Through spiritual
education He (Baha’u’llah) led the people out of darkness and ignorance into
the clear light of truth, illuminated their hearts with the splendor of
knowledge, laid a true and universal basis for religious teachings, cultivated
the virtues of humanity, conferred spiritual susceptibilities, awakened inner
perceptions and changed the dishonor of prejudiced souls to the highest degree
of honor and capacity.
(Abdu'l-Baha,
The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 341)
To
become aware of, build, and disseminate the science of the love of God, which I
call the foundational science of a swiftly emerging category of knowledge named
by ‘Abdu’l-Baha, spiritual or divine science, a theory of knowledge that is
inclusive of the spiritual, and a new model of education, are needed.
I
say emerging category of knowledge, because spiritual sciences must already
exist in order for them to emerge into the human world and consciousness. Where do they exist? Baha’u’llah wrote: “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) clearly indicating that these new sciences, arts, knowledge, and all the rest, for
which His Revelation provides the key are already in existence, treasured up in
the storehouses of God’s knowledge, and that they can be unlocked. In a similar manner He spoke of Socrates: “He
had a profound knowledge of such sciences as were current amongst men as well
as of those which were veiled from their minds.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 146) Here again He indicates that knowledge
itself is part of any state of being, but “knowable” knowledge is a state of
understanding and awareness.
“Knowledge”, He stated, “is all that is knowable…” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 185) What
is knowable at any time is, I believe, circumscribed by human assumptions about
its limits, assumptions which Socrates did not share with the people of his
time. With spiritual knowledge those
limits are pushed back to infinity. Thus
humanity must have a new model of education.
By
education I mean the bringing forth of potentiality into actuality, which is the
actual meaning of the word. All education is the
bringing forth of some innate human ability through learning a knowledge
structure: verbal ability through a language structure; mathematical ability
through understanding the structure of rules and principles governing the
manipulation of quantity. In short, education
happens when there is forged a unity of faculty and dimension through a knowledge
structure. Spiritual education is no
different. But spiritual education does
not primarily bring forth our intellectual gifts of mind, but, rather, those spiritual
ones connected with the heart and these turn the mind toward spiritual reality.
The
Holy Books state that there are two natures to the human being, the eternal and
the organic, spiritual and material, divine and human, and three contexts of
reality, physical, intellectual, and spiritual.
Education to date has mostly focused upon bringing forth the physical
and intellectual potentials of the human reality. But the human reality has innate gifts and
powers that puts it in touch with all three major dimensions of reality. Today, I believe, the eternal, spiritual, divine
aspect is emerging as the leading aspect of the human reality. Thus, knowing the science of the love of God,
and spiritual science in general, is needed.
It is accomplished through awakening those faculties in the soul that
connect with the pre-existing spiritual dimension through a model or knowledge
structure of that spiritual dimension. That knowledge structure is composed
principally of spiritual principles.
These are enshrined in Revelation. The spiritual dimension is composed
of the qualities of God whose reflections, so to speak, are both diffused
throughout creation and within the human reality and connect it with the
reality of His Manifestation. That is,
these qualities are emanations or signs of God and as Baha’u’llah says: “We
will surely show them Our signs in the world and within themselves.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah:
177)
Down
through human history, progressive Revelation is the unfolding Primal Will of
God. It is an unfolding propelled by the
Manifestations of God in a logically connected, expanding tradition of Messages
transforming spiritual essence into material manifestation, eternity into
historicity, spiritual principle into human action. Each of these revealed Messages has
spiritually, intellectually, and socially transformed some fraction of humanity,
through Its principles of life, thought, and behavior that awaken and train
various faculties of the human being through models of, for example, justice,
morality, loving compassion, knowledge and worship. Hence we understand something of the material,
social and intellectual transformations of humanity, and individual spiritual
transformation is well-documented under names like religious or mystical experience
and the changes that flow from that. The
next great domain to understand is humankind’s collective spiritual and social transformation. The phenomenon of spiritual transformation is
never a single process or event, because the spiritual dimension is, as pointed
out, not a monochromatic landscape, but, like the natural, intellectual, and
social worlds, is an infinitely rich and varied interaction of distinct powers
and processes called the qualities and attributes of God. It has dimensions within it, fields of force
and changes of relations between these dimensions and forces that bring forth
by their new configurations in Revelations new spiritual entities that are
given intellectual form by the Revelators, and these intellectual forms over
time find their material expression.
Human knowledge of this chain of causation in philosophy, science, and
art is an analogy of the divine creation and the supreme educational model of
Revelation.
I
mean that through progressively unfolding spiritual principles, Revelation
unveils to human awareness and intelligence an ever-widening Divine vision and
pattern of the dimensions of different virtues named above (i.e. love, justice,
morality, intellect and volition, and others) creating an environment of new possibility
for human experience. Our innate faculties
of the heart and mind, also named love, justice, morality, intellect, faith and
vision, are the inner instruments and powers of an overarching human rational
faculty, whose first purpose is the discovery of the revealed Word and the
resulting recognition of God, as the senses are its outer functions. These all connect with their corresponding
dimensions through the universal and essential knowledge structure provided by
the Revelators. That knowledge structure, which is, again, expanding spiritual
principles, or human values, when authentically encountered, then awakens and
gives life to what the House of Justice calls “that which is immanent in human
nature”, (The Promise of World Peace:
3) educing the higher nature of the human reality—i.e. bringing it forth into
action. This is individual spiritual
transformation.
It
becomes collective when these new beings unfold their knowledge and experience
into the world, providing shared human intellectual models, named science and
art, which reveal the new creation they have discovered, in imitation of the creative
divine one. Too, modeling the principles in behavior does the same thing, as mirror
neurons kick in and provide a behavioral and emotional blueprint of the act
within the mind of the observer. That
is, for spiritual education spiritual principles and moral behavior stimulate
the bringing forth of spiritual being, i.e. bringing forth the higher nature from
oneself is a bringing forth into the world to transform it.
Today,
every member of the human family is called to this endeavor, in concert with
new institutions of society within the Bahá’i Community that are designed to
assist and guide this global advance into an ever-advancing civilization. This is called the establishment of a new
World Order. Yet, in truth, it is really the ages-old drive to erect the eternal
Kingdom of God on earth, that “kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (King James Bible, The Book of Matthew 25:34)
