Beliefs and Cultures (2/2): Integrating faith and modernity

This is an earlier post on the topic of Táhirih, hence its republication now, in the context of my latest sequence.

It’s taken me only just over a year to get round to finishing The Islamic Enlightenment: the modern struggle between faith and reason by Christopher Bellaigue, which by my standards is not too bad.

I finally got hooked by it. It’s fascinating for a number of reasons that the subtitle summarises. But that is not all.

Bellaigue deals with three middle-eastern contexts in his book on the Islamic Enlightment: Iran, Egypt and Turkey. It is not surprising therefore that he should spend a significant number of pages dealing with the impact on Iran of the Bábí and Bahá’í movements, as he terms them.

There was at least one major surprise to me in his account. More of that later.

He deals at length with the reign of Nasrudin Shah. Within that there is a short section on the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, with regular references to their influence at different points throughout the later sections.

I bought it partly because a review by Bettany Hughes also contained the following: ‘The story of the Persian feminist-martyr Fatemeh Zarrin Taj Baraghani [Qurrat al-Ayn], who read too much, wrote too much and, veil-less, promoted the social vision of the Bahá’ís (a united, anti-nationalist, monolingual world), is poignantly told.’ It describes her as one of the ‘brave radicals’ adding she is ‘Iran’s first feminist.’

More of the details of that in a moment.

Though her review effectively quotes the title of a book The Woman Who Read Too Much, Bettany Hughes doesn’t mention it. Alberto Manguel’s review captures the essence of the book, which suggests that it provides an important supplement to any more conventional historical approach. He wrote:

Less interested in theology than in literature, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani has chosen to construct, around the figure of Táhirih, a complex fragmented portrait that brings to literary life not only the remarkable personality of someone little known in the west, but also the convoluted Persia of the 19th century, treacherous and bloodthirsty.

The Báb and Bahá’u’lláh

Bellaigue’s account of the Bábí/Bahá’í impact on Iranian society begins on page 140:

The Bábí movement, which began in the 1840s, went on to become an important catalyst of social progressiveness in mid-nineteenth century Iran, promoting interreligious peace, social equality between the sexes and revolutionary anti-monarchism.

He oddly describes it as based on ‘secularism’ as well as ‘internationalism, and the rejection of war.’ He goes on to describe its survival ‘to the present day’ in the form of ‘Bahaism which emerged from Babism in the late nineteenth century’ adding that this ‘qualifies it for inclusion in any narrative about modernisation in the Middle East.’

It was, he explains, experienced as ‘a mortal threat to Islam,’ which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Bábís. For this reason hostility towards it continues in Iran to the present day. Even though he sees ‘the theology of Bahaism’ as ‘a little whacky’ he concedes that ‘the social vision was anything but.’ It transcended any Islamic perspective in its ‘vision of consultative democracy,’ in the ‘distinction it made between religion and politics’ and in ‘its promotion of a world civilisation united by a common language.’

Bellaigue concludes his account of this ‘movement’ by saying ‘Having declared the redundancy of the Muslim clergy, Bahá’u’lláh and his son and successor, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, proposed one of the most enlightened social systems of the time.’

Given the persecution it endured, he notes as surprising Bahá’u’lláh’s declaration concerning ‘the abolition of war’ and His forbidding the ‘denigrating of other religions.’ He points out the Bahá’í Faith’s continuing ‘efforts to live in peace with Islam,’ which continues to be largely rejected within the country of its birth, Iran.

Tahirih, aka Qurrat al-Ayn

Belaigue’s account of Tahirih, aka Qurrat al-Ayn, begins (page 147) by claiming she is ‘one of the most remarkable characters in nineteenth century Iranian history. She is both a feminist icon and the mediaeval saint.’

He recounts her early life and then focuses on perhaps the most famous incident in her entire life apart from her leaving of it – her appearing unveiled at the conference of Badasht (page 151).

Qurrat al-Ayn’s removal of the veil was a blatant rejection of the Prophet Muhammad’s command to his followers, set down in a famous hadith, that ‘when you ask of them [the wives of the Prophet] anything, ask it of them from behind a curtain.’

He then explains a crucial ambiguity:

‘Curtain’ and ‘veil’ are the same word in Arabic, and this ambiguous hadith is the basis on which the practice of veiling women has been sanctified.

After the conference, when the participants were marching north, ‘the sight of an unveiled Qurrat al-Ayn chanting prayers alongside Quddus prompted a group of villagers to attack them. Several Bábís were killed; the rest fled.’

I think it important to mention here that, while noting the intensity of her religious faith, Bellaigue, for obvious reasons given the theme of his book, looks particularly at the political legacy and inspiration of Qurrat al-Ayn. There is another important aspect of her life that needs to be included if we are to achieve anything life a complete sense of her contribution to our culture.

This can be accessed not just from Bahá’í sources. There is a book I discovered in the rich seams of Hay-on-Wye’s bookmines: Veils and Words: the emerging voices of Iranian women writersby Farzaneh Milani. On page 93 she quotes in translation the following poem:

I would explain all my grief
Dot by dot, point by point
If heart to heart we talk
And face to face we meet.

To catch a glimpse of thee
I am wandering like a breeze
From house to house, door to door
Place to place, street to street.

In separation from thee
The blood of my heart gushes out of my eyes
In torrent after torrent, river after river
Wave after wave, stream after stream.

This afflicted heart of mine
Has woven your love
To the stuff of life
Strand by strand, thread to thread.

I think that should be enough to indicate that she was a poet and writer of considerable power.

Milani argues that (page 90): ‘Tahereh’s contribution to the history of women’s writing in Iran is invaluable: she proves that women could think, write, and reason like men – in public and for the public. Such actions set her apart from her contemporaries and confer upon her an inalienable precedence.’

Sadly, this view was not yet widely shared outside the Bahá’í community at the time of her writing in 1992, 140 years after Tahirih’s murder, which, coincidentally, was also the anniversary of the death of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith :

Whether because she has been deemed to too offensive, too dangerous, or too minor a literary personage, no article, let alone a full-length book, has been written either on work, or on her life as a struggle for gaining a public voice.

Her poetry is also challenging, something else that might militate against its wider acceptance (page 91):

Some of Tahereh’s poems are difficult to understand. Their language is rich in abstractions. She not only mixes Arabic with Persian but also makes repeated allusions to Bábí jargon and codes. Her religious convictions saturate her poetry and set her verse on fire. They glow in her poetry like a flame that burns every obstacle away.

Her life and verse complemented and, in one way at least, seemingly contradicted each other (page 93):

If self-assertion is a cardinal tenet of Tahereh’s life, self-denial and self-effacement are key elements of her poetry. The themes of love, union, and ecstasy relate to mystic and spiritual experience.

In the end, there is perhaps more mystery than certainty about the facts of Tahereh/Qurrat al-Ayn’s life, as Bahiyyih Nakhjavani suggests in the Afterword to her absorbing novel The Woman Who Read Too Much:

We know more about what is not known than what is. Her date of birth, for example, is uncertain. The exact circumstances of her death are equally unclear. The details of her marriage and divorce are ambiguous, as is the question of whether she abandoned her children or were they were taken from her.

