The Mission of Bahá’u’lláh/The call to God (a meditation)

[Page 66]THE CALL TO GOD

A MEDITATION

Him He sent as His herald His Best Beloved, the Báb,

in whom the Spirit of Love was manifest with such

radiance that His disciples knew him as “the Ravisher of Hearts.” Bahá’u’lláh Himself in that little volume, The Hidden Words, into which He has distilled the essence of all revelations, teaches that before the foundation of the world God knew His love for man and therefore created him. He breathed Within man “a breath of His own spirit”; “engraved on him His image,” and bestowed on him endless bounties. One of these gifts, Justice, is “the sign of my loving kindness” since through its observance every man can win knowledge for himself.

The first demand which Justice makes on man is that he shall love his Creator. “I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love me that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life . . . Love me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest me not, my love can in no wise reach thee . . My claim on thee is great: it cannot be forgotten.” (H.W.A. 4, 5, 20.) Reunion with God is man’s heavenly home. The love of God in man’s Paradise. It is his stronghold, in which, if he enter in, he shall be safe and secure—But if he turn away therefrom “he shall surely stray and perish.” (H.W.A. 9.)

Righteousness has two supports—both spiritual. One is the love of God—“Walk in My statutesfor love of Me.” (H.W.A. I8.) The other is the fear of God, without the restraint of which and the knowledge of the certainty of retribution, the selfishness of man could not be held in control. “We have admonished our loved ones,” writes Bahá’u’lláh, “to fear God: a fear which is the fountain head of all goodly deeds and virtues . . . The fear of God is the chief cause of the protection of mankind and the supreme

\A HEN GOD CAME back into a world which had forgotten

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instrument for its preservation.” (Wolf. pp. 135 and 27.)

‘Abdu’l-Bahá frequently adverted to the close relationship between faith and morality. For instance He wrote (Tablets, 549) “By Faith is meant first, conscious knowledge and second, the practise of good deeds . . . Although a person of good deeds is acceptable at the threshold of the Almighty, yet it is first to know and then to do.” (Tablets, p. 549.) “The cause of eternal glory to man,” He writes, “is faith and certainty and then acting according to the behests of the Eternal God.” (Tablets 667.) God requires good deeds from one who loves Him. “Neglect not My commandments if thou lovest My beauty . . .” (H.W.A. 39.)

Through Faith and Righteousness, we are taught (and not without them) the world may be united. For the virtues are the means by which people are enabled to live together in peace and happiness. Generally speaking, whatever tends to harmony is right, and whatever promotes discord is wrong. Integrity, loyalty, fidelity, kindness, forbearance, mercy, generosity, trustworthiness, equity, hospitality, and the like, all tend to social concord, well-being and unity. If the scope and field of the virtues be not walled in by prejudices or bigotry, but expand without hindrance, then they will find their natural goal in uniting all the peoples of the globe. Faith will attract the help of the Holy Spirit without which the division forces of earth life cannot be mastered ; and faith and the knowledge of God Will alone be able to end that fierce struggle for existence which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá calls “the fountain head of all calamlties and the supreme affliction.”

For Faith is a “divine elixir” which “transmutes the soul. ” When a believer turns in faith towards Gaga profound change 111 his being 18 wrought through which he becomes a‘ ‘new creature.’ ‘Abdu’l Baha likens this change to the ante—natal process whereby spiritual forces surrounding the body of an infant as it is formed before birth gradually permeate it according to the degree of its receptivity. Similarly a believer’ s faith draws about him the everlasting bouhties of God which he by degrees appropriates into his being according to the measure of his capacity and of the spiritual preparation he has made. (Tablets 157.) Man’ 5 natural condition is that of an animal: until he is born again from this and detached

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from the world of nature he remains essentially an animal, “and it is the teachings of God which convert this animal into a human soul.” (Letter to the Hague.) ‘

The soul is an intermediary between the spiritual world and the material world. In its higher aspect it looks up toward the Kingdom of Glory, in its other aspect it looks downward/toward the lower sphere where darkness and ignorance have their home. If spiritual light be poured down upon this lower phase of the soul and if the soul be able to receive it/then the truth is made clear and falsehood is of short duration. But if such light does not come or is not accepted, then darkness gathers about the soul from all directions, it is cut off from the spiritual world and remains in the lowest depths. (Tablets p. 611.)

