Yesterday was the Birth of the Bab
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I was to do a visual presentation on the Birth of the Bab, my favorite Holy Day, on Friday night but two bugbears elbowed in to prevent me. First was my audio-visual curse. Every time I try to extend my writing to sound and pictures as well as words, something obstructs me. In this case, one of our computers crashed and fried; then, for the first time I recall, I lost the working file in which I was writing the Birthday essays. I scrambled and managed to partially reconstruct it from older backups. I had lost data but pieced together a condensed, revised version of the previous two essays on the Bab's Birthday, which is at the end of this installment.
The other bugbear was changeable weather. Although I do not get head pain migraines much any more, I have learned to cope and stave them off, still I get severely dragged down by rainy weather, with a vague but constant emotional pressure; not illness but not ease either. Late Thursday night, Thomas came into our bedroom in mute anguish. He was making jactitations; hand motions that strangely resembled an orchestra conductor in a moving musical passage. He said nothing, but it was clear he was in pain. It transpired that the top of his head was splitting. We asked if this happens often. "Only when I vomit." What? He has been vomiting? We are sending him to the doctor, but these are pretty clear symptoms of the abdominal migraine typical of certain blond children, an affliction that I too suffered at an early age. It is agonizing for a parent to find that he has passed on faulty genes, and that the exquisite agony you have suffered all your life is going to be shared by your only male heir. Truly, we put our hopes in Baha'u'llah when, speaking in the voice of God, He said: "my calamity is my providence."
At Friday night's Birthday of the Bab, Helen Kelly told about her pilgrimage to the House of the Bab, and I found it so inspiring that I asked her to retell it over the phone the next morning. The result of this interview you can find on the previous Badi' Blog entry for the day of the Birth of the Bab.
Normally I make my annual (sometimes semi-annual) contribution to Huqqu'llah on or soon after my favorite Holy Day, the Birth of the Bab. But this time I had watched the video about the Huqquq -- which features the recently deceased Dr. Varqa, the last of the Hands -- and it assures us that the Huqquq is not acceptable unless it is given with joy. And in spite of all my efforts to prepare for this event, in spite of writing two and a half essays and spending far more time on it than most of my fellow believers have leisure to spend, I had still come across great tests and difficulties, only some of which I have mentioned. True, working on Helen's pilgrimage did bring some joy on the holy Birthday, but so much else spelt only sorrow. Did this mean I could not give Huqquq this year? But then I thought of the saying "joy and sorrow embrace." And I thought how much tighter the embrace must have been for the Bab. I have a migrainy son, but his son died in childbirth. I have a scattered brain, His whole body was scattered by several hundred bullets. So, I realized, the presence of worldly darkness was not an excuse, it was in fact a dark shadow that makes the light all the brighter. So, I gave, smiles and tears blended in one.
So, the following is an abridged and condensed version of the two longer essays I produced last week. When my plans for an audio/video presentation did not pan out, I simply read this, and Silvie read the quotes, at our local Birth of Bab celebration,
Talk given for 2007 October 19, 04 Ilm, 164 BE; Birth of the Bab
Tomorrow, on the 20th of October, we stop our daily routine and celebrate the birthday of the Bab, among the most joyous celebrations in the Baha'i year. It marks the most momentous imaginable turning point in spiritual history: the birth of a Manifestation of God. The Bab was born Siyyid Ali Muhammad on the first of Muharram, 1235 A.H. in the Muslim calendar, to a businessman by the name of Siyyid Muhammad-Rida -- he was a mercer by trade -- and Fatimih-Bagum. His father died when the boy was nine years old; after that He was under the guardianship of his mother's brother, Haji Mirza Siyyid Ali. This was the only relative of the Bab to openly accept His Cause during His lifetime.
The Bab's birth took place early in the morning, reportedly before dawn, on this day in 1919. A dawn prayer prescribed in the Qu'ran seems to foreshadow this early morning event because it mentions Ali Muhammad's title, the Bab, or gate. The Qu’ran asks that all Muslims say this invocation in the small watches of the morning so that soon the Lord will raise them to a "station of Praise and Glory,"
"Say: O my Lord! Let my entry be by the Gate of Truth and Honour, and likewise my exit by the Gate of Truth and Honour; and grant me from Thy Presence an authority to aid (me). And say: Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish." (Q17:80-81, tr: Yusuf Ali)
Later in His life the Bab even adapted another dawn prayer, written by one of the twelve Imams, that mentions over nineteen attributes of God, as the framework for His calendar. This calendar is known today as the Badi or Baha'i calendar. In spite of this strong association with pre-dawn events, Baha'is are mercifully left free to pick a convenient time celebrate the happy occasion, as long as it takes place at some time during the twenty four hour period beginning at sunset of the 19th and ending on sunset the next day.
