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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-- Unveiling the Huri of Love (Used by permission of the curator)