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Spring/Summer 1981

World Order

Music’s Unific Influence

Editorial

Four Kinds of Love

Marzieh Gail

A Dialogue on the Bahá’í Faith

Juan Ricardo Cole

The Dilemma of Drug Abuse

Abdu’l Missagh A. Ghadirian

Illuminating the Second Century

Gary L. Morrison

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World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 15, NUMBERS 3 & 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

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. Application to Mail at Second-class postage rates is pending at Wilmette, IL. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD ORDER, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

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 copes $1.60.

Copyright © 1981, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Music’s Unific Influence

Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

7 Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Rashíd Riḍá:

A Dialogue on the Bahá’í Faith, translated

and introduced by Juan Ricardo Cole

18 Four Kinds of Love

by Marzieh Gail

30 Meditation

poem by Olive V. Applegate

31 The Dilemma of Drug Abuse

by Abdu’l Missagh A. Ghadirian

47 Illuminating the Second Century A.D.

a book review by Gary L. Morrison

Inside back cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue

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Music’s Unific Influence

MUSIC can help us to express and to recognize within ourselves the noblest impulses of our being. The feelings that are associated with religion, the exaltation, the sense of association with something greater than our individual selves—whether it be all of creation, or its Creator—and at the same time of a heightened worth as a participant in that divinely ordained creation, can be aroused by music. The great religions of the world have found music indispensable in helping to unite the souls of the rightly named communicants, and much of the greatest music the world has known has been of religious inspiration. At the same time, music has the great advantage of denoting no particular doctrine, dogma, or ideology: music has no intrinsic theology that can incur the risk of conflict with the philosophical system of a rival sect.

Music is, therefore, along with other nonrepresentational arts, the most suitable expression of the religious spirit that can be shared by all members of a pluralistic society and, as such, is the manifestation of that spirit most appropriately encouraged and supported by all enlightened members of a society. In this age of increasing violence and moral confusion, it would be regrettable indeed if music and the arts were allowed to languish, no longer to exercise their gentle yet powerful influence.

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

WITH THIS Spring/Summer issue we conclude our fifteenth year—certainly a time for stock taking. The fact that this is a double issue confirms that we are not quite as caught up as we would like to be. We decided to combine two more issues and to forgo our annual Summer index to bring us back into our normal Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer publishing cycle. Our subscribers can expect to receive the number of issues for which they paid (four per year), and with some help from the computer we will see that that happens. In the Summer of 1982 we will prepare an index covering Volumes 14 and 15 (Fall 1979 through Summer 1981).

Something else missing from this issue is Nosratollah Rassekh’s conclusion to his trilogy of articles on the first 138 years of Christianity, Islám, and the Bahá’í Faith. He had originally planned to write the articles over a three-year period, publishing one per year. We persuaded him that it would be better to publish the three one after another, and so he wrote “Christianity, A.D. 138” and “Islám: The First 138 Years” in quick succession. But it was not possible to research and write the final part of the trilogy—the assessment of the Bahá’í Faith after its first 138 years—as quickly as anticipated. We now hope to publish the article in our Winter 1981-82 issue.

In the meantime (that means our Fall 1981 issue) we are planning a memorial tribute to Robert Hayden, our beloved poetry editor for twelve years, our friend, our colleague, the bringer of much joy and laughter to our deliberations, the ardent defender of the place of poetry in our lives.

To the Editor

MATTERS OF LANGUAGE

Many thoughts came to my mind after reading the recent editorial: “Of Language, Literacy, and A World Embracing Vision” [Winter 1980].

A lot of good points were made concerning a need for a world view and the importance of language, especially foreign languages and how they are keys to that culture and keys to the hearts of these peoples. The ideas seemed very honorable and of the highest ideals of integrity and compassion. After all, what greater act of love than to learn to communicate with and show an interest in the culture and concerns of our fellow human beings? . . . Yet the years of effort and study not only of language but of culture required for this goal or even the goals proposed in the editorial would be phenomenal; I mention culture because the two—language and culture [Page 5] —are inseparable. Probably this is why (among other obvious reasons) a world language must accompany a world culture. These observations or others I am not aware of may be the reason behind the indications (what I feel are the indications and not necessarily true indications) of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Bahá’u’lláh (to cite one reference: p. 183, Bahá’í World Faith) that our energies would be put to more efficient use by perfecting a universal language. So allow me to contradict myself and answer my own question. The greater act of love would be to offer the world a universal language that would enable all the people of the earth to translate their diversity and uniqueness, their beauty and culture, their hearts and souls while still retaining the beauty and culture of their original tongue.

If the same effort and time were put into perfecting such a language as would be put into the programs proposed in the editorial we would not need to worry about a meanwhile between now and that tomorrow when we will have the universal language, for the day of that auxiliary language would be today. . . .

Sometimes, and this time could be one of them, a bridge can be in such a state of disrepair that a new and stronger bridge could be built in the time that would be required to keep the old one in operation.

This view is merely through my feelings and understanding of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. I know there are problems in communications with other nations and the point of view concerning the continual need for the study of foreign languages and intensifying necessary programs to act as a bridge between the Old World and the New World until such time that the Old can be severed without the fear of a loss of the communication we do have is very sensible. It is so sensible in fact that it throws great doubt in my mind and heart as to whether I am justified in saying that the propositions given in the editorial are a waste of valuable energy that could be put to better use, for I do realize the problems facing the world and that the view here seems to ignore the “meanwhile.” Yet I feel it necessary to express these views and truly believe that by concentrating fully on the New Order and the development of the auxiliary language that God will aid us with the Concourse on High and the problems of “meanwhiles” will solve themselves.

Perhaps the true solution (for our concern here should be the truth and not our views) is through a moderation of both views. . . .

JEFF WILLIAMS

West Liberty, Iowa

Regarding the letter to you from Todd Lawson, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Winter 1980 issue, who commented on Juan Cole’s recent article on “Problems of Chronology in Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of Wisdom” [Spring 1979].

Mr. Lawson concluded his comments by stating, “A prophet, after all, is restricted to the language of His people.” I felt moved to rewrite that statement to read, A prophet, after all, restricts His language to the language of His people.

LINDA M. NELSON

Kodiak, Alaska

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Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Rashíd Riḍá: A Dialogue on the Bahá’í Faith

TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION BY JUAN RICARDO COLE

WHEN Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí Núrí (1817-92), entitled “Bahá‘u'lláh,” was exiled in the summer of 1863 from Baghdád to Istanbul, it was natural that the Bábí movement, of which He was then the de facto head, should come face to face with the social issues confronting the Ottoman Empire. Between 1863 and 1868 Bahá’u’lláh not only founded a new religion (the Bahá’í Faith) but in the process transformed Bábism from an eschatological protest movement into a religion aimed at reforming world society to accord with the new social, economic, and political realities then making their impact on the parts of the Ottoman Empire closest to Europe.

Bahá'u’lláh began to consider highly charged political issues such as the propriety of adopting a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentarian form of government, and other European innovations. Even wider questions of how to stabilize the nationalistic state system that had emerged in Europe and was spreading to the rest of the world were treated by Bahá’í writings, which also paid attention to the responsibility of the state to ameliorate the condition of the poor, rather than squandering state monies in the pursuit of a mindless arms race. In short, Bahá'u’lláh in His Ottoman exile developed a coherent program of institutional reform for societies that found themselves faced with the new world of the industrial revolution, the mass politics of the French Revolution, and the rise of industrial capital as the dominating factor in world affairs. In 1875 Bahá’u’lláh’s son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbás (1844-1921) wrote a book aimed at canvincing the Iranian government to adopt a series of modernist reforms based on Bahá’í ideals.

The shift of focus from millenarianism to a social gospel made Bahá’í thought suddenly relevant to Muslim reformers who were confronted with many of the same problems. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá met in later years with such figures as Midḥat Páshá, the Turkish supporter of constitutionalism, and Muḥammad ‘Abduh, the proponent of Islamic legal reform. Muslim modernists often had an ambiguous attitude toward the Bahá’í Faith. On the one hand, the Bahá’ís produced eloquent and convincing arguments supporting the reformist position against the opposition of clerical conservatism and autocratic governments. On the other, the Bahá’í Faith had put itself outside the pale of Islám and so represented, in its own way, as much a competitor to Islám and a threat to its unity as did Christian evangelism. This ambivalence helps to explain why Jamálu’d-Dín-i Asadábádí “Afghání” (1839-97), the Iranian agitator and Pan-Islamist, felt it useful to keep in touch with the Bahá’ís in spite of his vehement and repeatedly expressed [Page 8] antipathy to the Bábí-Bahá’í movement.

Mixed feelings about the Bahá’ís can be clearly seen in the reformist Salafiyyah movement in Egypt. Afghání’s own negative feelings toward it do not seem to have affected his student Muḥammad ‘Abduh, who defended the Bahá’ís to his own student, Muḥammad Rashíd Riḍá (1865-1935). Riḍá was born in a village near Tripoli in Ottoman Syria (now Lebanon). He began his higher studies at the National Islamic School founded in Tripoli by Shaykh Ḥusayn al-Jisr (1845-1909) and went to Cairo to study with ‘Abduh in 1897. He originally wanted to join Afghání in Istanbul, but the latter’s death determined him to seek out his most famous student, ‘Abduh. In 1898 Riḍá began a journal, al-Manár (The Lighthouse) as a forum for his ideas on the reform of Muslim society. The subject of the Bahá’í Faith was treated several times in this journal, and the hostile stance Riḍá took against the Bahá’ís there can be seen in germ in an early conversation with ‘Abduh. A translation of this conversation, which Riḍá recorded, will be given below.

Riḍá’s conversation with ‘Abduh concerning the Bahá’í Faith came near the beginning of their relationship, soon after Riḍá’s arrival in Cairo. It demonstrates a wide divergence in their outlooks and tendencies of thought. ‘Abduh’s admiration for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the Bahá’í movement was very great, at least as of 1897, and it is difficult to believe that he was as uninformed about the nature of the Bahá’í Faith as Riḍá makes him out to be. We now know that ‘Abduh was little concerned with orthodoxy per se, and if it is true that he later turned against the Bahá’ís, this was more likely because he wished to protect his reputation than because he belatedly recognized that there was a great difference between Sunní Islám and the Bahá’í Faith. ‘Abduh did, however, seem unaware that Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb claimed to bring new religious laws and so to be independent Messengers of God. He referred to the movement as a sect (ṭá’ifah) of Islám. It may well be that Riḍá managed to convince ‘Abduh that the Bahá’í Faith was a wholly new religion, and so discredited it for him as a path to the reform of Islám itself. However, Riḍá’s avowed purpose in devoting several pages of his biography of ‘Abduh to the latter’s views on the Bahá’ís was to clear his mentor’s [Page 9] name of any connection with them. It is thus possible that he exaggerated ‘Abduh’s later disillusionment with the Bahá’í Faith.

Whatever the case may be, it seems clear that in 1897 ‘Abduh thought the Bahá’í movement the most progressive and creative Muslim group and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá a truly great man. It is possible that ‘Abduh himself felt the influence of Bahá’í ideas. He defends such ideas as restrictions on polygamy and the unity of religions. His presentation of the theory of progressive revelation is very similar to the Bábí-Bahá’í schema, and the fact that it came up during a conversation about the Bahá’ís might be an unwitting indication that it was partially derived from them.

That Bahá’í ideas were being taken seriously by intellectuals in turn-of-the-century Egypt is not surprising. Iranian Bahá’ís, most of them merchants, began settling in Egypt in the late 1860s; by the 1890s there was a thriving, though numerically small, community in Alexandria and Cairo. These communities were reinforced by the arrival in 1894 or 1895 of Mírzá Abú’l-Faḍl Gulpáygání, the renowned Bahá’í scholar. Gulpáygání (1844-1914) was sent by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to Egypt from Palestine, where he had spent ten months after his return from ‘Ishqábád in Russia. He began to establish himself among students and professors at the Azhar Mosque College as an expert in geography, history, dialectical theology (kalám), and Qur’án commentary and managed to attract some students to his circle. They undoubtedly believed him to be a Shí‘ite, and he did nothing to dispel the idea.

In 1896 when a Pan-Islamist follower of Jamálu’d-Dín-i Afghání assassinated Náṣiru’d-Dín Sháh, the Iranian Muslims in Cairo were convinced that the Bahá’ís were at fault, and there was some sentiment that a wholesale massacre of the Bahá’ís in Egypt should be carried out in revenge. Mírzá Mihdí Khán Za‘ímu’d-Dawlih, a knowledgeable enemy of the Bahá’í Faith, was among those agitating against the Bahá’ís. However, the ambassador forestalled this action, and it was soon established that the Bahá’ís were not involved in the assassination.

Soon thereafter, Mihdí Khán openly accused Gulpáygání of being a Bahá’í, to which the latter replied that he was indeed and not ashamed of it. This open proclamation of his faith must have made it easier for him to comply with the request of the editors of al-Muqtaṭaf, a popular secular magazine, that he write an article explaining the Bahá’í Faith. This was probably the first time that the Bahá’ís in the Middle East were able to utilize the press to publicize their faith.

Rashíd Riḍá, then a student in Tripoli, read the al-Muqtaṭaf article and with a group of friends wrote a letter to Gulpáygání protesting its contents. This was the beginning of Riḍá’s antipathy to the Bahá’í Faith. Later, when he arrived in Cairo, he met with Gulpáygání and was unhappy with the latter’s exposition of the divinity of Bahá’u’lláh. As a strict Sunní Muslim, Riḍá was unable or unwilling to understand the doctrine of theophany (ẓuhúru’lláh) preached by the Bahá’ís. It smacked to him of incarnationism [Page 10] and seemed to make the Bahá’í Faith far more similar to Christianity than to the transcendalist faith of Islám.

