By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 16, 10 Mulk, 164 BE
I wrote the following essay and prayer for the proofs of deity a couple of years ago. It still stands, and I have only changed a sentence or two. I mentioned that I had just read "Introducing Marquis de Sade" and react with great anger and frustration to the original sadist's, "Dialog between a Priest and a Dying Man." Since I wrote that I did get an electronic copy of the dialog, and have included a brief commentary and excerpt from the dialog at the end of this post.
2006 Jan 26; Baha'u'llah's Brave
The Marquis de Sade shot past the 18th Century deists and wrote "A Dialog between a Priest and a Dying Man," an apology for atheism, a refutation of Christianity and all it stood for. More than any other philosophe, Sade captured the anti-religious undercurrent of the "Enlightenment." As a former atheist myself, reading a summary of this dialog infuriated me and I plan to get a hold of an etext, if I can, and deal with it in detail. It was especially distressing to read that what the dying man regarded as his most devastating ammunition against belief in God is now actually fully accepted by most believers, especially by us Baha'is. The very nature of belief in God is completely different now. Now, we believe in a reasoned manner. Proofs enter in. Consider this, from another in the series I am reading, this time, "Introducing Philosophy,"
"But all of them (philosophers) believe that philosophers are obliged to provide some kind of explanation, proof or evidence for their ideas. And this obligation marks the one obvious difference between philosophy and religion." (Introducing Philosophy, Dave Robinson and Judy Groves, Icon Books, Duxford, UK, p. 5)
Sputter, sputter. I think that the reason that such an extraordinary distinction can pass muster in
Take a deep breath, John, and count to ten. Let us back off from this and take another tack. What is to follow is ground I have covered before but it is worth plowing it over, perhaps annually, like a crop. The House of Justice begins "One Common Faith" with a special reassurance that we can be confident that the,
"period of history now opening will be far more receptive to efforts to spread Baha'u'llah's message than was the case in the century just ended. All the signs indicate that a sea change in human consciousness is under way."
Let us focus in on this phrase, "sea change in human consciousness." Consciousness is a slippery word, hard to nail down almost by definition. John Lock defined it as the "perception of what passes in a man's own mind." Dictionaries suggest a broader definition, an awareness or concern for something, be it within or without the mind. As for "sea change," this interesting expression was born, like many English words, in the imagination of the Bard. His last play, his swan song, and my favorite of them all, The Tempest, has prince Ferdinand stranded on a beach thinking that his father and all hands are dead in a storm and shipwreck from which he has barely escaped. He wonders about some music he thinks he hears,
"Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather."
Shakespeare then has the airy spirit Ariel sing the song again. Since Shakespeare, Ariel has become a symbol for poetic inspiration, but here she offers a song of Dutch comfort; it is consolation passing strange, assuring Ferdinand that his father is dead, drowned and gradually being encrusted by jewels under the sea:
"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell"
It turns out that this song of Ariel is a spell, not to say a lie, that Ariel has been charged by Prospero to cast upon the young prince. The image reflects the anger of Prospero, a brother wronged by the present king of
"O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't!"
Aldous Huxley took Miranda's innocent wonder at what a beautiful thing a healthy youth in full flower can be, and made it infamous by entitling his satire of our technology and pharmaceutical obsessed life, "Brave New World." A thousand times, alas. Now, you cannot say "brave new world" without echoing Huxley's rank cynicism, the reverse of what Shakespeare's poetic expression intends. Fortunately, "sea change" did not undergo such a bad sea change. It still implies not a bad change (like the encrustation that actually happens to an object left for centuries under the sea) but an imaginary transformation of our "fading parts" into something "rich and strange;" moldering flesh in the sea of imagination turns into coral and diamonds, into a precious, rare and wonderful thing.
Now the reason I am alive and still have hope, the reason that I am a Baha'i, is that I still look forward to a brave new world without qualm or hint of irony. I really believe that if we could see with our inner eye we would witness this sea change going on in our soul and in the general consciousness of society. However ugly it may look outwardly, I believe with all my heart that a sea change is in the offing, a wonder is in the making. I believe that the day will soon come that anyone entering a religious gathering, not just a Baha'i meeting but any gathering of sincere believers in God, will make that very declaration that Miranda made upon seeing her cousin Ferdinand:
"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't!"
