Hot August Nights

Even the hard, soft rains do not bring much respite from heat. I am grateful: for air conditioning, for small sudden unexpected breezes, for the garden in full bloom, for friends arriving, for family too. Sometimes in this heat it is challenging even to think. Nonetheless, last night I attended the final session of study on a book I have already recommended to you, One Common Faith. There are lines which I find quite electrifying, so this will be my post for today: sharing some perspectives from this important analytical document, commissioned for study by Baha'is and their friends by the Universal House of Justice.

I should note that the document goes through several stages. I will share, first, some fascinating insights as to the developmental nature of religious truths, which declare unambiguously and emphatically the significance of Bahá'í teachings, but which go on to do so in the context of a view of history and its intimate connection with the soul and with social development.

Witness:

"Because free will is an inherent endowment of the soul, each person who is drawn to explore Bahá'u'lláh's teachings will need to find his own place in the never-ending continuum of spiritual search." (p. 52)

"While the mind seeks intellectual certainty, what the soul longs for is the attainment of certitude." (ibid.)

Read that again!

"One of the distinguishing features of modernity has been the universal awakening of historical consciousness...Beneath the surface language of symbol and metaphor, religion, as the scriptures reveal it, operates not through the arbitrary dictates of magic but as a process of fulfilment unfolding in a physical world created by God for that purpose." (53)

"The declared purpose of history's series of prophetic revelations, therefore, has been not only to guide the individual seeker on the path of personal salvation, but to prepare the whole of the human family for the great eschatalogical Event lying ahead, through with the life of the world will itself be entirely transformed. The revelation of Bahá'u'lláh is neither preparatory nor prophetic. It is that Event." (54)

And here is the analysis:

"The moral vacuum that produced the horrors of the twentieth century exposed the outermost limits of the mind's unaided capacity to devise and construct an ideal society, however great the material resources harnessed to the effort. The suffering entailed has engraved the lesson indelibly on the consciousness of the earth's peoples. Religion's perspective on humanity's future, therefore, has nothing in common with systems of the past-and only relatively little relationship with those of today. Its appeal is to a reality in the gentic code, if it can be so described, of the rational soul." (55)

I find this fascinating: the link between historical development, evolution, and the evolution of the conscious soul. We have the capacity to learn from our mistakes, albeit not quickly. In the context of current and past outrages, it is heartening to be able to place conflict in its rightful perspective, as an anachronism destined to itself diminish and die-off like an unwanted virus for which a cure is found. If unity is the goal, and for Baha'is, it is, perhaps a future time will look back on the centuries glorifying warfare and will view them as if that period in human history were no more significant than the defunct common cold. We will find cures, I am certain, as science advances, for the grievous afflictions of the body. Religion, which in the past has been used as a force of evil, can become, through curing the soul as a component of our conscious knowledge and desire for unity, as important for a future, close and distant, where we all know that we are, in fact, one people.

A thinking soul. A rational soul. Consider that Bahá'u'lláh says, "Ponder this in thy heart, how it behooveth thee to be." How are we meant to be? How are we meant to live? How are we meant to think?