‘Abdu’l-Bahá used the picture of the “Waxing of the Moon” to illustrate the gradualness of this heavenward conversion and - detachment from the world. The believer when first he turns to God and receives his light is like the crescent moonwhich is illumined on its sunward side but has the face‘it tums’to earth still in shadow. When the moon is full, and, turning to the sun’s light the same face it turns to earth, is illumined throughout its whole circumference so that no shadow anywhere remains, it becomes a type of the spiritually mature soul. (Tablets I08.) The reality of this severance is shown by a remark attributed to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—“The Holy Spirit moves my limbs.”

The results of spirituality, the full meaning of reunion with God, are not, however, made known to man fully till the Hereafter. “Sorrow not if in these days and on this earthly plane things contrary to your wishes have been ordained and manifested by God, for days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight are assuredly in store for you. Worlds holy and spiritually glorious will be unveiled to your eyes.” (GI.329.)

The purpose of earth life is to acquire the qualities that will be needed in those other worlds: as “the knowledge and the love of God; faith, sanctity, spirituality, eternal life.”

To a “pure, kind, radiant heart” is promised “a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.” Could man behold that

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immortal sovereignty, he would “strive to pass from this fleeting world.” (H.W.P. 41.)

But the journey to God is not easy to accomplish. God is a jealous God. “Ye shall be hindered from loving Me and souls shall be perturbed as they make mention of Me. For minds cannot grasp Me nor hearts contain Me.” Man must face a conflict in his own soul: “If thou lovest me, turn away from thyself; and if thou seekest my pleasure regard not thine own . . . There is no peace for thee save by renouncz'ng thyself and turning unto me.” (H.W.A. 7, 8.)

Only through the energy of his own volition may the hidden powers of his being be developed. Again and again man is called on “to make an effort.” He is reminded that the greater his endeavour to cleanse and refine the mirror of his heart, the more faithful will be the reflection in it of the glory of the names and attributes of God, and that as a result of the exertion of his own spiritual faculties, he will be able to “attain the courts of everlasting fellowship.” (G.262.)

At the present time the way to God is particularly hard to find. For it is the Day of Judgment. Mankind has been “taken unawares,” as Christ foretold it would be. God can only be known through His Messenger; and now there is a New Era, a New Advent, a New Messenger. Old forms and names do not avail now. Souls are being tested by their readiness to acknowledge the New Manifestation of God—as the Mosaists were tested by the ' advent of Christ. Men are being divided by God: some are taken, others left. All behold the light; only the spiritual see its source. All men recognise a transition; only the spiritual understand its meaning.

But no soul, no Age is tested beyond"its powers. To those who seek to turn to Godfinspiration adequate to every demand, is given. Great as have been the bounties poured forth from heaven in past Advents, those of to—day are greater far. Both in the Gospel and the Apocalypse/the overwhelming weight of this Second Coming and the victory of the righteous over the infidelihave been foretold. A power above the ken of men and angels, we are assured, now enforces men’s obedience to the will of God.

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The teachings on the spiritual life are such as beseem the age of man’s maturity, when every soul is required to investigate the truth for himself. They are given in plain terms, not in “proverbs.” They are authentic, being the written word of Bahá’u’lláh or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. They are not of doubtful interpretation. They are voluminous and comprehensive, offering diverse approaches to knowledge and being adapted to diverse temperaments. Owing to the labour of various translators and predominantly to that of the Guardian, many of these teachings are accessible in English.

