Will and Word: A Vibrating Influence

Will is the centre or focus of human understanding.

(‘Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West # 4 p. 30)

What is the will’s relation to the rational faculty?  As always in spiritual matters, there is a two-fold, reciprocal relationship, as the unity of receiver and expression. The quote above gives the receiver relation: that the faculty of will is the focus or center of the power of understanding, the rational faculty. Recall that, in any organic system its spiritual center is the pivot, or axis of growth, in league with its counterpart, the organic center, which is the totality of potentials, both source and final stage of life, as, figuratively, the seed and fruit.

Yet, Will is also related to the rational faculty as a subordinate, an instrument, as are the other faculties discussed: “Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. Examine thine own self, and behold how thy motion and stillness, thy will and purpose, thy sight and hearing, thy sense of smell and power of speech, and whatever else is related to, or transcendeth, thy physical senses or spiritual perceptions, all proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty….It is indubitably clear and evident that each of these afore-mentioned instruments has depended, and will ever continue to depend, for its proper functioning on this rational faculty, which should be regarded as a sign of the revelation of Him Who is the sovereign Lord of all. Through its manifestation all these names and attributes have been revealed, and by the suspension of its action they are all destroyed and perish.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 163)

Creatively, will is first, the active force, not thought, per se, which remains in its self-contained realm, though its knowledge obviously influences will.  But, in truth, they are so closely and reciprocally intertwined as to make it impossible to separate them, except analytically.  In this context, Will is the intermediate cause of creation, the executive power.  Action is the immediate cause.  Thought? “God saw that the light was good.”

To create, then, will is the most necessary quality, since changing the condition of anything has never been the result of knowledge or thought alone.  Knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha said: “The attainment of any object is conditioned upon knowledge, volition and action. Unless these three conditions are forthcoming, there is no execution or accomplishment.” (Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 157)

And in regards to the topic of justice and peace: “We all know and admit that justice is good, but there is need of volition and action to carry out and manifest it. For example, we might think it good to build a church, but simply thinking of it as a good thing will not help its erection. The ways and means must be provided; we must will to build it and then proceed with the construction. All of us know that international peace is good, that it is conducive to human welfare and the glory of man, but volition and action are necessary before it can be established. Action is essential. Inasmuch as this century is a century of light, capacity for action is assured to mankind.” (Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 157)

Will is not just a capacity for volition and intentions, but, in relation to creating or changing reality, it is the first capacity, the one that gets everything else going, the link between knowledge and action.  Provisionally, we can call will intentional or directed thought, i.e. the power that tells thought where to turn, or, conversely, which carries out thought’s knowledge.  All consciousness is consciousness of difference.  In this regard, we say that will is the heart of consciousness, because it is the power of choice, to move one way or another, and, even, not to move. It is the power that starts action and thus is first cause.

If spiritual principles are in harmony with that which is immanent in human nature then they are also expressions of the divine Will, and when these principles are accepted by the individual this actually puts the human will in harmony with the divine Will that pervades and sustains the universe.

The divine Will manifests in the human world, which is the outer aspect of the soul, as a new social order.  Baha’u’llah announced: “The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 136)

Shoghi Effendi outlined how that mysteriously comes about from within: “That God-born Force, irresistible in its sweeping power, incalculable in its potency, unpredictable in its course, mysterious in its workings, and awe-inspiring in its manifestations—a Force which, as the Báb has written, "vibrates within the innermost being of all created things," and which, according to Bahá'u'lláh, has through its "vibrating influence," "upset the equilibrium of the world and revolutionized its ordered life"—such a Force, acting even as a two-edged sword, is, under our very eyes, sundering, on the one hand, the age-old ties which for centuries have held together the fabric of civilized society, and is unloosing, on the other, the bonds that still fetter the infant and as yet unemancipated Faith of Bahá'u'lláh.” (The Advent of Divine Justice: 46)

This ever active divine Will continually shapes and reconfigures human society to better reflect the Kingdom of Heaven.  Hence “the synchronization of such world-shaking crises with the progressive unfoldment and fruition of their divinely appointed task is itself the work of Providence, the design of an inscrutable Wisdom, and the purpose of an all-compelling Will, a Will that directs and controls, in its own mysterious way, both the fortunes of the Faith and the destinies of men.” (Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice: 72)

The human will also silently vibrates through the web of connections linking all things, but without the power to transform all the relations of creation, only a part of them.  Plus there is a time lag, for while we need action, the divine Will IS His action.  "O My Servant! Obey Me and I shall make thee like unto Myself. I say 'Be,' and it is, and thou shalt say 'Be,' and it shall be." (Baha'u'llah, The Four Valleys: 63)

Faculty of Will

All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth.

