A DIFFERENT DISCOURSE: PART THREE The Origin and End

The beginning of all utterance is the worship of God, and this followeth upon His recognition. Sanctified must be the eye if it is to truly recognize Him, and sanctified must be the tongue if it is to befittingly utter His praise.

(Baha'u'llah, The Pen of Glory: 154)

Kerygmatic language, the language which proclaims God, sees words as spiritually creative, because it sees words in their proper station as related to the Word.  Kerygmatic language is the first language, born from the Word and learned from the gods, to lift humanity out from nature, to achieve their human nature, and now to bring forth their divine nature.  That the first language is praise of God and His divine Word is brought out in the Scriptures, starting with the opening quote above.  But there are others:

“It is clear and evident, therefore, that the first bestowal of God is the Word, and its discoverer and recipient is the power of understanding. This Word is the foremost instructor in the school of existence and the revealer of Him Who is the Almighty. All that is seen is visible only through the light of its wisdom. All that is manifest is but a token of its knowledge. All names are but its name, and the beginning and end of all matters must needs depend upon it.”(Baha'u'llah, The Pen of Glory: 94)

"The God of mercy hath taught the Qur'án, hath created man, hath taught him articulate speech." (Qur'án 55:1-3)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (King James Bible, John 1:1)

Yet it also the last language, not just the Alpha but also the Omega of speech, both the origin and highest expression, seed and fruit.  And to say that it is the first language is, of course, not to assert anything as simpleminded as that the first word spoken is God, followed by Prophets, angels and saints.  No, it is, as in all things human, a process of discovering an essence as that essence is coming forth into more complex manifestation.  It is, then, the glue joining and knitting together the beginning when: “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech", (King James Bible, Genesis 11:1) and the end when God promised: “For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.” (King James Bible, Zephaniah 3:9)

Thus the kerygmatic is, as stated before, and in regards to human utterance, also an example of: “in truth there is a return and resurrection for every created thing” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 186-187); “that which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140); and: “The highest essence and most perfect expression of whatsoever the peoples of old have either said or written hath, through this most potent Revelation, been sent down from the heaven of the Will of the All-Possessing, the Ever-Abiding God.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 87)

This is not to say that other modes of language are no longer useful or meaningful.  We don’t throw away arithmetic when we learn algebra, as if it was some sort of now useless scaffolding. Rather we learn more complex rules for the manipulation of number and quantity to bring forth what arithmetic cannot.  But we still use arithmetic to balance the bank statement.  But in mature kerygmatic speech an added religious dimension (religious in the etymological sense of reuniting all things) is reintroduced into language.  The language of the Word is heard in the heart, and when truly heard faith is enkindled, as stated by Paul: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (The Book of Romans 10:17)

Faith perfects the natural reason by virtue of the supernatural light of Revelation being received into the heart, allowing the intellect to assent to Revelation’s supernatural truths.  Faith is, as Saint Paul says in the Letter to the Hebrews, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1). It is, in other words, a form of knowledge that extends beyond the natural limits of our intellect, to help us grasp the truths of divine revelation, truths that we cannot arrive at purely by the means of the human natural reason.

The Bab adds: “Man’s highest station, however, is attained through faith in God in every Dispensation and by acceptance of what hath been revealed by Him, and not through learning; inasmuch as in every nation there are learned men who are versed in divers sciences.” (Selections From the Writings of the Báb: 88)

Because of its spiritual power and religious origin, the kerygmatic, or what I am calling the proclamation mode of language, and not just the more or less isolated proclamation (kerygma) of and about the Word itself, carries a moral authority that separates it from the purely metaphorical that is poetry and myth, making its metaphors more existential than literary, an ethical dimension that distinguishes it from the merely aesthetic and beautiful, a polysemous meaning that expands and resonates out from the more literal prosaic, and a transformative power that elevates it above the descriptive and discursive.  Yet it is, too, permeated with joy and punctuated with laughter.

It is, as I said before, revelatory.  But by revelatory here I mean not a revelation from God, but a revelation of God, insofar as human speech can do that, a bringing forth of what God has deposited of His Being in His creation.  It describes God in His attributes, evokes His Presence, understands and explicates His purpose, and calls on His aid to accomplish these.  With this mode of language we may see that, in truth: “This is the Day whereon naught can be seen except the splendors of the Light that shineth from the face of Thy Lord, the Gracious, the Most Bountiful. Verily, We have caused every soul to expire by virtue of Our irresistible and all-subduing sovereignty. We have, then, called into being a new creation, as a token of Our grace unto men.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 29)

Let’s examine in greater depth the relation of the kerygmatic to the Word itself and to the expression of the divine nature latent within the human reality in order to bring forth that nature.

“The Word of God is the king of words and its pervasive influence is incalculable. It hath ever dominated and will continue to dominate the realm of being. The Great Being saith: The Word is the master key for the whole world, inasmuch as through its potency the doors of the hearts of men, which in reality are the doors of heaven, are unlocked.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 173)

What is human utterance?  “Human utterance is an essence which aspireth to exert its influence and needeth moderation.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 143) So we have these two powers and influences in relation.  First is the pervasive influence of the Word, the dominant force in creation, the master key for the whole world BECAUSE its potency can unlock the doors of hearts of human beings.  These doors of the heart lead not outwardly to earth or sky or society, but inwardly to heaven, the eternal realm of spirit.  And, secondly, we have human utterance which is “an essence” that aspires to exert its influence outwardly and needs moderating, else it will exert a pernicious influence.

