A Model of Spiritual Perception Part Two: Bridges to Reality

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.
(Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 110)

I have stated that to perceive spiritually is to “recognize” God in everything.  In that perception and understanding, God is, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha states above, “the Most Manifest”.  Recognition moves inwardly in stages from the universe to the creation, from seeing God in His handiwork, to perceiving God in His image and likeness within the human reality, to pure recognition of God in His Manifestation. This movement of knowledge is the reverse of the stages of creation.

That is, there is a double movement.  Creation “descends” from the spiritual to the material as emanations through stages of crystallization. But knowledge moves from material to spiritual and is called the ascent of the soul. The soul having reached the stage of pure recognition all is seen as a single creation.  This is the dynamic interplay of ontology and epistemology, the forms of being and the forms of knowing.  But ontology and epistemology are actually the same thing at another level.  That is, if we think of ontology as a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being, we are chasing fruitless speculation since, as Baha’u’llah says, we cannot understand even the least of God’s signs.  We don’t and can never know the nature of being. But if we use the other definition of ontology, namely, a set of concepts and categories in a subject area that shows their properties and the relations between them, we are on firmer ground.  For we can put forth what is believed are some foundational principles and laws and test them.  It is this second definition that I use.

Thus I conceive of Reality as presenting Itself to the human intelligence in three levels.  The lowest and last level ontologically is the universe around us, the infinite physical world, with all its galaxies, numberless stars and planets, cosmic dust and layers upon layers of subatomic energies.  It is about things.  But this level, though first in order, is last in importance, for the epistemological progression of the mind.

Next and higher, both ontologically and epistemologically, occupying the middle position, is Cosmos, composed of the archetypal thought forms and intellectual structures of Reality that science infers or discovers and whose foundation is the progressive Revelations of God that configure the universe.  It is also the human understanding of this level of creation, (i.e. what is called cosmology) written in the various poetic, philosophical and scientific languages of their times and across time.  Its supreme metaphor is the Word.

Finally, at the highest level, both ontologically and epistemologically, for It is the origin of all creation and the end of all knowledge, is the divine Creation, the foundational, spiritual powers (attributes of God,) each a universal, that are revealed and configured by the knowledge of God—i.e. the knowledge that God has of the creation which manifests His Will: a knowledge that is infused into every atom of the universe.  From this level of Reality cosmos and universe unfold.

One relation between these contexts of creation is that of counterparts.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha said: “The spiritual world is like unto the phenomenal world. They are the exact counterpart of each other. Whatever objects appear in this world of existence are the outer pictures of the world of heaven.” (Promulgation of Universal Peace: 10)  Again, the spiritual is the origin, the cause and source, of the material. The material is the effect and outer picture of the inner spiritual reality shining forth.  But the two together are the poles of the structure of cosmic consciousness with mental energy in the form of thought moving between them, for emanation is complemented by return.

Because the spiritual and the material are exact counterparts they are in harmony and they resonate. Resonance joins and knits together the spiritual and material.  This resonant unity is called coherence, but resonance, the harmony of frequencies, is the mechanism of joining and knitting.  Coherence is at every level of the universe, from atomic fractal spin to galactic scale symmetry. But coherence also exists between levels of Reality—i.e. the thought-forms of the cosmos and the physical manifestations of them in the universe, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s statement, which recalls the ancient Hermetic principle, indicates.  When coherence is achieved across all levels everything becomes a resonant structure with infinite depth and a vibrating influence.  Baha’u’llah speaks, for example, of the “world's equilibrium” (i.e. the human social order) having been upset “through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 136)  The coherence between the cosmos and universe is from the divine Will acting through one of the Names of God.  Today, that name is the Most Glorious.

