Idol Chatter

The latest target of BIGS Legal

I recently decided that I didn’t really want to say any more about the Rocky Mountain Bahá’ís, that is, the O’Bahá’ís (Orthodox Bahá’ís) of New Mexico and the BUPCees (Bahá’ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant) of Montana. It’s obvious that they’re irrelevant and seeing as I have taken the position that the Guardianship was a bad idea to begin with, I don’t really see the point of promoting their desperate causes.

Guardianship? For those not in the know, a Guardian is a sort of Bahá’í Imam or Ayatollah.

Anyhow, The BUPCees are just too kooky and fragmented, and the O’Bahá’ís—they’re just boring. What have they done for me lately?

But then I was reminded that these two pathetic minorities have recently been getting bullied in court by the dominant Bahá’í organization, henceforth referred to as the BIGS™ Corporation, or BIGS™ Inc.

Word on the street has it that the BIGS™ (Bahá’ís In Good Standing) have been diverting construction funds into litigation against those minuscule mountain communities, so I couldn’t help but take notice. And what are they suing the O’Bahá’ís and BUPCees for? Exclusive rights to Bahá’í terms such as “Bahá’í,” “UHJ,” and “The Greatest Name.”

“The Greatest Name”—now who wouldn’t want to corner that?

“The mainstream Baha’is have responded with a lawsuit that tries to bar the orthodox from calling themselves Baha’i and sharing the “The Greatest Name,” a sacred and trademarked symbol. Baha’is believe they are not only safeguarding their identity. They are defending the truth with a capital T.

“The Orthodox say that is not a matter for the courts to decide.”

—Chicago Tribune, May 18, 2009

At present, BIGS™ Inc is losing. They lost to the BUPCees in 2005 and then lost to the O’Bahá’ís in 2008. The latter case is being appealed. Stay tuned. The Chicago Tribune is on the case.

“… the Court finds that the alleged contemnors are not in contempt …”

How minority Bahá'í attorneys of the future will get to court.

I wonder how well paid the BIGS™ Inc legal team is. I wonder whether the BIGS™ Inc lawyers are themselves BIGS™ members. Then again, who cares?—I just hope they’re well paid. But I digress.

As for the mountaineers, can they even afford attorneys? I’m surprised that they can even afford airline tickets to Chicago. Then again, maybe they left the driving to Greyhound. Speaking of Greyhound, check this ride—but I digress further.

Back around the close of the 1970s, my friend next door showed me a newspaper article that seemed to be about my father. It was about a Bahá’í chiropractor—a Dr. Jensen—who was making prophecies about a coming calamity. My father, Dr. John Jensen, is a Bahá’í chiropractor with a Bahá’í fondness for doomsday visions. Fortunately—or unfortunately, as the case may be—the Dr. Jensen featured in the article was out in Montana, a long way from my home in central California. It was some other Bahá’í chiropractor named Jensen.

The old Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana

This was quite a coincidence, of course. It’s not like there are many Scandinavian Bahá’ís like there are hoards of Scandinavian Mormons.

Actually, my father’s dad was one of those Scandinavian Mormons, but that’s another story.

One thing the Bahá’ís and Mormons do share, though, is a peppering of heretics across the Rocky Mountain states. Must be something about mountains that brings out the heretic in people.

This Dr. Leland Jensen of Missoula, Montana was well known among researchers for his string of failed prophecies. He was also known for being convicted for sexually molesting of a minor. It was while doing time in the big house that Jensen received his calling, as so oft it happens. Upon release, Jensen founded his own Bahá’í sect, and commenced to doing what prophets do.

My father was and is quite different. He is a principled man who would never entertain prophetic delusions or manipulate people as the Montana Jensen did.

But my father did—and does—share Leland Jensen’s apocalyptic view of the immediate future. He is a Bahá’í, after all. It’s in the scripture. A lot of bad things are going to have to happen for the world to be cleansed before the last century ends.

As a child in a Bahá’í household, I learned about a horrible calamity that would soon cleanse the world of its blind materialism and render it receptive to the light of faith in Bahá’u'lláh. We weren’t sure what exactly would happen but we knew it would necessarily be bad—something along the lines of Zechariah 13:

In the whole land, declares the LORD,
two-thirds will be struck down and perish;
yet one-third will be left in it.
This third I will bring into the fire;
I will refine them like silver
and test them like gold.

