Planning Year for Search for Truth

World Principle Planning Years, Search for Truth (Parts One and Two)


By John Taylor; 6 June, 2004

This is the revised version of an essay written on 5th September, 2003



When I first began working out the principles in the 1980's I divided each into three categories, problem, theory and solution. That is under each principle I listed, one, the problems that the principle is intended to solve, two, its particular theoretical considerations and three, the specific, practical solutions that might come about. Later I found that a larger number of sub-topics, including a dozen of the principles themselves, was a more adequate framework for capturing their many facets. Still, it is useful sometimes to picture a given principle in that threefold manner.



Last September I began a detailed discussion of the tripartite principle approach by setting up a thought experiment. I imagined a world government initiating a cycle of ten planning years. These would not be unlike the years that the United Nations declares periodically, except that each year would be hung on the peg of a Baha'i principle. Instead of holding a planning year on a theme and then forgetting about it, the UN or world governing body would repeat each principle every decade indefinitely.



I never seriously suggested to the UN or anybody else the actual adoption of such a cycle of planning years. It is just that you have to start somewhere in imagining how the principles might be consciously approached and implemented. In order to go through the three steps, collecting data about problems, reflecting on theory and finally proposing and agreeing upon solutions, there has to be a regular, systematic time orientation.



Perhaps someday Baha'i administrators will adopt a 19 year cycle for their planning, following the Bab's implicit suggestion in the Badi Calendar's 19 year Vahid cycle. I don't know, maybe a planning decade would be a step in that direction. In any case, the more I thought about the planning decade idea the more I liked it. For one thing, most people are unfamiliar with the principles as a coherent spiritual alternative to materialist ideologies. Surely the first few planning decades would be primarily devoted to publicity and basic education. Only after that would the advantages of a cycle become evident.



For one thing, a world citizen could count on encountering a given principle several times in the span of their working life. I wrote,



"a worker during a career of 40 years would go through the planning year for each principle four times and would gain perspective from comparison over time."



This would eliminate the generation gap by allowing older workers to contribute in a broader and more meaningful way to the younger generation. Even when their technical skills are obsolete, older and retired workers could give a meaningful yearly perspective on how that year's principle has been handled throughout living memory. This would tend to eliminate repetition of past errors.



Since the principle theme is set in a planning context, a decade temporal orientation would allow systematic mentoring. NASA has been criticized for just this shortcoming. (Popular Science, Constance Adams, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist," February 2004, p. 68) NASA projects and plans tend to be laboriously worked out then either rejected or completed and then abandoned; everyone with experience is fired or poached away by private industry, without a hint of long-term vision.



Of course this problem is endemic even in less demanding governance, starting with democracy itself. The lack of ability to carry plans and programs over the four year politician's term of office has long been the most annoying drawback of democracy. Planning decades oriented around the Baha'i principles would give a different standard of comparison. Instead of competing with and often undoing the work of the previous administration, a leader would inevitably compare accomplishments with planners of a decade or two in both the past and the future. This would erase partisan orientation and fix attention where it should be, on the good of our children and their children.



Last September I pictured the first two years of the planning decade as a combined festival, because the first two principles, search and oneness, are so closely allied and utterly interdependent. So before going into the details of the year for search for truth next time, I will finish with what I wrote then. I have little to add to it and will let it stand unchanged.



While the following planning years may be the direct concern of some more than others, these first two are essential for every thinking world citizen, without exception. That makes the first two international principle years pivotal: they are the focal point of all world planning. Together these two years would constitute a single world jubilee, a combined exposition and festival in every region of central concern. The celebrations would be combined with a most serious purpose, setting the tone for the planetary planning of the next eight years.



Allow me to suggest a name for this two year long event: The Synergy Festival. Synergy, a term popularized by Buckminster Fuller, has become a buzzword in the past two decades and often ends up as a fancy synonym for "cooperation." In its original meaning, though, it describes perfectly what the exposition would be designed to accomplish every decade.



Synergy is defined as the "behavior of a system as a whole greater than the sum of its parts and unpredicted by them." Fuller saw the term as the complementary opposite of "energy." Whereas energy is work that runs down entropically, synergy uses the power information to reverse that process. In the Baha'i writings equivalent co-evolutionary terms are "covenant," "confirmations," and "power of the Holy Spirit." Baha'u'llah's theology describes a spiritual synergy that collects around the Manifestation of God Who is the primal Impulse for the advance of civilization. This is the synergy of synergies. The "kingdoms of God" theory of nature, explicated by `Abdu'l-Baha, describes a set of transcendent synergies proceeding from matter (the power of motion, or energy), to plant (growth), to animal (motion, sensation) and at the highest level, the human (reason, faith). The Baha'i social principles are intended to help humanity assume its position at the top of this network of transcendent hierarchies; they teach us consciously to direct the synergy of our planet as a holistic system. They constitute a plan and framework to begin planning on world scale.



The search for truth year would bring out the synergy within each individual. Our power of reflection enables us to transcend the benighted, animal self and reach out to a higher, purer humaneness. Without this personal synergy, the second year for oneness of humanity could have nothing to do with its potential, the coming together of the vast diversity of the human race.



Indeed more often than not politics and group expression are conceived of as opposed, as ever threatening to suppress the fundamental rights and interests of the individual. This problem of right is the danger that this first year would confront head-on. Contrast that with the picture of the Master of a synergy among the flowers of a garden, ruled by one Gardener, where all its variegated aspects set off and complement one another.



"Therefore, every union and colour of leaves, of flowers and of fruits, each will contribute to the beauty and charm of the others and will make an admirable garden, and will appear in the utmost loveliness, freshness and sweetness. Likewise, when difference and variety of thoughts, forms, opinions, and characters and morals of the world of mankind come under the control of one Supreme Power, that influence of composition among the elements is the cause of life, while dissociation and separation is the cause of death." (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablet to the Peace Conference at the Hague, 12)




World Principle Planning Decade Year One,
Search for Truth (Part Two)


7 June, 2004



Ludwig Zamenhof rendered an old saying into the language he had invented, Esperanto, as, "Komenco bona --- laboro duona," literally "start well, half the work." I think the version in English is "The first step is half the journey." The proverb in either form nicely sums up what the first Baha'i principle is all about. Start with due reflection as to what exactly the problem is, then go straight towards the solution. Proper preparation by thinking interspersed with regular reflection and meditation means fewer wrong turns, half the travail for twice the results. And of course, the best beginning is to start with the Origin of truth.



"The road to attain to this Truth is the love of God. ...As to what causes the growth of the love of God, know that it is to turn one's self toward God;" [`Abdu'l-Baha, SW Vol 13, p. 164]



Today I want to go over the ways that a world government might encourage this love by celebrating a Year for planning the search for truth. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of encouraging and fostering the search for truth in everyone's life. If there is no love or serious thought within, how can we ever expect to have the wherewithal to build the foundations of peace without? Baha'u'llah's Seven Valleys places Search as the first valley that a seeker of truth must enter. He writes,



"The steed of this Valley is patience; without patience the wayfarer on this journey will reach nowhere and attain no goal." (SVFV, 4-5)



A person who is devoted to her own search for truth is able to focus upon a single goal over a long period and is therefore much more likely to live a fruitful life than one prone to every fad and passing fashion. For example, Isaac Newton, believed by many to be the greatest scientist who ever lived, wrote, "If I have succeeded in my inquiries more than others, I owe it less to my superior strength of mind, than to the habit of patient thinking." The more truth seekers like that around us the more secure the foundations will be for stable and secure improvements in every area of endeavour. The emphasis of this year, then, would be on helping people reduce the stresses and strains of daily life so as to be more creative, or at least more patient and longsuffering. This might include finding a better balance in the amount of time we spend at work, in the family and alone.



The beauty in our built environment is also very important for this. This includes the nature and amount of contact we have with it. Recent studies confirm, for example, that inhabitants of segregated suburbs are more prone to heart disease and other stress related conditions than those who live in mixed neighborhoods where they are required to carry out daily activities on foot rather than in a vehicle. The family domicile needs to be redesigned to give priority not only to physical activity but also to make allowances for quiet meditation; the Hindu custom of a shrine or alter in the home is worthy of imitation.



Some find truth and recoup strength while sitting alone in garden or dark room; others improve themselves by expanding their horizons, traveling, meeting new people and visiting different climes. Most, I am sure, benefit from a combination of both. The International Year for Search for Truth would therefore be a year for rethinking culture, entertainment, sports, recreation and all aspects of leisure time. How do we integrate these benefits into an examined life?



This would surely call upon the world's largest industry, the travel industry, to help more seekers gain their strength and perspective. This might be done by offering reduced fares and fees to allow the disadvantaged to attend UN Year sponsored events. However, while the year for search would encourage travel, its most lasting benefits would be in improving the workplace, the home and the road between them.



It is therefore most important that improvements to the meditative life be integral to daily routines. William James called habit the flywheel of society, and the daily habits of a reflective life will surely do all that a flywheel does: store energy, lend stability while allowing tremendous dynamism and -- like a gyroscope -- the spin will orient our lives to an independent center of balance, no matter what the particular slant of our surroundings may be. In a similar way, even in His most mystic writing, Baha'u'llah does not artificially separate the reflective phase of search from its expression in work,



"...In their search, they have stoutly girded up the loins of service, and seek at every moment to journey from the plane of heedlessness into the realm of being. (Id.)



