# Laozi: A Lost Prophet?

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Roland Faber, Laozi: A Lost Prophet?, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Laozi, A Lost Prophet?
> 
> The Challenge of the Dao De Jing for the
> Bahá’í Universe of Discourse
> 
> Roland Faber
> 
> 1. Why Daoism, Laozi and the Dao De Jing ?
> 
> Daoism is one of the oldest religions.1 Its roots are lost in pre-
> history. We find it arise amidst the fog of human awakening to
> historical consciousness when it begins to manifest itself in old
> mythological and symbolic archetypes of existence and impresses on
> us patterns of human wisdom and insight into the nature of existence
> that immediately strike a cord on various levels of human thought
> and modes of feeling. It grew from a primordial and pre-confessional
> mode of religion in the form of incarnations of a worldwide religious
> consciousness of earlier times (although it has never disappeared
> completely to this day),2 housed in shamanistic rhythms of living.3 As
> a spiritual philosophy it arose and developed (at lest in their effect)
> preeminently from the genius of one person and the medium of one
> book4 to become a well-established worldview and way of life,
> religion and cultural self-definition, expressive of the Chinese mind
> and spirit: Meet the legendary sage Laozi and his incomparable book
> of ancient, yet in its context novel and unexpected wisdom, the Laozi
> or Dao De Jing!5
> 
> As the Bahá’í Faith recognizes all religions and wisdom traditions
> to be the expression of one divine origin,6 the acknowledgement of
> 38                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Daoism, Laozi and the Dao De Jing must be of preeminent
> importance. They demand attention not only for the reconstruction
> of one of the most influential streams of religious history of
> humanity7 — as all religious streams are considered to be flowing into
> the universal openness of the Bahá’í revelation, which receives them
> as moments of one history of religious awakening and as past
> expressions of it own pre-history.8 What is more, they command to
> be heard in their own contributions to the future of humanity, as all
> religions contribute their specific uniqueness to the unity of
> religions,9 a unity which in the image of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá must be
> understood as a unification by differentiation, where the manifold
> highlights the beauty of this confluence.10
> 
> The coming considerations set out to frame this task in three
> related facets: First, they want to demonstrate the uniqueness of the
> contributions of Daoism especially as mediated through Laozi and
> the Dao De Jing to a future universal religious consciousness that the
> Bahá’í revelation is said to have instigated, although we might not yet
> be able to see its future contours clearly or at all.11 Second, they want
> to explicate resonances with and differences from the Bahá’í
> universe, less in principles, as both traditions are overwhelmingly
> compatible,12 but rather taking the(philosophical and religious)
> emphases into account that renders Daoism enlightening beyond its
> historical situatedness because of the genius of Laozi and the Laozi
> and their reception throughout history.13 Third, such considerations
> cannot avoid the question whether or not, if such a religion is one of
> the major expressions of the one source that has also animated
> Bahá’u’lláh, Daoism should be considered a genuine dispensation of a
> divine Manifestation; whether or not, then, the Laozi must be read as
> scripture, expressing the one revelation in a unique (historical) body;
> and whether or not the figure of Laozi and the book of the Dao De
> Jing should be considered a temple (haykal) of revelation14 in the
> sense that we would accept for the so-called “Big Five” (Judaism,
> Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism)15 with the addition of
> Zoroastrianism, all of which Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi
> Effendi recognized as genuine dispensations under the influence of a
> Manifestation.16 In other words, are we with Laozi and the Dao De
> Jing encountering a (lost) prophet and his book?17
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                              39
> 
> Why should this be challenging to the Bahá’í universe of
> discourse?18 Because compared with the “Big Five” (Hinduism,
> Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and Zoroastrianism, the
> Bahá’í writings entertain only scant references to other religions,19
> such as “Chinese religions,” and in particular virtually none to
> Daoism nor Laozi, nor the Dao De Jing.20 This in light of the fact
> that we do find at least several references of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi
> Effendi to China, Chinese religion(s)21 and especially Confucius,
> although the exact status of these in the Bahá’í universe is far from
> definite beyond any doubt either.22 Yet, since the absence of evidence
> should not be taken as a sign for the evidence of absence,23 the fact
> that the Bahá’í writings know of Confucianism, but emphasizes it as
> an ethics with Confucius as an ethical reformer (as contrasted with
> the Buddha as Manifestation and Buddhism as religion)24 — although
> there are indications to the contrary25 — should make us even more
> inclined to investigate the status of one of the “other” original
> sources of religion and philosophy, wisdom and life in China, namely,
> the tacit “presence” of Daoism in the legacy of Laozi and one of its
> “constitutional” texts,26 the Dao De Jing.27 After approaching
> Daoism, Laozi and the Dao De Jing historically and philosophically as
> well as religiously and referencing resonances with the Bahá’í universe
> of discourse, its principles and worldview, I will reflect on the
> fascinating and rewarding question regarding the (potential) status of
> Laozi in the Bahá’í universe of discourse. By connecting the insights
> gathered, and in light of only scant evidence (but with some
> arguments from the Bahá’í writings), I will not answer this question
> definitively, but rather consider several alternatives of how to
> potentially understand Laozi from a Bahá’í perspective, altogether
> developing eight alternative views for future consideration.28
> 
> 2. Defining “Daoism”
> We can assume that some of the Daoist texts are very old,
> predating the organization of a Daoist movement or religion. While
> we may find estimations that some of these texts in their original
> form (not the received texts) go back to the Zhou dynasty (1000
> B.C.E. – 300 B.C.E.), in any “organized” form “Daoism” appears
> around the beginning of the second century B.C.E. as an established
> and distinct philosophy,29 but as religious identity, Daoism was
> 40                                                Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> probably not organized before the movement of the Celestial Masters
> in the second century C.E.30
> 
> In the west, serious attempts of understanding Daoist texts and
> Daoism as a phenomenon can be dated only to the beginning of the
> 20th century C.E. The Dao De Jing, the book traditionally assigned to
> the ancient sage Laozi, was only translated in the 1860s and the
> preceding reception of Daoism in the west was littered with
> prejudices: that it is a primitive wisdom tradition, closer to
> primordial forms of shamanism than any western concept of religion
> and even further removed from what could possibly count as
> philosophy; that it represents an irrational, chaotic, even anarchic
> approach to reality far removed from the understanding of
> Confucianism as a “rational” wisdom then prevalent among
> intellectuals and philosophers in the west receptive to Chinese
> thought; that it is really a non-philosophy falling under the ban of
> Plato on poets31 since they seek imagination instead of truth; and that
> it seemed to have been too much involved in esoteric Chinese folk
> practices like alchemy as to be taken seriously.32
> 
> However, as soon as the philosophical side of Daoism was
> discovered to be actually of considerable interest in its contrasts to
> western thought patterns, unfortunately, a new division was
> introduced. Insofar as we can differentiate between the religion of
> Daoism (Dao Jiao) and its philosophical texts, like the Dao De Jing
> (Dao Jia),33 interests shifted to the excavation of the noble ideas
> from the crude folk elements salvaging the philosophy from the
> primitive religion, which to the dismay of the philosophical purist
> exhibits the belief in ghosts and ancestral ceremonies or alchemical
> endeavors in the search for physical immortality.34 Newer research
> (conscious of such biases) has, however, shown that this is a short-
> sided approach as both Daoist religion and philosophy are intimately
> intertwined in the life of the people that followed and still follow
> their teachings.35
> 
> Then again, as this integrated gestalt becomes more and more
> visible today, we are forced to step outside of the western prejudices
> regarding that which it grants the title of a religion.36 This is, of
> course, a reminder that the phenomenon of religion and its wisdom as
> well as its relationship to philosophical thought and insight are much
> more complex, intricate and fascinating than the fairly recent western
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                  41
> 
> definitions of religion would seem to suggest and (based on the Greek
> antagonisms) its presumed opposition to philosophy would allow to
> be discovered.37 Since one of the most profound claims of the Bahá’í
> Faith is the unity of all religions and their divine origin,38 it is a good
> exercise in this encounter to probe the Bahá’í universe of discourse as
> it ventures outside of these pervasive western limitations whereby it
> may discover a truly different way how religion can be lived and how
> thought can “strangely” understand the world and its existential
> grounds, how human beings can practice spiritual existence and for
> what reason human beings express spiritual and religious aims socially
> and intellectually.39
> 
> 3. Revelation or Wisdom?
> Yet another difference becomes quickly visible as long as one tries
> grasping Daoism from the perspective of Abrahamic experiences and
> thought patterns: there seems in early Chinese history not to have
> been any claim (or concept) of revelation of a divinity or of a divine
> messenger such as that which has structured the mutually related
> Abrahamic traditions at least from the Hebrew’s experience of the
> exodus from Egypt on.40 Hence, in her book on The Chinese
> Religions and the Bahá’í Faith, Phyllis Chew leaves us with this
> profound statement: “Thus, while the Baha'i Faith is established as a
> revealed religion brought by a prophet-messenger, the Chinese
> religion is not. The Chinese religion is a unique instance of a religion
> without revelation, a religion with the sage as a central figure rather
> than a prophet.”41 The sage is a holy figure or (like the early Greek
> seeker of wisdom Pythagoras) a philosopher who teaches a method of
> life and lives what he teaches,42 one who is versed in the mysteries of
> the cosmos and how its rules influence human existence.43
> 
> Nevertheless, we must also not overlook that Daoism at certain
> points in its development constructed notions that Bahá’ís
> understand to be essential to their own identity — in the case of
> Daoism virtually before any other religion, philosophy or cultural
> pool of ideas: that the aim of society is the establishment of the Most
> Great Peace, understood to include the whole of humanity, not just a
> tribe or specific culture;44 that the notion of religion is not
> necessarily a western invention as Daoism viewed itself self-
> consciously as a religion (although just not in the western sense);45
> 42                                                Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> that Daoism developed into a “state religion” — something Shoghi
> Effendi expected to happen with countries of majority Bahá’í
> populations;46 and most interestingly, that Daoism indeed developed
> into a revealed religion revering scriptures and worshipping holy
> figures such as Laozi as divine.47 Again, given such evidence we might
> learn that wisdom and revelation are not necessarily opposing
> categories48 even if the order of their appearance and their spiritual
> relevance for the concrete life of the respective societies is not the
> same as in the Abrahamic context.49
> 
> 4. What is the Dao?
> 
> One important point must be mentioned before all else: all
> Chinese religions (and philosophical schools) relate in one or another
> way to the Dao, not only Daoism.50 Confucianism and other Chinese
> schools (such as Legalism or Mohism) as well as Chinese Buddhism
> also speak of and identify with the concept of the Dao even if they
> perceive and conceive it differently.51 Nevertheless, in all Chinese
> wisdom schools and religions (or intersecting religious streams)the
> Dao presents what we could call ultimate reality. Accordingly, Alan
> Watts, one of the most well known popularizers of the “strange”
> imaginations and thoughts of Daoism and Buddhism in the west in
> the second half of the 20th century, defines the Dao as “the mystery
> that we can never understand — the unity that underlies the
> opposites.”52 This “definition” gives us a first hint at the profound
> nature of the concept and its importance, namely, besides any
> particularities and pedantries to connect us with the world as a whole
> in such a way that the most hidden secret of the inner workings of the
> world is revealed: that there are no fixed oppositions or opposites;53
> that all is always involved in the movement of one into the other; that
> not divisive strive has the last word, but the harmony of oppositional
> movements.54
> 
> Dao means the Way and the Method that the world movement is
> exhibiting in everything.55 In this sense, all things are daos, actions
> and activities engaged in such movements of overcoming oppositions
> and creating ever-new harmonies. This world activity is what is
> understood as the “natural” process of things.56 Nature (ziran) means
> that which operates on it own; everything exists and proceeds by
> itself, is “self-so.”57 The best one can do when one has gained this
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                             43
> 
> insight is to let the Dao work through all actions one performs, that
> is, if one does not try to act against the flow of the movements of
> harmonization, but acts with it. In doing so, one reaches the height
> of activity in accordance with the Dao as long as one does not
> (coercively) act against its all-wise movements (wu wei).58 And if one
> learns to live this way, one becomes a perfect human being
> (zhenren).59
> 
> The Dao is the ultimate of ultimates, the unnamable, but it is
> manifest in all phenomena (without being identical with them).60
> “How deep and mysterious this unity is/How profound, how
> great!/It is the truth beyond the truth, /the hidden within the
> hidden/It is the path to all wonder/the gate to the essence of
> everything.”61 We are reminded of similar Bahá’í expressions of
> ultimate reality as can be found in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings indicating
> the unknowable,62 but all-pervasive divine reality beyond any name
> (al-haqq)63 and the mutuality of even these “opposites”64: “O Thou
> Who art the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of
> the hidden!” [PM #155]65
> 
> 5. Who is Laozi?
> 
> Laozi figures as the “founder” of (philosophical) Daoism.66 Yet,
> this description is already tainted by western misperceptions. Laozi
> was for all intents and purposes a sage who lived in the 6th century
> B.C.E., presumably before the Buddha. He was — trusting tradition —
> a scribe and scholar at the exceptional library of the court of Zhou
> (an extraordinary achievement in itself). In these traditions, he
> appears as the teacher of Confucius, although this is less clear as he
> may instead represent a culmination or personification of the
> confluence of several ancient and honored traditions and
> personalities.67 Maybe he is just a literary figure identified with an
> “Old Master” (Lao-Zi)68 who represents and functions as a
> convergence of the old wisdom sayings of the Zhou time collected
> into the Laozi or Dao De Jing. First mention of his identity as a
> person is made long after he is supposed to have lived, namely, in the
> Book of History (Shih Ji) around 150 B.C.E., which also makes
> mention of “Daoism” as an already established philosophical school
> at that time.69
> 44                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Laozi is often depicted as an old man with long white beard
> (westerners may immediately identify someone else with this
> description), riding a bull, riding to leave his country because no one
> wants to hear his wisdom, or, much later, as a divinity in ornate attire
> enthroned in heaven.70 The story is passed down that Confucius asked
> Laozi for advice on rituals (li) related to ghosts and ancestors still
> roaming the world and haunting, in the opinion of the people, their
> families and villages. Laozi is presented here as a soul-guide who
> knows how to perform rituals for the save passage of the departed or
> to accompany the shamanic journey of the soul into spiritual
> realms.71 In any case, the importance of this development of the
> figure of Laozi with his growing myth and divinization over the next
> millennium in the east is only underscored by his elation to the status
> of one of the rare “axial” philosophical, religious and spiritual figures
> in the west by which the German philosopher Karl Jasper’s famously
> identified the revolutionary and decisive axial age of human
> awakening to a new universal spiritual consciousness in a timeframe
> of several centuries around the mid first millennium B.C.E., a status
> only rivaled by figures such as Socrates, Zoroaster, the Buddha,
> Confucius and Isaiah.72
> 
> These old stories already show influences of the two other
> important religions of Chinese culture, Confucianism and Buddhism,
> which will, in this triangulation, drive the dynamic of Chinese
> religions and culture for the centuries to come.73 In Daoist lore,
> Laozi is introduced as the sage by whom Daoism or certain Daoist
> schools assert its superiority over Confucianism and Buddhism and
> their related schools. He is the superior wise man. He was supposedly
> born from a virgin after having been sixty (!) or so years in her body,
> emerging an “old baby” when he finally came into this world (one
> meaning of “Laozi” is “old boy”).74 That he is imagined to be the
> superior sage can also be witnessed by the belief that when he left his
> country he is said to have gone to India and to have taught the
> Buddha or even to have been reborn as the Buddha.75
> 
> Here, as Bahá’ís will notice, a transformation takes place that
> resonates with the Bahá’í teachings of recurrent Manifestations of
> the divine. And in the case of Laozi, it is even a movement across
> religions.76 In other instantiations of such a cyclical recurrence, the
> divine figures like that of Hindu Avatars and the infinite Buddhas of
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                 45
> 
> Mahayana generally remain within their own religious sphere to
> express the uniqueness and identity of these traditions.77 An
> interesting exception occurs with the Vaishnavite belief that the
> Buddha is integral to the series of Avatars of Vishnu or Krishna.78 Yet
> in this case, for similar reasons that Daoism taught that Laozi was
> instructing or even becoming the Buddha, this crossing of religious
> boundaries and integration of foreign or even hostile figures was
> meant to demonstrate the superiority of the “parent” religion79 —
> something Bahá’u’lláh has categorically rejected.80
> 
> 6. What is the Laozi (or the Dao De Jing )?
> 
> The story of Laozi in the Book of History culminates in the
> significant event of the creation of the Dao De Jing.81 In protest to
> the unwise government of the Zhou, Laozi decides to from China.82
> One may understand this move as spiritual retreat from political
> machinations, or, by giving it a different twist, one could also view
> this act as a more radical protest since it was assumed that to life in
> China meant to be in the sphere of civilization while outside China
> basically barbarism had the rule.83 Not only does such a political
> protest in Laozi’s act of emigration, if it may be assumed, uncover
> this so-called “civilization,” so held high by its powers-to-be, as itself
> corrupt and barbarian.84 This highly symbolic statement also could
> have implied that Laozi was forgoing the folk belief, or was
> accepting the consequences of abandoning this belief, that one part
> of the multilayered human soul must be buried in Chinese earth in
> order for the departed person to have immortal life.85
> 
> Now, at the border, the guard, who is the silent hero of this story,
> discovers that the approaching rider is Laozi (what a feat considering
> the vast land that was and is China!), the famous sage, and after
> hearing his story asks him, at least, before he leaves to write down his
> wisdom so that future generations would not forever be bereft of his
> insights and all knowledge of ultimate reality, and a life according to
> its eternal laws would be lost. In one hour, so the story continues,
> Laozi writes the whole wisdom of existence down in only five
> thousand characters — the time dilation and brevity being the signs of
> his extreme wisdom. Thus was created the Dao De Jing.86
> 46                                                  Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> The received text of the Laozi is a collection87 of short, poetic,
> mystical, ethical and political sayings, interspersed with longer
> comments of explanation.88 It is structured into eighty-one chapters.
> Note that this reflects nine to the second power, nine being the
> Chinese number of the Emperor, heavenly order and long
> lastingness89 — somewhat in resonance with the Bahá’í understanding
> of the number nine, besides being the Abjad number of the word
> bahá’.90 Further, the Laozi has two parts: the Dao Jing, which
> explores the nature of ultimate reality (dao), and the De Jing, which
> meditates on the cultivation of the virtues (de) of the Dao necessary
> to become a sage and a perfect human being, or to rule justly and to
> order society according to cosmic harmony.91
> 
> Research has shone that this is a very old structure, maybe finding
> together as a collection as early as 500 B.C.E.,92 which we can already
> find settled in the oldest extant versions of the text from around 300
> B.C.E., excavated in the 1970s and 1990s.93 The characters of the
> Laozi are painted on bamboo strips, which are attached to one
> another and can be rolled up so as to not lose their integrity as a
> whole. While over the centuries the order of the two parts may have
> been reversed in some collections, the general structure and order of
> the sayings are preserved.94 The characters are of ancient complexity,
> and no translation can hope to fathom the depth of the field of
> reference they invoke or to establish a final correct relationship
> between them.95 This fact, and the perceived depth of insight that the
> Laozi conveys, has led to one of the vastest libraries of commentaries
> and translations of any Chinese classic, maybe only rivaled by that of
> the Bible.96
> 
> 7. Understanding Philosophical Daoism ( Dao Jia )
> 
> Given all of these uncertainties, but also the astonishing integrity
> of the text of the Dao De Jing, we can expect a great variety of
> interpretations97 as the context changes over the course of time and
> the transformations of Chinese culture, that is, as the text moves
> through its use by different schools of thought98 and also begins to
> serve a variety of political interests99 as well as the mutual discussions
> and strives for supremacy with and between other Chinese religions,
> especially Confucianism and Buddhism.100 If we try to situate the text
> of the Laozi in its own process of becoming, we will, however, gain
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                               47
> 
> some valuable insight in its meaning or, at least, some layers of its
> perceived importance.
