# Unveiling the Huri of Love

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: John S. Hatcher, Unveiling the Huri of Love, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> The 23rd Hasan M. Balyuzi Memorial Lecture
> 
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love
> JOHN S. HATCHER
> 
> Abstract
> Most people are acquainted with the major issues that science and religion must
> resolve in order to reconcile their sometimes mutually exclusive descriptions of
> reality. As Bahá’ís, we may feel privileged to have been made aware of what we
> b e l i eve to be foundational answers relating to the interplay between these twin
> expressions of reality. As Bahá’í scholars, however, we are obliged to help dis-
> cover and forge pathways from the essential questions to those foundational
> answers, if we are to play a meaningful role in demonstrating how physical and
> metaphysical aspects of reality can be understood to be “exact counterp a rts of
> each other.” This art i c l e, taken from my Balyuzi lecture in 2005, attempts to
> explain a parallel relationship between (1) the means by which the essential
> unknowable intelligence we call “God” employs the intermediaries of extra o r d i-
> nary beings (Manifestations) to run physical reality, and (2) the means by which
> the essentially unknow able intelligence we call the human “soul” employs the
> intermediary of an extraordinary creation (the human brain) to run our physi-
> cal bodies. The abiding theme of this discourse is to understand how the
> Creator’s love is the motive force instigating and sustaining these parallel sys-
> tems.
> 
> R é su m é
> La plupart des gens sont au fait des grandes questions que la science et la reli-
> gion doivent résoudre pour concilier leurs perceptions parfois diamétralement
> opposées de la réalité. En tant que bahá’ís, nous pouvons nous sentir privilégiés
> d ’ avoir pu prendre conscience de ce que nous considérons comme des réponses
> fondamentales à ces questions essentielles concernant l’interaction de ces deux
> 
> 2               The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> expressions parallèles de la réalité. Toutefois, en tant qu’érudits bahá’ís, nous
> d evons contribuer à faire découvrir les voies qui mèneront à ces réponses fonda-
> mentales. Ainsi pourrons-nous jouer un rôle significatif en démontrant de quelle
> manière les aspects physiques et métaphysiques de la réalité peuvent être perçus
> comme étant les « contreparties exactes l’une de l’autre ». Le présent art i c l e,
> extrait de la conférence Balyuzi que j’ai donnée en 2005, tente d’établir un par-
> allèle entre, d’une part, la manière dont cette intelligence essentielle et insaisiss-
> able que nous appelons « Dieu » agit par l’intermédiaire d’êtres extraordinaires
> (les Manifestations) pour régir la réalité physique et, d’autre part, la façon dont
> cette intelligence essentielle et insaisissable que nous appelons « l’âme humaine
> » agit par l’intermédiaire d’une création ex t raordinaire (le cerveau humain) pour
> régir le corps matériel. L’unique objet de ce propos est de comprendre comment
> l’amour du Créateur constitue la force motrice qui engendre et soutient ces sys-
> tèmes parallèles.
> 
> R e su m e n
> La mayor parte de las personas están al tanto de los principales temas que la
> ciencia y la religión deberán resolver con el fin de reconciliar sus descripciones
> de lo que es la realidad, a veces mutuamente exclusivas. Siendo bahá’ís, podemos
> sentirnos privilegiados de hab é rsenos dado a conocer aquello que creemos ser las
> respuestas fundamentales relacionadas al intercambio entre estas expresiones
> gemelas de la realidad. Sin embargo, como eruditos bahá’ís, estamos obl i gados a
> ayudar a descubrir y forjar senderos entre las preguntas esenciales y aquellas
> respuestas fundamentales, si hemos de tomar un papel significativo en demostra r
> cómo los aspectos de la realidad, tanto físicos como metafísicos, puedan verse ser
> contrapartes exactas, el uno del otro. Este escrito, tomado de mi disertación
> Balyuzi presentada en 2005, busca explicar una relación paralela entre (1) la
> fo rma en que la inteligencia esencialmente inescrutable que llamamos “Dios” se
> vale de seres extraordinarios (Manifestaciones) como intermediarios que hacen
> funcionar la realidad física y, (2) el modo en que aquella inteligencia esencial-
> mente insondable, la cual llamamos “el alma” se vale de intermediario de una
> creación ex t raordinaria, el cerebro humano, para hacer funcionar a nuestros
> cuerpos físicos. El tema que permanece en este discurso es el de comprender
> como el amor del Creador es la fuerza motiva que promueve y sostiene estos sis-
> temas para l e l o s.
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                         3
> 
> “He works his work, I mine, ” says Ulysses about his son Telemachus, as
> he info rms the people of Ithaca that he is about to take off on one final
> adve n t u r e, leaving the young man to rule in his stead.
> As Bahá’ís, we must remind ourselves almost daily that not everyone
> can do everything, but everyone can do something. So if my work has been
> of service, I am pleased, but all the while I am keenly aware that the true
> heroes and heroines in this period of the Bahá’í Faith are, more often than
> not, those who labor in selfless obscurity.
> M e a n w h i l e, we who are engaged in Bahá’í scholarship become ever
> more aware of the strat egic questions that science and religion must
> resolve if these two forces for learning and social advancement are to
> become reconciled in their sometimes mutually exc l u s i ve descriptions of
> reality: questions about the origin of creation, the existence of m e t a-
> p hysical reality; the related questions concerning the interplay between
> p hysical and metaphysical aspects of reality; as well as questions ab o u t
> academically, socially, and mora l ly charged issues, such as when human
> life begins, when it ends, what dynamic force impels human history, and
> whether nor not human consciousness exists independently of the human
> b ra i n .
> If we are Bahá’í scholars, we may feel privileged that we have access to
> what we believe to be foundational answe rs to many of the essential ques-
> tions about the physical and metaphysical aspects of reality, as well as the
> interplay between them. Howeve r, I feel we must always be acutely aware
> that without focused reflection and intensive study, these same answers,
> even if correct, can, if wielded mindlessly, render us opinionated, dog-
> matic, and obnoxious, instead of useful scholars, able to help reconcile
> these sometimes diametrically opposed views.
> Consequently, if we are to assist in facilitating this discourse, rather
> than in becoming enmeshed and embroiled within it, our task must ever
> be to discover and forge pathways leading from strategic questions to
> what we believe to be strategic answers set fo rth in the authoritat i ve
> Bahá’í texts.
> It is precisely in this vein that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states in one of His own
> responses to such a question: “Although . . . the answer is short, by close
> 4             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> r e flection it shall be made long” (Tablets of ‘Abdul-Bahá 2: 309). I infer
> from this comment that while His brief answer may have enabled us to
> discern the end in the beginning, we are no less obliged to construct
> bridges from the strategic question to the strategic answer, so that all may
> have access to the truth about reality by traversing these bridges across
> the gaps that presently exist.
> The observation that perhaps best establishes the potential adva n t age
> we possess as scholars capable of e m p l oying the vast ocean of inform a-
> tion ava i l able to us in the Bahá’í texts—as well as the inherent difficulty
> we have employing that information appropriately—is stated by Shog h i
> Effendi when he observes: “There is an answer in the teachings for every-
> thing; unfo rtunately the majority of the Bahá’ís, however intensely devo t-
> ed and sincere they may be, lack for the most part the necessary scholar-
> ship and wisdom to reply to and refute the claims and attacks of people
> with some education and standing” (in Compilation on Sch o l a rs h i p 10).
> During the course of the last fo rty-two years as a university professor
> and publishing scholar, I have devoted a good deal of time to refl e c t i n g
> on a question that I feel is central to the present discourse and disaffec-
> tion between scientific thought and religious/philosophical thought: If
> we presume that there is a Creator, why did He decide to give a phy s i c a l
> dimension to His creation? Or, stated in more personal terms, if the cre-
> ation of human beings is at the heart of the purpose of p hysical cre-
> ation—as most religions suppose—then why did the Creator presume we
> would benefit from waking up in an environment where we think we are
> p hysical beings, when we really aren’t; where we think we own stuff,
> when we don’t; and where we seem to be constantly worried about dying,
> when our conscious self t ogether with all our essential human powe rs
> will endure fo r ever as properties of our eternal soul?
> 
> THE JOURNEY SO FAR
> 
> My first attempt to get to the heart of this question was entitled The
> Metaphorical Nat u re of Physical Reality, in which I discussed the premise
> that physical reality is a poetic or metaphorical expression of ab s t ract
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                          5
> 
> virtues and, as such, provides a fo u n d ational methodology for human
> beings to become introduced to spiritual reality. In this work, I applied
> terms and techniques of literary studies of how metaphor works to demon-
> strate that analogical processes provide a useful means by which ep h e m e r-
> al or metaphysical realities can be introduced to and acquired by the
> human mind. This study further asserts that it is possible and useful to
> approach the entire physical part of our lives as a dramatic teaching
> d ev i c e.
