALLY show that this is a rough draft.) Thou in one sense these Names apply to God, they also apply to humanity inasmuch as we are empowered to manifest the same attributes. In fact this is one of the defining characteristics of Baha'i spirituality. Below is a quote from the Suriy-i-Haykal. It is an address from God to Baha'u'llah.

Bring then into being, by Our leave, resplendent mirrors and exalted letters that shall testify to Thy sovereignty and dominion, bear witness to Thy might and glory, and be the manifestations of Thy Names amidst mankind.

Throughout this really quite spectacular book, Baha'u'llah repeatedly prophesies the multiplication of His followers, consistently referring to them as ones who will manifest the Names of God. In this way the manifestation of divine attributes is a very high priority for Baha'i spirituality. It is on this basis that I believe that that which is with Thee refers to the divine attributes, embodied in the traditional list of 99.

Special mention though should be made for the 100th name, revealed by Baha'u'llah to be the greatest: Baha, meaning glory, light, splendour, brilliance. This is the name that is referred to when the petition is made by Thy Name through which Thou hast subdued the whole creation. What this is saying is that the Manifestation of God, in this case Baha'u'llah is the means by which God hast subdued the whole creation. But on the other hand He is also the manifestation of the love of God which is responsible for setting the world aflame. To subdue and to set aflame would be seen in common parlance as two opposite things. One involves the clamping down of energy. The other involves its release.

As a way of concluding I want to reflect on this tension. I believe it helps illustrate what it means to manifest the Names of God. For such a process itself involves a similar tension: that as a servant one is obedient to the master by receiving the power to take the position of master. After all, most of the Names of God speak of His Lordship, attributes that might seem out of place for His servants. In this way, the servants participate in the mastery of God while all the while still remaining servants.

For Baha'u'llah the greatest freedom is in submission to God. Not so much that we are liberated from the debt of sin, and are thus free to go about our lives without fear of hellfire. In that case freedom would be characterized by some absence. But rather, what I see in Baha'u'llah is that freedom is characterized by some presence, namely power: the power to move about freely. In this case, it would be the spiritual power of a world set aflame.

of Fire and Water

2007-05-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

Moving on with the Long Obligatory Prayer

Passage Four!

Coming out of prostration, the performer stands up and speaks thusly.

Make of my prayer, O my Lord, a fountain of living waters whereby I may live as long as Thy sovereignty endureth and may make mention of Thee in every world of Thy worlds.

The clear companion to this passage is the opening invocation of the entire prayer.

....I beseech Thee....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 me unto the ocean of Thy Presence.

Whereas before one asks for fire. Now one asks for water. Clearly there is a contrast between these two images.

With the image of fire we have something that upsets the routine balance of the self. It is a singular moment of disruption that stands between two distinct states: one, a period of being veiled, blinded, and shut out, and the other, a period of vision, intimacy, and presence. This singular moment is necessary to make the transition from between states. Otherwise there is the mere repetition of what already is. But this singular moment is not a sustainable way of being in the world. In fact, it is the very disruption of any way of being in the world. It's merit is in it's vigor, spontaneity, and life not in its steadfastness. But it is steadfastness that is absolutely crucial to any human or spiritual undertaking.

The singlular moment of fire cannot complete the life of the spirit. This is why we need living waters whereby I may live as long as Thy sovereignty endureth. They are the power that makes possible a long term commitment to struggle. All great undertakings have their ups and their downs, those periods when one feels unstoppable, and those periods when failure seems inevitable. When external circumstances are no longer enough to guarentee success, one has to draw deep from one's inner resources to carry on. For this reason we must always take care to nurture and train our souls for struggle. Justice is waiting on us! We cannot let her down! This is why the performer petitions God to make of this prayer a fountain of living waters: so that God's grace and power may flow down into our souls and empower us to be steadfast in His path.

Long Obligatory Prayer: passage three

2007-05-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

And now I finally return to the commentary on the Long Obligatory Prayer. The third passage from the prayer is the shortest, a single sentence, though it may turn out to be the most important.

Exalted art Thou above the description of anyone save Thyself and the comprehension of aught except Thee.

To think something is to put boundaries around it. It is to say that it is this and not that, that it is this on condition of that. Thought is the delimitation that gives an object its reality on a plain of equals with other objects. Though the content of the thought of that object might be that it is superior, or transcendent above other objects, nonetheless, it is one idea among many. Transcendence is a curious idea in that it can be thought about, but it cannot itself be thought. So it it is with God. Just look at the movement of thought in the following effort to explain divine transcendence.

The relationship between the Creator and creation in Baha'i thought can compared to two sides of the same coin. Though there is a necessary connection between the two at all times, they can never be present to each other face to face. Instead they remain always other, always apart, always distinct, while at the same time they are always necessarily linked.

God is transcendent, even above the affirmation of his transcendence. Thought then is just a series of language games, serious games, but games nonetheless that do not produce a one to one correspondence between the word and what it claims to refer to.

