He Who is both the Beginning and the
End, He Who is both Stillness and Motion, is now manifest before your eyes.
Behold how, in this Day, the Beginning is reflected in the End, how out of
Stillness Motion hath been engendered. This motion hath been generated by the
potent energies which the words of the Almighty have released throughout the
entire creation.
(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings
from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 168)
Today, the mind’s attention must be continuously bi-focal: it should preserve a complex identity, yet make room for a difference in that
identity. Thus the symbols describing
how this "Man of Two Visions" (The Hidden
Words #12 Persian) truly thinks in his maturity must have a static
structural aspect and a dynamic process aspect.
These twin characteristics beget the laws of transformation. All moves forward in any unfolding integral
development, though each stage is also under the dominion of one aspect, one
Name of God. Knowledge is the cause of
progress, so all progress is from a new Revelation of the knowledge of God.
In a resonating universe, any full truth is the union of
metaphor and fact, which may be the confluence of metaphors, as things are the
nexus of spiritual and material energies.
Now metaphorical truth is more suggestive than precise, evoking not
explicating, exact but not exacting, and the historical movement of thought and
language is from the former to the latter and back again on a higher turn of
the spiral: effects precede causes in knowledge, mirroring that causes precede
effects in being. Such a truth paradigm
maintains that all is potentially knowable because knowledge itself is an
interconnected, complex and intricate web of analogical correspondences
corresponding to the web of actual life.
Thus spiritual truth, which is “both the Beginning and
the End” “both Stillness and Motion”,
comes forth at the maturity of humankind.
The truths of the age of Him Who is the “Spirit of Truth” Who “will
guide you into all truth” (King James Bible, John 16:13) is both infinitely
suggestive and everlastingly creative, and singularly precise depending upon
the context. I mean that fact in one
context is context itself in another. The
context is composed of a causal spiritual truth at the locus, or center, and
the metaphorical truths of the material world that are its field of effects,
its vibrating influence.
The finding in
abstract space of the intellectual essence of things, the ding an sich,—which was the great work of the self-conscious
individual that grew up within the Adamic cycle, especially after the Greek
revolution in thinking associated with Plato and Aristotle as put forth in Eric
Havelock’s groundbreaking Preface to
Plato—makes room for great
relational structures in thought that in language are indicated by analogies and
other metaphors, the evidence of things unseen.
We are seeking in this age the general and
specific laws of transformation, like E=mc2. But His laws and principles are to convert “satanic strength into heavenly power.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah:
200) Divine philosophy may include the “discovery
of a radical approach to the transmutation of elements” (The Kitab-i-Aqdas: 250), but this greater alchemy of soul, the
spiritual and sacred science, this science of the love of God, will renovate
all the conditions of existence.
Baha’u’llah’s
spiritual principles and revealed truths are the foundation upon which human
beings are constructing a new type of discourse which is neither merely
perceptual and poetic nor only scientific and conceptual. It joins and knits together spirit and
matter, energy and form. It is
inspirational and motivating, and non-rational as a higher ratiocination. It is
for revealing the divine. Hence, we can
roughly characterize it as revelatory. It borders upon and
sometimes spills over into language which the modern temper would call
mystical, which grates
harshly upon rationalist’s ears, but that is because it is trying to explicate
a “mystic transformation” (The
Kitab-i-Iqan: 156), a transformation so complete as to turn the base metal
of human life into the golden age of humankind. This kind of language has been the lingua franca of spirit over centuries
of expression. Its piling up of emotionally-charged
metaphors indicates that this is the kind of thing the mind comes up with when
encountering something of overwhelming importance and power that empowers, when
anyone speaks of high spiritual matters.
The symbolic union of the spiritual and the
material in a single unifying discourse of Revelation needs a new logic of
description to present its new objects of knowledge. That is, the syntactical relations and
contexts of language must illuminate the transmutations of being. As the self-conscious individual that grew up
within the Adamic cycle became aware of abstract objects in thought, so today,
the Revelation of Baha’u’llah, awakening the divine within the human reality,
reveals to that new Man spiritual objects of knowledge, because it opens vision
to the placeless and timeless. There is,
therefore, also need of a new frame of discourse and a new vocabulary.
Such foundational work is involved in the birth
of any science, let alone a new kind of science. This is science as
Scientia. It is the inventing of a language
and perspective, of force finding form, which makes spiritual science
possible. Yet it is also the rebirth of
an ancient divine philosophy in the modern materialist techo-world, the
reintroduction of the sense of the sacred, and it is the addition of the sacred
dimension to awareness that differentiates spiritual science from intellectual science
as a knowledge domain.
As with any science there is need of both a
fundamental coordinating principle, like that of evolution in biology, and operational
principles of transformational relations that build into a mature body of
knowledge as it explicates its realm of experience and perception. For spiritual science this is the union of
divine love and knowledge. The unity of
all things is, at one and the same time, the foundational coordinating principle, the essential relation,
and the goal of divine philosophy. “The
most important principle of divine philosophy”, stated the Master, “is the
oneness of the world of humanity, the unity of mankind, the bond conjoining
East and West, the tie of love which blends human hearts.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 31) Similarly on the macroscale: “It will be
demonstrated and become evident that the origin and outcome of phenomena are
identical and that there is an essential oneness in all existing things. This
is a subtle principle appertaining to divine philosophy and requiring close analysis
and attention.” (Abdu'l-Baha, The
Promulgation of Universal Peace:285)
But, equally as important as foundational
abstract, structural and relational principles, new kinds of concepts must be presented
in new lexical formulations and syntactical arrangements. Intellections that only attempt to isolate
the intellectual essence of something, or cognitions that statically capture,
embalm, or fix in the hard amber of thought, the nature of something and then
relate it through other abstract concepts to something else are residue of a once towering but now crumbling paradigm of knowing.