A recurrent theme in the Writings of the Bab is -- appropriately enough, in view of when His birth took place -- the image of a rising sun at dawn. He says, for example,
"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." (The Bab, Selections, 159)
In this we discern glimmerings of the new idea that divine revelation is progressive, that the sun dawns at diverse points on the horizon but always remains one sun. This is the essence of monotheism, the essence of faith. The sun's dawning points vary, they progress through different points of the horizon as the seasons progress, and in different constellations through the millennia, but there is ever only One God, a God not defined or limited to where His light originates but One that stands Independent. This idea later became central to Baha’u’llah’s teaching in the Iqan. And of course Abdul-Baha gave it tremendous emphasis in His expositions of Baha'i belief.
It is perhaps for this reason that Baha'u'llah spoke of the Bab in His Ishraqat as the Point from where all knowledge grows,
"Praise be to God who manifested the Point [the Bab] and caused to proceed therefrom the knowledge of all that was and shall be.... He is that Point which God hath made to be an Ocean of light unto the faithful among His servants, and a Ball of Fire unto the deniers among His creatures and the impious among His people." (Tablets, 102)
On this birthday celebration we should realize how fortunate we are to have the story of the Bab's birth and childhood in His own words, albeit tersely described. In a prayer the Bab wrote:
"Thou art aware, O My God, that since the day Thou didst call Me into being out of the water of Thy love till I reached fifteen years of age I lived in the land which witnessed My birth [Shiraz]." (Selections, 180-181)
We cannot know whether His peculiar expression, being "called into being out of the water of God's love," refers to His conception or His birth, but the idea that God's love is life-giving water is echoed in all scriptures, and especially the Qu’ran, which says, for instance,
"And God has created every animal from water: of them there are some that creep on their bellies; some that walk on two legs; and some that walk on four. God creates what He wills for verily God has power over all things." (Q24:45, Yusuf Ali)
By all reports the Bab had tremendous personal magnetism. T.K. Cheyne wrote the following about the Bab:
"Such a prophet ... was the Bab; we call him prophet for want of a better name, yea, I say unto you, a prophet and more than a prophet. His combination of mildness and power is so rare that we have to place him in a line with super-normal men.... We learn that at great points in his career, after he had been in an ecstasy, such radiance of might and majesty streamed from his countenance that none could bear to look upon the effulgence of his glory and beauty. Nor was it an uncommon occurrence for unbelievers involuntarily to bow down in lowly obeisance on beholding His Holiness while the inmates of the castle though for the most part Christians and Sunnis, reverently prostrated themselves whenever they saw the visage of His Holiness. Such transfiguration is well known to the saints. It was regarded as the affixing of the heavenly seal to the reality and completeness of [the] Bab's detachment." (quoted in Vamberi, Reconciliation of Races and Religions, pp. 8-9, and in Dawn-breakers, 514)
Perhaps the greatest tribute possible to the Bab comes from Baha'u'llah himself, in the third paragraph of the Isriqat,
"Praise be to God who manifested the Point [the Bab] and caused to proceed therefrom the knowledge of all that was and shall be.... He is that Point which God hath made to be an Ocean of light unto the faithful among His servants, and a Ball of Fire unto the deniers among His creatures and the impious among His people."
Here Baha'u'llah identifies the mission of the Bab as the establishment, once and for all, of the knowledge of the Oneness of God as one point, one dawning point. Thus, on this day, the dawning point entered into this world. This special relation to divine Oneness is made even clearer by Baha'u'llah in the section of His Tablet of Ahmad dedicated to the Bab. We are all familiar with this powerful invocation, so I will just sum it up: Baha'u'llah tells Ahmad, who was one of the few Babis who had actually met the Bab in person, that any who deny the Bab must perforce be a false one. A denier cannot really believe in God. They can never prove their sincerity in believing in God, even should they combine to assist one another.
The Bab Himself confirms this understanding of His role in the following passage from the Qayyumul-Asma, addressed to the "delight of the eyes," in other words, Baha'u'llah,
"O Qurratul-Ayn! Say: Verily I am the Gate of God and I give you to drink, by the leave of God, the sovereign Truth, of the crystal-pure waters of His Revelation which are gushing out from the incorruptible Fountain situate upon the Holy Mount. And those who earnestly strive after the One True God, let them then strive to attain this Gate. Verily God is potent over all things..." (Selections, 50)
And again, He writes in the seventh chapter of that same book,
"O peoples of the earth! Bear ye allegiance unto this resplendent light wherewith God hath graciously invested Me through the power of infallible Truth, and walk not in the footsteps of the Evil One, [Q2:204] inasmuch as he prompteth you to disbelieve in God, your Lord, and `verily God will not forgive disbelief in Himself, though He will forgive other sins to whomsoever He pleaseth.' (Q4:51) Indeed His knowledge embraceth all things... (Selections, 48)
As you just heard in the above quotation from the Qu’ran, the Muslim teaching is that only by truly believing in God can we attain sure forgiveness for our sins. Since that is only possible, according to what the Bab Himself asserts here, to those who believe in and accept the Bab, it follows that His Way is the only assured way to divine forgiveness. This He assures us repeatedly in His Writings,
"O children of men! If ye believe in the one True God, follow Me, this Most Great Remembrance of God sent forth by your Lord, that He may graciously forgive you your sins. Verily He is forgiving and compassionate toward the concourse of the faithful." (Selections, 45)
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