And the list continues for half a page (p 316). What is beyond argument is what her life stood for and what she died for, and the lasting impact that has had on the course of history since then.

An Unexpected Influence

Returning to Bellaigue’s book in which there are other incidental references to the Bahá’í Faith, as I finished The Islamic Enlightenment, I found an extremely interesting piece of history that I‘d never heard of before. It happened in the reign of Muzzafar al-Din. Bellaigue writes (page 238-39): ‘in January 1906 the shah, embarrassed by the forthrightness of the opposition that had established itself at Shah Abdulazim, and disquieted by strikes in the bazaars, agreed to convene a ‘House of Justice,’ a body made up of influential men that would adjudicate on the complaints of the people, dimly inspired by the(banned) Bábí councils of the same name.’ Later though, the shah’s ‘health had taken a turn for the worse and the government had no intention of carrying out his promise to set up a House of Justice.’

I decided to check this out. I clearly should’ve read further into Moojan Momen’s collection of Western accounts of Bábí and Bahá’í history, which was the first book I pulled off the shelf to check, (page 354 – my bookmark is stuck at the previous page – I got close but not close enough). He quotes, ‘In December 1905, as a result of.a large crowd taking sanctuary in the shrine of Shah ‘Abdu’l-‘Azím near Tihrán, the Shah agreed to dismiss ‘Aynu’d-Dawlih and convene an ‘Adálat-Khánih (House of Justice). Whatever was meant by the latter, the Shah, after the dispersion of the crowd at Shah ‘Abdu’l-‘Azím, showed no intention of fulfilling his promises.’

There are probably many other equally hidden influences on history originating in the Bábí and Bahá’í ‘movements,’ as Bellaigue terms them.

On the whole, and not only for his references to the spiritual path I have chosen to follow, this is a valuable account of one region’s attempt to reconcile its religious history with the pressures of modernity. There is clearly still a long way to go.

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Veils, Words & Values (2/5): Mostly about poets, poetry and mysticism

Delight not yourselves in the things of the world and its vain ornaments, neither set your hopes on them. Let your reliance be on the remembrance of God, the Most Exalted, the Most Great. He will, erelong, bring to naught all the things ye possess. Let Him be your fear, and forget not His covenant with you, and be not of them that are shut out as by a veil from Him.

(Bahá-u-lláh from The Summons of the Lord of Hosts – pages 202-03)

Role Clashes

The previous post made it clear that for women there was, and almost certainly still is, definitely a clash between the socially acceptable roles that they could inhabit without criticism and the ones of artistic creativity that were frowned upon.

It’s not just women of course who have a clash of this nature, but the burden does fall more heavily on them for sure. TS Eliot, as explained by Lyndall Gordon in The Hyacinth Girl, was in a similar situation:[1]

. . .[the] moral issue that will haunt him through the next phase of his life, turned on one question and one only: had The Waste Land proved him to be the great poet of his age, who, by virtue of that, must grant priority to his gift? Because Eliot’s conscience was so scrupulous and his sense of responsibility for Vivienne [his wife ] so strong, the issue could not be resolved in any simple manner…

In the end at this point, the Woolfs[2] ‘proposed Eliot as editor of the Nation’:

It was a top literary post, what Eliot had dreamt of when he came to England, and it carried a higher salary than he had at the bank. Early in 1923 this presented an agonising temptation because Eliot had to recognise that it wouldn’t do for his wife: despite the salary and literary prestige, the position did not offer the bank’s guarantees of security nor a widow’s pension.

. . .In the end, Eliot turned the Nation down…

As my previous post indicates I also have had experienced similar difficulties, though of a far less prestigious nature, which is perhaps why I am drawn to examining this issue in so much detail.

My hearth dream, as I will briefly explore later, seemed to help me transcend that darkness, but even after that the humorous exploration of my Parliament of Selves suggests the tension between subpersonalities, and related values and roles, was by no means over, rooted as it was in my pretending at age five or less to be a priest, using the kitchen doorstep as my altar, as well as my struggling to write poems in my teens, most of which were sickeningly saccharine, rather like the only one some of whose words I can still remember: ‘Like envied autumn swallows seeking spring/The hours pass by on wings of weeping gold/And seeking joys that cannot be we cling/In tender sorrowing to those of old.’

What has proved intriguing is that the various competing values that were apparently pulling me in different directions through seemingly different desired roles turned out not to be as much in conflict as I had originally thought, which may be a result of my grasping their deeper common grounding at the level of basic principles.

Poetry as Revealer

Before I move onto to explain that a bit more clearly in a later post, I have to clarify also that to assume that all poetry dispels veils, as I might have implied in the previous post, is not in fact completely true: we have to keep all our faculties on the alert to prevent our mistaking obfuscation for a supposedly enlightening poem.

TS Eliot gives us a perfect example of that.

While he argues for poems finding what he calls an ‘objective correlative,’ which is allied to a continual extinction of the personality’,[3] Lyndall Gordon makes clear in her exploration of the relationship between his life and his poetry, based on the recently released stash of his letters to Emily Hale, that[4] ‘Eliot slides confession into his poetry.’ In using the example of the ‘Cooking Egg’ poem, she writes:[5]

The emotions of this poem are buried even more deeply than usual below an obscuring surface, with glittering shards of narrative in the Modernist manner.

This is also true of what is regarded as his Modernist masterpiece:[6]

‘Tom’s autobiography – a melancholy one’ is the way Mary Hutchinson, one of the first to know the poem, described The Waste Land. She could discern the substratum beneath the Modernist manner. His mother was given to understand the same: ‘Tom wrote to me before it was published that he had put so much of his own life into it.’ Most telling of all, Eliot’s unveilings to Emily Hale make it clear how much this poet needed an actual pulse shaking the heart to authenticate the experience he opens up to us. Unless these unveilings in his letters were preserved, he told her, ‘my life and work will be misunderstood to the end of time.’

So, it would be a complete mistake to interpret, as too many critics did, poems such as The Waste Land as purely objective, impersonal and relating to the state of the world rather than Eliot’s mental state.

According to Seymour-Jones in her biography of Vivienne Eliot, Eliot did drop a massive hint about the personal significance of the poem:[7]

The poet had thrown down the gauntlet to researchers when he admitted that The Waste Land, far from being an expression of horror at the fate of Western civilisation, ‘was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life.’

So in fact:[8]

. . . the longer I worked, the more sure I became that it was justified to view T.S.Eliot’s poetry and drama, bedrock of the modernist canon, through the lens of his life with Vivienne; that the autobiographical and confessional element in Eliot’s texts had been greatly underestimated, due at least in part to a paucity of information.

My own attempts to grapple with the evasive mysteries of that poem came to rely on the heavily disguised confessional component to decode many of its puzzling elements.

Veils

On the issue of veils I need to begin with two contrasting poetical visions of connecting with God, one using a literal veil as a vehicle for conveying her perspective, and one who uses veils purely metaphorically.

The two poets concerned are R.S.Thomas and Táhirih.

De Bellaigue’s account of Táhirih, aka Qurrat al-Ayn, in his book The Islamic Enlightenment, begins[9] by claiming she is ‘one of the most remarkable characters in nineteenth century Iranian history. She is both a feminist icon and the mediaeval saint.’