> My next study of this subject, The Purpose of Physical Reality: The
> K i n gdom of Names, dealt with the way in which physical reality and our
> experience in it might correctly be described as a classroom in which we
> are prepared for the continuation of personal development after the dis-
> sociation 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
> this transition—we might think of it as a workshop or “breakout” ses-
> sion—is aging, an ingeniously devised experience in which we watch our
> skin become wrinkled, feel our joints falter, our organs failing, and the
> whole organic physical construct become incrementally more dysfunc-
> tional until it dies, decomposes, and, according to Walt Whitman,
> becomes “leaves of grass,” or, in my own case, a dandelion.
> 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 called The Arc of Ascent: The Purpose of Physical Reality II.
> The central thesis of this study is that individual spiritual development
> in the context of the physical classroom is inextricably linked to our real-
> ity as inherently social beings. In this work, I conclude that all individ-
> ual virtue is largely theoretical until practiced and developed in the con-
> text of human relationships. For example, a hermit dwelling in a moun-
> tain 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 hab i t u ated and thus integral at t r i butes of his character.
> 6               The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> The thesis of this lecture was taken 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 meta-
> p hysical and physical aspects of reality is bridged constantly and bidirec-
> tionally on both the cosmic and the individual level. Stated axiomat i c a l ly,
> this work compares the theory that an essentially unknow able metaphy s-
> ical being (the Creator) runs physical reality, with the parallel theory that
> an essentially know able metaphysical being (the human soul) operates
> the human body. God employs the Manifestations as intermediaries
> b e t ween Himself and physical reality even as we employ our brains as
> intermediaries between our “essential self ” and our bodies.
> If this thesis is correct, even as you at this moment read this paper, you
> and I are conve rsing 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 in the
> Journal, and is at this moment being translated by your senses into
> ab s t ract concepts through the capacity of your brain, which then tra n s-
> lates the complex of symbols that constitute human language into mean-
> ing. Your conscious mind then considers these ideas, stores them in the
> repository of your memory, or else rejects them as unworthy of being
> retained.
> The methodology and challenge of this study is first to defend these
> theories in the light, and with the support of, classical and contemporary
> scientific theories of reality. Or, put in terms that contemporary physics
> might find appealing: how can we defend the thesis that essentially meta-
> p hysical beings—and therefo r e, for the majority of contemporary scien-
> tists, nonexistent beings—think themselves capable of o p e rating heav y
> machinery without hurting anybody ?
> In Close Connections I discuss critical questions related to evolution, par-
> ticle physics, astrophysics, history, cosmology, anthropology, medicine,
> p hy s i o l ogy, psyc h i atry, and all sorts of other fields directly affected by the
> assertions that metaphysical reality exists and, more important, that
> there is a strat egic and systematic interplay between the metaphy s i c a l
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                          7
> 
> and physical aspects of reality. Most important in this study is the con-
> sideration that these relationships are at the heart of any understanding
> about how reality works at every level of ex i s t e n c e.
> My ove rall objective in Close Connections is, thus, to demonstrate an
> integrative view of reality provided in and corroborated by authoritat i ve
> Bahá’í texts. But since I cannot in a single presentation discuss all the
> support for a thesis wrought over ten years and seve ral hundred pages of
> research, I have decided to focus this presentation on one of the funda-
> mental themes in this 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—unless, of course, we are first led
> out of the cave of i g n o rance 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 c o n-
> cept is another equally enigmatic verb, which evokes the title of this pre-
> sentation, the concept of love. Since, according to Bahá’í teachings, the
> human purpose is to learn to know and to worship God, or to love and
> to express that love in dramatic fo rm, then it is crucial that we under-
> stand how both processes work, as neither learning nor loving can be
> coerced, even by God.
> 
> THE HÚRÍ OF LOVE
> 
> Let us begin this process of unveiling the húrí of love by first explaining
> my personal understanding of what a húrí is, because my understanding
> may not accord with other definitions which interpret this symbolic term
> literally, as an allusion to a company of chaste maidens. I have taken my
> definition from the Kitáb-i-Íqán of Bahá’u’lláh, an appropriate source,
> since the first 116 pages of this work are devoted to unveiling the prev i-
> ously veiled verses of Matthew (24:29–31), a symbolic prophecy ab o u t
> the signs of the coming of the Son of Man. Bahá’u’lláh explicates this as
> an allusion to the advent of Muhammad: “How many the húrís of inner
> 8              The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> meaning that are as yet concealed within the chambers of divine wisdom!
> None hath yet approached them;—húrís, ‘whom no man nor spirit hath
> touched before’” (Kitáb-i-Íqán 70–71).
> Thus, if we thus define húrí (literally “white one” or “pure one”) as
> veiled or hidden or concealed meaning, then we realize that the capacity
> to understand the poetic verses of scripture—what Bahá’u’lláh alludes to
> in another passage as “Brides of inner meaning” (Kitáb-i-Íqán 175)—then
> we can imagine that there are an infinite number of h ú r ís about love wait-
> ing to be unveiled. But the focus of my concern is how the gap between
> the metaphysical and physical aspects of reality are bridged on both the
> macrocosmic and microcosmic leve l s, so that an authentic love relat i o n-
> ship can take place between God and humankind.
> We begin the process of unveiling this love relationship by approaching
> one of the most succinct statements of this relationship that can be dis-
> covered: the h.adíth of the Hidden Treasure, a verse explicated at length by
> both ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Bahá’u’lláh: “I was a Hidden Treasure. I wished to
> be made known, and thus I called creation into being in order that I might
> be known” (qtd. in Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas 175). Implicit in this h. adíth is
> not merely a casual acknowledgement of the Creator, but sufficient know l-
> edge that we choose to participate in a love relationship with the Creator.
> Thus, if the Creator merely wished to be recognized as an extant being of
> omnipotence, He could simply reveal Himself in some spectacular fashion,
> so that no one could possibly deny His existence or His heretofore hidden
> treasures. He could simply utter, “Kun fa Ya k ú n u” (“‘Be!’ and it is”) and we
> would instantly exist and would instantly acknowledge His supremacy
> and power—the way Job does when God speaks to him from the whirl-
> wind. We would all become instantly tra n s fo rmed, like little Billy Batson
> who, by simply uttering Shazam! is tra n s fo rmed into Captain Marvel.
> But here we are 5.9 billion years into the evolution of this one planet,
> and so far we have not even accomplished the fruition of the Lesser Peace.
> Bahá’u’lláh clearly acknowledges that the Creator has the power to make
> this a reality very simply with a single word:
> 
> Within the treasury of Our Wisdom there lieth unrevealed a
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                             9
> 
> knowledge, one word of which, if we chose to divulge it to mankind,
> would cause every human being to recognize the Manifestation of
> God and to acknowledge His omniscience, would enable eve ry one to
> discover the secrets of all the sciences, and to attain so high a station
> as to find himself wholly independent of all past and future learning.
> (Summons 35)
> 
> Indeed, an instantaneous and direct process is precisely what creat i o n-
> ists theorize occurred. Six thousand years ago, God created a man and a
> woman and thus the earth became populated and human history began.
> Ironically, in spite of the ostensible warfare between science and religion,
> most astrophysicists are in accord with this perception of creation as hav-
> ing a point of beginning in time, only with a slight increase in time: from
> six thousand years to sixteen billion years. For while astrophysicists
> posit many theories about whether or not the big bang caused the beg i n-
> ning of t i m e, and some believe the beginning of space as well, few agree
> as to what caused this event, since they believe that nothing preceded it.
> It’s a mystery, a h ú r í.
> Let me give you a couple of examples of the strange alliances we now
> find, and the strange corners thinke rs of eve ry sort have thought them-
> selves into. The fact is that scientific study—indeed virtually all academ-
> ic study—is now so segr egated into discrete and often isolated areas that
> larger questions are treated more as a nuisance, as a source of b e m u s e-
> ment to share on a coffee break than as issues of critical concern.
> A recent personal experience may demonstrate my point. A few weeks
> ago I went to the lecture by 2004 Nobel Prize-winning physicist and
> MIT professor Frank Wilczek, in which he spoke about his exquisite
> work in quantum chromody n a m i c s. During the course of his presenta-
> tion, Wilczek displayed a photograph of two particles crashing into each
> other at the CERN accelerator in Geneva. He then observed that this
> image might well resemble what the big bang looked like.
> Having completed my book only the week before, and having posited
> and proved to my personal satisfaction the “big bang” theory to be logi-
> cally untenable, even ludicrous, I asked during the Q and A that followed
> 10            The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> that, if it required immense energy and planning to get these two parti-
> cles to crash into each other to produce this effect, why would there not
> be the same sort of sufficient cause for a big bang—which would thus
> make the big bang an effect rather than a sufficient cause for physical real-
> ity and, according to Hawking, for the beginning of time itself—and,
> according to some theorists, the beginning of space itself. After all, if
> space already existed, then didn’t something precede the big bang?