Gulpáygání subsequently published his book, al-Fará’iḍ, in Cairo, and because of this and other writings, eventually a declaration that he had departed from Islám (takfír) into unbelief was issued by some ‘ulamá’. Under an Islamic government that could have meant his death, as this was a capital offense under Islamic law. However, Egypt at that time was ruled by the British. Not all the students and teachers at the Azhar were quite so zealously orthodox. Indeed, Gulpáygání managed to convert some fourteen students and teachers. Some of them were subsequently expelled from the Azhar, at least one at Rashíd Riḍá’s insistence. Later another of Gulpáygání’s books was published: ad-Durar al-Bahiyyah (Glorious Pearls). This work was in Arabic, and it attracted the favorable notice of nationalist spokesman Muṣṭafá Kámil. The book incensed Rashíd Riḍá, who did everything he could to ensure that it was not favorably reviewed in the Cairo press.

From Riḍá’s testimony the three most striking aspects of Gulpáygání’s message were his insistence that Islamic society and religion be reformed; his conviction that reform could successfully be undertaken only by a new Messenger of God; and a millenarian belief in the imminent destruction of much of the world, particularly Europe. Gulpáygání’s ideas about the theophany must be understood against the background of Bahá’í theology, in which God’s essence in transcendent and unknowable, while His attributes can be reflected on earth by a Manifestation of God (mazhar-i-iláhí). Riḍá confused this Shí‘ite Islamic doctrine with the Christian dogma of the Incarnation. The appearance of such a theophany helped Middle Eastern Bahá’ís in the nineteenth and early twentieth century explain the rapid and sweeping changes taking place in their societies and the world at large. The changes were understood as concomitants of the eschatological advent of a new theophany through whose teachings traditional society could be transformed to accord with changed social conditions. In late nineteenth- and very early twentieth-century Egypt the Bahá’í Faith seemed largely to appeal to a small number of merchants and ‘ulamá’, who were looking for a means of asserting their cultural identity against Europe. The Bahá’í Faith seems to have struck them as exactly the sort of revitalization of Islamic principles that could allow Muslims to restore the greatness of their civilization. For members of the traditional lower middle class, the ‘ulamá’ and the bazaar elements, who were hurt by the competition of European trade, Gulpáygání’s idea that God was about to rain down his wrath upon Europe cannot have been particularly distressing.

Riḍá, as a contemporary observer, apparently felt that the Bahá’í Faith was appealing enough to constitute a threat to Sunní Islám. Only this can explain his steady stream of polemics against it. But, in point of fact, Cairo and Alexandria did not prove to be particularly fertile ground for the Bahá’ís, who never grew to more than a few hundred in either city. While a nationalist spokesman for the lower middle class like Muṣṭafá Kámil was impressed by Bahá’í ideas, he did not join the new religion. Moreover, the competing nationalist current he headed was to be far more representative of Egyptian social movements in the twentieth century than the Bahá’í Faith.

Between the nationalist tradition running from Kámil through Gamal Abdel Nasser [Page 11] and the adventist social gospel of the Bahá’ís stood the reformist Islamic Salafiyyah movement headed by Rashíd Riḍá. As an advocate of moderate social and religious reform, Riḍá rejected the Bahá’ís as extremists. He not only bitterly criticized them for accepting the appearance of a prophet after Muḥammad (Muslim doctrine asserts that he is the last prophet) but also assailed them for their tendency to behave outwardly as Muslims while inwardly professing a wholly new faith. He claimed that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá deliberately misled Muslim leaders by telling them that the Bahá’í Faith was simply a reform of Shí‘ite Islám. In the discretion, no doubt derived largely from the repressive atmosphere of religious intolerance in which the Bahá’ís were forced to operate, a discretion that Riḍá perceived as secretiveness, he saw a modern recrudescence of the esotericism of the Ismá‘ílís. The subsequent history of the Bahá’í Faith belies this impression, but it was undoubtedly an easy one to form in turn-of-the-century Egypt. The claim by Bahá’í leaders that their faith was a reform of Shí‘ism was no doubt an honest self-perception.

Riḍá was particularly angered by Bahá’u’lláh’s promulgation of a new law concerning marriage, limiting the number of wives to two rather than the Qur’anic four. Reform for Riḍá could only mean a more perfect understanding of and adherence to the immutable religious law of the Prophet Muḥammad. Riḍá felt that in revealing a new law Bahá’u’lláh had chosen to abandon Islám rather than reform it.

THE FOLLOWING is a translation of a transcription of the conversation between Riḍá and ‘Abduh recorded in Riḍá’s diary. Riḍá included it in his biography of ‘Abduh and framed it with a clearly biased and polemical account. However, the chapter retains a good deal of historical value for students of the Bahá’í Faith, and the conversation itself shows clearly ‘Abduh’s sympathies for this movement and its ideals at that time. Riḍá begins by saying that he had become interested in the Bábí and Bahá’í Faiths while still a student of Islamic sciences in Tripoli, Syria (now Lebanon). Determined to investigate them, he met with Gulpáygání on his arrival in Cairo in 1897 and says he debated with him repeatedly. Riḍá claims to have had in his possession a letter from Gulpáygání in which the latter openly calls people to the Bahá’í Faith. Riḍá complains that the Bahá’ís were forbidden to try to spread their religion in the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt, according to the terms prescribed by the Empire “when it allowed them to live in ‘Akká, to move about freely, and to reside in all its lands.” Riḍá was confused here, however, since the Bahá’í leadership was exiled to ‘Akká rather than being “allowed” to live there, and the movement of Bahá’ís was quite restricted. The idea he presents that there was some sort of agreement between the Bahá’ís and the Ottomans appears to have no basis in fact.

Riḍá claims to have found ‘Abduh rather uninformed about the Bahá’í Faith but believing in what he had been told about it by “‘Abbás Effendi.” He says that when ‘Abduh was living in Beirut (presumably in the late 1880s) ‘Abdu’l-Bahá more than once came to Beirut from Haifa and would make a point of attending some of Muḥammad ‘Abduh’s study sessions. Bahá’í sources, [Page 12] however, speak of only one encounter between ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and ‘Abduh, and the matter of how intimate the two men were bears more investigation. After ‘Abduh returned to Cairo, he continued to correspond with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and Riḍá said that he had in his possession some of the latter’s letters to ‘Abduh.

After the conversation was over, Riḍá remarked in his diary that ‘Abduh “asserts the necessity of reform, but the immoderation of the reformers. And were it not for this immoderation of the Bábís [Bahá’ís], he would have liked to help them.” Riḍá lamented that ‘Abduh had never read Afghání’s Arab Encyclopedia article on the Bábís and seemed to think of them as simply a reformist movement within Shí‘ite Islám. Riḍá claims that Gulpáygání once explained to him the Bahá’í doctrine of Bahá’u’lláh’s divinity and ended by saying “He is God, there is no God but Him” and by applying various names of God to Bahá’u’lláh. Riḍá seems to be reporting in garbled fashion the Bahá’í doctrine that Bahá’u’lláh was the manifestation of the names and attributes of God. He says that, when he reported to ‘Abduh this Bahá’í belief in the divinity of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abduh turned against the Bahá’ís and considered them to be extremist Shí‘ites. Given ‘Abduh’s prejudice against Shí‘ites, this is not impossible, especially in view of the garbled way in which the Bahá’í doctrine was communicated to him.

Riḍá then discusses the articles against the Bahá’í Faith that he later published in his journal, in which he attempted to disprove the Bahá’í assertion that the persistence and growth of a religious movement is proof that it possesses some intrinsic truth. Riḍá argued in utilitarian fashion that any religious movement, no matter how false, could be kept going by an efficient propaganda machine. He claims that ‘Abduh was impressed with these later articles, in spite of the fact that he had earlier defended the Bahá’í view. Riḍá says that ‘Abduh also liked a later article in which he attempted to stress sectarian divisions within the Bahá’í Faith. Even in Riḍá’s time, however, it was clear to most observers that the vast majority of the Bahá’ís chose to follow ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in accordance with Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of the Covenant (Kitáb-i-‘Ahd).

‘Abduh and Riḍá were two of the more influential Sunní Muslim thinkers of their day. ‘Abduh’s own analyses have formed a basis for liberal Islamic reformist thought throughout the Sunní world. Riḍá’s influence was more circumscribed, but his version of the Salafiyyah movement was highly influential, especially in North Africa. His journal, al-Manár had a wide following, and he appealed more to the lower middle class than ‘Abduh, who was more favored by the upper middle class. With the resurgence of lower middle class Islamic fundamentalism in several Sunní countries in recent years Riḍá may once again become influential. What these two men had to say about the Bahá’í Faith in Cairo one evening in 1897, therefore, remains relevant even today.

Translation

Riḍá: (The first conversation that took place between us concerning them [the Bahá’ís] occurred at the end of a discussion of jurisprudents and Ṣúfís. When I noted the similarity between Ṣúfism and extremist Shí‘ism (al-báṭiniyyah) in the use of esoteric interpretation (ta’wil) [of the Qur’án], I asked him his opinion of the Bábí [-Bahá’í] Faith.)

‘Abduh: “This sect is the only one that strives so that sciences and arts might be acquired by the Muslims. There are learned and wise men among its adherents, but I do not know the truth of their school, nor do I know if the incarnationism and the like which is attributed to them is attributed rightly so or not. Rather, I find it exceedingly strange.”

Riḍá: (Then I asked him about Mírzá Faḍlu’lláh al-Írání.

‘Abduh: “I have heard of him recently and [Page 13] that he is an historian and a man of refinement, but I haven’t met him.”

Riḍá: “Yes, he excels in history, and has traveled a great deal. He is of refined character.” I mentioned all that I knew of his characteristics and remarked, “He appears to me to be one of their propagandists.” (Then I asked him about ‘Abbás Effendi:) “I hear that he excels in religious science and in diplomacy (as-siyásah), and that he is wise enough to satisfy all who seek his company.”

‘Abduh: “Yes, ‘Abbás Effendi transcends all that. He is, in fact, a great man; he is the man to whom it is right to apply that epithet.”

Riḍá: “I have met with Mírzá Faḍlu’lláh several times and have debated with him, finding that he presents as evidence for the soundness of his teachings the period of their duration, as well as their diffusion and growth. He protests by means of Qur’án verses that only the truth can endure and persevere, as ‘Surely falsehood is ever certain to perish’ and ‘To Him is the call of truth,’ etc.”

‘Abduh: “And I say that only truth and good persevere and endure, and that evil and falsehood do not endure. If they should spread and grow, even so the people’s propagandizing for them will not be so long-lived that it would be right to protest against this principle.”

(He saw that I had misgivings about his words, and continued:) “I do not assert that whatever is stable is true and good; I speak only of that which possesses a spiritual life and growth. The endurance of spiritual things is not like that of a stone which one finds in a place, and which no one moves, or as a mountain and the like, the continuing endurance of which is due to the lack of anyone to move it rather than to a vital power which holds it back from oblivion.

“As for that which possesses life, such as the call to a religion or school, it will neither persevere nor endure save if the call be intrinsically true, even if some degree of falsehood encompasses it in some of its phases. For this is an accidental quality that cannot prevent its endurance and continuance, unlike the call that is false in its foundation. For this reason the call of no one who claimed to be a prophet after our Prophet— may the peace and blessings of God be upon Him—ever endured, because he is the Seal of Prophets. Even were the fact that he is the Seal of the Prophets not in the Qur’án, the very nature of existence would point to it merely on deliberation upon the message and teachings of the Qur’án.”

(He coined a metaphor for this, remarking,) “The entire human race is like a single member of it, whose father and trainer speaks to him in every phase of his life according to the level of his intellect and the needs of his age. In such wise did God deal with mankind. He addressed the people of every Messenger according to their intellectual level and the condition of their society at that time. As man progressed, God ordained more advanced religious laws for him, until He sealed them with the mission of the Seal of the Prophets, which is the religion for mankind’s maturity.”

(Then he explained the matter in a way such that we may dispense with it here because he set it down in the Treatise on Divine Unity, in the investigation of the progress of the religious, the seal of which is Islám insofar as it is God’s message to man at the age of his maturity. The Treatise had not yet been printed when he spoke these words to me, nor had its composition been completed.)

Riḍá: “The followers of the Báb and Bahá’ were attracted by them when they saw a miraculous rational faculty in them. Thus they followed them, even though this is something natural. It has been well-known in nature for some individuals to possess a miraculous rational faculty (such as the late [Page 14] Czar of Russia). Thus at some times persons exist with miraculous rational faculties, and if any of them arises with a call to something such as a religion, school (madhhab), or a Ṣúfí order (ṭaríqah), many people follow him. They are attracted by him and admire his impressive thoughts, perceptions, and words, even though his call is to something unreasonable, and even though he cannot establish a proof for it.”

‘Abduh: “I believe that when someone with a miraculous rational faculty calls people to a good thing and has success in this he must be supported by a Spirit from God. For God does not bring this rational faculty into existence on a whim.”

Riḍá: “Do you believe this on the basis of conscience alone, or on that of rational evidence?”

‘Abduh: “No, it is rational. History from beginning to end witnesses to it and gives evidence for it. Indeed, the Prophets and the founders of the true schools were all of this sort.”

Riḍá: “Your former and subsequent statements are identical to what the Bábís allege, and you do not contradict them save in one thing, which is really everything: You have confirmed that no change is possible in the principles and religious law of Islám. For it is that whereby God addressed mankind at the time of his attainment to maturity, and in the phase of his intellectual perfection, beyond which there is no higher phase requiring another divine legislation for his education and perfection. Rather, He has entrusted man in all that comes thereafter to his own personal endeavor (ijtihád) and self-reliance. But the import of the words of their propagandists such as Mírzá Faḍlu’lláh, according to what is indicated in the letter he wrote to some of our brethren, clarifying the article he published in al-Muqtaṭaf, is either that Bahá’ is a renewer of the Islamic religious law or that he is the bringer of a new religious law. They support each of these standpoints with Qur’án verses and Traditions. Their assertion that it is possible for there to be a renewer is the first stage in their invitation of Muslims to their religion. If the one who is invited accepts this, they shift him to the second position. Their way of making propaganda and interpreting Qur’án verses and prophetic Traditions according to their base desires is like the way of their forbears among the esotericists, such as the Ismá‘ílís, etc. They say that the objective of their religion, or its principles and intentions (maqáṣid), is the unification of the religions. They look into the books of the Jews and the Christians and interpret them the way they interpret the Qur’án. Mírzá Faḍlu’lláh claims, as I have heard from him, that the Book of every religious community contains an exposition of all that will befall that community; that the Gospel contains an exposition of the current condition of Europe and that the Europeans shall be entirely annihilated. Mírzá Faḍlu’lláh appealed for evidence to the second chapter of 2 Peter concerning the appearance of false teachers who will spread about the heresy of perdition and who will attract to themselves swift perdition, promising liberty while they are slaves of corruption, etc.”

