One of the key benefits of the revelation of Baha’u’lláh is expressed in a talk that His son, His appointed successor `Abdu’l-Bahá gave to the Japanese YMCA at an “independent Japanese church” in San Francisco in 1912.
“The foundation of all the divine religions is one. All are based upon reality.”
The lamps of the divine religions may seem different. This amazing talk from the book, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pages 485-492, is so beautiful. It honors the lamps of Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad, and it also recognizes the light is essence the same light. And the light is about love.
Verily, we should consider the divine Prophets as the intermediaries, but mankind has made use of Them as causes of dissension and pretexts for warfare and strife. In reality, They were the intermediaries of love and reconciliation. If They were not sources of love and fellowship amongst men, then undoubtedly They were not true, for the divine wisdom and purpose in sending the Prophets was the manifestation of love in human hearts.
– `Abdu’l-Bahá
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Bahá’i faith, is considered to be a very special soul. He spent most of his life in captivity, but towards the end of his time on earth, he was released from political and religious bondage, and traveled to Europe and North America, giving profound talks and meeting with quite a few esteemed and honored personages. He was even greatly honored in the newspapers. It’s not to hard to confirm this if you wish.
As I write this in western Montana, the leaves have been falling from the trees. We’ve had Indian summer, though the frost in the mornings seem to show that is now just a memory. It was the spring when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke at a Christian church in New York City on April 14, 1912. It must have been vibrant, sunny, and his talk contained a strong sense of the season of the Spring.
The light of truth has heretofore been seen dimly, through variegated glasses, but now the splendors of Divinity shall be visible through the translucent mirrors of pure hearts and spirits. The light of truth is the divine teaching, heavenly instruction, merciful principles and spiritual civilization.
– Talks by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Spirit of Christ, p. 57.
This time of year has always been my favorite since I moved to Montana. But right now, I also sense the difficulties as autumn progresses, the light of the sun becomes dimmer, and the cold advances. For many, it’s not just the next few months, but the next few years that seem to portend much difficulty. In many ways, looking back at 1912 and what was coming, there were going to be two very deadly world wars. Yet how beautiful a vision of Spring was promised, not just in his talk, but in all the “splendors of Divinity” in the “divine teaching” we’ve been graced with. What a glorious season ahead as we reflect the divine light, and grow in grace in the sunlight of truth.
As a member of Generation X, I was culturally raised by Saturday Night Live. The Dana Carvey skits where he played the Church Lady were entertaining and funny, often calling out very public corruption. Why would this be the topic for a spiritual Baha’i blog? What’s practical about paying attention to Satan?
In part this post was inspired by a conversation with Christians in a Bible study group where the Church Lady was named as a means of attacking true spirituality. Perhaps. In general, popular culture is not especially helpful, and has largely undermined our connection the the spiritual and the Creator. Yet this very sarcastic skit, and the character of the Church Lady, has a certain old time purity from simpler times. Today the Church Lady could help us look at the challenging concept of Satan, which is all over the Bible. The concept is also in Baha’i scripture.
Shall we manifest hatred for His creatures and servants? This would be contrary to the will of God and according to the will of Satan, by which we mean the natural inclinations of the lower nature. This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 287.
Christians have helped me understand the importance and the relevance of symbols employed in the canonical Bible, like Satan, and the Church Lady helps us also have fun with the symbol, and not fall into fear due to superstition. Evil, like the dark, has no independent existence. Evil is just an abstraction for the absence of good, and has no existence in and of itself.
Briefly, intelligible realities such as the praiseworthy attributes and perfections of man are purely good and have a positive existence. Evil is simply their non-existence. So ignorance is the want of knowledge, error is the want of guidance, forgetfulness is the want of remembrance, foolishness is the want of understanding: All these are nothing in themselves and have no positive existence. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – Some Answered Questions, #74.
This seems difficult, because evil seems so plain and clear, yet like the dark, it vanishes with a little light. Darkness doesn’t need to be carefully deconstructed. It just goes away in the presence of good. So Satan doesn’t have a positive existence. Yet Satan becomes very real and manifests in the hearts of people, when they let it.
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
So, let’s not devalue the usefulness of the concept of Satan, of it’s influence potentially on each of us. It could help purify our hearts by searching them and rooting out the satanic spirit which is self-aggrandizing, selfish, and deceptive. The satanic spirit in us will seek leadership, power, money and status and neglect the true purpose for which we were created.
So, that urge that prompts us, could it be …Satan?!
