The glorious maturity of this world depends upon the
realization of two things: the establishment of Universal Peace, and the
discovery, or appearance of that hidden science which shall renovate all the
conditions of existence.
(I Heard Him Say: Words of ‘Abdu’l-Baha as recorded
by his Secretary Mirza Ahmad Sohrab: 38)
Scientific
knowledge is the highest attainment upon the human plane, for science is the
discoverer of realities. It is of two kinds: material and spiritual. Material
science is the investigation of natural phenomena; divine science is the
discovery and realization of spiritual verities. The world of humanity must
acquire both. A bird has two wings; it cannot fly with one. Material and
spiritual science are the two wings of human uplift and attainment. Both are
necessary—one the natural, the other
supernatural; one material, the other divine. By the divine we mean the
discovery of the mysteries of God, the comprehension of spiritual realities,
the wisdom of God, inner significances of the heavenly religions and foundation
of the law.
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The
Promulgation of Universal Peace: 138)
Recently, I was asked by a friend: “Why do you write what you write?” It is a fair
question and I have often found it difficult to answer quickly, because the
prime areas of my interest are, well, pretty obscure to most. So, after answering to the best of my ability
the first question, a second equally legitimate question comes: “Why should anybody read that?”; or, “OK. But how does that help anybody?” Neither question
is asked with any malice or attempt to dismiss what I am doing. They are genuine efforts to understand me and
my work. I appreciate that. But it is puzzling to many why anyone would
pursue something that does not have the immediate and practical benefits of,
say, fixing a broken faucet or motor, especially since there is little hope of
making a living remuneration for the hours that I put in. So why do it?
The short answer is: I feel called to do it. More quizzical looks. It is not a fashionable reason or
motivation. So I am going to devote this
long post to answering the question: What Am I doing?
In a nutshell, I am making an inquiry into some possible
conditions for spiritual sciences. I am
following up ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s statement in the second quote above that science is of
two kinds, material and spiritual. Both,
He says, are necessary. The past four
hundred years has been primarily devoted to bringing forth marvelous material
sciences. The past few decades have seen
some scientists undertake a similar effort to discover spiritual realities and
generate sciences of the spirit that explain and explicate them, albeit slowly
because of, first, great resistance or crushing indifference from those
committed to a materialist paradigm, but also from their looking in the wrong
place for a true beginning.
I take a somewhat unorthodox view on sciences of the
spirit, to say the least. My view hinges on the difference between “sciences of the spirit” and “spiritual sciences”. The distinction is, for me, more than mere nuance,
and certainly not semantic word-games.
It is the difference that makes all the difference. While generating spiritual sciences
does not require that the mind jettison everything about the structure of
material science, it also does not mean that we can simply transfer wholesale the
methods and approaches of material science to spirit and believe these will
bring us all we can ever know of spirit.
Why?
Because the conditions for understanding spiritual
realities and, therefore, for establishing spiritual sciences, are more than
simply new theories, better experimental apparatus, and the verification of new
facts gained from modifying the established paradigm of understanding. Rather, a new set of assumptions about
Reality and human nature, wider contexts and domains of knowledge that include
the spiritual, newly awakened faculties of perception, a new language of
communication, new practices of attaining knowledge, such as faith and vision, are
needed. In short, a new paradigm of
human knowledge and understanding is required.
To
establish spiritual sciences requires a revolution in humanity’s total world
view.
Thus,
for me, while sciences of the spirit can be conceived as new sciences within
the existing paradigm of science, extensions, if you will, into the spiritual of the procedures
of material science, spiritual sciences are new kinds of sciences. (The phrase “spiritual science” was also used
by Rudolf Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools. Though there
is some commonality between his conception of spiritual science and mine, there
is an important difference. I will not
go into that here. Perhaps a later post.)
