Category Archives: Bahá’í

My religion of birth

Our Daily Bread: Blind thine eyes

by kaweah

Today’s sweet slice of salvation directs us to block all sensory input, wash our brains, empty our wallets, and close our minds so that we may fully and properly adore Bahá’u’lláh, the Promised Idol of All Ages:

Blind thine eyes, that thou mayest behold My beauty; stop thine ears, that thou mayest hearken unto the sweet melody of My voice; empty thyself of all learning, that thou mayest partake of My knowledge; and sanctify thyself from riches, that thou mayest obtain a lasting share from the ocean of My eternal wealth. Blind thine eyes, that is, to all save My beauty; stop thine ears to all save My word; empty thyself of all learning save the knowledge of Me; that with a clear vision, a pure heart and an attentive ear thou mayest enter the court of My holiness.

—Bahá’u’lláh, The Persian Hidden Words

Our Daily Bread: It's All About Growth

by kaweah

growth [ grōth ]

noun (plural growths)
medicine tumor: a mass of cells with no physiological function, e.g. a tumor that forms in or on an organ

Encarta® World English Dictionary

Pathology An abnormal mass of tissue, such as a tumor, growing in or on a living organism.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

The words “growth” and “expansion” occur six times in a recent announcement of the Bahá’í Universal House of Justice, not because growth and expansion are occurring so much as they are anticipated.

When the Universal House of Justice got word of the global economic crisis that broke back in September, they anticipated a weakening in the world’s immunity to religion, and acted promptly, alluding to the Bahá’í prophecy that the “Old World Order” is doomed to collapse:

Behold how even in the short span of time since we raised this warning in our Ridvan message, financial structures once thought to be impregnable have tottered and world leaders have shown their inability to devise more than temporary solutions, a failing to which they increasingly confess.

Message to the Bahá’ís of the World, October 20, 2008

It is the weakening of the morale of a society, after all, that religions like the Bahá’í Faith feed upon:

the continued strengthening of the [Bahá’í] community should be matched by a further decline in the old world order

So they’ve got right to work. They’ve primed “scores of clusters” for “systematic expansion”:

Scores of clusters around the globe are being primed for systematic expansion, and we expect to see a wave of intensive programmes of growth launched in the months leading up to Ridvan next year.

They don’t just strike everywhere with their clusters, but rather, target specific weak points:

identify receptive segments of society and share with responsive souls the message of the Faith

Large-scale crises are always a promising time for those who would stand to benefit from crisis. The question for Bahá’ís, I think, is how might this crisis be different? What will make the crisis at hand the crisis of victory? Looking at America, I see people turning to their traditional saviors. Looking abroad, I don’t see much that is different for the Bahá’ís this time around, and it’s because of this: the Bahá’í Faith doesn’t appear to have changed, except that it’s not quite as new as it was before. What the Bahá’í “Administrative Order” appears to be banking on is their recent effort to “systematize” and “develop human resources.” Perhaps Bahá’ís are better organized and prepared to convert new seekers than they were before.

Our Daily Bread: Ultimate Idols

by kaweah

Today’s slice of divine guidance begins with the obvious: we humans can never have universal, divine knowledge. This is not a problem for those of us who have come to terms with the fact that we cannot know everything.

O Salmán! The door of the knowledge of the Ancient Being hath ever been, and will continue for ever to be, closed in the face of men. No man’s understanding shall ever gain access unto His holy court. …

There are those among us, however, who continue to harbor ambitions for the unattainable. For them, we have religion:

As a token of His mercy, however, and as a proof of His loving-kindness, He hath manifested unto men the Day Stars of His divine guidance, the Symbols of His divine unity, and hath ordained the knowledge of these sanctified Beings to be identical with the knowledge of His own Self. …

There you have it: the solution. God can be known by knowing these special messengers the Baha’i Faith calls “Manifestations of God.” These Manifestations are specially created by God to be the perfect images of God, tuned with precision to the capacities of our minds at any given time. For instance: Jesus was perfect for the Roman era, and Muhammad was perfect for the MIddle Ages. These images of God are so perfect that as humans, the only appropriate response is for us to regard them as God himself:

Whoso recognizeth them hath recognized God. Whoso hearkeneth to their call, hath hearkened to the Voice of God, and whoso testifieth to the truth of their Revelation, hath testified to the truth of God Himself. Whoso turneth away from them, hath turned away from God, and whoso disbelieveth in them, hath disbelieved in God.

—Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

That’s the ultimate in idolatry, right there. Feast your eyes.

Our Daily Bread: No more questions, thank you!

by kaweah

Happy New Year, everyone!

Today’s slice of sustenance is a reminder of the mind-numbing principle under which I was raised. I remember learning just how much of a problem this would become for me around New Year’s Day, 1988, when my parents stunned me by reacting quite desperately and angrily to my doubts as a young Bahá’í.

