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.