This section of the prayer is performed with the body in prostration, as if one is bowing before a king, or one might say because one is bowing before a king. Between the words of the prayer and the posture of the body is a connection between the sovereignty of God and His transcendence above thought. Both affirmations rely on the idea that God is utterly unbound, unrestrained, undetermined, and unconditioned.

This brings us back to the unconditioned coming of the will of God, that what God wants of us can be wholly foreign to our desires, expectations, and ideas about him, and that His will may only become familiar to us once we try to put it into practice. Inasmuch as God transcends our understanding of Him, then by implication what He wants of us may itself transcend our understanding. The path forward is not just about mere implementation of what is already known. Rather it is an openness to that which we do not yet understand, the unforeseen whose existence we are not even aware of.

In this way, there is a consistant theme that runs through Baha'i teachings on the order of the cosmos and how we should approach prayer, discernment, and the life of service.

Vahid and the Worldliness of Renunciation

2007-05-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

The 52nd Arabic Hidden Word reads,

O SON OF MAN! Should prosperity befall thee, rejoice not, and should abasement come upon thee, grieve not, for both shall pass away and be no more.

One of my favorite anecdotes from the Dawnbreakers takes place as Vahid was preparing to flee the city of Yazd after it had just poured over into sectarian violence between Babis and Muslims. An essential part of this was abandoning his house. I think it wonderfully illustrates the spiritual themes Baha'u'llah addresses in the above passage from the Hidden Words.

On page 473 Dawnbreakers reads,

That very night, Vahíd bade his companions disperse and exercise the utmost vigilance to secure their safety. He advised his wife to remove, with her children and all their belongings, to the home of her father, and to leave behind whatever was his personal property. “This palatial residence,” he informed her, “I have built with the sole intention that it should be eventually demolished in the path of the Cause, and the stately furnishings with which I have adorned it have been purchased in the hope that one day I shall be able to sacrifice them for the sake of my Beloved. Then will friend and foe alike realise that he who owned this house was endowed with so great and priceless a heritage that an earthly mansion, however sumptuously adorned and magnificently equipped, had no worth in his eyes; that it had sunk, in his estimation, to the state of a heap of bones to which only the dogs of the earth could feel attracted. Would that such compelling evidence of the spirit of renunciation were able to open the eyes of this perverse people, and to stir in them the desire to follow in the steps of him who showed that spirit!”

For Vahid, recognition of the impermanence and vulnerability of earthly wealth is inscribed into his desire for such wealth. The pleasure in gaining is the pleasure in losing. In the binary between gain and loss, Vahid's desire is situated in both.

And now for something completely different, and relatively unrelated to the above passage from the Hidden Words.

In this anecdote from the Dawnbreakers renunciation (and by implication martyrdom) is in no way passive. Instead it is a lively spectacle of Vahid's power. He gave up a comfortable lifestyle of influence, wealth, and fame for death as a Babi. Here, he makes a spectacle of this contrast by heightening the violence against himself. Rather than cowering away with whatever material possessions he could salvage he rushes headlong into his persecution, not just to make a name for himself, but to make a name for the cause he espoused. By suffering heroically, Vahid hopes others will arise to serve the faith of the Bab. Thus, his personal sacrifice becomes a political statement which in a way is a sort of threat against those who seek to stamp out the Babis.

The historical backdrop of this incident is a national polarization between the emerging Babi community and established elites among the Shia clergy and the Shah's government. As was the case in Khurasan with the Babi Jihad at the Shrine of Shaykh Tabarsi and now with violence in the streets of Yazd this struggle had become an increasingly bloody one. In this context to leave behind his belongings is a political show of force inasmuch as 1) he has the discipline to do such an act 2) that he regards the faith of the Bab as worthy of exercising such intense discipline. There is a certain worldliness then to this act of renunciation, not in any way as a sort of hypocrisy, but rather that his renunciation was intended to have profound influence on worldly affairs and to upset the status quo of Iran in his day.

So what's the lesson here? The aggressiveness of such renunciation could be used to "shake things up," and give a reason for people to speculate why somebody would be willing to make such profound sacrifice for a given cause. It would serve to make public the intense feelings of commitment that might be forced into privacy by the apathy or hostility of a dominant culture.

Reflections on the Place of Politics in the Baha'i Faith

2007-05-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

This has ended up really long, possibly because it's such a huge topic, but here goes.

One of the more perplexing practices for Baha'is to follow is non-participation in politics. Many people don't understand how a religion that is so focused on issues of social justice can deliberately avoid running for office, campaigning for or against particular candidates, or get involved with organizations that are too "divisive." One might wonder how Baha'is expect to realize their dreams of social equality, cooperative governance, demilitarization, and enduring peace without engaging with the institutions most influentially involved in dealing with these issues.

My response to this common concern can be articulate a such:

that politics, as matters of state, is of central concern for the Baha'i faith. Politics is repressed by Baha'i communities, not so as to eradicate it, but to protect it from colonization by the social forces it seeks to challenge. Baha'is withdraw, only so that they can expand, consolidate, strategize, and organize for a time when the community can act far more effectively than at the present moment.

