ANOTHER IMAGE OF GOD
Well, then, it is reasonable to turn for guidance and help to the East. There was living quite lately a human being of such consummate excellence that many think it is both permissible and inevitable even to identify him mystically with the invisible Godhead. Let us admit, such persons say, that Jesus was the very image of God. But he lived for his own age and his own people; the Jesus of the critics has but little to say, and no redemptive virtue issues from him to us. But the 'Blessed Perfection,' as Baha'ullah used to be called, lives for our age, and offers his spiritual feast to men of all peoples. His story, too, is liable to no diminution at the hands of the critics, simply because the facts of his life are certain. He has now passed from sight, but he is still in the ideal world, a true image of God and a true lover of man, and helps forward the reform of all those manifold abuses which hinder the firm establishment of the kingdom of God. I shall return to this presently. Meanwhile, suffice it to say that though I entertain the highest reverence and love for Baha'ullah's son, Abdul Baha, whom I regard as a Mahatma—'a great-souled one'—and look up to as one of the highest examples in the spiritual firmament, I hold no brief for the Bahai community, and can be as impartial in dealing with facts relating to the Bahais as with facts which happen to concern my own beloved mother-church, the Church of England.
I shall first of all ask, how it came to pass that so many of us are now seeking help and guidance from the East, some from India, some from Persia, some (which is my own case) from India and from Persia.
BAHA'ULLAH'S PRECURSORS, e.g. THE BĀB, ṢUFISM, AND SHEYKH
AḤMAD
So far as Persia is concerned, the reason is that its religious experience has been no less varied than ancient. Zoroaster, Manes, Christ, Muḥammad, Dh'u-Nun (the introducer of Ṣufism), Sheykh Aḥmad (the forerunner of Babism), the Bāb himself and Baha'ullah (the two Manifestations), have all left an ineffaceable mark on the national life. The Bāb, it is true, again and again expresses his repugnance to the 'lies' of the Ṣufis, and the Bābīs are not behind him; but there are traces enough of the influence of Ṣufism on the new Prophet and his followers. The passion for martyrdom seems of itself to presuppose a tincture of Ṣufism, for it is the most extreme form of the passion for God, and to love God fervently but steadily in preference to all the pleasures of the phenomenal world, is characteristically Ṣufite.
What is it, then, in Ṣufism that excites the Bāb's indignation? It is not the doctrine of the soul's oneness with God as the One Absolute Being, and the reality of the soul's ecstatic communion with Him. Several passages are quoted by Mons. Nicolas [Footnote: Beyan arabe, pp. 3-18.] on the attitude of the Bāb towards Ṣufism; suffice it here to quote one of them.
'Others (i.e. those who claim, as being identified with God, to possess absolute truth) are known by the name of Ṣufis, and believe themselves to possess the internal sense of the Shari'at [Footnote: The orthodox Law of Islam, which many Muslims seek to allegorize.] when they are in ignorance alike of its apparent and of its inward meaning, and have fallen far, very far from it! One may perhaps say of them that those people who have no understanding have chosen the route which is entirely of darkness and of doubt.'
Ignorance, then, is, according to the Bāb, the great fault of the Ṣufis [Footnote: Yet the title Ṣufi connotes knowledge. It means probably 'one who (like the Buddha on his statues) has a heavenly eye.' Prajnāparamitā (Divine Wisdom) has the same third eye (Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting, illustr. XLV.).] whom he censures, and we may gather that that ignorance was thought to be especially shown in a crude pantheism and a doctrine of incarnation which, according to the Bāb, amounts to sheer polytheism. [Footnote 4: The technical term is 'association.'] God in Himself, says the Bāb, cannot be known, though a reflected image of Him is attainable by taking heed to His manifestations or perfect portraitures.
Some variety of Ṣufism, however, sweetly and strongly permeates the teaching of the Bāb. It is a Ṣufism which consists, not in affiliation to any Ṣufi order, but in the knowledge and love of the Source of the Eternal Ideals. Through detachment from this perishable world and earnest seeking for the Eternal, a glimpse of the unseen Reality can be attained. The form of this only true knowledge is subject to change; fresh 'mirrors' or 'portraits' are provided at the end of each recurring cosmic cycle or aeon. But the substance is unchanged and unchangeable. As Prof. Browne remarks, 'the prophet of a cycle is naught but a reflexion of the Primal Will,—the same sun with a new horizon.' [Footnote: NH, p. 335.]