Bahai Philosophy and the Question of the Environment

Every time I lift up mine eyes unto Thy heaven, I call to mind Thy highness and Thy loftiness, and Thine incomparable glory and greatness: and every time I turn my gaze to Thine earth, I am made to recognize the evidences of Thy power and the tokens of Thy bounty. And when I behold the sea, I find that it speaketh to me of Thy majesty, and of the potency of Thy might, and of Thy sovereignty and Thy grandeur. ix This means that nature is the mirror of God which should be recognized and loved as the reflection and embodiment of divine revelation. The traditional opposition between the invisible and the visible realms is now replaced by the Bahá’í conception of the harmony of the divine and the created realms. Abdu’l-Bahá explicates the same principle in the following way: These are spiritual truths relating to the spiritual world. In like manner, from these spiritual realities infer truths about the material world. For physical things are signs and imprints of spiritual things; every lower thing is an image and counterpart of a higher thing. Nay, earthly and heavenly, material and spiritual, accidental and essential, particular and universal, structure and foundation, appearance and reality and the essence of all things, both inward and outward--all of these are connected one with another and are interrelated in such a manner that you will find that drops are patterned after seas, and that atoms are structured after suns in proportion to their capacities and potentialities. For particulars in relation to what is below them are universals, and what are great universals in the sight of those whose eyes are veiled are in fact particulars in relation to the realities and beings which are superior to them. Universal and particular are in reality incidental and relative considerations. The mercy of thy Lord, verily, encompasseth all things! (provisional translation) x If humans view the realm of nature as the symbol and mirror of divine attributes, then their attitude towards the environment will not be one of abuse and destruction. The Bahá’í theology of revelation simultaneously affirms the two principles of the absolute transcendence of God and the sacred character of nature. That is why the Bahá’í position fits neither mysticism nor asceticism as defined by Weberian typology. Mysticism and asceticism are both (partially) affirmed and (partially) negated in the Bahá’í worldview and hence the Bahá’í value orientation is neither a destructive instrumental rationalization, nor a stagnant conception of life and culture

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