Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Lasse Thoresen, Creation, bahai-library.com.
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Creation
Lasse Thoresen

Abstract
Divine creation moves from implicit and transcendent oneness to explicit and
manifest multiplicity. To contribute to the creation of a new civilization as a
researcher or as an artist means to make oneself available for participation in
this process o f neverending unfolding. The divine Names are the eternal
archetypes organizing the material world. Divine Names are not concepts; they
are tools for invoking the animated presence o f a particular aspect of the
creative force, thus enabling dialogue between thinking processes and reality.
Such a dialogue favors a presuppositionless, susceptive attitude to reality as
more adequate than the im position o f preconceived m ethodological
assumptions.

Résumé
La création divine se meut continuellem ent de l ’unicité im plicite et
transcendante à la multiplicité explicite et manifeste. Participer à la création
d ’une nouvelle civilisation en tant que chercheur ou en tant qu’artiste implique
une ouverture totale à ce processus sans fin. Les Noms de Dieu sont les
archétypes éternels par lesquels s ’organise l ’univers matériel. Les Noms de
Dieu ne sont pas des concepts, mais plutôt des moyens d ’évoquer la présence
vivante d ’un aspect particulier de la force créatrice, permettant ainsi que
s ’établisse un échange entre le processus de la pensée et la réalité. Un tel
échange préfère une attitude sans à priori, une perception spontanée de la
réalité comme plus adéquate que l ’imposition d ’hypothèses méthodologiques
préétablies.

Resumen
La creación divina pasa de la unidad implicita y transcendente a la
m ultiplicidad explicita y manifiesta. Contribuir a la creación de una
civilización nueva en carâcter de investigador o artista significa hacerse
disponible para la participación en este proceso de desenvolvimiento
inacabable. Los Nombres divinos son los arquetipos eternos que organizan el
mundo material. Lejos de ser conceptos, son herramientas que sirven para
invocar la presencia animada de un aspecto especifico de la fuerza creadora,
entablando asi diâlogo entre los procesos de reflexion y de la realidad. Tal
didlogo favorece una actitud susceptible a la realidad y carecente de

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presuposiciones como mds adecuada que la imposición de lax suposiciones
preconcebidas metodológicas.

I
It is a fundamental belief of the Bahà’is that creation as we witness it through
our senses is a reality rooted in a still deeper reality, hidden to our senses but
accessible to our souls, spirits, and hearts. The Bahà’i view of the world beyond
emphasizes becoming over being. Eternality and historicity are mutually
interactive.1 The world was not created once and for all; it is under continual
creation as the energies of the transcendent world flow into the world of matter
and the world of human minds, manifesting themselves in the creation of living
beings, in the revelation of God through His manifestations, and in the rise and
flourishing of human civilizations throughout history. The same creative force
that produced the dinosaurs and caused their extinction so that the era of the
mammals could begin is still at work through human history. Humanity is
presently in a stage of transition in which crises after crises challenge human
creativity to find solutions to man’s craving for spiritual and physical
sustenance. The mammals of the new era may still be small in size and number,
but they are here and are gradually accumulating strength.
The creative energy of the universe works itself from the point of unity into
diversified forms and beings that exist on different levels of the cosmos. While
creation diversifies itself, at the same time it gathers together again its
diversified elements and species so as to bring itself into harmony with the
original oneness from which it is always emerging. All the planets of our solar
system supposedly came into individual existence through a centrifugal
explosion that was counterbalanced by forces of gravity. Thus the initial
centrifugal diversification was held in check by the centripetal force of gravity.
We could see this as the “love” of the sun for its planets, as gravity is the
expression of love on the lower level of material reality. “The power of
cohesion expressed in the mineral kingdom is in reality love or affinity
manifested in a low degree according to the exigencies of the mineral world”
(‘Abdu’l-Baha, Promulgation 257).
In the animal kingdom we find groups of species that collaborate to survive
or perform complementary, mutually beneficent tasks one for the other, without
the self-awareness that they are doing so. In the organic world, symbiosis and
interdependency are now gradually being recognized as constituting a more
fundamental feature in the evolution of species than competition and the
survival of the fittest.2 In the world of humanity, religion is the force which
most powerfully can reunite a diversified humanity conscious of its own
existence and capable of making individual choices. All the great religions have
contributed in this regard by giving man the means of reuniting with the
primordial Unity from which all creation is constantly emanating, and in
C r e a tio n 73

addition, in this particular day and age, the Bahà’i Revelation has been sent
down to promote the unification of the entire planet in the form of a global
civilization.
The Bahà’i Faith teaches that the ultim ate source of all being, the
unknowable God, created the universe out of love. “I loved thy creation, hence I
created thee” (Bahà’u’ilàh, Hidden Words Arabic no. 4). From this we learn
that divine, cosmic love is the one and ultimate origin of all existence. Being
with a capital B is thus essentially nothing but love. To exist is to arise out of
love. To be conscious that we simply exist, and to testify to this naked fact,
brings to us the awareness of this universal, all-pervasive love. Meditation and
the arts can change man’s frame of mind to reach this awareness of Universal
Being. Daily, BahâT's testify before God that we are created to know Him and
worship Him through obedience to His Will.
In another passage, Baha’u’llah, God’s supreme Manifestation for our time,
tells us: “Thou didst wish to make thyself known unto men; therefore, Thou
didst, through a word of Thy mouth, bring creation into being and fashion the
universe (Prayers and Meditations 6). Thus we learn that the diversified
creation is created with the purpose that the Supreme Creator be known through
the revelation of His attributes. Creation ec-sists, which literally means stands
out, that is, stands out from primordial, undifferentiated oneness, in order to be
known. This gives us an important perspective on the nature of the relationship
between the material world and human consciousness: In the final analysis it is
impossible to divorce the very existence of concrete things from the existence
of a consciousness capable of observing and knowing these things, since one is
created for the other, the other for the one.
If creation were not to be known, not to be observed and acknowledged, if it
were not to be investigated, described, depicted, then the very purpose of God
to make Himself known would indeed be frustrated. Thus the development of
science and arts, both interactive agents in the civilization process, has a
meaning beyond providing us means for physical survival and sensual pleasure:
through these complementary disciplines we testify before God, before man,
and to ourselves about our consciousness—or even our amazement—that we
exist, that the created world contains innumerable wonders and mysteries, that
we are all connected with our Creator, that we are the recipients of His riches
and bountiful gifts, and that we are participants in the creative unfoldment of
His Will through human history, engaged in spiritualizing our lives and those of
our fellow citizens, eagerly contributing to the creation of a spiritual world
civilization.