He recounts her early life and then focuses on perhaps the most famous incident in her entire life apart from her leaving of it – her appearing unveiled at the conference of Badasht.[10]

Qurrat al-Ayn’s removal of the veil was a blatant rejection of the Prophet Muhammad’s command to his followers, set down in a famous hadith, that ‘when you ask of them [the wives of the Prophet] anything, ask it of them from behind a curtain.’

He then explains a crucial ambiguity:

‘Curtain’ and ‘veil’ are the same word in Arabic, and this ambiguous hadith is the basis on which the practice of veiling women has been sanctified.

I think it important to mention here that, while noting the intensity of her religious faith, de Bellaigue, for obvious reasons given the theme of his book, looks particularly at the political legacy and inspiration of Qurrat al-Ayn. There is another important aspect of her life that needs to be included if we are to achieve anything life a complete sense of her contribution to our culture.

This can be accessed not just from Bahá’í sources. There is a book I discovered in the rich seams of Hay-on-Wye’s book mines: Veils and Words: the emerging voices of Iranian women writers by Farzaneh Milani.

The book explains that she was a poet and writer of considerable power:[11] ‘Tahereh’s contribution to the history of women’s writing in Iran is invaluable: she proves that women could think, write, and reason like men – in public and for the public. Such actions set her apart from her contemporaries and confer upon her an inalienable precedence.’

Sadly, this view was not yet widely shared outside the Bahá’í community at the time of her writing in 1992, 140 years after Tahirih’s murder, which, coincidentally, was also the anniversary of the death of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith:

Whether because she has been deemed too offensive, too dangerous, or too minor a literary personage, no article, let alone a full-length book, has been written either on work, or on her life as a struggle for gaining a public voice.

(That is no longer true as Hatcher’s book, from which I shall be drawing quotes shortly, has with his co-author created a compilation of her poems with detailed commentary and English translations.) Her poetry is also challenging, something else that might militate against its wider acceptance:[12]

Some of Tahereh’s poems are difficult to understand. Their language is rich in abstractions. She not only mixes Arabic with Persian but also makes repeated allusions to Bábí jargon and codes. Her religious convictions saturate her poetry and set her verse on fire. They glow in her poetry like a flame that burns every obstacle away.

Her life and verse complemented and, in one way at least, seemingly contradicted each other:[13]

If self-assertion is a cardinal tenet of Tahereh’s life, self-denial and self-effacement are key elements of her poetry. The themes of love, union, and ecstasy relate to mystic and spiritual experience.

Táhirih’s unveiling was perhaps not just about the emancipation of women, though that is clearly a key part of its significance. It might also be symbolising the need for all of us, and perhaps men in particular, to face reality more fully. We live inextricably connected with an ecosystem while echo chambers interfere with our perception of that reality. As a minor illustration of that, on my walk the other day I felt guilty about leaving a distressed snail on the pavement rather than moving it to safety and comfort on the grass verge. As I walked on I noticed two lads walking by with ear phones on who clearly didn’t even see the snail.

The reality Táhirih was most concerned to connect with was mystical in character

And the translation on page 93 of Milani’s book of one of Táhirih’s poems gives a sense of her yearning for connection with the transcendent, though I suspect, as always, to translate a poem is to betray it (an old Italian saying about all translation goes: ‘Traduttore, traditore.’).

I would explain all my grief
Dot by dot, point by point
If heart to heart we talk
And face to face we meet.

To catch a glimpse of thee
I am wandering like a breeze
From house to house, door to door
Place to place, street to street.

In separation from thee
The blood of my heart gushes out of my eyes
In torrent after torrent, river after river
Wave after wave, stream after stream.

This afflicted heart of mine
Has woven your love
To the stuff of life
Strand by strand, thread to thread.

Hatcher, in his introduction to a collection of Táhirih’s poems quotes Shelley as saying, in A Defence of Poetry that[14]‘Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world…’

He goes on to say that[15] ‘Great poetry, poetry with lasting merit, takes us from our present state of awareness to some place else, some place we may not have ever been before, some level of understanding we did not formerly have.’

In his view:[16]’The poet, the good poet, is attempting something beyond description.’ He feels that this often collates with their being poets ‘who are not always easy to understand.’ With Táhirih’s poems for English readers there is the additional challenge of her use of figurative language which is based in a very different culture from our own.

Mysticism

One of her main focuses is on seeking to achieve a connection with divine power, something that a Welsh priest, R.S.Thomas is also frequently concerned with. This is something that has always strained language to its limits, as the NDE experiencer, quoted by Bruce Greyson, testified when they said that describing their experience was like trying to paint a smell.

It is not just the intensity of Táhirih’s faith that gives her a sense of greater closeness to the divine: she was also blessed to live at the same time as two Manifestations of God, the Báb and Bahá-u-lláh. This is what, I feel, enables her to write such lines as:[17]

From behind the veils of grandeur

The face of God is suddenly manifest!

O, believers, you need no longer heed:

‘You shall not see me!’

There are moments where the exact sense of her closeness is less clear, for example:[18]

My life derives not from my soul,

nor does my dying come from my death;

Union with you is my life,

and separation from you is my death.

 

At the moment of death you moved

your sweet lips to enquire about me,

so that I would remain a life newly fashioned

by the breath of God.

In his notes Hatcher explains:[19]

It is not clear whether she is here referring to her own death or to the death of the Báb (which precedes her own martyrdom by two years). Either makes sense, though since she is speaking of separation and the sorrow she feels at that separation, it would seem logical that her longing for nearness to her beloved (the Báb in this case) is coupled with her longing for death that she might once again attain that nearness.

As Hatcher puts it:[20]

The point is that writing poetry, like any art, is not easy or simple or a matter of an inherent gift, and … neither is the art of the reading of poetry… With almost any art, the audience must be trained to understand the depth of thought underlying the beguiling surface of expression.

R.S.Thomas is less challenging for the reader of English, but perhaps more challenging in terms of the frustration implicit in the experience he seeks to convey:[21]

The distinction he draws between ‘place’ and ‘state’ is crucial to understanding the difference between his quest and Táhirih’s. The focus of her yearning seems to be very much outside of herself: his focus seems to be part of what he calls ‘the best journey to make’, which is ‘inward’ into the ‘interior that calls.’[22]

This may relate to the distinction sometimes made between extroverted and introverted mysticism. Main quotes Walter Stace’s position:[1]

Stace identifies two main types of mystical experience: extrovertive (‘outward-turning’) and introvertive (‘inward-turning’). ‘The essential difference between them,’ he writes, ‘is that the extrovertive experience looks outward through the senses, while the introvert looks inward into the mind’ (page 61 [of Mysticism and Philosophy])

Thomas defines a key problem[24] as being ‘in everyday life/it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God.’ Basically the ‘things of the world’ are too often our veil.

My own felt experience is more like his than Táhirih’s.

So how far have I got with dispelling my veils and accessing a deeper reality where discord is reduced if not eliminated? More on that next time.

