Yeshua

My dear brothers and sisters

I am wondering if anyone can tell me if the Baha'i Writings say anything about the birth of God or the higher soul in us?


"...Become a fertile ground for the divine birth. Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it frequently...May God help us to prepare a dwelling place for this noble birth [of the Divine in us], so that we may all attain spiritual motherhood..."

- Johannes Tauler (c.1300-1361), Catholic mystic



"...I once had a dream. I dreamt that I, even though a man, was pregnant, pregnant and full with Nothingness like a woman is with child. And that out of this Nothingness, God was born...The being and the nature of God are mine; Jesus enters the castle of the soul; the spark in the soul is beyond time and space; the soul’s light is uncreated and cannot be created, it takes possession of God with no mediation; the core of the soul and the core of God are one...We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is born in us..."

- Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), Catholic mystic and Dominican priest



"...The body is like Mary. Each of us has a Jesus inside, but so long as no pain appears, our Jesus is not born. If pain never comes, our Jesus goes back to his place of origin on the same secret path he had come, and we remain behind, deprived and without a share of him..."

- Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 – 1273), Islamic Sufi mystic


Rumi and Eckhart - who was the mentor of Tauler - these two great contemporary mystics of the Christian West and the Islamic East, who never met - divided as they were by country, nationality, geography, religion, language and culture - both came to realize through their spiritual experiences the same salient truth: We all must become spiritual mothers, we all must become Mary the Mother of Jesus, giving birth to a Jesus within ourselves, in the spark of our soul, and this is born only through the pain of sacrificing our own will and joining ourselves to the Will of God - just as Jesus did, as he gave up his life on the cross. What does it matter that Jesus was born in a stable 2,000 years ago, if he is not born in you today, in the here and now? What use is it if Jesus rose from the dead 2,000 years ago if he does not arise, today, in you?


We all have inside of us a Jesus, or a Buddha or a Guru Nanak or a Krishna or a Baha'u'llah or an Abdu'l-Baha. We all have the seed of God in us.


The question is: Will you give birth to him within yourself, or not?

LordOfGoblins

Now the time has come when we must part, but the separation is only of our bodies; in spirit we are united. Ye are the lights which shall be diffused; ye are the waves of that sea which shall spread and overflow the world. Each wave is precious to me, and my nostrils shall be gladdened by your remembrance. Another commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another even as I love you. Great mercy and blessings are promised to the people of your land, but on one condition; that their hearts be filled with the fire of love, that they live in perfect harmony and kindness like one soul in different bodies, like one soul in different bodies. Never forget this; look at one another with the eye of perfection; look at me, follow me, be as I am; take no thought for yourselves or your lives, whether ye eat or whether ye sleep, whether ye are comfortable, whether ye are well or ill, whether ye are with friends or foes, whether ye receive praise or blame; for all these things ye must care not at all. Look at me and be as I am; ye must die to yourselves and to the world, so ye shall be born again and enter the kingdom of heaven. Behold the candle, how it gives light. It weeps its life away drop by drop in order to give forth its flame of light. The time has come when we must part, but the separation is only of our bodies; in spirit we are united forever.

(Compilations, Baha'i Scriptures, p. 503)

Essence of GOD

i said this to someone, he thought i was suicidal.
be careful who you say this to, most don't get it.

LordOfGoblins

That's not what it means. It has a meaning to do with giving up the things of the world for a higher existance.
No??
Not to be taken as a literal killing of oneself..

People dont get it which is why it is the duty of Bahais to learn to expound the meanings of things rather than just repeating the words like parrots which many people of the past religions have done over the ages..

Yeshua

Amen brother Goblin

A beautiful passage from Baha'i scripture!

To die to oneself means to renounce one's egocentric needs and re-direct the focus away from obsession with self and self-satisfaction, to the Will of God. It calls for a radical re-orientation of our interests, which ultimately will result in the coveted and metaphorical new birth, when we become One with God in a state of self-naughting, the absolute Valley of Poverty and Nothingness, and the mirror of our soul has nothing of our selfish needs but only the beauty of God shinning through it.

