Master and Mammon II

The Master and Mammon

Oneness of God Series, Master Principle, Part Two

By John Taylor; 1 April, 2006

My goal today is to link the Master Parable to the Revelation of
Baha'u'llah as laid out in two Hidden Words. Yesterday we looked at
the parable of the Qu'ran emphasizing the superiority of a servant of
one master over one afflicted by two or more.

"Consider this comparison. There are two men: the one has many masters
who are ever at odds among themselves; the other has one master, to
whom he is devoted. Are these two to be held alike? Allah forbid! But
most of them have no knowledge." (Q39:30)

We saw that the original Arabic text of this passage seems to imply
that in the first case the bosses and even the worker are warring
"partners" in the enterprise, hence the important expression "joining
partners with God." These are not enlightened partners; they are at
one another's throats. Without this concept of the ego betraying the
Oneness of God by joining partners with Him it would be difficult to
understand the central Baha'i principle of perseverance in the
covenant. Strength and unity result when the heart has "one master, to
whom he is devoted." The Christian version of the parable is,

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the
other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matt 6:24)

Here the mention of Mammon is crucial. In Medieval lore, there were
held to be seven deadly sins, each sin hosted by a caretaker devil.
Lucifer, a fallen angel, whose name means "born of dawning light,"
ruled over pride; Mammon ruled avarice, Asmodeus lechery, Satan anger,
Beelzebub gluttony, Leviathan envy, and finally Belphegor sloth. Why
does Jesus pick on Mammon here? Consider that the first and deadliest
of the deadly sins is pride. Why not say, "Ye cannot serve both God
and Lucifer"? I think the answer may be that pride is unlike other
vices. It is untouchable by what appeals to the others. An anecdote of
my father illustrates why this is so.

As a career salesman my father sold many products over several
decades, including cars, hearing aids, mutual funds and home
improvements. He observed that only one company prescribed for its
sales persons what is called negative selling technique. This was a
correspondence school promoting courses in what is now called
"distance learning." In effect they had to "sell" education, so sales
personnel were trained to put potential clients down, to ask them:
"What are you doing with your life? You are in a dead-end position;
you have no prospects of advancement. You are useless, helpless. Your
boss can bully you all he wants and you have no choice but to take it
because you are financially bound. Every minute of your day is a
humiliation. Your only hope is to better yourself by taking this
course." My father hated this and quit the job sooner than usual. This
company felt that negativity would work because, I think, education is
in fact like Lucifer; it is born of the bright light and dark shadows
of the dawn, and pride woven into the fiber of its being.

The advancement of learning and education is built upon the first
virtue, faith. In order to want to learn one must believe in oneself.
Also, one must believe in the power of knowledge to make a better
world and a better me. Problems and negativity, and even humiliation,
are fodder for this virtue, they tweak the student into studying
harder. Cut that sustaining belief in oneself off from the One God,
and Lucifer falls out of heaven. Fallen faith is pride. When pride
predominates faith flees, for God is the object of all knowledge. As
soon as self jumps in, the One jumps out. One becomes two, the idol of
pride, the first deadly sin. Pride is self-satisfaction and compares
the ego with others rather than what the self can become. This slowly
stifles the desire to improve, breeds prejudice, kills goodwill and
personal influence and, in a group, snuffs out camaraderie and unity.

Mammon, on the other hand, can seem entirely pleasant and positive in
its appeal. In a capitalist society, avarice is thought of as a
benefit, a virtue rather than a vice. Enlightened self-interest feeds
the engines of commerce and industry. If some profit and
acquisitiveness is helpful, more must be even better. Thus Mammon
gives birth to commercialism; it puffs up and pushes false hopes on
high and low. It has no need for negativity, no need to challenge
peoples' pride. Appeals to Mammon always look enlightened, friendly
and helpful; who can object to a seller helping you to gain more of a
good thing?

Greed is a universal attractor. The more freedom, liberalism and
equality reign in a society, the stronger Mammon becomes. Everybody
could do with more. Even when there is no discernable need, even if
owning a product would in reality be a burden, a complete waste of
time and space, it is astonishingly easy to persuade yourself that it
would be nice to own it. Usually, just looking at an image of it is
enough. Advertisers take advantage of this. Without thinking, without
paying attention, one can suddenly find oneself with strong desires
for whatever they offer.

If you doubt, try this little experiment. Sit down and watch a spate
of advertisements on television. Write down the deadly sin that each
advertiser is appealing to. Rarely will you find negative selling or
overt appeals to pride. You will probably find that the desire for
more, avarice is the main attractor. Even when a given ad could be
categorized under another deadly sin, Mammon is always a close
contender for second place.

Consider my father's sales job browbeating poor working stiffs,
offering a way out of daily humiliation in the workplace by way of a
correspondence course. Even this invocation of Lucifer takes in an
appeal to Mammon, since educational credentials lead to higher paying
jobs and therefore more purchasing power. On the other hand, too
frequent appeals to Mammon tend to degrade pride, they discourage
without challenging. Adolescent females are among the first victims;
repeated images of supermodels in the media make them seem to be the
standard of beauty, and since nobody can change their own body, teen
girls are discouraged early in life.

This mention of beauty leads to two Hidden Words that I think build
upon and further extend the One Master principle. The first deals with
One God as the only true and reliable standard of beauty, as well as
love and will.

"O SON OF SPIRIT! Wouldst thou have Me, seek none other than Me; and
wouldst thou gaze upon My beauty, close thine eyes to the world and
all that is therein; for My will and the will of another than Me, even
as fire and water, cannot dwell together in one heart." (Arabic Hidden
Words, #8)

The second Hidden Word is concerned with time, the permanence of our
relationship with the One Master. It compares faith's protection to
clothes, which guard and adorn the body while giving the soul a field
in which to express virtue.

"O MY FRIEND IN WORD! My eternity is My creation, I have created it
for thee. Make it the garment of thy temple. My unity is My handiwork;
I have wrought it for thee; clothe thyself therewith, that thou mayest
be to all eternity the revelation of My everlasting being." (Persian
Hidden Words, #26)

It would be futile to attempt to follow every new trail which even
these two Hidden Words open up. I only want to show the place from
which they start, a simple parable about a slave with one master and
another with many. The coming Golden Age will surely be a theocratic
utopia infused by this master principle, permeated in every
conceivable aspect of life. The contribution of Baha'u'llah's Word is
to inspire the soul with the power of faith, to liberate it from vice,
to give courage and impetus to cast off Mammon, Lucifer and the
others, and take on the robe of service to the One.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com