The idea of moderation as a balancing, harmonizing power, leads of course to the image of the balance as the leitmotif of justice, the builder of civilization, the discerner of truth, the expression of courtesy, and the “best-beloved of all things” in His sight. As Baha’u’llah says about moderation in a social context: “Whoso cleaveth to justice, can, under no circumstances, transgress the limits of moderation. He discerneth the truth in all things, through the guidance of Him Who is the All-Seeing. The civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences, will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men. Thus warneth you He Who is the All-Knowing. If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 342)

Balanced or moderated speech, then, is just speech; what we call in the public arena, “civil discourse.”  To be clear, just speech is, I believe, more than polite, mannered, cultivated speech. Rather, it is the result of a harmonizing into a creative tension of two of the most powerful forces in the universe, the all-pervasive Word of God, the king of Words, and that essence which is human speech that at all times seeks to exert its influence. The question is: How does one both tap the universal power of the Word of God to unlock the hearts of people to turn them toward the vastness of the spiritual realm, and also harness the powerful urge of human utterance so as to exert its influence in a non-egoistic and beneficent way, so that one does not cross over moderation into bombast, derogatory speech, or self-righteousness, or worse?  How, in short, to achieve that state He mentions: sanctified must be the tongue if it is to befittingly utter His praise?  

Baha’u’llah outlines some conditions and issues a warning in a celebrated passage often called the Tablet of the True Seeker.  We’ll get to that in a minute.  But let’s first pause and reflect that this essence called human utterance is a powerful drug, one that can miraculously heal or calamitously damage the heart and soul. To assist those reflections let us see what is the purpose of the organs of speech communication?  For example, Baha’u’llah speaks about the purpose of our sense of hearing, saying: “This lowly one entreateth the people of the world to observe fairness, that their tender, their delicate and precious hearing which hath been created to hearken unto the words of wisdom may be freed from impediments and from such allusions, idle fancies or vain imaginings as 'cannot fatten nor appease the hunger', so that the true Counsellor may be graciously inclined to set forth that which is the source of blessing for mankind and of the highest good for all nations.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 170)  That is, not until we have prepared the soil of the heart to receive the divine speech will He speak forth, else the Message will be drowned in the noise and clamor of ordinary egoistic chatter.  On the other side, He stated the spiritual purpose of the tongue: “Verily I say, the tongue is for mentioning what is good, defile it not with unseemly talk. God hath forgiven what is past. Henceforward everyone should utter that which is meet and seemly, and should refrain from slander, abuse and whatever causeth sadness in men.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 219-220)

 To both prepare the heart and to reinforce His warnings about the creative/destructive power of words, He states that the seeker: “must never seek to exalt himself above any one, must wash away from the tablet of his heart every trace of pride and vainglory, must cling unto patience and resignation, observe silence, and refrain from idle talk. For the tongue is a smouldering fire, and excess of speech (like the excess of civilization quoted above) a deadly poison. Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endure a century.

“That seeker should also regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep himself aloof from its dominion, inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul.” (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan: 193)

More conditions in next post.

A DIFFERENT DISCOURSE: PART TWO--KERYGMA

No man of wisdom can demonstrate his knowledge save by means of words. This showeth the significance of the Word as is affirmed in all the Scriptures, whether of former times or more recently.

(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 172)

One of the major themes of these posts, and of the book of which these posts form the draft, has been that with the advent of every Revelation creation is both made new and renewed to demonstrate the interrelated principles of: “in truth there is a return and resurrection for every created thing” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 186-187); “that which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140); and: “The highest essence and most perfect expression of whatsoever the peoples of old have either said or written hath, through this most potent Revelation, been sent down from the heaven of the Will of the All-Possessing, the Ever-Abiding God.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 87)

There are two other associated principles to remember: first, because of progressive Revelation, which is the power driving the unfolding of life in the universe, there is not just a simple return for every created thing, but a progress toward maturity and complexity in its form; and, second, the essential spiritual form of anything, what all manifest stages of growth come forth from, itself appears in manifest form as the “highest essence and most perfect expression” of that creation at the end of every universal cycle, for the transformation of any thing comes from reshaping itself from its own depths.  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá supports this last notion, writing in regard to the relation between the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and all previous Revelations: “(T)he rising of the Greatest Luminary was the condition of the perfection of the essence and of the qualities.” (Some Answered Questions: 124) And: (T)he words of Bahá’u’lláh are the essences of the words of the Prophets of the past.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 314)

Now all these principles can be brought out in regards to kerygma and catechesis, which is and has been the chief method of spreading the Good News of the coming of a new Message and Messenger from God and consolidating His community of faith.  We continue, then our exploration of the kerygmatic mode of language, perhaps the “different discourse” required today.  But the kerygmatic may also be the first discourse of humanity now appearing in its highest essence.

Kerygma is a Greek word used in the New Testament for "preaching" of a certain kind. It is related to the Greek other verbs keryssein, to proclaim, and keryx, herald.  Thus it means literally "to cry or proclaim as a herald".

Kerygma was the initial proclamation of the gospel message by the Apostles as recorded in the New Testament. Kerygma was considered the very heart of the gospel, the core message of the Christian faith, the irreducible essence of Christian apostolic preaching, that all believers are called to proclaim. More generally it is the mode of preaching, which we will get to in a bit.  The core message was that Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament, was sent by God, preached the coming of the Kingdom of God, died, was buried, rose from the dead, and was raised to the right hand of God in heaven.  The kerygma, or preaching, was followed by the didache, or catechesis, the oral instruction of doctrine and moral teaching given before baptism to those who accepted the message.

