God, Man and Cargo

God, Man and Cargo

By John Taylor; 12 April, 2006

At the beginning of this essay series I determined to go through all
the Baha'i principles in the light of the Oneness of God as epitomized
in several "Great Being" statements from the Lawh-i-Maqsud. So far we
have covered one principle. To sum up:

The first Baha'i principle, investigation of reality, enlightens the
seeker with inner vision, the understanding sincerely to ask, along
with the greatest Minds gone before, "Why callest thou me good? there
is none good but one, that is, God." (Mark 10:18) This change of heart
reconciles private with public good, for divine good is embroiled in
the highest aim of both private and public. This mystic unity is
propounded in the short obligatory prayer too, where God is "the help
in peril, the Self-Subsisting," Lord of collective and individual
salvation, both apart and at once. To this all that is human bears
witness.

"I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no
strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord,
that I am God." (Isa 43:12)

Today let us move on to the second Baha'i principle, the Oneness of
Humanity. At least two Great Being declarations uphold this principle,
which indicates how pivotal it is. The first is concerned with a
change in perspective on our fellow seekers. This is the fruit of
search, the precondition of oneness:

"The Great Being saith: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity
hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the
fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch." (Tablets, 163)

The tabernacle was the tent that held the Arc of the Covenant as Moses
led His people across the wilderness. Baha'u'llah pitched His tent in
Ridvan, on Carmel and in several locations in the Akka area. Here the
friends recited tablets, especially on Holy Days. The tabernacle of
covenant encloses and protects unity if we cease to "regard one
another as strangers." We see the one tree in the light itself under
the roof of the tabernacle, as we saw in the Qu'ranic parable of an
oil lamp burning olive oil from the divine Tree of Knowledge.

To love humanity is to love God, and to love God is to love others.
Conversely, to criticize or disparage any person, high or low,
literate or illiterate, is to affront and dare to bully the Creator.
"He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God." (I Thes
4:8) We all owe the one lamp, the principle of the oneness of God that
lights up the tabernacle from above, a great debt of gratitude. Once
again, the Great Being declares,

"That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the
service of the entire human race. The Great Being saith: Blessed and
happy is he that ariseth to promote the best interests of the peoples
and kindreds of the earth. In another passage He hath proclaimed: It
is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather
for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and
mankind its citizens." (Tablets, 167)

Here is the light in the middle of the tabernacle of the unity of the
human race. It has endless implications for all values and priorities.
Love for our fellows, one and all, must be the basis of pride. Here is
Shangri La, the source of human happiness. This defines us, allows us
to call ourselves human beings rather than animals.

This set of "Great Being" statements is so powerful and
self-explanatory that I am tempted to leave it at that, to stop here
and go on to the next principle. Relax. Do not panic. I would never do
that to you, dear reader, you must know that. Before ending I will
step back and take another tack from further back.

A few weeks ago a reader of the Badi' list passed me a clipping of an
interview with the world's richest man, Bill Gates. In it Gates
recommends Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human
Societies" as the most important book published in the last fifty
years. I only just got a copy and began reading but so far I am
inclined to agree with Gates' assessment.

"Guns, Germs and Steel" starts off with an explanation of how the book
began. As a research biologist in the early 1970's, Diamond was
walking along a beach in Papua New Guinea. Here he met an intelligent
and inquisitive local by the name of Yali. Yali had observed that
although he and his friends were obviously of equal abilities with
white people, the latter enjoyed tremendous, disproportionate
advantages. Yali's question was this:

"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought
it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"
(Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 14)

If somebody asked me that, there would only be an embarrassed silence
in response. Not that was Diamond inclined to a flippant answer. He
thought about the question for thirty years and laid out his answer in
the form of this book. By asking different questions, he has come up
with a new perspective on history. One blurb on the back cover,
written by an anthropologist, says it all:

"This book is the perfect antidote to the `bell-curve' theories of
racial and ethnic differences. Drawing widely on geography, botany,
zoology, archeology and epidemiology, Diamond shows us that human
diversity is the result of historical processes, not differences in
intelligence."

I was reminded by this of Ruhiyyih Khanum's often expressed opinion
that the worst prejudice operative in the world today is that of
educated people against illiterates. Such is the power of knowledge,
that the educated assume that the illiterate are less intelligent,
which is not true at all. Material education only plugs you into the
machineries of material civilization, for better and for worse. It can
corrupt and prejudice as well as enrich.

The real lamp of life, true civilization is spiritual. This is the
cargo beyond price. The uneducated have the same, sometimes better,
access to spirit. Material education tends to be an accident of where
you were born and what color of skin you have; spiritual education is
just you, God and your ability to show love toward your fellows. This
is not conditional on outer education. No doubt, Ruhiyyih Khanum is
right that if the educated minority and the uneducated majority came
together and shared, there would be infinite benefits. In coming
essays I will no doubt feature more from Diamond's defense of Ruhiyyih
Khanum's thesis.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com