> His answer was a sort of gestalt sidestep, an anecdote about Napoleon
> who, upon perusing Laplace’s great work, Méchanique Céleste, commented,
> “It appears to me that there is no mention of God in your system of the
> universe.” Laplace laughed, slapped the emperor on the back and replied,
> “You tiny emperor person you, I had no need of that hypothesis to com-
> plete my work.” Wilczek did not mention the slap on the back in his story,
> but according to some observers, Laplace emerged from this historic
> encounter with a pained grimace—as if he had been struck very hard.
> This story was Professor Wilczek’s way of explaining that he did not
> particularly care whether or not something preceded the big bang, because
> that theory had nothing to do with his own remarkable ability to create a
> formula for predicting where particulates would end up after splitting a
> quark into the constituent components of a quark, an anti-quark, and a
> “gluon”—physicists being, by nature, very poetic. Indeed, Wilczek gave
> much the same answer to someone who asked about superstring theory.
> This attitude or perspective—that scientists can work in isolation on dis-
> crete parts of reality, even as medical specialists work on ever more indis-
> crete parts of our bodies, often without having the slightest idea whether
> or not they have made us healthier as an entire human being—is the pre-
> cise opposite of what advocates of religion or philosophical students of
> reality desire to accomplish. Indeed, this anecdote underscores what my
> brother William S. Hatcher observed in his work Minimalism—namely,
> that science possesses (or thinks it possesses) very exact knowledge about
> very discrete portions of reality (which it thus studies as a modular sys-
> tem), whereas philosophy and religion possess (or think they possess) very
> inexact knowledge about the entirety of reality (which they study as a
> holographic system). Stated even more succinctly, science offers a bottom-
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                        11
> 
> up view of reality, while philosophy and religion offer a top-down view. My
> objective is to offer a synthesized or integrative view of these ostensibly
> opposing but potentially complementary approaches to reality.
> So what would be wrong with this cosmogonist myth of instant cre-
> ation, whether from a fundamentalist creationist perspective, or from a
> scientific theory of a big bang? We would be created already in love with
> God, all spiritual and smiling at one another with happy families living
> in nice neighborhoods! There would be no backbiting, no war, and all TV
> shows about crime scene inve s t i gation would be entirely fictional. We
> would all eat organic food, have pure water and clean air..
> The problem is that, besides being bored, we would exist like amnesi-
> acs waking into a reality without a conscious history, without the foggi-
> est idea of how we became so nice, and certainly without any sense of
> having participated in this event. Consequently, we would not only be
> unable to appreciate the value of what we had, since, having known noth-
> ing else, we would be totally at a loss as to how to proceed beyond this
> point, because we would have no experience or training to provide us
> with the tools necessary for further development.
> If we return to the desire of the Creator not merely to be known, bu t
> to create a being capable of a love relationship, we realize that an instan-
> taneous creation does not work, and for a number of reasons. First,
> authentic love requires a number of essential conditions which an instan-
> taneous act could not prov i d e. But before we examine the properties of
> such a love relationship, let us briefly examine the love relationship as it
> is commonly perceived, so that we can then see that the methodology
> e m p l oyed by the Creator is not only useful, but essential.
> 
> A MODERN AFFLICTION: THE NEUROTIC CONCEPT OF LOVE
> 
> The world has now become largely afflicted with the Western view of
> love as an event, in much the same way that most scholars view creation
> as an event. Furthermore, we have come to view love as an event that we
> are powerless to control. Love happens to us—like a traffic accident, only
> worse, because there is no insurance coverage for it.
> 12             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> Even more unfortunate is the fact that we are taught to desire this acci-
> dent, even to long for it. Thus we place ourselves in the most likely places
> to have it strike us down. Metaphorically, we stand in the middle of a
> three-lane superhighway and close our eyes. It matters not whether such
> an event is appropriate to our lives—whether or not we are married or
> single, already in a relationship or not—because we are constantly and
> ceaselessly bombarded by the message that meaningful life can be brought
> about by nothing else except the ecstasy of the bloom of new love.
> But the cruelest part of this neurotic vision is that once we are struck
> d own by the SUV of love, this intense desire and infatuation cannot, must
> not ever c h a n g e. But if it does, it is not our fault. After all, love is not an
> act of free will. We simply fell out of love. The SUV struck us and then
> d r ove off—what we might call a hit-and-run love affair. And while from
> any sort of rational or objective perspective, this sort of relationship
> sounds more like the title of a poorly written country-and-western song,
> this is, in fact, what we think as a global society, and why we are liable to
> excuse any act perfo rmed while one is in the throes of passion, whether
> it be murder or simply abandoning one’s husband or wife or children to
> pursue this central objective. That, we are constantly reminded, is the
> one event worth living fo r.
> Furthermore, if we would rather sustain this feeling than destroy our
> family, we will try just about any product to maintain the initial sensation
> we once had, including a plethora of multicolored pills, artistically cra f t-
> ed undergarments, and all manner of m e t h o d o l ogies to rid ourselves of
> unsightly human hair or to acquire thoroughly ex fo l i ated skin that
> retains the texture we had when we were sixteen.
> Naturally, all of this effo rt, however sincerely and rigorously purs u e d ,
> must ultimately give way to nature itself—the inexorable and apparently
> intractable process of aging and, in time, death, Nature’s way of exhort-
> ing us to give up this stru ggle to stay fo r ever young. It is then—or, with
> those who have attained some slight degree of wisdom, slightly befo r e
> then—that we come to realize that all the myths about love with which
> we have been raised, trained, and indoctrinated, are unhealthy, unnatural,
> and impossibl e. We realize this verity partially because, as students of
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                          13
> 
> nat u r e, we in time appreciate that nothing in physical or metaphy s i c a l
> reality can exist in a condition of stasis. Nor should we desire stasis, espe-
> cially in relationships, because stasis is agonizingly boring and, therefo r e,
> doomed.
> N evertheless, Western society has inherited the mythical belief that
> love can and should always be the same, a concept which really defines
> love as an event more than a process. And thus, we seem to be comfo rt-
> able treating love as an event, a mysterious accident that evokes incredi-
> ble psychic and physical sensations. Furtherm o r e, because we accept this
> event as an accident and thus quite beyond free will, we also conclude
> that this event is all the more enticing because it transports us out of the
> realm of responsibility and accountability. “Sorry, honey,” our spouse is
> l i able to say one evening at dinner, “but I have to leave you and the kids
> because today at work I was struck by the SUV of love. ”
> Of course, your lawye rs will work out the details of the practical reper-
> cussions of the accident—who gets what furniture and which child—bu t
> you can hardly argue against an accident any more than you can argue
> against a tornado or a flat tire. The SUV of your love just up and drove
> away, and another Escalade in midnight blue came and struck your
> spouse at lunch.
> 
> T H E OR I G I N S O F T H E M Y T H
> 
> Interestingly, there is a great deal of fascinating scholarship about this
> neurotic paradigm of love as it has evo l ved in Western literature and cul-
> t u r e. My favorite is Love in the Western World by Denis de Rougement,
> who employs a study of the medieval romance as a paradigm for under-
> standing and explaining our contemporary views and beliefs about love,
> as well as the húrí veiled within these beliefs.
> According to de Rougement, our modern view of love takes its origin
> from the medieval romance idea that love thrives only when it is forbid-
> den, or else when its progress is being hindered by insurmountable obsta-
> cles, the most frequent one being that the fair maiden is already married
> to the liege lord of the knight with whom she has fallen helplessly in love.
> 14             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> Thus, an obstacle of some sort is essential if the love is to intensify and
> remain just out of reach—and in a tenuous condition of stasis because it
> is beyond any final resolution or union.
> This is not to say it is beyond consummation, that it is a Platonic rela-
> tionship as is commonly thought. This is a confusion with Petrarchan
> love, in which the lover pines for his beloved from a distance, idealizes
> her, and writes sonnets about her. The only sense in which court ly love
> is Platonic is that the ecstasy and mystical elements of the intense ex p e-
> rience might be thought of as tra n s fo rmat i ve, and can lead to an appreci-
> ation of a higher fo rm of love, such as that which Plato describes in the
> Symposium, or that which Guinevere achieves at the end of Malory’s
> treatment of the Arthurian legend.