> 
> Here is one such attempt. The Laozi as well as Daoism as
> philosophy in general should be understood as a reaction against
> Confucianism (not as its origin).101 It explores an alternative to
> Confucian imperialism that in comparison exhibits the characteristics
> and implementation of a highly hierarchically stratified society, a
> petrified system of education (canalizing mostly the control over of
> the court scribes, religious representatives and other political
> officials) and the worship of the court as means of political
> unification of the diverse lands and regional powers. Daoism,
> instead, appeals to the equality of all people and diverse peoples of
> the realm, favors small integrated communities instead of large
> political entities of military and economic power that shift wealth to
> the political and religious elites, and, hence, intends to function as a
> model of life in which power is distributed among a vast multiplicity
> of communities.102
> 
> This counter-imagination of living together is in itself obviously a
> dangerous idea to entertain in a society that is based on idealized and
> divinized political and religious powers, and its reservoir of
> alternative ideas and ways of living has, in fact, led to occasional
> political tumult and insurrections against the sanctioned
> establishment.103 The concurrent Daoist ethics that grounds this
> (some would say) anarchic understanding of society has left us with
> one of the earliest instantiations of cultural, political and spiritual
> relativism, which was based on the insistence on individual
> responsibility (instead of obedience to authority), mutual dependence
> of all people and institutions (instead of divinization of higher
> institutions and personalities), and a life that is oriented toward
> living in harmony with nature (ziran) and its cycles (instead of the
> excesses if poisoning social constructions).104
> 
> The inner working of this universe of discourse is based on the
> precise understanding of the Dao as the way and method of living —
> or skill at living.105 The Dao, here, is not a description of reality or
> ultimate reality, for that matter, but prescribes a way of acting with
> the flow of nature (and the nature of things).106 The Dao does not tell
> us what is or why it is, but how acts can be performed in accordance
> to the rules of the natural, all-pervading movement of the Dao. If
> 48                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> one “follows” the Dao, one knows how to perform something the
> right way.107 The Dao cannot be known (theoretically); it must be
> done. One must train in the Dao’s way by learning to see the signs of
> the natural movement of all things and by acting accordingly. To
> follow the Dao is akin to the know-how of cutting wood the right
> way, that is, not counter to its nature, its appearance, its structures
> and patterns. One cuts wood without effort if one knows how to
> follow these natural forms given in the pattern of a piece of wood;108
> one traces the Dao if one knows how a situation has arisen and will
> develop and without effort follows its development.109
> 
> Daoism’s relativistic claim is based on a divergent interpretation
> from Confucianism and other (political) schools.110 For Confucian
> philosophy, the Dao is a universal law that dictates the social
> relationships as a norm-system one must follow in order not to lose
> ones face or honor.111 Mohism embraced this approach and
> understood the Dao to represent a norm of existence we must
> pursue.112 Yet, Daoism critiqued this approach and instead
> understood at least the universal Dao not as normative rule, because
> any norm is itself a dao that needs a justification in a higher norm
> (dao). This leads to an infinite regress without finding a highest norm
> from which the hierarchical claim of Confucianism could be
> justified.113Yet the consequence Daoism draws from this insight is not
> that this regress is absurd, as western logic might have concluded, but
> that the universal Dao is beyond any norm, that the ultimate is
> relativistic, depriving us of any ability for the deduction of norms.114
> Hence, social order is uncovered here as relative, that is, as a social
> construction, not as a natural necessity; and, hence, political power
> must be considered as relative, too.115
> 
> The Daoist Dao is, therefore, set against and highly critical of any
> fixed norm system and in some radical sense anarchic (or based on
> spontaneity).116 It proposes that there cannot be only one norm
> system of society one must follow as a divine order, but suggests
> many equally valid ways of living together. The natural norm is, now,
> that of a nature that moves in cycles of harmonization, universally
> and in the mutual relationship of all things, persons, forms and
> structures.117 As nature does not force any natural norm or law, many
> societies can co-exist and coinhere without force and with different
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                49
> 
> rules according to their situatedness and internal and external
> relationships in any given moment of their mutual interference.118
> 
> This Daoist interpretation of reality reveals two related
> perspectives: On the one hand, the Dao is mystical as it is inaccessible
> and beyond any articulation (as a norm); it is mirrored only in the
> experience of the experienced master, sage and perfect human
> being.119 On the other hand, the Dao is relativistic, but in the sense of
> the mutual relationship of all beings in their coinherent movement of
> living together; and the daos (acts, norms) do not “exist” out there,
> but must be created in the flow of things and acts.120
> 
> 8. Understanding the Dao De Jing
> The inherent paradox that the Laozi displays in such a mystical and
> relativistic understanding of the Dao is staggering, because it conveys
> the counter-movement of two in themselves coherent, but mutually
> seemingly excluding expressions of existence. On the one hand, the
> mystical insight of someone following the Dao would indicate that
> one can know how to act in accordance with the Dao; but, on the
> other hand, because of the relativistic side there is no fixed anchor in
> any ultimate expression of the Dao that justifies any particular
> direction of acting as normative or “in the right way.” In other
> words, to follow the Dao means that there is no “right” Dao to
> pursue. Only if one gains the insight that there is not one “right” Dao
> to follow, one actually follows the Dao.121
> 
> The ethical implications are of utmost relevance here: one should
> not cling to tradition, rigid rightness and correct language if one
> wants to follow the Dao. The wisdom of achieving perfection does
> not appear by following preconceived virtues, but by learning to
> performing “virtuosity” in living (de), the ethical impulse of the
> Dao.122 The Laozi explains that it is not nature that is ambivalent, but
> society; society’s constructed norms are forceful misconstructions of
> the flow of the Dao in the interconnectedness of all things.123 It is
> not nature, but society that with its social norms and tainted
> language creates the very desires that deprives us of deeper insight
> into the Dao. It is not nature, but society that is at the root of evils
> as it forces us into unnatural desires and conflicts laying life’s course
> 50                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> out as a matter of competition and war.124 Peace comes only though
> harmony with nature and the Dao that is its nature.125
> 
> The interesting insight that follows from this paradox is that only
> without fixed norms and preconceived patterns of existence do we
> become able to withhold from a life of conflict and war. By
> becoming mutually coinherent, we lose the ability to “other” the
> stranger, the other culture or religion. In not acting forcefully, we
> harmonize with Harmony itself. War and strive are, in this
> understanding, not an implication of nature, but of society,
> tradition, blind obedience, socially awakened desires, fads,
> compromises of self-interest, competition, mutual exclusion, and the
> clash of force and counter-force. It is not law and order that
> guaranty peace, but, on the contrary, the anarchy of moving
> harmony. It is not determination of rightness, but the relativity of
> living together in concrete circumstances in which the Dao becomes
> the event of peace. Peace arises “self-so” (ziran) not by acting, but be
> letting be (wu wei) of any presupposed concept and the division that
> it would induce.126 This is the meta-theme of the Laozi; this is the way
> of the Dao: “The Dao/Way that can be dao-ed/walked is not the
> constant Dao/Way. The name/language that can be named/
> spoken/expressed is not the constant name/language.”127
> 
> If we were to penetrate deeper into the spirit of the Chinese
> relationship between the three great traditions, Daoism,
> Confucianism, and Buddhism, it would be at this point that we could
> find a hint enlightening the very fact that there were never religious
> wars between them. While quarrels always arose were respective
> representatives of these traditions were self-involved with political
> interests and powers over the centuries of their coexistence and
> interaction, these conflicts never amounted to the religious wars
> raging between the Abrahamic religions and the various factions
> within them, leaving trails and rivers of blood in the western
> chronicles of history to this very day.128 It is the interconnectedness
> of this relativity of the Dao in all things that resonated with the
> Mahayana notion of co-origination or dependent co-arising (pratitya-
> samutpada); and it is the relativism of withholding the attachment to
> fixed norms that mirrors Buddhist detachment in the same way that
> the Daoist insight of the constructedness and impermanence of any
> social structure as well as any desire created by social interaction
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                51
> 
> resonates deeply with the attitude of overcoming impermanence by
> such detachment.129 Since this attitude is one of peace, it can only be
> found in the heightening and refinement of the perception of the
> harmonies in the flowing multiplicity of happenings that constitute
> any situation and world, much like the coincidence of detachment
> and compassion in Buddhism.130
> 
> Another Daoist insight strengthens this impression. The eternal or
> constant Dao, since it follows no rule besides interconnectedness and
> harmonization of opposites, is itself bare of interest or self-
> existence.131 The Dao is empty (wu), like the ultimate reality in
> Buddhism, nirvana, the state beyond being and non-being, or
> dharmakaya, the Dharma-body of the Buddha, the transcendent
> Wisdom of emptiness of all phenomena (sunyata).132 The Dao is not a
> being, but nothingness (wuji), and as such it is the mother of all
> things (taiji).133 “The Dao is both Named and Nameless / As Nameless,
> it is the origin of all things / As Named, it is the mother of all
> things.”134 In fact, all happenings (daos) are empty (wu), that is, again
> correlative to Buddhism, impermanent, changing, related to all other
> daos, and spontaneous (creative).135 There are infinitely many daos
> and the world is their infinite movement without beginning and end.
> 
> The relativistic ethic of Daoism, then, imprints on its adherents
> values of tolerance, cooperation, mutual understanding and peace. It
> instills on us136 the importance of non-violence: that it is better to be
> like water that collects itself at the lowest point and, in its patient
> letting be, is stronger in weakness than the force of a rock, which is
> formed by water.137 Furthermore, we are asked to always differentiate
> into more than two daos, that is, always to escape the dualism of
> opposition and strife.138 Finally, we are lured into becoming creative,
> that is, self-responsible, not to (blindly) follow traditional norms, but
> to always create new ways that escape oppositional thinking and
> acting.139 In this sense, we are reminded of many Bahá’í principles of
> non-oppositional unity and difference, mutuality and creative
> responsibility140 and may marvel in the fact that these insights
> appeared not late in any assumed spiritual maturation of humanity,
> but were already always there to be perceived and to be activated.141
> 52                                                   Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> 9. Resonances with the Bahá’í Faith
> Of the many resonances with the Bahá’í Faith, I will only name a
> few, the ones that immediately demonstrate the congruence of their
> intentions even while coming from vastly different cultures and
> times.142 First, the Dao, ultimate Reality, is a mystery, utterly
> unapproachable, beyond any category and expression of itself while
> all else is its expression — like the unknowable essence of the “(God)
> Beyond” (the utter divine transcendence as understood in the Bahá’í
> context) and the infinity of divine attributes that constitute the
> essence of all things (divine immanence) — all together faint
> expressions of the apophatic unmanifest Ultimate and the
> plurisingularity of the manifest God (Primal Manifestation, Mind,
> Will, Spirit, Word, Light).143 Both the Dao’s apophatic and manifest
> “oneness” is like unto that of the Bahá’í understanding, while on the
> vastly different background of Islamic thought, namely, not a
> number, a one, and not any “form” of identity such as an self-
> identical being or of any “character” of sameness.144 In this sense, the
> Reality (al-haqq) of the Dao is “empty” (wu) of secondary
> differentiations, abstractions and projections.145 Like the central
> Islamic term for the unity of God, tawhid, the Dao is inexpressible,
> beyond (any limiting notion of) oneness and multiplicity alike,146 but
> — other than purely iconoclastic readings of this unity — out of its
> generosity their “friend.”147 The Dao is like unto the Godhead beyond
> any attributes (or indifferent from them in their infinity)148 and,
> hence, beyond any “kinds” of opposites, divisions, and divides.149 Yet,
> it also seeks to overcome such opposites — which is the secret of the
> first message of Bahá’u’lláh at the first Ridvan: that there is only
> unity if it realizes itself (or we let it realize itself) beyond strive and
> war.150 And the Dao is spontaneous, without reason creating and
> letting everything create their reality from the infinity of “divine”
> immanence in everything.151 The Dao/ Reality is always manifesting
> as and in renewal. “For if God speaks a word today that comes to be
> on the lips of all the people, before and after, that word will be new,
> if you only think about it.”152
> 
> Second, the Daoism of Laozi engenders in us153 the ancient
> knowledge of the relativity of religious truth that the Bahá’í Faith
> made its central conviction.154 “Our” dao is relative to the exigencies
> of the time;155 it expresses itself differently in different minds;156 and
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                 53
> 
> it reflects the unique mixture of attributes one realizes from its
> infinity in one’s “character” (of persons, times, cultures, religions)157
> — much like the contextual relativity of revelations and their finite
> reception by any peoples as related by Bahá’u’lláh.158 “The
> conceptions of the devoutest of mystics, the attainments of the most
> accomplished amongst men, the highest praise which human tongue
> or pen can render are all the product of man — finite mind — and are
> conditioned by its limitations” [GWB #26].
> Third, in relation to the so-called principles of the Bahá’í Faith,159
> we find the Laozi to inculcate similar or resonant spiritual and
> ethical, social and political impulses.160 To follow the universally
> harmonizing Dao, one must become empty of Self (wu) and in letting
> go become a universal person receptive to the flow of things,
> perceptive of the whole world at any moment.161 One must learn to
> relate harmoniously one to the other and everything, and try to
> engage any situation from a non-oppositional and creative
> perspective that avoids, overcomes, or mitigates oppositions. In this
> context, opinions only become relevant if they are mutually
> justifying their differences, that is, if they employ the movement of
> unity (of differences) into a peaceful future.162 Further, one should
> not imitate any social norm just because of its constancy within
> certain traditions or because it is held up by any social, cultural,
> political, or religious authority. Rather, one should begin to think,
> see, perceive and act from one’s own insight into one’s
> interconnectedness with everything and everyone in every situation.
> One should also avoid prejudices, as they are nothing but stabilized
> oppositions locking us into our thoughts, language and habits that
> again force destruction, superiority and supersession to arise.163 The
> most basic impulse of the Laozi is the “ecological” unification of the
> whole world, not just of humanity,164 into one movement of a
> multiplicity, that is, the manifold of interrelated daos/ways in which
> religions, cultures, and humanity in their diversity are related as one
> movement of peace.165 One is immediately reminded of ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá’s allegory of the diverse beauty of a garden as an ecological
> image of unity and interconnection. Here mutual relatedness and
> peaceful differentiation, complexity and beauty become measures of
> unity and peace.166 To follow the Dao means to live without any fixed
> way, always anew, always engaged in an evolving mindscape of peace
> that is already the ultimate reality of the movement toward itself.167
> 54                                               Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Fourth, from the aforementioned points it may have become clear
> that unity is valued higher that the particular claim of truth of/for
> oneself over (and against) others or the particular importance of ones
> actions and thought over (and against) others. As perceiving truth is
> related to different situations, limitations, and the manifold of
> realizations of the attributes of reality, so is practicing truth also
> always already a matter of situatedness and receptiveness.168 To seek
> unity through communication or consultation is the “natural” way to
> go, that is, a way that overcomes the poisonous creations of desires
> in societies, as is the fact that such processes of harmonization will
> emphasize the minorities among themselves since such
> harmonizations can never be suppressive of differences, but must
> highlight them in a manifold of togetherness by which unity is
> enriched.169 Therefore, difference is essential to any deep
> understanding of unity170 and has priority over “being right” — much
> like Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teach.171
> 
> Nevertheless, Daoism provides its challenges for a Bahá’í
> understanding of religious unity and equality. The question is, for
> instance, how (or even whether) we can find a space “within” the
> coordinate system of a universe of discourse that has (not necessarily
> originated, but) mostly developed in the western or at least
> Abrahamic context, or better: how to expand and transform this
> coordinate system so as to allow for unity on the basis of a more
> universal equality?172 In fact, Daoism challenges us to constantly
> remain aware of the limitations of such traditional molds of
> understanding the depth of its intention and message.173 We note that
> the vast Daoist universe of discourse in its internal diversity and
> complexity, and its multiplicity of sources and dimensions, is not
> bound by categories of revelation or prophetic establishment, any
> necessarily personal notion of God or an ultimate Reality conceived
> as God at all.174
> 
> Although Daoist explications of existence can occasionally
> approximate some of the Abrahamic categories with the implied
> worldview of a history of divine interaction with the world and
> humanity and a soteriology that wants to liberate humanity from its
> predicament (Heilsgeschichte),175 note also that it is not primarily
> interested in such a framework, but rather rests on wisdom of self-
> cultivation, critical of habitual sedimentations, and living with
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                55
> 
> “nature” (ziran, self-so) more than with any Godhead.176 And we note
> also that there is the radical social criticism and (epistemological and
> ontological) relativism regarding constructions of power and an
> equally anarchic perspective on the movement of the world from
> spontaneity, rather than any fixed order; there is no eternal law to
> follow, except the apophatic movement of harmonization.177 The
> Daoist watchword is creativity (or spontaneity) in which everything
> else is enfolded.178 Hence, we, from a receptive Bahá’í context of
> listening, will only make progress in appreciating even this seeming
> “strangeness” (of non-theism, non-controlling and –controlled order
> of creativity, of spontaneous happenings, of radical immanence of
> ultimate reality in the cosmic movements) as expression of
> philosophical communication and religious oneness179 when we learn
> to understand all of these terms in a different way, namely, on their
> own background: that of the eternal becoming of harmonies.180 In
> this context, historical progress is nothing compared with the insights
> of the cyclical workings of the universe.181 And this approach shows
> itself even in the fact that ancient sages could develop notions of a
> universal civilization of peace that defies any simple understanding
> of progression.182
> 
> The implications for a fruitful (interreligious) conversation will be
> far-reaching, beyond any specific engagement with a specific wisdom
> tradition, but we may learn a great deal from the unique feature of
> the Daoist universe of discourse and spirituality. If we, for instance,
> recognize and acknowledge that the Dao De Jing indicates a major
> milestone in (and for) the development of a world civilization,183 the
> fact that it has (yet) to become a consciously perceived, even if
> unconsciously already permeating, part of the universal unity of
> religions projected in the Bahá’í universe of discourse will lead to the
> question, how this (compared with other religious traditions) relative
> absence of sustained reflections and dialogues, acknowledging,
> engaging, and even integrating its contributions, maybe transformed
> into the structuring of a future, developed Bahá’í self-consciousness
> of having fulfilled and sublimated (or even subsumed) all such earlier
> endeavors as their culmination?184 Hopefully, future realizations of
> unity and difference in the spirit of receptivity and mutuality,
> especially from the Bahá’í perspective, will show.185 The profound
> challenge that the contrasted differences and resonances, especially in
> the reception of the Dao De Jing, provide if they are engaged in a
> 56                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> spirit of unity may be that we will want to accept, or even love,186 the
> insight that the unity of religions can never be understood, or merely
> achieved, as a fixed state, but must always (anew) be performed in
> processes of profound mutual contrasting.187 We shall (and will want
> to) seek mutuality with the “other” and one another,
> contemporaneously and diachronically, allowing for surprising
> supplementations of the known by the unknown; and we must (and
> will always want to) be ready to be enriched by future and past
> contributions,188 from wherever they arise.189 Mutual respect and
> learning are not just practical virtues, then, but divine characteristics
> of a “unity in multiplicity”190 that the Bahá’í reading of its own
> tradition and of the signs of the world, its predicaments, pressing
> issues, and diagnoses of illness needs to unfold as it unfolds itself.
> Maybe the contributions of the Dao De Jing (among other classics of
> Chinese philosophical, and wisdom, and religious traditions), as it
> speaks surprisingly with a fresh and current voice today, may not
> only contribute to the colors of the garden of truth and a future
> civilization of peace, but also, with its holistic, yet processual view
> of all spheres of human life, from individual and social virtues to
> ecological and cosmic integrity, uniquely color their realization.
> 
> 10. Is Laozi a “Lost Prophet”?
> After these short approximations to and glimpses in to the nature
> and relevance of Daoism, Laozi and the Dao De Jing in their
> contributions for the foundation of Chinese civilization,191 if not
> human civilization, their importance for the Bahá’í universe of
> discourse, and from a current global consciousness of interreligious
> conversations for a future civilization of peace, I can now address a
> question that has lingered beneath these considerations all along.
> Given everything mentioned above, of resonance between one of the
> oldest living religions and wisdoms on this earth and the Bahá’í Faith,
> one of the youngest religions: what should we think of Laozi and the
> Laozi in a Bahá’í universe? How can this sage and this book be related
> to the scheme of cyclical revelation throughout the history and
> becoming of humanity as embraced and expounded by the Bahá’í
> universe?192 Could we think of Laozi in terms of, or at least similar
> to, a Manifestation, such as (or much like) the Buddha and Jesus? And
> if not, how do we understand the fascinating congruencies between
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                              57
> 
> these profound religious traditions, bridging several thousands of
> years, if one of them were not to be considered to be authorized by
> “divine inspiration” or “revelation,” but derives from “nature” the
> common essential ingredients of a divine, human, religious and
> universal unity and a peace for which the Bahá’í Faith stands?193 The
> Bahá’í writings give us very few hints as to the station of Laozi and
> his namesake book. Of course, as already mentioned, the general rule
> of Bahá’u’lláh that all religions reflect one apophatic divine source,
> would imply that Daoism is (and has itself proven to be) a true
> religion so that we would be justified to spiritually understand and
> revere its scriptures,194 especially the Laozi, and consider them in
> some meaningful sense as a “revelation” of the mystery beyond
> names.195 But even if so, we are in a more precarious situation as the
> Bahá’í writings seem, at the same time, to deny Laozi the status of a
> Manifestation or Prophet, minor or major. “Regarding Lao-Tse,”
> Shoghi Effendi writes, “The Bahá’ís do not consider him a prophet, or
> even a secondary prophet or messenger, unlike Buddha or Zoroaster,
> both of whom were divinely-appointed and fully independent
> Manifestations of God.”196 Conversely, it is interesting to note that
> both the Muslim Ahmediyyah community and the Vietnamese Cao
> Dai religion (originating in the same general timeframe) accept Laozi
> as divine Manifestation, much like the Buddha.197
> 
> However, despite Shoghi Effendi’s statement that Bahá’ís don’t
> know of Laozi as a Manifestation, we cannot (on its own and by its
> singular status) be sure what this statement actually includes or
> excludes. Considering the stunning synergies between Daoism and the
> Bahá’í Faith — not forgetting that Daoism is a valuable and important
> dialogue partner in the interreligious dialogues worldwide today, but
> also that such a dialogue is what Bahá’u’lláh has asked us to pursue198
> — we seem at least to owe ourselves, and for the purpose of the
> imperative to pursue universal religious dialogue, the effort to
> understand as much as possible the coordinates that would allow us
> to explore the relationship the Bahá’í writings can invite us to
> establish with Laozi and his book, the Dao De Jing. I understand this
> situation as an appeal to create a tentative and open framework in
> which it becomes possible and fitting actually to pursue such
> relationships, practically, in spiritual community, but also in
> reflection on the potentials of mutual consciousness and insight
> inherent in such a universal religious community.199 Such an approach
> 58                                                Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> could maybe begin with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá’s wise instruction to engage
> with the Chinese religious, spiritual and philosophical mind and heart,
> and its sages and scriptures: “imbued with their spirit; know their
> sacred literature; …and speak to them from their own standpoint, and
> their own terminologies.”200 So, here are, from my understanding of
> the potentials such an approach could have for the Bahá’í universe of
> discourse, eight theses for an open framework of mutual
> interreligious communication, pondering on why maybe, or maybe
> why not, and in what sense the sage Laozi (and his book) might be
> considered a mirror of the Sun of Truth. Yet, as such a space of
> potential differentiations is not meant to define a specific outcome,
> a definitive answer, it rather wants to envision and tentatively walk
> through a field of perceptivity in which the concept of
> Manifestations (and its relation to religious communities and their
> truth claims) can shine in its fascinating complexity for further
> interreligious investigations in general.
