The Atom's Heart
Bahá'ulláh referred to a passage from an old Sufi poem while describing a stage of spiritual enlightenment:
With inward and outward eyes he witnesseth the mysteries of resurrection in the realms of creation and the souls of men, and with a pure heart apprehendeth the divine wisdom in the endless Manifestations of God. In the ocean he findeth a drop, in a drop he beholdeth the secrets of the sea.
"Split the atom's heart, and lo!
Within it thou wilt find a sun."— The Seven Valleys
The English poet William Blake also made such a reference:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.Just as I do not pretend that William Blake was talking about physics, now that I am no longer yearning for Bahá'í proofs I no longer make such pretense with regard to Bahá'ulláh, who was clearly not talking about physics, and, even if he were, what specifically would he have been describing?
No astrophysicist has found anything that resembles a star inside an atom, but rather, to the contrary, the microscopic characteristics of subatomic matter are known to be quite different from the macro characteristics of stars.
What about the fact that both stars and atoms have things orbiting them, one might ask. Well, perhaps, but how far do the similarities extend beyond that simple parallel? That is about where the similarities end.