Paragraph 202

Inasmuch as they have not apprehended the meaning of Knowledge, and have called by that name those images fashioned by their own fancy and which have sprung from the embodiments of ignorance, they therefore have inflicted upon the Source of Knowledge that which thou hast heard and witnessed.

Paragraph twelve of the twenty-two that look at those two stations that the Manifestations of God occupy. But now He is beginning to look at how we react to new information.

We are so used to thinking in dichotomies, either one thing or another, that it is sometimes difficult to see how two things can be true at the same time. The Manifestations of God are absolutely identical in the realms of reality, yet they also occupy different stations in the realm of this world. "Knowledge is a single point which the ignorant have multiplied."

So let's look at what He is saying here.

We think we know what we're talking about. We have these ideas which have actually come from our "own fancy and which have sprung from the embodiments of ignorance". We call what we think we know "knowledge", but are we really certain we understand what that word means?

We know from "Words of Wisdom" that "The source of all learning is the knowledge of God, exalted be His glory, and this cannot be attained save through the knowledge of His Divine Manifestation." But that tells us the source, not what it actually is.

Knowledge, in essence, is awareness, understanding, information, and familiarity about a subject or reality, acquired through experience, education, or learning. It encompasses facts, skills, and insights that form a cognitive connection to the world, whether through practical skills, like knowing how to ride a bike, or theoretical understanding, like knowing scientific principles.

When it comes to religious knowledge, most of what we think we know is just fanciful imagination. We hear the prophecies and come with our own ideas of what the next Manifestation must look like.

All those questions that were asked way back in the beginning of the book? Those questions about why the people denied the promised One? The answer always comes back to this. They acted out of ignorance. They acted hastily and harshly based on their own false expectations.

Even so recently as paragraph 183, He pointed out to us that the people have regularly "turned their face toward their own thoughts and desires". This is so reprehensible that He even refers to it as "folly and perversity".

These "thoughts and desires" though, go far beyond what we think the next Messenger may look like, or how they may act. It also affects how we perceive God, humanity, and virtually everything else.

When talking about God, Baha'u'llah Himself approaches the subject with such humility. In Prayers and Meditations LXXV, He says, "I know not how to sing Thy praise, how to describe Thy glory, how to call upon Thy Name. If I call upon Thee by Thy Name, the All-Possessing, I am compelled to recognize that He Who holdeth in His hand the immediate destinies of all created things is but a vassal dependent upon Thee... And if I attempt to describe Thee by glorifying the oneness of Thy Being, I soon realize that such a conception is but a notion which mine own fancy hath woven, and that Thou hast ever been immeasurably exalted above the vain imaginations which the hearts of men have devised."

To be aware of the limitations of our own knowledge means that we can walk forward more surely, more humbly. It means being keenly aware of the difference between fact and our own opinion. So much of this paragraph focuses around this theme. Because we are unaware of the difference between these two, between our own opinions and actual truth, we "have called those images fashioned by (our) own fancy" as fact. Then when we act on these imagined ideas as if they are somehow universally true, we end up in all sorts of strange and dangerous places, lost amidst the wilds of error.

As we move forward in this book, Baha'u'llah seems to use this awareness, and the coming negative example of one who did not act in this way, as a prelude to our own search. He will preface it with a more lengthy description of the attributes of a true seeker, and then proceed to give us His argument for how we can know that the Bab was a true Manifestation of the Divine.