3. Regard Backbiting as Grievous Error
THE PATH OF SEARCH, Chapter 3.
The month of'Azamat (Grandeur) 176 BE
Memorising the 3rdParagraph of The Tablet of the True Seeker
This image from a beautiful arrangement, with the 361 Days of the Badí' Calendar and the 19 days of each month arranged into a hexagram by New York Bahá’í friend Leland Wright, and available online as a pdf or hard copy decorative wall calendar…
That seeker should, also, regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep himself aloof from its dominion, inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul. He should be content with little, and be freed from all inordinate desire. He should treasure the companionship of them that have renounced the world, and regard avoidance of boastful and worldly people a precious benefit. At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and, with all his soul, persevere in the quest of his Beloved. He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him. He should succor the dispossessed, and never withhold his favor from the destitute. He should show kindness to animals, how much more unto his fellow-man, to him who is endowed with the power of utterance.
9 'Azamat (Grandeur) 176 BE, 25 May 2019 CE
Prior to finishing the previous chapter, I made a random entry in The Call of the Divine Beloved, treating the beautiful new book from the World Centre like a kind of spiritual tarot card deck, looking for confirmations from the higher realms, and in this case asking the question if it was time to post the chapter? For decades I had regarded these signs as coming from my spirit guides, the bringers of synchronicity, but now I was getting more and more focus on the idea that it might be The Beloved sending these manifest signs of the Universe via angels and/or spirit guides in the Concourse on High. I noted that although there was some stern admonition about the burning force of the fire of the tongue that endureth for a century there was also a beautiful gift promised; the precious benefit I would get if/when I was obedient to the suggestion in this month’s words to avoid boastful and worldly people! Opening the book my eyes went to Paragraph 73…
O friend, the heart is the dwelling-place of eternal mysteries: Make it not the home of fleeting fancies. Waste not the treasure of thy precious life occupied with this swiftly passing world. Thou comest from the world of holiness: Bind not thine heart to the earth. Thou art a dweller in the court of reunion: Choose not the homeland of the dust.
In sum, there is no end to the description of these stages, but because of the wrongs inflicted by the peoples of this age, this Servant is disinclined to continue:
The tale remaineth yet unfinished and untold;
Forgive me, then, for weariness hath taken hold.
The reading was an unmistakeable direct answer to my question, but with some precious Words to fill in some more of the tapestry I was perceiving in the quest for my Beloved, a task on which I was overjoyed to find the command in this month’s words to persevere with all my soul! The small rhyming couplet was in fact a quote taken by Bahá’u’lláh from Rumi, which told me directly it was time to post this month’s blog, and then lay down the pen for a while. But looking deeper into the words I perceived some deeper and deeper meanings… The following paragraph read as follows:
The pen groaneth and the ink sheddeth tears, and the river of the heart surgeth in waves of blood. “Nothing can befall us but what God hath destined for us.” (Qur’an) Peace be upon him who followeth the way of guidance!
After scaling the high summits of wonderment, the wayfarer cometh to THE VALLEY OF TRUE POVERTY AND ABSOLUTE NOTHINGNESS. This station is that of dying to the self and living in God, of being poor in self and rich in the Desired One. Poverty, as here referred to, signifieth being poor in that which pertaineth to the world of creation and rich in what belongeth to the realms of God. For when the true lover and devoted friend reacheth the presence of the Beloved, the radiant beauty of the Loved One and the fire of the lover’s heart will kindle a blaze and burn away all veils and wrappings. Yea, all that he hath, from marrow to skin, will be set aflame, so that nothing will remain save the Friend.
Meditating on this, I realised that this pause before laying down the pen was in fact the stage Bahá’u’lláh was describing before entering the 7th Valley! In other words, I was way ahead of myself again on The Path of Search… the Words were telling me to go back and study the Valleys of The Seven Valleys from the very beginning. So; I downloaded the next 2 talks from Steven Phelps in California, who was spending some time with his study group on this beautiful new book. The first session had been focused on Bahá’u’lláh’s beautiful mystical poem the Rashh-i-'Amá, then the next 2 study groups were focused on the first two Valleys of The Seven Valleys. Before listening to these workshop videos and going back to the beginning of the book myself, I discovered that the 1st Valley was The Valley of SEARCH– and I was astonished to realise that the Valley of Search was only the very first valley of the seven!
I started reading about the first Valley in The Call of the Divine Beloved and learnt that the steed of the Valley of Search is PATIENCE; without patience the wayfarer on this journey will reach nowhere and attain no goal. Nor should he ever become downhearted: If he strive for a hundred thousand years and yet fail to behold the beauty of the Friend, he should not falter. Well that certainly took the pressure off! I decided I would spend a week catching up on emails and all my worldly affairs that were necessary for my employment etc before I wrote some more on the blog. I read on to find that, just as in The Tablet of the Seeker, the first requirement in the Valley of Search was to cleanse the heart, which is the wellspring of divine treasures, of every marking… It was the same message that was delivered in the very 1st Arabic Hidden Word also …
O SON OF SPIRIT! My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.
