Many thanks, Baha'u'llah

Many thanks, Baha'u'llah, for coming to earth and suffering your whole life so that you could 'download' from the Houri a message saying that God, who I can never know directly, has come to call me home. For decades, I thought I was listening. But I wasn't. I was listening to people around me and Baha'i administration types and such like, and getting caught up in human affairs at all levels. And for years, I got caught up in my own dramas, which I thought had substance, but didn't.

Finally, I actually began to listen to you. And I began to hear you say that you wanted me to forget the world and tune in to you, your word and melody. Then I started to hear the mysteries. Now I'm not very good at keeping focused on you, but I know where I need to keep my attention. And, dear Baha'u'llah, I am grateful beyond all that you took the pains, which have lead me to eternal joy and freedom from the heartaches all around. To think that God created it all just so humans might know. I say 'wow' to what you have willed me to know.

To the eternal I call thee

When Baha'u'llah says, time and again, to detach from the world, I've discovered that that includes not letting myself get caught up in world affairs. In the past, I've been so rapt up in the horrors that I have felt distanced from God. It's not that I don't care anymore; it's that I now recognise I am powerless and that the world is in God's hands not mine.

And so, I reach for my morning reading and discover these words of solace: "To the eternal I call thee, yet thou dost seek that which perisheth" (AHW 23). Gee, when Baha'u'llah puts it that way, I wonder why I get caught up in what's going on (for it does all perish). The idea of being called to the eternal sounds amazing. I like to try to experience the eternal inside me, so that I can answer Baha'u'llah's call to it. I try to locate that timeless joy, where all good is all about me. Wow, I'm so pleased Baha'u'llah trained me to read the writings and find this place. Can't wait to see what the eternal is like in the next world!

Back to Baha'u'llah

I haven't posted for a while. Some serious work came my way, and I had to give up things to do it. Also, I need to listen to Steve, who has given up saying to me that it is worth blogging about an idea that I think is obvious, and that takes only a paragraph to outline.

Ever into self-flagellating - that's me. And it has been a veil between me and God all my life. What is, essentially, a very simple message from Baha'u'llah - "love me and return to me" - I make complicated by turning it into hard work.

It's not about doing things, Alison; it's about being in love with one who is more worthy than anything else to make a claim on your heart.

'Just as soon as I'm finished this, I'll be with you, Lord.' Dah.

'No, Alison, come now. Forget that, and come now.'

God does suffice

I discovered recently something new about the 'God sufficeth' prayer revealed by the Bab. The full version of the prayer appears on page 123 of Selections from the Writings of the Bab.

"Say: God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or in the earth or in whatever lieth between them but God, thy Lord, sufficeth. Verily, He is in Himself the Knower, the Sustainer, the Omnipotent."

What I didn't know is that, in Persian Bayan 9:6, the Bab says that if a person recites this prayer 314 times, any question that person may have will be answered. Well, that is a very succinct comment on what the Bab actually says, but I don't have a translation of it, sorry.
I decided to give it a go. I haven't done a marathon session in ages. Baha'u'llah put me off doing it because he recommends not praying so much that you get fatigued. But since the Bab suggested it, I thought it would be OK.
I paced myself. I found that I was able, just, to do roughly 100 at a time. I took an hour or more off between each session. Effectively, it took all day, and the praying was my principal occupation for that day. My concentration went in and out, but overall, wasn't too bad. Certainly, it was all spent by the time I could see the finishing line. I used a book with over 314 pages to count, turning a page each time I recited two prayers.
As for the issue I was ostensibly praying about (a solution to a friend's difficulty), that is already sorting itself out like it never really was a problem at all.
What I didn't anticipate was the brand new view of the Kingdom I gained from my effort. The sessions took me deep into a zone that is hidden in the words of the prayer and I saw the heaven of unlimited abundance that Baha'u'llah speaks of in his writings. I can relate now to the image of the bread coming down from heaven. Bread is our sustenance. In everyday life, we tend to look 'laterally' for it; in other words, we look for it in things and people around us. But that isn't where the baker's shop is. The baker's shop is the invisible realm of the Kingdom. That's where all gifts and bounties originate. If you need anything, that's the place to source it. The difficult bit is to see that the shop is located close to you and that it is open, so you can walk into it anytime to obtain what you need, for free.

