(Please note: In this introduction, for ease of reading, I have referred to the manifestation as ‘he’. I usually try to avoid this when the reference is to a generic manifestation and not a specific one. But in this case, making the text gender neutral became awkward.)
The translation of Tablet of Manifestation was published in Horris Holley (ed), Baha'i Scriptures, 2nd ed, New York: Bahá'í Publishing Committee, 1923. It is reproduced at the Baha'i Library Online. The translator is not known, but appears to have had English as a second language. To make the translation easier to read, I have changed the paragraphing, spelling and punctuation and edited some sentences with the aid of Stephen Lambden's partial translation of the tablet, which appears on his website Hurqalya. My version appears on Baha'u'llah Explore.
The theme of the tablet is the transcendent nature of the manifestation. The tablet’s purpose is to outline the way in which the transcendent is able to operate in creation, and to draw a distinction between it and the elemental body that the manifestation takes on when he appears in one of the worlds of God. One obvious problem Baha’u’llah faced when people were confronted with his claim to be a manifestation of God was that he looked for all the world like any other human being. People naturally questioned how someone who has a physical body like them, and is subject to all the earthly limitations they are, can have access to a divine realm that they cannot see. The tablet addresses this issue.
Baha’u’llah begins by explaining that the manifestation is “the Mystery of Oneness, the Ancient Identity, the Eternal Essence and the Unknowable Reality” (para 1). By this, he is saying that the spiritual reality of the manifestation is a mysterious, eternal and hidden essence that humans can never know. It is therefore a mistake to think that the manifestation is composed of the elements of the earth – that is, earth, fire, water and air – or that the manifestation’s being originates from conditions in nature such as heat, cold, dryness or wetness. Instead, these natural elements and processes are created by the spiritual reality of the manifestation; they do not create the manifestation.
Because the reality of the manifestation creates everything in creation, there is no way to learn anything about the reality of the manifestation except from the manifestations, for nothing in creation is in position to provide independent knowledge about them. To illustrate this, Baha’u’llah asks rhetorical questions such as: “Is there anything endowed with utterance in the world that may be able to speak with Him?” (para 2) If the manifestation could be known by something other than him, he would lack the divine attributes of uniqueness and singleness. When people seek to know the manifestation through something other than him, the conclusions they arrive at are inevitably fanciful.
Paragraph 5 begins Baha’u’llah’s discussion on the nature of the manifestation’s body. The body of the manifestation is a temple for his person – presumably, this means, in one sense, something like a vehicle by which he can operate while living in this, or some other, world. In each world, the manifestation takes up a body that is made of the elements of that world; for example, in spiritual worlds, he appears as signs of the spirit and in this physical world, he appears in a physical body. In paragraph 8, Baha’u’llah likens the phenomenon of God appearing in his own creation to that of a goldsmith who makes a ring and then wears it on his own finger.
Although each manifestation’s body is made up of worldly elements, it is in reality sanctified from those elements. For example, a diamond is made of stone but at the same time is very different to an ordinary stone. Paragraph 7 seems to contain more explanation on this point, but the translation is not clear. Baha’u’llah asks his reader to consider his own identity – by which I think is meant his self - and how it animates his body through the ‘expansion and ordering’ of the senses; for example, he sees through his eyes and hears through his ears and moves through his limbs. But although the reader uses these functions, he is the ruler of his whole being. I think the implication is that a person cannot be reduced to any one bodily function just because she operates through them – at all times, she stays sovereign over the whole body. Similarly, God uses the elemental body to operate through, but nevertheless always remains the Sovereign of Creation and sanctified from those elemental functions.
An enigmatic sentence in paragraph 4 is perhaps related to this idea that the manifestation is sanctified from elemental reality. The translation has Baha’u’llah say: “He is not a manifestation in Himself, but rather He is a manifestation in His Identity.” I think the idea here is that the transcendent reality of the manifestation is never manifested (hence, “he is not a manifestation in Himself”); what is manifested is just one ‘face’ or ‘given identity’ of the manifestation. An analogy might be, for example, a woman - when she is with her child, her identity is a mother. But she has many other identities, such as writer and farmer, none of which captures the whole of her. Her self transcends the identities she manifests. Similarly, the manifestation appears in an infinite variety of identities and bodies but none of these captures the manifestation’s essential reality.
The divine purpose in the manifestation taking on the same form as the creatures is to enable the manifestation to get close to the creatures, guide them and teach them. If God was to appear ‘as God’, or in a way that was unmistakably God-like, the creatures would run away. Therefore, God adopts the identity of the creatures so that they will come into God’s presence, listen to what God has to say and benefit from it.
In paragraphs 9 and 10, Baha’u’llah gives an example of the transformative effect God’s use of an elemental object has on that thing. This helps to clarify how the body of the manifestation, while originally an elemental object, is elevated into the sanctified temple of God when it is made use of by God. He asks the reader to consider three objects that humans sit on – the throne, the seat and the chair – and says that no one takes much notice of them because they are simple objects made by human hands. But when God makes use of them, their everyday relationship with worldly things is severed and they become the Throne of God and the heavenly realities circle about them. At that point, only people with genuine spiritual insight can recognise their worth. The reality of the manifestation is pre-existent (that is, created before creation), and its use of the throne (body) is pre-existent too. There can, therefore, be no relationship or similarity between the throne (body) and anything in creation. On the contrary, all elements, such as fire, water, air and earth, have come from them; for example, fire originates from the Fire of Manifestation, which appeared to Moses on Sinai.
More discussion on the different aspects of the manifestation's make-up can be found in Abdu'l-Baha: Some Answered Questions, chapters 38 and 39.
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