ASMÁ (Arabic, asmá' for names), an acronym for Applied Studies in Mythic Analysis™, is a project of The Structurization Institute™2. Here, mythic refers to sacred stories and is not used as a deprecation. Furthermore, ASMÁ is a deconstruction and construction, a Bahá'í deepening process, a study circle3 proposal, a nonacademic application of The Structurization Paradigm™4, and a narrative spirituality™5. It is inspired by postliberal or Yale school, postcritical, postliberation, and emergent6 theologies (or hierologies).

ASMÁ favors a conversation on texts, contexts, and subtexts, while avoiding the supposed propositional pretexts for immutable verities, and it centers on the nominalist concept of the absolute sovereignty of God. According to divine command theory, God's decree is good only because He wills it. Since there is, in the eyes of God, no virtue apart from His omnipotent Will or Teleology, good and evil function, not as fixed eternal essences or ideal forms, but as names for the commands, the Cause of God, resulting from His Will.

As God has a free Will, so each person has, absent whatever limitations God may elect to impose and accounting for any circumscription by preexisting sociocultural constraints, a free will agency, as well. The individual's prerogative is whether to conform to a personal nominalism, the supremacy of the human will posited by Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, and Aleister Crowley, or to the divine nominalisms promoted in certain texts of the so-called Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá'í Faith. In the latter case, although one continues to acknowledge one's own will, without attempting to suppress it, one deliberately chooses a path of surrender to the Will of God.

Language Games

If it were God's Will, the entire recorded Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, or any portions thereof, could be discarded, much as He Himself was reported to have destroyed certain of His Writings. It is God and His Will, not His relative structurizations of reality or revelational language games, which should command our loyalty. Revelation, the Logos, is dependent on the Will of God; and His Will, or Covenant, takes precedence over His Word, or Revelation, and His Cause, or Commission.

It is evident that the changes brought about in every Dispensation constitute the dark clouds that intervene between the eye of man's understanding and the divine Luminary which shineth forth from the dayspring of the divine Essence. Consider how men for generations have been blindly imitating their fathers, and have been trained according to such ways and manners as have been laid down by the dictates of their Faith. Were these men, therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been living in their midst, Who, with respect to every human limitation, hath been their equal, had risen to abolish every established principle imposed by their Faith - principles by which for centuries they have been disciplined, and every opposer and denier of which they have come to regard as infidel, profligate and wicked, - they would of a certainty be veiled and hindered from acknowledging His truth.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitáb-i-Íqán, pages 73-74

There is no direct correspondence between words and realities. Even the divine Word, the Logos, constitutes an epistemically contingent transmission of God's Will to His servants. All descriptions of worlds or kingdoms, and of the content and ordering of spiritual conditions and substances, are discoursive symbol pictures.

Numerous approaches to scriptural hermeneutics have been devised. The revealed Word, the transmission of the knowledge of God, might be compared with a driver; historicism, the Prophetic ecology of the dialectical God-Man and His Revelation situated in their original cultural, historical, bodily, and linguistic contexts, to the vehicle; and religous ecology (or cultural syncretism), the recontextualizations of the revealed Word into multiple normative structurizations, to the destination.

A distinction can, therefore, be drawn between religion as divine construction (Revelation) and religion as social construction. The first, Prophetic ecology, is the proclamation of the Word of God, the Logos, or the Teachings of an embodied Messenger to a peculiarized cultural, historical, and physical audience. The second, designated as religious ecology, is a fundamentally human phenomenon.

From the standpoint of religious ecology, revealed religions do not operate in a vacuum. Rather, as the extraordinary charisma of the Prophet is routinized, or institutionalized, in diverse cultural settings, a dynamic interplay occurs between the original Revelation and the social structures of the individuals and groups which receive it. One may then speak of multiple Judaisms, Buddhisms, Christianities, Islams, Bahá'í faiths, etc.

Ergo, the Bahá'í faith in Iran is not precisely the Bahá'í faith in the United States. In the latter, the Bahá'í Faith has been commingled, among diverse persons and groups, with elements of Protestantism, the New Age Movement, New Thought, the Enlightenment project, and other systems of thought. While this religious ecology is inevitable, as Bahá'ís refashion their understandings of their literature and as their social situations change, their Bahá'í faiths will also presumably undergo modification.

