Search for Truth

The Segue for Truth; Part One of Several


By John Taylor; 21 May, 2004


Dear Friends,

Yesterday I wrote some general material on Ruhi, "yet another Ruhi rant" as someone put it. According to my new policy, only new and original material went out over this Badi mailing list. I do not like clogging your mailboxes any more than necessary. So, on the blog I put up some additional material, including the first May 7 essay, Back to the Ruhi Future, in corrected form -- according to Murphy's Law, I find that no matter what a few spelling errors and other typos show their ugly face just after the final draft is out and onto the Badi list -- I also put on the blog a fuller version of the letter of the Master in question, some intelligent feedback to the BTTRF essay by reader Jimbo, yesterday's sequel essay, again, slightly corrected, and finally a thoughtful email response by reader Jean to essay number two.

Now that I am an experienced blogger all of four days I have learned that all a blog is a chronological website. It is just html or xml text, nothing more. Blogsite.com even gives you the option of archiving older posts onto your personal website. Once I get my website back online, I will certainly do that, except that I will arrange the content topically rather than chronologically. At some stage in the process I want also to take the leap away from my usual plain text into multimedia, photos, sound, video, all incorporated into the essays. That is impossible with the Lyris server that runs the Badi list, but easy on the website. The Blog seems like the logical place for the transitional stage.

My health has held up for a whole week now, and I realize I am still writing the fluff that keeps me busy during attacks but is not good between them. I am capable of better than that, really I am. And it has been rainy too -- experience says I should be laid out completely. I will never understand this body.

So, I will have to assume that this clear patch will continue. The challenge I'll take on is what I call a principle run, a systematic run through the principles. I will start today with Search for truth. Again, only the new stuff will go into your mailbox, the blog will probably include some revised older essays and more extensive quotes from the Writings and elsewhere.



Search for Truth; 21 May, 2004


Part One of a Series on Search for Truth in the Writings of Baha'u'llah


This morning, going over the vast material I have collected over the years on the principle of search for truth my question was, where to start? This principle covers just about everything. Every thinker in history has spent most if not all of his or her time dealing with either search or truth, or both; that is what made them thinkers in the first place. The principle was even enshrined in a Latin saying, Quaere Verum, "Seek the Truth." The problem is that, like Pilot, the temptation is to throw up your hands and say, "What is truth?" Truth, for most of us most of the time, is something to live up to, finding it is the easy part.

After much agonizing, I concluded that the place to begin (and end) is with the Writings of Baha'u'llah and the Bab. Why? Here's my reasoning.

I should expect from these Writings nothing more nor less than what any student does of his or her teacher. No intelligent student imagines that her teacher is the first to think up these ideas. The expectation is only that this material is what that wise teacher has carefully considered and chosen as the most appropriate for right now and the tasks that the teacher knows from experience that we will be facing soon. The given lesson that the Bab and Baha'u'llah give us is, we believe, the most suitable for the particular challenges of this age.

While we are still on this all important question of what we expect from truth, our hopes and motives, what we are looking for from our quest, it occurs to me that the best place to start is with a prayer. Baha'u'llah wrote this petition for the seeker after truth:

"Establish us, then, upon the seats of truth in Thy presence, O Thou in Whose hands is the kingdom of all things! Thou art, verily, the Almighty, the All-Glorious, the Most Merciful." (Prayers and Meditations, CLXXIX, 309-310)

The great, confusing discovery of the modern age is that truth is a diamond with many facets. The surface of each facet reflects a different, unique light from the one Source, but each of these phases or modalities seems to contradict all the others. Stand inside one and the others become invisible. Baha'u'llah's mystical writings, the Seven Valleys, the Four Valleys, the Javahir, are intended as compasses to guide our way through a maze that stymied even the Prophets of God.


