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[Page -1] World order

SUMMER 1977

ETHNICITY—A COUNSEL OF DESPAIR

Editorial

SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE AND HEALTH: A CASE FOR REAPPRAISAL

B. B. Page

TIBETAN BUDDHISM: THE FULLY DEVELOPED FORM OF INDIAN BUDDHISM

Wesley E. Needham

THE METAPHORICAL NATURE OF PHYSICAL REALITY

John S. Hatcher

REDISCOVERING MEREZHKOVSKII

Firuz Kazemzadeh

INDEX, VOLUME 11

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World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 11, NUMBER 4 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

ROBERT HAYDEN

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence and changes of address should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription rates: USA, 1 year, $6.00; 2 years, $11.00; single copies, $1.60. All other countries, 1 year, $7.00; 2 years, $13.00; single copies $1.60.

Copyright © 1978, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Ethnicity—A Counsel of Despair

Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 Scientific Medicine and Health: A Case for

Reappraisal, by B. B. Page

16 Balm

poem by Gayle Marie Hoover

17 Tibetan Buddhism: The Fully Developed Form

of Indian Buddhism, by Wesley E. Needham

29 Poem

by Gayle Marie Hoover

31 The Metaphorical Nature of Physical Reality

by John S. Hatcher

58 Rediscovering Merezhkovskii

book review by Firuz Kazemzadeh

61 World Order Index, Volume 11

Inside back cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue

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Ethnicity— A Counsel of Despair

AMERICAN SOCIETY, founded on a base of sixteenth to eighteenth century British culture, still bearing the mark of that origin, has received a series of ethnic additions all of which have modified the flavor of life in the United States without annulling the characteristic mental, moral, and behavioral traits which render the American recognizable abroad, whatever the place of origin, the race, or the religion of his ancestors. In many important ways the Italian-American has more in common with his fellow citizen of East European Jewish extraction than has the former with his Neapolitan forebears or the latter with the Jewish inhabitant of prewar Vilma. This phenomenon is known as the American melting pot.

It is a process which, at its worst, tends to reduce American culture to a stultifying conformity, but which, at its best, results in a pluralistic society. Without a creative awareness of the cultural freedom inherent in the American tradition, the distinctiveness of the various ethnic strains is blurred; our diet consists of hamburgers and hot dogs. Pluralism offers to each individual his choice of many options: thus we have become appreciative eaters of pizza, sukiyaki, sauerkraut, and gefilte fish, and this without reference to the ethnic origins of the individual diner. In the same way, any person can choose his religious and political affiliations (unless he prefers to be unaffiliated), his music, and his games from the rich menu America offers him.

Both the secure but mindless conformity of the melting pot and the engaging but chaotic welter of choices offered by pluralism have given rise to disillusionment and to a quest for alternatives. Although the two stand at extremes, the one of uniformity, the other of variety, they have in common a distressing fuzzing of the line between manners and morals. While the one condemns even moderate departures from expected modes of dress, language, and manners, the other tends to a permissiveness bordering on toleration of antisocial, destructive behavior.

One alternative which has been gaining favor in the last fifteen years or so has been the return to the ethnic identity—if it can be found—of our ancestors. Many American Indians would like to forget that the European (and African and Asian) invasion of their land ever happened; if they could only return to the point at which the first European settlers found them, their troubles—alcoholism. malnutrition, loss of moral orientation —would be solved. Blacks want to return to African ways, without going back to Africa. They say, “The Italians have their heritage, their language, their practices, intact after several generations of living in America, and so do the Poles, and the Irish; we want to discover our African heritage and live in accordance with it.” The European ethnic groups, often unaware that they have been serving as models to stimulate [Page 3] the Black Power movement, say, “They have Black Power—how about (fill in the name of your favorite ethnic group) Power, too? We cannot have it by losing our identity in the American mass. The melting pot has left too many lumps—let us return to our true identity.”

One American Indian leader has observed that tribalism is not the sole possession of nonwhite groups—it is as accurately represented in the ethnic structure of white America as it is in the “tribes” of the American Indians. Therefore, he says, we should recognize American tribalism as a fact and adapt to it, rather than to the myth of the melting pot.

We agree with his observation, to a certain degree, but not with his conclusion. A resort to tribalism would be based on graver misconceptions than that of the melting pot. And its consequences would be most dire. American Indian tribalism is not in the interests of American Indians: carried to its customary extreme, it sets one tribe against another and deprives them of the ability to unite in defense of Indian rights. Every Indian who reads this will remember some incident of discriminatory treatment in relations between Navajos and Hopis, between Oneidas and Menominees. As for black Americans, there is not one African race, there is not one African heritage, and certainly there is no African tradition which has survived intact in the culture of black Americans. African traits, detached from tribal context, have become part of the Great American Mix, in some instances more characteristic of black Americans than of others, but not exclusively so.

No; the tribal solution, whether for red, black, white, or yellow, is no solution at all. It is reactionary, repressive, disunifying, destructive of harmony and progress, and withering to the individual who seeks wider horizons. The insistence that a poet be a Black Poet, rather than a good poet, is destructive of competence and sensitivity in art; the demand that correct Standard English no longer be taught in elementary schools the majority of whose children speak Spanish or “Black English” should have come, not from the champions and representatives of those minorities, but from the most avid racists, intent on the destruction of all their civil liberties.

The Bahá’í community in the United States has consistently advocated unity rather than uniformity. While boldly proclaiming the principle of the unity of mankind, Bahá’ís welcome a cultural pluralism, allowing every American to enjoy the fruits of all the ethnic strains which make up his country. Committed to spiritual unity which transcends the accidents of culture, a spiritual unity in which all people of the world, grown too small to indulge tribalism, can find the moral imperatives of our time, Bahá’ís find inspiration in the teachings of their Faith and pray that God will “Unite and bring mankind into one shelter . . . so that they may become as waves of one sea, as leaves and branches of one tree . . .”

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

PRODUCING a quarterly journal such as World Order with a small volunteer editorial and production staff is an ambitious undertaking which requires a great deal of discipline and a special measure of love for publishing. Fortunately, the Editors are able to supplement their own time and talents with the extra hours and hands of volunteers. For example, this Editor remembers pleasant evenings, over the past several years, reading galley proofs with Stephen Wilder, Fran Hunter, and Wendy Heller—all volunteers, all willing to give up an evening or two to help with the proofreading: the reward an advance peek at the issue’s contents and a few cups of Ceylon tea.

In this issue we take special notice of another volunteer whom the Editors have never met in person and with whom they have conducted business in the past by letter and telephone and more recently across an ocean. Ms. Frances S. Worthington is the person responsible for the index to Volume 11, published in this issue, as well as for the cumulative index for Volumes 1 through 9, recently published, and the index for Volume 10, included in the Summer 1976 issue. Ms. Worthington is a librarian by profession and, for us, a rare breed and a rare find: she is a librarian who loves to prepare indices. Moreover, she performs her tasks exceedingly well under adverse conditions. When she was working on the indices for Volumes 1 through 9, she not only had a small baby, but was packing to move to Japan. Some of the final work on the index she did in a dreary motel in Wichita Falls, Texas, after she and her husband had left their home in Tennessee. Now Ms. Worthington lives in Japan, and she has a second child. Our obstacles this time were distance, two small children, and an airport which was closed for a month, delaying delivery of letters, copies of past issues, and manuscripts for forthcoming issues. Nevertheless, with airmail copy from Ms. Worthington and with the adding of some entries and page numbers in Wilmette, together with the meticulous checking by Wendy Heller, we are again able to give our readers an annual index. To Ms. Worthington—one of our “far- flung volunteers,” as she terms them—we send our warmest thanks.

• • •

To our readers, another group of far- flung friends, we send another sort of notice. From the magazine’s inception in 1966 the Editors have had a policy of not writing letters to themselves, as is often done in the magazine business. The result has been that we have often had a rather slim mailbag from which to choose. Of late, however, famine has given way to feast. Below we print a sampling of what we hope will continue to be a stream of provocative letters:

CONCERNING THE BÁB

The . . . [Winter 1976-77] issue of WORLD ORDER, containing Robert Cadwalader’s excellent article on the arrest and persecution of three (or four) Bábís in Shíráz, reached me here just [Page 5] as I had finished writing an account of the same incident. Mr. Cadwalader’s discovery is of great value in that it gives us information as to the date of the writing of the original letter and the fact that it was, in fact, sent from Búshihr. His analysis of the circumstances of this incident is also of interest, but contains one or two points which, I feel, require clarification or elaboration.

Mr. Cadwalader’s statement that “In accordance with His [the Báb’s] claim to be the Promised Qá’im (He Who shall arise) He was believed by the Bábís to be a successor of the Prophet,” and his following attempt to elucidate the remark that the Báb “‘had been for some time endeavouring . . . to prove that he was one of the successors of Mahomet’” by referring to the Persian Bayán and the claim of the Báb that another “Prophet” would follow Him are both misleading in the present context. The Persian Bayán is a very late work of the Báb’s and cannot be used as evidence for His claims at this early date. In His early works, such as the Aḥsanu’l- Qaṣaṣ, the Ṣaḥífa Makhzúna, and numerous letters and prayers, He refers to Himself as Dhikru’lláh (the Remembrance of God), the Báb (Gate) of the Baqíyyatu’lláh (the Hidden Twelfth Imám, the Qá’im). . . . The claim to be the Qá’im Himself was made in the fifth year of the Báb’s prophetic career, and it definitely confuses the issue if we project such a claim back to this early period. Mr. Cadwalader’s statements that the Báb, “As the revealer of a new law” “was justified not only in altering the traditional adhán but also in completely doing away with it if need be” and that “the alteration of the adhán . . . was the revelation of the Qá’im” are equally misleading. In an early letter to Qurratu’l-‘Ayn, the Báb . . . [wrote that he wished to be assured] . . . that the externals of the sharí’a (Islamic law) . . . [were] observed, [for] whoever . . . [neglected] the least of its laws, it . . . [was] as if he . . . [had] neglected all of them. In a letter written somewhat later in Iṣfahán, he . . . wrote [that] . . . [He] . . . [had] not commanded anyone save (to observe) the laws of the Qur’án. The additional wording of the adhán itself makes it clear that no claim was made for the appearance of the Qá’im, since the Báb is there described as “the servant of the Baqíyyatu’lláh (the twelfth Imám).” . . .

The most interesting feature of this incident is not mentioned by Mr. Cadwalader or by any previous writer, and that is the fact that the Bábís in question were treated so leniently. Ḥusayn Khán Ajúdán-báshí had recently arrived in Shíráz with orders to put an end to a prolonged period of civil disturbance there; the measures he took, involving torture and execution, were severe but wholly in keeping with Qájár methods. The uproar caused by Mullá Ṣádiq and his companions was likely to have led to renewed breaches of the peace, and one is surprised that Ḥusayn Khán did not immediately order their execution as in the case of previous troublemakers. It is also clear that the ‘ulamá did not press for a death sentence (or were, for some reason, unable to), itself further evidence that the actions of these men were not regarded as rendering them outside the pale of Islám and thereby deserving of death. Whatever the reasons for this leniency—perhaps Ḥusayn Khán feared fresh violence should he put them to death, perhaps the ‘ulamá resented his interference in what seemed a matter for the religious law—it seems to me that emphasis must be placed on this fact, rather than on an exaggerated sense of persecution (as in the case of Nabíl’s Narrative, for instance). The unfortunate Ḥusayn Khán—who was, after all, only doing his duty as Governor in keeping the peace—has been rather roughly treated by Bábí and Bahá’í historians, and deserves some credit at least for not having had these three Bábís put to death out of hand.

On some minor points: “Mullá Ṣádiq used to act as mu’adhdhin”—in fact, it appears that Mullá ‘Alí Akbar acted on his behalf in this capacity. “The fate of the third Bábí, Mullá ‘Alí-Akbar-i-Ardistání, is not known to the writer . . .”—soon after this incident, Mullá ‘Alí Akbar is described by Nabíl as being in the company of Mullá Ṣádiq in Kirmán where they [Page 6] confronted Ḥájí Mírzá Mullá Muḥammad Karím Khán Kirmání with the claims of the Báb; he later transcribed many copies of works of the Báb, copies of some of which are extant; and according to one source, he later became a Bahá’í. With reference to the works of Nicolas —his history of the Báb is only in one volume; his work on the Shaykhís consists of four slim articles, only two of which are historical, these latter being singularly unoriginal and vague accounts of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsá’í and Siyyid Káẓim Rashtí, with no reference to Shaykhí history as a whole.

I look forward to seeing further results of Mr. Cadwalader’s assiduous researches in future issues of WORLD ORDER, and hope that he will not be discouraged by these small objections from continuing studies for which he appears to be eminently suited.

DENIS MACEOIN

Ṭihrán, Írán

MANI

I enjoyed reading Mr. Daniel Keith Conner’s article on “Mani and Manichaeism: A Study in Religious Failure” [Winter 1976-77]. His arguments were sound as he outlined the differences between divine and human religion. Perhaps a similar article could have been written on Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak, which, although enjoying a measure of success, was an intentional synthesis of Hindu and Islamic theology. Another could have dealt with Jainism, a religion with high ideals that never had a significant influence on the course of history.

However, I have a problem with one part of Mr. Connor’s article. It comes from this statement:

Mani regarded himself as . . . the “Seal of the Prophets” (the Muslims borrowed the term and applied it to Muḥammad). (p. 40)

The Muslims never needed to borrow this term from anyone. Muḥammad referred to Himself as the “Seal of the Prophets” in the Qur’án:

Muḥammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the Apostle of God, and the seal of the prophets: and God knoweth all things (33:40; Rodwell’s translation)....

MARK A. FOSTER

Athens, Georgia

SPEAKING OF WORLD ORDER

Thanks so much for another wonderful season. Even being behind schedule has a positive side. In the heat of the Alabama summer it’s nice to be reading a cool winter issue with pictures of snow and ice in July and August. And, to think, we’ll be getting Spring just when we need it the most!

ROXANNE ERICKSON

Montgomery, Alabama

Suddenly I remembered that l have not received the Fall issue of WORLD ORDER. Has my subscription run out? Is it too late to receive a copy? Was I sent a notification, and it didn’t arrive? Do you have my new address? Is my copy lost in the mail? If I sent in a renewal, would it include the Fall issue? Can you check your records? Do you realize how much I enjoy it above my other subscriptions like Scientific American or Atlas, World Press Review? I think I have suddenly lost an arm and now realize it—like an amputee who feels phantom pain and itching, then suddenly realizes the loss.

Help!

Help!

Help!

Help!

Has the computer made a mistake?

Who put out

my literary eye?

Please rush in response or

Medical aid?

Sincerely in black ink,

from the heart inside the rain

falling—

on Ridgeville.

THOMAS GRANT

Ridgeville, South Carolina

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Scientific Medicine and Health: A Case for Reappraisal

BY B. B. PAGE

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.

—From the General Confession, Book of Common Prayer

THERE is considerable talk in the United States these days of a “right to health,” of “national health insurance,” and of the ways to realize them. Just what we have a supposed right to, just what would be insured, is rarely defined. In our science- and service-oriented culture, most people tacitly assume health to be that which is provided or maintained by scientific medicine and the medical professions. This identification of health with the work of medical institutions and personnel calls for critical reappraisal from several practical and theoretical perspectives.

From the practical side, for the foreseeable future, a model which sees scientifically based medical care as the primary guardian of health can only increase in cost, regardless of whether individuals, insurance companies, or a national health service pay the bills. Unlike the situation in many other fields, the more technology is introduced into medical care the more increasingly specialized and appropriately trained personnel are needed. Thus costs for research and development, training facilities, equipment, and salaries are likely to rise. This is particularly true so long as we feel ourselves obligated to find “cures” for every medical problem.

It may be true, as Dr. Lewis Thomas has suggested, that much of our expensive and often dehumanizing medical technology represents a stage of development analogous to that of the iron lung in polio “treatment.” He foresees a day when we shall have attained a truly high level of technology for other major medical problems, such as that represented for polio by the discovery of the Salk and Sabine vaccines. Eventually, in other words, dialysis, cobalt therapy, transplantation, and other Such procedures may join the iron lung in museums. Such a possibility cannot be denied. However, it is not a likely vision of the very near future (a practical problem), and it assumes that today’s major “killer” conditions—heart disease, cancer, and stroke—can be dealt with in the same ways which were successful against the infectious diseases (including polio), which were the main “causes of death” in earlier generations. This is a more basic question and will be considered more fully below.

Moreover, although the thrust of Thomas’ view is preventive, most physicians and hospitals in the United States derive income primarily from the treatment of illnesses and accidents, a situation which is also reflected in most of the national “health” insurance bills before Congress. So long as this remains the case, and so long as drug and medical equipment manufacture remains privately [Page 10] owned and oriented toward profit, none of the components of our medical system has much objective interest in prevention, except when, as with some infectious diseases, prevention can be provided by a product of a drug company administered by a physician.

In the absence of the kinds of breakthroughs Thomas posits, then, the costs of technologically oriented scientific medicine will consume ever greater portions of the world’s limited resources of raw materials, energy, and so on, and of the Gross National Product of the United States and the personal incomes of its citizens, the latter either directly or through increased insurance premiums or taxes. As both biologist-philosopher René Dubos and medical economist Victor Fuchs warn, such an approach to “health” and medicine will force societies in which it predominates to face difficult choices. No society has unlimited resources; no society can afford to permit medicine to develop technologically primarily on the basis of the criteria, claims, and interests of the medical profession without detracting from the resources available for the development of such other social values as education, culture, urban development, and defense. Thus choices will have to be made as to which of the medical technologies and research projects which could be developed should be developed, as to which patients of those who might benefit will be given priority in access to inevitably scarce medical resources.

A second reason for a reappraisal of the scientific model of medicine and “health” has been suggested by some of those associated with the Institute on Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences. Bluntly, the scientific model could, in the name of “health” lay the basis for medical authoritarianism. Most of us already permit medical personnel to infringe on personal privacy and dignity and to do far more with and to our bodies and psyches in quest of “health” than we would permit any other agency to do in pursuit of any other value. This situation becomes more ominous if we follow the World Health Organization’s definition of health— a state of complete physical, social, and mental well-being and not just the absence of disease—and retain the assumption that “health” is the product or province of the medical experts.

To take a step further, there are certain parallels between science and medicine on the one hand, and organized religion or ideologies on the other—and authoritarian theocracies have not been infrequent in history. Physicist Ralph Lapp has warned of such prospects, with science the religion, white- coated scientists in sacrosanct laboratories its “new priesthood.” At the very least there is serious potential for conflict between the possibility of rule or behavior setting by “experts” and the concepts of democracy and individual self-determination.

A third reason for reappraisal is that the scientific model of medicine is inherently disease oriented. It focuses on biochemical processes and organ systems, not on people. Through research it establishes statistical norms and, for individual patients, explores deviations from these norms as indicated by laboratory tests, EKGs, X rays, and the like. When a person’s complaints cannot be so verified, he has a difficult time proving “ill health,” such verification, attested by a physician, being required to legitimize a person’s adoption of the “sick role.” The therapies of [Page 11] scientific medicine are also disease oriented: they use drugs, surgery, or other means currently believed effective in dealing with deviations from established norms.