If
we read closely the quote from ‘Abdu’l-Baha about the two kinds of science He calls
one the natural, the other supernatural; one material,
the other divine. That is, spiritual science itself is supernatural
and not just what it is investigating.
What
is a supernatural science? It could be
merely mental, for the mind is, strictly speaking, a supernatural
phenomenon. But I believe it is more
than mental, for He further defines supernatural science as divine. What is a divine science? He goes on: divine science
is the discovery and realization of spiritual verities…By the divine we mean the discovery
of the mysteries of God, the comprehension of spiritual realities, the wisdom
of God, inner significances of the heavenly religions and foundation of the
law.
Are any spiritual
sciences mentioned in the Bahá’i Writings?
I believe so. In the second
Valley of His Four Valleys, a valley devoted to “primal reason”, Baha’u’llah
quotes these lines from a celebrated Persian poet:
Wouldst thou that the mind should not entrap thee?
Teach it the science of the love of God!”
(Baha'u'llah, The
Four Valleys: 52)
It seems this
science is the means to mental health and progress, else the mind stops growing
and gets entrapped in its own imaginings.
It is like alchemy, perhaps the first proto-science, which started out
fine but got lost in its imaginings, as will any science which does not lead to
God. A bit more on alchemy below.
But
the science of the love of God is more than a good psychology. The science of the love of God may be the
foundational science for all spiritual sciences. I say this because of a phrase in the first
opening quote—I know it is a pilgrim’s note and is not scripture so it must be
taken as not necessarily His actual words.
That phrase is the discovery, or appearance of that hidden
science which shall renovate all the conditions of existence. Look at it again: a single science “will
renovate all the conditions of existence.” That’s the kind of foundational
DNA-like code of knowledge out from which can emerge different sciences, as the
oak tree emerges, from trunk to twig to leaf, from the acorn because the entire code sequence to make an oak is in it.
A
statement from the Master that qualifies as more scriptural than pilgrim’s notes
gives support to this idea. He is
reported to have said: “In this century of the latter times
Bahá'u'lláh has appeared and so resuscitated spirits that they have manifested
powers more than human….Therefore, the question arises: How is this
resuscitation to be accomplished?
“There are certain means for its
accomplishment by which mankind is regenerated and quickened with a new birth.
This is the second birth mentioned in the heavenly Books. Its accomplishment is
through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. 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.”
(Promulgation of Universal Peace:
277) The bold-faced emphasis is, of
course, mine.
I believe that some keys to the science of
the love of God may be concealed within Baha’u’llah’s Tablet of Wisdom—Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 137-152—awaiting
discovery. It is in this tablet that He
refers to the teachings of Hermes, or Idris, as that Manifestation of God is
known in the Qur’an. There He also
praises Balinus (Apollonius of Tyana) as a “man of wisdom who became informed
of the mysteries of creation and discerned the subtleties which lie enshrined
in the Hermetic writings.” (Tablets of
Baha'u'llah:148) The scope of Hermes
teachings is brought out in the footnote to that statement: “In one of His
Tablets Bahá'u'lláh wrote: 'The first person who devoted himself to philosophy
was Idris. Thus was he named. Some called him also Hermes. In every tongue he
hath a special name. He it is who hath set forth in every branch of philosophy
thorough and convincing statements. After him Balinus derived his knowledge and
sciences from the Hermetic Tablets and most of the philosophers who followed
him made their philosophical and scientific discoveries from his words and
statements...' In the Qur'án, Sura 19, verses 57 and 58, is written: 'And
commemorate Idris in the Book; for he was a man of truth, a Prophet; And we uplifted
him to a place on high.' (Tablets of
Baha’u’llah: 148)
Earlier in that same tablet Baha’u’llah
wrote: “I will also mention for thee the invocation voiced by Balinus who was
familiar with the theories put forward by the Father of Philosophy (Hermes) regarding
the mysteries of creation as given in his chrysolite tablets, that everyone may
be fully assured of the things We have elucidated for thee in this manifest Tablet, which, if pressed
with the hand of fairness and knowledge, will yield the spirit of life for the
quickening of all created things.” (Tablets
of Baha'u'llah:147) All this sounds to
me very much like the kind of language revolving around the great science of
the love of God. The science of the love
of God may be that fundamental scientific knowledge that “will yield the spirit
of life for the quickening of all created things.”