The Baha'i vision of a Mashriqu'l-Adhkar in each town is a perfect model of a quiet center around which our hectic lives can spin. It places the most sanctified edifice, wholly devoted to song and worship, right in the center of each town and village. Being in the middle, everyone can walk there daily, stroll among its surrounding gardens, and then attend dawn prayers and readings of the Holy Texts. Because this happens before going to work, it allows for reflection and spirituality to enter fully into mind and heart as one enters into the labor of one's calling. At the same time, the Mashriq is surrounded by social service organizations. Travelers, the disabled and others without employment might after the morning devotional session visit and serve in one or more of these institutions surrounding the Mashriq.



These service institutions surrounding the place of worship will make service to the disadvantaged part of every balanced lifestyle. For example, `Abdu'l-Baha once observed that the poor themselves tend to much more charitable than the wealthy, for they know the need. This sorry fact of human psychology will be plain to see when rich and poor serve the disadvantaged together elbow to elbow. This approach would be the reverse of the hidden charity and anonymous transfer payments that support, palliate and paralyze the poor today. There must be personal contact or the mutual benefits of love and service cannot take effect.



"...he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me." (Psalms 101:6)



Now our public spaces are dominated by force-feeding commercial interests whose malls accommodate only what promotes profit not what makes for happiness. A Mashriq would turn the center towards God and make the lifestyle of the Master a more normal thing. His example was the perfect picture of the practical path trodden by mystical feet. The service institutions around the Mashriq will have to be carefully designed to encourage all to walk that walk. `Abdu'l-Baha went on daily rounds, personally visiting the indigent in groups and the working poor apart by paying them private house calls -- these were too proud to allow public exposure of their neediness. Spending His time in this way He showed an example of a life utterly devoted to helping others. In order to encourage all to do something like this every day, the structure of our public spaces will have to be radically changed.

So the first planning year would ask questions like: how can we place the poor on a high pedestal and encourage all to participate in their service? How can we make a theoretical good into a routine essential to all of our perfection?

Interstices, Search in the Kitab-i-Iqan

Interstices;

By John Taylor; 31 May, 2004


You know, religion as we think of it is so racked by ritual; it is harrowed by holier-than-thou attitudes and lollygagging in literalism. The last thing you would expect is what Baha'u'llah sometimes does, just hand you the building blocks and say, "Here. Put it together yourself." "Here's the question. Come to your own conclusions." Or, in the words of the rap, "Can't touch that." Sometimes He leaves an entire field of concern open, without comment one way or another. Okay, maybe I'd expect Him to ignore something minor like the cut of the beard or the trim of the trousseau, but not things that seem fundamental, issues that many would think really do need to be spelled out.
The list here can be as long as you like; there is monogamy, which is not specifically laid down in the Kitab-i-Aqdas and was not explicit until `Abdu'l-Baha ruled. Why? Or politics, the very word we have seen does not appear in Holy Writ until the ministry of `Abdu'l-Baha, and even then He used it in a sense that applies as much to religious institutions as to political ones, and indeed to any other kind of grouping. Other hot issues were left aside until the Guardian came along, like nudity, nudism, mental illness, and many others. Yet more have only come to the fore in very recent times, such as Internet literary review and homosexual "marriages."

Not that the rulings are any weaker for not being mentioned earlier in the corpus, I would add. Whether it was one head of the Faith that ruled or another, you will still not run across any fewer Baha'is in a nudist colony or shacking up in a same-sex marriage than otherwise. It is just that I think there must be a special wisdom in how and when a given ruling was came into effect. In other words, we should not only notice what Baha'u'llah and others are saying but also what they are not saying, and why.
It would be facile to say that the reason for such blank spots is that now for the first time in a religious system the principle of search for truth has been set up front and center. If you are looking for ellipses, syncopes and lacunae, earlier scripture is even more replete. Most notorious of all is the Qu'ran, whose very diction is intentionally compressed and distilled to a point where the average, educated Arabic speaker finds its prose as incomprehensible as, say, Pope, Shakespeare or even Chaucer are for English speakers.

There must be a reason for this opacity. My theory: the heavy, abstruse style of the Qu'ran was designed as a form of mental exercise. Just as even a native English speaker will never understand her own language until she has tried to scrape off some flecks from the genius of Shakespeare, so a person thinking about religious issues will never have muscles strong enough in exactly the right places until she has wrestled with comprehending the Qu'ran. Specifically, its cognitive calisthenics seems intended to erase the silly literalism that still plagues popular religion in the West. If you can make sense of even one sentence of the Qu'ran, you will never look at words in the same way, you will never more think of sinking faith in the bottomless quicksand of literal semiotics.
Yesterday I took a long walk with the kids. Towards the end of it we came across a streak where some child had drawn a set of hopscotch squares on the sidewalk using chalk. As always when encountering an edifying challenge, I pretended to try it and become the first to overcome. Then I pretended to fail, not a hard thing to do with my arthritic knees. Silvie, as always, was tempted to surpass me.

This hopscotch matrix was different, though. As often happens with a major project, the designer did not know when to stop. Drawing hopscotch squares had become an obsession whose joy contemplated no end. The trail of little green sidewalk squares seemed to go on forever, by far the longest I have ever seen. Silvie gave it a valiant try but had to step aside and walk in order to keep up with me (Thomas was by then riding my shoulders, a compassionate decision that my knees even now are protesting). When the end finally came, Silvie jumped back for the last few matrices and celebrated victory.

I recalled then what I read somewhere, that hopscotch was born three hundred years ago as a military training exercise in the Swiss Army, the theory being that soldiers need to work their legs in order to be agile enough on their feet in battle. So grown men would play what is now a kid's game in full battle dress; and no doubt they were better prepared for having done so. --Here's an aside, soldiers still march, though the tactical benefit of marching has been obsolete for centuries. On the other hand, they do not play the new sport of simulated paint gun battles, even though the tactical benefits are much more relevant than marching. Reason? Paintball, as experienced players attest, is simply too realistic; it gives a reasonable picture of your chances of survival in a losing shooting battle, virtually nil. Soldiers trained at paintball would know too well when and how to run.
Another thing I read lately, that psychologists are recommending that one take mental exercise just as seriously as soldiers do their training. For example take different routes to work each time in order to strain different dendrites in different ways. The problem is that we do not know what kind of mental exercise prepares for which life challenge, or even what kind of challenge we will face in a given day.

No doubt this hints at what poetry is all about too. Why go to the trouble of compressing language if not to work the brain's comprehension muscles? English speakers tend to use Shakespeare in this way, which is not the same as understanding what Shakespeare was actually saying. Even what would have been ordinary speech in Elizabethan times is tough to understand, and we use that as a similar exercise in linguistic calisthenics. People who encounter Shakespeare in another language have a totally different and more authentic experience. When I read Hamlet in Esperanto, a wholly different monologue (which I analyzed in detail in an earlier essay) jumped out at me. Strangely, it had been completely invisible to me when I read it in English.

The difference is that the Qu'ran, and of course earlier scripture to some extent, is a form of hopscotch, even more endless hopscotch if you bang your head against it morning and evening. Except that here the motions were designed by God right down to the least syllable and nuance, and He is surely is the ultimate training Master. His training methods do not go in or out of fashion, they endure even when specific laws and ordinances no longer apply.


"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." (Matt 24:36, WEB)


He knows for sure what mental exercises benefit the most and the most often, since He designed our brains, He embodies the spirit that gives us life. This is probably why Baha'u'llah recommends that we memorize certain passages from His Writings. The actual memorizing is not the exercise, picking the context for saying it, the exact right time and place to recite it, that is the exercise.

Be that as it may, this is all background as to why I think I felt moved to give special attention to the Qu'ran last time and next in expounding upon the principle of search for truth. The cognitive calisthenics that it demands seems to build intellectual muscles that help engender spirit, strengthen what is needed for working out the nature of both search and truth. And the most demanding exercise for this is the now universal duty to take the self into account morning and evening.


"Verily thy Lord doth provide sustenance in abundance for whom He pleaseth, and He provideth in a just measure. For He doth know and regard all His servants." (Q17:30, Yusuf Ali)




Search for Truth in Baha'u'llah's Kitab-i-Iqan


by John Taylor; 4 June, 2004



There follows the first half of an essay heavily revised from one called "Myrtles of Unity," originally written on 28 June, 2002. The second half of Myrtles will be included on this mailout RSN, Real Soon Now, maybe under Oneness of Humanity.

The body of Baha'u'llah's work runs the gamut of literary genres, from mystic poetry to legislation, to philosophical exposition, to epistolary homily, to prophesy, both explication of old ones and original predictions. This diversity of styles and approaches has at least one core purpose, to serve as an aid for periodic meditation, to act as a compass and true magnetic north for every seeker. Today I will glance at Baha'u'llah's central doctrinal work, the Kitab-i-Iqan. More than perhaps any of His works, the penetrating, clear prose of the Iqan furnishes a beat for the rhythm of an examined life. It equips the reader to make of self its own judge by studied reflection and taking every motive, thought and action regularly into account. The gift of the Iqan is faith, the ability to make the unknowns of life a function of God's will and chosen truth.

