Unnamed Tablet

Inner meaning of the principle of Oneness of God;
Notes on an Unnamed Tablet of the Bab

By John Taylor; 2006 June 24

Today let us go through an unnamed tablet of the Bab from the section "Excerpts from Various Writings" in the compilation "Selections from the Writings of the Bab."

First off, have you ever wondered why the Hidden Words are almost all addressed, "O Son of..."? Yes, it is a common literary convention -- used in the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, for instance -- for a sage in wisdom literature to offer advice as if he were a father giving advice to his eldest son, the one according to ancient laws of primogeniture would take over proprietorship of the family farm, business or other enterprise. Historically, this was the most important type of advice possible. Upon it hung the family name and the fate of all its possessions. If a daughter or younger son messed up it was a personal tragedy, but an unwise heir could sink the entire family fortune and everybody's link to family tradition. But this is getting it backwards, for the model of filial relationships, the greatest, the primal father-son tie is that of God to His Manifestation. Upon this relation we all depend for our spiritual purity and vitality. Consider God's words here addressed to the Bab in His role as the eldest son, inheritor of a new name, the gate to a time when God's Messenger is no longer called prophet but "manifestation":

"I have called Thee into being, have nurtured Thee, protected Thee, loved Thee, raised Thee up and have graciously chosen Thee to be the manifestation of Mine Own Self, that Thou mayest recite My verses as ordained by Me, and may summon whomsoever I have created unto My Religion which is none other than this glorious and exalted Path." (The Bab, Selections, 158)

The parable of the vineyard explains this distinction. The master's heir from now on will no longer be sent as a messenger to stewards of an usurped estate telling them to get ready to hand it over, as prophets did in the past. Now He is inheritor coming into direct sovereign proprietorship. He writes the message down for all to read themselves, thus "manifesting" the Will of God in authentic, verifiable text. For what does He inherit? Verses. He recites them and calls those created "unto My Religion which is none other than this glorious and exalted Path." What does Path imply? For one thing, ownership is ultimately of God, so this heir does not hold onto land passively. He builds a Path through a garden. The verses given to Him explain how; they are an "owner's manual," so to speak.

In every meaningful sense before the Bab came ownership did not exist. Only a tiny percentage of the population owned anything. The vast majority of the human race were dispossessed. They did not own land, land owned them. Slaves were property, bought and sold. The "free" peasantry were legally required to stay on the land they worked and were bought and sold along with the estate. Those few who did gradually liberate themselves from material serfdom remained slaves to their own ignorance and animal drives. As Rousseau put it, "...man acquires with civil society, moral freedom, which alone makes man master of himself; for to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom." (Social Contract, 65) The Manifestation is, from the spiritual point of view, the first morally free Owner ever. His followers take God's will upon themselves as their own rule, their own intimate master. Thus He takes possession of all hearts, and by extension all things, by means of God's love. But again, this is getting it backwards, All things were created for Him in the first place. Consider the next, truly astonishing statement that God addresses to the Bab:

"I have fashioned all created things for Thy sake, and I have, by virtue of My Will, set Thee sovereign Ruler over all mankind." (Id.)

One essential transition is missed by those of us not born into Jewish home, the coming of age ceremony known as a Bar Mitzvah, or for girls, a Bat Mitzvah. Kurt Vonnegut in his memoir, "Timequake," fervently suggests that such a ceremony be made a fundamental human right for every child, written into the constitution. But he adds that this would be impossible without a strong extended family to implement it. Myself, I think there should be such a thing as a "family constitution," backed by civil law. Until that happens we will never understand the value of monarchy, which is a national coming of age ceremony, much less the Supreme ceremony of the Manifestation depicted here.

In any case, these words addressed to the Bab seem to my ears to be a divine Paterfamilias conferring maturity upon the new "Manifestation" in a primordial Bar Mitzvah ceremony. We are all to pay attention as if we were friends and extended family members attending a Bar Mitzvah. Again, Christ prefigured it.

"A multitude was sitting around him, and they told him, "Behold, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are outside looking for you." He answered them, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Looking around at those who sat around him, he said, "Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever may do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." (Mark 3:32-5, WEB)

The prophets of old spoke of God's Will as something coming in the future, but now it is manifest, here and now. The Will of the Bab's and God's Will are one, for He is a true Son in a profound way beyond our comprehension. God loves this firstborn son and the Bab loves Him back. This love and this only is a love worthy of the Supreme Being. We can never fathom such total love to and from God. It confers virtual possession of all things on the manifestation, the clarifying One. God's Will, and what identifies with it, directly pulls the strings of every atom and quark, every law, every throw of the quantum dice, in the universe.