Then on the next page I found some words that EXACTLY described how I was feeling in the Valley of Search: At every moment he findeth a weighty matter, in every hour he becometh aware of a new mystery; for he hath severed his heart from both worlds and set out for the Kaaba of the Beloved. At every step, aid from the Invisible realm will attend him and the fervour of his search will grow. So even though it was only the first valley, it was a totally exciting place to be; to experience the heat of the search, and the amazing signs that came from the Invisible realm; I was definitely feeling my fervour growing like a fire in my chest…
Taking a weekend off I decided to go and visit a non-Bahá’í friend, who was just over an hour’s drive away, wondering while I was driving with my A4 Pages, and listening to Steven Phelps’ 2nd Valley Workshop, if I really should be visiting this friend, as the previous month’s words had told me that I must renounce the peoples of the earth and this month’s pages told me that I should with the swiftness of lightning pass by all else save God. I thought about that some more… what did that mean? One known behaviour of lightning was that it never struck twice in the same place, and if it grounded anywhere, like in the maple forests of North America, it would never visit that tree again… But looking again at the Words, I saw that this advice on lightning referred more to what I should be thinking… He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him. When it came to visiting friends, or interactions with the peoples of the earth, the advice was he should treasure the companionship of them that have renounced the world, and regard avoidance of boastful and worldly people a precious benefit. This friend was an artist who was passionate about making art to expose the wrong doings of the world, and the most prominent art piece in his new home was a visual of a soldier crying over a dead or wounded child in his arms, so maybe he was a good candidate for being attracted to the people of The Beloved?
Driving to my friend’s place I discovered with Steven Phelps that the 1st stage of the Seven Valleys, the Valley of Search, along with the 2nd and 3rd Valleys was one of the 3 Valleys of Limitation…. I also heard that there was almost no transition point between the 1st 2 Valleys, the Valley of Search and the Valley of Love, whose steed is PAIN. In the 7 Valleys these 2 Valleys are pretty much the same terrain, and Very deep and profound were the teachings delivered by Steven Phelps; I knew I would have to listen to this workshop, and the next one about the Valley of Love, over and over again, taking notes, before I could move on. In this Video I also found some beautiful synchronicity, for example when Paragraph 7, the one that set off this Path of Search in the 1stplace, was read out complete by Steven Phelps. In this workshop I also learned that even though the Valley of Search was the 1st Valley, that it could for the seeker with a pure heart be only one heartbeat away, in the same sentence, with his being enveloped in the lights of knowledge and certitude.
…Only when the Lamp of Search, of earnest striving, of longing desire, of passionate devotion, of fervid love, of rapture and ecstasy, is kindled within the Seekers heart, and the breeze of HIS loving kindness is wafted upon his soul, will the darkness of error be dispelled, the mists of doubts and misgivings be dissipated, and the lights of knowledge and certitude envelop his being.
In the workshop Steven Phelps, after reading out Paragraph 7, paralleling this blog, then went back and read the 1st Paragraph of the Tablet of the True Seeker. O My Brother, when the true seeker determineth to take the step of search… etc. I, in turn, felt encouraged to talk about this process with my friend, who previously had been very sceptical of any mentions of the Bahá’í faith or any religion, and later in the evening I even recited the 1st Paragraph, and found that he was quite impressed with the words. It was confirmation that teachings I heard from Hooper Dunbar during this year’s fast about teaching the Faith were correct; it was better, rather than using logical arguments to convince people of the truth of the faith, to get the heart lit up and then just go and recite the Words of God – then the people would feel the warmth and magnetic attraction of the fire of the Beloved!
The nine days from when the 2nd Paragraph was posted on 1 ‘Azamat were taken up with all sorts of other activities, though I continued my meditations with the words upon waking at the dawn of every day and continuing my readings in Dr Momen’s book, discovering some amazingly deep connections with the Words. My dawn was not actually the true dawn of the daylight hours, as I worked a night shift and generally slept till about 1pm, and I realised I would therefore be out of synch with the rest of the true seekers around the planet. My meditation was therefore probably not as powerful on the consciousness grid as it would be at the true dawn of the day, with its huge electromagnetic shifts detected at sacred pyramid sites the world over, as for example discovered and written about by John Burke in his illuminating book Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty: Understanding the Lost Technology of the Ancient Megalith-Builders.
The WORDS I was memorising were the 1st Ones in this paragraph though I reflected that they would have been better learnt with the last words of the previous paragraph, as together they made up a paragraph about the Power of the Fire of the tongue, and how this should be or must be dealt with …as the Paragraph went … That seeker must… observe silence and refrain from idle talk. For the tongue is a smoldering fire, and excess of speech a deadly poison. Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endureth a century. That seeker should, also, regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep himself aloof from its dominion, inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul.