Acknowledging that narratives are inexact and perspectival (as with the Jain doctrine of anakanta), allowing for diverse, even contradictory, divine and human reality constructions, one should simultaneously recognize, even advocate and celebrate, a radical multidoxy or polydoxy of variegated Bahá'í faiths, consisting of groups of Bahá'ís who accept the authority of the the Bahá'í primary sources but differ in some of their relative understandings or approaches, and a similarly radical orthopraxy of covenantal obedience.

Indeed, heresy (Greek, hairesis) is presented throughout the Christian New Testament, not as the benign presence of alternative beliefs, but as the self-willed promotion of malignant division. It may even be said that common views of heresy as heterodoxy, serving as they do to divide believers on the basis of doctrinal distinctives, are themselves isomorphic with New Testament usages of hairesis!

Moreover, since language, à la différance, expresses only an accidental or intentional relationship with particulars and their categories or connections, a linguistic contradiction is indeed a contradiction. Likewise, the frameworks and taxonomies narrated in each omnibus Revelation ought to be approached as contextual and constructed realities, historically relative treatments of relationships between the attributes of particulars, and language games, not as concrete metaphysical systems. Thus, the inevitable contradictions between, often within, certain faith-based scriptures can only be resolved, if ever, in the linguistic texts of religiously authorized interpreters.

In The Seven Valleys, we are presented with one such language game. With it, we will begin at the end, in the condition of faná (self-annihilation), translated by Marzieh Gail as The Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness. The evanescence of self-will is the culmination of other spiritual attributes, or valleys, mentioned in this Tablet, including search, love, knowledge, and contentment.

Marian C. Lippitt7 and Henry A. Weil, have described, to their own understandings, additional language games found in the Bahá'í texts. Since many of their assumptions were grounded in essentialism, Aristotelian realism, or Platonic idealism, ASMÁ, as a nominalist perspective, has relativized both their models. Indeed, one of its principal engagements is, as respecting Lippitt and Weil, with a radical destructurization™ (deconstruction) of the Platonic and Aristotelian foundationalisms in their understandings of Bahá'í wisdom teachings.

There is, in other words, no attempt at being faithful to any previous schemata, including those developed by Weil and Lippitt8. All such systems, rather than approached as fixed ontologies (reality frameworks) or kosmologies (Ken Wilber's term), are treated here as language games, rubrics, and categories. Likewise, created reality is considered a name for God's volitionally relative structurizations, not a perennial hierarchy of existence or an idealized ordering of timeless first principles. Divine discourse or meaning (the Word) is produced, relative to a particular Dispensation, through the exercise of power by a Prophet.

Now, formation is of three kinds and of three kinds only: accidental, necessary and voluntary. The coming together of the various constituent elements of beings cannot be accidental, for unto every effect there must be a cause. It cannot be compulsory, for then the formation must be an inherent property of the constituent parts and the inherent property of a thing can in no wise be dissociated from it, such as light that is the revealer of things, heat that causeth the expansion of elements and the solar rays which are the essential property of the sun. Thus under such circumstances the decomposition of any formation is impossible, for the inherent properties of a thing cannot be separated from it. The third formation remaineth and that is the voluntary one, that is, an unseen force described as the Ancient Power, causeth these elements to come together, every formation giving rise to a distinct being.
--`Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablet to August Forel, pages 16-17

ASMÁ Theism: A Categorical Framework

H. Emogene Hoagg was an erudite Bahá'í who had studied under Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani and other prominent Persian Bahá'í scholars both in the Middle East and in the United States. During 1900, 1913, 1914, and 1920, Hoagg lived and served, sometimes for months at a time, in the household of ` Abdu'l-Bahá. Following `Abdu'l-Bahá's passing in 1921, she returned to Haifa to assist the new Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi.