Written in Baghdad in January of 1861, not long before His valedictory declaration just outside that city, the Kitab-i-Iqan acts as a hinge between His early Writings and the challenging, global concern of His post-Declaration Writings. It carries over previous Revelations to such an extent that that it is considered spiritually to be the final chapter of the Persian Bayan, which the Bab prophesied would be completed by the "One Whom God Would Make Manifest." Carrying over from earlier mystical works such as the Four Valleys, the Kitab-i-Iqan was written to a particular person but is also a general guide for every thoughtful seeker of truth. This is evident even in its title, "Iqan," which means in English "Faith" or "Certitude." The "Certainty Book" sets out from the beginning to establish what we can be sure of, and what we cannot.

As for the specific questions, we do know that Baha'u'llah wrote the Iqan in answer to a list of specific questions that unfortunately are not translated yet, to my knowledge. Yet it is clear from the text that whatever his specific queries, the seeker was after questions we all ask sometimes: What is constant? What can I be certain of? What stays the same and what passes on? How can God be consistent in history and at the same time inspire progress and education? How does sameness within reconcile with change without, in the self, in history and in religion?

In answering these questions and their subtexts, Baha'u'llah advises the reader to "ponder," on two dozen occasions. By my count He in some way admonishes the reader to question, consider, meditate or reflect over a hundred and thirty times. This concern with seeking climaxes in the famous passage popularly known as the "Tablet of the Seeker" (KI, 192 to 195), an inspiring peroration not unlike the Sermon on the Mount that spells out the "attributes of the exalted" and what constitutes the "hall-mark of the spiritually-minded." The tablet of the seeker includes a long list of "the requirements of the wayfarers that tread the Path of Positive Knowledge." (KI, 195) Aside from the usual purification, prayer and reflection that you would expect of a sincere seeker of truth, some surprises, like abstinence from idle speech, avoiding cruelty to animals, "how much more to his fellow-man," and rejection of immoderation in all its manifestations.

Over and above its emphasis on active and independent questioning, Kitab-i-Iqan is very much an apologetic with a clear thesis to uphold. It was written for an uncle of the Bab who was on a visit to Karbila in order to persuade him that the Bab had a divine Mission. It succeeded in this rhetorical goal by taking on several tasks, including explications of various prophesies and scriptural terminology. Above all, the Iqan explains that there is a good reason for the many difficulties one encounters in scripture. The purpose is in fact no different from anything else a mystical seeker encounters: purification. These strange, apparently inexplicable passages are intended to strengthen faith by purifying us of our irrational, ignorant qualities,


"Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbolic terms and abstruse allusions, which emanate from the Revealers of God's holy Cause, hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world; that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the perishable and barren soil. From time immemorial such hath been the way of God amidst His creatures, and to this testify the records of the sacred books." (KI, 49)


This compares the heart to soil, the source and origin of growth and food. The soil is "purified" (a less palatable analogy would be "fertilized") by the divine tests, which require one to work at it, to seek out and live up to truth, refusing to be distracted and by secondary concerns. A seeker therefore could,


"never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the all-Glorious ... unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets." (KI, 4)


Baha'u'llah in this way establishes the "unfettered" or "independent" aspect of the principle of search for truth. On the one hand, we are all expected to read and understand the Word of scripture on our own. On the other hand, there still are abstruse and ambiguous passages that definitely need an authoritative interpretation. For a Muslim, that would be the twelve Imams, for a Baha'i the Master, the Guardian and the House, in due order. Accepting this authority does not negate one's independence as a seeker any more than accepting the advice of a doctor means renouncing all responsibility for maintaining one's health. In this way the Iqan allows for a sane balance in exegesis between liberalism and conservatism.

The mystical task of purification or fertility of the heart is a major concern of the Iqan but its guidance in this respect also extends to the practical principle of making unity out of diversity, also a task for every seeker. Hence its explanation of one of the most common symbols of meditative life, the comparison of spirit and scripture with food and drink, especially the staple of many diets, bread. Fertile soil grows bread in abundance, as does the heart.


"This is the food that conferreth everlasting life upon the pure in heart and the illumined in spirit. This is the bread of which it is said: `Lord, send down upon us Thy bread from heaven.' [Q76:9] This bread shall never be withheld from them that deserve it, nor can it ever be exhausted. It groweth everlastingly from the tree of grace; it descendeth at all seasons from the heavens of justice and mercy." (KI, 22)


The divine Word properly understood has the same essential role in the spiritual life that nourishment plays in the body. Jesus, for example said that, "It is written, `Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4) The end result is clear, someone who does not "eat" or reflect on spiritual bread cannot develop the humanity to call himself a true person.

The Kitab-i-Iqan carries this metaphor right to the nub when it advises the reader to ponder one Surih of the Qu'ran in particular, called "Hud," after a prophet not mentioned in the Bible. The lessons and stories about utter rejection of the prophets in this chapter are worthy of pondering in order to understand why the holy ones of the past had so little effect on the doubters. The Iqan says, "Such is the share of the bread that hath descended from the realms of eternity and holiness." (KI, 6) Baha'u'llah thus compares this bread to the Manna from heaven which the followers of Moses found so unpalatable in the wilderness, which they bartered away for the "sordid things of the earth." (KI, 208)

Food is, then, a symbol of the "meat" that the Manifestation wishes to give us, and the "milk" our own thinking prepares us for. At the same time it is the epitome of unity in diversity. Food seems to be of infinite variety and origins yet it is made up of a relatively small number of chemicals, minerals and other ingredients, such as water and carbon. This narrow range supplies the energy, nutrients, and structure of the body. Yet every human body is nourished by that same thing and breathes the same air.

Similarly, the Word is based upon simple things like love and knowledge of God, and yet it can provide all we require in our spiritual struggle. Its food for reflection can satisfy the entire spectrum of minds, hearts, temperaments and personalities that make up the vast human race. This is the crux of the principles, the oneness within the search for truth. The Master carried it into His teaching, emphasizing that every human eats the same food, benefits from the same nutrients, breathes the same air and is poisoned by the same chemicals. This truth is the bridge between principle one, search for truth, and principle two, the oneness of humanity.

Search as Covenant, as Monadology

Covenant and Search in an Age of Responsibility.

Part II


By John Taylor; 1 June, 2004


Yesterday we worked the idea that freedom and truth are not states or conditions but muscles strengthened by regular exercise. No matter what our religion, everyone increases strength by struggling to squeeze spiritual meaning out of daily life. This is not done passively but through independent planning and regular assessments guided and illumined by regular reflection, prayer and reading of scripture. In Baha'i terminology this responsive exercise of search for truth is termed "firmness in the covenant," since it is a primary expression of an ancient contract with God.

All the great world religions are intended to fulfill this covenant by synchronizing our hearts to truth in the rhythm of nature, the seasons and the motions of sun and stars. Their specially designed calendars regulate personal introspection and build from that a common structure for peace. Having a schedule allows many to come together in God and share personal discoveries. In time this forges a community of believers. In researching this I came across two useful new words, proseity and propitiable. Here are their definitions.


Proseity: (from metaphysics; Latin, "Pro Se," for oneself) "The quality or condition of existing for oneself, having itself for its own end."

Propitiable: "Capable of being made favorably inclined."


Given these definitions, we may sum up the principle so far by saying that the search for truth makes the proseity of mankind. It makes us propitiable to unity in diversity by expanding what is "for myself" to its broadest, most universal sense. By participating in God, ultimate concern, my idea of what is pro se, for myself, identifies with what is for the human race as a whole. I am then pure, or propitiable to subordinating special interests and narrower, parochial needs to the whole. I can reach out and share in the same truth with others, both within and without our faith community.

I therefore do not pray, recite, meditate, plan and assess my progress merely for self-help or personal improvement. My spiritual expression makes my proseity into "pro-humanity" and merges consultation into the collective search for truth. What makes consultation a multiple of many individuals searching for truth is their loyalty to the spirit of this covenant. Although ostensibly spirit seems like wind and fire, moveable and ineffable, Jesus Christ drew with it a very deep, emphatic line.


"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come. Either make the tree good, and its fruit good, or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by its fruit." (Matt 12:30-33, KJV)


Human beings are either all answerable to this spirit, or they not. All are His servants, or not. Whether we know it or not, each and all are completely involved in an unspoken covenant of mutual love with our Creator. The Center of the Covenant, `Abdu'l-Baha explained that humble, loving service is the mark of firmness in the covenant of spirit.


"Adhere to the hem of the robe of the Lofty One and do your best to spread the Covenant of God and to be kindled with the fire of the love of God, so that your hearts may move with joy through the fragrances of humbleness which are being diffused from the heart of 'Abdu'l-Baha." (Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, 404)


An attitude of humility demonstrates understanding that the covenant is universal, that all are his servants, even the reprobate and rejecter. Nobody knows who will make it through the eye of the needle. Nobody can say what rule or restriction may benefit us or others in some hidden way. Another aspect of humility is respect, fear of God, a sense of reverence for the One behind the diversity of outer expressions.