The earliest and perhaps (it is said) the greatest of Bahá’u’lláh’s revelations on the Search for God is a little mystical treatise: “The Seven Valleys.” The thought is subtle and profound; the idiom is oriental; but yet the book has a beauty, a charm and a rapture Which have made it the dearest treasure of many a believer. It is the love—story of one who being separated from his beloved seeks far and long, eagerly, patiently, despite all hardships and through all vicissitudes for the one and only object of his desire; and at last attains his goal in a union which will know no separation or end—“When a true friend and lover, meets the beloved one, the radiance of the beauty of the beloved creates a fire which burns away all veils, bums all he has and he is, consumes his very being, so that nothing remains but the friend.”

The story is one of a journey. But though we read of ‘valleys,’ ‘cities,’ ‘heights,’ ‘fields,’ ‘gardens,’ yet it is made clear the changes of scenery are inward changes of emotion, of sensibility and the like. The traveller passes from ignorance to knowledge, from illusion to discernment ; love deepens, is cleansed, intensified, uplifted; wisdom yields to greater wisdom; joy trembles and is lost to make way for finer joy. The “Seven Valleys” are seven experiences or groups of experiences which all must pass through who would travel this way to the end.

The story is lyric rather than dramatic. Though it is (like Bunyan’s masterpiece) an allegory of a pilgrimage to a Celestial City, there are no lions, nor giants in the way here, no Doubting Castle, no Vanity Fair. The enemies of the traveller dwell within his heart. Evil is a negation, an imperfection. Nor is the journey

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lonely: the Beloved’s presence is felt from the beginning, the Messenger of Love is the pilgrim’s guide throughout: The moving impulse of the journey is not solely the traveller’s own; the voice of his Beloved calls ever in his heart “seek thou no shelter save in the Bower of the Well-Beloved,” and he is drawn onwards to the happy ending by a power not his own.

How far away these valleys from the earth we know to-day! How far these aims, this search from the pursuits and projects of men and peoples now. Yet we are given to understand that only by adopting “The Hidden Words” as the standard of right living and “The Seven Valleys” as a guide to human conduct will society be empowered to inaugurate the Most Great Peace.

The Obligatory Prayers are given to help a Believer in this search. They are not concerned with the objects so familiar at this time—as the expansion of the cause, the giving of the message, the unifying and pacification of the peoples. No. They are designed to be used daily by Bahá’í of all degrees for generations and centuries to come. They are about that which Bahá’u’lláh wishes to be the essence and constant centre of Bahá’í devotion and thought. Comprehensive and complex they may be: but their subject is one and simple. It is the knowledge and the love of God.

The Short Prayer states the whole matter in a word: “Thou has created me to know Thee and adore Thee.”

The Medium Prayer is more particular. It specifies in two verses the fact of the Manifestation. The first verse presents this in its transcendent aspect, proclaiming God’s Advent and His Sovereignty. The second acknowledges His omnipresence and unity, gives the substance of His Revelation and remembers the champions of the Faith.

The Long Prayer develops the theme still more fully and deeply. It seeks the vision of God’s Beauty, an approach to His presence, an eternity of progress in His knowledge. The main phases of the thought seem to be Self-Surrender, Confirmation, Adoration and Thanksgiving, Penitence, and Trust in forgiveness and redemption through the special graces of this Dispensation. While this Long Prayer has one definite, elevated subject,

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believers have found that they can apply it, or major parts of it, to a special crisis or a special act in their own lives and can thus the better understand the Prayer and spiritualise their problems.

How marked and how significant, on the one side the correspondence and on the other the contrast that exist between this prayer of the New Age and the Lord’s Prayer which Christians have been repeating for nineteen centuries. Here is reflected the continuity of the work of Christ and Bahá’u’lláh and the Oneness of their common purpose. Here, too (in an hour when many fear Christ has thrown away His teaching on an unworthy race), is a testimony to the ultimate success of His glorious ministry and sacrifice. ‘

The first petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The Obligatory Prayers imply and declare that the Kingdom has come: for instance “the All-Possessing is come. Earth and heaven, glory and dominion aregGod’s . . .” and “He who hath been manifested is the Hidden Mystery . . . through whom the letters ‘B’ and ‘E’ have been joined and knit together . . .” (that is, mankind’s true existence begins in the New Era).

