Recognition Part 1

From the opening, in the very beginning of the 1^st verse of His Most Holy Book of Law, Baha’u’llah declares that:

ان اوّل ما كتب الله على العباد

عرفان مشرق وحيه ومطلع امره

الّذي كان مقام نفسه في عالم الامر والخلق

Which in translation says:

“The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Day Spring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who represents the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation.”

In this regard He also declares:

انّه يفعل ما يشآء

ولا يسئل عمّا شآء

وما حكم به المحبوب

انّه لمحبوب ومالك الاختراع

That is: “He does what He pleases. He chooses; and none may question His choice. Whatsoever He, the Well-Beloved, ordains, the same is, verily, beloved. To this He Who is the Lord of all creation bears Me witness.”¹

The reason that “none may question” is because, as He explains in another Tablet, whatever pertains to the Manifestation “all His acts and doings” and whatever He ordains or forbids “should be considered … as identical with the Will of God Himself.” ²

Similarly in another Tablet, also excerpted in Gleanings, Baha’u’llah states that:

“. . . the works and acts of each and every one of these Manifestations of God, nay whatever pertains unto them, and whatsoever they may manifest in the future, are all ordained by God, and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose.”³

Thus we understand that the Manifestation speaks as God has commanded Him to speak, acts as God has commanded Him to act, forbids what God has commanded Him to forbid and ordains what God has commanded Him to ordain. Every true Baha’i will likewise bear witness that the Manifestation isn’t a partner with God but rather the relationship between His will and God’s Will, is as set forth in Baha’u’llah’s statement that:

“Divinity, whenever I mention it, indicates My complete and absolute self-effacement. This is the station in which I have no control over mine own weal or woe nor over my life nor over my resurrection.”⁴

From this we understand that Baha’u’llah’s human station was effaced in the Divine Station.

“… We have, at no time, desired anything whatsoever except His Will, and have welcomed each one of His irrevocable decrees.” Gleanings LXII p. 120

“I have renounced My desire for Thy desire, O my God, and My will for the revelation of Thy Will. By Thy glory! I desire neither Myself nor My life except for the purpose of serving Thy Cause, and I love not My being save that I may sacrifice it in Thy path.” Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 37

That is, through His desire to be completely effaced in God’s Will, the Will of God becomes known because this effacement is a perfect reflection of God’s Will to Manifest that Perfect Mirror. Therefore the Manifestation submits personal will to God’s Will to such an extent that the personal identity is erased.

Thus we understand, not that the Manifestation is free to do whatever He chooses separate from God’s own Will, but rather the meaning is as stated in the Kitab-i-Iqan where He indicates that all the Manifestations “… in themselves manifest and vindicate the reality of these holy words: ‘Verily God does whatsoever He wills, and ordains whatsoever He pleases.’”⁵

A reflection of this reality can therefore be stated as: The Manifestation does as God Wills.

That Baha’u’llah considered himself in complete servitude to God and that there is only one God without partner is attested throughout His Word!

For instance He declares: “God was alone; there was none else besides Him.”⁶

And in another Tablet He reveals:

“He is, and hath from everlasting been, one and alone, without peer or equal, eternal in the past, eternal in the future, detached from all things, ever-abiding, unchangeable, and self-subsisting. He hath assigned no associate unto Himself in His Kingdom, no counsellor to counsel Him, none to compare unto Him, none to rival His glory.”⁷

These explanations clarify that true Baha’is are not those who add partners to God, rather they believe in the One God described by Baha’u’llah in these words:

“To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. …He stands exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. No sign can indicate His presence or His absence; inasmuch as by a word of His command all that are in heaven and on earth have come to exist, and by His wish, which is the Primal Will itself, all have stepped out of utter nothingness into the realm of being, the world of the visible.”⁸

Once we understand and accept this the meaning of “He doeth as He Willeth” relative to the Laws of the Manifestations becomes readily apparent. It is understood to mean that the Manifestation isn’t constrained by the previous laws which were in accord with the needs of a previous age because times having changed a new law is needed so as to foster an ever evolving spiritual civilization.

The people, being unaware of this, are deficient in their understanding. They judge His Revelation according to whether or not they find support in it for the laws which they already believe in, whether this be the law of a former book or that of their own personal concept of right and wrong.

Thus it is said: “And when the standard of Truth is made manifest, the people of both the East and the West curse it.”⁹

In this regard it seems inescapable that one way or another the people must make a judgement – a decision – whether yay or nay! This is because every human being is motivated to pursue the object of their desire in the degree of their own valuation of the worthiness of that object. Whatever this object may be it signifies to them what is truly worthwhile and therefore sacrosanct – on a personal level. Thus they will defend their possession of it even as they would defend their own persons for they understand instinctively that it represents their motivation to live.

Thus it can be witnessed that every human being is moved to choose the highest possible value that they are able to perceive given their personal circumstances and limitations. For the materially oriented this will be a material desire, for the socially oriented a social desire, for the intellectually oriented an intellectual desire, for the idealistically oriented an idealistic desire and for the spiritually oriented a spiritual desire.¹⁰

To the extent that their psyche is firmly wedded to their own subjective concept of value a person will find it difficult to conceive that there might be a higher standard of value than that which they have chosen for themselves. For most, the reality is, they didn’t independently choose it, rather it was imprinted on them through family, culture, society etc. These values aren’t necessarily intrinsic to these institutions originally, rather, these institutions arose from the values which, over millennia, were learned from the scriptures and teachings which God caused to be revealed previously all the way back to long, long before the dawn of history. However, because humans are imperfect, human institutions are bound to reflect these values imperfectly.

It is because the people failed to comprehend the true intent of those scriptures that too much of what they understand concerning “values” is merely accumulated human interpretations of the meaning of those values, and thus they presume to adequately measure with an inadequate standard Him Who is the Arbiter of Value itself.