Now is the Moment, ESW 13-15

After everything Baha'u'llah has asked Muhammad-Taqi to do so far, it is remarkable that He continues. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to give ear, to practise renunciation, to recite, to ponder, to listen carefully and pay attention to meaning. He has been asked to become just and fair-minded, and has heard Baha'u'llah describe the source of these words. All of that seems to have been preparing him for something. “Now is the moment in which to cleanse thyself with the waters of detachment that have flowed out from the Supreme Pen, and to ponder, wholly for the sake of God, those things which, time and again, have been sent down or manifested...”

There are those waters again. Earlier Muhammad-Taqi was told to purify himself with the waters of renunciation, and then Baha'u'llah expressed the hope that he might “inhale the breath of detachment”. Now he is told to cleanse himself with “the waters of detachment”. He is also told once again to ponder, although this time Baha'u'llah adds something. He is to do it “wholly for the sake of God”. I wonder if that is partly a question of motive. Muhammad-Taqi isn't being asked to investigate Baha'u'llah in order to defend his position, preserve his reputation, win an argument, or prove that he was right. He is being asked to consider what has been revealed for the sake of God alone.

And then something seems to change. Most of the instructions so far have concerned what Muhammad-Taqi needs to do within himself. Listen. Renounce. Recite. Ponder. Pay attention. But now Baha'u'llah asks him to do something in the world. He is to “strive, as much as lieth in thee, to quench, through the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance, the fire of enmity and hatred which smouldereth in the hearts of the peoples of the world”.

There is the voice again, although now Muhammad-Taqi isn't being asked to use his voice to recite words Baha'u'llah has given him. He is being asked to use his own utterance, guided by wisdom, to quench hatred. That seems especially powerful when addressed to a man whose words have helped inflame it. Baha'u'llah isn't merely asking him to stop using his influence destructively. He is asking him to turn it around. The same power of utterance that can help kindle enmity can be used to extinguish it.

And this takes me all the way back to the Invocation. We wondered there about the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise, and whether those divine attributes might also cause Muhammad-Taqi to consider his own lower-case power, knowledge and wisdom. Now, thirteen paragraphs later, Baha'u'llah actually asks him to use “the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance”. Perhaps that was where all of this was going. Muhammad-Taqi already has influence. He already has a voice. The question is what he is going to do with them.

The next paragraph seems to widen that question from Muhammad-Taqi to religion itself. “The Divine Messengers have been sent down, and their Books were revealed, for the purpose of promoting the knowledge of God, and of furthering unity and fellowship amongst men.” That word “purpose” catches my attention after everything we've just seen about the voice. A few paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah told us that God gave a voice to all things so that they might praise and glorify Him. We then encountered the rather severe statement that a tongue deprived of the fragrance of that praise was “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”. The voice has a purpose, and its worth seems somehow connected with whether or not it fulfils that purpose.

Now Baha'u'llah tells us that religion has a purpose, too. The Messengers and their Books have been given for the knowledge of God, and for “unity and fellowship amongst men”. Then comes the painful contrast: “But now behold, how they have made the Law of God a cause and pretext for perversity and hatred.” Religion hasn't merely failed to produce unity. The very thing intended to produce unity and fellowship has been used as a pretext for hatred.

So perhaps the question we asked about the tongue can be asked here as well. What is religion for? If its purpose is the knowledge of God, unity and fellowship, then surely we have to judge what we are doing with religion partly by whether it produces those things. However learned our arguments might be, however certain we are that we are defending the truth, if the result is perversity and hatred, something has gone badly wrong.

And Muhammad-Taqi is not merely a religious person. He is a religious leader. Baha'u'llah has just asked this particular religious leader to use the power of wisdom and the force of his utterance to extinguish hatred, and then immediately reminds him that the Messengers and their Books were given to further unity and fellowship. It is difficult not to hear the connection.

Baha'u'llah then says that people “are cleaving fast to, and have busied themselves with, the things they possess, and are unaware of, and shut out as by a veil from, the things God possesseth”. I find myself wondering what those things we possess might include. Material possessions, certainly, but perhaps also our learning, our interpretations, our position, our reputation, even our certainty that we already know what God requires. Muhammad-Taqi possesses a great deal of religious knowledge, but some of that knowledge may have become the very thing preventing him from recognising what is before him. Once again we seem to have returned to detachment, although from a slightly different direction. The problem isn't necessarily possessing these things. It may be cleaving fast to them.