References

[1]. The Hyacinth Girl – page 103.
[2]. Op. cit. – page 105.
[3]. The Waste Land: a Biography of a Poem – page 130.
[4]. The Hyacinth Girl – page 88.
[5]. Op. cit. – page 85.
[6]. Op. cit. – page 92.
[7]. Painted Shadow – page xix.
[8]. Op. cit. – page xviii.
[9]. The Islamic Enlightenment – page 147.
[10]. Op. cit. – page 151.
[11]. Veils and Words – page 90.
[12]. Op. cit. – page 91.
[13]. Op. cit. – page 93.
[14]. The Poetry of Táhirih – page 16.
[15]. Op. cit. – page 16.
[16]. Op. cit. – page 17.
[17]. Op. cit. – page 95.
[18]. Op. cit. – page 105.
[19]. Op. cit. – page 268.
[20]. Op. cit. – page 18.
[21]. No Truce with the Furies – page 26.
[22]. Collected Poems: 1945-1990 – page 328.
[23]. Consciousness Unbound – page 145
[24]. Op. cit. – page 355.

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Concerning the Message from the Universal House of Justice 28 November 2023

The members of the first Universal House of Justice elected in 1963

Towards the end of last year the international governing body of the Bahá’í world community wrote a long and inspiring message to all Bahá’í around the world. Given my ongoing attempt to provide a limited sense of what the Bahá’í community is seeking to achieve it seemed essential to flag up the importance of this message to all my readers as the perspective of the House far more accurately conveys the totality of the current situation than I have been able to achieve. Below is a short extract from the opening paragraphs of the message: for the entire text text see link.

Dearly loved Friends,

THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

28 November 2023

On 27 November 2021, in the middle of the still, dark night, nearly six hundred representatives of National Spiritual Assemblies and Regional Bahá’í Councils gathered, together with members of the Universal House of Justice and the International Teaching Centre, as well as the staff at the Bahá’í World Centre, to commemorate with due solemnity, in the precincts of His Holy Shrine, the centenary of the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Throughout that night, with the turn of the globe, Bahá’í communities worldwide also gathered in reverent devotion, in neighbourhoods and villages, towns and cities, to pay homage to a Figure without parallel in religious history, and in contemplation of the century of achievement that He Himself had set in motion.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

This community—the people of Bahá, ardent lovers of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—now millions strong, has today spread to some one hundred thousand localities in 235 countries and territories. It has emerged from obscurity to occupy its place on the world stage. It has raised a network of thousands of institutions, from the grassroots to the international level, uniting divers peoples in the common purpose of giving expression to Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings for spiritual transformation and social progress. In many a region, its pattern of building vibrant local communities has embraced thousands—and in some, tens of thousands—of souls. In such settings, a new way of life is taking shape, distinguished by its devotional character; the commitment of youth to education and service; purposeful conversation among families, friends, and acquaintances on themes of spiritual and social import; and collective endeavours for material and social progress. The Sacred Writings of the Faith have been translated into more than eight hundred languages. The raising of national and local Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs heralds the appearance of thousands of future centres dedicated to worship and service. The world spiritual and administrative centre of the Faith has been established across the twin holy cities of ‘Akká and Haifa. And despite the community’s current, all too obvious limitations when viewed in relation to its ideals and highest aspirations—as well as the distance separating it from the attainment of its ultimate objective, the realization of the oneness of humankind—its resources, its institutional capacity, its ability to sustain systematic growth and development, its engagement with like-minded institutions, and its involvement in and constructive influence on society stand at an unprecedented height of historical achievement.

How far has the Faith come from that moment, a century ago, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá departed from this world! At dawn on that woeful day, the news of His passing spread across the city of Haifa, consuming the hearts with grief. Thousands gathered for His funeral: young and old, high and low, distinguished officials and the masses—Jews and Muslims, Druze and Christians, as well as Bahá’ís—a gathering the like of which the city had never witnessed. In the eyes of the world, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had been a champion of universal peace and the oneness of humanity, a defender of the oppressed and promoter of justice. To the people of both ‘Akká and Haifa, He was a loving father and friend, a wise counsellor and a refuge for all in need. At His funeral they poured out fervent expressions of love and lamentation.

Naturally, however, it was the Bahá’ís who most keenly felt His loss. He was the precious gift bestowed by the Manifestation of God to guide and protect them, the Centre and Pivot of Bahá’u’lláh’s peerless and all-enfolding Covenant, the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, the unerring Interpreter of His Word, the embodiment of every Bahá’í ideal. Over the span of His life, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá laboured tirelessly in service to Bahá’u’lláh, fulfilling, in its entirety, His Father’s sacred trust. He faithfully nurtured and protected the precious seed that had been planted. He sheltered the Cause in the cradle of its birth and, guiding its spread in the West, established there the cradle of its administration. He set firm the footsteps of the believers and raised up a cohort of champions and saints. With His own hands, He interred the holy remains of the Báb in the mausoleum He raised on Mount Carmel, devotedly tended the twin Holy Shrines, and laid the foundations of the Faith’s world administrative centre. He safeguarded the Faith from its avowed enemies, internal and external. He revealed the precious Charter for sharing Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings with all peoples across the globe, as well as the Charter that called into being and set in motion the processes of the Administrative Order. His life spanned the entire period of the Heroic Age inaugurated by the declaration of the Báb; His ascension ushered in a new Age whose features were as yet unknown to the believers. What was to befall His loved ones? Without Him, without His continual guidance, the future seemed uncertain and bleak.

Devastated by the news of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, His grandson Shoghi Effendi hastened from his studies in England to the Holy Land, where he received a second stunning blow. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had appointed him as the Guardian and Head of the Faith, entrusting the Bahá’í world to his care. In grief and agony, but sustained by the unfailing solicitude of Bahá’u’lláh’s beloved daughter Bahíyyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi donned the heavy mantle of his office and began to assess the conditions and prospects of the fledgling community.

The announcement of Shoghi Effendi’s appointment as the Guardian was received with relief, gratitude, and declarations of fealty by the body of the believers. The anguish of their separation from the Master was assuaged by the assurances in His Will and Testament that He had not left them alone. A disloyal few, however, challenged ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s chosen heir and, motivated by their own ambitions and ego, rose against him. Their betrayal at that critical moment of transition was compounded by the fresh machinations of the avowed opponents of the Master. Yet, although hard-pressed by such heartache and trials, and in the face of other formidable obstacles, Shoghi Effendi began to mobilize the members of the widely scattered Bahá’í communities to begin the monumental task of laying the foundations of the Administrative Order. Individuals previously galvanized by the unique personality of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gradually began to coordinate their efforts in a common enterprise under the patient yet resolute guidance of the Guardian.

As the Bahá’ís began to take on their new responsibilities, Shoghi Effendi impressed upon them how rudimentary was their grasp, as yet, of the sacred Revelation in their possession and how daunting the challenges before them. “How vast is the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh! How great the magnitude of His blessings showered upon humanity in this day!” he wrote. “And yet, how poor, how inadequate our conception of their significance and glory! This generation stands too close to so colossal a Revelation to appreciate, in their full measure, the infinite possibilities of His Faith, the unprecedented character of His Cause, and the mysterious dispensations of His Providence.” “The contents of the Will of the Master are far too much for the present generation to comprehend”, his secretary wrote on his behalf. “It needs at least a century of actual working before the treasures of wisdom hidden in it can be revealed.” To comprehend the nature and dimensions of Bahá’u’lláh’s vision of a new World Order, he explained, “We must trust to time, and the guidance of God’s Universal House of Justice, to obtain a clearer and fuller understanding of its provisions and implications.”