Be
that as it may, one of the effects of the appearance or discovery of this
“hidden science” that “renovates all the conditions of existence”, that regenerates
the phenomenal world because it resuscitates a human spirit entrapped in
materialism, will be to cause the kind of rupture in human existence that
occurred millennia ago when humanity burst out of its chrysalis of sensory
knowledge into the world of intellectual knowledge. This rupture was the conception—in the
biological sense of conception—of science.
The story is told in the Judeo-Christian tradition through the Genesis
story surrounding the figure of Adam, though secular thinkers like to ascribe
the leap to the pre-Socratic Greeks, or the Egyptians, and so forth. But such great ruptures can, for me, only
occur through the creative Word of God, not intuitive leaps of human beings.
The
first rational intellectual form that emerged from the “Adamic” mental
revolution was philosophy to replace mythology.
It is from logical inquiry into the regularities of nature and humanity that
all sciences have come. We are passing
through an even greater revolution today with the birth of spiritual man. As intellectual philosophy was the birth of all
rational inquiry—an endeavor extending over vast millennia that has culminated
in the mansions of thought we now call modern experimental science—so the
science of the love of God, a spiritual philosophy, will be the womb out from
which will be born, in the coming centuries, powerful spiritually-driven
inquiries into creation.
Now
when the “mind” was born in that eponymous Garden with the naming of things it
was not just a new knowledge, but also a new kind of knowledge, a kind of
knowledge that could only be understood by “a new race of men” using newly
awakened faculties. The new knowledge
was not just objective, but also subjective, even, we can make the argument,
subjective for the first time in the sense of an individual “I” narrating its
experiences to itself in an inner “space”.
It was not just conscious, but self-conscious. Nothing like it had ever appeared before, but
everything came from it.
Similarly
today a new philosophy leads. In His Kitab-i-Aqdas,
Baha’u’llah appointed two signs that indicate the maturity of humanity. The note elucidating this statement says: “The
first sign of the coming of age of humanity referred to in the Writings of
Bahá'u'lláh is the emergence of a science which is described as that ‘divine
philosophy’ which will include the discovery of a radical approach to the
transmutation of elements. This is an
indication of the splendours of the future stupendous expansion of knowledge.”
(The Kitab-i-Aqdas: 250) This can be alchemy.
But first is the divine alchemy of soul making I discussed last post.
We
live in an entirely new day. What does
it require from us to live in the new reality?
‘Abdu’l-Baha says that people “must be set completely free from their
old patterns of thought…until the old ways, the old concepts, are gone and
forgotten, this world of being will find no peace, nor will it reflect the
perfections of the Heavenly Kingdom.” (Selections
from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 252)
Spiritual
sciences will be built upon that foundation laid down by the new Revelation,
and no other foundation. Does not Baha’u’llah
state: “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.” (Tablets
of Baha'u'llah: 96)
As I see it, part of the revolution in
humanity’s world-view, and an essential aspect of any inquiry into the science
of the love of God, will be a new, deeper and broader perspective on causality,
for all science must explain the coming into being of things. While material science has got along quite
nicely relying almost exclusively upon efficient causality—the linear,
sequential, logico-empirical, left-brained thought so characteristic of the
post-Renaissance—spiritual science emphasizes, I believe, the two causes that
material science leaves out, formal cause and final cause, structure and
purpose, ontos and telos.