And then, after all this, Baha'u'llah gives Muhammad-Taqi another prayer. It is remarkably short: “O God, my God! Attire mine head with the crown of justice, and my temple with the ornament of equity. Thou, verily, art the Possessor of all gifts and bounties.”

That imagery feels familiar. Near the beginning of the Epistle, Muhammad-Taqi's head was to be crowned with the fear of God and his temple adorned with reliance upon Him. Now the same head is to be crowned with justice, and the same temple ornamented with equity. Perhaps those are precisely the qualities he needs if he is going to do what Baha'u'llah has just asked of him. He already possesses a powerful voice. He already possesses learning. What he needs is the justice and equity that will allow him to use them properly.

And I find it amazing that Baha'u'llah once again doesn't simply tell Muhammad-Taqi that he ought to be just. He puts the request into Muhammad-Taqi's own mouth. Muhammad-Taqi has to ask God for justice and equity himself, and then acknowledge that God is “the Possessor of all gifts and bounties”. Justice and equity aren't presented as qualities he can simply assume he already possesses because of his position or learning. They are things he needs to ask for. After everything Baha'u'llah has just said about the things people possess and “the things God possesseth”, that final acknowledgement seems particularly appropriate.

Which brings me back to those opening words: “Now is the moment”. Perhaps everything before this has been preparation. Baha'u'llah has been teaching Muhammad-Taqi how to listen, what to do with his own voice, and how to examine the person doing the listening. But eventually all that listening and pondering has to become action, and the action Baha'u'llah asks of this powerful religious leader is to use his wisdom and his voice to quench hatred. Perhaps that is one way of knowing whether he has really begun to hear.

The Call, ESW 11-12

Muhammad-Taqi has been told what his ears were created for, and then given words to recite. Baha'u'llah has told him that God gave a voice to all things so that they might praise and glorify Him. And in the prayer we just looked at, Muhammad-Taqi was asked to say that any tongue deprived of the fragrance of God's praise was “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”.

Now Baha'u'llah returns to His own voice. But first He asks God to help Muhammad-Taqi to be able to do something.

Oh, before that, though, my usual reminder that these are just my own thoughts as I wander through this incredible book one more time. They’re nothing official. Just where my mind goes as I’m sipping coffee here on a beautiful late summer morning. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, I remember.

“We beseech God to aid thee to be just and fair-minded, and to acquaint thee with the things that were hidden from the eyes of men.”

Justice and sight are connected, and not in the usual sense of blind justice. There are things that have been hidden from people's eyes, and Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to become capable of seeing them. And once again Baha'u'llah doesn't simply tell him what conclusion to reach. He asks him to “reflect upon that which hath been revealed, and to be fair and just in thy speech”.

Hmm. Speech again.

And the hoped-for result is familiar, too. Baha'u'llah says, “that perchance the splendors of the daystar of truthfulness and sincerity may shine forth”.

Perchance.

We just had “haply”. Now we have “perchance”. Once again, Baha'u'llah can ask Muhammad-Taqi to reflect, to be fair and just in his speech. He can give him something to consider. But there is still room for Muhammad-Taqi himself. His free-will is never trampled upon. Perchance truthfulness and sincerity will begin to shine.

And what will that light do? It “may deliver thee from the darkness of ignorance, and illumine the world with the light of knowledge”.

That seems particularly pointed when addressed to a religious scholar. Muhammad-Taqi is presumably one of the people his society would regard as knowledgeable. Yet Baha'u'llah is still speaking to him about being delivered from “the darkness of ignorance”. Knowledge, apparently, is not simply a matter of how much you have learned.

Then Baha'u'llah gives him something to reflect upon.

“This Wronged One hath frequented no school, neither hath He attended the controversies of the learned.”

I love that He mentions both. He hasn't attended their schools, but neither has He taken part in their controversies. Given what we have already seen about cavils, that second part seems fairly directed at him, or at least those of his profession.

