Bahai Faith
True Feminism Raises the Spiritual Bar
These days, more and more people are identifying with the term “feminist” to show their support for women. While there is an increased popularity in being a feminist and proclaiming the equality of men and women, I have noticed that in trying to achieve equality, many people either purposefully or accidentally use oppressive standards that can turn into subtle forms of misogyny. Despite their popularity, feminism and gender equality often go misunderstood.
One of the most persistent questions I have had in my thinking about these things is: Does feminism mean holding women to the same skewed standards we’ve historically held men?
The Baha’i Writings emphasize the need for humanity to end the oppression of women so that we can address other issues in our society. In his book “The Promulgation of Universal Peace,” Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, wrote: “The world of humanity consists of two parts or members: one is woman; the other is man. Until these two members are equal in strength, the oneness of humanity cannot be established, and the happiness and felicity of mankind will not be a reality.”
It can be hard to understand how different issues interconnect. The widespread oppression of women has all kinds of effects that we aren’t aware of because we’re so used to an unjust reality. For example, Abdu’l-Baha explained that warfare is tied to gender inequality. He said that “equality between men and women is conducive to the abolition of warfare for the reason that women will never be willing to sanction it… There is no doubt that when women obtain equality of rights, war will entirely cease among mankind.”
In contrast, I have seen people push for women to behave in ways men are socialized to act. Men are often socialized to act emotionlessly, over-assertively, and aggressively instead of seeing emotional vulnerability, empathy, and kindness as strengths. Likewise, emotionally available or stereotypically “feminine” women are often seen as less worthy of respect, or “less progressive.”
Regardless of how they present themselves to the world, women receive judgment based on the choices they make in their work, their personal and professional relationships, or the way they dress. Similarly, they might feel pressured to be less emotional or behave in sexually exploitative ways — just as men have historically been encouraged to do — as proof that they are “liberated” from the oppression they face.
Instead of embracing and valuing the wide diversity of personalities all people can have, people mistake equity as holding the same skewed standard for everyone This misunderstanding of feminism just creates a new box around women.
The Baha’i Writings say that as stereotypically feminine values come to the center of our society, many of the world’s issues will begin to heal: “The happiness of mankind will be realized when women and men coordinate and advance equally, for each is the complement and helpmate of the other.”
This requires ending another subtle form of misogyny: when women’s comments are pushed aside or consistently left unaddressed in conversations, simply because they disagree with men’s opinions. When it comes to communicating empathetically and compassionately about their rights, women aren’t meant to carry the brunt of the work.
The Baha’i Writings encourage folks of all different backgrounds and identities to step up to the plate. While men are often socialized to be more combative, stubborn, and argumentative than women, they can work towards more gentle and careful forms of communication, uplifting the voices of women and beginning to bridge the gap between genders.
Abdu’l-Baha explained in a speech in 1911: “In order to find truth we must give up our prejudices, our own small trivial notions; an open receptive mind is essential. If our chalice is full of self, there is no room in it for the water of life.”
When we accept that our gender isn’t tied to our true essence, it becomes easier to move past antiquated gender roles and sharp divides between masculinity and femininity. Our souls do not hold a gender. As Abdu’l-Baha said in a speech in 1912, “In the estimation of God there is no gender. The one whose deeds are more worthy, whose sayings are better, whose accomplishments are more useful is nearest and dearest in the estimation of God, be that one male or female.”
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Women: the Key to Human Progress
On August 26th, the day in 1920 when the United States certified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, Americans observe Women’s Equality Day.
In other words, the country sets aside one day out of 365 days in each year to celebrate equality for half of humanity. Somehow it just doesn’t seem quite proportional, does it?
The Baha’i teachings call on mankind to implement full equality for womankind. In fact, the Baha’i teachings say that humanity itself cannot progress until both genders have equal rights:
Now in the two lower kingdoms of nature we have seen that there is no question of the superiority of one sex over the other. In the world of humanity we find a great difference; the female sex is treated as though inferior, and is not allowed equal rights and privileges. This condition is due not to nature, but to education. In the Divine Creation there is no such distinction. Neither sex is superior to the other in the sight of God. Why then should one sex assert the inferiority of the other, withholding just rights and privileges as though God had given His authority for such a course of action? If women received the same educational advantages as those of men, the result would demonstrate the equality of capacity of both for scholarship. – Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 161.
The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly. Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment. When the two wings or parts become equivalent in strength, enjoying the same prerogatives, the flight of man will be exceedingly lofty and extraordinary. Therefore, woman must receive the same education as man and all inequality be adjusted. Thus, imbued with the same virtues as man, rising through all the degrees of human attainment, women will become the peers of men, and until this equality is established, true progress and attainment for the human race will not be facilitated. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 375.
When we celebrate Women’s Equality Day, we often don’t realize that it took the American women’s suffrage movement almost seventy-five years of committed, painful struggle to achieve voting rights for women. A half-century before women could vote, a chance meeting on a train set the 19th Amendment in motion.
At that point, the famous suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had just drafted the simple, 29-word text of what would become the 19th Amendment:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Then, in 1872, Susan B. Anthony—Quaker, suffragette, anti-slavery activist and internationalist—met a Congressman from Nevada City, California, Aaron Sargent, and his wife Ellen Clark Sargent. Anthony’s fervent desire for a women’s suffrage movement convinced the Sargents to become supporters of the movement, and Aaron Sargent subsequently became the first person to ever utter the word “suffrage” in the United States Congress. Since women could not vote or hold office, it took a man to advance the 19th Amendment:
God’s Bounty is for all and gives power for all progress. When men own the equality of women there will be no need for them to struggle for their rights! – Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 164.
Elected to the Senate in 1873, Sargent interceded with President Grant when Susan B. Anthony was jailed for registering to vote—his efforts secured her release. In January of 1878 Senator Sargent introduced the “Susan B. Anthony” Amendment—and for the next 40 years it would annually be introduced unsuccessfully in Congress, until it finally passed during Woodrow Wilson’s administration in 1919, forty-one years later.
From their home in Nevada City, the Sargents carried on the long battle for suffrage. A year after Aaron Sargent’s passing, in 1888, when the famed abolitionist, pacifist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe (the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic) visited California, Ellen Clark Sargent hosted an important meeting in San Francisco that brought together some of the nation’s most powerful and influential women’s suffrage advocates—Phoebe Hearst, Sarah Dix Hamlin, Emma Sutro Merritt, M.D., and several others. Phoebe Hearst, one of the wealthiest American women and a strong supporter of women’s rights, became a Baha’i a decade later, in 1898. In that 1888 meeting the women formed the Century Club of California, often noted as the fulcrum of emerging female power in the West, and a major supporter and funder of the campaign to pass the 19th Amendment.
During that same period, when most civic, political and religious organizations opposed, fought against or even criminalized the women’s rights movement, the Baha’i Faith strongly advocated the equality of men and women.
Abdu’l-Baha, who met with many suffragist leaders and spoke encouragingly to suffragette groups in Europe and America, clearly enunciated the Baha’i teachings on the question when he addressed a women’s suffrage meeting in New York City in 1912. He questioned, in fact, the underlying premise of any attitude that opposed the equality of the sexes:
Woman must be given the same opportunities as man for perfecting herself in the attainments of learning, science and arts. God has created the man and the woman equal, why should she be deprived of exercising the fullest opportunities afforded by life? Why should we ever raise the question of superiority and inferiority? In the animal kingdom the male and female enjoy suffrage and in the vegetable kingdom the plants all enjoy equal suffrage. In the human kingdom, which claims to be the realm of brotherhood and solidarity, why should we raise this question? – The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 167.
The great global movements for freedom, the Baha’i teachings say, never take place in a spiritual vacuum. Instead, Baha’is believe that the civil rights and women’s rights movements; the various movements for justice for workers; the anti-war and anti-nuclear movements and every other mass uprising that has called for peace, justice and equality since the mid-19th Century all have their genesis in the deep spiritual principles revealed by Baha’u’llah:
Every age requires a central impetus or movement. In this age, the boundaries of terrestrial things have extended; minds have taken on a broader range of vision; realities have been unfolded and the secrets of being have been brought into the realm of visibility. What is the spirit of this age, what is its focal point? It is the establishment of Universal Peace, the establishment of the knowledge that humanity is one family. – Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 3, p. 4.
In the Baha’i Faith, the equality of women and men forms one of the great pillars of the oneness of humanity, the central prerequisite for peace.
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What Does It Mean to Be a Baha’i?
Baha’is belong to the world’s newest major Faith, founded by Baha’u’llah, a 19th Century Persian mystic, prophet and prisoner who taught the unity of all nations, races and religions.
The Baha’i Faith tends to spread its message gently and quietly, and yet, in the past 150 years, it has become one of the most widespread religions on Earth. Representing all nationalities, backgrounds, ethnicities, social classes, and every beautiful color of the human race, you probably have Baha’is living in your community or somewhere near you.
If you look carefully you might even recognize them – Baha’is generally tend toward happiness, try to have a positive, radiant, healthy outlook on life, and express their love for humanity by engaging in volunteer work for children, the elderly and the poor. Baha’is do their utmost to exemplify the spiritual teachings of Baha’u’llah, which call upon everyone to know and love God and carry forth an ever-advancing civilization:
He is a true Baha’i who strives by day and by night to progress along the path of human endeavor, whose cherished desire is so to live and act as to enrich and illumine the world; whose source of inspiration is the essence of Divine Perfection, whose aim in life is to conduct himself so as to be the cause of infinite progress. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Baha’i World, vol. 2, p. xvi.
This series of nine short essays attempts to answer two of the most common questions people who encounter the Baha’i teachings ask – what does it mean to be a Baha’i, and how do you become one?
#1 – Progressive Revelation
Baha’is believe that all of the founders of the world’s major Faiths — including Moses, Abraham, Christ, Muhammad, Krishna, Buddha, and now Baha’u’llah — have appeared at intervals throughout history to write the chapters in a single great religion. Together these Manifestations and Prophets, sent by a loving Supreme Being to enable us to seek the answers to our deepest inner questions, have created a sequential, linked historical pattern of mystical and practical teachings Baha’is call progressive revelation.
In other words, Baha’is see the entire epic scope of religious revelation and belief as one single system.
Instead of competing messages from disparate and conflicting Messengers, Baha’is focus on the unity of all Faiths, the common messages of their Founders, and the essential oneness of their teachings. In the simplest terms, Baha’is believe that one God has given us one continuous Faith. Like teachers in a school, the Founders of the world’s great Faiths progressively reveal the knowledge and insight humanity needs to keep moving forward.
This simple and yet profound way to look at religion means Baha’is accept all of the major Faiths as legitimate and true. Religion is one, Baha’u’llah taught, revealed over the course of time by one loving God through a series of Divine Educators.
Baha’is come from Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and all other religious traditions; and Baha’is also come from agnostic and atheist and spiritual backgrounds. Becoming a Baha’i means embracing the one Faith that does not reject other Faiths.
Baha’u’llah wrote:
The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 215.
The essence of the Baha’i teachings — love, harmony and peace – reflect the essential message of all spiritual truths. Baha’is want to spread the love and unity Baha’u’llah describes, so the Baha’i community welcomes everyone. Please follow along in this series of articles as we discover how Baha’is lead their lives and what it means to be a Baha’i.
Read the next article in the series: Independent Investigation of Truth
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What Is Reality – and Can Our Senses Understand it?
My friend is a materialist—that is to say, he accepts as reality only that which can be perceived by the senses. Are you a materialist, too?