The proclamation (kerygma) of the Gospel message is addressed not to the reason, but to the hearer as a self.  It was to proclaim Christ to the individual heart and to appeal for conversion and its promise of redemption.  The catechesis was addressed to the mind, and sought understanding of the Scripture in the light of what is taught.  For the early Christians, the full kerygma was to appear in the Age of Fulfillment, the “latter days”, which Christians associate with the second coming of Christ.  For some the latter days actually started with the resurrection of Jesus and would reach a consummation with His return.    

Early last century the term kerygma was reintroduced as kerygma theology and the movement is usually associated with the theologian Rudolph Bultmann who suggested that the gospels were of an oral and literary genre unique in the ancient world. However much it resembled the mythology contemporary with it, he asserted, this mythological cloak was a mere shroud—one that brings sneers from modern day minds which think to be the real message and thus on a par with similar mythologies of that time.  But the Gospels were actually another kind of message.

Bultmann explains, “This then is the mythical view of the world which the New Testament presupposes when it presents the event of redemption which is the subject of its preaching. It proclaims in the language of mythology that the last time has now come… All this is that language of mythology, and the origin of the various themes can be easily traced in the contemporary mythology of Jewish Apocalyptic and in the redemption myths of Gnosticism. To this extent the kerygma [preaching, proclamation] is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that that mythical view of the world is obsolete. We are therefore bound to ask whether, when we preach the Gospel today, we expect our converts to accept not only the Gospel message, but also the mythical view of the world in which it is set. If not, does the New Testament embody a truth which is quite independent of its mythical setting? If it does, theology must undertake the task of stripping the Kerygma from its mythical framework, of demythologizing’ it.”(See Bultmann’s essay "New Testament and Mythology": 2-3)

Whatever one thinks of the theology of this, there can be no doubt that kerygma is highly-charged message addressed primarily to the heart not the reason.  The kerygma was mythical in design, poetic in shape and oracular in delivery.  It is addressed to the heart to bring it to recognize and accept the Manifestation of God.  It is a testimony or declaration of faith, a witnessing and observing, like the two shahada of Sunni Islam: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”  The didactic, catechistic was more intellectually disciplined, rational and discursive.  But, following the insight of Bultmann, but broadening it beyond the Christian Gospels, any Revelation of the Word of God is a different sort of message from myth, poetry, or moral philosophy, however much of these they may use, contain or are presented in.

I mean that, for me the kerygma and catechesis, which Baha’is know as teaching and deepening, are indicative of the principle that all Revelation is, first, an event to be experienced, (See in this regard Kenneth Cragg’s The Event of the Qur’an) and, second, a set of laws, principles and truths to be studied.  But the different discourse of today combines these into one.  That is, the kerygmatic is no longer just an unique genre of literary or oral creation, but the essential one for all others, the one they come out from.

The alert reader familiar with the Bahá’i Texts will no doubt see the parallel of the purpose of kerygma and catechesis with Baha’u’llah’s admonition/warning written in the opening paragraph of His Most Holy Book (Kitab-i-Aqdas): “The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.” (The Kitab-i-Aqdas: 19)

A modern-day faith with a divine Herald and no clergy, where all believers are called upon to “teach” their faith at any moment to a spiritually starving humanity in desperate need of guidance and moral direction, it seems to me possible to expand the kerygma into the kerygmatic, from the special proclamation of the Word into a general form or mode of language: a language not only spiritually transformative of the human soul, but also unique in its capacity to reveal universal spiritual reality.  What makes it unique’?

For one, the kerygmatic mode of speech, as I perceive it, sees all words as spiritually creative. “Every word is endowed with a spirit, therefore the speaker or expounder should carefully deliver his words at the appropriate time and place, for the impression which each word maketh is clearly evident and perceptible. The Great Being saith: One word may be likened unto fire, another unto light, and the influence which both exert is manifest in the world. Therefore an enlightened man of wisdom should primarily speak with words as mild as milk, that the children of men may be nurtured and edified thereby and may attain the ultimate goal of human existence which is the station of true understanding and nobility. And likewise He saith: One word is like unto springtime causing the tender saplings of the rose-garden of knowledge to become verdant and flourishing, while another word is even as a deadly poison. It behoveth a prudent man of wisdom to speak with utmost leniency and forbearance so that the sweetness of his words may induce everyone to attain that which befitteth man's station.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 172-173)

That is, He sees words as more than mere signs signifying something, or conveyor belts shuffling information from mind to mind, or builders of imaginative images poetically describing, however exquisitely, the beauties of nature or human beings.  Words are, of course, all of these things, performing all these various functions.  But to know where words get their spirit we must know what the Word is and its relation to this idea of kerygma, or proclamation of the Word.  That is the subject of the next post.

A DIFFERENT DISCOURSE: PART ONE

A different Cause, however, hath appeared in this day and a different discourse is required.

(Baha'u'llah, Tabernacle of Unity: 113-114)

Knowledge is the cause of spiritual, intellectual and social advance.  But this is not a straight linear advance along a continuum, an unbroken continuity stretching from antiquity to modernity.  There are revolutionary breaks in knowledge, discontinuities giving rise to new rules for the formation and generation of knowledge, to new methods of discourse about it, to new patterns of syntactical relations, which are not just linguistic but also perceptual and conceptual.  These are, or will be, the rules and principles, the patterns and processes, of ordering and arranging perceptions and ideas within language, the inner markings characterizing a new human psychology.  All these taken together represent a fundamental shift in the kinds of ideas that can be generated and discussed and the methods of discourse that embody and convey them.  But today, the discontinuity takes on the shape and character of reversal.  I mean that since the Revelation of Baha’u’llah the direction of growth inverts with the shift to spiritual awareness, the self-reflective subject built up through the Revelations of the Adamic Era becomes, through self-abnegation, reflective of divine attributes.  This is a universal growth of mind, like going from only black and white to full color.