‘Abduh: “If Peter had known what was to befall Christianity and reported it, he would have also reported that which is more important than the appearance of Protestantism and everything else which has befallen it— that is, its alteration and transformation into idolatry. For Christianity changed into idolatry in the age of Constantine, three hundred [Page 15] years after Christ. Constantine was a pagan king who claimed to be a Christian that he might call on the support of its adherents against his enemies . . . and he succeeded in this.” (He added that the term ‘liberty’ in the Epistle of Peter does not have the commonly known sense it now bears.)

Riḍá: (After a long discussion of the history of Christianity, I gave him Mírzá Faḍlu’lláh’s handwritten letter and left. I did not meet him again until after a journey to Upper Egypt from which I returned toward the end of Sha‘bán. I visited him on the second night of Ramaḍán, but we found no time for religious study because of the many visitors. Then I visited him on Friday afternoon, the sixth of Ramaḍán, and he received me in his bedroom-study. The first thing I asked him about was Faḍlu’lláh’s letter, and I perceived that he thought well of it. [I said:])

“Yes, its words and style are good, especially its elucidation of the Muslims’ need for reform. But he mentions two stages of the call for reform. The first is the reform of the Islamic religion, which is reasonable and acceptable. It is this that we assert and strive for and for the sake of which I desire to begin a periodical publication. The second is the need for a new revelation. He has expressed this ambiguously, as in his statement that its comprehension depends on an understanding of ‘the Resurrection and the folding up of the heavens of the religions.’ His reader will not understand his intent here. But we have discussed it with him and learned that they believe the Resurrection to have occurred and that all the descriptions of it in the Qur’án have been realized—including the rolling up of the heavens as in God’s word, ‘And the heavens are rolled up in His right hand.’ For them the heavens are the religions, and the seven heavens are Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islám.” Then I mentioned others of their doctrines and Qur’án interpretations, which contain things even less likely than the interpretations of their forebears, the Ismá‘ílís and the Fáṭimids in Egypt.”

‘Abduh: “What need is there for such distance from the truth and the right, and for this talk which reason cannot accept? I never understood any of this from ‘Abbás Effendi. He only explained that they have undertaken to reform the Shí’ite sect and bring it closer to the Sunnís. In reality, the Shí’ite school is ———. They are the sect most in need of reform. But, most unfortunately, none among us arise as reformers save that they depart from moderation into extremism, and the call cannot succeed with extremism. The Wahhábís undertook reform, and their sect would be good were it not for their extremism and excess. What need is there for their call that the tomb of the Prophet be destroyed? Or their assertion that all other Muslims are infidels? Or that they must be extirpated? Yes, there is nothing wrong with extremism in speech or address for the sake of influencing or attracting people, or frightening and deterring them. But not everything that is said is to be written down and acted upon. I often say things in study or preaching sessions that I do not wish to be written down and transmitted from me. Their only value is their immediate effect on the soul of the one who is addressed.” (He then asked me what it was that I rejected in Mírzá Faḍl’s letter.)

Riḍá: (I mentioned to him that, first of all, there is the matter of polygamy and concubinage [Page 16] and that the law of Bahá’ allows only two wives.)

‘Abduh: (He began to explain the evils of polygamy and concubinage and the Muslims’ departure from the guidance of the Holy law thereby into) “excess in striving mightily after base desire without taking notice of the religious aim. This custom developed in ‘Abbásid times and has reached into our own age, to the extent that you even find hundreds of these concubines with the Sulṭán of the Turks and others. From this have sprung many corrupt practices that were highly influential in causing the weakness of the Muslim community and its fall to the nadir wherein it now subsists. Let alone the selling of female Muslims from Circassia or the Sudan without the least semblance of religious legality!”

(Then he expanded on this and referred to the destruction of households resulting from polygamy through the extension of the mutual hostility of the two wives, or more, to their children, making it impossible to train them up properly. He said in regard to sulṭáns and rulers:) “If this large number of women is in any of their palaces, when will their thoughts become purified such that their deliberation upon the affairs of the Muslim community will improve?” (He only digressed so lengthily on this subject because he thought me one of those who think well of polygamy. This was at the beginning of our relationship. Then we returned to the subject of the Bahá’í Faith.)

Riḍá: “They assert the soundness of all the religions and religious scriptures and call all peoples of all religious communities to their religion, that the word of mankind may become one thereby. They give as evidence, in calling the people of each religion to their faith, what is in the scriptures of the former, particularly the Pentateuch, the Gospel, and the Qur’án. It has become apparent to me that their way is wiser than that of the Masons. The Masons found it advisable not to differentiate between the religions in membership in their association, claiming that it does not touch on religion, even though their objective is the destruction of all the religions. But the Bahá’ís assert the soundness of each religion in itself and seek evidence within it for their own religion, which abrogates whatever preceded it.”

‘Abduh: “Drawing the religions closer together is among the things which the Islamic faith brought: ‘Say: ‘O people of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you.’” (But he found it strange that this group presents evidence for the missions of the Báb and Bahá’ from the heavenly scriptures.)

[Page 17]

[Page 18]

Four Kinds of Love

BY MARZIEH GAIL

This essay will appear under the title “The Diamond Bough” in a book by Marzieh Gail to be published by George Ronald, Publisher.

THERE WERE ONCE two brothers named Chang and Eng, who were closer to each other than almost any two human beings have ever been. The two were even closer than Ruth and Naomi in the Bible; with them, it was truly a case of where you go I will go, for they were joined at the waist by a flexible ligament, five or so inches long.

They were profitably put on public view (for a time by famed circus producer Phineas Taylor Barnum), and although mostly Chinese, were everywhere billed as the Siamese Twins.

In 1839 the brothers left show business, rich men for that time: they had over $10,000. Named Bunker by now, they settled down in North Carolina and became hard working and prosperous farmers. Then the two of them (respectively, it seems) married two sisters, country belles, Adelaide (Chang), and Sarah Yates (Eng); the marriages produced twenty-one children.

Close as they were, as time wore on they (and the two sister wives, and some of the children) grew poles apart. For example, Eng was only a moderate drinker, but Chang was a confirmed drunk. When violent he would smash things—his own, it is true—around the house. Once, under the influence, he even threw a feather bed on the fire.

The harassed four made an arrangement which helped a little: they would spend three days at Adelaide’s house, and three at Sarah’s.

When it got to be 1874, Chang fell ill, and died of something wrong with his lungs, and three hours later Eng too was a corpse.

But the thing that stays with me about these brothers is, they seem to symbolize humanity in our present age, hopelessly bound together and at the same time worlds apart.

One day the two of them were working on top of a roof when yet another of their quarrels broke out. At that point a neighbor happened by, and, according to him, Chang grabbed a hammer and threatened to bash Eng with it and knock him off the roof.

I OFTEN WONDER what it was that these brothers, who could never escape each other, needed and lacked. Certainly, it must have been love, a too-much profaned term which explains little. What was absent from their lives was something like the Irishman’s definition of salt: salt is what potatoes are no good without.

[Page 19] Salt is not far-fetched in this connection. Its credentials are age-old. It means both hospitality and loyalty in the Old Testament. It is used in baptism and exorcism by the Roman Catholic Church, because the Devil hates it. For the same reason, medieval witches banned it from their ceremonies. The disciples of Christ were the salt of the earth; and in Da Vinci’s Last Supper, Judas is depicted as spilling the salt.

In his famed essay On Love Stendhal also put love and salt together. He says that in the salt mines near Salzburg (Salt Town), the miners would throw a bare winter bough down into the old workings. Pulled out two or three months later, the bough, twigs and all, could be recognized no more: it was no longer a stripped, dried-out piece of wood, but a rainbow shimmer, a twinkling jewel, a “diamond bough,” bits of which jewelry the miners would offer the tourists for souvenirs.

He goes on to describe the whole tour to Hallein, as it was in the early years of the nineteenth century, the visitors sliding rapidly down into the mine astride ancient tree trunks, the women with their voluminous skirts packed into huge trousers of gray serge. But what he uses for the development of his theme—love—what he dwells on, is that “crystallization,” that transformation of stick to gem, “that process of the mind,” he says, “which discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn.”

Stendhal’s four kinds of love have nothing to do with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s. The novelist speaks of passion-love, and mentions Héloïse and Abélard; of sympathy-love; of sensual love; and of vanity-love (this last by a man who shows off his mistress as he would a fine horse).

We are all familiar with aspects of love that effect a brief unity in the world: parental, romantic, patriotic, racial, political, team-love—we know about them; they are all limited, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, and cannot bring peace. These kinds are among us anyhow, and, to paraphrase, there needs no Holy Ghost come from the next world to tell us so. These are not what Scripture means by love. As Jesus said, “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans [the hated tax-gatherers] the same?”

But what was it that the Apostle John meant when he was grown too old to walk, and had to be supported under his arms by a disciple to either side— too old to deliver his message any more, able only to condense it all into five words, no more: “Little children, love one another”?

[Page 20] He must have meant the same as what the Qur’án says: “Hadst thou spent all the riches of the earth, thou couldst not have united their hearts; but God hath united them. . . .” Or what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá means on the same theme of the believers’ unity through divine love when He says of our Faith that here “is neither rod not blow, whip nor sword; but the power of the love of God has accomplished this.”

Bahá’í doctrine has it that a candle cannot light itself, that only God can rekindle love in the world: God, through His Manifestation. Human beings will not suddenly turn loving and lovable. Unless love comes from Somewhere outside, Something not ourselves, we will continue to hate and envy and punish and retaliate forever and ever.

Let alone national wars, urban guerrilla warfare is daily on the increase worldwide; and current studies show that many American couples beat, maim, and even kill each other and their offspring. The mindless murders that take place every day throughout the nation, now routine to the point where we hardly notice them any more in the news, do not derive from love in the heart.

People have forgotten, Shoghi Effendi writes, “those things of the spirit on which alone a sure and stable foundation can be laid for human society.”

Love must be taught, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says. All “must be taught to love their fellow-creatures. . . .” And He says again: “Let not a man glory in this,— that he can kill his fellow-creatures; . . . rather, let him glory in this, that he can love them.”

He says on love that love gets stronger if we practice it: “By the exercise of love,” love is strengthened, and hostility wanes. Again he tells us to treat people “as kindly as God treats them,” and adds that there is no higher attainment for humanity than this. A New England artist, Daisy Pumpelly Smythe, when she asked Him how to live her life, was told: “Be kind to everyone.”

Another of His well-known teachings on love is to look for the good qualities in those we meet. Such a procedure is bound to effect what Stendhal refers to as “crystallization,” that magic change of a twig into a spray of diamonds. Obviously, this works both ways—people seem wittier when others think they have wit, more beautiful when others think them beautiful.

And subjectively, seeing only the unpleasant inevitably makes us like the fabled cow, wandering through the streets of beautiful Baghdád, looking [Page 21] through its gutters and saying: “Nothing here but orange peel and melon rind.”

THERE are four kinds of love, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: God’s love for the transfiguration of His beauty in the mirror of creation—Christ has said, “God is love.” We could also remember here the Muslim ḥadíth, sacred tradition, on which the Master wrote a noted commentary, when still an adolescent: “I was a Hidden Treasure, and I desired to be known, wherefore I created man, thereby to become known.” (“Man” being the Perfect Man, emerging from time to time in history; God’s Primal Mirror, through Whom alone we can see the Father).

Second, there is God’s love for humankind, His creatures.

Third, the love that flows from us to God.

And, finally, the love that binds the hearts of the believers. (These four are not necessarily listed in this order—He lists them differently in different places.)

As you look at it this way and that, Bahá’í history is primarily a love story illustrating these four kinds of love.

Think of the love between the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, Who never met. The Báb, Who established Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant before His own, Who wrote to His Promised One: “I have sacrificed myself wholly for Thee; I have accepted curses for Thy sake, and have yearned for naught but martyrdom in the path of Thy love. Sufficient witness unto me is God, the Exalted, the Protector, the Ancient of Days.”

And Bahá’u’lláh Who responded: “I stand, life in hand, ready; that perchance, through God’s loving-kindness and grace, this revealed and manifest Letter may lay down his life as a sacrifice in the path of the Primal Point, the Most Exalted Word.”

Their chronicler tells how each tried to outdo the other in proclaiming the new Faith. Both of Them, while of different backgrounds, young men from homes of comfort and wealth, they matched hardships in what to Them was the way of God: They matched prison sentences, and hunger and pain, matched ridicule and humiliation and scorn, matched the bastinado (the ignominious throwing down of the victim on his back, fastening his ankles tight to a horizontal pole, this being held firm and continually twisted by a [Page 22] man at either end, while a third man beats and beats the soles of the tortured feet). Then at the end the Báb was bound and raised up on a spike in the wall at Ṭabríz, and Bahá’u’lláh was chained and lowered into the Black Pit of Ṭihrán.

“Such love no eye has ever beheld, nor has mortal heart conceived such mutual devotion,” writes Nabíl, and adds in the terminology of the Persian poets: “If the branches of every tree were turned into pens, and all the seas into ink, and earth and heaven rolled into one parchment, the immensity of that love would still remain unexplored, and the depths of that devotion unfathomed.”

What each saw in the other was undoubtedly the beauty of the Unknowable, mirrored in the heart of His Manifestation. The mystery is perhaps fleetingly glimpsed in this strange colloquy between the Sender and the Sent One:

O My Well-Beloved! Thou hast breathed Thy breath into Me, and divorced Me from Mine own Self. Thou didst, subsequently, decree that no more than . . . a mere emblem of Thy Reality within Me be left among the perverse and envious. Behold, how, deluded by this emblem, they have risen against Me, and heaped upon Me their denials! Uncover Thy Self, therefore, O My Best-Beloved, and deliver Me from My plight.