As to the fundamentals of teaching the Faith: know thou that delivering the Message can be accomplished only through goodly deeds and spiritual attributes, an utterance that is crystal clear and the happiness reflected from the face of that one who is expounding the Teachings. – Selections from the Writings of `Abdu’l-Bahá, 146.12, p. 183.
Teaching the Bahá’i faith is one of the prerequisites, and yet we’re also not supposed to proselytize. Marshal McLuhan may not have been Bahá’i, but he certainly taught about the nature of media. We do need to be clear in what we say, but notice that most of what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words on the fundamentals of teaching are about the behavior and nature of the teacher.
Bahá’i’s are called to love the planet. I recall the power of this quote deeply.
It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. – Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh
I own an earth flag and I have flown it proudly. Today I show a picture of the American flag. The writings are filled with promise and commendation of so many countries in the world, and we are not called to hate our own nation. We can find perhaps the greatest promise and expectation for the American nation, of all the nations in the world, in the Bahá’i faith, not because we’re necessary so virtuous. In many ways, it’s because God can be most glorified through the challenges we face with materialism and corruption.
The son of the founder, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave us a beautiful prayer, the prayer for America which he offered when a very important temple construction was under way in a suburb north of Chicago. Shoghi Effendi, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandson as he lead the faith before World War II offered great encouragement to our nation in playing the most important role in bringing peace to the world in the upcoming conflicts, and called us to spiritual advancement, as did his grandfather in the prayer.
Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees … – `Abdu’l-Bahá
The book by Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, is a humbling book. We seem to be so far from the needed spiritual advancement to fulfill our promise. But it’s something everyone can do. Perhaps we can see simple (but very difficult) guidance for this in the first of Baha’u’llah’s Hidden Words. May you be a blessing to your land with these simple instructions.
Oh Son of Man! Possess a pure kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable, and everlasting. – Baha’u’lláh, The Hidden Words
This video I encountered at the end of a Children’s Health Defense show. It is a reading of a poem by Jonathan Reed, which was the winning entry of a 2007 AARP contest. It went viral back then, and there are quite a few readings on YouTube. This is only one of them. It’s fascinating because when you reverse the order of the versus, the message is completely opposite. It brought me to tears the first time I watched it.
The poem in the first order is one of cynicism and materialism, disbelieving there’s anything other than decay, entropy, and corruption. The reverse reading is one of hope, fully aware of the challenges, but choosing to affirm the value of life and having faith that good will win out in the end, and most importantly, choosing to take a role in moving to a better future.
The poem made me think of the numerous references to the sea of negation and the sea of affirmation in the Bahá’i writings. Here’s a passage from the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh’s forerunner.
SAY, verily God hath caused all created things to enter beneath the shade of the tree of affirmation, except those who are endowed with the faculty of understanding. Theirs is the choice either to believe in God their Lord, and put their whole trust in Him, or to shut themselves out from Him and refuse to believe with certitude in His signs. These two groups sail upon two seas: the sea of affirmation and the sea of negation.
Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 189. (Excerpts from the Book of Names – Kitáb-i-Asmá’ 5:19)
God created all things in this sea of affirmation, but gave humans the choice. We can choose the positive or the negative. Either will be true for us, depending on our choice. This is maybe the most immediate and practical of the posts so far, if you just remember that God has provided for us, the Universe is His creation, and we can either choose to trust in God, or we can choose to go the other route. I pray you choose join the rest of God’s creation, and sail on the sea of affirmation. If you ever glimpse that glory in a beautiful sunset, or a child who chooses to build a good life rather than destroy him or herself, that will be a glimpse of the sea of affirmation.
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Psalm 119:11
This psalm was given to me by my father when I was an agnostic in college in the eighties. He had been a born again Christian all my life. I rejected my Roman Catholicism, his Southern Baptist evangelical Christianity, and I rejected all belief in God. Although this passage from the psalms did not mean a whole lot to me at the time, it stuck in my memory. It especially came forward when I learned about the Hidden Words from the founder of the Bahá’i faith, Bahá’u’lláh after I committed to the Bahá’i faith in 1998. I’d read the Psalms after committing to Jesus before my father and a couple of his fellow born again Christians during a mission in Moscow in 1991, but it still didn’t really register until much later.
The Hidden Words are a very short document. They consist of 71 short paragraphs in Arabic and 81 in Persian. They were written before Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed His station as a Manifestion of God – not as God himself, but as an individual that reflected the glory of the Word, similar to the station of Moses, the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad.