Two-thirds of the people of the world would perish, and many of the survivors might wish they had perished as well. It was a retributive promise laid over the real danger of the Cold War. It was easy for a child to internalize.

Noted skeptic Michael Shermer has also heard of Leland Jensen. Shermer discussed Jensen at length in his book How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science:

On a brisk April 29 morning in 1980, Dr. Leland Jensen, a chiropractor and leader of a small religious sect called the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant, led his devoted followers into fallout shelters in Missoula, Montana, to await the end of the world. Within the first hour, Jensen believed, a full third of the Earth’s population would be annihilated in a nuclear holocaust of fire and fallout. Over the course of the next twenty years most of the remaining population would be ravaged by conquest, war, famine, and pestilence. (page 192)

What I find interesting about this Leland Jensen episode, beside the curious parallels in my family, is the way that Jensen and his followers handled the failure of Jensen’s prophecies. It reminds me of the rationalizations offered by Bahá’ís in response to the failure of mainstream Bahá’í prophecies of peace and calamity in the 20th Century:

Psychologists who studied Leland Jensen and his Baha’i sect … discovered that when the end of the world came and went, they did not quietly disband and go home. Psychologist Leon Festinger applied his theory of cognitive dissonance to failed prophecy, and argued that the stronger one’s commitment to a failing cause, the greater the rationalizations to reduce the dissonance produced by the disappointment. Thus, paradoxically, after the 1980 debacle in the bomb shelters, not only did Jensen and his followers not abandon the cause, they ratcheted up the intensity of future predictions, making no less than 20 between 1979 and 1995! Jensen and his flock applied one or all of the following rationalizations:

1. the prophecy was fulfilled—spiritually
2. the prophecy was fulfilled physically, but not as expected
3. miscalculation of the date
4. the date was a loose prediction, not a specific prophecy
5. God changed his mind in order to be merciful
6. predictions were just a test of members’ faith.

How We Believe, page 202

Bahá'u'lláh in Edirne, Turkey

As a young Bahá’í on pilgrimage, I remember not being delighted by the photograph of Bahá’u'lláh that only pilgrims and janitors are permitted to see. Having grown up with charming images of `Abdu’l-Bahá, my expectations were high, and unfair to Bahá’u'lláh.

Portraits of `Abdu’l-Bahá are as common in Bahá’í households as crosses are in churches. “place the picture of `Abdu’l-Bahá in your home,” Bahá’ís are told (Lights of Guidance, page 520). They are instructed to post these portaits up high in prominent locations. This is done out of what they call “respect.” In spite of this idolatrous practice, Bahá’ís consider themselves special for not displaying portraits of Bahá’u'lláh.

I don’t intend to criticize Bahá’u'lláh for his lack of physical charm, but when I hear Bahá’ís wonder at the attractiveness of `Abdu’l-Bahá, I am moved to ask, “why do you place significance on such matters?”

Abbas Abbas Everywhere!

I can’t help but be skeptical regarding the motives behind the Bahá’í prohibition against portraits of Prophets. Given the Bahá’í affection for graven images, I’m inclined to wonder whether the prohibition would have ever been laid down had Bahá’u'lláh been better looking.

Bahá’ís are told not to keep photos of their Prophets because such photos could too easily become idols; believers would focus on the appearance of their prophet, and be distracted from his message. Yet, the anticipation of Bahá’ís to view the one Holy Image in the International Archives Building in Israel is only heightened by that prohibition of graven images, and Bahá’ís shudder at the prospect of seeing the image of Bahá where they ought not, as though the image itself has some kind of ominous power!

Imagine what the Bahá’í Faith might become if its idols were stripped away. What if the burden of divine authority were cleansed from every portrait, every image, every institution, and every holy word?

Imagine there’s no Cov’nant. It isn’t hard to do.

What if the Bahá’í religion were not a cult of divine images (“manifestations”), but rather a fellowship of principles (or virtues)? What if Bahá’u'lláh had said, “never mind about me and my station; let’s get down to the business of world reform.”

