Alright, so I have finally set aside time to consider the Baha’i faith, and so for the rest of this week I will do my best to actually delve in to some of the topics and beliefs of Baha’i. For most of this month I have remembered to pray, but I am certainly not a morning person so some days have slipped my attention. The morning prayer (which is also the shortest, and this is not a coincidence) seemed to me a little silly at first. I didn’t really see it as anything special, but just like the Navkar Mantra, it has grown on me and has made me realize its importance.

I bear witness, O my God, that Though hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy strength, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.

The prayer encompasses all that is Baha’i, like a handy reminder, or a quick answer to what Baha’i is all about. It is a prayer that is ‘full of utility’, as one of the people at the Naw Ruz dinner aptly put it.

Anyway, now that I have really started to study and read about the Baha’i faith I have so many things I want to talk about that I am in danger of writing a long, overblown post that tries to cover multiple topics. So I will try to keep this short and simply discuss the parts of the Baha’i religion that I find intriguing and the philosophies that I agree with so far.

A Short Introduction to the Baha’i Faith begins by showing the individual how they can achieve real happiness. This seems to be the plight answered by every philosophy and religion that I have come across. It is always about how we are told that happiness is found in material things, in wealth and in power, in social status, influence, and consumerism. There always seem to be people who are unhappy with the regular lot in life, and require something else, something deeper, a better understanding of the self and of the Other.

It seems like a logical place to start for a religion that claims to be a synthesis of everything before it (see Andrew’s intro. for more on this), and it is one of the many common principles that unites religions- they allow you to get more out of life than just the regular run of the line bells and whistles.

We all know that our shiny things can be lost. They can make us feel unsafe, anxious, competitive, etc… But what is never lost, what cannot be taken away is understanding. Truth. That is what we all really want, claims Baha’u'llah, to know peace and contentment that won’t wander away from us.

And so, “we should change ourselves before the short time that we have on this earth comes to an end,” and I could not agree more. This is similar to the role philosophy has played in my life, as well as in western culture in general. It was the philosophers in ancient Greece that called our attention to the fact that our near and dear sense perceptions were not enough to adequately explain the world around us. So we moved on to abstract thoughts, and the realm of ideas, similar to the spiritual realm described in Baha’i- “our search, however, must not be among the things of this world, which only lead to sadness and suffering; rather, we must make our search a spiritual quest.” They say spiritual quest, I say philosophy, but I think we mean the same thing- inquirying into that which gives us value and virtue.

As human beings we have the capacity to reflect on ourselves and our actions, and to a far greater degree than any other animal on this planet. We each then have this kind of divine spark, this higher potential to rise above our baser pleasures and exhibit divine attributes. These things are what any other religion or philosopher would want to find in an ethical code- that is to say, Baha’i’s think we must cultivate things like justice, trustworthiness, and love. Their concept of love seems so perfect and all encompassing, I think it should seem familiar to many Christians:

Love is unlimited, boundless, infinite! Material things are limited, circumscribed, finite. You cannot adequately express infinite love by limited means. The perfect love needs anunselfish instrument, absolutely freed from fetters of every kind . . . The great unselfish love for humanity is bounded by none of these imperfect, semi-selfish bonds; this is the one perfect love, possible to all mankind, and can only be achieved by the power of the Divine Spirit. No worldly power can accomplish the universal love.

Again, I am with them up until the ‘Divine Spirit’ part. I am still unsure as to how I am willing to conceptualize God, and I will have to leave that for another post. But the Baha’i faith and my own philosophy both see the need for a kind of unlimited, unbiased, compassionate love. The forgiveness that follows from it is one of humanities saving graces, it allows us to peacefully coexist and get a better understaning of one-another’s positions and status in life. We are capable of so much, and it is up to us to realize our true nature, to be like talismans (see previous post).

The Baha’i conception of the highest reality, and the highest personage, is God, and a God that jives well with every religious conception of a deity or of an ultimate, spiritual plane of existence. Though we are incapable of describing this ultimate reality adequately (something with which I have some issues, which will also be discussed later) we are all attempting to describe the same thing. Though the Abrahamic traditions of the West often give God physical appearences and characteristics, their descriptions also fall short. For how can something infinite have anything that can be desribed by man? Baha’i does not try to invalidate any religion, but to point out to them that they are all getting it right, that they are all have a piece of the puzzle.

Therefore, although the religions of the East and West have widely differing concepts of the highest reality, Baha’u'llah maintains that this does not mean that there is a difference in the reality that is being described. Rather the religions differ because they are each looking at that reality from different viewpoints. They have each constructed concepts and ideas from their own perspective. The source of the differences lies, therefore, not in what is being observed; rather it lies in the fact that those who have written on these subjects have each had a particular cultural or personal background that predetermines the way that they have looked at these matters

I really like the Baha’i’s concept of the oneness of God, it seems like a very apt way of putting our situation regarding spiritual truth. I have thought this from very early in my philosophical wanderings- that all relgions were pointing at the same things, the same gods and values. Though Baha’i does seem to then later on assume that its own position is more correct then the others, but there will be more on that later.

Right now all I want to do is assert that, at the outset anyway, the Baha’i philosophy does a good job of highlighting one particular part of God that I safely accept. Which is that God is for the most part unknowable but we can all come to a consensus about God, and that we are all seeing the same thing, we are all realizing the same truths. I am uncertain as to whether or not I agree with how they then conceptualize God, or at least attempt to… but all these questions and uncertainties I leave for tomorrow…or rather, later today, to be precise.