Now why would people of faith change from objects of revulsion into a thing of beauty?
The Definition of the word "Manifestation"
The Bab made the answer to this question crystal clear when he defined the word "manifestation" in the following passage. Speaking of Islam's promised Qa'im, he wrote,
"God hath made Him manifest invested with the proof wherewith the Apostle of God was invested, so that none of the believers in the Qur'an might entertain doubts about the validity of His Cause, for it is set down in the Qur'an that none but God is capable of revealing verses." (Selections, 118)
A prophet points to a future time when religion and faith will be known and understood. The followers of a prophet place their trust in his insight, they do not really know anything of themselves. A Manifestation of God, though, makes all clear by offering proof. He sets forth arguments that stand on their own before any who try to comprehend. Thus proof is the big criterion, the difference between now and past ages of prophesy. Today there need no longer be any "doubts about the validity of His Cause" because His proof is set out in revealed verses, a body of literature that backs it all up. The Bab continues with His proof, pointing to His own lack of human qualifications, especially his youthfulness,
"Now the Ever-Living Lord hath made manifest and invested with supreme testimony this long-awaited Promised One from a place no one could imagine and from a person whose knowledge was deemed of no account. His age is no more than twenty-five years, yet His glory is such as none of the learned among the people of Islam can rival; inasmuch as man's glory lieth in his knowledge." (
The glory of the coming brave new world will be that not one or two, but many, many people will be intellectually equipped to stand up and offer extempore all necessary proofs of the existence and relevance of the One True God. It will all be manifest, obvious. Let me, O God, one day be in that number.
JET,
The infuriating reality is that for hundreds of years the fact of divergence among world religions has been well known. For centuries the solution has been clear: reconciliation. But all this time believers have stubbornly persisted in sectarian disputes, in smug holier-than-thou-ism. Their devil's spawn is atheism and anti-theism. I would like to just dismiss both atheists and exclusivist believers by saying "a plague on both their houses," but with global warming it is manifest that there is only one house, and it has a thermostat that is badly out of whack. The only way we are ever going to fix it will be to keep the divisive exclusivists well away from the divine thermostat repair Person. Otherwise, we will be where the DYING MAN is, squabbling on our death bed.
From "A Dialog between a Priest and a Dying Man, by the Marquis de Sade
DYING MAN. Answer me this frankly, and above all, do not give self-interested responses! If I were to be weak enough to let myself be talked into believing your ludicrous doctrines which prove the incredible existence of a being who makes religion necessary, which form of worship would you advise me to offer up to Him? Would you have me incline towards the idle fancies of Confucius or the nonsense of Brahma? Should I bow down before the Great Serpent of the Negro, the Moon and Stars of the Peruvian, or the God of Moses' armies? Which of the sects of Muhammad would you suggest I join? Or which particular Christian heresy would you say was preferable to all the others? Think carefully before you answer.
PRIEST. Can there be any doubt about my reply?
DYING MAN. But that is a self-interested answer.
PRIEST. Not at all. In recommending my own beliefs to you, I love you as much as I love Myself.
DYING MAN. By heeding such errors, you show little enough love for either of us.
PRIEST. But who can be blind enough not to see the miracles of our Divine Redeemer?
DYING MAN. He who sees through Him as the most transparent of swindlers and the most tiresome of humbugs.
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DYING MAN. My dear fellow, if it were true that the God you preach really existed, would He need miracles, martyrs, and prophecies to establish His kingdom? And if, as you say, the heart of man is God's handiwork, would not men’s hearts have been the
No, preacher, you offend your God by showing Him to me in this light. Allow me to deny Him altogether, for if He exists, I should offend Him much less by my unbelief than you by your blasphemies. Think, preacher! Your Jesus was no better than Muhammad, Muhammad was no better than Moses, and none of these three was superior to Confucius, though Confucius did set down a number of perfectly valid principles whereas the others talked nonsense. But they and their ilk are mountebanks who have been mocked by thinking men, believed by the rabble, and should have been strung up by due process of law.
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