They were powerful words, but I found that it took me the whole 9 days to remember just the beginning sentences. For some reason they did not come easily… even today on 9 ‘Azamat there was an initial hesitation, but after a few attempts they came easily and complete, so I decided it must be time to move onto the next sentences…
He should be content with little, and be freed from all inordinate desire. He should treasure the companionship of them that have renounced the world, and regard avoidance of boastful and worldly people a precious benefit. At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and, with all his soul, persevere in the quest of his Beloved. He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him.
After spending a half hour trying to memorise these words, I turned to the very last article in Dr Momen’s book, and found it was a profound essay entitled The Inner Dimensions of Revelation, by Ross Woodman. Immediately feeling the rewards of deciding to persevere with all my soul in the quest of my Beloved, I was amazed to find incredibly deep allusions and references to the Maid of Heaven, discovering that Mt Carmel herself on one level was the handmaid of the Maid of Eternity referred to in the Tablet of the Holy Mariner, another mystical and very sad poem written in those early years of Baghdad, perhaps a good example of Bahá’u’lláh’s reference in the Seven Valleys to when he felt such sadness and wrote about that time when the pen groaneth and the ink sheddeth tears… I found that the essay was a long one, and would have to be finished tomorrow, but for now I was totally overcome and in awe of the synchronicity of what was happening to me in the world of dust…
What happened on 7 ‘Azamat, 23rd May, was the 176th Anniversary of the Original Declaration of the Bab in 1844. On this date I was able to join my wife and youngest step-son in celebrating the Holy Day with a circle of candles and a fire in the freshly painted and newly dedicated prayer room at Te Whare Rongoā– The House of Medicine in NZ – an extremely memorable date. The trans-Tasman link felt so good and strong that all I wanted to do was to make music, and so spent the next couple of hours learning a classic song that many Bahái’s know off by heart, to remember the Shrine of the Bab on the sacred mountain, not very far from Elijah’s cave…
Standing on a mountain
Looking across the bay
The Queen of Carmel reigneth
She reigns majestically
Cry out to Zion
Cry out for your Lord
Cry out to Zion
Circle ‘round, in adoration
Circle ‘round your Lord
10 'Azamat (Grandeur) 176 BE, 26 May 2019 CE
This was the last day of the work run, tomorrow I would be packing, and then the next 10 days would be on the run… I was now in the habit, while on my 18 days of work every month, to shower on rising and do the ablutions of washing face and hands, then the long obligatory prayer, followed by a session with the current A4 page, till I could recite it from top to bottom, which on day 2 was taking about ½ an hour with this current page…
He should treasure the companionship of them that have renounced the world, and regard avoidance of boastful and worldly people a precious benefit. At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and, with all his soul, persevere in the quest of his Beloved. He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him.
For the first time I then followed my wife’s longing desire for me to use an ink pen instead of keyboard, as she thought that way the REAL stuff would come out… Perhaps she was right, I started thinking, as my meditations took me very deep in my memories and a few more connections opened up… I found myself particularly focusing on the line about the lightning - He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him. I had been thinking of the lightning as a destructive force that burns trees and kills people, but now in trying to learn the words and penetrate their many meanings I realised that they were telling me to BE like lightning and pass by everything but God. I got that I had to let the flame flicker with intensity, feeling it in the sternum and heart chakra, and let it go where it wanted to go to connect with God on the trail ahead.
I then remembered the only time that I had actually felt like a ball of lightning in my life, during my 1st Iboga journey, when I had the peak experience of my life. It was such a powerful and intense experience that I had tried to get back there several times now, taking the medicine again, but I’d not been able to get there again. Reading about the indigenous use of Iboga with the Bwiti in Gabon, Africa, I read that it was only used once for initiation, when the indigenous people used it as they described “to separate the soul and the body and let the soul travel to meet its ancestors.” So, the indigenous people knew it should only be used once for initiation, and after that they used it only for its healing properties in people who were sick, and now the plant was proving to be amazingly effective with severe problems afflicting almost every nation on the planet, East and West, North and South. It was particularly effective with drug addicts, alcoholics and for all sorts of other harmful addictions.
In any case, the 1st journey had been the peak experience of my life in 2 ways, both of which related directly to this sentence. First, I still remembered 9 years later the intensity of the sensation when I became a ball of lightning in my dream, when I was able to interact with what I perceived were archangelic forms, or “whole light beings” as described in Ezekiel’s dream in the old testament of The Holy Bible, related in the Keys of Enoch, which, back then, both also behaved like Books of Knowledge for me that sometimes gave very pointed answers to questions, and timely guidance. Now, 9 years later, for me all the other books of Knowledge are eclipsed by the writings of the Blessed Beauty, particularly at the moment in The Call of the Divine Beloved, but I still felt like looking up the timely random reading I’d had back then, that described the experience of feeling like a ball of lightning exactly, as written in The Keys of Enoch by J. J. Hurtak describing his experience of interaction with a whole light being known as Metatron.