If so, along with my friend you may be a follower of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677). He convinced much of the Western world that God and nature are the same. Spinoza wrote “God is no longer the transcendent creator of the universe but Nature itself … because we can reasonably prove the existence of Nature but not of God.“
Calling upon humans to live by the guidance of reason, Spinoza advocated finding happiness through a rational understanding of a natural system and our place within it.
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Growing up in Odessa Texas, I used to love to stargaze during the summer months. In those days, the small city of 80,000 had dry, unpolluted air, such that the brilliance of the celestial spheres greatly affected me. The fixed billion or more stars of the Milky Way, the occasional flashes of comets, and the zigzagging of nearer stellar objects inspired me to reflect how such wonders could exist spontaneously without an intelligent Creator.
Decades later, the Hubble spacecraft would estimate the observable universe at two trillion galaxies. My own vision, like everyone’s, does not have the capacity to recognize this reality.
I saw something endless and timeless in the heavens—and a non-random order that struck me with awe. I also recognized something important about myself: that even the physical, material universe far, far exceeded what I could perceive with my limited senses.
Years later, as a Baha’i, I would discover that Abdu’l-Baha—the son of the Faith’s founder Baha’u’llah, and its head after his passing—had effectively refuted the materialist view of nature and God in the very first chapter of the book Some Answered Questions:
Nature is that condition or reality which outwardly is the source of life and death, or, in other words, of the composition and decomposition, of all things.
This nature is subject to a sound organization, to inviolable laws, to a perfect order, and to a consummate design, from which it never departs. To such an extent is this true that were you to gaze with the eye of insight and discernment, you would observe that all things – from the smallest invisible atom to the largest globes in the world of existence, such as the sun or the other great stars and luminous bodies – are most perfectly organized, be it with regard to their order, their composition, their outward form, or their motion, and that all are subject to one universal law from which they never depart.
When you consider nature itself, however, you see that it has neither awareness nor will. For instance, the nature of fire is to burn; it burns without consciousness or will. The nature of water is to flow; it flows without consciousness or will. The nature of the sun is to shed light; it shines without consciousness or will. The nature of vapor is to rise; it rises without consciousness or will. It is therefore evident that the natural movements of all created things are compelled, and that nothing moves of its own will save animals and in particular, man.
Man is able to resist and oppose nature inasmuch as he discovers the natures of things and, by virtue of this discovery, has mastery over nature itself. Indeed, all the crafts that man has devised proceed from this discovery. For example, he has invented the telegraph, which connects the East and the West. It is therefore evident that man rules over nature.
Now, can such organization, order, and laws as you observe in existence be attributed merely to the effect of nature, notwithstanding that nature itself has neither consciousness nor understanding? It is therefore evident that this nature, which has neither consciousness nor understanding, is in the grasp of the omnipotent Lord, Who is the Ruler of the world of nature and Who causes it to manifest whatsoever He desires.
Some say that human existence is among those things that have appeared in the world of being and that are due to the exigencies of nature. Were this true, man would be the branch and nature the root. But is it possible that there could exist a will, a consciousness, and certain perfections in the branch which are absent in the root?
According to Spinoza and like-minded thinkers, we should live by the guidance of reason. Why then do materialists, reasoning through rational arguments, seldom arrive at a common understanding, diverging in their opinions or changing their conclusions?
In a talk he gave on the philosophy of the materialists in 1912 at New York City’s Ansonia Hotel, Abdu’l-Baha answered this question by saying that the basis for rational understanding is inexact. He mentioned the four accepted criteria for human knowledge: sense perception, reason, tradition and inspiration, but then pointed out that our senses have significant limitations. They aren’t completely reliable, he said, and are often deceived by external movements such as a mirage or shadow. He said that reason is subjected to conflicting opinions, that traditions are based on varying historic interpretations, and that inspiration is only “the influx of the human heart.”
That which is certain, he continued, is vouchsafed by the Holy Spirit.
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While the Baha’i Faith does not discount these inexact criteria of the senses, Abdu’l-Baha explained in a talk he gave in Chicago that we human beings need a divine educator to quicken our minds and harmonize divergent thoughts:
The prophets of God are the first educator. They bestow universal education upon man and cause him to rise from lowest levels of savagery to the highest pinnacles of spiritual development. … His Holiness Jesus Christ was an educator of humanity. His teachings were altruistic; His bestowal universal. He taught mankind by the power of the Holy Spirit and not through human agency, for the human power is limited whereas the divine power is illimitable and infinite. The influence and accomplishment of Christ will attest to this. … The purpose of this is to show that the holy Manifestations of God, the divine prophets, are the first teachers of the human race. They are universal educators and the fundamental principles they have laid down are the causes and factors of the advancement of nations.
Guided and quickened by the teachings of these prophets and messengers, and inspired by the energies of the Holy Spirit, we gain true knowledge.
The materialist may deny its existence, but Abdu’l-Baha, in a talk he gave in Paris, explained its power to inspire and educate humans:
An humble man without learning, but filled with the Holy Spirit, is more powerful than the most nobly-born profound scholar without that inspiration. He who is educated by the Divine Spirit can, in his time, lead others to receive the same Spirit.
The Baha’i teachings confirm that the foremost favor vouchsafed by the Almighty is this divine gift of knowledge and understanding.
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The 3 Main Principles of the Baha’i Revelation
The sacred writings of Baha’u’llah, who lived from 1817 to 1892, extend from 1852, the year of the inception of the Baha’i Faith, to 1892, the year of his ascension – 40 years of revelation.
Both the Faiths of the Bab (1819-1850), the prophet who paved the way for the coming of Baha’u’llah, and of Baha’u’llah are characterized by an unprecedented ocean of revelatory outpouring.
That is why Baha’i scripture constitutes almost a library, rather than one or a few books.
In addition, there is no historical or objective doubt about the authenticity of these writings. The writings of Baha’u’llah by himself would be the equivalent of one hundred books, and the Baha’is have the originals. These writings address all kinds of issues in a variety of styles. However, despite the amazing diversity and plurality of Baha’u’llah’s writings, they all represent a grand divine order and unity:
Incline thine ear and hear! This is the voice of My pen raised before mystics, then divines, and then kings and rulers. – Ishráqát, p. 260.
This statement of Baha’u’llah unveils a unique order and unity. As he notes, he revealed his writings in three stages. The first stage of his revelation Baha’u’llah addressed to the mystics, the second to the divines and clerics, and the third to the kings and rulers of the world. This order is not accidental. The logical and dialectical structure of this order is itself another testimony to the primordial unity, originality, novelty and purity of Baha’u’llah’s consciousness.
In this reflection we will explore these three stages, the corresponding principle announced by each of them, and the logical connection and unity of all three.
The principle explained in the first stage is the mystical consciousness – that reality is ultimately spiritual. The second stage emphasizes historical consciousness and extends that dynamism to the realm of religion and the word of God. The third principle in the final stage of Baha’u’llah’s revelation emphasizes global consciousness and its twin requirements of the oneness of humankind and universal peace. Together, these three principles – mystical, historical and global – constitute an organic unity, and this unity defines the uniqueness of Baha’u’llah’s message.
1. Mystical Consciousness
The first stage of Baha’u’llah’s revelation, from 1852 to 1860, took place during much of his exile in Baghdad. Some of his principal works from this stage – The Hidden Words, The Four Valleys, The Ode of the Dove, and The Seven Valleys – emphasize the spiritual interpretation of reality.
According to the writings of Baha’u’llah, reality expresses ultimately diverse manifestations of divine names and attributes. All beings therefore are sublime mirrors in which the divine revelation is reflected and made manifest. This radical affirmation of the sacredness of all beings and the cosmic solidarity and unity of all things is based upon the idea that the ultimate truth of all beings is the very divine revelation that is enshrined within their inmost hearts. History, then, is a spiritual journey towards the realization and unfoldment of this all-encompassing inherent divine revelation in the lives of human beings. In Baha’u’llah’s The Hidden Words we read:
O Son of Man! Thou art My dominion and My dominion perisheth not, wherefore fearest thou thy perishing? Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished, why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn. Abide then in thy love for Me, that thou mayest find Me in the realm of Glory.
The principle of the spiritual nature of all beings differentiates the viewpoint of Baha’u’llah from all materialistic worldviews and all social theories that divest sociocultural order from spiritual values and moral orientation. Thus, according to Baha’u’llah, one of the most important foundations of social order is the commitment of society to moral and spiritual values.
Such a spiritual orientation means that we should observe reality as an interconnected unity, rather than a set of fragmented, independent, solid objects. The truth of everything is the divine revelation, meaning that all beings are interconnected and one. However, this same spiritual understanding of existence implies an opposite principle as well. Consciousness is always a unique and individual reality. Therefore, humans as independent spiritual beings all have the duty to think for themselves. The metaphysics compatible with this mystical consciousness – unity in diversity – calls for an ever-increasing unification of the planet and all of its peoples.
2. Historical Consciousness
Although Baha’u’llah’s first principle sequesters his message from any materialistic worldview, the second constitutive principle of his worldview differentiates his vision from all religious forms of traditionalism.
This second principle is the principle of historical consciousness or the historicity of life. In the second stage of his revelation, from 1860 to 1867, during the last years of his stay in Baghdad and continuing during his banishment to Istanbul and Adrianople, Baha’u’llah spoke in terms of issues that relate to sacred scriptures.
Here the divines and the learned of various religious persuasions became the direct recipients of his writings. Chief among these works are the Book of Certitude and the New Wondrous Book. This dynamic conception is particularly relevant to the realm of human culture and society.
Social reality is a perpetually advancing phenomenon. Such dynamism applies not only to the realm of human cultural institutions but also to the realm of the revelation of divine word itself. Baha’is call this all-encompassing and radical affirmation of historical consciousness in the writings of Baha’u’llah the principle of progressive revelation.
Culture and society are defined by perpetual change and transformation, which means that the revelation of the eternal Will of God becomes something historical and dynamic as well. Baha’u’llah, therefore, sees in all diverse religions one and the same eternal truth. That creative divine Will reflects itself in the form of new laws and doctrines, in different ages, in accordance with the level of the development of humanity and the specific needs of all people at that particular stage of advancement. Thus for Baha’u’llah, all prophets of God represent one and the same eternal reality, who appear in different ages as diverse and historically-specific human persons with different laws as required by the material and spiritual development of society in that stage of humankind’s development. In other words, the message of this second principle is the unity in diversity of all religions:
The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which the subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements. – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah
Although historical consciousness is present in the philosophical systems of a number of philosophers like Hegel and Marx, Baha’u’llah’s principle is qualitatively different. First, this historical dynamic never ends in an ultimate historical state. Thus, for Baha’u’llah, even the truth of his own revelation is relative to the present stage of development of humanity, and therefore his revelation is not the last divine revelation. Divine revelation, on the contrary is eternal and everlasting. Secondly, Baha’u’llah applies this historical logic not only to the realm of human culture, but also to the realm of the revelation of divine word as well.
3. Global Consciousness
The unity of the first and second principles implies the third principle of the worldview of Baha’u’llah. The two first principles together declare the necessity of the renewal of spiritual order at this stage of the maturation of humanity in ways that accord with the fundamental challenge of historical development in this age.
The third principle of Baha’u’llah’s worldview is the principle of the oneness of humankind and the imperative of universal peace. According to this Baha’i vision of the world’s future, an effective and just solution to diverse problems of humanity at this stage of its development requires the adoption of a global consciousness that is based upon the fundamental premise of the essential unity of the entire human race.