Saint John of the Cross described it with the analogy of a stained-glass window:


"...In order that both these things may be the better understood, let us make a comparison. A ray of sunlight is striking a window. If the window is in any way stained or misty, the sun's ray will be unable to illumine it and transform it into its own light, totally, as it would if it were clean of all these things, and pure; but it will illumine it to a lesser degree, in proportion as it is less free from those mists and stains; and will do so to a greater degree, in proportion as it is cleaner from them, and this will not be because of the sun's ray, but because of itself; so much so that, if it be wholly pure and clean, the ray of sunlight will transform it and illumine it in such wise that it will itself seem to be a ray and will give the same light as the ray. Although in reality the window has a nature distinct from that of the ray itself, however much it may resemble it, yet we may say that that window is a ray of the sun or is light by participation. And the soul is like this window, whereupon is ever beating (or, to express it better, wherein is ever dwelling) this Divine light of the Being of God according to nature, which we have described. In thus allowing God to work in it, the soul (having rid itself of every mist and stain of the creatures, which consists in having its will perfectly united with that of God, for to love is to labour to detach and strip itself for God's sake of all that is not God) is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has. And this union comes to pass when God grants the soul this supernatural favour, that all the things of God and the soul are one in participant transformation; and the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation; although it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before, even as the window has likewise a nature distinct from that of the ray, though the ray gives it brightness..."

- Saint John of the Cross (1542 - 1591), Catholic mystic and Doctor of the Church

armin

I truly like your understanding of spirituality Yeshua. It's praiseworthy. The final valley in the Seven Valleys is the valley of true nothingness! It all, as you mentioned, circles around surrendering our will to His will.

I'm not sure if sharing the dream I just had is fitting here so forgive me beforehand. I am however moved beyond what I can simply explain with words. In short, after a series of happenings which were rather promising in nature to my soul and being I found myself on a staircase. At this point I was urged to run up with a great sense of fear as if the world and people were trying to grab unto me to hold me from my destination. I ran as fast as I could upstairs while seeing some people who are close to me following me, calling me ... As the fear got worse I ran faster and faster till I could see the end which had a locked door. The fear turned into a soul wrenching agitation as I realized that I would not have enough time to unlock the door. In complete dismay I screamed Oh Baha'u'llah in Persian (Oh the Most Glorious Countenance).

At which point I woke up in the same position I had fallen asleep but feeling an unearthly fear which I had never experienced before. My whole body was shivering greatly ... The dream felt so real that I thought I yelled in real life waking everyone else but thankfully that was not the case. Without getting into the parts that pertains to me personally I am sharing this dream solely to say this: fear God oh people! There is no explaining what the wrath of God can be like!

I have seen many things in my life. Among them being in the middle of a war zone with shells falling everywhere around us, a situation where one feels there's no where one can escape to. But by God, the fear I felt in my dream is something I had never experienced anything anywhere close to! My body is still shivering ...

Yeshua

My dear brother Armin

I appreciate your words very much, thank you. I am very happy that you found what I had to say useful.

Thank you doubly for sharing your incredible experience!

I personally have never experienced such an incredible - if terrifying - spiritual experience in a dream.

I have had experiences when I was quite a bit younger, say around 14, where I felt utterly consumed by God and terrified that I might be reduced to nothing. I was more spiritually engaged then, having less of the cares of the world that i do now, being absorbed in study and all the other anxieties of our material age.

During this period, I had many ecstatic spiritual experiences which in hindsight seemed very similar to the feelings and emotions (although not the actual physical pleasure) which one would experience during and immediatly after orgasm.

For example I would feel pure "elation" and "exhiliration". A warmth would come through my body after about half an hour of intense prayer and meditation on the Word of God. I would get this tingling feeling, that would be very, very pleasurable. In my chest - and this was the most memorable bit - I would get this sensation like pure ectasy that would completely take my breath away, and I would grow faint and gasp out loud like in a sweaty heat wave, but I had no sweat and felt marvellously cool. It was almost like a tension but a very cool and pleasing one that would rise throughout my entire body - kind of like a full body orgasm but without the actual carnal pleasure and without me having an erection or anything, nothing physical like but very overwhelming. I would feel completely calm and joyful for about a day or two after, as if I was high on some kind of drug or had just had a release of endorphins.

However sometimes this feeling of ecstasy would get to a stage where I felt kind of as if I were at a breaking-point - a kind of cliff edge beyond which there is no return.

When I got those gasping experiences, it was almost as if God were ploughing me, as a farmer would cultivate a field and sometimes the sensation would get so overwhelming that I would feel close to bursting; as if I was getting too intimate with God and was becoming utterly consumed by his grace. I never seek such feelings, and I am more mature now but my young brain would interpret it that way. And so my powerful emotions of Love turned into absolute fear of God - pain, almost, as I started to lose awareness of myself and become wholly focused on Him.