"And so amongst men and crawling creatures and cattle, are they of various colours. Those truly fear God, among His Servants, who have knowledge: for God is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving." (Q35:28, Yusuf Ali)


A person grounded in the spirit of knowledge of God can appreciate the many and diverse "colors," outer expressions of one truth. Endowed with this knowledge, one can express it in harmonizing speech.


"...by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matt 12:35-7, WEB)


There is a thought provoking new book out this year that explains how this spirit of search for truth can work its way into the opinions of a collectivity; by one James Surowiecki it is called "The Wisdom of Crowds." As he himself points out, he only traces recent research that confirms the wisdom of a very old saying.


"Where there is no counsel, plans fail; But in a multitude of counselors they are established. Joy comes to a man with the reply of his mouth. How good is a word at the right time!" (Proverbs 15:22-3, WEB)


Surowiecki points out that the popular television show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" demonstrated how very accurate a crowd can be. Overall it was found that when a contestant asked for help from an expert, the expert was right about 60 percent of the time. When a poll was taken of the audience, they were correct well over 90 percent of the time. Other examples he cites are the uncanny ability of a random crowd at an agricultural show to guess within a pound the dressed weight of a cow. Then there is the spot-on guess within a few hours by the stock market as to which contractor was responsible for the Challenger shuttle disaster. The stock price of that company dropped and stayed down while other contractors' prices fell but recovered shortly afterwards. Months later expert investigators (including our hero, Richard Feynman) confirmed what the market guessed right away, that this company's O rings were brittle in the cold.

This collective ability to divine the truth tends of course to confirm the value of both democracy and free markets, both happy combinations of individual and group judgment. But as Surowiecki points out, this wisdom only works when four factors characterize the crowd, diversity, independence, decentralization and aggregation. Diversity of opinion means that each person should have some private information, even if it is an eccentric interpretation of known facts. Independence requires that the opinions not be determined by those around you, in Baha'i and Platonic terminology, "imitation."

This independence factor points to what I have long thought, that there is a great future for the voting devices that were built into the seats at the set of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," or as many teachers are now doing, building them into personal remote controls that each student keeps at hand during lectures. These devices input your opinion without influencing it by knowledge of what those around you think. It is also testimony to the brilliance of the Master, who so often spoke of the necessity of "unfettered" and "independent" search for truth.

Decentralization, the third requirement, means that people can specialize and draw on local knowledge. I'll have to read the book rather than a review of it to know exactly what this means, but it certainly seems to indicate what Baha'is call consultation, where the expertise of a small group enhances the specialized training of individual experts by "rounding off" their inevitable blinkers and biases. Medicine itself is no longer relying on a single diagnosis but in recent years is taking a team approach of several experts to handle the most serious health care problems.

The last factor, aggregation, refers to the need for an agreed upon mechanism for turning private judgments into a collective decision. I need not go into how this is done in Baha'i administration and will only note that in the case of personal problems, "aggregation" is left up to the individual. That is, if I ask an ad hoc group to consult about whether I should jump in the lake, the final decision as to whether to take the leap is still left up to me, whether a majority of consultants lean one way or not -- though an exception seems to be in medical consultation where I am obliged to obey a wise doctor's counsel; of course I still decide whether she is wise or not. Giving the individual final say in personal consultation, I suppose, pays obeisance to the supremacy of search for truth.



Search and Monadology


By John Taylor; 2 June, 2004



Here is a citation from the Guardian that I read today that seems new to me; it is compatible with my train of thought lately.


"We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions." (Shoghi Effendi, through his Secretary, from a letter dated 17 February 1933 to an individual believer, quoted in BIC, 1998 Feb 18, Valuing Spirituality in Development)


I need not point out that this contradicts something you hear virtually every time a Western believer opens his mouth. You hear it endlessly, that we need to change the world one heart at a time, change starts from within, and all that. Poppycock. The soul is a mirror, it reflects what is outside it; nature, the world, they are mirrors too, they reflect our inner condition whether we like it or not. So you have to change both outward and inward conditions in order make any lasting reforms.

If I have made any original contribution in my life, it was last summer when an idea for what I called "open systems" blew me down like a fresh breeze. It tries to go beyond "one heart at a time" and take on both outward and inward change at the same time. Actually, I think I'll now start calling it "open principles," since I realize lately that it really is an understanding of the Baha'i principles. It all started in an essay called, "What I Did On My Summer Vacation," written on 11 August, 2003, where I wrote,


"What else did we do? Well, there were readings from `An Intellectual History of Europe,' by Roland N. Stromberg. That was really exiting, and as the week went by the cerebral heroes described therein led me into a sort of epiphany. On Saturday I sketched out a plan to revolutionize the world. Eureka! But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. The real hero of this story is, of course, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, (1646-1716) a colossus bestriding the world of thought. As soon I got home I rushed to find something by him but found only some tidbits. Even so, they were nourishing."


In the ten months since I wrote that I still have not found nearly enough to give more than a taste of the writings of Leibniz. Still, reading about his monadology was the flint that sparked my ideas for expanding the open systems movement beyond its current bounds into a sort of "dashboard" for monitoring personal progress in relation to the whole of humanity. The word "monad" comes from the Latin equivalent for Vahid, the Badi' Calendar's 19 year period. Both Monad and Vahid are Latin and Arabic words meaning "unit" or "unity," and of course both mean far more than that. Both hint at the emergent qualities of atoms in nature, where out of many One emerges, and a similar phenomenon in the world of human minds.

Yesterday while exploring search for truth we discussed James Surowiecki's book, "The Wisdom of Crowds," which gives four factors that characterize a wise crowd, diversity, independence, decentralization and aggregation. A democratic poll of a random crowd, as long as it lives up to these four conditions, is almost always right in answering just about anything you can ask them, even when they seem to have no way of knowing what they seem to know. This agglomeration of many independent minds is the mental superpower behind democracy and the free enterprise economy, not to mention the principle of search for truth.

Thinking about this since yesterday, I recalled that something like a wise crowd has actually been for centuries the ultimate authority in informal logic; for philosophers, if a proposition would be deemed inadequate by the average intelligent person, it is rejected as a fallacy. It will be interesting to see if some enterprising school of philosophers stops just speculating as to whether this or that proposition is what the average intelligent person thinks is reasonable, and actually begins to poll real crowds.

In any case, before I go any further with this connection of monads with wise crowds, I will excerpt the rest of what I wrote just after my Eureka experience last August.



"Most important is the monadology. Not long ago, in discussion, I encountered a friend's idea that God is a sort of pebble tossed into the still pond of reality. Creation participates in His Being by moving to that impulse, like circular waves radiating in perfect circles around and out from the impact point of the stone. Leibniz's monads are the reverse of this picture. Being is pluralistic, atomistic, throbbing little monads whose motto is, "All for one and one for all." Wiggle your finger on the tummy of one monad and all the monads in the universe will giggle.

"Like most of Leibniz's ideas, this is very close our modern understanding. Especially for Baha'is, this is how unity is supposed to work, a vast diversity with a unity built into each monad. We, each in our own way, seek truth and tickle the tummy of reality. The result, faith; every thinking being will spontaneously and in their identical nature within, laugh in harmony. The overall, macroscopic result? Unity in diversity. As Leibniz starting off his letter to Simon Foucher puts it, it is important,


"`once and for all to examine all our presuppositions in order to establish something sound. For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we can understand perfectly the thing being considered.'


"That's it. That is the principle of search for truth right there. That is the basis of my master plan to change the world. But we will get to that in due time.

"What else went on in our vacation? It seems to me that there were some outward events, but the memory is already fading, dancing illusions that may or may not have been real. It involved a car as I recall, and family, money, boats, food, traveling about, a cinema, sleep, an island, things like that. I am not sure that kind of thing deserves to be mentioned as what I actually _did_ on my summer vacation but I didn't want to leave them out completely.



Monads, Karl Wilhelm Gottfried Von Leibniz said, "have no windows by which anything could come in or go out." In other words, they have the four criteria that according to Surowiecki make a crowd wise; they are independent, diverse, decentralized and aggregative. At the same time, each monad can "express" any other or, more likely, all of the other monads at the same time.

This fits with the Master's ideas that the soul is a mirror and that there are "kingdoms of God" going right up to the spirit of faith. On each level many atoms or monads have a transcendent power; on the mineral level this power expresses motion, plants take that in and add on growth, from animals emerges locomotion, and so forth. The human is the epitome of all below, with reason on the human level and the "spirit of faith" added over that, like a cherry on a bowl of ice cream. Each level is a set of many monads, each an independent mirror to a power or attribute of God.

A monad then is an expression of both what is within and without it, close to what Ali is reported as saying, that "In the beginning knowledge was One but the ignorant multiplied it." The Timaeus of Plato explains how a monadic soul must interact with the Manifestation of god, a divine interaction of one with its surroundings,


"For God only has the knowledge and also the power which are able to combine many things into one and again resolve the one into many. But no man either is or ever will be able to accomplish either the one or the other operation."