(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 149)

Since religion as Revelation, the Word of God, is a source of knowledge that embraces all human consciousness, it can be discovered by any of our higher spiritual faculties.  Which faculty leads in that discovery depends, I suppose, on the individual.  A painter may best discover nature through the faculty of sight, though of course she has other faculties which will come into play.  A musician through hearing, and so on.  I have chosen the six spiritual faculties of religion, justice, morality, intellect, will, and love as the leading faculties to discover the Word of God in relation to the establishment of peace.  These faculties are part and parcel of the essence of the rational faculty, some of its attributes so to speak, and attributes of anything cannot be separated from its essence any more than the rays of the sun can be separated from the sun itself.

These faculties are also active in their natural state, i.e. the state prior to spiritual transformation.  But their enduring activity for good or evil, justice or prejudice, for religion or not, depends upon their transformation, which is initiated by recognition of the “Word made flesh” or His Word.  Now the divine Will and the divine Word are essentially the same thing.  A letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer states: "There is, therefore, only one way to God and that is through the realization of his Manifestation or Prophet in that age. Christ called the world of the prophets the word in the verse of 'the word became flesh' while 'Abdu'l-Bahá calls it the Will. (Lights of Guidance: 510.  That makes the first Mind also the first Will and both are the Word, the first emanation from God.

So, we begin again on a new point of the outer edge of context, launching our discussion from a different foundation, but always working toward the same center: “In essence, peace stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual or moral attitude” thus peace is already within us as an inner state—since “all were made for harmony and union.”—but it needs to be manifested.  That is, peace is something that we “potentially possess” but it can be manifested only as a result of volition.

Will can be generated by spiritual principles.  Recall, the House of Justice states: “The essential merit of spiritual principle is that it not only presents a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures.”

But there is an interesting point with the transformation of will.  Previously, I spoke of the intellect having to undergo a transformation by reversal or inversion through humility and self-abnegation in order to attain unto spiritual understanding in the spirit of faith.  To truly understand spiritual truths, the ordinary human intellectual condition must be sacrificed and incorporated into the spiritual.  The stage of reversal is associated with any transcendent leap.  This is always accomplished and driven by an act of will.  Thought cannot will to transcend itself.  Thought cannot think transcendent thoughts through its own power.  It must be willed. While other faculties expand with their transformation, the faculty of will expands only after completely surrendering itself, willing against itself, so to speak.  That is, while the human experience is, in a sense, built upon the self-assertive exercise of will, the leap into the divine and spiritual is by giving up that will of self-assertion in another act of willing surrender to self-abnegation.  Will is the only quality that is both self-generating and that can negate itself, willing not to will, without losing itself, for that, too, is a willing.  Self-abnegation is far different from a passive surrender to things as they are or simply unfold, or a letting things happen, a lazy go-with-the-flow mentality.  The act of surrender is, too, an act of willing, what the Bahá’i Writings call “radiant acquiescence.”

In this regard let us reacquaint ourselves with this previously quoted statement attributed to the Master: “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.

            One of the best discussions of the Will is found in Hannah Arendt’s, The Life of the Mind.  She makes this distinction between thinking and willing: “Thinking and willing are antagonists only insofar as they affect our psychic states; both, it is true, make present to our mind what is actually absent, but thinking draws into its enduring present what either is or at least has been, whereas willing, stretching out into the future, moves in a region where no such certainties exist.  Our psychic apparatus—the soul as distinguished from the mind—is equipped to deal with what comes toward it from this region of the unknown by means of expectation, whose chief modes are hope and fear.” (The Life of the Mind: 35)

Will is the name of the power that has volitions.  It is connected with the spirit of inner subjective life, the spirit of faith, individualism, the power of choice, moving toward destiny, and creating the future.  But, as Hannah Arendt points out, will is also connected with hope and fear and, thus, connected with justice and morality.

Will is the power which stimulates all things into activity: the divine Will for all things lacking self-consciousness and for human beings will is their stimulus to act.

Will implies a conscious choice to do this or that, to act one way or another. All creatures except the human reality act in accordance with their nature.  Human beings alone can consciously go against their nature.  This makes will one of the chief pillars not of consciousness, but of self-consciousness.  This implies a faculty to make this choice.