"Now look, what a sun in the sky there is;
night has retreated from the hills.
The wholesale bazaar of lovers
has been scattered by your perfumed locks
And because of your lips -- sugar rubies --
everything smells like a confectioner's shop."
-- Baha'u'llah: O Nightingales

There really is a confectioner's shop, just two bow length's away. And the amazing thing is this: it is an unending bounty. It never goes away. It is eternal. So once you find it, that's it, you have it for good. On and on, for a very, very long time after physical death. I love it now when Baha'u'llah uses images like "the ocean of Thy generosity", "the ocean of Thy knowledge", "the heaven of Thy gifts", "the living waters of Thy loving-kindness", "the endlessness of Thy purpose".
To everyone out there searching, I say: stop focusing solely on your difficulties, the details of your life and what's going on in this world. Give them to God to sort out, for God can do anything - absolutely anything. Baha'u'llah wants to be with you, and that means he wants to be with a person who is present to him, not one who is concerned with the comings and goings of the world of limitations. Leave that world to those who think they can win in it. Choose to win, instead, where you can win everything you've ever wanted and much, much more, and where there's enough for everyone else to do the same.
You know what? I'm beginning to wonder if I will run out of prose. I can see why some mystics wrote poetry, because there really does come a time when you can only allude to what you want to say. No words will point directly.

Powerlessness and God's power

I've been thinking a great deal recently about my powerlessness and God's power. The issue came to a head when I was writing an introduction to Surah of the Almighty, in which Baha'u'llah says:

"God will render anyone who reflects the effulgence of this Name powerful over all things, to the extent that if he were to instruct all things to turn upside down, they would do so. If he should wish to conquer all beings by the power of his will, he would be enabled to accomplish it by the might of his Lord. This is, verily, a grace for all to see."

I didn't know what to make of it because I had never experienced anything like what is described here. I also thought that it couldn't be taken literally for I've never seen any Baha'i with such power - even Baha'u'llah opted to appear to the world as powerless, even though he wasn't. He argued that if he showed the world the real power he had, no one would disbelieve. So what to make of this passage?
Not long after I was wondering about this, I embarked on a prayer campaign to improve my financial situation. It had become a bit dire and I felt I needed divine assistance. Over a week or more, I said the Tablet of Ahamd, the Long Healing Prayer and some other favourites. Gradually, in that time, assistance arrived and my circumstances improved dramatically.
At that point, I believed I'd had a glimmer of what the passage meant. Yes, I am powerless, but in turning to God, truly amazing things are achievable. I realised that I'd been selling God short and, to a huge extent, not relying on God and using the power that Baha'u'llah promises in the surah he will send if we call on it.
This has opened up huge possibilities for me. My horizons have been too low. I'm far too focused on the world and what it might supply or not supply and not enough focused on God and God's unlimited power to bring about any outcome. What I see as a fix between a rock and hard place is no such thing at all to God. God can open up doors out of rock and hard places. All things are possible to God.

My thinking has been shockingly narrow. I'm overwhelmed now by a new view of unlimited, infinite and eternal majesty standing just in front of me, on tap whenever I put in the effort to access it. I now see that there is nothing I can't do, so long as it is willed and so much has been willed that I can't fathom its depths. I need to pray much, much more and skip over the terrain of my future like the humans who leap over trees in that movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Yes, the only limits are mine.

Memorising a hidden word

Life out here in the country is much quieter than it was in the city. Days go by where Steve and I don't see anyone except each other. It has meant that I now have the space to learn some of the writings. I haven't set myself huge goals, like learning long passages. I have contented myself with a hidden word at a time and found that to be more than enough.

The hidden word I've been most recently working on is Persian Hidden Word number 70:

"O son of worldliness! Pleasant is the realm of being, wert thou to attain thereto; glorious is the domain of eternity, shouldst thou pass beyond the world of mortality; sweet is the holy ecstasy if thou drinkest of the mystic chalice from the hands of the celestial Youth. Shouldst thou attain this station, thou wouldst be freed from destruction and death, from toil and sin."

I've developed a strategy for learning a hidden word. It takes weeks to work through. I don't start with a finish line in mind; I start with the determination to see the process through however long it takes (sometimes months). I've adopted this attitude because I have to be realistic about my abilities. There is a good chance I will experience difficulties in my life and find it impossible to concentrate. If I don't allow for this, I will give up, and then all is lost.