47. In the education of a soul, true soul advancement takes place though the channelling of divine thought-forms which move the soul (of an individual) beyond the consciousness of being limited and earthbound…
54. In order to appreciate the reception of the ‘Whole Light Beings’ Metatron called my attention to the following words of Ezekiel: “And above the expanse that was over their head there was something in appearance like sapphire stone, the likeness of a throne. And upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness of someone in appearance like an earthling man upon it, up above.
55. And I got to see something like the glow of electrum, like the appearance of fire all around inside thereof, from the appearance of his hips and upwards; and from the appearance of his hips and downward I saw something like the appearance of fire, and he had a brightness all around.
56. The Brotherhood of Man, in this context, is able to receive the Brotherhood of Light that comes with the appearance of an ‘earthling man’. Yet Spiritual Man as an earthling man is able to recognise the difference. In the same energy field of meeting both share a higher ‘Light environment’ controlled by the Urim and Thummim.
57. When you behold a ‘Whole Light Being’ you stand in the presence of quanta mechanistic corpuscles of Light as in the appearance of a flash of lightning. And when you exchange the joy of being God’s servant with a ‘Whole Light Being’ you can actually feel the great rushing of gravitational flux line controls which are used by the body of the emissaryof Light to enter and leave this corporeal dimension at will.
The second way the experience of my 1st Iboga journey was the peak experience of my life, was when I was given, by a being who was like a ball of lightning, what I thought of as a ‘plasma torch’ and then I was shown how to use it, as I wrote in my book The Heart of the Hurricane– ‘First of all I had to clear out the dross and evil accumulated in the bowels of the Earth from the last cycle. He took me all the way down to the bottom level. All the caverns were filled with the colours of hell, filth and evil. Deep blacks, browns, reds, oranges, yellow streaks of colour, all the evil doers and bad people, murderers, rapists, cut-throats and sorcerers, powerful kings, fallen angels all swirling and shrieking, clanging in a huge cacophony of noise. I spent the next interminable period… clearing out the caverns. It was like I had this huge flamethrower that emanated an effervescent stream or beam of brilliant white light, with which I swept and swept and swept all the caverns clean down to the lowest Hell. Finally, they were all clean, all clear, all gone, swept into non-existence.’
It was a few days after that experience, 9 years ago, that I realised I was actually cleaning my own DNA when I was cleaning the caverns – perhaps even a sort of purging of the breast– of thousands of years of history in my own bloodlines, of bloodshed and warfare, that had to be purged before I could come to a peaceful place. This feeling was intensified in the present by watching at work the final Season of Game of Thrones, which was in fact a true depiction of what life was like in many places on planet earth during the last 10,000 years or so, of continuous bloodshed and warfare, the era of the kings and queens. It was truly an Entheogenic plant, I realised now, in that it had shown me some of the deep inner mysteries of God. Now on this journey of the true seeker, I was coming to realise that what I had seen and felt very briefly back then, a glimpse from this God-given plant medicine, was what I was getting into now, in the eternity of the Path of Search as it opened up ahead, and the way to defeat any false thoughts, or stray feelings of lechery was in fact to use that same plasma torch to consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention.
The session with the WORDS was VERY deep today, and then the reading in Dr Momen’s book, the conclusion of the last essay really lit up some candles also, in the description of how, in the Tablet of Carmel, Bahá’u’lláh addressed the sacred mountain of Carmel as a Maid of Heaven, whom he was now addressing and helping exactly as he had been helped in the Síyáh-Chál by a Maid of Heaven! Ross Woodman finished his very deep and beautiful essay, ‘with the exchange between Bahá’u’lláh and Carmel, which unveils the inner dimensions of Bahá’u’lláh’s revelations. ‘…in the encounter with Carmel, Bahá’u’lláh addresses Carmel as her Lord who now appears before her face, cheering her eyes as earlier the Maid of Heaven in the Síyáh-Chál had cheered His, her ‘countenance [shining] with the ornament of the good-pleasure of God’. Carmel, coming before Bahá’u’lláh, is led by the light issuing from Bahá’u’lláh, which fills her with ‘transports of joy’. She has harkened to His call; even as earlier Bahá’u’lláh had harkened to the call of the Maid of Heaven. She has been quickened by the voice of Bahá’u’lláh’s Pen, even as earlier the Maid of Heaven was herself the quickener…’
It added some dimensions of feeling to the song I was practising at the moment, as I sang my song … Cry out to Zion O Carmel! And announce the joyful tidings! The King of Glory has come! … And it also added some depth of understanding and an edge of even greater excitement into the quest of my Beloved, mentioned in the other sentence for this day …At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and, with all his soul, persevere in the quest of his Beloved. Just as my knowledge and feeling of the Beloved was illuminated and enflamed by the descriptions of the Maid of Heaven as she came to the King of Glory in the Síyáh-Chál, now the flame of my love for Her was lit fiercely by the discovery of the beautiful Maids of Heaven that were the Mountains of Carmel and Zion… The Tablet of Carmel was very important in the Bahá'í faith, even being described by Shoghi Effendi, the beloved Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, as ‘the Charter of the World Spiritual and Administrative Centres of the Faith on that mountain’, implying that this document established that Mount Carmel would be the physical location of the Bahá’í World Centre. The two other documents described as charters by Shoghi Effendi were The Tablets of the Divine Plan, and The Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Bahá.
