You are an abundant resource.

Most sincerely

I’m not sure what you mean by “originals”. Revelation writing was illegible squiggles to all but Baha’u'llah’s amanuensis. And even he couldn’t read it sometimes!

We do have originals written by the Bab’s own hand and Baha’u'llah also (as well as the Master). They are on display in the Archives and in a secure bunker-like archive underground underneath.

In any case, only those who read Arabic and Farsi could read the originals. Is this what you were asking? because I’m not sure.

Does anyone have the answer to why there requires an AO?

How about where Baha’u'llah wrote something to the effect, “My people shall call themselves Bahai”?

Does anyone know why the actual writings are not published in originals, you know actual photo copies?

To me it’s a matter of the Valleys - back to the question of the right/duty of independent search - Search/Love/Knowledge…. at first questions are all that matter and answers kind of don’t; then *the* answer matters and the questions are meaningless; then questions and answers mutually evolve…. “and enter The Valley of Knowledge and come out of doubt into certitude….” If they now come out of doubt and into certitude they must have had doubts before. Searched but were impatient, loved but felt forgetfulness more than pain….

It’s also described in the Valley of Unity -

“In sum, the differences in objects have now been made plain. Thus when the wayfarer gazeth only upon the place of appearance—that is, when he seeth only the many-colored globes—he beholdeth yellow and red and white; hence it is that conflict hath prevailed among the creatures, and a darksome dust from limited souls hath hid the world. And some do gaze upon the effulgence of the light; and some have drunk of the wine of oneness and these see nothing but the sun itself.

Thus, for that they move on these three differing planes, the understanding and the words of the wayfarers have differed; and hence the sign of conflict doth continually appear on earth. For some there are who dwell upon the plane of oneness 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 portion of the radiance of Divine Beauty, make certain claims, and in every age and cycle inflict on the people of the sea of oneness what they themselves deserve. “Should God punish men for their perverse doings, He would not leave on earth a moving thing! But to an appointed term doth He respite them….” “

I see no reason the Baha’i Faith would be exempt from this analysis. We are far form the Most Great Peace when something huge has to change. But we make that group effort with steps forward and back, dealing with where people are at and pushing onward.

Thanks for that link.

It looks very good.

I am very busy in my work right now writing some pretty tricky Java objects that essentially not only make the lady and the tiger dsappear, but the stage, the audience, the city, the continent, and the hemisphere too and then make them re-appear essentially on another planet in space-time metaphorically speaking. So my mental energy is being pretty much used up every day by the time I get home. So it will take me a few days to read those essays. But I will and post back here some thoughts.

I feel you are a young man. The irony here I think is that I was once you. But I have been a Bahai’s for 36 years now. I have seen too much staggering loss that can never be regained, recovered, or put back in any way. The system was a mystery and a cypher. And it still is to me. The depth psychologies involved are immense. Really archetypal and, therfore, of Cosmic proportions.

But I still feel that in the next 300-500 years there still could be a sea change in fortune on this planet as more and more people in all the electorates on Earth (including the Baha’i electorate) understand depth psychology in power seekers, narcissists, passive-aggressive personalities, and obsessive-compulsive personalities before they go into a voting booth or vote in a Baha’i election.

That level of psychological insight will eventually come for every man, woman, and child on this planet. And when it does only highly limited power will be given to very spiritually advanced adepts in life for very short highly fixed periods of time. And people will sense people’s true motives with greater and greater acumen everywhere in the world. I think the Writings of Baha’u'llah clearly foretell this level of development appearing in human beings.

You write:

I would say “once you have found Baha’u’llah your search is over” is as true as “once you have found Baha’u’llah your search has just begun”.

Hummm.

I will have to think about this.

Best regards,

Craig

I suggest you review more carefully that Abrahamic history. We are from any semblance of Christianity’s drift from it’s source or example, and survived as best we could the failures of Islam in the same regard. If you presumably accept ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s verdict note then He establishes the Christian Lesser Covenant was secured past 600AD (even to 800AD perhaps). Notwithstanding that Christianity’s excesses over the next 1200 years have given us big problems to solve, it took far longer for such excesses to strike at the root of the Tree of the Religion of God.

If anything we are far closer to the period of Arius - someone who explained answers to people that were wrong. See this article on Baha’i Library (half way down the page)

Markers of that period include many diverse, conflicted, misleading understandings of the Religion of God in it’s day - before it’s emancipation. People making up answers to questions that require “getting it” but which are not themselves actually written out and as a result drift even further from the truth. People taking up sections of the Scripture as it was available and ignoring other whole sections….. There is a continued independent search for truth because one needs to keep learning for oneself. But one need not keep doubting. By way of analogy, an axiom may make some things obvious, but there are implications undreamt of.

Thank you for your very articulate post. Your points are all very well taken.

What I am saying is that a religion is about states of consciousness. The Baha’i Faith is about Baha’u'llah’s mystical state of consciousness. It is not about Shoghi Effendi’s non-mystical state of non-consciousness. It is not about any particular member of the Universal House of Justice’s non-mystical state of non-consciousness.

It is about the inner mystical horizon of a person’s individual soul. It is profoundly sacred. For any person in the Baha’i Faith to say to any other soul “once you have found Baha’u'llah your search is over” is to assert a viewpoint that is profoundly materialistic and Earth bound. It is a statement that is profoundly unspiritual.

This is because to my mind Baha’u'llah is not a person like someone’s needy parental projection. Baha’u'llah should not be made into anyone’s need for an authority figure from unhappy and unstable childhoods. Baha’u'llah is not a person for someone who has identified the message on the deepest spiritual plane. Baha’u'llah is a state of consciousness. As was Jesus a state of consciousness. A spiritual state of consciouness on comprehending the powers of the Cosmos for a new World Age cycle in human growth and evolution toward the Divine.

A spiritual person would say “Once you have found Baha’u'llah’s state of consciousness your search for truth has just begun on a new plane of insight. You are now seeing with a new eye and hearing with a new ear. You are now free to fully investigate and explore the Cosmos as you see fit from this new persepective.”

But religions are always hi-jacked by spiritual archetypes who will not allow or permit that. Always. Look at the sorry, sorry histories of all the Abrahamic religions. And this is why the power of the Baha’i Faith is now passing to other people and other movements who will be the real spiritual Baha’is doing the work of the World Age.

I wish it would be otherwise. But I fear this is what has happened.

The difference of perspective between people who see Baha’u'llah as a person to be worshipped as an idol of their own psychological making and people who see Baha’u'llah as a state of spiritual consciousness to be explored with the vast powers of your own God given heart and mind is as vast a scope of being in the Cosmos as that between heaven and hell.

There are no illumined poets left in the Baha’i Faith now. Only dreary apparatchiks with their regimented “spiritual” comic book level of insight into the Universe. The results of this are catastrophic for the “Lesser Covenant”. But not for the “Greater Covenant.” The spiritual souls of the much bigger world will carry on with or without the so called formal “Baha’i Faith”.

The Teachings of Baha’u'llah are flowering everywhere among spiritual people of insight but, unfortunately, not among the people called by His Name at the present time.