And then comes His explanation:

“By My life! Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself, but God, of His own choosing, hath manifested Me.”

This takes me right back to the voice. Only a few paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah said that He had “spoken not from mere impulse”, and that the One Who gave Him a voice is the One Who “hath given a voice unto all things”. Now He says much the same thing about His Revelation. This isn't something He decided to do. “Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself.”

He was called.

And to explain what He means, Baha'u'llah quotes from His Tablet to the Shah: “O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been.”

There is so much in that image. He is asleep. The breezes come. He is taught. And then: “...He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven.”

There is the voice again. But this time I find myself thinking of another voice.

According to the account of Muhammad's first Revelation, Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him, “Recite!”

We have already encountered that command more than once in this Epistle. Baha'u'llah has repeatedly told Muhammad-Taqi to recite words that He has given him. And now, only a couple of paragraphs later, Baha'u'llah tells him about the moment when He Himself was called and commanded to lift up His voice.

I'm not sure how far I want to take the parallel, but I find it difficult not to hear the echo. Muhammad was called and told to recite. Baha'u'llah was called and told to lift up His voice. And Muhammad-Taqi, who has rejected Baha'u'llah's claim, is now being told to recite the words that have flowed from Baha'u'llah's tongue.

Perhaps there is another parallel worth noticing. Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to lend his voice to words given to him by Baha'u'llah. Baha'u'llah, meanwhile, describes Himself as lending His voice to the One Who called Him. He even describes Himself as a leaf. “This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred. Can it be still when the tempestuous winds are blowing?”

The wind blows and the leaf moves. And Baha'u'llah has already said much the same thing in another form: “Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself.” The movement does not originate with the leaf, nor does the voice originate with Baha'u'llah.

“His all-compelling summons hath reached Me, and caused Me to speak His praise amidst all people.”

Again, He is summoned. Again, He speaks. And once again we have praise, the very purpose for which we were told only a few paragraphs ago that God gave a voice to all things.

Then comes another remarkable description: “I was indeed as one dead when His behest was uttered. The hand of the will of thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful, transformed Me.”

The images keep changing, but there seems to be a similar movement within them. The breezes come to the man asleep upon His couch. The wind stirs the leaf. The behest is uttered and the one “as dead” is transformed. The summons comes, and He speaks.

And perhaps that helps explain why Baha'u'llah began paragraph 11 by asking Muhammad-Taqi to reflect.

Muhammad-Taqi is being confronted with a claim that his education and position have apparently led him to reject. Baha'u'llah doesn't respond by trying to defeat him in one of those “controversies of the learned”. Instead, He asks him to be just and fair-minded, to reflect upon what has been revealed, and to be fair and just in his own speech.

Baha’u’llah tells him He was commanded by a voice. And perhaps Muhammad-Taqi is being asked a fairly simple question. Where does he think this voice comes from? He can continue to judge it by the learning “current amongst men”, by the schools Baha'u'llah never attended and the controversies in which He never participated. Or he can listen to the voice itself and ask whether what it is saying is true.

After all, Baha'u'llah has been preparing his ears for exactly that.

What Is Your Tongue For?, ESW 9-10

I'm looking at paragraphs 9 and 10 together for a fairly simple reason. The first tells Muhammad-Taqi how to pray the prayer, and the second gives him the prayer to pray. And Baha'u'llah is remarkably specific about how he should approach it.

“They whose sight is keen, whose ears are retentive, whose hearts are enlightened, and whose breasts are dilated,” He says, can “recognize both truth and falsehood, and distinguish the one from the other.”

That seems an appropriate place to begin when speaking to Muhammad-Taqi. As a religious scholar, distinguishing truth from falsehood is presumably something he believes himself quite capable of doing. And yet Baha'u'llah doesn't point here to scholarship, learning or religious authority as the qualities that make this possible. He mentions keen sight, retentive ears, an enlightened heart and a dilated breast.

Only a few paragraphs ago Muhammad-Taqi was told to “Give ear”, and then reminded what his ear had been created for. Now we learn something more about that ear. It isn't enough for it simply to hear. It needs to be retentive. It needs to hold on to what it hears.