The one task I set myself is to slowly read the hidden word through twice a day, during either my morning or evening prayers. That's all. I do not try to memorise the hidden word as such, although that is the intended goal. I just read it through slowly, focusing on what it says. I find that, after about a week, I am starting to remember bits of it - most likely, the first line by then.

At this stage, I wonder what the hidden word could mean, but I am focused mainly on articulating the words themselves. Although I may have read the hidden word many times during my 30 years as a Baha'i, it seems like I'm seeing it for the first time. I begin to wake up to words that I never noticed before; for example, in the hidden word above, the "realm of being", the "domain of eternity" and the "world of mortality". The words "realm", "domain" and "world" are all possible synonyms, and when I read the hidden word quickly, I miss the subtleties behind why one word has been used instead of another in different phrases.

After a while, a couple of weeks perhaps, I become familiar with phrases in the hidden word and begin to focus on the meaning, instead of struggling with the issue of what word comes next. I start to see the structure of the whole and the positioning of phrases and ideas in relation to each other. For example, I start to see the close line up of the three phrases "realm of being", "domain of eternity" and "world of mortality". You see that Baha'u'llah is referring to each of these as an identifiable chunk of reality, and that he is particularly emphasising the contrast between the domain of eternity and the world of mortality.

This got me wondering: well, what is the domain of eternity as compared to the world of mortality? I am being asked to pass beyond the world of mortality and enter the domain of eternity. He is asking me to do this right now, and not when I die. So how do I do that? What is the world of mortality I should... What should I do? I should "pass beyond" it. What does it mean to "pass beyond"?

And so I keep reading. Each day, I think about my life and what about it could constitute "the world of mortality" and "the domain of eternity". Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the world of mortality was pretty much everything in my daily life, and that the domain of eternity was the spiritual realm I can't see. And that's the rub; I can't see it, but Baha'u'llah is asking me to 'enter' it by passing beyond my daily reality. He tells me that the domain of eternity is "glorious". Gee, who wouldn't want to be there? There's very good reason, apparently, to make the effort to pass beyond my immediate experience and be in this invisible realm.

In the end, I decided that I was almost a complete failure at doing what Baha'u'llah is asking of me. I believe he wants me to focus on him all the time, throughout my daily activities. At best right now, he comes and goes. I've got a long way to go. But that's all right. I've spent 50 years practicing being submerged in the world of mortality; it might take another, say, 20 years to lift me out of it in any significant way.

The main thing is that I'm memorising hidden words and finding the transforming element in them, and not simply memorising words.

Trust in God's providence

Life continues apace. Steve and I expect to move in about three months and we still have heaps of cleaning up to do on this house in preparation for its sale. Everyday, I am focused on this task and it is difficult to focus my mind on writing my blog. Usually, I have quiet time reading and thinking, in which I formulate my ideas for my next blog entry.

Life has become strange for me. It is unusual and mildly unsettling to spend each day dedicated to getting rid of everything in your house bar the essentials, and sorting things out around the property knowing you'll never see them again. They're not activities one does very often in life. Managing a large transition is a full-time project. It provides me with a full-time job while at the same time keeping from a full-time job.

I spend much time thinking about how I will live on the new property: how it will be sitting in each room of the new cottage, how it will be walking around the paddock and trees, how it will be living in a much warmer climate, how it will be living where there are no street lights and the night will be dark and the stars clear, how it will be with no immediate neighbours, how it will be living where plants grow easily and trees fruit readily, how it will be for me for writing?

They say that shifting house is as stressful as getting married. I couldn't understand this until now because the two activities seem like completely different kinds of changes. But what's common to them is that they are permanent changes and there's only so much you can plan for the long-term future. You can't anticipate all the things you'll be confronted with in your new life. You just have to decide that you'll take the plunge and leap into the deep end of the swimming pool and hope that you'll come up breathing.

In fact, this is what Baha'u'llah tells us to do in our spiritual lives. It appears in a couple of places: Gems of Divine Mysteries and the Mathnavi.