II
Let us now take one step further behind the curtain of physical reality, to delve
deeper into the operation of the spiritual forces that create existence as we know
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it, using the Sacred Scriptures of the Bahà’i Faith as our guide. My reason for
doing so is not only to present a doctrine of the metaphysical nature of the
universe, but also to derive models of the creative powers at work that could
enhance our own limited creative endeavors.
The Bahà’i Sacred Scripture teaches us that God in His absolute transcendent
essence did not create the world directly but through the mediation o f the
creative Word; the original creative act of God did not imply causation. Let me
quote from the writings of His Holiness the Báb:3 “God created all things by
His Primal Will, and this Primal Will by itself’ (Bayán 3:6);“ He has created
Will from nothingness, It is a cause unto itself. This Will cannot be explained or
qualified. Subsequently, He created all things as an effect of this Will” (qtd. in
Mázandarání 1:99); “The Cause of the Will, in truth, is not the eternal Essence.
. . . He created the Unity (the Primal Will) from itself, by itself and made it to
be the cause of the existence of all existences” (Súriy-i-Tawhíd).
The world is not directly caused by God, as far as I can understand the
Writings. The Primal Will was called forth from nothingness by the creative
Word to establish Its own existence, and to generate the particular essences of
beings from Itself, and to bring them to appear in the perceptible realm so as to
be known in their full, concrete, and complex creation. This primal, generating
Will (Mashiyyat) is identified with the essential nature of the Manifestation of
God. Thus Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, and Bahà’u'Uah, in terms of physical,
historical beings, were the concrete expressions of this Primal Will, created so
that ordinary man through establishing a relationship with these figures could
be connected to their inner, essential reality, the Primal Will, and thus become
reunited with the origin of creation. Each of these has in turn initiated an entire
civilization; and for each new one, God has signified a change of His Will,
pointed out a new direction and cancelled (badá’) features of the previous
Dispensation.
Now, the idea of creation without direct causation challenges us to
thoroughly reexamine our conceptions of causation with regard to the creative
process. The modern conceptions of the nature of causation in the creation of an
object were generally shaped by Aristotle. He taught that there are four types of
causation: taking the example of the production of a silver goblet to be used for
giving sacrifice to the gods, he describes the material cause, that is, the material
out of which it is produced; the formal cause, that is, the form the material
should be given; the, final cause, which is all the necessary constraints and
principles defined by the purpose for which the object is produced, in this case
the production of a goblet to be used for sacrificial rites; and then the efficient
cause, that is, the work of the craftsman who actually makes the goblet,
combining all the previous elements. God is traditionally described as the
efficient cause of the universe. However, the Bahà’i writings challenge this
idea, emphasizing that pristine creation is something different from causation,
C r e a tio n 75

and so they definitely prevent us from degrading God to a demiurge who puts
together disjointed entities from a static, ideal world in order to construct our
physical reality.
In his analysis of the pre-Socratic conceptual world of the ancient Greeks, the
philosopher Martin Heidegger brings our attention to a concept of creation that
comes much closer to the one suggested by the Báb.4
First, Heidegger contends that the modern understanding of cause is implicit
in the very etymology of the Latin word causa, being derived from cadere,
meaning “to fall.” Thus a cause is a something that brings about the effect that a
certain something falls out, or turns out in such and such a specific way, it
becomes a case, so to speak. Heidegger then proceeds to analyze the etymology
of Aristotle’s word for cause, aitia, a word coined by a consciousness that was
not yet affected by rationalist categories of thought. It turns out that this word
.also has meanings like occasion and accusation. The related verb aiteo means
to demand, to ask, to beg.
Going beyond Heidegger’s deliberately areligious philosophy, and using his
ideas about creation as a tool to explore the possible signification of the Bâb’s
statement, I would suggest the following: To create something without
causation might imply to demand (pray, ask for) the appearance of a
transcendental reality in a particular context and to prepare conditions for this to
happen. This transcendental reality is not itself intrinsic in what is actually
made; it just appears in the context created. The appearing reality is not at all
something made up, invented, or put together; rather it is un-covered, dis­
closed. What is made up owes its existence, its raison d'être, to the higher
reality without actually being made by it; the production as such takes place on
a lower level. The hidden meaning calls for its own appearance, and it
eventually appears when a mirroring condition is present, that is, when a
susceptible state (a “locus”) on a lower level has been brought into existence.
Accordingly, the created world owes its existence to its being an occasion for
divine attributes to appear in it; this does not mean God Himself made it, but He
evidently created conditions in which it could constitute itself and thus become
the locus of the appearance of God’s attributes within it. It was brought forth
through the challenge of God’s creative word, through His evocation. Creation,
after being evoked by God’s decree (amr), or by his mention (dhikr). then is
self-generating in developing its intrinsic formal and material distinctions,
which eventually fulfill the original demand: to mirror, to make God’s hidden
nature appear; to uncover His hidden nature. This appearance of the
transcendent in the manifest remains the purpose of all existence, of human life,
therefore also the aspiration of all true science, of all worthy art.
The creation of a work of art can be seen in a similar perspective. Returning
to Heidegger, a true masterwork of art is “the Truth of existing things setting
itself into [the] work” ( “Das sich-ins-Werk-setzen der Wahrheit des Seienden”)
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(Der Ursprung des Kunstwerk.es 33). Heidegger goes on to point out that the
Greek word for truth, aletheia, has the etymological meaning of un-hiddenness.
Thus truth becomes the appearance of the transcendent, deeper aspect of reality
(Being) appearing in a finite context (the work of art), among other existing
things, but the work of art has the function of heightening this awareness and
realization connected to the unveiling of transcendental reality. Its effect upon
us becomes to marvel, to experience intensively that we are present, to find
ourselves alive and existing and to rejoice in this realization.
The Bahà’i Shrine, Terraces, monumental buildings, and gardens on the slope
of Mount Carmel that recently were officially opened, fulfill all these properties
of the work of art in a most exceptional and exquisite way. Their existence is
due to a few words of the Báb and BaháVlláh—by their decree (qadd), but
they had to be physically conceived and built by material and practical means,
after the House of Justice found the time was right and gave permission.
Despite all the Terraces’ beauty, their ultimate fascination is of course the
transcendent spirit that is found in them. Bahà’u’ilàh’s Tablet of Carmel
abounds with allusions to the appearance of the hidden in the manifest: “God
hath . . . made thee [Carmel] the dawning-place of His signs. . . ‘“ He that
was hidden from mortal eyes is come!’” (Tablets of Bahd’u ’lldh 4). The Tablet
contains a recurrent metaphor describing the movement from the transcendent
realm into manifestation in the earthly dimension: The Name of God, or
Heavenly element is first invoked, the Earth shakes in response, and a new
creation, until now hidden in the unseen world, is made to appear. “Sanctified
be the Lord . . . , at the mention of Whose name all the atoms of the earth have
been made to vibrate, and the Tongue of Grandeur hath been moved to disclose
that which had been wrapt in His knowledge and lay concealed within the
treasury of His might” (Tablets of Bahd'u’lldh 5). In the oratorio Terraces of
Light I wrote for the opening of the Terraces on Mount Carmel, I extracted from
the above quotation a formula for introducing changes or new elements in the
piece: first a signal, like a fanfare, symbolizes the mention of the Name of God,
then a tremulating sound, sometimes a kettledrum roll, in the orchestra, before
the new musical element appears.