This global approach is not simply a cult of brotherly love or a utopian fantasy. Emphasized through his letters to the rulers of the world in 1867-1868, and elaborated throughout the rest of his life, Baha’u’llah’s third principle calls for the emergence of a new culture of peace and unity, a new consultative and democratic international structure, and new consultative and just social institutions. Baha’u’llah’s teachings aim to create a social order defined by the principle of unity in diversity:
That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race. The Great Being saith: Blessed and happy is he that ariseth to promote the best interests of the peoples and kindreds of the earth. … It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.
Anyone can see the remarkable dialectical nature of these three stages. The first stage emphasizes the abstract and mystical unity of humanity. The second stage negates that abstraction and affirms the historical diversity and the dynamic nature of the spirit. The third stage affirms the concrete, historically-specific unity of humankind.
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Making Economics Serve Humanity – BahaiTeachings.org
The recent pandemic has highlighted the glaring disparities in the economic system between the rich and the poor. On the one hand, we have the plight of poor people living under the poverty line and trying to survive the onslaught of miseries caused by financial hardship. In contrast, a small percentage of people continue to add billions to their already colossal wealth.
It upsets me because it looks like humanity has lost its consciousness and has become numb to the sufferings of the poor and underprivileged. I see the ever-widening gap between the poor and the rich getting wider and wider, yet there seems to be no solution in sight. That makes me more determined than ever to keep this issue alive and continue to address it.
I like to use the word “humanomics” to describe the solution to the inequalities in our economic system because a lack of humanity has been with the system since its inception and has had devastating effects on millions of lives.
Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, taught us how to treat the poor. It is no wonder that he was called “Father of the Poor.” He wrote:
Know ye that the poor are the trust of God in your midst. Watch that ye betray not His trust, that ye deal not unjustly with them and that ye walk not in the ways of the treacherous. Ye will most certainly be called upon to answer for His trust on the day when the Balance of Justice shall be set, the day when unto every one shall be rendered his due, when the doings of all men, be they rich or poor, shall be weighed.
The Baha’i Writings remind us to be aware of our role in taking care of the poor since our moral and spiritual duty is to protect and care for them. Baha’u’llah also wrote: “O Son of Man! Bestow My wealth upon My poor, that in heaven thou mayest draw from stores of unfading splendour and treasures of imperishable glory. But by My life! To offer up thy soul is a more glorious thing couldst thou but see with Mine eye.
In addition to helping on an individual level, we need to work towards changing the economic system to make it more sensitive to people’s needs and inject morality and spirituality into it so that it serves humanity rather than humanity being sacrificed to make the system work. We need Humanomics: a human system with human values and less of economics.
This can only be done by practicing truthfulness, trustworthiness, and other moral values in our actions, especially in our economic activities. These activities are not just economical but spiritual. In a talk in Boston in 1912, Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah and his designated successor, explained that “The fundamentals of the whole economic condition are divine in nature and are associated with the world of the heart and spirit.”
In 1935, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, further explained Abdu’l-Baha’s meaning:
… By the statement ‘the economic solution is divine in nature’ is meant that religion alone can, in the last resort, bring in man’s nature such a fundamental change as to enable him to adjust the economic relationships of society. It is only in this way that man can control the economic forces that threaten to disrupt the foundations of his existence, and thus assert his mastery over the forces of nature.
The economic problems of the world will not be solved if we do not change the system. The present financial system is a by-product of the old order and was built on wrong assumptions. It assumed that people only think of their interest and do not concern themselves with the plight of others. This assumption has been the engine for driving the system, and it has become a fertile ground for greed to spread in every aspect of human life, and we can see the result is the present economic injustices in the world.
The sad part about this is that every single day that this continues, thousands of people in the world will be dragged into a life full of economic challenges without any hope of remedy.
The essential element missing in the present economic system is justice, which has to be its foundation. Economic justice these days is the scarcest commodity in the world. In a talk in Montreal in 1912, Abdu’l-Baha told the audience:
We ask God to endow human souls with justice so that they may be fair, and may strive to provide for the comfort of all, that each member of humanity may pass his life in the utmost comfort and welfare. Then this material world will become the very paradise of the Kingdom, this elemental earth will be in a heavenly state, and all the servants of God will live in the utmost joy, happiness and gladness.
I feel that every individual is responsible for trying to do his or her utmost to lessen the burden of poverty from the shoulders of our fellow humans, so that every person in the world has the economic means to live a comfortable and fulfilled life — which is a fundamental human right for everyone.
Though the possibility of the economic system becoming more humane looks like a far-fetched dream, if we desire it and strive to attain it by playing our small part, we can transform this rigid system — which is currently devoid of spirit — into a fantastic tool for the prosperity of humanity.
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What I Know about God
I’ve tried to strengthen my faith through earnest seeking, through more or less constant reflection and prayer, and in trying to do right. Isn’t that the essence of all religious teachings?
Scripture supports this logic, proclaiming that if you seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, all things will be added unto you (Matthew 6:33).
Following a path to God, knowing that it is good, is, in itself, rewarding. It is also, as the Psalmist says (119:97), surely wondrous to revel in God’s law, to think about it all day. Many days scriptural study has buoyed me up and illuminated my path.
It is also surely better to do right than to do wrong. Though I often make mistakes, my experience fits the reality the prophet Ezekiel proclaimed: “if a wicked man turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he will save his life.” – 18:27. In Romans 2:7, Paul said it more sweetly: “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, He will give eternal life.”
Doing the right thing just feels good of its own accord, and thus brings assurance that the ancient road laid out for all to walk is the right path. In the end, both faith and deeds are necessary to find and stay in touch with God on this path.
My Experience of God
As a final piece to consider about finding God, it may help if I share, as best I can, how I experience my connection with God in the moment. Before I share, however, a cautionary note is in order.
Religious people get in a lot of trouble when they read too much into their individual spiritual experiences or draw unjustified conclusions from them. Though God’s spirit can and does guide people, I encourage skepticism of those claiming to be moved or directed by God, as much nonsense occurs and is tolerated under this protective cultural and quasi-religious banner. The Baha’i teachings warn against the “vain imaginings” some consider divine, when really they’re only the manufactured mirages of the mind:
… they that tread the path of faith, they that thirst for the wine of certitude, must cleanse themselves of all that is earthly – their ears from idle talk, their minds from vain imaginings, their hearts from worldly affections, their eyes from that which perisheth. – Baha’u’llah, The Book of Certitude
… how can the human reality, which is limited, comprehend the eternal, unmanifest Creator? How can man comprehend the omniscient, omnipresent Lord? Undoubtedly, he cannot, for whatever comes within the grasp of the human mind is man’s limited conception, whereas the divine Kingdom is unlimited, infinite. But although the reality of Divinity is sanctified beyond the comprehension of its creatures, it has bestowed its bounties upon all kingdoms of the phenomenal world, and evidences of spiritual manifestation are witnessed throughout the realms of contingent existence. The lights of God illumine the world of man, even as the effulgences of the sun shine gloriously upon the material creation. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace
However, inspiration often makes me feel that what comes to me is not from me. Well, the mistakes are mine – part of the limitations of my particular being at each moment in time – but my animation is part of a much larger process. I, and we, experience God through being, through our tie to life and to the Creator of all that is. This connection can be very exciting – the source of all gifts.
Some of what I know of God comes quickly in almost ecstatic bestowals. Surely, this is not rare. There seems to be little pre-condition other than a place of quiet reflection and a beseeching attitude. Here’s one of my experiences of God, as I reflect on what God is:
He’s the One
He is the Lord of dance and life, and yet He rewards those who sit still to find Him. He’s the One who floods the minds of those who leave their selves behind, who approach His Holy Seat with wonder, who fills them with rapturous tokens of His might and with thoughts that flow too fast to capture. He’s the One who rescues the seekers if they come too near too fast, who diverts them to a pleasant garden and says “Peace be upon you. Tarry here till you’re ready to go on.”
He’s the One who lets us know there is always more to know, more to experience and be. He’s the great life-giving Spirit. He’s the One who heals the broken hearts, who sustains the wounded. He’s the One who rewards good choice and lets us experience the consequence of the bad; He’s the Caring. He’s the One who protects purity with incomprehension of wrong. He’s the Author of the continuity beyond earthly time, and the One who lets us experience part of the next world in this one. He’s the One who tells us what life is, what death brings, and who causes us to celebrate because of it. He’s the One who will one day, lift us up, free our souls, and cause us to enter a new world, and He’s the one who is refreshing and refashioning this one, right now.
Of course, these perceptions don’t represent anything other than me trying to articulate what I’m feeling in a particular moment. However, these perceptions did not feel like they came wholly from me, but rather from an interaction in which some kind of a bestowal took place. I take that as evidence of humanity’s connection to the divine, of our being through His Being, and of our closeness to the Creator.
To the trusting, abundant guidance continually flows, amazing events transpire, and a greater awareness of divine guidance is continually revealed. I’ve known people who are so responsive to these kinds of mystical signals from the heavenly realm that they often completely change what they are doing to follow some sudden call unheard by others. Such friends make lousy lunch companions – when moved by the spirit they follow, often leaving you behind to eat alone. While I know these people are not perfect, their lives are rich and they teach us of the wonders found in following a divine call, in knowing that it is here now.
Perhaps that explains why religion has lasted so long throughout human history – because it works its magic within individuals. While the periodic appearances of God’s Chosen Ones are the most dramatic examples of God’s interventions in history, God’s bestowals seem to be an ever-present force working many small miracles all the time among everyday people. Contact with this divine force through prayer, meditation and study can connect us, bring us union, and also refashion our understanding of God’s plan as more of it is revealed.
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Can I Overcome My Racist Programming?
I am a white American woman who has, for most of my life, been oblivious to my white privilege — those benefits that accrue to me simply because of my pale skin.
In the past, I dismissed this privilege, arguing, “My family never ever owned slaves. Racism? Not my fault.”
I was raised in a blue-collar family, yet my parents were homeowners, never renters. We always had more than one car, and we had excellent health care, thanks to my dad’s government job. We were solidly lower middle class, neither wealthy nor privileged. We worked hard, I said, and we didn’t take handouts.
How naïve I have been. My parents’ generation benefited from the G.I. Bill, subsidized mortgages, union membership — all keys to acquiring wealth, education, and property. These were denied to every Black man, even men who served our country. I learned this only recently.
I never worried about being stopped by the police. I have never been followed around in a store or asked what I was doing there. I have never been denied service or asked for proof that I own the car I’m driving.
RELATED: Dismantling the Ladder: Why Anti-Racism Must Go Blue Collar
In a recent podcast, the writer Hilton Als described an encounter with two elderly white women. He was wearing a face mask, as we all do now during the pandemic, and one of the women flinched when she saw him. She was making an effort not to be afraid, he said. But still, in that effort, he felt great sadness because “I wouldn’t be afraid if she came up to me.” He asked, “What is it in the white body that produces that response?”
Listening to Als, I met my own racism.
How many times have I first, if even for a split second, flinched before I caught myself. Yes, I have. A Black man walked through my neighborhood, and I cringed — for that crucial lizard-brain half-second before I relaxed and recognized him. He’s my neighbor!
I was raised to be racist. I can still hear the childish taunts I uttered, hear my long-ago laughter at a racist remark, learned at my father’s knee. Am I past this? Can I ever overcome that training?
RELATED: Committing to Race Unity — Even When Times Get Scary
One day I shared a subway platform in Atlanta, a lone white woman, with a group of Black men who were arguing. Other than the men and me, the station was deserted, and it was late at night. In my mind’s eye that night, I saw a white woman clutch her purse to her chest and back away, moving far down the platform. Am I that woman? I instead shook off that flinch, relaxed my body language, and swung my shoulder bag loosely across one shoulder. I edged closer. When I could hear what they were arguing about, I heard them talking sports. They were comparing players, and they were really funny. When they realized I was eavesdropping, they began to perform for their audience of one. I laughed along with them.