Thereupon a Voice replied: “I love, I clearly cherish this emblem. How can I consent that Mine eyes, alone, gaze upon this emblem, and that no heart except Mine heart recognize it? By My Beauty, which is the same as Thy Beauty! My wish is to hide Thee from Mine own eyes: how much more from the eyes of men!”

[And again, in the Persian poets’ language for an interrupted speech, He says:] I was preparing to make reply, when lo, the Tablet was suddenly ended, leaving My theme unfinished, and the pearl of Mine utterance unstrung.

SECOND and third of the four kinds is the love of God for the creature, and of the creature for God.

Among the Báb’s followers one or two had been told that they themselves would see Him Whom God Would Manifest; they would see Ḥusayn, the Promised One.

This refuted the claim of the Azalís that the Heralded One of the Báb would not appear before the Day of Mustagháth, an Arabic word meaning “He Who is Invoked.” To them, the Day of Mustagháth meant A.H. 2001; for each letter of the Arabic alphabet has a numerical value, so that words could add up to calendar dates; and the letters of this word add up to 2001. This 2001 was the date assigned by the Báb as the time beyond which the promised Advent could not take place.

[Page 23] One of these especially prepared believers was Shaykh Ḥasan.

“Go to Karbilá,” the Báb told him. “Stay on in that city, for ‘you are destined to behold, with your own eyes, the beauteous countenance of the promised Ḥusayn.’”

And so Shaykh Ḥasan went to Karbilá, over by Baghdád, settled down there, and earned his living as a scribe, a profession underpaid, however necessary in that mostly illiterate society. Meanwhile, far away in Tabríz, the Báb was put to death. Meanwhile, too, Ḥasan was hounded by the Shaykhí sect in Karbilá—those followers of Shaykh Aḥmad who failed to recognize the Báb, just as in after years the Azalís disclaimed Bahá'u’lláh. Ḥasan bore it all, to stay on at his post, never breathing to anyone the secret of why he was there.

Time passed, and then one day—it was 5 October 1851—when Shaykh Ḥasan was walking past the gate of the inner courtyard of Imám Ḥusayn’s Shrine, he caught sight of Bahá’u’lláh, Whom he had never laid eyes on before. How he recognized Him, we do not know. We once asked Louis Gregory, first Bahá’í Hand of the Cause of the black race: “How do we know Bahá’u’lláh was the Promised One of the Báb?” Louis Gregory replied: “Bahá’u’lláh is His own proof, just as the sun is its own proof.” We have often thought, since, how irrelevant it would be to pin a label on the sun, to introduce the sun.

Could he have perhaps heard the Stranger’s name, Ḥusayn-‘Alí? We do not know. This was three years after that watershed Conference at Badasht, where a woman had “sounded the death-knell of the twelve hundred year old law of Islám,” and where each of those present received a new name, the new name confirmed in every case by an individual Tablet from the Báb later on. It was at Badasht that Ḥusayn-‘Alí had become Bahá.

Or did he perhaps have wind of that Shí‘ih tradition, that in the Latter Days ‘Alí would reappear twice, once before Muḥammad and once after Ḥusayn? Still, he could hardly have heard, so early, that the mysterious prophecy referred to ‘Alí-Muḥammad (the Báb’s name), and Ḥusayn-‘Alí (Bahá’u’lláh’s).

Shaykh Ḥasan was by now an old man, bowed over with the years. And he was so poor, with his ill-paid job, that he went hungry most of the time. So, a poor, shabby old man. Yet he was the individual singled out by this princely pilgrim Who, judging by His dress, had come out of Persia, to visit the Shrine.

Ḥasan has left, at this point in his account, one of the few word portraits of Bahá’u’lláh, then in the prime of life at thirty-four, His face still unmarked by the long anguish to come. He lingers on Bahá’u’lláh’s great beauty, His probing glance, and the sweetness of His smile; tells how kindly His face was, how luxuriant His black flowing hair.

“How lovingly He advanced towards me!” says Shaykh Ḥasan. “He took me by the hand and . . . addressed me in these words: “‘This very day I have purposed to make you known as a Bábí throughout Karbilá.’”

Continuing to speak with him, never letting go of his hand, Bahá’u’lláh [Page 24] walked him the whole length of the market street, the people who had come to buy, and the merchants in their raised niches to either side of the way, watching as they passed. Then at the end Bahá’u’lláh told him: “Praise be to God that you have remained in Karbilá, and have beheld with your own eyes the countenance of the promised Ḥusayn.”

At these words Shaykh Ḥasan caught fire, and he wanted “with all my soul and power” to shout to the pressing crowds that the Promised Day had come. But Bahá’u’lláh’s whisper was urgent in his ears, “‘“Not yet . . . the appointed Hour. . . . has not yet struck. Rest assured and be patient.”’”

From that day on, Shaykh Ḥasan was never unhappy again. Never mind hunger, never mind his poverty and the constant persecution by the Shaykhís; what he now had outvalued all the treasures in the world, because what he now had was love.

OR, from the Báb’s time, take that Mihdí who appeared above the ramparts at Ṭabarsí—the Fort the early believers built when, on their march, they were betrayed by the guide and ambushed in a forest. Cut off by Government troops, Mihdí and the others in the Fort were living on grass and bones. Now he was called to by a Muslim, a former companion from his home city, and he stood up there on the wall, his head wrapped around with a white cloth, his sword girded on over his white robe.

“What is it you want? Be quick!” he cried, impatient to rejoin his starving friends.

The other looked up at Mihdí’s non-seeing eyes and could think of only one thing to say:

“Your little son, Raḥmán—he misses you—he wants you back.”

He knew that Mihdí so loved his son, whom he had named after God’s name, the All-Merciful, that he had written a song for him and would sing it as he rocked the boy to sleep.

“Tell him from me,” the father answered, “that the love of the true Raḥmán has so filled my heart, it has left no room for any other loves.”

Then the friend found himself weeping and said. “May God assist you to achieve your goal.”

And the starving man said, “He has indeed assisted me! How else could I have been delivered from the darkness of my prison-home? How else could I have come to this high Stronghold?”

And he sank behind the wall of the Fort.

WE KNOW, too, from Nabíl that in the Baghdád days the believers were as if drunk with bliss. He says the earth’s kings never dreamt of festivals such as those impoverished lovers had, that a royal palace would have meant no more to them than a cobweb to be brushed away.

[Page 25] “‘Many a night,’” he writes, “‘no less than ten persons subsisted on no more than a pennyworth of dates. No one knew to whom actually belonged the shoes, the cloaks, or the robes that were to be found in their houses. Whoever went to the bazaar could claim that the shoes upon his feet were his own, and each one who entered the presence of Bahá’u’lláh could affirm that the cloak and robe he then wore belonged to him. Their own names they had forgotten, their hearts were emptied of aught else except adoration for their Beloved. . . . O, for the joy of those days, and the gladness and wonder of those hours!’”

AT A LATER TIME in our history, Juliet Thompson tells in her unpublished diary of the kind of love continually expressed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

She was a young Victorian woman, very beautiful, and an artist, who in the early days would speak on the Bahá’í Faith (she well chaperoned, but behind her mother’s back)—down in the Bowery, in the slums of New York.

One bitter night she arrived at the Bowery Mission, to find it packed with hundreds of homeless men, forced in by the sleet and snow.

Among the crowd was enormous John Good, with his shock of white hair. He had been released from Sing Sing prison that day. They had tortured him, hung him up by the thumbs, and he had come out an atheist and full of hate.

Juliet, knowing nothing of John Good, told the men about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His prison, and how He had come out, full of love. The minister in charge then rose and said that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was even then on His way to America, and would all those who wanted to hear Him please stand up, and the whole three hundred stood up.

Next the minister asked how many of them would like to study 13 Corinthians with Juliet and himself. Thirty of them stood up. Among these thirty were John Good and a thin, redheaded, sodden individual named Hannegan.

“Then we will meet every Wednesday,” the minister said, “and learn something about this love of which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is our great Example.” This they did, Juliet as ever well chaperoned and having wrested permission from her mother.

The night ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke at the Bowery Mission was 19 April 1912. First, He had sent Edward Getsinger and Juliet to the bank, each to secure a large quantity of quarters, which the bank gave them in two huge white bags, so heavy that Juliet had to drag hers.

They found the long hall packjammed with derelicts, the unwanted and rejected who would sleep on other peoples’ doorsteps and on benches in the park. To her embarrassment, the minister asked Juliet to “introduce the Master.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá rose and addressed them. He told them that they were His friends and His family He said that in their poverty they were more like Christ than the rich, for the rich depend on their means, and the poor have nothing to depend on but God. He said that everyone must be a servant of [Page 26] the poor. He said that Jesus was a poor man; that one night, homeless, out in the fields under the rain, He raised up His eyes and said to the Father that although He had nothing, only the cold ground, the stars for lamps and grass for food, still He had a blessing the rich were deprived of: He had the poor. “Thou hast given Me the poor. . . . They are Mine. Therefore I am the richest man on earth.”

Afterward, followed by Juliet and the others with Him, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá walked down the aisle to the door. He had on His pongee ‘abá, Juliet says, and was “shining in white and ivory.” There at the door He waited, and He called on Juliet and Edward to stand one on each side of Him, each with a heavy bag from the bank.

Then, as Juliet describes it—she was an artist and visual-minded—came the long line of men down the aisle: the “sodden and grimy procession— three hundred men in single file. The ‘breadline’—the failures. Broken forms. Blurred faces. How can I picture such a scene? That forlorn host out of the depths . . . ?” She asks if the Master greeted them like the erring, or like strays. “No, like His own beloved children.”

And as He took each hand, He pressed into it “His little gift of silver— just a symbol and the price of a bed. Not a man was shelterless that night. And many, many, I could see, found a shelter in His heart. I could see it in the faces raised to His and in His Face bent to theirs.”

He held out His hand to the first man, leaving His gift. Five or six quarters, maybe (and John Good told her afterward that the completely destitute got the most).

The first man looked up, surprised. “His eyes met the Master’s look, which seemed to be plunging deep into his heart with fathomless understanding. . . . The man must have known very little of even human love . . . and now, too suddenly, he stood face to face with Divine love. He looked startled, incredulous. . . . Then his eyes strained toward the Master, something new burning in them—and the Masrer’s eyes answered with a great flash, revealing a more mysterious, profounder love. . . . I saw this repeated scores of times.” She says some of them only “shuffled past, accepting the gift ungraciously,” but most were like the first. And she adds, “Who can tell the effect of those immortal glances on the lives and even, perhaps, at the death of each of these men?”

Months afterward, John Good told her about Hannegan, the Bowery derelict who by now had drunk himself into his grave. Hannegan had been counting the days, John Good told her, till it would be 19 April and he could go to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at the Mission—but he lost count, and the day came and went. Once he was conscious again, he realized there would be another chance— ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was to speak in Flatbush the following Sunday. Flatbush was a long way off, and when the day came, Hannegan was penniless, and so he walked.

That midnight John Good went to Hannegan’s room and found him in his usual condition.

[Page 27] “Why did you do it this time, Hannegan—and you straight from seeing the Master?”

“That’s just it,” said Hannegan. “I’m straight from seeing Him. The Light of the World, He is, John. It’s too much for a man. Too discouraging.”

AFTERWARD, recalling with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that scene at the Bowery Mission, somebody asked Him if charity is advisable.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá laughed and said: “Asuredly, give to the poor. If you give them only words, when they put their hands into their pockets after you have gone, they will find themselves none the richer for you!”

Although a prisoner and exile Himself, He was known all over the Holy Land for taking care of the poor. On His travels He tipped generously. He also gave generously to churches where He spoke, and gave in the poor quarters of cities, which He sought out. He shared with the poor whatever funds came in, and although so poor Himself that His daughter could not find an extra nightgown for Him during His last hours, when He died, the destitute were orphaned.

FOR A LOVE of our own times, we might also remember Keith Ransom-Kehler, who typifies the devotion of Bahá’í pioneers for the Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, and who (though nursed day and night by Raḥmat and Najmia Ala’i) died of smallpox in Iṣfahán when on a mission for our Faith. It is clear that during her final days she was going over lines from De Profundis and “Say not the struggle naught availeth”; and she was thinking of the young Quddús, who was killed for the Báb in the streets of his home city of Bárfurúsh, and dwelling too on her own similar love for the Guardian—for afterward, in her journal, they found this:

I have fallen, though I never faltered. Months of effort with nothing accomplished is the record that confronts me. If anyone in future should be interested in this thwarted adventure of mine, he alone can say whether near or far from the seemingly impregnable heights . . . my tired old body fell. . . . Nothing in the world is meaningless, suffering least of all. Sacrifice with its attendant agony is a germ, an organism. . . . Once sown it blooms, I think forever, in the sweet fields of eternity. Mine will be a very modest flower, perhaps like the single, tiny forget-me-not, watered by the blood of Quddús, that I plucked in the Sabzih-Maydán of Bárfurúsh. Should it ever catch the eye, may one who seems to be struggling in vain garner it in the name of Shoghi Effendi and cherish it for his dear remembrance.

While the tired waves vainly breaking

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making,

Silent comes flooding in the main.

[Page 28] What we in the world call love is not included in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s four categories. Our kind is not true love, He says, because it changes. He calls it fascination: a spell, sorcery, enchantment.

As the wind blows, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, the bough bends; if the wind blows from the east, the tree leans to the west, if the wind veers to the west, the tree leans to the east. Today you will see two souls ready to die for each other, tomorrow the same two not speaking. “This is not love; it is the yielding of the hearts to the accidents of life.”

WHAT IS IT that people have found in the Cause of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, from its birth until this hour? Why have they offered themselves either to live or die for it?

What they see here is a restoring love, a beatific vision to blot out the world’s augean hate. Here they have glimpsed once more, as in the ancient story, Joseph’s Face.

