Word and Matter: Words Matter

Look at the world and ponder a while upon it. It unveileth the book of its own self before thine eyes and revealeth that which the Pen of thy Lord, the Fashioner, the All-Informed, hath inscribed therein. It will acquaint thee with that which is within it and upon it and will give thee such clear explanations as to make thee independent of every eloquent expounder.

(Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 141-142)

This quote from Baha’u’llah, which also appeared last post,  refers to God “the Fashioner” inscribing His Revelation on the pages of the world—as Adam named things in the garden and gave them perceptible intellectual existence, which is the birth of human intellectual consciousness as we know that term.  Creation was, in traditional Christian theology, the verbum factum, the secondary revelation of God.  Scripture, the verbum scriptum, was the primary revelation.

But it also points out to me that writers are conjurors, words are powerful talismen.  God “calls” creation into being; His Manifestation is the “Word made flesh” and His Words are creative.  But it also points to the original meaning of the word “poet” as “the maker.”  Every poet makes ideas and things intellectual perceptible to the mind through figurative language. The Word as the primary creation acting upon Nature means that “Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 141)  Too, let us remember that: “…nature, also, in its essence is an intellectual reality and is not sensible.” (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 83)

As the spiritual Word acts upon the intellectual reality of Nature Its vibrational effects call forth responses called material reality, i.e. that which the Pen of thy Lord, the Fashioner, the All-Informed, hath inscribed therein..  The sonorous imprint of the Word of God is the proof of the Voice of God sounding throughout creation.  The secondary creation is the physical universe, the crafts of God.  Humanity imitates His actions in our speech, art and crafts.

But even more fundamentally, the Manifestation of God infuses His own Being into creation in some manner.  With every Revelation of this returning archetypal Being a new creation is “called into being.”  Baha’u’llah writes of the Bab: “When He purposed to call the new creation into being, He sent forth the Manifest and Luminous Point from the horizon of His Will; it passed through every sign and manifested itself in every form until it reached the zenith, as bidden by God, the Lord of all men." (Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 101)

‘Abdu’l-Baha, in one of His tablets, frames the bringing forth of the universe in terms of fashioner and fashioned, using Aristotelian arguments of causality, specifically the union of formal cause (the essential form of something) and material cause, the primal substance that essential form imprints upon.  He wrote: “For example it has been stated that all things are composed of two elements: the "Fashioner" and the "Fashioned". By "Fashioned" is meant substance and primary matter and by "Fashioner" is meant the form and shape which confines and limits the primary matter from its state of indefiniteness and freedom to the courtyard of limitation and definite form. For example, letters and words are composed of two things: The first is the substance which is ink and pencil-lead and is the "Fashioned" while the second is the forms and features of the letters and words which are the "Fashioner". Now this specific substance and this specific form were created simultaneously although the general substance was created before the specific form. It is clear that, before the existence of this specific form and shape, the ink had an external existence which had no specific form or shape and had the ability and potential to assume the shape of any letter or word and was not restricted or specified to a particular shape or form. Similarly, the general shape and form had an existence before substance specified them since before being specified by substance (which is ink or pencil-lead) the general shape and form of letters and words had a mental existence in the mind of the writer. Moreover, general form and general substance were also created simultaneously. For it is not possible for a thing to have an external existence and not to be formed into a shape because substance and primal matter in order to exist need shape and form; while shape and form in order to appear need substance. Thus has it been said: Substance needs form to endure.  In attaining shape it has imprisoned form.

"This is not a false circular argument. It is usually known as an interdependent or connected argument. For a false circular argument is one where one thing is dependent on another which is in turn dependent on the first in one or two stages. Since it has been shown that specific substance and specific form were created simultaneously as also were general substance and general form, therefore potentialities and their recipients come into being at one and the same time and neither precedes the other except in essence.”(Provisional Translations, I was a Hidden Treasure)
        Through this discussion we return to Baha’u’llah’s statement in His Tablet of Wisdom—wisdom literature being, again, Hermetic literature: “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today. The world of existence came into being through the heat generated from the interaction between the active force and that which is its recipient. These two are the same, yet they are different.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140)

Other metaphors for this relation of fashioner and fashioned, of formal and material cause, are the creative interplay between God’s knowledge and love for His creation.  In one of The Hidden Words, Baha’u’llah wrote: “Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I molded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.  (The Arabic Hidden Words #13)

Looking closely at this statement we realize that the phrase, “Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being”, is formal cause, because both the Being of the Manifestation of God and His Word are the essence of knowledge.  Baha’u’llah states: “Notwithstanding all these evident and significant traditions, all these unmistakable and undisputed allusions, the people have rejected the immaculate Essence of knowledge and of holy utterance, and have turned unto the exponents of rebellion and error.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 241)

On the other hand, “Out of the clay of love” is the primal material cause or substance, the archetypal substance that is the “recipient” of the active force of the Will and Knowledge of God through His Manifestation.  Thus, at the heart of all creation, meaning the One Who is the Source and Center and lasts from beginning to end, the Alpha and Omega, in Jesus words, of this relationship between fashioner and fashioned, of formal and material causes, is the Being of the Manifestation “standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.” 

By inner heart, i.e. the center and locus of human understanding, is meant the will and its volitions.  As I quoted last post, the Master is recorded as having said: “Will is the centre or focus of human understanding. We must will to know God, just as we must will in order to possess the life He has given us. The human will must be subdued and trained into the will of God. It is a great power to have a strong will, but a greater power to give that will to God. The will is what we do, the understanding is what we know. Will and understanding must be one in the cause of God. Intention brings attainment.” ('Abdu'l-Bahá: Ten Days in the Light of Acca: 30)  More on this in my next post.