Question

In the Seven Valleys it mentions that Luqmán, “in proving to his son Nathan the planes of resurrection and death, advanced the dream as an evidence and an example.” I have just a few thoughts to share on this statement.

There is another Tablet, provisionally translated, where Bahá’u’lláh uses the dream metaphor relative to the idea of resurrection – or more specifically, when something appears in other form after death: https://bahai-library.com/brown_lawh_haqqu_nas. I find that this explanation also connects with the other dream example, immediately preceding His statement about Luqman in the Seven Valleys.

A few thoughts: For all things there is an essence and an appearance, which are intimately related but not identical. Resurrection is the return of essence in a new appearance. This happens in the world of nature, in the return of the Manifestations — and it happens when we dream. In dreams, we observe things that connect to the waking world in very indirect ways. This is because the essence is the same, but the appearance varies between the waking world and the dream world, just as they do through all the worlds of God.

If one understands how a “river” in a dream can represent the course of one’s life in the real world, and vice versa, then one should understand how religious texts speak of spiritual realities using metaphors and images: where “earth” may mean the heart and “heaven” can mean the Holy Scriptures. The dream world is an example of the flexibility with which spiritual essences reveal themselves in the world of Being, and so also how the Ancient Beauty appears in various figures and guises throughout history. This is why it is such a powerful “evidence and example”, and how this insight can lead to divine confirmations. The dream is, in this way, an intra-personal reflection of how the spiritual and material worlds are connected.

Consider the difference between these two worlds and the mysteries which they conceal, that thou mayest attain to divine confirmations and heavenly discoveries and enter the regions of holiness.

When I compare the Primal Will to the sun, it’s clear to me that the sun too has an origin: the laws of physics which allow gravity to seize matter and compress it until fusion begins. But where did the laws of physics come from? What is the origin of gravity? No matter how much we may understand the operations of nature that allow the sun to exist, we cannot know the causal origins of existence itself. In logic, this is like building a framework of reasoning atop an assumed set of axioms. Although such a framework can explain nearly all of mathematics, at the end of the day the axioms are pulled out of whole cloth and it is there that our reasoning fully and completely stops. The mind has no entrance, even if in the result there is great utility.

Now that the sun is shining, and bestowing life on the entire solar system, it must convey that life-giving power through its rays. There is no direct tie between the sun and any of the planets: this would be utterly destructive. Instead, the rays act as medium and connection. What we call “the sun” is in fact only knowledge of the sun’s properties through its rays.

But even this isn’t a complete picture, because life requires periods of rest and renewal. The earth is not awash in the full radiance of the sun at all times. There is a night and day cycle. In consequence – from the earth’s perspective – the rays appear to come and go, to wax and wane in both intensity and spectrum.

In this sense, a pre-dawn ray might claim to be a direct representative of the sun, but it cannot be compared to the visible sun. A post-dawn ray, however – while also a ray – is a more direct representative because its light manifests the full orb of the sun. When speaking in the voice of the sun, it could factually declare that it is the source of that pre-dawn ray.

This is the key point: they are both equally rays, but because of their differences owing to the orientation of the earth, they speak in the voice of the sun from distinct stations. One is the dawning radiance of the sun; the other bears the light of the full image of the sun. And since the dawning light derives its radiance from that full orb, it would be correct for the ray representing the orb to say that it is the source of the ray representing the morning’s aurora.

To me, these three realities: that which makes the sun possible, the sun itself, and the rays that manifest the attributes of the sun: are all aspects of one reality. And because the rays differ in rank in their relationship to the sun – solely due to the orientation of the earth, and not because of any inherent difference in the essence of the rays themselves – not only do they appear as multiple, but in their relationship one to the other it could be said that one is the source of another, or that an earlier ray exists only to make the earth ready for one who will come after.

A wave is a creature of zero thickness, zero depth. It neither dives nor departs. It’s “not really there”, except as a moving form given passing life by time. It has form due to the ocean, while the ocean is the lone reality. All the wave has to do is stop asserting its existence, or striving to regain companionship with the ocean. In a moment, there it is, a tacit understanding, and all is settled with nothing achieved.

Many seem to think that belief in God should be based on His being obvious and easily proven to exist. Yet the nature of this life, with all its apparent contradictions, causes me to wonder if His not being obvious is the point of why we’re here.

Say you’re the most famous person in all of existence; wouldn’t you like to know who your real friends are before you let them into your home? As Hollywood has shown in many films, sometimes you don’t discover who your real friends are until you test them.

Al-Qushayri, the Sufi scholar, writes that the fear of God (تقوى) has three aspects: “… full trust in God with respect to what has not been granted to him; full satisfaction with what has been granted to him; and full patience with respect to what has eluded him.”

In terms of the lover and the Beloved, consider how a lover’s heart would be affected if he were offered a hundred mithqals of gold to betray his beloved. That reaction, if true to his love, is تقوى. I believe this state of being is also echoed in the following passage of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas:

Whoso hath inhaled the sweet fragrance of the All-Merciful, and recognized the Source of this utterance, will welcome with his own eyes the shafts of the enemy, that he may establish the truth of the laws of God amongst men.

In this state of being, one’s chastity of soul (that is, singleness of desire for God) becomes so refined that even a single misstep from the Straight Faith would be reckoned as though stepping into white hot fire.