We white people cannot overcome racism without first seeing that the American culture itself is infected. It’s the other pandemic in us.
When I first read the passage below from Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, originally written in 1938, I thought that these words were addressed to an earlier America:
As to racial prejudice, the corrosion of which, for well-nigh a century, has bitten into the fiber, and attached the whole structure of American society, it should be regarded as constituting the most vital and challenging issue confronting the Baha’i community at the present stage of its evolution.
Originally, I smugly thought we are long past racism as a challenging issue. How little I knew. We are still in the early stages of our evolution, and if I am to address this most challenging issue of racism, I have to change myself. The President of the local NAACP chapter told me recently that she was tired of explaining to white people what racism is and how it affects her and her family. She told me to read! So I’m reading.
RELATED: Anti-Racism Is Not a Book List. It’s a Way of Life
So let’s all do that, let’s read, to learn what racism is and has been, how it informs American institutions and policies. Let’s read about the Reconstruction period in our history and about Jim Crow, about mass incarceration and how it disproportionally affects communities of color. Read books and essays by Michelle Alexander and Ibram X. Kendi, read James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis. Read Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jelani Cobb. For an antidote to prejudice and racial superiority, read the Baha’i writings, which offer us all a vision of an equitable, hate-free future and the promise of the unity of humankind.
From reading to understanding to action, we can learn to stop flinching and become true allies. Together, we can forge a path to racial justice.
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Is God Mad at Us?
Do natural disasters mean that God is mad at humanity? This subject is too big for a text conversation, yet a friend and I began sharing some random thoughts via…
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6 Baha’i Concepts for Life Beyond Adversarial Politics
How do we move towards a more inclusive reality beyond the trappings of adversarial partisan politics?
We might want to try these six unity-building principles from the Baha’i teachings. They aren’t answers in themselves, but rather they suggest a new way of looking at the world that can allow for diverse people to contribute to a dynamic process of community transformation.
1. The Oneness of Humanity is a Universal Truth
We as a human race are increasingly coming to recognize our oneness. We are one interconnected human family in the most literal sense: genetic studies prove that every one of us is a distant cousin to every other human being on Earth. We live on one common planetary homeland and share one common biosphere, and we are now living in a moment of intensifying global interdependence. Pollution and war in one part of the world causes ripples that effect every other part of the planet, whether by contaminating a shared water source or by displacing millions of people across borders. We are so deeply connected it is as if we are the cells of one body, and if one part of the human body is sick or distressed, the rest of the body will suffer as well. We need a new model of social organization, so recognizing the fundamental truth of humanity’s oneness is paramount.
2. Humans Have the Capacity for Cooperation
The idea that humans are essentially selfish and must fight for power over others is part of the fabric of the world’s political life. But humans aren’t intractably corrupt, selfish, and aggressive; we also have the capacity for cooperation, reciprocity, and mutual service. What we need, now more than ever, are forums for community development that revolve around consultation and mutual respect. We must seek out new models of governance that reflect the human capacity for altruism.
3. Diversity is Necessary for Unity
Unity does not mean uniformity; instead we need diversity to bring new perspectives and innovation to solving our complex problems. Through a Baha’i model, the voices of those who have been historically the most marginalized must be brought to the center. The colonial and imperial projects that have oppressed masses of people over hundreds of years have their legacy in social structures that still value the privileged few. Real social prosperity can’t be realized until we have a framework that incorporates diverse voices from all segments of society into the work of governing human affairs.
4. Social Change Demands Universal Participation
Today people all over the world are mired in a culture of expecting the “experts” to solve our problems: waiting for elected politicians or other community leaders to make things right. How can we empower each other to see ourselves as agents of change within our local communities and focus on the positive change we can each contribute to? How can we break free from the false dichotomies of “the advanced” and “the backward”, the “developed” and the “underdeveloped?” All people must have a seat at the table, because each person is the real expert of his or her life.
5. History can be Reframed
Just like the development of an individual through stages of infancy, childhood, and adolescence, humanity has evolved from a “childhood” of independent tribal societies through an “adolescence” of more complex and integrated national communities. We now stand at the cusp of a collective coming of age: the emergence of a truly global civilization. More and more, we can see the emergence of worldviews that emphasize humanity’s unity and oneness. Some people still cling to the old narratives that say, “it always has been and always will be this way,” but we are living through a time of advancing global interdependence that has never been seen before. Now everyone on Earth has the choice to learn to accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human family.
6. Humans Have Both a Spiritual and Material Dimension
Our spiritual dimension is as important our material dimension, and we desperately need social structures that provide for the development of both. This is not an assertion of a particular religious ideology. Rather, it expresses the idea that many people do feel love and connection to the Earth, to other humans, and to that unknowable essence that some people call God. Beyond having basic material necessities for survival, people need spiritual healing. People need to feel loved. The development of spiritual qualities such as love, justice, trustworthiness, patience, and gratitude, help us to connect authentically with each other and to contribute to social progress.
Moving Beyond the Political Divide
The solutions to the complex problems we face will not come easily, and they can’t be reduced to simple slogans. The reality of unity will only emerge organically, in relation to how well we as citizens build authentic bonds of trust, conquer our prejudices and establish new forums for true collaboration.
Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, warned us:
How long will humanity persist in its waywardness? How long will injustice continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men? How long will discord agitate the face of society?… The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appeareth to be lamentably defective. – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 216.
We can consume our time rallying against the continual assaults of a defective model of governance, or we can devote our energies towards promoting a new set of values and a new way of relating.
More than ever, we need to replace outdated modes of thought and behavior with a worldview that recognizes the oneness of humanity.
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Observing the Martyrdom of the Bab
Streaking across the heavens in 1843, a great comet alarmed many and served to validate the belief of others that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent. In that same year, poet James Russell Lowell wrote in “The Crisis”
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.
Some great Cause, God’s new Messiah…
The early to mid-nineteenth century witnessed a world gripped by millennial zeal, as Biblical scholars across the globe deduced from their studies and mathematical calculations, based on scripture, that Christ would return sometime during the mid-1840’s. Some chose 1844 as the precise year. Reactions to these millennialists varied; some were excommunicated from their churches, some committed to mental institutions, some ridiculed, some respected and listened to (Harriet Livermore preached Christ’s return on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives), while another had great followings from which sprang the Seventh Day Adventists–a religious denomination that calls 1844 “The Year of Disappointment.”
One group from Germany, the Templars, moved to Palestine and established a community at the foot of Mount Carmel in Haifa to await the Return. They inscribed above their doors, “Der Herr ist Nahe” (The Lord is Near).
In the year 1844, an official of the U. S. Patent Office wrote in a report that he believed everything that could possibly be worthwhile had already been invented, and said the Patent Office might just as well close its doors. Yet from that time on, there has been a constant and ever-increasing amount of new inventions and discoveries. That very year, on the 24th of May, Samuel F. B. Morse sent out the first telegraphic communication, tapping out this Bible text,
What hath God Wrought? – Numbers 23:23.
The press hailed Morse’s invention as a modern miracle and scholars of Scripture asked,
Is this not still another proof that the hour has come for Christ’s appearance? Is it not written in the Book of Job that only God can send “lightnings that they may go and say unto thee here we are!” – quoted in William Sears, Release the Sun, p. 192.
On the preceding evening, in a modest home in Shiraz, Persia, Siyyid Ali-Muhammad, a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad through both his mother and his father, laid claim to a direct Revelation from God, announcing:
I am, I am the Promised One! I am the One Whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at Whose mention you have risen, Whose advent you have longed to witness, and the hour of Whose Revelation you have prayed God to hasten. – quoted by Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 21.
Although the Bab brought his own religion and his own holy book, he proclaimed his entire purpose was to prepare the way for the coming of an even greater revelation:
The purpose underlying this Revelation, as well as those that preceded it, has, in like manner, been to announce the advent of the Faith of Him Whom God will make manifest. – The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 105.
That is just one of many references the Bab made to Baha’u’llah, the prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith.
Hundreds of thousands of people became Babis, but the Bab’s followers were cruelly persecuted. Fanatical leaders within the Persian Shi’a Islamic community feared losing their power over the people, and jealous government officials felt their political careers would be in jeopardy should this new Faith continue to spread unchecked. Over 20,000 lives, including that of the gentle Bab himself, were sacrificed in unspeakably cruel and vicious attacks.
Following the public execution of the Bab by firing squad, the authorities had his body tossed at the edge of a moat, intent on it being devoured by animals. Sentinels were stationed to guard it from being retrieved by the Bab’s followers. But they kept a constant watch, waiting for the sentinels to be distracted or drift off to sleep. Their patience was rewarded, and they succeeded in rescuing the remains which were kept hidden for many years, having to be moved from place to place to avoid discovery. Finally they were interred on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land—in the exact spot designated by Baha’u’llah—directly above the street of the homes of the Templars. A befitting monument has now been erected over this final resting place.
The martyrdom of the Bab and his followers, rather than wiping out the new religion, only served to kindle the flame in the hearts of the believers and whet the curiosity of others, many of whom investigated the new Faith and joined it.
And, as foretold by the Bab, his revelation was quickly followed by the Baha’i Faith. Baha’u’llah’s teachings revolve around unity and oneness:
- The unity of God. There is only one God, by whatever name people choose.
- The essential unity of all religions. All the major religions have been direct revelations from the one God and are like the chapters of a single book, each one following logically and developing further the great author’s message.
- The oneness of humanity. There is only one race, the human race, and our outward differences are to be appreciated for their variety and beauty, like the beautiful blending of various flowers in a magnificent garden.
Followers of Baha’u’llah are called Baha’is, and though they profess the Baha’i Faith, the lives and revelations of the Bab and Baha’u’llah are so closely intertwined as to be practically inseparable. Therefore, the year 1844, the date of the Declaration of the Bab, is considered the first year in the Baha’i calendar.
Today Baha’is all around the world observe this solemn anniversary called the Martyrdom of the Bab.
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A Spiritual Guide to the Dream World
We spend nearly one-third of our lives sleeping and we can’t function physically without it. But I’ve often wondered if there is also a spiritual reason we need to sleep — and dream.
Does our need for sleep coincide with a desire to enter a world where the spirit can roam free without the limitations of the physical body? Dreams are one of the most fascinating phenomena that we experience in our lives, and the Baha’i writings have an answer for every question I’ve ever had about this subject.
Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, wrote that “God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures.” He explained that the world we live in while we’re awake is completely different and separate from the dream world, which is within us and has “neither beginning nor end.”
Baha’u’llah wrote that when our spirits transcend “the limitations of sleep” and detach from “all earthly attachment,” God lets us travel throughout “a realm which lieth hidden in the innermost reality of this world.” In this dream realm, there may be messages to meditate on and secrets to discover.
It’s fascinating to think of what traveling looks like without physical means. When we are awake, there is a limit to how fast we can travel on public transportation, but, according to the Baha’i writings, we can travel throughout the planet “in sleep, in the twinkling of an eye.” In the early 1900s, Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah and his designated successor and interpreter of the Baha’i writings, called this “spiritual traveling.”
Abdu’l-Baha explained, “In the time of sleep this body is as though dead; it does not see nor hear; it does not feel; it has no consciousness, no perception—that is to say, the powers of man have become inactive, but the spirit lives and subsists. Nay, its penetration is increased, its flight is higher, and its intelligence is greater.”
