Divine Creation

I testify that no sooner had the First Word proceeded, through the potency of Thy will and purpose, out of His mouth, and the First Call gone forth from His lips than the whole creation was revolutionized, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth were stirred to the depths. Through that Word the realities of all created things were shaken, were divided, separated, scattered, combined and reunited, disclosing, in both the contingent world and the heavenly kingdom, entities of a new creation, and revealing, in the unseen realms, the signs and tokens of Thy unity and oneness. Through that Call Thou didst announce unto all Thy servants the advent of Thy most great Revelation and the appearance of Thy most perfect Cause.

No sooner had that Revelation been unveiled to men's eyes than the signs of universal discord appeared among the peoples of the world, and commotion seized the dwellers of earth and heaven, and the foundations of all things were shaken. The forces of dissension were released, the meaning of the Word was unfolded, and every several atom in all created things acquired its own distinct and separate character.

(Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah, p. 295-296)

I am continuing the discussion of the three levels or contexts of the creation.  To recap: the first level is the universe of matter in all its levels and forms.  The second level, presented last post, I name cosmos, and is the intellectual or mental foundation of the universe.  This level is the Word, the Revelation of God, the movement of the divine Intellect. It generates both all material existence and human intellectual life by the imprinting of a configuration of eternal, divine thought-forms upon the primal substance (i.e. matter) of the universe and the human mind.  This mind, said Max Planck, one of the founders of modern physics, “is the matrix of all matter.” This post will talk about the highest level of the divine creation itself, namely, the level of the foundational qualities of God, remembering that in spiritual relations the highest is always the foundation and origin.

The whole of creation originates in the outpouring of the Primal Will into the divine, universal Intellect, traditionally named Logos, which is the archetypal form of all.  Through Logos uttering the vibratory influence of the Word, Divine Will forms chaos, i.e. universal matter, into the primary and recurring forms of life which in their universal relations and myriad interactions bring into being infinite individual creatures.  It is Logos which “in every epoch casts on the mirror of creation new and wonderful configurations.” (The Secret of Divine Civilization:1)  Logos encodes the Primal Will, which is the Source of all, the Foundation of Creation and its Sustainer at all times.  "Glory be to Thee, O my God!,” writes Baha’u’llah apropos this theme, “The power of Thy might beareth me witness! I can have no doubt that should the holy breaths of Thy loving-kindness and the breeze of Thy bountiful favor cease, for less than the twinkling of an eye, to breathe over all created things, the entire creation would perish, and all that are in heaven and on earth would be reduced to utter nothingness.” (Prayers and Meditations by Bahá’u’lláh: 90)

By new configuration is meant new design by rearranging the intervals between things, such as a new configuration of furniture in a room.  Recall, Baha’u’llah says: “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140)  And “As to the Return…by this is meant the return of all created things in the Day of Resurrection….And this Return is realized at His behest in whatever form He willeth.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 183-184)

As the opening quote states, the effulgence of the Word has both integrating and disintegrating effects: new spaces open in the fabric of things as old ones close, and new complexities of life are formed.  The intervals of creation are not empty spaces but resonant intervals. Each is a pulsating matrix of energies out from which crystallize new entities of creation.  Revelation, the Logos, the expression of the Primal Will, is the creational codes of the templates of creation.

By coded templates of creational development I mean spiritual energies and structures that provide the dynamism and instructions for building forms of life.  In short, I mean the interacting archetypal qualities of God that are the foundation of cosmos and universe. A spiritual template is like biological DNA, the genetic code. DNA is not only instructions how to make proteins, but also, through a sub-code buried within the same stretches of DNA that make proteins, instructions telling when and how to regulate and activate their expression through millions of gene switches.  But these switches are, in creation, intervals and gaps, similar in my mind to those between nerve synapses, over which electrical impulses pass. These foundational spiritual codes include the essential sequences of activity that transform spiritual impulse into material creation and the regulatory instructions deciding how energies are controlled, making it possible to transform that spiritual code into an organic code that can build the proper material structures.  Building spiritual energy and code into material structure is not a simple formula, however.  Learning and response, modification and change occur from the determining factors of physical limitation.  But all is guided toward a desired end, at every step a conscious creative choice occurs.  Time in this view is not a continuous flow, but an infinite series of “moments” both in context and creating context: what quantum physicists call collapsing the indeterminacy of possibility into one actuality.  All living organisms, from bacteria to human beings, more or less share this basic construct and growth pattern.

The basic DNA “alphabet” of four digits or four letters is enough to code for all the different proteins and macro molecules in each cell right down to the genetic variations of our inherited characteristics, much as the twenty six letters of the English alphabet are enough to write nearly every word ever uttered by humankind.  Such codes store multi-layered meanings and functions that science cannot yet decipher, but which may also code more than biochemical reactions.  Their potentials unfold in response to environmental stimulations from the outside, but also are timed by internal clocks.

Similarly, language is not just letters and words, but also syntactical and grammatical rules (codes) deciding how to combine these essential phonemic units into larger units of meaning called sentences, paragraphs, pages, essays and books—thought into sound, then, via writing, sound into sight.  Likewise, mathematics is not only an infinite series of numbers, but is also logical rules for combining numbers into highly complex operations of calculation.

   Revelation is a divine code of infinite complexity for building not only Nature but also, human consciousness and society, into increasingly complex structures.  It unfolds the biological potentialities of Nature into an infinity of living organisms, and the intellectual potentialities of human consciousness into the arts and sciences to grasp these entities of a new creation.  “Unveiled and unconcealed, this Wronged One hath, at all times, proclaimed before the face of all the peoples of the world that which will serve as the key for unlocking the doors of sciences, of arts, of knowledge, of well-being, of prosperity and wealth.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 96)

 Every quality or attribute of God is archetypal and universal, meaning that it is diffused throughout the entire creation.  So the whole, infinitely large, and eternal creation is one single entity to God.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha reminds us in one of His table talks that: “It is necessary, therefore, that we should know what each of the important existences was in the beginning—for there is no doubt that in the beginning the origin was one: the origin of all numbers is one and not two. Then it is evident that in the beginning matter was one, and that one matter appeared in different aspects in each element. Thus various forms were produced, and these various aspects as they were produced became permanent, and each element was specialized. But this permanence was not definite, and did not attain realization and perfect existence until after a very long time. Then these elements became composed, and organized and combined in infinite forms; or rather from the composition and combination of these elements innumerable beings appeared.

This composition and arrangement, through the wisdom of God and His preexistent might, were produced from one natural organization, which was composed and combined with the greatest strength, conformable to wisdom, and according to a universal law.” (Some Answered Questions: 181)

He reiterated this view at another time, stating: “The organization of God is one; the evolution of existence is one; the divine system is one. Whether they be small or great beings, all are subject to one law and system.” (Some Answered Questions: 199)

We’ll begin to see how this creational process might work, at least in outline, in the next post titled, Fashioner and Fashioned, knowing and doing.