The present moment, following, as it does, the completion of a full century of “actual working”, offers a propitious vantage point from which to garner new insights. And so we have chosen the occasion of this anniversary to pause to reflect with you on the wisdom enshrined in the provisions of the Will and Testament, to trace the course of the Faith’s unfoldment and observe the coherence of the stages of its organic development, to discern the possibilities inherent in the processes driving its progress, and to appreciate its promise for the decades ahead as its power to reshape society is increasingly made manifest in the world through the growing impact of Bahá’u’lláh’s stupendous Revelation.

Seat of the Universal House of Justice © Bahá’í World Centre

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Humanity is our Business (4/7): Capacity Building (b)

 

© Bahá’í World Centre

Given that my recent sequence ended by looking at the need for concerted action it seemed a good idea to republish this sequence from many years ago. Since I first wrote this significant progress has been made in terms of the Bahá’í footprint on world affairs, but, as the Universal House of Justice admits in its letter of 28 November 2023, we still have a long way to go:

. . . despite the community’s current, all too obvious limitations when viewed in relation to its ideals and highest aspirations—as well as the distance separating it from the attainment of its ultimate objective, the realization of the oneness of humankind—its resources, its institutional capacity, its ability to sustain systematic growth and development, its engagement with like-minded institutions, and its involvement in and constructive influence on society stand at an unprecedented height of historical achievement.

Empowerment

To mistakenly identify Bahá’í community life with the mode of religious activity that characterises the general society — in which the believer is a member of a congregation, leadership comes from an individual or individuals presumed to be qualified for the purpose, and personal participation is fitted into a schedule dominated by concerns of a very different nature — can only have the effect of marginalising the Faith and robbing the community of the spiritual vitality available to it.

(Universal House of Justice, 22 August 2002)

Training is helping move us from a passive congregational culture to an actively empowered one.

Referred to as the “chief propellant” of the change in culture, the training institutes, with their ability to produce an expanding number of human resources, have fundamentally altered the approach of the Bahá’í community to the tasks at hand. More than ever the rank and file of the believers are involved in meaningful and vital service to the Cause. Whether by holding devotional meetings, facilitating study circles, or teaching children’s classes, a greater number of friends have found paths of service that do not depend on public-speaking prowess.

(Building Momentum: pages 18-19)

The three activities referred to in that last quotation have often been described as ‘core activities.’  Core does not, however, mean only. The analogy of the spear has also been used, with these activities, or some aspect of them, referred to as the spearhead. This metaphor points up (terrible unintended pun – sorry!) the  issue here. A spearhead without a  shaft is not much use. So, there are many other things that we need to do as well as those three important components of our plan if they are to have the impact we would like.

The House of Justice has remarked on this increase in empowered participation:

It is especially gratifying to note the high degree of participation of believers in the various aspects of the growth process.

(Building Momentum: pages 18-19)

People often refer to how, in most organisations, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Bahá’ís are learning how to buck this trend.

A Sequence of Courses

A critical tool in this process is a sequence of courses devised by the Ruhi Institute in Colombia, tested in the field there and gradually improved in the light of experience. Certain principles underpin the components of this set of materials:

From among the various possibilities, the Ruhi institute has chosen ‘service to the Cause’ as the organising principle of its educational activities.

(Learning about Growth: page 50)

They describe this further in one of the modules of the course:

The purpose of our courses is to empower the friends spiritually and morally to serve the Faith . . .

(Book Seven: page 102)

Learning to implement these courses here and in other countries has not been without its problems of course:

Out of a desire to apply the guidance ‘correctly,’ there was a tendency in isolated cases to go to extremes: either everyone was to be a tutor or restrictions were imposed; people who had taught children for years were told they couldn’t continue unless they did Book Three; firesides [informal introductory meetings usually with an invited speaker] were abandoned in place of study circles; people were rushed through the courses without doing the practice.

(Paul Lample: Revelation and Social Reality, pages 64 and 92)

This pain and discomfort of learning by these mistakes is perhaps the inevitable accompaniment of creativity and enacting higher values. There is no doubt though that the basic methodology is sound and has proved itself in many places, in spite of these teething problems, to be a powerful means of giving people the confidence to act. People are also learning how to dovetail the activities connected with the sequence of training courses with previously existing patterns of action such as the fireside and courses designed to further deepen our understanding of the Writings of the Faith.

© Bahá’í World Centre

Refining What We Do

We are also learning not only to be more active in service of the community as a whole, but also to think about what we are doing in order to do it better. The methodology for this was part of the Colombian experience and draws on models of action research (see Peter Reason for example) undertaken in the wider community.

The most [the teachers and administrators] could expect from themselves was to engage wholeheartedly in an intensive plan of action and an accompanying process of reflection and consultation. This reflection and consultation had to be carried out in unshakeable unity and with a spirit of utmost humility. The main thrust of the consultation had to be the objective analysis of possible courses of action and the evaluation of methods and results, all carried out in the light of the Writings of the Faith.

(Learning About Growth: page 10)

Other posts on this blog examine in considerable detail what Bahá’ís mean by consultation and reflection. The key components of the process described here are study, consultation, action and reflection.

Relating to Scripture

In using scripture as part of this process of empowerment certain aspects are emphasised:

. . . to reach true understanding . . . one must think deeply about the meaning of each statement and its applications in one’s own life and in the life of society. Three levels of comprehension are: basic understanding of the meaning of words and sentences, applying some of the concepts to one’s daily life, and thinking about the implications of a quotation for situations having no apparent or immediate connection with its theme.

(Learning about Growth: pages 30-31)

A good mnemonic for this is AIMs. The ‘A’ stands for applications, the ‘I’ for implications and the ‘M’ for meanings. The bedrock of the process of empowerment here is to enable us all to relate to the Word of God in a way that inspires us to put what we have understood into action for the betterment of the world.

© Bahá’í World Centre

The Links to Civilisation-Building

It is important to have a brief look now at how the work of each book including its ‘service’ component links to the aim of building a better world for everyone.

This is made quite explicit at the beginning of the first book in the sequence (page 9):

The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct.

(The Advent of Divine Justice: pages 24-25)

The theme is continued in the other books, for example:

Book Two (page 46):

The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh encompasses all units of human society; integrates the spiritual, administrative and social processes of life; and canalises human expression in its various forms towards the construction of a new civilisation.

(Universal House of Justice: 1989)

Book Three (page 9):

Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education, alone, can cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.

(Gleanings: CXXIII)

Book Four (page 8):

It is incumbent upon all the peoples of the world to reconcile their differences, and with perfect unity and peace, abide beneath the shadow of the Tree of His care and loving-kindness.