There is an odd assumption that the best time for political action is ASAP. Ask anybody involved in the major parties what goals their particular party has for the nation 50 years down the road, and chances are it will be indistinguishable from their goals two years down the road if you even get an answer. It should come as no surprise then that as a nation we have lost all sense of vision and purpose in our collective life. The ideological malaise can be felt anytime one turns on the news and finds more coverage of campaign strategy than of campaign issues. This isn't how you run a country.

True governance looks to the roots of any community issue. It does not assume that all the world needs is a little tweaking here and there. True governance examines the fundamental ways that we relate to ourselves and the people and world around us. How did we get here? Where are we going? To take this broad of a perspective is an endeavour so profound and so encompassing that religion is the only name that can do it justice. No other word can approach the broad scope of inquiry and still capture its necessary embodiment in individual and communal practice.

What this means is that Baha'i political activity doesn't focus on the tip of the iceberg, but rather on more fundamental issues in the spiritual life of the community, e.g. how to approach conflict, how to relate spiritually to wealth and power, how to relate to people understood as being religiously, racially, economically, or sexually different from oneself. By focusing on these basic spiritual concerns the Baha'i community takes a long term perspective on effecting change on these issues. The fundamental means for this is expanding and consolidating the community towards the end of mobilizing larger numbers of people in service to the world.

One interesting example of this principle in action is the series of events a century ago that inspired it in the first place.

Following the Babi revolts at Zanjan, Nayriz, and the Shrine of the Shaykh Tabarsi Baha'u'llah took a consistant stance against armed resistance to government. His followers were instructed not to work against the government but rather to focus on the spiritual upliftment of the people. At the time this did not mean non-participation in politics. In fact, Baha'is remained atleast as involved in politics as anyone else during this period. This changed though during the course of the Iranian Revolution of 1905. With the formation of a parliament Abdu'l Baha at first encouraged Baha'is to campaign on behalf of their co-religionists running for office. But as it became clear that the new government would be dominated by the Shia clergy, who were the faith's bitterest opponents, Abdu'l Baha withdrew the community from the new government altogether so as to focus on teaching efforts.

Had Baha'is become a player, however small, in Iranian politics Abdu'l Baha might have spent the rest of his life trying to influence the Iranian legislature, especially if immediate social reform was an item high on the Baha'i agenda. Instead though, the community's resources were directed towards spreading the faith and rearing its administrative institutions, especially in the United States. The payoff came, and is still coming today, with the subsequent expansion of the faith to nearly every nation on earth spearheaded largely by the American Baha'i community two generations later. Baha'is still have barely made a dent in influencing native Iran. But the emergence of an extremely well integrated and coordinated global community has greatly expanded the faith's potential for social change, if not now then in the future. The faith could use all of this for social action in the short term or that could be deferred so as to continue efforts to multiply the spiritual and human resources at its disposal. Clearly, there is a place for short term social action in Baha'i communities. But generally, it is not allowed to impede on the more far-sighted goal of the faith: to develop the spiritual, human, and institutional resources that are capable of effecting social change.

This process will continue until the time is ripe, when Baha'is will focus more and more of their energies towards healing an ailing world. What shape that will take is hard to tell. But when they do that generation will stand on the shoulders of giants. God willing, the efforts of contemporary Baha'is will allow them to be those giants. In time the seeds sown today will produce a rich harvest. And if Baha'is play their cards right the energy that supports future generations will be far more effectively employed on efforts in the future than if those same energies had gone directly towards social and political change today.

Return of the Cat

2007-05-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm back. I've been in Wisconsin since Wednesday visiting my sister and her fiance on account of her graduation. We got back yesterday afternoon. I might have posted something, but alas, I was exhausted. I have a few ideas floating around that I plan to turn into full-fledge entries sometime soon. It may take me a few days to get through them, so I thought I'd put something down now, lest they fall by the wayside and never get written.

For one, I'll be continuing with the Long Obligatory Prayer. I'm on what? the third section now? I'm moving rather slowly through the prayer, which concerns me because I only have a couple more weeks of free time to continue with this blog on a regular basis. But this next post should be fun. It will be on this brief passage that is recited in full prostration.

Exalted art Thou above the description of anyone save Thyself, and the comprehension of aught except Thee.

I've also got thinking up something on charismatic leadership within the faith, namely that there is a strategic spiritual advantage in having the Universal House of Justice be really quite dull as a leadership body.

Finally, I want do a piece on the place of politics within the Baha'i faith. The basic thrust will be that politics is too important to the faith for its members to get involved in particular expressions of politics this early stage in the faith's development. I'm writing this as somebody who has struggled and still struggles with the Baha'i principle of non-involvement in politics. But out of this struggle I have seen the value of the practice in a more concrete way then I would ever be able to had I not brushed up against it. It should be a fun post inasmuch as the personal and intellectual dimensions of this pursuit reinforce and encourage each other forward.

away message

2007-05-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

This blog will probably go silent for a few days. My sister is going to be crowned a PhD and my family is driving up to Wisconsin for the coronation ceremony. Soon she will be a Dr. Cat.

I think I'll be back sometime Saturday. It will probably be late though.

So who is invoked in Baha'i prayer?