It seems like our spiritual powers and abilities are limitless when we dream. To help us understand this freedom we have when our physical bodies are not in charge, Abdu’l-Baha used the analogy of a bird in a cage: “Our body is like the cage, and the spirit is like the bird. We see that without the cage this bird flies in the world of sleep; therefore, if the cage becomes broken, the bird will continue and exist. Its feelings will be even more powerful, its perceptions greater, and its happiness increased.”
Abdu’l-Baha further explained the powers and freedoms our spirits have in the dream world. He said, “in the state of sleep without eyes it sees; without an ear it hears; without a tongue it speaks; without feet it runs.”
So, how much importance should we place on the events that take place in our dreams? If our perceptions and intelligence are greater in this state, can our dreams provide us with worthy insight into the future?
When asked about the immortality of the spirit, Abdul-Baha referenced dreams. He said:
“How often it happens that it [the spirit] sees a dream in the world of sleep, and its signification becomes apparent two years afterward in corresponding events. In the same way, how many times it happens that a question which one cannot solve in the world of wakefulness is solved in the world of dreams. In wakefulness the eye sees only for a short distance, but in dreams he who is in the East sees the West. Awake he sees the present; in sleep he sees the future.”
I know I’ve had dreams that predicted my father’s health scare, and other dreams that predicted the birth of some of my nieces and nephews. Dreams can serve as warnings, reminders, or exciting glimpses into the future. But how can we know which dreams will come true and which won’t? I know I go through times when many of my dreams seem like they could have a lot of merit, and other times, it feels like everything I’m dreaming is complete nonsense. So, is it something we are doing wrong? Do we have control over the accuracy of our dreams?
The Baha’i writings tell us there is no doubt that “truth is often imparted through dreams” but at the same time, dreams and visions are always “influenced more or less by the mind of the dreamer and we must beware of attaching too much importance to them.”
In a letter written in 1925 on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, he wrote, “The purer and more free from prejudice and desire our hearts and minds become, the more likely is it that our dreams will convey reliable truth, but if we have strong prejudices, personal likings and aversions, bad feelings or evil motives, these will warp and distort any inspirational impression that comes to us.”
So, he advised us to strive to “become pure in heart” and detached from everything that is not good and godly. Then, he wrote, “our dreams as well as our waking thoughts will become pure and true.”
Just because some dreams won’t come true, it doesn’t mean they can’t be coherent, relaxing, or exciting. But, sometimes we have delusions or nightmares — bad dreams that are uncomfortable, scary, or stressful. After speaking with Abdu’l-Baha about dreams, Mrs. May Maxwell, an early American Baha’i, said her conversation with him led her to understand that these dreams result from “various influences like fatigue, fear, etc.” These confusing dreams are created when our bodies influence our souls‚ as opposed to our souls influencing our bodies.
Abdu’l-Baha said that we have three kinds of dreams, and the confused dream is the one type of dream that has no truth or significance. For example, Abdu’l-Baha said, “during the day a man becomes engaged in a quarrel and dispute. Later, in the world of the dream, these same circumstances appear to him. This is a confused dream. It has no interpretation and contains no discoveries. Before the person dreamed, he was overcome with delusions. It is clear that this kind of dream bears no interpretation and is confused.”
As a Baha’i, it gives me so much solace and comfort to know that, as Abdu’l-Baha explained, although “Those who have ascended have different attributes from those who are still on earth, yet there is no real separation.” Since time is an illusion while we are in this earthly realm, what we know of as time does not exist in the afterlife. In addition, prayer helps our spirits transcend the physical limitations we have and connect to our angels and ancestors while we are still here.
Abdu’l-Baha said, “In prayer there is a mingling of station, a mingling of condition. Pray for them as they pray for you! When you do not know it, and are in a receptive attitude, they are able to make suggestions to you, if you are in difficulty. This sometimes happens in sleep.” So, if we pray before we go to bed and are receptive to the wisdom of those who have come before us, we just may meet them and receive guidance in the world of dreams.
Indeed, Abdu’l-Baha wrote, “When thou desirest and yearnest for meeting in the world of vision; at the time when thou art in perfect fragrance and spirituality, wash thy hands and face, clothe thyself in clean robes, turn toward the court of the Peerless One, offer prayer to Him and lay thy head upon the pillow. When sleep cometh, the doors of revelation shall be opened and all thy desires shall become revealed.”
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We’ve Reached the Limits of Partisan Politics
The principal teaching of the Baha’i Faith is the oneness of humanity. Baha’u’llah wrote, “The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens” over 100 years ago.
By now, we can all see that humanity is essentially interdependent; the oneness of humanity has become a spiritual truth also confirmed by all the sciences of our era. That’s the fundamental purpose of the Baha’i Faith—to “promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men.” – Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 215.
However, in the United States, like many other countries that rely upon a partisan system of governance, people are accustomed to taking sides. In an extremely heated political climate, the idea of fostering the spirit of love and fellowship with someone across the political divide may seem disingenuous at best, and life-threatening at worst. Our deepest fears and longings related to economics, race equity, immigration, and justice have all tied themselves into the values of our various political parties. Our sense of social progress and justice rests with our hopes for victory over the “other side.”
But if we really want to promote the oneness of humanity, why do we accept any partisan system of social organization that necessarily divides us into camps and pits us against each other? How can we expect to arrive at a state of unity by using a process that inherently creates and fosters disunity?
As a member of the Baha’i Faith and an American, I vote—but I do my best not to identify with any political party, and I avoid engaging in political activity. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have a sense of justice or a vision for real social transformation. I do. I just think that partisanship is fundamentally inimical to the principle of humanity’s oneness, and therefore it cannot logically move us forward to a place where the principle of oneness forms the basis of governance.
The Limits of Partisan Politics
Political polls continually show that Americans are bitterly divided along party lines, but this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. If anything, it should confirm that the Western liberal democratic tradition of multiparty competition is working as intended.
Our system is built around enormous and deeply questionable assumptions about human reality: primarily that humans are selfish and competitive by nature, and that it is in our own best interest to be antagonistic towards the needs, values, and interests of our political rivals. Partisan politics demands that we always have “winners” and “losers.”
In my country, across all party lines, Americans are cynical towards government and mistrustful of corporate, financial, and political corruption that serves the interests of only a few powerful people or groups. But, to many, no other way of social interaction seems possible. We are literally caught in a frantic cycle of adversarial political backlash, and social media only seems to fuel our anger, fear, and frustration.
Within this narrative, serious social change is framed in terms of rallying against the un-favored party or politician, and then electing the right party or politician who can transform society into what we want it to be. But regardless of whatever party or politician is in power, the real root of the problem is that we are trapped in a divisive “us versus them” framework of competition, with all of its inevitable corruption, which allows for certain voices and interests to be privileged over others, and which paralyzes ordinary citizens from becoming agents of change in their own communities.
The partisan political system itself, with all of its narrow, built-in assumptions about human reality, forms one of the biggest obstacles to realizing the truly united and freely-functioning countries we would all like to see.
So if we want real social transformation, honest change and justice for all, we shouldn’t be looking for the perfect new candidate. We should search for a whole new way of relating to each other, and a bold new vision of society to actively work towards.
Baha’is believe that the only way to really break free of the profound social disunity in our societies—whether politically, racially, religiously, or otherwise—is to build true, authentic human solidarity, in a systematic manner, among all people. If we really want to see positive social change, we have to learn to build unity:
The welfare of any segment of humanity is inextricably bound up with the welfare of the whole. Humanity’s collective life suffers when any one group thinks of its own well-being in isolation from that of its neighbours or pursues economic gain without regard for how the natural environment, which provides sustenance for all, is affected… The world is in desperate need of a shared ethic, a sure framework for addressing the crises that gather like storm clouds. – The Universal House of Justice, March 1, 2017.
Love and unity are the needs of the body politic today. Without these there can be no progress or prosperity attained. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 171.
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5 Ways to Prepare for the Next World
During this unprecedented time in history, I find myself reflecting on my life’s purpose and my mortality.
More than ever, I feel the need to focus on preparing myself for the next realm of my existence. In searching the Baha’i writings for guidance, I discovered five steps to help in this process:
1. Don’t be afraid
The Baha’i teachings assure us that if we live our lives in accordance with the spiritual guidance the Faith gives us, the world to come is a wonderful place with joys that we could never imagine. In The Hidden Words, Baha’u’llah wrote:
I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?
Baha’u’llah’s writings also promise that “Days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes.”
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2. Practice mindfulness in my daily thoughts and actions
Mindfulness is not my strong suit! When all the esoteric explanations of mindfulness are said and done, the best way for me to understand and practice mindfulness is to simply pay attention. What am I thinking, feeling, and doing right now? How am I speaking and relating to others in any given moment?
Referring to our future transition to the next world, Baha’u’llah advises us to be conscious and accountable for our actions each day and every minute, so that when our time of return comes, we are prepared to stand in the Creator’s presence:
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.
3. Focus on loving, connection, and service
Our world is in turmoil. Rather than concentrating on the chaos, though, the Baha’i teachings tell me that I can be part of the solution: unity. I can help do that by focusing on developing meaningful relationships in my community and serving others. All that I will take with me after I pass on are the loving connections I fostered in this world, and all that will matter is the love I gave while here on Earth. Abdu’l-Baha wrote:
It is incumbent upon the loved ones of God to exercise the greatest care and prudence in all things, whether great or small, to take counsel together and unitedly resist the onslaught of the stirrers up of strife and the movers of mischief. They must endeavor to consort in a friendly spirit with everyone, must follow moderation in their conduct, must have respect and consideration one for another and show loving-kindness and tender regard to all the peoples of the world.
The fleeting hours of man’s life on earth pass swiftly by and the little that still remaineth shall come to an end, but that which endureth and lasteth for evermore is the fruit that man reapeth from his servitude at the Divine Threshold.
4. Cultivate spiritual qualities
In the life beyond, the Baha’i teachings and the teachings of many other Faiths tell us, our inner virtues become our most important qualities. The more I can deepen, polish, and develop my virtues in this world, the richer I will be in the next.
RELATED: The Hidden Nature of Life After Death
Just as the fetus grows arms and legs inside the womb in order to thrive here on Earth, we cultivate the spiritual qualities in this material world necessary to navigate the life ahead. The more spiritual virtues I develop here, the better prepared I will be to flourish in the life to come. These virtues include compassion, truthfulness, justice, love, and faith, among many others, as Baha’u’llah said in The Hidden Words:
My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.
Holy words and pure and goodly deeds ascend unto the heaven of celestial glory. Strive that your deeds may be cleansed from the dust of self and hypocrisy.
5. Nurture my relationship with God
Each person has their own personal relationship with God. This precious gift, unique to every soul, means that fostering this bond with our Creator, now, is the best preparation for the life to come. This can be accomplished through prayer and meditation and by listening to our intuition—that “small still voice” (1 Kings 19:12) inside. Trust in God, communion, and love for God are our greatest connections with Him, as Baha’u’llah wrote:
Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
O moving form of dust! I desire communion with thee, but thou wouldst put no trust in Me. The sword of thy rebellion hath felled the tree of thy hope. At all times I am near unto thee, but thou art ever far from Me. Imperishable glory I have chosen for thee, yet boundless shame thou hast chosen for thyself. While there is yet time, return, and lose not thy chance.
If I can follow my own advice, and try my best to care for and develop my own inner spiritual life using these five steps, I feel confident that my “second birth” into the next world will happen in a joyful, loving way.