While will is the faculty that generates action, more importantly, it is, too, the spontaneous power of beginning something new.  That is, in order for there to be novelty there must be new beginnings.  Yet, in regards to itself, the Will produces its own act, it is self-generating.  It is self-determined in its own nature and obeys its own laws, unlimited by any internal or external agency or object.  It is continually renewed by its own source of itself.  Because the will drives the soul toward the future and destiny, it cannot will backward.  It realizes hope and overcomes fear.

In relation to the world, Will connects the mind’s inwardness with the outer world.  It experiences itself as a causal agent, as the first cause, as causer of causes.  It prepares the ground for action to occur. 

Will says “yes” and “no” at the same time.  Whichever is the conscious choice, the other is implied.  They are always together.  That is, the will’s activity does not exclude its opposite, but brings it along, and thus, at a later time, the implied can become the actuality.  Its activity is, therefore, simultaneously its rest, making it a perpetual energy machine, for its energy is always and automatically replenished.  It is not only self-generating but also self-subsisting.

As Hannah Arendt put it: “the I-will inevitably is countered by an I-nill.” This means it is split internally and every affirmation automatically produces its own counter.  It can only check itself.  The split in the will is a contest, not a dialogue, as with thought.

This split has further implications for moral choice. I mean that command is of the intrinsic nature of willing, but, then, so is obedience.

I said that Will is the only quality that is self-generating and that can negate itself, willing not to will, without losing itself, for that, too, is a willing.  It comes out of itself.  This characteristic of negating itself yet remaining itself makes it, alone of all qualities, free to conceive ends in themselves.  This makes will a fundamental ontological quality and power.

A thought can oppose another thought, but this is not the same as stopping thought, but another thought.  The will’s negating of one of its own volitions by another volition, driving, so to speak, in the opposite direction, is like this.  In actualizing itself it overcomes that in life which, though also a part of life, negates its own life.  But the will can go farther than this.  The will can will its own death, is own paralysis, its own self-abnegation.  Yet, if the will always generates and brings along its opposite, then the act of will to will self-abnegation generates and brings that self along.  Willing its own death brings it a new life, turns it into new life, transforms it from death to life.

The will does not strive after something it does not have, but wills itself toward that thing.  It is both self-preserving and self-asserting—even the negation as an act of will, is the self-asserting itself, but this is the assertion of a higher self. 

Like every other fundamental quality, will is not just known of itself.  Will is known because we understand through logic or imagination that one could have done or chosen other than what one did, a different sequence can be narrated.  To choose is an act of intention, of will.  Volition is the link between mind and matter and knowing and doing.  Will, then, is the focal center of consciousness, for all consciousness is consciousness of difference, and the knowledge that you could have done other than what you did, or to know that you have choice beforehand, is the primal difference.  Willing gives meaning to experience.

Intellect, Heart, and the Spirit of Faith

But the universal divine mind, which is beyond nature, is the bounty of the Preexistent Power. This universal mind is divine; it embraces existing realities, and it receives the light of the mysteries of God. It is a conscious power, not a power of investigation and of research. The intellectual power of the world of nature is a power of investigation, and by its researches it discovers the realities of beings and the properties of existences; but the heavenly intellectual power, which is beyond nature, embraces things and is cognizant of things, knows them, understands them, is aware of mysteries, realities and divine significations, and is the discoverer of the concealed verities of the Kingdom. This divine intellectual power is the special attribute of the Holy Manifestations and the Dawning-places of prophethood; a ray of this light falls upon the mirrors of the hearts of the righteous, and a portion and a share of this power comes to them through the Holy Manifestations.

(‘Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 218)

In the quote above, it is worth noting where ‘Abdu’l-Baha indicates that the light from the universal Mind of the Manifestation falls: on the heart, wherein resides the faculty which recognizes Him.  This light is what, I believe, Baha’u’llah means when He states, in contrasting spiritual with only intellectual knowledge: "Knowledge is a light which God casteth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth." It is this kind of knowledge which is and hath ever been praiseworthy, and not the limited knowledge that hath sprung forth from veiled and obscured minds. This limited knowledge they even stealthily borrow one from the other, and vainly pride themselves therein!” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 46)

Recognition is, as I have stated before, the heart’s way of knowing spiritual reality, an entering into a higher stage of spiritual understanding named the spirit of faith. This means of knowing brings certitude.  Baha’u’llah states: “Do thou ponder these momentous happenings in thy heart, so that thou mayest apprehend the greatness of this Revelation, and perceive its stupendous glory. Then shall the spirit of faith, through the grace of the Merciful, be breathed into thy being, and thou shalt be established and abide upon the seat of certitude.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 236)

Like the other faculties discussed so far, the faculty of intellect, too, expresses new powers and latent capacities when it comes, through the power of faith, under the sway of the divine Word.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha states that: “Spirit in the human world is the discoverer of the realities of existence. All the inventions, all the sciences, all the hidden mysteries are brought to light through the activity of the spirit on the plane of life. While living in the Orient it organizes affairs in the Occident; while living on the earth it discovers the heavenly constellations. These examples ought to show you that the spirit of life is omnipotent, especially when it establishes a communication with God and becomes the recipient of the eternal light—then it transforms itself into a ray of the effulgence of the eternal sun.