> For the most part, howeve r, the courtly love tradition is thoroughly
> sensual and sexual, with each rendezvous more daring and more intense
> than the last. It is love from a distance only in the sense that the love rs
> constantly lament that they are unable to have an unencumbered, long-
> term, uninterrupted relationship. Of course, what they do not realize—
> but what de Rougement does—is that the removal of obstacles and the
> ability to be together daily would quickly destroy the whole shebang. The
> routine would remove the risk, the intensity, the passion, longing, and the
> intermittent ecstasy. They would be stuck with each other all the time
> and have to worry about earning a living, raising children, cleaning his
> armor, cooking, taking the kids to sword practice. In time, they would try
> to find something more passionate on the side:
> 
> The myth of falling in love operates wherever passion is dreamed of
> as an ideal instead of being feared like a malignant fever; imagined as
> a magnificent and desirable disaster instead of as simply a disaster.
> It lives upon the lives of people who think that love is their fate (and
> as unavo i d able as the effect of the love-potion in the Romance); that
> it swoops upon powerless and ravished men and women in order to
> consume them in a pure flame; or that it is stronger and more real
> than happiness, society, or mora l i t y. (de Rougemont 24)
> 
> To his great credit, de Rougement does sense that underlying this
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                         15
> 
> n e urotic myth of ecstatic longing is a concealed longing for the ultimate
> transformative experience, death itself, the ultimate ecstatic experience.
> He also concludes that it is this desire that explains the progress and out-
> come of all courtly romances—whether Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella,
> Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, or Romeo and Juliet.
> They all end in one of three ways: they can end “happily ever after,” in
> which case in our minds they stay fo r ever young, never have children,
> mortgag e s, car repairs, or hip replacements. Indeed, the story must
> immediately stop with their reunion, because otherwise it would go
> d ownhill ve ry quickly, SUV- w i s e. Consequently, all love stories that have
> the happy ending focus on the intensity and complexity of obstacles that
> must be overcome for the two to get together. Furthermore, the story
> must ignore all damage that has been done along the way—the post-tra u-
> matic shock syndrome that both must necessarily have as a result of hav-
> ing endured countless episodes of t ragic experiences. In effect, the end-
> ing not only eradicates all obstacles for the love relationship, but we can
> assume that it also mag i c a l ly cures all emotional scars in the fictional
> romance that would otherwise complicate a real relationship.
> More realistic is the second paradigm often used in the satiric or comic
> version of this concept in action: the love rs fall out of love by falling in
> love with someone else in order to experience once again the same ecsta-
> tic experience of new love. This is the unive rsal love cycle I term the
> Seinfeld syndrome, a process in which the lover’s life consists of an end-
> less sequence of episodic relationships, all of which hold out the hope of
> being the “right” o n e, but none of which ever seem to be exactly what the
> lover needs. This sort of eternal adolescence so accep t able in contempo-
> rary television sitcoms, is not quite so hilarious for the aging lover or his
> or her victims left behind, once reconstructive surgeries and innovat i ve
> chemical assistance no longer function adequat e ly to sustain the
> inevitable decline in the physical capacity to maintain this neurotic and
> doomed quest for the perfect fit.
> The third possible ending is the tragic conclusion that befits better de
> Rougement’s thesis that this passion is really concealing an ecstatic long-
> ing for the ultimate tra n s formative experience of death itself. Or from a
> Bahá’í perspective, as derived from Middle Eastern poetic imagery (from
> 16            The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> which, by the way, the entire courtly love tradition ultimately derives), a
> longing for union or reunion with the “Fr i e n d ” or the “Beloved.” In this
> p a radigm, things almost work out, but get messed up just in time for the
> love rs to die or kill themselves, as most forthrightly port rayed in Tristan
> and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet.
> The paradigm goes something like this. First there is love at first sight,
> not simply because the lovers are too shallow to be attracted to aught
> beside physical appeara n c e.
> But as fate would have it—and in the romance Fate will have it—she is
> as witty and charming as she is beautiful and, with the appropriate obsta-
> cle in place (the family feud), the star-crossed lovers are appropriat e ly
> doomed. Of course, we excuse the young lovers because they are young,
> because they are love rs, and people can’t help falling in love. And we fo r-
> give Tristan and Isolde because they have taken a love potion which, in
> addition to the addictive properties of love, means that they are operat-
> ing outside the laws of free will and thus unders t a n d ably feel no guilt.
> And we unders t a n d ably sympathize with all their shenanigans, as they
> have successive rendezvous and make a complete fool of King Mark, even
> as do Lancelot and Guineve r e.
> In any case, all the lovers in this paradigm kill themselves, and some-
> how we are supposed to think this is very exciting and touching. We are
> even supposed to envy them these intense relationships, which, while
> usually adulterous and entirely physical, come to epitomize what we our-
> selves are suppose to discover (only without the death part ) .
> Yet this third category, these unhappy endings, are the romances that
> endure and tantalize us. We can cheer when Rhett Butler walks out the
> door after finally realizing what a wretched and selfish woman he has fall-
> en in love with, but we regret that they couldn’t quite get it together. Few
> and far between are those love stories where the couple endure hardships,
> only to find their relationship strengthened, as each learns to assist the
> other in fashioning a mature and enduring bond, having raised healthy
> and happy children, and having no regrets about their decision to take
> willful control of their lives and the progression of their relationship.
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                         17
> 
> AUTHENTIC LOVE VS. SOCIAL NORMS
> 
> In spite of the fact that our culture still accepts and endorses the concept
> of love as an event, an accident, a thing quite beyond our willful control,
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states that none of the three paradigms we have just
> described can be defined as love—at least not as far as they go, which is
> about six to ten months, according to the newly calibrated Hollywood
> a d j u s t able sliding scale. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states:
> 
> But the love which sometimes exists between friends is not (true)
> love, because it is subject to transmutation; this is merely fascination.
> As the breeze blows, the slender trees yield. If the wind is in the East
> the tree leans to the West, and if the wind turns to the West the tree
> leans to the East. This kind of love is originated by the accidental
> conditions of life. This is not love, it is merely acquaintanceship; it is
> subject to change.
> Today you will see two souls apparently in close friendship; tomor-
> row all this may be changed. Yesterday they were ready to die for one
> another, today they shun one another’s society! This is not love; it is
> the yielding of the hearts to the accidents of life. When that which
> has caused this ‘love’ to exist passes, the love passes also; this is not
> in reality love. (Paris Talks 181)
> 
> So what, then, is the distinction between what is commonly accepted as
> love and the authentic love alluded to in the Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh
> in which He port rays what God feels for us and what He desires that we
> feel for Him in return? Or, stated in terms of the Seven Valleys, if this
> powerful attraction which fo l l ows on the heels of intensive and dedicated
> search is a valid part of an organic process, what can and should fo l l ow
> this initial stage that we seem to have mistaken for the entire experience?
> Socrates portrays this process in the Symposium in terms of the
> metaphor of a ladder of love. For while the concept of “Platonic love ” has
> come to connote a relationship that is nonphysical, the process begins
> with physical attraction or infatuation and proceeds by degrees through
> 18            The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> graduated stages (rungs on the ladder) of refinement or ascent. Thus,
> Platonic love port rays this blinding magnetic attraction as one of the
> first stages in a sequence of an ever more refined relationship, rather than
> as the end or objective of love itself.
> This graduated sequence, which became the basis for most mystical
> treatises in both Christianity and Islam, is similar to the process por-
> trayed by Bahá’u’lláh in the Seven Valleys. Here, too, love as intense
> attraction is not disdained, nor is it perceived as inappropriate. This
> intense ardor and longing and passion may be the initial stage of a u t h e n-
> tic love, but only if it leads the lover to other succeeding stages of
> progress and development. Otherwise, the intensity and blind attraction
> has no meaning in and of itself.
> Thus, the succeeding stage of this process consists of extricating one-
> self from this blind infatuation in order to examine the nature of that to
> which we are attracted. Since it is not uncommon for us to be attracted to
> that which is unhealthy for us, even as one who is a condition of poor
> health may find appealing foods that are unhealthy, this stage or rung or
> valley requires that we withhold acceding to passion until we determine
> if what attracts us is wort hy of proceeding further in this process.
> But understanding whether what attracts us is healthy for us or not
> requires that we understand how we are constru c t e d — t h at is, what is
> conducive to our health and what is detrimental. For ex a m p l e, the Bahá’í
> Writings affirm that God fashioned us with an inherent love of reality.
> We love stuff, can’t get enough of stuff because the first emanation from
> God to humankind is our desire to find out about stuff:
> 
> Science is the first emanation from God toward man. All created
> beings embody the potentiality of material perfection, but the power
> of intellectual inve s t i gation and scientific acquisition is a higher
> virtue specialized to man alone. Other beings and organisms are
> deprived of this potentiality and attainment. God has created or
> deposited this love of reality in man. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations 60)
> 
> But why are we created with this love of reality, whether it be a tree, a
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                          19
> 
> fl ower, a pet, or another person? The húrí behind this inherent or “God-
> given” affection is that everything in creation manifests some aspect of
> the nature of the same Creator, from whom we emanated as a breath of
> spirit: “[A]ll things, in their inmost reality, testify to the revelation of the
> names and at t r i butes of God within them. Each according to its capacity,
> indicateth, and is expressive of, the knowledge of God. So potent and uni-
> versal is this revelation, that it hath encompassed all things visible and
> invisible” (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings 178).