Within language it is the framework which changes with each new universal revolution and not just the picture within the frame.  Hence two distinct phenomena are covered by the shift, the content of thought and the organization of thought.  The origins of such far-reaching change was stated by a great British historian, Herbert Butterfield, in the opening page of his classic study, The Origins of Modern Science: “We shall find that in both celestial and terrestrial physics—which hold the strategic place in the whole movement—change is brought about, not by new observations or additional evidence in the first instance, but by transpositions that were taking place inside the minds of the scientists themselves. In this connection it is not irrelevant to note that of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking cap for the moment.” (Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science: 1)  But that new thinking cap in any meaningful sociological sense is a new language that awakens within the hearer the new perceptual order discovered within themselves by the pioneers of thought.

It is a complex process.  The complexity of change over these vast stretches of time can be summed up, at least in the history of the “west”, as a shift from poetry to prose to proclamation (kerygma) as the medium of intentional, preserved communication; each change both evoked by and carried forward through the creation of a new syntax of verbalization.  The current change now underway is from prose to proclamation. That is, we may discern in the proclamation of the Word of God by the most recent Manifestations of God, the Word made flesh, a heightened spiritual language, that of Revelation, fertilizing and reconfiguring both the non-conceptual and conceptual to reveal the spiritual.

Again this collective change is associated historically and psychologically with an emerging mode of understanding that these languages and syntaxes denote, i.e. from sensory to intellectual and now from intellectual to spiritual of the heart.  When the intellectual, or better conceptual, replaced the sensory it was through the creation of a language form wherein the abstract replaced the concrete.  It was more than simply the invention of an abstract version of what had previously been experienced sensually and directly as a series of events or actions, however much it may have been that at the beginning of the transformation. But to see the change of language in its fullness, such terms as “concept” or “abstraction” must be seen in their end-forms—i.e. as the end result of the transformation. The transformative changes for classic Greek society in particular and for western culture in general are fully documented in Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato.  But in his article, The Alphabetic Mind, he stated the linguistic change concisely: “Critics and commentators are fond of calling attention to the presence of what they call abstractions or abstract ideas in Homer. This at bottom is a mistake, the nature of which can be clarified by giving an example of what the abstractive process in language involves, as opposed to Homeric idiom. The poet Homer begins his Iliad by addressing his Muse: 'Sing I pray you the wrath of Achilles, the wrath that ravages, the wrath that placed on the Achaeans ten thousand afflictions.' Suppose we render these sentiments into prose and translate them into abstract terms; they would then run somewhat as follows: 'My poem’s subject is the wrath of Achilles which had disruptive effects and these caused deep distress for the Achaeans.' A series of acts signalled in the original by appropriate transitive verbs and performed by agents on personal objects is replaced by abstractions connected to each other by verbs indicating fixed relationships between them.”

Too, verbs within concept language can also be intransitive, denoting no specific object but focusing on the action indicated by the verb itself.  Havelock continues: “Concept language is based upon the abstract language of permanent and fixed relations.  Complete “conceptuality” of discourse (if this be the appropriate word) depends not on single words treated as phenomena per se, but on their being placed in a given relationship to one another in statements which employ either a copula or an equivalent to connect them. The growth of abstractionism and conceptualism in the Greek tongue is not discoverable by a mere resort to lexicons, indexes, and glossaries, common as this practice has become. Single words classifiable as abstract like ‘justice’ or ‘strife’ or ‘war’ or ‘peace’ can as easily be personified as not. What is in question is the ability of the human mind to create and manipulate theoretic statements as opposed to particular ones; to replace a performative syntax by a logical one.”

But a different discourse is required in this Day when “He Who is both the Beginning and the End, He Who is both Stillness and Motion, is now manifest before your eyes.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 168)

A process language is being born, a language where all relations are a vibrating influence, because all things reflect and embody the archetypal principle of the universe: “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today. The world of existence came into being through the heat generated from the interaction between the active force and that which is its recipient. These two are the same, yet they are different. Thus doth the Great Announcement inform thee about this glorious structure.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140)

A process language favors grasping the structure of movement of all kinds, and perhaps the mathematics of quantum mechanics is as close to that as we have come.  It is one where not fixed relations are seen, but dynamic ones.  It is a language of metamorphoses and transformation, of growth and development, of alteration and modulation as the permanent aspects of the things.  Such innovations in language as Hopkins “sprung rhythm” or the more popular free verse may be poetic attempts at it. Whitehead’s Process and Reality is a philosophical analysis of it. 

Others have seen the language of scripture as a model.  Northrop Frye in his magisterial Words with Power speaks of the kerygmatic mode of discourse found in the Bible.  For example: “The implications for the conception of the kerygmatic are, first, that kerygmatic writing normally demands a literary, that is, a mythical and metaphorical, basis; second, that the kerygmatic does not, like ordinary rhetoric, emerge from direct personal address, or what a writer ‘says….

“In poetry anything can be juxtaposed, or implicitly identified with, anything else.  Kerygma takes this a step further and says: ‘you are what you identify with’.  We are close to kerygmatic whenever we meet the statement, as we do surprisingly often in contemporary writing, that it seems to be language that uses man rather than man that uses language.” (Words with Power: 116)  This last sentence points to the self-abnegating subject open to being inspired.  A little later he remarks: “…if the word inspiration means anything at all, it means the point at which the cleavage between active speech and reception of speech merges into a unity.  At this point we are in a genuinely kerygmatic realm.” (Words with Power: 118)  Here we hear echoes of the “B” and “E”, active force and recipient, joined and knit together.