I know. It’s a stretch.

Imagine, by Rachel Boden

If Bahá’ís were to forfeit their sense of divine entitlement, would they lose their famous, unquenchable sense of purpose?

Sorry. I couldn’t resist. I’ll try to keep it serious.

They’d have to give up some very comforting expectations, it’s true. I’m not saying it would be easy.

There’s a word for a religion of principles: unitarianism. Christian unitarians practice “the religion of Jesus, not a religion about Jesus.” What if Bahá’ís could say the same about their religion? What would their religion look like?

Progressive Religion

A central, defining principle of the Bahá’í Faith is “progressive revelation.” According to Shoghi Effendi, it is the most fundamental Bahá’í principle, but alas, it is not completely compatible with unitarian thought, because revelation is a concept that depends on singling out one man or book as standing for God. That’s idolatry, so it will have to go, but we can reform the idea of “progressive revelation.” Rather than thinking of religion as leading mankind according to mankind’s needs, let us rather think of religion as evolving organically in response to mankind’s needs.

Independent Investigation of Truth

This is the most unitarian of Bahá’í principles. Named the first principle of Bahá’u'lláh by `Abdu’l-Bahá’ in Paris Talks, independent investigation of truth is often cited as a fundamental principle of the Bahá’í religion, but it has been undermined by qualifications and exceptions in the interests of idolatry since the earliest days of the Bahá’í religion.

God: To Unity and Beyond

Unity is a problematic notion, because it tends to imply uniformity and common fealty to a single book, person, or idea.

“Absolute Unity excludeth all attributes.”

—Saying attributed to the Imam `Alí, cited by Bahá’u'lláh in The Seven Valleys

Care must be taken when speaking of “Unity of God.” Unity, in this case, must be taken to mean inaccessibility and unknowability. Nothing whatever should be permitted to represent God. The very term “Manifestation” must be stricken from the lexicon. God must be seen as utterly unknowable. To suggest that a particular image, such as a holy book, is more holy than anything else is idolatry.

Ultimately, we must get beyond the term “unity,” for unity itself imposes an image of God that is presumptuous. How can we know that divinity is not fundamentally dualistic? We cannot. We can think of God being characterized by unity in some trivial, truistic way, but to declare the unity of God from pulpits and mountaintops is utter pretense and presumptuousness.

Religious Harmony

“Unity of religion” presents a big problem. It tends to encourage triumphalism, and it threatens cultural diversity. What must be aimed for is not unity, but rather harmony and tolerance.

Human Harmony

I don’t have a problem with the idea that we ought to think of all people as having a great deal in common, and I certainly like the idea of equal treatment under the law, but unity is a dangerous word. Just as it can be abused by religion, it can be abused by the state. Let’s stick with “harmony,” just to be safe. “Harmony” is for unitarians. “Unity” is for idolators.

Equality

Curiously, `Abdu’l-Bahá’s Eleven Principles mention “equality” more times than “unity.” Here are the three equalities that he emphasizes explicitly, plus a fourth principle that implies equality quite strongly:

I find it hard to argue of any of these points. They may not be unitarian ideas per se, but they certainly do not conflict with the unitarian principle.

Peace and Non-interference

Here are three more of the principles that don’t conflict with the unitarian principle:

• Religion ought to be the Cause of Love and Affection.
• Universal Peace.
• Non-Interference of Religion with Politics.

Idolatry

I find only two of `Abdu’l-Bahá’s Eleven Principles to be idolatrous:

• The Unity of Religion and Science
• The Power of the Holy Spirit

The first might not seem so bad at first, but it implies that religion and science are one and the same–that “true religion,” because it is infallible, will always confirm science. The implication being that if science fails to comply with “true religion” then science must adapt. I would sooner keep religion and science at arms length, lest the one strangle the other.

As for the Holy Spirit, I don’t have a problem with admitting the existence of unseen, intangible powers, but what `Abdu’l-Bahá’ asserts with respect to this “Spirit” is pure, unmitigated idolatry.