The concepts themselves must be dynamic; they
must move, like pulsations of energy or “the water of life”, because they take
on the characteristics of Spirit. It is
their divine origin and reality, their connection with the Names of God, that gives
them life and motion as conduits for the Will and Mind of God, which is the true
Origin of all creation. These are first known in the subtle intimations of the
sacred heart. Only the revealed Word can
open our spiritual intelligence to this world, to “see” this Reality.
These living conceptions of spiritual energies flow
and integrate, and in their range of integration show the limits of a
domain. They are concepts that unify and
resonate to show how structure gets transformed into sequence by process and
back again through the exchange not just of force and physical energies, but
also what scientists call information, and at times by information alone: the
kind of thing in homeopathy where healing takes place through an antidote that
has nothing left of the original substance but the memory of it, the information
of its past presence. These concepts are themselves complexes of movement
issuing into larger complexes and combinations, which, if you will, leap and
dance to an inner music and harmony.
Concepts that are not yet really concepts, but symbols, unities of life
and experience, body and soul joined and knit together, not ghostly after-life things
drained of all their earthy substance. It is symbols of divine philosophy that in
their most complex figuration demonstrate and show forth the reciprocal
relations, the mutual-mirroring, between the three levels of creation, and
between ontology, ethics, and epistemology, between human being, human doing,
and human knowing. These figurations will
gradually unfold into coherent theory that shines forth the divine Spirit in
all creative actions. Let us look at a few examples of what I
mean to understand something of their nature.
“We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment
outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be
improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment
and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every
abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.
No movement in the world directs its attention
upon both these aspects of human life and has full measures for their
improvement, save the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh.
And this is its distinctive feature.” (The Compilation of Compilations vol. I, p. 84-85)
“Such simultaneous processes of rise and of fall,
of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos, with their continuous
and reciprocal reactions on each other, are but aspects of a greater Plan, one
and indivisible, whose Source is God, whose author is Bahá'u'lláh, the theater
of whose operations is the entire planet, and whose ultimate objectives are the
unity of the human race and the peace of all mankind.” (Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice: 72-73)
“Thou hast asked regarding
the subject of the return. Know thou that the end is like unto the beginning.
Even as thou dost consider the beginning, similarly shouldst thou consider the
end, and be of them that truly perceive. Nay, rather consider the beginning as
the end itself, and so conversely, that thou mayest acquire a clear perception.
Know thou moreover that every created thing is continually brought forth and
returned at the bidding of thy Lord, the God of power and might.
“As to the Return, as God
hath purposed in His sacred and exalted Tablets wherein He hath made this theme
known unto His servants; by this is meant the return of all created things in
the Day of Resurrection, and this is indeed the essence of the Return as thou
hast witnessed in God's own days and thou art of them that testify to this
truth.
“Verily God is fully capable
of causing all names to appear in one name, and all souls in one soul. Surely
powerful and mighty is He. And this Return is realized at His behest in
whatever form He willeth.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets
of Baha'u'llah: 183)
"Should they attempt to
conceal His light on the continent, He will assuredly rear His head in the
midmost heart of the ocean and, raising His voice, proclaim: 'I am the
lifegiver of the world!'... And if they cast Him into a darksome pit, they will
find Him seated on earth's loftiest heights calling aloud to all mankind: 'Lo,
the Desire of the world is come in His majesty, His sovereignty, His
transcendent dominion!' And if He be buried beneath the depths of the earth,
His Spirit soaring to the apex of heaven shall peal the summons: 'Behold ye the
coming of the Glory; witness ye the Kingdom of God, the most Holy, the
Gracious, the All-Powerful!'" (Baha’u’llah quoted by Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah: 108)
“When, however, thou dost contemplate the
innermost essence of all things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt
behold the signs of thy Lord's mercy in every created thing, and see the
spreading rays of His Names and Attributes throughout all the realm of being,
with evidences which none will deny save the froward and the unaware. Then wilt
thou observe that the universe is a scroll that discloseth His hidden secrets,
which are preserved in the well-guarded Tablet. And not an atom of all the
atoms in existence, not a creature from amongst the creatures but speaketh His
praise and telleth of His attributes and names, revealeth the glory of His
might and guideth to His oneness and His mercy: and none will gainsay this who
hath ears to hear, eyes to see, and a mind that is sound. (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha:
41)
“For it must be clearly understood, nor can it be
sufficiently emphasized, that the conjunction of the resting-place of the
Greatest Holy Leaf with those of her brother and mother incalculably reinforces
the spiritual potencies of that consecrated Spot which, under the wings of the
Báb's overshadowing Sepulchre, and in the vicinity of the future
Mashriqu'l-Adhkar, which will be reared on its flank, is destined to evolve
into the focal center of those world-shaking, world-embracing, world-directing
administrative institutions, ordained by Bahá'u'lláh and anticipated by
'Abdu'l-Bahá, and which are to function in consonance with the principles that
govern the twin institutions of the Guardianship and the Universal House of
Justice.” (Shoghi Effendi, Messages to America,:
32)
