Bahai Faith; Peace -- Religious aspects -- Bahai Faith
The bestowal and grace of God have quickened the realm of existence with
life and being. For existence there is neither change nor transformation;
existence is ever existence; it can never be translated into nonexistence.
It is gradation; a degree below a higher degree is considered as
nonexistence. This dust beneath our feet, as compared with our being, is
nonexistent. When the human body crumbles into dust, we can say it has
become nonexistent; therefore, its dust in relation to living forms of
human being is as nonexistent, but in its own sphere it is existent, it
has its mineral being. Therefore, it is well proved that absolute
nonexistence is impossible; it is only relative.
The purpose is this: that the everlasting bestowal of God vouchsafed to
man is never subject to corruption. Inasmuch as He has endowed the
phenomenal world with being, it is impossible for that world to become
nonbeing, for it is the very genesis of God; it is in the realm of
origination; it is a creational and not a subjective world, and the bounty
descending upon it is continuous and permanent. Therefore, man, the
highest creature of the phenomenal world, is endowed with that continuous
bounty bestowed by divine generosity without cessation. For instance, the
rays of the sun are continuous, the heat of the sun emanates from it
without cessation; no discontinuance of it is conceivable. Even so, the
bestowal of God is descending upon the world of humanity, never ceasing,
continuous, forever. If we say that the bestowal of existence ceases or
falters, it is equivalent to saying that the sun can exist with cessation
of its effulgence. Is this possible? Therefore, the effulgences of
existence are ever present and continuous.
The conception of annihilation is a factor in human degradation, a cause
of human debasement and lowliness, a source of human fear and abjection.
It has been conducive to the dispersion and weakening of human thought,
whereas the realization of existence and continuity has upraised man to
sublimity of ideals, established the foundations of human progress and
stimulated the development of heavenly virtues; therefore, it behooves man
to abandon thoughts of nonexistence and death, which are absolutely
imaginary, and see himself ever-living, everlasting in the divine purpose
of his creation. He must turn away from ideas which degrade the human soul
so that day by day and hour by hour he may advance upward and higher to
spiritual perception of the continuity of the human reality. If he dwells
upon the thought of nonexistence, he will become utterly incompetent; with
weakened willpower his ambition for progress will be lessened and the
acquisition of human virtues will cease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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