> So that’s why we love stuff ! Because in some way, eve rything, includ-
> ing ourselves, reminds us of our sacred origin and that to which we long
> to return, even though we may spend our lives oblivious to the source of
> that insatiable desire.
> That is why we are attracted so intensely, especially to people, because
> love is a law of our creation, even as gravity is a law of relationships
> among physical objects. But where the force of p hysical attraction
> depends on proximity and mass, the force of spiritual attraction (the
> beginning stage of love) increases according to spiritual proximity and
> the extent (with regard to both quantity and quality) that another being
> manifests the at t r i butes of God.
> So, romantic love is not an illusion after all, not merely a silly fiction
> invented by Provençal poets. Love is a universal spiritual law. And this
> law does indeed work, whether or not we want it to work:
> 
> Love is the cause of God’s revelation unto man, the vital bond inher-
> ent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things.
> . . . Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly
> cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of
> this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the
> movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
> Selections 27)
> 
> But the entire process of love is not confined to this initial attraction,
> nor is its success subject to the incidents and accidents of life, nor is it
> beyond the operation of free will. Thus, we may indeed be blindsided by
> 20             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> the SUV of love, but what happens after that is in our hands. This is why
> free will plays such a vital role in the second stage of this process.
> Because if we are not in a condition of health, we may well be attracted
> to that which is precisely unhealthy for us, in much the same way that
> someone who is unhealthy physically will be attracted to precisely the
> wrong foods. In short, our emotions, regardless of how powerful and
> intense they may be, are not always the best means for determining how
> we should respond, though certainly we should not ignore them. But
> until we examine the source of the emotions, we must realize that they
> may lead us in precisely the wrong direction.
> To stress the importance of escaping from or progressing beyond this
> initial, intense, ecstatic at t raction and proceeding to an intellectual investi-
> gation and comprehension of that to which we are attracted, Bahá’u’lláh
> employs the following powerful metaphorical image about proceeding from
> the stage of ecstatic at t raction to the stage of understanding or knowledge:
> 
> And if, confirmed by the Creator, the lover escapes from the claws of
> the eagle of love, he will enter the Valley of Knowledge and come out
> of doubt into certitude, and turn from the darkness of illusion to the
> guiding light of the fear of God. His inner eyes will open and he will
> privily converse with his Beloved; he will set ajar the gate of t ruth and
> piety, and shut the doors of vain imaginings. (S even Valleys 11)
> 
> Of course, the problem is that in the midst of passion, the very last thing
> we are interested in doing is summoning up sufficient free will to apply our
> intellect, so as to extract ourselves from what seems so ecstatic. A brief
> look at a sonnet by John Donne port rays this dilemma extremely well:
> 
> Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
> As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
> That I may rise, and stand, o’ert h r ow me, and bend
> Your force, to break, bl ow, bu rn, and make me new.
> I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
> L abour to admit you, but O, to no end.
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                        21
> 
> Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
> But is captived, and proves weak or untru e.
> Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
> But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
> Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
> Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
> Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
> Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
> (1117)
> 
> Here the speaker desires to love God. Indeed, on an intellectual level he
> really does love God, but he has been caught in the claws of the eagle of
> love, and cannot employ sufficient free will to extricate himself from an
> u n h e a l t hy addiction to, and seduction by, some ignoble passions. The
> speaker is not clear what this attraction might be, but since it is ruled
> over by “your enemy” (sin, Satan, etc.), we must presume it is some fo rm
> of passion that violates religious law and distracts the speaker from his
> attention to his love of God.
> What’s important here is that the speaker is perceptive, intelligent,
> k n ows what has occurred and why. We can imagine that if the speaker
> were a real character instead of Donne’s fictional persona, he might have
> written a letter instead of a sonnet, something like this:
> 
> Dear God,
> Thanks a lot for all the Free Will—
> I tried it out this morning and got the house really clean for the
> first time!
> But in all candor, I would really rather that You just take care of
> things Yourself.
> Sincerely,
> John Donne
> 
> And had he done so, God might well have written a response that would
> go something like this:
> 22             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> Dear John,
> “Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can
> in no wise reach thee.
> Know this, O serva n t . ”1
> Love and Forgiveness,
> God
> 
> EXTERNAL GUIDANCE IN LOVE AS A PROCESS
> 
> This brings us to the single most crucial ingredient in this authentic love
> relationship with God, the húrí of all the húrís of love, how to create a
> system that will foster love as a process, that will allow fo r, indeed,
> encourage and insist upon, human reflection, unders t a n d i n g, and free
> will, and yet provide enough encouragement and guidance that we could
> reasonably be expected to be held accountable for succeeding, even as
> Bahá’u’lláh has assured us: “It fo l l ows, therefo r e, that every man hath
> been, and will continue to be, able of himself to appreciate the Beauty of
> God, the Glorified. Had he not been endowed with such a capacity, how
> could he be called to account for his failure?” (Gleanings 143).
> This ingredient is external guidance. Guidance is the most essential
> ingredient in the bridge between the dual expressions of reality. Of
> course, the Manifestation of God is the Intermediary between worlds.
> But because the station and function of these remarkable Beings is often
> misunderstood or misconstrued, we need to pay careful attention to what
> the Bahá’í texts have to say about the ontology of the Prophets, if we are
> to understand this part of the process.
> We begin with the problem of the gap—how the Creator constructs a
> bridge between the metaphysical and physical aspects of reality, the
> process by which the will, or wish, or command Kun! (“Be!”) produces the
> results Yakúnu! (“It is!”). Let us first portray this process simply in the fol-
> lowing terms: from God emanates the wish to be known, a will that
> emanates in the form of the Holy Spirit, the medium or power, if you will,
> by which the Manifestation receives this wish and becomes empowered to
> translate that desire into creative increments of progressive guidance and
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                           23
> 
> action to the physical or human reality. This top-down view of the process
> thus begins in the realm of the spirit, the dwelling place of the essential-
> ly unknowable reality of the Creator and the preexistent reality of the
> Manifestations. The Kingdom of Names is then brought into being by
> degrees through the Manifestations, who provide guidance in three dif-
> ferent conditions or capacities in order to forge the Kingdom of Names
> into a replica of the qualities and attributes of the spiritual world.
> The symbol created by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to represent this process is very
> useful in portraying the causal relationship among these three aspects of
> reality: the will, the transmittal of that will into increments of action, and
> the gradual shaping of spiritual forms into physical representation (see
> figure 1).
> But here is where we come to a subtle but interesting and important
> point about this symbol: in this arrangement, there seems to be a clear
> subordination of physical reality to spiritual reality. In effect, we are assist-
> ed by the Manifestations in fashioning a lesser reality into a social state-
> ment of spiritual principles which are already extant in the realm of the
> spirit (see figure 2).
> This inference is borne out by an axiomatic observation by ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá: “Know thou that the Kingdom is the real world, and this nether
> place is only its shadow stretching out. A shadow hath no life of its ow n ;
> its existence is only a fantasy, and nothing more; it is but images refl e c t-
> ed in water, and seeming as pictures to the eye” (Selections 178).
> However, by rearranging this symbol as it appears on the corners of
> the Shrine of the Báb (see figure 3), we can sense a different relationship
> and, in many ways, a slightly different, more expansive, and complete
> meaning: a collateral relationship in which the physical and metaphy s i c a l
> expressions of the Creator are both complete expressions of reality, one
> expression being the outer or visible aspect of that reality, and the other
> being the unseen counterpart of that reality. This inference is equally
> confirmed by another axiomatic statement of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “The spiritu-
> al world is like unto the phenomenal world. They are the exact counter-
> part of each other. What ever objects appear in this world of existence are
> the outer pictures of the world of heaven” (P ro m u l gation 9).
> 24            The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> Figure 1.
> Of particular relevance to this discourse is this second understanding
> of the relationship between the twin realms of creation, for the world of
> the spirit is no less a product of the Creator than is the physical realm.
> Thus, if these two realities are the exact counterpart of each other, then
> the complete panoply of the infinite expressions of infinite spiritual real-
> ity must find expression in the physical world. For example, if one of the
> at t r i butes of the spiritual realm is limitlessness, then limitlessness must
> necessarily also find expression in the physical aspect of creation,
> whether that at t r i bute apply to time, space, plenitude, or complexity.
> The ability to embrace infinity—even the willingness to consider it as
> a possibility—flies in the face of all science and most religious and philo-
> sophical belief systems. But it helps us immensely in considering some-
> thing which is equally perplex i n g, even absurd, in all fields of learning
> (especially sociology, anthropology, and history): the idea that our plan-
> et has been visited periodically by beings who, though human in phy s i c a l
> respects, are ontologically quite distinct from ordinary human beings.