2007-05-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

Is prayer addressed to God? Is it addressed to Baha'u'llah? Is it directed to both inasmuch as they are the same person? This is no easy question, and there are no easy answers, or difficult ones for that matter. This analysis takes up Baha'u'llah's doctrine of the Manifestation of God, and what it means for prayer. But what is more interesting is what it specifically doesn't mean. For what becomes apparent is that there appears to be no being to speak of that hears prayers. All the while, no doubt is ever entertained that such prayers are in fact heard.

In the Kitab-i-Iqan Baha'u'llah addresses the status of the Manifestations of God, the founders of the major world religions. His explication of the doctrine on the Manifestation of God begins with the assertion that God is transcendent above all creation and thus cannot appear as Creator within His creation. They are like two sides of a coin. At every moment they are necessarily united, but they can never meet face to face. For this reason, God empowers particular people at particular times to manifest his attributes, such as love, wisdom, and sovereignty. These are the Manifestations of God, the founders of the world's major religions.

Rather than taking an either/or position on the divinity of God's messengers Baha'u'llah takes a middle road of sorts by arguing that there are two aspects to the Manifestations of God. Whether or not they are divine depends on the perspective one takes.

One of these is the station of unity. This is the perspective that they are all one inasmuch as the same God speaks and manifests His attributes through each one of them. Because of this it is possible to speak of the one Manifestation that encompasses all of them. The other station is the one of diversity. This is the perspective of history, that each Manifestation is assigned a specific mission in a different time and place from every other. One way of looking at these two different stations is to think of the station of unity as divine and the station of diversity as human.

On this subject Baha'u'llah writes in the Kitab-i-Iqan,

sections 194,196
Viewed in the light of their second station—the station of distinction, differentiation, temporal limitations, characteristics and standards,—they manifest absolute servitude, utter destitution and complete self-effacement. Even as He saith: “I am the servant of God. I am but a man like you".......[and with regard to the station of unity] Were any of the all-embracing Manifestations of God to declare: “I am God!” He verily speaketh the truth, and no doubt attacheth thereto. For it hath been repeatedly demonstrated that through their Revelation, their attributes and names, the Revelation of God, His name and His attributes, are made manifest in the world.

In section 109 of the Kitab-i-Iqan he writes,
Nay, all else besides these Manifestations, live by the operation of their Will, and move and have their being through the outpourings of their grace.

This means that the Manifestation of God doesn't just play a role as messenger. The Manifestation also participates in the emergence of the cosmos. God as the Absolute gives way in almost every sense to God as the Manifestation, the delegate, the vicegerent. This is why it is so hard to pin down to whom one invokes in Baha'i prayer. You have to know who is dispensing grace. Though God as the Absolute would be the ultimate source, this passage locates this role in the Manifestation. In short, it could be said that the Manifestation always defers to the Absolute. But the Absolute always defers back to the Manifestation.

To get back to the twofold station of the Manifestations, one noteworthy aspect of the doctrine is that the truth of both stations seems to be both/not. Rather than trying to produce a logical and syntactically coherent account, Baha'u'llah revels in the perplexity this doctrine produces. Pay attention to the usage of first and third person pronouns in this passage from the Suriy-i-Haykal, a work from just a few years later.

Sections 44-45
Say: 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.

Beware lest ye speak of duality in regard to My Self, for all the atoms of the earth proclaim that there is none other God but Him, the One, the Single, the Mighty, the Loving. From the beginning that hath no beginning I have proclaimed, from the realm of eternity, that I am God, none other God is there save Me, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting; and unto the end that hath no end I shall proclaim, amidst the kingdom of names, that I am God, none other God is there beside Me, the All-Glorious, the Best-Beloved. Say: Lordship is My Name, whereof I have created manifestations in the world of being, while We Ourself remain sanctified above them, would ye but ponder this truth. And Godhead is My Name, whereof We have created exponents whose power shall encompass the people of the earth and make them true worshippers of God, could ye but recognize it. Thus should ye regard all Our Names, if ye be endued with insight.

The flow of the prose suggests that this is monologue but the back and forth movement of God from the first to the third person upsets the unity and clarity of the speaker. What is known is that there is speech, but whether it comes from one or from two is not determined. My understanding of this is that the Manifestation of God stands between the one and the two, Creator and Creation, unity and diversity. It is both, and simultaneously it is neither. The mighty figures depicted in this passage seem to be little more than figures of speech, and speech without speaker at that.

The doctrine of the Manifestation of God is an insult to the self-certain authority of language and a mockery of logical inference.

So who is invoked in Baha'i prayer?

I don't know, which is not to say that there is necessarily an answer to be known. My estimation is that the one invoked is not in the order of the knowable, nor a one for that matter.

