Interstices, Search in the Kitab-i-Iqan

Interstices;

By John Taylor; 31 May, 2004


You know, religion as we think of it is so racked by ritual; it is harrowed by holier-than-thou attitudes and lollygagging in literalism. The last thing you would expect is what Baha'u'llah sometimes does, just hand you the building blocks and say, "Here. Put it together yourself." "Here's the question. Come to your own conclusions." Or, in the words of the rap, "Can't touch that." Sometimes He leaves an entire field of concern open, without comment one way or another. Okay, maybe I'd expect Him to ignore something minor like the cut of the beard or the trim of the trousseau, but not things that seem fundamental, issues that many would think really do need to be spelled out.
The list here can be as long as you like; there is monogamy, which is not specifically laid down in the Kitab-i-Aqdas and was not explicit until `Abdu'l-Baha ruled. Why? Or politics, the very word we have seen does not appear in Holy Writ until the ministry of `Abdu'l-Baha, and even then He used it in a sense that applies as much to religious institutions as to political ones, and indeed to any other kind of grouping. Other hot issues were left aside until the Guardian came along, like nudity, nudism, mental illness, and many others. Yet more have only come to the fore in very recent times, such as Internet literary review and homosexual "marriages."

Not that the rulings are any weaker for not being mentioned earlier in the corpus, I would add. Whether it was one head of the Faith that ruled or another, you will still not run across any fewer Baha'is in a nudist colony or shacking up in a same-sex marriage than otherwise. It is just that I think there must be a special wisdom in how and when a given ruling was came into effect. In other words, we should not only notice what Baha'u'llah and others are saying but also what they are not saying, and why.
It would be facile to say that the reason for such blank spots is that now for the first time in a religious system the principle of search for truth has been set up front and center. If you are looking for ellipses, syncopes and lacunae, earlier scripture is even more replete. Most notorious of all is the Qu'ran, whose very diction is intentionally compressed and distilled to a point where the average, educated Arabic speaker finds its prose as incomprehensible as, say, Pope, Shakespeare or even Chaucer are for English speakers.

There must be a reason for this opacity. My theory: the heavy, abstruse style of the Qu'ran was designed as a form of mental exercise. Just as even a native English speaker will never understand her own language until she has tried to scrape off some flecks from the genius of Shakespeare, so a person thinking about religious issues will never have muscles strong enough in exactly the right places until she has wrestled with comprehending the Qu'ran. Specifically, its cognitive calisthenics seems intended to erase the silly literalism that still plagues popular religion in the West. If you can make sense of even one sentence of the Qu'ran, you will never look at words in the same way, you will never more think of sinking faith in the bottomless quicksand of literal semiotics.
Yesterday I took a long walk with the kids. Towards the end of it we came across a streak where some child had drawn a set of hopscotch squares on the sidewalk using chalk. As always when encountering an edifying challenge, I pretended to try it and become the first to overcome. Then I pretended to fail, not a hard thing to do with my arthritic knees. Silvie, as always, was tempted to surpass me.

This hopscotch matrix was different, though. As often happens with a major project, the designer did not know when to stop. Drawing hopscotch squares had become an obsession whose joy contemplated no end. The trail of little green sidewalk squares seemed to go on forever, by far the longest I have ever seen. Silvie gave it a valiant try but had to step aside and walk in order to keep up with me (Thomas was by then riding my shoulders, a compassionate decision that my knees even now are protesting). When the end finally came, Silvie jumped back for the last few matrices and celebrated victory.

I recalled then what I read somewhere, that hopscotch was born three hundred years ago as a military training exercise in the Swiss Army, the theory being that soldiers need to work their legs in order to be agile enough on their feet in battle. So grown men would play what is now a kid's game in full battle dress; and no doubt they were better prepared for having done so. --Here's an aside, soldiers still march, though the tactical benefit of marching has been obsolete for centuries. On the other hand, they do not play the new sport of simulated paint gun battles, even though the tactical benefits are much more relevant than marching. Reason? Paintball, as experienced players attest, is simply too realistic; it gives a reasonable picture of your chances of survival in a losing shooting battle, virtually nil. Soldiers trained at paintball would know too well when and how to run.
Another thing I read lately, that psychologists are recommending that one take mental exercise just as seriously as soldiers do their training. For example take different routes to work each time in order to strain different dendrites in different ways. The problem is that we do not know what kind of mental exercise prepares for which life challenge, or even what kind of challenge we will face in a given day.