> Stated axiomatically, we can assert the fo l l owing two statements, the first
> from Bahá’u’lláh’s Words of Wisdom: “The source of all learning is the
> k n owledge of God, exalted be His Glory, and this cannot be attained save
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                        25
> 
> Figure 2.
> 
> through the knowledge of His Divine Manifestation” (Tablets 156). The
> second axiom is asserted by Shoghi Effendi: “We cannot know God
> directly, but only through His Prophets. We can pray to Him realizing
> that through His Prophets we know Him, or we can address our prayer
> in thought to Bahá’u’lláh, not as God, but as the Door to our knowing
> God” (Messages to Alaska 71).
> Obviously, then, if we are to understand how these beings serve as a
> bridge between the Creator and the world of the spirit and ourselves, it
> is crucial that we know something about the ontology of the
> Manifestations. Equally info rmed by such knowledge will be our ab i l i t y
> to establish a meaningful love relationship with this essentially unknow-
> able Being.
> 
> ONTO LO G Y AND THE MANIFESTATIONS
> 
> As we study the Manifestations in Their function as the bridge between
> the twin expressions of reality, we discover that we experience the guid-
> ing influence of the Manifestations in three stages.
> Stage one. The Manifestations assist us prior to Their appearance in
> 26            The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> Figure 3.
> 
> human form by providing sufficient influence to forge our planet and the
> system that contains it into a progressive and creative organism, thereby
> reversing what would subsequently occur without such external input of
> energy—the planet, abiding by the second law of thermodynamics,
> would succumb to entropy and degenerate into a chaotic, molten glob of
> stuff which, in time, would cool into a not-so-hot glob of stuff. Put sim-
> ply, while the earth, like a seed in the matrix or body of the universe, has
> the inherent capacity to evo l ve through stages of successive change,
> given its propitious position in regard to the sun, the Manifestation as a
> preexistent being oversees this process.
> Does this observation imply that They guide the evolution of the plan-
> et or, as we begin to evolve, do They appear in the fo rm of a d vanced tad-
> poles, in case we are having too much fun in the water and refuse to crawl
> onto the shore to continue our evolution so that we can later play in the
> trees with our similarly evolving simian friends?
> While there is much that we do not know about this first stage, we do
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                         27
> 
> k n ow that the Prophets preexist in the world of the Spirit prior to Their
> appearance on earth: “The Prophets, unlike us, are pre-existent. The soul
> of Christ existed in the spiritual world before His birth in this world. We
> cannot imagine what that world is like, so words are inadequate to pic-
> ture His state of being” ( S h oghi Effendi, to an individual believe r, 9
> October 1947).
> Christ, of course, refers to this preincarnate condition when He states
> that, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Likew i s e, Bahá’u’lláh refers
> to this same condition when He alludes to the “School of inner meaning.”
> Later in the same discourse Bahá’u’lláh states, “By the one true God! We
> read the Tablet ere it was revealed, while ye were unaware, and We had
> perfect knowledge of the Book when ye were yet unborn” (Kitáb-i-Aqdas
> par. 175–76).
> Perhaps the most amazing ava i l able insight into the preexistent condi-
> tion and the willful and creative power of these divine Beings is revealed
> in two passages which indicate Their part in determining the location in
> which They will become Manifest, as indicated by Shoghi Effendi’s stat e-
> ment that “[T]he primary reason why the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh chose to
> appear in Pe rsia, and to make it the first repository of their Revelation,
> was because, of all the peoples and nations of the civilized world, that
> race and nation had, as so often depicted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, sunk to such
> ignominious depths, and manifested so great a perversity, as to find no
> parallel among its contemporaries” (A dvent 18).
> And Shoghi Effendi’s statement that the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh
> released Him from the human Temple, through which He had for a time
> chosen to reveal Himself: “[T]he dissolution of the tab e rnacle wherein
> the soul of the Manifestation of God had chosen tempora r i ly to ab i d e
> signalized its release from the restrictions which an earthly life had, of
> necessity, imposed upon it” (God Passes By 244). It is my own opinion that
> one meaning of the Súrih-i-Haykal is that the Manifestation is revealing
> to us the part He plays in fashioning that human edifice through which
> He will convey to us the new Revelation.
> Stage two. The Manifestations assist us most apparently and observ-
> ably by intervening periodically in human history, in order to alter the
> 28             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> course of what would be yet another expression of the same law of
> entropy without this divine guidance—that is, humankind descending into
> the abyss of appetites, warfare, eventual extinction. This direct physical
> intervention, accompanied by an even more influential infusion of spiritu-
> al renewal, has the function of updating laws and institutions, reorganiz-
> ing or reinventing appropriate paradigms of social stru c t u r e, reaffirming
> and refining laws of personal hygiene and comportment, and, most impor-
> tant of all, art i c u l ating an ever more expansive and complete description of
> reality as a whole, and our individual and collective relationship to reality.
> The end result of this second means by which the two expressions of r e a l-
> ity are bridged fosters and nurtures the central objective of human society
> as a whole: the creation of an “ever-advancing civilization” (Gleanings 215).
> Finally, the Manifestation continues to guide and assist physical cre-
> ation after His ascent from the confines of His earthly persona. As we
> have already noted, after His ascension, the Manifestation still remains
> for us the most complete expression of the Creator, and the essential
> intermediary between us and the essentially unknow able essence of
> Divinity. Howeve r, since the powers of the Manifestation are infinitely
> beyond our own station and unders t a n d i n g, this relationship of entering
> “the Presence of God”—via our knowledge of the Manifestation—should
> not be thought of as ever being complete or static.
> We are naturally most fully aware of the Manifestation operating in
> this second stage of His function as intermediary. In this capacity, in
> which He appears as if He were a man among men, He perfectly incar-
> nates all the virtues of God and, once unveiled or unconcealed, openly
> reveals His station and articulates a more expansive description of r e a l i-
> ty together with specific laws, ordinances, and admonitions about human
> behavior, and about how humankind can collective ly and progressively
> construct a social edifice to befit the evolving spiritual and intellectual
> conditions of the body politic.
> In this second stage, the Manifestation can correctly be said to repre-
> sent for us the most complete expression of godliness we can compre-
> hend during our own incarnate or associational stage of existence. What
> we may not understand completely is that these specialized Beings are
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                         29
> 
> Manifestations prior to Their birth and incarnation, and that They are
> also (in this second stage) quite aware of Their station and function from
> the beginning of Their consciousness after They have assumed a human
> persona: “Verily, from the beginning that Holy Reality is conscious of the
> secret of existence, and from the age of childhood signs of greatness
> appear and are visible in Him” (Some Answered Questions 155).
> Comprehending this conscious awareness of station, the Manifestation
> challenges our understanding of His station with passages that some-
> times seem enigmatic in this regard. For ex a m p l e, many people have
> t r o u ble recognizing this capacity or consciousness when the
> Manifestations cite some critical point of change in their awareness or
> station. For ex a m p l e, in Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet to Nás.iri’d-Dín S háh, He
> states that He was but a man like others until God endowed Him with
> capacity and knowledge as He lay bound in chains in the Síyáh-Chál:
> 
> “O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when
> lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught
> Me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from Me,
> but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And He bade Me
> lift up My voice between earth and heaven, and for this there befell
> Me what hath caused the tears of every man of understanding to
> fl ow. The learning current amongst men I studied not; their schools
> I entered not. Ask of the city wherein I dwelt, that thou mayest be
> well assured that I am not of them who speak falsely. This is but a
> leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-
> Praised, have stirred.” (Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 11–12)
> 
> Certainly on first reading and at face value, such a statement would
> seem to indicate that the Manifestation is an ordinary human being who
> becomes transformed or inspired by God. The same conclusion could be
> inferred from passages by Christ and Muhammad, and passages about the
> transforming experience of Moses when He encounters the Burning
> Bush, and the Buddha when He becomes enlightened as He meditates
> beneath the Bo Tree.
> 30             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> Some might wish to view this ostensible point of change as an outright
> subterfuge created by the Prophet to explain why He suddenly possesses
> a power which He has heretofore not made manifest. Others perceive in
> these passages the description of the point at which the Manifestation is
> given the sign by God that He is to begin doing that for which He has
> taken on human aspect. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá makes it abundantly clear, in an
> authoritative explication of the passage in the Tablet to Nás.iri’d-Dín
> Sháh, that these are not points of ontological change, nor are they points
> at which the Manifestation suddenly becomes aware of the station He has
> been ordained to occupy: “Briefly, the Holy Manifestations have ever been,
> and ever will be, Luminous Realities; no change or va r i ation takes place
> in Their essence. Before declaring Their manifestation, They are silent
> and quiet like a sleeper, and after Their manifestation, They speak and are
> illuminated, like one who is awake” (Some Answered Questions 85–86).
