Inspired
by the
Baha’i Faith
The views expressed in our content reflect individual perspectives and do not represent the official views of the Baha'i Faith. The official website of the Baha'i Faith is: Bahai.org. The official website of the Baha'is of the United States can be found here: Bahai.us.
GOT IT
The views expressed in our content reflect individual perspectives and do not represent the official views of the Baha'i Faith.
How do I become Baha’i?
Spirituality

Prenatal Exercises for Our Second Birth

John Hatcher | Feb 10, 2018

PART 25 IN SERIES The Purpose of Physical Reality

The views expressed in our content reflect individual perspectives and do not represent the official views of the Baha'i Faith.

Interested in Other Topics?

We’ve got something for everyone.
John Hatcher | Feb 10, 2018

PART 25 IN SERIES The Purpose of Physical Reality

The views expressed in our content reflect individual perspectives and do not represent the official views of the Baha'i Faith.

Mothers typically prepare for their birth of a baby—so why wouldn’t we all prepare, in a similar way, for our second birth?

Having examined the Baha’i view of physical creation as a just and logically-devised system in previous essays in this series, we have now responded to the first of three major concerns—the theoretical basis for a belief in some form of divine justice in relation to physical reality, and our individual and collective experience in it. Our second task is to move from theory and theology to practicality—to determine how this environment trains and assists us on a daily basis to know and to worship God:

Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things. – Baha’u’llah, The Hidden Words, p. 22.

This objective should be more immediately satisfying than the first. It would certainly seem to respond more forcefully to the questions raised by Job and Boethius if such a practical analysis could provide insight into how negative experiences and unjust suffering can ultimately lead us to positive conclusions.

In short, it is all well and good to assert eternal providence or to discern a coherent and logical set of laws and principles at work in the universe—but we live our lives one day at a time with family and friends in a community where we must busy ourselves with mundane sorts of activities. In this context, we need to understand how what we do each day—the prenatal exercises for our second birth—can help us have the subjective knowledge of the “end” in what sometimes seems to be a very painful and ludicrous “beginning.”

The Unity of Human Experience

When we let the phenomenal world become an end in itself, rather than a means of gaining access to the spiritual reality it reflects, or when we let our physical or appetitive nature rule over our judgmental or volitional faculties, we are, indeed, in a state of injustice, confusion, and internal strife. In such a state the physical world does become detrimental to our success. But physical reality itself is not the cause—the culprit is ourselves, when we misuse temporal reality and fail to grasp the essential unity of our physical and metaphysical experiences.

The relationship between the physical and the spiritual aspects of reality is thus at the heart of appreciating and using the physical classroom. Such a relationship, hinted at by Platonic philosophy and spelled out in detail in the Baha’i writings, does not simply affirm that it is possible to obtain spiritual benefits from physical experience.

The relationship dictates that the animating principle of creation is its reflection of the spiritual world.

In this sense the physical world is a means of gaining access to the spiritual world in the same way that a periscope enables us to view a reality that is otherwise blocked or obscured from our vision.

Stated in terms of Chaucer’s own analogy of life as a journey or pilgrimage, when physical reality is employed to our benefit, it is a pathway to spiritual ascent. Physical reality is detrimental only when we come to believe that physical experience is the object of our pilgrimage instead of our means of transportation. Hence we can appreciate that one of the principal and most difficult tasks of the messengers of God is to clarify the essential relationship between these dual aspects of our experience—to show us how to use one experience as a dramatic device whereby we can comprehend the other, and thereby achieve unity and harmony in our lives, as well as in our identity as human beings.

To help relate one aspect of ourselves to the other, the messengers of God work in two capacities. As the prophet reiterates the eternal and changeless attributes of the spiritual world, he is a revealer, an unveiler of divine reality and moral law. Accordingly, religious law as it is revealed by the prophets is not simply an attempt to impose order on disorder. Understood from this perspective, the moral or spiritual law revealed by the prophets assumes the same objective authority as scientific law. Even as physical laws describes predictable relationships among phenomena, so spiritual or moral law describes predictable relationships among spiritual entities.

