A DIRECT PERCEPTION OF REALITY

Praise be to God! the least change produced in the form of the smallest thing proves the existence of a creator: then can this great universe, which is endless, be self-created and come into existence from the action of matter and the elements? How self-evidently wrong is such a supposition!

These obvious arguments are adduced for weak souls; but if the inner perception be open, a hundred thousand clear proofs become visible. Thus, when man feels the indwelling spirit, he is in no need of arguments for its existence; but for those who are deprived of the bounty of the spirit, it is necessary to establish external arguments.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 6)

I said that one cannot reason one’s way to direct perception.  This takes one farther away, because, after the eclipse of intellectual distance, reason can only go on within a fading mental space.  That is, one does not reason to direct perception, rather, one reasons from it.  To rely solely upon reason reenacts the story of the Tower of Babel, when humans attempted to build a tower that would “reach unto heaven”. Instead, because they built outward instead of inward, they splintered and the one language of spirit fractured into a cacophony of voices talking past each other.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha reminds us that: “any movement animated by love moveth from the periphery to the centre, from space to the Day-Star of the universe.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 197)

Direct perception, i.e. the state of knowing by recognition, not cognition, through the spiritual faculties of faith and vision, i.e. to perceive with our God-like faculties, is a gift of the heart.  This gift, like reason, is not bestowed upon a soul as an addition to other natural and spiritual endowments.  The ability to perceive directly, like verbal or mathematical ability, is innate, an essential aspect and characteristic of the human reality.  The gift, as a potential, is bestowed at conception.  The archetypal direct perception of recognition is: “If it be your wish, O people, to know God and to discover the greatness of His might, look, then, upon Me with Mine own eyes, and not with the eyes of any one besides Me. Ye will, otherwise, be never capable of recognizing Me, though ye ponder My Cause as long as My Kingdom endureth, and meditate upon all created things throughout the eternity of God, the Sovereign Lord of all, the Omnipotent, the Ever-Abiding, the All-Wise.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 272)

We can ask: What inhibits this state of direct perception from coming forth?  In one passage, Baha’u’llah points indirectly to the reason: “We cherish the hope that through the loving-kindness of the All-Wise, the All-Knowing, obscuring dust may be dispelled and the power of perception enhanced, that the people may discover the purpose for which they have been called into being. In this Day whatsoever serveth to reduce blindness and to increase vision is worthy of consideration. This vision acteth as the agent and guide for true knowledge. Indeed in the estimation of men of wisdom keenness of understanding is due to keenness of vision.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 34)

The phrase “obscuring dust” does not refer, it seems to me, to accurate sensory apprehensions, or to true logical and scientific conclusions and established facts, but rather to false theories, prejudicial beliefs, emotional attachments to unchallenged dogmas and rigid ideologies, whether religious or scientific, that are taken to be true and final. A belief in the finality of some notion or fact inhibits or interdicts actual or further investigations.  For example, dogmatic materialism circumscribes knowledge by limiting itself to a purely material causality.  On the other side, pure imaginations that pass as spiritual understanding, such as misguided religious beliefs, or what seems to be the sole content of some ‘new age’ writing, do the same thing. 

Baha’u’llah says of those who uphold standards of impartial investigation: “These souls are the protectors of the Cause of God on earth, who shall preserve its beauty from the obscuring dust of idle fancies and vain imaginings.” (The Summons of the Lord of Hosts: 10)

But, as with all gifts, to activate, bring forth, and train direct perception—to see Him with His own eyes—requires that certain internal conditions be in place.  The divine knowledge that one may obtain by direct perception is only reached by the heart’s attraction for the Holy Reality.  The attitude that indicates attraction for the Divine is humility. The House of Justice says Baha’is must adopt “a humble posture of learning.”  Baha’u’llah’s counsel is: “O my brother, when a true seeker determineth to take the step of search in the path leading to the knowledge of the Ancient of Days, he must, before all else, cleanse and purify his heart, which is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge, and the allusions of the embodiments of satanic fancy….He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth. Even as thou dost witness in this Day how most of the people, because of such love and hate, are bereft of the immortal Face, have strayed far from the Embodiments of the Divine mysteries, and, shepherdless, are roaming through the wilderness of oblivion and error.” (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan: 192)

What can direct perception accomplish?  'Abdu'l-Bahá said: "There is but one power which heals—that is God. The state or condition through which the healing takes place is the confidence of the heart. By some this state is reached through pills, powders, and physicians. By others through hygiene, fasting, and prayer. By others through direct perception." (Abdu'l-Baha in London: 95)  Again, if healing comes about through “confidence of the heart” and direct perception is one avenue to reach that confidence, which may be more like certainty, then it is the heart that sees.   