Conclusion

`Abdu’l-Bahá’s idolatry, superstition, traditionalism, and orthodoxy aside, I think that a unitarian theme can be identified in his message. I believe therefore that it would not be unreasonable for a Bahá’í to adopt a unitarian view of the Bahá’í Faith. I also believe that a fundamentalist view would be equally justifiable. No view of the Baha’i Faith can be free of contradiction. The unitarian approach, however, enjoys a particular advantage: it accepts contradiction as an attribute of all human endeavors and moves forward. The fundamentalist clings to the purity of idols until the strain reaches a point of fracture.

Welcome, pilgrim, to the Dan Carmel and the Terraces at the Bahá’í World Centre.

This is a brief guide to help you golf this authoritative, par-95 course.

"The Lumps" at "the Terraces"

In all these terraces the fairwayer must stray not the breadth of a hair from the “Law”. Please observe and heed all signs, and please refrain from wading after balls into the founts of Divine Bounty. Divots are strictly forbidden, and grounds for immediate expulsion without warning.

Please don’t feed the badgers.

By playing the BWC Links, you help to finance the maintenance of the terraces. Your continuing patronage is appreciated.

Disclaimer: though infallibly guided by the Sun of Divine Composition, the author knoweth very little about golf, and it ill-beseemeth him to go into great technical detail, for quotation from the words of others proveth acquired learning, not the divine bestowal. Furthermore, for they that move on these 18 differing terraces, the understanding and the words of the fairwayers have differed.

1. The Terrace of Contentment. Why the fairwayer ever attempteth to drive his balls out of this terrace can only be said to be a divine mystery, but yea, golf is itself inscrutable. No man knoweth its secrets, and to go into detail on this matter would not prove meet or seemly.
2. The Terrace of Search. The steed of this terrace is patience, for the course is well-concealed in the city, and the cabbies know not where it can be found.
3. The Terrace of Conversion. The steed of this terrace is pain, and such that it would seem it may never end, for the gravel is something fierce for its sharp edges, and no steed will have anything to do with carrying anyone anywhere, and the fairwayer must find a place to change into more appropriate footwear, then lifting his bag, and turning toward the tee, the fairwayer is straightaway cast into …
4. The Terrace of Proselytism. On this terrace the fairwayer is thrown into confusion. This terrace has no steed, for the steed has refused to go this far. Here the fairwayer is accosted from every direction by a host of holy caddies, each granting game advice at no charge, while the fairwayer stands firm beneath the Sun of limitless thirst. Secrets are many, but strangers are myriad. It is vital that the fairwayer find the right path, so that he may free himself of the all-knowing caddies. Peace be upon him who followeth the Right Path! The weary fairwayer, wearied out with his own life, waiteth longingly for those founts of unwelcome knowledge to ascend the steps to the …
5. The Terrace of Wonderment, wherein the weary fairwayers, both proselyte and proselytizer, begin to wonder what they’ve signed up for. Thinking to excess upon this question, they find themselves pitching into …
6. The Terrace of Shame, but growing weary of the pangs of conscience, they shake off their misgivings, return to the game, and find themselves groping through the lumpy grasses of …
7. The Terrace of Administration. It is related that one day they came upon Majnun sifting the sand trap (it ill beseemeth thee to say “bunker”), and his tears flowing down. They said, “What doest thou?” He said, I seek for but one ball—any ball, that I may play out of this desert of dysfunction. I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her. Finally finding a ball and chipping upslope, the weary fairwayer finds his ball trapped once more in …
8. The Terrace of More Administration. Once again finding a ball and chipping upsloap, the weary fairwayer finds his ball trapped once more in …
9. The Terrace of Still More Administration. This is the terrace of the highest authority, and the Men of the House sit consulting right over yonder in that big white house, but see that thou dost not approach them for the way is barred and to seek it is impiety. Just when the fairwayer loses hope that there may ever be a non-administrative terrace, he is reassigned to …
10. The Terrace of Relocation, wherein the fairwayer must forsake every possession in exchange for freedom from administrative obligations and other community burdens, and receiving a set of rental clubs for the back half of the course. Shanking a beaten old secondhand ball into the prickly shrubs, he wanders in upon …
11. The Terrace of Alienation, where culture sickness is but a euphemism, and the weary fairwayer loses whatever remains of his sense of place. The fairwayer inevitably finds his way from this hapless state into the …
12. The Terrace of All-Consuming Homesickness, which is bound to lead to …
13. The Terrace of Wholesale Forfeiture, wherein the fairwayer fails utterly to keep his head in the game, with thoughts only for the 19th Hole, and what delights lay waiting there, which I have not thought pertinent to mention here. The cloud of the Loved One’s mercy raineth only in the season of spring, wherefore the fairwayer, feeling the symptoms of overexposure and lusting for shade, ascendeth at last upon …
14. The Terrace of Knowledge, where many a fairwayer dwelleth within the shadow of the tree of knowledge, having finally come upon the knowledge of the whereabouts of the tree of knowledge. After a siesta of undetermined duration, the fairwayer hooks a ball up upon …
15. The Terrace of True Poverty, wherein pitiless ravens do lie in wait to pilfer balls. Having sliced his final ball into a fountain, the weary fairwayer begins to hit ghost balls up the fairway. Doing this, he mimes his way upward to …
16. The Terrace of Illusory Contentment, wherein bliss causes the weary fairwayer to misplace his one remaining club, requiring that he shadow golf into …
17. The Terrace of Absolute Nothingness, wherein the weary fairwayer wanders in a trance of delirium. And just when he thinketh it couldn�t get worse, he swaggereth as one inebriated up to …
18. The Terrace of Absolute Exhaustion. Labor is needed, as he struggleth up this infernal ascent, hacking away at the path with an imaginary chipper, until, lost in vain hallucinations and pummeled by heat exhaustion, he stumbleth into …
19. The Nineteenth Hole, the very lounge of the Dan Carmel on High, and drinketh from its bountiful, divers taps. Ecstasy alone can encompass this theme, not utterance nor argument; and whosoever hath dwelt at this stage of the journey knoweth whereof We speak.