"On this plane, neither the reign of reason is sufficient nor the authority of self. Hence, one of the Prophets of God hath asked: `O my Lord, how shall we reach unto Thee?' And the answer came, `Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.'" (SVFV, 55)


Self is pretty close to the ultimate authority that we can possibly have, and reason is the "first gift of God to man," and yet both of them are inadequate! We have to leave them aside to seek and find the truth. In the Hidden Words, God again expresses this profound truth, this demand of truth that the seeker take a mystic leap of love and faith into the void.


"If thou lovest Me, turn away from thyself; and if thou seekest My pleasure, regard not thine own; that thou mayest die in Me and I may eternally live in thee." (AHW #7)


This might be called the golden Golden Rule, that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, but when you do unto God, you die. Then you live again but are wholly changed, holy, susceptible to the views and values of the Universal. Having gone through that you actually want to do what it takes to be one, unified. In a later tablet, Baha'u'llah points to the end result of masses of people refusing to take this solitary jump.


"Though the world is encompassed with misery and distress, yet no man hath paused to reflect what the cause or source of that may be. Whenever the True Counsellor uttered a word in admonishment, lo, they all denounced Him as a mover of mischief and rejected His claim. How bewildering, how confusing is such behavior! No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union." (Tablets, 163-164, Lawh-i-Maqsud)



Search as Anti-Politicizing Process; 22 May, 2004


Part Two of a Series on Search for Truth in the Writings of Baha'u'llah


By John Taylor; 22 May, 2004



Yesterday we observed a unified unity thesis running through Baha'u'llah's writings from beginning to end. It makes no hard distinction between being fair to ones self and being just in society. Failure in one mirrors the other. He sums it up in a Word of Wisdom,


"The essence of all that We have revealed for thee is Justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancy and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye." (Tablets, 157)


It holds that the ultimate sign of real seeking of truth is unity, which is the same as saying that one has learned to de-politicize one's world and words. Religion and politics are both under the same law, that of consultation, whose mindset is at the root of all that is both spiritual and scientific. Independent search for truth is basic to both methodologies and the following applies for those religious or scientific leaning:


"True loss is for him whose days have been spent in utter ignorance of his self." (Tablets, 156)


To fail to seek truth is to forget the true self, and that means neglecting the manifest fact that mind and soul are built for harmony and meant for union.

Early works like the Seven Valleys pick out a oneness in apparently diverse stages and incompatible perspectives of mind and soul. The many must ever be brought before the One. Variations of this theme continue through the Proclamation of the Kings. For example, in the Hidden Words, the 31st Arabic one advises every son of Being to,


"Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds."


Later, addressing the indolent Sultan of Turkey, He advises personal investigation rather than delegating to untrustworthy ministers. He then advises,


"Set before thine eyes God's unerring Balance and, as one standing in His Presence, weigh in that Balance thine actions every day, every moment of thy life. Bring thyself to account ere thou art summoned to a reckoning, on the Day when no man shall have strength to stand for fear of God, the Day when the hearts of the heedless ones shall be made to tremble." (Summons, 5,69, Suriy-i-Muluk, 208)


The same counsel in almost the same words for religious seekers and for a hopelessly depraved tyrant responsible for most of Baha'u'llah's years of suffering and banishment!

This refusal to draw distinctions common in other schools of thought continues through to the majestic pragmatism and world embracing concerns of later works, such as the Tablet of Wisdom, which advises the seeker to use unity as an indicator of independence of thought, to be "united in counsel, be one in thought." (Tablets, Lawh-i-Hikmat, 138) The Tablet to Maqsud holds that the misery and distress evident in current events is De Facto proof of a widespread refusal to reflect.


"How bewildering, how confusing is such behavior! No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union." (Tablets, 163-164)


Those who oppress and persecute others may seem to act in concert outwardly, but it is a facade. In the Tablet of Ahmad, for example, Baha'u'llah refuses to honor them with the word "unify," saying instead that they merely "combine to assist one another." The only thing that merits the word "unify" is genuine search and sincere adherence to truth, inside and out. Political revolutions, particularly the Iranian one, are historical demonstrations of how quickly such artificial conglomerations of wet sand fall apart from within as soon as they are dry.