Ill
Having now discussed the relationship between God’s absolutely Transcendent
Essence and the Primal Will, and deduced from this the principle of creation
through emanation, let us now consider the self-generation of the Primal Will,
through the Primal Point. In the Lawh-i-Hikmat BaháVlláh states: “The world
of existence came into being through the heat generated from the interaction
between the active force and that which is its recipient. These two are the same,
yet they are different” (Tablets of Bahd’u ’lldh 140). This statement about the
creation of the spiritual universe may seem nebulous, but it becomes quite clear
C r e a tio n 77

when seen in the light of the Bâb’s discourse on the creative word, “Be!,” the
Arabic word kun. The word is first of all used in the Qur’àn; “His command
when He willeth aught, is but to say to it, BE [kun], and IT IS” (36:80). We
know the reference to this word from the long obligatory prayer in the passage
in.which we testify that “Thou art God, that there is no God but Thee, and that
He Who hath been manifested is the Hidden Mystery, the Treasured Symbol,
through Whom the letters B and E (Be) have been joined and knit together”
(Prayers and Meditations 321).
The Arabic word consists of an initial burst of energy: “k,” which
immediately has its resonance in the softer vowel, n: “A 'a/lthe letter k]
represents the station of Mashiyyat (Primal Will) and Nún [the letter n ]
represents the station of Irádih (Purpose); Mashiyyat is the Father of things and
Irádih the Mother. . . . Through Kqf God created the substance [Máddíyyih] of
•all things and through Nún God created the form [Surat] of all things” (The
Báb, Tafsír-i-Bismi’lláh; provisional translation). We understand that within
this unitary sound kun there is an inherent polarity between an active
component and a passive one: the active one ordains being; the passive one is
the matrix containing all possibilities of form. Being has been endowed with the
endless potentiality to form essences of particular beings. Perhaps creation so
far is timeless, perpetual; all possible creations for all times are there, yet
nothing is materialized, selected for actual existence.
If we are to understand further the implications of the active and passive
forces with regard to the emergence of the physical world from the Will of God,
the following quotation from ‘AbduT-Bahá is interesting:

[T]he substance and primary matter of contingent beings is the ethereal power, which
is invisible and only known through its effects, such as electricity, heat, and light—
these are vibrations of that power, and this is established and proven in natural
philosophy and is known as the ethereal substance [mdddiy-i-athiriyyih]. This ethereal
substance is itself both the active force and the recipient; in other words, it is the sign
of the Primal Will in the phenomenal world. . . . ” (Qtd. in Brown 28)

The next step in the divine creative process now casts a dynamic element into
creation; the first active point determines to activate a latent possibility of form,
so that a certain thing will appear in the world of creation. This third step of
creation, the actualization of a particular preexisting potential, is called Qadar
in the Writings. The following quotation by the Báb may serve to elucidate the
meaning of this concept:

Subsequently, He created all things as an effect of this Will. This is impossible save
through seven degrees of contingency. Without these seven degrees nothing is
possible in the contingent world. These seven are Will [Mashiyyat], Purpose [Irádih],
Predestination/decreed fate [Qadar]; Decreed Fate/Predestination [Qada], Permission
78 THE JO U R N A L OF B A H À ’Î STU D IES 1 2 .1 /4 .2 0 0 2

[IdhnQ, Fixed Time [Ajal\, and the Book [Kitáb], (Qtd. in Mázandárání 1:99;
provisional translation)

