No sign can indicate His [God's] presence or His absence; inasmuch as
by a word of His command all that are in heaven and on earth have come to
exist, and by His wish, which is the Primal Will itself, all have stepped
out of utter nothingness into the realm of being, the world of the
visible.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, The
Kitáb-i-Íqán, page 98
Were the risings of the sun to continue till the end
that hath no end, yet there hath not been nor ever will be
more than one sun; and were its settings to endure for
evermore, still there hath not been nor ever will be more
than one sun. It is this Primal Will which appeareth
resplendent in every Prophet and speaketh forth in every
revealed Book. It knoweth no beginning, inasmuch as the
First deriveth its firstness from It; and knoweth no end,
for the Last oweth its lastness unto It.
In the time of the First Manifestation the Primal Will
appeared in Adam; in the day of Noah It became known in
Noah; in the day of Abraham in Him; and so in the day of
Moses; the day of Jesus; the day of Muhammad, the Apostle of
God; the day of the "Point of the Bayán"; the day of
Him Whom God shall make manifest; and the day of the One Who
will appear after Him Whom God shall make manifest. Hence
the inner meaning of the words uttered by the Apostle of
God, "I am all the Prophets," inasmuch as what shineth
resplendent in each one of Them hath been and will ever
remain the one and the same sun.
-- The Báb, Selections
from the Writings of the Báb, page 126
The first thing which emanated from God is that universal reality,
which the ancient philosophers termed the “First Mind,” and which the
people of Bahá call the “First Will.” This emanation, in that which
concerns its action in the world of God, is not limited by time or place;
it is without beginning or end—beginning and end in relation to God are
one.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered
Questions, page 203
The mystics, in general, believe that existence is limited to two
conditions: one is God and the other Creation. They believe that God is
the inner existence of things and Creation the appearance of things. As
for the people of Truth, existence hath three degrees: God and Command,
which is the Primal Will, and Creation. The Primal Will, which is the
world of Command, is the inner reality of things and all existing things
are the manifestations of the Divine Will, not the manifestations of the
Divine Reality and Identity. As to the station of the Godhead, it is
independent and sanctified from the understanding and comprehension of
created things, leave alone that it penetrateth and is absorbed by the
realities of things. His Holiness, the Bab, may my life be a sacrifice
unto Him, sayeth that the testimony of this verse: "The Sea (of existence)
is the same as it hath ever been from eternity and the accidents are (its)
waves and apparitions," is complete in the Primal Will, not in the Essence
of God.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Makatib,
volume 3, pages 355-356 (provisional
translation by Keven Brown)
O earthly creatures, O coarse minds! The Primal Will, which is
goodness itself, never abandons its own self ....
-- Alighieri Dante, The Divine
Comedy, Paradiso Canto XIX:1-90 Divine Justice
This other will is his Son, which he begets out of his eternal one
will from eternity, which he leads forth through fire, through the
breaking of the source of death, as out of his fierce ferventness. It is
this other will, viz. the Son of God the Father, which breaks down death
as the stern, dark source, which kindles fire and proceeds through the
fire as a shine or lustre of the fire, and fills the primal will which is
called Father; for the lustre is also as thin as a nonentity, or as the
will which is called Father. Therefore it can dwell in freedom, that is,
in the Father's will, and makes the Father bright, clear, gracious and
friendly, for it is the heart of the Father or mercifulness; it is the
Father's substantiality, it fills the Father everywhere, although in him
is no place, no beginning nor end.
-- Jacob Böhme, The Incarnation of
Jesus Christ, chapter v
To know being as good requires some affection or inclination towards
it. As light, being creates the intellect as formal cause of the soul
(or if preferred, as cause of the formal cause, cause of the enlightenment
of the soul). In the same way, being, as the essential condition of good,
creates the primal will as final cause which actuates the first affection,
that is, the first volition directed towards being in general. Thus
intellect is the receptive potency; the will, the active potency
corresponding to the intellect.
-- Antonio Rosmini, The Development of the
Human Soul, book 2, chapter 7, number
1008
Some kabbalists maintain that the hidden God works through the Primal
Will. This is the highest emanation (Sefirah) that either flows from Him
or is concealed within His power. The age-old question raised is: Was this
Primal Will co-eternal with God/Ein-Sof, or did it originate only at the
time of its emanation? The majority of statements in the Zohar support the
former view. It is generally accepted that this eternal "twinning” of God
and Will brought forth the first emanation (Sefirah).
The early kabbalists, who linked the attribute of Will to the
Ein-Sof, assert that it was with God’s Will that the world came into
being. Thus communion with the Supreme or Primal Will was the ultimate
goal of prayer, since this attribute was the "source of all life,”
including the first emanation. This concept of the Will as the supreme
Divine Power takes precedence over Divine thought and pure intellect.
-- Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, Mysticism --
Will, Thought, and Wisdom
As Heh of Yod, the Magician is passive to Ain Soph, hence he is a
symbolic antithesis to the Fool. He is God the Creator in the Beginning,
in contrast to God the Principle before all beginnings. He is Kether, the
Primal Will which initiates the creative process by selecting a particular
point in space at which to begin.
-- Paul Foster Case, An
Introduction to the Study of Tarot, chapter
v
And accordingly the man of God, Adam, and the woman of God, Eve,
discharging mutually (the duties of) one marriage, sanctioned for mankind
a type by (the considerations of the authoritative precedent of their
origin and the primal will of God. Finally, "there shall be," said He,
"two in one flesh," not three nor four.
-- Tertullian, On Exhortation to
Chastity, chapter
v
Only the primal will of God works in the material world, and no
secondary finite will.
-- Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma
(1871), chapter xxxi