Eric Voegelin, in his book, In Search for Order, the fifth and last volume of his five volume Order and History, goes back to Genesis to find the kind of language needed to convey spiritual processes associated with the creative Word: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” or, in the more literal Buber-Rosenzweig translation, “God spoke: Light be! Light became.” The reality light appears in this verse when the divine command calls it forth, into its existential luminosity, by calling it by its name. The spoken word, it appears, is more than a mere sign signifying something; it is a power in reality that evokes structures in reality by naming them.…The It-reality is symbolized as the strong movement of a spiritual consciousness, imposing form on a formless and nonforming countermovement, as the tension between a pneumatic, formative force (ruach; in later Greek translation, pneuma) and an at least passively resistant counterforce. Moreover, the tension in the It is definitely not the tension of a human consciousness in its struggle with reality for its truth; it is recognized as a nonhuman process, to be symbolized as divine; and yet it has to convey an aura of analogy with the human process because man experiences his own acts, such as the quest for truth, as acts of participation in the process of the It. When the authors of Genesis 1 put down the first words of their text they were conscious of beginning an act of participation in the mysterious Beginning of the It.” (In Search of Order:19-20)

A secular and modern model of a new language mode, called rheomode, was created by physicist David Bohm. He believes that his new language form is necessary both to counteract the fragmentary world view characteristic of modern times—a view embodied and perpetuated by a language structure that presents subject and object as separate things related by some sort of verb copula (i.e. abstract, concept language discussed by Havelock)—and to embody the new scientific ideas of wholeness and undivided movement.  He writes: “(T)he world view implied in the rheomode is in essence…(and)…expressed by saying that all is an unbroken and undivided whole movement, and that each ‘thing’ is abstracted only as a relatively invariant side or aspect of this movement. It is clear, therefore, that the rheomode implies a world view quite different from the usual language structure.  More specifically, we see that the mere act of considering such a new mode of language and observing how it works can help draw our attention to the way in which our ordinary language structure puts strong and subtle pressure on us to hold to a fragmentary world view.” (Wholeness and the Implicate Order: 60)

Poetic language before the advent of the language of abstractions in their fixed linguistic relations presents a series of sensuous events with no necessary inner connectivity.  The abstract conceptual is an architectural language grasping, connecting, and holding these events by inner mental laws and forms.  But the spiritual is animating energy and movement, of melody and harmony, of fertilizing idea, the motion of water flowing and rhythmic winds and pulsating fires, like a Whitman poem.  Hence its concepts must also be percepts, by incorporating some of the ever-changing fluid nature of percepts, which change as the light or rhythm does, which awaken new powers, which upset equilibriums of thought, which advance and retreat, but overall form an ever-advancing comprehension through the spiritual dynamics of crisis and victory.  It is, simultaneously, the action of unifying yet inverting and reversing, a seeing of oneness in mutual mirroring.  It is transforming and transcending, particularizing and universalizing as opposite responses to the same Impulse, when Paradise is brought nigh hell blazes up.  It speaks of the reciprocal actions of the twin Plans of God, and of spirit and matter.

That is, such “concepts” are really symbols throwing together and fusing opposites in the mind and in language, always the inner and outer acting together creating an universal transformational effect upon the behavior of the mind and language which determine the kind of things that can be said and the things that can be thought.  “And yet, is not the object of every Revelation to effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions?” (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan: 240)

Yet, there is an adamantine structural quality to it, as movement comes forth from stillness, and water flows beneficially between the firm banks of the river.  For, though all creation advances by the unfolding transformational knowledge in progressive Revelation, the universe and the Kingdom of God remain the same in their essential structure, their eternal principles, and in their single purpose.  “All beings, whether large or small, were created perfect and complete from the first, but their perfections appear in them by degrees. The organization of God is one; the evolution of existence is one; the divine system is one.” (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 199)

More on this in next post.

In the Vortex: The Crossing at the B and E

Not in any other of the species in the world of existence is there such a difference, contrast, contradiction and opposition as in the species of man.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions:235)

 As everyone knows, we live in a time of unprecedented upheaval and change.  The “winds of despair” are blowing with hurricane force, while the hopes of humanity are uplifted to bring into being an unimaginably glorious future.  The “world’s equilibrium hath been upset” because a new creation “hath been called into being”. The “lamentably defective” existing order is crumbling with terrifying acceleration, while simultaneously a new “most glorious” order is being laboriously erected.  Always, divine spiritual impulses generate opposing and contradictory reactions among all created things.  We have discussed this as “paradise brought nigh” and “hell made to blaze.”  But it is also a product of any dialectical world-view, a view which in modern times is especially characteristic of Marxian materialist philosophy derived from Hegel’s idealistic logic.  Yet, contradiction in life and thought may lead through the violence of the antagonists interplay to a condensation in which opposites are blended together.

Creationally, everything “created in pairs” means, I believe, not only as two expressions of one reality, as male and female in humanity, but also, as the positive and negative, the antithetical, possibilities of every created thing.   This is one meaning of the B and the E joining and knitting together, which we will explore in this post, for it is an intrinsic law of creation.