Although the Bahá’i faith came first to Muslims in the Shi’áh tradition in Persia and Iraq, and although there is a strong story of what this alludes to – I don’t come from the Muslim tradition and it takes work for me to resonate with the story of words of comfort from the Holy Spirit to Muhammad’s daughter when the split between Shi’áh and Sunni Islam came so nearly immediately after the passing of the Prophet. What does resonate is Psalm 119:11, which my father emphasized as one of the most meaningful of the scriptures for him, at least at that time.
O SON OF DUST! The wise are they that speak not unless they obtain a hearing, even as the cup-bearer, who proffereth not his cup till he findeth a seeker, and the lover who crieth not out from the depths of his heart until he gazeth upon the beauty of his beloved. Wherefore sow the seeds of wisdom and knowledge in the pure soil of the heart, and keep them hidden, till the hyacinths of divine wisdom spring from the heart and not from mire and clay.
The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh from the Persian number 36
One of the practical elements of wisdom from the Hidden Words as relates to the referenced Psalm relates to the thirty-sixth of the Hidden Words from the Persian. Bahá’i’s have a huge responsibility to teach our faith. Some have called it the Bahá’i yoga. Yet we’re also prohibited from proselytizing our faith. Perhaps such practices worked in the past, but they don’t work very well now. Instead of speaking when people aren’t interested in listening, the Hidden Words give me comfort in a concise set of meditations that support “sowing the seeds of wisdom and knowledge” in my heart, keeping them hidden until beautiful, fragrant and attractive flowers bloom.
Please forgive my reference to a statement, “Trust the Science”, that I mostly find unhelpful. Yet trust and science are profoundly relevant and practical aspects of life, whether you are a Bahá’i or not, in this period of great stress and challenge. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Come let us reason together.”
Religious teaching which is at variance with science and reason is human invention and imagination unworthy of acceptance, for the antithesis and opposite of knowledge is superstition born of the ignorance of man. If we say religion is opposed to science, we lack knowledge of either true science or true religion, for both are founded upon the premises and conclusions of reason, and both must bear its test. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – The Promulgation of Universal Peace
‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke the words cited above in Pittsburg in 1912, after he’d been freed from imprisonment after the Young Turk revolution in 1908. He traveled and taught in Europe and then in the United States and Canada. As the son and successor to the founder of our faith, Bahá’u’alláh, he is considered the exemplar. His clarity and depth still amazes me.
One of the key elements of the Bahá’i faith that attracted me was the need for science and religion to work in harmony. For some reason, religion and science have been set at odds with each other.
When we are told “trust the science”, many like myself find this deeply at odds with the true principles of science. In fact, it sounds vaguely religious (and not in a good way). In true and good science, we recognize the limits of our understanding at any time. We recognize that the entire foundation of our understanding might need to be revised. Rather than trusting “the” science, we trust in the process of the scientific method. We trust in honest divergent conversations and experimentation that when the time comes, we might all revise our understanding when better theories and models are discovered that match the evidence. This is the kind of science I want to trust, and I most certainly don’t want anyone forcing it on me.
The Monty Python comedy troupe has brought me great joy and laughter over the years, in this skit laughing at the incompetent priests who can’t get their lines straight and who eventually fail to torture and terrorize their victims into a confession of their sins. The comfy chair and soft pillow most emphatically did NOT work. Yet there were priests that did terrorize and torture people. I believe in religion and science. But I don’t believe in BAD religion. The Spanish Inquisition is one of many examples of BAD religion.
We might believe we are so much more advanced than the crazy priests of the Spanish Inquistion (which of course, no one expected). But humans in the twenty-first century are not above persecuting people for holding what we believe are dangerous beliefs. The Bahá’i faith, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made clear in the quote above, shows that true science and true religion depend on reason and must pass the test of our reason.
This practical Bahá’i offers the practical observation to watch out for anyone triggering fear or possible violence. Good science shows fear causes the higher functioning of our brains to shut down. Take a breath. Use your brains (and new science shows that also includes the brain in your heart and the brain in your gut.) We can work it out.
One of the key benefits of the revelation of Baha’u’lláh is expressed in a talk that His son, His appointed successor `Abdu’l-Bahá gave to the Japanese YMCA at an “independent Japanese church” in San Francisco in 1912.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Bahá’i faith, is considered to be a very special soul. He spent most of his life in captivity, but towards the end of his time on earth, he was released from political and religious bondage, and traveled to Europe and North America, giving profound talks and meeting with quite a few esteemed and honored personages. He was even greatly honored in the newspapers. It’s not to hard to confirm this if you wish.