"Great God! This sea had laid up lustrous pearls in store;
The wind hath raised a wave that casteth them ashore.
So put away thy robe and drown thyself therein,
And cease to boast of skill: it serveth thee no more"
-- Gems, paragraph 43

"You, likewise, Noah, break the body's Ark
and hurl yourself into the Sea of Light!
Don't seek self-preservation; Drown this self!
then you'll come up for air in God's embrace
Seek out the King's protection, not the ship's
– the King's preserve will then provide refuge"
-- Mathnavi lines 191-3

Both passages talk about the same thing: letting everything go - absolutely everything except Baha'u'llah. I always knew I had never achieved this level of detachment, but the unsettling, uprooting task of shifting house has helped me along the path, and I'm grateful for it. The process has taught me much about learning to rely on God and trust in the Lord's providence. I am getting more out of my devotions now. Consider: what can I do? I am powerless about my future and what will happen to me. I don't expect it to be bad, but it is uncertain and I have only so much control over it (and even that is an illusion).

The more I let go, the more simple life becomes, and the more simple life becomes, the more beautiful it is, and the more beautiful it is, the more I see God in everything. I rejoice in little things all around like I have never done so before. I am the happiest now than I've ever been in my life. It feels like the simple joy of childhood. I feel like I am returning to my Lord and I cannot ever say how glorious he appears to me.

Snow-animals letter

Last week, I went through my provisional translations and put them into clear files. I had allowed them to fall into a mess and couldn't find anything. During the clean-up, I found a treasure that I thought I'd lost. I found a letter that Baha'u'llah wrote upon his arrival in Istanbul. Juan translated it and put it up on H-Baha'i on 10.2.02. Given that I have Juan's permission to put his translations up on my sites, I thought I'd put up the translation here so that everyone could enjoy it. That is better than it being buried in the H-Baha'i archives. I'll also put it up on Baha'u'llah explore. I call the letter the 'snow animals' letter because, in it, Baha'u'llah refers to seeing snow animals for the first time. I love it. So here it is:

Source: Rosen, p. 126, no. 37:

Baha'u'llah, Istanbul, fall, 1863

He is the mighty, the everlasting.

It is well known that the wayfarers unto God, after passing the way stations of what is other than he, arrived at the renowned place known as Istanbul. So far, nothing has been seen from its inhabitants but conventional, officious formalities. What will come next? What decree will fate inscribe behind the veil? But, we saw many barren trees and much frozen snow. Every moment the heat dissipates and the cold increases. The salamander of fire has been heard of, which depends on fire for its existence, by the grace of the all-knowing, the all-wise. But a snow salamander has never been seen. Now, by the wonders of God's handiwork, many snow animals have been observed. After that, what will the white hand of divine power and the illumined hand of the all-praised bring forth?

All are held in his grasp, and depend on his will. No God is there but he, the mighty, the eternal. Nothing else has happened. That is, there are no discussions. After our consultations, details will be sent. All will be comfortable in their quarters until the time comes. That time is in the hands of God, the mighty, the beloved. We make mention of all of the friends, and counsel all to avoid neglecting the mention of God, nor should they allow their love of him to be veiled by the love of anything else. Peace be among those who follow the truth.

It is interesting to note here that Baha'u'llah seems not to know what his fate will be. According to Juan, by this time, the Ottomans had already decided that Baha'u'llah was to be exiled to Edirne. Apparently, they decided this at the same time that they decided to exile him from Baghdad. That is, the Ottomans intended all along to send Baha'u'llah to Edirne from Baghdad and not to Istanbul. Juan found this out from documents he found in the Ottoman archives. Juan states this here:

"Baha'u'llah was exiled to Baghdad in Ottoman Iraq in early 1853, after having been imprisoned on false charges of involvement in the Babi attempt on the shah's life... Baha'u'llah's growing popularity in the early 1860s caused many pilgrims from Iran to seek him out in Baghdad when they visited the shrines of the Imams in Najaf and Karbala. This development annoyed the Iranian government, which put pressure on the Ottomans to exile Baha'u'llah farther away from Iran.

The Ottomans acquiesced and decided to send him to Edirne from Baghdad, as is apparent from documents in the Ottoman archives, … and so his brief stay in Istanbul in fall of 1863 had been intended to be only a stop-over."

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~bahai/trans/vol3/ashab2.htm

As Juan points out in his message to H-Baha'i, the wording in Baha'u'llah's letter suggests that he was unaware of the Ottoman's plan. That may well have been the case. I think there are other possibilities: that he did know, but did not reveal this and waited to see whether the decision would be carried out. There is such contradictory evidence relating to the issue of what Baha'u'llah knew about the future. I'm willing to accept that it's too complex to fathom.