And then Baha'u'llah tells him what to do:

“Recite thou this prayer that hath flowed from the tongue of this Wronged One, and ponder thereon with a heart rid of all attachment, and with ears that are pure and sanctified, be attentive to its meaning...”

There's quite a sequence there.

Recite these words. Ponder them with a heart rid of attachment. Listen carefully to them, presumably with those retentive ears so that the words stay with you. Pay attention to their meaning.

And then:

“that haply thou mayest inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”.

Haply.

I love that word. With luck. Maybe. Perchance.

Baha'u'llah doesn't say that if Muhammad-Taqi follows these instructions he will necessarily become detached. He doesn't say that he will inevitably become more compassionate towards himself and others. He tells him what to do, how to approach the prayer, what to listen for, and what may result. But then there is that little word, haply. There is still something required of Muhammad-Taqi himself.

And I think we should probably take Baha'u'llah's instructions seriously as we move into the next paragraph. I'm going to presume that you, dear Reader, are taking care of the reciting, pondering, detachment and careful listening. I'm going to focus on the meaning.

The prayer begins, “My God, the Object of my adoration, the Goal of my desire”. That word “Goal” catches my attention because Baha'u'llah has already given us a goal for this prayer. He hopes that, haply, Muhammad-Taqi will “inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”. Presumably that compassion is not separate from approaching God, the Goal of his desire, but part of what happens as he moves towards Him.

The prayer then reminds Muhammad-Taqi just how precarious his own position is. Whoever God "exaltest is raised above the angels”, while whoever God abases is made “lower than dust, nay, less than nothing”. It would be very easy for a man in Muhammad-Taqi's position to look down upon those he regarded as beneath him.

But if it is God Who exalts and abases, then the person who has fallen could just as easily have been me. And if I can see that, perhaps it becomes a little easier to have pity upon others.

But Baha'u'llah goes even further. “Though wicked, sinful, and intemperate, we still seek from Thee a ‘seat of truth’.” We. Not they. Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to include himself among those who are wicked and sinful, while still asking God for something far beyond anything they might deserve. He isn't being allowed to stand apart from everyone else and judge them. He is standing among them, asking God for mercy.

And then we come to what almost sounds like a correction. “Everything Thou doest is pure justice, nay, the very essence of grace.” Justice, nay, grace. Justice is important, of course. Baha'u'llah speaks elsewhere about reward and punishment as two pillars upon which the stability of the world depends. But if none of us is truly worthy before God, then I'm not sure I want to stand too firmly on the side of demanding justice. Grace is something else. Grace is mercy and compassion shown to us even though we don't deserve it. And if Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to recognise the grace that God has shown him, perhaps that might help evoke similar feelings in him towards others.

The prayer continues by asking God to “Vouchsafe Thy strength, O Almighty One, unto Thy weak creatures”. That must be an interesting thing for a powerful man to pray. Muhammad-Taqi was not one of the weak members of his society. He was a religious leader whose words carried influence and whose actions had consequences for others. But if he is sincerely praying that the weak be strengthened, what does that prayer demand of a powerful person who encounters them? It becomes rather difficult to pray for their strengthening while using your own strength to crush them.

And then we're back to the voice again.

“Should the fragrance of Thy praise be shed abroad by any of the divers tongues of the world, out of the East or out of the West, it would, verily, be prized and greatly cherished.”

Only a couple of paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah said that God “hath given a voice unto all things, that they may praise and glorify Him”. Now that purpose is given another image. Praise has a fragrance, and any tongue in the world, whether from East or West, that gives off that fragrance is to be prized and cherished.

But then comes the other side of it.

“If such tongues, however, be deprived of that fragrance, they assuredly would be unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought.”

Wow. Not even worthy of being thought about? Whew.

If we don't fulfill the purpose for which our voice was given, then we, or at least our tongue, are “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”.

And think what that means for Muhammad-Taqi. His tongue is one of the principal instruments of his position. He teaches. He argues. He gives religious opinions. People listen to what he says. The issue isn't simply whether his arguments against Baha'u'llah are clever, learned, technically defensible, or even sincerely believed. Baha'u'llah has established a much more fundamental criterion.

What is your tongue for?