Efforts are currently being made in many quarters to train medical professionals to see and treat “the whole patient” or “the patient as person.” However, one may ask if this is not requiring people whose training is basically oriented toward disease to augment their already overburdened work with another, almost opposite perspective. One may also ask similar questions about the efforts to make medicine, the orientation of which is toward life, incorporate death and dying into its perspectives.

Such questions and the observation about the overburdening of the medical professions raise yet another point for reappraisal. The scientific model of medicine sees disease as the result of the invasion of the body by foreign organisms or as the result of the malfunctioning of a particular organ system or biochemical process. This so-called germ theory displaced several other theories of health, disease, and healing toward the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the work of Pasteur, Koch, and others. Although it proved effective in treating victims of certain infectious diseases, it should be recalled that many of these diseases were “conquered” (that is, brought under control) more by improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and in general living standards than by “breakthroughs” in biomedical research.

It should also be noted that the process by which germ-theory medicine became established as the sole legal form of medicine was essentially a political process. At the time this occurred, around the turn of the century, the germ theory had accomplished little which would demonstrate its scientific or practical superiority; as recently as the 1930s the saying that a sick person visiting a physician had a fifty-fifty chance of getting better was still largely true. The details of this political process have been described elsewhere, for example, with regard to the United States, by Rosemary Stevens. The important points here are that the process, generally associated with the 1910 report on medical education by Abraham Flexner, made medicine a science of treatment and, to some extent, of prevention on the individual level rather than the more traditional art of healing —a discipline based on the natural sciences and laboratory work. In addition, it established our present system of medical education, in which students are trained in university hospitals where the orientation is primarily toward research and the most interesting patients are those with the most scientifically interesting conditions. Moreover, future physicians are selected primarily on the basis of performance in college-level science and premedical courses, rather than on any indication of interest or ability in working with sick or injured people—people in pain or anxiety—their families, and their human and cultural environments. To this day, what has been called the mainstream of modern medicine sees diseases and their victims as two distinct entities, the former being conquerable by medical means at which [Page 12] point the victim is considered once again normal, healthy, or at least functional.

The political process by which the “germ theory” established itself as the sole legally sanctioned approach had various socioeconomic, political, and cultural consequences as well. In eliminating all other approaches and concepts from the realms of legal or, later, insurable care, it made legal, licensed medical careers accessible only to the sons of the rich, of those who could afford four years of college and premedical studies and many more years of graduate medical training, internship, specialization, and so on. It deprived the poor of their own “healers,” making them dependent on the rich and their cultural and other values for the provision of medical services. Because of the costs of treatment and of the fact that until well after World War II the poor frequently were treated as an act of charity by physicians, their care became firmly established as crisis oriented. Finally, in seeming to give the rich and their physician sons a set of potentially effective tools for treating and preventing some of the infectious diseases, the establishment of the “germ theory” in a very real sense bought time for the social structure and political system of the United States at the time.

The turn of the century was a time of considerable ferment, with populism threatening to become a strong, possibly challenging force and the labor movement in the depth of struggle for greater social justice for the working class. Had it not been for the Soviet Revolution, many of the capitalist countries might have seen considerable change some fifty or sixty years ago. The establishment of the Flexner model of medical education and practice, with all its social consequences, was a definite factor in the consolidation of a slightly reformed but essentially unchanged social order in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. That this was recognized by major vested interests of the time is illustrated by the medical work of the Rockefeller Foundation. Immediately after the First World War, it funded, in most of the newly independent countries and in China—countries in which the Soviet Revolution had a strong appeal—hospitals, medical schools, public health departments and laboratories, and programs to bring graduates to the United States for postgraduate specialty training. This work undeniably helped the recipient countries meet a real need. At the same time, however, it sought to plant in them the basic orientations and values of the Flexner model, and with a similar sociopolitical effect if not intent: voices calling for a more radical approach to the development of indigenous institutions were deflected until the advent of fascism and the end of the Second World War.

For much the same reason, the establishment of the Flexner model resulted in the United States and many other countries in the almost complete separation of public health from medical care. The logical emphasis of public health is preventive, with implications similar to those mentioned in in connection with Thomas’ ideas. Moreover, its preventive efforts are directed toward society at large, rather than at individuals, the latter being true of the emerging Health Maintenance Organization concepts. To deal seriously with many potentially preventable illnesses and injuries would involve conflicts with vested socioeconomic or political institutions and interests. This is one of the main reasons why the United States, alone of the [Page 13] advanced countries, did not move toward more socialized forms of medical care after World War II, despite considerable public opinion in that direction. Instead the United States moved toward federal support for hospital construction and for research and the production of “miracles” in the treatment of diseases and injuries.

Closer cooperation between preventive and therapeutic medicine, medical care and public health, is occasionally urged. While this may appear novel in the United States, in many European countries it is their separation which is new, a separation due in large part to the work of the Rockefeller Foundation and its exportation of the American model. Many of the socialist countries have gone further than much of the capitalist world in reintegrating medical care and public health and have treated such additional areas as the right to employment, healthful environments, improved housing, recreation, and the like, within their conceptions of health care. Nonetheless, they too accept the underlying model of scientific medicine to which the United States holds. In fact, Flexner is highly regarded for his work in establishing medical research, training, and care on a scientific basis. It is worth noting that so long as the socialist countries continue to accept uncritically the scientific model of medicine, they too will be faced with the kinds of choices mentioned earlier, which are implicit in it.

Some of the theoretical reasons for reappraising the relationship between health and scientific medicine are even more important than the practical reasons already considered.

First, many physicians acknowledge that a large portion of the conditions which bring patients to their offices are either inherently self-correcting or are incurable, at least by the means available to scientific medicine. In such cases, the most a physician can do is to provide by word or by medication (including the placebo) relief of pain, anxiety, or, where indicated, antibiotic prevention of infection, so that the body’s natural self-correcting mechanism can function with a minimum of “outside interference.” Although this situation is most obvious in the case of primary care, it frequently holds, albeit in somewhat modified form, in secondary (hospital in-patient) or even tertiary (specialized or intensive) care as well. For it may well be that treatments offered by physicians in hospitals or elsewhere “work” because, in our scientifically oriented society, we expect them to work.

Such a prospect merits considerable research. Many people from many disciplines are concluding, as Kant and Other philosophers have hinted, that we can never know what reality or anything else is really like in and of itself. The most we can do is describe it to ourselves through theories, hypotheses, or “laws” which we develop on the basis of our purposes in undertaking the description. Thus every culture, including those of science and scientific medicine, operates on the basis of what sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman call a “social construction of reality,” a socially held myth system. Each such myth system leads those who hold it to see certain kinds of things— [Page 14] to the exclusion of others—in certain kinds of ways. It leads adherents to predict or expect that certain kinds of things will be “true” or will “work.” So long as these expectations by and large correspond with actual outcomes, the myth system from which they were predicted continues to be accepted as valid. When such correspondence fails, attempts are made to rework the predicting hypotheses within the confines of the myth system. However, if this proves impossible, the assumptions and content of the myth system itself come under scrutiny, and it begins to lose its hold as a source of meaning and explanation. These processes have unfolded within many religions and ideologies; Thomas Kuhn has described them with respect to revolutions within science; some people have begun to wonder if they may not be at work with respect to science itself as a world view. Be that as it may, the point here is that so long as a given myth system continues to appear valid, its power of prediction, of creating expectations, becomes a major force in that its concepts, hypotheses, explanations, or approaches—for example, with regard to illness and its treatment— “work.” The apparent validity of any functional myth system, including those of science and medicine, rests in large part on self-defined problems and self-fulfilling prophecy. That scientific medicine, with its therapies and institutions, “works” for us may, in short, be due largely to the fact that it has established certain kinds of problems and approaches as important and manipulable within the set of expectations it creates.

Thus there is need to explore such questions as the extent to which the accomplishments of scientific medicine reflect any inherent superiority of its underlying assumptions and resulting theories and approaches. Is it not possible that, if some of the other concepts of health, healing, and medicine which scientific medicine supplanted at the turn of the century had been accorded its uniquely legal status and vast research funding, they might have produced results of qualitatively equal impressiveness, albeit in other areas and ways? If it is so that most of the problems which take people to physicians are self-correcting or cannot be helped by their ministrations and technological capabilities, and if it so that in such cases the most a modern physician can do is provide relief of pain or anxiety, or prevention of infection, perhaps we need to reexamine some of the displaced alternatives. For it may be that some of them are equally effective in providing pain and anxiety relief, that some of the “traditional,” “folk,” or even “quack” medicines of other cultures may also “work,” in the sense of responding to the needs of those sick who share the myth systems of which the medicines are a part, again because those myth systems lead their adherents to expect them to work.

At the very least there would seem to be room for further research. It may also be that some of these alternative concepts of health and healing have something to offer us. For example, in scientific medicine a sick individual is usually removed from his normal, meaning-giving environment, placed in the foreign environment of a hospital, and surrounded with strangers in white or green and with machines of various sorts. He is obliged to adopt a life style and daily schedule which corresponds to the needs, interests, and precepts of those who treat him. When his treators decide he is sufficiently “cured,” he is returned to his normal environment, where he may now be somewhat a stranger, particularly if his treatment has been lengthy or if the condition in which he returns differs markedly from that in which he left. On the contrary, many so-called primitive medicines stress the healing of the person rather than the treatment of his condition. Such [Page 15] healing is usually done in the context of the person’s normal environment and frequently involves members of his family, even his friends and neighbors. Having never been taken from his normal environment and having been so treated, the person suffers no problems of separation, of abrupt change of milieu and life style, or of return home after treatment.

Few in contemporary America would feel comfortable if treated, say, for a heart attack, anywhere but in a well-equipped hospital. Yet the very removal to a hospital is likely to set up new, counterproductive anxieties in addition to those associated with the actual heart condition: a recent British study of 450 randomly selected male cardiac patients concludes that those treated at home recovered faster and more fully than those treated in a hospital. Moreover, there are many documented cases of people who have not responded to scientific medicine, who have been pronounced incurable, or who have refused the treatment recommended by their physicians, and yet who have experienced apparently miraculous, medically inexplicable and unexpected recoveries when they turned to other means of healing. Finally, many who know people both in sickness and in health —pastors, neighbors, relatives—have observed that frequently those who fall victim to heart disease, cancer, or the like have gone through a change in life style or content at about the same time. People who have recently experienced the death of someone close, women whose children have recently grown up and no longer “need” them, or men who have recently retired are among the most frequently cited examples.

From such observations emerge questions about the unique validity of the therapies of modern scientific medicine, of its theories of disease, etiology, and therapy, of its underlying myth system. As implied in the model established in the wake of the Flexner Report and in our current “wars” on cancer, heart disease. and stroke, scientific medicine assumes that the conditions it labels diseases are caused by one factor or by a very few, that these factors and appropriate therapies can be discovered through research, and that such diseases can eventually be “conquered” and victims successfully treated by means of such discoveries. We have a vast social, cultural, economic, and even political investment in this approach, which has given rise to equally vast expectations and, in the cases of still “unconquered” diseases, hopes. These, in turn, create problems and questions of their own, a situation explored by Daniel Callahan and others.

However, if the points raised in this article have merit, an alternative approach to the phenomenon of disease and the problems of healing may be more appropriate. The concept of single causal agent may have been useful in treating victims of some of the infectious diseases. But infectious diseases are no longer the main causes of death in the advanced countries; moreover, the effectiveness of germ-theory medicine in this regard in no way implies that it was the only valid or potentially useful approach. On the contrary the concept of multifactorial etiology, close to the traditional perspective of public health and explicitly elaborated by René Dubos, may offer a framework for the reconstruction of our medical myth system and its concepts of health, disease, and treatment. In addition, Dubos’ approach poses [Page 16] a warning to the uncritical transplantation of Western, scientific ways of doing things to non-Western societies, even when what is involved is medical care, offered for the most humanitarian of reasons.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Dubos suggests that, like other forms of life, man exists in constant interaction with his environment. This interaction involves adaptation, in the case of man mutual adaptation in that man consciously alters his physical and sociocultural environments, thus changing himself as well. However, this mutual adaptation with environment will always be imperfect. Dubos sees disease as the result of imperfect adaptation, the particular diseases characteristic of a given culture and time reflecting the nature of the imperfection in adaptation. Therefore, we can never expect to eliminate disease—frequently an expectation engendered by the scientific model of medicine—but can at best only alter and respond to the kinds of disease which predominate. Disease could be eliminated only as the result of a perfect adaptation, at which point human and social evolution would cease and our species become too specialized for further long-range survival. For example, intensive care units for victims of heart disease, stroke, and cancer are adaptations to certain aspects of our environment which are detrimental to health; yet the adaptations themselves may be detrimental to the future adaptability and viability of the species. In fact, every form of adaptation creates new problems and forecloses, at least temporarily, other alternatives. Thus every form must be constantly reexamined from these perspectives, keeping in mind what Dubos calls the multifactorial etiology of disease.

To develop an example, from a Dubosian perspective, our high rate of automobile injuries and deaths might be considered a disease resulting from our imperfect adaptation to a culture created around such inventions as the automobile and hence requiring a high degree of rapid, individualized mobility. So long as this form of adaptation persists, we shall need more and more expensive emergency care facilities to handle what can only be an increasing number of automobile accident victims. In providing such facilities and care scientific medicine is undeniably superior to the traditional medicine of, say, the Indians of Peru. But we might not need them at all if we could find alternative ways of adapting to our transportation needs, or if we could alter our culture so as to reduce them. Similar prospects could be delineated for many other diseases currently threatening us in terms of health. resources, and life.

I do not wish to suggest that we abandon the scientific model of medicine and its means of therapy. However, for the practical reasons mentioned, a critical reappraisal appears essential. The theoretical points mentioned above may help prepare the way for such an undertaking.

Balm

In the gentle

windrustle of leaves

are heard the accents

of your peace.

—Gayle Marie Hoover

[Page 17]

Tibetan Buddhism: The Fully Developed Form of Indian Buddhism

BY WESLEY E. NEEDHAM

THOUGH in this survey of Tibetan Buddhism my purpose is to show how it differs from early Indian Buddhism known as Theravāda and Hīnayāna, it is a temptation to share a few facts not generally known about Tibet. One such is the name Tibet of European origin and derived from the Mongolian Thubet, which is the Thai word Thibet.

Tibetans refer to their country as Pö (rhymes with her) although they write it Bod or Bod-yul, “Land of Bod”; they refer to a Tibetan or the Tibetan people in general as Bod-pa. In India Tibetans are referred to as Bhotias, a word derived from Bhota, the ancient Indian name for Tibet. A more poetic name for Tibet is Gang-jong (Gangs-ljongs), “Abode of Snow,” which is the Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit and English word Himalaya. A more descriptive name “The roof of the world” refers to its lofty elevation.

The high plateau of Tibet in central Asia, rising nine thousand to fifteen thousand feet above sea level, is surrounded by the towering peaks of the Himalayas on the south, the Karakoram range on the west, the Altyn Tagh on the north, and the deep gorges of the Salween and Mekong rivers on the east. This highest country in the world with hundreds of square miles of uninhabited, treeless, desolate landscape made Tibet discouragingly inaccessible to the outside world. Mountainous barriers and the inhospitable attitude of the Tibetan government toward uninvited travelers suggested another though less poetical name, “The forbidden land.” Over forty years ago Tibet acquired the label of “Shangrila” when James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, published in 1933, became popular.

In the legendary history of Tibet a number of ancient kings, possibly tribal chieftains, preceded Nyatri-Tsenpo (Gnya’-khri btsan-po) of the fifth century B.c., recognized as the founder of the royal line. Many generations later, a monarchy was established when a powerful king, Namri Songtsen (Gnam-ri srong-btsan) and his more famous son Songtsen Gampo (Srong-btsan sgam-po), 617-649, consolidated Tibet into a nation during the first half of the seventh century. The youthful king, enthroned in 630 A.D., and his people were adherents of their ancient Shamanist cult called Bön (rhymes with burn).

Several significant events soon had a profound and far-reaching effect on the religious history of Tibet. King Songtsen Gampo, like his father, was a [Page 18] warrior who wanted to extend his newly inherited empire in all directions. When he and his army invaded the borders of Nepal, the Maharajah Amsuvarman negotiated for peace terms. In 639 his daughter, the princess Bhrikuti consented to marry the Tibetan king and thus became the first queen of a unified Tibet. She was a Buddhist and brought with her royal dowry an image of the Buddha and Buddhist scriptures.

Two years later the king made a victorious conquest in western China and forced a peace treaty with the Tang Emperor Tai-tsung. By the terms of the treaty the Chinese princess Wen-ch’eng, a near relative of the Imperial Family, was given in marriage to the young Tibetan king in 641. The royal Chinese bride was also a devout Buddhist, who brought to Lhasa, the newly founded Tibetan capital, an image of the Buddha with her dowry. King Songtsen Gampo became a convert to Buddhism through the influence of his two royal consorts and subsequently made Buddhism the state religion.

At that time the spoken language of Tibet had no literary form for translating Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan. To overcome this significant deficiency the king sent his chief minister Thon-mi to India to study Indic languages and to devise an alphabet and script to represent the sounds of the Tibetan language. When Thon-mi returned to Lhasa, he was able to form a Tibetan alphabet of thirty consonants with four vowel signs modeled after the characters of the Western Gupta script, which resembles Sanskrit. He then composed several books on Tibetan grammar based on Sanskrit grammar; as a result he became renowned in Tibetan history as Thon-mi Sambhoṭa, the “Father of Tibetan Literature.” This notable, historic achievement made possible the subsequent translations of thousands of Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist texts into the newly formed Tibetan literary language.

Although the royal family supported every effort to promote the new religion, little progress was made largely because of opposition from the followers of the powerful Bön cult, who almost suppressed it. After the death of Songtsen Gampo in 649, thereafter renowned as the first Chögyal (Chos-rgyal) “Religious King,” popular interest in Buddhism gradually declined. Almost a century passed before Buddhism was revived, again to flourish by royal favor.

The second “Religious King,” Trisong Detsen (Khri-srong Ide-btsan) 742- 797, of the fifth generation, born a Buddhist, was concerned with the decline of his religion since the death of his illustrious ancestor. He ordered Indian Buddhist texts to be brought out of concealment and translated into the Tibetan language. To further the establishment of Buddhism, the king invited the famous Indian Buddhist pandit, Śāntirakshita, 705-762, high priest of Nālandā monastic university—the Oxford of India—to become his spiritual preceptor and high priest of Tibet. Although he was received by the Tibetans with all honors due his erudition and sanctity, Śāntirakshita found much animosity and a determined resistance by the Bön cultists, who feared the wrath of the local demon-gods of their indigenous faith should there be an intrusion of Buddhism in their ancient realm.

In the face of these ominous warnings, Śāntirakshita advised the king to send to India for Padma Sambhava, a celebrated Buddhist guru and mystic famous for his mastery of esoteric doctrines transmitted orally to worthy personal disciples. Padma Sambhava, later to be known in history and legend [Page 19]

[Page 20] as the illustrious founder of Tibetan Buddhism, arrived in Tibet in 747. Two years later, under the direction of these two eminent Buddhist scholars the first important Buddhist monastery, Samye (Bsam-yas), was built under the sponsorship of the king. Śāntirakshita was appointed abbot, thereby becoming the first hierarch of the first monastic order in Tibet, later to be known as the Nyingmapa (Rnying—ma-pa), “Ancient Order.” A monastic curriculum was established for training Tibetan monks, and seven Tibetan youths were admitted as novices. This monastery attracted a number of Indian Buddhist monks, and eventually Padma Sambhava’s most learned disciples translated many Indian Buddhist scriptures into Tibetan. As Buddhism spread, other monasteries were built and a succession of other monastic orders grew up around the personality of an inspired teacher or upon the emphasis of a favorite scripture.

