Divine Sciences

The resuscitation or rebirth of the spirit of man is through the science of the love of God. It is through the efficacy of the water of life. This life and quickening is the regeneration of the phenomenal world.

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 277)

I have not been concerned in these posts with laying out in any detail the science of the love of God, which Abdu’l-Baha is reported to have said will “renovate the conditions of existence.“ I am concerned only with determining in broad outline what might be the conditions of its appearance.

One of the innate endowments of the human reality is, according to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, a love of Reality.  It's what drives the scientific enterprise.  He wrote: “Science is the first emanation from God toward man. All created beings embody the potentiality of material perfection, but the power of intellectual investigation and scientific acquisition is a higher virtue specialized to man alone. Other beings and organisms are deprived of this potentiality and attainment. God has created or deposited this love of reality in man.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace:  49)  Perhaps another name for the science of the love of God is love of reality.

Names aside, the key word in both phrases is love.  And this means the heart moves into prominence as an organ of intelligence.  So, the fundamental question becomes: Which “Reality” does one love?  I have argued that the heart is specially created for obtaining divine knowledge. But the heart must be cleansed, purified and detached from all attachments to the things of this world and attachments to the Spirit made before its reflective capacities of the Divine can be really shown, and its innate intelligence for spiritual perception operate fully.

In one reported conversation of ‘Abdu’l-Baha's while He was in London, we read: “When asked how this attachment is to be made, how the love of God is to be obtained, since there are many people in the world who admit the existence of a Deity but without any emotion, 'Abdu'l-Bahá said: 'Knowledge is love. Study, listen to exhortations, think, try to understand the wisdom and greatness of God. ... The soil must be fertilized before the seed be sown.'" ('Abdu'l-Bahá from an article in The Fortnightly Review, June 1911, by Miss E. S. Stevens. Star of the West# 5)  In one of His prayers He implores the Almighty: “O my forgiving Lord! Light up the hearts with the rays of a lamp that sheddeth abroad its beams, disclosing to those among Thy people whom Thou hast bounteously favoured, the realities of all things.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 44)

Educator, Stanwood Cobb, founder of the Chevy Chase Country Day School and president of The Association for the Advancement of Progressive Education from 1927–1930, predicts that: “A wholly new science will evolve under the Bahá'í aegis—a new type of psychology. The present materialistic psychology, which either denies or ignores the existence of a soul, will yield ground to a more spiritual science which will unfold to youth the essential nature of his being and his consequent spiritual potentialities.

“In fact, the whole process of education, including the acquisition of knowledge and the acquirement of skills, will be reoriented around those spiritual potentialities which are basic not only to the development of moral character but also to the wholesome development of man's emotional nature. Such a spiritual psychology will lift the human mind, expand its horizons, and develop powers higher than the materialistic scientist has been able to conceive.”(Bahá’i World Vol. 12: 877)

Baha’u’llah advises every individual to: “Free thyself from the fetters of this world, and loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more.” (The Persian Hidden Words #40)

Some of these fetters must surely be the limitations we impose upon our understanding by material sciences and philosophies.  Hence getting to the heart’s level of intelligence can never be accomplished by wandering through the labyrinth of current intellectually-based, materially-oriented, sciences, arts, and philosophies, or to chart unnumbered concepts, facts and their verifications, synthesizing as we go.  Neither can it be reached by reasoning arguments to a conclusion, which another reason may overthrow.  Spiritual knowing is another order of knowledge requiring another faculty to perceive, know and understand; one that brings not just knowledge but also certitude.   That is, spiritual understanding is another order of knowing—as the intellectual is compared to the sensory—because it flows from another order of our being. To open this new faculty, to attain to spiritual knowledge, the soul must extricate itself from the drowsy dream of space/time reason, and ephemeral, phenomenal things.  “For verily the soul, while bound by the ephemeral and transitory things of this world, is confined, in its understanding, to limited phenomena only.  However, once the soul hath soared beyond the realm of nature and becometh submerged in the   ocean of absolute unity, then can it acquire the capacity to discern the reality of all sciences and knowledge in their full plentitude.” (The Bab quoted in Gate of the Heart: 44)

In another place Baha’u’llah calls the individual “O Man of Two Visions!”  He means a material and a spiritual vision of things are both available to the intelligence.  But He is clear that if one wishes to know the divine, spiritual realm, one must: “Close one eye and open the other. Close one to the world and all that is therein, and open the other to the hallowed beauty of the Beloved.”  (The Persian Hidden Words #12)  This Hidden Word is closely linked with the one preceeding it, which reads: “Blind thine eyes, that thou mayest behold My beauty; stop thine ears, that thou mayest hearken unto the sweet melody of My voice; empty thyself of all learning, that thou mayest partake of My knowledge; and sanctify thyself from riches, that thou mayest obtain a lasting share from the ocean of My eternal wealth. Blind thine eyes, that is, to all save My beauty; stop thine ears to all save My word; empty thyself of all learning save the knowledge of Me; that with a clear vision, a pure heart and an attentive ear thou mayest enter the court of My holiness.” (The Persian Hidden Words #11)

Now, of course, He is not advocating any sort of physical mutilation, such as actually putting out one’s eye, but rather figuratively explaining what needs to be done to acquire a proper view of spiritual things.  One must turn one’s whole being to the spiritual realm to gain admittance.  It is this view that opens the floodgates of divine knowledge to pour from the heart.

Yet, sciences of the spirit are not limited to a new psychology of love, or imaginatively exploring the airy mysteries of something called spiritual reality and the like .  Indeed, one of the aspects of spiritual science is that it have real meaning and some practical end in view.  Sciences of the spirit embrace the entire range of human activity, but from a perspective that starts from the spiritual as the most significant aspect to consider.

Baha’u’llah says, for example: “One of the names of God is the Fashioner. He loveth craftsmanship. Therefore any of His servants who manifesteth this attribute is acceptable in the sight of this Wronged One. Craftsmanship is a book among the books of divine sciences, and a treasure among the treasures of His heavenly wisdom. This is a knowledge with meaning, for some of the sciences are brought forth by words and come to an end with words.” (From a Tablet - translated from the Persian) (The Compilation of Compilations vol. I, p. 1)

While, obviously, in the establishment of sciences of the spirit there are millions of miles to go and millennia of time to do it, yet, given the current state of the human and natural worlds now is the time to start renovating the conditions of existence.  This begins with quickening and resuscitating the human spirit, and: “The resuscitation or rebirth of the spirit of man is through the science of the love of God. It is through the efficacy of the water of life. This life and quickening is the regeneration of the phenomenal world.”