(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 186)
To summarize part one: ‘Abdu’l-Baha stated that there are three kinds of education: material education, common to animals and human beings alike; human education, which is cultivation of the rational mind, science, civilization and culture; and spiritual or divine education, which is “true education” where we are seen to be made in the image and after the likeness of God, which is the goal of humanity. I have suggested that these three kinds of education are not only three contexts and components of education today, but also successive stages in a history of education driving the “evolution of spiritual man”, and that now humanity is in transition from a human education, based on human learning, to divine education, based upon the revealed Word. But most people are veiled from this. How?
The chief barrier, the “densest of all veils,” obscuring the need to make a leap of consciousness is that one kind of knowing can block the acquisition of another and higher kind, because the higher reality can not be perceived using modes of knowing that provide proofs of lower order objects of knowledge. That is, what was once an open vista of vision can later turn into an enshrouding veil of knowledge.
Sensory knowledge is/was adequate to the human condition for a time, but keeping within sensory knowledge itself hinders the development of the rational intellect’s knowledge of abstract realities. Likewise, intellectual knowledge and human education have brought marvelous advances in civilization, but science has distained investigating spiritual reality until just recently because it could not be proved “scientifically”. This is a conceit, for a lack of conclusive scientific proof of existence is not necessarily lack of existence. Thus “the veils of human learning and false imaginings have prevented their eyes from beholding the splendour of the light of His countenance.” (The Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh p. 240-241.) Intellectual knowledge is not the greatest knowledge and not the end of knowing, for it does not give the reality of knowledge, only images and semblances of it. What happens?
When human learning obstructs spiritual understanding then science and art, the organized perceptions of the innate powers of discovery and invention, are cut off from their Source of Life, becoming a body without a soul, so to speak. Then the world of knowledge and understanding becomes materialistic, secular and humanistic. In such a case religious conviction and spirituality are replaced by a secular rationalism and its strict devotion to the empirical, with the self as god and science as king.
And if science is king, then art is queen in a secular world. Religion and spirit may find a place in artistic expression, but only within the imaginative parts of culture. There they feed the imagination by providing themes for art, connecting the mind not to faith but to the fabulous, because the connection is not to an objective world of spiritual realities but to the subjective world of dreams, desires and fantasies. These are sometimes taken to be spiritual, but they stem from the wrong kind of understanding of spirituality, one of spectral will-o-the-wisps which stir up a froth of blurred enthusiasms. It is of such notions of spirituality that ‘Abdul’-Baha warns: “Know, O thou possessors of insight, that true spirituality is like unto a lake of clear water which reflects the divine education. Of such was the spirituality of Jesus Christ. There is another kind which is like a mirage, seeming to be spiritual when it is not.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London p.107)
When spirituality is perceived as only part of culture, rather than its source, humans also lose their moral grounding and purpose, because they lose touch with the Sacred. Ethics and morals quickly degenerate either into iron principles of behaviour that an educated class uses to govern the herd, or are relativized into situation ethics or subordinated to the aesthetic sense with its imaginative drive. In the purely imaginative there is a substituting of utopia for religion’s end of days.
But religion is not dogmatic rules, imaginative stories, practical ethics, or even eschatological beliefs. It is neither a conceptual nor an imaginative construction. Rather, it is our mystical connection with the Creator with its own ways of knowing, because human consciousness is rooted in a powerful sense of the Sacred. (I will discuss this dimension in coming posts.)
Recognition of spiritual reality can not be accomplished through any amount of human learning, any more than “seeing” an abstract mathematical truth can be done by the senses. To understand the Divine Word requires conditions of perception other than the senses, and more than logical reasoning or intuitive insight. For divine truths can not be sensed. Neither can they be induced or deduced. They are not invented, but revealed. Revealed truth can only be recognized if certain inner conditions are in place,because true spiritual perception and understanding is not a higher degree of intellectual intelligence, but, rather, a fundamentally different condition of consciousness. What are the conditions of spiritual perception?
Bahá’u’lláh writes that: “The understanding of His words and the comprehension of the utterances of the Birds of Heaven are in no wise dependent upon human learning. They depend solely upon purity of heart, chastity of soul and freedom of spirit.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 211) These qualities of “purity of heart, chastity of soul and freedom of spirit” are the conditions of spiritual knowing. No other conditions are listed. No other preparations are required. Not only does one not need academic, artistic, scientific, philosophic or religious training to comprehend spiritual truth, but such training, valuable as these are in themselves, often prevents it. “Call thou to remembrance Him Who was the Spirit, Who, when He came, the most learned of His age pronounced judgment against Him in His own country, whilst he who was only a fisherman believed in Him. Take heed, then, ye men of understanding.” (Summons of the Lord of Hosts: 56)
But with the added tools of intellectual learning the condition is light upon light. As the Master put it: “If, then, the pursuit of knowledge lead to the beauty of Him Who is the Object of all Knowledge, how excellent that goal; but if not, a mere drop will perhaps shut a man off from flooding grace, for with learning cometh arrogance and pride, and it bringeth on error and indifference to God.
The sciences of today are bridges to reality; if then they lead not to reality, naught remains but fruitless illusion. By the one true God! If learning be not a means of access to Him, the Most Manifest, it is nothing but evident loss.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:110)
Part three of this discussion is my next post.
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