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Fade to Back

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 29, 18 Masa'il, 164 BE

Our kids are avid fans of Futurama, so there was no question but that I would be forced, under threat of grievous bodily harm -- Silvie invented her own form of "karate," a windmill-like flailing of arms and legs accompanied by the shout "Hiya!" specially and exclusively designed to persuade a reluctant father to do what he does not want to do -- to purchase the just released "Bender's Big Score" as soon as it was available. Our little feet patterers replay their favorite material so often that I usually leave off watching, knowing that eventually just wandering through on the way to the kitchen or bathroom I will glimpse enough fragments to add up to the whole story. One fragment I did pick up from "Big Score" is in the extra features section of the DVD. It seems that the cartoonists and storytellers of Futurama are guided by a real mathematics professor, Sarah Greenwald, who sees to it that streets are given names like Pi and e. She has her own math teaching website called Futuramamath.com.

She explains one scene from the series that she initiated, where the gang are entertaining a guest and they decide to show him the edge of the universe (Zoidberg: "You know, you live right by these places but it takes a stranger to force you go out and see them.") What transpires is that the Futurama crew go and stand at the rail of the panoramic outlook podium looking over at the edge of our universe. Then, lo and behold, all they see before them is the back of their own heads. So, it seems that the idea of a recursive universe has sunk out of the warm and fuzzy clouds of poetry and philosophy and gained entry into the hard and pointy world of mathematics, physics and astronomy.

 Baha'u'llah did the same thing, only He raised it from poetry and philosophy up and away, into the giddy heights of Holy Writ.

"Thou hast asked regarding the subject of the return. Know thou that the end is like unto the beginning. Even as thou dost consider the beginning, similarly shouldst thou consider the end, and be of them that truly perceive. Nay, rather consider the beginning as the end itself, and so conversely, that thou mayest acquire a clear perception. Know thou moreover that every created thing is continually brought forth and returned at the bidding of thy Lord, the God of power and might." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 183)

As Baha'u'llah says, our endings are wrapped up in our beginnings our starts in our stops, and I started out my intellectual life as an atheist. It feels strange to climb laboriously up the long ladder of my faith, look out expectantly from the rail of its high outlook tower, and then only witness the back of my own head.

But that just how I feel as I investigate atheism and the proofs of God.

An old joke has a grain of truth in it: we all start out as atheists in the morning, then become agnostics in the afternoon and in the evening before sleep we transform into firm believers. The non-existence of sleep forces faith, which is why it is crucial for all, Baha'i or not, to enter into prayer and reading of Holy Writ in both morning and evening. That way our beginnings and our endings, our high times and our low, will be in God and for Him, and we will not be tossed so violently on the waves of belief and unbelief. Once, when the kids were unusually reluctant to say their morning prayers, Tomaso asked, "Why do we have to pray?" and I found myself saying:

"We are praying because a lover does not just pray in the bad times when he needs God to get him out of trouble. That is pure selfishness. A true lover enters into a complete marriage bond. He talks to God at all times, happy as well as sad, from youth to old age; he communes not only morn and eve but in the afternoon too every day. A lover shares highs, lows and depression, duds and boredom too. Want it or not, God dominates the beginnings and the ends, but it is the times in-between, free time, the moments we choose at our discretion, that is when it is hardest but it means something, and that is most precious to God. Ultimately, that is the only free, voluntary gift we have to offer."

Our understanding in this world has a saprophagous quality. A saprophagous animal is one that subsists on decaying matter. That is what we do too, for our beginnings and ends resolve into one another. The beauty is that we benefit spiritually from ruminating on why this is so, why nature is incomplete, why we are so uncomfortable, why our life fades out, dies and rots, and why even our vision and understanding of God, however perceptive, still fades to black. `Abdu'l-Baha says,

 "When thou lookest about thee with a perceptive eye, thou wilt note that on this dusty earth all humankind are suffering ...if a human life, with its spiritual being, were limited to this earthly span, then what would be the harvest of creation? Indeed, what would be the effects and outcomes of Divinity itself?" (Selected Writings, pp. 184-5)