Bahá’ís talk a lot about their principle of “independent investigation of truth,” but this only applies to those who haven’t yet found the truth—the Bahá’í Faith. Since I was born a Bahá’í, there was nothing for me to investigate:

what would it profit any man to strive after learning when he hath already found and recognized Him Who is the Object of all knowledge?

—Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

But that’s not all. It’s not enough to cease looking for truth; it’s equally important to abstain entirely from questioning Bahá’u’lláh:

Blessed is the man that hath acknowledged his belief in God and in His signs, and recognized that “He shall not be asked of His doings”. Such a recognition hath been made by God the ornament of every belief and its very foundation. Upon it must depend the acceptance of every goodly deed. Fasten your eyes upon it, that haply the whisperings of the rebellious may not cause you to slip.

—Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas

The question and answer period has ended.

This insight—this epiphany—gave special meaning to “New Year” for me at the outset of 1988. Within six months, pending long days and nights of reconsideration and reflection, I would completely detach myself from any belief in my religion of birth.

Heard it on the X

by kaweah

I was invited to join a newly-created Baha’i discussion group on Yahoo! a couple years back. I checked it out, promptly noticed that the group was full of wide-eyed minions, and promptly checked out. The invitation list must have been very inclusive! I was reminded of one famous Peanuts scene.

The X Sign

The X Sign

That discussion group quickly became one of the busiest Baha’i-related discussion groups on the Internet, and appears to have replaced the old USENET soc.religion.bahai group as the most popular Baha’i discussion group, with one possible exception: our very own ex-bahai discussion group.

That’s right: the ex-bahai discussion group is one of the busiest Baha’i discussion groups on the Internet. At times, it is the busiest, as far as I have been able to figure.

I said “our very own”. I don’t own the group, but I have been a member for four years, and I feel very much a part of a community there; a community of Muslims, Christians, Unitarians, agnostics, atheists, core Baha’is, marginal Baha’is, Covenant Breaker Baha’is, and even one Zoroastrian!

It’s not all about attacking the Baha’i Faith, but rather, it is a community of people who have more or less left the Baha’i Faith behind, plus a few Baha’is who don’t mind mingling with such riff raff.

Though a lot of discussion traffic has moved to blogs, the ex-bahai group has remained active. It still fills a need for semi-private discussions that aren’t squeezed arbitrarily under blog entries. It feels a bit constricted being stuck under the Yahoo! banner, and its days may be numbered, but then again, maybe not. So long as there are Baha’is, I suppose there will be Ex-Baha’is.

Come check it out.

I’ve created a Facebook Ex-Baha’i group as well, and you’re welcome to join, but for now that group exists only as a placeholder.

Our Daily Bread: Of Sheep and Men

by kaweah

When I left my religion of birth, the Bahá’í Faith, it was due to one characteristic of that religion more than anything else: its contempt for humanity.

We previously discussed the authoritarian character of the Bahá’í Faith. We revealed the fact that the Bahá’í religion bases human virtue solely upon recognition of Bahá’u’lláh’s divine authority and obedience to him. What we didn’t mention is the poor opinion of men that underlay this authoritarianism:

Regard men as a flock of sheep that need a shepherd for their protection. This, verily, is the truth, the certain truth.

—Bahá’u’lláh, Kitab-i-Aqdas

This view is expressed in more than one place by Bahá’u’lláh:

Men at all times and under all conditions stand in need of one to exhort them, guide them and to instruct and teach them.

—Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i-Maqsud

I once held a very dim opinion of Christians for regarding men as sinners, and I still disagree with the view, but I now understand that Christian view leaves room for transcendence. I cannot say the same for the Bahá’í view of man. To Bahá’u’lláh, men are lower than sinners: they are blind, ignorant, utterly helpless, and, for the most part, unable to act virtuously except when threatened. Even the most submissive, deterministic views of Muslims seem to give humanity more credit.

Men are seen as so low, in fact, that they cannot even understand their own scriptures:

Man is unable to comprehend that which hath streamed forth from the Pen of Glory and is recorded in His heavenly Books.

—Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i-Maqsud

Thus the Bahá’í doctrine of the Covenant, which guarantees the sheep that they will never be left without a shepherd. This “Covenant”, Bahá’ís boast, is what makes the Bahá’í Faith special, and I agree; only I see it as a sign of what is most wrong with the Bahá’í Faith: its distinctive contempt for humanity.

Our Daily Bread: The Twin Duties

by kaweah

Any given religion can mean a variety of things to its adherents. The religion I was raised in, the Bahá’í Faith, is no exception to that rule of thumb, though that changed substantially with the long-overdue publication of Bahá’u’lláh’s “Most Holy Book” in 1993, five years after I had left the Bahá’í Faith. The book provides a definitive, unambiguous “mission statement” for the Bahá’í religion that runs counter to the pluralistic vision that some Bahá’ís had embraced previously.