With Qadar, a process of diversification begins, which means an initial,
although perhaps not yet manifest, entry into the categories of time and space.
Now Qadar would probably correspond to the element of heat referred to in the
above quotation from the Lawh-i-Hikmat, the element of heat being certainly
the Fire element, which is more or less the same as Light. Thus Qadar would
probably correspond to that moment in Genesis when God says: “Let there be
light.” Before that, the heaven and the earth, probably symbolic of the active
and the recipient agents (or Mashiyyat and Irádih), had already been created:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without
form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of
God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be
light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God
separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:1-4).
According to Genesis, God proceeds to create all things. It seems, however,
that the first chapter of Genesis does not deal with physical creation. It is the
creation of eternal archetypes in what is called the Kingdom (Malakút) in the
Bahá’1 writings. In this realm man as a species always preexisted ideally,
regardless of the historic processes of this world. Only in Genesis 2 does the
reality ideally created begin to manifest itself in the historic dimension, a
dimension where the right time (or Term, Ajal) will have to be there before that
reality can become manifest:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In
the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens when no plant of the field
was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God
had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a
mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground—then the
LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:4-7)

IV
Let me now present some musical thoughts that the contact with these ideas
released in my mind. When I began writing the piece for the opening of the
Terraces on Mount Carmel, I was allowed by the Universal House of Justice to
stay at the World Centre for three weeks. Daily visits in the gardens, in the
Shrine of the Báb, and search in the Bâb’s Texts released a strange ecstasy
within me, and while conceiving the main piece for the Terraces, I also had the
idea of another piece. I accepted a request from my school, the Norwegian State
Academy of Music, to write a piece to celebrate the change of the millennium,
and I found a way to include 230 performers from the school, and ended up
C r e a tio n 79

with a work of one hour’s duration. I called it “As the Waves of One Sea.” In
my mind, and in its interior construction, the piece was actually a contemplation
of a number of the Bâb’s metaphysical and numerological categories. The piece
begins with a forceful stroke on a tam-tam (a huge, flat gong), placed on an
elevated spot above the orchestra. This sound symbolizes the kun. It is a stroke
that provides the active force, the existence of the sound, and then there is an
enormously complex, rich resonance, a sound so rich that one could imagine
that all other sounds could come from this one, if it were to be filtered in
different ways. Now, the whole piece is organized into eighteen sections by the
nineteen strokes of this huge, elevated tam-tam.
The Báb divides nineteen, the number of wáhid, meaning unity, into
.3+4+Ó+6. From these numbers, a number of musical rhythms are generated.
The pitches used are generated using the first nineteen partials of nineteen
subharmonically transposed fundamentals. These, of course, are things you
cannot hear as such; they are parts of the internal construction of the pieces. The
first stroke on the huge tam-tam placed on an elevated spot in the hall is an
equivalent to kun, and it is echoed (mirrored) by nineteen strokes on minor tam­
tams spaced around the audience. Each of these is placed in front of a door in
the concert house. The next stroke of the big tam-tam gets a resonance in the
big choir: a hundred voices sounding with no internal order, as if heaven and
earth had not yet been separated. The third stroke, and the orchestra enters in
the same way, playing simultaneously all the twenty-one pitch classes used in
the piece. Now the ocean is starting to have waves, and the waves uncover
vaguely some of its own interior, so we start to discern different groups of
instruments. A new stroke, and now the doors behind the smaller tam-tams are
opened halfway; in the distance one can hear, but not see, different kinds of
music, as if preexisting in the ideal world, but not yet manifest. Now back to the
beginning; eventually the human voice in harmony is heard, and with a tam-tam
stroke, you hear a harp solo that represents the dawning of the first light,
followed by a rejoicing flute quartet. The musical material of the flute quartet
and harp solo is constructed by forms I deduced from Subhàna’llàh, the
particular invocation (tasbih) that the Báb in the Persian Bayán assigns to the
first element, that of light/fire. The tonality of the section combines
subharmonic layers 1 and 19, and the section ends with a ritornello playing with
rhythmical groupings based on the numbers 3, 4, 6, and 6.
Successively the piece descends through the air element, the water element,
and the earth element, each section using its proper invocation as its hidden
constructive element. It eventually arrives at a consummation in the ninth
section, whose fundamental is the nineteenth subharmonic and which again
presents the human voice. The remaining section forms some kind of a
reascension to the beginning point. The forces of diversification attain their
consummation during the fourteenth section, where the music played by various
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mobile ensembles emerges and takes the floor of the concert hall while the
choir is transformed into a cheering crowd; there is a jazz ensemble, a
Norwegian folk music ensemble, a Renaissance ensemble, a military band, and
also a fantasy ensemble playing on hoses and tubes. In the next section four
fanfare ensembles, each placed in a different corner of the concert house, are
accompanying an invisible fireworks while the choir is jubilating and pointing
to invisible rockets; the fireworks and climactic sounds bring the entire world
back again to the first point, from which the world again is ready to reemerge at
the nineteenth stroke of the big tam-tam.

V
We will now proceed one step more into the creative processes that determine
physical existence. The Bahà’i Faith teaches us that all the Names and
Attributes of the one God form the basis of the creation of all existing
phenomena. This is evident from passages such as this one;

Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one
of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the
reality of man, however. He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and
attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath
been singled out for so great a favour, so enduring a bounty. (BaháVlláh, Gleanings
65)

The acceptance of this statement will naturally form the basis of a Bahà’i
epistemology. Evidently, this is how we, mankind, are created so that we would
have the “capacity to know Him [God] and to love Him—a capacity that must
needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose
underlying the whole of creation. . . .” (Bahà’uTlàh, Gleanings 65).
It is of paramount importance, if we are to grasp the distinctive nature of the
creative relationship between transcendence and physical reality, to understand
the difference between a concept and a name. A concept (from Latin, con
capere) means to seize hold of a certain something by the aid of something. The
etymology of the Germanic word begreifen reveals a similar meaning. To grasp
is of course a very useful act, because you can appropriate what you grasp and
handle that which you have seized. A word that is a concept gives us a mental
tool with which we can grasp or seize something. To form or define a concept is
mostly the end result of a process of research, of observation, and of
contemplation of a certain aspect of reality. The forming of a concept will
crystallize or freeze a number of more fluid or vaguer phenomena, define—that
is, literally put a border around—that phenomenon and delimit it from other
phenomena. By itself, a concept is, however, merely an arbitrary tagging or
labeling of a mental construct, useful among other things to retrieve the
associations to which it is fixed, from our own memory or that of others. By
C r e a tio n 81