Conceptually, coherence of the spiritual/material unity in the human world is achieved in language and knowledge through the symbol. In thought, analogical ratios, created by the rational faculty, means that analogy is, too, a resonant, vibrating intellectual structure.  The metaphoric interval structuring analogy does not identify one thing as another, but two things as one thing.  This is the prelude to a change of consciousness, a leap into a new mental reality.  Here, as in all cases, there is a moment of arrest which mysteriously results in a metamorphosis, called understanding, the “aha” moment. This is the end of one form of perceptual life, before it figuratively reverses into its opposite form.  But opposite form has two meanings.  The first exists at the level of separation, and is the opposition, to use Hegelian terminology, between the thesis and its antithesis.  To reverse or transform into the opposite form, thesis into antithesis, occurs in development and marks the switch into negativity, from growth to decline into death of every organic structure. Death, whether actually or symbolically, preludes the leap into something new: the consummation, or burning up of one level, before consummation, the last and all-inclusive stage that initiates rebirth.

The second meaning of transformation into the opposite form occurs on a higher plane of unity.  It is transcendence.  It means the incorporation in understanding of the thesis and antithesis into one thing, which is epistemologically the symbol or the concept.  This is the advance of consciousness into a higher state, and all higher ontological forms are the radical opposites of their lower forms. Hence, the Master stated that: “the Preexistent is different from the phenomenal, and the phenomenal is opposed to the Preexistent.” (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 293)

This higher form is what Hegel called synthesis. It is to see the relations between things, and not just the things themselves.  Thus higher is not a simple spacial metaphor of altitude, a diagram that purports to show life and knowledge moving up the evolutionary ladder or chain of being from the thick mud of concreteness to the rarefied air of abstraction, but is also a weaving metaphor. The creating of an ever-richer tapestry of complexity.  It is the manifestation of new and greater powers, which includes, via similitudes, all the lower kingdoms.  We say the manifestation of greater complexity is higher “form” of life, even though it is not necessarily more biologically complex.

This brings us to today’s material sciences as bridges to reality.  What is the nature of the bridge? I think that there are two metaphors we can use to get an idea of the bridge.  As is so often is the case in the Bahá’i Writings, principles and concepts can be figuratively conveyed through both auditory and visual metaphors.  These are complemented and completed by the idealizing of hearing and insight as twin metaphors for knowing and understanding.  As Baha’u’llah says in the Tablet of Ahmad: “For the people are wandering in the paths of delusion, bereft of discernment to see God with their own eyes, or hear His Melody with their own ears.” (Compilations, Baha'i Prayers: 210)

Perceiving the levels of Reality as discrete planes is another visual metaphor, and is about surfaces and things, for that is what the eye sees.  But perceiving them as contexts, as one surrounding and penetrating another, as intertwining processes of creating complexity, are all acoustic or auditory metaphors, for the characteristics of sound are to both surround and penetrate things.  Auditory metaphors better capture hidden relations. But they are hidden only from the eye.  They are perceptible to the ear.  The process is one of translating acoustic knowledge into visual knowledge, replacing the ear with the eye, like translating speech into writing. The reverse, eye into ear, also goes on.

The image of the sciences of today as bridges to reality can obviously be visualized as a bridge spanning a gap, as a road, a gorge, or river. These are serviceable enough visual metaphors, especially if that bridge is the Sirat of the Qur’an, the fiery bridge, said to be as thin as a hair and as sharp as the sharpest knife or sword, over which every soul must pass to enter Paradise. Below this bridge burn the fires of hell, which sear sinners to make them fall. Yet, the musical bridge is also, I believe, a good metaphor for the sciences of today being bridges to reality.

A musical bridge is a contrasting section in a musical piece that prepares for the return of the original theme, the verse or the chorus.  It is sometimes called the release.  Lyrically, the bridge in a melody is typically used to pause and reflect on earlier portions of the song or to prepare the listener for the climax.  In all cases, it is a transition bar or theme to smooth what would be an abrupt shift or modulation, but it also works to delineate the separate sections of an extended piece of music.  This discussion brings us back to the phenomenon of resonance and the shift to a new universal configuration and a higher harmonics. Both auditory relations and visual images are the basis of resonance, as I showed.