THE RELIGION of Tibet can be usually found recorded in dictionaries and encyclopedias labeled as Lamaism, an Occidental term derived from the Tibetan title lama (bla-ma, “superior one, teacher”) which Europeans often apply to all members of the Tibetan Buddhist clergy. The Tibetan people, however, properly reserve this title for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. for abbots of monasteries, and for other high-ranking religious teachers. Just as Tibet is not the indigenous name of the country, neither is the word Lamaism known to most Tibetan people, nor used by them. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, in his recent book, translated and published in English, wrote the following concerning the word:

Some persons have the idea that the religion of Tibet is that of the “lamas” who have fabricated a system called “lamaism”. They say too, that this is very far from the true teachings of Lord Buddha. Such ideas are very misinformed since there is no separate ‘ism’ of the lamas apart from Lord Buddha’s teachings.

It is clear from the Dalai Lama’s statement that a summary of what the Buddha taught would be an excellent preparation for the survey of Buddhism in India and its complex development in Tibet.

Siddhartha Gautama is revered by His followers as the Buddha, which means the Perfectly Enlightened One. He was neither a god nor a divine savior though, in fact, many of His disciples tried to deify Him after His death. A reliable tradition records Siddhartha’s birth in the year 563 B.C. in northern Indian where His father was ruler of the Śākya Kingdom. Educated to succeed His father, he astounded, even at an early age, the best tutors in the kingdom with His rapid and extraordinary mental development and analytical powers. As He grew older, he turned His discerning mind toward deep compassion for humanity and all animal life, especially the defenseless.

As befitted a rajah’s son, He lived a luxurious life, married the daughter of a neighboring ruler, and had a son. In spite of every inducement to remain and become his father’s successor, the realization of His destiny, unworldly and spiritual, dawned upon Him when He was twenty-nine. Inspired with religious zeal, He renounced His family ties and all rights to royal succession, left the palace, and began His homeless life, wandering from one holy teacher to another for six years. His futile search ended at the fact of the now famous [Page 21] Bodhi tree near Gaya, in northeastern India, where He resolved to remain until He had experienced spiritual illumination.

Here under the full moon of Vaiśakha (May) 528 B.C., He sat absorbed in deep meditation, His mind completely withdrawn from contemplation of external objects. Through a concentration of the will and an intense attention to His thought processes, His consciousness transcended all levels of the intellect and, according to His biographers, He attained the highest Perfection, the Climax of Wisdom. He became the Enlightened One, the Buddha, and realized the true meaning of the drama of existence. He became aware of the whole universe as a system of Cosmic Law, existing throughout eternity. This was the Supreme Realization of that which defies definition in finite terms.

Although the full meaning of this state of Spiritual Perfection cannot be described, we do know that the Buddha’s sermons and discourses, recorded in the canonical Buddhist scriptures, originated from His illuminating experience. He left no personal writings, and His oral teachings were transmitted by His personal disciples to later generations of disciples.

Dharma, a Sanskrit word, is the traditional name for the teachings of the Buddha. Derived from the root dhri, “to sustain, to support,” Dharma is a comprehensive word carrying several related meanings: the eternal reality, truth, religion, morality, the law of righteousness; it is also one of the three traditional refuges for all Buddhists, who recite them daily:

I take refuge in the Buddha (the Teacher).

I take refuge in the Dharma (his Teachings).

I take refuge in the Sangha (his Monks).

It is a vow to oneself to strive unceasingly to follow where the Buddha led.

Many events recorded in His biography and in Buddhist texts indicate that the Buddha’s vast wisdom was balanced by His boundless compassion for all mankind, their unhappiness, ill health, grief, and despair. He was impelled in his search for Enlightenment to find the cause, and the remedy, for the misery, suffering, and sorrows of all humanity.

The Buddha’s insight gave Him the key to the riddle of suffering, the universal affliction. This was the subject of His first sermon which he called “Setting in Motion the Wheel of Righteousness,” a method of mental and moral self-development symbolized by a wheel with eight spokes. This profound discourse began with the Four Noble Truths:

1. The Existence of Suffering. All humanity experiences suffering and sorrow in one form or another.

2. The Cause of Suffering. It originates in selfishness, self-centered craving, and desire.

3. The Cessation of Suffering. It ends with the elimination of selfish desires.

4. The Path which leads to the Cessation of Suffering. This is the Noble Eightfold Path, the middle way between the two extremes of self-mortification and self-indulgence:

1. Right Ideas.

2. Right Resolution.

3. Right Speech.

4. Right Conduct.

5. Right Vocation.

6. Right Effort.

7. Right Mindfulness.

8. Right Concentration.

[Page 22] Simple as it may seem, this sermon was of primary importance because it was the foundation of his Doctrine—The Dharma. The Eightfold Path was expounded for His followers as a practical way of life; however, to achieve Perfection no part could be left out. All were to be practiced simultaneously in order for one to acquire self-discipline and complete self-reliance. His followers were taught that only by their own efforts could they attain Perfection, insight into Dharma, the bliss of Nirvāņa experienced by the Buddha. As mentioned above, the supernormal state of Nirvāņa cannot be defined; in fact even the Buddha himself would not define it. Nirvāņa means “being extinct”; from a Buddhist point of view ignorance, craving, and ill will are extinguished—resulting in a state of supreme moral perfection and the final cessation of rebirths.

For forty-five years after His first sermon, the Buddha traveled and preached in the northeastern part of India. He founded His order of monks known as the Sangha; and, as His fame spread, the number of monks and lay converts increased. The Buddha died in 483 B.C. at the age of eighty. During His lifetime His inspiring personality, boundless compassion, and profound wisdom never failed as an all-sufficient guide for His disciples. But after His death, His disciples had to rely for guidance on their memories of His sublime teachings. Hundreds of monks of the Sangha met at the First Great Council at Rajagriha to decide upon the authoritative doctrines of the Master and to preserve for all time the Dharma by reciting and compiling the teachings systematically, thereby complying with the Buddha’s parting advice, “Let the Dharma be your guide, your only refuge.”

The canonical teachings were arranged in three divisions called the Tipitaka (“The Three Baskets”): Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma. The Vinaya Pitaka deals with moral discipline and monastic rules. The Sutta Pitaka contains the sermons and discourses of the Buddha. The Abhidhamma Pitaka sets out the metaphysical and philosophical teachings of the Buddha. The oral language of the Tipitaka was Pālī, which is related to Sanskrit. Although considered orthodox, the Abhidhamma Pitaka and the Sutta Pitaka include what appear to be systematic elaborations. In 25 B.C. the “Three Baskets” were recorded in writing for the first time on hard palm leaves. The teachings and practices recorded in the Tipitaka formed the foundation of the Buddhist school of the Theravāda, the “doctrine of the Elders,” also referred to as Hīnayāna Buddhism.

Some of the essential teachings of the Dhamma (Pālī) or Dharma (Sanskrit) found in Hīnayāna Buddhism, which also appear in the later Mahāyāna Buddhism, “the greater vehicle” or “way to spiritual perfection,” had a far-reaching influence on Tibetan Buddhism. Among the most important teachings of the Dharma are Rebirth and Karma. According to the doctrine of Rebirth (often called Reincarnation) the life-force of every human being extends through eternity in a succession of innumerable births and deaths. The Buddha defined a person as an assembly of aggregates called Skandhas in Sanskrit or Khandhas in Pālī. This assembly, which we could call character or individuality, consists of five components of being: body, feelings, perception, dispositions, and consciousness. During a lifetime the body and the other four constituents are constantly changing and maturing as the result of education, environment, opportunity, personal reaction to others. After physical [Page 23] death the components separate.

Karma, the complement of Rebirth, is a Sanskrit word with such a wealth of meaning that no single word in English can serve as an adequate translation. It implies moral action and reaction, cause and effect; it has been translated as the Law of Ethical Causation or of Moral Equilibrium. Every thought and act of a person during his present or a previous lifetime has an effect on his future life when he is reborn to a new set of parents. Karma determines the time, the place, and the parents. The life energy collects the essence of the previous Skandhas at the time of conception.

Buddhists accept the twin doctrines of Rebirth and Karma as self-evident and essential to the understanding of their individual destinies. Together they offer an explanation for the numerous gradations of mankind, for the abilities, talents, inequalities, mental and moral tendencies, good fortune, misfortune, and so on. Although the effects produced in previous lives could be interpreted as rewards and punishments, Buddhists consider such effects as natural consequences. In His sermons and discourses the Buddha often referred to events in His previous lives and in those of His disciples to clarify His moral teachings.

NOWHERE in the Buddha’s teachings do we find any evidence of a dogmatic attitude or any beliefs that Buddhists must accept. He asked no one to believe on His authority anything He taught. On the contrary, He made it clear to all that no one should believe what was spoken by Himself, or any teacher, or what was written in any sacred book, or transmitted by tradition as authoritative, unless it was in accord with reason and experience. He never forced His opinion on others; in fact, He urged His disciples to think for themselves and to exercise their own judgment.

Coexisting with religious freedom of thought were five essential rules of discipline which were prescribed for a moral life and which were, therefore, an obligation for all monks and lay followers of the Buddha. The Five Precepts included refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and the use of intoxicants. Monks were required to observe additional rules of conduct.

The Arhats or earliest disciples of the Buddha became the founders of the Order (Sangha), and most of His teachings were intended for men who had forsaken the life of home and family. This early Buddhism had for its ideal the Arhat, who by strenuous self-discipline and effort finally attained Enlightenment. Although this intense self-development was a satisfying career for a monk, it seemed self-centered and escapist to many lay followers of the Buddha.

For those who preferred a Buddhist life open to all the ideal became the ever-selfless Bodhisattva, in contrast with the Arhat bent upon his own salvation. Before Gautama became the Buddha He was known as the Bodhisattva, (Bodhi, “Enlightenment,” the goal of sattva, “a being”). A Bodhisattva actively strove for Enlightenment while practicing benevolent compassion, engaged in helping and guiding all beings to share in his enlightenment, and rid himself of the three moral obstructions: selfishness, wrath, and ignorance. This constant compassionate attitude and departure from the Hīnayāna discipline were inspired by the Buddha’s profound wisdom, benevolence, and moral [Page 24] concern for humanity.

The career or path of the Bodhisattva was later given the name Mahāyāna (Mahā, “great,” and yāna, “way, path, or vehicle”) to distinguish it from the Hīnayāna (Hīna, “lesser,” and yāna, “vehicle”) of the Arhat. Above all, the fundamental difference between the two Buddhist traditions was the Bodhisattva’s vow to renounce his right to Nirvāņa until everyone could share in his enlightenment.

The Mahāyāna Buddhists never denied the original doctrines expounded by the Buddha. They had the original discourses, and there is no evidence that they ever modified them, but they did interpret the teachings with a different emphasis. While both schools relied on the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path, the Mahāyāna considered these teachings as preparatory steps in the Bodhisattva’s career or path. About a century after the Buddha’s death in 483 B.C., His disciples gradually split into two divisions: those who adhered to the orthodox Theravāda teachings, and those who adopted the more liberal teachings of the Mahāyāna school sometimes referred to as Bodhisattvayāna.

Among the early teachers and scholars of the Mahāyāna tradition was Nāgārjuna, another great philosopher of Nālandā monastic university, who lived in the latter half of the second century A.D. He founded the Mādhyamika School (“Middle Way or View”) from his systematic study and interpretation of Prajñā pāramitā, a Sanskrit term usually translated as “Perfect Wisdom,” “Transcendental Wisdom,” or “the Perfection of Wisdom.” Nāgārjuna was the earliest expounder of the Prajñā pāramitā doctrines in which the potential Bodhisattva is guided by the practice of the Six Pāramitās or “Virtues of Perfection leading to Enlightenment.”

The practice of the Six Pāramitās, the six transcendental actions, is the Bodhisattva’s Path. Gampopa, a twelfth-century Tibetan lama, was later to define the Path as giving up “what is to be given up” and instilling “its opposite in one’s being.” The Pāramitās in traditional order are as follows:

1. Dāna. The practice of generosity, compassion, and good will to all.

2. Śila. The practice of morality and the active combating of evil thoughts.

3. Kshañti. The practice of patience and the toleration of ill treatment.

4. Vīrya. The practice of untiring exertion and sustained perseverance.

5. Dhyāna. The practice of contemplation, or concentration of attention.

6. Prajñā. The practice of wisdom, looking at things as they really are, the middle view between phenomenal truth and absolute truth of the “Voidness.”

All Pāramitās must be practiced to attain Enlightenment, which is insight into the inexpressible Reality referred to as Śunyatā, the “Void.” This is not the void of nothingness but the primordial Uncreated, Unformed, incapable of being described with terms of phenomenal or finite experience. This is to be intuitively grasped by transcending the ego consciousness with constant reading of the Prajñā Pāramitā texts and methodical meditation on the contents. [Page 25] Prajñā, the wisdom which destroys illusion, is the pāramitā par excellence, the attainment of which depends on the prior practice of the first five.

During the following centuries philosophical studies, discussions, and debates attracted other Buddhist scholars who made significant contributions to the Mahāyāna school. Asanga from Peshawar introduced the Yogācāra teachings which emphasized the practice of yoga as the way to Enlightenment. He and his brother, Vasubandhu, expounded their doctrines in the fourth century, destined later to influence Tibetan Yoga practice, as will be explained below.

Although the Buddha during His life discouraged His most fervent disciples from making images of Himself, after His death Buddha images became popular objects of veneration and inspiration and were to become indispensable to the practice of certain kinds of meditation. Images of the Buddha usually represent Him in the simple garments of a monk.

Subsequently, the Bodhisattva ideal inspired artists and craftsmen to produce images which symbolized the virtues of the Bodhisattva—compassion, wisdom, meditation, protection. Since the Buddha was formerly the first known Bodhisattva, the image makers molded the human form of the Bodhisattva in the princely garments and jewelry befitting the Rajah’s son who was to become the Buddha.

One of the chief obstacles to be overcome by the candidate for Bodhisattvahood is self-interest, the source of exclusiveness and isolation. Egoism is the principal hindrance to the practice of the Six Pāramitās beginning with Compassion and progressing on to Wisdom. Other obstacles emanating from ego consciousness which confront the aspirant are avariciousness, anger, and delusion.

Fortunately the means of overcoming these obstacles were already at hand in the practice of meditation (Yoga) of the Yogācāra tradition founded by Asanga. The images of a sacred pantheon of Buddhist divinities were also available for use in meditational practices to be systematized with the introduction of esoteric teachings known as Tantra. This mystical discipline existing from early times as an independent Indian tradition, was adopted between the eighth and tenth centuries by the teachers of the Mahāyāna universities of Nālandā and Vikramaśila. From the blending of Tantric discipline with Mahāyāna teachings emerged a third path or vehicle, Tantrayāna. Tantrayāna practice included ritual, the chanting of sacred invocations called mantrams and dharani, and a unique form of meditation specified in Tantric texts as Sadhana, “self-identification.” The instructions in this esoteric Buddhism, transmitted by the preceptor orally to his selected disciples, included meditation on the virtues of a Bodhisattva or Buddhist divinity using its image as an object of contemplation. The next step in the process of self-identification was to meditate on himself as the Bodhisattva or Buddhist divinity chosen for its virtue or perfection in order to achieve its realization.

When, as seen earlier, Padma Sambhava introduced Indian Buddhism into Tibet in the eighth century, he and Śāntirakshita collaborated in teaching the Dharma in its three divisions or yānas. The Tipitaka teachings recorded in the Pālī language as the Hīnayāna Canon were taught in its Sanskrit form called Tripitaka, and during the ninth and tenth centuries were accepted as the first [Page 26] stage of development in Tibetan Buddhism. When the sūtras of the Mahāyāna school had been translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries the Mahāyāna teachings became the second stage. Tantrayāna, the third and highest stage, could be practiced only after a sound foundation in the teachings of the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna traditions. Gradually Tantrayāna became the dominant influence in Tibetan Buddhism and its sacred art, but Tibetans both clergy and laymen think of the yānas as the Dharma and refer to it in Tibetan a5 Chö (rhymes with her). A Tibetan would interpret in English Dharma or Chö as “the Religion” since all three yānas are successive stages of one path, interlinked and interdependent, all leading to the one goal—Enlightenment. The Buddha, however, referred to but one yāna or “path” as Buddhayāna.

When in the seventh century, Thon-mi Sambhota, his students, and associates translated available Mahāyāna sūtras, it was the beginning of one of the greatest achievements in literary history which continued for over a thousand years. The translations, limited by a Tibetan vocabulary unsuitable for conveying Buddhist ideas and Sanskrit terminology, proceeded slowly during the seventh and eighth centuries. But with time and patience, experience and exuberant piety, Tibetan ingenuity led the way to a new proficiency.

In the next two centuries Tibetans collected and translated Buddhist texts wherever they could be found. Monks traveled to Nepal and India, especially to Nālandā and Vikramaśila universities to study under Indian teachers and to obtain Sanskrit manuscripts. In turn, Indian teachers traveled over the Himalayas to assist Tibetans in translations. In the first half of the ninth century many Buddhist texts were translated through the joint efforts of Indian scholars and Tibetan monks. King Ral-pa-chan (815-838), a devout Buddhist, encouraged translation on a large scale. Indian pundits and Tibetan translators collaborated on the compilation of the Mahāvyutpatti, a Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicon to establish uniformity of terminology and phraseology in the translation of Buddhist scriptures.

From the ninth to the thirteenth centuries translations were systematically prepared by Tibetan translators in close collaboration With Indian scholars in monasteries of India and Tibet. Finally the established texts of the Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna traditions revered as canonical were collected, coordinated, and properly classified. After extensive editing, the translations were arranged in two great collections: the more than 100 volume Kanjur (Bka’-’agyur), “The Word [of the Buddha] translated,” the scriptures considered authoritative; and the Tanjur (Bstan-’agyur) “The teachings translated,” expository treatises composed by later Indian Buddhist scholars, usually in 225 volumes. Both collections were compiled about 1340 A.D. under the supervision of the great historian and redactor, Bu-ston Rin-po-che (1290- 1364) at Zha-lu monastery, of which he was abbot. The number of volumes in the Kanjur and Tanjur above refers to block-printed editions dating from the seventeenth century. Copies of the original manuscript editions were prepared for the libraries of monastic orders founded before the time of woodblock printing.

The teachings of the Dharma (Chö) were spread orally in Tibet by monk teachers and through copying the manuscript editions of the Buddhist scriptures. [Page 27] Monastic orders were founded and monasteries and temples were built between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries. The unique architecture of Tibetan monasteries and temples had little in common with Indian or Chinese Buddhist architecture. The massive stone construction, wide at the base with sloping sides and flat roofs which suggests Egyptian architecture, retains the ancient style of early Tibetan fortresses.