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What Is the Purpose of Our Lives?
When a baby is born into this world, she “dies” with respect to the warm comfortable mother’s womb where she has happily lived for nine months.
She leaves that life forever as she enters this life – with no idea that this life even exists. This life, then, represents the afterlife of the mother’s womb.
The sole purpose of the baby being in the mother’s womb is to grow all the organs and limbs she will need in order to function in this life.
Taking this analogy a step further, this life is the womb for the next life.
With all the issues we deal with every day – our health, relationships, careers, finances, possessions, hobbies, you name it – the sole purpose of our being in this womb we call Earth is to develop our souls for the next life, the life of the spirit. Everything else in our lives ends with our deaths. Only our souls go on to the next plane of existence.
So how do we develop our souls for that next life? The Baha’i teachings have answers to that critical question.
First, those teachings recommend that we recognize the message of God for the age we live in; and second, we then “observe every ordinance” that message contains:
The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. … It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.
Baha’is believe God has revealed His will periodically throughout history through His messengers, the founders of the major world religions – Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, and for this new day in human history, Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith.
Recognizing the divine authority of a messenger of God requires that we conduct our own independent investigation of truth, willing to let go of all prejudices, superstitions, and beliefs that prevent us from objectively evaluating and accepting that new message. Only when we very humbly open our minds and hearts to the possibility of someone being a messenger of God can we accept his teachings as the Word of God, and understand God’s will.
Also, as the second part of Baha’u’llah’s injunction asks, we must be willing to follow the principles, teachings, and laws revealed by God’s messenger. These “twin duties,” the Baha’i teachings assure us, will help us become more spiritual beings.
Here are just a few ways we can do this:
1. Develop a close relationship with God by praying; loving and praising Him; continually thanking Him for the countless blessings He has bestowed upon us throughout our lives; having faith and trusting in His grace that He is always there for us, loving us and protecting us, at all times and under all conditions.
2. Acquire God-like attributes and strive to make our daily behavior reflect these attributes – such as love, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, justice, patience, trustworthiness, integrity, courtesy, the Golden Rule, etc.
3. Be of service to others. The more we serve other people, the more selfless we become. Moreover, Baha’u’llah said that work performed in the spirit of service is worship.
4. Stay focused on our spiritual nature: our reality is our soul, not our body.
5. Strive to be in unity and harmony with all people, regardless of who they are and what they believe.
6. In this new day, Baha’u’llah taught that all human beings must fully embrace the indisputable fact that humankind is one family. There is only one race – the human race. We are all one beautiful human flower garden. We need to accept and appreciate our diversity, not condemn and destroy it.
As a corollary to this, we must do everything in our power to totally eliminate all our prejudices – racial, religious, gender, cultural, political, national, economic, educational, tribal, etc. Not only does this greatly benefit our souls; it also brings about desperately needed unity and harmony.
All of this requires commitment. Our daily words and actions, based on total unconditional commitment to become deeply spiritual, are the true reflection of who we are as human beings.
Because we’re human, though, we’ll always fall short of these high ideals. But we must keep trying, no matter how difficult or painful. God knows our hearts. He knows how sincere we are in our daily efforts to become the noble spiritual human beings we were created to be.
We must constantly give ourselves love, kindness, gentleness, and forgiveness, and we must appreciate who we are. These two powerful quotations from the writings of Baha’u’llah elaborate further on these exalted themes:
… The nature of the soul after death can never be described, nor is it meet and permissible to reveal its whole character to the eyes of men. The Prophets and Messengers of God have been sent down for the sole purpose of guiding mankind to the straight Path of Truth. The purpose underlying their revelation hath been to educate all men, that they may, at the hour of death, ascend, in the utmost purity and sanctity and with absolute detachment, to the throne of the Most High … – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah
… man can never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the All-Glorious, can never quaff from the stream of divine knowledge and wisdom … 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. – The Book of Certitude
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Meteor or Metaphor: Finding Meaning in Suffering
Night descended on Yosemite National Park, the beginning of a twilight adventure for our family.
We groped in the backpack for a flashlight, quickly shined it on the paved path, and then turned it off again. Slowly, our eyes adjusted to the dark. Our ears cocked to the chants of hoot owls, the Gregorian monks of the forest, and to the rustling of deer that shied away from the soft plodding of our footfalls. A dim moon finally turned the path ghostly silver. The thunder of the distant waterfall lured us along. Then, as we came around a bend, the bellowing falls suddenly loomed before us like a white skyscraper, enshrouded in mist, silencing the children’s voices into a rare state of reverence.
We knelt on the path, rolled to our elbows and finally onto our backs, and stared straight up at the summer constellations. The sky had deepened to a dimensionless velvet ocean. I thought about time and space and what they meant in a sky like that. The context of our own comings and goings began to slide down on the relevance scale like water molecules hurtling over the cliff and into the torrent.
We lay silently below Yosemite Falls, searching for the first spit of stardust, for some suggestion of ancient cosmic dust. We had never seen a meteor shower so far from city lights, and this was the big one, the annual Perseid. Under a mid-August panoply of stars, we awaited our cleansing, due to begin at 11:00 pm.
Perseus did not disappoint us. A brilliant raking light suddenly speckled the infinite night, and then another. The earth had intercepted the comet’s concourse once again on its race around the sun, unloosing spangles of gargantuan glitter to rain down on earth.
I was not prepared for the sense of awe that stuck in my own throat as we lay there, wondering how many rainbows of light had spilled from the universe over the millennia, as trustworthy as rock and rain and starlight — and how many meteor showers had gone unnoticed by city dwellers collected under clusters of streetlights, spotlights, and lamplights.
Looking up, the trivialities of the daily human experience suddenly paled against this annual galactic tradition. How could we have missed the drama before? It made me feel insignificant. What comes of a lifetime of struggle and effort? What point was there to each human life in a universe so vast? Is humanity a mere speck on a random planet?
Suddenly, the deeper spiritual truth of the scientific metaphor descended on me, shouting not of hopelessness but of meaning. Until we experience the depth of true darkness, I realized, we do not see pure light. In the humbling of such moments, we listen more closely, we look more intently, and the mysteries of the universe reveal themselves to us. We awaken to a new gratitude that we have the gift of senses to perceive such beautiful light.
Similarly, all our lives, we shy away from darkness, even though times of pain, doubt, or loneliness in the universe could be our finest. As Rainer Maria Rilke pleaded, in Letters to a Young Poet: “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
The Baha’i teachings suggest that even when the sky rains hardship upon us, the meaning becomes clear as we learn to accept life’s ephemeral discomforts with “radiant acquiescence.” These encounters with the contrast between birth and death, gain and loss, evolution and decline can awaken wonderment, as they strengthen our resilience, convictions, faith and compassion – like strokes of light on a dark canvas.
Yesterday, a man sitting near me in a public square wore a shirt that read “God doesn’t waste human suffering.” A few blocks away at a peace rally, a mother spoke who had started an international peace movement after losing a son in battle. Her audience surely grasped the need to let go of grief and embrace the strengths it offers us — and to accept the joys that come with greater reverie after enduring adversity.
As Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Baha’i Faith, wrote:
“My calamity is my providence. Outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. ”¹
A study of altruists in society conducted at Humboldt University identified “overcoming hardship” as one of the prevailing common childhood experiences of adults who later become the beneficent leaders in society. ² Hardship, it seems, is a prerequisite for maturation. An untested spirit, like an unplayed instrument, can never exude the same resonance when played.
For me, a night that began on the brink of despair about humanity’s in the universe had ended with a sense of the oneness of all things. The meaning of “light and mercy” sank in as I lay there and watched the shooting stars pierce the night sky with these clear words: Be grateful for the darkness. It opens our eyes to true illumination.
1) Hidden Word of Baha’u’llah #51, Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1985 reprint; p. 52.
2) Oliner, S. & P. Toward a Caring Society, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, 1995; p. 202.
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5 Ways to Combat Depression and Pessimism
If you’re like me, you’ve spent some time in recent months and years feeling ineffective – because of the seemingly intractable problems we humans face as a result of endemic injustice and disunity.
Those problems, complex and enormous, each tie to all the others like a huge ball of impossibly tangled yarn. As we survey climate change, a global pandemic, racism, civil unrest, inequity, and long-standing wounds on every side, it seems easy to feel small and powerless, and to want to curl into a ball and hide.
Add to these shared communal problems all our individual heartaches — illness, broken relationships, loneliness, work problems, financial woes — and we can feel overwhelmed, as if nothing we do makes a much of a difference. Our world obviously requires a massive amount of change to heal, and so many people feel they can’t muster what it takes.
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But the Baha’i writings tell us that in such moments, powerful actions we can each take really do exist. These five inner and outer actions are available to everyone:
1. We can remind ourselves that God is in control and has a plan for humanity:
Like a loving parent, the Baha’i teachings tell us, the Creator has never left humanity without spiritual and practical guidance, and His divine messengers continue to bring a sequential, regularly renewed, and evolving plan for our individual and collective growth at ever higher levels of development. We are on the cusp of our collective adulthood, and adolescence is a turbulent time. We can choose to alleviate our suffering by aligning ourselves with the side of justice. When we act selfishly, outside our collective good, we will suffer and cause the suffering of others, both physically and spiritually.
Baha’u’llah explained this present era as a necessary part of our transformation as a world citizenry:
… these great oppressions that have befallen the world are preparing it for the advent of the Most Great Justice. … These fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars, shall pass away, and the Most Great Peace shall come.
Understanding our struggles as necessary for our development and learning may give us some perspective and keep us from despair.
2. We can pray for ourselves, for others, for the healing of this world:
We may feel we can do little to help in this world. But God is All-Powerful, and prayer is our link to that power. We can always ask God’s assistance and know that in His mercy, He will provide what we need, and assist others as well.
When I am low and feel helpless, I sometimes recite this short Baha’i prayer to remind me Who is in charge: “Armed with the power of Thy Name, nothing can ever hurt me. And with Thy love in my heart, all the world’s afflictions can in no wise alarm me.”
3. We can focus on what brings us joy and energy, and limit what drags us down:
I find that while I need to be concerned with and aware of what is happening in the world — and working hard to bring positive change — excessive focus on the brokenness of old systems and ways of thinking tends to disempower and drain me. So I’m careful to limit my exposure to negative and divisive media outlets, partisanship on either side, gossip and backbiting, debased entertainment, and shocking clickbait. I don’t feed my body a diet of junk food; why would I fill my head with garbage?
The Baha’i teachings say spiritual reality and our spiritual qualities are the source of joy and energy. Abdu’l-Baha explained:
There is no human being untouched by these two influences [joy and pain]; but all the sorrow and the grief that exist come from the world of matter – the spiritual world bestows only the joy!
We also know that when we are uplifted ourselves, we create happiness in those around us. Abdu’l-Baha encouraged this: “I want you to be happy … to laugh, smile and rejoice in order that others may be made happy by you.”
4. We can look for the signs of the Divine in every aspect of the Creation:
The Baha’i writings say, “Every created thing is a door to the knowledge of God.” The sun speaks to God’s illumination and power. A seed stands for humility, sacrifice, and potential, a flower for beauty and sweetness, a mountain for the Creator’s might and steadfastness. So time spent outdoors may well lift our spirits and help us gain perspective.
With regard to us humans, God has made all these essentially spiritual attributes latent within us. We all have the capacity for steadfastness, humility, generosity, forgiveness, and love. Also, when we look for and recognize others’ divine qualities, we feel hopeful. We can see and nurture these qualities in ourselves, in our children, and in each other. They are the essence of who we are meant to be.