Let us continue with this endless theme tomorrow.

Two Essays on Search for Truth

Why Search? (Part II of II)
Covenant and Search in an Age of Responsibility. (Part I)



Why Search?


Part II (remix of several earlier attempts)


By John Taylor; 26 May, 2004



Socrates' famous teaching is that the examined life is not worth living. This implies that it is possible to live an unexamined life. Indeed it is much easier to substitute imitation for truth. Same thing in dieting, avoiding exercise and munching on sugary snacks instead of healthful, nutritious meals is for most of us the easy way. Socrates' point only was that such a life is of such low value that it is not worth it, it loses "life value." Similarly, the Baha'i teachings aim to improve life value by raising search for truth to the level of a universal principle, an imperative for every citizen of the world.

The past few days I have been asking, "Why Search?" Today I'll try imagining the ways that life would be more worthwhile if genuine search ever predominated over imitation. Specifically, I will ask: "What would happen if search for truth were fully understood as a principle?" and, "What would the world look like if everyone cast aside shoddy imitations and sought the truth?"

Some might say that our world would look just like it is, assuming that since Truth is infinite it makes no difference how close we may be, or how distant. This may be so but the experience of modern times with the spread of scientific investigation indicates that there are great consequences indeed. The spread of education and systematic investigation of spiritual as well as material conditions would, I think, be the revolution to end all revolutions.

All people of faith, however much they may disagree in specifics, have to assume that this is so. We all believe that the world would be a finer place if spiritual truths were valued and understood by all people. The Psalm sums it up, "... give me understanding and I shall live." (Ps 119:144) I think it is fair then to assume that the more widespread search becomes, be it material or spiritual, the more people will value one another and generally admire beauty and perfection, be it in nature or the built world.

I would therefore expect to see more beauty, and to see more people having full and free access to it. Places of beauty would take over; there would be more parks, nature trails, excursions to mountain panoramas and into the dark depths of the rain forest. Buildings would contain more meditation rooms and relaxation areas and display more art on the walls and statues in the foyer. The air would be fresher and the conversation more serious and animated. The world of work would be less driven and frenetic but more efficient, more fulfilling for both servants and those served. There would be fewer slums, less pollution, and more smiles on peoples' faces.

To me this is the simplest and most reliable indicator, the aspect of the face. When I first arrive in the city from the country the first thing I notice is how oppressed peoples' faces look. Everyone seems either to on his way away from some horrible crime or has just leaving the scene of a horrible tragedy. A columnist in that nearby city is now complaining that people are rightly complaining about a general decline in the quality of service; the person at the counter or carrying your bags is more surly, angry, intolerant and impolite than even a few years ago. This surely is a very bad sign.

I would also expect if search for truth predominated that the average person would look more beautiful. I am not speaking about just faces and bodies, though there is that too. The epitome of beauty is the young person. If you want to visit a place where everyone has Disneyland beauty and perfection you just have to visit any university campus. But that is an unfair choice since these places cut out the very young and the old. These scenes have what one member of our Baha'i community calls "McOneness." In a world where search predominated I would therefore expect beauty to last through all the ages of man. Most would have beautiful, perfect bodies appropriate to childhood, adulthood and old age. Perfection would not be confined to those in the prime of life.

Last summer I had the rare chance for the likes of me to frequent tourist areas. I was shocked to find that almost everyone there was fat, most being grossly obese. Here the human world was as ugly as the waddling pedestrians in the new animated video, "The Triplets of Belleville." This film's depiction of our epidemic of obesity unfortunately only slightly exaggerates the reality. The latest headline shares a startling new statistic: one in three premature deaths around the world can be traced to either being too fat or smoking.

Though most are not making the connection, this is surely a glaring sign that imitation is taking the place of truth seeking. The metaphor is so close that I find it one hard to distinguish from the other. How so? Recent studies show that fat cells take on a corrupt agenda of their own; greasy globules of fat actually function as an independent organ. They take over the body's pleasure centers and raise hunger to the top of its list of priorities. Heroin is now known to be less addictive than fat!

Now imitation does exactly the same thing in the world of the mind. The old fashioned word for this is idolatry, worship of false idols. People love this or that idea, cause or interest, but then it takes on its own agenda. It rises above all other points of view, even above the good of the human race itself. The means becomes the end. After that, every suggested cure becomes a self-propagating cancer.

This is why I think that the first step to a cure will be to investigate and regulate our lives according to what our bodies really need, in other words, reality. We increasingly do it for our pets, most of which look healthier and more content than their owners. We do it for new cars; warrantee plans assure that owners perform the proper maintenance of their vehicles at regular intervals. Why not for our own bodies and, most importantly, for our own souls?

What then would the world look like if we performed correct maintenance on our souls? To me the first outer sign that people value and apply search for truth as it merits would surely be that they smile and laugh. Proof of this is that children, whose physical needs are closely regulated by their parents, tend to laugh hundreds of times more often than adults. I believe that if throughout our lives we accepted the care and regular corrections that our Creator can offer, we would smile and laugh far more frequently than we do.

`Abdu'l-Baha seems to have been of this opinion. A loving smile is a major outer sign of successful search. He concluded His address to Green Acre (which was a center for free and eccentric thought at the time, not yet a Baha'i summer school) offered the following indicator that Baha'is have hit upon the truth of Baha'u'llah and are spreading it as they should.


"The Cause of Baha'u'llah has not yet appeared in this country. I desire that you be ready to sacrifice everything for each other, even life itself; then I will know that the Cause of Baha'u'llah has been established. I will pray for you that you may become the cause of upraising the lights of God. May everyone point to you and ask, Why are these people so happy? I want you to be happy in Green Acre, to laugh, smile and rejoice in order that others may be made happy by you. I will pray for you." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 218)



Covenant and Search in an Age of Responsibility. Part I



By John Taylor; 30 May, 2004



The inauguration of search for truth as law and principle marks the most fundamental step forward in the history of humanity; it is the logical extension of the Abrahamic religions’ establishment of love as a law.

Revolutions have always eaten their own children and fallen back into barbarism and violence because they were not based upon search by one and all. It is always the same story. Opponents and contenders on all sides dress in high ideals and fill the air with slogans like "power to the people" and "no peace without justice." But all is empty posturing as long as each and all are not responsible, as long as even one of us is left out of the duty to search for truth.

Even without universality, limited search for truth has already has given birth to science and high technology, which are based upon systematic investigation of this world. As search becomes universal it will be carried to our purpose as humans, that is, conscious, regular accountability to God will be systematic, regular and universal. Hence the scriptural prophesy of a promised "Kingdom of God." The Bab inaugurated this Age of Responsibility. He declared that all difficulties are removed by the mantra: "All are His servants and all abide by His bidding." It follows that the only solution is for one and all to give a better, more regular accounting of themselves to God.

Holy Writ's special terminology pictures those who serve God consciously as sitting on God's "right hand" and those who do not on the "left." In both, the highest human station is defined by service to the King, responsibility to God. Conscious or unconscious, right or left, day or night, many symbols point to this one reality of one equal human station. The Bab explains,


"God is sanctified from His servants and no direct relationship ever existeth between Him and any created thing, while ye have all arisen at His bidding. Verily He is your Lord and your God, your Master and your King. He ordaineth your movements at His behest throughout the day-time and in the night season." (Bab, Selections, 130)


The Bab pictured His Revelation as the "essence of Islam." In spite of its horrific corruption today, the Message of the Qu'ran was designed to inculcate certain lessons that are at the heart of a truly civilized life. Among these are daily prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, alms, and other expressions built into one's lifestyle of accountability towards God. Without this training, we will always have problems breaking through from theory to action in the search for truth.

For Westerners our normality suffers from a perverse, triumphal secularism that leaves God utterly outside the structure of our lives. Regular daily expression of godliness is banished from daily life, even among our most pious and devout. One result is a twisted understanding of the nature of right and equality.

Over past centuries in the West equality and rights are misunderstood because they were hacked off the hanks of religion like a steak off a carcass. Constitutions, laws and rights were formally written out and made accessible to rational analysis. However, from an organic point of view they are dead, broken and mutilated. They came out of the Baha'i hell, that is, an atmosphere of contention, conflict, rebellion and revolution. Their influence is stunted for this reason. Only an atmosphere of love, a feeling of their being made in the court of a Merciful Creator will make right right for all of us.

This bifurcation of right from its root accelerated in the 18th Century with the Declaration of the Rights of Man. An example is Article 15, which states,


"Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration." (Declaration of the Rights of Man, Article #15)


This upholds what is not unreasonable, that the people should require public servants to be responsible to them, or rather to their trustees and representatives. Answerability is what service is about, after all, and a servant by definition works for and is answerable to someone else, though not necessarily the one being served.

The problem is that a certain hypocrisy enters in. What business does the public have requiring an accounting of public servants if they themselves are not called to give account of their actions? Every perfidy starts and ends in a self-betrayal like this; if anyone is left unaccountable power, absolute power, centralizes upon that fulcrum.