No doubt this hints at what poetry is all about too. Why go to the trouble of compressing language if not to work the brain's comprehension muscles? English speakers tend to use Shakespeare in this way, which is not the same as understanding what Shakespeare was actually saying. Even what would have been ordinary speech in Elizabethan times is tough to understand, and we use that as a similar exercise in linguistic calisthenics. People who encounter Shakespeare in another language have a totally different and more authentic experience. When I read Hamlet in Esperanto, a wholly different monologue (which I analyzed in detail in an earlier essay) jumped out at me. Strangely, it had been completely invisible to me when I read it in English.

The difference is that the Qu'ran, and of course earlier scripture to some extent, is a form of hopscotch, even more endless hopscotch if you bang your head against it morning and evening. Except that here the motions were designed by God right down to the least syllable and nuance, and He is surely is the ultimate training Master. His training methods do not go in or out of fashion, they endure even when specific laws and ordinances no longer apply.


"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." (Matt 24:36, WEB)


He knows for sure what mental exercises benefit the most and the most often, since He designed our brains, He embodies the spirit that gives us life. This is probably why Baha'u'llah recommends that we memorize certain passages from His Writings. The actual memorizing is not the exercise, picking the context for saying it, the exact right time and place to recite it, that is the exercise.

Be that as it may, this is all background as to why I think I felt moved to give special attention to the Qu'ran last time and next in expounding upon the principle of search for truth. The cognitive calisthenics that it demands seems to build intellectual muscles that help engender spirit, strengthen what is needed for working out the nature of both search and truth. And the most demanding exercise for this is the now universal duty to take the self into account morning and evening.


"Verily thy Lord doth provide sustenance in abundance for whom He pleaseth, and He provideth in a just measure. For He doth know and regard all His servants." (Q17:30, Yusuf Ali)




Search for Truth in Baha'u'llah's Kitab-i-Iqan


by John Taylor; 4 June, 2004



There follows the first half of an essay heavily revised from one called "Myrtles of Unity," originally written on 28 June, 2002. The second half of Myrtles will be included on this mailout RSN, Real Soon Now, maybe under Oneness of Humanity.

The body of Baha'u'llah's work runs the gamut of literary genres, from mystic poetry to legislation, to philosophical exposition, to epistolary homily, to prophesy, both explication of old ones and original predictions. This diversity of styles and approaches has at least one core purpose, to serve as an aid for periodic meditation, to act as a compass and true magnetic north for every seeker. Today I will glance at Baha'u'llah's central doctrinal work, the Kitab-i-Iqan. More than perhaps any of His works, the penetrating, clear prose of the Iqan furnishes a beat for the rhythm of an examined life. It equips the reader to make of self its own judge by studied reflection and taking every motive, thought and action regularly into account. The gift of the Iqan is faith, the ability to make the unknowns of life a function of God's will and chosen truth.

Written in Baghdad in January of 1861, not long before His valedictory declaration just outside that city, the Kitab-i-Iqan acts as a hinge between His early Writings and the challenging, global concern of His post-Declaration Writings. It carries over previous Revelations to such an extent that that it is considered spiritually to be the final chapter of the Persian Bayan, which the Bab prophesied would be completed by the "One Whom God Would Make Manifest." Carrying over from earlier mystical works such as the Four Valleys, the Kitab-i-Iqan was written to a particular person but is also a general guide for every thoughtful seeker of truth. This is evident even in its title, "Iqan," which means in English "Faith" or "Certitude." The "Certainty Book" sets out from the beginning to establish what we can be sure of, and what we cannot.

As for the specific questions, we do know that Baha'u'llah wrote the Iqan in answer to a list of specific questions that unfortunately are not translated yet, to my knowledge. Yet it is clear from the text that whatever his specific queries, the seeker was after questions we all ask sometimes: What is constant? What can I be certain of? What stays the same and what passes on? How can God be consistent in history and at the same time inspire progress and education? How does sameness within reconcile with change without, in the self, in history and in religion?

In answering these questions and their subtexts, Baha'u'llah advises the reader to "ponder," on two dozen occasions. By my count He in some way admonishes the reader to question, consider, meditate or reflect over a hundred and thirty times. This concern with seeking climaxes in the famous passage popularly known as the "Tablet of the Seeker" (KI, 192 to 195), an inspiring peroration not unlike the Sermon on the Mount that spells out the "attributes of the exalted" and what constitutes the "hall-mark of the spiritually-minded." The tablet of the seeker includes a long list of "the requirements of the wayfarers that tread the Path of Positive Knowledge." (KI, 195) Aside from the usual purification, prayer and reflection that you would expect of a sincere seeker of truth, some surprises, like abstinence from idle speech, avoiding cruelty to animals, "how much more to his fellow-man," and rejection of immoderation in all its manifestations.