(Gleanings: IV)

It is perhaps worth stressing here that specific patterns of action are linked to the work of each book and are central to the purposes of that book. Book Three is designed for example to empower people to run children’s classes. Book Four encourages us to speak to people about the lives of the central figures of the faith as a way to inspire them to a new way of living. The lives of the Báb and His disciples, for example, unfold before our eyes a quality of moral heroism that  many profound thinkers lament is missing from modern life.  Zimbardo devotes the closing chapter of his book  The Lucifer Effect to describing ways of cultivating exactly that quality in the ordinary challenges of life. Susan Neiman describes examples of such heroism in her book Moral Clarity.

Civilisation-building is the underpinning purpose of the courses and it is seen to begin with small changes in our patterns of daily action. Again in a later book:

Book Six (page 11):

The world is in great turmoil, and its problems seem to become daily more acute. We should, therefore, not sit idle . . . Bahá’u’lláh has not given us His Teachings to treasure them and hide them for our personal delight and pleasure. He gave them to us that we may pass them from mouth to mouth, until all the world . . . . enjoys their blessings and uplifting influence.

(Shoghi Effendi, The Guardian: 27 March 1933)

Book Seven (page 67):

Children are the most precious treasure a community can possess, for in them are the promise and guarantee of the future. They bear the seeds of the character of future society which is largely shaped by what the adults constituting the community do or fail to do with respect to children.

(Universal House of Justice: Ridván  2000)

The Purpose of the Core Activities

Many people has felt confused at times about the exact purpose of the ‘core activities.’ A member of the Universal House of Justice has reportedly offered the following clarification.

He gave the example of a glass. He said that while it is not inaccurate to say that the glass is transparent, it is evident that transparency is not the purpose of the glass. Transparency is one of the attributes of the glass, but its purpose is to hold liquid. Similarly, one of the attributes of our core activities is that they become instruments for teaching – but that is not their purpose. He stressed that the purpose of our core activities is to enable us to serve society and help “translate that which hath been written into reality and action”.

The primary purpose of our core activities is to raise our capacity to serve society, such that these activities become instruments for developing communities, and not merely instruments for teaching the Faith.

He encouraged the participants present at the seminar to re-look at the Ruhi Institute books from 1 – 7 with the eye of society and to reflect on how the concepts embedded in them could be used for social action and not just for the sake of bringing more people into the Faith.

He developed this further. It is clear that we need to imbue participants engaged in our core activities with a vision of social transformation as well as personal transformation. Now if someone were to ask us whether the purpose of our inviting them to join study circles is to make them Bahá’ís, we can confidently say ‘no’ and tell them that the purpose of our core activities is to assist in the transformation and betterment of society.

The next posts will look more closely at the nature and value of devotional meetings and the compelling need for the spiritual education and proper nurturing  of children.

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Heart-to-Heart Resuscitation (2/4): What might be the answer?

To be explained much later!

The Challenge

At the end of the previous post we faced a challenge.

Until we can begin to accept the truth of interconnectedness, it far too easy for us to operate on the assumption that, to get my own way and obtain my own gains, cheating, robbing and even killing are all right because I’m not affected by my own crimes as long as I win. All this fits well with the short-term narrow-minded thinking of the primate brain that helped us survive and win in the purely material world most of the time in the distant past when we were less connected in material terms. Now, if one major economy sinks in this time of global capitalism we will all be affected and may well go down with them as the financial crisis of 2008 warned us. Activism is important but it can be divisive as it is often fuelled by the same kind of limited divisive conviction I have just been describing.

So, what then might be the answer. Well, if it is a cultural heart attack that we’re facing, what better than heart-to-heart resuscitation?

What might that be exactly?

Individual acts of service and kindness are obviously important.

The research Timothy Wilson reviews in his excellent short book Redirect: the surprising new science of psychological change points towards the critical importance of incorporating a community service component into any remedial programme for children and young people manifesting behavioural problems:[1]

The fact that policymakers learned so little from past research – at huge human and financial cost – is made more mind-boggling by being such a familiar story. Too often, policy makers follow common sense instead of scientific data when deciding how to solve social and behavioural problems. When well-meaning managers of the QOP [Quantum Opportunities Programme] sites looked at the curriculum, the community service component probably seemed like a frill compared to bringing kids together for sessions on life development. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But common sense was wrong, as it has been so often before. In the end, it is teens… who pay the price…

Also[2] ‘a third technique, call the do good, be good approach, involves changing people’s behaviour first… In other words, people’s behaviour shapes the personal narratives they develop. If they act kindly toward others, they begin to see themselves having kind dispositions, and the more they view themselves as kind, they more likely they are to help others…’

He goes on to explain:[3]

. . . the idea that one of the best ways of changing people-s self-views this to change their behaviour first. Involving at risk teens in volunteer work can lead to a beneficial change in how they view themselves, fostering the sense that they are valuable members of the community who have a stake in the future, thereby reducing the likelihood that they engage in risky behaviours…’

Our ability to be consistently kind depends, more than our materialistic culture in the Western world acknowledges most of the time, upon the climate of the mind. So, there are two important spheres of endeavour. The first is tending to our inscape thereby enhancing our understanding. The second is enhancing our capacity to communicate with others in a way that lifts the ability of all involved to raise their level of understanding to increasingly higher levels.

I’ve dealt in detail elsewhere on this blog with the idea that the process of reflection, in the sense of recognising that consciousness is not the same as its contents, and the closely related state of increased detachment and the process of consultation, in the sense of a dispassionate comparison of perspectives that draws them closer to the truth, potentiate each other. So, I won’t be going over that ground again here.

Instead, I’ll be looking in some detail at what a healthy inscape might look like, and what other ways, in addition to reflection, we might draw upon to achieve that state. I’ll also be trying to unpack what might enable our relationships to qualify more closely to the description of heart-to-heart resuscitation. Perhaps we can all do something as individuals which will have a cumulative and transforming effect. We can heal our own hearts in order to help others heal theirs, thus reducing the spread of this cultural heart attack.

I suspect at this stage I will barely be able to scratch the surface, and will therefore be returning to this theme more than once in the coming months and years, if I live that long.

Uniting the World

The first time I thought of the idea of heart-to-heart resuscitation it was just as a joke in response to the Bahá’í poster in circulation at the time. There’s been an awful lot of heart-work of various kinds going on in my head since then. I read a lot in the Bahá’í Writings that pointed towards the need to unite our own heart as an essential prerequisite to any hope of working with others to unite hearts on a larger scale. More on that in a moment.

One of the most influential largely unconscious influences in that direction though was my therapeutic work as a clinical psychologist working in mental health in the NHS. I was sometimes asked to describe how that kind of work felt rather than to give an intellectual explanation of its official description. As I sat in my chair attempting to tune into the reality of this other person sitting opposite me and the challenges it presented with a calm and silent focus, I often would sense a kind of shared space between us. In that space it felt as though our perspectives were communicating somehow with each other above and beyond the words we were exchanging and the obvious signals coming from our bodies. It felt like heart-to-heart communication. By saying this I don’t mean something reducible to the electromagnetic signals hearts send out across a short space within a room. It felt more complex than the shared mood that could trigger.