The Lord’s Prayer remembers a prophecy and a promise; and centres men’s attention on a triumphant future on earth. The Obligatory Prayers contain no prophecy and aim at an inward spiritual attainment.

Christ’s Prayer is social in form. It is suited to spiritual children, being very simple and largely practical. In the words “as we forgive those who trespass against us” it adverts to the virtue of personal mercy to which Christ gave special prominence.

‘ The Prayer of Bahá’u’lláh is personal and mystical, advanced in character and suited to a maturer race. It carries the idea of communion and unity far, invoking in the Long Prayer all the Prophets of the Ages, interceding for the past heroes of the Faith, and joining the worshipper’s testimony to this Era and its Prophet with the testimony of those in the highest heaven and of the Tongue of Grandeur itself as well as with that of all creation.

Besides these and similar prayers, the Guardian has given us in the volume Prayers and Meditations a number of other prayers

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of a difi‘erent origin—prayers made by Bahá’u’lláh for His own use, acts of communion between the Prophet Himself and the Most High.

To these a special mystery attaches, as He Himself affirms (p. 282), and they are bequeathed to us by His particular grace. They offer us a new approach to the knowledge of God, and constitute perhaps the highest point we can attain in our mystical contemplation of the Prophet’s ministry.

Some of these pieces are ascriptions to the power, the exaltation and the munificence of God. Others deal with His creative and redemptive work. Others belong to dramatic moments in His struggle against the evil forces of His environment. The range of thought and emotion Which we find in them far outreaches ordinary human experience. On the one hand it soars to unimagined heights of adoration and triumph and 10y. On the other, it plumbs depths of such anguish as only the truest love could know. But whatever the subject or the occasion of these prayers they all are one continuing diverse song of self-surrender and praise and thanksgiving to God. From every page—now in phrase or in sentence or paragraph or sometimes in a whole long prayer of glowing and sustained emotion—pour forth tributes of adoration magnifying the eternal Beauty of Him whose love gives sustenance to the universe and who With one least drop from the infinite ocean of his Mercy now redeems and beatifies mankind.

Love for God inspires every thought and deed. “In Thy path and to attain Thy pleasure, I have scorned rest, joy, delight. I have wakened every morning to the light of Thy praise and Thy remembrance and reached every evening inhaling the fragrance of Thy mercy . . . The fire of Thy love that burneth continually Within me hath so inflamed me that whosoever among thy creatures approacheth me and inclineth his inner ear towards me cannot fail to hear its raging within each of my veins.” (pp. 103, 270). “Nothing whatsoever can withhold me from remembering thee though all the tribulations of earth.were to assault me from every direction. All the limbs and members of my body proclaim their readiness to be torn asunder in Thy path and for the sake of Thy pleasure, and they yearn to be scattered in the dust before

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Thee. Oh, would that they who serve Thee could taste what I have tasted of the sweetness of Thy love.” (p. I 52). Upborne by this love He counts toil in God’s cause to be ‘blissful repose,’ ‘anguish a fountain of gladness.’ (p. 136.)

He testifies to the Majesty of the Station held by Him; to the profound and subtle changes in this created world, through which this New Age, the Age of God, was brought into being (p. 295); to the supremacy and triumph of the Revelation (p. 275) and to the eclipse of man’s wisdom and the collapse of his power and of his knowledge before the manifest glory and dominion of the Most High. (p. 53.) He gives a picture, unprecedented and unparalleled, of that spiritual illumined world which He is building, the world ordained by God of old which now is to be realised—a world so incomparable to ours that though we read the divine description of it, our aspirations can form as yet no image of its unity, its felicity or its attainments. (Prayers 58, I84, etc.)

One and all, these prayers have for their immediate background and occasion the events of his life and ministry. Dates are not given, nor circumstances. But the prayers evidently cover many dynamic years of intense and extraordinarily varied personal activity—the period during which He regathered the stricken Bábis, reanimated their faith, laid broad and deep in men’s hearts the foundations of the Bahá’í Cause, and in spite of successive and accumulating difficulties, in spite of the oppression of priests and tyrants, the machinations of traitors and the lethargy of the public, in spite of sorrows, sufferings and frustrations beyond number, declared His Mission, proclaimed it to the Kings of the World and went down to His last long imprisonment in the city of Acca.