Forgiveness, fellowship and justice

I had some interesting responses to my previous blog entry "A Ridvan vision" and want to respond here to some ideas that came up. You can read some responses to my vision on Jim Habegger's blog "A Wayfarer's Tales". The first response is called "Alison's Ridvan vision: first reactions", but Jim adds several more posts after that.
I find Jim's blog very interesting. He raises many important issues, some of which I hope to discuss here. One question, which I think is long overdue, is why do Baha'is seem to regard the Internet as a place where they read and write, but not a place they 'do' anything. Somehow, interacting on the Internet isn't considered a place where we 'act', so we don't apply Baha'i principles, such as courtesy, to how we behave. Would Baha'is behave in their local community in the same way that they do on the Internet? I guess it's like getting behind the wheel of a car. People who are usually calm natured suddenly turn into monsters and become capable of road rage. Here's what Jim has to say:

"Some harmful prevailing online social practices that have alarmed me the most revolve around thinking of the Internet as only a place to talk and write, and thinking of what we do there as something apart from "real life." I'd like to see more people practicing spiritual principles and community service, and working on community development, in online communities. I'd like to see more people spending more of their online time in fellowship across religious boundaries." Baha'is on the Internet

But I digress; as my title suggests, I want to talk about forgiveness, fellowship and justice. In my previous blog entry ("A Ridvan vision"), I said that I forgive those who I believe have wronged me in the past. What do I mean by that? What do I think forgiveness is? To me, forgivenss is an inner state where I can say to myself in all sincerity: I no longer harbour ill feeling toward that person, who I believed wronged me in the past. Initially, I was angry, upset or whatever. But now, I am not. It doesn't matter any more; I have let it go and moved on. I wish the person well. To me, that is forgiveness. The importance of forgiveness is that it enables me to draw closer to God. It means that there is no longer a shadow over my heart that veils me from my Lord. My heart is clear and happy because it longer harbours any animosity.
In my view, forgiveness is different to fellowship. One might think that forgiving someone will lead to fellowship with them. Perhaps, but not necessarily. For starters, the other person may not have forgiven me. They may not want my fellowship. Secondly, the two parties involved may not naturally seek each other's company anyway. "For like seeketh like, and taketh pleasure in the company of its kind." (PHW 10). Often we fall out with those we don't have any affinity with or those who hold very different views to us. Mutual forgiveness may not lead to warm relations, but it should lead to cordial relations, which is the basis of what's required of us by Baha'u'llah. In any case, fellowship is a two-way thing. It requires mutual consent. For example, the House of Justice has seen fit to remove me from community membership. I don't consider it, and never have considered it, courteous to agitate for my membership to be reinstated. Real fellowship is the fruit of a freely chosen decision. If the House doesn't freely choose to have me as a member of the community, then I will respect that. Although, I would like to be welcome at local holy day celebrations - but I am not and so I leave it alone.
I also think that forgiveness is different to justice. People tend to get them confused. They refuse to forgive because they think it means the party who has wronged them gets off the hook. But it doesn't mean that at all. I no longer harbour ill feeling toward the House for what it did to me, but that does not mean I was not wronged or that the House does not suffer the consequences of what it did. Those consequences are nothing to do with me. Baha'u'llah deals with that institution and its members as he sees fit. My role isn't found there; it's in looking after the health of my own heart and freeing it from ill feeling. Baha'u'llah has written a tablet in which he explains how each of us does suffer the consequences of our actions. The tablet is called "Tablet on the Right of the People".
In the end, it came down to this for me: my only desire is to live in Baha'u'llah's sanctuary. Once you can see it, nothing else matters and forgiveness in the illusory show of life becomes automatic.
Hafiz: Ghazal no 41

One rose from the world’s garden is enough for us.
In the field, the shade of that flowing cypress is enough for us.
May I never be intimate with hypocrites.
Of the world’s weighty things, a heavy cup is enough for us.
For good deeds they grant you the palace of paradise.
We rends and paupers, the Magi’s cloister is enough for us.
Sit by the stream’s edge and watch life pass by,
for this sign from a passing world is enough for us.
See the cash in the world’s bazaar, and the world’s torments.
If not enough for you, this profit and loss is enough for us.
The friend is with us. Why would we look further?
Intimacy with that soul-companion is enough for us.
I am here at your door, for God’s sake don’t send me to heaven,
for in all the universe the head of your alleyway is enough for us.
Hafiz, it is unjust to complain about the wellspring of your fate.
A nature like water and flowing ghazals are enough for us.
From The Green Sea of Heaven. Fifty ghazals from the Divan of Hafiz, translated by Elizabeth Gray (1995)