I also remembered another phrase I discovered some years back, which also brought profound meaning and illumination on the subject of the quest of The Beloved, from the Prophet Jeremiah, as I had also written the story into my book The Heart of the Hurricane, in the chapter about the discovery of the real Mt Sinai and the real Mt Hor, also both sacred Maids of Heaven. In a secret manuscript discovered by Graham Philips, as he described in his book The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant, he discovered that it was the Prophet Jeremiah that took the Ark and hid it away from mankind after they used it as a weapon of mass destruction. Jeremiah was said in the manuscript, known as The Remaining Words (Paralipomena) of Jeremiah, a rare 1st Century Greek Manuscript found by Graham Phillips in the Jerusalem Shrine of the book, to have asked God where to hide the Ark and the implements of the temple…
“And Jeremiah said, “Behold, Lord, now we know that you are delivering the city into the hands of its enemies, and they will take the people away to Babylon. What do you want me to do with the holy vessels of the temple service?” And the Lord said to him, “Take them and consign them to the earth, saying: Hear, Earth, the voice of your creator who formed you in the abundance of waters, who sealed you with seven seals for seven epochs, after this you will receive your ornaments. Guard the vessels of the temple service until the gathering of the Beloved”.
It seemed to me that there were more and more dimensions of understanding the nature and meaning of The Beloved. Not only was she the Daēnā of ancient Zarathustra, and the Dīn of Shi’i Islam, but she was also the Maid of Heaven of Bahá’u’lláh, as well as all the other Sacred Mountains, and then as the people wake up all over the planet and become the people of Bahá, they too will become the gathering of The Beloved. The path was getting ever richer in all its references and allusions through time and history to the sacred feminine. Then in beginning again to watch the workshops from Steven Phelps, on The Call of the Divine Beloved, I heard him talk about when he was a bit younger how lucky he had been to attend Persian classes with Marzieh Gail in San Francisco.
I had heard references to Marzieh Gail, and understood that she, with the help of her father Ali Kuli Khan, made the original translation of The Seven Valleys. I didn’t know any more about her, so I did a Google search, and reading about her I felt deeply the sufferings and triumphs of this shy Beloved humble servant of Bahá’u’lláh, and I was then overjoyed to discover a beautiful recording of her talking on Youtube. While listening to this my heart burned like a fire, as my eyes filled with hot tears, and I realised that she too, now one of the angels of the Concourse on High, was another aspect of The Maid of Heaven, and also another aspect of The Beloved…
17 'Azamat (Grandeur) 176 BE, 2 June 2019 CE
On this date I found myself in a high-rise hotel in downtown Melbourne at an Emergency Medicine Conference with several hundred fellow emergency physicians, so I caught time to catch up on my writing with the ink pen my beloved wife had given me, reflecting again that she was so right in her advice, as this really allowed me to open up and get down what I was thinking, and then edit and correct it a little when transferring into the digital. Reflecting on the last week I recorded the fact that I had not yet found the time to study the Steven Phelps workshops on the 1st 2 Valleys. Instead when I synched my iPhone with my iMac a podcast I had downloaded a few weeks earlier began playing by itself out of the blue… It was a conversation between Freeman, an American blogger and interviewer of amazing people the world over, who was far out there on his own fantastic and beautiful path of synchronicity, and Anthony Peake, a well-known English author and researcher of consciousness and mind-altering plants. Freeman enthused that it was going to be like Ken Kesey talking to Timothy Leary back in the 1960s in the days of the Great American acid trip, and indeed it was an illuminating journey, especially into the depths of the human interaction with DMT, di-methyl tryptamine, known as The Spirit Molecule among many other names, for its Entheogenic and Illuminating properties in consciousness expansion.