Joseph was a Prophet Who ruled in Egypt, and His beauty was beyond compare.

There came a time when His courtiers gathered around Him and said: “We shall go forth and search through every land, and each return to Thee bringing a gift, which shall be whatever thing he finds most beauteous in all the world.”

The years passed by, and one by one the courtiers came home, each bringing what to him was the fairest thing on earth. They came with white racing camels and comely slaves, fabrics so delicate they could be drawn through a ring, lacquers and rare animal skins and opalescent glass, jewels bright enough to light a room. Finally, they had all come back but one.

Then at last he too was back, bowed with the years, wearied out with the roads and waves. Slowly he approached the throne and knelt, offering his gift.

It was only a mirror in a simple wooden frame, no more.

Joseph took it and held it up; and Joseph looked, and within it saw His face.

“I have traveled through every land,” the old man said, “I have searched through all the world; and what in all the world is more beauteous than the Face of Joseph?”

[Page 29]

[Page 30]

MEDITATION

Voice from the infinite:

Word of the giver!

The word that is God.

The voice that speaks silence.

The silence that sings.

The song that is rapture.

The rapture that stills.

The stillness that moves.

The movement that stays.

Voice that is placeless:

Voice of the Kingdom!—

The Kingdom of God.

Never beginning

And never ending.

Moving forever

In its no beginning.

Resting always

In its never-ending.

Voice of the timeless:

Moulder of time!

The voice that is God.

Piercing the nothingness

Of now and forever,

Receding endlessly

Yet rising in triumph.

All that we know—

Unknowable Essence!

—Olive V. Applegate

[Page 31]

The Dilemma of Drug Abuse

BY ABDU’L MISSAGH A. GHADIRIAN

This paper, which has been revised for publication, was presented at the International Conference on Health and Healing sponsored by the Canadian Association for Studies on the Bahá’í Faith, 2-4 June 1980, in Ottawa.

THE NONMEDICAL use of drugs, particularly among youth, has reached a crisis level in many parts of the industrial world. The consumption of alcohol has also been rising rapidly among adolescents, to whom it is easily available and socially acceptable. Both have contributed to the complexity of the formidable tasks of parents, teachers, and professional mental health workers in recent years.

From time immemorial, it is true, man has longed to discover the secret of eternal life and has searched for ingredients to dispel his sorrows and to help him gain lasting joy. Various cultures have found and cherished an array of herbs and medicines, many of which have been used in tribal festivities and religious rites to evoke ecstasy or to induce a trance. Depending on the quantity taken and the potency of the substance, the individuals experienced selective or total dissociation from reality and, at times, seizures and unconsciousness. In some cultures individuals consuming such substances performed ritualistic dances and rhythmic motions that accelerated toward the culmination of the excitement; they were praised by the beholders as the special ones who at the peak of their elation could communicate with the spirits and supernatural powers. Such communication was thought to invoke cure for the diseased and to bring mercy and prosperity to a family or tribe.

Hashish (Cannabis indica, Indian hemp), to cite one drug, has been used in India and Egypt from prehistoric times. In the Orient toward the end of the eleventh century some of the followers of the Ismailieh sect led by Hasan-i-Sabbáh, “the Old Man of the Mountain” in Northern Persia, used hashish for special purposes. Those who resolved to undertake dangerous missions would partake of hashish and then be transported into an attractive garden that was represented to them as a reflection of the eternal Paradise, which they were destined to enter upon the completion of their mission. Robert S. deRopp, a biochemist, has written: “For the sake of the glimpse of paradise which the drug afforded, his fanatical henchmen would gladly ride across the desert to Basra or Baghdád, there stealthily to murder certain individuals of whom Hasan happened to disapprove. For this reason the furtive secret political murderer is known even today as an assassin [hashíshins], a name supposedly derived from that of the drug.”

The hallucinogen psilocybe of Southern Mexico was consumed in most of the religious rites of that area long before the Aztec civilization flourished. Likewise, peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) was used by the Indians of Mexico in an attempt “to drive out alcoholism.”

Drugs such as narcotics and alcohol have also been known to man for centuries. But it was only during the American Civil War that the use of morphine spread for the first time. Following each of the two World Wars, as well as the Korean and Vietnamese wars, many of the veterans and disillusioned [Page 32] survivors sought refuge in habit-forming substances that seemed to lessen the pain of their losses and their memories of a cruel war.

In the 1960s the newly discovered hallucinogenic drugs brought a wave of search into the deeper layers of consciousness as well as popular excursions into the world of unreality. Mind expansion and drug experimentation spread into universities and psychological laboratories.

Toward the end of the 1960s illicit drug use spread rapidly among youth. In the 1970s there was a shift of emphasis from conventional psychoactive substances to alcohol. The consumption of alcohol and drugs also penetrated deeper among the younger adolescents and reached the rural communities, further threatening the family life of the society.

What, then, are the causes of drug and alcohol abuse? How do they affect the mind, the body, and the soul? What are the psychosocial implications of and Bahá’í attitudes toward such abuse? How can it be prevented? These questions I will treat in this essay, for the state of euphoria induced by intoxicants poses serious questions with respect to man’s relation to himself and indicates a crisis within the person in his search for his true identity. Natural states of consciousness and feeling are the most valuable facets of human life that enable one to perceive and interpret the inner and outer realities. Yet man’s manipulation of his feelings and consciousness by the use of toxic substances (I use the term “substance” for both drugs and alcohol) has a far-reaching effect on the development of a man’s character and on the progress of his mind and soul in this world. It inhibits man’s motivation for learning, impedes his intellectual and spiritual progress, and diminishes his sensitivity to the natural external and internal stimuli that are of fundamental importance to his growth and maturity.

Statistical Aspects of Alcohol and Drug Abuse

THE EXTENT of the drug and alcohol problem now facing parents, teachers, and mental health workers can be seen from a sampling of statistics. In February 1970 a Newsweek survey indicated that 30 to 50 percent of all high school students in the United States had made regular use of marijuana. In 1974 a survey of senior high school students in California found that 61.9 percent of the male and 58.2 percent of the female students had consumed marijuana at least once during the past year. Another survey, published in 1977, showed that 10 percent of all high school seniors smoked marijuana at least once a day. The use of cannabis has continued on an upward trend in recent years and has also affected children as young as eight years of age. NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws) estimated in 1976 that some thirty-five million Americans smoked marijuana and that ten million of them were regular users.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford in his message to the United States Congress stated that five thousand Americans die each year of drug-related causes. A report on the prevalence of drug abuse among the adult population of Ontario in the same year indicated that the drug problem was the most important one next to inflation and unemployment.

Drug abuse among college students is also extensive. Contrary to public opinion, [Page 33] students in some professional fields that involve the highest moral responsibilities in society have not been spared. A 1974 study of students in the schools of law and medicine in a northeastern university in the United States—schools whose graduates are considered the custodians of human rights and justice and the preservers of health and healing—reported these startling findings: 73 percent of the students of law and 68.1 percent of the students of medicine used marijuana.

In the 1970s the consumption of alcohol among teenagers began to rise, adding more confusion to the problem of drug use among adolescents. Juvenile consumption of alcohol has increased since then; and although drugs such as cannabis have regained their popularity in recent years, the use of alcohol alone or in combination with other drugs has continued to rise. According to M. E. Chafetz, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 5 percent of American youth in 1975 had alcohol problems. A national survey of high school students in the United States that same year revealed that 63 percent of the boys and 54 percent of the girls in the seventh grade had had a drink. The figure rose significantly by the time they reached the twelfth grade where 93 percent of the boys and 87 percent of the girls had used alcohol. In 1975 there were twenty-seven groups of Alcoholics Anonymous for teenagers and preteenagers in Southern California alone; since then a larger number of similar programs have been established in other parts of North America.

The alarming rise of alcohol abuse among youth has also been reported in other parts of the world. In 1978 20 percent of the high school students in Japan reportedly needed a drink several times a week in order to keep up with their academic work.

The spread of drinking, like the use of other drugs, has a particularly serious consequence for adolescent girls—its effect on pregnancy and the appearance of subsequent birth defects including a possible Fetal Alcohol Syndrome among the progency of alcoholics. Alcohol and many other psychoactive drugs can pass through the placenta and affect the organic growth of the fetus. The uterine environment, which normally is an optimal one for the nurture and growth of a child, may become polluted with toxic substances of which the unborn is a defenseless victim. Children of mothers addicted to potent drugs such as morphine or heroin may enter this world stillborn or suffer tragic withdrawal consequences.

Sedative-hypnotics, including barbiturates and nonbarbiturate sedatives as well as minor tranquilizers such as Benzodiazepines, are another group of substances increasingly abused by youth and adults for pleasure and as a means of overcoming psychological pain. It is estimated that each year more than $100 million worth of prescriptions based on this group of drugs are written for medicines.

When youth were asked in a survey of adolescent drug abuse to indicate the contributing factors that helped them stay off drugs, 26 percent noted willpower or self-determination as the most important contributing factor. Ten percent felt there was no “pay-off” in the use of drugs, 9 percent named fear, and 9 percent named therapy. The absence of any significant mention of the role of education in this study is surprising (though the U.S. government spends more than $80 million annually for a comprehensive drug control program). The study shows the importance of volition and personal choice; yet the strength of self-determination [Page 34] depends to a great extent on a number of variables among which childhood education and parental attitudes toward alcohol and drugs are of prime importance.

Thus the task facing parents, teachers, and mental health workers is, indeed, a monumental one—and one in which society, as it is presently structured, provides little real help.

Some Reflections on the Cause of Drug Abuse

THERE are many factors in modern civilization that lead to drug abuse. Some have to do with seeking comfort and security. Others stem from our competitively oriented society; the breakdown in established values; anxiety and despair; and personality traits.

A primary factor leading to drug abuse is the rapid advances in discovering ways and means for satisfying man’s psychosocial needs and relieving his pain and anxiety. As a testimony to this one sees, on the one hand, the enormous synthesis and rapid dissemination of various types of mood- and mind-altering substances and, on the other hand, the popular rise of relaxation techniques, whether imported from the East or invented in the West. The notion of stress and the popularization of that notion since the 1930s have also stimulated research in coping with the wear and tear of life, opening a new era in human adaptation to a stressful environment. Medicine, which traditionally has been concerned with the art of healing physical ailments, is challenged to produce sound and satisfying remedies for the invisible wounds of the human mind and soul and to break through human fear and despair. The response has been overwhelming: man can now alleviate fear and anxiety or produce a depressed and apathetic mood. He can stimulate or inhibit his appetite, tame his violent temper, or change his vision and perception of the world through psychoactive substances. He can alter or totally distort his reason, the most precious gift bestowed upon him, and he can turn a meek individual into a monster of violence and destruction. It has been estimated, for example, that a small quantity of LSD dissolved in the water reservoir would be sufficient to turn the population of a city such as New York insane.

Another factor leading to drug abuse is the considerable emphasis, in the Western world, placed on the necessity for sensorial satisfaction. The excessive consciousness of sensory perceptions has further heightened individuals’ sensitivity to pain and frustrations. To feel better or to experience instant relief from any discomfort has become part of man’s notion of health. Pain and suffering are considered abnormal or unacceptable, just as pleasure and comfort are sought as indispensable. Well-being is conceived of as a condition of health in the absence of pain and discomfort rather than as a state of health with the ability to cope with pain and distress. Western society has achieved remarkable skill and mastery in controlling its environment through modern technology, and with the advancement of science the will to control has extended from without to within the person. Hence by means of biochemical agents certain wants and impulses are inhibited while others are stimulated and discharged. This will to control is continuously nurtured and reinforced through social contacts and the communications industry.

Yet another factor leading to drug abuse, particularly for self-centered people, is the Western world’s intensely competitive social structure. Figure 1 illustrates the phases that such a person goes through in an achievement-oriented society. Upon entering competitive relationships with others he finds that competition is encouraged by the social system and that he is rewarded for success and penalized for failure. His continual struggle to nurture an idealized self image [Page 35] in competitive relationships diminishes his tolerance of failure and renders him vulnerable and insecure under stress. Being unable to accept the reality of failure and to cope with the stress generated by it, he seeks various ways to escape an essentially moral dilemma. Whereas coping with the stress of life becomes a creative process for those secure about themselves, for the insecure and self-centered it leads to destructive behavior in which alcohol and psychoactive drugs may present convenient opportunities for gaining relief. With drugs or alcohol the self-centered individual wards off the fear and anxiety of an impending or experienced failure. But he does so without gaining any insight into himself, and he ensures the continuance of a vicious circle.

FIG. 1

ABNORMAL RESPONSE IN A SELF-CENTERED INDIVIDUAL

The easy availability of sedative drugs and the absence of motivation for working through conflicts further accelerates the cycle. The precedence of sense orientation over insight orientation in contemporary North American culture is discussed by Edward M. Scott, who reports, in his study of adolescent drug users, that when they were asked what they thought they were getting out of drugs, 69 percent replied, “experiencing more” (which could also mean “to feel better”). Only 1 percent believed that they learned something about themselves. This supports the hypothesis that excessive awareness of sensual feelings plays an important role in the motives of drug abuse.

Not all substance abuse. it must be noted, [Page 36] occurs because of hedonistic drives, nor is such abuse confined to the West. Anxiety, despair, or chronic illnesses lead substantial numbers, especially adults, to such abuse. Sidney Cohen, one of the leading authorities on the problem of alcoholism and drug abuse in America, has noted yet other causes of drug abuse:

1. The attenuation of established values without the appearance of new and more suitable values to replace them.

2. The decay of traditional customs and beliefs that bound groups of people together, e.g. religion (réligio: to bind together), family ties, and the common roots of national, ethnic, and tribal allegiances.

3. The decline in visible and viable aspirations for many. . . .

4. The persistence of an “affluent society” in our midst, with its diseases of hopelessness and poor self-esteem; the rise of an affluent society, with its diseases of directionlessness and goallessness.

