Baha'u'llah's Brave New World

Baha'u'llah's Brave New World

By John Taylor; 26 January, 2006

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)

Splutter, splutter. I think that the reason that such an extraordinary
distinction can pass muster in Europe must be that so few ever read
the Qu'ran. Depending on the translator, there are between 9 and 55
mentions of proof in that Holy Text alone. If de Sade's dying man had
a mullah instead of a priest by his side, he might not have won so
decisively. But still, Jesus did say, "By their fruits ye shall know
them," does that not count for anything? Besides, the KJV offers six
mentions of the word "proof," and the World English Bible ten. The
dying man's priest should have searched them on his Blackberry.

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 Milan. Ferdinand's father, the present king of Milan,
is in reality alive and stranded elsewhere on the island. However, the
plot of the play does offer real sea changes to all concerned,
anointed by the magical imagination of Shakespeare. Many magical
twists and turns finally correct the dislocated political situation.
Wrongs are righted, Prospero regains his usurped crown, Ferdinand
meets and falls in love with Miranda, his cousin and Prospero's
daughter. When she first meets Prospero, Miranda has no memory of life
off of the desert island, and has never seen a man other than the base
and deformed Caliban and her aged father. She declares,

"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!" Why would people of faith turn from objects of revulsion into a
thing of beauty? The Bab made it 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. 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 qualifications, especially
his youth,

"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." (Id.)

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.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com