The best phrase to capture this is the one used frequently by Bahá-u-lláh, one which I have also explored at length on this blog: the ‘understanding heart.’ For me, it seems like a deep intuition that extends beyond physical boundaries and is able to tap into transpersonal dimensions. Its apparent insights need to be tested carefully so we don’t end up confusing instinctive reactions with genuine intuition. If genuine, such intuitions can pick up on otherwise inaccessible aspects of reality. I can’t prove that this subjective interpretation of what was happening in therapy is correct, but it still feels like the best available description for me at least.

It helps make what I am going to attempt to explore plausible enough to be convincing.

There is much else I’ve dealt with elsewhere which I’ll reference quickly here before moving on to my main focus.

We’re living in an increasingly nightmare world, and I’m not just talking about the climate crisis, or our battle with Covid. Politics generally is threatening to shift back to the dangerous polarisations that led to World War II, as we call it in the west.

It seems we never learn from the traumatic mistakes of history and continue to repeat them. Triggered by his powerfully beautiful book on Du Fu, the refugee poet in a war-torn China, I have recently been reading Michael Wood’s The Story of China. He quotes the words of Du Fu at the end of Chapter 6:[4]

Weeping in the wilderness, how many families

Know of war and loss…

At the start of the next chapter he writes:[5]

The eight year An Lushan rebellion was a turning point in the story of China. Censuses suggest that as many as 30 million people died, comparable to figures from the First World War, and it was accompanied by similar institutional crisis and societal and governmental breakdown.

Nearly 1300 years later, wars have already broken out again too close to home. It makes it too easy to slip into the nihilism of meaninglessness. Part of my way of meeting this challenge is expressed in my poem Cold Comfort.

Working on the Inscape

There are days when it drives to me confront a looming desperation inside me and ask, ‘What can I do at my advancing age to try and make this world a better place, beyond small acts of help, supporting some more organised acts of kindness and this blog? What real difference can I make?”

Bahá-u-lláh makes it clear that both the world inside us as well as the world outside us demands our constructive attention if things are very going to change. He laments that ‘No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united’.[6] What do I think he means by that exactly?

I think He is telling us that we need to achieve an inner harmony if we are ever going to successfully contribute to creating harmony in the world outside us.

He states in the Hidden Words, ‘Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.’

How might this ‘essence of detachment’ relate to the ‘signs of oneness’? ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanation takes us somewhat further. He explains a crucial implication and the remedy:[7]

. . . all souls [must] become as one soul, and all hearts as one heart. Let all be set free from the multiple identities that were born of passion and desire, and in the oneness of their love for God find a new way of life.

Operating through the heart is crucial. According to Saiedi, in his book about the Revelation of the Báb, to approach challenge through the heart enables us to reach higher levels of understanding:[8]

. . . by attaining the higher perspective of the heart, one can transcend the oppositions of the limited station of intellect and arrive at a more comprehensive, holistic perspective.

So, aligning our hearts with the highest levels of understanding is a task that we should not dismiss as pointless even in a world as dark as ours seems to be at present. We’ll be looking at the importance of concerted action later, but working on the inscape will be the main focus of the next post.

 

References:

[1]. Redirect – page 131.
[2]. Op. cit. – page 17.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 127.
[4]. The Story of China – page 153.
[5]. Op. cit. – page 154.
[6] Tablets of Bahá-u-lláh – pages 163-64.
[7] Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — page 78.
[8] Gate of the Heart – page 180.

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Becoming a True Upholder of His Oneness (2/4): burnishing the mirror of our heart

To download the complete materials click this link Upholders of His Oneness v2.

It seemed worth republishing this sequence at a point when I will soon be launching into an exploration of how as individuals we can prepare ourselves for working more effectively to create a unified but still diversely creative world. 

Each day we drove into Strathallan from Dundee. This was because my health issues meant that I needed to make sure I had enough rest each day. Being a resident at summer school means that you have the benefit of more activities but with that goes a greater expenditure of energy that I couldn’t afford this time round.

So, after the long ribbon of the bridge over the shining waters of the Firth of Tay and the 17 miles of dual carriageway under alternating showers and sunshine, we arrived back at the school in time for prayers and Khazeh Fananapazir’s engaging exploration of the significance of this year. Two hundred years ago Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, was born in Tehran. This year therefore Bahá’ís are taking every opportunity to remember His life and connect with Him spiritually, as well as to deepen our understanding of the spiritual connection between Bahá’u’lláh as the Manifestation of God for this day and the Báb as His Herald .

After that, and a cup of coffee and a cake, we headed for our workshop.

Consensus Consciousness

It might help if we begin more or less where we left off. Charles Tart in his book Waking Up.’ begins his analysis of social reality and its impact on the individual by contending (page 9) that ‘Consciousness, particularly its perceptual aspects, creates an internal representation of the outside world, such that we have a good quality “map” of the world and our place in it.’ He doesn’t mince words when he describes what he feels is an important correlative of this (page 11): ‘Our ordinary consciousness is not “natural,” but an acquired product. This has given us both many useful skills and many insane sources of useless suffering.’

He chooses to introduce a phrase that captures this (ibid):

. . . [For the phrase ordinary consciousness] I shall substitute a technical term I introduced some years ago, consensus consciousness, as a reminder of how much everyday consciousness has been shaped by the consensus of belief in our particular culture.

He continues (page 59):

. . . . one of our greatest human abilities, and greatest curses, is our ability to create simulations of the world . . . . These simulations, whether or not they accurately reflect the world, can then trigger emotions. Emotions are a kind of energy, a source of power.

In the workshop at Strathallan School we delved deeply into this down side and its costs from a spiritual point of view. In a mystical work of poetic power and great beauty Bahá’u’lláh writes (Seven Valleys – pages 19-20):

Thus it is that certain invalid souls have confined the lands of knowledge within the wall of self and passion, and clouded them with ignorance and blindness, and have been veiled from the light of the mystic sun and the mysteries of the Eternal Beloved; they have strayed afar from the jewelled wisdom of the lucid Faith of the Lord of Messengers, have been shut out of the sanctuary of the All-Beauteous One, and banished from the Ka’bih of splendour. Such is the worth of the people of this age! . . . . .

Clearly, this kind of tunnel vision is more than enough to account for why Bahá’u’lláh can dismiss much of what we think as superstition, illusion, delusion and ‘vain imaginings.’ There was some discussion in the workshop as to whether invalid should be taken to mean ‘sick’ or ‘unconfirmed/inauthentic.’ Fortunately we had the chance to check out with Khazeh, the presenter of the plenary sessions and a reader of both Arabic and Persian, what the word in the original text meant: he said without the slightest hesitation, ‘sick’.

Also, what we see is still very much in the eye of the beholder. In an exploration which compares reality at the spiritual level to the sun, whose pure light is white, Bahá’u’lláh illustrates how different what we observe is from the light itself (pages 19-20):

In sum, the differences in objects have now been made plain. Thus when the wayfarer gazeth only upon the place of appearance–that is, when he seeth only the many-colored globes –he beholdeth yellow and red and white; hence it is that conflict hath prevailed among the creatures, and a darksome dust from limited souls hath hid the world. And some do gaze upon the effulgence of the light; and some have drunk of the wine of oneness and these see nothing but the sun itself.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that these subjective differences, which result from the imperfections of our vision, can give rise to utterly toxic conflicts, conflicts whose origins are in essence delusional.

