The Terrible, Multimodal Meek
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"As for the learned who are pure of heart and soul, each of them is a divine mercy and gift, a candle of guidance ... They are unmovable pillars bowing and genuflecting toward the house of God in the gathering of effulgence, encompassed by the beatific vision." (Abdu'l-Baha, Treatise on Politics)
Dear Friends,
Elvis-like, I am all shook up. My friend Stu and I set out last night for Mrs. Javid's fireside and I had just rounded the left onto Concession Street in Dunnville and was approaching the stop sign when my brake pedal hit the metal and there was nothing, not even a hint of a slowdown, much less a stop. So I turned around, dropped my car off at Lou's Garage, and we took the trip in Stu's car. Gordon Naylor gave a lovely talk on mysticism, consultation, the administration and a few other topics. But now all I can think about is how close to death I, and indeed our entire family, must have come. Should I sell this car and get a new one? Can I trust that mechanic to get it right this time? If I do decide to get rid of it, how can I in good conscience sell a death trap like this to anybody but a wrecker? And how to get around the Catch 22 of living in the country: in order to buy a car you have to have a car in the first place.
I want to get my mind out of this rut for now, so let me address something easy and straightforward this morning. A new Baha'i in our community asked about the motions and ablutions of the obligatory prayers, washing, standing, kneeling and bowing, hands in the air, etc. Why do we have to do all that? The question was asked of a Baha'i with access to the usual guidance in the Writings; it was passed on to me presumably because this did not satisfy. Frankly, I am not surprised. This is one of those questions that has a do-it-yourself answer, along the lines of what Aristotle said about playing the flute: the only way to learn to play the flute is by playing the flute. No amount of theorizing or high sounding advice can substitute for just doing it.
Other than saying, "do it, and you will find out why," I cannot say a great deal. Really, I am the last person to ask such a question. That is because I avoid as much as possible the genufluctive prayers. Not out of laziness, but out of craven, naked fear. I now know, in my head, why I tremble to go through the motions -- bowing low causes a rush of blood to the head, and this is known to provoke migraine attacks. But such is the force of my visceral reaction that even though the chances of an episode are more remote than ever I still feel a sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over my head, just enough distraction to keep me from concentrating and benefiting from the devotion. God willing this will fly off as my health continues to improve.
In spite of my lack of direct experience, I will attempt the best answer I can. It beats stewing about the brakes on my car.
A brief explanation of the Master is cited by the House of Justice in a footnote to the Aqdas,
"In a Tablet commenting on the presently-binding Obligatory Prayers, 'Abdu'l-Baha indicates that `in every word and movement of the Obligatory Prayer there are allusions, mysteries and a wisdom that man is unable to comprehend, and letters and scrolls cannot contain.' Shoghi Effendi explains that the few simple directions given by Baha'u'llah for the recital of certain prayers not only have a spiritual significance but that they also help the individual `to fully concentrate when praying and meditating'". (p. 167)
So from this we know that they are important, significant, ineluctable, ineffable, mystical, and that they help us concentrate (except when they do not). The only more detailed attempt to offer an explanation in Baha'i literature that I am aware of is in Adib Taherzadeh's three volume overview of the Writings of Baha'u'llah, entitled "The Revelation of Baha'u'llah." In it he offers the following enticing glimpse into the body of as-yet-untranslated Writings:
"Baha'u'llah has attached utmost importance to the obligatory prayer. 'Abdu'l-Baha in one of His Tablets describes it as 'the very foundation of the Cause of God' and the 'cause of spiritual life' for the individual. In another Tablet He states that the observance of the ordinance of obligatory prayer is binding on all and no excuse is acceptable, except when a person is mentally deranged or is confronted by extraordinary circumstances." (Vol. 3, p. 150)
Hey, what about us extraordinarily deranged persons? Are we exempt? Anyway, I want to cite the entire text of Taherzadeh's explanation of genuflections. Call it the cultural explanation. I cite this cultural thesis in order to be fair, for, let me tell you right off, I find it irksome, patronizing and unsatisfying in the extreme. In trying to shut a can of worms he unleashes a hornet's nest. Anyway, here is what this sage scholar has to say on the matter,
"The effect of the personality of the Manifestation on His religion is not limited to influencing the Word of God. It affects almost every feature of that religion. The genuflectory actions ordained in the obligatory prayers provide an example, for this important religious rite has been formulated and to some extent influenced by the personality of Baha'u'llah. These genuflections are intended to convey symbolically man's attitude towards his Lord. The combination of the words uttered with the actions that accompany them will bring about a greater consciousness of the sovereignty of God and of man's impotence and poverty in this life."
"The form that these actions take, however, is based in Baha'u'llah's own personal background. In the society in which He was brought up, the language was Persian and there were certain expressions which were conveyed by the movements of one's hands or body. Similar to the use of the Persian language in the revelation of the Word of God Baha'u'llah has incorporated these movements, which were known to Him, to express symbolically various feelings such as humility, supplication and servitude to God.