I decided that as I was learning the words with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him, I had to assume, as there were no accidents on this path, that the guidance was showing me again that these Entheogenic plants were not outlawed in the Path leading to the knowledge of the ancient of Days. I knew that this might be quite controversial for some Bahá’ís, as I had seen on Bahá’í Facebook sites that many western Bahá’í doctors were thoroughly immersed in the Rockefeller Medical school system, controlled and programmed by corporate interests and ‘Big Pharma’, and paying little attention to the Tablet of the Physician, in which Bahá’u’lláh gave clear advice to doctors to, for example, use 1 plant to heal a problem and not mix too many plant medicines… Also their attitude to mind altering plants was influenced by their pharmaceutical understanding of the universe, in which these plants are considered drugs of addiction, at least in one book I read by a Canadian Bahá’i psychiatrist…. Thankfully the tide is turning in the west, and these plant medicines, such as psilocybin containing mushrooms and mescaline containing cacti, are being recognised as our God given allies on a very tough and hostile planet. Even in the last few days I saw on a news program that Oakland California was the second city in America, after Denver Colorado, to decriminalise possession of magic psilocybin mushrooms…
In his conversation with Freeman, Anthony Peake talked about his book entitled The Daemon, A Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self, in which he expanded on the proposition that all consciously aware beings consist of not one but two separate consciousnesses; an everyday consciousness, and that of the Daemon, a higher being that seems to possess knowledge of future events. This book includes stories of many famous artists, politicians, musicians, and scientists who have felt a force outside themselves including Winston Churchill, Byron, Goethe, Jean Cocteau, and many others. Peake referred to this as ‘cheating the ferryman’ meaning that through this process people can cross the stream in to the next world, and into the future, and then return, without the use of a ferryman. The higher consciousness in this way receives guidance from the future and from other higher and far seeing forms of consciousness in the angelic realms, in the form of signs synchronicity, and dreams, things I was realising were in fact the Manifest signs of the Universe on the Path of Search…
On the flight to Melbourne I also listened to a presentation by English author Andrew Collins, about his recent amazing experiences discovering “star-gates” at various special places on the Earth. These places were associated with volcanic fault lines, and electromagnetic anomalies, and also tended to contain settlements and villages of ancient cultures, showing that these people probably had more awareness of living in harmony with the mother earth. These were places where he and his friends had amazing communications with higher dimensional beings that he designated ‘ultra-terrestrials’. The communications came with the help of his beloved friend and intuitive psychic Debbie, and they were also captured accidentally, being discovered later on electronic recordings, in the form of electromagnetic anomalies associated with these times of communication. This was evidence to me that the quest of my beloved should not be confined to the Bahá’í scriptures, although it was becoming clear that the writings of the Blessed Beauty was where the Beloved could be found with the most power and purity. I decided that these research efforts by good and honest Seekers of the Truth, like researchers and authors Andrew Collins and his friend Graham Phillips, and others like Graham Hancock also connected into God, as for example in the case given above about GP discovering that the powerful implements of the ancient priesthood were in the custody of the Maids of Heavenwho were Mt Hor and Mt Sinai, until the Gathering of the Beloved.
At this point in time I pretty much had most of the 3rd Paragraph reciting freely morning and night, and it was time to work on the last few lines… He should succor the dispossessed, and never withhold his favour from the destitute. He should show kindness to animals, how much more unto his fellow-man, to him who is endowed with the power of utterance… I had another 3 or 4 days of the month of ‘Azamat to nail these last lines, and get to where I could recite the whole tablet from the top, and it was VERY appropriate timing as well, as the plan was to go and visit our special radical vegan friends at their communal land, where they lived on several hundred acres of river valley in the New Zealand bush. They called themselves The Gentle World, and my wife and I with our kids felt very honoured to be their friends and all have GW names. We had both talked to Gentle World about Bahá’u’lláh and the Bahá’í faith, but on finding out that most Bahá’ís eat animals, they quickly lost any interest. Indeed, my wife and I found ourselves as a very small minority of vegans within the Bahá’í faith, though we understood that veganism was the destiny of Bahá’ís and a logical outcome of the suggestion in these words for us that we should show kindness to animals. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was also very clear that we are not designed by nature to eat meat, and a careful reading of his words would convince most Bahá’ís to give up that habit…
"But now coming to man, we see he hath neither hooked teeth nor sharp nails or claws, nor teeth like iron sickles. From this it becometh evident and manifest that the food of man is cereals and fruit. Some of the teeth of man are like millstones to grind the grain, and some are sharp to cut the fruit. Therefore, he is not in need of meat, nor is he obliged to eat it. Even without eating meat he would live with the utmost vigour and energy. For example, the community of the Brahmins in India do not eat meat; notwithstanding this they are not inferior to other nations in strength, power, vigour, outward senses or intellectual virtues. Truly, the killing of animals and the eating of their meat is somewhat contrary to pity and compassion, and if one can content oneself with cereals, fruit, oil and nuts, such as pistachios, almonds and so on, it would undoubtedly be better and more pleasing." ('Abdu'l-Bahá, from a Tablet - translated from the Persian; Health, Healing, and Nutrition, no. 17)
On the flight to Melbourne I also read an article that went into detail about the effects on human well-being of vegan diet and found that several essential elements were missing for good health, such as B12, carnitine, creatine. Although I myself had been vegan for many years I was presently having trouble healing an inflammatory problem in my elbow joints, and I was now of the opinion that after several thousand years of eating meat, humans have become adapted to eating it and dependant on some of the elements in it, though certain cultures such as the Brahmins and Sikhs have lived for thousands of years on a vegan diet without harmful effects. Most of the 8 billion odd humans on this planet have become adapted to eating blood and meat and so do not do very well initially if giving it up overnight. The several elements we need in our diet, and are available in animal products, make the Bahá’í approach understandable, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá pointed out, taken from an interesting discussion on this topic from the Bahái Library Online…
"What will be the food of the future?" "Fruit and grains. The time will come when meat will no longer be eaten. Medical science is only in its infancy, yet it has shown that our natural diet is that which grows out of the ground. The people will gradually develop up to the condition of this natural food."('Abdu'l-Bahá, cited in Julia M. Grundy. "Ten Days in the Light of 'Akka", rev. ed. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1979), pp. 8-9; Health, Healing, and Nutrition, no. 41)
The Bahái library discussion also quoted the Ancient Beauty on meat, from Summons of the Lord of Hosts, Súriy-i-Haykal, no. 154.