One time, it got really bad. I had experienced a very intense prayer session and went to bed, because it was late at night, with that feeling of breathless ecstasy in my chest. And this time, I had the feeling of being sucked as if into a whirlpool. It is difficult to explain but I had the sensation of being pulled to the extent that I visually - whether in a dream-like state induced by my ecstasy or awake - saw a kind of whirling vortex that was dragging me, my mind, my soul I don't know - away from my body, into the very heart of something. It reminded me of a tunnel. It was dark but there were kind of concentric circles made of very thin threads of different colours - blue, purple, green, red, pink - you name it, all around me like a top, and sides and bottom; whirling, whirling and whirling in a cyclinder formation. I kept going deeper and deeper, and then I got terribly afraid. It seemed to genuinely be taking control of me. I felt as if I had no power over this movement, deeper and deeper into the vortex. I couldn't go as far as God, or the force or the pull or whatever you call it, wanted me to go. I was too afraid that I was going to die, that the experience was so powerful that I would literally be torn away from my body and become utterly destroyed and reduced to nothing by God or this force, this pull.

To my mind I was not asleep. I had just lay down on the bed and was very excited because I had just received this wonderful, warm, ecstastic feeling in my chest. I considered this to be a kind of gift from God, like the kiss or embrace of a lover - rewarding or pleasuring me because I had given myself to Him through long hours of prayer. And it was just when I lay down in that state, that I felt myself pulled into that tunnel. I usually take AGES to fall asleep, so it was not sleep too me but rather a literal change of location from my bedroom to this tunnel or vortex or whirlpool.

And so I pulled back. I pleaded in my head, 'No, I can't go any further, please'. I pulled and forced myself to resist. I actually remember saying mentally, screaming in my mind, 'I can't do this, I can't go any further'. I resisted and pulled and pleaded and was basically in a state of absolute panic and terror. And before I knew it, I felt myself moving backwards, up the tunnel and eventually I was back in my bedroom again, shaking, freezing cold and terrified. I don't know how much time had elapsed.

I have never - EVER - had such an intense experience again. I am still too afraid to let go of myself completely like that. It felt like I was going to die. I actually thought - for a moment - that I had died, that I got so spiritually attached that my soul had literally become disconnected from my body and I was now going beyond, into that other world. It sounds spooky and crazy - and if you don't believe me - well, It HAPPENED.

It reminds me of these words:


"...Divine light entered my heart from His love
that did never fully wane,

though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person's
faith can at times flicker,

for what is the mind to do
with something that becomes the mind's ruin:
a God that consumes us
in His grace..."

- Saint Catherine of Sienna


A God who becomes the mind's ruin, who consumes us in his Grace - like the fiery God of the Old Testament, who the NT describes as an "All-consuming fire", so terrifying that even Moses could not bear to loo at his face for fear of dying. This was the first and last time that I have ever experienced what I consider to be this aspect of God.

But I have always wondered - what would have happened had I had the braver to let go of myself completely and get to the end of that whirling vortex?

I know it sounds crazy, but I am not lying. I have never told anyone this before but your experience reminded me of it, and I have this idea that you might be able to help me make sense of what happened.

I could kick myself even now. I am furious that I pulled back, that I stopped. I believe that I glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel. If I had more guts, I would have reached it. But I was too afraid and my fear got the better of me.

LordOfGoblins

Wow that is some crazy but really interesting read.
THanks for sharing...

armin

I don't think anyone thinks you're lying Yeshua. What you described is something I can relate to! But as for the similar experience I had it was all rather pleasant. What was going through my mind at the time, I can't recall if this was said by the Bab or by Baha'u'llah, was 'God astonish me' and believe it or not the experience was truly an astonishing experience. We'll have a talk about it all

arthra

Well it sounds a lot like something a Vouthon wrote on a Catholic Answers forum:

Has anyone ever experienced a feeling of being pulled into a whirlpool/tunnel? - Catholic Answers Forums

LordOfGoblins

Probably the same person who posted there...
hehe

Yeshua

Hi Arthra

Yes because we are the same person


I hope your not angry or anything, I am a fallible, sinful human being with many faults.....


(I thought you would guess already - I was going to PM you on CAF about it but then decided not too, although I thought you would suss me out, which is why I tried to write slightly differently).

