Master and Oneness

More on the Master and His principle of Oneness of God

Series on the Oneness of God

By John Taylor; 20 February, 2006

Dear reader, what can we say about how the Master presented this
principle of One God? I have already gone over his "obvious" points
about the necessity of Deity being One with Its light, plus our need
for a collective center to unite human differences. Important as these
are, they are abstruse and not easily summed up in a few sentences, as
are most other Baha'i principles. Did the Master ever capsulate this
principle? Let us look into that next.

Unfortunately, in the bare principle listings in `Abdu'l-Baha's many
talks and letters about principle there is no mention of Oneness of
God as a principle, though there are several invocations of its sister
spiritual principle, the Power of the Holy Spirit. That is not to say
that He thought the Oneness of God was unimportant. Quite the reverse!
As far as I can see, this only implies that He did not consider
Oneness of God to be distinctly Baha'i. A single God is, after all,
central to virtually every other world religion. Or perhaps, to use
the Master's own analogy, the social principles are variations or
colors of a single spectrum of light. According to this, the Oneness
of God would be white light, containing and uniting every other color
possible. He said, early on in His talks in America,

"The light of truth has heretofore been seen dimly through variegated
glasses, but now the splendors of Divinity shall be visible through
the translucent mirrors of pure hearts and spirits. The light of truth
is the divine teaching, heavenly instruction, merciful principles and
spiritual civilization." (Promulgation, 11)

The Oneness of God then is not only an intellectual concept, it is
something we witness in pure hearts, among pure hearts consulting
together. Just as the human being unites all lower kingdoms, the
mineral, plant and animal, so when humans unite under the tutelage of
a higher Will, the laws and teachings of God. To witness this unity in
faith is to see all things, the divine at work.

Another possible explanation as to why the Master did not list Oneness
of God along with the other Baha'i principles may be that unlike the
principles that derive from it, the reasoned basis of One God is
entirely negative. We know only that we do not know God. In a talk He
gave in April, 1912 in a hotel on Broadway in New York He offers a
critique of all four foundations of human knowledge, sense, reason,
tradition and inspiration. His critique of reason does not mention the
Liar's Paradox itself, only its effect, the permanent inability of our
best reasoners ever to meet on purely reasoned grounds. The fact that
they disagree "so completely" proves that "human reason is not to be
relied upon as an infallible criterion." (Promulgation, 21) Reason is,

"by its very nature finite and faulty in conclusions. It cannot
surround the Reality Itself, the Infinite Word. Inasmuch as the source
of traditions and interpretations is human reason, and human reason is
faulty, how can we depend upon its findings for real knowledge?" (Ib,
22)

When He made this pronouncement it was too early for His listeners to
appreciate how shockingly accurate 20th Century science would prove
Him to be. Various incompleteness proofs have shown that nobody will
ever make up a mathematical formula to solve the nature of the
universe. There is not and never can be a theory of everything. When
He said that, virtually every scientist was convinced that one day we
would know everything important about the universe. Today, every
scientist familiar with mathematics and logic knows with equal
certainty that we never will. All we can hope for are tentative
stances, never positive final certainty. When the Master said,

"Mathematicians, astronomers, chemical scientists continually disprove
and reject the conclusions of the ancients; nothing is fixed, nothing
final; everything is continually changing because human reason is
progressing along new roads of investigation and arriving at new
conclusions every day. In the future much that is announced and
accepted as true now will be rejected and disproved. And so it will
continue ad infinitum." (Promulgation, 21)

There must have been much tuttuting and muttered nay saying among
logicians and scientists in His audience, but today this would pass
with enthusiastic approval. There is hardly a working researcher who
does not accept such limits to their reach and the inevitability of
turnover in theory, now known as scientific revolutions or paradigm
shifts. This change and renewal is, in the Master's philosophy, a
central proof of God and His Oneness.

Next time we will continue tracing the outlines this principle in the
philosophy of the Master as expounded in His talks in North America.
In the meantime, as a separate mail-out I will include a complete talk
He gave about One God in a New Jersey venue called, appropriately
enough, Unity Church.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com