"Every culture has its own language and customs. The person of the Manifestation of God from the human point of view abides within His own environment. He expresses himself like the rest of His countrymen. In the Persian culture it was customary to raise one's hands towards heaven when supplicating the Lord, or to bend one's body when showing humility or to prostrate oneself before one's God when expressing one's utter nothingness before Him. These actions Baha'u'llah has incorporated in the obligatory prayers in order to increase the ardour and devotion of the servant when praying to his Lord and to demonstrate both by words and by action, the loftiness, the grandeur and the glory of God, while recognizing his own station of servitude at His threshold." (Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Baha'u'llah v 3, p. 349-350)
One word Adib: Islam. Ever hear of it? It is the majority religion in the land of your birth,
But I guess he has a point. When a Persian bows his head to the ground a Chinese, an African and a European standing by might well ask, "What do mean by doing that? Have you lost your contact lens? Are you looking into an ant hill?" Then the Iranian would have to stand up and explain that in his country a strange custom has arisen where bowing low has come to mean, get this, submission. In
But wait, does not the word "Islam" mean "submission?" Might not bowing have some religious significance to that Arabian religion? For gosh sakes, I had a dog called Jet once, long ago, and that motion, bowing head to ground, for her meant submission, or at least, "Do not hit me." And as far I know, she did not speak a word of Persian. An Iranian cultural attribute? Give me a break. While I calm down, check over this incident from history, which pretty much marked the beginning of the Arabian religion:
"After the surih of The Brightness, which brought Him (Muhammad) consolation and told Him: "Thy Lord hath not forsaken Thee...." He felt confident of His prophetic mission. The Faithful Spirit taught Him to pray, perform ablutions, stand and kneel in worship. One day as He and Khadijih were praying together young 'Ali entered the room. He saw them bowing down before empty space. He said, "What are you doing? Before whom are you bowing down?" Muhammad said, "Before God, Whose Prophet I am." 'Ali accepted the Faith, and in future he was called "Him whose face was never sullied," because he was so young when he became a believer that he had never worshipped an idol. (Marzieh Gail, Six Lessons on Islam, p. 6)
The Qu'ran uses the expression "dust on their foreheads" as a sort of shorthand for a believer in God, since that is what they do as they pray, they bow head to ground and by so doing dirty their brow. And when the Qu'ran was written, the number of Persians bowing down to a non-idol, to apparent nothingness, was small to negligible. Consider,
"`Walk not proudly in the land, for thou canst not cleave the earth, neither shalt thou equal the mountains in stature,' (Q17:39). The true Muslims are humble, known by the dust on their foreheads -- `their tokens are on their faces' (Q48:29) -- from bowing down in prayer." (Ibid, p. 15)
Let there be no mistake. This points to the great contribution of Islam to religious history, and obviously it is a lesson that Baha'u'llah did not want forgotten. It is this: there is a crucial difference between a believer, one who submits and habitually bows down in submission before God, and somebody who merely believes in God for the same reason that he believes that Napoleon's white horse was white, or that the King of Siam was from
"In prosperity, an individual forgets God, returning quickly to Him when in trouble: "When We are gracious to man, he withdraweth and turneth him aside; but when evil toucheth him, he is a man of long prayers." (Q41:51) (Marzieh Gail, Six Lessons on Islam, p. 15)
Now consider what Abdu'l-Baha said about a peculiar gesture that was, He says, made two millennia ago during the passion of the Christ,
"There were many other forms of reviling and persecution, spitting in His beautiful face, cursing and anathematizing, bowing backward toward Him, saying, `Peace be on thee, thou king of the Jews!'" (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 429)
Now here, admittedly, it may have been a Persian cultural attribute that made the Master pick out this particular gesture of contempt, bowing backwards, evidently on a par with spitting, made so long ago by an angry Jerusalem crowd. He may have been the victim of such insulting motions when He was a child, a known Babi, bullied by hostile gangs of urchins on the mean streets of Teheran. But even so, this happened in
On first blush, bowing backwards does not seem to be a major insult for us, here and now; but still, if I saw someone on the street give a very similar forward motion of the hips in my direction, I would hardly take it as a complement. The Master mentions reverse bowing again in describing the Passion to some Baha'is in
"Here I ceased to take notes. I was stabbed to the heart. As He flashed each scene to us with His vivid words and gestures I felt that He was reliving it. When He came to that walk to Golgotha: Jesus, the Saviour, stumbling beneath the weight of His Cross while the mob capered about, bowing backward, mocking `the King of the Jews,' I knew He was telling us of remembered anguish. `And when all this is finished,' He said, `Then the Terrible Meek will be expressed.'" (Diary of Juliet Thompson)
So by this logic, a believer in bowing the head and genuflecting is recapitulating in mirror-opposite the motions of those who mockingly bowed backwards to the Holy Ones. Thus all humans, good and bad, submissive and recalcitrant, show ourselves not just meek but terrible meek.