> 
> Thesis 1: Laozi was a holy soul, influenced by the
> Buddha
> 
> According to this thesis, which is occasionally ventilated in Bahá’í
> reflections on the matter, Laozi is not a Manifestation or Prophet in
> the Bahá’í sense, but a holy and pure soul who, like Confucius,201 was
> under the influence of another (acceptable) Manifestation, namely
> the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. This view is partly based on the
> understanding of the reflectivity of the Logos/Will/Mind of God,
> the primordial Manifestation of Divinity, in creation and through the
> pure and stainless souls of the Prophets, the Manifestations proper,202
> who again reflect their reality in holy souls that would always rise in
> the wake of the revelation of a new Manifestation, either
> contemporarily or in the span of their dispensational force field.203
> Like the apostles of Christ, Laozi would be a reflection of the Sun of
> Truth that appeared “in” the (wake of the) Manifestation of the
> Buddha, who again is the primordial reflection of the Self of God
> (which again is the primordial Manifestation of the apophatic
> ultimate “Reality Beyond”).204
> 
> While such a solution allows us to recognize connections between
> the accepted (known) Manifestations in the Bahá’í context and many
> holy figures or sages during the centuries, appearing in relation or in
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                59
> 
> parallel to these prophetic figures,205 much like the prophetic figures
> of the Mosaic dispensation (after and under the umbrella of Moses),
> it is also fraught with several serious problems. First of all, Daoism is
> older than Buddhism. It cannot without grave limitations be
> understood to have arisen in the wake of Buddhism.206 At least
> traditionally, Laozi lived before the Buddha — a problem that this
> solution shares with the question whether or not Confucius was a
> Manifestation, who also lived before the Buddha and who
> traditionally was thought to have visited Laozi and accepted him as
> his teacher.207 Even if the traditional chronology may not hold up to
> historical scrutiny, as we may assume that the legendary sage Erh
> (Laozi) might have lived in the 5th century B.C.E. while the Laozi was
> created or compiled between the 4th and the 2nd century B.C.E., the
> main counter argument still remains, namely, that Daoism is older
> than Buddhism. However, even if this was not the case, we must not
> forget that Buddhism entered China only at the time of the Han
> dynasty between the late 3rd and the 1st century B.C.E., long after
> both the alleged lifetime of Laozi and the creation of the Dao De
> Jing.208 We must also take into consideration that it was the Daoist
> substrate that facilitated the survival of Buddhism in China while it
> was disappearing in India over the next centuries either by being
> reappropriated into Hinduism or by being eradicated by Islamic
> occupation.209 Moreover, it was mediated through Daoism and
> especially through Laozi and the Laozi that Buddhism developed into
> new and important branches, which became influential and are still
> with us today, not only in East Asia, but also in America and Europe
> (for instance, Chan, Hua Yen, Tian Tai, and other forms of Mahayana
> Buddhism); and so was Zen enfolding a synthesis with Daoist streams,
> perpetuating its inherent influence worldwide to this day.210 Hence,
> the assumption of a movement of influence opposite to the proposed
> thesis is not only more probable regarding origins and historical
> development, but also on the symbolic level as Laozi in later Daoism
> was understood to have been the teacher of the Buddha, and the
> Buddha was even proclaimed the return of Laozi.211
> 60                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Thesis 2: Laozi was a sage, transmitting an older
> Chinese “revelation”
> 
> There are, in fact, in Chinese cultural memory indications of
> mythical figures who have been considered the founders of Chinese
> culture or even humanity such as the divine Yellow Emperor and the
> figure of Fu Xi, a legendary emperor and mythological author of the
> ancient Yi Jing who is considered somewhat similar to the
> mythological Adam of biblical heritage (which to mythological
> consciousness also appeared to be historical).212 The reason to think
> in this way in a Bahá’í perspective would be that, if we rule out thesis
> 1, namely, that the Buddha is the “origin” and overarching force field
> for the emergence of Laozi, we might think of Laozi as the mirror or
> companion of an older Chinese Manifestation of which we have lost
> record.213 The Bahá’í writings expect that every culture would have
> had their Manifestations even before the ones known today. In fact,
> Shoghi Effendi partly justifies his reluctance to widen speculation to
> other than the recorded figures named in the scriptural Bahá’í
> writings on this basis: that we have lost knowledge of older
> dispensations distributed throughout humanity and human pre-
> history.214 They could, as Bahá’u’lláh says, have been the instigators
> of humanity’s cultural development in these older times, but were
> living, for instance, before writing could have preserved their
> memory.215 Hence, it would make sense to postulate such a prophetic
> figure, which then would be the force field of revelation “in” which
> Laozi represents another mirror of rejuvenation or exploration.
> 
> What may count against this thesis, however, is the overwhelming
> evidence that it was not such an ancient figure of the unremembered
> past, but Laozi himself who was seen as the initiator of
> (philosophical) Daoism (Dao Jia), and who, in the further
> development of Daoism as a religion (Dao Jiao) in the first
> millennium C.E., began prominently to feature as divinity, even as
> one aspect of the highest Manifestations of ultimate reality in the
> Daoist understanding.216 This development should give us pause: It is
> in the figure of Laozi and his book that it is at least questionable that
> China had not developed any idea of Manifestations of divine
> “revelation” and produced scriptures of such revelations, because it
> was precisely with Laozi and the Laozi that, over the coming
> centuries, the idea of apophatic divinity, divine Manifestations of
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                               61
> 
> ultimate reality and scriptural revelation, have developed.217 In fact,
> Laozi became the “face,” that is, literally the Manifestation of the
> highest mystery of ultimate reality expressed in the conception of the
> “Three Pure Ones.” Of them, he is the “face” of mystery, himself
> often represented as holding “the book” (the Laozi) — uncannily
> mirroring the Bahá’í understanding of the High Prophets or
> Manifestations as being the “face” of the unknowable Godhead and
> the ones bringing “the book,” that is, not only a new scripture, but
> the “Law” of the dispensation that decides its pattern of living.218
> Not only can the origin of the “Three Pure Ones” be traced back to
> the Dao De Jing, as it understands the origin of all things to proceed
> from the apophatic One that becomes Two (Yin, Yang) and then
> Three (The Three Pure Ones) from which, consequently, all things
> flow.219 Moreover, within this logic of the Three-One, together with
> the apophatic One (Yuanshi Tianzun) and the Divine Treasure
> (Lingbao Tienzun), Laozi appears as “its” third aspect, the
> quintessence of the Way and Virtue (Daode Tienzun). The “face” of
> ultimate reality is none other than the divine Spirit of Laozi who,
> then, is nothing else but the human Manifestation of the Way (the
> universal Dao, ultimate reality) and all of “its” divine attributes or
> virtues.220
> 
> At this juncture, we may ask: What more and what other
> (additional) characteristics can we expect a Manifestation to exhibit
> to be called a Manifestation in a Bahá’í sense than being the very
> expression of ultimate Reality “in person” and bringing (revealing)
> “the book,” and being considered to have a human and a divine
> station and nature (rather similar to the development in
> Christianity,221 maybe even under influence of its Chinese expansion)?
> But then, contrarily, we can also ask whether there is any evidence
> that Laozi, or Confucius, for that matter, considered himself, or
> claimed to be, a Manifestation?222 As a final similarity we may also
> remember that this divine figure of Laozi, Lord Lao, was considered
> to undergo a rhythm of human appearances in a progression of
> revelations and Manifestations. Like the Reality of Bahá’u’lláh,
> Krishna and the Buddha, Laozi’s Reality (in Daoist scriptures) is
> understood to have come time and again into the world of humanity,
> even as the figure of the Buddha (but not confined to it) whom
> Bahá’ís consider as a genuine Manifestation.223 But then, again, as this
> cyclical scheme of the divine reality of Lord Lao, appearing in a
> 62                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> figure of another religions, was created under the pressure resisting
> Buddhist expansionism, it might not create a reliable argument for
> the cyclicity and return of Manifestations in a Bahá’í understanding
> either.224 What is more, despite the high station of Lord Lao, later
> developments in religious Daoism have not confirmed, or rather,
> shaded, the seeming importance of the divine figure.225
> 
> Thesis 3: Laozi was a “possible, but unknowable”
> Manifestation
> 
> Shoghi Effendi’s statement that Laozi is “not considered” a
> Manifestation in the Bahá’í context leaves space for an interpretation
> that takes into account the seeming conviction of the Guardian to
> not expand his interpretations of Bahá’í revelation beyond the
> boundaries of that which the texts actually say or give evidence for in
> his considerations when answering questions (thesis 2). It is quite
> often the case that we find in the corpus of Shoghi Effendi’s letters
> (or letters written on his behalf) that he cautions the questioner about
> that which on any specific issue can actually be known if one takes
> the Bahá’í scriptural texts as a basis: sometimes nothing can be
> known, because nothing can be found or inferred regarding a specific
> question or matter; sometimes the evidence is scarce and caution is
> necessary not to overstep the boundaries of interpretation into
> fantasy.226
> 
> If we can understand Shoghi Effendi’s statement regarding Laozi
> in this way, it would not mean a denial in principle, but it would
> rather indicate a factual impossibility to know whether Laozi was or
> was not a Manifestation since the Bahá’í scriptural sources do not
> indicate anything in either direction. On this view, all we can say is
> that the Bahá’í writings do not (as far as we know) mention Laozi
> either way. But given all the other criteria for discerning a
> Manifestation, as they eerily apply to Laozi and the Laozi (thesis 2),
> even if neither is mentioned in the canonical accounts, but since there
> is virtually no limitation to divine theophanies in the Bahá’í
> writings,227 Laozi may possibly be a Manifestation or be a “possible”
> Manifestation. Yet this estimation must remain an open question in
> the current context, not only because of the silence of Bahá’í
> scriptures, but rather since we cannot exclude that later
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                              63
> 
> Manifestations could clarify this matter and possibly refer to Laozi
> as such a Manifestation (thesis 6).
> 
> There is not much to say against such a thesis, except that we
> could ask the question what sense it would make to ponder the
> existence of a “possible” Manifestation of whom we cannot know
> factually whether s/he is one or not. I will come back to this question
> in thesis 5.
> 
> Thesis 4: Laozi was no Manifestation, because Laozi
> did not exist
> 
> Shoghi Effendi’s statement that Laozi should not be considered a
> Manifestation could also be understood as one in principle, that is, if
> it indicates a definitive knowledge that he was not a Manifestation.
> This would make sense if Laozi did never exist. In fact, more recent
> research has raised doubts regarding the historical existence of a
> singular figure named Laozi and, hence, of him being the author of
> the Dao De Jing. It is rather assumed that he was a “composite
> figure,” crystallizing a whole group of learned scholars of classical
> Chinese wisdom.228 We know that the Zhou dynasty under which
> Laozi is assumed to have lived was cultured enough to entertain an
> imperial library and to employ scholars and scribes, collectors of
> literature, philosophy, art and law, and who were advisors and
> guardians of traditional wisdom.229 Like many other anonymous texts,
> for instance of the Jewish wisdom literature (even the scriptural texts
> accepted in either the Hebrew Bible or diverse canonical versions of
> the Christian Old Testament), which are expected to be either
> collective endeavors of a group or received redactions over time,230
> we can reasonably assume a group of scribes, scholars and sages to
> have collected the ancient Chinese wisdom sayings in a book(or what,
> over time, became a condensed book) and by attaching it to one of
> the mythological or faintly historical figures, or still revered
> notables, remembered in Chinese history and named Laozi (as there
> are, in fact, more than one such figures related to our composite
> person Laozi).231 And we know of at least one such school to have
> been entertained for some time during the fourth century B.C.E. that
> was capable to either collect the Dao De Jing (or one of its early
> versions) or hold high its memory without knowing its origins, but
> accepting some traditional ascription to a mythical sage named Laozi
> 64                                                Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> who in the old sources was assumed to have been the one that
> Confucius had encountered in the search for some answers regarding
> the correct performance of ancestral rituals. In this case, we must
> still accept the acute relevance of the Laozi as a scriptural text of
> religious Daoism (in which the text unfolded) that Bahá’í should
> admire or revere, but without any knowable figure as its author. This
> would not be without precedence in the Bahá’í universe as it also
> accepts a Sabean/Sabian “revelation” of which we cannot even say
> exactly what group it represents (as different groups are indicated in
> different scriptural contexts), but of which we can definitely say that
> we have no idea of any founder, mythological or historical.232
> 
> Thesis 5: Laozi was an “incognito” Manifestation
> 
> Although it is a somewhat strange assumption, at first, that a
> Manifestation, which should be considered an educator of humanity,
> could be unknown to his or her contemporaries, there are indications
> in the Bábi-Bahá’í literatures that such a possibility is not a priori
> excluded or under all conditions meaningless. A Manifestation might
> decide not to be known by anyone. This assumption can be traced
> back to an intriguing Shi‘i theological speculation that there are not
> only known, but more often even unknown perfectly holy
> representatives of the Twelfth Imam or the Qa’im in the world233 —
> almost like the “hidden” (prachanna) Buddhas in Theravada
> Buddhism.234 In any case, the Báb did assume that it is a
> Manifestation’s decision if, when, and how to reveal him- or herself
> to the world, depending on the situation.235 What would happen if
> such a Manifestation decided not to reveal him- or herself? Would it
> not imply that this human figure was nevertheless a “hidden”
> Manifestation236 — because Bahá’í scriptures would not accept any
> mere assumption scheme such as could also be witnessed in a group
> of Christian (Ebonite) views that holds that Jesus “became” the Son
> of God by adoption and exultation?237 And wasn’t any Manifestation
> before his or her declaration a hidden Manifestation?238
> 
> But what could be the meaning of such hiddenness, as it seems to
> contradict the very reason why a messenger of divine enlightenment,
> revelation, and education of humanity is sent to appear?239 One
> reason may be found deeply embedded in the Báb’s and Bahá’u’lláh’s
> understanding of the nature of a Manifestation. In the words of the
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                 65
> 
> sixth Imam, both the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh repeat in their writings that
> the essence of divinity consists in (the substance that is) servitude.240
> Bahá’u’lláh also describes the divine “station” of the Manifestation in
> terms of such servitude, not only “in the court” (the presence) of God
> in which the Manifestation shows no self (ego) except the Self of
> God, but even more so in the world in which s/he appears.241 In other
> words, a Manifestation is a Manifestation regardless of whether s/he
> appears in the face of witnesses and can be experienced as a divine
> figure, a messenger or a prophet, or just as a mere human being, in
> his or her servitude as “merely” human being expressing his or her
> divinity as perfectly as would appear in any other (super-natural)
> impressions s/he might leave in the perception and understanding of
> humanity.242 Laozi might have been such a Manifestation, then, one
> of absolute servitude, being anonymous, even incognito.243 However,
> what counts against such a thesis in the case of Laozi is the fact that
> his anonymity could not have been absolute since Laozi, in fact, was
> known not only as a holy figure and sage, but even as a divinity,
> similar to the Christian development following the experience of
> Jesus’s exultation, explicating itself in the apotheosis of Christ (thesis
> 2).244
> 
> Thesis 6: Laozi was a “Manifestation” of Wisdom
> 
> The content of that which Bahá’ís may or may not consider a
> Manifestation is not as clear-cut as one might think at first glance.
> The first impression is that Manifestations are identical with the
> founders of religions, but limited to certain known figures of
> specific religions, such as the “nine” religions, which Bahá’í writers
> sometimes assume as “canonical” for the Bahá’í universe,245 namely,
> that of Sabianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism,
> Christianity, Islam, Bábism and the Bahá’í Faith.246 While it is true
> that Shoghi Effendi mentions those “nine” religions as the “only ones
> still existing,” he also avoids three possible reductionisms: first, that
> the number “nine” has a literal significance; second, that these are the
> only (true) religions associated with Manifestations, these
> Manifestations being the only ones; and, third, that this list is
> exhaustive of “true” religions.247 In particular, first, the “nine”
> represents the symbolic number of fullness for the Bahá’í Faith, the
> Abjad number of the name of Bahá’u’lláh (BHA’), reflecting the
> 66                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> essence of all Manifestations as mirrors of the one Splendor or Glory
> of God (thesis 7).248 Second, the often (in some combination)
> together and in association with some of the “nine” religions
> mentioned Manifestations, such as Krishna, Abraham, Moses,
> Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Báb, and Bahá’u’lláh249
> do in no way exhaust the Manifestations mentioned and assumed in
> the Bahá’í writings.250 Rather, as Shoghi Effendi immediately adds,
> there have always been Prophets and Messengers.251 In fact, the Báb,
> Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu'l-Bahá consistently assume an indefinite
> number of Manifestations.252 Third, as Shoghi Effendi emphasizes,
> the mentioned religions do not represent the only true religions,253
> but — maybe similar to the methodological restraints mentioned
> thesis 3 — could be understood as the ones existing as mentioned in
> the Bahá’í writings.254 This also derives from the fact that Bahá’u’lláh
> understands all religions to be divine in origin and nature.255
> 
> Yet, if one was tempted to assume any of these reductionisms — if
> the “nine” religions were to be taken literally — the “list” itself would
> demonstrates several grave flaws. To name just a few anomalies
> visible even from this reductionist outset: it would fail by suggesting
> that these different religious historical organisms were one (linear)
> chain of progressive revelations. These “nine” don’t form a simple
> timeline of progression, but imply parallel developments and
> crossings. Further, some of these religions are not named after a
> founder, actually have a founder, or attach to a figure that is the
> founder of the respective religion; they are religions in very different
> senses of the word.256 Finally, such a literalism would also miss the
> symbolic and spiritual character of the named religions as “the only
> ones existing” and begin to resemble an exclusivist determination of
> “true” religions. Shoghi Effendi avoids this danger, first, by
> clarifying that the “nine” should not be used to create the impression
> “of being all tied up with peculiar religious theories” and, second, by
> advising Bahá’ís “not … to be rigid in these matters,”257 but rather to
> take into account the historical and scholarly discussion on the
> number and identity of (what should be called) “existing” religions.
> These are all also important insights in the conversation with Daoism.
> 
> Another complication arises if we take a closer look at other
> figures related to Manifestations, such as the Hebrew prophets, or
> holy figures in other religions, such as the apostles in Christianity or
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                67
> 
> the Imams in Shi‘i Islam, as reflected in the Bábi-Bahá’í writings.258 As
> not all accepted (known) Manifestations are founders of religions,259
> so do not all holy figures appear automatically in a lesser rank than
> that of Manifestations. It is well known that the Báb began his
> revelatory writings connected to his declaration as the Gate of the
> Qa’im, eternalized in his mighty book, the Qayyum al-Asma, by
> identifying himself symbolically with the figure of the Hebrew
> patriarch Joseph who according to the Qur’an was considered a High
> Prophet and one of the most important figures of the Jewish
> dispensation in Islamic understanding.260 It is also well know that
> Bahá’u’lláh has, on occasion, identified the Báb with John the
> Baptizer who as Yahya was also a Qur’anic High Prophet with a
> book, that is, given Bahá’í criteria, a Manifestation.261 Bahá’u’lláh
> also identifies the Joseph of the Báb with himself and with the third
> Shi‘i Imam Husayn ibn ‘Ali, both offering their lives in the wake of
> divine demonstration of unconditional love (at least in Bahá’u’lláh
> understanding).262 On occasion, both Joseph and Imam Husayn
> appear in the same lineup with accepted Manifestations as if they
> were participating in this elevated station, but maybe only were
> anonymously manifest as such (Thesis 5).263 In other words, the Bábi-
> Bahá’í writings know of a host of other (maybe in some sense
> anonymous) “Manifestations” of the divine besides Manifestations in
> a technical sense, often named the “holy ones,” appearing in the series
> of Imams or the holy family, or in series of Manifestations, or with
> all their attributes in place of them, or even as identified with a
> named (known) Manifestation,264 or occasionally name them as
> Manifestations.265
> 
> In this context, it is also remarkable that the Báb in his Tafsir
> Hadith al-Haqiqat (and other tablets) names Fatimah, the daughter of
> the Prophet Muhammad and the wife of the first Shi‘i Imam ‘Ali ibn
> Abu Talib, the generative principle of all prophets — a function that
> seems to indicate a “station” that is in some sense even higher than
> that of the prophets.266 If we take also into account, as Henry Corbin
> has demonstrated, that the Shaykhi movement, which preceded the
> Báb and from which he recruited almost all of his early followers and
> “apostles,” the Letters of the Living, has considered Fatimah as the
> representation of divine Wisdom, we are in a whole new world of
> religious and philosophical as well as spiritual connotations.267
> Wisdom, hokmah in biblical understanding, indicates not just one
> 68                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> divine attribute among infinitely many others, but is singled out as
> one of the divine modes of immanence of the transcendent God in
> the world of creation. In the Hebrew Bible she appears in an elevated
> position in her function to indicate the presence of God’s Self in the
> world in the company of similarly elevated terms such as the Name
> (haShem), the Word (dabar), the Spirit (ruah), the Angel (malek), and
> Glory (kabod)268 — many of them, individually and collectively, also
> being used to indicate divine Manifestations in the Bahá’í writings.269
> In the biblical context, Wisdom represents, among other things, the
> aspect of the presence of the unfathomable God as the plan of
> creation, the wise order and reasonability of creation in the mind of
> God; God’s luring power, instead of coercive force, in the education
> of humanity in divine virtues; and the glory of God as she contracts
> herself in the tent of the covenant and wanders with the people as
> shekinah.270 It is this Wisdom that the Gospel of John refers to in its
> famous prologue as the Word (logos) that was in the beginning of all
> creation, is in all creation, and is God.271 It is the same Wisdom
> (hikmat) in which Bahá’u’lláh understands the world to be created;
> that in many of his tablets appears to indicate the nature of the
> Manifestations; and that allows us to understand creation as divine
> order and to penetrate its secrets with our mind (as its mirror).272
> 
> Nor does divine Wisdom figure only as the inspiration of
> prophets, but also of the sages and lovers of wisdom, that is,
> philosophers.273 It is not without merit to point to the fact that in
> light of Wisdom both of these categories — that of the prophet and
> of the sage — appear at times fused in past scriptures and the Bahá’í
> writings. A strong witness to this fusion presents itself in the biblical
> and intertestamentary Wisdom literature, which is itself not only
> viewed as inspired scripture, but highlights Wisdom as divine Spirit
> and plays the role of inspiration of prophets274 as well as that of the
> divine dimension, as identified in the figure of Christ.275 Moreover,
> as part of the Wisdom section of Hebrew Scriptures, the Book of
> Daniel features one of the most influential Jewish prophets as a
> sage.276 And Bahá’u’lláh identifies the symbolic figure of Hermes
> Trismegistus as the primordial exponent of philosophy, who was
> already traditionally thought to be the Jewish patriarch Enoch, the
> one exalted to God while alive,277 while also being identified with the
> Islamic prophet Idris.278 This will be further explored in thesis 7.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                               69
> 
> So, while one could hold that eastern religions tend to not
> entertain the concept of revelation and prophethood, but rather view
> their holy figures as sages and their insights as wisdom, one could also
> make a case that such sages live from the same Wisdom that generates
> the prophets as divine representatives. In this sense, Laozi could be
> understood as personification of this same Wisdom that flows
> through all prophets and holy figures regardless of their station as
> primal mirrors (thesis 3 and 5) or as mirrors of these mirrors (thesis 1
> and 2).279 In this perspective, it would be secondary to what the exact
> station of Laozi amounts if we accept that the Laozi is such a
> scripture of wisdom, shining with divine Wisdom (thesis 4); and even
> more so if we take into account the later Daoist interpretation of
> both the person and the book as Manifestations of ultimate reality
> (thesis 2). Yet, perhaps one may counter (and limit this thesis) by the
> fact that, in the Chinese context, if one does not follow the
> divinization of Lord Lao, Laozi is more naturally considered as a
> wisdom teacher than an “incarnation” of Wisdom.
