Beyond Hegelian Dialectics

The future of reality and its investigation

In order to better understand the doctrine of progressive revelation, it is instructive to compare it with the work of the main representative of historical consciousness in Western philosophy, Hegel. Hegel's philosophy represented a turning point in Western philosophy precisely because he emphasized the dynamic nature of reality as a dialectical process. In his approach to the study of religion, Hegel applied his dialectical model to the realm of religious history as well. Dialectical method sees reality as the unity of Opposites. Each side of this unity contains its Opposite within itself. The true totality is realized when the opposition of the two sides is cancelled and they are united in a higher totality.

Hegel conceived of religious history as a dialectical process comprising three stages. In the first stage, worship of the Absolute Reality takes the form of the veneration of natural phenomena. The second stage is the worship of the Absolute as God, a spirit that is conceptualized as the creator of the universe but which is entirely opposed to material nature. Hegel, however, found both these approaches to religion inadequate. He posited as the final stage in his sequence what he termed "Christianity," in which God and the world become identical, and the believer finds God to be immanent in the world. Hegel's pantheistic interpretation of Christianity was based on the doctrine of God-manhood, or incarnation - the belief that in Christ God has become flesh. Thus human beings and God, or nature and Creator, are perceived as one and the same reality. For Hegel the apparent merging of opposites in this stage represents the consummation of the dialectical unfolding of religious truth, and is explicated as the attainment of divine self-consciousness.

Although the Báb does not address the works of Hegel, His writings address virtually the same questions Hegel grappled with. Hegel's philosophy of religious development advocates a thesis of historical consciousness and change, and it attempts to transcend the opposition between the spiritual and the natural realms. Both of these issues are addressed by the Báb. However, unlike Hegel, who terminates historical dynamics in the final resolution of the dialectic, the Báb sees no end for the dynamics of religious truth. Even the truth represented by the Revelation of the Báb, in the inception of the age of the sanctuary of the heart, is still partial and relative to the receptivity of human beings in the current Stage of spiritual development. The writings of the Báb thus introduce a truly historical consciousness, one which avoids the static thesis of the end of history.

Hegelian theory achieves its positive orientation to nature by dissolving God into the level of phenomenal beings. But for the Báb such a pantheistic conception is not an advanced consciousness, and the Hegelian dialectic is typical of the tendency of human beings to take the categories that pertain to their own reality and then elevate them to descriptions of the Essence of God. This attitude is comparable to that of an ant who defines God as a reality whose antennae stretch to infinity. According to the Báb, any claim to rationally understand the Absolute Mystery is a sign of imprisonment within one's self. Although the perspective of the heart transcends the limited categories of intellect, this perspective is never suggested as a means of understanding the Essence of God but, rather, the revelation of God at the level of the phenomenal world.

The main problem with the Hegelian construct is that Hegel, like some of the Sufi writers, confounds the Essence of God with the realm of divine Action. The conception of God that Hegel speaks of - a God that was first conceived as the creator of the world and then discovered to be the same as the world - refers, in the Báb's terms, to the twin stations of the Point or the Primal Will, where the unity of opposites is realized. This realm, however, is neither the unity of the world with the Essence of God, nor a static final point of civilization. Instead, it represents the dynamic principle of progressive revelation. Nor is this station confined to Christ; it is the reality of all the Manifestations of God. Christ was the Manifestation of the Primal Will in the world at a particular Stage of humanity's spiritual development.

Therefore, Hegelian philosophy, at best, can be viewed as a somewhat crude affirmation of the principle of manifestation, and the thesis of the identity of God and human in Christ as an inadequate expression of this general doctrine. The Manifestations of God do represent the revelation of God in the phenomenal world. But unlike Hegelian theory, which takes this fact as evidence for the end of history and of religious progression, the Báb defines this principle as progressive revelation, and as the resolution of the existential paradox of human reality. The Báb affirms the principle of manifestation in order to announce not the end of spiritual dialectics but the perpetual renewal of divine revelation. The metaphysical truth that the doctrine of the trinity attempts to explain, thus, has nothing to do with the Essence of God. Rather, it is an affirmation of the triad of Will, Determination, and Destiny, or the Manifestation of God in the world.

(from Gate of the Heart, Saiedi)

Be lovingly watchful

Be lovingly watchful of one another
and thus improve your affairs.
Should ye find amongst you one
who is afflicted with grief,
remove his sorrow by any means in your power,
and should ye find one stricken with poverty,
enrich him to the extent of your ability.

If ye find in your midst one who is abased,
exalt him to the extent ye can,
and if ye find one who is veiled by ignorance,
educate him to the degree of your capacity.

