It is He Who hath called into being the whole of
creation, Who hath caused every created thing to spring forth at His behest.
(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah,
p. 193)
Last post ended with a brief look at the
concept of emergence, stating that emergence is actually two movements; an
emerging into the world of time and organic process of a spiritual power, so that an emerging of qualities that were latent and
inactive can occur within the organic material world. What is the spiritual cause of
this? Of course we cannot really know,
as it is beyond our ability to grasp.
But we can, by analogy and metaphor, obtain some inkling of it. “Oh that a man’s reach should exceed his
grasp, else what’s a metaphor.”
One way to get a handle on the notion of spiritual
causality is to look at what traditional theology calls Logos, the Word or Revelation
of God, and its relation to the cosmos. Theologically,
Logos is the cause of the cosmos. It is
what changes the “without form and void” of pure primal matter, which is the
One Matter of the alchemists, into forms and life. But Logos is not something originating from or
existing within time or temporal sequence.
It is not part of the cosmos that it forms. “Know
thou, moreover, that the Word of God--exalted be His glory--is higher and
far superior to that which the senses can perceive, for it is sanctified from
any property or substance. It transcendeth the limitations of known elements
and is exalted above all the essential and recognized substances. It became
manifest without any syllable or sound and is none but the Command of God which
pervadeth all created things. It hath never been withheld from the world of
being. It is God's all-pervasive grace, from which all grace doth emanate. It
is an entity far removed above all that hath been and shall be.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)
Logos
as the manifest divine Utterance is the power to call things into being. As power to create and then transform
creation, Logos makes the thing into what it is essentially, and perpetually
builds upon that metaphysical origin and pattern of information in a process of
unfolding potentials and capacities.
Naming a thing is the act of spiritually defining it, meaning giving it essential
spiritual structure and manifest material existence. When uttered by the Manifestation, the name
is the thing’s individual logos or reality.
Logos is the constitutive utterance.
It gives definition. This
definition is the potential for the thing to evolve as an integrated and
progressively unfolding whole.
The
Reality of Logos is outside creation, likewise the “action” of Logos as spiritual
cause is also not part of the order of development. That is, it is not the first step in a linked
series of actions or causes that bring things into being. Baha’u’llah states: “His creation had ever
existed beneath His shelter from the beginning that hath no beginning, apart
from its being preceded by a Firstness which cannot be regarded as firstness
and originated by a Cause inscrutable even unto all men of learning.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)
It
is a metaphysical power and
action that has physical manifestations.
Spiritual causality is the appearance of eternal forms in temporal forms
which unfold and manifest by degrees the potentials of the natural and human
worlds. Its action is associated more
with ideas and images like the imprint of light, the reflection in a mirror. (See the previous post titled The Divine
Imprint, January 13, 2013) With the reconfiguration of eternal forms by the
utterance of the Word the archetypal temporal forms of creation also
reconfigure.
As I said, the Word is the reality and it is
first in importance, but it is not first in a sequence of actions connected on the same plane. Rather the Word and what it creates are eternally co-existent and connected, but infinitely different. “Verily,
the Word of God is the Cause which hath preceded the contingent world—a world
which is adorned with the splendours of the Ancient of Days, yet is being
renewed and regenerated at all times.” (Tablets
of Baha'u'llah:140-141) This
precession is not in time but in importance. The Word does not just precede any particular thing, but the whole contingent world.
The Manifestation knows essential forms, but
He speaks existent forms. Human intelligence
has no access to the divine realm of essences, and we think and speak and
create forms of existence after the image and likeness of His existent ones. What are reflected in the mirror of creation
are the forms of the Word as divine thought connected with the forms imagined
and created by human beings. “Praise and
thanksgiving be unto Providence that out of all the realities in existence He
has chosen the reality of man and has honored it with intellect and wisdom, the
two most luminous lights in either world. Through the agency of this great
endowment, He has in every epoch cast on the mirror of creation new and
wonderful configurations. If we look objectively upon the world of being, it
will become apparent that from age to age, the temple of existence has
continually been embellished with a fresh grace, and distinguished with an
ever-varying splendor, deriving from wisdom and the power of thought.” (The
Secret of Divine Civilization:1)
The forms of natural beings that every
Manifestation speaks are the Will of God.
“Say: Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the
Creator. Its manifestations are diversified by varying causes, and in this
diversity there are signs for men of discernment. Nature is God's Will and is
its expression in and through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of
Providence ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise. Were anyone to affirm that
it is the Will of God as manifested in the world of being, no one should
question this assertion.” (Tablets of
Baha'u'llah:142)
The essential relationships composing Nature
are fixed and enduring, because they are an expression of the Will of God. “God hath created a relation between the sun
and the terrestrial globe that the rays of the sun should shine and the soil
should yield. These relationships constitute predestination, and the
manifestation thereof in the plane of existence is fate. Will is that active
force which controlleth these relationships and these incidents.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha,
198)
Nonetheless, though the essential relations are
fixed, the forms they create through their interactions change with every divine utterance as these
relations, which are the laws of Nature, themselves evolve and develop. “In every age and cycle He hath, through the
splendorous light shed by the Manifestations of His wondrous Essence, recreated
all things, so that whatsoever reflecteth in the heavens and on the earth the
signs of His glory may not be deprived of the outpourings of His mercy, nor
despair of the showers of His favors.” (Gleanings
from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 61)
These forms developmentally link through time
and history as the varied results of the reciprocal action of two complementary
powers. “That which hath been in
existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today. The world
of existence came into being through the heat generated from the interaction
between the active force and that which is its recipient. These two are the
same, yet they are different. Thus doth the Great Announcement inform thee
about this glorious structure. Such as
communicate the generating influence and such as receive its impact are indeed
created through the irresistible Word of God which is the Cause of the entire
creation, while all else besides His Word are but the creatures and the effects
thereof.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)
This
discussion, abstract as it is, provides context for an examination of the
varied interactions—“Such as communicate the generating influence and such as
receive its impact”—between the two great creative powers in the world, the active
force and that which is its recipient.
That examination can be carried on within Aristotle’s discussion of the
four causes for any created thing: the formal cause, the final cause, the
efficient cause and the material cause.
I am going to concentrate on the least understood of these causes,
formal cause.
A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle
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