The laws of the messengers are thus descriptive as well as prescriptive. For example, we praise Newton for having discovered and formulated the mutual attraction of masses—the law of gravity—not for having contrived, invented, or imposed this property of matter. Similarly, the prophets do not create divine reality or the laws governing that reality. They reveal them to us, and invite our compliance with them. Likewise, as advances in scientific understanding render more and more complete our descriptions of the phenomenal world, so the progression of revelation by the successive spiritual messengers makes our understanding of spiritual reality and spiritual laws more complete and more accurate.

But the prophet is not only a describer or revealer. He also makes things happen. In his station as lawgiver, he actively affects the degree to which the physical world reflects the spiritual world. He is the primary creative force that sets in motion the spiritual forces and creative laws that will cause spiritual reality to become actuated in the phenomenal world. Consequently, when the messenger instructs us how to implement spiritual law, he is carrying out both objectives simultaneously: describing the spiritual principles that underlie and are the logical bases for his social ordinances, and establishing the Kingdom of God on Earth by implementing those principles in a way consonant with our increased level of human understanding and our increased capacity for action.

For example, when Baha’u’llah instituted the concept of the equality of men and women, he revealed a spiritual verity that has always existed—he did not invent a new spiritual reality. But in giving voice and legal weight to this spiritual principle, he is actuating that principle in social action by pronouncing to what extent human society can now implement and reflect that reality.

Likewise, when Baha’u’llah spoke of the unity of science and religion, he revealed an objective fact about reality by pointing out that both areas of investigation probe complementary aspects of one organic creation. At the same time he admonishes scientists and religious thinkers to become aware of the unity of science and religion—the physical and spiritual laws as they describe reality—so that they can put aside misperceptions about the nature of reality and work together to increase our understanding of existence and the reciprocal influence in our lives of these twin aspects of reality.

At the heart of the dual function of God’s messengers, then, is the key to the essential unity of the physical and spiritual properties of reality. By demonstrating the harmony of the two aspects of reality, the prophets enable us to live successfully and simultaneously in both realms. Since our soul, which is essentially spiritual, operates a physical body in a physical environment, this enlightenment can be a most valuable practical aid to the unification of our everyday experience.

You May Also Like

How to Turn Prayer into Action
Spirituality

How to Turn Prayer into Action

Sacrificing Your Life for Love
Spirituality

Sacrificing Your Life for Love

No Pain, No Gain: How to Face Difficulties Head-on
Spirituality

No Pain, No Gain: How to Face Difficulties Head-on


Comments

characters remaining
  • Sara Jones Bagby
    Feb 11, 2018
    -
    really!!! appreciate this piece/essay. Reciprocity the go word of this Age/Day.
  • Theresa Iler
    Feb 10, 2018
    -
    It is very easy to accomplish living this way. It is not we should or can we. It is that we can and are. Without influence and without purpose, this is occurring. It is a natural state that we have moved into. We blind ourselves by trying to take apart every small piece of existence and prioritize it in some sort of outlined list. Because we have done this so much it is now a custom. People are forgetting how to just exist. This is not something with a million little pieces to look at and label and put ...in drawers. We live in a living growing universe. If you separate all the pieces you are no longer existing. You are walking around lifeless. Take it all in. Live in it all. It is easy.
    Read more...
    • John Hatcher
      Feb 11, 2018
      -
      True, we can ruin pleasurable moments by over-analyzing everything, and yet, as Socrates famously proclaimed, "The unexamined life is not worth living!" But that examination should not be an end in itself. Unlike the birds and beasts who existentially because they have no alternative, we have free will, a power which provides us choices, and these choices are best made after reflection about what outcomes we desire for ourselves, our loved ones, and humankind as a whole. Perhaps what people are forgetting is not how to "just exist," but how to take joy in existing with an abiding purpose, the ...most lofty and joyful of these being service to others.
      Read more...
x
x
Connect with Baha’is in your area
Welcome!
What's your name?
Thanks my friend ! We want to connect you with a Baha’i in your area, where would that be?
Thank you so much! How can they best reach you?
To put you in touch with a Baha’i in your area who can answer your questions, we would like to kindly ask for a few details about yourself.
Connect with Baha’is in your area
Connect with Baha’is in your area
Get in touch with the Baha’is in your community.