Should ye find amongst yourselves one who is single,
help him to marry, in accordance with the divine law,
to the limits of your ability, and should ye find one
who is in distress, bring him tranquility
by any means in your power....

Gaze upon others with the same eyes
with which ye gaze upon your own selves....
If ye find in your midst one who is hungry,
send him, in truth and to the extent of your power,
food in such a way that his heart will not be saddened,
and if ye find one who has no clothes,
provide him with clothes in the most dignified manner,
to the extent possible for you.

Look then not at your selves and your possessions,
but rather look at God, Who hath created you
and conferred upon you
from His kingdom that which is your lot.

(The Bab)

Seek Ye Eagerly!

Seek ye eagerly God's Most Mighty Reward,
through the Báb, for the Báb of Truth,
the Exalted Mystery of God,
this 'Alí, Who is evident in the Mother Book....

O people of Glory!
Hearken ye unto the call of God,
raised within the Inscribed Mystery,
out of these Crimson Leaves,
that hath descended from the Throne
upon this Snow-White Leaf,
to bow down upon the Yellow Dust.

* * * * * *

O people of the Supreme Cloud of Subtlety!
Hearken unto My call from this Radiant Moon,
Whose Countenance shall never eclipse the Face
of this Youth of the East and the West,
the One ye find mentioned in all the Holy Scriptures
as the Mystery that is hidden upon the Written Line....

He verily is the Truth in the accent of Muhammad,
and He is the Mystery Who shineth forth
out of the body of 'Alí, the hidden Dove
- like Light within the heart of Fátimih....
This is verily the Mystery of Mysteries,
Who hath been inscribed in the vicinity of the Water....
- The Báb
(from Gate of the Heart)

Before Abraham was, I am. (Jn 8:54-55)

If Jesus is a prophet then he has a right to pass on the words of God.
What if that is what he was doing the whole time? If so, the words
about Abraham make sense, because it is God speaking.

But what about the "I am". I think that this indicates that Jesus was also
I special character in history. A manifestation of God. He is more than a
prophet.

Muhammad is allowed to be the mouthpiece of God by the Muslims,
but the Christians get confused when Jesus speaks as God. He is a
special soul that has witnessed history and influenced earlier prophets.

The Bab, 1844-1850, said that he spoke to Moses through the burning
bush. It is the job of messengers to pass on messages. Why should we
be so threatened? Is it because God is asking us to do acts that we are
too lazy to do? Is the message too much for us to take?

A.G.W.

I Wonder

Would it be possible that man could construct a system that
had the appearance of spirituality. This would be done in the
distant future. This construction of the soul and heaven would
need to be so convincing that they would be all convinced that
this new created God was uncreated.

This system would have to be passed on to a newly created
universe. None of the creators could live in the new heaven
because they would know the truth and could not hide truth
in heaven. If truth could be hidden then what you would have
was hell.

I suspect that what man could create will be unconvicing. The
levels of heaven would need to be infinite and on each level man
would need to learn truths that man on earth will never know. A
man's soul can only be raised to new heights by true heavenly
love and wisdom.

A.G.W.

SPACE TRANSCENDING

I thought the following quote puts much into perspective about our time on this earth.

"The same kind of transcendence of course applies as well to space as to time. The baby learns on the scale of inches before he is big enough to grasp anything in the range of feet. Yet even when he can understand that his crib is a yard long, larger units like acres or miles might be infinite for all his comprehension of them. And it is only when he is big enough to take long walks that his world attains the span of a mile. From there on, the transcendent relativity of space becomes increasingly noticeable to him and the miles (like years) shrink and go by faster as they increase in number - and in a similarly inverse proportion.

"By the time he is grown up and studying astronomy, he will get an inkling of what a light-year is. Then come parsecs and even megaparsecs, which relegate miles (relatively) into the microcosm. And all of this verifies Einstein's statement that neither space nor time are fundamental. Which means they are basically only illusions of this finite phase of earthly existence, out of which the law of transcendence is progressively and inexorably taking us. Moses seems to have agreed when he said in the Ninetieth Psalm that "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Later David added that, "as for man, his days are as grass." And, likening him to a flower of the field, "the wind passeth over it, and it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more."

"Please don't get the idea that the sweep of transcendence through time and space need ever disrupt your sense of where or when you are. For the acceleration of dimensions is generally too gentle and natural for that. Certainly you do not have to lose the minute as you gain the hour. Nor let go the year to grasp the century. In fact I can read a chapter of the book of life now in as few clock hours as it took me to read a single sentence in my childhood, yet I'm sure I understand most sentences of that chapter much better than I understood the single sentence I once struggled with. By simple extrapolation I can even predict that when you and I are a billion earth years old and a finite century unrolls in a twinkle, whatever world we are in (assuming it includes the time dimension) we will still have ample "time" to take in every minute of every year. We may feel then what we can barely deduce now: that time is just as relative a dimension as space, with width and depth as well as length.