I try now too keep my annonymity on different internet forums etc. In the past I have been way to liberal with giving information about myself, and was advised (by a Baha'i on here) to be more prudent and to do what he does, have different usernames on different forums rather than the one Yeshua and try to write slightly differently from my natural style, so that people cannot find out too much about you because you would be mightily shocked how easy it is to learn practically everything about me from my various usernames on various forums..... He demonstrated this a long while back and I was shell-shocked. I used to go under the name MDM when I was about thirteen and my posts are still out their in cyber space on a lot of Christian forums and I was even worse then.

He managed to find out my location, what part-time job I have, what university I go too....I was kicking myself. Ever since I have took his advice and decided to take action and not be so stupid. That was back at the end of 2010 or start of 2011. He actually made me edit many of my posts on Baha'i Forums were I had revealed too many private details.

He also did what you did and demonstrated how easy it is to spot me on various forums even while using a different username and then connect things I tell about myself there, to things here. You have demonstrated my stupidity again.

The problem I have though is that, as you can probably tell, I write fairly distinctively so that even why I try to change my tone, it usually doesn't work. Some people are skilled at this, apparently, but not me.....

I know that you are the kind of person Arthra who seems to have one common username but I hope you understand that, for a variety of reasons, that would not be prudent in my case.

When I spotted you on CAF it was my kind of nightmare situation. Reveal my identity or not? I've been deliberating for weeks. I tried to dum my posts down and write in a more ignorant style, should we say, as if I don't know as much about the Baha'i Faith as I do and less respectfully than I usually write so as to make myself seem less Yeshua. Well I now know that I could never be an undercover agent.....Because I'd already participated in that thread, and because I'd mentioned the Baha'i Faith before on CAF many times so it would look suspicious if I didn't participate heavily in the one thread on CAF currently about the religion, I had to keep going to keep up face, and its been agonizingly difficult to change the way I write and think.

You will notice that I once asked you about 20 questions, which no other person apart from me would probably do (Because ya know I'm insane like that ) and I realized that I had made a huge blunder and then you wrote to me like, "....God Bless you "Vouthon"...." and I thought, are the " " a coded message that you've sussed me?

You have blown my cover on one forum! :/ But perhaps you've actually lifted a burden from me. At least I can be fully myself now on CAF

I have been holding back a little there, so perhaps its time to give them the full wammie.....so to speak.....

I'm also on a lot of Sikh forums...please don't bust my identity there either......thankfully you don't seem to frequent Sikh forums.....I don't think your on any other forums I am on so I should be safe....

I always keep my basic identity: Catholic, crazy and my age....with a penchant for making huge posts filled with quotes from different religious traditions....can't really change that...apart from that I try to make subtle changes.....

arthra

Uuuhhh generally not to worry Yeshua/Vouthon.. but you need to consider the length of your posts.

Yeshua

Here, here It is a skill I am trying to learn, and hopefully will get the hang of eventually

LordOfGoblins

Along the same theme...

7. O SON OF MAN!
If thou lovest Me, turn away from thyself; and if thou seekest My pleasure, regard not thine own; that thou mayest die in Me and I may eternally live in thee.

(Baha'u'llah, The Arabic Hidden Words)

LordOfGoblins

You are definately touching on a theme that is in the Bahai writings. But I must say that putting it this way
"Spiritual Motherhood - Giving birth to God's Seed in Us "

sounds a little bit like a black magic ritual if you know what I mean.

The Bab uses the analogy of cystals to show grades of perfection.
**********
NO created thing shall ever attain its paradise unless it appeareth in its highest prescribed degree of perfection. For instance, this crystal representeth the paradise of the stone whereof its substance is composed. Likewise there are various stages in the paradise for the crystal itself... So long as it was stone it was worthless, but if it attaineth the excellence of ruby -- a potentiality which is latent in it -- how much a carat will it be worth? Consider likewise every created thing.

(The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 88)

Yeshua

Thank you for those wonderful quotes lord brother

Reminds me of:


"...If the soul is to know God, she must forget herself and lose herself: for if she were aware of herself, she would not be aware of God: but she finds herself again in God...The soul is in God and God in the soul. If anyone put water in a barrel, the barrel would surround the water, but the water would not be in the barrel, nor would the barrel be in the water: but the soul is so wholly one with God that the one cannot be understood without the other. We can understand heat without the fire, and the shine without the sun: but God cannot understand Himself without the soul nor the soul without God - so completely are they one..."

- Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), Catholic mystic and Dominican priest