The tenth month of the Bab's Badi' Calendar is Mashiyyat, Will. Its central position in the year (nine months before, nine after it) demonstrates the pivotal role that will and ownership play in all things. The Bab inherited it first, but inherit when we love and sacrifice for Him. Identify with God's will through His religion and verses, and moral freedom is our inheritance. We become a mature son or daughter of God. Everything in the universe, the whole family fortune, is destined for you. Jalalu'Din Rumi, a minor prophet himself, expressed it poetically:

"For he that is beside himself is annihilated and safe;
Yea, he dwells in security forever.
His form is vanished, he is a mere mirror;
Nothing is seen in him but the reflection of another.
If you spit at it, you spit at your own face,
And if you hit that mirror, you hit yourself;
And if you see an ugly face in it, 'tis your own,
And if you see an 'Isa there, you are its mother Mary.
He is neither this nor that he is void of form;
'Tis your own form which is reflected back to you."
(Mathnavi of Rumi, Vol. 4, E.H. Whinfield tr)

This reflexivity of spirit had been understood on a personal level before. What is new in our age of manifestation is that the mirror can be reflected in many, in group action. Spiritual enlightenment and evolution is no longer just about you, or just me, it is the reflection in us of our unity together. We combine in love with our brothers and sisters, we separate and recombine like letters of the alphabet expressing the Bab's supreme will. Not dead letters but living, breathing, loving letters, which is why the Bab's 19 leading followers were entitled "Letters of the Living." The Creator lays this out with perfect clarity to the Bab in the following:

"Moreover, I have decreed that whoso embraceth My religion shall believe in My unity, and I have linked this belief with remembrance of Thee, and after Thee the remembrance of such as Thou hast, by My leave, caused to be the 'Letters of the Living', and of whatever hath been revealed from My religion in the Bayan. This, indeed, is what will enable the sincere among My servants to gain admittance into the celestial Paradise." (Selections, 158-159)

To embrace this extended family requires only one belief above all: they "shall believe in My unity..." The Bab has been laying out the principle of principles, the Oneness of God. This is why I so strongly believe that all Baha'i principles are nothing but derivations of this one central conviction, the belief that God is One, that from one comes many, and that the love of the Manifestation demonstrates unity. As the Bab puts it, "I have linked this belief with remembrance of Thee..." Talk God and you talk the Bab, talk the Bab and you talk his followers... their immolation spelled out His meaning in flaming letters.

And remember, who was always there behind the scenes, the puppet master pulling the strings of Vahid, Tahirih, Hujjat, and all the other Babi' heroes? Baha'u'llah Himself. He taught them that theirs was a path to supreme sacrifice and He fortified them in that. Together they spelled out, as perfect mirrors, the meaning of the martyrdom of the Bab. This was how the Heir came of age, by taking on the crown of martyrdom. The Bab, the heir, is next informed that the very structure of the universe reflects His identity with God.

"Verily, the sun is but a token from My presence so that the true believers among My servants may discern in its rising the dawning of every Dispensation." (Selections, 159)

Intellectually, the inheritor of this was `Abdu'l-Baha. He read and memorized the Bab's Writings in youth instead of formal schooling. His assiduous study in youth of the Bab's verses came into full flower in old age when He traversed the West with a simple, penetrating and original analogy in hand: sun and earth explain understandably what had been called the trinity, the threefold levels of God, Manifestation, and creation that we see on the ring stone symbol, also designed by `Abdu'l-Baha as a teaching device. Hundreds of times the Master repeated this clarifying, manifesting metaphor. God, to the Bab, then explains the direct act of will that brought about creation, first through the Bab's Word, then all things proceeding from that.

"In truth I have created Thee through Thyself, then at My Own behest I have fashioned all things through the creative power of Thy Word. We are All-Powerful. I have appointed Thee to be the Beginning and the End, the Seen and the Hidden. Verily We are the All-Knowing."

Here the Mystery is laid out in positive terms. We know now that creativity an act of direct will and that the Manifestation is on a higher level because God created Him directly, "through Thyself," and other created things came about "through the creative power of Thy Word." He is his own substance, in technical terms, self-subsisting. Other created beings are removed from the grounds of their existence, as the word "substance," "standing under," signifies. The manifestation speaks the words and creation is the letters, syllables and phonemes that make up His speech. So much for what He is; next we are directed to what is not Him.

"No one hath been or will ever be invested with prophethood other than Thee, nor hath any sacred Book been or will be revealed unto any one except Thee. Such is the decree ordained by Him Who is the All-Encompassing, the Best Beloved.

I suppose that at a Bar Mitzvah for the eldest son the father can stipulate that this son and nobody else will run the family business. So it is with the divine heritage. All previous prophets and prophesies are wrapped up into one Revelation, that of the Bab. All loyalty goes to Him, and anybody who enters or works on the family farm answers to His leadership. This is the heart of the principle of the Oneness of God. Here is the concluding paragraph of the Bab's Tablet. If "Bab" means gate, here is the hinge to the gate, the center around which it and all things move. The words of the Bab, as this attests, "inherit" the meanings behind all previous scriptures. That is what ownership truly is, for words are the most powerful tool known to humankind.

"The Bayan is in truth Our conclusive proof for all created things, and all the peoples of the world are powerless before the revelation of its verses. It enshrineth the sum total of all the Scriptures, whether of the past or of the future, even as Thou art the Repository of all Our proofs in this Day. We cause whomsoever We desire to be admitted into the gardens of our most holy, most sublime Paradise. Thus is divine revelation inaugurated in each Dispensation at Our behest. We are truly the supreme Ruler. Indeed no religion shall We ever inaugurate unless it be renewed in the days to come. This is a promise We solemnly have made. Verily We are supreme over all things..."

--
John Taylor

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