A Ridvan vision

From ressentiment to rapprochement

I know this will sound trite, but I had a dream - I really did have a dream. It came on the night after the anniversary of my expulsion. I was expelled on March 27 2000, and so this dream, coming in the year 2008, came as I was entering my ninth year of being unenrolled. To me, the ninth year is significant because Baha'u'llah spent nine years in Akka before he allowed others to persuade him to leave. Baha'u'llah was kind enough to send me a dream warning me about my expulsion, so it's likely he'll kindly send me signs of what's going to happen after it. I know that my expulsion was considered to be the 'end of an unpleasant matter', but there are no ends in creation that do not result in birth.

I don't want to share the details of the dream, but I do want to share the vision that resulted from it. I felt the grace of Baha'u'llah stretched over the entire Baha'i world. He waits silently in anticipation that we will look and see him in his supreme majesty overshadowing us with his attentive gaze and all-encompassing love. But whether we see it or not, this is the reality of his presence upon us all the time. When I looked at the Baha'i world from this vantage point, I realised that all was not hopeless after all. I realised that, for years, I had assumed that it was inevitable the Baha'is would continue to curse and revile each other and that the Cause would be forever crippled by this. But this vision gave me hope that this tragic scenario was not inevitable at all. With the grace of Baha'u'llah, the slowly unfolding tragedy could be turned around. It was possible that people's hearts could be softened toward each other and those who were estranged could associate with each other in a civil manner.

How could such a thing be possible, you might ask. Well, for starters, we need only look at history and the numerous situations where the hope of a few seemed fantastic in the face of the odds. It must have seemed like all hope was gone when Christ was crucified on the cross, Muhammad took his flight to Medina and Baha'u'llah languished in the Siyah Chal. But we know from the benefit of hindsight (and from what Baha'u'llah teaches us) that these dark days are just the beginning of a miraculous plan God has yet to unfold. We know God sets up these situations to see who'll believe despite the odds. When Martin Luther King said he had a dream, he dreamed it in the face of huge opposition to his vision of universal love for all people despite their colour.

The key thing is that one's vision is in keeping with the divine plan. And what, I ask, is not in keeping with Baha'i principles about the dream that Baha'is should stop cursing and reviling each other and reach out to each other in a spirit of tolerance? Here is the principle that we are exhorted to live by:

"'Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.' Whatsoever hath led the children of men to shun one another, and hath caused dissensions and divisions amongst them, hath, through the revelation of these words, been nullified and abolished." (Baha'u'llah: Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p87)

In this passage, Baha'u'llah is not telling us all to agree with each other. He is telling us how to treat those who have different religious views. We should associate with them in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. We should not shun them, much less revile and attack them. The principle applies equally within the Baha'i world as it does between religious communities. Individual Baha'is have different views on things. They all proclaim their belief in Baha'u'llah, but they still disagree over the details. Again, we should associate with believers who have different views in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.

It is easy to see how the principle works when we apply it to others. We look at the religious strife around the world and say to ourselves: it just doesn't need to be that way. Why don't they just get along? Why does it matter to one that another holds a different view? Why do the differences matter so much that they must lead to such tragic consequences? Why don't they just live and let live? Why indeed. And the same questions apply to the Baha'is today. Why do they attack each other for holding different views? We can see when we look at warring factions that when they point out each other's faults, they do not thereby make themselves righteous or win. You want to tell them that the only path to peace is forgiveness and letting go. If we want the Cause to spread throughout the world, this is what we must do. We must forgive, let go and live in peace with each other. If we cannot move ahead together in peace, then we offer the world only what it has already and we fail to offer Baha'u'llah's healing remedy. That remedy must be an inner reality in our hearts if we're to have an effect.

And so, today, this Ridvan, I make an unconditional declaration of peace to the Baha'i world. I unconditionally forgive anyone who, to my mind, has wronged me and I hold in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship all Baha'is who have different views to me: the House of Justice, the NZ NSA, the Baha'is in my local community and all Baha'is on the Internet that I have had dealings with. If I have hurt any of you in any way, I unreservedly apologise. And I unconditionally forgive any grievance I may once have felt you had caused me. If you imagine that I hold a grievance against you, please this minute know that it is extinguished. If you wish to check that out with me, please email me privately.