> 
> Thesis 7: Laozi is a “symbolic” Manifestation
> 
> This thesis is based on the observation, already hinted at, that not
> all of the Manifestations, named in the Bahá’í writings, are either
> founders of religions (thesis 6) or, for that matter, even historical
> figures (thesis 4). This is especially true for Krishna, who is accepted
> as a genuine Manifestation in the Bahá’í context,280 but is neither a
> founder of Hinduism nor a historical figure, but probably similar to
> Laozi (thesis 4) a composite personality.281 There are as many
> “Krishnas” in the Indian records of old as there are “Laozis” in the
> Chinese records. Similarly, we find series of Manifestations in Bábi-
> Bahá’í literatures that include figures such as the biblical Adam and
> Noah besides the already mentioned ones, and they were already
> included in the Qur’anic series of prophets leading up to
> Muhammad.282 Similar to Fu Xi in the Chinese context (thesis 2), it is
> not difficult to agree that both Adam and Noah are not historical
> figures, but symbolic representations of the archetypical human
> condition in relation to (ultimate) reality at earlier stages of human
> development and consciousness.283 Nevertheless, if such figures are
> included in valid lists of Manifestations, we must either conclude
> that Manifestations do not necessarily have to be historical figures or
> 70                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> that they will always at least have to indicate a great existential
> symbolism of divine revolution in the history of evolution and
> civilization.284 In either case, history becomes not obsolete — such as
> in docetic renderings of the Christ event (recognizing only the
> archetype, but denying the scandal of particularity, embodiment and
> historicity)285 — but remains the very intention of this symbolic
> reality as it emanates from the spiritual realms into their
> materializations, and repeatedly so.286 In fact, with the return of one
> Manifestation “in” another one, the whole cyclical and progressive
> understanding of the symbolic “identity” of all Manifestations as
> expressions of the one Word, Wisdom, Glory, Mind, Will and Spirit
> of God becomes only intelligible if we assume such a symbolic reality
> as a profoundly spiritual Reality, as the very basis for any singular or
> cyclical or progressive materialization in history.287
> 
> Considering the symbolic character of the Manifestation as basis
> for any historization is not the same as making a mythological
> statement or transforming the concept of the Manifestation into a
> mythopoeic statement extracted from past religions. A mythological
> statement was meant to be (or was factually often misunderstood as)
> a literal rendering of an event of sacred history within the bounds of
> the causal connections of this material universe — something we
> would today consider literalism (thesis 6)288 — even if it looks from a
> current perspective like a paradigmatic rendering of deep realities.
> The symbolic character of Reality, however, is related to the fact that
> the spiritual nature of its meaning cannot be exhausted by material,
> causal, space-time relations without, in this collapse, in its very
> meaning becoming irrelevant to them (that is, the literal facts created
> in such a way have already lost the spiritual meaning). ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
> with the Sufi tradition, speaks of the higher spiritual realm of the
> Kingdom (malakut) sometimes in terms of the realm of similitudes
> (alam al-mithal), the realm of symbols, meanings, similarities, images,
> and significances, which are aspects of a higher reality than the
> fleeing causal realm of impermanence, but which are mutually
> immanent with and must be materialized and historicized at the plane
> of the physical, historical, temporal, spatial and bodily world.289 He
> also relates many doctrines of past religions to have been
> misunderstood as “mythological” truths, that is, as literal renderings
> of spiritual realities by confounding them with happenings of this
> causal realm of the physical universe. Instead, these stories of sacred
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                              71
> 
> history were, so ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, always meant to convey symbolic
> patterns of spiritual realities in the midst, but not of the stuff, of
> physical realities.290 It is their symbolism, not their mythopoetic
> confusion, which transports religious truths through symbols, myths,
> tales, which, in their spiritual nature, have the power to connect us
> with the divine revelation of Reality, or rather are the emanations of
> this Reality into the world of creation.
> 
> A good example of this difference between mythic illusion and
> symbolic meaning, or spiritual reality, in the Bahá’í writings is the
> appearance of Hermes Trismegistus and “his” writings, the Corpus
> Hermeticum, in Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of Wisdom (Lawh-i-Hikmat).
> Hermes is, according to contemporary historical readings, (like Laozi)
> considered a composite figure, not a historical person (thesis 4) —
> although sometimes (mythopoetic, literalist) historicity was assumed,
> as in the Renaissance. Like Krishna and Laozi, he “manifests” at
> different times in history, collecting himself to, and collectively
> emanating, characteristics of an archetypical figure of (philosophic)
> wisdom and of divine revelation. He represents the Egyptian God
> Thoth, the originator of scripture and language, and the Greek
> Hermes, the messenger of the revelations of the Greece pantheon, but
> also the Hebrew and Jewish figure of Enoch, who was supposed to
> have been assumed into the divine realm while alive. Hermes/Thoth/
> Enoch later also lent “their” name to this culminating Corpus, of
> scriptural and para-scriptural texts of apocalyptic nature,291 carrying
> “his” name, and advanced par excellence to the figure through whose
> mystical ascent into the presence of God its secrets were
> authorized.292 And, finally, in Islamic lore “he” became identified
> with the mysterious Qur’anic prophet Idris who was also already
> equated with the biblical Enoch (thesis 6).293 The Corpus Hermeticum
> is, of course, not an ancient text of those pre-historical figures, but
> was probably accumulated not earlier than the 1st century C.E.,
> although the ascription to Hermes and Enoch lets it appear to have
> been created at the beginning of human civilization. Its enormous
> impact was not only due to its assumed old age and the authorship of
> this presumably exceptional holy figure of divine origin or touch, but
> can also be explained by the variability with which the presumed
> authorship (and authority) could be identified with figures from
> different cultures, embracing a divinity, a prophet, a philosopher,
> and a revealer of divine truth in its sphere.294
> 72                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Comparing Laozi with Hermes, at this point, we can decide to
> dissolve Laozi like Hermes/Enoch/Idris into irrelevant clouds of
> mythological confusion or view them as actual philosophers, or
> actual prophets of old, or, conversely, in the contemporary climate
> of “demythologization,” as imaginations based on a fraud of a later
> generation ascribing an old name with authority to a respective
> corpus of writings that, nevertheless, stun us even today because of
> their beauty and depth of insight. Over against all of these potential
> solutions, we could also decide to follow Bahá’u’lláh’s view of
> Hermes and understand Laozi, like Hermes/Enoch/Idris, as such a
> symbolic “Manifestation” of an ideal prophet-philosopher, educator,
> and revealer of Wisdom — conveying spiritual archetypical Reality
> regardless of the folds that formed the cooperate identity of the
> figure through which this reality shines as Sun of Truth (thesis 3 and
> 6).
> 
> Furthermore, the fused figure of a prophet-philosopher (thesis 6),
> whether symbolic or historical (or at least as perceived in sacred
> history), is not an unusual category of human societies to understand
> their extraordinary figures to be relevant across diverse cultures.
> Historical figures like Pythagoras were considered not only
> philosophers (and scientists), but spiritual giants, gathering religious
> communities among themselves, being quintessential human beings,
> incarnations of Wisdom and knowledge, and even divine figures. So
> could the Roman poet Ovid divinize Pythagoras as all-knowing sage
> of universal, super-mundane wisdom.295 Insofar as other philosophers
> are understood — traditionally in Islam and also by Bahá’u’lláh —
> spiritually to have gained their wisdom from the prophets, such as
> Pythagoras from disciples of Salomon, for instance,296 and vive versa,
> and insofar as such philosophers can be understood as being inspired,
> as Bahá’u’lláh suggests for Socrates,297 we can discern the same
> pattern: Wisdom flows from divine Wisdom that/who in all prophets
> constitutes their “person,” who, therefore, are her highest
> incarnations, but of a Wisdom that/who also distributes herself
> among (or is being mirrored in) other extraordinary figures of
> holiness, mystical insight (irfan), philosophical reason and spiritual
> wisdom. Laozi, considered as divine personification of Wisdom, is no
> exception — whether he was a composite personality, a (symbolic or
> historical) divine mirror, a holy sage or Wisdom’s “Manifestation.”
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                  73
> 
> Thesis 8: Laozi’s station is (now) irrelevant
> 
> As with every Manifestation in the context of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> revelation we can, on this view, assume that they all have been
> integrated in their greatness into the greatness of Bahá’u’lláh who is
> called a “universal Manifestation,” unprecedented in human history
> on earth until now (and maybe never seen before even in unrecorded
> human pre-history).298 Consequently, whatever the exact station of
> anyone of any dispensation — even if such a station seem to lower
> from one dispensation to another, as in the case of John the Baptizer,
> or changes into divinity over time, as in the case of Krishna, the
> Buddha, Jesus, and Laozi (thesis 6)299 — has become irrelevant in light
> of the newest Manifestation; the past has been made new.300 It is in
> line with this pattern of thought that the Báb, the more he gradually
> revealed his claim to that of a Manifestation, also granted
> outrageously grades of divinity to his disciples,301 while Bahá’u’lláh,
> conversely, by his declaration to be the coming of the One God Shell
> Make Manifest (man yaziruhu’llah) — whom the Báb expected being
> even greater as the Bab himself,302 the Manifestation in which all
> religions flow together (again) — resumed all distributed divinity back
> into the singular universal event of his appearance. It is in this event
> that the whole world was created anew by a divine infusion with all
> the divine attributes, with grace, mercy, forgiveness, and renewal.303
> Symbolically, that is, considered as spiritual reality (thesis 7), with the
> coming of a new Manifestation all creatures expire, are inhaled, as it
> were, and are, out of this moment of divine inhalation of the Spirit
> and into silence, exhaled again, recreated. Through this event, all
> reality is being born again into a new process that erases all ancient
> stations and recreates them anew in unexpected ways into
> unprecedented forms.304 If in the new revelation on the spiritual level
> only the “face” of God remains, that is, the primordial Manifestation
> resuming all reality, then its symbolic re-presentation is always such
> that it does not matter what anyone’s station was before its new
> appearance, except it is newly defined by its relation to this novel
> event by which all is recreated.305 All stations, even of all past
> Manifestations, are, therefore, in a sense redefined by the new event
> of a universal Manifestation. On this view, it does not really matter
> what station Laozi has had.306 It is in the connection that one finds to
> Bahá’u’lláh in which one may also find Laozi’s relevance today,
> reverberating through his Dao De Jing in new splendor. “Now is the
> 74                                                 Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> time,” says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “when we restrict our discussion to the
> Most Great Luminary of Peace and Salvation in the Age, to talk of
> the Blessed Perfection and to voice His exhortations, behests and
> teachings. … [The] sovereignty [of former Manifestation] in this
> world is ended and their cycle is completed” [SWAB 469].
> 
> 11. The Dao of Bahá
> In conclusion, what is the challenge of Laozi and the Dao De Jing
> for the Bahá’í universe of discourse? Sure, we might have enough to
> work through with the host of diverse correspondences and
> differences in detail as developed up to this point — such as the
> resonances in the understanding of the unmanifest and hidden as well
> as the manifest and creative ultimate divine reality; the relativity of
> (religious) truths; the striving for education and perfection of human
> potential in light of this ultimate reality and its exemplars; the effort
> to liberate us from empty repetition of traditions and manipulations
> of social and psychological dependences; the mutual resonances of
> the respective Manifestations of Reality/ Dao in wise and prophetic
> figures; and the effort to reform human society in light of the whole
> of humanity and with universal peace as aim, among others. Yet, a
> maybe even deeper dimension of fruitful cross-pollination may come
> to light only if we reformulate the assumption regarding the unity of
> religions, which was underlying the whole conversation all along,
> namely: in form of a reflection on the one universal Dao of all
> religions as the Dao of bahá, of the latest Manifestation of the Dao,
> of ultimate Reality in “person.”
> 
> If the many books and reflections beginning with “the Dao of…”307
> have brought something to light, then it is the insistence on a certain
> shift of our perception of reality as a whole, a shift of the worldview,
> the cosmology that is more often than not tacitly presupposed in our
> day by day evaluation of our lives and in some sense or another
> underlies any philosophical and religious discourse, and so also the
> ones reflected on here. The mathematician and philosopher Alfred
> North Whitehead has made this insight the basis of his philosophical
> investigations308 so that by knitting together the major spheres of
> thought     (science,   religion    and   philosophy)309      he   could
> programmatically proclaim: “Science suggested a cosmology; and
> whatever suggests a cosmology, suggest a religion.”310 The emphasis in
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                75
> 
> such a correlation and mutual induction of these spheres on the level
> of a cosmology, whether implicit or as a reflected worldview of any
> scientific and religious discourse and their mutual integrations, is to
> recognize not only the unity of humanity and religions (with its/their
> Manifestations) in the unity of God. The true nature of unity as
> envisioned by the Dao of Laozi and the Dao De Jing is of
> encompassing cosmological breadth that intends nothing less than the
> unity of the whole “body of the world”311 as pervaded by the one
> divine Spirit that vivifies the universe in a process of the emergence
> of mind and the various evolutionary harmonizations of its members
> throughout all of its spheres and layers of existence.312 The Dao, then,
> translated in Bahá’í terms, is this all-embracing and all-pervading
> Reality of the Spirit, the working of its essence in all of nature,
> including elementary particles, living beings and humanity.313 This
> one Spirit pervades the All of cosmic reality.314 To see in the diversity
> of cosmic existence this unity of beauty and the evolving force of
> unification315 is to feel or see or experience or perceive or inherit the
> unseen and unnamed Dao/Reality, and is to become a mirror of its
> all-pervasive working.316 Human perfection, then, lies not in the
> flight from the world of nature, but in the realization of all divine
> attributes, which are seeking realization in all of existence,317 not
> only among humanity and society, but also in all of nature, our
> precious Earth and the cosmos as a whole. The Dao is this inner
> nature (ziran) that unites all of existence, physical and mental,
> subjective and objective, individual and collective, personal and
> social, visible and invisible, sacred and profane, material and
> spiritual, and is always already present and at work in the process of
> becoming, the becoming of new worlds and new spiritual beings,
> even beyond humanity.318 Yet, of course, as practitioners of Daoism
> can and will claim their own understanding of these matter,
> historically, philosophically, and religiously — and especially in the
> context of Chinese self-identity, which does not so much discern
> between the “Three Traditions” than identify with them — these
> references for a contemporary Bahá’í perception, reception and
> dialogue will remain in flux.319
> 
> It is, then, in this wide view of cosmic unity in which the Dao of
> Laozi reclaims a “face” in the “Dao” of Bahá’u’lláh. In this universal,
> evolutionary, ecological Dao, universal Reality (the primal
> Manifestation of the apophatic Reality/God/Truth) becomes, indeed,
> 76                                                          Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> relative in all of its happenings and truths/daos far beyond particular
> religions, even particular spiritual beings, such as humanity; it
> becomes relative to all sentient beings beyond humanity (as in
> Buddhism); and it becomes implicitly always already related to the
> whole of existence as one process of divine Reality or Realization.320
> In this universal ecological model of unity, the Dao speaks for all
> beings and in all beings with one voice, a univocity of infinitely many
> voices.321 In a pluralism of all beings on their respective levels of
> intensity of the flow of the one Most Great Spirit,322 “its”
> Manifestations give voice to this univocity “in person.”323
> 
> N OTES
> Cf. Ninian Smart, The World’s Religions. Cambridge: Cambridge
> University Press, 1998, chs. 1, 3.
> Cf. Arvind Sharma, A Primal Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion.
> Dordrecht, NL: Springer 2006, 1-32.
> Cf. Eva Wong, Taoism: An Essential Guide. Boston: Shambala, 1997, ch. 1.
> As we will see later, in section 10, this claim must be relativized in relation
> to its historical accuracy, as it the circumstances for the identity the
> person and the becoming of the book are quote complicated.
> Cf. Alan Watts, What is Dao? Novato, CA: New World Library, 2000, 36.
> Cf. Dann May, “The Bahá’í Principle of Religious Unity,” in Jack McLean,
> ed., Revisioning the Sacred: New Perspectives in Bahá’í Theology. Los
> Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1997, 1-36.
> Although a wider shamanic religiosity may have been pervasive throughout
> the different pre-historic cultural areas, the emergence of Chinese
> religions or Daoic religiosity is not in any direct way dependent on the
> Indian and South Asian or Dharmic traditions and in its origins and
> further developments always demonstrates its own unique characteristics.
> Nevertheless, in the later confluence of these streams of religious
> universes diverse daoic schools and religious expressions, Daoism among
> them, with Indian Buddhism has led to transferences of categories and
> mutual synergies such as have contributed to the appearance of Chan and
> Zen Buddhism and other confluences of the Dao with philosophical and
> religious connotations in these encounters. Cf. Ray Grigg, The Tao of
> Zen. Edison, NJ: Alva Press, 1994. More will be said in sections 8 and 10.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                         77
> 
> Cf. Moojan Momen, “A Bahá’í Approach to Other Religions: The Example
> of Buddhism,” in Moojan Momen, ed., The Bahá’í Faith and the World’s
> Religions. Oxford: George Ronald, 2003, 167-188.
> Cf. Seena Fazel, “Interreligious Dialogue and the Bahá’í Faith: Some
> Preliminary Observations,” in Jack McLean, ed., Revisioning the Sacred:
> New Perspectives on a Bahá’í Theology. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1997,
> 137-152. This integration must, as all other unifications in the context of
> the understanding of “unity” in the Bahá’í writings, be seen in the tension
> between indelible uniqueness (‘ahad) and inclusiveness (wahid); cf. Rhett
> Diessner, Psyche and Eros: Bahá’í Studies in a Spiritual Psychology.
> Oxford: George Ronald, 2007, ch. 1. This oscillation between uniqueness
> and embracing unification is also enshrined in Shoghi Effendi’s two
> formulations: first, “unity in diversity,” which must not ever be mis-
> understood as uniformity, and second, the “complementarity” of religions
> in their contribution to the one history of religions; but even more so in
> the fact that the one religion, of which the Bahá’í Faith understands itself
> as a part, is an ongoing, always self-transcending process beyond any
> religion, even the Bahá’í Faith. Cf. Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of
> Bahá’u’lláh. Wilmette: IL, Bahá’í Publishing, 1993, sections “Unity in
> Diversity” and “Fundamental Principle of Religious Truth.” For the
> philosophical and transreligious implications, cf. Roland Faber, The
> Divine Manifold. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014, passim.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks: Addresses Given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1911.
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 2011, #14.
> This will have a great deal to do with the mystical consciousness that
> unites us with the unknowable mystery beyond; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, The Seven
> Valleys and the Four Valleys. Translated by Marzieh Gail. Wilmette, IL:
> Bahá’í Publishing, 1991, 91. In the Fourth Valley (of the Four Valleys) we
> read: “If the mystic knowers be of those who have reached to the beauty
> of the Beloved One (Maḥbúb), this station is the apex
> of consciousness and the secret of divine guidance.” This consciousness
> will also lead us into the heart of the Dao De Jing.