Turning toward "Thy will and Thy desire:" part two

2007-05-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

A couple posts back I began a commentary on the second passage of the Long Obligatory Prayer. In that post I interpeted up through the sentence beginning Behold me standing ready... In this post I will take on the rest of it, starting from I implore Thee by the Ocean of Thy mercy....The section as a whole reads as follows,

O Thou the Desire of the world and the Beloved of the nations! Thou seest me turning toward Thee and rid of all attachment to anyone save Thee and clinging to Thy cord, through whose movement the whole creation hath been stirred up. I am Thy servant and the son of Thy servant. Behold me standing ready to do Thy will and Thy desire, and wishing naught else except Thy good pleasure. I implore Thee by the Ocean of Thy mercy and the Day-Star of Thy grace to do with Thy servant as Thou willest and pleasest. By Thy might which is far above all mention and praise! Whatsoever is revealed by Thee is the desire of my heart and the beloved of my soul. O God, my God! Look not upon my hopes and my doings, nay rather look upon Thy will that hath encompassed the heavens and the earth. By Thy Most Great Name, O Thou the Lord of all nations! I have desired only what Thou didst desire, and love only what Thou dost love.

In part one we looked over the image of the supplicant who stands ready to do Thy will and Thy desire. Poised to perform the will of God, the servant does all that can be done to prepare for the performance, but does not in fact begin carrying out the will of God. This is because the decree has not yet come.

I implore thee by the Ocean of Thy mercy and the Daystar of Thy grace to do with Thy servant as Thou willest and pleasest.

The prayer is not for this or for that thing that the servant happens to want. Instead the prayer is for what God wants, whatever that may be. In this petition we see the most explicit presentation of the will of God as unconditioned and foreign to the self of the servant.

For something to be conditioned means quite simply that it must meet certain conditions. It must be constricted and bound within certain rules of engagement. A thing is acceptable if it conforms with my understanding of justice. A thing is acceptable if it confirms the legitimacy of such and such institution. A thing is acceptable if it doesn't interfere with my relationship with this person. Conditioning is the act of self-preservation. In fact it is the production of the self in the first place. It is the demarcation between the legitimate and illegitimate in such a way that secures the position that does so. The internalization of this conditioning process is desire. In this way desire isn't purely natural. It is produced and...yes...conditioned to support a particular arrangement.

Thus, the unconditioned coming of the will of God is something that breaks apart the unity and integrity of the self as desire. It is done on God's terms and God's conditions, which are foreign and exterior to that of the servant. In this way, there is an openness to the construction of a new self, a new standard for legitimacy. It is the production of new desires, and the discipline to follow them.

The tension between the old and the new is highlighted in the second-to-last line of the passage.
Look not upon my hopes and my doings, nay rather look upon Thy will that hath encompassed the heavens and the earth. Here, the servant puts not only my doings, a frequent subject of penance, but also my hopes in question. This is an extraordinary petition inasmuch as there is no greater illustration of self than in the content of one's hopes. Self is configured around how one imagines oneself to be and how things could be. To put one's hopes at a distance is to become alienated from one's own self. The great irony is that this is done in hope of a new self that one imagines as being yet to come.

Reasonable voices may look this over and see in it the enslavement of the human race. The images of subjection and pacification are obvious. So one wonders what this has to do with the upliftment of the human spirit, or emancipation from the rule of tyranny. The best response to this comes I think from a return to the image of turning presented earlier.

When one turns, and I'm imagining a 180 degree turn, there are three stages. At first one's feet are fixed. The gaze is in a single direction. At the end, one is in the same situation except what was once in front is now in back and what was in back is in front. In between is a time in which one moves from one position from the other. As the body moves so does the world. The faster one moves the harder it is for the eyes to focus. The stable frame of reference is lost. Eventually it is regained, but in the meantime a new and unclear world opens up. The loss of this stable frame of reference can be thought of as the loss of self and the certainty of one's own perspective.

The irony is that between selves is the ultimate testing grounds for the capacities of self. This is because the self-as-such is not dissolved, only its integrity, only its self-certainty. Its powers carry on, disconnected, liberated, betrayed: to make judgments when it is unclear by what criteria to make them, to endure the socio-political destabilization that comes with the transgressive act of turning one's feet, to keep one's life balanced when the balance of routine has been lost.

This turning requires a faith, not in the certainty of one's self, but in the turning itself, that when we turn by God, we turn round right.

the Politics of Turning: a brief interlude

2007-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Between parts one and two of the commentary on the second passage of the Long Obligatory, I thought I'd throw in this interlude. It's inspired by this recitation a friend sent me.

to touch the Most High
to touch the life of another
to touch one's own heart
may we do these things always in good faith
may we always be mindful
and turn not from the suffering of others

For one, this passage is amazing in that it doesn't need commentary. It speaks for itself. But nonetheless, I want to give some commentary on the last line because I think it highlights the socio-political project I have in mind behind the commentary on the Long Obligatory Prayer.

This is that spirituality and socio-politics coincide inasmuch as spirituality has an impact on how we relate to other people. This is a persistant theme throuhout the writings of Baha'u'llah. For him, social concerns and spiritual concerns are one and the same. Because of this, its impossible to do justice to one of his prayers outside of the social activist context of all his writings, especially the later ones from which this prayer is drawn. No doubt a central point of intersection is how to respond spiritually to the suffering of others. To respond in a spiritual way isn't just one way among other non-spiritual ways. This is because how to draw a distinction between one's own pain and the pain of others necessarily brings into question the definition of oneself and what that means. How to respond to suffering is necessarily spiritual, even though the specific response might not be informed by what we would call a spiritual or religious tradition."