And I challenge enrolled Baha'is and unenrolled Baha'is to see their common ground, let go the past and begin associating with one another in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. Think about the dream that Martin Luther King had. He saw a time when black people would associate freely with whites, even though at that time, the idea of associating with blacks was anathema to many whites. I know that unenrolled Baha'is are anathema to many enrolled Baha'is, but my purpose here is to bring about a change there. I want to start a movement that will lead to peace between us. And I begin by making my declaration of peace. I lay all my cards on the table. I am not your enemy; in fact, the opposite. As Sen McGlinn has pointed out, the unenrolled Baha'is worldwide are surely the most fruitful target for declarations. These people already say they believe. I recall, when I was a member of the community, there used to be people who would come to Baha'i events but who were not enrolled members of the community. We used to call them Baha'is because, for all intents and purposes, they were. We called them 'friends of the community'. We cherished their fellowship. Why should things be different today? Why can we not open our hearts to each other, worship together and work together? Would the Cause suffer by this or would it blossom? I believe, it would blossom to such an extent that we would all be astonished. The believers often point to the power of unity; well, here's our chance to harness it. Let's take up this precious opportunity offered us. Let's overlook our differences and work together to revolutionise the fortunes of the Faith.

The real Baha'u'llah

Yesterday I was interested to read a comment that appeared on Baquia's blog, which had been pointed out to me by Steve. It is written by Andrew Carter, who I interviewed for this blog last year. Back then, he was saying that he believed Baha'u'llah was a manifestation of God. But it seems that he has changed his mind. He says:

"I was once swayed by the idealism and casuistry of certain Baha’i writers who insist that Baha’u'llah was actually a teacher of inner freedom and transformation. I no longer believe this. No matter how one gilds the lily, Baha’u'llah was not a spiritual guide, but rather a religious dictator, and the religion he created expresses the thematic continuity of his authoritarianism." Andrew

This accusation that Baha'u'llah is a "religious dictator" reminded me of a similar accusation made by someone else many years ago. At that time, Juan Cole wrote an enlightening and moving defence of Baha'u'llah and posted it on H-Baha'i. I thought it would be timely, given the above, to repost that message here. A key thing that comes through for me is that the authoritarianism we see in the Baha'i community today is assumed to reflect the way Baha'u'llah was. But this isn't the case.

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Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 11:55:34 -0400
From: jrcole@... (Juan R. I. Cole)
Subject: H-Bahai Baha'u'llah's authority

I wanted to follow up on the nature of Baha'u'llah's authority in the 19th century Baha'i community. XX has presented an image of it as absolute, and many have agreed with him. But I don't find in the historical record such a situation.

There are two sorts of lattitude I'd like to point to. The first is lattitude of relatively free thought. Because Baha'u'llah accepted Ibn al-`Arabi's and Rumi's Sufi notion of standpoint epistemology with regard to metaphysics, he did not believe there was only one right answer to any particular doctrinal question. Which answer one gave would depend on one's own "maqam" or spiritual station, and upon one's degree of spiritual discernment or "idrak." Since maqams and idrak were so numerous and disparate, in Baha'u'llah's view, he did not expect the Baha'is all to adhere to the same theological beliefs at the same time. That is why he refused to intervene in the dispute between Jamal-i Burujirdi (who insisted that Baha'u'llah was man, not God) and other prominent Baha'i teachers (some of whom saw Baha'u'llah as a manifestation of God's very essence). This tablet and Khazeh's translation is in Baha'i Studies Bulletin and also on my Web page. It is very instructive. (cf. Iqtidarat p. 219). One prominent Baha'i in Iran told Browne (I think it was Mirza Haydar `Ali Isfahani) that Baha'u'llah was just "a man, perfect in humanity." Browne also reports a good deal of wine drinking and drug use among the Baha'is, if my memory serves.

Along the same lines, in Iqtidarat, p. 100, Baha'u'llah tells the Baha'is who keep writing him with questions that *they* are the springs of his own discourse, and that they should strive to cleanse their water of idle fancies so that they can answer their questions *themselves*:

ta az shuma: khu:d dar amtha:l-i i:n masa:'il-i mas'u:lih java:bha:-yi muhkamih-'i mutqanih za:hir shavad

In this dispensation, he says, all bear the divine effulgence according to their own capacity, and all are able to discern the truths in the revealed scripture. This is an encouragement to all Baha'is without exception to develop their own midrash on the Baha'i scriptures and to try to answer questions for themselves. This is very different from the attitude of some authoritarian leaders that everything must be referred to them, and they must have the option of settling all important questions.