If I do not start by holding myself accountable, there is no avoiding it, I am a hypocrite. If I never give account of myself by what right can I even utter the word "justice?" Every time I cry for justice, or complain of someone doing wrong I am holding some public agent to account. By questioning their actions I am leaving myself open to the same question. This article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man therefore set up another tyranny. It laid the groundwork for the totalitarianism of the public.

True religion holds the self, its truth and actions accountable to God, including the inner, hidden and untouchable thoughts. When religion is left out only some are held responsible and others are not. This is true of every human movement. The communists started by defending the working class but ended by making it into an idol and tyrant. The democrats do the same for the majority, capitalists for the profiteer, and so forth. Leaving anybody unaccountable opens the floodgate of centralized, unlimited power. It starts in hypocrisy and taints all service, public or private, with the master-slave relationship born of absolute power.

Nature abhors a vacuum. If you choose to leave God out something else will rush into the center; without Deity our hearts construct idols. The lesson of this age is summed up by this verse of the Qu'ran, which asks us to be objective and scientific about our idols. The criterion has to be whether they work.


"(Who) is better? -- God or the false gods they associate (with Him)?" (Q27:59, Yusuf Ali)


The old order is being rolled up because it is imbalanced by its involvement in idols and their tyranny, slavery and hypocrisy. In all its forms, this order is disordered, it simply does not work.


"Say: Verily my Lord doth cast the (mantle of) Truth (over His servants),- He that has full knowledge of (all) that is hidden. Say: The Truth has arrived, and Falsehood neither creates anything new, nor restores anything." (Q34:48-9, Yusuf Ali)


The new order is based upon a renewed covenant of service of each and all to God, without a single exception. Only this way will the ills of over-centralized, unaccountable power be excluded. That is why the Guardian called the new world order an "Age of Responsibility."

I am not finished with this theme, but for now let us conclude: At the crux of the principle of search for truth is the requirement that every believer, no, really everybody without exception, give a regular accounting of himself before God. At this junction search combines with social expression, which becomes the oneness of humanity. This combined principle informs all other social principles and bring order, world order, to the otherwise unimaginable complexity of five billion souls interacting every minute of every day.

Aphorisms, Why Search?

More of Alex's Aphorisms, Plus a few of mine; 24 May, 2004


I can see now so I don't have to listen anymore!
"My braying is the only truth," said the donkey.
We accept bribery as proof of natural selection!
Slogan: "Nurture the past to defeat the future!"
Smart people don't work, they are retired.
Power and being hated comes in the same package.
Do you believe in reincarnation after love?
I hate rainbows, so I chase them.
Wishes for eyes, reality for hands, struggle for heart.
Maximalist: Struggle does not matter, only results!
Feeling stupid is the first step to becoming smart, and that is as far as we are ever going to get.
Follow the common rules and you go to a common grave.
Your dreams become truth if you can remember them.
Love and water are fundamental to life but only if they are clean and tasteless.
Respect for stupidity makes you smart.
I'm nostalgic for a past that never happened.

Addendum by JET: I am even worse, I get nostalgic for other peoples' past.


--from "Say So," by Alex Szatmary, revised by JET 24 May, 2004



Added Sayings by JET


This is saying number one. Blow your nose in the morning or pick it all day. Your choice.

The prophet says, "Ye have eyes but do not see." And the impure answer, "You see but you do not make eyes." The prophet answers: "Actually I do, just not in the way you mean."

Thales said there was no difference between life and death. "Why, then," said some one to him, "do not you die?" "Because," said he, "it does make no difference." (Thales, IX, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Translated by C. D. Yonge)

JET: "Well, what if I kill you," someone said to Thales. "Makes no difference." "Hows about torture you?" "No difference," came the reply. "There's something hanging out of your nose there." "Well, you got me there," came Thales embarrassed reply. See saying number one.




Why search?; 24 May, 2004 (rewrite of a 1996 essay)


'Abdu'l-Baha said that "there is nothing of greater importance to mankind than the investigation of truth." [Promulgation, 63] If we accept that this is so this hypothetical question takes on great importance: What would the world be like if search for truth were universally ignored?

They told a story in eighteenth century Japan of a master who began instructing a servant. He said, "I want you to go on an errand to so and so across town..." This servant was very prompt and obedient, so he cried out, "Yes sir!" and ran off. On his return his master was beside himself. "You did not wait to hear my message! What in heaven's name did you tell him, you fool?" The servant answered: "Well, fortunately he was not at home." (Blyth, Oriental Humor, 535-6) Suffice to say, if nobody sought truth, it would be better for us all if we were not at home.

Richard Landau, an old friend and one of the best Baha'i speakers I've ever heard, once gave a delightful and succinct summary of the principle of universal education. Think of it this way, he said. What would happen if the old stopped teaching the young? If that were suddenly to happen the human race would surely die out within a generation, he said. But I would take Rick's question even further. What makes the young want to learn from the old? What makes the old want to share? What makes both desire to take knowledge further and strive to improve on old ways? The answer to that surely rests in the first Baha'i principle, in our mysterious human desire to seek out hidden realities. If nobody wanted to investigate, that is, we would reject knowledge, refuse instruction and sink into barbarism. No doubt, the race would die out in far less than a whole generation.

Of course this is an extreme, hypothetical case. Most of the time you can sit back and rely on the fruits of others' search. The mind is a mirror, after all. You can read history and because you know what will happen you will have more insight into their lives and blunders than the greatest and wisest.

It is not only possible but quite easy to relax before the challenge of truth and just say, "Let's not and say we did?" Truth is hidden and invisible, after all, so nobody will scream and shout if you get by with a half hearted stab at it. You can just parrot the first truths you happen to overhear from others and people will respect your words just the same.

Both Socrates and `Abdu'l-Baha termed this "imitation." The Master pointed out that imitation is an inebriating wine that leads to slavery,


"For the imitator saith that such and such a man hath seen, such a man hath heard, and such a conscience hath discovered; in other words he dependeth upon the sight, the hearing and the conscience of others and hath no will of his own." [Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, p. 29]


What is wrong with not having a will of your own? It feels good, after all, to be part of a bigger anthill. But, as an imitator you will not only be weaker but dumber, because you will forget how to take ideas apart and put them back together. Worse, an imitator tends to forget what is good and what is bad. Aesop told a story to illustrate what happens next.


There once was a caterpillar who came upon a snake sunning itself upon a rock. The caterpillar was filled with awe at the beauty of this creature. When he compared its extended length with his own he was envious. He stretched and strained to make himself as long as the snake. Eventually he elongated himself so hard that he burst. (Aesop Without Morals, 268)


We are made for the truth, but for our own truth. The part of the soul that loves its truth, that is made for reality, feels discontented and unhappy without expression. That anger boils over into irrational, knee-jerk reactions, such as violence.

This is not to say that imitation is all bad. Indeed, ardent, strenuous search all the time would take the strength and endurance of a superman. And as every teacher knows, imitation is a useful shortcut, especially in the early stages of the learning process. You can learn a lot about art by looking at paintings and about sports by watching professionals play the game. But at some stage a student must make truth his or her own. This is painful and requires work and effort but it is absolutely essential. If learners were allowed to copy from their neighbors in an examination only a small elite would learn anything. As likely as not, their errors would proliferate through the class.

A world like ours where imitation is common is a dangerous, precarious place. With large numbers of imitators sinking into ignorance it is not difficult for small elites to cajole large numbers of people to hatred, to march to war and terror and make cannon fodder of us all. So in many ways a world that relies too much upon imitation is as badly off as one where nobody sought truth at all.


"It behooves us all to be lovers of truth. Let us seek her in every season and in every country, being careful never to attach ourselves to personalities." (Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, 134)

Declaration of the Bab, Essay

Essay Written on the Declaration of the Bab


By John Taylor; 23 May, 2004



Last night Mullah Husayn discovered the hidden Imam and more than the Hidden Imam. He stumbled against a gate that swiveled open the first Unit of a whole new Era. Who was Mullah Husayn? Suffice to say, we believe that without his contribution, merit, discovery and eventual sacrifice there would have been no Baha'i Faith, just as there would have been no Christianity without Paul. Both were human but had a unique, pivotal role and station.

In the reckoning of time, our year starts in the solar advent of spring; spiritually it tees off with this great renewal, two declarations, one after the other, though the last came first and the first last. These two great annunciations -- "Now hear this. God is here. That is all." -- of the Baha'i Era take place in our year before the first four of its nineteen month year have passed. The Declaration of the Bab takes place 65 days after Naw Ruz, the year's Day One in the Baha'i or Badi' Calendar. Ridvan begins 31 days afterwards, thus leaving 22 days, a little more than one 19 day Badi' month, between the end of Ridvan, Baha'u'llah's Declaration, and the event we celebrate today, the Declaration of the Bab (the formula being 65-(31+12)).

In actual chronology, of course, the Bab's declaration took place first, almost two decades or in Badi' measure one Vahid before Ridvan. He declared, that is, nineteen years before the first Ridvan of 1863, in 1844 CE, or Year One BE. The two declarations are separated by the space of one 19 year Vahid (unit, or cycle of years) in the Badi system of reckoning, less that 22 days.