> Even though the Manifestations choose to limit the expression of
> Their powers while They abide in the second stage of Their appeara n c e
> as a man among men, this limitation is one of choice. For example, the
> Manifestation has conscious awareness of whatever He wants to know.
> He is, according to Shoghi Effendi “omniscient at will” (U n folding Destiny
> 449). One interesting explanation of the process by which the Prophet
> possesses this inherent knowledge of reality is described in very specific
> terms by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “Since the Sanctified Realities, the supreme
> Manifestations of God, surround the essence and qualities of the crea-
> tures, transcend and contain existing realities and understand all things,
> therefore, Their knowledge is divine knowledge, and not acquired—that is
> to say, it is a holy bounty; it is a divine revelation” (Some Answe red Questions
> 157–58).
> The distinct ontology of the Prophets during Their incarnate state log-
> ically derives from Their inherently perfect manifestation of all the at t r i b-
> utes of God, one of which is power. They are omnipotent. Even though
> They carefully restrain Themselves from ove rt demonstrations of this
> capacity in order that humankind will recognize them for spiritual reasons
> and not some ove rt or sensational actions, They are litera l ly able to do
> whatsoever They think appropriate, even as Bahá’u’lláh observes: “He Who
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                         31
> 
> is the Dawning-place of God’s Cause hath no partner in the Most Great
> Infallibility. He it is Who, in the kingdom of creation, is the Manifestation
> of ‘He doeth whatsoever He willeth’” (Kitáb-i-Aqdas par. 47).
> Stage thre e . Finally, the Manifestations function as intermediaries
> after Their ascension to the realm of the spirit. In this station, no longer
> constrained by the dramaturgy of feigned humanness, the Manifestation
> is able to oversee and assist the process He has set in motion. In this sta-
> tion He is fully able to assist us collective ly and individually, as we
> attempt to understand and implement the divine plan He has revealed.
> Bahá’u’lláh alludes to the wisdom and power of this third condition with
> the fo l l owing well-known ve rse from the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: “In My presence
> amongst you there is a wisdom, and in My absence there is yet another,
> inscrutable to all but God, the Incomparabl e, the All-Knowing. Verily, We
> behold you from Our realm of glory, and shall aid whosoever will arise
> for the triumph of Our Cause with the hosts of the Concourse on high
> and a company of Our favoured angels” (Kitáb-i-Aqdas par 53).
> While this wisdom is inscrutabl e, another h ú r í, if you will, Shog h i
> Effendi in God Passes By alludes to part of the wisdom in this third con-
> dition with wonderful clarity:
> 
> [T]he dissolution of the tab e rnacle wherein the soul of the Mani-
> festation of God had chosen tempora r i ly to abide signalized its
> release from the restrictions which an eart h ly life had, of necessity,
> imposed upon it. Its influence no longer circumscribed by any phy s-
> ical limitations, its radiance no longer beclouded by its human tem-
> ple, that soul could hencefo rth energize the whole world to a degree
> unapproached at any stage in the course of its existence on this
> p l a net. (God Passes By 244)
> 
> Another aspect of this third stage that is particularly relevant to our
> own third stage of existence—the first two being the world of the womb
> and the world of physical experience—has to do with the fact that the
> indirect relationship with God by means of the Manifestation as interme-
> diary persists throughout our existence into the realm of our post-carnate
> 32            The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> state of existence: “We will have experience of God’s spirit through His
> Prophets in the next world, but God is too great for us to know without
> this Intermediary. The Prophets know God, but how is more than our
> human minds can grasp” (Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer,
> November 14, 1947).
> An important aspect of the station of the Prophets, pertaining to all
> three stages of Their reality, but, for us, most particularly, to the second
> and third stages, is the fact that the Manifestation will ever remain for us
> the most complete understanding of the Creator we will ever have.
> Therefore, as Bahá’u’lláh explains at length in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, the con-
> cept of gaining access or proximity to God (entering the “presence” of
> God) is a figurative and spiritual one, not a literal fact. In other words, God
> will ever remain “essentially” unknowabl e, and all our knowledge of God
> will ever be acquired through the intermediary of the Manifestation,
> whether in this life or in the afterlife: “He Who is everlastingly hidden from
> the eyes of men can never be known except through His Manifestation,
> and His Manifestation can adduce no greater proof of the truth of His
> Mission than the proof of His own Person” (Gleanings 49); “The source of
> all learning is the knowledge of God, exalted be His Glory, and this can-
> not be attained save through the knowledge of His Divine Manifestation”
> (Tablets 156).
> Yet another extremely significant feature of the distinct ontology of
> the Manifestations as intermediaries is that when They describe Their
> authority as being derived from God, it is totally clear in the Bahá’í texts
> that the specific channeling of this command or Primal Will into specif-
> ic ideas, appropriate languag e, and social design derives from the
> w i l l p ower and creativity of the Manifestations themselves. True, They
> rep e at e d ly acknowledge that all that They do and say derives from God
> working through Them, and in the sense that it is the will or wish of
> God to bring about a creation capable of k n owing and worshiping Him,
> this is precisely accurat e. But it is equally clear from seve ral passag e s
> t h at the specific design of the dispensation wrought by the
> Manifestation in His station of “distinction” (that is, as Prophet appear-
> ing at a particular time in particular circumstances in which there are
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                          33
> 
> specific needs and specific capacities), the Manifestation is the fashioner
> of His Reve l ation.
> For example, Shoghi Effendi states that the Kitáb-i-Aqdas “may well be
> r egarded as the brightest emanation of the mind of Bahá’u’lláh, as the
> Mother Book of His Dispensation, and the Charter of His New World
> Order” (Synopsis 2). Likew i s e, in another passage, Shoghi Effendi pra i s e s
> the world order that Bahá’u’lláh has devised as the product of His own
> creat i ve and willful genius. This extended metaphor, itself a marvelous
> work of the Guardian’s own creat i ve genius, states this capacity in
> remarkably effective terms:
> 
> Not ours, the living witnesses of the all-subduing potency of His
> Faith, to question, for a moment, and however dark the misery that
> enshrouds the world, the ability of Bahá’u’lláh to forge, with the
> hammer of His Will, and through the fire of tribulation, upon the
> anvil of this travailing age, and in the particular shape His mind has
> envisioned, these scattered and mutually destructive fragments into
> which a perverse world has fallen, into one single unit, solid and
> indivisibl e, able to execute His design for the children of men.
> (P romised Day is Come 124)
> 
> Put simply, the Manifestation is not merely God’s mouthpiece or
> amanuensis. He is the creat i ve force that translates the Creator’s wish,
> will, and desire into increments of creative revelation, action, and design,
> appropriate to what He sees as propitious for a given period in human
> evolution on a given planet.
> One common way of explaining this intermediary relationship is the
> analogy of a mirror, a figurative image employed in the Bahá’í Writings
> and frequently used by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. However, this analogy is sometimes
> incorrectly understood and conveyed by believers, and thus fails to eluci-
> date the concept it was intended to explain. Indeed, it can confuse the
> entire issue of the ontology of the Prophets.
> In this analogy, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá compares the Manifestation to a perfect
> m i rr o r, because the Manifestation has the power to convey fl awlessly all
> 34             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> the infinite at t r i butes of God. In this sense, the Manifestation can cor-
> rectly be described as a mirror image of the Creator, though ever remain-
> ing essentially distinct from the Creator. Thus, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains
> t h at the Manifestation, while conveying to us the bounties of God, is not
> identical with the essence of God. Nor is the Manifestation a piece of
> God. Thus, properly understood, the mirror analogy conveys the idea
> t h at a perfect mirror is capable of conveying fl awlessly the powers and
> properties of the sun, without itself actually being or conveying a piece
> of the sun—the mirror does not enable the sun litera l ly to come to earth.
> The mirror is the means by which we receive the bounties and attributes
> of the sun’s light, warmth, and nourishing infl u e n c e.
> The problem with the perfect mirror analogy crops up when it is mis-
> used to assert that we who are finite cannot bear to behold that which is
> i n f i n i t e,even as we cannot stand to behold the sun directly. Therefo r e, so
> this interpretation goes, God sends the Manifestations because we can
> bear to behold them. Of course, the logic of such an explanation fails
> because if the mirror is perfect, the light and power emanating from it
> will be just as bright and intense and unbearable to behold as the source.
