He hath known God who hath known himself.
(Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitab-i-Iqan: 101)
Without proper knowledge of
ourselves we lack any clear understanding of the Divine or even our own
divinity, believing God to be, at worst, non-existent, and, at best, but
humanity’s best image of itself. Knowledge of the human reality and
knowledge of God is the same thing, and forgetfulness of God is the same as
forgetting our true self. Baha’u’llah writes: “And be ye not like those
who forget God, and whom He hath therefore caused to forget their own selves.
In this connection, He Who is the eternal King…hath spoken: "He hath known
God who hath known himself.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh:178)
We can know God and ourselves because, God
has “infused into me Thy love and Thy knowledge.” (Prayers and Meditations by Bahá’u’lláh: 177) The discovery of God and Self, which is not
the same thing as God as Self, is not an one time happening, but, rather, is
simultaneously the psychological rediscovery and re-recognition of both at
every stage of spiritual development. It
acknowledges both a fundamental truth and a state of being already present but
unknown and unknowable until one arrives there, like birth into a world
awaiting the baby’s arrival. The
knowledge is somehow present, latent, in the searching itself. This seeming circularity has a way out, which
we will get to.
Now, of course, this is not to say that the
whole of God is within the soul, so that to know the soul fully is to know all
there is to know about God. But it is to
assert that if we are to know the spiritual aspect of ourselves directly, we
must achieve some conscious use of more God-like spiritual faculties. Otherwise, the best that can be done is to
infer something about them through the use of the senses or human reason.
Further, if the spiritual faculties are a
higher means of knowing than intellect, another rung up the ladder of
self-knowledge, then they become, when manifest, the criteria of true
consciousness, not the mind and its intellectual self-consciousness. Spiritual self-consciousness becomes
something other than what we ordinarily mean by that phrase.
I mean that, intellectually,
self-consciousness is to see oneself as an independent psychological entity
separated from everything else, yet attempting to be related to them by knowing
them objectively. This psychological
distance results, in large part, from being shut up in our own subjectivity and
peering out at the world through whatever chinks one finds in the wall. But it seems to me that a spiritual
self-consciousness is what mystics and idealistic philosophers have said it is,
a great union—which does not mean a complete identification—of this distinct personal
essence with all things. Many in the
sciences don’t believe this is really possible, except in some diseased states;
neither is it for them a good thing.
In some anthropological and psychological
quarters, mostly in the last century, such a union was pejoratively called a participation mystique; a term denoting
a “mystical” connection between subject and object. It consists in the fact that “rational”
observers—like anthropologists and psychologists—believe that a subject in such
an experience cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object, but is bound
to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity. He “loses himself” or is in some manner
wholly absorbed by what should remain distinct and separate and “out
there”. This supposed loss of identity is
explained as either a regression to infantile perception or a flight of wild
fancy that is the result of temporarily losing one’s mind. But this kind of definition says more about
the limits of the field of understanding of the observer than it does about the
truth of the state of mind being observed.
Such intellectualistic thought is locked into a dualistic world and
cannot differentiate higher and lower states of mind from that. Rather it lumps
them all into one heap labelled something like unconscious, preconscious, or
madness, because it thinks that only the subject/object duality is actual
consciousness or reason. It cannot
discern the difference between the reason of the mind and the unitary vision of
the heart.
Now it is always true that consciousness is consciousness
of difference. It requires two “things”,
either subject and object or subject and subject, a perceiver and a perceived.
Consciousness presupposes a resonant connection between these, meaning there is
a gap, a “space”, between them like that between the reality and its reflection
reflected in a mirror. But,
psychologically, the gap is, of course, not spacial, but metaphorical—a word
which means “to carry over”. That is,
there is a sameness of form and image between the reality and its reflection, whether
the actual object and its mirror reflection, or between the object being
perceived and its image in the mind of the perceiver, but always with a reverse
polarity. What is of the left in the
object, is on the right in its mirror-image.
Even self-consciousness is an objectifying by reversing of some part of
oneself to “see” it and interact with it.
In a sense, self-consciousness is always a result of seeing oneself as
other than oneself. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said: “Things are known by their
opposites.” (Promulgation of Universal
Peace: 83) But there are different
relations of conscious interaction. The
highest that we know of so far takes place in the heart.
Bahá’u’lláh wrote of
Revelation:” It is clear and evident, therefore, that the
first bestowal of God is the Word, and its discoverer and recipient is the
power of understanding. This Word is the foremost instructor in the school of
existence and the revealer of Him Who is the Almighty.” (The Tabernacle of Unity:3)
The relationship presented here between the Word and the power of
understanding is the same relationship as that between the cosmological active
force and that which is its recipient, namely, these two are the same yet they
are different.
If we ask, “How does the power of
understanding discover “the Word”? the
answer seems to be connected with the heart, since Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “That the heart is the throne, in which the Revelation
of God the All-Merciful is centered, is attested by the holy utterances which
We have formerly revealed. Among them is
this saying: "Earth and heaven cannot contain Me; what can alone contain
Me is the heart of him that believeth in Me, and is faithful to My Cause."
How often hath the human heart, which is the recipient of the light of God and the seat of the revelation of the
All-Merciful, erred from Him Who is the Source of that light and the Well
Spring of that revelation.” (Gleanings
from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 186)
The heart discovers the Word within itself,
because it is the “recipient of the light of God”. That is, the heart perceives the light of God
as Revelation, and this perceived light of God enables the self-discovery of
the light already within the heart. For, as Bahá’u’lláh, speaking as the Voice
of God, wrote of human creation: “within thee have I placed the essence of My
light.” (Arabic Hidden Words #12)
From a developmental view, the power of
understanding, i.e. “the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the
essence of man”…and which…”should be regarded as a sign of the revelation of
Him Who is the sovereign Lord of all.” (Gleanings
from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 163) has many grades and stations. While intellect and thought is the essence of
the human reality, the heart’s receptive capabilities to Spirit and Revelation
make us divine in a special sense. 'Abdu'l-Bahá said: “The power of the intellect is one of God's greatest gifts to men, it is
the power that makes him a higher creature than the animal….As for the
spiritual perfections they are man's birthright and belong to him alone of all
creation. Man is, in reality, a spiritual being, and only when he lives in the
spirit is he truly happy.” (Paris Talks:
68)
The heart and mind, both powers of the
rational faculty, form a matrix of intelligence. The union with God and the supposed
obliteration of identity feared by the intellect in this connection does not annihilate
consciousness, but elevates it. It is
not a union with God, but a reunion with God that preserves personal identity. Once the intellect awakens spiritually it is
never lost. But it makes the identity
gained by intellect subordinate to the greater connection achieved by the heart—i.e.
the identity is redefined in relation with God rather than defining that
relation. The heart has a higher
relation: that of love and connection with its Creator and the discovery of the
divine self within. For being the
“recipient of the light of God” and “the seat of His revelation” the heart’s
knowledge of the self and God is of a different nature than that apprehended by
the intellect
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