themselves, concepts are empty if not filled with the experiences that define
their meaning. Heidegger puts it very clearly when he says: “Philosophische
Begriffe bleiben leer, wenn wir nicht zuvor ergriffen sind von dem, was sie
begreifen sollen” (“Philosophical concepts remain empty as long as we are not
captured by that which they are supposed to conceive”) (Gesamtausgabe 29/30:
9; my translation; italics added to indicate etymologically related roots
equivalent to the German original’s greifen, “to seize”).
The Names of God are intrinsically something entirely different from
concepts. They are agents o f creation in the world beyond, with their
representations in this world. Perhaps they can be conceived as different rivers,
each containing an amount of onrushing energy—that is, a fluid quality—and a
static, resistant quality, that provokes or filters the formal potential of this
energy. This would be more or less like boulders in a river bed that cause the
rise of whirls and vortices, which would be the equivalent of the appearance of
wonderful forms in the contingent world. The static elements that cause the
onrushing energies or generate phenomena in this world are the archetypes
(a ‘yan thábita) that provide us with the organizing structure of the world, and
of our minds: ’Abdu’l Bahá exemplifies them as directions like North and
South, that is, immaterial but relational matrices.

As to the “fixed archetypes” [a ‘yan thábita] spoken of by the mystics, the argument
is this: Numbers, although fixed, have no definite existence and are a mere
convention. As they say: “East and west, north and south, possess a fixed character,
yet they have no objective existence. Likewise, the fixed archetypes are the forms of
God’s knowledge: they have a fixed character, but have not inhaled even a breath of
real existence.” (‘“ Abdu’l-Bahà’s Tablet” 27)

The Names are not just agents in the process of creation that proceed from
God to the physical world. A Name is a tool for us as well, but another kind of a
tool than a concept whose function it merely is to designate. It lies in the nature
of a Name that it is designed for invocation. Through a Name one calls upon the
bearer of the Name, in order to bring that other reality into the presence of the
one who is calling. Once the spirit of faith is activated in man, through man’s
belief in the Manifestation of God, Who represents the unifying and mediating
central agency of the created world, we are potentially connected to all of
reality. To the extent that it is God’s will, and we are receptive in the right way,
the reality of any existing thing is spiritually present with us. The evocation of
the inner reality of things brings us into a com m unication or— more
appropriately expressed—communion with the world around us so that by
resonating with it we may come to understand it more deeply.
Calling upon someone is only meaningful if that one upon whom we call is
another sentient being. The Bahà’i Scripture states explicitly that reality is not
dead, mechanical, inherently devoid of signification and intelligence. There is
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no such thing as an entirely inanimate object; the world around us is alive. In
His letter to Dr. Forel, ‘Abdu’l Bahá explains this fact clearly and without any
shadow of a doubt to this sympathetic but materialistically oriented scientist:
“As to the existence of spirit in the mineral: it is indubitable that minerals are
endowed with a spirit and life according to the requirements of that stage. This
unknown secret, too, hath become known unto the materialists who now
maintain that all beings are endowed with life, even as He saith in the Qur’àn,
‘All things are living’” (“Tablet to Dr. Forel” 9). Accordingly, the evocation of
the inner reality of things should be possible. It provides the practicing natural
scientist with the idea that a merely objective approach (in which man, so to
speak, challenges nature through his devices, his m easurem ents, his
apparatuses, his mental fixations or preform ed concepts) could be
complemented by a sensitive approach to observation, one more like someone
who enjoys the company of nature in a dialogue, than someone who wants to
conquer it and appropriate it for his own purposes.
Although ordinary people can never match the Manifestations of God, we
know we should also emulate Their example. And we know that Bahà’u’ilàh on
several occasions addressed or held conversations with a number of objects,
such as water drops, grasshoppers, mountains (Carmel), with limbs and parts of
the human body, and even with cultural objects (cities, houses) and ideal
objects (trustworthiness, the Maid of Heaven).
If we wish to contribute to the unending process of creating a new
civilization, be it as artists or scientists or in whatever capacity, I suggest we
should exploit to the full the belief that the Names of God are being coequally
revealed in material reality and in the human soul. The implication is that
research is not simply concerned with “something that is going on out there.”
Research is also going on through our contemplation of reality as it appears to
us in our own mind and spirit. Reality has a resonance in our soul. An echo of
The creative Word that created the reality of the world can, we may suppose, be
heard in the thinking that streams from our own higher Self.

VI
This approach to the investigation of the world around us depends, however, on
a certain culture of the mind. It may briefly be summed up as the principle of an
unprejudiced approach to the search for truth. We may also call it the principle
of the pure heart f This culture of the mind, or mindset, has another interesting
relationship to God’s Names through the use we make of them by the activity of
remembrance (dhikr). “True remembrance is to make mention of the Lord, the
All-Praised, and forget aught else beside Him” (Tablets of Bahá’u’ilâh 155).
The term remembrance both denotes a human, individual process of forgetting
everything but God through the repetition of one of His Names, and is at the
same time used as a name of that reality which is the intended goal of such an
C r e a tio n 83