> Cf. Phyllis Chew, The Chinese Religion and the Bahá’í Faith. Oxford:
> George Ronald, 1993.
> Cf. Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton:
> Princeton University Press, 1963. While this influence of the Dao de Jing
> has created worldwide presence, this article will, of course, not claim to
> understand the historical situation of its becoming and transmission,
> especially in China and throughout Chinese culture and the “Chinese
> religions,” but will especially take into account the scholarly engagement
> with it, its history and becoming, as well as its contemporary
> interpretations in light of interreligious and cross-cultural philosophical
> discourses, which have taken place after its western academic reception,
> 78                                                        Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> but also the contemporary interreligious interest accompanying the
> interest in its content and meaning.
> Bahá’u’lláh uses the term haykal as embodiment of divine presence, which
> can assume the form of a literal or symbolic temple, the human body; or it
> indicates the heart, which is the place of divine revelation and presence in
> creatures. Revelation can, therefore, take the form of an embodied person
> or/and a “book,” that is, the prophet and his or her book. Cf. Bahá’u’lláh,
> Days of Remembrance: Selections from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh for
> the Bahá’í Holy Days. Haifa: Bahá’í World Center, 2016, #40:6: “O night
> of the All-Bountiful! In thee do We verily behold the Mother Book. Is it
> a Book, in truth, or rather a child begotten?”
> Regarding such a transreligious notion of “revelation,” cf. Keith Ward,
> Religion and Revelation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, parts 2 and 3.
> The term “Big Five” has come into use as many introductions of religion
> or investigations into specific religious matters related to “world
> religions” have often reduced their view, or concentrated on, these five
> religions, often to the exception of other traditions. While the Bahá’í
> writings firmly add Zoroastrianism and the mysterious Sabian/Sabaean
> religion(s), some introductions widen their horizon to Jainism and
> Sikhism or, in rare cases, even to the Bahá’í Faith. Cf. George Chryssides
> and Ron Geaves, The Study of Religion: An Introduction to Key Ideas
> and Methods. London: Bloomsbury, 2007, ch. 3.
> Cf. Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By. Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing, 1970, 94-
> 96; Christopher Buck, “A Unique Eschatological Interface: Bahá’u’lláh and
> Cross-Cultural Messianism,” in Peter Smith, ed., In Iran: Studies in Bábí
> and Bahá’í History. Vol. 3. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1986, 157-180.
> While section 10 of this article will wrestle with this questions, it should
> be clear from the outset that answering this question either in the
> affirmative or negative would not have any influence on the value of
> Daoism, Laozi, and the Dao De Jing as philosophical and religious
> entities, or better, a living organism and its importance for the future of
> religions in their philosophical and religious expressions. However, as will
> be seen later, I will not even intend to “answer” this question in any
> simple way, but rather take the uniqueness of their contributions to
> world-philosophies and –religions as a mirror for differentiating the
> question and harvesting the insights gained by doing so for the Bahá’í
> universe of discourse. Hence, my title-question, whether Laozi is a “lost
> prophet” must not be misunderstood as presupposing that he necessarily
> is a prophet (in anyone’s eyes), but as a question that addresses the
> interest of the Bahá’í concept of the Manifestation of God in the context
> of another religion. While it may be true that such a claim—to
> prophethood—is not an inherent necessity or even a real possibility in the
> context of eastern religions, it should, therefore, not be summed that the
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                            79
> 
> Abrahamic institution and notion of “prophethood” is merely applied by
> asking this question. Rather, if we substitute, as the reverse is sometimes
> the case in Bahá’í parlor, the word “prophet” with Manifestation (mazhar-
> i ilahi), we immediately have left this limitation.
> Of course, in the first place, the engagement with Daoism, as with any
> other religion, in the Bahá’í context is a fascinating and rewarding quest
> and an imperative, given the presupposition of the Bahá’í axiom of the
> unity of all religions. Yet, as imperative, it is always also a challenge as the
> details of such a “unity” will be of revealing and enriching nature, even if
> we might not immediately “see” how differences and unison are to be
> understood or (in an intellectually satisfying and spiritually gratifying
> way) achieved. It is in this sense, that the Bahá’í imperative of unity is an
> even stronger impulse to reflection than the usual interreligious
> engagements of comparative religion, comparative theology, or
> interreligious dialogues; cf. Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Religious Pluralism and
> Interreligious Theology: The Gifford Lectures—An Extended Version.
> New York: Orbis Books, 2016.
> In general, the different magnitudes of the presence of diverse religions in
> the Bahá’í writings must be understood from the historical fact and
> hermeneutical principle of the (historical and geographical) “location” of
> any event, such as a new religion, like the Bábi-Bahá’í religions, as it will
> harbor inherent limitations of access and understanding of hearers and
> listeners to its new revelation in any given context. As Bahá’u’lláh and
> ‘Abdu'l-Bahá explain, their references to divers religions were not only
> related to the ability of their audience to understand, but also by the
> religious adherence and context of questions and questioners present and
> inquiring, which/whom they often answered with their books, tablets and
> letters. This is also a liberating insight, as it is not the limitations of the
> Manifestations that define the language and references they use to explain
> their revelations, but the limitations of the time and place in which they
> appear; hence, the meaning of their teachings and the categories they use
> must not be reduced to these contexts either, but can and must be
> translated into new contexts; cf. Momen, “Bahá’í Approach,” in Momen,
> Bahá’í Faith, 167-188.
> The one specific reference of Shoghi Effendi to Laozi and how to
> understand him in the Bahá’í context will become the driving impulse of
> section 10 where it is quoted, and the analysis of which will take up all of
> the latter third of this article.
> It should be mentioned at this point that the references of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá to
> Chinese religion or religions (such as Buddhism and Confucianism) can
> and should also be understood as signifying and, hence, implying Daoism
> so that they are relevant to its discussion. This is even more so of
> importance as in the Chinese context, as we will see later, the
> 80                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> differentiation between the religious traditions, especially Daoism,
> Confucianism, Chinese forms of Buddhism, and the so called “folk
> religion,” are less of importance than the Chinese identity that they
> together express in their relation to China as unified, or confluent,
> spiritual heritage.
> With the sparse sources in this regard, we are in a similar situation as with
> considerations regarding the possibility of Native American “prophets” or
> Manifestations; cf. Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in
> Canada? A test case for Bahá’í universalism,” in The Bahá’í Studies Review
> 6 (1996): 97-133; C. Buck, “Bahá’í Universalism and Native Prophets,” in
> Seena Fazel and John Danesh, eds., Reason and Revelation: New
> Directions in Bahá’í Thought. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2002, 173-201.
> This caveat holds all the more in light of Bahá’u’lláh’s statement that all
> religions are not just creatures of human imagination, but of divine
> revelation; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh.
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 1976, #111. One might also think of the
> religion of the Sabians/Sabeans, of which we do not only not know any
> founder, but of which we also cannot even be sure what group it
> identifies (many are suggested in historical research). What is even more,
> in Islamic interreligious discourses, their name functions often as means
> to integrate other religions, such as Buddhism, into the sphere of divine
> guidance. Cf. Christopher Buck, “The Identity of the Sabi’un: An
> Historical Quest,” in The Muslim World 74:3-4 (1984): 172-186.
> Cf. SAQ #43.
> Shoghi Effendi has clarified that Confucius is not signified a
> Manifestation by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; cf. Helen Bassett Hornby, Lights of
> Guidance: A Bahá’í Reference File. New Deli: Bahá’í Publishing, 2010,
> #1685. Yet, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, #43, in the same section, states
> Confucius together with the Buddha as claimed by “worshipers,” which
> would suggest a religion, not an ethics. And in another context, ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá mentions Confucius in one series of names together with only other
> founders of religions such that Confucius would be the only one captured
> by the term “blessed souls,” which binds all of them together, to be
> (grammatically oddly) excluded from the series. Besides, although not
> authoritative, pilgrim notes exist in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá answers the
> question whether Confucius was a Manifestation affirmatively. But the
> point, here, is not to decide whether there are conflictual statements or to
> establish a hermeneutics that would resolve such questions on a chain of
> authority, but to hint at the fact that these questions need not necessarily
> be answered with the most simple explanations; rather, they are worth to
> be thought through in their ambivalences, complexities, and hidden folds,
> as section 10 will attempt.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                         81
> 
> The other equally important person and text being (the) Zhuhangzi (the
> person and the book) to which I will not refer here further, but
> who/which would be important to add to complete the picture or, at
> least, to see the development of (philosophical) Daoism more clearly and
> fully. Cf. Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New
> York: Columbia University Press, 1968; Victor Mair, Wandering on the
> Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Honolulu:
> University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. Resent research also indicates that
> there may be even older texts on which both the Dao De Jing on which
> might depend; cf. Harold Roth, Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the
> Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. NY: Columbia University Press, 2004.
> The textual history of Daoism is more complicated, as it comprises a
> whole universe of texts that, later, were understood as scriptural basis of
> religious Daoist identity. And it cannot be claimed that any of the early
> texts has already settled into a fixed identity by which it would be
> possible anachronistically to differentiate diverse religions as mutually
> stable identities. They are rather differentiating “schools” of thought,
> spirituality, and ceremonials, more than (independent or mutually
> exclusive) religions; cf. Livia Kohn, The God of Dao: Lord Lao in History
> and Myth. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2000, chs. 1-2.
> This approach, one of possibilities, or a multiplicity of potential answers,
> is not only meant to address the question directed toward Laozi alone, but
> rather to open a space in which complex considerations regarding the
> Bahá’í concept of the Manifestations of God in relation to all religions
> can be raised and pondered, but, here, as triggered by the unique profile
> of Daoism, especially in the mirror of the Dao De Jing and the figure of
> Laozi, that otherwise might not easily come to the surface or could go
> unreflected. For a similar, but much wider field of considerations
> regarding the concept of Manifestation in light of a multiplicity of
> religions, cf. R. Faber, The Garden of Reality: Transreligious Relativity in
> a World of Becoming. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018, ch. 7-8.
> Cf. Wong, Taoism, chs. 1-3. For early forms and groups, cf. Gil Raz, The
> Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition, New York: Routledge,
> 2011.
> Cf. Terry Kleeman, Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist
> Communities, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016.
> Cf. Pierre Destrée and Fritz-Georg Herrmann, eds., Plato and the Poets.
> Leiden: Brill, 2011.
> Cf. J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West: Western Transformation of Taoist
> Thought. New York: Routledge, 2000, ch. 3.
> Cf. Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, The Shambala Dictionary of Taoism.
> Translated by Werner Wünsche. Boston, MA: Shambala, 1996, 176.
> 82                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Cf. John Blofeld, Taoism: The Road to Immortality. Boston, MA:
> Shambala, 2000, chs. 5-7.
> Cf. Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion. Stanford: Stanford
> University Press, 1997, 1-24. As we will se later, the same is true for the
> entanglement of Daoist schools and strains with that of Confucian and
> Buddhist provenience, philosophically as well as religiously, which created
> a fascinating rhizome of interactions and mutual coinherences.
> Cf. Wilfred C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis:
> Fortress, 1991, chs. 2-3. Smith has demonstrated that for the study of
> religion the term religion is a fairly new and late term, used to categorize
> mostly western sensitivities on the basis of the Enlightenment and modern
> secular differentiations of spheres of living such as culture, society,
> economy, and so on. It was also used to imperialistically capture other
> spiritual paths either for missionary reasons or subordination under a
> specific tradition, preeminently Christianity, as the peak and essence of
> religion. Many scholars have, therefore, tried to avoid this term as
> description of spiritual ways in order to withhold its prejudicial
> prescriptive implications as well as the unspoken presupposition that
> there is an already defined essence of religion(s) that needs only to be
> applied while, in fact, it was gathered from a specific tradition and
> projected onto others. Cf. John Cobb, “Some Whiteheadian Assumptions
> about Religion and Pluralism,” in David Griffin, ed., Deep Religious
> Pluralism. Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2005, ch. 12. Exceptions,
> however, arise historically with Manichaeism and Islam, as both of them
> use the term religion (din) self-reflectively; cf. Smith, Meaning, ch. 4. For
> Bahá’u’lláh’s reconceptualization of “religion” in light of this Islamic and
> pre-Islamic stream from its much more spiritual origin in Zoroastrian
> texts, cf. Kamran Ekbal, “Daéna-Dén-Dín: The Zoroastrian Heritage of
> the ‘Maid of Heaven’ in the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh,” in Moojan Momen,
> ed.,Scripture and Revelation: Papers presented at the First Irfan
> Colloquium, Oxford: George Ronald, 1997.
> The relation between religion and philosophy is an ancient problem and
> widely discussed where “revelation” becomes the discerning mark of
> religions. But if we change our perspective and seek the transformative
> character of a teaching, as ancient Greek philosophy did (versus a purely
> intellectual endeavor), we will find the difference harder to establish.
> Ancient philosophers were sages, as sages were often religious figures, as
> for instance evidenced by Pythagoras. Hence Laozi was not considered
> merely an intellectual figure, but a transformative force of living a
> spiritual life. Cf. Yu-Lan Fung, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy: A
> Systematic Account of Chinese Thought from its Origins to the Present
> Day. NY: Free Press, 1948, chs. 1-2. For further discussion, cf. section 10.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                           83
> 
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #132; Seena Fazel, “Religious Pluralism and the
> Bahá’í Faith,” in Interreligious Insight 1:3 (2003): 42- 49.
> It would seem that this approach is a natural implication and extension of
> Shoghi Effendi’s insight that the oneness of religions does not hinder their
> differences in the sense of a relational complementarity; Cf. Shoghi
> Effendi, The Promised Day is Come. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing,
> 1996, #I. For such a complementarity to be actually of some value, it can
> only evoke insights if the content brought into complimentary
> conversation is not already a priori known and included in one’s own
> horizon, such that even the assumed “completeness” of one’s own
> scriptures and wisdom path does not reveal such insights if they are not
> accepted as a gift of that particular tradition—as an aspect of truth that in
> fact adds to insight; cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #15. This is a major
> problem in interreligious discourses, related to the differentiation
> between certain forms of inclusivism (that my truth supersedes and fulfills
> all others) and pluralism (that there is mutual enrichment); cf. Raimon
> Panikkar, The Intra-Religious Dialogue. New York: Paulist Press, 1999.
> The later development of Daoism, however, will in some sense open up to
> the idea of “revelation,” for instance, in the movement of Zhang Daoling
> of the second century C.E., who claimed to have received revelations
> from Laozi, and on which revelations the important sect of the Celestial
> Masters is based; cf. Clarke, Tao, 33; Fischer-Schreiber, Dictionary, 9-10;
> Robinet, Taoism, ch. 3.
> Chew, Religions, 196.
> Yet, it is in no way clear that these categories, that of the philosopher, the
> sage, the holy figure, and the prophet, cannot also intersect in a west-
> Asian (Abrahamic) context. Pythagoras, for instance, was, in his time,
> rather a religious leader than a philosopher in the modern sense. Note that
> Bahá’u’lláh in his Tablet of Wisdom considers Apollonius of Tyana, who
> seem to have been received as a holy figure in his time, even as a counter-
> example to Jesus, as a Greek messiah of sort, rather than a philosopher;
> cf. Keven Brown, “Hermes Trismegistos and Apollonius of Tyana in the
> Writings of Bahá’u’lláh.” In Jack McLean, ed., Revisioning the Sacred:
> New Perspectives in Bahá’í Theology. Studies in the Bábi and Bahá’í
> Religions. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1997, 153-188. And Bahá’u’lláh
> even mentions Hermes Trismegistos, who in Islamic lore was already
> identified with the Qur’anic prophet Idris, and the Hebrew patriarch
> Enoch, as the originator of philosophy; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i Hikmat
> (Tablet of Wisdom), in Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh revealed after the Kitab-i
> Aqdas. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 1994, 148n3. And then there is
> Socrates, whom Bahá’u’lláh not only mentions as an exceptional
> philosopher, but as a divinely inspired holy man of Truth; ibid, 147—as
> 84                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> there is also a long tradition that seems to imply the worthiness of
> Socrates to compared with Jesus. More is said in section 10.
> Yet, in this sense, the sage is the representation of perfect humanity; cf.
> Wing-Tsit Chan, Source Book, 761. Hence, the sage seems to embody
> ideals of the “revelation” of ultimate rightness in the cosmos as a whole,
> not unlike certain prophetic figures in the west-Asian religions of
> Abrahamic flavor as well as the “Perfect Man” tradition in diverse Jewish,
> Gnostic, Christian, and Islamic philosophical speculations; cf. Frederick
> Borsch, The Son of Man in Myth and History. Philadelphia: The
> Westminster Press, 1967, chs. 2-6; Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone:
> Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. Princeton, NJ:
> Princeton University Press, 1997, 131-133. Here again seems to appear a
> transreligious connection to the Bahá’í notion of Manifestation (mazhar-i
> Ilahi); cf. Juan Ricardo Cole, “The Concept of Manifestation in the
> Bahá’í Writings,” in Bahá’í Studies 9 (1982) @ http://bahai-
> library.com/cole_concept_manifestation.
> Cf. Chew, Religions, 82-83.
> Cf. Wong, Taoism, 31-37.
> Cf. Wong, Taoism, 37-41; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, ch. 24.
> Cf. Kohn, God, passim. With the divinization of Laozi in the late Han
> dynasty—Robinet, Taoism, xviv fixes the date at 166 C.E.—Laozi is
> depicted as creator of the universe, and he is elevated to the highest
> depiction of ultimate reality by being admitted into it in the form of the
> Three Pure Ones; cf.; Clarke, Tao, 67-68; Blofeld, Taoism, 95; Taoism,
> Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation: The Mao-Shan Tradition of Great
> Purity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993, ch. 6. See
> further discussion in section 10.
> Cf. Faber, Garden, Prologue, chs. 3, 8; John Walbridge, The Wisdom of
> the Mystic East: Suhrawardi and Platonic Orientalism. Albany, NY: State
> University of New York Press, 2001.
> If we compare the Dao less with the particulars of the Greek, Jewish, and
> Christian Logos tradition, which leans itself more to controlled order,
> even if it is related to reason, as in Stoicism and Philo of Alexandria, but
> with the Wisdom tradition as represented with the biblical and
> intertestamentary books of Proverbs(ch. 8) or Wisdom of Salomon(ch. 7),
> we may begin to understand better the existing subliminal transreligious
> relations between east and west, that is, the prophetic and wisdom
> oriented religions, as Wisdom operates by attraction, not by force, not
> even that of logic, and as Wisdom embodies itself in the sages as well as in
> the prophets; cf. Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian
> Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism. London: Bloomsbury, 2015,
> ch. 2; James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                          85
> 
> Inquiry into the Origins of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Grand Rapids:
> Eerdmans Publishing, 1996, chs. 6-7. See further discussions in section 10.
> Cf. Thomas Cleary, The Essential Tao: An Introduction into the Heart of
> Taoism through the Authentic Tao De Ching and the Inner Teachings of
> Chuang Tzu. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991, ch. 1. This is
> also in line with the fact that early Chinese religion(s) were differentiated
> more in terms of schools than denominations, and important texts were
> often shared between all of them, although their value in those schools
> might have been different.
> Cf. Wong, Taoism, ch. 6.
> Alan Watts, What is Tao? Novato, CA: New World Library, 2000, 37-38.
> Cf. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China. Vol. 2.
> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 68-71.
> Cf. Chan, Source Book, chs. 6-7. That this is not just a western
> interpretation of the Dao can be witnessed by the considerations of the
> Chinese scholar Meijun Wang, “Conviviality with Dao: A Chinese
> Perspective,” in Roland Faber and Santiago Slabodsky, eds., Living
> Traditions and Universal Conviviality: Prospects and Challenges for Peace
> in Multireligious Communities. Edited by. Lanham, MD: Lexington
> Books, 2016, 67-78.
> Cf. Fung, History, 97; Robinet, Taoism, 26.
> Cf. Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical
> Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, ch. 6.
> Cf. Blofeld, Taoism, 1-19; Watts, Tao, 41-41.
> Cf. Chan, Source Book, 136-137.
> Cf. Robinet, Meditation, 42-48.
> Cf. Fung, Source Book, 94-97; Cf. Phyllis Chew, “The Great Tao,” in The
> Journal of Bahá’í Studies 4:2 (1991): 11-39.
> Jonathan Star, Tao Te Ching: The Definite Edition. New York: Jeremy P.
> Tarcher/Putnam, 2001, #1.
> Cf. Rob Stockman, The Bahá’í Faith: A Guide for the Perplexed. New
> York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, ch. 3.
> Cf. Stephen Lambden, Introduction to The Lawh-i haqq/Lawh al-Haqq
> (Tablet of Truth/True One/Ultimately Real...) @
> http://hurqalya.ucmerced.edu/node/378/.
> Instead of setting up the world in opposites (in permanent conceptual
> strive for superiority), the Dao categorizes everything fluently as
> contrasts in mutual immanence and of a flow into one another; cf. Clarke,
> Tao, ch. 8. The unknowability and essential hiddenness of the Dao, even
> to the extent to call it “nothing” (wu) or “true nothingness” (zhen wu)—cf.
> 86                                                        Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Robinet, Taoism, 194-195—is a great example of non-dual thinking, which
> also characterizes Bahá’u’lláh’s understanding of Reality (al-haqq) beyond
> differentiations of theism and monism, but also beyond even the simple
> opposition between being and nothingness; cf. Roland Faber, “Baha'u'llah
> and the Luminous Mind: Baha'i Gloss on a Buddhist Puzzle,” in Lights of
> Irfan 18 (2017): 53-106.