> What this interpretation of the analogy is getting at, however, is logi-
> cal and important. Un-incarnated in a human fo rm and unarticulated in
> human speech, the divine powers and bounties and at t r i butes would be
> i n c o m p r e h e n s i ble to us. But by translating Godliness into human terms
> and human language, the Prophet enables us to understand the nature of
> the Creator, even though the Prophet does not literally become the
> Creator, is not of the essence as the Creator. This is the very problem that
> so confounded those present at the Synod of Nicaea, who in the year 325
> A.D. incorrectly determined (by majority vote) that Christ was “very God
> of very God,” homoesus (of one and the same essence as God or God incar-
> nate), a mistake which caused the next Manifestation, Muhammad, to
> chastise these clerics numerous times in the Qur’án.
> In other words, the mirror image is va l u able because it explains that
> the Manifestation can be an intermediary by means of which Godliness
> can be conve yed to us without every becoming God Himself, except in a
> figurative sense. Thus we can correctly assert that the Manifestation is
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                        35
> 
> the sole means by which we can comprehend God and that in this capac-
> ity as intermediary, He functions as a bridge between the realm of the
> spirit and the physical world. But in making this assertion, we must ever
> take care to realize the distinction in essence and station between God
> and these Emissaries.
> Consequently, an analogy that may sometimes be more useful in expli-
> cating the station and capacity of the Manifestation in the second stage
> is that of the prism. In its capacity to refract the ostensibly white light of
> the sun into the infinite array of constituent colors, the prism demon-
> s t rate well how the Manifestation as Teacher and Emissary translates
> the Holy Spirit emanating from God, which we cannot comprehend out-
> right, into increments of specific powe rs and virtues that we can perceive
> and comprehend. The prism illustrates well how the Manifestation tra n s-
> lates the otherwise imperceptible powers and at t r i butes of God into vis-
> ible attributes and patterns of action. But the analogy also has the addi-
> tional value of demonstrating that the array of at t r i butes is endless,
> infinite, even as the spectrum itself is infinite, whether we proceed
> towards the longer waves of light (infrared, micro-, and radio waves), or
> ever more finite waves (ultraviolet wave s, x-, and gamma rays).
> Thus far, then, we have traced, in a ve ry limited and necessarily abbre-
> viated fashion, the intermediary process by which we can bridge the gap
> between the metaphysical and physical aspects of reality, so that we
> might establish an authentic love relationship with the heretofore hidden
> treasure that is the Creator. Rehearsing a portion of this process might
> go something like this:
> 
> From the Unknow able Essence of God emanates the Primal Wish or
> Will of God
> by means of the Holy Spirit
> that conveys this wish to the Preexistent Manifestation,
> Who determines to assume the guise of a human persona
> that He might exemplify Godliness in His person and actions and
> provide laws and guidance for creative human action
> so that we can progress in our love relationship with God.
> 
> 36             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> However, before we can make progress, yet another bridge must be
> crossed, analogous to the means by which the Hidden Treasure causes
> His own will to become manifest in physical reality. Our own essential
> reality, our soul, is likewise a hidden treasure, an unknow able essence,
> most especially while we dwell in this post-embryonic existence.
> From our soul emanates our spirit, and with it the powers and faculties
> of the soul which express themselves as reason, will, memory, imag i n a-
> tion or ideation, emotion, love, and so fo rth. We are aware that reason—
> what Bahá’u’lláh calls the “rational faculty” (Gleanings 164)—is associat-
> ed with the brain, though it is not itself “in” the brain, or derived from
> the brain. As ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains, this is an associative relationship,
> akin to the relationship between the soul and the human temple as a
> whole: “The mind which is in man, the existence of which is recog-
> nized—where is it in him? If you examine the body with the eye, the ear
> or the other senses, you will not find it; nevertheless, it exists. Therefo r e,
> the mind has no place, but it is connected with the brain” (Some Answe red
> Q u e st i o n s 2 4 2 ) .
> In this sense, the brain is a complex transceiver, not the ultimate
> source of anything. And when both the brain and its power of b i d i r e c-
> tional communication are in a state of health, this bridge between the
> essentially metaphysical reality of the soul and the essentially phy s i c a l
> construct that is the body is transparent. The self you sense and the self
> you present to those around you are relat i ve ly accurate and transparent
> representations of your spiritual nature and condition. Howeve r, when
> the brain becomes injured or is afflicted with disease, defect, or some fo rm
> of progressive neurological dysfunction, the mirror image of the soul
> that is the physical self and your ability to make that vehicle portray the
> real you become ever more distorted and inaccurat e.
> Po s s i bly the most intriguing aspect of this intermediary relationship
> b e t ween the soul and the body is that this veil between the real you and
> the metaphorical expression of you is sometimes veiled even from your
> own sense of self. That is, while a stroke or other physical disabilities may
> deprive us of the capacity to express to others what we are feeling, think-
> ing, or becoming, brain injury or dysfunction can also cause us to lose the
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                           37
> 
> sense of our own self. Amnesia is an obvious example of this, but so is
> Alzheimer’s disease or other sources of dementia.
> Stated axiomat i c a l ly, so long as our consciousness maintains its asso-
> ciative relationship with the body through the brain, our awareness of
> our own self is dependent on a healthy brain functioning in association
> with a healthy body.
> Stated in a broader context, we receive info rmation from two funda-
> mental sources while we are in our second stage of existence, our associ-
> ation or relationship with physical reality. We derive or infer ideas indi-
> rectly through the info rm ation gathered by our senses, info rmation that
> is then channeled through the brain to the mind, and thence to the rep o s-
> itory of memory in the soul. This inferential process is often referred to
> as the scientific method. Or we can receive info rmation through intuition,
> inspiration, prayer, or refl e c t i o n — t h at is, ideas and info rmation which
> may come from the realm of the spirit.
> The point is that while some may give more credence to one or the
> other of these two fundamental modalities, one source is not necessarily
> more va l u able or more reliable than the other. Both processes are subject
> to misinfo rmation, whether through faulty data or logic in the case of the
> indirect process, or through vain imaginations, in the case of what we
> b e l i eve to be divine inspiration. In short, no matter what our source of
> inform ation about reality may be while we are in the physical stage of our
> ex i s t e n c e, we are challenged to weigh the validity and the usefulness of
> this info rmation with the rational faculty of our conscious mind.
> Because all info rmation, from whatever source, ultimate ends up in the
> repository of our conscious mind, we can have only a relat i ve degree of
> certitude in this life about our own powers to come to correct conclu-
> sions. It is for this reason that the holy texts function as our touchstone
> against which we can assess what conclusions we make. They are, in this
> sense, the infallible mizán or qustás—the “standard,” the “balance, ” the
> “scales” by which all other verities are assayed. It is precisely for this rea-
> son that we are admonished to rev i ew our progress and effo rts on a daily
> basis, not merely eve ry so often. Only by such systematic weighing of our
> own perspectives against the standards set fo rth by an infallible and
> 38             The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 15. 1/4. 2005
> 
> totally reliable resource can we have any degree of confidence that we are
> complying with the reality that is in our best interest.
> In the third stage of our ex i s t e n c e, that is, after death, when our con-
> scious mind and other essential human powers are released from the con-
> straints of having to work through the intermediary of an ever more
> dysfunctional brain and body, we will find ours e l ves capable of under-
> standing and progressing more ra p i d ly. However, we will always be
> exhorted to attain understanding through the exercise of our will, and
> to express that understanding in some fo rm of action. Perhaps that
> action will be to assist those still in an associative relationship with phy s-
> ical reality, or to perfo rm other tasks that are presently quite beyond our
> understanding.
> As we consider this ingenious process by which we are led to know and
> understand our own nature—even as we simultaneously come to know
> and love the Creator in Whose image we have been created—it finally
> becomes clear that the veiling of spiritual reality from us is the only way
> that we could have become responsible for our own progress and enlight-
> enment.
> 
> O SON OF MY HANDMAID!
> Didst thou behold immortal sovereignty, thou wouldst strive to
> pass from this fleeting world. But to conceal the one from thee and
> to reveal the other is a my s t e ry which none but the pure in heart can
> comprehend. (Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, Persian 41)
> 
> N OTES
> 
> Presented at the 29th Annual Conference of the Association for Bahá’í
> Studies–North America, Cambridge, Massachussetts, 13 August 2005.
> 1. Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, Arabic 5.
> Unveiling the Húrí of Love                             39
> 
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> ing Trust, 1971.
> ———. High Endeavours: Messages to Alaska. Anchorage: National
> Spiritual Assembly of Alaska, 1976.
> ———. The Promised Day Is Come. Wi l m e t t e, Ill.: Bahá’í Publ i s h i n g
> Trust, 1980.
> ———. U n folding Destiny: The Messages from the Guardian of the Bahá’í
> Faith to the Bahá’í Community of the British Isles. London: Bahá’í
> P u blishing Trust, 1981.
> A Synopsis and Codification of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book of
> Bahá’u’lláh. Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1973.
>
> — *Unveiling the Huri of Love (Used by permission of the curator)*