Five principal monastic orders were established in Tibet during that period. Although the basic subjects of the Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna traditions were the same in each order, each developed its own curriculum and discipline. Fortunately sectarian diversity was virtually free from sectarian conflicts, and a monk of one order was free to seek personal instruction from a lama in a different order. He would be made welcome if qualified, for the compassion of a teacher went hand in hand with wisdom.

The ceremonies of any monastic order and its monasteries could reveal a significant feature of Tibetan Buddhism. It is not a congregational religion in the Christian sense of the word which implies the public worship of God conceived as “a supreme Being, a divine Creator, a personal Deity, a heavenly Father.” Services are held daily in the temples by the monks who recite the sūtras, chant in unison, and honor the Buddha Gautama. Although lay Buddhists do not attend the daily services, they attend special occasions and ceremonies which take place in the temple. While the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, Indian saints, and holy lamas are venerated, worship is absent because in Buddhism there is no Deity to be worshipped. Buddhism is a personal religion for the lay devotee and his family. They perform their daily devotions before a shrine in the home, recite invocations to the Bodhisattva, Chen-re-zi (spyan-ras-gzigs), the Buddhist personification of compassion in whom the Dalai Lama is believed to be the earthly presence. Tibetans also recite the Threefold Refuge: by taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha (lamas and monks). A layman’s devotions are performed to give his life spiritual energy, direction, and resolution.

Among the notable abbots recorded in Tibetan history, one was outstanding as a great religious genius. Destined by his own efforts to become celebrated as the Second Buddha, Tsong-kha-pa was born in 1357 near Koko Nor Lake in northeastern Tibet. His birthplace was humble as his name implied “Onion Valley man.” Endowed with a healthy body, a remarkably keen mind, and a strong desire to learn, he visited different monasteries where he studied under the most learned scholars. Ordained at an early age, he continued his studies in the Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna doctrines; mastered them; and received the coveted Geshe degree, a double doctorate in Buddhist philosophy and literature requiring no less than thirteen years of study.

Tsong-kha-pa had no rival as a lecturer or as a skillful debater, and his expository “Collected Works” in eighteen block-printed volumes are profound, accurate, and clear. His magnum opus, the Lam-rim cben-mo (“Great Graded Path to Saintly Perfection”) was systematically composed with main headings [Page 28] and subdivisions. When he was fifty, he founded a new monastic order for his numerous followers who were attracted to his teachings despite his strict discipline maintained to correct the abuses and misinterpretations of Tantrayāna practiced in other monastic orders. He named his order Gelugpa (Dge-lugs-pa), “The Virtuous-way goers,” and for his monks he prescribed yellow hats to distinguish them from those who wore red hats. Thereafter his monastic order acquired the more popular name of “Yellow Hats.” In 1409 he built his monastery, which he named Gan-dan, and became its abbot. He trained several exceptionally qualified monks who became his chief disciples; two in succession occupied the abbot’s chair after his death in 1419.

The youngest personal disciple of Tsong-kha-pa, his nephew Gandun Truppa (Dge-’dun grub-pa), born in 1391, attended his master until his death. By nature a leader, by inclination a scholar and author, he built his own Gelugpa monastery in western Tibet and served as its first abbot. He was later known in history as the first Dalai Lama, a title posthumously bestowed. According to the prediction of Tsong-kha-pa, this hierarchy would continue through a series of incarnations, each the reembodiment of Gandun Truppa in a baby boy successor. Although Rebirth (commonly called Reincarnation) is one of the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism, until his death in 1474 no one had been recognized as the rebirth of a person previously known or recorded in Tibetan history.

A BABY BOY born the following year having certain physical characteristics was found and identified as the incarnation of Gandun Truppa, later known as Dalai Lama II (1475-1542). The title “Dalai” was conferred upon Dalai Lama III (1543-1588) while he was visiting Mongolia at the invitation of Prince Altan Khan in 1578. He converted the prince and his followers to Buddhism and in return received from the khan the title Talai (written “Dalai” by others), the Mongol word for “ocean.” The title of Dalai Lama was extended retroactively to his two predecessors and later to all his incarnate successors from Dalai Lama IV (1589-1616) on. They began to assume political power when the forceful Dalai Lama V (1617-1682) became the first spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet in 1642. Also a great scholar (the author of twenty-five block-printed volumes) and builder, he is referred to in Tibetan history as the “Great Fifth.”

Although fourteen Dalai Lamas are recorded in Tibetan history, their followers consider them all as one Dalai Lama in fourteen bodies. When a Dalai Lama dies, a lama (prelate) of exceptional scholarship is appointed to serve as regent of Tibet. Three or four years later the regent lama authorizes a search for the new incarnation. Boy candidates born forty-nine days to two years after the Dalai Lama’s death are shown some of his personal belongings mixed with several similar objects. The boy who recognizes the Dalai Lama’s former possessions “as his own” is identified as the new incarnation. In Tibet the Mongol title Talai was very seldom used because Tibetans prefer his Tibetan titles which signify “The Precious Sovereign” or “The Precious Protector.” The present Dalai Lama, fourteenth holder of the title, born in 1935, became a refugee in India with thousands of his Tibetan followers in 1959 when China annexed Tibet.

[Page 29]

In this survey to show how the Buddhism of Tibet compares with early Indian Buddhism, it is obvious that the teachings of the earlier Hīnayāna tradition and the later Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna teachings are interlinked and form the successive stages of Tibetan Buddhism. In contrast, each of the Indian Buddhist traditions has become, outside of Tibet, a distinct school. Since every available Indian Buddhist text was translated into Tibetan, and later revised with more accurate and consistent terminology, and all systematically organized, Tibet became heir to the teachings of the total Indian Buddhist tradition at the height of its development. Subsequently the biographies, writings, and collected works of the Dalai Lamas and their tutors and of other lamas and abbots renowned for their erudition became important texts in the voluminous sacred literature of Tibet.

While Tibet succeeded in synthesizing three Indian Buddhist traditions, she has made an unparalleled contribution to her own Buddhist tradition. The Dalai Lama is unique among religious leaders and temporal rulers because he is chosen when discovered and identified as the rebirth of the previous Dalai Lama, a succession extending over a period of more than five centuries.

Poem

Your hands

relaxed criss-cross

on your lap—

arabesque of

two unfurling

flowers.

—Gayle Marie Hoover

[Page 30]

[Page 31]

The Metaphorical Nature of Physical Reality

BY JOHN S. HATCHER

IN CONTRAST to most institutionalized religions, the Bahá’í Faith teaches that spiritual reality is logical and that man should examine that reality with the same rational faculties and rigorous standards he uses in probing the phenomenal world. Therefore, the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá provide clear, forthright, and logical responses to virtually every major philosophical and theological question.

There is one question, however, which is rarely asked, not because the answer is unavailable in the Bahá’í Writings, but because most people probably do not think to ask it. The question concerns the rationale for physical reality—why it exists and how it works. Sometimes the matter is dealt with on a superficial level: since God fashioned the physical world, and since He has intended that man should evolve spiritually, phenomenal reality must be a benevolent creation which somehow facilitates his development. Such a response may be initially comforting, but it does not penetrate to the heart of the matter where the question is conceived in the first place: it scarcely resolves the myriad philosophical and pragmatic dilemmas confronting man daily in his desire to cope intelligently with a world which seems to make little sense.

To some even the Bahá’í Writings on physical reality may appear enigmatic. On the one hand, Bahá’u’lláh admonishes man to be detached from the physical world: “Abandon not the everlasting beauty for a beauty that must die, and set not your affections on this mortal world of dust.” On the other hand, He commands him to pay close attention to his physical actions, to have a vocation, to be wholeheartedly involved in the phenomenal world: “The best of men are they that earn a livelihood by their calling and spend upon themselves and upon their kindred for the love of God, the Lord of all worlds.”

Since there are no explicit contradictions in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh regarding this subject, and since Bahá’u’lláh has provided man with the necessary laws and institutions to direct his temporal affairs, the question may seem superfluous. Quite possibly this is why it is rarely asked. The results of the unasked question’s remaining unanswered are that many accept a vision of themselves as precariously tottering between two worlds and most approach things physical with confusion or at least some vague but haunting sense of guilt or anxiety.

Bahá’u’lláh does give man clear permission to enjoy the material bounties of the world: “Should a man wish to adorn himself with the ornaments of the earth, to wear its apparels, or partake of the benefits it can bestow, no harm can befall him, if he alloweth nothing whatever to intervene between him and God . . .” Yet man finds himself trying to live simultaneously in two disparate worlds, one of which, he is told, has the power to impede his spiritual progress. He senses within himself two natures, one spiritual and transcendent, the other appetitive and mundane; and, more often than not, the fulfillment

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This essay is a revised version of a paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Association for Studies on the Bahá’í Faith, held in Bolton, Ontario, on 31 December 1976-1 January 1977.

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[Page 32] of one seems to deny fulfillment of the other.

Many thinkers have pondered how man attains spiritual or intellectual growth without experiencing a seemingly endless war between the two aspects of his existence. Yet only a few have gone beyond this question to consider the source of this dilemma. Even fewer have concluded that there is a divine logic to this strange amalgamation of spiritual and physical realities. And of those who have perceived a rational means by which man can function harmoniously in the two realms, still fewer have been able to explain why spiritual growth must be achieved in such an awkward and painful way as physical experience.

I contend that the Bahá’í Writings contain solutions to the major questions about existence in the temporal world and that these solutions not only clarify man’s relationship to both worlds and both facets of man’s nature but also imply the divine rationale for the creation of a physical reality in the first place. I believe it is in the elucidation of the essentially metaphorical nature of physical reality that these answers are found.

By examining first the traditional and then the Bahá’í attitudes toward physical reality, and by studying in detail the way in which the metaphorical process applies both to the individual’s spiritual development and is used by Manifestations of God as part of Their teaching techniques, we can understand an important part of the logic underlying this process.

Such a study will reveal the validity of the method by which physical experience can effect spiritual growth, as well as the necessity of this teaching device for the achievement of such development.

I

HISTORICALLY, there have been three general views of man’s relationship to physical reality. The first holds that man is essentially spiritual in nature and that to attain his highest destiny he must reject the physical world together with its appetites and passions. Antithetical to this view is a perception of man as essentially an animal who is happiest when he devotes himself to the physical world and its bounties and discards the vain and frustrating attempts to become something more ethereal. Between these extremes are various conceptions of how man may develop his higher self and yet partake of the fruits of physical reality.

The most obvious compliance with the first of these views has been martyrdom or suicide. Short of death, the ascetic ideal has provided the most exacting response. The problems with both positions are obvious: sufficient persecution to ensure martyrdom is not always easily accessible to a community of believers; and suicide, in addition to thinning the ranks of followers, is usually proscribed in organized religion. The ascetic ideal with its rigors of prayer, fasting, meditation, and flagellation is a forthright, dramatic renunciation of physical reality. but it too presents perplexing consequences. Assuming mass acceptance of such a position, and providing the commonly held ascetic rule of celibacy were followed, the human race, or at the very least the most dedicated and spiritualized portion of it would die off in one generation. Moreover, asceticism evinces a philosophical dilemma: such a belief may affirm one’s assurance of life after death and of spiritual reality, but implicitly it condemns a sizeable portion of oneself and of God’s own handiwork.

A less stringent compliance with the point of view requiring that man reject the physical world is to acknowledge the necessity of physical experience but to advocate that it be endured with the least amount of joy possible. The question then arises as to what the relationship between deeds and spiritual growth is. As if to de-emphasize physical involvement, two of the predominant advocates of this approach, much of Medieval Christianity and early Calvinism, held that there is a negligible relationship between deeds and [Page 33] salvation. Calvin even went so far as to say that since man is saved from birth through preordination nothing he does will affect his spiritual destiny one way or the other. Similarly, an influential sixth-century work by Boethius, a condemned, possibly Christian scholar, implies that there may be some eternal logic to this physical world, but it is veiled from the eyes of men, who should rejoice in their release from the confines of this existence.

Perhaps the most intriguing response to the ostensible wretchedness of this corporeal realm is the belief that it does not exist. In the works of Mary Baker Eddy, for example, one finds the following reasoning: a physical world is from man’s perception limited and imperfect; a perfect Deity could not create imperfection; ergo, physical reality does not exist. She goes on to describe a process by which man, as a spiritual entity projects the illusion of this crass world. Thus she avoids the dilemma of understanding how a beneficent God would create such an apparently shabby physical world, but she fails to explain how the same Creator would produce souls capable of such shabby illusions.

Antithetical to these aspirations toward spiritual progress is a view which emphasizes the physical reality of man’s existence—a view that man is happiest, or most fulfilled, when he accepts his lot as a rather strange species of animal. This is not to imply that such a view automatically finds spiritual or intellectual endeavors dangerous, but to one who conceives of human fulfillment in terms of physical or sensual reward or pleasure the spiritual or intellectual enterprises are valuable only insofar as they are able to enhance participation in the physical world. As in the first view, this view is too broad to be clearly defined, for it encompasses positions ranging from the extremes of explicit hedonism and epicureanism to milder forms of atheism and agnosticism. In fact, an honest appraisal of modern philosophical positions, at least as they are implicitly reflected in the goals and activities of the vast majority, fit within this classification. Certainly the prevailing notion of human well-being is that a happy person is one who has the wherewithal to acquire. Even education is viewed in purely pragmatic terms of how it can assist man in responding to his acquisitive drives, for he can scarcely exist under continuous media bombardment and not on some level believe that peace of mind can be bought. With the exception of a few books, records, and other providers of quasi-intellectual stimuli, the products relate strictly to physical or sensual delight: sex, food, sleep, good digestion, shining hair, white teeth, soft hands, clear eyes, moist skin, new clothes. In addition to these and other means of appeasing the senses, there is an active attempt to avoid thought, or at least the kind of thought which might wander to more perplexing questions. This avoidance is accomplished through the acquisition of devices to occupy the mind’s leisure hours—television, games, alcohol, cars: the list is endless.

The philosophy implied by such a materialistic approach to life is that one is happiest when he avoids doing anything a well- trained animal could not do quite as well, even better. Such an attitude is also a tacit denial of spiritual growth and equates physical well-being with human fulfillment.

Obviously not all the positions within this category are so ill-defined and mindless. Gestalt psychology, at least as it is presented and practiced by most, can be viewed as essentially concerned with the physical realm. It is not necessarily amoral or unspiritual, but its approach does tend to be existential. Furthermore, its application frequently involves the attempt to purge oneself of externally imposed expectations, such as those transmitted through traditional views of human relationships and moral codes. Such an approach is not hedonistic or unfeeling, but it perceives individual health and growth as something incidental to and aloof from societal health and development, as the so- called Gestalt prayer illustrates:

I do my thing, and you do your thing.

[Page 34]

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you and I am I

And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.

If not, it can't be helped.

Understood in the context of the lengthy discussion of emotional health by Frederick S. Perls, the father of Gestalt methodology, the dictum is logical, valuable, essentially humanistic. As it is often practiced and perceived, however, the attitude is taken as a prescription for self-indulgence and the abdication of moral responsibility.

One noteworthy observation about the positions emphasizing the physical reality of man’s existence is that there is often a delight in the possibilities of a spiritual reality, but a spiritual realm which is mysterious, illogical, and unrelated to human development. Thus there is a fascination with astrology, palmistry, biorhythms, tarot cards, and the like. Yet there is a lack of relationship between human action and development and spiritual mysteries. Outside forces may influence man, but they are impersonal determinants, fates, stars, all sorts of energies loose in the world. Man might improve his situation by being aware of such forces and reacting to them, but the degree to which he can effect substantial change is minimal; hence his responsibility for his condition is likewise limited.

A third view of the physical world consists of various positions falling between the first two views, which, perhaps, sounds rather nebulous. In fact, within this middle ground are two rather clear divisions. First, there is the position that man can combine the spiritual and the physical by imposing a code of some sort which relates physical action to spiritual growth. Second, there is the belief that both realms are already integrated in one universal construct; thus man can, by understanding the nature of this integration, attain fulfillment without being fragmented or rejecting part of himself and his experience.

In one sense, any system of belief which subordinates purely pragmatic considerations to moral principles is integrating the two realms. To be legitimately classified within this third view, however, an ideology must do more than advocate suppression or control of physical man; it must establish a correlation between physical acts and spiritual or intellectual development. In other words, it does not view physical action as negative or superfluous but as an integral part of human development. In addition, the ideology may also suggest an idea of reciprocity in which intellectual perception directs physical action, while the physical action in turn contributes to a greater understanding of the abstract concept. For example, there are laws which attempt to elevate the moral or ethical standards of society; conversely, the carrying out of those laws may foster an environment which will enhance society’s perception of the moral question. This concept of the interrelation between the spiritual and physical is distinct from the idea of societal order as the end in itself, as portrayed, for example, in Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984, where control and regulation function to maintain physical stability to the detriment of human growth and development.

Some critics of Plato’s utopian political system depicted in the Republic feel he has also sacrificed human growth for the promulgation of the state, but I think Plato’s system accurately reflects the second division of this third view, the perception of physical end spiritual as already united. In his allegory of the cave in Book VII of the Republic Plato describes the physical world as a shadowy [Page 35] reflection of the higher and ultimately more real spiritual world. He does not imply that man should, therefore, ignore the physical reality; man should use the metaphorical expression of the metaphysical abstraction to discern higher reality. From the beautiful but transient objects in the phenomenal world he may discern the concept of beauty which unites the objects. From the concept of physical beauty he may ascend to the concept of the beauty in abstract qualities, the beauty of justice, of truth, of knowledge. In short, Plato portrays a world in which man can use the phenomenal world as a ladder to the world of ideas and attributes and, ultimately, to the animating force of the universe, God Himself.

Until quite recently Western man has been content to live divided between the dictates of two of these major views of the spiritually oriented life and the physically oriented life: he perceived his religious life as governed by the first view but his business life and physical routine as prescribed by the pragmatic considerations of the second view. In effect, the middle-class male who domihated the work force and political hierarchy had two incompatible, almost diametrically opposed views of life and of himself, one which governed his spiritual aspirations and another which described the pragmatic exigencies of his business world. As a result he either ignored his religious beliefs as irrelevant to the “real world,” floundered because he refused to compromise his ethical standards, or lived in constant turmoil as he vacillated between the two points of view.

Some societies in their primitive stages of development had no such dilemma. Man in the heroic cultures of Achaean Greece or Anglo-Saxon England, for example, saw the world and his experience in that world as unified, not divided bemeen physical considerations and spiritual aspirations. In a very real sense all action had religious implications, and life was an organic experience aimed at one central goal—becoming as noble as possible in the minds and hearts of others within the tribal structure. And nobility was traditionally something more than physical prowess; it was courage plus magnanimity, humility, wisdom, grace.

Of course, it is easy to idealize the heroic tribal community; its world was small, simple, defined, limited. As man’s knowledge and experience grew, all learning was no longer vested in one or two wise elders. Distinctions were made between what could be empirically observed and described through induction and deduction and what remained mysterious, unknowable, within the province of superstition or blind faith. As man’s powers of observation progressed, what was at one time unknowable became undersrandable so that what had formerly been described through myth and ritual could be explained through logic.

Gradually, western thought was divided between men of science and men of religion. The man of science labored awkwardly within the constriction of his religious belief, accomplishing such feats as compounding the errors of the Ptolemaic system, or he rejected the restraints of theologically based descriptions of the phenomenal world while retaining his religious faith, or he renounced completely the unfounded tenets of religious belief in favor of total reliance on scientific method. Tradition was promulgated that the man of science was unfeeling, coldly rational, unreligious, unspiritual and that the man of religion was irrational, meditative, inspired, tenacious in his faith. Logic became the faculty of science; blind faith, the faculty of religion.