The two declarations, that is, pounded out the first divinely sanctioned way of reckoning years. In a similar way Genesis compresses all of creation, from prehistory to now, into the first of its units, the seven day week. The declaration of the Bab inaugurated the first year, and Ridvan gave the whole era a local habitation and a name, the Baha'i Era, BE. The Bab named each of the 19 years of the Vahid cycle, just as he named the weeks and the months, after divine virtues. Only one year of the Vahid has the same name as a month, Baha, year number nine, month number one. The name of year 19 of the Vahid is, logically enough, "Vahid." Our books translate Vahid as "unity," but I was assured by a scholar at the Institute for Persian Studies that "unit" is a more adequate translation. Either way, the divine virtue of Vahid seems to refer to God's ability to sum up all things into a single unit or unity, or whatever.

In that first, formative nineteen year Vahid (pronounced "V ah head," not to be confused with Vheed, Vahid, the learned disciple of the Bab) separating the two great declarations, we can expect that the sun of revelation rose in the sky and its force grew much stronger. One unit stronger, maybe. The Bab was the sun dipping over the horizon and Baha'u'llah was the sun, well, higher in the sky. Maybe after the half million years of the Baha'i Era have run their course somebody will be able to say exactly how much higher the sun rose during that first Vahid.

This waxing of force seems to be reflected in the stories of how the two holy occasions played out. The Declaration of the Bab, which we celebrated two hours and 11 minutes after sunset last night, seems characterized by mystery. Reading through the account of Mullah Husayn's fateful evening, one is struck by the strong element of suspense and resolution. It is as if the story of religion were one big mystery novel and that meeting on that street of Shiraz was the beginning of an answer. Even where they met is shrouded in mystery, since Dawnbreakers contradicts itself, as B-- remarked at our meeting last night. The text says they met in the street outside the gate of the city (p. 52) but the caption to a picture of a room in the Masjid-i-Ikhani says that they met there (p. 53). A further mystery: was she, of all the people that have been and are reading this history, the first person to notice that?

Wherever it was that they actually met, they soon returned, the Bab and the Babu'l-Bab, to the home of the Bab, thus setting up a guest-host relationship between them. This is an important relationship everywhere, but especially in Muslim lands; it actually supercedes the literally repulsive notions of ritual uncleanness prevalent among Muslims. No matter how filthy an infidel you are, you are still welcomed into a desert home and treated with great deference. As the Bab Himself points out, these strictures of hospitality saved Mullah Husayn at one point, when the guest presumed to test his Host. There is a mystery in that.

Another thing I noticed as we were reading through the story once again last night was that time for both the Gate and the Gate's Gate was regulated by the five Muslim obligatory prayers. The only reason Mullah Husayn remembered that the declaration took place at exactly 2 hours and eleven minutes after sunset was that they had performed the ablutions and evening obligatory prayer together at the required time, near sunset. Prayer and time regulated one another and made events memorable, even when the supreme revelation was turning time and calendration upside down and renewing it according to Badi', meaning an innovation, inspiration or what some Christians call a personal "dispensation."

But as I was saying, mystery and the resolution of a mystery were characteristic of this first declaration of our Era. Mullah Husayn was, according to the Covenant of God, the most qualified person in the world to find the solution to the puzzle of religion. For one thing, he was a Shiih or Twelver Muslim, a religion that emphasizes the aristocratic element of faith.

Imagine, if you will, how different Christianity would have been if Jesus had married and His descendents were known and walking among us. Yet Shiism is founded upon just that, the living and reproducing family of the Prophet, called Siyyids or "chiefs." Their most cherished belief, shared by Baha'is, is that the family of God's Prophet is by that very fact the most worthy and qualified group of aristocrats in the world. Who could ever be greater than the Messenger of God, or more privileged than a member of His family? Other aristocrats may have qualifications, but nothing like this. God Himself picked the Siyyids out. No human election or testing, or even luck, could ever top that merit! A government run by them would be the meritocracy of meritocracies.

In Islam, the Prophet, to make things even tougher, became the head of state during His own lifetime. It was no longer a matter of prestige for his family but royal power. His twelve lineal descendents are considered in Shiism to be the only truly legitimate successors to the leadership of Islam. Similarly, Britons regard the house of Windsor to be the only family from which legitimate kings can chosen. Yet this succession of spiritual kings called "Imams" ended in the twelfth of them, a once and future king whose demise was shrouded in mystery or "occultation." Shiihs look for the return of that Twelfth Imam in the same way Jews await the Messiah and Christians the return of Christ.

As I said, in a sense Mullah Husayn was the most qualified from the point of view of credentials. He was not only a Shiih, but the logical successor to the most recent and advanced school of Shiih Islam, Shaykhism, headed by Siyyid Kazim and Shaykh Ahmad before him. But instead of passing the ball to the learned Husayn, Kazim posed for him a quest, a holy mystery for him to solve. He offered a whole series of clues, many very specific. Mullah Husayn had to use all his spiritual savvy to find the answer on that street, or was it in that room of the Masjid? in the city of Shiraz. At the end of His quest was a Siyyid, the ultimate Aristocrat, a family member chosen again by God.

For Mullah Husayn his quest was no idle mystery tour excursion; it was a matter of life or death. It is evident from some of the asides in Nabil's account that like the Ancient Mariner, Mullah Husayn told the story of the encounter that night whenever he had the chance until the end of his days. He often stops his story to describe his own reactions. It was the heaviness of his burden, confided not to the Bab but silently in the obligatory prayer they were saying together, that initially prompted the process of Declaration in the first place.


"Whilst praying, I unburdened my soul, which was much oppressed, both by the mystery of this interview and the strain and stress of my search." (55-6)


The questioning and revelation of verses by the Bab that followed after his prayer lasted until just before he noted the time of the declaration. "I sat enraptured by the magic of His voice and the sweeping force of His revelation." (61) His hands were trembling and he was so moved that, as the Bab Himself remarked, he could not have walked the streets without being thought a madman. His story enflamed Babis he met personally and continues to light new torches every 22nd of May.

So when I say though that Mullah Husayn was the most qualified, I don't mean just by learning or background. I mean mostly his ardor, for the mark of his declaration was personal passion for the Key to God. At Ridvan we elect those who will undertake institutional measures to make us real believers.


"The members of the Spiritual Meeting must endeavor, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make the souls real Baha'is." (Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, 411)


But at the Declaration of the Bab, we choose that part of ourselves that is elect, that will do that to the self. In this sense, earned merit confronts aristocratic merit, as it did when Husayn met Ali Muhammad, the Bab. This invisible election chooses the Aristos within, the feeling part of the soul; it flames out today in a spreading conflagration from person to person, from Mullah Husayn to all born in sincere belief.

Search for Truth

The Segue for Truth; Part One of Several


By John Taylor; 21 May, 2004


Dear Friends,

Yesterday I wrote some general material on Ruhi, "yet another Ruhi rant" as someone put it. According to my new policy, only new and original material went out over this Badi mailing list. I do not like clogging your mailboxes any more than necessary. So, on the blog I put up some additional material, including the first May 7 essay, Back to the Ruhi Future, in corrected form -- according to Murphy's Law, I find that no matter what a few spelling errors and other typos show their ugly face just after the final draft is out and onto the Badi list -- I also put on the blog a fuller version of the letter of the Master in question, some intelligent feedback to the BTTRF essay by reader Jimbo, yesterday's sequel essay, again, slightly corrected, and finally a thoughtful email response by reader Jean to essay number two.

Now that I am an experienced blogger all of four days I have learned that all a blog is a chronological website. It is just html or xml text, nothing more. Blogsite.com even gives you the option of archiving older posts onto your personal website. Once I get my website back online, I will certainly do that, except that I will arrange the content topically rather than chronologically. At some stage in the process I want also to take the leap away from my usual plain text into multimedia, photos, sound, video, all incorporated into the essays. That is impossible with the Lyris server that runs the Badi list, but easy on the website. The Blog seems like the logical place for the transitional stage.

My health has held up for a whole week now, and I realize I am still writing the fluff that keeps me busy during attacks but is not good between them. I am capable of better than that, really I am. And it has been rainy too -- experience says I should be laid out completely. I will never understand this body.

So, I will have to assume that this clear patch will continue. The challenge I'll take on is what I call a principle run, a systematic run through the principles. I will start today with Search for truth. Again, only the new stuff will go into your mailbox, the blog will probably include some revised older essays and more extensive quotes from the Writings and elsewhere.



Search for Truth; 21 May, 2004


Part One of a Series on Search for Truth in the Writings of Baha'u'llah


This morning, going over the vast material I have collected over the years on the principle of search for truth my question was, where to start? This principle covers just about everything. Every thinker in history has spent most if not all of his or her time dealing with either search or truth, or both; that is what made them thinkers in the first place. The principle was even enshrined in a Latin saying, Quaere Verum, "Seek the Truth." The problem is that, like Pilot, the temptation is to throw up your hands and say, "What is truth?" Truth, for most of us most of the time, is something to live up to, finding it is the easy part.