> For more conversation between the mystical dimension of the Dao, its
> activation in the multiplicity of the world(s) and our Selves, and the
> Bahá’í writings; cf. Faber, Garden, ch. 3.
> In the reflection of Chinese history of thought and culture, one might
> even say that without the Dao De Jing, the authorship of which is credited
> to the legendary Laozi, Chinese civilization would not have been the same
> or dramatically different; cf. Chan, Source Book, 136.
> Cf. Olivia Kohn and Michael LaFargue, eds., Lao-Tzu and the Tao-Te-
> Ching. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, chs. 1-3.
> Laozi is a title rather than a name, meaning Old Master. It may refer to a
> wise man with the name (Li) Erh and also, in Daoist and Confucian
> literature, Lao Tan; cf. Chen, Tao Te Ching, 6-10.
> Cf. Ellen Chen, The Tao De Ching: A New Translation with Commentary.
> St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 1989, 6-18.
> Cf. Fischer-Schreiber, Dictionary, 88-90; Robinet, Taoism, 19, 26.
> Cf. Chen, Tao De Ching, 16-17; Chew, Religions, 24-25; Fischer-Schreiber,
> Dictionary, 89.
> Cf. Jaspers, Karl, The Great Philosophers, Vol. 2: The Original Thinkers:
> Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plotinus, Lao-tzu, Nagarjuna.
> Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.,
> 1966. Jaspers adds also Zhuangzi, Liezi, Elijah, Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah,
> Homer, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, among others, to the axial list,
> indicating this awakening to be one especially of consciousness, not of
> narrow religious (revelatory) or even only western emergences; cf. Karl
> Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History. New York: Routledge, 2010, 8,
> 278-279 n5 (of p. 53), ch. 5.
> This mutual interference and development of Daoism, Confucianism, and
> Buddhism is known as the “3 Traditions” approach; cf. Clarke, Tao, 22-28.
> Cf. Diane Morgan, The Best Guide to Eastern Philosophy and Religion.
> New York: renaissance Books, 2001, 223; C. Alexander and Annellen
> Simpkins, Simple Taoism: A Guide to Living in Balance. North Clarendon,
> VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1999, 11.
> Cf. Fischer-Schreiber, Dictionary, 56-57, 90; Morgan, Guide, 225.
> This extraordinary crossing of lines by Bahá’u’lláh was not totally
> unknown in other religious contexts. One may think of the integration of
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                        87
> 
> the Zoroastrian king Cyrus as Jewish Messiah in Isaiah 45 into Jewish
> salvation history; or the “Old Testament,” integrating the Jewish Hebrew
> Bible into Christian scripture; or the critical confluence of Islam and
> Hinduism in Sikhism. But the maybe closest predecessor of the idea of
> multi-religious prophethood was the figure of Mani whose movement
> became a “world religion” stretching from the Levant to China and Japan
> for over a thousand years before Bahá’u’lláh claimed the integration of all
> religions and to be the “return” of all Manifestations of the past in his
> prophethood; cf. Buck, “Interface,” 157-160. I fact, Mani claimed to be
> the return not only of Jesus, but also that of Zoroaster and the Buddha;
> cf. Smith, Meaning, 93.
> Cf. Geoffrey Parrinder, Avatar and Incarnation: The Divine in Human
> Form in the World’s Religions. Oxford: Oneworld, 1997, chs. 2, 11.
> Cf. Moojan Momen, Hinduism and the Bahá’í Faith. Oxford: George
> Ronald, 1990, 5-11.
> Cf. Arvind Sharma, “Buddhism met Hinduism: Interaction and Influence
> in India,” in Arvind Sharma, ed., The World's Religions: A Contemporary
> Reader. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011, 234-40; Roland Faber, ““Must
> ‘religion’ always remain as a synonym for ‘hatred?’”: Whiteheadian
> Meditations on the Future of Togetherness,” in Faber and Slabodsky,
> Living Traditions, 167-82.
> Michael Sours, The Station and Claims of Bahá’u’lláh. Wilmette, IL:
> Bahá’í Publishing, 1997, ch. 5.
> Cf. Chen, Tao Te Ching, 10.
> Cf. Chew, Religions, 24.
> Cf. Chan, Source Book, 36-41, 430-431.
> The Dao De Jing is situated in the time of warring local states against one
> another and should be read as a profound criticism of the political
> barbarism this situation implied. Hence, it lays out a political philosophy
> of harmony that, if realized, would indicate the ideal of civilization that
> the myth from the deliberate choice of Laozi for exile emphasizes as being
> impossible to be established; cf. Wong, Taoism, ch. 2.
> Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China. Vol 6/2. Cambridge:
> Cambridge University Press, 1984, 85-93.
> Cf. Chen, Tao Te Ching, 10-12; Chew, Religions, 24; Fischer-Schreiber,
> Dictionary, 88.
> It is an “anthology”: cf. Alan Chan, “Laozi,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of
> Philosophy (5/2/2013), ch. 4 @
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/#TexTra; Chan, Source Book,
> 137-138. This collection also indicates that it was prepared by a group of
> authors, rather than by one person.
> 88                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Cf. Star, Tao Te Ching, 7-9.
> Cf. Annemarie Schimmel, The Mystery of Numbers. NY: Oxford
> University Press, 1993, 164-180. Schimmel may indicate a relationship of
> the (number of) 81 (chapters) of the Dao De Jing to the birth myth of
> Laozi, who, in one version, was born 9x9 years after his conception (170).
> Cf. Peter Smith, A Concise Encyclopedia of the Bahá’í Faith. Oxford:
> Oneworld, 2008, 261; Stephen Lambden “The Word Bahá: Quintessence
> of the Greatest Name,” in Bahá’í Studies Review 3:1 (1993): 19-42.
> Cf. Fischer-Schreiber, Dictionary, 175.
> Cf. Cleary, Tao, 2. This early estimate is of course challenged by the fact
> that the Dao De Jing was already a reaction to Confucianism, imagining a
> different kind of society, and, hence, must be later in origin or, as a
> collection, fitting more into the time of the warring states of the third
> century B.C.E.; cf. Chen, Tao Te Ching, 5, 21.
> Cf. Chan, “Laozi,” ch. 3; Chen, Tao Te Ching, ch. 3
> Cf. Alan Chan, “The Daode Jing and Its Tradition,” in Olivia Kohn, ed.,
> Daoism Handbook, Leiden: Brill, 2000, 1-29.
> Cf. Clarke, Tao, 61.
> Cf. Chan, Source Book, 137.
> Cf. Robinet, Taoism, 29. On the diverse traditional commentaries, cf.
> Chan, “Laozi,” ch. 4.
> Cf. Chad Hansen, “Daoism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
> (Fall 2014 Edition), ch. 2 @
> http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/daoism/. Dao Jia,
> although it cannot ever be separated from origins in alchemical and
> shamanic surroundings and the development of its central figures into
> religious heroes, like Laozi, of Dao Jiao, can of course not be reduced to
> Laozi and the Dao De Jing, but, nevertheless, he and his book remain the
> “foundational” text together with the Zhuangzi and several other ancient
> works in a tradition that from the beginning has gathered itself among
> many traditions—the “thousand schools”—and among several streams of
> reception and interpretation, one of which might have been a Laozi-
> school. Cf. Blofeld, Taoism, chs. 1-2; Fung, History, chs. 2-3; Robinet,
> Taoism, ch. 1; Chan, Source Book, chs. 2-16; Chen, Tao Te Ching, 8-9.
> Cf. Wong, Taoism, ch. 2.
> Cf. Grigg, Tao, 29-57; Clarke, Tao, ch. 2; Chan, Source Book, 136; Chen,
> Tao Te Ching, 15-18, ch. 2; Fung, History, chs. 18-26.
> Cf. Chen, Tao, 15-18; Watts, Tao, 27-31.
> Cf. Needham, Science. Vol. 2, 86-100; Chad Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 3.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                           89
> 
> Cf. Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization. Cambridge:
> Cambridge University Press, 1999, 102; Clarke, Tao, 105.
> Cf. Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical
> Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, ch. 6; Clarke,
> Tao, ch. 5. Yet, as many ideas, they may have been ideals, never to be
> realized in pure form, as, in fact, under the influence of Daoist political
> reign feudalism prevailed; cf. Kristofer Schipper, The Daoist Body. Trans.
> by Karen Duval. Berkeley: University of California, 1993, ch. 1.
> Cf. Watts, Tao, 46-50.
> Cf. Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 9.1.1. The differentiation between why and
> how does not exclude the Dao to be understood in metaphysical terms of
> ultimate reality—as it is mostly perceived to be: cf. Blofeld, Taoism, ch. 1;
> Chew, Religion, 25-28—but it warns us to attempt understanding ultimate
> reality beyond our ability to act, or to divide between mysticism and
> metaphysical insight, on the one hand, and ethics, world-engagement and
> social action, on the other. This might indicate a resonance of intention
> between the Dao Dee Jing and Bahá’u’lláh’s explication of mystical-
> ethical insights in his “prophetic” collection of the Hidden Words. Cf.
> Todd Lawson, “Globalization and the Hidden Words,” in Margit
> Warburg, Annika Hvithamar and Morten Warmind, eds., Baha’i and
> Globalization. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2005, ch. 2.
> Cf. Dao De Jing, #37; Fung, History, 97-102.
> Cf. Blofeld, Taoism, ch. 3.
> Cf. Hansen, “Daoism,” chs 4, 9.1.1.
> Cf. Needham, Science. Vol. 2, 74-83.
> Cf. Hansen, Theory, ch. 3.
> Cf. Hansen, Theory, ch. 4.
> Cf. Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 2; Clarke, Tao, 175-184.
> This relativism is not to be confounded with an “anything goes”
> approach, as westerners might feel to appropriate its insights, but as a
> new kind of normativity, namely, that of spontaneity in the flow of
> things; cf. Clarke, Tao, 98.
> Cf. Fung, History, 102-103.
> Cf. Hansen, Theory, 225; “Daoism,” ch. 3.
> Cf. Livia Kohn, Taoist Mystical Philosophy: The Scripture of Western
> Ascension. Albany: State of New York University Press, 1991, ch. 1;
> Hanson, “Daoism,” ch. 3.
> Cf. Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 6: Clarke, Tao, 80-91.
> Cf. Livia Kohn, Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in
> the Taoist Tradition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, chs. 1-
> 90                                                          Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> 2; Clark, Tao, ch. 7. This implies that we can, in fact, live according to
> “nature” if we follow the unknowable Dao, that is, as this mystical Way
> implies some kind of experiential metaphysical or even religious
> descriptive probabilities; cf. Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 2. In the exemplarity
> of the “perfect human being” lies also a certain connection to the notion
> that the Manifestation is the mirror of the of apophatic Reality such that
> Reality, which is unknowable per se, becomes accessible in this mirror at
> least as the way of life implied in this knowledge, but not besides their
> revelation; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #30; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #5;
> Questions, #27. We might even find a resonance here to the fact that to
> reach this point of perfection is a rare possibility so far so that later
> elevations and divinizations of certain masters, but at least of Laozi, seem
> to demonstrate that such a possibility is by no means just a bottom up
> achievement, but might rather be the expression of grace from above, of
> divine embodiment.
> Cf. Clark, Tao, ch. 8. In a more radical interpretation, this relativism
> equates with a pluralism that is (metaphysically) presupposing skepticism
> as to the ability to gain any insight into the nature of things; cf. Hansen,
> “Daoism,” ch. 2.
> Cf. Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 9.1.1; Clarke, Tao, 101.
> Cf. Chan, “Laozi,” ch. 6; Hansen, “Daoism,” 9.1.2; Clarke, Tao, 90-103.
> This “virtuosity” is like learning to carve wood along its grain, rather than
> against it, learning the natural way; cf. Watts, Tao, xvii.
> While the ideal of the Daoist sage is, therefore, the withdrawal from
> society into nature, this does not mean that Daoism was apolitical; rather
> it furthered resistance against the feudal society, and the creation of
> counter-societies of equality, based on agriculture, and generally with a
> pacifist orientation; cf. Clarke, Tao, 103-111; Robinet, Taoism, 27;
> Needham, Science. Vol. 2, 86-132.
> Cf. Hansen, Theory, 212-213; Hansen, “Daoism,” chs. 3.3, 4, 8, 9.4, 9.5.
> Cf. Hans-Georg Moeller. The Philosophy of the Daodejing, New York:
> Columbia University Press, 2006, ch. 5. Situating the Dao De Jing
> primarily as a political philosophy in the context of the warring state
> period, Moeller speaks of the establishment of peace by the method of
> “dehumanization” (76).
> Cf. Chan, “Laozi,” ch. 7.
> Dao De Jing, #1; transl. by Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 4.
> This does, however, not exclude political quarrels for supremacy of
> respective groups and religious “inclusion” of the other parties; cf.
> Clarke, Tao, 22-28. While exclusivism is especially haunting Abrahamic
> traditions, the possibility of one person in relation to different aspects of
> their life to embrace all three traditions, respectively, shows the
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                          91
> 
> fundamental different approach to religious identity in the Chinese
> context.
> Cf. Grigg, Tao, passim; Joseph Bracken, The Divine Matrix: Creativity as
> a Link between East and West. New York: Orbis Books, 1995, 133-135.
> Compassion (sanbao) is one of the three root virtues in Daoist living, one
> of the “Three Treasures,” first appearing in the Dao De Jing, #67; cf. Lin
> Yutang, The Wisdom of Laotse, Random House, 1948, 292; Masao Abe,
> “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” in John B. Cobb and Christopher
> Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist- Jewish-Christian
> Conversation. Edited by, 3-68. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990, 3-67.
> Cf. Kohn, Mysticism, ch. 6; Hansen, “Daoism,” ch. 8.
> Cf., Antonio Cua, “Opposites as complements: reflections on the
> significance of Tao,” in Philosophy East and West, 31:2 (1981): 123–40;
> Hansen, “Daoism,” chs. 4, 9.2.
> Cf. Ellen Marie Chen, “Nothingness and the mother principle in early Chinese
> Taoism,” in International Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1969): 391–405.
> The identification of ultimate reality with “nothingness” is based on the
> term wuji, which is itself a term of ultimate reality. It appears for the
> first time in the Dao De Jing, #28 and also means the limitless infinite in
> the Zhuangzi, ##1, 6, 11, 15; cf. Zhang Dainian and Edmund Ryden, Key
> Concepts in Chinese Philosophy. Yale: Yale University Press, 2002, 72. For
> the resonances with the “two truths” and Madhyamika cf. Friederike
> Assandri, Beyond the Daode Jing: Twofold Mystery in Tang Daoism,
> Dunedin, FL: Three Pines Press, 2009; Mark Csikszentmihalyi, “Mysticism
> and Apophatic Discourse in the Laozi,” in Mark Csikszentmihalyi and
> Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi.
> Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, ch. 1.
> Dao De Jing, #1.
> For the thesis that Daoism and Buddhism in China were not two
> contrasting religions, cf. Henri Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religions.
> Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981, 412. For the deep
> resonances with Zen, cf. Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought.
> Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985, chs. 2-3.
> If we think of Daoism as philosophy (dao jia), being internally touched by
> the truth of its proposition (correlating it with experience) is to be
> expected; cf. Bahá’u’lláh’s praise of philosophers, especially Socrates, in
> his Lawh-i Hikmat (Tablet of Wisdom), 146-147. However, if we view
> Daoism as religion (dao jiao) it could be said that it is the Bahá’í
> conviction that all religions receive their life from the same apophatic
> source of Reality/God (al-haqq) and, hence, are not a dead body of the
> past, but alive in the unity of Manifestations with their eternal (time-
> relative, but –invariant) effect in the world of becoming and perishing,
> 92                                                          Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> that is, are beyond the boundaries of the religious identities with which
> they are identified universally “present.” In this sense, the Bahá’í view of
> unity is not the expression of a simple supersessionism, in which all
> religions of the past are “overcome,” but one in which they communicate
> in an “analogy of faiths” in mutual coinherence and coinhabitation; cf.
> Faber, Garden, ch. 8: section 6. Therefore, it is not a mere intellectual
> interest that feeds any serious investigation into the diverse relations
> from a Bahá’í perspective, but the amazing potential to be able to
> spiritually understand and share (irfan) from the inside in the spiritual and
> divine power or grace (fayd) in their confluence in the Bahá’í view—“with
> the eye of God, ” rather than as an objective dissector. In some
> meaningful sense, a Bahá’í could claim to be a believer in these religions,
> sharing in their riches, as s/he does not make any difference between them
> (in their origin, in their Manifestations); cf. Stephen Lambden,
> “Dimensions of Abrahamic and Babi-Bahā’ī Soteriology: Some Notes on
> the Bahā’ī theology of the Salvific and Redemptive role of Bahā'-Allāh,”
> 2017 @ https://hurqalya.ucmerced.edu/node/3451. This view is, on a
> much more tentative basis, current standard understanding of
> methodological access to multiple religions in comparative studies; cf.
> Keith Ward, Religion and Revelation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994,
> chs. 1-2; Raymond Panikkar, “What is Comparative Philosophy
> Comparing?” in Gerald Larson and Eliot Deutsch, eds., Interpreting
> Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Princeton:
> Princeton University Press, 1988, 116-36.
> Cf. Dao De Jing, #8.
> D.C. Lau, “The treatment of opposites in Lao-tzu,” in Bulletin of the
> Society for Oriental and African Studies 21 (1958): 344–60.
> Cf. David Hall, “Process and anarchy: a Taoist vision of creativity,” in
> Philosophy East and West, 28:3 (1978): 271–85. This is, of course, a
> modern perception, taking into account the radical potentials of the ideas
> inherent in the ideas even if they have not, at the time of their inception,
> been realized in such a radical way.
> Cf. Chew, Religions, chs. 5-9. For the Bahá’í context, philosophically, all
> of these characteristics can be traced back to the Báb and his metaphysical
> and spiritual understanding of this cosmos to be released from the Divine
> Point (Will, Mind), which is in its own complex way both unity and
> diversity, non-opposition and differentiation, creativeness and
> receptiveness; cf. Nader Saiedi, Gate of the Heart: Understanding the
> Writings of the Báb. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
> 2010, part 2.
> This is, from a Bahá’í perspective, rather a “natural” assumption, as all
> Manifestations and, in extension, all religions in their true core teach the
> same truths; cf. Dann May, “The Bahá’í Principle of Religious Unity,” in
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                          93
> 
> Jack McLean, ed., Revisioning the Sacred: New Perspectives in Bahá’í
> Theology. Studies in the Bábi and Bahá’í Religions. LA: Kalimat Press,
> 1997, 1-36. “Confluence” is also always the recognition of the mutual
> coinherence and coinhabitation, the translucency of religions in the new
> event of gathering—for Bahá’ís, the new revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. This is
> the heart of the Bahá’í conviction of the relativity of religious truth; cf.
> Faber, Garden, chs. 1, 9; Juan Cole, “‘I am all the Prophets’: The Poetics
> of Pluralism in Bahá’í Texts.” In Poetics Today 14:3 (Fall 1993): 447-76.
> The most comprehensive comparison between Chinese Religions and the
> Bahá’í Faith, that is, mostly of Daoism and Confucianism, which for many
> Baha’is may feel more familiar, is still Chew, Religions. And the most
> excellent comparison of Bahá’í sensitivities with the Dao De Jing can be
> found in Chew, “The Great Tao,” 11-39. For the Islamic philosophical
> background of the Bahá’í Faith in relation to Daoism, cf. Toshihiko
> Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical
> Concepts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
> Cf. Chew, “The Great Tao,” 17-19; Stockman, Bahá’í Faith, 31-35. As to
> the apophatic nature of the Godhead and its implications as well as the
> breathtaking interference with “its” manifestation as and in the world, cf.
> Stephen Lambden, “The Background and Centrality of Apophatic
> Theology in Bábi and Bahá’í Scripture,” in Jack McLean, ed., Revisioning
> the Sacred: New Perspectives in Bahá’í Theology. Los Angeles: Kalimat
> Press, 1997, 37-78; Moojan Momen, “The God of Bahá’u’lláh,” in Moojan
> Momen, ed., The Bahá’í Faith and the World’s Religions: Papers presented
> at the Irfan Colloquia. Oxford: George Ronald, 2003, 1-38.
> Cf. Isuzu, Sufism, part 1/II and part 2/VII. It would be limiting if we
> were tempted to reserve this intended “apophatic” Oneness to the
> unknowable Godhead (as “formless”) by exclusion of the manifest “God”
> (Primal Will) as “formed” or “determined.” Rather, the unity of
> unnamable and manifest Dao is a hint to the “divine sphere” of both these
> highest realms of divinity, crossing the highest realms of divine
> “existence,” symbolically sometimes addressed in Bahá’u’lláh’s and
> ‘Abdu'l-Bahá’s writings as hahut and lahut; cf. Momen, “God of
> Bahá’u’lláh,” 25. And the Primal Will in the writings of the Báb is not
> “form” either, but infinite potential to be determined by form, united in
> the Primal Point; cf. Saiedi, Gate, 183, 202 (and the whole of chs. 7-8).
> This “emptiness” is directed against all projections on “it” of categories,
> which remain always only our abstractions, not “its” reality. This, among
> other things, is also addressed in the Islamic and Bahá’í universe of
> discourse by the expression that God alone “exists.” For the implications,
> explicated in Bahá’u’lláh’s tablet of Uncompounded Reality, cf.
> Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet of the Uncompounded Reality (Law –i Basít al-
> Haqíqa). Introduction and translation by Moojan Momen: “Bahá’u’lláh’s
> 94                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Tablet of the Uncompounded Reality (Law –i Basít al-Haqíqa) in: Lights of
> Irfan 11 (2010): 203-21; Faber, “Bahá’u’lláh,” 53-106.
> Bahá’í writings follow the maxim that absolute unity excludes all
> attributes; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Valleys, 24 (Seven Valleys: Valley of
> Knowledge). This “exclusion” also applies to any emphasis on unity over
> and against multiplicity. We must learn to “perceive, with an eye purged
> from all conflicting elements, the worlds of unity and diversity, of
> variation and oneness, of limitation and detachment”; Bahá’u’lláh, Iqan,
> 160. For the philosophical and theological importance of this insight
> against such a simplified emphasis and its unfortunate implications, cf.
> Faber, Divine Manifold, part 1.
> Cf. Chew, “The Great Dao,” 19-21. For the differentiation between
> exclusive and inclusive unity (ahadiyyah and wahadiyyah, respectively) and
> their mutual interference on all levels of existence in the Bahá’í context,
> cf. Rhett Diessner, Psyche, ch. 1.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, #37.
> Cf. Chew, “Great Dao,” 21-22. For the motive of creation out of love
> and beauty, cf. Abdu’l Bahá, Commentary on the Islamic Tradition “I
> Was a Hidden Treasure.” Translation by by Moojan Momen, in Bahá’í
> Studies Bulletin, 3:4 (1995): 4-35.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Days, #9; Gleanings, #131.
> Spontaneity (bada‘) is the essence of creativity, be it of God or of any
> creature; cf. Saiedi, Gate, chs.7-8; Idris Samawi Hamid, The Metaphysics
> and Cosmology of Process According to Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i: Critical
> Edition, Translation and Analysis of Observations in Wisdom. Ann
> Arbor, MI: UMI, 1998.
> Cf. Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, #14; Tablet of the Son (Jesus) §9 in Juan R. I.
> Cole, “Baha'u'llah's ‘Tablet of the Son [Jesus]’: Translation and
> Commentary. Translations of Shaykhi, Babi and Baha'i Texts, 5(2), May
> 2001 @ http://www.h-net.org/ bahai/trans/vol5/son/bhson.htm; ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í
> Publishing, 2012, #93.
> Again, the continuity of such religious insights is more than a distancing
> statement about some “other” religion, but rather the translucency of
> their internal communication in the unity of all religions and their
> Manifestations; cf. Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come. Wilmette:
> Bahá’í Publishing, 1996, 108.
> Cf. Phyllis Chew, “Religious Pluralism in Chinese Religion and the Bahá’í
> Faith,” in World Order 34:1 (2002): 27-44; Moojan Momen, “Relativism:
> A Theological and Cognitive Basis For Bahá’í Ideas,” in Lights of Irfan 12
> (2010): 367-97.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                            95
> 
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 13.
> Cf. Momen, “God,” 14.
> Cf. Momen, “God,” 15-17; Moojan Momen, “Relativism: A Basis For
> Bahá’í Metaphysics,” in Moojan Momen, ed., Studies in Honor of the
> Late Hasan M. Balyuzi. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1988, 185-218.
> Cf. May, “Principle,” 25-27.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #40; Christopher Buck, “Fifty Bahá’í
> Principles of Unity: A Paradigm of Social Salvation,” in Bahá’í Studies
> Review 18 (2012): 3-44.
> Cf. Chew, “Great Dao,” 24-33; Chew, Religions, chs. 8-24. Many
> resonances cannot be discussed here, but can to a good extent be found in
> Chew’s work, such as strategies for peace, education, priority of
> agriculture (maybe ecology?), overcoming of prejudices, principles of
> living as a sage, striving for perfection (as to be realized at any given
> moment and in any given situation), growth of character and insight,
> political strategies of non-violence and non-interference (wu wei),
> organicity of living and acting, multiplicity of communities, interreligious
> relationships, and so on. For mystical insight (irfan) as one of widening
> perceptivity, cf. Roland Faber, God as Poet of the World: Exploring
> Process Theologies. Louisville: WJK, 2008, §48.
> Cf. Chew, “Great Dao,” 22-24; Julio Savi, “The Sufi Stages of the Soul in
> Bahá’u’lláh’s The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys,” in Moojan Momen,
> ed., The Bahá’í Faith and the World’s Religions: Papers presented at the
> Irfan Colloquia. Oxford: George Ronald, 2003, 89-106.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet to Jamal-i-Burujirdi (Lawh-i-Jamál-i-Burujirdí).
> Translation by Khazeh Fananapazir, in Bahá’í Studies Bulletin, 5:1-2
> (1991) 4-8 @ http://bahai- library.com/bahaullah_lawh_jamal_burujirdi.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #41; Promulgation, ##71, 105.
> Cf. Zhihe Wang, Process and Pluralism: Chinese Thought on the Harmony
> of Diversity. Frankfurt, GER: ontosverlag, 2013.
> Cf. Chew, Religions, chs. 5, 7; Faber, “Religion,” 167-182; Roland Faber,
> “Process, Progress, Excess: Whitehead and the Peace of Society,” in Łukasz
> Lamża and Jakub Dziadkowiec, eds, Recent Advances in the Creation of a
> Process-Based Worldview: Human Life in Process. Newcastle upon Tyne:
> Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, 6-20; Roland Faber, “Becoming
> Intermezzo: Eco-Theopoetics After the Anthropic Principle,” in Roland
> Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal, eds., Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing
> Multifariousness. New York: Fordham Press, 2013, 212-238.
> Cf. SWAB #225. This image is the basis for the reflections on the
> relativity of religious truth for a future civilization of peace in my
> Garden, ch. 2.
> 96                                                          Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> While this might sound somehow too anarchic for a Bahá’í understanding
> for which the novelty of the current Manifestation is also related to a new
> matrix of commandments, one should also not forget that the Kitab-i
> Aqdas is not constructed and presented as a casuistic law book, but as a
> “choice wine”; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitab-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book.
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 1993, π4-5. This character challenges
> humanity to implement its meanings and ordinances in highly creative
> ways by sensing the necessities and predicaments of, and choices we have
> in, an interrelated, ecological world—never without the originative
> impulse of the individual insight and understanding in any given situation,
> but always oriented toward the greater insight and understanding; cf.
> Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh revealed after the Kitab-i Aqdas.
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 1994, 200: “Blessed are those who
> meditate upon it [Aqdas]. Blessed are those who ponder its meaning.”
> While Confucianism might feel as the more “natural” choice in this
> context, as it relates clear social structures, the overturning of traditional
> orders is a pressing motive of the novelty of this, and every, new
> Manifestation; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #143. This is an area where
> more research and imagination will be fruitful. Cf. Roland Faber, God as
> Poet, ππ44, 46; Roland Faber, The Becoming of God: Process Theology,
> Philosophy and Multireligious Engagement. Portland, OR: Wipf & Stock,
> 2017, Sphere V.
> Cf. Faber, God as Poet, §§41-42; Divine Manifold, Intermezzo 1;
> Garden, Epilogue (sec. 4).
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets, ##8, 11; ADJ 35-36.
> Cf. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections, #225.
> CF. John Kolstoe, Consultation: A Universal Lamp of Guidance. Oxford:
> George Ronald, 1988.
> This would seem to be part of the serious application of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> imperative of the equality of, and non-difference between,
> Manifestations; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #24.
> Cf. Momen, “Bahá’í Approach,” 167-188; “Learning from History,” in
> Journal of Bahá’í Studies 2:2 (1989) @ https://bahai-
> library.com/momen_learning_from_history.
> Such complex relationships (between theism and monism) are by no means
> external to the philosophical and religious becoming of the Bábi-Bahá’í
> religions, as they are fluent in a vast Sufi universe of discourse and their
> relationship to eastern traditions of thought and wisdoms, especially
> regarding non-dual thinking; cf. Izutsu, Sufism, chs. 2, 4-5; Momen,
> “God,” 1-8; Faber, “Bahá’u’lláh,” 53-106.
> Cf. Kohn, God, part 2.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                           97
> 
> This “nature” is not controlled by reason or the Logos in an Abrahamic
> sense, which again has God as the ultimate point of reference, but also not
> in the Stoic sense, which does avoid reference to a transcendent Godhead;
> cf. Watts, Tao, 41-42; Longxi Zhang, The Tao and the Logos: Literary
> Hermeneutics, East and West. Duke University Press, 1992, 22-34.
> Here, questions of the status of any law of prophets, their “books,” come
> into sharp relieve with the change of any such law from dispensation to
> dispensation and even within any dispensation according to the changing
> exigencies of the time. In light of the Daoist antinomian ultimate (the
> apophatic), we may also recognize more starkly the contrast between two
> imperatives: to follow the temporal recognition of a Manifestation and
> its commandments, but also to always follow the indefinite
> presupposition of non-imitation and independent insight into Truth/Dao.
> Cf. Chung-yuan Chang and Zhao Xian Batt, Creativity and Taoism: A
> Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry. London: Julian Press, 1965.
> This is the reason that process thought can be a means of mediation, not
> only as it is acknowledged to present this Chinese “processual” universe in
> western language—and as it is also used by Chinese scholars to translate
> their thought—but even more so as the very basis of the Bábi-Bahá’í
> universe of discourse lies in the process philosophy of Shaykh Ahmad al-
> Ahsa’i that directly connects the process thought of the philosophical
> Bahá’í background to Chinese categories of feeling and thought; cf.
> Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. ed.
> by D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1978, 7, 21;
> Hamid, Metaphysics, ch. 4; Faber, Garden, ch. 3.
> Hence, mutual translation is possible, as especially the work (and the
> reception of the work) of Alfred N. Whitehead has demonstrated; cf.
> Needham, Science. Vol. 2, passim; David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking
> Through Confucianism. Albany, State University of New York, 1987;
> Faber, Divine Manifold, chs. 7-8, 15; God as Poet, §§19, 39; Alfred North
> Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967, ch. 20.
> Cf. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Promulgation, #79.
> This linear simplicity is also broken by the metaphoric of the Bahá’í
> writings of cyclic becoming (of renewal and phases of revelations and
> dispensations), which is not necessarily such that all that the last cycle has
> produced—such as trees—are, in the new season, dead and exchanged; this
> is also corroborated by the fact that a garden of many flowers is beautiful
> not because all of them have become the same flower in a certain time or
> area (or dispensation), but because multiplicity itself contributes to the
> beauty, and only as long as it is appreciated and respected; cf. ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá, Questions, #4; Tablets of the Divine Plan. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í
> Publishing, 1991, #14.
> 98                                                          Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Cf. Chew, Religions, 44, 47. Lee Sun Chen, Laozi’s Daodejing.
> Bloomington: iUniverse, 2011, xvii-xviii; Albert Cheung, “The Common
> Teachings from Chinese Culture and the Bahá’í Faith: From Material
> Civilization to Spiritual Civilization,” in Lights of Irfan 1 (2000): 38.
> While emphasis is given to Laozi, here, a full understanding would have to
> explicate the role of other sages, such as Zhuangzi and, especially,
> Confucius. This is also highlights by the fact that when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> mentions Confucius as an “ethical reformer,” he seems not to suggest that
> he was “only” such a reformer, but rather a reformer of profound impact
> on the development of human civilization (which would meet the
> historical facts), as he is still mentioned among a series in which all other
> personages are considered Manifestations; cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
> Promulgation, #109.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, 155. In other words, it is not enough only to
> take recourse to the fact that any revelation comes to a closure (in some
> profound sense, even if there may remain mechanisms of renewal) and,
> hence, over the time of its further unfolding in the respective religious
> community with its own history will have to live from its references
> backwards, which inevitably and eventually implies that it will become out
> of sync with the new times it might even have helped to instigate; cf.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #41; Questions, #43. We must, instead, try to
> seek a framework that allows these “blind spots” of every contingent
> limitation of revelation in time and space as created by its recipients—that
> is, this fact does not necessarily include the view of the imperfection of
> the revelation in itself; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #22—to be
> constructively addressed. One of these frameworks is religious pluralism,
> as already mentioned in other sections; another one appears in the
> foundational principle of the relativity of religious truth, which must be
> made to bear on this matter here, as a form of relationality or mutuality,
> which, theoretically, allows for the discovery of the other not as alien, but
> already as moment of one’s self and vice versa and, practically,
> emphasizes the ability to listen and learn; cf. Faber, Becoming of God,
> Sphere V.
> This is part of a wider task, namely, to fulfill ‘Abdu'l-Bahá’s request to
> study all religions—Promulgation, #121; Paris Talks, #41—in fairness and
> in seeking the garden of truth in them as a means to establish the
> rationality of the oneness of religions and by valuing their contributions
> to it; an endeavor that has only begun to take hold becoming part of a
> sustained effort in Bahá’í consciousness, but has become a general
> presupposition of interreligious dialogue today. Compare only to the
> works of one of the foremost thinkers of such an intellectual dialogue
> over the last decades: Paul Knitter, One Earth, Many Religions: Multifaith
> Dialogue and Global Responsibility. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995;
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                         99
> 
> Introducing Theologies of Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007;
> Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009;
> and as editor of: The Myth of Religious Superiority: Multifaith
> Explorations of Religious Pluralism. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015.
> ‘Abdu'l-Bahá admonishes Bahá’í to grow into this new consciousness that
> means nothing less than to love all religions; cf. Selections, #34.
> Cf. the concept of polyphilic (religious) pluralism: Faber, God as Poet,
> Postscript; Divine Manifold, Intermezzo 2; Becoming of God,
> Explorations 14-15; Roland Faber and Catherine Keller, “Polyphilic
> Pluralism: Becoming Religious Multiplicities,” in Chris Boesel and Wesley
> Ariarajah, eds., In Divine Multiplicity: Trinities, Diversities, and the
> Nature of Relation. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014, 58-81.
> This is also implied by Shoghi Effendi’s statements on the receptivity of
> the Bahá’í universe of other religions, such as this: “The Faith standing
> identified with the name of Bahá’u’lláh disclaims any intention to belittle
> any of the Prophets gone before Him, to whittle down any of their
> teachings, to obscure, however slightly, the radiance of their Revelations,
> to oust them from the hearts of their followers, to abrogate the
> fundamentals of their doctrines, to discard any of their revealed Books, or
> to suppress the legitimate aspirations of their adherents,” in Shoghi
> Effendi, Promised Day, 108.
> Cf. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #40: “In short, it behooves us all to be
> lovers of truth. Let us seek her in every season and in every country, being
> careful never to attach ourselves to personalities. Let us see the
> light wherever it shines, and may we be enabled to recognize the light
> of truth no matter where it may arise.”
> Cf.’Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #126; Selections, #225; Shoghi Effendi,
> World Order, sections “Unity in Diversity.”
> Many more aspects of the whole phenomenon of the religion of Daoism,
> of which Laozi and the Dao De Jing are inextricable part, cannot be
> brought into conversation here: the practical life of a cultivation of
> “becoming human,” the mystical, sexual and alchemical practices, the urge
> to realize (physical) immortality, the vast complexity of Daoist scriptures
> and history must, of course, also be part of a thorough discussion; cf.
> Kohn, Taoism, chs. 2-8; Wong, Taoism, parts 2-3.
> Cf. Bowers, God, ch. 13.
> Cf. Chew, Religions, 49. Of course, we can always refer to the universal
> revelation in all of nature as foundational basis for such an occurrence
> being more than a coincidence; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #125. But this
> would miss the point because of the cyclicity of Manifestations revealing
> themselves in human history as an inevitable additional (although in its
> depth not different) movement for the advance and education of
> 100                                                        Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> humanity; cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections, #34; Questions, #39;
> Promulgation, #106.
> Cf. Michael Sours, Without Syllable and Sound: The Worlds Sacred
> Scriptures in the Bahá’í Faith. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2000, chs. 1, 9.
> Cf. Lambden, “Background,” 1; John Hick, An Interpretation of
> Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. New Haven: Yale
> University Press, 2005, chs. 14-16.
> Hornby, Lights, #1694. From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to
> an individual believer, November 10, 1939.
> Cf. Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Revelation, Rationality and Truth. Tilford: Islam
> International Publishing, 1998, 165-170; Linda Davidson and Gitlitz,
> Pilgrimage: From the Ganges to Graceland. An Encyclopedia. Santa
> Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002, 83.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets, 22 (Second Bisharat); Fazel, “Dialogue,” 137-152.
> For preliminary considerations of what, in general, such a framework
> could include, cf. Seena Fazel, “Dialogue,” 137-152.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Star of the West 21 (1930): 261.
> Cf. Peter Smith, An Introduction to the Bahá’í Faith. Cambridge:
> Cambridge University Press, 2008, 129-131.
> Cf. Momen, “God,” 23-28.
> Cf. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Questions, #24; Sours, Syllable, 17-18.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, #25.
> Tentatively, such a view is implied in certain guidance of Shoghi Effendi
> when relating to Joseph Smith and Emanuel Swedenborg as religious
> teachers sensitive to the revelations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh; cf.
> Hornby, Lights, ##1719-1722, 1728.
> However, as with Swedenborg and Smith, the force field of revelation
> could be understood as stretching beyond chronological time and
> embracing not only the future, but also the past as mode of its arising.
> Cf. Wong, Taoism, chs. 1-2.
> Cf. Smart, Religions, 124; Arthur Write, Buddhism in Chinese History.
> Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959, ch. 1.
> Cf. Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions. Chicago: Encyclopedia
> Britannica, 2006, 155.
> Cf. Smart, Religions, 124-128, 13-151; Grigg, Tao, part 1.
> Cf. Christian von Dehsen, ed., Philosophers and Religious Leaders: An
> Encyclopedia of People Who Changed the World. New York: Onyx Press,
> 1999, 113.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                         101
> 
> Cf. Rudolf Ritsema and Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classical Chinese
> Oracle of Change. Shaftesbury: Element, 1994, 12-13.
> Cf. Chew, Religions, 49-50.
> Cf. Hornby, Light, #1696.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #87.
> Cf. Kohn, God, ch. 1.
> Cf. Kohn, God, 291-293; Bede Bidlack, In Good Company: The Body and
> Divinization in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ and Daoist XiaoYingsou.
> Leiden: Brill, 2015, 58-60.
> Cf. Kohn, God, 78; Bahá’u’lláh, GL, #13. The “book” is the Qur’anic sign
> of a High Prophet and is, as such, a divine sign upheld be the Báb and
> Bahá’u’lláh; cf. Sours, Syllable, ch. 2.
> Cf. Starr, Dao De Jing, #1.
> Cf. Kohn, God, 121-129; GWB #28; SAQ #30.
> One cannot simply counter that Christ was conceived as divine from the
> outset. Current exegetical knowledge has confirmed that a divine self-
> designation of Jesus, that is, a divine self-consciousness, is not a priori
> impossible, but that the becoming-divine of Jesus in the full sense of the
> Councils of the fourth and fifth century C.E. has taken that time to be
> fully established and settled. That the process regarding Lord Lao took
> “longer,” namely, about a five hundred year span to develop a full
> understanding of his divinity, hence, cannot simply be viewed as deep a
> counter-argument; cf. Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The
> Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne,
> 2014. Nevertheless, the consciousness to be the “Son of Man,” the most
> reliable self-identification of Jesus in an exegetical context, speaks for
> the extraordinary consciousness of Jesus, yet widely misunderstood even
> by his closest followers, only becoming alive by their experience of his
> exultation; cf. Hurtado, God, ch. 5; Chrys Caragounis, The Son of Man:
> Vision and Interpretation, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1986, ch. 4;
> Andrew Loke, in The Origins of Divine Christology. Cambridge,
> Cambridge University Press, 2017.
> Much later deification speaks against this assumption; cf. Kohn, God,
> passim.
> Cf. Tan Chung, Himalaya Calling: The Origins of China and India.
> Hackensack, NJ: Word Century Publishing, 2015, 71-74.
> Cf. Livia Kohn, Laughing at the Dao: Debates among Buddhists and
> Daoists in Medieval China, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009.
> In fact, this argument of “immunization” may rather contribute to the
> impossibility to accept a new event, such as the Manifestation of
> Bahá’u’lláh, in light of the “old” master; cf. Faber, Garden, ch. 9.
> 102                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Cf. Kohn, God, chs. 1, 5-6.
> Cf. Horny, Lights, ##1683, 1692-1693, 1696, et alia.
> In the Persian Bayan, for instance, the Báb writes of “a thousand
> thousand Manifestations”; cf. The Báb, Persian Bayan, III:15, in Moojan
> Momen, ed., Selections of the Writings of E. G. Browne on the Bábi and
> Bahá’í Religions. Oxford: George Ronald, 1987, 348. Cf. also thesis 6.
> Cf. Louis Komjathy, The Taoist Tradition: An Introduction. London:
> Bloomsbury, 2013, ch. 2.
> Cf. Chan, “Laozi,” ch. 2.
> Cf. Craig Bartholomew, “Old Testament Wisdom Today,” in David Firth
> and Lindsay Wilson, eds., Interpreting Old Testament Wisdom Literature.
> Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic Publishing, 2017, ch. 1; Edward Curtis,
> Interpreting the Wisdom Books: An Exegetical Handbook. Grand Rapids,
> MI: Kregel Publications, 2017, ch. 1. The collective character of the
> Wisdom literature is also significant in our context as it represents
> scriptural texts, sometimes accumulated around personages like Job, but
> also exhibiting anonymous, but prominently assigned authorship, such as
> David and Solomon, while still being considered part of scripture, or, on
> other cases, such as the Book of Wisdom, closely connected to it, while
> not necessarily being about or transporting revelation by a prophet.