The splendour of His power, His constancy, His spirituality, shines out against the unremitting darkness of His earthly lot. For 7 ever His human self complains and expostulates with Him under the weight of ceaseless afl‘liction: “My blood at all times addresseth Me saying, ‘O Thou who art the Image of the Most Merciful! How long will it be ere Thou riddest me of the captivity of this world . . . ?’ To this I make reply: ‘Be thou patient . . . The things thou desirest can last but an hour. As to me, I quafif continually

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in the path of God the cup of His decree and wish not that the ruling of His will should cease to operate . . . Seek thou my wish and forsake thine own’.” (p. I I.) His abasement causes His friends to weaken and His enemies to rejoice. Yet He has Himself chosen this suffering (p. 278) and wishes life could be prolonged that He might suffer more for love of God. His afflictions increase His love and His redeeming power. (pp. 146-7). He gives no sign of personal resentment: quite the contrary (p. 307). But He prays for the vindication of the Faithful and the punishment of those who oppose God and His Truth. “Well beloved is Thy mercy unto the sincere among Thy servants, and well besecming Thy chastisement of the infidels . . . Abase Thou, O my Lord, Thine enemies and lay hold on them with Thy power and might, and let them be stricken-with the blast of Thy wrath.” (pp. I41, 121.)

Here in this devotional record may be traced the spiritual creation and the first ideal beginnings of the New Age and its glories. Here is fought and won in the heart and soul of the Prophet that battle which established for us the Victory of God on earth. Here is invoked that wrath of an outraged Deity which now overwhelms mankind in its cleansing fires.

As one contemplates the awfulness of the tragedy unfolded in these pages: as one ponders over this intimate revelation of the impassion d love, the wrongs, the sufferings of Him by Whose stripes we are healed and who for our redemption endured the abominations of the world: the Call to God sounds With a new appeal, and one hears with a new realisation and a new resolve the summons of the All-Victorious.

“Hear Me ye mortal birds! in the Rose Garden of Changeless splendour a Flower hath begun to bloom compared to which every other flower is but a thorn and before the brightness of whose glory the very essence of beauty must pale and wither. Arise,' therefore, and with the whole enthusiasm of your heart, of your will, and the consecrated efforts of your entire beingstrive to attain the Paradise of His presence and endeavour to inhale the fragrance of the incorruptible flower, to breathe the sweet savours of holiness and to attain a portion of this perfume of celestial glory. Whoso followeth this counsel will break his chains 'in

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sundet, will taste the abandonment of enraptured love, will attain unto his heart’s desire and will surrender his soul into the hands of his Beloved. Bursting through his cage; he will, even as the bird of the Spirit, wing his way to his holy and everlasting nest.

“Night hath succeeded day and day hath succeeded night, and the hours and moments of your lives have come and gone and yet none of you hath for one instant consented to detach himself from that which perisheth. Bestir yourselves, that the brief moments which are still yours may not be dissipated and lost. Even as the swiftness of lightning your days shall pass and your bodies shall be laid to rest beneath a canopy of dust. What can ye then achieve? How can you atone for your past failure ?

“The everlasting candle shineth in its naked glory. Behold how it hath consumed every mortal veil. O ye moth-like lovers of His light! brave every danger, and consecrate your souls to its consuming flame. O ye that thirst after Him! strip yourselves of every earthly affection, and hasten to embrace your Beloved. With a zest that none can equal make haste to attain unto Him. The Flower thus far hidden from the sight of men is unveiled to your eyes. In the open radiance of His glory it staudeth before you. His voice summoneth all the holy and sanctified beings to come and be united with Him. Happy is he that tumeth there unto; well is it With him that hath attained, and gazed on the light of so wondrous a countenance.”—(Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 321.)