One gesture of Christ, spreading his arms out wide in the air while speaking to a large audience, impressed itself upon the memory of the disciples. This was exactly how Jesus later looked, spread-eagled with arms outwards, upon the cross. It is noted in the Book of Matthew. The same gesture, arms out high, is repeated thrice in the long obligatory prayer. Sure, a gesture of bounteous generosity, tinged by willingness to sacrifice self on the cross for God.
There are scientific justifications for repeated motions during obligatory prayers. We all unconsciously make hand motions when we speak extempore, and scientists have speculated that these hand movements jog spatial and verbal regions of the brain. There is little doubt that bodily movements go deep into the prehistory of language. Consider this spate of discoveries reported in a recent science magazine article,
"`Words would seem to have been necessary to establish the use of words.' Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau pithily summed up the paradox underlying the evolution of language some three centuries ago. So, how did words arise without the words to explain them? Biologists have long assumed that human language evolved from the basic vocalizations made by chimps and other primates, but this doesn't help resolve Rousseau's paradox. Now discoveries in chimps and other non-human primates suggest a solution: spoken language evolved from gesture." (New Scientist,
This article, "Bonobos and chimps 'speak' with gestures," seems to underline, in literal terms, what Baha'u'llah said about false science being confined only to words that end in words. If prayer is the beginning of all our words, we should not always be satisfied with mere words that begin in words. Sometimes our words should begin in gestures. In several illustrations this article even details specific regions of the brain and in our genetic code where word and movement centers overlap.
The article continues, explaining the meaning of certain primate gestures that startlingly resemble the "hands in air" phase of the long obligatory prayer,
"For example, the vocal signal "bared-teeth scream" signals fear in chimps and bonobos, but the gesture "reach out up", where an animal stretches out an arm, palm upwards, has different meanings. It may be begging for food, in the same way people beg for food or money, or it may be begging for support from a friend, says de Waal. `The open-hand gesture is also used after fights between two individuals to beg for approach and contact in a reconciliation. So the gesture is versatile, but the meaning depends on context.'" (Ib.)
I quail in advance at the sort of reader feedback I am going to get; how dare I compare our movements in our most sublime activity, prayer, to the gestures of chimpanzees! But what can I say? I am incorrigible. The reason I find it compelling is that word and gesticulation seem to go together at such a primitive level. The article continues,
"Humans often gesture in combination with speech, and chimps and bonobos also use such "multimodal" signals: making a gesture and vocalising at the same time. Pollick and de Waal found that multimodal signals were more likely to elicit a response in bonobos than in chimps. `It seems to fit other indicators that bonobos have a more complex integration of signals, so that gestures do not just emphasise the meaning of other signals, but perhaps transform them,' says de Waal."
Let me end with a final technical note about the hands-in-air motion, and the repetitions of the Greatest Name during the long obligatory prayer.
Way back when I was a new Baha'i I attended a youth conference where an aged Iranian scholar of the Faith (Persians were rare and exotic then) explained what is evidently commonly believed among our Eastern brethren, that we should not only raise arms when it says to do so in the long obligatory prayer, but even afterwards, when it does not. I was long puzzled about that and all these years I guiltily raised my hands, or did not, when it did not say to do so. When somebody asked why raise our arms high when only says to stand, the old man replied, "It is implied." Hmm. Well, finally around the turn of the millennium somebody asked the Universal House of Justice about that, and here is their reply.
MEMORANDUM
From: Research Department
To: The Universal House of Justice
Date:
Questions about Obligatory Prayer
....
Repetition of the Greatest Name in the Long obligatory Prayer
The National Spiritual Assembly observes that in the Long Obligatory Prayer, there are three occasions on which one has to repeat the Greatest Name three times. While it is clear that, on the first occasion, the believer has to raise his or her hands once and repeat the Greatest Name three times, the National Assembly enquires whether it is also necessary to raise one's hands on the other two occasions.
In relation to the first of the three instances, the Universal House of Justice stated on
"Let him then repeat the Greatest Name thrice, and bend down with hands resting on the knees, and say..." "Let him then repeat the Greatest Name thrice, and kneel with his forehead to the ground, and say..."
In contrast to the first occasion where the raising of the hands forms part of the explicit instructions, in the second and third instances no mention is made of raising the hands.
4. Raising hands twice in supplication
The National Spiritual Assembly refers to the instruction to stand and raise one's hands twice in supplication, and say the words that follow. It enquires "whether one should say each (of the two) phrase(s) each time one raises one's hands". While the intent of the question is not exactly clear to the Research Department, we provide the following extract from the letter dated
"Regarding the direction "Let him then stand and raise his hands twice in supplication, and say;...", the believer does not have to read twice the paragraph which follows. Whether the believer raises his hands twice before the reciting of the passage, or commences the reciting after having raised his hands once, and raises them a second time soon thereafter, is left to his choice." (from communication from Universal House of Justice, 2000 Nov 28, Various Questions re Long Obligatory Prayer)
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