Paragraph 179

Likewise, strive thou to comprehend the meaning of the melody of that eternal beauty, Ḥusayn, son of ‘Alí, who, addressing Salmán, spoke words such as these: “I was with a thousand Adams, the interval between each and the next Adam was fifty thousand years, and to each one of these I declared the Successorship conferred upon my father.” He then recounteth certain details, until he saith: “I have fought one thousand battles in the path of God, the least and most insignificant of which was like the battle of Khaybar, in which battle my father fought and contended against the infidels.” Endeavor now to apprehend from these two traditions the mysteries of “end,” “return,” and “creation without beginning or end.”

Here we are at paragraph 19 of these thirty paragraphs focusing on "pure abstraction and essential unity", the first of the two stations of the Manifestations of God.

The first thing that we noticed here is the word "likewise" at the beginning. What is He likening it to? The quote in the previous paragraph, “A thousand Fáṭimihs I have espoused, all of whom were the daughters of Muḥammad, Son of ‘Abdu’lláh, the ‘Seal of the Prophets’”.

You will recall that he, Ali, is not saying that he married a thousand women, all of whom were Muhammad's daughter. No. He is talking about the recurrence of themes that are all under the general category of the "Return".

Similar to his marriage to Fátimih, Ali is saying that all the Messengers had successors, like him. Each and every one of Them also faced these incredible battles. Over and over the similarities between all the Manifestations is evident. This is His overarching theme throughout this book, the absolute oneness of the Messengers.

What really stands out to us in this paragraph, though, are the words "strive" and "endeavor". There is an importance to the effort we make, a value to the striving. While we can never truly understand the full vastness of all of this, we can come to a better and better understanding. As we mentioned so many times in our study of the first paragraphs of this book, the time we take to pray and meditate and make a concentrated effort to study these concepts, the better we will make sense of it all.

So often in religion, we are taught things as if they are in a fixed and firm chronological order. We are taught there is a beginning and an ending, from Genesis to Revelation, with nothing before or after that. But when we read our sacred texts, we see that this is not the case. We see many references to the "beginning that hath no beginning" or the "end that hath no end". We see continual thoughts about the concept of eternity, as well as the explicit statements about a "Return".

How are we to make sense of all this, given the current concepts that are taught?

Well, this goes back to the statements at the beginning of the book, and the idea found throughout all religious texts. We need to see the world through our own eyes, and not through the eyes of others. We need to listen to the voice of the divine with our own ears, not the ears of others.

It's also worth noting that even though we aren't from this culture, the one that these traditions come from, we still have the capacity to understand them. Of course, there's probably a lot more to them than we are aware of, but isn't that always true when dealing with religious ideas?

Through these two traditions, the one about a thousand Adams, and the one about the battle, He is asking us to strive to "apprehend... the mysteries of 'end,' 'return,' and 'creation without beginning or end.'”

The best parallel we can think of is the calendar. The Gregorian year ends on 31 December, and the next one begins the following day. In fact, it begins at the very moment the previous one ends. But is it the end of time? Of course not. The end of December means the "return" of January. Time, outside the imposed boundaries of the calendar system we happen to use, has no beginning and no end. It is continual.

Unlike this post. We could easily continue, but feel this is enough for now.