Over and above its emphasis on active and independent questioning, Kitab-i-Iqan is very much an apologetic with a clear thesis to uphold. It was written for an uncle of the Bab who was on a visit to Karbila in order to persuade him that the Bab had a divine Mission. It succeeded in this rhetorical goal by taking on several tasks, including explications of various prophesies and scriptural terminology. Above all, the Iqan explains that there is a good reason for the many difficulties one encounters in scripture. The purpose is in fact no different from anything else a mystical seeker encounters: purification. These strange, apparently inexplicable passages are intended to strengthen faith by purifying us of our irrational, ignorant qualities,


"Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbolic terms and abstruse allusions, which emanate from the Revealers of God's holy Cause, hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world; that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the perishable and barren soil. From time immemorial such hath been the way of God amidst His creatures, and to this testify the records of the sacred books." (KI, 49)


This compares the heart to soil, the source and origin of growth and food. The soil is "purified" (a less palatable analogy would be "fertilized") by the divine tests, which require one to work at it, to seek out and live up to truth, refusing to be distracted and by secondary concerns. A seeker therefore could,


"never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the all-Glorious ... unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets." (KI, 4)


Baha'u'llah in this way establishes the "unfettered" or "independent" aspect of the principle of search for truth. On the one hand, we are all expected to read and understand the Word of scripture on our own. On the other hand, there still are abstruse and ambiguous passages that definitely need an authoritative interpretation. For a Muslim, that would be the twelve Imams, for a Baha'i the Master, the Guardian and the House, in due order. Accepting this authority does not negate one's independence as a seeker any more than accepting the advice of a doctor means renouncing all responsibility for maintaining one's health. In this way the Iqan allows for a sane balance in exegesis between liberalism and conservatism.

The mystical task of purification or fertility of the heart is a major concern of the Iqan but its guidance in this respect also extends to the practical principle of making unity out of diversity, also a task for every seeker. Hence its explanation of one of the most common symbols of meditative life, the comparison of spirit and scripture with food and drink, especially the staple of many diets, bread. Fertile soil grows bread in abundance, as does the heart.


"This is the food that conferreth everlasting life upon the pure in heart and the illumined in spirit. This is the bread of which it is said: `Lord, send down upon us Thy bread from heaven.' [Q76:9] This bread shall never be withheld from them that deserve it, nor can it ever be exhausted. It groweth everlastingly from the tree of grace; it descendeth at all seasons from the heavens of justice and mercy." (KI, 22)


The divine Word properly understood has the same essential role in the spiritual life that nourishment plays in the body. Jesus, for example said that, "It is written, `Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4) The end result is clear, someone who does not "eat" or reflect on spiritual bread cannot develop the humanity to call himself a true person.

The Kitab-i-Iqan carries this metaphor right to the nub when it advises the reader to ponder one Surih of the Qu'ran in particular, called "Hud," after a prophet not mentioned in the Bible. The lessons and stories about utter rejection of the prophets in this chapter are worthy of pondering in order to understand why the holy ones of the past had so little effect on the doubters. The Iqan says, "Such is the share of the bread that hath descended from the realms of eternity and holiness." (KI, 6) Baha'u'llah thus compares this bread to the Manna from heaven which the followers of Moses found so unpalatable in the wilderness, which they bartered away for the "sordid things of the earth." (KI, 208)

Food is, then, a symbol of the "meat" that the Manifestation wishes to give us, and the "milk" our own thinking prepares us for. At the same time it is the epitome of unity in diversity. Food seems to be of infinite variety and origins yet it is made up of a relatively small number of chemicals, minerals and other ingredients, such as water and carbon. This narrow range supplies the energy, nutrients, and structure of the body. Yet every human body is nourished by that same thing and breathes the same air.

Similarly, the Word is based upon simple things like love and knowledge of God, and yet it can provide all we require in our spiritual struggle. Its food for reflection can satisfy the entire spectrum of minds, hearts, temperaments and personalities that make up the vast human race. This is the crux of the principles, the oneness within the search for truth. The Master carried it into His teaching, emphasizing that every human eats the same food, benefits from the same nutrients, breathes the same air and is poisoned by the same chemicals. This truth is the bridge between principle one, search for truth, and principle two, the oneness of humanity.