There are also many instances where Baha'is wrote to Baha'u'llah with local disputes about, say, the disposition of property, and he wrote back that they should consult (mushavirih) with the local community and follow the consensus that was reached. Several such letters are in the later volumes of Athar-i Qalam-i A`la (vols. 6-7).

So I would argue that Baha'u'llah farmed out a lot of authority to individuals and to local communities, and often declined to intervene decisively in disputes back in Iran. I don't see this sort of lattitude as terribly authoritarian, though I agree that later Baha'i tradition may have imagined it that way.

From another point of view, I find all sorts of evidence that the Baha'is very often ignored Baha'u'llah's advice and instructions, and did as they pleased. A very serious such instance was when, in 1872, some Baha'is in Akka came to him and said they wanted to kill Sayyid Muhammad Isfahani, the Azali who had been sent by the Ottomans to spy on the Baha'is. Baha'u'llah strictly forbade them, according to Mirza Ja`far Qazvini in the Epitome translated by Browne (Materials 54-55), but they went ahead and murdered the Azalis anyway. Baha'u'llah was very upset by all this, and sanctioned them both by refusing to intervene with the Ottoman authorities on their behalf, and by banishing them from his presence for a long time. But some of the murderers at least, such as Ustad Salmani, eventually were able to rejoin the community. My point, in any case, is that even these close companions of Baha'u'llah would not listen to him on such a serious matter!

There are many other instances of cavalier disobedience. Baha'u'llah wanted meetings back in Iran kept very small, but his emissaries reported back to him that he was regularly being ignored and that meetings of 40 and more were not uncommon. Baha'u'llah wanted the Baha'is not to bicker over doctrinal and other matters, but they went ahead and did, anyway. The historical records and the Tablets of Baha'u'llah and letters of Khadimu'llah are full of such details. Baha'u'llah even confesses at one point that his biggest headache was the 300 Baha'is living in the Akka area, who had their ups and downs (Iqtidara 26-27). Obviously, they were not causing him such grief because they were kowtowing to a despotic Prophet figure.

Very often, Baha'u'llah would respond to major disputes by telling the parties to work it out themselves, or by declining to comment (as with his non-response to the controversy caused by Jamal-i Burujirdi's plan for mass Baha'i emigration to Russia). I see him as having exercised moral suasion, as having attempted to persuade, as having sometimes issued rather stern counsels or reproaches. But his authority was only moral, and he was far more often ignored than Baha'is nowadays would like to admit. (Indeed, as time has gone on, some of his major emphases, such as standpoint epistemology and its accompanying tolerance, answering one's own questions, and the value of democracy, have been almost erased within the community, so that he is less and less a real authority and more and more just an icon to whom lip service is paid). There was a core of very devoted and sincere Baha'is, of course, who engaged in an almost court-like etiquette around Baha'u'llah. But as far as I can tell, these were a minority. One forgets the rude, the insolent, the unbalanced, the petty squabblers, the independent of mind, the wine-bibbers. One forgets that most Baha'is of the time were very lightly socialized to Baha'i values, and did a lot of dissimulating and picking and choosing. Baha'u'llah had more authority among Baha'is than did a mujtahid like Mirza Hasan Shirazi among Shi`ites, but it was authority and not power, and it probably worked practically in many of the same ways--persuasion, tacking with the wind, encouraging people to get along.

cheers

Juan Cole
History
U of Michigan

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Be fair: are these the words of a "religious dictator"? If these reflect the characteristics of a dictator, then may we have more of them!

"By Myself, the True One, O Ali! The fire that hath inflamed the heart of Baha is fiercer than the fire that gloweth in thine heart, and His lamentation louder than thy lamentation. Every time the sin committed by any one amongst them was breathed in the Court of His Presence, the Ancient Beauty would be so filled with shame as to wish He could hide the glory of His countenance from the eyes of all men, for He hath, at all times, fixed His gaze on their fidelity, and observed its essential requisites." (Baha'u'llah: Gleanings, CXLII)