"And so with space, the astronomer with his telescope who thinks in megaparsecs and supergalaxies need have no difficulty in switching, if need be, to a microscope and measuring molecules in microns and angstroms. For you do not lose the inch when you encompass the mile, nor the mile when you discover the light-year. And no one of the finite units of space or time excludes or diminishes another."

(from The Seven Mysteries of Life by Murchie)

Tests and Trials

I thought these passages in the book I have been reading will encourage many Baha'is.

(from Counsels of Perfection by Genevieve Coy)

Tests and Trials

The word 'test' is used frequently in the Bahá'í
Writings. Some of these tests, or trials, are the
consequences of a person's own actions. He makes a
mistake and has to suffer the consequences; he is
unkind, and makes a friend unhappy; he fails to pay
his debts, and becomes known as untrustworthy. It is
only when he analyses his behaviour, and realizes his
errors, that he will make an effort to change his conduct.
If he does not see his mistakes and try to improve, he has
failed to meet the 'test' he has given himself.

Other tests and trials are sent to us by God for our
development and perfecting. Some people have difficulty
in accepting this idea; they even feel that God
is unjust when he presents us with problems. But this
is just what a good teacher does in order to educate
his pupils. He gives them problems to solve, and tests
to take, which are within their ability if they work to
the top limit of their capacity. If he makes the tests
too easy the good student will feel that his teacher is
not interested in him, or underestimates his ability!

Since God is omniscient, He adjusts each individual's
tests to his capacity. We should realize that when a
trial or problem seems impossibly difficult, it is
because we are not working at it with all our might,
and with full dependence on God's help.

He will never deal unjustly with any one, neither
will He task a soul beyond its power.[6]

To the sincere ones, tests are as a gift from God,
the Exalted, for a heroic person hasteneth, with
the utmost joy and gladness, to the tests of a violent
battlefield, but the coward is afraid and trembles
and utters moaning and lamentation. Likewise, an
expert student prepareth and memorizeth his
lessons and exercises with the utmost effort, and in
the day of examination he appeareth with infinite
joy before the master.[7]

Remember not your own limitations; the help of
God will come to you. Forget yourself. God's help
will surely come![8]

Tests and trials are opportunities to learn, to become
more mature. Each of us should ask ourselves:
Am I willing to make the effort to learn, or do I
try to avoid the problem? I may try to escape the
problem by refusing to recognize it, by blaming others,
or by making a half-hearted, unintelligent approach
to it. If I succeed in avoiding the test it is likely to
recur again and again, until I face it and solve it.
The psychologist Alfred Adler wrote that the person
who tries to avoid all problems is acting as though he
wishes to 'live like a worm in an apple'!

How can we be happy in the face of problems
which are due to our own weaknesses and errors? If
you have lost your way in the woods, by taking the
wrong turn when the path forked, you return to the
fork, and are joyful to move forward on the path
which will take you to your destination. Similarly, we
can be happy in learning what we should not do in
the future.

We should not waste our energy by dwelling on our
failures. We should form the habit of looking for the
cause of the error. Then, if we can do something to
correct the mistake, let us do it at once. If we cannot
repair the harm we have done, let us plan how we can
do better to meet a similar situation next time it
arises. We should then move ahead into constructive
activity, rather than feel we are being 'noble' when
we use time and energy in regret and remorse.

Worry is another emotion with which some people
meet tests and problems. The dictionary defines 'to
worry' as 'to torment oneself with, or suffer from,
disturbing thoughts; to dwell uncomfortably on
actual or possible troubles'. Worry, like remorse is
an unproductive use of time and energy. It is
incompatible with an intelligent effort to solve the
problem. If you worry about a difficult university
entrance examination that you must take, you are
wasting time which could be spent in study: you cannot
worry and study at the same time. If you worry about
the success of a public talk on the Bahá'í Faith which
you are to give this evening, you are showing a lack
of common sense: do you wish your mind to be a
confused, unhappy turmoil when you address the
audience? If you have prepared the talk to the best of
your ability, leave its delivery in the hands of God,
and go to a film, or read an interesting book.

When God sends us difficult problems we often
cannot see their usefulness for our own development.
I may be unhappy because the direction of my life
seems to be deflected from what I thought was a fine
and creative goal. I may feel that many of my most
unselfish efforts have been wasted. But I can foresee
only a small section of my life, on my way through
eternity. God, who 'sees the end from the beginning',
has for me a larger and more glorious goal than I
can imagine. My faith in His goodness and justice
must be so deep that I can rejoice in the methods He
uses to educate me.