Complete Incompleteness

The materialists hold to the opinion that the world of nature is complete. The divine philosophers declare that the world of nature is incomplete. There is a wide difference between the two. The materialists call attention to the perfection of nature, the sun, moon and stars, the trees in their adornment, the whole earth and the sea—even unimportant phenomena revealing the most perfect symmetry. The divine philosophers deny this seeming perfection and completeness in nature's kingdom, even though admitting the beauty of its scenes and aspects and acknowledging the irresistible cosmic forces which control the colossal suns and planets. They hold that while nature seems perfect, it is, nevertheless, imperfect because it has need of intelligence and education. In proof of this they say that man, though he be a very god in the realm of material creation, is himself in need of an educator. Man undeveloped by education is savage, animalistic, brutal.  Laws and regulations, schools, colleges and universities have for their purpose the training of man and his uplift from the dark borderland of the animal kingdom.

    (Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 329)

The whole or transcendent is immanent in every part.  Thus formal cause, which is environmental cause, when it is glimpsed through the interstices of being and thought, is the appearance of the whole behind the flux of its moving parts, a quick perception of the coordinating principle itself, the one organizing its manifold appearances.  Because the whole is immanent in all the parts, in any closed, formal, finite system, everything is both self-referential and each element refers to all others.  The universe is like a hologram, each part of it, no matter how small, reflects every other part simultaneously. For, the basic substance of the universe is the qualities of God and these are everywhere and in everything, each with its own frequency, each diffused throughout the entire creation.  There are the particle/wave states of the subatomic energy packets, each individualized particle holds all the qualities of the universe but its defining character, what makes each particle itself and not any other, is one of these qualities.  Wave and the particle are complementary states of the photon, both its focal point and the energy pulsing in waves out from it: wave and particle are the same yet different, neither is separate from its medium but, rather, different manifestations of it.  

Said another way, all the qualities of the higher, which is the same as the essential, are diffused throughout the lower, so that the lower is the generalized version of what is altogether in the higher order reality—all the qualities of God are in each of His Manifestations and in all of Them; all the qualities of the Manifestations are in every soul and in humanity; all the qualities of man are in Nature, for each is made in the image and likeness but not the nature of the higher order reality.  But a part of the essence of the higher reality is within the lower order reality.  Baha’u’llah, speaking of the creation of man, writes: “With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light.” (The Arabic Hidden Words #12)

 The higher aspect within a lower system is its essence, center and pivot.  It is what completes the lower order reality as a structure of being, and what drives it toward ever more complex manifestations of its qualities for it brings higher order energy and intelligence into the lower order system.  The Yin/Yang symbol is a useful but not quite accurate picture of what I mean.

The whole of the spiritual world surrounding the creational world manifests in a focal point, a Manifestation, Who appears at its “mid-most heart” and radiates out via His Words the powers of that spiritual world to transform this lower one.  This relationship is a universal law: “When ye consider this matter with care, it will become apparent that this is according to a universal law, which one can find at work in all things: the whole attracteth the part, and in the circle, the centre is the pivot of the compasses.  Ponder thou upon the Spirit: because He was the focal centre of spiritual power, the wellspring of divine bounties…” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha:62)  Thus, the whole manifests in the center; rather, it manifests as the center of a lower order, coordinating its actions, organizing its powers, driving its development.  It completes the lower order by linking it with a higher order, and its influence radiates out over the entire lower order, diffusing simultaneously throughout the entire lower order because the whole is within every part.

How does the lower order develop toward greater complexity?  We can use Godel’s proof to speak on this point.  It rests on the principle of mapping.  That is, Godel proved incompleteness when he gave metaarithmetical statements themselves—i.e. statements about arithmetic—numbers.  By doing this he showed that arithmetic can encode metaarithmetical statements and higher order metaarithmetical statements can be mapped into the language of arithmetic.  But, though encoded and expressed arithmetically, the truth or falsity of these metaarithmetical statements can’t be proved

Now, logically, it is impossible for infinite Mind to communicate its knowledge to finite minds.  Human thought can never capture the truths of Revelation, or prove by our standards of rational thought the truth or falsity of many of them.  Nevertheless, communication does occur.  His Truths are analogies of truths that we can grasp.  Some of the truths of revelation can be “mapped” via figurative language, metaphors, similes, analogies, etc. into human language and thereby expressed to test their truth.  But their truth or falsity often cannot be proved logically.  This requires faith and action and in this way transform human thought into a higher kind of human thought and, then, we may then “see” their truth. 

This communication can occur in some measure because, again, we are made after His image and in His likeness—not His nature--so He may communicate with us and we understand something of what He says—i.e. the image and likeness of His thought and meaning in our own world of understanding.  The Creative Word is just this process of mapping higher, more complex meanings into human thought so that greater complexity of understanding and better coordinated action can be released.  New meanings are encoded into our life, and this leads to breakdown and breakthrough.  Baha’u’llah warned, “the world’s equilibrium hath been upset” and this occurs from trying to assimilate higher truths into our current level of understanding.

From my point of view, every Revelation is a mental field, or expression of the universal Mind.  Each revelation patterns into a unique configuration the essential properties—the qualities of God—inherent in the realities of things.  These configurations are logically-related to each other and over vast cycles of time these grow in complexity because Revelation Itself is progressive.  In other words, no Manifestation reveals the whole of reality, but reality as a whole, each whole more complex than the one before, all approaching but never reaching the complexity of the whole of Reality. 

Within the realm of human knowledge we also strive for consistency, because that is the basis of rational thought.  Every science has its own consistency, i.e. its approved methods of inquiry and verification; its shared assumptions and paradigms.  Each of the sciences is a kind of language that yields particular knowledge of creation.  By putting the yield of these sciences together into a sort of cross-correlation a more comprehensive picture of reality is obtained.  Science is the revelation of nature and of all objective reality.  Human intelligence and knowledge completes nature.

‘Abdu’l-Baha says: “It is evident, therefore, that the world of nature is incomplete, imperfect until awakened and illumined by the light and stimulus of education.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace:309)  It may seem strange that human education is necessary for nature to be complete, but, as the opening quote said, without intelligence nature is incomplete.  “If the world of nature were perfect and complete in itself, there would be no need of such training and cultivation in the human world—no need of teachers, schools and universities, arts and crafts. The revelations of the Prophets of God would not have been necessary, and the heavenly Books would have been superfluous.  If the world of nature were perfect and sufficient for mankind, we would have no need of God and our belief in Him. Therefore, the bestowal of all these great helps and accessories to the attainment of divine life is because the world of nature is incomplete and imperfect.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace:310)