5. The inadequacy of our educational system, with its unbalanced emphasis on training of the intellect with only minimal consideration to training of the senses and the emotions.

The desire for adventure and the quest for novel experiences in a dull or indifferent social climate of purposelessness are yet other factors leading youth to drug abuse. Some use drugs to combat boredom and depression, while others do so to cope with a sense of alienation and disillusionment they experience in relation to social norms and values (see Table I).

The Interrelationship of Sensory and Spiritual Powers

ACCORDING to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, man is endowed with five senses through which he perceives the material world. These are the powers of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. “Man has also spiritual powers,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:

imagination, which conceives things; thought, which reflects upon realities; comprehension, which comprehends realities, memory, which retains whatever man imagines, thinks, and comprehends. The intermediary between the five outward powers and the inward powers, is the sense which they possess in common, that is to say, the sense which acts between the outer and inner powers, conveys to the inward powers whatever the outer powers discern. . . .

For instance, sight is one of the outer powers; it sees and perceives this flower, and conveys this perception to the inner power—the common faculty—which transmits this perception to the power of imagination, which in its turn conceives and forms this image and transmits it to the power of thought; the power of thought reflects, and having grasped the reality, conveys it to the power of comprehension; the comprehension, when it has comprehended it, delivers the image of the object perceived to the memory, and the memory keeps it in its repository.

From this illustration we can appreciate the chain of events that carries a message from the outer world to the inner world. Such a message may excite or inhibit emotion, resulting in alterations of mood and feeling, or it may spark a novel cognitive activity and bring about a new thought or idea. Under certain conditions, however, the perception of the sensory organs and the interpretation of the perceived images or messages may become distorted, thus giving rise to a wrong impression of an external reality. For example, in an alcoholic delirium a rose may not be perceived as a rose but rather as a frightening object creeping into the observer’s mind and arousing tremendous fear and anxiety. Therefore, the consumption of an intoxicant causes a misperception of reality, an illusion. Psychedelic substances such as LSD and mescaline may alter the [Page 37] perception and interpretation of messages received by the brain from the outer powers or external stimuli. As a result, visual and auditory experiences may be perceived in a highly exaggerated manner or be interpreted illogically and unreasonably. These substances may also affect the inner powers, particularly the power of imagination and the grasp of reality; the result is impairment of judgment and false perceptions.

FIG. 2

THE RATIONAL SOUL AND ITS ATTRIBUTES

The human mind, as described by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is the power of the human spirit or the rational soul: “Spirit is the lamp; mind is the light which shines from the lamp. Spirit is the tree, and the mind is the fruit. Mind is the perfection of the spirit, and is its essential quality, as the sun’s rays are the essential necessity of the sun.” Figure 2 shows some of the attributes of the rational soul. As is noted in the Bahá’í writings, the mind is the perfection of the human spirit or rational soul. The soul is likened to the tree and the mind to the fruit of the tree. It is, therefore, possible to consider the mental faculties such as intelligence, imagination, memory, reason, comprehension, and the power of discovery as the fruits of the tree, which are collectively referred to as the mind. The natural strength and intensity of all intellectual faculties can be altered by chemical substances. Should these substances be taken without medical supervision that would ensure their proper and safe use, the adverse effects may ultimately affect the evolution of the soul and the release of its powers through the instrumentality of the mind and character.

In the Bahá’í concept of the reality of man the soul occupies a unique place. It is a center around which revolve the intellectual, emotional, physical, and social dimensions of human existence (see Figure 3). The various dimensions are not isolated from one another; rather they flow one into the other. In a well-balanced life the soul remains the center of spiritual gravity bringing all other essential dimensions into a creative harmony and interaction. Some individuals because of their innate potential and perception and aided by education may make more significant progress in one dimension than in others. For example, among those who excel in the intellectual sphere, [Page 38] one finds great scholars, scientists, and writers, while others who are truly enlightened and advanced in the spiritual realm may attain celestial attributes and saintly character. Still others who have made special progress in physical development—for example, athletes—may become champions of sport. It should be emphasized, however, that progress in any one of the facets of human reality will not occur in isolation but rather in concert with changes in other dimensions. Hence one may be a scientist and also attain a significant spiritual insight into the mystery of the universe or become an esteemed figure in public relations.

FIG. 3

THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL NATURE OF HUMAN BEINGS

The Bahá’í writings indicate that “These energies with which . . . [God] hath endowed the reality of man lie, however, latent within him, even as the flame is hidden within the candle and the rays of light are potentially present in the lamp. The radiance of these energies may be obscured by worldly desires even as the light of the sun can be concealed beneath the dust and dross which cover the mirror. . . . unless the dross is blotted out from the face of the mirror it can never represent the image of the sun nor reflect its light and glory.”

The Effects of Drug and Alcohol Abuse on the Mind, Mood, and Soul

THE EFFECT of any toxic substance on the mind and mood depends on the nature and potency of the substance, the quantity consumed, and the personality predisposition and emotional state of the individual. Still, alcohol and other psychoactive substances directly or indirectly affect the various systems of the body and their functions, including the closely related respiratory and cardiovascular system. Their main effect is on the brain. Of the various parts of the brain the limbic region, which houses the pleasure center of the [Page 39] brain and which plays an important role in the central control of drives and the expression of emotions and of reason, is particularly sensitive to the effects of psychoactive compounds. The chemical stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain interferes with their natural functioning and ultimately diminishes or even blocks their responsiveness to drugs. This explains the inability of some chronic users to derive pleasure from their chosen drug. The drug-induced malfunction of pleasure centers is reversed once the drug is no longer administered.

DIAGRAM I

The psychochemical effects of drugs can be divided into two groups: 1) the alteration of mind and consciousness, and 2) the alteration of mood and feeling.

1) Consciousness constitutes an important function of the human mind and comprises perception, comprehension, and preparation for reaction to external or internal events or stimuli. In medical practice the perceptual capacity of consciousness may need to be altered (for example, reduced, during a surgical operation) to avoid physical pain, or its focus be shifted out of the mental concentration of the person to alleviate psychological pain and anxiety in the process of uncovering painful conflicts.

Among the substances that lower the level of consciousness and inhibit sensory perception, especially of pain, are opiates of which morphine and heroin are the best known for their medical and nonmedical use. Their consumption results in passive pleasure, diminution of consciousness, and oblivion to the surrounding world and thus perceptual anesthesia. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states that opium “taketh possession of the soul of man, killeth the reason, weakeneth the intelligence, maketh a living man dead and extinguisheth the natural heat.”

Another form of drug-induced alteration of consciousness is the stimulation of imaginary and sensory perception and the induction of an illusionary world of unreality. [Page 40] Hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD can cause such experiences.

2) The alteration of mood may be aimed at evoking pleasurable feeling and euphoria, or it may be an attempt to overcome pain or a flight from a dysphoric mood and depression. The ultimate result is a state of depression, which, in turn, enhances in the person the desire to consume more of the intoxicant to regain an emotional uplift. Consequently, he establishes a cycle of perpetual drug abuse and addiction. Individuals who are basically insecure and dependent, who have not acquired adequate skills in problem solving, and who do not have coping mechanisms are the most vulnerable to such a chemical dependence in which substances replace the real satisfaction of needs.

Although psychoactive drugs are divided here by their primary targets of activity, it should be noted that their effects on consciousness and mood are not independent of one another. Furthermore, the human organism with all its diverse neurophysiological systems functions as a single entity, and it is not possible, nor is it logical to separate, for example, the functions of the central nervous system from the rest. Similarly, there is a unitary basis of human emotions, cognitive and sensorial perceptions, and spiritual insight and intuitions. The precise interrelation of the brain and the soul is far from clear, as the former is matter and is perceivable by the senses while the latter is not composed of matter and thus is inaccessible to the senses for measurement or observation. It is like an energy beyond man’s sensory perception and intellectual determination, and yet it continues to prevail in his life, like the power of thoughts that cannot be touched, seen, or measured, but whose existence one can acknowledge by their manifestations.

In addition to certain special effects on mind, consciousness, mood, and feeling, any drug, if not prescribed and used properly, will produce a number of undesirable side effects and may be more dangerous than advantageous as a therapeutic agent.

Perhaps the worst effect of substance abuse is the extinction of human sensitivity. Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and neurologist, believes that such extinction by means of “narcotization” is in a sense a “spiritual anesthesia,” which can lead to spiritual death. In his opinion “consistent suppression of intrinsically meaningful emotional impulses because of their possible unpleasurable tone ends in the killing of a person’s inner life.” For every emotional experience there is a meaning deeply rooted in human reality. Indiscriminate suppression of certain unpleasant emotions such as anxiety, unless it is excessive, is like the elimination of pain without the identification of its underlying cause and is thus the denial of a symptom that otherwise conveys a valuable message. Equally significant is the induction of a nirvana mood or any artificial alteration of feeling of a nature that might disturb the homeostasis of normal emotional activities.

The Psychosocial Effects of Drug and Alcohol Abuse

IN ADDITION to physical, emotional, and spiritual effects, drug and alcohol abuse also have psychosocial effects. Many drug users, for example, have their own concept of freedom and contest the rules and moral values set by society. It is ironic that the ultimate destiny of an alcoholic or a drug addict is the loss of the very freedom that he initially claims. He soon realizes that by becoming dependent on an intoxicant, he becomes more and more tolerant of the substance and requires a larger amount to achieve the same result. In addition, he discovers that failure to obtain the necessary drug on time means a psychophysiological withdrawal reaction that can be quite painful and critical, depending on the nature and potency of the drug. Hence an addict is very vulnerable and faces two moral dilemmas:

1) He has lost his freedom to be himself [Page 41] by becoming dependent on a lifeless, speechless, and indifferent chemical agent to which he cannot even communicate a complaint. Rather he must submit to its consumption in order to escape withdrawal symptoms. The fear and anguish of a forthcoming withdrawal attack in the event of failure to obtain the addicting substance may be so intense that the primary objective of achieving pleasure and euphoria is of secondary importance. Hence pleasure is replaced by fear, and the individual involved in a quest for nirvana is instead locked into “chemical slavery.” Shakespeare wrote in Othello: “O thou invisible spirit of wine! if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil! . . . O God! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!”

2) In an effort to avoid the pain of withdrawal the addict may make any attempt to ensure himself a sufficient supply or to obtain the drug by any means. The rules of ethics and the laws of society may have to be broken to achieve this goal. Thus assault, robbery, breaking and entering, and violence including murder may be the unfortunate consequences. The victim of addiction, in his desperate mood and possibly with impaired judgment, may endanger his own life unless psychiatric help is given.

Drug-induced violence and aggressive behavior have been reported in the literature and are familiar to many clinicians. A recent report suggests that chronic use of phencyclidine (PCP or “angel dust”) can cause violence directed at others or at oneself. Such behavior was found inconsistent with the behavior of the abusers while they were not under the influence of that drug or of alcohol. The report included one case of murder and self-mutilation under the influence of PCP. In some cases it appeared that the impairment of judgment led to reckless behavior with suicidal potential. For example, it was reported that one of the drug abusers was found climbing into the cage of a polar bear to take a picture of it!

It should be noted that not all drugs and alcohol cause addiction and that, depending on the substance and the length of consumption, addiction may be either psychological or more profound and biological.

The Bahá’í Attitude Toward Substance Abuse

THE WRITINGS of the Bahá’í Faith are explicit about the use of substances such as alcohol and drugs. Never before in the history of mankind has a Divine Manifestation been so explicit about the effect of alcohol and narcotics on the human mind and soul. One of the principles enshrined in the Bahá’í Revelation is obedience to the laws of this Dispensation. True liberty, in Bahá’u’lláh’s words, is to be found in obedience to the ordinances of God. Obedience in abstaining from toxic substances protects the individual’s freedom to be his true self.

Hence it is no surprise to find that the Bahá’í writings require total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages. Alcohol, the Bahá’í writings say, is “‘the cause of chronic diseases, weakeneth the nerves, and consumeth the mind’”; hence Bahá’ís are exhorted to become “intoxicated with the wine of the love of God, and not with that which deadeneth your minds. . . .’” The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh elucidate the true nature of joy and sorrows as they relate to the human soul. They emphasize that the words of the Divine Manifestations that have appeared at various stages of human development are endowed with a spiritual potency that is the wellspring of guidance and happiness. This potency Bahá’u’lláh symbolically refers to in His writings with expressions such as “The Mystic Wine,” which is to be drunk from the cup of His words. Spiritual wine, when taken free from prejudice, Bahá’ís believe, [Page 42] excites one’s consciousness for a greater love and understanding of the mysteries of the universe, stimulates his thoughts in discovering a new meaning in life, and broadens his vision in seeing the reality of existence. None of these attributes can be achieved through the consumption of material intoxicants such as alcohol. On the contrary, the Bahá’í writings indicate (and a multitude of scientific observations suggests) that alcohol does exactly the opposite. Indeed, an individual’s temporary gratification derived from alcohol can undermine objectivity and lead him to yield to self-defeat.

The Bahá’í writings also forbid the use of opium and its derivatives, unless prescribed for medical treatment. The unauthorized use of opium is considered to be “the destruction of the foundations of humanity” and the cause of “perpetual unhappiness.” For this reason the Bahá’í International Community represented at the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization has cooperated closely with the United Nations and its Commission on Narcotic Drugs in the prevention and the eradication of narcotic and other drug abuse.

The Bahá’í attitude toward the use of hallucinogens and psychedelic drugs such as mescaline, LSD, and cannabis has been made explicit in a number of statements by the Universal House of Justice, the supreme administrative body of the Bahá’í World Community. In 1965 the Universal House of Justice wrote: “Concerning the so called ‘spiritual’ virtues of the hallucinogens . . . spiritual stimulation should come from turning one’s heart to Bahá‘u'lláh, and not through physical means such as drugs and agents. . . . ‘A very great responsibility for the future peace and well-being of the world is borne by the youth of today. Let the Bahá’í youth by the power of the Cause they espouse be the shining example for their companions.’” The Universal House of Justice further confirms that “Bahá’ís should not use hallucinogenic agents, including LSD, peyote and similar substances, except when prescribed for medical treatment. Neither should they become involved in experiments with such substances.”