Baha'u'llah's Writings, early, middle and late, share another presupposition about search and truth, that outer events reflect the inner reality, or lack thereof, as if in a mirror. This golden thread runs through into His ultimate work, the Will and Testament or Kitab-i-Ahd, as we shall see. For example, the burst of knowledge and communications characteristic of this age is an early outer sign of Baha'u'llah's spiritual impetus. Conversely, the ubiquitous war and bickering that fill the newspapers is public witness of private refusal to seek truth or sacrifice self for the Divine Beloved. The secret, inner betrayal of the self results in hatred and violence, either actively or by passively accepting them as inevitable. This insidious process is going on everywhere, at every level.

Baha'u'llah's great concern throughout is therefore both positive and destructive, to build what is true while breaking down all false and artificial barriers erected by finite human understanding. For instance, we petty mortals discover that meditation is valuable but instead of incorporating it into every phase of life, we specialize and shut the practice off into monasteries and solitary penance. The Law of Baha'u'llah therefore makes reflection an obligation for all but ends ritual, monasticism and ascetic practices.

At the same time, however, His Law upholds dichotomies that have a real basis. Most notable is the permanent separation of religion from politics -- as I just found out to my astonishment, the word "politics" does not even occur in the translated writings of Baha'u'llah. Still, Baha'u'llah undeniably affirms that there is some sort of division in the Kitab-i-Ahd. He states that the reason He suffered was for concord and an end to enmity, (Tablets, 219) and that royals serve the vital role of demonstrating hierarchical divine virtues, such as loftiness, on this earth.


"Kings are the manifestations of the power, and the daysprings of the might and riches, of God. Pray ye on their behalf. He hath invested them with the rulership of the earth and hath singled out the hearts of men as His Own domain." (TB 220-221)


There follows a categorical prohibition of any form of conflict or contention. Although the Ahd is undated, since it was His Will and Testament this is clearly intended to be His last word on the matter. We are free to be inwardly violent in taming the lower self (though since it is "His Own domain" the heart is surely meant ultimately to be peaceful as well), but any outer expressions of strife, even verbal ones, are now Verboten.

Though Baha'u'llah did not mention the word "politics," the Baha'i definition of the word was hardened by 'Abdu'l-Baha, the Center of the Covenant ordained in the Kitab-i-Ahd itself. His use of the word is close to what we in English refer to as "politicizing" an issue; that is, ejecting principle and reducing the discussion to contention and taking sides. This has nothing to do with the subject area covered by the discipline of political science, which of course is ruled the principle of harmony between science and religion. Whether a group is nominally political or not, even if it is religious, it is still "political" if its relations are marked by infighting and verbal clashes.

Proof of this is in the Master's use of the word "politico-religious" in reference to the relations among religions at a 1906 conference that initiated the Congress of Religions in Japan. Because each interfaith group came only in order to convert the others, He asseverated, they were by virtue of that fact merely political. He predicted that the impact of their work would be weak and ephemeral (Tablets, v3, 496) and seems to have considered Baha'i teaching activities as in another category completely, as the solution to politics, the way to end this atmosphere of proselytize.

To sum up, Baha'u'llah held with Jesus that lasting unity, like a castle's foundation of rock, bases itself upon God; other foundations are sand and lead to collapse. Other systems of thought hold that faith concerns are inherently sacred and essentially spiritual and private, while the body politic is profane, basically material and public. Baha'u'llah makes no such distinction, though He does draw a hard and fast line. For Him the sacred is only what aids us in attaining to the truth and the profane is what blocks us off from it, and nothing else. Politicization is a destructive process that results directly from ignoring the sacred. It is the mark of neglect of the characteristic human obligation to seek all that is true and right while rejecting everything wrong and false.