And once again Baha'u'llah isn't merely telling Muhammad-Taqi this. He has put the lesson into his own mouth. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to recite a prayer in which he himself declares that the value of a tongue lies in whether it carries the fragrance of the praise of God. The very tongue that has been used to speak against Baha'u'llah and His followers is being given very different words to speak.

Then, after all of this, the prayer ends:

“We beg of Thee, O Providence, to show Thy way unto all men, and to guide them aright.”

All men.

I find myself thinking back to the reason Baha'u'llah gave for this exercise in the first place. Recite the prayer. Ponder it with a heart free from attachment. Listen carefully. Pay attention to its meaning. And haply, perhaps, perchance, you may “inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”.

Muhammad-Taqi has been made to acknowledge that his own position depends upon God, to place himself among the sinful, to move from thinking about God's justice to recognising His grace, to pray that the weak might receive strength, and to declare that the worth of his own tongue depends upon what he does with it.

And then he is made to pray for everyone. Not for himself. Not for the people who agree with him. Not for those he considers righteous. All men.

Perhaps that's how the prayer can teach him to have pity upon himself and upon others. It seems almost to widen, to dilate, as it goes, from “My God”, to “we”, to the weak, to the tongues of East and West, and finally to “all men”. It makes it increasingly difficult for Muhammad-Taqi to stand apart from everyone else.

And even after all of that, Baha'u'llah only says “haply”.

The prayer can put the words into Muhammad-Taqi's mouth. It can give him something to ponder. It can give those retentive ears something worth holding onto.

But what happens next is still up to him.

Whose Voice, ESW 8

The Shaykh’s prescribed recitation is over, and Baha'u'llah is speaking once again.

And what does He immediately talk about? The voice.

But let’s start at the beginning. Oh, and even before that, let me just remind you, dear Reader, that these are only my own thoughts about this book. Nothing official, of course. You can do with them as you will. I won't be offended. Now, on to the beginning.

“O Shaykh! Know thou that neither the calumnies which men may utter, nor their denials, nor any cavils they may raise, can harm him that hath clung to the cord of the grace, and seized the hem of the mercy, of the Lord of creation.”

Interesting. Calumnies, denials, and cavils. Calumnies are easily the worst of these. They're like backbiting, that most grievous of sins, except they're also lies. Backbiting at least is true. Denials are less obviously malicious. Instead of lying about Baha'u'llah, these are simply people who deny His claim. And then there are the cavils. They’re just petty complaints. Annoying. They don’t even imply a denial, just a pesky question.

For a religious scholar, that last one may be the most interesting of all. Calumny is horrible. Denial is at least fairly obvious, even decisive. But caviling can look remarkably like scholarship. It can involve careful arguments, learned references and considerable knowledge. In fact, the less serious these things appear, the easier they may become to justify. And yet all three are placed together here as things that ultimately cannot harm the person who has “clung to the cord of the grace”.

Then Baha'u'llah turns from their voices to His own.

“By God! He, the Glory of God (Baha), hath spoken not from mere impulse.”

Baha'u'llah has just referred to the things that are spoken or raised against Him. And now He says that He Himself has “spoken not from mere impulse”. I can't help wondering about the implied contrast. How much of what Muhammad-Taqi and others have said about Baha'u'llah has come from careful investigation, and how much from impulse, assumption or simple reaction?

And there is another contrast here that's intriguing. Muhammad-Taqi has just spent four paragraphs speaking words that did not originate with him. Baha'u'llah gave him the words, and he was asked to give them his voice. Now Baha'u'llah effectively says to consider His own voice. He has not spoken from “mere impulse”. Instead, He points towards the source.

“He that hath given Him a voice is He that hath given a voice unto all things, that they may praise and glorify Him.”

There seems to be an escalation here. We begin with the voices of those who utter calumnies, denials and cavils. Then comes the voice of Baha'u'llah. Finally the One Who “hath given a voice unto all things”.

“There is none other God but Him, the One, the Incomparable, the Lord of strength, the Unconditioned.”

And suddenly we've been here before.

This Epistle began, “In the name of God, the One, the Incomparable, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” Now, only a few paragraphs later, we find ourselves once again standing before “the One, the Incomparable”.

But we haven't come full circle. It feels more like a spiral.