“Shoghi Effendi, in letters written on his behalf, has explained the significance of the "letters B and E". They constitute the word "Be", which, he states, "means the creative Power of God Who through His command causes all things to come into being" and "the power of the Manifestation of God, His great spiritual creative force".  The imperative "Be" in the original Arabic is the word "kun", consisting of the two letters "kaf" and "nun". They have been translated by Shoghi Effendi in the above manner. This word has been used in the Qur'án as God's bidding calling creation into being.” (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas: 247)

The “B” and the “E” are “joined and knit together” in the resonant interval, where opposites flow into each other.  The resonant interval is the metaphorical gap where vibrations, pulsations of energies, waves and currents from the two worlds, “B” and “E”, meet, like the synaptic gap between nerve endings over which jumps the electrical impulse, carried as a wave by the invisible medium of the soul.  This union is one where B and E come together creating a turbulent flow, as a vortex, that spans, fills and spills over the interval for it cannot be bridged by the realities themselves. Yet it is really the gap that dissolves. The opposites reciprocally influence one another through the joining and knitting of infinite frequencies and vibrations into wave interference patterns that cancel some actual existences, but amplify other potentials into existence.  They are connected directly, but cross oppositely, (i.e. chiastically) bringing together from opposite sides two parts of one process.  This movement is that each process, simultaneously and reciprocally, transforms at the midmost point of the heart into its opposite by bringing forth its opposite and the opposites are manifestly integrated to reveal the full process that is the conditions of renewal, progress and renovation.  It is opposite ends joined and knit together, like blood circulation and respiration.  These are the contradictory/complementary transformative engines of change. 

Knowledge is, too, a point of intersection and interplay.  It is the manifestation of Reality.  The Manifestation appears at the mid-most point of creation, which is where, in His own Being, symbolically, the organic and the spiritual connect, which is outwardly on the plane of manifestation, Carmel, the mountain of God.  Their connection, while direct, for they are a symbol (symballein or thrown together), is one of resonance.  That is, the connection is not like fitting together the two pieces of a broken amulet, but a harmonious blending of frequencies, of light upon a mirror and reflected back.  He raises His voice “betwixt earth and heaven”.  He is “He Who hath been manifested is the Hidden Mystery, the Treasured Symbol, through Whom the letters B and E (Be) have been joined and knit together.” (Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah: 320)

Again, He is the Alpha and Omega inhabiting both poles of the circle of life, the arc of descent and the arc of ascent.  The vortex is where these arcs meet and energies cross and stimulate their opposites.  The unity of His two stations, “the station of distinction” that “pertaineth to the world of creation and to the limitations thereof” (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan: 176)  and the station of “pure abstraction and essential unity” (Kitab-i-Iqan: 152) which is the unchanging eternity of essence, come together as and at the Primal Point of connection between heaven and earth.  That connection is the originating union of the two realms, though they never “touch” but is, rather, manifest through the collision of opposing energies that both sunders the existing “B” and “E” and rejoins them in new configuration of being and knowledge.  This weaving metaphor is important, joined and knit together being, perhaps, fibers or filaments intertwining in creation that parallels and embodies the sounds of divine Language, the Word of God as Revelation and Divine Being, knitting together a new reality of knowledge of the new creation.  The interpenetrating dimensions of existence make the relation vibratory and the resounding verbs and phrases are educative, bringing forth created things by calling them forth, evoking an inner communion between Spirit and Matter that is reflected in the interlocking dimensions of community life that are manifest both as an embracing unity the binds and knits together the reality of all the “difference, contrast, contradiction and opposition” that is the human reality and world of humanity.

That is, the reflexivity of knowledge, of A is A, mirrors the structure of reality, of B and E manifestly joined and knit together to reflect the “essential unity” of  “these two are the same yet they are different.”  As He asserts of the unity of opposites in His own Being, each bringing forth its opposite in creation: “I bear witness that in His person solidity and fluidity have been joined and combined. Through His immovable constancy in Thy Cause, and His unwavering adherence to whatsoever Thou, in the plentitude of the light of Thy glory, didst unveil to His eyes, throughout the domains of Thy Revelation and creation, the souls of Thy servants were stirred up in their longing for Thy Kingdom, and the dwellers of Thy realms rushed forth to enter into Thy heavenly dominion. Through the restlessness He evinced in Thy path, the feet of all them that are devoted to Thee were steeled and confirmed to manifest Thy Cause amidst Thy creatures, and to demonstrate Thy sovereignty throughout Thy realm.”(Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah: 49)

But His great purpose in coming He says is “to draw thee from the realms of contradiction unto the retreats of oneness, and to lead thee to the sacred streams of His Law.”(Baha'u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries: 8)

 Again, He says regarding the reflexive unity of the “BE” of creation over the circle of time: “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.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 183)

Shoghi Effendi points out where these principles of oneness and the duality of simultaneity and reciprocal action, which is the crossing of energies and processes, help define the overall workings of the two Plans of God: “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)  The House of Justice further illustrates how this turbulence of simultaneous processes working in opposition creates a new vortex of possibilities of social life for those who are alert and can follow the flow: “It is against such "simultaneous processes of rise and fall, of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos, with their continuous and reciprocal reactions on each other," that a myriad new opportunities for the next stage in the unfoldment of the beloved Master's Divine Plan present themselves.” (The Universal House of Justice, A Wider Horizon, Selected Letters 1983-1992: 103)

The principles of reciprocal transformation even operate within every individual and structure his/her efforts to transform society: “At the very core of the aims of the Faith are the establishment of justice and unity in the world, the removal of prejudice and enmity from among all people, the awakening of compassion and understanding in the hearts of all men and women, and the raising of all souls to a new level of spirituality and behavior through the vitalizing influence of divine Revelation. The course set forth by Bahá'u'lláh for the attainment of these aims is the double task of simultaneously building an ideal society and perfecting the behavior of individuals. For this dual and reciprocal transformation He has not only revealed laws, principles and truths attuned to the needs of this age, but has established the very nucleus and pattern of those institutions which are to evolve into the structure of the divinely purposed world society.” (The Universal House of Justice, 1992 Dec 10, Issues Related to Study Compilation)
      Finally, the principles reveal the antagonistic/unifying relations between humanity’s two great knowledge systems: “To every fair-minded observer, you are the living proof that faith in God and confidence in social progress are in every sense reconcilable; that science and religion are the two inseparable, reciprocal systems of knowledge impelling the advancement of civilization.” (The Universal House of Justice, 2003 Nov 26, To the Followers of Bahá'u'lláh in the Cradle of the Faith:4)