Cleansing the Mirror

As individuals, brainwashed by flawed worldviews, what can we do to transcend the resulting limitations?

In exploring this angle on the issue I am not discounting that steps also need to be taken to address the limitations of our culture, but, in seeking to capture the flow of consultation around the quotations we were considering, it’s easiest to start from here and deal with the wider issues later.

Bahá’u’lláh writes (Gleanings – XXVII):

. . . These energies with which the Day Star of Divine bounty and Source of heavenly guidance hath endowed the reality of man lie, however, latent within him, even as the flame is hidden within the candle and the rays of light are potentially present in the lamp. The radiance of these energies may be obscured by worldly desires even as the light of the sun can be concealed beneath the dust and dross which cover the mirror. 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. It is clear and evident that until a fire is kindled the lamp will never be ignited, and unless the dross is blotted out from the face of the mirror it can never represent the image of the sun nor reflect its light and glory.

I have dealt at length elsewhere on this blog with the idea of the human heart as a mirror that needs to be burnished if it is to reflect the light of spiritual reality and that we also need to be sure that we do not mistake what is reflected there for the mirror itself. It is enough at this point simply to quote a writer whose insights, along with my experience of Buddhist meditation, helped prepare me to understand Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation sufficiently to choose the path He reveals to us. What this writer says covers what our consultation on the day disclosed to us about the power and challenges of separating consciousness from its contents, a process he calls reflection.

In his brilliant book on existentialism The New Image of the Person: The Theory and Practice of Clinical Philosophy, Peter Koestenbaum states that (page 69):

[a]nxiety and physical pain are often our experience of the resistances against the act of reflection.

By reflection, amongst other things, he means unhooking ourselves from our ideas.

An example he gives from the clinical context illustrates what he means:

. . . to resist in psychotherapy means to deny the possibility of dissociating consciousness from its object at one particular point . . . To overcome the resistance means success in expanding the field of consciousness and therewith to accrue increased flexibility . . .’

But overcoming this resistance is difficult. It hurts and frightens us. How are we to do it? In therapy it is the feeling of trust and safety we develop towards the therapist that helps us begin to let go of maladaptive world views, self-concepts and opinions.

This process of reflection, and the detachment it creates and upon which the growth of a deeper capacity to reflect depends, are more a process than an end-state at least in this life.

Koestenbaum explains this (page 73):

The history of philosophy, religion and ethics appears to show that the process of reflection can continue indefinitely . . . . there is no attachment . . . which cannot be withdrawn, no identification which cannot be dislodged.’

By reflection he means something closely related to meditation.

Reflection, he says (page 99):

. . . releases consciousness from its objects and gives us the opportunity to experience our conscious inwardness in all its purity.

What he says at another point is even more intriguing (page 49):

The name Western Civilisation has given to . . . the extreme inward region of consciousness is God.

I feel this brings us in psychotherapeutic terms close to the exact place ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is describing in Paris Talks. These are the quotes we wrestled with at the Summer School, striving to understand the role of silence more fully (page 174-176):

Bahá’u’lláh says there is a sign (from God) in every phenomenon: the sign of the intellect is contemplation and the sign of contemplation is silence, because it is impossible for a man to do two things at one time — he cannot both speak and meditate.

It is an axiomatic fact that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed. . . .

Through the faculty of meditation man attains to eternal life; through it he receives the breath of the Holy Spirit — the bestowal of the Spirit is given in reflection and meditation. . .

Meditation is the key for opening the doors of mysteries. In that state man abstracts himself: in that state man withdraws himself from all outside objects; in that subjective mood he is immersed in the ocean of spiritual life and can unfold the secrets of things-in-themselves. To illustrate this, think of man as endowed with two kinds of sight; when the power of insight is being used the outward power of vision does not see.

This faculty of meditation frees man from the animal nature, discerns the reality of things, puts man in touch with God.

. . . Through this faculty man enters into the very Kingdom of God. . . .

The meditative faculty is akin to the mirror; if you put it before earthly objects it will reflect them. Therefore if the spirit of man is contemplating earthly subjects he will be informed of these. . . .

Therefore let us keep this faculty rightly directed — turning it to the heavenly Sun and not to earthly objects — so that we may discover the secrets of the Kingdom, and comprehend the allegories of the Bible and the mysteries of the spirit.

May we indeed become mirrors reflecting the heavenly realities, and may we become so pure as to reflect the stars of heaven.

Bronze mirror, New Kingdom of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty, 1540–1296 BC. For source of image see link.

This paved the way for our attempt to understand the relationship between achieving oneness and cleansing the mirror of the heart, which Bahá’u’lláh describes as burnishing, a process of intense friction involving metal against metal, not just picking up a duster and some polish to bring the shine back to a modern glass mirror. Once again a quick confab with Khazeh confirmed that the original word implied effort and friction. This suggests that Bahá’u’lláh may have had the early metal mirrors in mind when He wished to convey how difficult, even painful, the polishing process would be for the heart’s mirror. A Wikipedia article states:

. . . . stone and metal mirrors could be made in very large sizes, but were difficult to polish and get perfectly flat; a process that became more difficult with increased size; so they often produced warped or blurred images. Stone mirrors often had poor reflectivity compared to metals, yet metals scratch or tarnish easily, so they frequently needed polishing. Depending upon the color, both often yielded reflections with poor color rendering.^[6] The poor image quality of ancient mirrors explains 1 Corinthians 13‘s reference to seeing “as in a mirror, darkly.”

The art of making glass mirrors was not perfected until the 16^th Century.

If we become capable of polishing the mirror of our hearts, then we can potentially become capable of reflecting the pure undivided light of spiritual reality, thus transcending both our inner conflicts and our conflicts with others.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá describes this possibility in the following words (Selected Writing of ‘Abdul-Baha 1978 – page 76):

For now have the rays of reality from the Sun of the world of existence, united in adoration all the worshippers of this light; and these rays have, through infinite grace, gathered all peoples together within this wide-spreading shelter; therefore must all souls become as one soul, and all hearts as one heart. Let all be set free from the multiple identities that were born of passion and desire, and in the oneness of their love for God find a new way of life.

This then will remedy our current conflicted state, wherein we are at war with ourselves as well as with others. This is Bahá’u’lláh’s description of the challenge we face compared with the reality most of us are blind to (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh = CXII):

No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union. The Great Being saith: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.

He is unequivocal about the role of religion in this healing process (ibid. – CXXVIII):

The religion of God is for love and unity; make it not the cause of enmity and dissension. . . . Conflict and contention are categorically forbidden in His Book. This is a decree of God in this Most Great Revelation.

And now we come to a cusp where we move from looking mainly at the individual to where we look at the community. And here it is that we will see where words can change from misleading labels or names, corrupted by misguided worldviews, to lamps of guidance.

That needs to wait for the next post.

When we got back to Dundee that evening, from the window of the flat where we were staying we could see the lights of a cruiser docked at the harbour side. Though purely material, it had a beauty of its own.

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