Best of Deaths

The Death of Malice, The Best of Deaths

By John Taylor; 10 February, 2006

I was going to go straight on to the remaining references to the
"Great Being" in Baha'u'llah's Writings, but then I had a change of
heart. Let us continue to dwell on malice. The reason being, last
night we had our Philosopher's Cafe discussion on euthanasia, and then
late at night in my daily reading I came across this, the second
paragraph of the Bab's Kitab-i-Asma,

"Those who have deprived themselves of this Resurrection by reason of
their mutual hatreds or by regarding themselves to be in the right and
others in the wrong, were chastised on the Day of Resurrection by
reason of such hatreds evinced during their night. Thus they deprived
themselves of beholding the countenance of God, and this for no other
reason than mutual denunciations." (Bab, Selections, 129)

A footnote here explains that "night" refers to the dark period
between two Revelations of God when the Sun of Truth is obscure; to
back this up it cites another passage of the Bab advising believers
not to act so that the "fruits of your night" are brought to nothing.
What are fruits of the night? This has pragmatic as well as religious
meaning in Baha'i belief. Baha'u'llah in the Suriy-i-Vafa portrays
night and the sleep which occurs then as a potential proof of God and
His multi-layered creation. Abdu'l-Baha went so far as to recommend
using sleep to learn mystic truths and to answer prayers.

"When thou desirest and yearnest for meeting in the world of vision;
at the time when thou art in perfect fragrance and spirituality, wash
thy hands and face, clothe thyself in clean robes, turn toward the
court of the Peerless One, offer prayer to Him and lay thy head upon
the pillow. When sleep cometh, the doors of revelation shall be opened
and all thy desires shall become revealed." (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets,
vol. 1, p. 104)

The Bab, then, portrays here a nightmare image of a resurrection
taking place only for those who love and refrain from hate, malice and
contention. Only those who escape the clutches of malice and the
insidious belief that I "am right and you are wrong" remain awake and
alive. This surely would make as frightening a horror film as
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers," or "The Night of the Living Dead," a
resurrection of malicious denouncers lashing out at humble lovers, who
are cut down one by one. Ten thousand Babis were killed in the "night"
between His revelation and that of Baha'u'llah.

These events had been prefigured by the French Revolution, in a period
known as the "Terror." The Terror saw some fifteen thousand souls
beheaded by the guillotine, an instrument of death that previously was
regarded as a relatively painless and merciful death, one reserved as
a last privilege for condemned aristocrats. The egalitarian Revolution
brought a malicious death to all, high and low. The orgy of executions
that resulted is an example out of historical experience of a
malicious circle becoming a slippery slope into socially sanctioned
violence. Malice is the real slippery slope, no escape but down into
the fires of hell.

Euthanasia means either "good death," or "quiet death." A good death
may be quiet, or it may not. Some may call "good death" an oxymoron,
but such paradoxes are fair fodder to the religious frame of mind. The
real quiet death is what happens spiritually to those who slip into
malicious thinking, they are left in the dark as a punishment just as
the true dawn breaks. Outwardly they seem to be killers and winners,
but inwardly they are already dead, they lost the game before it
started. Malice and fate put a torturer's knife or a guillotine into
their hand, and the result is many good but not quiet deaths.

The death of the martyrs is the best of deaths. Why? Because of the
light they shed on the heart. For a thousand years after a martyr's
death, whenever anyone begins to think a thought of "mutual hatreds"
or who sees "themselves to be in the right and others in the wrong,"
they see the slippery slope of malice teetering before them, they
recognize the danger and draw back to warm, enlightened thoughts of
love, harmony and unity. An end, once and for all, of "mutual
denunciations," for what greater thing could you give your life?

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com