The Revealed Word and the Akashic Field

From the heaven of God's Will, and for the purpose of ennobling the world of being and of elevating the minds and souls of men, hath been sent down that which is the most effective instrument for the education of the whole human race. The highest essence and most perfect expression of whatsoever the peoples of old have either said or written hath, through this most potent Revelation, been sent down from the heaven of the Will of the All-Possessing, the Ever-Abiding God.

(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 87)

A universal message is not one that is true for everyone at this time, but one that “hath been” true for humanity at all times.  It must have been true in the past, is true now, and will be true in the future.  This does not mean that it will not change, but its change is only that of unfolding in more manifest form its truth.  But, too, it must bring together old ideals and notions with contemporary ideas of the same, yet more manifestly complex, reality so that humanity’s current of intellectual energy runs true.  Thus old concepts such as the ether and metamorphosis, and sciences such as alchemy, are returning in new form to help us grasp the new reality that is also the old reality renewed.

The best example of this progressive unfoldment of the same Reality is the interconnected Revelations advancing the same divine Message through time and history.  It comes in two parts, a material law that is abrogated and replaced with every new Revelation, and a spiritual part that unfolds into greater complexity and clarity.  Of the spiritual aspect ‘Abdu’l-Baha says: “The spiritual part never changes. All the Manifestations of God and His Prophets have taught the same truths and given the same spiritual law. They all teach the one code of morality. There is no division in the truth. The Sun has sent forth many rays to illumine human intelligence, the light is always the same.” (Paris Talks: 142) 

Now one of the most fascinating aspects of the renewal of the spiritual law in new and greater form, and what makes it truly universal, is that each Revelation not only lays the groundwork for the next and future Revelations, a clear idea, but also it seems to affect the past, perhaps in the sense of renewal in some manner.  Baha’u’llah remarks about Himself and His Revelation: “Thou art He, by Whose name the Hidden Secret was divulged, and the Well-Guarded Name was revealed, and the seals of the sealed-up Goblet were opened, shedding thereby its fragrance over all creation, whether of the past or of the future.” (Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah: 240-241)

This brings us to a discussion of another ancient idea receiving new attention, this one from the Hindu tradition, perhaps Indian would be better.  I refer to the doctrine of the Akashic Field and Akashic Record.  According to this belief, the Akashic Field is a universal field of patterned energy underlying creation from which all the universe is formed. Being the background to the subatomic worlds, it also flows through the other realms of stars, galaxies and human life, and is an activating force in all those realms.

But it also seems a storehouse of information, for the Akashic Record is the record of everything that ever occurred or will occur in time and space.  It also holds the potential for all future actual events and thoughts.  Thus the “Akasha” is in two parts, pre-creation formative structure and all-inclusive record, what in the human intelligence we might call imagination and memory.

Modern philosophers, such as Ervin Laszlo in his book, Science and the Akashic Field, accepts the Hindu idea, calling it the “A-field”.  He believes that it may not only be a super dense sea of frictionless energy but also a sea of information conveying the historical experience of matter.  For him, and those who believe as he does, the discovery in physics of the zero point energy field (ZPF), is also the discovery of this universal information field.

In the preface to his book he writes: “Akasha (a-ka 'ska) is a Sanskrit word meaning "ether": all-pervasive space. Originally signifying "radiation" or "brilliance," in Indian philosophy akasha was considered the first and most fundamental of the five elements - the others being vata (air), agni (fire), ap (water), and prithivi (earth). Akasha embraces the properties of all five elements: it is the womb from which everything we perceive with our senses has emerged and into which everything will ultimately re-descend. The Akashic Record (also called The Akashic Chronicle,) is the enduring record of all that happens, and has ever happened, in space and time.”

Now my model of the three levels of divine creation can incorporate all this.  How?

First, is there any support in the Bahá’i Writings for the concept of an Akashic Field and Record?  I don’t know of any specific reference, but the following are some suggestive statements from the Master and Baha’u’llah. (I have bold-faced the relevant phrases)

Regarding an all-pervasive field of energy (an ether) underlying the physical, ‘Abdu’l-Baha speaks of etheric matter.  For example: “Reflect that light is the expression of the vibrations of the etheric matter: the nerves of the eye are affected by these vibrations, and sight is produced. The light of the lamp exists through the vibration of the etheric matter; so also does that of the sun, but what a difference between the light of the sun and that of the stars or the lamp!” (Some Answered Questions: 149)

What about an Akashic Record? Baha’u’llah asserts: "O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from Me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven, and for this there befell Me what hath caused the tears of every man of understanding to flow.” (Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf: 11)  And…

“Thou knowest full well that We perused not the books which men possess and We acquired not the learning current amongst them, and yet whenever We desire to quote the sayings of the learned and of the wise, presently there will appear before the face of thy Lord in the form of a tablet all that which hath appeared in the world and is revealed in the Holy Books and Scriptures. Thus do We set down in writing that which the eye perceiveth. Verily His knowledge encompasseth the earth and the heavens.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 149)

(It may be worth noting that Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, uses the word akasha, characterizing it as a sort of life force.  She also referred to "indestructible tablets of the astral light" recording both the past and future of human thought and action.  I am not claiming that the Bahá’i Writings and ancient and contemporary science and philosophy are speaking of exactly the same thing, only pointing to the similarity of imagery.)

