Paragraph 239

Give ear unto God’s holy Voice, and heed thou His sweet and immortal melody. Behold how He hath solemnly warned them that have repudiated the verses of God, and hath disowned them that have denied His holy words. Consider how far the people have strayed from the Kawthar of the divine Presence, and how grievous hath been the faithlessness and arrogance of the spiritually destitute in the face of that sanctified Beauty. Although that Essence of loving-kindness and bounty caused those evanescent beings to step into the realm of immortality, and guided those destitute souls to the sacred river of wealth, yet some denounced Him as “a calumniator of God, the Lord of all creatures,” others accused Him of being “the one that withholdeth the people from the path of faith and true belief,” and still others declared Him to be “a lunatic” and the like.

Baha'u'llah's commentary on the verse "As for those who believe not in the verses of God, or that they shall ever meet Him, these of My mercy shall despair, and these doth a grievous chastisement await" continues all the way through paragraph 241. And His citing of the verses as His first defense of the Cause of the Bab will continue on through paragraph 245. After that, He looks at the effect the Faith has had on some of the followers, and then a little bit at the life and character of the Bab. All of this constitutes His main defense of the Cause, before He takes a detour into some traditions to satisfy the questions of the uncle. And that will then conclude the book, but not our never-ending exploration of it.

He opens this paragraph with a reference to this "sweet and immortal melody". It puts us in mind of the very title, The Book of Certitude. We often wondered why it was called "certitude" and not "certainty". What's the difference?

When you listen to the music of Bach or Mozart, knowledge will tell you all about the instrumentation, structure, and theory. That is certainty.

Certitude will tell you that it's beautiful.

Baha'u'llah seems to be more concerned about the certitude aspect of it, and He is gearing all His proofs from the Qur'an to that end. He is guiding us to read the Writings of the Bab for ourselves, and make our own judgement about them. And that, we feel, is why the book is called Certitude.

In addition to this, He also begins by telling us to "Give ear... Behold... Consider..." Three times He asks us to really sit up and be aware. The emphasis to the musical aspect of it also reminds us just how important the human voice is in Islamic culture. While Judaism had the shofar, the ram's horn, to call people, and Christianity used the church bells, Islam was all about the voice.

But He isn't just asking us to listen to it. He is asking us to really pay attention to it. Remember, He has been reminding us all along of these people who have ears but do not actually listen. Back in paragraph 2, when telling us how to begin sanctifying our souls, the first thing He mentioned was to cleanse our "ears from idle talk".

By the way, when we are preparing for writing this blog, we often have a conversation of notes before we start. As this sometimes has a very different tone than the blog itself, and might give some insight into our own methodology, we thought we'd include one of the notes here about this paragraph:

Notice that He is asking us to really pay attention here. "Give ear" "Behold" "Consider" Three times He asks us to really sit up and take notice.

Also notice that He is calling them "spiritually destitute". That's a strangely strong phrase. These people possess knowledge, but what they're missing is wisdom, or perhaps the humility to recognize. Remember, this is all about a spiritual disease, not an intellectual misunderstanding.

Anyways, I'll do my errands while I ponder this one.

 * * * * *

Oh, one more thought before I go: I notice you spend quite a bit of time talking about the persecutions. I'm curious about that, since Baha'u'llah doesn't seem to really dwell on it, except as it can help us recognize the tendency in ourselves.

The issue here is that these people are spiritually destitute. The problem is not that they call Muhammad names. That's just the result of their spiritual disease.

When we focus on the actions, we tend to be more condemnatory, I think. But when we recognize it as a spiritual lack, our attitude towards them changes quite a bit.

Thoughts?

As you can see, we really take our time to consider, and ponder. It's such an important aspect of this book. A lot of what Baha'u'llah did in Part One was ensure that the uncle took the time to slow down. The uncle came into the conversation with all these ideas about how prophecy was to be fulfilled, and what all these different things were supposed to mean. For him to come to a different understanding would take time. And so Baha'u'llah would regularly ask him to "consider", "ponder", or "meditate".

He doesn't do this as often in Part Two, so when He did so here, we really sat up, especially since it seems like a very different thing we are to consider here than what we do in Part One.

What is it He's asking us to "consider"? How far the people have strayed, and how grievous their faithlessness and arrogance.

If this is all a warning to the uncle to ensure he doesn't walk in this same path, then it further reinforces all He has said up to this point in the book. He has continually quoted the Qur'an. He has shown the uncle over and over how the people in the past, according to his own traditions, have failed to recognize. And demonstrated, again from his own traditions, why they failed to recognize. Baha'u'llah seems to be saying in the clearest of language, "Don't fall into the same pattern."

And then, when He has issued this warning, He shows two examples of how people act when they fall into that pattern. They are faithless, meaning they don't follow the laws of their own religion, and they become arrogant. Both of these things the uncle seems to have avoided.

One final thing is the way Baha'u'llah refers to those actions of the disbelievers. He says that some accused the Manifestation of being a calumniator, which means spreading vicious lies to damage another's reputation. He says others claim He withheld people from the true Path. And some just called Him a lunatic. This seems to us to be a decrescendo, which is unusual in the Writings, which is why it caught our attention.

It feels as if by using a decrescendo here, Baha'u'llah is moving from an extreme state of denial to a lesser one. From there it is an easier step to granting the possibility that the Messenger may be right, and from there an even easier step to acceptance.