exercise, namely the Primal Point, the Primal Will, the Manifestation of God in
His transcendent aspect. “Unlock, O people, the gates of the hearts of men with
the keys of the remembrance of Him Who is the Remembrance of God. . . .”
(Gleanings 296), BaháVlláh says, thus ingeniously connecting both usages of
the term into a compact, memorable statement. 6
The term heart, so frequently used in Bahà’i Scriptures, seems often to
indicate a state of human consciousness that lies beyond feelings, beyond
thought. The meaning of the Bahà’f term heart, as the term is described in some
passages, is not adequately explained by using the meaning of the word in
everyday language, where one generally aims at a sincere and courageous
expression of human feelings. As I understand, by the heart is meant, in a
number of cases anyway, that faculty of God, that, when purified, is capable of
reflecting the Primal Will. The Primal Will is completely free, has no describable
quality, but is the originator of all qualities. The heart is that faculty in man that
can reflect this reality from which all thinking, all imagining, all feeling radiate.
But of itself, it has no particular quality, it is no object, it has no form.
Now how does this relate to the question of the quest for truth, a quest in
common both for the scientist, the artist, and the spiritual seeker? The exercise
of remembrance, such as we daily practice it through the repetitions of the
Greatest Name, rehearses in us the ability to direct ourselves towards a point of
truth, while letting go of every image we might have of it, any feeling. We are
approaching the very beginning of the universe in our own mind. Before the
appearance of mental images of forms and qualities in our minds, we find
intentions to perceive or create forms. In a state of communion with the Spirit
of the Manifestations of God, that can occur as a result of remembrance of His
Greatest Name, new intentions can be born in our minds from the Primal Will,
through the mediation of the Holy Spirit. These may mean new perceptions of
the world—we see things anew—or they release the impulse to create new
entities or relationships in the world, if we carry out our intentions in action.
Thus we can become co-creators of a new civilization.
From the intentions born out of the communion with His transcendent Spirit
creative thinking can issue. Creative thinking is something going in our minds;
it is self-propelling, self-generating. Thought, on the contrary, is the finished,
fixed result of these relatively fluid processes; the result shows itself in words,
in concepts, or becomes solidified in the definite shapes of an accomplished
work of art, or may be translated into the building of well-defined institutions,
resulting in actions that benefit civilization. However, unless we master the
process before the finished result, we will not develop our creative potential to
the fullest.

VII
I would like to be more specific about the relationship between the pure heart
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and the scientific approach to reality. Certainly, useful scientific work that is in
full correspondence with a given code of scientific methodology can be done
without using the heart. However, I think that discoveries that lead to
fundamentally new, basic insights concerning the world presuppose purity of
heart and a sincerely truth-seeking attitude, at least with regard to the specific
matter under investigation. In saying so, I do not say that the total person needs
to have a pure heart with regard to all fields of human existence (which would
mean sainthood), be it the quest for religious truth or personal moral integrity.
Now the corollary of the above statement is that scientific method never is self-
sufficient. It presupposes the mindset of the researcher in terms of a pure and
truth-seeking heart.
My experience, and I think that of many others, has proven that the
indiscriminate application of scientific method to any phenomenon will not
automatically reveal the truth—the inner essence—of the phenomenon being
investigated, but rather will confirm a number of assumptions already implicit
in the method itself. I am speaking out of my own experience with academic
musicological research. Scientific method may become like a prejudice,
hindering the open, susceptible mind—which is more or less how we would
define a pure heart—from reflecting the truth of the matter which is the inherent
essence of the phenomenon studied. I am not suggesting we should discard the
use of objective methods, but we must not put implicit faith in any scientific
method as leading to the uncovering of the truth of the matter we are
investigating. It must be applied judiciously, and with a truth-seeking attitude.
The truth we seek is the truth of that which is under investigation, and this truth
is its divinely created endowment of inherent purpose and essential attributes,
as well as its network of interactions with other created entities.
Already seventy or eighty years ago Edmund Husserl, the founder of
phenomenology, coined the famous slogan: “Zu den Sachen selbst!"—“To the
things themselves!” Through phenomenological contemplation of the object
under investigation, Husserl described a rational, stringent approach to reality,
based on a sensitive attitude that seeks to incorporate the subjective
consciousness and conscience of the researcher while on the other hand
emphasizing a methodical approach that aims at preventing subjectivism from
detracting from an other-oriented, matter-of-fact attitude. In a phenomenological
context, truth unravels its essential nature in the light of evidence in man’s
transcendental self, and is of a progressive nature, according to Husserl. Thus,
the acquisition of such a mindset through a methodic exercise of the mental
faculties will help maintain contact with commonsensical reality and help
eliminate the absurdities that sometimes result from a naive belief in objective
scientific methods as such.
Now Husserl, in his critique of the implicit crisis caused in Western
civilization by the objectivist approach to reality, defines a few basic states of
C r e a tio n 85

mind that the researcher has to be able master in order to be a truthful
researcher. One of these he terms the transcendental self, and he describes
meticulously how man momentarily attains to this by rehearsing the intention
by which man suspends all judgments about the world, lets go of all efforts at
explanation, and explores the phenomena appearing to him from the point zero
of an open, unassuming mind. In his own words:

This ubiquitous detachment from any point of view regarding the objective world we
term the phenomenological epoché. It is the methodology through which I come to
understand myself as that ego and life of consciousness in which and through which
the entire objective world exists for me, and is for me precisely as it is. Everything in
the world, all spatio-temporal being, exists for me because I experience it, because I
. perceive it, remember it, think of it in any way, judge it, value it, desire it, etc. It is
well known that Descartes designates all this by the term cogito. For me the world is
nothing other than what I am aware of and what appears valid in such cogitationes.
The whole meaning and reality o f the world rests exclusively on such cogitationes.
My entire worldly life takes its course within these. I cannot live, experience, think,
value, and act in any world which is not in some sense in me, and derives its meaning
and truth from me. If I place myself above that entire life and if I abstain from any
commitment about reality, specifically one which accepts the world as existing, and if
I view that life exclusively as consciousness of the world, then I reveal myself as the
pure ego with its pure stream of cogitationes.
I certainly do not discover myself as one item among others in the world, since I
have altogether suspended judgement about the world. I am not the ego of an
individual man. I am the ego in whose stream of consciousness the world itself—
including myself as an object in it, a man who exists in the world—first acquires
meaning and reality. (Husserl, The Paris Lectures 8)