One part of the divine creation that I have proposed is the level, pre-existent to all creation, of the attributes of God.  But this pre-existence is not a temporal priority, but a causal or conceptual one.  Creation changes when these Attributes and Qualities undergo reconfiguration and development, a change indicated by the change with every Revelation of the leading Name of God.  Baha’u’llah, for example, speaks of the change from the Bab’s Revelation to His own as “when He replaced His Name 'the Most Exalted' by 'the Most Glorious'…”(Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 185)

 This divine change is effected by the Will of God flowing through the archetypal and universal categories of the divine Intellect whch forms the cosmological dimension.  The full cosmological dimension is that of all consciousness and intelligence, of the sun of the divine Intellect and its reflection in human minds. The Divine Intellect also pre-exists and “informs” (Laszlo’s word) the Akashic Field.  That is, the divine Will is Spirit as originating, universal metaphysical impulse, the Spirit of God moving across the face of the waters in Biblical imagery. Primal Will is embodied and formed by the universal, divine Intellect, the Spirit as archetypal form and pattern.  In this context, these two, Will and Intellect, are the same, yet they are different.  The union of Will and Intellect is the imprinting active force.  Upon what does this energy pattern imprint itself?  Akashic Field proponents would say the Akashic Field, which I agree with in one sense.  But the first imprint, I would say, is upon the archetypal, metaphysical and receptive substance of divine Love.  Now this metaphysical love has its mental/physical image and counterpart in the cosmos/universe union.  Remember ‘Abdu’l-Baha stated that love is “the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 27)  The physical universe itself, the world of being, is the manifestation of the heat generated by the interaction of Will and Intellect upon this prima materia.

This divine love—what Laszlo calls a sea of “frictionless energy”—is an inherent part of the universe.”  ‘It is undisputed, however, that the influence of Thine attraction hath everlastingly been inherent in the realities of Thy handiwork,…”(The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab:175)

For today’s cosmologists, like Laszlo, who leave God and His Manifestations out of creation, the original substance would be the Akashic Field-information-cosmos and the Zero Point Field energy universe that together make up what physicists call the quantum vacuum.  Creation itself is, in modern terminology, made up of countless wave interference combinations, both physical and mental and physical with mental, that join and knit together in a kind of conjugation to create the infinite manifest things.  There are sub-fields, not only electro-magnetic and gravitational in the physical realm, but mental fields, like Sheldrake’s “morphic fields”, that also operate through time and space.  Together these physical and mental interactions bring about a species-life and learning, each species recognizing its signature in the field of fields, and each tradition of thought in the human realm manifesting what is known as a history of ideas.  I don’t quarrel with the logic of any of this, but I accept the creation as a divine handiwork, not just the interplay of forces.

Now Revelation would also change the Akashic Field and Record.  I mean that the Akashic Field would carry the imprint of previous Revelations, being the Master Imprint, and these would be linked together in a kind of morphic resonance, a species of divine Utterance unlike any other pattern of informed energy, recognizable only as Itself, and progressing toward a state of “highest essence and most perfect expression”. This is what the Bahá’i Writings call progressive Revelation.  Indeed, recall Baha’u’llah claims to see “in the form of a tablet all that which hath appeared in the world and is revealed in the Holy Books and Scriptures.”  

Now the Bahá’i Writings also claim that with every Revelation, creation is made new.  In one celebrated passage—Prayers and Meditations: 295-96—Baha’u’llah speaks of “every several atom” acquiring a new and distinct character.  Are atoms—not the billiard balls of classical physics but the energy quanta of quantum mechanics—where the cosmological Mind resonantly intersects with universal Matter, when and where the divine imprints its mental image upon the prima materia?  In short, in my model, natural law is a physical image of the divine law flowing from self-generating Will through Intellect imprinting upon Love.  

But, if Revelation recreates all creation how is there continuity?  Though the forms of creation are recreated the essential elements and simple substances would not change, just be reorganized and transformed into new things.  Through progressive Revelation, information—the rules, laws and principles of Nature’s organization—is passed from one cycle of Revelation to the next, again through a kind of morphic resonance, because it would imprint the same image, though each time in fuller form, upon the Akashic field, or divine love, reorganizing its patterns and thus reorganizing into new forms “every several atom”.  Because the structure of the spiritual and natural law remains, but ever new things may come from these laws and principles of structure and organization, even precise ratios of numbers for gravity, electromagnetism etc. so exact that there has not been enough time for these to have formed randomly, would be the same. Those numbers are transferred from previous stages of the universe, they are unchangeable or change so slowly that they are nearly so.

Said another way, the first intellectual form, the abstract universal of Revelation, becomes the concrete universal, the formal cause of  the universe, when it imprints upon mental/physical prima materia, the Akashic Field, which is the intellectual essence of Nature since “nature, also, in its essence is an intellectual reality”, (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 83), “the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah:141)

Thus: “Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of Providence ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise. Were anyone to affirm that it is the Will of God as manifested in the world of being, no one should question this assertion.” (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 142)  Now all this imprinting of Revelation on the Akashic Field would be recorded on the Akashic Record.

The foundation of spiritual science is to know, without necessarily fully comprehending, those great spiritual structures from which come forth all created things.  These are the mansions of eternity, eternal principles that are revealed with every Manifestation of God but in ever more complex intellectual and social and material form.   They open and are propagated by light, both intellectual and physical, depending upon which is being emphasized, for both are always part of every act.