Direct perception of higher states occurs in the heart, where lies the celestial faculty “that is infinite both in regards man’s physical and intellectual faculties”. This celestial faculty, the Master explains: “...discovers past events and looks along the vistas of the future. It is the ray of the Sun of Reality. The spiritual world is enlightened through it, the whole of the Kingdom is being illumined by it. It enjoys the world of beatitude, a world which had not beginning and which shall have no end.” (Foundations of World Unity: 51) 

But there are broader implications and greater results than personal healing.  I have often referred to Baha’u’llah’s restatement of the ancient Hermetic truth of the conjunction of the two states of the B and E, Spirit and Matter.  As He says: “these two are the same, yet they are different.”  Each state (i.e. the state of difference and the state of sameness) is perceived by a type of perception, but sameness is inclusive of the state of difference; difference having come from sameness. 

Perceptually, when the two become one to the mind and heart it marks the change in understanding from “yet they are different” to “these two are the same”.  It is then that the opposites seen in polar contradiction in difference are reframed as complements of a union, like the writer and his pen, creator and instrument.  They are separate and different until writing begins, but when working together, they become one yet different. 

The archetype of the condition of “these two are the same, yet they are different” is the relation between God and His Manifestations.  Baha’u’llah writes, for example: “Men have failed to perceive Our purpose in the references We have made to Divinity and Godhood. Were they to apprehend it, they would arise from their places, and cry out: ‘We, verily, ask pardon of God!’ The Seal of the Prophets—may the souls of all else but Him be offered up for His sake—saith: "Manifold are Our relationships with God. At one time, We are He Himself, and He is We Ourself. At another He is that He is, and We are that We are." (Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf: 41)

It is the purpose of the Manifestations to awaken the faculty of “inner perception”, to train the divine endowment of the celestial faculty, so we may have a direct perception of the creation as a divine construct, one infinitely greater than the infinite physical universe.  Difficult to see and believe?  The Master said above: if the inner perception be open, a hundred thousand clear proofs become visible.  Otherwise, we are left with only the weakness of human reason.

The Spiritual Creation and the Universe

Thou didst wish to make Thyself known unto men; therefore, Thou didst, through a word of Thy mouth, bring creation into being and fashion the universe.

(Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah: 6)

The fundamental purpose of the entire universe is, according to the above statement, for human beings to know God.  The universe is the physical part of creation, fashioned to be a kind of laboratory of spiritual discovery.  To know God requires a special power of knowing, since it is clear that the animals, plants and minerals know nothing of God, and, if we could ask them, would likely say they don’t care about knowing.

So who are these creatures that God wants to reveal Himself to so they will know Him and how did God fashion them to know Him?  Let’s take the second question first.

In one of His Hidden Words Baha’u’llah reveals the inner thoughts of the Mind of God: “Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.” (Arabic Hidden Words #3)

Intellect, or Mind, is the way that God creates the universe out of His love for Man.  Of Mind ‘Abdu’l-Baha says: “This supreme emblem of God stands first in the order of creation and first in rank, taking precedence over all created things. Witness to it is the Holy Tradition, "Before all else, God created the mind." From the dawn of creation, it was made to be revealed in the temple of man.” (The Secret of Divine Civilization: 1) 

  Now this Mind which is first created is not your mind or my mind, but the universal Mind of the Manifestations. ‘Abdu’l-Baha explains:  “The first thing which emanated from God is that universal reality, which the ancient philosophers termed the "First Mind," and which the people of Baha call the "First Will." This emanation, in that which concerns its action in the world of God, is not limited by time or place; it is without beginning or end—beginning and end in relation to God are one. The preexistence of God is the preexistence of essence, and also preexistence of time, and the phenomenality of contingency is essential and not temporal, as we have already explained one day at table.”