When we encountered those words in the Invocation, Muhammad-Taqi had not yet been asked to do anything. Since then Baha'u'llah has spoken about God and the Messenger, told Muhammad-Taqi what his ear was created for, asked him to practise renunciation, turned him towards the Most Great House, and given him words to recite. Muhammad-Taqi has heard his own voice speaking words that came from Baha'u'llah.

Now Baha'u'llah speaks again and tells him that the words He says come from God. And so we return to “the One, the Incomparable”.

The words are the same, but we are not standing in the same place. Even the attributes that follow have changed. At the beginning we had the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise. Here we have the Lord of strength and the Unconditioned. The former seems to mirror the All-Powerful, while the Unconditioned takes me back to the All-Knowing and the All-Wise. Not because they mean the same thing, of course, but because our own knowledge and wisdom are among the things that condition the way we see the world.

And Muhammad-Taqi is very much conditioned. His education, his religious position, the opinions of those around him, his own certainty about what is true, all of these might condition the way he sees. In fact, some of the very things that have given him knowledge may now be preventing him from seeing beyond it. Aren't those some of the very things Baha'u'llah has just asked him to set aside through renunciation?

And now the spiral brings him back before God, the Unconditioned.

I’m not sure what to make of that word yet. Perhaps the rest of the Epistle will give us a reason to return to it. But already I find myself looking differently at what initially appeared to be a repetition.

Baha'u'llah has brought Muhammad-Taqi back to where he began. Just not at the same level.

The Waters of Renunciation, ESW 4-7

At the end of the previous paragraph, Baha'u'llah tells Muhammad-Taqi to “recite”. He has told him to give ear, reminded him what that ear was created for, asked him to purify his soul with the waters of renunciation, and turned his face towards the Most Great House. And then, after all that preparation, He gives him something to say.

And I have to admit that on my first reading, it almost sounded like grovelling.

“O my God, O my God!” it begins. And from there, for four lengthy paragraphs, Baha'u'llah places words on Muhammad-Taqi's lips in which he acknowledges his own weakness before God, asks for forgiveness, confesses his failings, and pleads for assistance. This is a powerful Muslim cleric, a man accustomed to others listening to him, and Baha'u'llah is asking him to say these words aloud.

Which takes me right back to the ear.

There is a huge difference between being told, “You have behaved arrogantly before God”, and hearing your own voice say words acknowledging your condition before Him. Baha'u'llah could simply have told Muhammad-Taqi what was wrong with him. Instead, He changes the speaker. These are Baha'u'llah's words, but Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to give them his own voice. And if he has followed the instruction in the previous paragraph, he will also be listening to himself say them.

Perhaps that's why the “waters of renunciation” come first.

Baha'u'llah begins the Kitab-i-Iqan by asking the reader to become detached. Before He begins answering the questions of the uncle of the Bab, before He starts laying out His arguments, He tells him what he needs to do if he is going to understand them. That has always made sense to me. The uncle of the Bab was a seeker. He had questions and had come looking for answers. But if we are too attached to the answers we already have, we aren't going to be particularly good at recognising new ones. At least, that's how I've tended to think about it.

Muhammad-Taqi presents a rather different problem. He was not coming to Baha'u'llah with questions, as far as I'm aware. He wasn't a seeker asking to be shown the way. Quite the opposite. He was a powerful Muslim cleric, the son of the man Baha'u'llah had named the Wolf, and had himself been an enemy of the Faith. The uncle of the Bab knows that he has questions. Muhammad-Taqi seems convinced that he already has the answers.

And yet Baha'u'llah begins with both men in much the same place.

In paragraph 2 of the Iqan, Baha'u'llah says that nobody can truly partake of all these bounties “unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets”. In the Epistle, He tells Muhammad-Taqi, “Purify thou, first, thy soul with the waters of renunciation...” In both cases there is a prerequisite. Something has to happen to the reader before the argument can really begin.

Muhammad-Taqi is himself one of the religious leaders whose words and deeds others might regard as a standard. Simply repeating the instruction from the Iqan would therefore hardly have the same effect. He isn't merely attached to what religious authorities have told him. He is a religious authority.