If you couldn't tell, I'm unemployed and have little more to do than write blog posts, so bear with me on the sheer length of my entries.

May we do these things always in good faith
May we always be mindful
and turn not from the suffering of others

Turning? Didn't we already go over that?

As of late, I've been regaining an appreciation for the disruptive potential of compassion, especially in regards to the sacred trinity of progressive politics: race, class, and gender. It's not possible to simply choose to opt out of an oppressive system. Because our lives are deeply embedded in these systems the process of opting out takes long-term commitment. But one can choose to be affected by the suffering of others. Everytime I see suffering, the question is raised anew. Do I allow myself to recognize my privilege or do I sweep it underneath the rug because it is inconvenient. Allowing oneself to be affected by the suffering of others makes complacency impossible. It poisons the false-sense of innocence that comes with being raised in privilege. It destabilizes one's commitment to arrangements that by justice must be destabilized. When home is no longer the cozy home it once was, then there's no turning back. Long-term struggle becomes the only option.

Sometimes though, there's nothing that can be done. Politically that might be the must awful thing of all, that justice always has the deck stacked against it. In that case the disruptive power of compassion is an even more dangerous thing, especially if the only battlefield left is one's own self. Deprived of public opportunities to make progress, the struggle must turn inward. For some this could be a period of self-destruction. For others, it is a chance to prepare for more opportune times. Stress, disillusionment, and anger must not be all-consuming. They must play their part in the struggle or else be dismissed to the sidelines. Only then, when turning, turning, can we turn 'round right.

Turning towards "Thy will and Thy desire:" part one

2007-05-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.

To turn, turn will be our delight,

'Til by turning, turning we come round right

-Simple Gifts

The second passage of the Long Obligatory is a prayer of turning, not just for the turn, but a testimony of the turn itself.

It begins: O Thou the Desire of the world and the Beloved of the nations, Thou seest me turning toward Thee.... When one turns ones changes direction, one gains a new perspective. What was once behind is now in front. What was once in front is now behind. The simple gift of faith is to turn to Thy will, and as the prayer continues, to be rid of all attachment to anyone save Thee, and clinging to Thy cord, through whose movement the whole creation hath been stirred up. The Shaker hymn quoted above illustrates turning well, that to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed. Here there is a clarity of decision-making, of action, of lifestyle. One is at peace with a life of service in the path of God.

Behold me standing ready to do Thy will and Thy desire, and wishing naught else except Thy good pleasure.

What greater pain is there than to not be ready?

I'm starting college next week. Oh no! I'm not ready. I haven't started packing.

My girlfriend is pregnant. Oh no! I'm not ready. I don't want settle down just yet.

Death is at my doorstep. Oh no! I'm not ready. There are still so many things I have to say.

The law of change demands that we must move on, even when it means that it might drag us. The above line testifies to the joy of a life that has been set in order. It is to say before God that one has put their affairs in order, standing ready to do Thy will and Thy Desire.

Everybody it seems, likes to talk about vocation, about finding one's vocation, and living by it. But before a person can accept their vocation from God they must first be ready. They must have their own affairs in order. This isn't a path that we have to walk alone. Besides for ourselves, we can also help other people get their own affairs in order. Spirituality is not for ourselves. It is for God. And if it is for God then it is for everyone. We can support each other in our efforts to get our affairs in order, to become ready. This is the spiritual dimension to any social justice effort. When we prepare together, then we can turn together, and stand together in patient waiting before the will of God.

to be continued......

Veils of Self, Fires of Madness

2007-05-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Unconditional Prayer

2007-05-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

We often hear of people talk about a love that is not made conditional upon repayment or exchange. Such a love gives without receiving or hope of receiving. It is capable of forming a bond between people where otherwise there would be none. In Christianity this is the source and summit of all spirituality. And if this is how we are to relate to each other, then certainly there is something to be said for relating to God in this way. Such a move would reconfigure the way that we pray. It would require a commitment to God without condition, calculation, or self-interest. If I had to name this commitment I would call it unconditional prayer.

An excellent starting place for thinking about this is the Baha'i Long Obligatory Prayer. In it are contained numerous petitions along these lines. One of my projects for the summer is to set down in writing an extended meditation on this rich and deeply complex prayer. In the future, I intend to use this space for articulating what I believe this prayer asks of God, and of us.

If I had to sum up the prayer's spirit in one of its lines I would choose this one.

Look not upon my hopes and my doings.
Nay, rather look upon Thy will that has encompassed the heavens and the earth.

the Will to Salvation

2007-05-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of passages from the Gospel of Matthew, once again taking on the three way relationship between the Manifestation of God, His servants, and the world. Right off the bat we see the authority that belongs to God being delegated to His servants.

Then Peter answered and said, "Look, we have left everything and followed you.
What are we to have, then?" Jesus said to to them, "In truth I tell you, when
everything is made new again and the Son of man is seated on his throne of
glory, you yourselves will sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of
Israel."