© MMVII Dan “Carmel” Jensen Promotions. Provisional alternative land use partner of the Baha’i World Centre.

Yes, you can have your own official FBI* agent card! Print them while they last!

The official FBI agent card. Don't leave home without it.

Print this image (200 dpi), sign it with your alias of choice, slip it into your wallet, and be prepared to parade it at all Bahá’í functions. This will enable you to hoard the food and refreshments while all Bahá’ís-in-good-standing dutifully shun you!

Caveat: As FBI agents are becoming more and more common, you may need to divide the spoils with agents at an increasing number of events.

*FBI is an unregistered trademark of the Forum for Bahá’í Investigations. All rights reserved.

Here’s a single sentence that captures Bahá’u'lláh’s megalomania and narcissistic self-pity to an extent that perhaps no other statement of his does:

Verily, no God is there but Me, the Wronged One, the Exile.

—Tablets of Bahá’u'lláh …

The term “Wronged One” is a title that he appears to have adopted early in his career, and taken a great liking to later in life.

Here’s a tally of instances of “this Wronged One” or “the Wronged One” in selected volumes of Bahá’u'lláh’s writings:

• Epistle to the Son of the Wolf: 102
• Tablets … after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: 55
• The Summons of the Lord of Hosts: 5
• Proclamation of Bahá’u'lláh: 4
• The Book of Certitude: 2
• The Most Holy Book: 0

Bahá’u'lláh’s son`Abdu’l-Bahá also referred to himself as the Wronged One, it turns out. In his Will and Testament, he refers to himself as “this Wronged One” ten times.

Dwight.

Thy will be done, O Universe!

Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life, pg. 627

In the preface to his Seven Mysteries of Life, Guy Murchie wrote that when he had set out to write the book, he had intended the project to be an exploration of life in its entirety, but somewhere on that seventeen year journey he had discovered something — something philosophical. He reported that he’d discovered

fresh insights as to why the world is the way it is, where it is going and what it means … a discovery in philosophy.

This was quite a remarkable pronouncement. Unfortunately, the preface does not identify what these insights were. I can only make the considered guess that the discovery he speaks of is the set of mysteries which the title of the book refers to. The difficulty I have with that guess is that not all those seven mysteries — if they may justifiably be called mysteries — were all that new to the world.

The first mystery, the abstract nature of the universe, was something he’d already delved into in his previous book, Music of the Spheres.