In the later years of her life, Hoagg produced an outline, containing but a modicum of personal commentary, in which she organized citations of the Bahá'í literature within three existential categories:

Know that the conditions of existence are limited to the conditions of servitude, of prophethood and of Deity, but the divine and the contingent perfections are unlimited.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 230

Hoagg published her outline in 1937 as Three Worlds, revised it the following year as Conditions of Existence: Servitude, Prophethood, Deity, and, over those same two years, conducted classes on it in various venues, including the Green Acre Bahá'í School in Eliot, Maine, and the Louhelen Bahá'í School in Davison, Michigan. Then, in 1943, spanning an approximately five-month period, she personally instructed Marian C. Lippitt on her conditions of existence outline.

Lippitt subsequently, in the course of her decades long indexing project of Bahá'í sources, and her other work, developed Hoagg's model into an original ontology, ontotheology, and systematic theology, namely, The Science of Reality. As will be addressed in this portion of the paper, the objective of ASMÁ Theism is, by destructurizing (deconstructing) Lippitt's theology, to reorient the work initiated by Hoagg in a new, more nominalist, direction.

Regrettably, it has been common for certain of Lippitt's proponents to argue that the indexing system she developed, which she later implemented with her coworkers, was simply the Writings and not the product of individual deepening and personal interpretation:

A clear distinction is made in our Faith between authoritative interpretation and the interpretation or understanding that each individual arrives at for himself from his study of its teachings. While the former is confined to the Guardian, the latter, according to the guidance given to us by the Guardian himself, should by no means be suppressed. In fact such individual interpretation is considered the fruit of man's rational power and conducive to a better understanding of the teachings, provided that no disputes or arguments arise among the friends and the individual himself understands and makes it clear that his views are merely his own. Individual interpretations continually change as one grows in comprehension of the teachings.
-- From a letter of the Universal House of Justice to an individual Bahá'í, May 27, 1966, and cited: Lights of Guidance, pages 312-313

Fortunately, there is an appreciation, among most academic religious scholars and theologians, for the considerable hierographological, or textual, problems associated with utilizing translated materials as the basis for a scriptural indexing system, especially one lacking sufficient regard for issues of social and historical contextualization. Unfortunately, however, Lippitt's literalist hermeneutic and methodology, a species of linguistic realism in which she instructed her volunteers, required that Bahá'í and other writings should be indexed, word by word, following their verbatim English-language renderings.

Lippitt's model consolidates, in part, a three-tiered Reality Chart, illustrating the three physical dimensions of outward appearances, a fourth dimension of rationality and time, and a fifth dimension of purposeful power or spirit underlying outward appearances; a Neo-Platonic reification of the teachings of the Prophets; and a propositional Science of Reality. These metanarratives detract from her otherwise substantial and pioneering constructions of the worlds of God and her general insights into personal development.

Additionally, some of Lippitt's ideas were incorporated by her close friend, the late Professor Daniel C. Jordan of the University of Massachusetts, and his colleagues into the Anisa educational project. Lying squarely within the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s and formulated, primarily, around Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and, secondarily, around Carl Rogers' and Abraham H. Maslow's humanistic psychologies and Charles Sanders Peirce's realist pragmatism9, Anisa integrated Lippitt's proposition of purpose or potentiality as a universally manifested ontological essence.

In contrast, as framed here, human spirits, as names for the God-given capacities associated with particular individuals, may permit one to conform to God's multiple Purposes for man, but those Purposes refer to God's Will or Intentionality. They do not constitute, as presumed by Lippitt and Jordan, an innately coactive essence of all human spirits. Moreover, since the purpose of man, distinguished from the divine Will and Purpose, is no more than a nominal universal of the free wills of persons, these spirits are powers only, not powers concatenated with God's Purposes for man.

Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He, through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him -- a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, p.65

Although this passage is sometimes cited by those arguing for ontological realism or essentialism, no such concept is mentioned. Rather, each human soul has a particularized, or individualized, capacity to know and to love its Creator; and, in the great workshop of spiritual development and immortal preparation which characterizes this world, God has fashioned and empowered all things for His primary, His most important, purpose of facilitating this dual human capacity.

Therefore, the worlds of God, considered apart from the presuppositional matrix Lippitt incorporated into her indexing system, might be delineated as existential classifications, as structurizations, or as names for beings and entities with similar attributes, not as eternal essences or ideal forms.

