The Baha'i Concept of Monsters

I subscribe to the RSS feed of the Baha'i Blog, "Baha'i Thought," and in today's entry I found to my delight that they have made a zombie version of Pride and Prejudice. I had to suffer my wife's watching the Laurence Olivier version of this film over and over to the point where I had every line memorized. At last, they have come up with a version of P&P that men can enjoy too! Anyway, the author of the blog explains why he is interested in monsters, as if you have to have a reason why...

"...For people who are puzzled by my fascination with such things I've always told them that tales of monsters and things going bump in the night are really about human nature with these creatures representing the dark and terrible side of ourselves and fighting them representing the our spiritual struggle to overcome our egos. The Baha'i Writings put it nicely:

"Regarding the questions you asked: Self has really two meanings, or is used in two senses, in the Bahá'í writings; one is self, the identity of the individual created by God. This is the self mentioned in such passages as 'he hath known God who hath known himself etc.'. The other self is the ego, the dark, animalistic heritage each one of us has, the lower nature that can develop into a monster of selfishness, brutality, lust and so on. It is this self we must struggle against, or this side of our natures, in order to strengthen and free the spirit within us and help it to attain perfection."  (From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, December 10, 1947) 

"There is nothing more monstrous or frightening than a human being whose ego has seized control of his or her life. No zombie, vampire, or werewolf can compare. Witness the horrors human beings visit upon one another on a daily basis all over the world. To paraphrase a famous statement, I have seen the monster and it is us."

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