This admittedly simplistic analysis of the schism between two aspects of learning demonstrates one of the reasons for man’s divided attitudes about physical reality, and it explains why such division is no longer acceptable. Man can withhold rational investigation of his beliefs and accept fragmentation only so long before he yields to the demands of homeostasis.

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II

TO ONE who peruses the Bahá’í teachings cursorily, it might appear that the Bahá’í point of view could affiliate with any one of the three categories I have described. The emphasis on practical solutions to world problems, such as world government, a world economic system, and universal education, might seem to imply that the Bahá’í Faith is existential, particularly in its emphasis on deeds: “The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life.” Other passages from the Bahá’í Writings, taken by themselves, would seem to indicate a complete disregard for the physical world and a suppression of all material concerns:

Blind thine eyes, that thou mayest behold My beauty; stop thine ears, that thou mayest hearken unto the sweet melody of My voice; empty thyself of all learning, that thou mayest partake of My knowledge; and sanctify theyself from riches, that thou mayest obtain a lasting share from the ocean of My eternal wealth.

Taken as a whole, the teachings of the Faith might seem to imply a careful balance, a sort of Aristotelian mean between the extremes of asceticism and attachment to the physical world. A closer examination of the Bahá’í Writings, however, reveals a perception of physical and spiritual reality as one integral, harmoniously functioning entity: physical reality is not an arbitrary creation, nor is it something with which man should be only incidentally concerned as he devotes himself to attaining another realm. Thus the Writings of the Bahá’í Faith do provide specific and logical responses to questions about the nature of the physical world.

In His Writings, Bahá’u’lláh states that the physical world has the capacity to reflect or manifest spiritual qualities. This capacity is not confined to mankind but is common to all phenomenal objects and to relations among those objects.

Know thou that every created thing is a sign of the revelation of God. Each, according to its capacity, is, and will ever remain, a token of the Almighty. Inasmuch as He, the sovereign Lord of all, hath willed to reveal His sovereignty in the kingdom of names and attributes, each and every created thing hath, through the act of the Divine Will, been made a sign of His glory. So pervasive and general is this revelation that nothing whatsoever in the whole universe can be discovered that doth not reflect His splendor.

Furthermore, Bahá’u’lláh states that this capacity is the essential reality of the phenomenal world and that without it phenomenal reality would cease to exist: “Were the Hand of Divine power to divest of this high endowment all created things, the entire universe would become desolate and void.” Elsewhere Bahá’u’lláh states that man can perceive this relationship, the way in which phenomenal objects reflect spiritual attributes:

each and every created thing hath, according to a fixed decree, been endowed with the capacity to exercise a particular influence, and been made to possess a distinct virtue....

He is really a believer in the Unity of God who recognizeth in each and every created thing the sign of the revelation of Him Who is the Eternal Truth, and not he who maintaineth that the creature is indistinguishable from the Creator.

In still other passages Bahá’u’lláh explains that the capacity of the physical world to reflect the divine attributes and the capacity of man to recognize this correlation are not coincidental; it is the explicit function of the [Page 37] physical world to educate man: “Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things.” I will discuss later the metaphorical process by which the physical world exerts this influence, but it is worth noting that the many lessons man has learned from his study of atomic structure show this passage from The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh to be no mere hyperbole. One might see in the structure of an atom a parallel to the solar system, or in the way matter is held together by the mutual attraction of masses an analogue to the force of love which can unite men, or in the nucleus of the atom a representation of the Manifestation around whom circle the believers. The possibilities are innumerable.

Metaphorically, the Bahá’í Writings depict physical reality as a classroom replete with teaching devices, the physical objects themselves, but the Writings also make clear that the student is not left to his own intuition to utilize his educational environment. He is provided with Teachers, Manifestations of God, who explain the objectives of education and the means by which they can be achieved. In short, each Manifestation relates physical experience to spiritual growth, though He wisely causes the student to participate in discerning correlations.

The complexity of the Manifestation’s task is partly evident in that He must work on two levels in order to make the student aware of the two facets of his existence—where he is, the physical world, and where he aspires to be, a spiritual state of being. Consequently, the Manifestation has two aspects to His identity.

As He reiterates the eternal, changeless attributes of the spiritual world, He is a revealer, an unveiler of divine reality and moral law. Accordingly, religious law transcends the definition of the imposition of order on disorder. Properly understood, moral or spiritual law assumes the same objective authority as scientific law: just as scientific law describes relationships among phenomena, spiritual and moral laws describe the relationships among spiritual entities. In this sense moral law is not an arbitrary prescription; it is objective description. So it is that one ascribes to Newton the virtue of having discovered and formulated the mutual attraction of masses, not of having contrived or invented this property of matter. Similarly, the Manifestation does not create divine reality or the laws governing that reality. He reveals them to man and invites compliance with them. Likewise, just as advances in scientific understanding render more and more complete man’s descriptions of the phenomenal world, so the progression of revelation by the Manifestations renders his understanding of spiritual reality and its laws more and more accurate and complete.

But the Manifestation is not only a describer or revealer. In His station as law- giver, He actively affects the degree to which the physical world reflects the spiritual world. In this capacity He becomes more than an instructor who helps man understand and utilize his physical classroom; He becomes a creative force which puts in motion the energies and laws that will cause spiritual reality to be actuated in the phenomenal world. Consequently, the Manifestation instructs man how to implement spiritual law. He is doing at least two things: He is describing the spiritual laws which underlie and are the logical bases for His social ordinances, and He is creating that reality by making it understood and implemented in the physical world.

For example, when Bahá’u’lláh institutes the concept of the equality of men and women, He is both revealing a spiritual verity which has always existed and He is pronouncing to what extent the physical world can manifest that reality. Likewise, when Bahá’u’lláh speaks of the unity of science [Page 38] and religion, He is revealing an objective reality—that both areas of investigation are probing aspects of the same creation. At the same time He admonishes the men of science and religion to become aware of this verity so that, rather than being divided, they can work together to increase man’s understanding of his world.

Therefore, from the Bahá’í perspective there is no conflict between the physical world and the spiritual world, nor should there he a problem with man’s participation in either—that is, in theory if man follows the guidelines which the Manifestation provides for the proper utilization of the physical classroom, he should find that the study of and participation in one world will enhance and facilitate his perception of and utilization of the other. Furthermore, the Bahá’í point of view renders invalid the traditional distinction between the methods used to probe these two facets of man’s experience. Instead of perceiving religious belief as being beyond and impervious to rational investigation, the Bahá’í Writings state that the same standards which are valid for examining the verity of scientific belief are equally appropriate for examining religious conviction:

God has endowed man with intelligence and reason whereby he is required to determine the verity of questions and propositions. If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science they are mere superstitions and imaginations; for the antithesis of knowledge is ignorance. and the child of ignorance is superstition. Unquestionably there must be agreement between true religion and science. If a question be found contrary to reason, faith and belief in it are impossible and there is no outcome but wavering and vacillation.

Thus, like man’s other beliefs, his acceptance of the essential unity of creation as depicted in the Bahá’í Writings just examined must be followed by an attempt to understand the intricacies of that harmony and to implement that knowledge in his actions.

III

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH’S STATEMENTS about the educational value of phenomenal reality establish the essential unity of the physical and spiritual realms, but in order to understand how spiritual education takes place on the individual level, we must first understand the metaphorical process which relates one world to the other.

Metaphor is one of several kinds of analogical devices all of which function in the same manner: they compare two essentially dissimilar things, which may be people, situations, relationships, abstractions, or material objects, but always there is an implicit or explicit statement of similarity between essentially different subjects. Therefore, whether the analogical device is metaphor, simile, allegory, conceit, symbol, or some other type of figure, it contains three basic parts: the tenor, that which is being described; the vehicle, that which is compared to the tenor; and the meaning, that area of similarity between the tenor and the vehicle.

The term metaphor is often used to designate this process in general, though strictly speaking, a metaphor is a relatively short, implicit analogical device. Sometimes the term figure or the term image is also used in this general sense, figure denoting figure of speech or rhetorical device, and image designating figurative image. But whatever term one uses, and regardless of whether the device is a one-word metaphor or an elaborate parable, a particularly challenging process must occur if the device is to work effectively. The reader or listener must be made to think, to be creative, because it is he who must complete [Page 39] the final and most important part of the process. It is he who is responsible for determining in what way the tenor and vehicle are similar.

Consider the simple metaphor “Jane is a lovely flower.” The analogical equation is established because the tenor “Jane” is essentially different from the vehicle “flower.” (Had we compared June to Mary, the tenor and the vehicle would be essentially the same, both being girls, and no analogy would occur.) The reader or listener must now finish the process by deciding what the tenor and vehicle have in common. If the metaphor is completely obvious or trite, the mind may go from the tenor to the meaning without examining the vehicle. Thus overworked similes such as “cold as ice” or “hard as a rock” require no mental examination of the vehicle because no resistance is offered and the process is short circuited. Description has occurred, but the device has not caused the reader to participate.

The value and function of the analogical process are immense. On the obvious level, it is a useful way to explain the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, the abstract in terms of the concrete. In addition, it has the capacity to compress a great deal of meaning into a few words. Moreover, because it offers a variety of meanings, it can be an expansive description rather than a limiting or restrictive one. But probably the most important feature of the analogical process is its ability to educate—that is, when one is forced to examine the vehicle in order to understand the tenor, he is exercising one of his most important capacities as a human being:

Metaphor is a process of comparing and identifying one thing with another. Then, as we see what things have in common, we see the general meaning they have. Now the ability to see the relationship between one thing and another is almost a definition of intelligence. Thinking in metaphors . . . is a tool of intelligence. Perhaps it is the most important tool.

In addition to exercising this faculty of discernment, one is also extracting the meaning for himself instead of having meaning imposed on him. Therefore, the analogical process is indirect and objective in that the teacher who employs this process is a step removed from the teaching device. In effect, if a student is to obtain meaning, he must exercise his volition and examine the tenor and the vehicle. When he apprehends the meaning on his own, he will not feel as if he has been told what to think, though he may be grateful to the one who was creative enough to conceive the equation.

One can hardly discuss the use of the analogical process in regard to religion without mentioning at least one more important asset of this device; it is a safeguard against literalism and hence against dogmatism. For example, when Christ states that He is the “Bread of life,” He means something positive by it, that He is valuable, essential, a source of sustenance, of spiritual nutrition. But there is no one “correct” meaning or translation of the equation. To view the metaphor as having one meaning is to miss the analogical equation—mistake the vehicle for the tenor—and to end up believing that Christ was actually a piece of bread.

But perhaps the most important value of the analogical process in human development is that without it man would not be able to transcend the physical world even for a moment, because abstract thought is impossible without the use of metaphor. Therefore, in order to discuss or understand or perceive spiritual qualities, man must first relate ephemeral realities to a concrete form. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that

human knowledge is of two kinds. One is the knowledge of things perceptible to the senses . . .

The other kind of human knowledge is [Page 40] intellectual—that is to say, it is a reality of the intellect, it has no outward form and no place, and is not perceptible to the senses. . . . Therefore to explain the reality of the spirit, its condition, its station, one is obliged to give explanations under the forms of sensible things, because in the external world all that exists is sensible.

He then gives examples of this mechanism of human intellect as it enables man to communicate the knowledge of abstract thought:

For example, grief and happiness are intellectual things; when you wish to express those spiritual qualities you say: ‘My heart is oppressed; my heart is enlarged’; though the heart of man is neither oppressed nor enlarged. This is an intellectual or spiritual state, to explain which you are obliged to have recourse to sensible figures. Another example: you say, ‘such an individual made great progress,’ though he is remaining in the same place; or again, ‘such an one’s position was exalted,’ although, like every one else, he walks upon the earth. This exaltation and this progress are spiritual states and intellectual realities; but to explain them you are obliged to have recourse to sensible figures, because in the exterior world there is nothing that is not sensible.

So the symbol of knowledge is light, and of ignorance, darkness; but reflect, is knowledge sensible light, or ignorance sensible darkness? No, they are merely symbols.

Having established a working definition of the metaphorical process, we can now appreciate how this essential tool of enlightenment functions on the individual level and in terms of the Bahá’í concept of human fulfillment. Not that a belief in a divine reality or spiritual growth is a requisite to understanding the value of this process: man’s use of the phenomenal world in forming abstract concepts is an essential part of his survival, the means by which he subdues his environment and distinguishes himself from lesser creatures.

The analogical sensibility, together with the faculty for inductive logic, enables the child to pass beyond the Pavlovian, or Skinnerian reflex, and to form concepts of himself and the world around him. Wittingly or unwittingly, the child collects the data from his daily experiences, perceives the similarity among the experiences, and induces an abstract belief about those experiences. For example, the child is punished or corrected for various actions, essentially different actions, and he perceives the similar ingredients of rules, authority, obedience. He then induces generalizations about those concepts: he perceives that there are rules which require his obedience to authority; or, if there is no consistency to the rules or their application, he notes that authority is capricious, unjust, frightening. Consequently, the process may be valid without being true.

From the initial stages of abstract thought one can progress without limit to larger, more expansive and encompassing abstractions since the concept will always be in a relative state of being perceived. For example, once having perceived authority dramatized in the familial relationship, the child may inductively collect and store other dramatizations of this abstraction, perhaps in a teacher or public official. As he continues to accumulate data, he may perceive authority in other concepts; a belief in truth, honesty, or kindness, for example, may have more authority to some people than any human figure of authority. Even in these instances he is still relating the abstraction to the physical world; he has come to understand honesty or kindness as they have been implemented in physical circumstance.

There is no final or complete perception of the abstraction; it can always be more acutely perceived or more exquisitely dramatized [Page 41] in the phenomenal world. Of course, the idea of limitless growth is not confined to the individual. Society itself can manifest a collective awareness of authority, justice, honesty; and, as it expands its awareness of these attributes, it is capable of implementing its understanding more completely in social action.

Clearly the metaphorical process is an educational tool which can help provide unlimited development, even if one has no precise moral code or established theological belief. However, within the context of the Bahá’í perception of man’s nature and destiny, the process assumes a much greater significance. For example, the Bahá’í Writings portray man as capable of acquiring spiritual attributes—that is, beyond the ability to understand and implement a particular attribute, man can, through habitual utilization of a virtue, assimilate that quality as part of his essential nature. When he assimilates a quality, his soul is improved. Such progress is the explicit goal of man in both this world and the world to come.

The Bahá’í Writings further explain that even if the development does not take place in this world it can occur in the next:

It is even possible that the condition of those who have died in sin and unbelief may become changed; that is to say, they may become the object of pardon through the bounty of God, not through His justice; for bounty is giving without desert, and justice is giving what is deserved. As we have power to pray for these souls here, so likewise we shall possess the same power in the other world, which is the kingdom of God. Are not all the people in that world the creatures of God? Therefore in that world also they can make progress. As here they can receive light by their supplications, there also they can plead for forgiveness, and receive light through entreaties and supplications.

One might, therefore, ask—given a belief in a spiritual afterlife where opportunity to grow continues—why he should make efforts on this plane of existence. Numerous answers are possible. One is that, since the Bahá’í Writings teach that the soul assumes its individuality when it begins its association with the physical body at conception, this temporal experience is not one in a series of incarnate opportunities to learn—it is an opportunity for laying foundations and acquiring the tools for development in both the physical world and the spiritual world. For example, if a child in the womb had the capacity to choose whether it would develop the tools for physical existence, its arms, legs, senses, and if, in spite of our admonitions, it chose to ignore its own growth, believing this world to be a ludicrous myth, it would be born into this world unable to function, except on the level of a mineral or highly dependent plant. What is worse, without sensory tools it would not even be aware of its own state of deprivation. By analogy, to neglect developing spiritual sensibilities is to risk being born into a spiritual world either without any awareness of one’s condition or with enough awareness of one’s deprivation to be utterly confounded and distraught:

They that are the followers of the one true God shall, the moment they depart out of this life, experience such joy and gladness as would be impossible to describe, while they that live in error shall be seized with such fear and trembling, and shall be filled with such consternation, as nothing can exceed.

But the most immediate and empirically demonstrable reason for making efforts on the physical plane is that to do so is to attain the greatest happiness and fulfillment possible, since it is utilizing the physical experience as it was intended to be used—to educate the souls of men by enabling them to act out metaphorically their spiritual advancement.

There are specific steps in improving the condition of the soul through the acquisition [Page 42] of spiritual attributes. First, one must understand the nature of the attribute by observing how it might be manifest in physical action. Second, he must decide to acquire the attribute by resolving to carry out an action. Third, he must fulfill his noble intent, not once, but consistently, repeatedly until the response becomes habitual, instinctive. When he perceives that the attribute has become habitual, he can assume that his soul has, to some degree, assimilated that quality. It is then possible for him to perceive the same attribute on a higher level and to implement his increased understanding with a repetition of the same sequence of responses. In such a manner the human soul can continue to progress, whether in this world or the next, without ever reaching a final stage of perfection because, according to the Bahá’í Writings, the human soul has the capacity for infinite growth:

When man reaches the noblest state in the world of humanity, then he can make further progress in the conditions of perfection, but not in state; for such states are limited, but the divine perfections are endless.

Both before and after putting off this material form, there is progress in perfection, but not in state. So beings are consummated in perfect man. There is no other being higher than a perfect man. But when he has reached this state he can still make progress in perfections but not in state, because there is no state higher than that of a perfect man to which he can transfer himself.

Physical reality, then, functions metaphorically on this plane as an integral and inextricable part of man’s efforts to fulfill his primary goal, spiritual development. It provides the means by which he perceives spiritual qualities in the first place, and it is the means by which he may express and acquire attributes once they are understood. Even as man grows spiritually and is able to respond to increasingly higher levels of understanding, he never relinquishes on this plane the need to relate that understanding to metaphorical application; the reciprocal relationship between spiritual concept and physical act remains.

Consider cleanliness, for example. A child may first understand this abstraction in terms of seeing the similarity among the diverse acts of cleanliness he is required to perform— cleaning his room, washing his body, wearing clean clothes. At the outset these acts are received as separate commands; and each requires understanding, volition, and action until they become habitual. At some point the child will, one hopes, perceive the analogical relationship uniting these acts and instead of having to learn so many specific regulations will be able to reverse the process, to apply his understanding of the quality of cleanliness to other seemingly unrelated physical acts. As the process continues, the child may incorporate into his behavior more and more acts which exemplify the quality. As he manifests progressive levels of understanding through habit and discipline, he is liberated, enabled to perceive even more sophisticated levels of meaning——such as cleanliness of thought, purity of motive, chastity of conduct, and an infinite variety of other possibilities—which, in turn, require increased measures of will to make them habitual.

