Thanks for sharing your story. Now I understand how you became a *temporary atheist.* Something similar happened to me although it was not quite that dramatic. For about 10 years, I was angry at God and hated Him, so I shut myself off from God, although I never stopped believing God existed. Then in June 2014 when I was going through a major life crisis and no amount of counseling was helping me, I got really desperate and turned to God. This was not a conscious thing; just one day I asked my husband for Gleanings to read on the bus. I had not read it in decades, and I was reading it on the bus on my way home from work. I just started to cry because I suddenly knew that I was hearing the Voice of God and at the point I really connected to Baha’u’llah and realized who He was.
I have read Gleanings about five times since and as you know I refer to it often. I have also read the Iqan a few times.
My life has not been the same since that day. I started to recover from my grief that was the result of life circumstances that propelled me towards God, and I started my own forum in October 2014. I still do not have a very good attitude towards God, but I know that is my own personal problem so I do not blame God anymore since I realize that is illogical. I do have short relapses in judgement but they do not even last a day.
I agree. It is through Baha’u’llah that we can have a relationship with God, but Baha’u’llah is the Sadratu’l-Muntahá, the “Tree beyond which there is no passing,” The fact that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves does not mean that we can get close to God, not without Baha’u’llah or another Manifestation of God such as Jesus.
I think that quote does have *something* to do with our relationship to God. God is one and alone and has no associates since God is inaccessible directly.
“How wondrous is the unity of the Living, the Ever-Abiding God—a unity which is exalted above all limitations, thattranscendeth the comprehension of all created things! He hath, from everlasting, dwelt in His inaccessible habitation of holiness and glory, and will unto everlasting continue to be enthroned upon the heights of His independent sovereignty and grandeur. How lofty hath been His incorruptible Essence, how completely independent of the knowledge of all created things, and how immensely exalted will it remain above the praise of all the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth!” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 261-262
I do not believe we can have a personal relationship with God. That is a Christian belief, not a Baha’i belief. Here is something I wrote up for a post a while back:
“Nay, forbid it, O my God, that I should have uttered such words as must of necessity imply the existence of any direct relationship between the Pen of Thy Revelation and the essence of all created things. Far, far are They Who are related to Thee above the conception of such relationship! All comparisons and likenesses fail to do justice to the Tree of Thy Revelation, and every way is barred to the comprehension of the Manifestation of Thy Self and the Day Spring of Thy Beauty.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 4
What Baha’u’llah meant in this passage when He said that
“All comparisons and likenesses fail to do justice to the Tree of Thy Revelation” was that there is nothing that can compare to the Tree, nothing that can do justice to that Tree. That Tree is the Manifestation of God that comes in every age. It has been referred to the Sadratu’l-Muntahá, the “Tree beyond which there is no passing.”
The Manifestations of God stand on the All-Highest Throne, and they are the Tree beyond which there is no passing, the Habitation of everlasting might and glory. We cannot pass beyond Them and get to God without Them. We need to go through them to (a) know anything about God or (b) have any relationship with God.
“The “sacred Lote-Tree” is a reference to the Sadratu’l-Muntahá, the “Tree beyond which there is no passing” (see note 128). It is used here symbolically to designate Bahá’u’lláh.” The Kitáb-i-Aqdas. p. 236
“Give ear unto the verses of God which He Who is the sacred Lote-Tree reciteth unto you. They are assuredly the infallible balance, established by God, the Lord of this world and the next. Through them the soul of man is caused to wing its flight towards the Dayspring of Revelation, and the heart of every true believer is suffused with light. Such are the laws which God hath enjoined upon you, such His commandments prescribed unto you in His Holy Tablet; obey them with joy and gladness, for this is best for you, did ye but know.”
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas. p. 73
So now back to the mystical relationship with God. We can have a mystical relationship with God
through a Manifestation of God such as Baha’u’llah and that is what prayer and meditation is all about, but we cannot go
directly to God and have a mystical relationship with God.... We need the Intermediary, the Manifestation of God, who is our only connection to God.
Baha’u’llah is called the Tree beyond which there is no passing because we cannot just pass beyond Baha’u’llah and go directly to God.
Think of it as God being down at the end of a road. The Manifestation of God is like a Gate across the road and we can go no further than that Gate. We can approach that Gate but even that Gate is a mystery we cannot ever fully comprehend. That is why that passage says
“every way is barred to the comprehension of the Manifestation of Thy Self and the Day Spring of Thy Beauty.”
This idea that we cannot have a *direct relationship* with God is further confirmed by Shoghi Effendi:
"We will have experience of God's spirit through His Prophets in the next world, but God is too great for us to know without this Intermediary. The Prophets know God, but how is more than our human minds can grasp. We believe we may attainin the next world to seeing the Prophets. There is certainly a future life. Heaven and hell are conditions within our own beings."
(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, November 14, 1947)
Lights of Guidance (second part): A Bahá'í Reference File
I can agree with that. That is as God intended it to be.