Limits of Being

The Limits of Being and the Greatest Gift

 

 

By John Taylor; 2006 May 11

 

 

"God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach." -Heywood Broun

 

 

We have been considering the Oneness of God in the light of various Great Being statements strewn throughout the Tablet to Maqsud. Turning to the principle of education yesterday we touched upon the following pronouncement by the "Great Being," "Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom." (Tablets, 161) Although the metaphors are unrelated, this is thematically reminiscent of the eleventh Arabic Hidden Word,

 

 

"O Son of Being! Thou art My lamp and my light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor upon thee."

 

 

The concern in both is with the precondition of education, self-help, "teaching" oneself by establishing an inner spiritual struggle. This is the precondition that leads to efficient learning. No student gains anything from a teacher without establishing a desire, steeling a determination to learn alone and on his or her own. Once orientation and preparation for truth is stable, then the learning process begins. In the same way, doctors cannot "cure" anybody; only if the patient's mind and body choose to respond to treatment does recovery begin. Our Dunnville monthly fireside speaker last Tuesday, Linda Miller, compared this to the speech the airline stewards give at the beginning of each flight. It seems that they advise passengers in the event of a sudden loss of oxygen to put the mask on oneself before attempting to help anyone else, even a small baby. However urgently the baby apparently needs air, it is doomed if its rescuer loses consciousness.

 

Another similarity between these two mystical passages from the Writings of Baha'u'llah is striking. Both refer to God as a "Being;" they in some way address the divine Essence in Its existential aspect. Is the Lawh-i-Maqsud's "Great Being" the same Father of Being found in those Hidden Words that start off with, "O Son of Being"? No fewer than fourteen verses of the Hidden Words start with "O Son of Being!", which is surpassed only by "O Son of Spirit! (15) and "O Son of Man!" (35) I am in no position to judge or even speculate upon that question. Perhaps nobody is. But still, as an experiment this morning I sorted each of the fourteen "Son of Being" verses from the Arabic Hidden Words into each of the principles. Here is the verse, number forty three, that seemed most appropriate for our present principle under the magnifying glass, that of promoting education:

 

 

"O SON OF BEING! Make mention of Me on My earth, that in My heaven I may remember thee, thus shall Mine eyes and thine be solaced."

 

 

This cuts to the heart of educational goals. What is the purpose of education, the fundamental spiritual motivation behind it? Here is the answer to questions like: Why bother to teach? Why make the huge effort that it demands to learn something new? Think of it, the average child in school is being asked to take in the best that has been learned by the world's best minds over twenty thousand years of human development in a mere twenty or so years of schooling. Not only that, they are expected to improve upon that body of knowledge and then somehow convey that product in even more compressed form to the next generation to follow. And so on, Ad Infinitum. Why? In short, why dig that long tunnel under the ground just to unearth some pretty rocks?

 

The answer is reciprocity, the Golden Rule. Not an ordinary reciprocity between equals, but one with the Ultimate Being, God, who gave us our existence as a free gift. We live, we exist, we are, therefore the least we can do is, like Adam in the garden, give names to the wonders that God is constantly creating before us. We can summarize, verbalize, and express the experience of being in more compressed format. If we do that, if we are grateful and recount His blessings, God will in turn remember us, he will participate in our creation, he will make us geniuses of Spirit. The Kingdom of earth will be as it is in heaven, "in my heaven I will make mention of thee." Here is Being, life.

 

I will conclude with a qualification that `Abdu'l-Baha gave to this. Great as is the gift of existence, it is not the greatest. God given something much greater, more demanding, but sublime. In Washington on 25 April, 1912, just before coming to Chicago to dedicate the "Mother Temple of the West," the Master said,

 

 

"In the world of existence the greatest bestowals of God are His teachings. The other bounties of God are limited as regards their benefits and provision. Human existence itself is a divine bestowal, but it is circumscribed with limitations. Sight and hearing are bounties of God; both are limited. And so it is with all the other bestowals; the circle of their operation is confined, restricted, whereas the sphere of the divine teachings is boundless. Centuries and ages pass away, but their efficacy continues like the spirit of life which animates the world of existence. Without the teachings of God the world of humanity is like the animal kingdom." (Promulgation, 61)

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com