Learning Oneness By Heart

Learning Oneness By Heart

By John Taylor; 2006 April

"Please God, that we avoid the land of denial, and advance into the
ocean of acceptance, so that we may perceive, with an eye purged from
all conflicting elements, the worlds of unity and diversity, of
variation and oneness, of limitation and detachment, and wing our
flight unto the highest and innermost sanctuary of the inner meaning
of the Word of God." (Kitab-i-Iqan, 160)

We ended yesterday with this mystical prayer from the Iqan, and it has
resonated in my mind since then, especially as I read through more of
Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel." Unlike the universal
histories that came before it (HG Wells, Arnold Toynbee, the Durants),
Diamond's book goes back long before civilization was born and delves
into pre-history. Here he finds the key to understanding why some
races and peoples became civilized, prospered and crushed others.

He considers the big turning point to be the "Great Leap Forward,"
which took place around 11,000 BCE. This age saw the invention that
set in motion the process of "guns, germs and steel," an unstoppable
Juggernaut crushing all before it. That invention was food production
(a broader term than agriculture), which eventually won out over
hunting and gathering. This was not the easy choice it seems to us
now, for the lifestyle of a hunter-gatherer was in most ways more
leisured and prosperous than the typical farmer of the time. Also,
hunter gatherers partially managed their local fish, game and plant
stocks, making the line between them and agriculturalists less clear.
The main reason hunting and gathering over many thousands of years was
largely replaced by food production was simply that wild fish, game
and plant stocks gradually depleted or were driven to extinction. In
the past few centuries hunter gatherers have been confined to marginal
regions unsuitable for agriculture. Diamond estimates that the last
vestiges of this ancient lifestyle will die out completely within ten
years. The book was written nine years ago but I hear that at least
one lost tribe was discovered in the meantime.

I have summed up this first part, the "farmer comes first" -- Diamond
calls it "Farmer Power" -- section of the book because, well, look at
what Baha'u'llah is saying in the above supplication. Everything is
contained within the Word of God, land and ocean, air and sky, and
above all the ultimate sanctuary, the Holy Word, a protected place
wherein we derive spiritual nourishment. Consider Diamond's overall
thesis that geography is the operating factor in human affairs, not
genetics. He sums it all up in one sentence,

"History followed different courses for different peoples because of
differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological
differences among people themselves." (Guns, Germs and Steel, 25)

What the Iqan is saying above in contrast to this is that in a
spiritual civilization there would be two kinds of geography or
environment, one outer and the other inner. The inner environment is
the Word and Will of God, and that would determine success as much or
more than outer surroundings. If that was true fifteen years ago, how
much more so is it now that the Internet interconnects all knowledge,
unites us inwardly without consideration of distance and geography.

But now that we are being so rapidly freed from the grasp of our
physical world I think that we are in a better position to appreciate
Diamond's thesis that until very recently geography and the
capabilities of the land was the overweening precondition of success.
If the land did not provide food there was no way it could support a
large population. Consider Jesus' parable of the seeds scattered on
different ground. This says that just this is the same in inner space.
If a spiritual teacher does not nourish those who follow him, they
must fly elsewhere to live; hence the reliability of the message of
the tried and true major religions.

What I wonder is this: is spiritual food something we get by food
production or by hunting and gathering? Surely it is absurd to think
that we can alter the Word, or even indirectly manage it, as hunter
gatherers do. It comes from heaven, holy, intact, untouchable.

True, it was possible to twist religion around. For centuries
religious leaders corrupted the Word. Since the Qu'ran was written
down, though, and especially now with the authorized texts of the Bab
and Baha'u'llah, deceiving people about the meaning of the text been
more difficult, assuming most people are literate. Of course, even
using authoritative scripture you can still be a devil who selectively
quotes scripture. So it is interesting that even as Baha'u'llah warns
against this, he brings up physical food and drink:

"Whoso, while reading the Sacred Scriptures, is tempted to choose
therefrom whatever may suit him with which to challenge the authority
of the Representative of God among men, is, indeed, as one dead,
though to outward seeming he may walk and converse with his neighbors,
and share with them their food and their drink." (Baha'u'llah,
Gleanings, 175-176)

Spiritual zombies, the night of the living, eating, drinking dead. The
Word on its own, then, does not guarantee life. Its purpose, its
spiritual sanctuary itself, is the covenant, the contract we have with
the Creator. The life of this covenant throbs like a heart in the
essence of being. Contact with it synchronizes all things.

For that reason our contact with the word in the covenant cannot be
random or sporadic, it must be as regular as a heartbeat. The physical
body does not thrive by gorging or long periods of famine, it depends
upon rhythmic feeding. Spiritual timing is established by a twice
daily ritual, one before day and one in the remains of the day, then
it all is rounded out by an assessment, by taking the self into
account. It has no name, so let us call this three step process the
covenant ritual.

The covenant ritual is spiritual food production and preparation, it
is farm and restaurant together. Morning and evening we nourish our
soul as we read over the Word and pray in words given for that purpose
by the Manifestation. This plants seeds, it sets a keynote in the ear
for the melody of providence. And then, after the Word has been read
and recited, who is taken into account? Not God, not the Word, not the
Covenant, only the individual herself. This is different from outer
selection, where both food and consumer evolve together.

Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel makes an interesting point to do with
artificial selection of food stuffs. He points out that even hunter
gatherers are constantly working artificial selection on the plants
they eat and the animals they hunt, even though they are probably not
aware that they are doing so. For example, they pick out the ripest,
reddest berry to eat. They do not waste time on little berries. Then
they spread that big-berried plant's seeds around when they carry them
home and eat them. Unlike outer farming and gathering, inner food
production is all our life, the Word does the work, unchanged. It
nourishes and we do not touch or alter it, since it is holy.

The Manifestation of God, as a human and not as the Word personified,
is hardly excepted from this selection and improvement process -- what
do you call it? Not natural selection, not artificial selection, well,
call it "divine selection." Consider the Temptation of Jesus. Jesus'
40 day fasting in the desert gave posterity the supreme example of how
to vanquish a scripture-quoting devil in the dry wilderness of denial.
It happened just after the dove of His Mission descended during the
baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. Here are the three quotes that
Jesus Christ cites one after the next to refute all that the Evil One
thinks up to steer Him astray,

"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God."
"You shall not test the Lord, your God."
"You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve."
(Matt 4:1-11, WEB)

First of all, we notice that in His own inner, divine selection He has
picked out exactly the right quote from Holy Writ. Jesus may be
non-literate but like most non-literate peoples He has a powerful
memory. He memorized everything He heard in the Book and cites just
what is needed when they are needed. At the same time, these quotes
are probably the three most important things you can get out of the
Word. One, the Word is food, eat well and regularly. Two, God tests
you, you do not test Him. Three, pay tribute only to the One, and no
other; in other words, the oneness of God.

This shows I think, that covenant and divine selection seem designed
as aids of memorization. We pick the quotes most useful for now,
assess ourselves in them, and then speak them to others. This daily
discipline conditions the mind for applying memorized quotes as active
tools to win our struggles in material existence. Here, tribal
non-literate peoples are at a distinct advantage to us pampered,
effete Westerners who, swimming in words, rarely memorize anything.
Diamond says at the outset that in spite of Westerners' apparent
collective superiority, his broad experience in befriending many
hunter gatherers has persuaded him that as individuals they are more,
not less intelligent. Their environment and lifestyle demand it of
them. Who can say how far they will leap forward when fed and armed
with words of wisdom from the omnipotent Word of God learned by heart?

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com