After much agonizing, I concluded that the place to begin (and end) is with the Writings of Baha'u'llah and the Bab. Why? Here's my reasoning.

I should expect from these Writings nothing more nor less than what any student does of his or her teacher. No intelligent student imagines that her teacher is the first to think up these ideas. The expectation is only that this material is what that wise teacher has carefully considered and chosen as the most appropriate for right now and the tasks that the teacher knows from experience that we will be facing soon. The given lesson that the Bab and Baha'u'llah give us is, we believe, the most suitable for the particular challenges of this age.

While we are still on this all important question of what we expect from truth, our hopes and motives, what we are looking for from our quest, it occurs to me that the best place to start is with a prayer. Baha'u'llah wrote this petition for the seeker after truth:

"Establish us, then, upon the seats of truth in Thy presence, O Thou in Whose hands is the kingdom of all things! Thou art, verily, the Almighty, the All-Glorious, the Most Merciful." (Prayers and Meditations, CLXXIX, 309-310)

The great, confusing discovery of the modern age is that truth is a diamond with many facets. The surface of each facet reflects a different, unique light from the one Source, but each of these phases or modalities seems to contradict all the others. Stand inside one and the others become invisible. Baha'u'llah's mystical writings, the Seven Valleys, the Four Valleys, the Javahir, are intended as compasses to guide our way through a maze that stymied even the Prophets of God.


"On this plane, neither the reign of reason is sufficient nor the authority of self. Hence, one of the Prophets of God hath asked: `O my Lord, how shall we reach unto Thee?' And the answer came, `Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.'" (SVFV, 55)


Self is pretty close to the ultimate authority that we can possibly have, and reason is the "first gift of God to man," and yet both of them are inadequate! We have to leave them aside to seek and find the truth. In the Hidden Words, God again expresses this profound truth, this demand of truth that the seeker take a mystic leap of love and faith into the void.


"If thou lovest Me, turn away from thyself; and if thou seekest My pleasure, regard not thine own; that thou mayest die in Me and I may eternally live in thee." (AHW #7)


This might be called the golden Golden Rule, that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, but when you do unto God, you die. Then you live again but are wholly changed, holy, susceptible to the views and values of the Universal. Having gone through that you actually want to do what it takes to be one, unified. In a later tablet, Baha'u'llah points to the end result of masses of people refusing to take this solitary jump.


"Though the world is encompassed with misery and distress, yet no man hath paused to reflect what the cause or source of that may be. Whenever the True Counsellor uttered a word in admonishment, lo, they all denounced Him as a mover of mischief and rejected His claim. How bewildering, how confusing is such behavior! No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union." (Tablets, 163-164, Lawh-i-Maqsud)



Search as Anti-Politicizing Process; 22 May, 2004


Part Two of a Series on Search for Truth in the Writings of Baha'u'llah


By John Taylor; 22 May, 2004



Yesterday we observed a unified unity thesis running through Baha'u'llah's writings from beginning to end. It makes no hard distinction between being fair to ones self and being just in society. Failure in one mirrors the other. He sums it up in a Word of Wisdom,


"The essence of all that We have revealed for thee is Justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancy and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye." (Tablets, 157)


It holds that the ultimate sign of real seeking of truth is unity, which is the same as saying that one has learned to de-politicize one's world and words. Religion and politics are both under the same law, that of consultation, whose mindset is at the root of all that is both spiritual and scientific. Independent search for truth is basic to both methodologies and the following applies for those religious or scientific leaning:


"True loss is for him whose days have been spent in utter ignorance of his self." (Tablets, 156)


To fail to seek truth is to forget the true self, and that means neglecting the manifest fact that mind and soul are built for harmony and meant for union.

Early works like the Seven Valleys pick out a oneness in apparently diverse stages and incompatible perspectives of mind and soul. The many must ever be brought before the One. Variations of this theme continue through the Proclamation of the Kings. For example, in the Hidden Words, the 31st Arabic one advises every son of Being to,


"Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds."


Later, addressing the indolent Sultan of Turkey, He advises personal investigation rather than delegating to untrustworthy ministers. He then advises,


"Set before thine eyes God's unerring Balance and, as one standing in His Presence, weigh in that Balance thine actions every day, every moment of thy life. Bring thyself to account ere thou art summoned to a reckoning, on the Day when no man shall have strength to stand for fear of God, the Day when the hearts of the heedless ones shall be made to tremble." (Summons, 5,69, Suriy-i-Muluk, 208)


The same counsel in almost the same words for religious seekers and for a hopelessly depraved tyrant responsible for most of Baha'u'llah's years of suffering and banishment!

This refusal to draw distinctions common in other schools of thought continues through to the majestic pragmatism and world embracing concerns of later works, such as the Tablet of Wisdom, which advises the seeker to use unity as an indicator of independence of thought, to be "united in counsel, be one in thought." (Tablets, Lawh-i-Hikmat, 138) The Tablet to Maqsud holds that the misery and distress evident in current events is De Facto proof of a widespread refusal to reflect.


"How bewildering, how confusing is such behavior! No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union." (Tablets, 163-164)


Those who oppress and persecute others may seem to act in concert outwardly, but it is a facade. In the Tablet of Ahmad, for example, Baha'u'llah refuses to honor them with the word "unify," saying instead that they merely "combine to assist one another." The only thing that merits the word "unify" is genuine search and sincere adherence to truth, inside and out. Political revolutions, particularly the Iranian one, are historical demonstrations of how quickly such artificial conglomerations of wet sand fall apart from within as soon as they are dry.

Baha'u'llah's Writings, early, middle and late, share another presupposition about search and truth, that outer events reflect the inner reality, or lack thereof, as if in a mirror. This golden thread runs through into His ultimate work, the Will and Testament or Kitab-i-Ahd, as we shall see. For example, the burst of knowledge and communications characteristic of this age is an early outer sign of Baha'u'llah's spiritual impetus. Conversely, the ubiquitous war and bickering that fill the newspapers is public witness of private refusal to seek truth or sacrifice self for the Divine Beloved. The secret, inner betrayal of the self results in hatred and violence, either actively or by passively accepting them as inevitable. This insidious process is going on everywhere, at every level.

Baha'u'llah's great concern throughout is therefore both positive and destructive, to build what is true while breaking down all false and artificial barriers erected by finite human understanding. For instance, we petty mortals discover that meditation is valuable but instead of incorporating it into every phase of life, we specialize and shut the practice off into monasteries and solitary penance. The Law of Baha'u'llah therefore makes reflection an obligation for all but ends ritual, monasticism and ascetic practices.

At the same time, however, His Law upholds dichotomies that have a real basis. Most notable is the permanent separation of religion from politics -- as I just found out to my astonishment, the word "politics" does not even occur in the translated writings of Baha'u'llah. Still, Baha'u'llah undeniably affirms that there is some sort of division in the Kitab-i-Ahd. He states that the reason He suffered was for concord and an end to enmity, (Tablets, 219) and that royals serve the vital role of demonstrating hierarchical divine virtues, such as loftiness, on this earth.


"Kings are the manifestations of the power, and the daysprings of the might and riches, of God. Pray ye on their behalf. He hath invested them with the rulership of the earth and hath singled out the hearts of men as His Own domain." (TB 220-221)


There follows a categorical prohibition of any form of conflict or contention. Although the Ahd is undated, since it was His Will and Testament this is clearly intended to be His last word on the matter. We are free to be inwardly violent in taming the lower self (though since it is "His Own domain" the heart is surely meant ultimately to be peaceful as well), but any outer expressions of strife, even verbal ones, are now Verboten.

Though Baha'u'llah did not mention the word "politics," the Baha'i definition of the word was hardened by 'Abdu'l-Baha, the Center of the Covenant ordained in the Kitab-i-Ahd itself. His use of the word is close to what we in English refer to as "politicizing" an issue; that is, ejecting principle and reducing the discussion to contention and taking sides. This has nothing to do with the subject area covered by the discipline of political science, which of course is ruled the principle of harmony between science and religion. Whether a group is nominally political or not, even if it is religious, it is still "political" if its relations are marked by infighting and verbal clashes.

Proof of this is in the Master's use of the word "politico-religious" in reference to the relations among religions at a 1906 conference that initiated the Congress of Religions in Japan. Because each interfaith group came only in order to convert the others, He asseverated, they were by virtue of that fact merely political. He predicted that the impact of their work would be weak and ephemeral (Tablets, v3, 496) and seems to have considered Baha'i teaching activities as in another category completely, as the solution to politics, the way to end this atmosphere of proselytize.

To sum up, Baha'u'llah held with Jesus that lasting unity, like a castle's foundation of rock, bases itself upon God; other foundations are sand and lead to collapse. Other systems of thought hold that faith concerns are inherently sacred and essentially spiritual and private, while the body politic is profane, basically material and public. Baha'u'llah makes no such distinction, though He does draw a hard and fast line. For Him the sacred is only what aids us in attaining to the truth and the profane is what blocks us off from it, and nothing else. Politicization is a destructive process that results directly from ignoring the sacred. It is the mark of neglect of the characteristic human obligation to seek all that is true and right while rejecting everything wrong and false.