Bahá'u'lláh and the New EraEsslemont, J. E. (John Ebenezer)
Religion
Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era
Esslemont, J. E. (John Ebenezer)
Bahai Faith; Bahá'u'lláh, 1817-1892
Complete harmony with science is evident in the Bahá’í teachings regarding
the way in which we must seek the truth. Man must cut himself free from
all prejudice so that he may search after truth unhindered.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:—
In order to find truth we must give up our prejudices, our own
small trivial notions; an open receptive mind is essential. If our
chalice is full of self, there is no room in it for the water of
life. The fact that we imagine ourselves to be right and everybody
else wrong is the greatest of all obstacles in the path towards
unity, and unity is essential if we would reach Truth, for Truth
is one....
No one truth can contradict another truth. Light is good in
whatsoever lamp it is burning! A rose is beautiful in whatsoever
garden it may bloom! A star has the same radiance if it shines
from the East or from the West! Be free from prejudice; so will
you love the Sun of Truth from whatever point in the horizon it
may arise. You will realize that if the Divine Light of Truth
shone in Jesus Christ, it also shone in Moses and Buddha. This is
what is meant by the search after truth.
It also means that we must be willing to clear away all that we
have previously learned, all that would clog our steps on the way
to Truth; we must not shrink, if necessary, from beginning our
education all over again. We must not allow our love for any one
religion or any one personality so to blind our eyes that we
become fettered by superstition. When we are freed from all these
bonds, seeking with liberal minds, then shall we be able to arrive
at our goal.
The Agnosticism
The Bahá’í teaching is at one with science and philosophy in declaring the
essential nature of God to be entirely beyond human comprehension. As
emphatically as Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer teach that the nature of
the Great First Cause is unknowable, does Bahá’u’lláh teach that “God
comprehends all; He cannot be comprehended.” To knowledge of the Divine
essence “the way is barred and road is impassable,” for how can the finite
comprehend the Infinite; how can a drop contain the ocean or a mote
dancing in the sunbeam embrace the universe? Yet the whole universe is
eloquent of God. In each drop of water are hidden oceans of meaning, and
in each mote is concealed a whole universe of significances, reaching far
beyond the ken of the most learned scientist. The chemist and physicist
pursuing their researches into the nature of matter have passed from
masses to molecules, from molecules to atoms, from atoms to electrons and
ether, but at every step the difficulties of the research increase till
the most profound intellect can penetrate no farther, and can but bow in
silent awe before the unknown Infinite which remains ever shrouded in
inscrutable mystery.
Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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