The Bahá’í writings also contain prohibitions against the use of hashish, a preparation made from the plant Cannabis sativa. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written: “Regarding hashish. . . . This is the worst of all intoxicants, and its prohibition is explicitly revealed. Its use causeth the disintegration of thought and the complete torpor of the soul. . . .” Further, He says that “Alcohol consumeth the mind and causeth man to commit acts of absurdity, but . . . this wicked hashish extinguisheth the mind, freezeth the spirit, petrifieth the soul, wasteth the body and leaveth man frustrated and lost.” Some seventy years later, Professor Bernard M. Lall of Andrew University in the United States, while citing other researchers, echoed this statement of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by reporting to the Second World Congress for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency that marijuana, which is a milder form of hashish, is “the most dangerous drug with which we must contend.” He reported that chronic cannabis consumption results in possible interference with DNA synthesis, deterioration of mental functioning, pathological forms of thinking resembling paranoia, and “a massive and chronic passivity” and lack of motivation, the so-called “amotivational syndrome.” Dr. Gabriel Nahas, a professor of Columbia University’s College of Physicians, and a leading researcher on the effect of marijuana, has said that “most evidence now indicates chronic use of marijuana can cause brain dysfunction, making it difficult for many heavy users to perform [Page 43] the simplest tasks.” He has also stated that he is “afraid that we are going to see a lot of young people who are difficult to motivate, who find it difficult to get pleasure out of life.”

Prevention

ANY preventive measure for evils so pervasive and prevalent in the Western hemisphere as the use of alcohol and drugs should be comprehensive and take into consideration all aspects of human reality. Most of today’s programs are aimed at the treatment and rehabilitation of young and adult drug addicts and alcoholics. Very few, if any, positive and comprehensive programs that have been tested have proved successful in primary prevention.

On the contrary, a significant investment is made each year by government and private enterprise in the production and distribution of alcohol and of other habit-forming substances. The media and sports and public events of national and international interest have continued to reflect the popular use of alcohol. It is very rare, at least in the West, for weddings and other festivities not to include the serving of alcoholic beverages. Yet the general consensus is that alcohol is harmful to human health, and medicine is unable to surmount alcohol’s heavy toll each year. The young and growing generation of today’s world is perplexed and disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the adult world that does not practice what it proclaims. Many youth witness the contradiction in the behavior and attitude of their own parents and relatives. In families where the mother’s daily headache can only be relieved by a sedative or aspirin, usually of the brand most advertised on television; where the father cannot sleep without a pill and often needs a drink before starting his day and certainly to end it; where sisters and brothers have a strange habit of getting “stoned” whenever they go to parties; where all family members are overmedicated for their aches and pains or because of their needs for security—in all of these circumstances children receive behavioral messages that consciously or subconsciously contribute to their future strategies and armamentarium of coping with internal and external stress. Research on the problem of juvenile alcohol and drug abuse supports the notion that the abusers frequently come from families where one of the parents is often found to be an alcoholic, to drink to excess, or to be involved in drug abuse.

Moreover, the mere presence and availability of alcohol and other stimulants with their enticing glamor, cherished by many users at home or in the street, is an invitation to discontented individuals who seek immediate relief and satisfaction. According to Sidney Cohen, the former director of the Division of Narcotic Addiction and Drug Abuse of the National Institute of Mental Health, “the ability to purchase dreams in a feed-and-seed store presents an important problem to authorities which may come to be even greater than the difficulties of eradicating the clandestine practice of marijuana smoking.”

To establish a comprehensive prevention plan a number of elements merit serious consideration. Table 1 shows at a glance some of the frequent contributing factors in substance abuse the understanding of which will help with preventive programs. Among these, some, such as the role of the individual, the family and culture, childhood education, the availability of drugs, and dysphoric moods (loneliness, depression, personal failure, and so on), are of prime importance.

The following are some thoughts on the ingredients of a comprehensive program for the prevention of adolescent alcoholism and drug abuse. It is comprised of education on three levels: 1) the individual level, 2) the family level, and 3) the community level.

[Page 44] 1) On the individual level, childhood education must give the utmost importance to teaching children about the relationship of man to his Creator and to himself. The former strengthens children’s faith and their obedience to the laws and precepts of their Faith, while the latter helps them to understand that they are entrusted with the precious gift of life in their physical being. Children must be led to see that the human body is like a temple within which shines the light of divine reality, and that each person is responsible for the well-being of his temple and of the light of spirit within it. Thus children must come to recognize the nobility of their nature and the creative purpose of their lives.

Table I

SOME IMPORTANT FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO ADOLESCENT ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE

1. Childhood education.
2. Peer group influence.
3. Parental identity model (i.e., parental alcoholism, absenteeism).
4. Cultural and family attitudes and habits (i.e., use of alcohol for entertainment).
5. Personal will to pleasure: “to feel better.”
6. Social incentives: availability, acceptability, and publicity of substances.
7. Family conflicts and poor communication at home.
8. Rejection of parental and social values.
9. Alienation.
10. Loneliness, shyness, and affectional deprivation.
11. Feeling of personal failure or despair (particularly in a competitive society).
12. Aggressive impulses or boredom.
13. Search for identity.
14. Search for escape.
15. Emotional distress and disturbances.
16. Lack of spiritual values or a faith on which to depend.
17. Rite of Passage and symbolic expression of adulthood.
18. Conscious or subconscious self-destructive motives.
19. Curiosity and/or experimentation.
20. Social and interpersonal stress.
21. Lack or ignorance of positive alternatives.

Childhood education must also emphasize the necessity of accepting hardship, discomfort, and adversity as some of the essential elements of growth and maturity and not as signs of evil or misfortune. Children must acquire the capacity to postpone gratification of their desires whenever necessary since such an acquisition is a sign of nobility and perfection.

The education and direction of youth requires special sensitivity, for adolescents have the dual task of adjusting to their internal psychobiological changes and of coping with the stress of a rapidly changing world. In their search for easy solutions they may turn to psychoactive drugs or alcohol as a means of coping with stress. Therefore, adolescents need to be understood and guided to recognize the nature of their psychobiological rhythms and impulses and the awakening force of their spiritual search for a new identity. Parents and society bear the crucial responsibility of providing youth with tasks that will translate their motivation, zeal, and idealism into productive service to humanity and encourage them to discover for themselves the wealth of noble attributes with which they are endowed and which can be reflected in their lives.

To provide adolescents with a comprehensive preventive program against alcohol and drug abuse, a number of constructive alternatives should be taken into consideration, alternatives through which they could identify healthy opportunities that would enable them to resolve their frustrations and fulfill their needs and ambitions in a positive and creative way. The following alternatives correspond to the various dimensions of human reality outlined earlier:

a. Intellectual: In the intellectual realm adolescents, to overcome mental apathy and boredom, need to experience creative sensory, perceptual, and intellectual stimulation. Such stimulation might take the form of essay contests in literature, science, or history, or it [Page 45] might entail learning about art, music, and philosophy, or acquiring new knowledge and ideas.

b. Physical: In the physical realm adolescents need physical vocational and creative activities that augment their sense of wellbeing and self-esteem and that, at the same time, enable them to acquire new technical skills. They also need a greater involvement with nature through the appreciation of its beauty and a response to its challenge through various activities such as outdoor work, gardening, sports, exercise, and so on.

c. Emotional: In the emotional realm adolescents must be shown how to cultivate a spirit of love and fellowship among themselves and a greater tolerance of distress and discomfort. They must have opportunities to communicate with family members and to express feelings, whether of joy or sadness. They must learn to eliminate prejudices and to verbalize feelings in life crises. Creative art and music projects can help many unassertive youth express their feelings.

d. Social: In the social realm adolescents need to be integrated in a model of education universal in scope, one that will provide equal opportunities to serve and to be useful to the masses of humanity. They need to be aided in cultivating a sense of determination, hope, and enthusiasm for the realization of the highest human ideals such as peace and the unity of mankind. As a positive force counteracting their self-centeredness and boredom with modern life, they need to be involved in humanitarian activities such as service to the underprivileged and disabled individuals. According to the Bahá’í writings the highest expression of personality is service to society, which offers a noble purpose for living and social integration of a positive nature.

e. Spiritual: In the spiritual realm adolescents need to recognize the reality of man, which is his soul, and the true nature of his being, which is noble. “Regard man,” Bahá’u’lláh proclaims, “as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value.” Such a positive attitude enables one to cherish and respect the “gem” of life rather than aim at its destruction by intoxicants. Spiritual realization also helps one to discover a purpose in life, the fulfillment of which may require acceptance of hardship and discomfort. Religious conviction free from superstition and prejudice and reliance on a faith that is in harmony with science and reason will enrich one’s experience in discovering new truth in the mystery of the universe. Prayer and meditation will bring further consolation and joy to the human mind and soul.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá paints a graphic picture of “education” that centers on the purely physical gratification of one’s self-centered needs and ambitions and ignores the intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of human reality, holding out at the end a glimpse of the wonders of true education:

Some men’s lives are solely occupied with the things of this world; their minds are so circumscribed by exterior manners and traditional interests that they are blind to any other realm of existence, to the spiritual significance of all things. They think and dream of earthly fame, or material progress. Sensuous delights and comfortable surroundings bound their horizon, their highest ambitions center in successes of worldly conditions and circumstances. They curb not their lower propensities; they eat, drink, and sleep. Like the animal, they have no thought beyond their own physical well-being. It is true that these necessities must be dispatched. Life is a load which must be carried on while we are on earth, but the cares of the lower [Page 46] things of life should not be allowed to monopolize all the thoughts and aspirations of a human being. The heart’s ambitions should ascend to a more glorious goal, mental activity should rise to higher levels. Men should hold in their souls the vision of celestial perfection, and there prepare a dwelling-place for the inexhaustible bounty of the divine Spirit.

2) While the education of the individual is important, education on the family level is equally important. For the family as the foundation of society plays an important role in educating children and youth about the effects of substance abuse and in preventing the use of such substances. Parents are, without question, the first to set the example. According to a recent report “mother’s drinkings seems to be more influential than father’s and girls are more likely to model parental drinking than boys. Some evidence also suggests that loose control, especially by the mother and rejection by the father, have more effect on drinking and drunkenness than does the actual drinking of parents.” The study further explains the crucial role of the mother as the first educator of children at home. Other factors in the home also affect the attitudes of children and youth. Parents’ attitudes and style of reacting to the joys and sorrows of life become an important model for children. The practice of serving alcohol at home, for example, whatever the reason may be (happy or sad), can influence the children’s and youth’s attitudes toward its consumption. Therefore, the family should provide a healthy and drug-free environment for its children through their own example.

3) On the community level, the active participation of individual community members in programs based on love and unity of purpose promotes healthy growth within the community and an environment that diminishes stress and boredom and discourages adolescents from turning to alcohol and drugs for “fulfillment.” An ideal community would be one providing youth with various types of dynamic involvement in the life of the community and stimulating their enthusiasm to fulfill their highest aspiration to serve humanity. Saul Levine, Attending Psychiatrist at the University of Toronto, has written that “Unless our social system can instill in its youth some degree of purpose and community, then in a substantial number of our adolescents problems will inevitably occur.”

Through encouragement society should help youth to channel their potential into useful and fulfilling activities and provide ample opportunities for their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual enrichment and hence eliminate any desire for alcohol and drug-induced excitement. Society should also discourage the availability and consumption of habit-forming substances by law and by collective efforts through communications media and educational programs at home, at schools, and in institutions of higher learning.

Today, there is substantial evidence suggesting that a sense of alienation, boredom, and lack of faith and of spiritual belonging to a divine reality are among the contributing elements at the root of the epidemic of juvenile drug dependency. Therefore, to eliminate this crisis and to prevent its ravages mankind should acquire a discipline and a moral conviction based on reason and faith and develop a system of education spiritual in nature and universal in scope as prescribed in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and exemplified in the efforts of Bahá’í communities around the world.

[Page 47]

Illuminating the Second Century A.D.

A REVIEW OF ELAINE PAGELS’ The Gnostic Gospels (NEW YORK: RANDOM HOUSE, 1979) XXXVI + 182 PAGES, NOTES, INDEX

BY GARY L. MORRISON

IN 1945, in the mountain caves around the town of Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt, an Arab peasant made an archaeological find as significant as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Digging for the soft soil used to fertilize his crops, he found a large earthenware jar containing thirteen leather-bound papyrus books. Through a combination of circumstances the value of the books came to be understood, and for thirty-five years black-market schemes and intrigues by antiquities dealers, as well as attempts by Egyptian government officials to confiscate the texts, have prevented scholars from ready access to the works and from making available until now the results of that remarkable discovery. What is at last available are fifty-two Coptic translations, prepared about fifteen hundred years ago, including complete texts of more ancient manuscripts of gospels and secret writings written originally in Greek, the language of the New Testament, and dating from the Christian period when the New Testament Gospels themselves were written.

These early Christian writings found at Nag Hammadi include The Gospel According to Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel to the Egyptians and writings attributed to Jesus’ followers consisting of The Secret Book of James, Apocalyse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter. Biblical scholars have long known about the existence of these texts circulating among the Christian communities from the beginning of the Christian era, but they were known mainly as embodying teachings that the gradually organized and “orthodox” Christians of the late second century attacked, condemned, and suppressed as heresies. Until at least the second century, however, these writings were widespread, accessible, and represented some of the earliest forms of Christian teachings, what scholars now refer to as gnostic Christianity.

Because the gnostic tradition was largely suppressed, there has developed over time a false idea of the early years of the Christian movement. One tends to think of early Christianity as a cohesive, unified movement that in a later age was attacked, divided, and diversified. With the gnostic tradition now becoming more known, one sees a very different world emerging—perhaps the liveliest period of diversity and ferment in the nearly two thousand years of Christianity.