Even this brief treatment of the working of this process makes apparent several important factors related to spiritual growth through physical action. First, spiritual growth is gradual, painstaking, difficult. There are, no doubt, moments of great insight, visions of great change, and possibly days and weeks of rapid advancement. But the enduring and effective change of the human soul is attained slowly, meticulously, wittingly. Second, habit and discipline, instead of being restrictive or limiting, are, when applied positively to the formation of attributes, agents of liberation and advancement. One could almost state that without a sense of discipline, [Page 43] he cannot be released from one level of response to ascend to the next level. Consequently, the early training of a child in the formation of good habits and the initiation of discipline is, when properly taught, a key to his freedom and not a stifling of his creative spirit. If one has become accustomed to the benefits of these good habits and self- discipline, he will be less likely to be overwhelmed by the initial negative feedback which inevitably occurs in his struggle against his natural inertia and resistance to growth. Looking for spiritual growth without discomfort is like trying to become physically conditioned without the willingness to endure days of persistent strain and breathlessness. If one is not accustomed to persisting in spite of anxiety and discomfort, if one has not experienced analogous efforts where he has persisted, the abstract understanding of the value of his efforts may not provide sufficient impetus to ensure success. Being aware of the initial discomfort of human growth is particularly important when one investigates religion. If one seeks out a system which “feels good,” he is assuming that he is already developed, spiritualized, and that any belief which feels uncomfortable, which demands struggle or change, is clearly erroneous. Such an attitude blatantly ignores on a spiritual level what one would easily acknowledge on a physical or metaphorical level—that growth is not comfortable.

In the end, man may choose not to use his physical classroom to advance his spiritual growth, even though all creation from the smallest seed to the universe itself exhorts him to fulfill his destiny:

Thus the embryo of man in the womb of the mother gradually grows and develops, and appears in different forms and conditions, until in the degree of perfect beauty it reaches maturity, and appears in perfect form with the utmost grace. And in the same way, the seed of this flower which you see was in the beginning an insignificant thing, and very small; and it grew and developed in the womb of the earth, and after appearing in various forms, came forth in this condition with perfect freshness and grace. In the same manner it is evident that this terrestrial globe having once found existence, grew and developed in the matrix of the universe, and came forth in different forms and conditions, until gradually it attained this present perfection, and became adorned with innumerable beings, and appeared as a finished organisation.

IV

IF THE metaphorical process is the best device by which spiritual growth is initiated in the physical world, it would seem logical that this process would be evident in the methods of the Manifestations of God. Since They are perfect teachers sent to direct man’s spiritual development, it is reasonable to assume They would employ the best possible methods. When one examines the teaching techniques of the Manifestations, he finds that metaphorical devices constitute the core of Their methodology.

A Manifestation, besides being an emissary, is also an exemplar, a perfect reflection of the attributes of God, a station which relates directly to man’s twofold purpose in life: “The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence.” Since the Bahá’í Writings depict God as essentially unknowable, the most effective means of knowing God is through knowing the Manifestation Who portrays God’s Essence to man. However, it is clear that attaining the presence of God does not imply attaining physical proximity, but rather changing the spiritual condition of the soul so that one is constantly increasing his capacity for acquiring the spiritual attributes of God, for becoming more like Him. As [Page 44] we have already seen, however, acquisition cannot take place without understanding. A study of the Bahá’í Writings reveals that knowing God and attaining His presence are aspects of one process. For example, Bahá’u’lláh points out in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas that one cannot sever the recognition of the Manifestation from obedience to His laws: “These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other.”

Recognition of the Manifestation is, therefore, a necessary prerequisite for spiritual advancement; it is not sufficient simply to follow a pattern of behavior. Furthermore, recognition of the Manifestation implies more than perceiving the validity of His description of the universe and the pragmatic value of His ordinances; it involves perceiving the way in which the Manifestation metaphorizes or dramatizes God for men. Therefore, the Manifestation is clearly distinct from all other spiritual teachers, no matter how astute their teachings or how wise their laws. To know God is to know the Manifestation first, and to know the Manifestation is to understand the way in which He manifests the qualities of God. Christ, in responding to Philip’s request to see the Father about Whom Jesus had said so much, states: “‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, “Show us the Father”?’”

Of course, it is important not to confuse the tenor with the vehicle nor to take the metaphor at its literal value; one must extract the meaning by discerning the similarity between the two components, Christ and God in this case. Clearly the similarity between these essentially different entities is not physical, since the Manifestation is not necessarily physically impressive and since God is not a physical being. The similarity is not in physical power, since none of the Manifestations aspires to earthly ascendancy. Clearly the commonly held qualities are spiritual powers and capacities: to confuse the literal or physical nature of the vehicle, the person or personality of the Manifestation, with the tenor it represents, the nature of God, is to do more than misuse an analogy. To miss the metaphorical nature of the relationship between the Manifestation and God is to misunderstand completely the nature of the Manifestation, to fail to understand God Himself, and to confuse the whole educative process by which the Manifestation is attempting to instruct man.

It is no doubt because of this confusion that the Manifestations expend such effort to make clear the analogical relationship. For example, even though Christ states that no one can understand God except by first understanding Christ, He explains clearly that He is essentially different from God: “‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser.’” Furthermore, throughout His teachings, He explains that He is not the authority behind the Revelation, but a reflection of the Deity Who is:

“‘He who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.’”

“‘For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak.’”

“‘The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.’”

Similarly, Bahá’u’lláh also explains the relationship of the Manifestation to God and repeatedly enunciates the same theme: He is a tool which God uses to educate men:

This thing is not from Me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And [Page 45] He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven, . . .

This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred.

By My Life! Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself, but God, of His own choosing, hath manifested Me.

One example of the disastrous results of not recognizing the metaphorical process at work in the nature of the Manifestation is evident in the far-reaching effects of the vote taken at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The followers of Athanasius had come to believe that the tenor and the vehicle were one—that Christ and God were one in essence. The followers of Arius believed Christ was essentially inferior to God. Arius lost. The institution of the Church sanctioned the theology of Athanasius, condemned as heresy the views of Arius, and effectively severed itself from Christ’s fundamental teaching for all time. As Muḥammad pointed out to the Christians, to equate Christ with God was to add Gods to God, in effect, to believe in more than one God, as the idolators did in Muḥammad’s day:

Infidels now are they who say. “God is the Messiah, Son of Mary;” for the Messiah said, “O children of Israel! worship God, my Lord and your Lord.” Whoever shall join other gods with God, God shall forbid him the Garden, and his abode shall he the Fire; and the wicked shall have no helpers.

The use of metaphor is also the key to unlocking the meaning of the physical acts of the Manifestations. Since none of the Manifestations aspires to physical authority or dominion, any expression of physical power clearly has limited importance as a literal phenomenon. In healing the sick Christ was not attempting to rid the nation of disease or demonstrate an innovative medical technique. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that the miraculous acts of the Manifestations had as their primary and essential value the metaphorical or analogical dramatization of a spiritual action:

The outward miracles have no importance for the people of Reality. If a blind man receive sight, for example, he will finally again become sightless, for he will die, and be deprived of all his senses and powers. Therefore causing the blind man to see is comparatively of little importance, for this faculty of sight will at last disappear. If the body of a dead person he resuscitated, of what use is it since the body will die again? But it is important to give perception and eternal life, that is, the spiritual and divine life. . . .

. . . Whenever in the Holy Books they speak of raising the dead, the meaning is that the dead were blessed by eternal life; where it is said that the blind receive sight, the signification is that he obtained the true perception; . . . This is ascertained from the text of the Gospel where Christ said: ‘These are like those of whom Isaiah said, They have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not; and I healed them.’

The meaning is not that the Manifestations are unable to perform miracles, for they have all power. But for them the inner sight, spiritual healing, and eternal life are the valuable and important things.

It is with obvious wisdom that Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá exhort Bahá’ís not to place any emphasis on the miracles associated with Bahá’u’lláh. First, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá points out, the act is valuable only to those who witness the event, and even those may doubt what they have seen:

[Page 46]

I do not wish to mention the miracles of Bahá’u’lláh, for it may be said that these are traditions, liable both to truth and to error . . . Though if I wish to mention the supernatural acts of Bahá’u’lláh, they are numerous; they are acknowledged in the Orient, and even by some strangers to the Cause. . .. Yes, miracles are proofs for the bystander only, and even he may regard them not as a miracle but as an enchantment.

Second, there is an obvious temptation on the part of the followers of a Manifestation to praise Him for physical miracles and to perceive Him as a figure of temporal power instead of one of spiritual authority. In other words, it is too easy for the followers to become attached to the vehicle, the Manifestation Himself or the literal act He performs, instead of perceiving the essential value of the metaphors, the similarity between the Vehicles and the entities or qualities They metaphorize.

One of the clearest examples of such a mistaken perception, besides the almost inevitable attachment to the physical person of the Manifestation, is the incident of Christ's feeding of the five thousand. After He performed the miracle of feeding the masses with only five barley loaves and two fishes, the people believed He was a Prophet. When Christ saw that they wanted to take Him by force and make Him king, He fled to the hills. He explained the reason for his action to His disciples the next day when they found Him on the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.”

When the people missed the essential meaning or inner significance of his act and wanted to follow Him for the literal value of the physical action, He left them. Yet the importance He placed on their grasping the inner significance is evident in the patience with which He continued His explanation:

“Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus then said to them. “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life: he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

If one thinks Christ belabored the imagery, he is wrong; even when He repeated and extended the conceit, the Jews were not able to perceive the analogical process He was using:

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Having been raised in a religious tradition of literal laws, the Jews had difficulty understanding teachings which were communicated through analogy, even though most of their own ritual was, in its original intention, metaphorical dramatization. In a very real sense, the actions and teaching methods of Christ were aimed at breaking through the literalistic tradition in order to teach His followers to think analogically. As one of His last actions among His disciples, for example, He continued the bread imagery at the Last Supper:

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Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat: this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins?”

In this case, a verbal metaphor was not sufficient; Christ had His own disciples act out the analogy.

The life of Bahá’u’lláh also contains many actions with obvious analogical value. The conference at Badasht is perhaps one of the most intriguing. The occasion was the need to “implement the revelation of the Bayán by a sudden, a complete and dramatic break with the past—with its order, its ecclesiasticism, its traditions, and ceremonials.” In order to act out this transition, Bahá’u’lláh rented three gardens, one for Himself, one for Quddús, a third for Ṭáhirih. According to a prearranged plan Quddús and Ṭáhirih publicly quarreled during the conference, Quddús advocating a conservative view that the followers of the Báb not dissociate themselves from the religion of Islám and Ṭáhirih urging a complete break with Islám:

It was Bahá’u’lláh Who steadily, unerringly, yet unsuspectedly, steered the course of that memorable episode, and it was Bahá’u’lláh Who brought the meeting to its final and dramatic climax. One day in His presence, when illness had confined Him to bed, Ṭáhirih, regarded as the fair and spotless emblem of chastity and the incarnation of the holy Fáṭimih, appeared suddenly, adorned yet unveiled, before the assembled companions, seated herself on the right-hand of the affrighted and infuriated Quddús, and, tearing through her fiery words the veils guarding the sanctity of the ordinances of Islám, sounded the clarion-call, and proclaimed the inauguration, of a new Dispensation.

This dramatic event no doubt had many analogical meanings, not the least of which was a transition from one “garden,” Islám, to a completely new “garden,” the Bábí Revelation. We may also find symbolic value in the fact that Bahá’u’lláh occupied a third “garden,” possibly His Revelation:

Proclaim unto the children of assurance that within the realms of holiness, nigh unto the celestial paradise, a new garden hath appeared, round which circle the denizens of the realm on high and the immortal dwellers of the exalted paradise.

My point is not to assign one explanation to this metaphorical event; for, as I have already noted, to affix one meaning violates the very nature of metaphor; what I do think this episode indicates is that the Manifestation uses dramatic metaphorical action as one of His teaching devices.

Not all the actions of the Manifestations and Their followers are so clearly symbolic and analogical, though one can hardly ignore the overall dramatic and metaphorical tenor of the entire Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Faith. But, strictly speaking, all the actions of the Manifestation have the capacity to express God’s love for man through dramatic physical action.

The most obvious use of metaphor by the Manifestations is in the language They use. Whether it is the allegorical myths of the Old Testament, the parables of Christ, or the exquisite poetic imagery of Bahá’u’lláh’s verses, the language of the Manifestations frequently relies on imagery drawn from the phenomenal world in order to translate abstract concepts into terms which men can understand. To render a comparative analysis of the types of imagery used by the successive [Page 48] Manifestations would require volumes, but several general observations will help to demonstrate how essential metaphor is in the language of these Teachers.

As Bahá’u’lláh explains in The Kitáb-i-Íqán, the Manifestations do not always use language which is veiled, allusive, analogical; the way They speak depends on the exigencies of the situation:

It is evident unto thee that the Birds of Heaven and Doves of Eternity speak a twofold language. One language, the outward language, is devoid of allusions, is unconcealed and unveiled; that it may be a guiding lamp and a beaconing light whereby wayfarers may attain the heights of holiness, and seekers may advance into the realm of eternal reunion. Such are the unveiled traditions and the evident verses already mentioned. The other language is veiled and concealed, so that whatever lieth hidden in the heart of the malevolent may be made manifest and their innermost being be disclosed. . . . In such utterances, the literal meaning, as generally understood by the people, is not what hath been intended.

An illustration of Bahá’u’lláh's statement might be the distinction one would make between the language with which the Manifestation reveals His laws and the language with which He inspires and explains spiritual attributes.

Of course, there are no exact rules governing when a Manifestation will speak metaphorically and when He will not. As one looks at the Old Testament, for example, he can only guess how literally the followers of Abraham or Moses perceived the anthropomorphic descriptions of God and the physical evidences of His intervention in the lives of men. But two major uses of metaphorical language seem relatively consistent, at least with Christ and Bahá’u’lláh.

One recurring use is to convey concepts of spirituality, for which purpose Christ used the parable. Like the other analogical devices, the parable forces the listener to participate, to decide the meaning; but being an extended analogy in the form of a story, the parable has the further advantage of working on various levels with multiple analogical equations and of holding the listener’s interest, since it is also a dramatic story. Thus while Christ was establishing an intimacy with the literal story by using characters and situations familiar to His audience (laborers in vineyards, sowers of seed, and so on), He was also teaching His followers to think abstractly, to escape the literalism of their past beliefs, and to understand the spiritual or inner significance of His words. Instead of an elaborate canon of law (though He did leave laws), He left them a treasury of memorable stories. Those searching for understanding and enlightenment could grasp a meaning or meanings of Christ’s parables, depending on their level of spiritual attainment. Those who could not penetrate the literal stories could not understand His teachings, just as those who had not already penetrated the literalism of their own Messianic prophecies probably did not recognize the authority of Christ in the first place:

Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear, nor do they understand.”

Christ later told His disciples that “the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures but tell you plainly of the Father”; certainly Bahá’u’lláh fulfills this [Page 49] promise in The Kitáb-i-Íqán. Without veiled language or indirection He explains God’s divine plan, describes the nature of the Manifestations, and clarifies the logical basis for the teaching methods of the Manifestations.

Yet Bahá’u’lláh does use imagery when it is needed, and He uses it with unsurpassable skill and magnificence. In His meditative writings, in most of His prayers, in His mystical treatises such as The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys, which rely heavily on metaphor and allegory, in the second half of His Hidden Words, and in various other poetic and allusive tablets, Bahá’u’lláh has bequeathed to mankind a storehouse of metaphor which it will study for centuries, hardly ever scratching the surface of possible meanings. In fact, in describing those utterances in which “the literal meaning, as generally understood by the people, is not what hath been intended,” Bahá’u’lláh states:

Thus it is recorded: “Every knowledge hath seventy meanings, of which one only is known amongst the people. And when the Qá’im shall arise, He shall reveal unto men all that which remaineth.” He also saith: “We speak one word, and by it we intend one and seventy meanings; each one of these meanings we can explain.”

But it is not only in the more abstruse Tablets that Bahá’u’lláh uses imagery. Even in The Kitáb-i-Íqán, which is a relatively straightforward essay, or in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá’u’lláh’s book of laws, there appears image upon image. Sometimes it is only a word or a phase, but often images are several lines in length. One need only glimpse a few of the numerous images appearing in the prefatory passages of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas to see this:

Know assuredly that My commandments are the lamps of My loving providence among My servants, and the keys of My mercy for My creatures. . . .

Think not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Whenever My laws appear like the sun in the heaven of Mine utterance, they must be faithfully obeyed by all, though My decree be such as to cause the heaven of every religion to be cleft asunder.

In these excerpts Bahá’u’lláh compares His laws to lamps, keys, choice wine, and the sun —and these are but a meager sampling of the quantity, the quality, and the complexity of imagery in the language of Bahá’u’lláh’s less metaphorical writing.

But in addition to using metaphor in the language of Their teachings, the Manifestations utilize metaphor in the language of prophecy. Many Christians are still trying to discover the key to the symbols used in Revelations and the figurative meaning of the metaphorical terms with which Christ describes His return. Likewise, Muslim scholars have devoted themselves to interpreting the veiled traditions regarding the Promised Qá’im, just as the Jews had looked for the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy.

Perhaps because prophecy is such an important link from one revelation to the next, Bahá’u’lláh devotes a good portion of The Kitáb-i-Íqán to a study of the nature of prophecy. In fact, because it is replete with examples of the use of recurring metaphors and because it discusses the rationale behind the use of prophecy, The Kitáb-i-Íqán could almost be considered a casebook study on the subject. More specifically, Bahá’u’lláh discusses the use of metaphorical language as He explains vehicles such as suns, heaven, clouds, smoke, and angels; He also discusses some of the reasons for the intentional obfuscation. Clearly the failure to describe the exact time and piece and personality of the next Manifestation is not due to a lack of knowledge on the part of God or His Messengers, [Page 50] but if people were to follow a name or physical aspect only, they would not actually understand what it was they sought. Some might turn to the Manifestation because they wished to achieve fame or use His power for their benefit. Those who already possessed authority and power might view a Manifestation as a threat to their esteem. But because the identity of the Manifestation is concealed, one must be spiritually aware in order to discover Him. If one understands authority and power in literal terms, if he looks for a physically impressive figure or someone who aspires to temporal power, he will not be able to discover the meaning of the figurative language of prophecy.

In order to be changed by the spiritual power which emanates from the Manifestation, one has to be spiritually receptive, in the same way that a television receiver can translate invisible signals into intelligible pictures. If one examines prophetic language, or confronts the Manifestation and does not have spiritual receptivity, he may perceive some power, but he will not be able to perceive the meaning of the power. In this sense, prophetic language is essentially metaphorical so that man will be obliged to educate himself spiritually in order to benefit from God’s Messengers.

In the laws of the Manifestation one can find another use of metaphor, though generally not in the language of the laws. For the most part, the Manifestations describe their laws and the actions of men through these laws in clear, straightforward language, but the actions they require do have metaphorical value, or inner significance—that is, in addition to the pragmatic benefits which the laws may bestow, they also force one to act out dramatically in the physical world what he is trying to accomplish in the spiritual world.

This correlation may not be so apparent with the laws which are basically restrictive and prohibitive in nature, but it is there all the same. For example, the Jews may have thought the Mosaic dietary laws to be arbitrary, but they followed them anyway, and in so doing they practiced reverence for the authority of Moses and His benefioent intentions. Now that science has described how various diseases are contracted, one can understand the scientific basis for the Mosaic laws and perceive that these so-called restrictions were actually a source of liberation. Therefore, perceiving divine logic in laws governing physical action and learning to follow the conduct prescribed by the Manifestations is training oneself to have faith in the ultimate liberation which the ostensible restriction imposes. It is then possible for one to transfer the lesson to his compliance with spiritual laws: he can no longer view such laws as incidental. Like their counterparts, the physical laws, they are pragmatic, logical, sources of liberation. The result is that one understands dramatically and metaphorically the beneficence of God’s laws:

Say: True liberty consisteth in man’s submission unto My commandments, little as ye know it. Were men to observe that which We have sent down unto them from the Heaven of Revelation, they would, of a certainty, attain unto perfect liberty. Happy is the man that hath apprehended the Purpose of God in whatever He hath revealed from the Heaven of His Will, that pervadeth all created things.