“This station is the greatest of all stations, for this connection of the spirit of man with God is like unto a mirror and the sun of reality is reflected in it. Thus it becomes the collective center of all the virtues; its emanation is the bestowal of the king of bestowers; its radiations are the manifold splendors of the infinite luminary; its sanctity is from the highest summit of divine essence. This station is the station of heavenly inspiration and is called the station of the divine grace. It signifies that the rays of the sun of reality are resplendent in the mirror and the attributes of the sun of reality are reflected therein. This is the ultimate degree of human perfection, for the attainment of which the thinkers and philosophers of all time have longed and poets have dreamed; it is the mystery of mysteries and the light of lights wherein the spirit become eternal, self-subsistent, age-abiding.” (Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy: 166-167)

The intellect is limited in its understanding and denied its full range of power if there has been no awakening of the religious faculty, no entry into the spirit of faith.  This limitation results in a blinding of the discerning faculty of justice, leading to a foggy conception of what is morally right and good.

Again, the spirit of faith is no mere form of belief, but, rather, a way of knowing, Baha’u’llah saying that a soul enlightened by true faith will be “established and abide upon the seat of certitude.”  But the way to achieve this understanding is through a kind of reversal of direction of consciousness, an inversion of purpose, a sort of turning the self inside out that comes with the proper understanding of the importance of spiritual origin.  The power of understanding discovers the Word and recognizes It as such.  But it cannot recognize It as such until the natural intellect sacrifices itself to the higher self, until there is a willingness to do this.  Baha’u’llah states: “The essence of understanding is to testify to one’s poverty, and submit to the Will of the Lord, the Sovereign, the Gracious, the All-Powerful.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 155-156) And: “Having recognized thy powerlessness to attain to an adequate understanding of that Reality which abideth within thee, thou wilt readily admit the futility of such efforts as may be attempted by thee, or by any of the created things, to fathom the mystery of the Living God, the Day Star of unfading glory, the Ancient of everlasting days. This confession of helplessness which mature contemplation must eventually impel every mind to make is in itself the acme of human understanding, and marketh the culmination of man's development.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 165)

The Bab wrote: “For verily the soul, while bound by the ephemeral and transitory things of this world, is confined, in its understanding, to limited phenomena only.  However, once the soul hath soared beyond the realm of nature and becometh submerged in the ocean of absolute unity, then can it acquire the capacity to discern the reality of all sciences and knowledge in their full plentitude.” (Gate of the Heart: 44)

‘Abdu’l-Baha stated: “What a heavenly potentiality God has deposited within us! What a power God has given our spirits! He has endowed us with a power to penetrate the realities of things; but we must be self-abnegating, we must have pure spirits, pure intentions, and strive with heart and soul while in the human world to attain everlasting glory.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 187)

With the inspired and transformed intellect, vision is added to faith, the mind opens to reasoning by and from faith i.e. certitude, intention is perfected, spiritual transformation takes place, and the science of the love of God becomes possible.  The rational faculty, the power of understanding, achieves its final stage and transcendent power in the condition of the vision of God; i.e. God seeing through it.  Baha’u’llah exclaims: “If it be your wish, O people, to know God and to discover the greatness of His might, look, then, upon Me with Mine own eyes, and not with the eyes of any one besides Me.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 272)  And: “In this Day whatsoever serveth to reduce blindness and to increase vision is worthy of consideration. This vision acteth as the agent and guide for true knowledge. Indeed in the estimation of men of wisdom keenness of understanding is due to keenness of vision.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 35)  Finally: “Thy hearing is My hearing, hear thou therewith. Thy sight is My sight, do thou see therewith, that in thine inmost soul thou mayest testify unto My exalted sanctity, and I within Myself may bear witness unto an exalted station for thee.” (Baha'u'llah, The Arabic Hidden Words #44)

But in the end, or, rather, in the beginning, all this active force, this transformation and reversal, this awakening of faculties and powers, depends upon the exercise of the faculty of will.  We will take that up next.