The book I am currently piecing together is
actually the first volume of a two volume study of the science of the love of
God to provide a new cosmology. Volume
two is tentatively titled The Causes of
Things. It examines the Word of God
as spiritual cause, the causer of causes—a phrase of
Baha’u’llah’s which I have used in my previous books but will hope to define
more precisely and use more comprehensively in that coming volume.
At
this juncture I will only say that for me spiritual cause is beyond, before,
and behind the four traditional causes—formal, final, efficient and material—that
Aristotle laid out to explain the creation of phenomena. Many others, including ‘Abdu’l-Baha, have
employed Aristotle’s terminology to explain the creation of phenomena. If one looks deeply into Aristotle’s
discussion of the four causes, however, one can see implied a “causer of
causes”.
Spiritual
cause is the hidden field out from which the four causes of phenomena come
forth, with which they remain connected, and through which they work. Baha’u’llah says “the Word of God is the
cause which hath preceded the contingent world.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah:141) Spiritual
cause generates, supports, and makes the four causes work, much as the
zero-point field does for all subatomic interactions of the physical
world. But spiritual cause, this field
of interpenetrating spiritual energies, is prior in importance, though not in
time, even to the zero-point field.
Quantum mechanics is turning the thought of physics toward the reality
of a mental foundation to the physical universe, but even more refined than the
domain of thought, which ‘Abdu’l-Baha called a “boundless sea”, is the kingdom
of spirit. It is to the spiritual level
that we will try to penetrate, to become conscious of that which supports and
gives life to everything.
These two volumes are the first
of an envisioned five volumes titled collectively, Restoring the Transcendent. Each
volume is, even now, at some level of completion. Besides the current book and the volume on
causality, a third volume on history, titled Revelation and History: Axial Ages of Humanity’s Spiritual Evolution,
is being written. The last two volumes
are The Loom of Civilization, a study
of the construction of divine civilization, and The Coordinated Vision—a treatise of educational philosophy
centered on religion, science and art as the three most powerful ways that
humans acquire knowledge. That final
volume will complete the circle back to education that started with my first
book, Renewing the Sacred: A New Vision
of Education. The purpose of all
these works is the same as that stated by Francis Bacon in the preface of his
Novum Organon, (New Science): “I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty.”
‘Abdu’l-Baha
said: “The sciences of today are bridges to reality;
if then they lead not to reality, naught remains but fruitless illusion. By the
one true God! If learning be not a means of access to Him, the Most Manifest,
it is nothing but evident loss.
He went on to the same inquirer: “It is
incumbent upon thee to acquire the various branches of knowledge, and to turn
thy face toward the beauty of the Manifest Beauty, that thou mayest be a sign
of saving guidance amongst the peoples of the world, and a focal centre of
understanding in this sphere from which the wise and their wisdom are shut out,
except for those who set foot in the Kingdom of lights and become informed of
the veiled and hidden mystery, the well-guarded secret.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 108)
When we discover that hidden science that
will renovate all the conditions of existence, if we can penetrate to that
“sphere from which the wise and their wisdom are shut out”, then we will have
crossed what Nietzsche called “the rainbow bridge of concepts” that compose “the
sciences of today”, that bridge leading from the land of shadows to the domain
of light which is Reality. There we will
“become informed of the veiled and hidden mystery, the well-guarded secret.”
The continued evolution of humanity calls for a new
state of heart and mind and a new way of looking
at things. I am attempting to show only some
of the features of what that may look like.
By definition, whatever I may discover in this work must, I freely
admit, be only partial and incomplete, often imprecise in thought and clumsy in
expression. That is in the nature of first attempts, and there are few precedents.
I take no credit for results, only the effort.
Only a fool would believe he has done anything in this arena by his own
making. If one wishes to help discover that
hidden science which shall renovate all the conditions of existence, it is necessary to be led by greater
Intelligence, by light up ahead not behind, by illumination from above and beyond.
That
is what I am doing now, and, God willing, shall be doing till the inner lights
fade and finally go out. I ask for your
prayers and support.
