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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