Mt 19.27-28

When the Son of man comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of glory. All nations will be assembled before him and he will separate people one from another as the shepherd separates sheep from goats.

Mt 25.31-32

So who is it that's doing the judging? Is it Jesus or is it the Apostles? Didn't Jesus say "Do not judge?" One way of looking at it is that the Apostles are to judge the twelve tribes of Israel, while Jesus judges all the other nations. But certainly there is room for another interpretation, one less overly cautious: that the Apostles, or more broadly the followers of Jesus, are the means by which the Son of man separates the sheep from the goats. We already see this theme within the Gospels. In chapter 10, verses 14-16 Jesus is commissioning the Apostles to go out and spread the Good News.

And if anyone does not welcome you or listen to what you have to say, as you walk out of the house or town shake the dust from your feet. In truth I tell you, on the Day of Judgment it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. Look I send you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning as snakes and yet innocent as doves.

Besides for the implication that the servants are instruments of the master's authority, there is a certain moral aspect that this entails for the servant. Jesus instructs the Apostles to walk a hard and narrow road being cunning as snakes and yet as innocent as doves. Handled poorly, cunning and innocence could undermine the Apostolic mission. So, innocence cannot mean weakness or indifference. Nor can cunning mean rapaciousness, or liquidating one's enemies. Thus, the Apostles must embody a certain expertise if they are to carry out their mission. Innocence must mean rigorous spiritual discipline, such that no-one can call into question their character. And cunning must mean practical wisdom, thinking on one's feet, and making good judgments. These two things cannot undermine each other. Because at stake here is the destiny of humanity, and the urgency that comes with any matters pertaining to the Day of Judgment.

Before I go too much further I want to clarify what I mean by judgment. By no means should it mean looking down on people, or being bigoted in any way. Rather, it means the basic faculty of making sense of the world, of deciding between the true and the false. Often times (and I mean very often), the way a person makes sense of the world is to look down on others. This is why Jesus argues that this is like placing oneself on the throne of glory on the Day of Judgment. This is because there is certainly an analogy between separating the true from the false, and the sheep from the goats. Nonetheless, making sense of the world and deciding between the true and the false is a necessary part of human existence. For this reason, when Jesus says do not judge he cannot mean that we should stop making judgments. Rather he must mean that we should be mindful that we are not God, and our word is not the final word. He may have other judgments in mind than the ones that we pronounce.

Yesterday, I pointed out a tension between the expertise of the Divine Physician and the exhortation to be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in. In brief, the tension is in determining who has the authority to decide what to do in particular situations. Is it Baha'u'llah, by way of his writings, or does he delegate it to humanity? My conclusion was that the decision rests with humanity. But it is Baha'u'llah who empowers us through the cultivation of our minds, bodies, and souls to make that decision. The Word of God is in one sense a law to which we are bound. In another sense, it is the key that activates the light contained in each and every one of us. The implication is that God's salvation doesn't just come through the implementation of divine teachings, (though this is just as important as is already commonly understood). It comes also through our own activities, decisions, and judgments. In short, it can come about through our own will. God commissions us to will, but the willing itself is up to us. Our free decisions can thus be the manifestation of God's salvation. No doubt, this is a mighty responsibility. God willing, there are people who will respond adequately.

At this point I want to make an equation between Baha'u'llah's instructions to be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in and to center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements and Jesus' instruction to be cunning as snakes yet innocent as doves. For both of these demand a recognition on a moral level from the servants that their actions and choices are deeply involved in the processes of salvation, judgment, resurrection, and justice that God has set in motion.

In this way, we are not spectators. We are the spectacle itself. God willing, our judgments will be the unfolding of His saving justice.

Towards a Spirituality of Rational Endeavour

2007-05-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

I plan on using this space as a sort of scratchboard for my ideas. Outlined here are two arguments. The first of which is an interpretation of one of my favorite passages from Baha'u'llah's writings. This leads into a related, but nonetheless distinct discussion of the role teaching plays in the Baha'i faith, not just as model of community life, but as the hierarchical structure of the cosmos. So, in fact teaching isn't just about Ruhi courses. If I really wanted to I would make these two arguments work together as one larger work, but alas, it's 1:22 AM, and young cats need there rest.
___________________

Baha'u'llah writes in his tablet to Manikchi Sahib,

The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He
perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy.
Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The
remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as
that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs
of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and
requirements.

Certainly, there is one thing that can be taken for granted with this passage: Universal prescriptions cannot universally speak to particular situations. For this reason, expert physicians are needed at different times and places to adequately address the particulars of any situation. Baha'u'llah is one of these.

Beyond this there is in these words a degree of ambiguity, tension, and some might even say contradiction. One is led to wonder: If Baha'u'llah has already prescribed the remedy "in his unerring wisdom" then why do we need to be concerned with the needs of our age? On the one hand it seems we should defer to the prescriptions of the Good Doctor. On the other hand it seems we should be anxiously concerned with producing our own prescriptions. Two opposing but related doubts thus arise: A) If He is All-Knowing wouldn't the wisdom of His prescriptions invalidate the need for future deliberation? and B) If we need to be anxiously concerned with the needs of our age then wouldn't that call into question the universality of the Divine Physician's message? One privileges deferral to Baha'u'llah's teachings. The other privileges the rationality of everyone else.