This particular state of mind has been a theme recurring through the history
of both science and religion: Buddha dealt with similar mental exercises in
detail in his Mahasatipatthana Sutta in which He defined the conditions of
mindfulness in meditation and life; and Descartes, to whom Husserl refers
above, described a similar principle through his famous dictum “Cogito ergo
sum”; and we all know Bahà’u’ilàh’s instruction to the true seeker that he
should “cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger
therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away
from the truth ” (Kitáb-i-íqán 192).
I would moreover suggest that Bahà’u’ilàh encourages us to attain this state
of mind daily through the short obligatory prayer in which the act of testifying
or witnessing has a central position, this being the only repeated word. I am
proposing, therefore, that the intention to “testify” or “bear witness” is a
complex but integrated state of mind in which we, either having observed a
particular reality or simultaneously while observing it, state that observation or
experience in the presence o f another, attesting to the truth o f what we say
86 THE JO U R N A L OF B A H Á ’ I STU D IES 1 2 .1 /4 .2 0 0 2

through the evidence o f our own being. The mastery of this state of mind has a
number of implications for a spiritual civilization beyond this context, be it in
the arts, the sciences, or for the sanity of the human mind.
I consider that the developments that took place in Husserl’s philosophy,
including his critique of objective science, are of particular importance to the
question of the use and usefulness of scientific method in a Bahà’i context. He
in no way intended to do away with science or get away from a rational or
scientific discourse; he was not in favor of relativizing truth entirely by
reducing it merely to a projection of psychological mechanisms, or even further,
by degrading the question of truth to merely individual points of view, such as
is often done in the postmodern world. He actually developed a constructive
critique of a number of ideas central to objective science, such as the dichotomy
between inner and outer reality, thus allowing a point of view that incorporated
the unity of existence into systematic thought. I would think that for Bahà’i
researchers, a reconsideration of Husserl’s ideas in the light of Bahà’uTlàh’s
Revelation might be fruitful as a means of creating a fresh approach to scientific
methodology altogether, one that would accommodate a spiritual aspect in the
process of rational research and investigation.
Consistently with the phenomenological approach, the question of truth will
have to be assessed through self-evidence. Constant effort to cleanse one’s heart
by forgetting all presuppositions and assumptions, and letting go of one’s pet
ideas and favorite opinions will help to avoid clogging up mental clarity. “Self-
evident” truths may turn out to be insufficient as new aspects of the
phenomenon under investigation emerge, and will have to be reconsidered and
revised accordingly. Thus truth for the unselfish researcher will be progressive.
For art, self-evidence might be a sufficient criterion for assessing the
appropriateness and wellformedness of an expression. For “hard” science one
would have to supplement the self-evident thesis with logical proofs and
experimental testing, and possibly adjust it in the light of new experience.

VIII
We have studied the ongoing process of creation in nature as well as in human
beings and human civilization. First we contemplated the idea of creation
without causation, then we probed the philosophy of the Primal Will and the
Primal Point. We discussed purity of heart as a prerequisite for communion
with this reality, as being fundamental for human life in general and
indispensable for truth in science and art. One aspect of the pure heart is its
openness, its having no form. Creative intentions spring from this point of
origin. Intentions still have no specific form, but they represent an essential will
to manifest a relationship to something positively existing in the manifest
world. Intentions pass through the world of images and archetypes—the former
more like vision, the latter more like cognitive patterns—before or while
C r e a tio n 87

materializing in this world of differences. This brief summary of some salient
points presented above is at the same a restatement aimed at orienting our
intention away from a cosmic ontology in order to rediscover the relevance and
applicability of these ideas for understanding and releasing human creativity.
This restatement is based on the assumption that the world we experience and
the human consciousness created to know about it spring from the same point of
unity.
I would now like to close by presenting two testimonies from excellent
creators in the field of human civilization, one a scientist and one an artist. The
first testimony is a letter written by Albert Einstein formulated in response to an
inquiry initiated by the journal L 'Enseignement Mathémathique1 about a
hundred years ago:

(A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play
any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as
elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be
“voluntarily” reproduced and combined.
There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant
logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected
concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above mentioned
elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to
be the essential feature in productive thought—before there is any connection with
logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to
others.
(B) The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular
type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a
secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and
can be reproduced at will.
(C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is
aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for.
. . . . It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can
never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the
narrowness of consciousness... . (Qtd. in Hadamard 142-43)

I would like to draw your attention specifically to a few points mentioned
here. Professor Einstein’s creative thinking only reaches a conceptual,
communicable formulation quite at the very end. Evidently, he must be
superbly in control of the mathematical language and its conventions to master
this final stage. However, the reasoning process itself is preconceptual,
preverbal, closer to an artist’s work than to exact science, since he works with
mental images. In his last remark concerning the narrowness of consciousness.
Professor Einstein seems to suggest that the creative moments do not happen in
a state of full consciousness, since a fully conscious, concentrated mind, is too
narrowed in its attention span, is too controlled, is not sufficiently free flowing
88 THE J O U R N A L OF B A H À ’Î S TUDI ES 12. 1/ 4. 2002

to conceive new and unexpected ideas. It is now generally accepted that the
creative process often passes through different phases: one characterized by
concentrated effort to penetrate a field; the second characterized by a more
turbulent grappling with problems that can find no solution through well-known
techniques of problem solving; the third phase being that of the “Aha!”
experience, a creative illumination that comes as a surprise when the mind is
not working in a concentrated manner; and the final one being the practical
application and testing of the ideas conceived.8
The second example is another introspective account from one of European
music history’s greatest creative geniuses, namely Johannes Brahms. In an
interview with a young American journalist in Vienna in 1896 attended by
Maestro Joachim (a famous violinist and lifelong friend of Brahms) as well as a
stenographer and translator from the American Embassy in Vienna.