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5. Finally, we can look beyond ourselves and dedicate ourselves to serving others:
Our misery is often increased by our focus on our own pain. We might be anxious about the future, or sad about the past. We may have suffered great traumas and losses. This life is full of such tests – but we can alleviate some of our pain by helping someone else. Abdu’l-Baha was reported to have suggested:
Be not the slave of your moods, but their master. But if you are so angry, so depressed and so sore that your spirit cannot find deliverance and peace even in prayer, then quickly go and give some pleasure to someone lowly or sorrowful, or to a guilty or innocent sufferer! Sacrifice yourself, your talent, your time, your rest to another, to one who has to bear a heavier load than you — and your unhappy mood will dissolve …
Serving others can mean volunteering your time and talents for a socially-minded organization, although it can also take many simpler forms: listening to a friend, checking in on someone you haven’t heard from in a while, offering assistance to a neighbor or relative, thinking of your job as the highest service you can render to humanity, and reaching out in love to all who cross your path.
We live in transformative and volatile years of great suffering and great possibilities for real and positive change, personally and collectively. But we are not powerless, and the small things we do to keep our perspective and to spread God’s love and healing message can have a huge effect.
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Building Family Unity From the Inside Out
Our families are the building blocks of society, and where we can start to build uncompromising unity — it’s where we have the opportunity to model and live out our faith in action. How do we continue to walk in love when we have strife and discord with our loved ones? We do this through the self-care of our spirits.
I am sure you have had this experience. A loved one says something to you that feels personal and you feel attacked. You move to defend words, and then you justify your actions. Your emotions are your brain’s split-second response to the situation, and they kick off changes in your body. However, this defensive posture, resulting from our unchecked ego, causes us to forget who we are as spiritual beings.
Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, wrote, “Wert thou to attain to but a dewdrop of the crystal waters of divine knowledge, thou wouldst readily realize that true life is not the life of the flesh but the life of the spirit…” The Baha’i Writings also tell us that “We must strive unceasingly and without rest to accomplish the development of the spiritual nature in man, and endeavor with tireless energy to advance humanity toward the nobility of its true and intended station.”
When we lose our spiritual grounding, we slip into a defensive mode, which has nothing to do with the soul and everything to do with the ego. We need to pause and take a deep breath. Through the teachings of the Manifestations of God, we can detach from the emotion of the moment and remember that beneath the surface of this behavior is a feeling, and beneath that feeling is a need. I need to look objectively at the interaction and ask, “What do I need right now? What does my loved one need?” Is my ego reacting, or am I in control of the situation objectively and spiritually from a place that has nothing to do with ego but everything to do with my higher self, my soul.
This critical step requires equanimity, which results from remembering who we are and who our loved ones are to God. Baha’u’llah reminded us of this when he wrote:
O SON OF MAN!
Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.
We have all been engraved with God’s image. We have an inherent nobility because we are a reflection of God’s love. However, when our ego gets in the way, and we become arrogant and prideful, we forget his reality. One way we can remedy our unchecked ego is to hold ourselves accountable or practice self-inquiry each day. Not only is this a best practice, but Baha’u’llah also called on all of us to do this when he wrote:
O SON OF BEING! 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.
Before holding ourselves accountable, we have to ask God to clear the clutter from our thoughts so that we can ascertain the truth about ourselves and where we have fallen short.
Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.
This is where we can make strides in reclaiming the love and compassion we feel for our loved ones. We must be humble and recognize that “I am only human, I am bound to misstep, yet I can avoid repeating the offense and do better.” The act of self-inquiry requires that we authentically acknowledge our human shortcomings, not in skill or aptitude, but where we have caused pain for another, usually resulting from our self-doubt, which is generally the result of being fearful.
A wise teacher once taught me that “FEAR” is False Evidence Appearing Real. It is an illusion, and if I am not aware of this, I will act or react and thereby short-change not only myself but also those around me. We learn from Baha’u’llah that the entire physical world is an illusion. He wrote:
O FLEETING SHADOW! Pass beyond the baser stages of doubt and rise to the exalted heights of certainty. Open the eye of truth, that thou mayest behold the veilless Beauty and exclaim: Hallowed be the Lord, the most excellent of all creators!
When it comes down to it, our reality is not “real,” yet our physical experience gives us a frame of reference that shapes our perception of the world. We have to ask ourselves, “How much of my experience, what I am feeling, and what I am thinking and observing from my loved ones is real or an illusion based on my own experience?”
Illusory thoughts can create fear — fear of lack of control, helplessness, abandonment, you name it. Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah and his designated successor, reminded us that we must learn to change our frame of reference, to look at something from a different vantage point. It is incumbent upon us to see from our loved one’s perspective, empathize with them during a storm, and envelope them with God’s love and compassion. After all, as Abdu’l-Baha wrote:
The fleeting hours of man’s life on earth pass swiftly by and the little that still remaineth shall come to an end, but that which endureth and lasteth for evermore is the fruit that man reapeth from his servitude at the Divine Threshold.
In this context, the personal insights and greater self-awareness developed through self-inquiry are essential to living with purpose and meaning. Traits associated with keeping our ego in check allow us to come from a peaceful place of humility, empathy, and active listening and are vital to maintaining trust and partnership.
Through self-inquiry, we discern our triggers. In a heated moment, we have a choice: to lash out defensively or humble ourselves and move forward with nobility, love, and patience so that we can maintain the health, safety, security, and unity of our home.
The sacred writings of many faiths encourage this. In Romans 14:19 in the Bible, we’re told, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.”
And in a talk in Paris in 1911, Abdu’l-Baha encouraged us when he said: “When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love.”
We must remember that God, in His ever forbearance and patience toward us, gently corrects us when we are not in alignment with His words by calling us to accountability to Him. When we meet each other in a spirit of humility, reverence, and true love for one another, God invites us, as Isaiah 1:18 said in the Bible, “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
The family is the nucleus of civilization and the basic social unit of society. We know this not only through the teachings of the Manifestations of God but research also clearly shows that the institution of the family is the first form of community. Abdu’l-Baha gave us insight into how we can create a home that nurtures the family:
My home is the home of peace. My home is the home of joy and delight. My home is the home of laughter and exultation. Whosoever enters through the portals of this home, must go out with gladsome heart. This is the home of light; whosoever enters here must become illumined. This is the home of knowledge: the one who enters it must receive knowledge. This is the home of love: those who come in must learn the lessons of love; thus, may they know how to love each other.
Our families are the gateway to building an ever-advancing civilization. Let the joy and tranquillity in one’s home be where faith can always be felt — and where the changes and chances of this life leave your faith unshaken.
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My 50th Baha’i Anniversary, and a Powerful Dream
I recently came across this old 1974 photo of me, aged 22, holding my new baby son Will. Sometime late that month, 50 years ago, I made the most momentous decision of my life – to become a Baha’i.
In a sense, I had no choice.
I first heard the word Baha’i from a friend in high school. I went to the school library and looked it up in the World Book Encyclopedia. I liked what I saw, but somehow got the impression that this was an Iranian religion. Little did I know that there was a thriving Baha’i community in Regina, Saskatchewan, where I lived.
Maybe five years later an acquaintance knocked on my door, and without saying much handed me the book Baha’i World Faith, and left.
I started reading, but found the book hard to penetrate. Still, something compelled me to keep at it and the words started to resonate within me, even though I didn’t fully understand them.
After studying the Baha’i teachings for a few years, I realized that they now made complete sense to me. I particularly appreciated the idea that all religions, from the Christian faith I grew up in, to the Eastern religions I was attracted to as a youth coming of age in the sixties, as well as Indigenous spiritual wisdom from around the world, were all part of a gradual unfoldment of the divine teachings delivered by a series of messengers, such as Christ, Buddha, Deganawida, and many others. I realized, too, that Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, was the most recent of these spiritual messengers.
Baha’u’llah wrote that his sole desire was “the regeneration of the whole world and the establishment of the unity of its peoples.” As someone involved in the environmental movement, I related strongly to that message. I understood that the Baha’is had a comprehensive plan to make Baha’u’llah’s revelation a reality – a plan now gradually unfolding around the globe. I hoped that I could contribute to it in some way, and that my little son would grow up to live in a peaceful world.
This passage from a particular text by Baha’u’llah had a profound effect on my decision: “… he who turneth away from this Beauty hath also turned away from the Messengers of the past and showeth pride towards God from all eternity to all eternity.”
I had a strong feeling that this was true, and I could not turn away, which is why I say I had no choice.
Shortly after becoming a Baha’i, I had a powerful dream. In the dream I was at the Baha’i Institute, a facility just outside Fort Qu’appelle, the town I lived in at the time. In the dream it was November, the time of year in Saskatchewan before the first snow when everything seems hard, frozen, dead. I was asked to go out and get a pail of water from the well. I walked out, feeling the cold, but as I came closer to the well it became warm. The trees had leafed out, but these trees and the other plants were of a different kind; there are no words to describe them, but I’ll just say they were multi-dimensional. The colors and fragrances were tactile, I could feel them. In that dream world I could smell colors and see fragrances.
I found myself in the most beautiful garden; everything was hyper-real, like the normal world but transcendent. I lowered the pail into the well and drew out what I can only describe as living water, water with multiple dimensions, water that could satisfy all thirsts. As I carried the water back to the building everything turned back into a normal cold November day in Saskatchewan.
For me, that dream was a powerful confirmation of my decision, which has stayed with me for more than 50 years. Now I am 72. If there is anything I have learned from life that is worth passing on, it is simply to invite everyone to seriously investigate Baha’u’llah’s stupendous revelation.
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If We’re Spiritual Beings, Why Do We Live in a Physical World?
During my half-century as a university professor and publishing scholar, I devoted a good deal of time to an obvious but puzzling question: If we presume an omnipotent Creator exists, why did He decide to give a physical dimension to His creation?
Or, stated in more personal terms, if the creation of human beings lies at the heart of the purpose of physical reality—as most religions suppose—then why did the Creator decide that we would benefit from waking up in an environment where we think we are physical beings, when we really aren’t; where we think we own stuff, when we actually don’t; and where we seem to constantly worry about dying, when our conscious self together with all our essential human powers will endure forever as properties of our eternal soul?
My first attempt to get to the heart of this question, a book entitled The Metaphorical Nature of Physical Reality, discussed the premise that physical reality is a poetic or metaphorical expression of abstract virtues and, as such, provides a foundational methodology for human beings to become introduced to a higher, nobler, and more permanent spiritual reality.
In this work, I applied the terms and techniques of literary studies, which describe how metaphor works, to demonstrate that analogical processes provide a useful means for the human mind to be introduced to, acquire, and understand ephemeral or metaphysical realities—making it possible for us to approach the entire physical part of our lives as a dramatic teaching device.
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My next book-length study of this subject, The Purpose of Physical Reality: The Kingdom of Names, dealt with the way in which physical reality and our experience in it might correctly be described as a classroom where we prepare for the continuation of personal development after the dissociation of our selves—our soul with all its complement of powers and faculties—from our physical body.
This work concludes by observing that one of the really useful devices this classroom offers us as preparation for that transition—we might think of it as a workshop or “breakout” session—is aging, an ingeniously devised experience in which we gradually watch our skin become wrinkled, feel our joints falter, our organs failing, and the whole organic physical construct become incrementally more dysfunctional until it dies, decomposes, and, according to Walt Whitman, becomes “leaves of grass,” or, in my own case, a bit of crab grass.