In interpreting this passage, I don't want to fall into the trap of regarding Baha'u'llah's claims as mutually exclusive. If that were the case then the truth value of each would be at the expense of the other. Instead, I believe it is preferrable to see in the last sentence the fulfillment of the first: that the All-Knowing Physician's prescription is for us to be anxiously concerned with the needs of our age. This would restore the universality of Baha'u'llah's prescription across situations while at the same time empowering future generations to respond to problems that may not have come up in Baha'u'llah's time. A fuller understanding of this comes through the recognition of the central role that teaching plays in the Baha'i faith. Viewed in this light human resource development isn't just a practical measure to expand and consolidate a spiritual community. It is the mission par excellence of the Baha'i faith, and this has a lot to do with Baha'u'llah's vision of the cosmos.
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Perhaps out of a sense of brevity, I don't really feel like explaining all of the ways in which teaching is central to the Baha'i faith. Anybody with much acquaintence to the Ruhi curriculum, or the career paths of so many Baha'is can figure that out. What is interesting though, is the way in which images of teaching and instruction so thoroughly pervade all aspects of Baha'i life. Baha'u'llah often configures the hierarchical relationships between God, Manifestation, Disciples, and World in terms of teacher and pupil.

Take this passage from the Kitab-i-Aqdas (K175) in which Baha'u'llah illustrates his relationship with God.

O Pen of the Most High! Move Thou upon the Tablet at the bidding of Thy Lord,
the Creator of the Heavens, and tell of the time when He Who is the Dayspring of Divine Unity purposed to direct His steps towards the School of Transcendent Oneness; haply the pure in heart may gain thereby a glimpse, be it as small as a needle’s eye, of the mysteries of Thy Lord, the Almighty, the Omniscient, that lie concealed behind the veils. Say: We, indeed, set foot within the School of inner meaning and explanation when all created things were unaware.

In the Tablet of Maqsud (ToB 159-178) we see the same theme in the relationship between the Manifestation and humanity.

Men at all times and under all conditions stand in need of one to exhort them,
guide them and to instruct and teach them. Therefore He hath sent forth His
Messengers, His Prophets and chosen ones that they might acquaint the people
with the divine purpose underlying the revelation of Books and the raising
up of Messengers, and that everyone may become aware of the trust of God
which is latent in the reality of every soul.

Regarding the relationship between Baha'is and humanity we see this from Gleanings CXXVIII

Say: Teach ye the Cause of God, O people of Bahá, for God hath prescribed unto
every one the duty of proclaiming His Message, and regardeth it as the most
meritorious of all deeds.

In Gleanings CLVI the teaching relationship between Baha'is and humanity takes on a dimension of social justice and world order.

Address yourselves to the promotion of the well-being and tranquillity of the
children of men. Bend your minds and wills to the education of the peoples and
kindreds of the earth, that haply the dissensions that divide it may, through
the power of the Most Great Name, be blotted out from its face, and all mankind
become the upholders of one Order, and the inhabitants of
one City.

And back at Gleanings CXXVIII we see the teaching relationship to one's own self.

Whoso ariseth among you to teach the Cause of his Lord, let him, before all
else, teach his own self, that his speech may attract the hearts of them that
hear him. Unless he teacheth his own self, the words of his mouth will not
influence the heart of the seeker.

Considering the consistency of this theme it makes sense that this is more than just an elaborate system for relaying information. Rather, teaching is the name for the overflowing grace of a beneficent creator. One example of this idea in Baha'u'llah's writings should be familiar to anyone who has participated in a Ruhi book 2 study circle. The first section isn't even finished before memorization is prescribed for this passage on teaching....

O wayfarer in the path of God! Take thou thy portion of the ocean of His
grace, and deprive not thyself of the things that lie hidden in its depths. Be
thou of them that have partaken of its treasures. A dewdrop out of this ocean
would, if shed upon all that are in the heavens and on the earth, suffice to
enrich them with the bounty of God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.
With the hands of renunciation draw forth from its life-giving waters, and
sprinkle therewith all created things, that they may be cleansed from all
man-made limitations and may approach the mighty seat of
God, this hallowed and resplendent Spot.

Finally, this is in keeping with the teaching carried over from the Bible and from the Qur'an that creation was brought into being by the Word of God. From the Word do we proceed, and from the Word do we receive our spiritual existence. A case could be made that the material and the spiritual are two separate spheres and should be treated separately. But Baha'u'llah never really appears interested in establishing that distinction. Instead the creation of flesh and spirit from the Word are mentioned coincidentally without mention of an essential separation between the two. The implication of this is that spiritual rejuvenation by the Holy Spirit is the fulfillment and logical conclusion of one's existence as a creation of God.

Welcome!

2007-05-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

At the prompting of a friend, I have begun this blog. Most of it will probably consist of Baha'i theology. The hope is that it will be a source of enjoyment for all who read it.