During the first 150 years after Jesus, Christian communities, although small, disparate, and fragmented, were established in many places throughout the Roman Empire —from Egyptianized North Africa to the Semitic Near East, from the largely Greek and Hellenized Eastern half of the Empire to the cosmopolitan and administrative center at Rome and into the northern and western European barbarian reaches of the Roman Empire. With no formal or even generally accepted authoritative teachings, save those growing out of the oral traditions extending from the apostles, and no real church organization or structure, except that which was established as a result of the leadership of the local bishop who came to symbolize the tradition of the apostles, Christian communities were best characterized by their ethnic, cultural, and geographic diversity. Many different forms of belief and worship sprang up, gained adherents, and flourished.

[Page 48] In this cauldron of diversity, the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world, the formulation of Christianity was gradual and largely influenced by conflicts and interchanges between the two main streams of belief—on the one hand, by those who sought the spiritual path to God through self-discovery and who understood the resurrection of Jesus in spiritual terms; and, on the other hand, by those for whom the physical resurrection of Jesus had to be a fact to serve as the fundamental rationale for unifying far-flung and diverse groups of worshipers into an institutional, ecclesiastical framework. There was conflict between beliefs and only a later age came to refer to the former group as gnostic and the latter as orthodox. For the orthodox this was the period for formulating its three basic, unifying premises—acceptance of the canon of the New Testament, the apostolic creed, and specific forms of church institutions. Against this emerging mainstream were the gnostics, actively involved in Christian communities and engaged in trying to comprehend the nature of Jesus and the spiritual life of the individual.

One of the central issues in comprehending the nature of Jesus was the question of resurrection. Until the second century the idea of the bodily resurrection of Jesus had not become a rigid doctrine, which may yet surprise modern Christians. Even the New Testament Gospels support different interpretations of the resurrection of Jesus. Why, then, after the second century, did the idea of the physical resurrection of Jesus take hold and harden into a doctrine to become one of the three principal premises of orthodox Christians and a touchstone by which all nonliteral interpretations of the resurrection of Jesus would be judged and condemned as heretical? This is one of the fascinating questions posed by Professor Elaine Pagels in The Gnostic Gospels.

Professor Pagels approaches the Gnostic tradition, one of history’s enticing might-have-beens, as a contrast and possible alternative to orthodox Christian belief. The true value of her work is not in any explication of the Gnostic teachings themselves but rather in the questions she raises and tries to answer as she identifies and elucidates the issues and teachings that divided the early Gnostic and orthodox Christian churches and contributed significantly to the origin and gradual formulation of Christianity. Professor Pagels focuses not only on great theological problems and issues but also on the political and social implications of these early competing ideas. The six central chapters of The Gnostic Gospels she devotes to four of those issues: (1) the organization of authority (emerging from “The Controversy over Christ’s Resurrection,” the doctrine of “One God, One Bishop,” and the question “Whose Church Is the ‘True Chutch’?”); (2) the participation and role of women in the early church (coming to terms with “God the Father/God the Mother”); (3) martyrdom (“The Passion of Christ and the Persecution of Christians”), and (4) the nature of God and spiritual knowledge (“Gnosis: Self-Knowledge as Knowledge of God”).

As Professor Pagels unravels each issue by comparing and contrasting gnostic and orthodox positions, it becomes obvious, as she herself states in her conclusion, that “all the old questions—the original questions, sharply debated at the beginning of Christianity— are being reopened: How is one to understand the resurrection? What about women’s participation in priestly and episcopal office? Who was Christ, and how does he relate to the believer? What are the similarities between Christianity and other world religions?” Because Gnostic teachings have for centuries been suppressed, the layman may [Page 49] be surprised to discover the world Professor Pagels illuminates—the world of the first two centuries of the Christian movement when the idea of the bodily resurrection of Jesus was considered neither an historic fact nor a given in Christian belief; when women participated to a great extent in Christian worship and community life; when the necessity of accepting martyrdom as a form of witness to faith was debated on a practical level among Christians. The reader, too, will begin to ask fundamental questions: Why were some gospels accepted and others rejected by the church? Why did Christianity grow the way it did? On what basis were certain beliefs accepted as orthodox and others rejected as heretical? What is the source of authority?

While considering the early Christian world, Professor Pagels is obviously an astute thinker and secure in her conclusions. Her greatest weakness is in her occasional use of examples from our own time that, by nor being truly analogous to the problem under discussion, do not offer fair comparison to the past and, therefore, dilute her point and weaken her arguments. In dealing with martyrdom, for example, she tries to compare early Christian martyrs to modern political dissidents “facing a massive and powerful political system.” Her shaky position is that, while orthodox Christians accepted martyrdom as a “blood witness” that emulates the Passion of Christ and as a means of consolidating and strengthening communities against common dangers, today’s dissidents attempt only “to generate pressure and gain the release of those who are tortured or imprisoned.”

What Professor Pagels fails to see is that Christian martyrs and modern political dissidents cannot be compared and are not analogous. Each is ruled by a quite different passion. The only examples in modern times that Professor Pagels could use to make a fair and adequate comparison with the early Christian martyrs would be the Bábí and Bahá’í martyrs in Persia who sacrificed their lives for the birth of the newest of the world’s major religions. Bábí and Bahá’í adherents have suffered periodic outbursts of persecution from 1844 to the present. Just within the last two years the Bahá’í Faith in Iran has been proscribed and the Bahá’í community systematically suppressed and persecuted. Rather than recant their faith, Bahá’ís are losing jobs, homes, properties, and bank and retirement savings, and many are being martyred. In this first half of the second century of the Bahá’í era, Bahá’ís are not running for their lives. Rather the persecutions and the sacrifice of the Bahá’í martyrs in the birthplace of the Bahá’í Revelation serve to galvanize and strengthen the worldwide Bahá’í community as it dramatically increases its membership and establishes its institutions. The followers of Bahá’u’lláh, like the early followers of Jesus, are living in a time of religious ferment, cultural diversity, ethnic and racial consciousness, political corruption and turmoil, economic failure, personal decadence, and social unrest. Bahá’ís are struggling against powerful, destructive human forces—racism, nationalism, capitalistic and communist exploitation, massive militarization. Yet they are striving to emerge as the sole source of the salvation of mankind, builders of a new world order. This is the modern equivalent of the early Christian period that Professor Pagels would do well to consider when attempting to make comparisons between the early Christian era and the modern world.

However, in all justice to the merits of her work, Professor Pagels avoids taking sides and making judgments on Gnostic teachings and retains a high standard of scholarly objectivity, somewhat rare among committed Christian writers. The Gnostic Gospels deserves a wide audience for it is at once an informative introduction to the layman and a fascinating account of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts. It is also a thoughtful consideration of the development of historical Christianity and a concise and clearly [Page 50] written exposition of the doctrinal issues and conflicts between competing forms of early Christian teachings that explains and illuminates those doctrines that gradually prevailed in the third century and were to be accepted as “orthodox” teachings of the triumphant ecclesiastical and universal Catholic Church.

FOR Bahá’ís The Gnostic Gospels provides a readily accessible outline of the fundamental issues that led to the adoption of specific doctrines that may have contributed to unifying early Christians but never fully resolved the underlying conflicts that until now continue to trouble Christians and weaken the spiritual underpinnings of universal Catholic Christianity. Among those issues are the nature of God and the source of religious authority.

For orthodox Christians God is infinite, omnipotent, the Creator of humanity, while humanity is totally different and separate, finite and imperfect; the former is active while the latter is passive. Jesus taught “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Therefore, orthodox Christians believe that God is outside of themselves and can be found only when man is enlightened by divine revelation, which is gained through the Scriptures and the Church. For Gnostics, too, God is infinite; however, He can be found within man; thus to know oneself is to know God. God is above all and can be approached by man, enlightened by the divine revelation of Jesus, Who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” For the orthodox the “way” becomes the Church; for the Gnostic the way becomes the path to self-knowledge and enlightenment.

How each group defined the nature of God influenced attitudes and beliefs concerning the source of religious authority. For the orthodox a transfer-of-power concept developed. Jesus, being the only One Whom His followers had accepted as an authority, conferred that authority on His followers (first to Peter, a disputed fact at best, but then to the eleven faithful apostles who “experienced” Jesus after His death) who established the Church as the vehicle for divine authority, the way outside man himself that could guide and lead him to God. For the Gnostics who believed that man was capable of approaching the infinite God on his own by coming to know his own self there was no need for an outside authority such as the Church. For the orthodox, God was the God of Israel—defined in masculine terms: King, Judge, Father, Lord, Master—and One God; therefore, His authority could be invested in only One Bishop; and the bishops, to symbolize the divine order, had to be men. To confess this truth orthodox Christians were to accept the ritual recitation of the apostle’s creed: “I believe in One God, Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth”— Scriptures, Creed and Church, the source of divine authority. Against this, the gnostics, believing in God as the “All in All,” could admit of God having both masculine and feminine characteristics, welcomed women participating in churches as individuals seeking the path to self-knowledge as an approach to God, and saw in the resurrection a Jesus Who demonstrated the lesson of spiritual transcendence over matter and, in this lesson, the way to spiritual transformation that neither required not called for an ecclesiastical church authority to guide man in his approach to God.

Only the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh can heal the spiritual wounds of centuries of wrangling and offer fulfillment to Christians and followers of every religion seeking spiritual reconciliation and unity. For Bahá’ís God is infinite, an unknowable essence, the divine Creator forever apart from His Creation —not because of the ambiguities of Original Sin but because of the clear spiritual principle that a creation can never be its own Creator. The Creator is forever separate and apart, yet desires to be known. Man, although finite, is created with the spiritual capacity to know his Creator, God, and to [Page 51] love Him. Since God is infinite and man is finite, and the finite can never fully comprehend the infinite, man needs a divine intermediary to show him a safe approach to God. Thus God shows Himself to man by manifesting —that is, by bringing out or revealing —those divine qualities and attributes in the knowable human form by which man might understand the unknowable. God is the source of light and life; His manifestation is the reflection or mirror image of that light and life; to know one is, in a sense, to know the other. The sun is the source, yet man does not know the sun directly but by its qualities of heat and light. In the same way, from age to age a Manifestation of God appears to guide man to the source of his being, and man comes to know and revere these Manifestations of God, Whom he calls Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Báb, and Bahá’u’lláh, and their teachings as expressions of the Divine Will. The nature of God is explained not by an amalgam of opinions, interpretations, suppositions, speculations, flashes of insight, or even the reasoned analyses of various men— always open to conjecture and further argument to which the more than six hundred denominations of present-day Christianity testify—but rather is encompassed by the entire Divine Revelation, the expression of the Divine Will, focused in and flowing from the pen of Bahá’u’lláh (the Glory of God).

Moreover, the problem of authority, which has plagued every religious system of the past by being a chief source of schism, has been resolved by Bahá’u’lláh. Christians from the beginning have argued over the problem of religious authority because it was never clear, even among the apostles, whether Jesus conferred authority on Peter as His primary successor. Muslims, too, have remained divided because of the unclear manner by which authority was transferred from the Manifestation of God, Muḥammad, to His successor. Bahá’u’lláh, however, by His own pen chose His successor and detailed the centers of authority in His Administrative Order. He appointed His son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of His Covenant to whom His followers should turn for authoritative interpretation and to see the perfect example of Bahá’í life. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in turn, appointed His grandson, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause. Under the direction of the Shoghi Effendi Bahá’ís raised up the basic administrative institutions detailed in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh—elected Spiritual Assemblies in communities throughout the world and, in 1963, the first Universal House of Justice, also elected, upon which Bahá’u’lláh conferred infallible authority. The clearly delineated sources of authority, then, are the Word—that is, the writings of Bahá’u’lláh Himself, as well as the authoritative interpretations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and explanations of Shoghi Effendi—and the Administrative Order, in which the Universal House of Justice is given by Bahá’u’lláh the authority to decide on any matter not explicit in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Book of Laws) of Bahá’u’lláh.

Bahá’u’lláh reconciles differing modes of religious thought by broadening man’s consciousness of the nature of God as a spiritual life force, the infinite unknowable essence that manifests itself and is thereby known to the world of creation through its divine intermediaries: Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Báb, and Bahá’u’lláh. To recognize the Light through whichever lamp it glows is to come in contact with the source of our own being. To recognize and accept the Manifestation of God is to recognize the source of authority; this recognition is complete only by accepting His Teachings as the authoritative guide to our spiritual quest to love and worship our Creator.

Professor Elaine Pagels unwittingly helps to illuminate the second century of the Bahá’í era through her study of The Gnostic Gospels. This book will provide Bahá’ís with examples of spiritual conflicts among Christians that the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh can reconcile. It will also give many Bahá’ís insights into the development of the Bahá’í [Page 52] Faith—from obscurity, to persecution, to recognition—by focusing on how Christianity originated and showing the steady development of one of the world’s earlier major religions, a consideration that is now possible thanks to the chance discovery of the Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi.

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Authors & Artists

OLIVE V. APPLEGATE is a grandmother who has been publishing and winning awards since she began writing in the 1940s. In 1959 she was named Poet Laureate of Monterey (California) Peninsula.

JUAN RICARDO COLE is working on a Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has studied and worked for several years in the Middle East. His “The Christian-Muslim Encounter and the Bahá’í Faith” appeared in our Winter 1977-78 issue and his “Problems of Chronology in Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of Wisdom” in our Spring 1979 issue.

MARZIEH GAIL is a poet, translator, novelist, biographer, and historian. Her several books include Persia and the Victorians, Avignon in Flower, The Three Popes, and Dawn Over Mount Hira. She is currently working on a book about twelfth-century troubadours, translating Tablets from the Persian and Arabic, and gathering materials for a biography about her father.

ABDU’L MISSAGH A. GHADIRIAN is a psychiatrist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He is an associate professor at McGill University, coordinator of Continuing Medical Education in the Department of Psychiatry at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, and a director of the Psychopharmacology Program at the Montreal General Hospital, where he teaches medical students and others the role of nutrition in mental health.

GARY L. MORRISON is a frequent reviewer of books and films for World Order. He holds a Master’s degree in Southeast Asian studies from Yale University and a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts. His “‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the Early American Bahá’ís” appeared in our Winter 1972-73 issue.

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