The Eternal Cosmos

Know that it is one of the most abstruse spiritual truths that the world of existence -- that is to say, this endless universe -- has no beginning.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions:179)

‘Abdu’l-Baha goes on from this statement to say that: “…as the Essence of Unity (that is, the existence of God) is everlasting and eternal -- that is to say, it has neither beginning nor end -- it is certain that this world of existence, this endless universe, has neither beginning nor end. Yes, it may be that one of the parts of the universe, one of the globes, for example, may come into existence, or may be disintegrated, but the other endless globes are still existing; the universe would not be disordered nor destroyed.   On the contrary, existence is eternal and perpetual. As each globe has a beginning, necessarily it has an end because every composition, collective or particular, must of necessity be decomposed. The only difference is that some are quickly decomposed, and others more slowly, but it is impossible that a composed thing should not eventually be decomposed.

It is necessary, therefore, that we should know what each of the important existences was in the beginning -- for there is no doubt that in the beginning the origin was one: the origin of all numbers is one and not two. Then it is evident that in the beginning matter was one, and that one matter appeared in different aspects in each element. Thus various forms were produced, and these various aspects as they were produced became permanent, and each element was specialized. But this permanence was not definite, and did not attain realization and perfect existence until after a very long time. Then these elements became composed, and organized and combined in infinite forms; or rather from the composition and combination of these elements innumerable beings appeared.

This composition and arrangement, through the wisdom of God and His preexistent might, were produced from one natural organization, which was composed and combined with the greatest strength, conformable to wisdom, and according to a universal law. From this it is evident that it is the creation of God, and is not a fortuitous composition and arrangement.

Then it is clear that original matter, which is in the embryonic state, and the mingled and composed elements which were its earliest forms, gradually grew and developed during many ages and cycles, passing from one shape and form to another, until they appeared in this perfection, this system, this organization and this establishment, through the supreme wisdom of God.” (Some Answered Questions: 179-183) 

In its essence Nature is also a metasensible creation: “For example, the power of intellect is not sensible; none of the inner qualities of man is a sensible thing; on the contrary, they are intellectual realities. So love is a mental reality and not sensible; for this reality the ear does not hear, the eye does not see, the smell does not perceive, the taste does not discern, the touch does not feel. Even ethereal matter, the forces of which are said in physics to be heat, light, electricity and magnetism, is an intellectual reality, and is not sensible. In the same way, nature, also, in its essence is an intellectual reality and is not sensible; the human spirit is an intellectual, not sensible reality.” (Some Answered Questions:83)

Thus there are actually two essential states without beginning, the Revelation and Creation, spiritual and material, first and final, whose eternal union forms what Baha’u’llah calls “the B and the E” in a formal sense.  That is the One Message and the one Matter in their primal, original states are locked in eternal embrace, BE; the former continually acting upon the latter, the latter continually receiving the former.

I said that Revelation imprints the first or archetypal form, the essential morphogenetic form, upon the cosmos.  This archetypal imprint of Revelation upon creation is what I call “the received Primal Form”.  Out from this imprinted form comes all life.  In the creational world of change and development, when the “B” and the “E” are joined and knit together that is the manifestation of the pre-existent relation and order.  Forms change and evolve so that past forms are related to present forms, but past forms are “not in the form thou seest today.” 

Last post I quoted Baha’u’llah’s statement that the complementary powers creating the world are the active force and that which is its recipient.  Baha’u’llah says of these two powers and conditions: “These two are the same, yet they are different.”  This is the “Glorious Structure”.  In the world of natural creation, the active force and that which is its recipient mirror the higher revelation/creation union, but with this difference: Active force and its recipient link not just into a formal relationship (these two are the same) but also into an efficient B and E cause and effect relationship of developing sequences in matter, (yet they are different) as the seed and the fruit are connected yet separate states of the same thing.  This is because every Revelation recreates the universe: progressive revelation is also the progressive unfolding of Nature.  No doubt the careful reader sees Aristotle’s four causes—the formal, final, efficient and material causes—at work here     

The formal cause is the active force or seed.  The final cause is the recipient, or fruit, the efficient cause is the tree itself and the material cause is the earth.  The formal cause is the first cause and final cause is the last cause.  The formal cause is inseparable from the final cause because, when considered closely, this first organic form of seed is both formal and final cause, for the active force and that which is its recipient are the same yet they are different.  As Eric McLuhan writes: “Nature and the four causes are one…Formal cause is the ground for the material, efficient and final causes; in that sense, it ‘contains’ all the other causes.”  The formal is the push to the final, the final, the telos, is the pull to itself, yet all comes from the formal because the final is contained within it as part of the ground plan of action, of regulation and coordination of efforts and effects.  Thus the formal is the hidden, archetypal laws of the cosmos—the received Primal Form.  But in the universality of life and definition all the causes are indispensable parts of a single Reality.  But the formal is the exemplar.  That is, formal cause “is not infinite but de-finite.” (Media and Formal Cause:128)  This is the natural cosmological structure.

But cosmological for human beings is not Nature but the union of an outer human social order, whose greatest form is civilization, with the universe within of human thought.  Revelation here is not just divine energy pouring into the molds of the natural world and driving them toward fruition, but divine consciousness enlightening human thought and behavior: i.e. not just energy but intellectual and social pattern.  This pattern is called the Kingdom of God on earth of Christianity. The “pattern laid up in heaven” is Plato’s image for the ideal city of his Republic (“In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter; for he will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other.”—Book IX of The Republic).  Augustine had his City of God, Aeneas is said to have founded Rome, “the eternal city”, upon a divine pattern after fleeing Troy, and the construction of the human city upon some sacred pattern was behind the founding of civilization myths of the ancient world.

How Revelation interacts in the human world to build the divine civilization also revolves around Aristotle’s four causes as effects and instruments of spiritual causality, but with the addition of human creativity.

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle