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- Thread starter Sundance
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As for individual interpretation of the Sacred Writings, @LuisDantas , we are absolutely given this liberty! That's why there is no clergy in our Faith! Though, no one of us can claim that ours is the only correct or authoritative interpretation. Authoritative interpretation of the Sacred Writings, that's the job of the Universal House of Justice.
So I have heard. What is a Bahai to do if he feels consistently unconfortable with the UHJ's line?
And hope that does not lead to covenant-breaking, if I am not mistaken.
Surely, to politely explain an issue one has to the UHJ does not constitute Covenant-breaking, but actively opposing the UHJ's authority while claiming one's faith in Bahá’u’lláh's Revelation, that does. For something more detailed, see this article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant-breaker
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant-breaker
I see what you mean and I don't disagree at all.
That is IMO one major difference between the Bahai Faith and Islaam.
Islaam, much against its own hopes, is deeply fractioned when it comes to authority (and that is not always a bad thing).
By contrast, the Bahai Faith's authority is clearly centered at the UHJ. That is not automatically a good thing, but it is certainly an impressive achievement, one that Muslims have attempted and failed to emulate for centuries before there was a Bahai Faith, even.
The issue of covenant-breaking and how to deal with it are IMO the most delicate, even questionable, in the whole of Bahai practice, even surpassing its insistence on monotheism and revelation. I don't think there is any clear solution to that, since the political aspects are central to it.
It does however worry me. My sincere impression is that the Bahai Faith has no obvious mechanisms to balance any hypothetical loss of constructive direction from the UHJ. Perhaps those mechanisms exist and I am simply unaware of them. Perhaps it is believed or hoped that God will keep them true to constructive paths.
I don't know. What is clear is that covenant-breaking, when it does happen, is a difficult thing for Bahais to accept without strong action. To be fair, it is not like the Bahai are particularly notable in that respect. Similar dilemmas are par of course in nearly all large groups with any degree of political motivation, and there is no obvious way of avoiding those.
Whether the estrangement that comes from accusations of covenant-breaking is necessary or justified I can't tell. It is difficult to even attempt to measure it, let alone decide whether it was necessary or worth the price paid.
Still, I can't help but feel that an emphatically monotheistic religion with a centralized authority will always face a self-imposed challenge that may easily turn ugly.
That is IMO one major difference between the Bahai Faith and Islaam.
Islaam, much against its own hopes, is deeply fractioned when it comes to authority (and that is not always a bad thing).
By contrast, the Bahai Faith's authority is clearly centered at the UHJ. That is not automatically a good thing, but it is certainly an impressive achievement, one that Muslims have attempted and failed to emulate for centuries before there was a Bahai Faith, even.
The issue of covenant-breaking and how to deal with it are IMO the most delicate, even questionable, in the whole of Bahai practice, even surpassing its insistence on monotheism and revelation. I don't think there is any clear solution to that, since the political aspects are central to it.
It does however worry me. My sincere impression is that the Bahai Faith has no obvious mechanisms to balance any hypothetical loss of constructive direction from the UHJ. Perhaps those mechanisms exist and I am simply unaware of them. Perhaps it is believed or hoped that God will keep them true to constructive paths.
I don't know. What is clear is that covenant-breaking, when it does happen, is a difficult thing for Bahais to accept without strong action. To be fair, it is not like the Bahai are particularly notable in that respect. Similar dilemmas are par of course in nearly all large groups with any degree of political motivation, and there is no obvious way of avoiding those.
Whether the estrangement that comes from accusations of covenant-breaking is necessary or justified I can't tell. It is difficult to even attempt to measure it, let alone decide whether it was necessary or worth the price paid.
Still, I can't help but feel that an emphatically monotheistic religion with a centralized authority will always face a self-imposed challenge that may easily turn ugly.
arthra
Baha'i
I would add that this is not necessarily the case... but there are monotheistic elements in Hinduism..
In the case of Buddhism we respect the approach of "via negativa"... "not this....not this" to approach the Absolute as we also recognize that the Essence of God is "unknown".
The Buddha also redefined the earlier Vedic religion and stipulated what a "true" Brahmin should consist of...thus the pattern I indicated in my post above in which the later revelation redefines the earlier one or shall we say restores the spiritual nature of it for the more recent time in which people are living.
One final and no less important point is the common base of language between the Vedic and the Avestan languages:
There are lot of familiar names in Avesta from the Rig-Veda and one of the first references comes not from India or Persia, but from northern Syria. A treaty signed by the Hittites and Mitannis dating to the fourteenth century BC calls upon Indara/Indra, Mitras(il)/Mitra, Nasatianna/Nasatya and Uruvanass(il)/Varuna, all known to Rig-Veda and Avesta.
http://varnam.nationalinterest.in/2007/01/avesta_and_rig_veda/
arthra
Baha'i
Luis,
I don't know how much you have reviewed the statements and positions of the House of Justice but you'll find they constantly defer to the Baha'i Writings and the perspectives of Shoghi Effendi the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith from 1921 until his passing in 1957.