Say: O concourse of priests and monks! Eat ye of that which God hath made lawful unto you and do not shun meat. God hath, as a token of His grace, granted you leave to partake thereof save during a brief period. He, verily, is the Mighty, the Beneficent. Forsake all that ye possess and hold fast unto that which God hath purposed. This is that which profiteth you, if ye be of them that comprehend.
I was initially a bit disturbed by this, but then looking a bit deeper I realised that Bahá’u’lláh’s World Order had no places for priests or monks; he actually deleted religious priesthoods from the world of mankind, and replaced them with a system of Local, National, and Universal Houses of Justice for the people. Taking in all the swathes of information, such as from The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, that show a massively increased incidence of Cancer and other diseases from eating meat, this could be discerned as a gentle way of encouraging the priesthood to eat itself into extinction! There was no doubt in my mind that the destiny of the human race on reaching maturity was not to dine on our fellow mammals and inmates of the planet, but there was no law in the Bahá’í faith prohibiting this habit, hence there is the allowance of some time to allow the shift to more correct ways of living with our relatives in the Universe, and not eating them!
I myself had experienced personal teaching in my dream-time about eating meat, which was one of the main reasons, along with my wife’s veganism and love of animals, for being vegetarian for decades and mostly vegan for about 7 years now… After I made the decision to go vegan, about a year later I decided to eat a lamb chop at a friend’s barbeque, and that night I had a dream in which there was a man sitting on a farm gate, sharpening a butcher knife and looking at me. I knew I was the lamb in the dream, and the clear indication was that if I ate lamb again, I might have the knife used on me! Several years later at my wife’s parents’ Christmas dinner, for old times’ sake, I decided to have a taste of the lamb roast, and indeed that night I had a vivid dream in which I did have my throat cut! Needless to say, I did not taste lamb again for several years, though recently trying to heal my pulled elbows I did on one occasion find an organic grass-fed lamb shank, and cooked and ate it following the guidance given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá above. That night I did not have my throat cut, but I did have a very troubled night of dreams, very much unlike my normal harmonious dreams, in which I was pursued and threatened with torture and death all night long. The guidance was very clear, although the last week or so, especially after reading about the deficiencies in a vegan diet, I had started eating sea food and fish again. It did not feel like such a crime against nature as eating meat, as I also felt a kind of kinship with dolphins who live on fish.
However, I did wonder if the distance from the celestial realms I had felt in my dream-time in the last week had partly been because of eating fish, and it was also true that my wife, on the Day of the Declaration of the Bab last week had also reported some troubled dreams that she was suspicious were caused by eating fish. Thinking some more on it I thought that salmon, hoki, snapper, and baramundi were probably included in the definition of “animals” that Bahá’u’lláh suggested we be kind towards. He should show kindness to animals, how much more unto his fellow-man, to him who is endowed with the power of utterance. Our Gentle World friends would certainly agree with this and could not even dream of eating the beautiful fish, who should be left to enjoy their world under the water, even if it was a fish-eat-fish sort of world! I also thought that Gentle World, in answer to the question how much more to his fellow-man? would answer “no more at all!” as they have largely given up hope on the ignorant carnivorous mass of humanity, and regard meat-eating as the major cause of the mental condition of mankind and the main cause of all the aggression, warfare and bloodshed on the planet, although my wife did point out when I discussed this thought with her, that most of the GW friends were very kind and loving people towards other people, even in many cases with meat eaters. In any case, it was food for thought that the eating of the fish, even if a tried and true gift from Tangaroa the atua (god) of the Ocean for the Maori people, who have survived on the gifts from his garden for Eons, might also be a factor drawing me away from the heat of the quest of my beloved.
