The Eternal Quest for God
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Contents[edit]
Notes and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 THE WAYS OF THE SEARCH: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF REALITY
- The criteria of knowledge
- Sense perception
- Intellect
- Insight
- The Holy Writings
- The research method
- Which truth?
- Thought and action
- Natural philosophy and divine philosophy
- The unity of religion and science
- Towards a philosophy of reality
- A conclusion and a preamble
- God is unknowable
- Differentiation of stages
- God's all-inclusiveness
- Human limitations
- Human incapacity to know the essence of things
- Limitations of human understanding
- Rational proofs of Divinity
- Cosmological proofs
- On the grounds of movement and the principle of efficient cause
- On the grounds of the different degrees of perfection
- Teleological proofs
- Cosmological proofs
- The perception of the indwelling Spirit
3 THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE IN SEARCH OF GOD
- Creation
- The world of God
- The world of the kingdom
- God's transcendence and pre-existence
- God and His creatures
- Different degrees in the world of existence
- The world of the Kingdom
- Pre-existence of the world of the Kingdom
- The world of the Kingdom and spirit
- Degrees of the spirit
- The world of creation
- Relation between the world of the Kingdom and the world of creation
- Nature and the Will of God
- Distinctive features of the world of creation
- The atom
- Evolution
- The creative plan of God
- General features of the creative plan of God
- Evolution in the world of creation
- Evolution in the four kingdoms of the world of creation
- Evolution according to Plotinus, in the Bahá’í texts
- Evolution as an educative process
- Evolution in the different planes of the world of existence
- Limitations of some modern concepts of evolution
- The origin of the universe
- Evolution in the mineral kingdom
- Living systems
- Animals
- Qualities of the animals
- Sense perception
- Memory
- Learning
- Voluntary movements
- Natural emotions
- Animal limitations
- Qualities of the animals
5. MAN: THE FRUIT OF PHYSICAL EVOLUTION
- His animal nature
- His human nature
- His divine nature
- Human greatness and limitations
- His evolution and his divine nature
6. THE PERFECT MAN: THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD
- The Manifestations of God in the history of mankind
- Their threefold reality
- Material
- Human
- Divine
- The Essence of God and the Manifestations of God
- Their names
- Relations between the Manifestations of God
- The station of unity
- The station of distinction
- Their purpose
- Their proofs
- Denial
7. STRIVING TOWARDS PERFECTION: DYNAMICS OF HUMAN TRANSFORMATION
- The method
- Prerequisites of human transformation
- Voluntary submission to the will of God
- Purity
- Endeavour
- Directions of human endeavour
- The special meaning of the Revealed Word
- Serving mankind
- Means of entrance into the Kingdom
- Qualifications of the enlightened souls
- Obstacles to human transformation
- Self or self-centredness
- Estrangement
- Malice
- Envy
- Backbiting
- Exceeding in words
- Meanings of sorrow and sacrifice
- Meanings of sorrow
- An instrument of human perfection
- An instrument of self-knowledge
- An instrument of detachment from the world of creation
- Meanings of sacrifice
- Conquering the natal self
- Self-sacrificing for a universal cause
- Attaining the qualities of the world of the Kingdom
- Human transformation as spiritual progress
- Spirituality as love in action
- Meanings of sorrow
- The second birth
8. THE SOUL: THE REALITY OF MAN
- Rational proofs of its existence and immortality
- Proofs of its existence
- Human rational faculty
- Inner perception
- Human inner reality
- Metaphysical proofs of its immortality
- On the grounds of movement
- On the grounds of the soul defined as substance
- On the grounds of the soul being simple as substance
- On the grounds of the presence of truth within the soul
- On the grounds of its natural aspiration for immortality
- On the grounds of the idea of mortality
- Moral proofs of its immortality
- As a requirement of human moral life
- On the grounds of consensus gentium
- What is the soul?
- Its individuality
- Its dual nature
- The oneness of the spirit
- Soul and body
- Proofs of its existence
- Its bounties or powers
- The soul as coordinator and motor of the body
- Knowledge
- Sense perception
- ‘Reasonable perception’ or ‘intellection’
- ‘Inner perception or insight’ or ‘intuitive knowledge’
- Self-consciousness
- Love
- The capacity of feeling joy and pain
- The power of love
- Love and knowledge
- Love and courage
- The growth of love
- Will
- Action
- The dynamics of the choice
- The soul as the mirror of human choice
- Spiritual knowledge
- Spiritual feelings
- Spiritual deeds
- Spiritual words
- The journey of the soul
- Individual evolution
- Material evolution
- Intellectual evolution
- Spiritual evolution
- Human education
- Material education
- Intellectual education
- Spiritual education
- Evolution of mankind
- Material evolution
- Intellectual evolution
- Spiritual evolution
- Contemporaneousness of material, intellectual and spiritual evolutionary processes
- Discontinuity of evolutionary processes
- Social evolution
- The world of the Kingdom within the creatures
- The world of the Kingdom within man
- The world of the Kingdom within society
- The world of the Kingdom as the world beyond
- It transcends time and space
- Metaphors of the world of the Kingdom in the Bahá’í texts
- Qualities of the world of the Kingdom
- Human souls in the world of the Kingdom
- Relations between this world and the other
- Relations between human souls in the world of the Kingdom
- Relationship between human souls in this world and in the other
11. GOD: THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF ALL THINGS
- The knowledge of God
- God within human hearts
- God within the universe
- God in His Manifestations
Table Of Contents
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1.1 Contents