Caves

The Cave of the Covenant, I

By John Taylor; 2007 June 29

A cave is a natural place of refuge from the elements. Bears and wolves use them as dens; sanctuaries where they can either hibernate for the winter or in the spring nurture their young in safety. In a prayer for protection Abdu'l-Baha uses cave in this sense, as a refuge from danger,

"O my God! O my God! Guard them by the eye of Thy protection, preserve them in the cave of Thy defence, deliver them from the grade of the contingent world, protect them during the violence of tests and trials, and assist them by a power from the breath of Thy Holy Spirit, in the world of existence! Verily, Thou art the Beneficent, the Mighty, the Clement!" (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets, Vol. 2, p. 275)

But of course a safe haven for one does not necessarily mean safety for everybody. This is why it is by no means safe for an unarmed traveler to wander into a cave until he can be sure that previous dwellers have vacated and will not return unexpectedly. There is evidence that our rivals for many thousands of years, the Neanderthals, were cave dwellers. Even today the word "troglodyte", for those who live in caves, is used often in a pejorative sense, indicating low, primitive sensibilities.

Caves have always played an important role in religion, both ancient and modern.

More often than you can count in religious history a cave was the only place that a saint or prophet had to dwell in. Anchorites fled to caves not just to be alone, or to escape the inclemency of nature, but to escape the wrath of society. Muhammad in His flight from Mecca hid in a cave, and was saved from discovery by His persecutors only by a fast-working spider whose large web persuaded the pursuers that He could not have gone in. Baha'u'llah fled the envy, disunity and disputation of the Babis and dwelled in a cave in southern Kurdistan for almost two years. In one of His best known prayers, "Blessed is the spot," He blesses the cave as the eighth of thirteen locations in which "mention of God hath been made and His praise glorified."

Jesus began His mission with 40 days in the wilderness, and was reaching the end when, upon entering Jerusalem at the time of Passover, a purification festival, He was angered to see what we would now call on-location concession booths selling pigeons to be sacrificed within the temple for the expiation  of inadvertent sins. Furious, He declared that this was a house of prayer, not a robber's cave (Matt 21:13). This was a reference to Jeremiah,

"Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?" (Jer 7:11)

Who was robbed? God was, which is the same as saying that the people were being robbed of the vitality of their link to God. This incident was the only known case of "Jesus, meek and mild" being carried away by fury. As the Qu'ran was later to say, the only unforgivable sin is to compromise one's belief in the One God. By selling forgiveness, the Temple priests robbed the people and themselves of free and direct concourse with God, and turned holy ground into a cave or den, the home of predators.

For the Ancient Greeks, a cave was not an abomination but often was itself sacred ground. Caves lead into the mysterious bowels of the earth, where the dead take their last journey. Even the Jews of this time thought of the afterlife as taking place down below, in an underworld they called Sheol, “the land of gloom and deep darkness” (Job 10:21). As any reader of the New Testament knows, this was literally the case in Palestine; corpses were not usually buried. Paupers were left to rot in unsanitary dumps (the famous Gehenna was one near Jerusalem) and those of more respectable standing were left in caves, with stones rolled before the entrance to keep out scavengers.

For better or worse, caves were the place of the dead, and had associations with mystical, polytheistic cults. In Hellas, for example, the Delphic cult was centered upon an underground cave system. A cleft has been recently discovered down there, from which natural gasses escaped. The Oracle of Delphi was a young girl who went down into this cave alone and breathed the air. She soon become inebriated by the fumes, entered a trance and spoke words thought to be inspired of the gods.

But most caves were not sacred, and served as the only refuge of outcasts who would change the current religious order. One of the most illustrious of these cave dwelling reformers was Socrates, according to Baha'u'llah:

"After him came Socrates who was indeed wise, accomplished and righteous. He practised self-denial, repressed his appetites for selfish desires and turned away from material pleasures. He withdrew to the mountains where he dwelt in a cave. He dissuaded men from worshipping idols and taught them the way of God, the Lord of Mercy, until the ignorant rose up against him." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 146)

Baha'u'llah is pointing to a primal experience that Socrates, and indeed every mystic and prophet goes through. First come purification and enlightenment, then rejection and dwelling in the wilderness, often in a cave. Finally come persecution, sacrifice, and in the case of Socrates, martyrdom. This seems to indicate -- we will examine this in more detail later -- that Plato's famous parable of the Den or Cave was not so much a myth as a literal retelling of Socrates’ life experience.

May Maxwell, in her famous little account of her visit with the Master, "An Early Pilgrimage," mentions an experience the Master told about another troglodyte, a social outcast who hosted the ultimate Guest, an honor that kings in their castles and palaces of that time lost out on. We do not know in which cave this man lived, but probably it lies somewhere on the road between Baghdad and Istanbul.

"... if anyone mentioned that the food was delicious, He smiled lovingly on the speaker and said: `That is because your heart is full of love; when the heart is filled with love everything seems beautiful and delightful to us.' Then He told us the story of the hermit; how once when the Blessed Perfection was travelling from one place to another with His followers He passed through a lonely country where, at some little distance from the highway, a hermit lived alone in a cave. He was a holy man, and having heard that Our Lord, Baha'u'llah, would pass that way, he watched eagerly for His approach. When the Manifestation arrived at that spot the hermit knelt down and kissed the dust before His feet, and said to Him: 'Oh, my Lord, I am a poor man living alone in a cave nearby; but henceforth I shall account myself the happiest of mortals. If Thou wilt but come for a moment to my cave and bless it by Thy Presence.'

"Then Baha'u'llah told the man that He would come, not for a moment but for three days, and He bade His followers cast their tents, and await His return. The poor man was so overcome with joy and gratitude that he was speechless, and led the way in humble silence to his lowly dwelling in a rock. There the Glorious One sat with him, talking to him and teaching him, and toward evening the man bethought himself that he had nothing to offer his great Guest but some dry meat and some dark bread, and water from a spring nearby. Not knowing what to do he threw himself at the feet of his Lord and confessed his dilemma. Baha'u'llah comforted him and by a word bade him fetch the meat and bread and water; then the Lord of the universe partook of this frugal repast with joy and fragrance as though it had been a banquet, and during the three days of His visit they ate only of this food which seemed to the poor hermit the most delicious he had ever eaten. Baha'u'llah declared that He had never been more nobly entertained nor received greater hospitality and love. 'This,' exclaimed the Master, when He had finished the story, 'shows us how little man requires when he is nourished by the sweetest of all foods - the love of God.'" (An Early Pilgrimage, pp. 24-25)

Next time we will discuss another cave, the cave of Elijah, as well as Plato's Den.