Outwardly it is seen as fear, inwardly it is a condition of being. The تقوى of the body prevents one from holding their breath too long; the تقوى of the نفس is clinging to the Law and the Path with every fiber of one’s being; and the تقوى of the spirit (روح) is the continual testimony: “… all exemplify the truth that there is none other God but Him”.

Even between the lover and his beloved: Something causes him to take care that his words and actions always express his heart; he never acts carelessly toward his loved one.

Something that occurred to me this week: In my relationship to God, I know I have to eventually love the Blessed Beauty so dearly that any hint of self would feel like choosing dust over diamonds.

And I’ve also always thought there is a direction reflection between my relationship to God and my relationship to people.

This led to an insight: the only path forward from where we are as a society, to the spiritual future ahead of us, is to so love Black people that even the least vestige of whiteness tastes like ash in my mouth. Not something to defend, or explain, or seek compassion for. Just ash. And yes, I have to love all humankind this way; but until I know how to adore Blackness, the muscle of my heart remains atrophied.

Now I see “Black Lives Matter” in a much deeper light. It reads like the title to Sadie Oglesby’s conversation with the Guardian.

If we experience failure from the perspective of a humble posture of learning, then failure makes the mind ready for what it needs to learn. Otherwise, it can become a barrier, a discouragement. It’s like tilling the soil: Until the ground is broken up, the seed may not take. Sometimes we have to discover what our weaknesses are in order to learn where strength must be shored up.

On Reddit someone said recently:

I was having this discussion with a few friends recently. I think that the term “Knowledge of God” in the Writings is code for “recognition of the Manifestation of God”, except in those Writings where the term “knowledge of God” refers to God’s knowledge – i.e. the knowledge possessed by God.

When I read your words, I agree with you 100%, though I realize it depends very much on what the hearer means by “God”, “knowledge” and “Manifestation”. Some people, even Bahá’ís, think of the physical person of Bahá’u’lláh when they hear the word “Manifestation of God”. Others think of divine attributes when they hear “God”. And the thing is, in a sense everyone is right, they’re just right on different levels.

To use some analogies: If I look at a mirror, shining with light reflected from the sun, I could say that I am looking at the sun and be both right and wrong. The sun is much more than the tiny bit of shining that I see, filtered as it is by distance, clouds and atmosphere. Humans have never seen the sun, we cannot process what it means to “see” gamma rays and x-rays and the full spectrum of its light; nor can we perceive its intensity. So we filter it down, dim it, and say we have observed the sun.

Or if I think about a rose, I might employ the idea of a rose. This is not the same thing as Plato’s Ideal Rose, even though they bear a relationship. No one has ever perceived the ideal, and everyone has their own idea descended from it. These ideas are made concrete by way of example, and every example has an actual, physical rose that acts as the revealer of its properties. So even just by saying “rose”, a person might mean the essential, the mental, the phenomenological, or the physical.

Again and again, these four “dimensions” of perception come up: the immediate and tangible; the revelation of attributes; the emanation from the source; and the imperceptible origin.

When we talk about knowledge of God, then which of these dimensions do we recognize Him through? Some have thought that phenomena were equal to God Himself, because nothing else but Him exists (the Sufi doctrine of wahdatu’l-wujúd). Others use “God” to mean the divine attributes we witness, emergent from the phenomena. Still others call “God” the absolute qualities these attributes descend from, such as perfection, glory, supreme sovereignty, etc. And then there are those who associate no name or place with “God” at all.

Similarly, we recognize the Manifestation of God first through His earthly person; then through a recognition of His station; then by a recognition of His eternal Purpose and sameness with all the Manifestations of God; and lastly as the Primal Point, the Ancient Beauty, the cynosure of all hopes and the object of the adoration of all existing things. The Kitáb-i-Íqán, the Seven Valleys, and the Gems of Divine Mysteries: each of these books is practically a travel guide through these stations of recognition.

But when it comes to discussion, I can’t pin any one of these down as being “right” and the others wrong, or even “more right”, because it depends on one’s perspective and how the seeker orients himself to the truth. Some look at a mirror and see primarily the mirror; some look at it and see the effulgence of the light; some look and see how it testifies to the nature of the Rays; and some look and see only the Sun itself.

And while it may be my purpose to forever learn about and better understand the Sun, but I will never soar in Its atmosphere, or make contact with It directly. In this way I am always dependent on the Rays to mediate the qualities of the Sun, so I can perceive them according to the extent of my limitations.

Then to me, the answer to how we know God and how we know the Manifestations is the same: What is means to know the Manifestation is to discover true Reality — which is what it means to know God.

For another metaphor: I can never enter the mind of an author, but I can discern his thoughts through the writing he conveys, always finding more meaning, deeper connections. This noetic reality is beyond paper, but it never fully bridges the gap between minds. The medium is our bond: it is the relationship.

If we see the Manifestation as a limit, thinking that because we can imagine something Beyond we might reach there — I think this is a falsehood of the self. He is the “Tree beyond which there is no passing”, because “How can utter nothingness gallop its steed in the field of preexistence?”. So He says, “Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.”

We dwell in Reality, but do we see it? A great part of what we perceive seems to be our own self reflected back at us: feeling real enough to drive our emotions, desires, and fears.

It’s like being in an empty room with white walls. We face one of those walls, except in addition to perceiving what’s in front of us, we project onto it as well: a constant movie of whatever occupies our mind and hearts. We find this movie so engaging that the wall fully disappears and we take the movie to be identical with reality.