> Cf. Chen, Tao De Ching, ch. 1.
> Cf. Hornby, Lights, #1694; Buck, “Identity,” 172-186; Seena Fazel,
> “Bahá’í Approaches to Christianity and Islam: Further Thoughts on
> Developing an Inter-Religious Dialogue,” in Bahá’í Studies Review 14
> (2008): 46-47.
> The “perfect Shi‘a,” modeled on the “Perfect Man” of Sufism, is present
> in the background of the Bábi-Bahá’í religions through the Shaykhi school
> for which this belief formed the so-called “Fourth Support”; cf. Moojan
> Momen, An Introduction to Shi‘i Islam. New Haven: Yale University
> Press, 1985, 228.
> Cf. Guang Xing, The Concept of the Buddha: Its evolution from early Buddhism
> to the trikāya theory. New York: Routledge, 2010, ch. 1.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitab-i Iqan: The Book of Certitude. Wilmette, IL:
> Bahá’í Publishing, 1974, 107. Additionally, even if the Báb would have
> known that Bahá’u’lláh is the awaited Manifestation (man yazhiruhu’lla)—
> and there are indications of such a knowledge in the Bábi-Bahá’í writings
> as well as some speculations around a physical or spiritual meeting of
> both Manifestations—he did not, besides subtle references to words and
> phrases related to augmentations of the word bahá, divulge this
> knowledge. In a deeper sense, this fact is related to this freedom of a
> Manifestation to choose its becoming revealed to the world.
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                         103
> 
> In a certain sense, any Manifestation is a “hidden” Manifestation, as no
> Manifestation just openly appears in divine attire, but always in a
> “cloud”; cf. Michael Sours, The Prophesies of Jesus. Oxford: Oneworld,
> 1993, 114-131. Bahá’u’lláh mentions that the reason for this “hiddenness”
> is the freedom of humanity to develop the sense to apprehend and believe
> in the Manifestation out of spiritual effort and freedom, instead of
> coercion; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #29.
> Cf. Romans 1:1-4. As in Christian texts, adoption-, exaltation-, divine
> mission- (and incarnation-) views appear together from early biblical texts
> on, but were harmonized in the later centuries by the two-nature-in-one-
> person doctrine, so is the Bahá’í understanding of the eternity and
> temporality of a Manifestation harmonized in the teaching of the two
> stations and natures or twofold station and nature such that the
> appearance of a Manifestation on the cosmic plane exhibits always
> essentially both aspects, that is, is never only human, but was always
> already divine, pre-eternal, pre-existent, as it were, as s/he is the Self of
> God in the Primal Will of which s/he is an appearance, meta-historically
> and historically; Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #29; Sours, Station, ch. 4. For
> refection of the Ebionite adoption view within a Bahá’í context, cf.
> Christopher Buck, “Illuminator vs. Redeemer: Was Ebionite Adam/Christ
> Prophetology “Original,” Anti-Pauline, or “Gnostic”? @ https://bahai-
> library.com/pdf/b/buck_illuminator_redeemer.pdf.
> The so-called “messianic secret” in the New Testament is, in fact, a major
> player in the gradual revelation of the nature and status of the person and
> identity of Jesus, documented throughout the gospels; cf. William Wrede,
> The Messianic Secret. trans. by J. C. G. Creig. Cambridge: James Clarke &
> Co, 1971. And there are similarities with the gradual unveiling of the
> mission of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh; cf. Christopher Buck, Symbol and
> Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i Íqán. Los Angeles:
> Kalimat Press, 2004, ch. 5. But this would be besides the point in our
> context since the “hiddenness” indicated, here, would relate to the
> lifetime of a Manifestation before the declaration, for instance, the “lost
> years” of Jesus before his baptism.
> Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #27.
> Cf. Saiedi, Gate, 164; Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle, 111.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #22.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #49. One might think of the transfiguration-
> scene in the Gospels (Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36) and the
> universal appearance of Krishna in the Bhagavat Gita (ch. 11) compared to
> which the humanity of the Manifestation normally and effectively shields
> the divine impression in most encounters—resonant with Bahá’u’lláh’s
> interpretation of the apocalyptic biblical and primordial Qur’anic image
> 104                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> of the “cloud” as veil hindering the recognition of a Manifestation; cf.
> Bahá’u’lláh, Iqan, part 1. In fact, most of the efforts of Manifestations
> seem to consist in providing ways to lead their surroundings the
> perception of their divine inspiration or even origin.
> This might be related to the biblical kenosis-scheme, found prominently
> in the Deutero-Isaiah figure of the Suffering Servant, cf. Isaiah 53, and its
> adoption in the Pauline Hymn of Philippians 2:9-11. It should also be
> noted that Christian theology has, at times, taken this kenotic appearance
> of God in this world in the human figure of Christ as an “incognito”
> movement, as witnessed in Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth and Emil
> Brunner; cf. Bernard Ramm, An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and
> Historic. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1985, 58-59.
> Cf. Ehrman, Jesus, chs. 6-7.
> Cf. May, “Bahá’í Principle,” xx.
> Cf. Smith, Encyclopedia, 291. Although these religions, or selections
> thereof, are sometimes mentioned as affirmed by the Bahá’í writings—cf.
> Kenneth Bowers, God Speaks Again: An Introduction to the Bahá’í Faith.
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 2004, 96—and also to indicate the
> “progressiveness” of religions, the writings themselves don’t claim any
> exclusivity to them as an exhaustive list.
> Cf. Hornby, Lights, #1373.
> Cf. Hornby, Lights, ##1373-1375; Ezekiel 1:26; Lambden, “Word Bahá,”
> 19-42.
> In identifying religions, it is not the “religions” that the Bahá’í writings
> emphasize, but the Manifestations that engendered religious movements,
> who are also not necessarily identical with, or limited to, the later
> established and settled forms of self-identifications of these religions with
> their founders; cf. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Questions, #43. Conversely, because of
> the complex non-identity of religions with Manifestations (as their
> founders) a whole interreligious space of conversations about both
> religions and Manifestations become available.
> In fact, even this list of named Manifestations in the Bahá’í writings is
> incomplete Cf. Stockman, Bahá’í Faith, 25-38.
> Cf. Hornby, Lights, #1373.
> Cf. The Báb, SWB 105; GWB #87; SAQ #50.
> Cf. Hornby, Lights, #1373.
> When Shoghi Effendi states that these are the great religions “of which we
> have any definite historical knowledge,” and as we can assume that this is
> not meant to limit historical research into what can be known at any
> point in the future (from this statement), as Shoghi Effendi explicitly
> denies, we could maybe understand this “knowledge” in relation to
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                       105
> 
> (limited to the appearance in) the Bahá’í writings, as Shoghi Effendi
> encourages historical research, but (in our context) demonstrates restraint
> regarding religious statements that would not have a foundation in the
> writings themselves; cf. Hornby, Lights, #1374. This seems also to be
> indicated with Shoghi Effendi’s references to Sabeanism and Hinduism,
> that is, that we cannot know from the writings more about them as we
> actually find in them; cf. ibid, ##1692-1694. This same hermeneutical
> approach can also be assumed from the statement of Shoghi Effendi, that
> “the only reason there is not more mention of the Asiatic Prophets is
> because Their names seem to be lost in the mists of ancient history.
> Buddha is mentioned, and Zoroaster, in our Scriptures -- both non- Jewish
> Prophets or non-Semitic Prophets”; cf. Compilation of Compilations.
> Vol. 1. Compiled by Research Department of the Universal House of
> Justice. Mona Vale: Baha'i Publications Australia, 1991, 21 (#22).
> For a differentiated reflection on “progressive revelation” without such
> symbolic inaugurations, cf. Stockman, Bahá’í Faith, 35-37, 42-43. The
> statement of Bahá’u’lláh that all religions are of divine origin, with some
> exceptions, which he thinks to be of human invention, seems also to imply
> that not only the mentioned (named) religions are intended, as do similar
> statements of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá regarding the love of, and finding truth in, all
> religions; cf. GWB #111; PT #41; SWAB #43.
> Cf. Winfred C. Smith, What is Scripture? Minneapolis, MN: Fortress
> Press, 2005.
> Hornby, Lights, #1375.
> In his high imamology, the Báb considered the Imams—and by extensions
> the Apostles of Christ—as part of a divine pleroma, which always appears
> with the Point, the Prophet or the Manifestation, and emanates from this
> one Soul; cf. The Báb, Persian Bayan, Exordium and Wahid I, in: Momen,
> Selections, 322-325; http://www.h-
> net.org/ bahai/trans/bayan/bayan.htm.
> While Krishna is named a Manifestation in the “canonical” Bahá’í
> catalogue, this figure cannot be considered the “founder” of Hinduism.
> Also, like Laozi, Krishna is probably a composite figure (thesis 7).
> Cf. Qur’an 12; cf. Todd Lawson, “Typological Figuration and the
> Meaning of ‘Spiritual’: The Qurʾanic Story of Joseph,” in Journal of the
> American Oriental Society 132:2 (2012): 221-244; Lawson, “The Bahá’í
> Tradition: The Return of Josef and the Peaceable Imagination,” in John
> Renard, ed., Fighting Words: Religion, Violence, and the Interpretation
> of Sacred Texts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, 135-57.
> Cf. Qur’an 19:12-15; Bahá’u’lláh, Iqan, 64-65; Epistle, 171.
> Cf. Juan Cole, “Behold the Man: Baha'u'llah on the Life of Jesus,” in
> Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 65:1 (1997): 62; The Báb,
> 106                                                       Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Wilmette: IL, Bahá’í Pub.,
> 2014, 49; Bahá’u’lláh, Days, #44; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, 23.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Iqan, 167-168, 212, 254.
> Bahá’u’lláh considers the hidden twelfth Imam, the personification of
> which is understood to be the Báb, as even more than all preceding
> prophets; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Iqan, 243-244.
> Stephen Lambden has pointed to passages—passages in which holy figures,
> such as the patriarch/prophet Josef, Son of Jacob (Israel), are named
> Manifestations (mazhar-i ilahi)—in the Bahá’í writings; cf. Lambden, Some
> Aspects of Isrā'īliyyāt and the Emergence of the Bābī-Bahā'ī
> Interpretation of the Bible. Dissertation: Newcastle University, 2002, 51
> Cf. Saiedi, Gate, 168.
> Cf. Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Faith: From Mazdean Iran
> to Shi‘ite Iran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977, 51-73.
> Already with the Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi and several Shi‘ite
> “extremists,” like Ismaelis and Nusayris, Fatimah appears as divine
> creatrix; cf. Corbin, Alone, 160.
> Cf. Dunn, Christology, chs. 5-7.
> Cf. Sours, Syllable, ch. 2; Station, ch. 7; Stephen Lambden, “The Sinaitic
> Mysteries: Notes on Moses/Sinai Motifs in Bábi and Bahá’í Scripture,” in
> Moojan Momen, ed., Studies in Honor of the Late Hasan M. Balyuzi. Los
> Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1988, 65-184; “Word Bahá,” 19-42.
> Cf. Hurtado, God, ch. 2.
> Cf. Ben Witherington, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom.
> Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994, ch. 8.
> Cf. GWB #34; TB #11; SDC 97, #147;
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Law-i Hikmat (Tablet of Wisdom), in Tablets, ch. 9;
> Prayers, ##86, 93;
> Cf. Witherington, Jesus, ch. 2; cf. Curtis, Wisdom Literature, ch. 4.
> Cf. John 1:1-18; Witherington, Jesus, 368-380.
> Cf. Daniel 1:20; 2:13; Jacques Doukhan, Secrets of Daniel: Wisdom and
> Dreams of a Jewish Prince in Exile. Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2000, 6-12.
> The influence of the Book of Daniel on the Bahá’í Writings is not only
> attested by their application of its apocalyptic mathematics regarding the
> coming of the Son of Man/Messianic King from Jewish and Christian
> writings in ‘Abdu'l-Bahá’s exegesis of it — cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions,
> ##10, 13 — but by figuring as the basis for Bahá’u’lláh’s exegesis of the
> Olivet Discourse of Mathew 24, which underlies the whole first part of
> the important Kitab-i Iqan; cf. Nader Saiedi, Logos and Civilization:
> Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh. Bethesda, MD:
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                         107
> 
> University Press of Maryland, 2000, chs. 4-5; Sours, Prophesies, passim. In
> fact, the Kitab-i Iqan is wedded to the Book of Daniel insofar as, in
> Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation, the Iqan is nothing less than the
> revelation in which the apocalyptic seals of the Book of Daniel (Daniel
> 12:8) was broken; cf. Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, 139.
> Cf. Gen 5:22; Charles Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents
> and Early Evidence. Leiden, NL: Brill, 1998, 156-158.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i Hikmat (Tablet of Wisdom), in Tablets, 148n1;
> Keven Brown, “Hermes Trismegistos and Apollonius of Tyana in the
> Writings of Bahá’u’lláh,” in Jack McLean, ed., Revisioning the Sacred:
> New Perspectives in Bahá’í Theology. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1997,
> 153-188.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, ##112, 121.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #9; Hornby, Lights, #1696.
> Cf. Guy Beck, ed., Alternative Krishnas: Regional and Vernacular
> Variations on a Hindu Deity. Albany: State of New York University Press,
> 2005, ch. 1.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, #22; Lambden, Aspects, 42-45.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #79.
> Cf. Lambden, Aspects, 40: for instance, the term “the Adam of Reality.”
> While it may have been the case that Docetism, which wanted to rescue
> the divine from the evil creation and Christ from the defilement of bodily
> existence, lived on in the Qur’anic mentioning, or at least, post-Qur’anic
> interpretation, of the cross, seemingly denying the historicity of the death
> of Jesus on the cross (Qur’an 4:147), Bahá’u’lláh always accepted this
> historicity and, hence, was opposed to such a dualistic rendering of the
> divinity of Manifestations in relation to their historical human existence,
> but without taking away from their universal spiritual nature representing
> the Primal Will or Mind; cf. Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the
> Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought. Oxford: Oneworld,
> 2009; Cole, “Behold the Man,” 60-64.
> The question, here, is not about the exact form of such an emanation—
> differentiating between incarnation or appearance, manifestation or
> revelation, theophany or epiphany—but that the intention of the
> emanation of the Primal Reality from the unmanifest Godhead Beyond is
> to manifest its Self and realize the infinity of divine attributes that links
> the transcendent and immanent divine in such way that they are one and,
> hence, that the world of creation with its impermanence and physicality is
> not an evil or unnecessary or irrelevant side effect of eternity, but the
> explication of the whole process of revelation and emanation—something
> 108                                                         Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has fathomed with the cycle or arc of decent and ascent; cf.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, ##53-54; Saied, Logos, ch. 2.
> Cf. Juan Cole, “‘I am all the Prophets’: The Poetics of Pluralism in Bahá’í
> Texts,” in Poetics Today 14:3 (1993): 447-76. Hence, ‘Abdu'l-Bahá’s often
> repeated emphasis of the spiritual reality of manifestations and all
> prophetic figures; cf. SAQ #23. The same could be said in this context of
> other religious founders and spiritual figures throughout history—one
> might think of Guru Nanak and Sikhism, Mahavira and Jainism—namely
> that they are inspired by the Holy Spirit, who/that makes them what they
> are in their spiritual station; cf. Stockman, Bahá’í Faith, 38.
> Cf. Sours, Syllable, chs. 1-2; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #87. The
> symbolic meaning is the true meaning, the spiritual reality, not an
> “allegorical spiritualization” of reality that is understood to be material in
> nature; cf. Corbin, Alone, 105-135.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #4; Julio Savi, Towards the Summit of
> Reality: An Introduction to the Study of Baha'u'llah's Seven Valleys and
> Four Valley. Oxford: George Ronald, 2008, 37-38.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #79.
> The “Sabians” of Harran seem to have used this corpus as scriptural
> evidence for being “people of the book” under Islamic rule.
> “Apocalyptic” as a qualification does not necessarily indicate
> precognition of a divinely determined future, but also includes literatures
> that claim to be able to “see” the higher spiritual realms or even travel in
> them to reveal its secrets.
> Cf. the 1st Book of Enoch; Chrys Caragounis, The Son of Man: Vision and
> Interpretation. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 83-119.
> Cf. Brown, “Hermes Trismegistos,” 153-188.
> Cf. Gilles Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Colleced Esseys of Gilles
> Quispel. ed. by Johannes van Oort. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2008; 19-21, 33,
> 155, 593, et alia.
> Cf. Kitty Ferguson, Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational
> Universe. London: Icon Books, 2010, 186.
> Cf. Juan Cole, “Problems of Chronology in Baha'u'llah's Tablet of
> Wisdom,” in World Order 13:3 (1979):24-39.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i Hikmat, in Tablets, 146.
> Cf. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Promulgation, #3; Sours, Station, ch. 6. In order not to
> misunderstand this in a triumphalist way, which easily can happen and, in
> fact, has happen with the emphasis on the exclusivity of “lastness” in
> other dispensations, Shoghi Effendi attributes the greatness of Bahá’u’lláh
> not to the inherent difference in station between him and other
> Laozi: A Lost Prophet?                                                       109
> 
> Manifestations, but to the time in which a Manifestation happens and its
> potentials to be harvested; cf. Fazel, “Pluralism,” 42- 43.
> As a prophet who brought a book, the Qur’anic John the Baptizer would
> have to be considered as a major prophet; in the Bahá’í writings however,
> he appears as a minor prophet preparing the way for a mayor prophet,
> Jesus; cf. Cole, “Behold the Man,” 52; yet compare with Lambden,
> Aspects, 55, 58-60.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Uncompounded Reality, in Momen, 203-21.
> Cf. Peter Smith, The Babi and Baha’i Religions: From Messianic Shi`ism to
> a World Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 24-26.
> Cf. The Báb, Persian Bayan, Wahid III:3, in Momen, Selections, 339-340.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Days, #42 (207), #44 (216-217).
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Days, #6 (27); Gleanings, #14. In most ancient religions,
> the inhaling and exhaling process and symbolism appears in one way or
> another as that of the Spirit-breath that binds the creation and
> annihilation process of the cosmos together into one movement of
> cyclical renewal. It stands behind the eastern (Hindu) and western (Stoic)
> expressions of the world conflagration, but, reduced to one linear
> process, is also behind the biblical creation Spirit (ruah), universally
> appearing in the pre-creation verse of the Book of Genesis (Genesis 1:2)
> and specifically as breath of life blown from the nostrils of God into the
> bodies of living beings (Genesis 2:7, 7:22; Job 27:3), and its eschatological
> resumption into God, specifically by taking back the spirit of life of
> individual beings (Psalm 104:9; Ecclesiastes 12:7) and universally in the
> conflagration of the world in the Psalms (Psalm 18:8) and at or after the
> universal judgment in the Book of Revelation (20:4). In some meditation
> technics, the movement of breathing reappears as the most basic bodily
> expression of the harmonization of individual and cosmic existence. Yet,
> it can also become the expression of the ultimate metaphysical movement
> of unification and differentiation, addressing the ancient problem of the
> one and the many; cf. Faber, God as Poet, §40.
> Cf. The Báb, Persian Bayan, Wahid II, in Momen, Selections, 325-338.
> It is a standard argument of Bahá’u’lláh, appearing in diverse tablets,
> that, after answering questions regarding other religions and
> Manifestations, the reference to them remains only relevant if the seeker
> embraces the new Manifestation by the appearance of which they become
> irrelevant if they cannot be related to this novelty in which they are also
> embraced; cf. Juan Cole, “Bahá’u’lláh on Hinduism and Zoroastrianism:
> The Tablet to Mirza Abu’l-Fadl Concerning the Questions of Manakji
> Limji Hataria,” @ http://bahaistudies.net/hindu_zoro.html.
> This was a trend probably set in motion by Fritjof Capra, The Tao of
> Physics. Boston: Shambala, 1975.
> 110                                                       Lights of Irfán vol. 19
> 
> Cf. Whitehead, Process, 3-18; Faber, Becoming of God, Sphere 2; God as
> Poet, part 1.
> Cf. Bonnie J. Taylor, One Reality: The Harmony of Science and Religion.
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 2013, ch. 1. This is also a major concern
> of Bahá’í thought as reflected in many scriptural passages, elevating this
> resonance to a foundational Bahá’í principle; cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i
> Hikmat (Tablet of Wisdom), in Tablets, #9; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks,
> #44. The independent investigation of truth, although hitherto not as
> defined in the Bahá’í universe of discourse as a condition of the
> cooperation between science and religion, is, in fact, the effort of
> philosophy; cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, PT, #41.
> Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making. New York: Fordham
> University Press, 1996, 141.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #72; Questions, #20.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, ##5, 69.
> Cf. Taylor, One Reality, ch. 4.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, ##36, 55.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, #15.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing, 2002,
> Persian, #29; Gleanings, ##5, 90, 153; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections, #21;
> Promulgation, #4.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, #58.
> Cf. SAQ #47; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Taylor, One Reality, 88-91; PUP #79.
> Cf. David Palmer and Xun Liu, eds., Daoism in the Twentieth Century:
> Between Eternity and Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press,
> 2011; and David Palmer and Elijah Siegler, Dream Trippers: Global
> Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality. Chicago: University
> Press of Chicago, 2017.
> Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, ##1, 47, 69.
> Cf. Faber, “Becoming Intermezzo,” 212-238; Divine Manifold, ch. 14.
> Cf. Bahá’u’lláh, Days, #10; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Questions, #91.
> Cf. Faber, Garden, chs. 7-9.
>
> — *Laozi: A Lost Prophet? (Used by permission of the curator)*