The 3 Rs -- An Upward Spiral

Much of the world is celebrating New Year’s Day, 2009. It leads me to ruminate about this rather arbitrary designation (for Bahá’ís the New Year falls on the vernal equinox). The new year is somehow a break from the old, a chance to begin anew with a clean slate. Studies in comparative religion have found that many ancient societies believed explicitly that at this time the gods destroyed the world and created it anew. To point out to them from a sophisticated 21st century perspective that the world of Januray 1st looks remarkably like December 31st past would bring, at best, puzzlement. New Year’s resolutions seem to me to be a vestige of those ancient days, for in affirming them we lock into the belief that I can recreate my life, as the past does not have to dictate the future.

So, the cycle of life, resurrection, return and reincarnation. When I hear Christians talking about resurrection, they chiefly mean Christ’s rising after three days. Jews and Muslims, on the other hand, focus on the spectre of the dead rising from the graves, a notion which in its bizarre literal form always engendered horror-film zombies in my imagination. Many a time I have heard questions about resurrection at Bahá’í meetings, and over and above doctrinal interest, my ear always hears the subtext: “But what about me – what will happen to me?” I understand it as much the same question as with reincarnation, wondering what’s going to happen to me after I die.

The pre-eminent Bahá’í scholar Mírzá Abú’l Fadl wrote in 1886, “. . . it is clear to the possessors of intellect that the original intent of the prophets and messengers when they mentioned Return and Resurrection was to deliver to God’s servants the glad-tidings of a future Advent – when all that had transpired would be played out once more, retracing each footstep. In this way, the people would be deterred from believing that the Sun of Reality would never again rise, or that the spring of divine, mystical knowledge would never return. The prepared souls would be awaiting the appearance of the Manifestations of God and watching for the appearance of a primal reality. Then when the spiritual breeze wafted and the lordly, radiant luminary arose, exalted souls would be raised from the tombs of their bodies, a wondrous life would be bestowed on the world through a new spirit, and the earth would be adorned with the flowers of knowledge and science. Thus might the fruits hidden in the trees of existence be brought into the realm of appearance, just as they were at the time of the last Advent, and all that is concealed in the recesses of souls be made apparent and manifest. This is the meaning of Return. Otherwise, in regard to relative characteristics, spirits never return to this world once they have been separated from it. The birds of the soul, once they have ascended to the Most High, never again descend to the nethermost depths.” (Letters and Essays, 1886-1913)

The Far Easterns have had for millennia a cyclical view of life, where souls not only return to earth, but in which history repeats itself, exactly down to the last detail, over and over again for eternity. In the minds of the people of the West, time has taken a very different dimension, moving inexorably forward in a measured and linear fashion toward a future most fear will be cut short abruptly at some point. The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh synthesizes all views in an astonishingly seamless manner (which is not to say that it is a synthesis; rather they are not only rolled into one, but refashioned and reinterpreted to show that they really have been aspects of one reality all along), and in this regard we have been given a new model that is both cyclical and progressive, an upward spiral. So life in all its aspects, from the individual struggle and experience, to the Revelation of God is seen as both repeating an endless pattern while at the same time striving upward. “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 214)

As a Bahá’í I have been given a vision of the ultimately destiny of the individual soul, which is an eternally dynamic and progressive one, but human civilization’s destiny is not fully revealed, and we’ll either find out when we get there, or as a mercy a future Manifestation of God will tell us more completely. Either way, I won’t be reincarnated as a dog, princess, or movie star, nor will I be playing harps and drinking ambrosia in a static eternity (or be barbecuing in hell with the devil turning the spit) when the ultimate end of humanity is known, if it ever will be. In the meantime my task has been set before me: “It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action.” (Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 166)