This first mystery was never all that mysterious. It was really just a declaration of philosophical idealism, as well as a recognition that mathematics is everywhere in nature.

A rather generous definition of "life"?

The next two mysteries were, though not commonly recognized, not all that new in 1978. The first of these, the interconnectedness of all creatures, was quite in vogue by 1978, and the second, the omnipresence of life, was just as fashionable, as evidenced by the advent of the Gaia Hypothesis.

Then came the ancient idea of Heraclitus and the Tao, canonized by Hegel, and echoed by the likes of Marx and Mao Zedong, that the world is a kind of embodied dialectic, a harmonious interaction of opposing principles. Murchie calls this dialectic the polarity principle.

contrast and struggle, … far from diluting beauty, only etch it deeper.

pp. 626–7

Appropriately, Murchie recognized that Heraclitus shared this deep insight with him:

wasn’t it Herakleitos of Ephesos who said, in the fifth century B.C., that “the way up and the way down are the same”? And wasn’t it he who later generalized the concept by adding, “it is sickness that makes health pleasant … weariness that precedes rest, hunger brings on plenty and evil leads to good”?

pp. 471–2; also see Music of the Spheres, pg. 522

And again:

Herakleitos who went so far as to declare Homer misguided when he prayed, “Would that strife might parish from among gods and men!” because the poet hadn’t realize he was asking for the destruction of the universe, since, should his prayer be answered, all things must pass away. Herakleitos obviously recognized the Polarity Principle and saw that “the sun is new every day” and “no man can step twice into the same river since the waters that flow upon him are ever fresh.”

pg. 495; also see Music of the Spheres, pg. 489

Murchie had been meditating on this polarity principle while writing Music of the Spheres, and, like Heraclitus, he took it very seriously:

I see the abstraction we have called Polarity transcending toward ultimate Divinity, …

pg. 627

Next came another principle that Murchie had visited often in Music of the Spheres, which he now had named transcendence. This was perhaps the most obscure of Murchie’s mysteries. He was not clear at all as to what he really meant by transcendence. He called it that because he wanted to give it a sense of spiritual progress, but what he meant, if one looks closely at his development of the idea, is closer to what might be called progressive perspectivism. This is where Murchie begins to tip his Bahá’í hand.

Looking at the development of the idea, we see that much of the chapter on transcendence dwells on the phenomenon of superorganism — an phenomenon that would certainly warrant its own chapter, but Murchie wants superorganism to serve another idea which holds more dear; an idea that he had probably held dear since he became a Bahá’í.

What I think Murchie was attempting to express in speaking of this mystery of transcendence was the idea that what we see in the world can change radically with a change of perspective, and a little dialectical thinking. This perspectivism, he hoped, could give hope that life’s puzzles could be solved.

… we need even more the principles of polarity and transcendence if we are really to explain why adversity is important and (as I believe) actually vital to our progress as spiritual beings.

pg. 621

Note that Murchie speaks of transcendence as a principle, rather than a mystery.

Murchie continues to tell the reader what he’s ultimately after in making such use of this transcendence. He thinks the world is a “soul school.” He thinks the world is hear to facilitate the education of souls. He thinks the justification for evil in the world can be found in correcting our shortsightedness. In other words, Murchie was a Bahá’í, and he needed this principle of transcendence to make his theology practicable.

Thus at last we arrive at the only hypothesis for the troubled world that fits all the known facts — the hypothesis that the planet Earth is, in essence, a Soul School.

pg. 621

Yes, that’s quite a leap that Mr. Murchie was asking the reader to make, and it’s clear now why he needed polarity and transcendence to pull it off. I for one can feel his yearning for justification of evil, though I personally have not been able to make that leap.

Transcendence … is not material so much as mental. And, to an even greater degree, spiritual.

pg. 494

When Murchie used the term transcendence, he was actually leading up to the Bahá’í doctrine of spiritual progress, which is related to the Bahá’í doctrine of unification, which is where the idea of superorganism came in. It’s not immediately apparent that this was the case, as Murchie went to great lengths to make his argument sound scientific, but it was more a rhetorical argument that sought to appeal to the reader’s yearnings.

transcendence … the development of our perspectives on space and time as we grow older, … a wider awareness as one matures spiritually … from our present earthly finitude toward some sort of an Infinitude far beyond.