The next stage in my study of physical reality as an expression of a coherent and logically structured expression of a divine plan for human education was The Arc of Ascent: The Purpose of Physical Reality II. The central thesis of this book—that individual spiritual development in the context of the physical classroom is inextricably linked to our reality as inherently social beings—led me to the conclusion that all individual virtue is largely theoretical until practiced and developed in the context of human relationships.
For example, a hermit dwelling in a mountain cave may consider himself to be extremely mystical and spiritual, completely kind and selfless, but neither he nor we can be sure he has acquired such virtues unless and until he emerges from his seclusion to help somebody, not once, but enough times that his theoretical virtues become habituated and thus integral attributes of his character.
The thesis of the series of essays you’re reading now came from ideas developed in my third assault on this endlessly fascinating question, entitled Close Connections: The Bridge between Spiritual and Physical Reality. As the title implies, this lengthy and complex discourse analyzes how the gap between the metaphysical and physical aspects of reality is bridged constantly and bi-directionally on both the cosmic and the individual level. Stated axiomatically, this work compares the theory that an essentially unknowable metaphysical being—the Creator—runs physical reality, with the parallel theory that an essentially knowable metaphysical being—the human soul—operates the human body.
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As Abdu’l-Baha so clearly pointed out in a talk he gave in Paris, God employs His messengers as intermediaries between Himself and physical reality, even as we employ our brains as intermediaries between our “essential self” and our bodies:
Like the animal, man possesses the faculties of the senses, is subject to heat, cold, hunger, thirst, etc.; unlike the animal, man has a rational soul, the human intelligence, whereby he can think abstractly, or meditate and reflect on philosophical or theological questions.
This intelligence of man is the intermediary between his body and his spirit.
When man allows the spirit, through his soul, to enlighten his understanding, then does he contain all Creation; because man, being the culmination of all that went before and thus superior to all previous evolutions, contains all the lower world within himself. Illumined by the spirit through the instrumentality of the soul, man’s radiant intelligence makes him the crowning-point of Creation.
If this thesis is correct, even as you at this moment read this essay, you and I are conversing soul-to-soul by means of a series of intermediaries.
The written expression of ideas emanated from my conscious mind through the intermediary of my brain. It was then published here at BahaiTeachings.org, and is at this moment being translated by your senses into abstract concepts through the capacity of your brain, which then transforms the complex of symbols that constitute human language into meaning.
Your conscious mind then considers these ideas, and either rejects them as unworthy of being retained or stores them in the repository of your memory and the convictions of your inner being.
So, to put it in terms that contemporary physics might find appealing: how can we defend the thesis that essentially metaphysical beings—and therefore, for the majority of contemporary scientists, nonexistent beings—think themselves capable of operating heavy machinery without hurting anyone?
In Close Connections I discuss critical questions related to evolution, particle physics, astrophysics, history, cosmology, anthropology, medicine, physiology, psychiatry, and all sorts of other fields directly affected by the assertions that metaphysical reality exists and, more important, that there is a strategic and systematic interplay between the metaphysical and physical aspects of reality. Most important in this study is the consideration that these relationships are at the heart of any understanding about how reality works at every level of existence.
My overall objective in Close Connections is to demonstrate an integrative view of reality provided in and corroborated by authoritative Baha’i texts. But since I cannot in a single series of essays discuss all the support for a thesis wrought over ten years, several books, and hundreds of pages of research, I have decided to focus here on one of the fundamental themes in that study: the relationship between the religious axiom that the human purpose is to love God, and the decision of the Creator to make the method by which we can attain this love relationship subtle, indirect, initially physical, poetic, and, consequently, largely hidden and concealed from intuitive knowledge.
In other words, how do we love God when we cannot possibly know the essential reality of God?
This represents a supremely difficult challenge—unless, of course, we are first led out of the cave of ignorance by mentors, and set on the path of willed, self-sustained progress, a process that translates well the Latin verb educare (to lead out) into the English cognate “to educate.”
Coupled with this idea is another equally enigmatic concept: love. Since, according to the Baha’i teachings, the human purpose is to learn to know and to worship God, or to love and to express that love in action, then it is crucial that we understand how both processes work, as neither learning nor loving can be coerced, even by God, because both require us to employ our free will, and our will cannot be free if it is coerced.
So please follow along in this series of essays as we explore what the Baha’i teachings recommend when they ask us to kindle the fire of divine love in our hearts and souls.
This series of essays is adapted from John Hatcher’s address to the 2005 Association for Baha’i Studies Conference titled The Huri of Love, which comprised the 23rd Hasan M. Balyuzi Memorial Lecture.
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How an Animal Helped Heal My PTSD
I held Darwin’s food bowl out to him. It was breakfast time at PrimRose Donkey Sanctuary, usually Darwin’s favorite time of day. He hung his head and turned away.
Darwin had come to PrimRose a year earlier, emaciated, teeth worn down to nubs, his tawny-grey and white coat patchy and dull. He’d been nursed back to health with meals of warm mash made of hay pellets, and lots of love.
I’d already been volunteering for several months at the sanctuary. I had never intended to volunteer but my daughter Mehra had been insistent. “You should go, Mom. You’ll love it.”
She had started volunteering at PrimRose and kept pestering me to go. I refused. As much as I loved animals, I was struggling enough. At five years old I’d been molested by a family acquaintance, and by the time the submerged memory surfaced, my life was in flaming ruins. After a divorce and years of counseling, now, in my second marriage, I was as happy as I’d ever been. I was learning to heal myself using energy healing techniques similar to Reiki, but even so, despair and feelings of panic were never far away. I’d learned that doing too much, over-extending myself, led to downward spirals that could last days, weeks, or even years.
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I’d been a Baha’i since 1992, but the struggles I had since childhood continued. Baha’u’llah’s teachings challenged me, gave me hope and made me rise beyond my small perspectives, but some of them seemed incomprehensible to me, like this one: “I swear by My life! Nothing save that which profiteth them can befall my loved ones. To this testifieth the Pen of God, the Most Powerful, the All-Glorious, the Best-Beloved.”
I longed to trust God, longed to release myself from fear, but although I had faith in God, I didn’t trust Him. After all, couldn’t God have stopped me from being abused? Deep down, I felt abandoned. If I was going to stay safe, it was up to me.
“No,” I told Mehra. “I’ve got enough to do!”
But Mehra was relentless. Every Sunday when she got back from volunteering, I heard stories about the sanctuary’s residents. There was Hannah, the mini donkey shaped like a dumpling who threw tantrums if she was separated from her best friend Sadie; Harry, a nervous, overweight fellow who liked to be in charge; Joey, a huge donkey who was gentle and affectionate, despite his heartbreaking history of abuse, and Sheeyore, an aged sway-backed donkey who had dementia and “introduced” herself over and over.
What could it hurt, going occasionally? I won’t commit to anything, I told myself.
At first, I was overwhelmed. New situations are hard for me, and I had so much to learn. But far from being depleted, I found being around the donkeys deeply healing, like on the day I was troubled about a family situation. The donkeys seemed to sense my sadness and stayed close. Three of the bigger donkeys surrounded me and took turns resting their heads on my shoulder, giving me “hugs.” One of them nibbled my cheek in a kiss. They stood in a protective half-circle, nuzzling and kissing me, while tears streamed down my cheeks.
Like me, the donkeys were survivors. Some of them, like the chocolate-brown hinny named Carl, carried deep psychological scars, and didn’t let humans close to them. Others, like gentle Joey, seemed to realize they were finally home, finally safe.
I had mentioned to Sheila, the sanctuary founder, that I struggled with PTSD but had found relief doing energy healing. When Darwin arrived, so broken and close to death, Sheila asked if I could work with him. Everything I’d learned about healing had to be adapted to equines, but miraculously, Darwin lived. As he gained strength, it was a joy seeing him living his “happy ending.”
I continued working with the sanctuary animals, working with the same white-knuckle determination that I did for my own healing, trusting in God … sort of. Mostly, I trusted in my own determination to fix everything. Every so often, a donkey that I’d worked with died, reminding me that I wasn’t God. “Release the outcome” became my mantra. I even convinced myself that I was doing it.
Maybe because of his Lazarus-like recovery, Darwin was special to me. He reminded me of my big-hearted white labradoodle, Oliver, who’d died suddenly almost three years earlier. Even though both had suffered at human hands before being rescued, like Oliver, Darwin loved people. And, like Oliver, Darwin loved to eat.
Darwin had a stall right next to where Sheila prepared meals for special-needs residents. As his breakfast mash cooled from the boiling water used to make it, Darwin would crane his neck around the edge of the stall, fixing an eye on Sheila. With lower lip trembling in anticipation, he’d loudly complain about how long it was taking. “It’s coming! It’s coming!” she’d say, laughing. His lunch, being prepared at the same time, was set aside for later. By 10:30, Darwin would be back to his stall, standing vigil for his next meal.
But now Darwin had turned away from his food.
Fighting back fear, I worked with him, trying to help balance his system. But although he looked brighter by the time I left, I couldn’t pinpoint the problem.
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It was soon found – toxicology reports revealed that he’d ingested poison. A visitor to the sanctuary had fed Darwin daisies which are toxic to equines. When I saw Darwin the following Sunday, dread prickled through me. Darwin was dying.
My determination kicked into high gear. I won’t LET him die!, I said to myself. I worked with Darwin for three hours, trying everything I could think of. He was so weak he staggered as he walked. His head looked like it ached. As I massaged his head and ears, Darwin bumped his head on my leg, rubbing it against me.
It was so hard leaving him that day. I gave him a kiss on his neck. “I love you,” I whispered.
I’d felt a sense of foreboding about Darwin for weeks, but I’d pushed it down. An image kept flashing in my mind of me reading an email with the subject line, “Darwin passed away…” The flashing image only made me more determined. Instead of “Release the outcome,” I doubled down.
I emailed everyone I could think of. “Please pray!” I begged. With so many of us praying, God had to listen! One day as I prayed, in my mind’s eye I saw Darwin before me, enveloped in light. It’s working!, I thought. Sheila’s progress reports seemed to agree.
A few days later, I checked my email. One subject line rushed at me: “Darwin passed away …” I fell back into my chair. I read the email several times in disbelief. Darwin was gone. Despite everything, he was gone, three years to the day that my dog Oliver had passed. I collapsed into wrenching sobs.
I don’t know how long I cried, but after some time, something shifted. A quiet stillness entered my heart. God was with me. I felt nudged to look deeper. There was something here for me to learn: God was the one who decided life and death, not me.
Yet … I still felt Darwin with me. Just like the strange vision of the email foretelling Darwin’s passing, an image flashed before me. Darwin. He was young, his coat thick and lustrous. He looked so vibrant, so content. So happy. While there was no way to prove that Darwin was still there in spirit, living his “happy ending” forever, peace welled up within me. Somehow, even though the outcome was not what I wanted, all was well.
Darwin was well. As was I.
A serenity came to me that day, formed from my futile attempts to control life, with all its ebbs and flows. It reminded me of decades before when I’d thought my life was over. A wise man, praying over me, quoted the Bible: “Be still and know that I am God.” Like Darwin, far from being abandoned, I’d been carried through so many dire storms over the years that I’d lost count.
Baha’u’llah’s emphatic promise that “… Nothing save that which profiteth them can befall my loved ones” has begun to resonate within me as I find myself circling closer and closer into the mystery and grace of its luminous inner meaning.
I still don’t know why Darwin died, or why I was abused, or why so much suffering exists in the world. All I know is that for the trials we go through, there is grace. As the pain plows its deep furrows into us, our harvest can be peace — peace that comes from surrendering to God’s will, peace that comes from trusting that all will be well.
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