Reform of the Individual

The Heart, Center-point of Love's Compass

By John Taylor; 2009 Feb 07, 19 Sultan, 165 BE

Second Essay on Panorthosia, Chapter Twenty, Reform of the Individual, Covering Paragraphs 1-2

In an age of environmental disaster and mass extinction of species, no unbiased observer can deny any longer that human intervention is driving the climate screwy. This proves that the planet's most intelligent inhabitants are badly corrupt and have fallen away from our reason for being here. To choose almost at random a passage from the Book of Proverbs,

"For the upright will dwell in the land. The perfect will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it." (Prov 2:21-22, WEB)

In other words, it has been known for thousands of years that human perfection allows us to live permanently in harmony with the land that supports us; conversely, faithless vice cuts us off. Eventually our corrupt worldview "roots us out," as the planet is doing right now. But what, specifically, does it mean to say that humans are corrupt? That is the question Comenius addresses in the first paragraph of his chapter on personal reform in the Panorthosia,

"Human corruption is largely if not wholly based on the fact that men are very busily concerned with their material goods and strenuously uphold the proverb 'I am my own closest friend', [the editor attributes this saying to Terence, Andria IV, 1, 10, but see the passage from Plato at the end of this essay] but they generally neglect their spiritual goods." (Panorthosia, Ch. 20, para 1, p. 20)

We are hypocritical friends, even to ourselves! By denying the power of the holy spirit, ever ready to confirm us in carrying out the Will of God, we pay overly close attention to what is unimportant and ignore what is essential to our true, albeit hidden nature. In the biblical phrase, `we strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.' This is not because we lack concern for ourselves -- in fact we lean towards the selfish and egotistical --but rather because we do not know how to be friends to anybody, especially to ourselves.

This gnat-straining, camel-guzzling syndrome Baha'is term "materialism." Materialism denies the spirit and focuses exclusively on ephemeral images flickering on the cave wall. The heart that responds to the priority of the spirit, on the other hand, liberates itself from the chains and bursts outside into genuine sunlight. Materialism has corrupted even the one calling wholly dedicated to getting us out of the cave, the teaching profession. I recently ran across the following on the Web, from the lecture notes of a student of Simone Weil,

"Weil lamented that education had become no more than `an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who in their turn will manufacture more teachers,' rather than a guide to getting out of the cave." (Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil, http://rivertext.com/weil4.html)

Comenius makes this same point by citing a saying of Seneca: 'The first man cultivates the second, and the second a third, but no-one cultivates himself.' As a result, we lose the general enlightenment that makes us human, that makes us into servants of God. In this hardened state we advance in some ways but fail to respond to others that are just as necessary for reform. Here is how Comenius puts it.

"Many attend to others, no-one to himself; many teach others, no-one teaches himself; many control and correct others, no-one controls and corrects himself; many ask compassion for others, but not for themselves, and so on. Therefore to put an end to this complaint, each individual should now begin to submit himself in the first instance to every aspect of reform." (Id.)

In the second paragraph, Comenius compares our "centeredness" on self-reform to a compass, the kind of compass with a needle on one side and a pencil on the other, the type that Blake in a famous etching a century later drew in the hands of a Deity scientifically measuring out the universe. The point where that needle sticks into is the center of the circle of divine love. And we know from scripture that God always sticks that needle right in the center of the human heart. Paying heed to our own reform first, then,

"will have the merit of beginning the task in the right place, and fixing a firm centre round which the circumference of the circle is to be drawn. Obviously public reform will make no progress without private reform on the part of individuals, since universality is the sum of all its units." (para 2, p. 20)

Abdu'l-Baha used this analogy implicitly in His often mentioned "circles of unity" or "circles of love" thesis. The divine needle goes into the heart. The distance from there to the pencil on the other side delimits everything else. Open the compass a little and you have the family, a little more and you get the city, wider still and you draw the nation, and so forth. Since the broadest circle possible on this sphere of earth is its atmosphere, it is not surprising that polluting it is provoking any number of negative feedbacks loops to set in motion. The utter impotence of the environmental movement to encompass this danger, mortal as it is, is proof positive that we have not penetrated the center of the human circle.

Comenius points out that we all, as individuals, have the power to make of our heart a heaven or a hell. With Jesus' saying that `the kingdom of God is within' in mind, he points out that no individual,

"can be prevented from founding Paradise in and around himself, and establishing God's Kingdom within himself, and setting up an altar to God likewise, and finding delight in the world and himself and God, by acting reasonably and reverently in all things."

Unless the needle sticks firm and deep in the center point, we cannot be worthy world citizens, learn followership or leadership skills, or avoid the error of corruption.

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The Center of the Compass is our justice. The line the compass draws around it is the boundary of our love

A passage from "The Laws," by Plato, Book V

"Of all evils the greatest is one which in the souls of most men is innate, and which a man is always excusing in himself and never correcting; ... what is expressed in the saying that `Every man by nature is and ought to be his own friend.' Whereas the excessive love of self is in reality the source to each man of all offences; for the lover is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and the honourable, and thinks that he ought always to prefer himself to the truth.

But he who would be a great man ought to regard, not himself or his interests, but what is just, whether the just act be his own or that of another. Through a similar error men are induced to fancy that their own ignorance is wisdom, and thus we who may be truly said to know nothing, think that we know all things; and because we will not let others act for us in what we do not know, we are compelled to act amiss ourselves. Wherefore let every man avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false shame to stand in the way." (Plato, Laws)

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John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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