This was actually nothing new to Murchie. When he began to work on Seven Mysteries, he had been a Bahá’í for 23 years. What he called transcendence was really none other than the Bahá’í doctrine of the soul’s progress through the worlds of God.

Murchie puts this Bahá’í doctrine of spiritual progression and collectivization to work as he presents his sixth mystery,

Germination of Worlds

With this mystery, Murchie put the fledgling Gaia Hypothesis to work for a Bahá’í doctrine, just as he had put superorganism to work for two other Bahá’í doctrines. In this case, the Bahá’í doctrine to be corroborated was to be the blossoming of humanity with the arrival of the promised one of all ages, Bahá’u'lláh; the Bahá’í notion that the very order of the world was to be overturned in favor of a new World Order, and Bahá’ís had long considered the advancements in science to be products of this spiritual New Jerusalem.

Rhetorically, Murchie couldn’t afford to be too explicit, but he was explicit enough to list out a number of Bahá’í principles as characteristics as this coming of age of humanity:

• elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty (pp. 577–8)
• gender equality (pp. 579–82)
• elimination of racial prejudice (pp. 579-82)
• universal education (pp. 582–3)
• universal auxiliary language (pp. 583–4)
• world government (pp. 584-586)
• progressive revelation (pg. 612)
• harmony of science and religion (pg. 615)

One can imagine Murchie reading these items off a Bahá’í brochure as he composed this chapter. This is Murchie at his most transparent as a Bahá’í evangelist.

The Gaia Hypothesis, born in the 1960s and raised in the 1970s, was not categorically new. The idea that Earth is an organism is as old as the science of geology itself. The very word “Gaia,” as it was adopted by the formulators of the Gaia Hypothesis, had actually been coined by the father of geology, James Hutton. The idea that the world would someday blossom was as old as Zoroaster. What Murchie wanted from the Gaia Hypothesis was a scientific foundation for what Bahá’ís like him had long believed.

With Murchie’s final mystery, divinity, we finally see a topic that actually qualifies as a mystery. The point of discussing this topic was apparently to argue for the existence of God as a mysterious but necessary concept, primarily by citing the preponderance of order and non-randomness in the universe. Here Murchie brought his religiosity to the fore, and he used Bahá’í terminology, such as unknowable Essence and veil of Glory (pg. 627), in speaking of God.

It now seems obvious to me that Murchie had been consciously working on a synthesis of current science and his particular religion, and I think he did remarkably well. I’m not sure that he began the project with this goal in mind, but I believe it began to take form as a religious project when his interest in religion was revived in 1963, and began to see himself as a Bahá’í author. Seven Mysteries certainly gained him the favor of many Bahá’ís and non-Bahá’ís around the world. Notwithstanding the lack of structure and logical lapses in Murchie’s colorful elucidations, to say nothing of his endorsements of pseudoscience (pp. 306–7), he might have had more of an impact on the popularity of the Bahá’í Faith had it not been for more traditionalist forces simultaneously gaining ground in the Bahá’í world community. We can see those forces at work in Murchie’s late life as we read through his autobiography. As early as 1979, we find him defending his ideas against critics within the Bahá’í Faith; critics for whom the harmony of science and religion was perhaps a lower priority than it was for Mr. Murchie.

I just had the pleasure of reading the first volume of Guy Murchie’s Music of the Spheres, titled The Macrocosm, and I can see that a lot has been learned about Earth, the Moon, and planets since I was born. Take this sectional illustration of Earth’s crust for example:

A rather outdated cross section of California

Note the complete absence of tectonic plates. Note that the Sierra Nevada is represented as a folded range, which it’s not. Furthermore, today we don’t think there’s a basalt layer beneath North America, and in fact, we don’t think there’s any root at all beneath the southern Sierra. That last bit has been discovered rather recently.

