Selected Mystical Works of Lord Bahá’u’lláh (vegetarian) – Divine Unity, Part 2 of 2

These excerpts reveal how our understanding of God changes as we grow spiritually, and that God’s true nature is beyond what we can fully understand.

“As the wayfarers traverse these three differing planes, their understanding and their words differ accordingly, and hence the sign of conflict has ever appeared on Earth. For there are some who dwell on the plane of Divine Unity and speak of that world, and some inhabit the realms of limitation, and some the grades of self, while others are completely veiled. Thus do the ignorant people of the day, who have no share of the radiance of the Divine Beauty, make certain claims and, in every age and cycle, inflict upon the people of the ocean of Divine Unity what they themselves deserve. ‘If God should chastise men for their perverse doings, He would not leave upon the Earth a moving thing! But to an appointed time does He respite them.’

O My brother! A pure heart is as a mirror; cleanse it with the burnish of love and severance from all save God, that the true Sun may shine therein and the eternal morning dawn. Then will thou clearly see the meaning of ‘Earth and Heaven cannot contain Me; what can alone contain Me is the heart of him that believes in Me.’ And thou will take up thy life in thy hand and with infinite longing cast it before thy newly found Beloved.”

“For God, in His Essence, is sanctified above all ascent and descent, egress and regress; He has through all eternity been exalted beyond the attributes of His creation, and will ever remain so. No man has ever known Him; no soul has ever fathomed the nature of His Being. In the valley of His knowledge every mystic wanders astray; in the comprehension of His Essence every saint stands bewildered. Sanctified is He above the understanding of the wise; exalted is He beyond the knowledge of the knowing!”

“Indeed, the references that have been made to the degrees of mystic knowledge pertain to the knowledge of the effulgences of that Sun of Truth as it becomes reflected in various mirrors. And the effulgence of that light is present within the hearts, yet it is hidden beneath the veils of selfish desires and earthly attachments, even as a candle within a lantern of iron, and only when the cover is lifted does the light of the candle shine out. In like manner, when thou do strip the veils of illusion from the face of thine heart, the lights of Oneness will be made manifest.”