My dreams, although vivid, were not so harmonious over the last week, and seemed to have taken me quite a distance from the divine realm I had felt myself in with the daily pattern of meditation and reciting the words, and at the dawn of every day communing with God. This was a medical conference, and as Bahá’u’lláh in his writings had raised the status of working in a profession or trade to the status of “worship of God”, then I had to believe that in furthering my knowledge of how to save people’s lives in the ED, this activity must also be regarded as focus on God. It must also follow that this level of dream time, even if not in the celestial realms I had experienced a couple of weeks back, was nevertheless still within the Worlds of God. Still it was a bit disconcerting to me how my dreams had taken me into quite a lot more chaos… Was this because of my reduced focus on these words? …At the dawn of every day he should commune with God. Was it because I was eating some fish, or indeed that I had been tempted by a small bottle of Chardonnay while eating a Barramundi fillet? I decided to take a random access in Javahiru'l-Asrar, Gems of Divine Mysteries, the other small green book from the world centre, which Steven Phelps had said on one of his workshops stands alongside The Call of the Divine Beloved, as a companion volume from those early years of Mystical writings, for some elucidation… I landed at Para 70, very appropriate in its manner of address as I was part way through the Tablet of the True Seeker, which also began with the address O My Brother!
70: O My Brother! At every juncture We have restated our theme, that all that hath been recorded in these verses may, by the leave of God, be made clear unto thee, and that thou mayest become independent of those who are plunged in the darkness of self and who tread the valley of arrogance and pride, and be of them that move within the paradise of everlasting life.
71: Say: O people! The Tree of Life hath verily been planted in the heart of the heavenly paradise and bestoweth life in every direction. How can ye fail to perceive and recognise it? It will in truth aid thee to grasp all that this well-assured Soul hath disclosed unto thee of the essence of the divine mysteries. The Dove of holiness warbleth in the heaven of immortality and admonisheth thee to array thyself with a new vesture, wrought of steel to shield thee from the shafts of doubt concealed in the allusions of men, saying “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again”. 49
72: Wing thou thy flight unto this divine Tree and partake of its fruits. Gather up that which hath fallen therefrom and guard it faithfully. Meditate then upon the utterance of one of the Prophets as he intimated to the souls of men, through veiled allusionsand hidden symbols, the glad-tidings of the One Who was to come after Him, that thou mayest know of a certainty that their words are inscrutable to all save those who are endued with an understanding heart… etc
The reference 49 was to a text from the New Testament of the Holy Bible in the Book of John, Chapter 3, Verses 5-7, and then the reference in the next paragraph to One of the Prophets was to the speaker of these words, Jesus Christ… In Terry Culhane’s book I Beheld A Maiden, he wrote of his discovery that when The Blessed Beauty’s words start with Say: then that means the words are from the Maid of Heaven, also known as The Beloved! Hence in Paragraph 71 we have the Maid of Heaven telling the People of the Earth that the Tree of Life planted in the heart of the heavenly paradise was the One who would come referred to by Jesus, Who was indeed The Blessed Beauty Himself!
I felt that it was quite a circuitous answer to my specific question, which was why my dreams had drifted away from what I perceived as a ‘celestial realm’ but I suppose could also be referred to as the Heart of the heavenly paradise! I am wondering if it means that the sorts of chaotic adventures I was experiencing in my dream-time now were still a part of the Worlds of God but quite a long way away from the Heart of the Heavenly Paradise? Or was it that several bad habits as outlined had made my dream-time drift into areas of darkness, or shadowy and ephemeral attachments and thus made me encounter in my dream-time those who are plunged in the darkness of self and who tread the valley of arrogance and pride? It didn’t really matter either way, the solution was the same, to Wing my flight unto this divine Tree and partake of its fruits, and to Gather up that which hath fallen therefrom and guard it faithfully. The first examples of these fruits then mentioned were the utterance of Jesus Christ when he spoke of Bahá’u’lláh, His Father Who was in Heaven! Another fruit then could be regarded as the next Paragraph for memorisation in the coming month of Núr, Light, with some should nots and how oftens as a variation on shoulds and musts to make it easier for memorisation!
He should not hesitate to offer up his life for his Beloved, nor allow the censure of the people to turn him away from the Truth. He should not wish for others that which he doth not wish for himself, nor promise that which he doth not fulfil. With all his heart should the seeker avoid fellowship with evil doers and pray for the remission of their sins. He should forgive the sinful, and never despise his low estate, for none knoweth what his own end shall be. How often hath a sinner, at the hour of death, attained to the essence of faith, and, quaffing the immortal draught, hath taken his flight unto the celestial Concourse. And how often hath a devout believer, at the hour of his soul’s ascension, been so changed as to fall into the nethermost fire.
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