“Dr. Brahms, “I queried, “how do you contact Omnipotence? Most people find Him
very aloof.”
“That is the great question,” Brahms replied. “It cannot be done merely by will
power working through the conscious mind, which is an evolutionary product of the
physical realm and perishes with the body. It can only be accomplished by the soul-
powers within—the real ego that survives bodily death. Those powers are quiescent
to the conscious mind unless illumined by Spirit.. ..
To realize that we are one with the Creator, as Beethoven did, is a wonderful and
awe inspiring experience. Very few human beings ever come into that realization and
that is why there are so few great composers or creative geniuses in any line of
human endeavor. I always contemplate all this before commencing to compose. This
is the first step. When I feel the urge I begin by appealing directly to my Maker and I
first ask Him the three most important questions pertaining to our life here in this
world—whence, wherefore, whither [woher, warum, wohin]?
“I immediately feel vibrations that thrill my whole being,” Brahms continued.
“These are the Spirit illuminating the soul power within, and in this exalted state, I
see clearly what is obscure in my ordinary moods; then I feel capable of drawing
inspiration from above, as Beethoven did. Above all, I realize at such moments the
tremendous significance of Jesus’ supreme revelation, T and my Father are one.’
Those vibrations assume the forms of distinct mental images, after I have formulated
my desire and resolve in regard to what I want—namely, to be inspired so that I can
compose something that will uplift and benefit humanity—something of permanent
value.
“Straightaway the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see
distinct themes in my mind’s eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies
and orchestration. Measure by measure, the finished product is revealed to me when I
am in those rare, inspired moods, as they were to Tartini when he composed his
greatest work—the Devil’s Trill Sonata. I have to be in a semi-trance condition to get
such results—a condition when the conscious mind is in temporary abeyance and the
subconscious is in control, for it is through the subconscious mind, which is a part of
C r e a tio n 89

Omnipotence, that the inspiration comes. I have to be careful, however, not to lose
consciousness, otherwise the ideas fade away.. . . ” (Abell 4-6)

“But don’t make the mistake, my young friend, of thinking that because I attach
such importance to inspiration from above, that that is all there is to it, by no means.
Structure is just as consequential, for without craftsmanship, inspiration is a ‘mere
reed shaken in the wind’ or ‘sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.’
“Here again I took my cue from Beethoven who had both inspiration and
workmanship in a superlative degree. I have worked very hard on all my major
compositions. I began my First Symphony in 1855 and I did not put the finishing
touches to it until 1876. What do you think of that? I know of no other composer who
labored twenty-one years over one work.”
“But Johannes,” protested Joachim, “you wrote also during those two decades
many other works in big form as well as dozens of smaller pieces.. . .
Brahms: “I see that you were afraid that I was giving Mr Abell the idea that I toiled
unremittingly and incessantly on my first symphony, and I am glad to you have
corrected that impression. I wish, however, to impress upon him the great truth that
my compositions are not the fruits of inspiration alone, but also of severe, laborious
and painstaking toil; I want the readers of this book, in the years to come, to realize
that a composer who hopes to write anything of lasting value, must have both
inspiration and craftsmanship.” (Abell 58-59)

Summarizing this extraordinary account of the creative process, one can see
that the contemplation of the Word of God is the first stage, and that this
releases creative ideas. The focus on the purpose and meaning of man’s earthly
life is important. Moreover, the intention to serve and benefit humanity is an
integral part of the composer’s attitude. To be receptive to inspired ideas, one
must be in a state between the waking and dreaming state. The channel for
inspired ideas is the artist’s mastery of his craft, and this demands lifelong
discipline and constant critical reassessment. Thus the existence of inspiration
depends entirely on a receptacle that is only formed through rehearsing, study,
and practical experience, and critical revisioning to improve one’s performance.

IX
Let me try to synthesize some of the points made above concerning noncausal
creation by emanation, the world as an emergent phenomenon to be witnessed
by the human spirit and as object of scientific research, by taking a quotation
from the Báb as my point of departure: “Verily, the sun is but a token from My
presence so that the true believers among My servants may discern in its rising
the dawning of every Dispensation” (Selections 159).
The idea of the rising sun, the dawning of the light, the appearance of the Sun
of Truth, is an archetypal one in our religion. Yet, if one views the sunrise from
the point of view of objective science, it does not really exist; the scientific
90 THE J O U R N A L OF B A H À ’Î S TUDI ES 12. 1/ 4. 2002

explanation is that the planet turns towards the sun, making it gradually visible.
Thus from the point of view of objective natural science we are dealing with an
illusion of perception. And nevertheless, the Sacred Scripture suggests that this
“illusion” is the very reason for the creation of the sun! Certainly, we would say
that God in creating a phenomenon that seems to be something else than it turns
out to be after scientific scrutiny, is a trickster. But I would say, rather. He
shows us the very essence of art: Art is solely made because of its emergent,
symbolic reality. Its construction, its explanation from the point of view of
producing it, is a different story—probably a scientific one. Its symbolic reality,
however, is its essence, not the aspect of it that concerns how it is put together,
analyzed, or explained scientifically. Its immediate appearance in our “life
world” (Lebenswelt as Husserl would call it) carries a significance so profound
that it provides the very reason for its existence. The metaphorical nature of the
sunrise, which is only accessible to the human mind, and about which man can
bear witness before God and his fellow man—was the essential reason for its
creation!

Notes

Presented at the Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Association for BaháT
Studies-North America, 31 August 2001.
1. See Saiedi, Logos and Civilization.
2. See Margulis and Sagan.
3. Provisional translations.
4. See Heidegger, “The Question of Technology,” a lecture under the title “Technik
und die Kehre” given in 1953.1 have used the Norwegian translation in Oikos og Techne
75-111).
5. See Saiedi, chap. 5.
6. For more details on remembrance, refer to the chapter about the meditation on the
Greatest Name in Thoresen, Unlocking the Gate o f the Heart.
7. Vol. 4 (1902) and vol. 6 (1904).
8. These phases have been more carefully explained and applied to the process of
meditation in a BaháT context in Thoresen, Unlocking the Gate o f the Heart.

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