The statement begins by declaring that the author is the sole representative of God in the universe and that men are duty-bound to recognize him as such:

The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation.

Bahá’u’lláh then goes on to state that those who recognize his exclusive divine authority are the good guys, and everyone else, however virtuous, is lost. Authority trumps morality.

Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed.

However, he adds this critical afterthought: believers, though they have “attained unto all good,” must also be absolutely obedient.

It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other.

Note that there are no concessions made to virtue per se. The only virtues recognized by Bahá’u’lláh are recognition of him and obedience to him.

The Great Peace of the Magi

by kaweah

Plutarch, in his treatise on Isis and Osiris, describes the great peace that the Magi foretold:

But the time appointed by fate is coming, … when the earth becoming plain and level there shall be one life and one government of men, all happy and of one language.

It reminds me of the utopian visions that I was raised on as a young Baha’i, right down to world government and a universal language. I sometimes yearn for that innocent vision, yet there’s always that nagging suspicion that such utopian visions can be terribly hazardous, in that their luminous purity can blind us to the immediate realities that we must face as denizens of the real world.

Indeed, Heraclitus would certainly have regarded such utopianism as blasphemy, just as he complained regarding Homer’s prayer for a permanent peace.

Killing your Buddhas

by kaweah

Continuing our discussion of the correspondences between Heraclitus and the Zarathustras, we have the directive that each one find truth for oneself; that one must never follow. As the old Buddhist epigram goes, “if you meet the Buddha on the road, Kill him.” Heraclitus, likewise, bids his readers not to listen to him, but rather to the Logos. Heraclitus also says “eyes are better witnesses than ears.”

Peters Denial of Jesus

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, likewise, is intent upon shaking off his disciples, for their own good:

Verily, I counsel you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you. … One repays a teacher poorly if one always remains only a student.

— Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1.22.3: On Bestowing Virtue

Zarathustra continues, cautioning his disciples against idolizing him:

You revere me; but what if your reverence should someday collapse? Be careful lest a statue fall and kill you!

— Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1.22.3: On Bestowing Virtue

As Heraclitus says, “I went in search of myself”, so Zarathustra instructs his disciples to do the same:

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

— Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1.22.3: On Bestowing Virtue

This sounds curiously similar to the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus:

Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.

— John 13:37–38

In a sense, I can personally claim to have been similarly instructed by the Idol of my youth, Bahá’u’lláh, who chased me off with his manifold contradictions while he subtly—perhaps unintentionally—instructed me in the ways of divine Godlessness.

Unfortunately, I know of no doctrine of virtuous denial in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings.

Our Daily Bread: Naw Rúz Drift

by kaweah

Note 26 to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas explains the timing of Naw Rúz as follows:

“Naw-Rúz is the first day of the new year. It coincides with the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, which usually occurs on 21 March. Bahá’u’lláh explains that this feast day is to be celebrated on whatever day the sun passes into the constellation of Aries (i.e. the vernal equinox), even should this occur one minute before sunset.”

Bahá’ís appear to believe that the Sun enters the constellation Aries at some time on or around the Vernal Equinox. This is not so. It was true about 2500 years ago, but not at present. At this time, the Sun enters Aries on April 19, about four weeks after the Equinox. This is because of something called precession.

The constellation Aries

One might possibly argue that what Bahá’u’llah really meant was the actual equinox (lit. “equal night”), and that the mention of Aries was only meant to refer to the first month (12th) of the astronomical year, but this argument has a leak: the Bahá’í system of watching for the equinox at some time of day is an impossible system, because the equinox cannot be determined empirically until a 12-hour day has passed, and at that point the equinox may need to be retroactively set to the day before (if the day before was closer to 12 hours).

One could conceivably stand at the equator and watch the sun pass overhead, but the sun passes over the equator at a different place each year. Better be on your toes! Of course, thanks to astronomy, one will know where to look. But there’s a catch:

“The Guardian has stated that the implementation, worldwide, of the law concerning the timing of Naw-Rúz will require the choice of a particular spot on earth which will serve as the standard for the fixing of the time of the spring equinox. He also indicated that the choice of this spot has been left to the decision of the Universal House of Justice.” (note 26)

Okay. Nevermind chasing the sun around the equator.

If one is to pick a single observation point, one had better pick a place not frequented by clouds, fog, dust storms, or mountain ranges. Muslims can tell you all about this problem.

There’s one final thing. The suggestion that a single observation point be selected for the determination of the equinox is, alas, manifestly ignorant of the science. The equinox is a global phenomenon. It does happen at a precise time, but it happens to the entire planet, at the moment that the radius vector of the earth’s orbit is at a right angle to the earth’s axis.