Understood in the light of this statement by Bahá’u’lláh, the laws of the Manifestation never prevent the full and complete utilization of the physical experience; on the contrary, even those laws which imply restriction ultimately encourage the most fulfilling use of it. Stated another way, the laws of the Manifestation enable one to experience the metaphorical value of the physical world, even when the follower is unaware that he is doing anything other than obeying divine authority.

The laws which provide creative use of [Page 51] physical experience perhaps reinforce the metaphorical value of the physical experience even more obviously than the laws of admonition and prohibition. First, these laws change from one Manifestation to the next so that they accurately describe the relative progress of man. As I have already attempted to show, this progress itself is essentially metaphorical in nature in that a society acts out literally a figurative or spiritual condition. When the law creates institutions, organizational structure, and codes of behavior which foster advancement, it is an integral part of man’s efforts to dramatize or act out spiritual progress. In addition to this long- range benefit, the law has the immediate effect of creating for the individual an atmosphere or environment conducive to spiritual growth. The profound influence which physical environment can have on mental and spiritual states man is only beginning to understand, but the Manifestation has always understood this reality and has reflected the understanding in His laws. Thus whether the law describes how people organize, carry out human relationships. care for their bodies, worship, or perform any other literal act, it is helping to effect spiritual development:

External cleanliness, although it is but a physical thing, hath a great influence upon spirituality. For example, although sound is but the vibrations of the air which affect the tympanum of the ear, and vibrations of the air are but an accident among the accidents which depend upon the air, consider how much marvelous notes or a charming song influence the spirits!

As the law gradually enhances man’s ability to manifest spiritual concepts through physical action, it participates in the largest and most important metaphorical exercise on the planet, the establishment of a spiritual kingdom expressed in terms of a visible society. Seen in this light, the entire Bahá’í administrative order, its institutions, and procedures, are dramatic expressions of this process.

Finally, many of the laws themselves are metaphorical exercises. When Christ wished to teach the abstract concept of love to His followers, He ordained a law to dramatize the quality:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. . . . For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”

Likewise, while Bahá’u’lláh teaches man the abstract concepts of the unity of mankind and the equality of men and women, He also provides man, through His creative laws, the dramatic institutions which enable him to act out the spiritual law with physical action. Properly understood and perceived, many of the laws of the Manifestations are similarly dramaturgical in nature, metaphorical devices by which man expresses with action what he wishes to feel and understand on a spiritual level. Sometimes the understanding precedes the dramatization; sometimes the reverse is true. The point is that whether in studying the nature of the Manifestation Himself, His actions, His language, or His laws, one can observe the analogical tie between spiritual growth and physical action as each reinforces the other in a pattern of continuous growth.

V

HAVING ESTABLISHED that physical reality is, from the Bahá’í’ perspective, essentially metaphorical in nature and, when properly used, beneficial to spiritual growth, we must [Page 52] confront two remaining problems—how to account for evil, corruption, injustice, and how to ascertain why physical experience is necessary in order to attain spiritual development.

Injustice and evil manifest themselves in two ways, by chance and by malignant intention. Traditionally the obstacle in the way of perceiving chance events (such as natural disasters, disease, famine) as unfortunate circumstance has been the belief in an Omnipotent Deity. If God loves us, and if He has the power to prevent such horror, why does He not do so? Even if one can escape that dilemma, there is the problem of God’s omniscience. If He knows chance disasters are going to occur, they will occur; therefore, the events seem predestined. In the face of such reasoning, many have found it difficult to believe in a loving God.

Juxtaposed to the knowledge of wars, plagues, and other calamities, our portrayal of the physical experience as a beneficently ordained teaching device may seem at first to falter. One might understandably be tempted to believe that God does not exist, that He exists but is aloof from His creation, that He is cruel or capricious, or that there is another opposing force, a Satan. Fortunately, the Bahá’í Writings deal with each of these contentions.

First, any resolution of the problem of evil in a beneficent creation requires a clear acknowledgment of the idea that life does not terminate with physical death; therefore, one cannot perceive justice only in terms of physical life and its outcome. To deny this major premise is to see as ludicrous most martyrdom and all the indignities which the Manifestations willingly endure:

How could such Souls have consented to surrender themselves unto their enemies if they believed all the worlds of God to have been reduced to this earthly life? Would they have willingly suffered such afflictions and torments as no man hath ever experienced or witnessed?

Therefore, the accidental death of the innocent man perceives as evil; and yet, given the nature of the life after death, such an event is really grievous only to those who must experience loss, not to the one who continues life in another, more lofty ambience. Much of man’s classification of objects and situations as “evil” is clearly the result of this relative point of view, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá illustrates in a discussion of the essential nonexistence of evil:

Nevertheless a doubt occurs to the mind: that is, scorpions and serpents are poisonous. Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings? Yes, a scorpion is evil in relation to man; a serpent is evil, in relation to man; but in relation to themselves they are not evil, for their poison is their weapon, and by their sting they defend themselves. But as the elements of their poison do not agree with out elements, that is to say, as there is antagonism between these different elements, therefore this antagonism is evil; but in reality as regards themselves they are good.

Likewise, an earthquake may be perceived as evil in relation to the destruction it renders, but it may be propitious in assisting the earth to maintain continuity and stasis.

That such occurrences are the result of God’s foreknowledge is an argument which has been ably refuted many times before by scholars who have noted that foreknowledge does not imply predestination. If God knows something will happen, no doubt it will occur but not as a result of His knowledge; there is no causal relationship between the two things. That a loving God would allow such events to occur is quite another matter and requires more explanation.

The Bahá’í Writings teach that God has endowed man with free will, has given him the capacity to learn, and, as I hope I have shown, a cleverly designed classroom in which to be inspired. Thus man has ample [Page 53] chance to succeed, but he may also fail. This does not mean God has set the laws of the universe in motion and left the mechanism to its own devices, as the Deists believe; God has sent the Manifestations to guide man and, as I have also discussed, endowed all created things with the capacity to reinforce the education. In other words, in terms of providing man with what he needs, with what is truly essential to his successful development here and in the next plane of existence, God has been bountiful, gracious, just. In the phenomenal world it is not easy to observe the expression of God’s justice and love, though ultimately divine wisdom is evident there as well. Not only does physical reality have the ability to reflect metaphorically spiritual reality; there is also a manifest beneficence in the overall progress of the planet as it comes into being, attains maturation through gradual stages of evolution, and functions as an integral part of a vaster system, the universe itself.

God does intervene, repeatedly, consistently, progressively, whenever man is in need. He always will, man is assured in every holy text, for such is the ancient covenant between God and man. That He does not intervene in ways which man likes or in a manner which everyone can perceive or understand is due not to the iniustice or inadequacy of God but to man’s capacity to fail in his use of the divine bestowals.

Still, one might ask why the scriptures themselves are replete with terms like Satan, sin, evil, and wickedness if, as the Bahá’í Writings state, evil is essentially nonexistent. The key to understanding the significance of these terms is the word essentially; there is no essence which is evil, no source of negative energy. But there are significant results caused by the absence of energy. These changes in condition, sometimes momentous and frightening, need to be understood and described; therefore, we use powerful, vivid words and images to portray the effects caused by the turning away from a source of energy, whether spiritual or phenomenal. For example, cold is the absence of heat, not the presence of cold energy, not the influence of a source of coldness. Yet one clearly needs to describe the effects caused by the absence of heat, since this reaction affects us profoundly. And if one gets quite far away from the source of heat, takes a trip to the Arctic wastes this very lack of energy may become so palpable that he might not feel awkward saying that an essentially nonexistent thing was causing his feet to freeze.

The point is that man needs words, metaphorical though they be, to portray laws; and, though there is no negative energy, and hence no source of such an energy, he needs to describe dramatically and potently the effects of turning away from positive forces which do exist. Thus, in one sense, Hitler and the destruction he wrought was merely the turning away from the laws of God which are the source of energy, and yet man needs to convey awesome results of that act, so he turns, albeit unwittingly, to metaphorical expressions which portray the sense of negative energy emanating from one man.

Similarly, the Manifestations of the past, wishing to convey spiritual states of being, have turned to the physical metaphor, not because They wished to distort the reality of a spiritual existence but because such devices were the only means by which men could understand such abstractions. Therefore, They frequently described pride in terms of an iniquitous temptor, a Satan; spiritual growth in the next world in terms of an idyllic pastoral abode, a Paradise; and spiritual degradation in terms of physical pain, Hell:

Even the materialists have testified in their writings to the wisdom of these divinely-appointed Messengers, and have regarded the references made by the Prophets to Paradise, to hell fire, to future reward and punishment, to have been actuated by a desire to educate and uplift the souls of men.

In the final analysis, it is logical to believe [Page 54] in a just and loving God and still recognize occurrences of injustice and misfortune; it is also possible to understand the essential spiritual nature of man’s life and still feel sorrow, pity, indignation, and remorse when things go awry in what we have come to call “the real world.”

Having ascertained the validity and logic of physical reality as a metaphorical teaching device, we can proceed to the final consideration, the necessity for such a process. For even if this process of spiritual development and enlightenment works quite capably, why could there not be a simpler, easier, less painful method of accomplishing the same task? Stated another way, if God is omnipotent and can create man in whatever way He wishes, why did He not create him already spiritualized, already in a state of understanding?

If the question seems presumptuous, it is not; Bahá’u’lláh deals with this precise question when He explains:

He Who is the Day Spring of Truth is, no doubt, fully capable of rescuing from such remoteness wayward souls and of causing them to draw nigh unto His court and attain His Presence. “If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people.” His purpose, however, is to enable the pure in spirit and the detached in heart to ascend, by virtue of their own innate powers, unto the shores of the Most Great Ocean, that thereby they who seek the Beauty of the All-Glorious may be distinguished and separated from the wayward and perverse.

In effect, to create already spiritualized creatures is to produce automatons incapable of appreciating what they have because they did not discover it and because they have not experienced anything else. Likewise, were the spiritual reality more apparent on the physical plane, man would have no sense of personal recognition and perception, since such reality would be obvious to all alike. By veiling spiritual reality in a physical garb, by removing the essential reality of things one step from the vision of man, God has enabled him to have every opportunity to attain spiritual knowledge and to have the bounty of recognition, and an awareness of the contrast between illusion and reality. The change from darkness to light, from ignorance to understanding, can provide more than a few moments of elation and reward; it can provide the impetus for continuing to progress and the tools of discernment with which to carry out that objective.

But perhaps the most important justification for the necessity of physical reality is the nature of the next world. For example, were there only two levels of existence in the next world, a Heaven for those who succeed and a Hell for those who fail, or even if there were various sorts of Dantean circles within these categories, God possibly could create man already spiritual, and he would not have lost much. In fact, in view of the pitfalls he might avoid, such a creation would be much preferred. But the Bahá’í Writings say that there is no static existence in the next world, no relegation to an eternal abode within some fixed state of existence. Whether in this world or the next, man is constantly changing, we hope in a positive way, and the point of transition called death does not end the process of spiritual development, nor does it end man’s need to utilize the important and essential faculty of discernment with its accompanying tools of volition and action. In other words, there is no end point, no state in which man is finally and completely perfected. Even if man has not used well the tools of spiritual growth, even if he has in this life neglected his essential nature, it may be possible to develop such faculties in the next world through the bounty of God, through the prayers of others, and through his own supplications.

Thus as souls in this world, through the help of the supplications, the entreaties, and the prayers of the holy ones, can acquire development, so is it the same [Page 55] after death. Through their own prayers and supplications they can also progress; more especially when they are the object of the intercession of the Holy Manifestations.

This distinction between the Bahá’í view of afterlife and the traditional conceptions of other religions is crucial. Were man’s destiny to attain one unchanging state of being, one explicit level of growth, such development could conceivably be accomplished by the provision of an exacting canon of rules and guidelines. However, since one is, as a human soul, whether in this world or the next, always in a state of becoming, a set code of behavior would be impossible for several reasons. First, one must constantly aim higher, for what was admirable, impressive, and progressive yesterday may be regressive today. Second, no two situations or people are exactly alike, and no guidelines, no matter how precisely wrought, could take into account all variables. Third, what is frequently required of one for his advancement is not a bold and courageous surpassing of his previous day’s goals but a finely chosen path of moderation or balance between two unhealthy extremes of response, such as the courage which lies between foolhardiness and cowardice, the joy between oppressive seriousness and insipid frivolity, or the wise guidance between unfeeling judiciality and permissiveness.

In each of these cases a faculty of discernment and judgment is clearly required, not a blind adherence to dogma. Bahá’u’lláh admonishes man to evaluate his progress on a daily basis, and with each new assessment he must decide what is progressive and yet not so far beyond his grasp that he will unwisely frustrate his determination to strive. Likewise, no handbook to personal conduct can take into account the exigencies of every situation; perhaps this accounts for the fact that Bahá’u’lláh revealed relatively few specific laws regarding personal behavior. However, He did create decision-making institutions which have the capacity to consider the variables in a given situation, and He left an abundance of instructional writings which can help to foster the same capacity in the individual.

Simply to follow a code of laws would require great effort and sacrifice, but to nurture the faculties of judgment, discernment, and understanding in addition to adhering to basic laws requires a completely different kind of effort. At the same time, such endeavor can yield a completely different kind of reward, the recognition of Him Whose Presence man strives to attain; such understanding, as we have already observed, is part of the avowed purpose of man’s creation.

It becomes clear, therefore. that man’s development is largely contingent on his utilization of the analogical process which has been provided for his advancement. It is equally clear that to learn how to use this device, man must rely on his own volition and, at least in the initial stages of his growth, participate actively, enthusiastically, but wisely in the physical reality which contains these analogies.

No doubt there are myriad justifications for the wisdom of the physical universe and its capacity to teach man, but one final requisite for the proper use of this instructional device should be mentioned. One’s association with the metaphorical world must incorporate detachment, which is both a quality and a process. As a quality, the term detachment denotes the capacity to use the physical analogues without becoming overly attracted to, infatuated with, or involved in the literal teaching device. As a process, the term implies a gradual relinquishing of our reliance on the physical vehicle to accomplish spiritual development.

In other words, detachment requires that man’s reliance on the physical experience is purposely short-lived. Like water which primes a pump, physical lessons serve to initiate [Page 56] understanding and other essential spiritual tools. But as man’s growth progresses, he should relate less and less directly to the physical analogue in order to understand the abstraction and set in motion his development. In the beginning he is like a young lover, attracted to the literal vehicle which has conveyed the abstract feelings and emotions. He finds it difficult to dissociate the idea from the metaphorical vehicle just as a lover cannot differentiate his love from the physical expression of that feeling. But as a lover matures, he must relinquish his dependency on the body to convey a spiritual bond and must recognize the true source of his attraction to another. So must man in his development become more and more aware of the reality being expressed through the physical world, and he must need less and less to relate to that spiritual reality through the phenomenal metaphor.

For example, man is told in the writings of all religions that one of the most dangerous distractions and detriments to his advancement is the love of self, which is expressed metaphorically by attachment to the physical metaphor for self, the body. Therefore, when man becomes overly concerned about his physical appearance, he may be forgetting that his ultimate reality is the soul which is temporarily expressing itself through his body. When he loves the vehicle for itself and sees it as synonymous with the tenor, he is becoming attached to the literal metaphor and forgetting the whole analogical nature of this physical experience.

To safeguard against just such a misuse of the physical experience, the Creator has provided man with a number of metaphorical reminders of his true nature and essential reality. The most intriguing of these is the aging process. At almost the precise point at which man’s physical body has reached its peak, he is as an intellectual and spiritual being just beginning to comprehend fully what he is supposed to be accomplishing on this plane of existence. Stated simply, just as man begins to strive for spiritual growth, his metaphorical self begins to crumble before his eyes. He may miss the point of his earthly mission and attempt to become attached to the metaphorical self, but this divinely ordained process daily teaches him that his attachment is doomed, that he is in time going to be detached whether he likes it or not.

Thus if man desires growth as his goal in life, the only kind of growth available which has any lasting value is spiritual growth; and if this development progresses as it can and should, the deterioration of the physical self together with the deterioration of man’s capacity to relate to the entire physical classroom, will parallel a corresponding increase in his spiritual faculties so that at the moment of transition from the physical world to the “real world,” his final detachment from the worn-out metaphor will occur at the precise instant that he can no longer use it anyway:

The nature of the soul after death can never be described, nor is it meet and permissible to reveal its whole character to the eyes of men. The Prophets and Messengers of God have been sent down for the sole purpose of guiding mankind to the straight Path of Truth. The purpose underlying their revelation hath been to educate all men, that they may, at the hour of death, ascend, in the utmost purity and sanctity and with absolute detachment, to the throne of the Most High.

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[Page 58]

Rediscovering Merezhkovskii

A REVIEW OF C. HAROLD BEDFORD’S The Seeker: D. S. Merezhkovskii (LAWRENCE, KANSAS: UNIV. PRESS OF KANSAS, 1975), 168 PAGES, NOTES, SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX

BY FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

MEREZHKOVSKII has been nearly forgotten by the reading public. He is in bad odor in his native country, where his mystic, religious views clash with official atheism. In the West he has been bypassed by fashion, his brief fame swallowed by the torrent of literary movements, intellectual fads, and theological novelties. Today only those who study twentieth-centuty Russian literature would know him. Indeed, who was Merezhkovskii? Why take an interest in someone who has quietly disappeared from sight?

Dmitrii Merezhkovskii was born in 1865 in St. Petersburg. His father was a high government official, a stern and forbidding figure against whom Dmitrii would rebel through most of his life. His mother was a kind and loving woman who protected her children from their father’s anger and was idealized by Dmitrii. At thirteen Dmitrii started to write poetry. At fifteen, through his father’s connections, he was introduced to Dostoevskii, who listened to a few of the boy’s poems and pronounced them worthless. “‘In order to write well,’ the great man declared, ‘one must suffer, suffer.’”

Soon thereafter young Merezhkovskii entered the literary world of St. Petersburg. He fell under the influence of revolutionary Populism but, finding its philosophy too confining, moved into the Symbolist camp. There he discovered decadence and aestheticism and developed some of the less attractive mannerisms characteristic of late romanticism. Like many others among the Symbolists, he glorified the ego, challenged God, and preached pride, solitude, and defiance.

Empty aestheticism could not hold Merezhkovskii long. He experienced too deeply; he thought too much to be satisfied with glittering surfaces. He felt a strong religious impulse to deal with problems of life and death, right and wrong, time and eternity. In a series of novels Merezhkovskii attempted to resolve the conflict of these dialectic pairs. The duality inherent in man’s condition is exemplified by Julian the Apostat and Constantine, Tsar Peter and his heir Alexis, Christ and Antichrist.