- Art
Those are evidence that monotheism is not entirely unknown in non-monotheistic beliefs.
Fair for what they are, but they address the opposite of the challenge found in reality: integration of non-monotheistic thought in the apparently strictly Abrahamic Bahai Faith.
I beg to differ. That is not a particularly important point, far as I can see. Not for the matter at hand, anyway.
I haven't reviewed them at all, but respect for the writings of the previous figures of authority in the Faith is not evidence of the mechanisms I was talking about.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Forget your Hindu and Buddhist brothers, first address your Muslim brothers and sisters. They are more relevant for you.
As a Hindu in reply to your question to a Buddhist, why do you need to approach us? You have your religion, we have ours.
None of the four Indian religions is a revealed religion (some people say that about Vedas and BhagawadGita but there is no evidence. Very much like Bahaullah claim of divinity). They are thought-out religions. Is there any problem with that?
You are right. By this time Bahaullah is stale. He died in 1892. We have had many great people (you term them as manifestations) in the meantime. Gandhi was assasinated in 1948, Ramana Mharshi died in 1950 and Swami Sivananda in 1963. My favorite Swami Adgadananda died in 1969. Swami Chinmayananda died in 1993. Swami Chidananda is still holding forth. There is no age in which India is not blessed by wise and holy people.
But that House is part of your religion. Why do you think my interpretation or that of any other person is wrong?
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Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
So how come there are similarities between Indian God/Goddess names and words with Gods/Goddesses and words in Russian, Balkan, Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic and Norse/Lithuanian. Yes, the Mittani reference may be the first but people who worshiped these deities in their various names were spread over a very large area. Hitties and Mittanis were really the first Aryan contact with Mesopotamia and Egypt. The transmission of Vedas was oral for many milleniums. Writing was not required by us. Aryans did not have empires. They were herders.
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This has been my thought as well that this whole elevation of a man who had a vision and insight in his day as THE prophet for the current Age, spanning generations blinds one from seeing the forest through the trees. Divine light shines in all hearts and minds if we let it. I just have a real issue divinizing individuals as "sent by God", when everyone is. Then to couple that with a "central authority" who decides what is "orthodox" beliefs or not, reduces insight and revelation into dogma and control, transfiguring it into something other than revelation.
Did this get missed? Ignored? What?
I must agree. While there is something to be said for making an effort to be true to past leadership figures, such efforts are usually overdone and end up compromising the validity of the doctrine.
That is something that seems difficult to explain to most Muslims and many Christians (but not so much Hindus): to be true to a doctrine, one must not fear improving upon it.
Sirius Star
Member
Well the verse said: 'So this "unifying vision of the future." Should I take this to mean that Baha'i wish to position itself as a universal religion (but not necessarily the universal religion, as in only we should exist and other religions should go away)?'
Reply: Have no idea except to say that is a real possibility. As in fact just most of them should go away. They are speaking polytheism these days. They cannot keep paying way less for their janitors! Who does the hardest work works and the rest are but stumblers.
The Earth is torn and so it has no more room for morons. It has no rooms for terrorists available anywhere as they have taken over most of your countries' orchard zones. The Newt Gingrich society of the most false as well as more useless bunch of worthless Republicans.
The Democrats deserve to spend some real time in hell seeing what it's like changing star patterns. Ozone layers. Oh the clock works. The hot sun burns. All of that ice is melting capstones. The most beautiful blue suns. What their world was. All of your owned chemicals.
On the surface it sounds like an acceptance of multiple points of view, but recall what I said in my post you responded to which you didn't exactly address in this response?
"Again, as I've suggested, the very minute this happens, that the new way of understanding becomes wrapped in the symbol of "divine revelation", or new Teachings as you capitalized it, they become binding truths to be accepted and believed in, not teachings one can challenge, reconsider, or outright reject when new information comes along. The Prophet of God is Authority, and to challenge the Prophet is seen as a challenge and affront to God Himself. "
Intrigued to read some of the sayings of Baha'u'llah since you quoted this one, I quickly discovered this one which absolutely affirms what I had just said,
The door of the knowledge of the Ancient Being hath ever been, and will continue forever to be, closed in the face of men. No man’s understanding shall ever gain access unto His holy court. As a token of His mercy, however, and as a proof of His loving-kindness, He hath manifested unto men the Daystars of His divine guidance, the Symbols of His divine unity, and hath ordained the knowledge of these sanctified Beings to be identical with the knowledge of His own Self. Whoso recognizeth them hath recognized God. Whoso hearkeneth to their call, hath hearkened to the Voice of God, and whoso testifieth to the truth of their Revelation, hath testified to the truth of God Himself. Whoso turneth away from them, hath turned away from God, and whoso disbelieveth in them, hath disbelieved in God.
That is precisely, exactly to the very point I made. Then to learn there is a central authority who gets to decide what is okay or not okay to question guts the spirit of insight and inspiration right out of the prophet's original vision. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Bear with me.
I certainly do agree there are individuals who for whatever reasons in their lives become quite "gifted" in their knowledge of the the divine. Each human alive has that Knowledge fully and readily available within themselves already. How they avail themselves of that, and how the respond to that when it is exposed to their conscious minds is what marks these individuals out from the rest who live in a state of unawareness. So when these "special" individuals open to the divine in themselves this way, the result can be rather profound and penetrating insights that go far beyond just our ordinary "sight" seeing through the eyes of unawakened minds.
When they stand out of the crowd this way, (and they are far, far from only one every several thousand years or so
) people revere and elevate them as "Sent by God". They mythologize them. They turned them into types of miniature deities of sort, whom us poor ignorant ones must listen to if we are to hope to crawl out of the misery of our lives into the promised land we envision must await us on the other side of Heaven's door, which these men of God have seen and tell us is there for us. Now, while there is in fact Truth in what these "prophets" realize in their own awakening experiences, and while the insights and teachings they offer may benefit others on their paths to their own Realization, they are not divine oracles speaking immutable, undisputable facts of God. They are in truth, at best in the words they say, "fingers pointing at the moon", and not the moon itself.Their words when literalized as "The words of God", no longer are metaphors, expressions of the divine in weak and faulting human language, but facts of absolute truth one must believe in in order to be included in God's holy roll-call. Note the shift from speaking of the divine which cannot be expressed in mere words, to the threat to not deviate from the prophet's words as an actual affront to God Himself? "Whoso turneth away from them, hath turned away from God, and whoso disbelieveth in them, hath disbelieved in God." There is an inherent problem with this, and one I am convinced turns inspired insights of these 'gifted' ones into just another form of uninspired human belief systems.
Let me give you an example. Take Jesus for example. You have an individual who saw Truth in himself and in the world, and in others. He spoke his vision to others, taught then as he could to their unenlightened minds in the hope the rays of that Light might penetrate into something in them in order to awaken it so that they too may see. That, is in fact what a true prophet does. To speak divine Truth in order to awaken individuals to that Light in themselves. So when he spoke divine Truth as he translated that within himself, to the minds of others, their minds, as those who heard the words, could only translate Jesus' understanding of Truth within the frameworks of their own unenlightened minds. In other words, when they then taught others Jesus' words, it was "dumbed down" by the limits of their own available insights. With me so far?
So if these who are not themselves Awakened, or Realized Masters, so-called prophets, position themselves as the final authorities on what Jesus said and meant, is inherently a profound problem! Not only is the firsthand Knowledge in the mind of a Jesus beyond even him to speak of precisely to others, those whose unenlightened minds hear him will step it down several degrees removed from the first-hand direct experience turning it into something else. They are sharing in effect, their translation of an Enlightened Master several degrees of illumination removed from themselves, as if it were the actual understanding of the source of the material they are translating.
Now, take those who are just lay people reading the words of a prophet or a Jesus. Their minds are even more unaware and incapable of truly fathoming any actual knowledge of what is being pointed to by the prophet to where when they say, "This is what he means!" is an instantaneous betrayal of their own ignorance about such things. It becomes a projection of their own unenlightened minds as the Word of God itself, which they then judge others in quoting as authoritative truth, "whoso disbelieveth in them, hath disbelieved in God." There is a profound lack of insight and inspiration going on at that level.
This is the inherent problem when people mythologize prophets as Authoritative Oracles of Divine Declarations, and then build up a religious institution around them with central authorities who become the final arbiters of Truth. It creates a system whereby the initiate seeks outside for truth to be told to them, forever dependent on others to decide for them what Truth should look like, while they themselves are but ones upon the path the same as they. There is nothing wrong in learning from Masters. There is something wrong in seeing them as the Final Authority on matters of Faith.
I'm sorry, @Windwalker , but I don't know anything about that.
What do you mean? Doesn't the verse I quoted come from (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, XXI)? I might suggest you read the quote I posted from there and try to understand it in the context I presented. Do you have have a different opinion than what I presented? If so, what is that? I'm interested in hearing how you do not see there is an inherent problem with having a central authority to rule on what is allowed belief or not.
No, Windwalker, you're right. It's something else....