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Good Morning
Thanks Nick! for showing your appreciation of my latest articles and for continously making my pages here beautiful.
Today I'll write something about God, I hope this will be a cherished theme for all of you, dear visitors. I'll say a few words about that old thing the devil too.
In the very first "Bahai book"that I read-"The Book of Certitude", Bahaullah reveals the following "concerning the nature of the Manifestation (of God) and His relationship to God and man."( I am quoting the "Book of Certitude" via the "Revelation of Bahaullah" by Adib Taherzade).:
"In the following worlds He states most eloquently that man shall never of himself be able to know his Creator, but by His bounty God reveals Himself through a Prophet in each age:
"'To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the Divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. Far be it from His glory that human tongue should adequately recount His praise, or that human heart comprehend His fathomless mystery. He is and hath ever been veiled in the ancient eternity of His Essence, and will remain in His reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of men...He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. No sign can indicate His presence or His absence; inasmuch as by a word of His command all that are in heaven and on earth have come to exist, and by His wish, which is the Primal Will itself, all have stepped out of utter nothingness into the realm of being, the world of the visible.
...All the Prophets of God and their chosen Ones, all the divines, the sages, and the wise of every generation, unanimously recognize their inability to attain unto the comprehension of that Quintessence of all truth, and confess their incapacity to grasp Him, Who is the inmost Reality of all things'
The station and nature of the manifestation of God are exalted above the world of humanity. He is in truth the embodiment of God's attributes revealed to man. He is the source of all the spiritual energies which are released from age to age. Just as the sun is the source of life and energy to this earth, so the Manifestation of God is the Sun to mankind. The life, growth and progress of humanity are due to, and depend upon, the appearance of these heavenly Souls. Bahaullah extols the station of the Manifestations of God and reveals a measure of Their glory in these words.:
'The door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days being thus closed in the face of all beings, the Source of infinite grace, according to His saying:'His grace hath transcended all things; My grace hath encompassed them all' hath caused those luminouis Gems of Holiness to appear out of the realm of the spirit, in the noble form of the human temple, and be made manifest unto all men, that they may impart unto the world the mysteries of the unchangeable Being, and tell of the subtleties of His imperishable Essence. These sanctified Mirrors, these Day-springs of ancient glory are one and all the Exponents on earth of Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose. From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived their sovereignty. The beauty of their countenance is but a reflection of His image, and their revelation a sign of His deathless glory. They are the treasures of divine knowledge, and the Repositories of celestial wisdom. Through them is transmitted a grace that is infinite, and by them is revealed the light that can never fade. Even as He hath said::'There is no distinction whatsoever between Thee and Them; except that they are Thy servants and are created of Thee.' This is the significance of the tradition:'I am He, Himself, and He is I, myself.' (Quote Qoaran)
And again He reveals the following:
'...And of all men, the most accomplished, the most distinguished and the most excellent are the Manifestations of the Sun of truth. Nay, all else besides these Manifestations, live by the operation of their Will, and move and have their being through the outpouring of their grace.'But for Thee, I would not have created the heavens.' Nay, all in their holy presence fade into utter nothingness, and are a thing forgotten. Human tongue can never befittingly sing their praise, and human speech van never unfold their mystery, These Tabernacles of holiness, these primal Mirrors which reflect the light of unfading glory, are but expressions of Him Who is the Invisible of the Invisibles. By the revelation of these Gems of divine virtue all the names and attributes of God, such as knowledge and power, sovereignty and dominion, mercy and wisdom, glory, bounty and grace, are made manifest.'
As I told you yesterday, I started to study the Bahai Faith with this Book of Certitude. The translation was very confusing, a strange kind of latinoswinglish and I didn't understand much, though I sensed its holiness though, to a certain and real degree.Later, through talking with the friends I came gradually to be aware of the reality of Buddha, Zoroaster, Abraham, Muhammad, Krishna, all of whom I was not very aquainted, only Jesus Christ, just remembering what had been taught at school. But I came to study the Scriptures of all of them, that is the Essence of their teachings, gathered in a book by another Bahai+ some other books. All of them have a GOLDEN RULE, thus uniting them+ many other uniting things. How important this is to have a knowledge about!. It would settle everything in its right place. I really long sooo much to see the results of this knowledge among the striding ones, among the "firemakers" that I call them in one of my poems.
I came to be sure that Buddha Who is said , by some people, to have created a religion without a God, was indeed revealing God, only Westerners think that there is no God in Buddhas teachings just because He calls Him the Causer of Causes. I'd say, what a wonderful name! Like the Sun has different names all over the globe, so has also God different names among the various peoples of the world. Of, course you understand, this is selfevident.
Last night I was thinking of the fact that I haven't said a word about the so called devil. Iin the light of this revelation, the Bahai Faith,
there is no such creature. The devil, where this concept is mentioned, is explained as everything that keeps you away from remembering God, whatever you are busy with, your body, your thoughts and your undertakings.
When we are in our infancy often some parents say something similar to thgis: if you do not obey us, the chimneysweep will come and take you.
When I was a kid, and did not obey,my fosterparents said to me, oh the "Laila of the fox" has come back. So where is Laila? I don't remember what I thought of this, but I remember I was a very obstinate child, lively too. I was not like my parents at all.
Humankind has likewise gone through childhood, adolescence and similarly there has apparently been some need of this concept of a devil, to get people to behave properly. Now in this age,the age of maturity there is certainly no need of such a threat. By the light of the spiritual sun we will surely learn to obey our loving Father Who is now teaching us to live in universal brotherhood. On our way towards this goal, we will just stumble upon our own selfimposed hindrances, that is our own unwillingness to let go of our ageold homemade lamps still shining, although the Spiritual Sun has rizen to its Zenith.
Some people say the devil is a spirit, and to deny its existence is to speak with the toungue of the devil. They say "this is one of his ways to deceive you". This is non-sence for a Bahai. There are evil people who are "dictated by their own evil desires and an corrupt inclination", they need to be illumined and then they will be informed of the reality, just as light eliminates the shadow. Similarly where there is knowledge ignorance is gone.
Bye for a while
Laila
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