Two Obvious Truths

Reconciling the Two Obvious Truths

By John Taylor; 19 February, 2006

Yesterday we ended with two truths about God held by Abdu'l-Baha to be
self-evident, or at least that He described as "obvious." The first
was that if we were to believe that creation is an accident "we would
be forced to admit that the Creator is accidental ... No cessation is
possible to the divine bounty, just as no cessation is possible to the
rays of the sun." (Promulgation, 463) The other obvious thing was that
since humans are at such tremendous variance, with many tastes,
thoughts, native lands, races and languages, that we need a
"collective center" to "counterbalance" and unify them. Outer,
material things do not suffice, only a spiritual power; as Jesus said,
with man it is impossible, but with God all things are easy.

"It is possible, however, for all to become unified through one
spirit, just as all may receive light from one sun. Therefore,
assisted by the collective and divine center which is the law of God
and the reality of His Manifestation, we can overcome these conditions
until they pass away entirely and the races advance." (Promulgation,
164)

`Abdu'l-Baha chooses the expression "pass away" to describe how the
"collective center" makes bad and harmful difference into something
good and beautiful. It is easy, natural, like old skin falling off a
lizard's back. Nothing need be violent, forced or arbitrary. Progress
follows smoothly from the spread of education, especially spiritual
sophistication. Here the two "obvious truths" meet, for it is of the
nature of creation to reflect God; this is necessary and not a matter
of choice or free will. Unification must come, it is an absolute
necessity arising from the Oneness of God.

How is absolute necessity reconciled in His philosophy with human
freedom? In other words, how is it that "all abide by His bidding,"
when so many willfully do their best to thwart the call of God?
`Abdu'l-Baha does this by distinguishing between two kinds of faith,
subjective and objective. Here is His exposition on that subject.

"Thou hast written of a verse in the Gospels, asking if at the time of
Christ all souls did hear His call. Know that faith is of two kinds.
The first is objective faith that is expressed by the outer man,
obedience of the limbs and senses. The other faith is subjective, and
unconscious obedience to the will of God. There is no doubt that, in
the day of a Manifestation such as Christ, all contingent beings
possessed subjective faith and had unconscious obedience to His
Holiness Christ.
"For all parts of the creational world are of one whole. Christ the
Manifestor reflecting the divine Sun represented the whole. All the
parts are subordinate and obedient to the whole. The contingent beings
are the branches of the tree of life while the Messenger of God is the
root of that tree. The branches, leaves and fruit are dependent for
their existence upon the root of the tree of life. This condition of
unconscious obedience constitutes subjective faith. But the discerning
faith that consists of true knowledge of God and the comprehension of
divine words, of such faith there is very little in any age. That is
why His Holiness Christ said to His followers, "Many are called but
few are chosen." (`Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, 364)

This comparison of truth in the universe with a tree whose roots go
deep underground into spirit reconciles Eastern and Western
philosophies. The tree beyond which lies only God is at the center of
Judaism (the burning bush), of Christianity (the Kingdom as a tiny
mustard seed that grows into the largest tree), of Islam (the Sadrat
of the boundary), and of course the Bodhi tree is a preoccupation in
Buddhism.

In my recent superficial foray into Eastern philosophy I was
interested to learn not just that Eastern thought pictures knowledge
and reality as a huge tree, which is common enough. Rather to my
surprise the image of this tree is utterly different from the way we
see a tree. Often the tree is pictured upside down with its roots
going upward. Even more disturbingly, the tree of knowledge is
imagined from the inside, as it were; it seems to extend into four,
five, or even more dimensions. You take a mental step and end up
inside a branch, another step and you meld into a twig or a leaf.

It takes strenuous mental gymnastics to get the brain around this
concept. I think though that it has gotten easier with the invention
of the Internet. I remember a journalist last year complaining that
before you could make reliable assumptions about people. You had a
good idea of what they thought and believed if you knew their
background or ethnicity. Now your neighbor can become a terrorist or a
pacifist without warning. The person in the next cubicle can shift
from a rightist or to a leftist, a saint to a sinner, and back again,
just by taking some wrong turn on the Net, by loading the wrong or the
right website.

I suppose what the Master is teaching is that this chaotic randomness
of our age will only be a temporary phase. We all have faith, be it
subjective or objective, and since there is only one truth, truth will
out, it will gradually unite and a new order will be restored. "The
contingent beings are the branches of the tree of life while the
Messenger of God is the root of that tree. The branches, leaves and
fruit are dependent for their existence upon the root of the tree of
life." (`Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, 364) Because the twigs and
leaves and branches of this tree permeate the universe, the agitation
of our mental atoms will stop shaking and rustling, they will begin to
orient around the invisible limbs of a tree that holds up the
universe. Here is peace, and this, `Abdu'l-Baha teaches, comes
straight out of the nature of things.

When I became a Baha'i, this was one of the unexpected fruits of the
invisible tree that I had learned to cling to. I could meet a person
from anywhere in the world, a person of any ethnic background, and the
fact that we were both Baha'is united us in every essential. It was as
if we shared the same spiritual DNA, as if the branch of the tree of
truth were growing inside us as well as outside. The Writings and
service to the Cause made us one, in a profound way that would be
inconceivable even with people of the exact same background or
ethnicity. And the tree is growing, that is the wonder of it all.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com