As great as this First Mind is, the Master goes on: “Though the ‘First Mind’ is without beginning, it does not become a sharer in the preexistence of God, for the existence of the universal reality in relation to the existence of God is nothingness, and it has not the power to become an associate of God and like unto Him in preexistence.” (Some Answered Questions: 203)

About the human creation the Master states: “He has chosen the reality of man and has honored it with intellect and wisdom.” (The Secret of Divine Civilization: 1)  Our intellectual endowment is part of what is meant by the human reality being made in the image and after the likeness of God and His Manifestations.  But the human intellect, however powerful, is a pale reflection of the infinite divine Mind or Will, which is first created.

Yet, we must always recognize that, as the lead quote says, Love is prior, even before Mind.  Love was already there for Mind to know.  Love is the uncreated substance from which Mind creates all aspects of the universe, because Mind or Intellect knows God’s Love for His creation within His own essence.  Thus, for me, when ‘Abdu’l-Baha says “The reality of man is his thought” (Paris Talks: 17) it implies both that we think best about what we truly love most and we love best what we think about most.   We may be thinking beings, but first we are loving beings.  Our best thinking grows out of love, in imitation of our Creator.  Too, when He states: “Knowledge is love” ("Star of the West" Vol. 20, No. 10, p. 314) it is because Mind comes forth from love.

‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote this powerful paean to the power of Love in its many contexts (I have bold-faced those statements that bear directly on my theme): “Know thou of a certainty that Love is the secret of God's holy Dispensation, the manifestation of the All-Merciful, the fountain of spiritual outpourings. Love is heaven's kindly light, the Holy Spirit's eternal breath that vivifieth the human soul. Love is the cause of God's revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things.  Love is the one means that ensureth true felicity both in this world and the next. Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul. Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms.  Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe.  Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 27)

Creation is the bringing forth by Mind of all the qualities latent in God’s Love.  Said another way, while the substance of all things is the same in essence, (i.e. all physical things come forth from the primal matter which is the physical and mental counterpart to divine Love) creation is the imprint of formal cause upon material cause, knowledge upon love.  Love and intellect form a pair of opposites on every level, and the union of these opposites is so that their underlying oneness may become manifest. 

The fundamental qualities and essential connections of the universe, (i.e. the spiritual foundation of the creation) are, in their full primal unity, the names and attributes of God and the inherent relations existing between them.  Every Revelation reconfigures these on the plane of manifestation, creating the knowledge of God, which is the essence of all knowledge.  Baha’u’llah wrote: “Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is a direct evidence of the revelation within it of the attributes and names of God, inasmuch as within every atom are enshrined the signs that bear eloquent testimony to the revelation of that Most Great Light. Methinks, but for the potency of that revelation, no being could ever exist. How resplendent the luminaries of knowledge that shine in an atom, and how vast the oceans of wisdom that surge within a drop!....From that which hath been said it becometh evident that all things, in their inmost reality, testify to the revelation of the names and attributes of God within them. Each according to its capacity, indicateth, and is expressive of, the knowledge of God. So potent and universal is this revelation, that it hath encompassed all things visible and invisible. (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 177-178) 

Every name and attribute of God is within all created things, because each and every one of His qualities is universal and permeates the entire creation; each created thing bearing and expressive of both a single Name of God in its essence and, in its relations, a unique configuration of all God’s Names and attributes.  Baha’u’llah says, for example: “Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is endowed with such potency as can instill new life into every human frame, if ye be of them that comprehend this truth. All the wondrous works ye behold in this world have been manifested through the operation of His supreme and most exalted Will, His wondrous and inflexible Purpose. Through the mere revelation of the word “Fashioner,” issuing forth from His lips and proclaiming His attribute to mankind, such power is released as can generate, through successive ages, all the manifold arts which the hands of man can produce. This, verily, is a certain truth. No sooner is this resplendent word uttered, than its animating energies, stirring within all created things, give birth to the means and instruments whereby such arts can be produced and perfected. All the wondrous achievements ye now witness are the direct consequences of the Revelation of this Name. In the days to come, ye will, verily, behold things of which ye have never heard before. Thus hath it been decreed in the Tablets of God, and none can comprehend it except them whose sight is sharp.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 141 – 142)