Finding Knowledge in a Dream — With Adam Robarts

In this Moments of Meaning podcast, we talk to Adam Robarts, a Baha’i who runs an architectural and engineering firm in China, about a powerful dream involving his father and a massive mirror. 

The mirror, he would later learn, has tremendous resonance and meaning in the Baha’i writings.

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As an undergraduate, Adam often had deep conversations with friends about how to make the world a better place. One day he was sitting in the dining hall at his college at Cambridge University, having lunch among a group of fellow students. They were discussing dreams when Adam realized that he was completely unable to recall any of his own.

That evening, he went to bed, and actually prayed for one. He woke up the following morning from a powerful and memorable dream, in which he was with his father, in a huge crowd, in a large stadium.  Whatever game or event they had come to watch had come to an end, and the crowd was trying to leave. The mass of people there with them were all crowded together in one vast room, face to face, shoulder to shoulder, pushing and shoving, not really going anywhere.

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At this point in the dream, Adam realized that he had become separated from his father. He felt a sense of anxiety and aloneness, wondering how they would ever find each other in such an enormous crowd. 

Right at that moment he changed his gaze and looked upward, as did others in the crowd. Above them was a huge and perfect mirror. In the mirror, Adam could not only see himself, but his father as well. “Lo and behold,” Adam says, “knowing our position, we could all fix our direction and move together towards the exits. It felt so graceful.” 

In the morning, waking up from his dream, Adam opened the book Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah to a random page, and read:

The mirror of His knowledge reflecteth, with complete distinctness, precision and fidelity, the doings of all men.

In this episode of our Moments of Meaning podcast, we explore that transcendent moment of finding something profound, unexpectedly and seemingly by chance, in the Baha’i writings which links to an experience we’ve had and provides insight into its deepest meanings. 

In the quote Adam referred to, Baha’u’llah employed the metaphor of a perfect mirror to describe how the knowledge of God and His teachings allows us to better see who we are, where we are, and where we are going in life. In his interview, Adam reveals why that quotation gave him a new insight into the nature and limitations of secular democracy, sharing that he felt empowered and clearer about how he could make change in the world.

Please join us in this fascinating podcast, and look with us into that special eternal relationship between humanity and the Creator, which directs our sight upward from the day-to-day realities of life toward higher spiritual principles.