Which makes me wonder if I've been thinking about detachment incorrectly all this time. Perhaps detachment isn't a requisite for seeking. Maybe it is a requisite for seeing.

The uncle of the Bab needs to become detached because he is trying to see something he does not yet understand. Muhammad-Taqi is asked to practise renunciation when he seems convinced that he already understands. Their starting points could hardly be more different, but both need something to change before they can see differently.

After asking Muhammad-Taqi to practise renunciation, Baha'u'llah doesn't immediately begin giving him proofs. He asks him to examine himself.

Again and again, Baha'u'llah places words on his lips that require him to consider his own condition before God. What initially struck me as grovelling now looks rather different. The effect is to turn Muhammad-Taqi's attention away from judging Baha'u'llah and towards examining the person doing the judging.

In the Iqan, Baha'u'llah is speaking to someone who is trying to understand why people have rejected the Messengers of God. He can take him back through history and show him the pattern. Again and again a Messenger appears, and again and again the religious leaders and people of the age reject Him.

But Muhammad-Taqi isn't merely trying to understand that pattern. He is part of it.

Perhaps that is why Baha'u'llah turns his attention towards himself. Before this powerful religious leader judges the claim before him, he is asked to consider the condition of the person doing the judging. And he doesn't merely read Baha'u'llah's assessment of that condition. He is given words with which to voice it himself.

This makes the comparison between the two books even more fascinating. In the Iqan, detachment prepares a seeker to reconsider what he thinks he knows. In the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, renunciation may be preparing an already-certain man to reconsider who he thinks he is.

Perhaps that is what I missed when I first read these paragraphs and thought they sounded like grovelling. Humiliation doesn't seem to be the point. Seeing is.

The uncle of the Bab needs help seeing what he thinks he knows. Muhammad-Taqi may need help seeing the person he thinks he knows.

And Baha'u'llah begins by asking him to listen to that person's voice.

Give Ear, ESW, 3

At the end of the first two paragraphs of the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, I found myself thinking that Baha'u'llah was beginning on common ground because He didn't want to be confrontational. He begins with God, moves naturally to the Messenger, and describes things that a Muslim cleric such as Muhammad-Taqi could presumably accept.

Then I read paragraph 3.

Baha'u'llah doesn't avoid confrontation. He prepares the ground before confronting.

“Give ear, O distinguished divine...” He says. Listen. And then, curiously, He stops to explain why the ear exists in the first place: “The ear of man hath been created that it may hearken unto the Divine Voice on this Day...” Muhammad-Taqi presumably knows what an ear does, so this isn't an anatomy lesson. Baha'u'llah is telling him what his ear is for. More particularly, He is telling him what it is for “on this Day”.

And then comes “Purify thou, first, thy soul with the waters of renunciation...”

First.

Before Muhammad-Taqi can listen properly, he has to practise renunciation. And that's not quite the same word as detachment, the word Shoghi Effendi uses in the opening passages of the Iqan. To me, renunciation sounds more active. Detachment can describe my relationship to something, while renunciation seems to suggest giving something up, whether a habit, a possession, a claim, or perhaps even an assumption. I'm not sure why the Guardian chose this word here. But given the difference between the two recipients, I find the difference intriguing.

Then Baha'u'llah begins moving him, almost physically, through the rest of the paragraph. He moves from the ear to the soul, which we might think of as encompassing the whole person. From there He moves to the head, and then to the crown placed upon that head, bringing our attention back towards the ears with which the paragraph began. He then moves to the body, which is to be adorned with piety. And then the body itself begins to move. Muhammad-Taqi is told to arise and set his face towards the Most Great House. In turning his face, of course, he also turns his head and positions those ears towards a particular point. Baha'u'llah has prepared the ears and then positioned them.

This is where I began to feel that the ice was getting rather thin.

The language surely would have sounded familiar to a Muslim cleric. Muhammad-Taqi would have spent his entire life turning towards the Kaaba in prayer. Muslims throughout the world set their faces towards that House, and pilgrims physically circle it. And now Baha'u'llah tells him to set his face towards the Most Great House, “the Spot round which circle in adoration the denizens of the cities of Eternity, and which is the Source of joy unto such as dwell on earth and in heaven”.