Merezhkovskii was struck by the conflicting attitudes of Christianity and paganism toward life, the body, and the spirit. Paradoxically enough, he relegated historical Christianity to the realm of Antichrist because its votaries were frequently further from its spirit than some of the pagan philosophers had been. “‘Did not the sages of Helles come close to what He said? Those who torment their flesh and their soul in the wilderness are far from the gentle Son of Mary. He loved children and freedom and the gaiety of feasts and white lilies.’” The Middle Ages, dominated by the Church, by superstition and fear, were pagan. The Renaissance with its revival of classical antiquity was Christian. To Merezhkovskii Savonarola represents an intrusion of historic Christianity into the sunlit meadow of the Renaissance, while Leonardo da Vinci exemplifies the synthesis of paganism and Christianity which lifts him to the stature of Nietzsche’s Superman. Yet the synthesis does not work. Leonardo is far too complex and too contradictory.

Merezhkovskii’s views of God, of Christ, of paganism and history were fashionable [Page 59] among certain circles and quite confused. The second person of the trinity, Christ, was believed to be the source of all love, humility, and self-sacrifice, while the Father was seen as the God of wrath and revenge, devoid of compassion and mercy. Thus all pre-Christian religion—even Judaism—is paganism. There existed, Merezhkovskii claimed, two truths, the truth of heaven—Christianity—and the truth of the earth—paganism. Full truth will emerge out of their union, as it had once emerged in perfect union in Christ.

The rejection of other religions went very far. Buddhism was spurned because it negated the flesh, but, paradoxically, so was Judaism. The historic Christian view that flesh was sinful and unclean, the view clearly and unequivocally championed by St. Paul himself, was attributed to Judaism. Christian asceticism, the dread of the body, a wrathful avenging God—these were claimed to have been Judaic elements of historic Christianity, elements which perverted the true meaning of Christ.

In his eagerness to save the body, to make flesh holy, and to unite it with spirit in a full synthesis, Merezhkovskii accorded central importance to the doctrine of resurrection.

“Indeed,” he wrote, “Christianity is not at all based on love for one’s neighbor . . . not on the righteous life and crucifixion of Christ, but on the real possibility, which has been proven by experience, of physical resurrection.” Resurrection could be achieved only through the infinite power of love; therefore, love was the sole principle necessary for the salvation of the individual and the governance of society.

Turning to the world around him, Merezhkovskii could not avoid the conclusion that no form of Christianity, no state, no organization ever corresponded to the requirements he established for a theocracy, the latter being government by love. With an almost insane consistency he, therefore, welcomed revolution which would establish anarchy, a condition in which love would triumph and lead to universal salvation.

Such a revolution, however, would have to be so fundamental, so deep, as man alone would never be able to accomplish. Even the Church could not attempt a solution, for a solution would necessitate “a new revelation; not the continuation of the Second Testament, but the beginning of the Third Testament; not a return to the Christ of the First Coming, but a bound toward the Christ of the Second Coming.”

Secular revolutions of the twentieth century presaged a new Advent, but in the coming age salvation would not be achieved through acts confined to a particular nation or culture. Mankind was entering the stage of the panhuman, a universal stage. What Merezhkovskii had earlier said about individual man, he now applied to nations: “a nation that desires to preserve its soul, its exclusive national truth, loses it; and the one that loses it for the sake of universal truth preserves it.” Thus the sacrifice of nationhood in a wider, more inclusive union is the only way to preserve nationhood.

The above is but a brief résumé of an aspect of C. Harold Bedford’s book, The Seeker, a literary and intellectual biography of Merezhkovskii. The book gives an account [Page 60] of his life, traces his development as a man and an artist, and analyzes his thought. It is well researched, serious, and sympathetic to its subject, perhaps too much so. The person who emerges from its pages is a mass of contradictions, a mind obsessed by fears and phobias, by strong drives, by a monumental ego. Perhaps Merezhkovskii had unconsciously modeled himself upon Dostoevskian heroes. He could have been invented by Dostoevskii.

The Seeker will be of interest not only to students of Russian literature and history but to those who are concerned with the basic spiritual issues of modern civilization. It is regrettable that Harold Bedford did not place Merezhkovskii in a larger context of twentieth- century thought. Like any other book, this one has its defects. Some translations from Russian are not entirely accurate. There occur occasional lapses of style and even of grammar which the editors should have caught. There is also the restrictiveness of space. 168 pages being entirely inadequate to deal with a complex, tortured, contradictory, yet powerful and important figure such as Merezhkovskii. However, to say that this is not a definitive work is not to imply that it is either insignificant or without value. On the contrary, The Seeker should serve as a stimulus for the rediscovery of Merezhkovskii.

[Page 61]

Index, Vol. 11, Fall 1976-Summer 1977

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Articles are indexed by author and subject. Book reviews are indexed by subject and reviewer, as well as by the book’s author under the heading BOOK Reviews. Fiction, poetry, art, and photographs are indexed by author or artist and only occasionally by subject. Letters to the editor are usually included with entries for the articles to which they refer.

ABBREVIATIONS

bibliog	bibliography
bibliog f	bibliogtaphical footnotes
il	illustrated
jt auth	joint author
por	portrait
Spr	Spring
Sum	Summer
Wint	Winter

For those unfamiliar with the form of indexing used, the following example is given:

ENTRY	ISLÁM Islám’s taḥríf: implications for the Bahá’í Faith. W. Collins. bibliog f 11:22-31 Fall '76 Letter. 11:5-6 Spr '77
EXPLANATION:	An article, with bibliographical footnotes, entitled “Islám’s Taḥríf: Implications for the Bahá’í Faith” by W. Collins will be found in Volume 11 of World Order on pages 22-31 of the Fall 1976 issue. A letter commenting on that article appears in the Spring 1977 issue on pages 5-6.

---

BÁB

“Persia”: an early mention of the Báb. R. Cadwalader. bibliog f il 11:30-4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4-6 Sum '77

BÁB, Shrine of the

Photograph. 11:31 Wint '76-77

BÁBÍ Faith

Missionary as historian: William Miller and the Bahá’í Faith. book review. D. Martin. bibliog f 10:43-63 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

“Persia”: an early mention of the Báb. R. Cadwalader. bibliog f il 11:30-4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4-6 Sum '77

BAHÁ’Í Faith

Bahá’u’lláh’s model for world fellowship. D. Martin. bibliog f 11:6-20 Fall '76

Challenge of the Bahá’í Faith. V. E. Johnson. bibliog f 10:31-41 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

Dot and the circle. M. Tobey. por 11:39-42 Spr '77

Mani and Manichaeism: a study in religious failure. D. K. Conner. bibliog f 11:36-45 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:6 Sum '77

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. J. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

Criticism of

Missionary as historian: William Miller and the Bahá’í Faith. book review. D. Martin. bibliog f 10:43-63 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

Writings

Attempting a survey of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. book review. F. Kazemzadeh. 11:62-3 Fall '76

Islám’s taḥríf: implications for the Bahá’í Faith. W. Collins. bibliog f 11:22-31 Fall '76 Letter. 11:5-6 Spr '77

[Page 62]

BAHÁ’Í Faith and other religions

Christianity in crisis. book review. W. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:46-51 Spr '77

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH

Attempting a survey of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. book review. F. Kazemzadeh. 11:62-3 Fall '76

Candle prayer. poem. J. Jentz. 11:46 Fall '76

BEDFORD, Harold. See Book Reviews

BIBLE

Textual Criticism

Islám’s taḥríf: implications for the Bahá’í Faith. W. Collins. bibliog f 11:22-31 Fall '76 Letter. 11:5-6 Spr '77

BOOK Reviews

Bedford, H. Seeker: D. S. Merezhkovskiy. 11:58-60 Sum '77

Dinnerstein, Dorothy. Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. bibliog f 11:47-51 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

Miller, W. M. Bahá’í Faith: Its History and Teachings. bibliog f 10:43-63 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

Sabet, H. Heavens Are Cleft Asunder. bibliog f 11:46-51 Spr '77

Taherzadeh, A. Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh: Baghdád 1853-63. 11:62-3 Fall '76

BUDDHISM

Tibetan Buddhism: the fully developed form of Indian Buddhism. W. E. Needham. 11:17-29 Sum '77

CADWALADER, Robert

“Persia”: an early mention of the Báb. bibliog f il 11:30-4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4-6 Sum '77

CHOLAS, Chris

Photograph. 11:1 Wint '76-77

CHRISTIANITY

Challenge of the Bahá’í Faith. V. E. Johnson. bibliog f 10:31-41 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

Christianity in crisis. book review. W. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:46-51 Spr '77

Is ecumenism hopeless? editorial. 11:1 Fall '76

See also

Bible

CIVILIZATION

Change

Through chaos to unity. editorial. 11:2 Spr '77

COLLINS, William

Islám’s taḥríf: implications for the Bahá’í Faith. bibliog f 11:22-31 Fall '76 Letter. 11:5-6 Spr '77

CONNER, Daniel Keith

Mani and Manichaeism: a study in religious failure. bibliog f 11:36-45 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:6 Sum '77

DAHL, Arthur L.

Photograph. 11:9 Spr '77

DANESH, Hossain B. and Hatcher, William S.

Errors in Jensen’s analysis. 11:52-60 Fall '76; Correction. 11:4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4 Wint '76-77

DEATH

Life After

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. J. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

DINNERSTEIN, Dorothy. See Book Reviews

DISEASE. See Health

ECONOMICS

International Monetary Fund. J. Huddleston. bibliog f 11:6-21 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

ECUMENISM. See Christianity

EDUCATION

Educating the whole being. editorial. 11:2 Wint '76-77

EDWARDS, Jonathan

Disciple of being: for Jonathan Edwards. poem. G. Parks. 11:50-1 Fall '76

ETHICS

Educating the whole being. editorial. 11:2 Wint '76-77

ETHNIC Groups. See Unity in Diversity

EVIL

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. J. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

FAIR, Charles M.

Honoring her “I”ness. book review. bibliog f 11:47-51 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

FOOD Supply

Food for the world. J. A. Pino. 11:23-9 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

GAIL, Marzieh

Days with Mark Tobey. il 11:10-26 Spr '77

GRAZIANI, Joseph

Dynamics of Indo-Pakistani modern Islám. bibliog f 11:33-45 Fall '76

HALLSTEN, Pehr

Days with Mark Tobey. M.Gail. il 11:10-26 Spr '77

HALSTEAD, Tom

Photograph. 11:5 Fall '76

HATCHER, John S.

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

[Page 63]

HATCHER, William S.

Christianity in crisis. book review. bibliog f 11:46-51 Spr '77

See also

Danesh, H. B. jt auth

HAYDEN, Robert

Peacock room. poem. 11:43-4 Spr '77

HEALTH

Scientific medicine and health: the case for a reappraisal. B. B. Page. bibliog f 11:9-16 Sum '77

HOOVER, Gayle Marie

Balm. poem. 11:16 Sum '77; Poem. poem. 11:29 Sum '77

HOUSES of Worship, Bahá’í'

North America

Wilmette, Illinois. photograph. 11:21 Fall ‘76

HUDDLESTON, John

International Monetary Fund. bibliog f 11:6-21 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

HUNGER. See Food Supply

INTELLIGENCE

Errors in Jensen’s analysis. H. B. Danesh and W. S. Hatcher. 11:52-60 Fall '76; Correction. 11:4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4 Wint '76-77

INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund

International Monetary Fund. J. Huddleston. bibliog f 11:6-21 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

ISLÁM

Dynamics of Indo-Pakistani modern Islám. J. Graziani. bibliog f 11:33-45 Fall '76

Islám’s taḥríf: implications for the Bahá’í Faith. W. Collins. bibliog f 11:22-31 Fall '76 Letter. 11:5-6 Spr '77

JENSEN. Arthur

Errors in Jensen’s analysis. H. B. Danesh and W. S. Hatcher. 11:52-60 Fall '76; Correction. 11:4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4 Wint '76-77

JENTZ, Jeffrey

Candle prayer. poem. 11:46 Fall '76

JOHNSON, V. Elvin

Challenge of the Bahá’í Faith. bibliog f 10:31-41 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

KAZEMZADEH, Firuz

Attempting a survey of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. book review. 11:62-3 Fall '76

Memories of Mark Tobey. il 11:31-6 Spr '77

Rediscovering Merezhkovskii. book review. 11:58-60 Sum '77

KUUSENJUURI, Ján

Simplicities. poem. 11:47 Fall '76

LEACH, Bernard

Mark, dear Mark: 11:28-30 Spr ’77

LIFE After Death. See Death—Life After

MANICHABISM

Mani and Manichaeism: a study in religious failure. D. K. Conner. bibliog f 11:36-45 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:6 Sum '77

MARTIN, Douglas

Bahá’u’lláh's model for world fellowship. bibliog f 11:6-20 Fall ’76

Missionary as historian: William Miller and the Bahá’í Faith. book review. bibliog f 10:43-63 Spr '76; Letter. 11:4 Fall '76

MEDICINE

Scientific medicine and health: the case for a reappraisal. B. B. Page. bibliog f 11:9-16 Sum '77

MEREZHKOVSKII, Dmitrii

F. Kazemzadeh. 11:58-60 Sum '77

MILLER, George O.

Photographs. ll:back cover Wint '76-77; 11:1, back cover Sum '77

MILLER, Joan

Photograph. 11:61 Fall '76

MILLER, William McElwee. See Book Reviews

MITCHELL, Glenford E.

Photographs. 11:32 Fall '76; 11:31 Wint '76-77

MONEY

International Monetary Fund. J. Huddleston. bibliog f 11:6-21 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

MOORE, Raymond I.

Photographs. 11:22 Wint '76-77

MORALITY. See Ethics

NEEDHAM, Wesley E.

Tibetan Buddhism: the fully developed form of Indian Buddhism. 11:17-29 Sum '77

PAGE, B. B.

Scientific medicine and health: the case for a reappraisal. bibliog f 11:9-16 Sum '77

PARKS. Gerald B.

Poems. 11:48-51 Fall '76

PEACE. See Unity

PHYSICAL Reality. See Reality

PILGRIMAGE, Bahá’í

Days with Mark Tobey. M. Gail. il 11:10-26 Spr ’77

PINO, John A.

Food for the world. 11:23-9 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

RACISM

Errors in Jensen’s analysis. H. B. Danesh and W. S. Hatcher. 11:52-60 Fall '76; Correction. 11:4 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:4 Wint '76-77

[Page 64]

REALITY

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. J. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

RELIGION

Is ecumenism hopeless? editorial. 11:1 Fall '76

Mani and Manichaeism: a study in religious failure. D. K. Conner. bibliog f 11:36-45 Wint '76-77; Letter. 11:6 Sum '77

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. J. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

REYNEAU, Betsy Graves

Peacock room. poem. R. Hayden. 11:43-4 Spr '77

SABET, Huschmand. See Book Reviews

SEMPLE, Hugh Jr. Photographs. ll:back cover Fall '76; 11:7 Sum '77

SEXISM. See Woman

SHOGHI Effendi

Days with Mark Tobey. M. Gail. il 11:10-26 Spr '77

SPIRITUALITY

Metaphorical nature of physical reality. J. S. Hatcher. bibliog f 11:31-56 Sum '77

STAFFORD, Scott Photographs. 11:30, 57 Sum '77

TAHERZADEH, Adib. See Book Reviews

THOMPSON, Richard Photographs. 11:1,3,7,4S, back cover Spr '77

TIBET

Tibetan Buddhism: the fully developed form of Indian Buddhism. W. E. Needham. 11:17-29 Sum '77

TOBEY, Mark

as artist

Art work. 11:19,27,33,37,38 Spr ’77

as author

Dot and the circle. por 11:39-42 Spr '77

about

Days with Mark Tobey. M. Gail. il 11:10-26 Spr ’77

Mark, dear Mark. B. Leach. 11:28-30 Spr '77

Memories of Mark Tobey. F. Kazemzadeh. il 11:31-6 Spr '77

Tobey. editorial comments. per 11:8 Spr. '77

UNITED STATES

Agriculture

Food for the world. J. A. Pino. 11:23-9 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

Ethnic Groups

Ethnicity—a counsel of despair. editorial. 11:2-3 Sum '77

UNITY

Bahá’u’lláh's model for world fellowship. D. Martin. bibliog f 11:6-20 Fall '76

Interchange. editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

Through chaos to unity. editorial. 11:2 Spr '77

UNITY in Diversity

Ethnicity—a counsel of despair. editorial. 11:2-3 Sum '77

WAR. See Unity

WINGER-BEARSKIN, Michael and Winger-Bearskin, Charlene

Photograph. 11:5, 46 Wint '76-77

WOMAN

Honoring her “I”ness. book review. C. M. Fair. bibliog f 11:47-51 Wint '76-77; Editorial comments. 11:3 Wint '76-77

WORLD Congress of Faiths

Bahá’u’lláh's model for world fellowship. D. Martin. bibliog f 11:6-20 Fall '76

WORLD Order. See Unity

WORLD Order Magazine

Interchange. editorial comments on tenth anniversary. 11:2-4 Fall '76

Interchange. editorial comments on translations of World Order articles. 11:4 Spr '77

ZUCKER, William H. Photographs. 11:8 Sum '77

[Page 65]

Authors & Artists

JOHN S. HATCHER is an associate professor at the University of South Florida at Tampa, where he teaches medieval literature end creative writing. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. in Old and Middle English literature and linguistics from the University of Georgia. Dr. Hatcher has published poetry in numerous magazines and literary journals (including the Summer 1975 issue of World Order). He is now working on several articles, a children’s story, and a novel and is preparing, with a colleague, a five-volume study of Old and Middle English literature for the University of Oklahoma Press.

GAYLE MARIE HOOVER is a recreation director in a health-care facility in Meridan, Connecticut. Her interests include music, arts and crafts, and reading. She makes a first appearance in World Order.

WESLEY E. NEEDHAM is a student of Buddhism and its influence on the culture and history of Asian countries, particularly Tibet. In 1953 he was appointed adviser in Tibetan literature at the Yale University Library. His Master of Arts degree from Yale University was awarded for his studies of the people and culture of Tibet. Mr. Needham has lectured at Yale and other universities and colleges, and he tutors undergraduate students in Tibetan Buddhist art. His book reviews (including his review of Jamshed Fozdar’s The God of Buddha in the Fall 1974 issue of World Order) and articles have appeared in religious periodicals and other publications, and three articles have been published in the Encyclopedia Americana. He serves as a director of the Tibetan Foundation, Inc.

B. B. PAGE, who is an assistant professor of philosophy at Quinnipiac College in Connecticut, holds a B.A. degree in government from Harvard University and a M.S. degree in urban and regional planning and a Ph.D. in social philosophy from Florida State University. His interests include the social philosophy of science and medicine, metaphysics, interfaith dialogue, ethics, and history. He has published several articles on the philosophy of medicine and medical care. In 1973 he served part time as Project Director of a six-town health planning project in the Hamden, Connecticut, area; in 1975-76 he undertook a research project on Marxism and medical ethics under the Institute on Philosophy and Sociology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science.

ART CREDITS: P. 1, photograph by George O. Miller; p. 7, photograph by Hugh Semple, Jr.; p. 8, photograph by William H. Zucker; p. 19. photograph of a painting at Tsongkhapa, courtesy Wesley E. Needham; p. 30, photograph by Scott Stafford; p. 57. photograph by Scott Stafford; back cover, photograph by George O. Miller.

[Page 66]