The Spiritual Foundations of the Self: The Search for God

Likewise, reflect upon the perfection of man's creation, and that all these planes and states are folded up and hidden away within him.  Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form, when within thee the universe is folded?

(Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys: 33)

I want to employ the structuring metaphors of interiority/exteriority and higher/lower, to describe the changing but unchanging relation between the human soul and its search for God, which is the eternal Self.  Progression through levels of interiority is the process of self-discovery—i.e. discovering those “planes and states folded up within.”  This means that every stage of interiority that is passed becomes an exterior, i.e. an object of consciousness becomes a plane or state of self-consciousness. That which is interior in one relation is exterior in another.  Thus it is not a simple two-term polarity, but a shifting relation or process, a dynamic structure unfolding from an enfolding. 

To obtain a more complete grasp of the “dimension” of spiritual experience, however, the interiority/exteriority metaphor must be combined with the metaphor of higher/lower, so that, spiritually, the more interior one “descends” the “higher” one ascends, until the deepest interior finally opens out to the eternal “above” and beyond.  When we fuse interiority and exteriority with ascent and descent we begin to get a better handle on the language used to describe the terrain of spirit, where to go down into true self is to go up to God, and to search the outer world for God is to go down and away from the true object of search.  Thus the deepest within opens to the highest above, and the highest above is found at “the mid-most heart”.

English poet, William Blake, understood that if God is eternally within the self, God cannot be found outside the self.  As Augustine says in Book III of The Confessions: “But you were more inward than my own inwardness.”  If He is in the most inward place, in that deepest interiority which we, as Augustine says, can never reach, then we are always outside Him.  It is from God’s desire to be known that we search for Him.  It is God who initiates, motivates and guides the seeking soul to Him to be found, which is, again, finding oneself.  Not only is God within my interiority; it is from the God within that the power comes which draws me back inwardly to myself, and so to God.  God is, then, also within the searching and not just the object of it.
        What I am saying is that, in a profound sense, if to find God is to find one's true self, then to forget God is to forget one’s true self.  To forget oneself is to be lost because one is no longer centered, as if the earth thought it was the center of the solar system, as the ego thinks it is the center of the self.  I am “outside” or “beside myself”, i.e. alienated from myself, when in a state of spiritual self-ignorance and unrecognition. Baha’u’llah asks us to: “Consider, moreover, how frequently doth man become forgetful of his own self, whilst God remaineth, through His all-encompassing knowledge, aware of His creature, and continueth to shed upon him the manifest radiance of His glory.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 185)  God, being with us even when we are not with Him, is eternally “more friend to me than I am to myself.” (Compilations, Baha'i Prayers: 151)

The knowledge which God has of Himself is not the unknown essence of the human reality, but the unknowable essence of this self, and when we forget or are ignorant of this we forget where we are in relation to Him. Rather, we are in a wilderness of ignorance, thinking it knowledge.   His call to the deepest interiority of the human self is His call to that similitude of Himself existing there.  Baha’u’llah declares: “Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.” (The Arabic Hidden Words #13)

From the other side, His call to us recalls His relation to us in the form of a warning.  Baha’u’llah admonishes: “And yet again He revealeth: "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—may the souls of all that dwell within the mystic Tabernacle be a sacrifice unto Him—hath spoken: "He hath known God who hath known himself." (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 178)

All desires are desires, however faint the echo, of our desire to recognize God, which is the basis of our reunion with God.  Reunion with God is the deepest longing of the human heart, and reunion is achieved when recognition occurs.  Bahá’u’lláh wrote to an inquirer: “The root of all principles and the cornerstone of all foundations hath ever been, and shall remain, the recognition of God.” (Tabernacle of Unity: 24-25)  To be unaware of that Interior Reality is to be unaware of the greatest part of oneself. 

The lack of real and lasting satisfaction with any answer but God to our quest for God-likeness drives spiritual growth to ever deeper levels of interiority.   Recognition often happens through what traditional theology called the via negativa, the way of negation.  That means that the frustration and dissatisfaction with any answer but God gradually sharpens the outline of the object of true desire.  Every failure to find God more clearly defines that desire and increases the desire for Him.  This negative knowledge is, of course, all we can have directly of God.  We cannot know God in His essence, and we know His attributes as positive knowledge through the Revelators. The negative knowledge is a counterpart to the positive and together they form a manifest union that reflects the primal unity of essence/attributes.

The recognition of God is of a knowledge that is already present within us.  In one of His prayers Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “I give Thee thanks inasmuch as Thou hast called me into being in Thy days, and infused into me Thy love and Thy knowledge.” (Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah: 177) 

Here, at this recognition scene, which is the opening to eternity, we again come to what seems to be a paradox.  Namely, though knowledge of God is already present, when recognized it is not a memory, but the first and fundamental experience.  This is the “point” of juncture at which the deepest interiority intersects, as it were, the eternally objective.  The highest point spiritually is actually the center of radiant spirit.  Carmel, the mountain of God, was traditionally said to be the point on earth where the human and divine worlds intersect.  According to Bahá’i teachings, Carmel is, geographically, the center of the world, and, spiritually, the pivot of nine concentric circles encompassing the globe. (See Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith: 95)

The cause of recognition of God is the Revelation of God.  Recognition takes place in two separate but inseparable aspects.  One could say, then, that there are two kinds or even stages of spirituality—soul-searching and soul-making.  Bahá’u’lláh explains in The Kitab-i-Aqdas: “The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.” (The Kitab-i-Aqdas: 19)

When the soul has recognized God it has recognized its own God-likeness and it will show forth God-like attributes.  It has found itself, because it is re-centered on God.  There is no higher/deeper stage.