I don't think Muhammad-Taqi would have understood “the Most Great House” as another name for the Kaaba. The phrasing is different. But the imagery seems difficult to miss. Set your face towards this House. All circle around it. Whatever else is happening here, Baha'u'llah has moved very quickly from the comfortable common ground of the first two paragraphs to language that seems to echo one of the most fundamental acts of Muhammad-Taqi's own religious life.

So perhaps I had it slightly wrong before. Baha'u'llah doesn't begin on common ground because He intends to remain there. He begins there because it gives Him somewhere from which to move.

But there is another movement in this paragraph that I find even more intriguing.

It begins with the ear. “Give ear.” Then Baha'u'llah draws our attention specifically to that ear and explains its purpose. From there He moves through the person: the soul is purified with renunciation, the head is crowned with the fear of God, the temple adorned with reliance on God, and then the whole person arises and turns. By setting his face towards the Most Great House, Muhammad-Taqi has also turned the ears with which the paragraph began.

And then comes the final word of the paragraph: “recite”.

At first I wondered if the whole paragraph almost travelled in one ear and out the other. But that's not quite right. It begins with the ear, travels through the person, and then ends with Muhammad-Taqi being told to speak. Assuming he actually recites the words aloud, they come out of his own mouth and go right back into his ears.

The paragraph seems to have come full circle.

From God to Us, ESW 1-2

The first paragraph of the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf begins about as simply as it possibly could: “Praise be to God...” And then Baha'u'llah spends the entire paragraph doing exactly that. He praises God. After the invocation, with its reference to the One, the Incomparable, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise, He continues by describing God and His sovereignty over creation.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Baha'u'llah is writing to a Muslim cleric who has been an enemy of His Faith. There is going to be plenty in this Epistle that Muhammad-Taqi will find challenging, perhaps even offensive. But Baha'u'llah doesn't begin there. He begins with God.

And He doesn't merely begin with a statement that God exists. He begins with praise. Praise is not an argument. It isn't an attempt to prove something to the other person. It is an orientation. Before Muhammad-Taqi is asked to consider Baha'u'llah, before he is asked to reconsider his own actions, before he is asked to examine the claims of this new Faith, both writer and reader are placed before God. Given what we saw in the invocation, this seems a natural continuation. Muhammad-Taqi may be a powerful and learned religious leader, but the conversation does not begin with either his power or his learning. It begins by turning his attention towards God.

From there, the second paragraph seems to move quite naturally from God to His Messenger. Baha'u'llah has begun with God, but now the question becomes how God's guidance reaches us. “He it is Who hath revealed His Cause for the guidance of His creatures, and sent down His verses to demonstrate His Proof and His Testimony...” From God, then, we move towards Revelation.

And this is where the second paragraph becomes particularly interesting to me. At this point Baha'u'llah has not yet asked Muhammad-Taqi to accept anything particularly difficult. He is a Muslim cleric. He already believes in God. He already believes that God sends Messengers. He already believes that those Messengers bring guidance to humanity. So far, there is very little to argue about.

Perhaps that is part of the method. If I begin a conversation with someone at the point where we disagree, then the disagreement immediately becomes the subject of the conversation. Each of us takes up our position and begins defending it. But if I begin with something we genuinely share, we can stand together for a moment and look in the same direction. Baha'u'llah begins with God, and then moves to the Messenger of God.

There may be something else happening here, too. The Messenger described in this opening isn't merely someone who appears, delivers a message and leaves. His coming has consequences for creation. Before Muhammad-Taqi is asked to judge the particular claims before him, Baha'u'llah is establishing something about the relationship between God, His Messenger and the world. He is describing what a Messenger actually does, and doing so in terms Muhammad-Taqi can presumably accept. Instead of beginning with something like, “You are wrong about Me”, He begins much further back. Who is God? What is a Messenger? What happens when a Messenger appears? These are questions Muhammad-Taqi presumably thinks he already knows the answers to. Perhaps that is precisely why they are such useful questions with which to begin.

We already know that this book will be a great challenge to its recipient. Given that, those first words begin to feel considerably less like a formality. Before Baha'u'llah begins the difficult work of challenging this man, He establishes where the conversation begins: “Praise be to God...”