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.