Another example of the obsolescence of this volume are the two outdated hypotheses of Moon formation. The preferred hypothesis at the time of printing appears to have been a fission model, which is no longer accepted:

An outdated moon-birth hypothesis

Of course this book was written before astronauts stepped on the moon — before we began to collect samples of lunar rock. Murchie can only guess that the Moon is a solid ball of granite, whereas today we know the Moon to be a stratified body like Earth, with a crust composed of basalt and anorthosite. We’ve obviously learned a thing or two about the Moon since the 1960s.

We’ve also learned a lot about the interior of Earth since then. We now believe that the source of most of Earth’s internal heat is nuclear radiation, and that Earth has a solid inner core. We’ve learned about plate tectonics and the greenhouse effect. We’ve found rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, we’ve discovered a number of dwarf planets and over 400 extrasolar planets, and we’ve discovered over 130 planetary satellites (moons), including some rather significant moons of Neptune. We’ve even watched a comet collide with Jupiter! With all that, we’re not as ready to send astronauts to Mars as Murchie and Werher von Braun were in 1961, but we’re doing quite well sending robots.

Of course we should not blame Murchie for what we didn’t know in the 1960s. Still, there are some areas where Murchie may have fallen short even for his time. There are places where he omitted pertinent facts, such as the role of bacteria in producing oxygen in the early atmosphere. There are also places where he may have misrepresented the basic science, such as with his treatment of heating by compression of solids (pg. 148–50). Murchie seemed to assert that pressure alone will cause any substance to glow, but a solid (so long as it behaves as an incompressible solid) will resist compression under high pressure. If a material does not compress under pressure, it will not heat, and it will not glow.

Digressions, Flourishes, & Religion

Murchie’s composition was sometimes distracted and his prose was sometimes needlessly flowery. He would sometimes graft in digressions — often religious — that could seem extraneous and even forced:

The dozens of human jet-age stargazers waiting around for the zero hour of launching then always remind me of the faithful shepherds of similar deserts in the ancient Holy Land who have long had an equally great faith that the world can be changed. Even though on the face of it the two kinds of change are different, I think they are also profoundly related in a way that will one day be made manifest to all.

Music of the Spheres, page 24

That’s more than a statement of belief; it’s a prophecy (too ambiguous to be anything else).

I don’t mean to denigrate the idea of spiritual progress — or political progress for that matter, but I don’t understand what Murchie is getting at here: what do the Bedouin have to do with progress?

Murchie also made some rather reasonable points in favor of religion, such as pointing to Johannes Kepler’s religious motives for seeking natural law — which he Murchie equated to divine justice — in the heavens. And I ought to give Murchie credit for having kept his religion out of the science itself. Murchie can be credited, for instance, with having resisted the temptation to follow the precedent of the Bahá’í “perfect exemplar” `Abdu’l-Bahá’, who spoke out against the idea that we are descendants of animals.

… we are the cousins, if not the descendants, of the very most successful of all the most daring of fish, …

Page 25

The Heart of the Matter

Notwithstanding these faults, I’m inclined to believe that Murchie’s core ideas transcend such particulars. Indeed, one wonders why he included quite so many particulars, knowing that such detail might water down the message. Perhaps Murchie was striving to make Music of the Spheres a comprehensive historical survey of physical science, but that might have been overly ambitious given his affection for big, broad ideas. Perhaps had he dealt separately with (1) music in nature, (2) math in nature, and (3) the boundless frontiers of discovery, this book would have been more enduring and more versatile.

A Segue into the Mysteries of Life

As Murchie stated in the forward to the 1967 edition of Music of the Spheres, he intended the two-volume set to form a larger set with his next book, which he intended to name Melody of Life, but was eventually named The Seven Mysteries of Life.

I am six years along in writing a sequel and companion volume to Music of the Spheres on the subjects of life and mind. The work, now about half done, will probably be titled Melody of Life, and in due time I hope it will be offered with the present book as an integral set.

G.M., 1967

Indeed, the two books share a central thread or three, including the core theme of Music of the Spheres — what Murchie calls the abstract, musical nature of the world. The Seven Mysteries of Life actually began as the chapters of Music of the Spheres that didn’t make the cut in 1961.

This time it was about life, philosophy and things I didn’t have space enough to include in my Music of the Spheres. It was another case of one book’s leading right into the next for fulfillment.

Guy Murchie, The Soul School, pg. 352