Visually, progressive Revelation is seen as the progressive revealing of the complexity of the plan of God. Acoustically, progressive Revelation is the releasing of the various harmonies of the Song of God.  Creatively, progressive means for the eye the reconfiguring of the universe, and for the ear calling into being a new creation.  Unifically, it means for both eye and ear the advance of the archetypal forms and melody into greater complexity of manifestation.  “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140)

Where does this recreation, this retuning to a new harmonics, this reconfiguration of all things in their return take place?  I have called that metaphorical space the resonant interval, again a mix of visual (interval) and auditory (resonant), but either can switch, since we know of musical intervals and visual resonances, because all is waves of influence.

The term resonant interval denotes the vibrating spaces between all living and created things.  There are not empty spaces.  There is no absolute silence, for the universe is a plenum not a vacuum, and all things have a voice. The gaps or spaces are laboratories of creation, the place to glimpse the spiritual reality at work casting outer pictures and voicing new melodies.  It is the realm of becoming or coming into being by a calling forth, for the Call is first, then the reconfiguration.  But, and here is the key point, the bridge of the knowledge and Word of God does not span these resonant intervals, but collapses them into a unity, a singularity, as the physics of black holes calls them.  It joins and knits together levels of Reality.  It eclipses these distances.  The symbol is such a union/bridge, resonance is a similar bridge. 

The resonant interval is turbulence and disequilibrium, death and birth, where chaos rules, complexity is built, and new harmonies are established because a new master vibration, a new Name or Title of God, has generated new possibilities of manifestation and upset the world’s equilibrium. 

The bridge between levels of reality is, then, a vortex of hurricane energies, lethal and living at the same time.  Think of the energy, the tension, the dangers and glory of birth.  It is the ferment of Chaos.  The Greek word "chaos" means "yawning" or "gap". Being a creative space, “crossing” the bridge to Reality is no smooth and orderly stroll, but a spiritual quest of tremendous risk from the intense universe-creating heat “generated from the interaction of the active force and that which is its recipient.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 140)  Anyone reading Baha’u’llah’s description in His Seven Valleys of finding one’s way through Valley of Love on the steed of pain will get an idea of the intensity and power felt in the soul of barely contained titanic energies that swirl and collide, that melt cool reason and destroy solid thought, that burn up the previous person in order to prepare the soul for the Valley of Knowledge.

In a watery metaphor, ‘Abdu’l-Baha calls the world of thought a “boundless sea.”  He goes on to state the relation between this “sea” of thought and the world of existence, saying “the effects and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life.” (The Secret of Divine Civilization: 109)

The boundless sea is one traditional image of chaos as the tempestuous prima materia.  The boiling sea is the vortex of creative action of Revelation from the realm of divine Spirit on the world of existence and our human response.  Metaphysically, creation is the interaction of will, intellect and love. 

All things are joined and knit together into a new creation in time and through time through the power of attraction and affinity, which is the manifestation of divine love, the “vital bond inherent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things.” (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 27)   That is, the “essential properties and the necessary relations inherent in the realities of things” (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablet to August Forel: 20-21) that characterize Nature, the world of being, are reconfigured (religia) by Divine religion “the essential connection which proceeds from the realities of things”.  (Some Answered Questions: 158)  All is guided and connected through this cataclysmic transition by divine Will “that active force which controlleth these relationships and these incidents.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 198)

‘Abdu’l-Baha said: The sciences of today are bridges to reality; if then they lead not to reality, naught remains but fruitless illusion.  Bridging the “gap” to Reality is not to span an airy space, but to transform into a new spiritual state by entering into a swirling vortex of energies and escaping their destructive power by perceiving their dynamic, flowing structure, as did Poe’s mariner in Descent into the Maelstrom.  We do that by dancing across the bridge in tune to the melodies of the Kingdom.