The Bab and the Perspective of the Heart

infinity. For us humans this is not the true God and we even may laugh at the ant. But we humans are doing precisely the same thing. In our world and our life, on the basis of our characteristics, certain things are useful and therefore we define them as perfection. When we want to define God we take our own characteristics and extend it to infinity and call it God. But God is as sanctified from the praise of the ant as is sanctified from our praise. This is actually the main reason Feuerbach and Marx rejected God and argued that God is a creation of human imagination. Feuerbach argued that God as worshipped by people in human history is always the externalization and estrangement of human nature. We take our human characteristics, project it to the clouds, exaggerate it, and create the illusion of God. Therefore, God is created by humans and not humans by God. Of course Feuerbach and Marx were wrong, but they were wrong because God is not an anthropomorphic God. From the point of view of the Bab God is above any human quality, and he cannot be described or praised in terms of any attributes. Humans cannot know God because God is absolute. But the fact that humans have so far understood God in terms of their own characteristics does not mean that there is no God. God is absolute and beyond definition and description. But if humans want to conceptualize the absolute they will do that in terms of what is familiar to them. Here it is that the Bab brings new insights to the conception of God and his unity. The Bab says that God is supremely beyond any praise and description. Yet the purpose of creation is that the created beings know and experience the absolute Beauty and Perfection, namely God. Therefore, according to the Bab, God engages in a self-description for the sake of the created being. God describes and defines himself not at the level of his own true essence and reality- because that is not understandable for humans-, but rather he defines himself for the people in a way that they can understand. This self-description of God is not the essence of God. Rather it is something created by God. It is the first and the supreme creation of God. This divine self description is the truth of the prophets of God and in a secondary way it is the truth of everything. Therefore the truth of prophets of God is the self description of God which is the revelation of God as it appears in the mirror of the created world. This divine self description is the “word” by which God creates all beings. This word is not the essence of God but the first creation of God. This word is the pure utter revelation of God in accordance with the limitations and characteristics of the world. Therefore, God is above any description. But the only way that we can understand God is not God itself but the revelation and reflection of God in this world. It is this reflection of God which is the real anthropomorphic God. Therefore, all attributes that human beings so far have attributed to God is really the attributes of the “word of God” who is the truth of the prophets of God, who are also the self-description of God for humanity. The ultimate truth of everything is also the reflection of divine revelation and attributes. In other words, the traditional conception of God namely the anthropomorphic definition of God is the truth of everything. But its supreme reality is the common truth of all the prophets of God, what the Bab called the Manifestations of God. But this is true, not because the Bab sees the prophets of God as God. Rather the opposite is the case. Since the Bab sees God as transcendental and sanctified above the limited human understanding, therefore, he is adding to the traditional conception of God a new transcendental conception of God. Prophets of God are all pure nothingness in the realm of the real transcendental God because at the level of God only God exists and nothing else ever exists with God.