The nominal relativity of these worlds may be implied in the following passage:

"Although the divine worlds be never ending, yet some refer to them as four: The world of time (zamán), which is the one that hath both a beginning and an end; the world of duration (dahr), which hath a beginning, but whose end is not revealed; the world of perpetuity (sarmad), whose beginning is not to be seen but which is known to have an end; and the world of eternity (azal), neither a beginning nor an end of which is visible. Although there are many differing statements as to these points, to recount them in detail would result in weariness. Thus, some have said that the world of perpetuity hath neither beginning nor end, and have named the world of eternity as the invisible, impregnable Empyrean. Others have called these the worlds of the Heavenly Court (Lahút), of the Empyrean Heaven (Jabarút), of the Kingdom of the Angels (Malakút), and of the mortal world (Nasút).
-- Bahá'u'lláh, The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, page 25

In this connection, Lippitt's Map of the Worlds of God has, over several decades, been reformulated by this writer as the categorical framework of ASMÁ Theism™10. Whereas Lippitt and Jordan premised their models on holistic principles, ASMÁ Theism takes a reductionist approach. It constitutes a construction11, not a science, of reality. Consequently, an outline, not Lippitt's realist map, will better serve to illustrate this framework:

1. Deity (unknowable Essence/Quiddity of God, divine Oneness, Most Great Spirit, 'álam-i-haqq/world of the True One, hahút/He-ness/divine Haecceity, and the Exnihilator or Creator out of nothing)
2. Prophethood ('álam-i-amr/world of Command)
   1. Station of Prophetic Unity (Greater World, God manifested, láhút/divinity, or the Unity in the Prophets' Unity in diversity)
   2. Station of Prophetic Distinction (jabarút/omnipotence/sovereignty or the diversity in the Prophets' Unity in diversity): includes at least four names or categories, viz.,
      1. Spirit of God (rúh'u'lláh; also Holy Spirit/rúh'u'l-qudus or divine Power)
      2. Will of God (insh'alláh; also Covenant/ahd, love/muhabbat, and al-mashiyyáh al-awwal/Primal Will, i.e., divine purpose or intentionality)
      3. Cause of God (amr'u'lláh; also translated as Command/Commission, i.e., the authority of a Prophet, based on the divine Will, to perform His Mission; seal/khátam)
      4. Word of God (kalimát'u'lláh; also Revelation/wahy, i.e., knowledge communication; divine teachings; the one religion of God, including Christianity, Islám, the Bahá'í Faith, etc.)
3. World of Creation ('álam-i-khalq or 'ubúdíyah/Servitude): includes numerous categories and subcategories, viz.,
   1. Next World (after death or malakút/heaven/kingdom beyond)
   2. Human Kingdom (lesser world/"should be regarded as" greater world, this world/before death, reflections of next world, or nasút/humanity; animated by human spirits; includes Prophets on earth)
      1. Human Spirituality ('álam al-mithal/imaginal realm/mundus imaginalis; ideal forms as symbolic terms/names; virtuousness; human acceptance of divine Revelation/religions/teachings of the Prophets, i.e., faith/faiths/religions as the conscious knowledge of God's Will; including The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys; and containing the revealed Word from the Word as Revelator; animated by spirits of faith)
      2. Human Affairs (social constructions of reality, including the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh and the "old world order"; the institutionalizations of the Revelations/religions/teachings of God's Prophets; multiple Christianities, Isláms, Bahá'í faiths, etc.)
      3. Human Imperfection (absence of virtuousness)
      4. Human Rationality (logic, reason, time, accomplishment, and reflections on concrete physicality and on physical metaphors)
      5. Physicality (materiality, energy, magnetism, and gravity; the kingdom of names/al-malakút al-asmá’, i.e., analogically designating, or naming, particulars, by their attributes, and placing them into nominal categories)
         1. Animal Kingdom (defined as sensation; animated by animal spirits)
         2. Vegetable Kingdom (defined as growth; animated by vegetable spirits)
         3. Mineral Kingdom (defined as elemental cohesion; animated by mineral spirits; a mineral spirit is defined by the presence of cohesion)

From one standpoint, Neo-Platonic ideal forms, essences, or realities are, in the Bahá'í scriptures, analogous to John Locke's nominal essences, frequently revisioned as relative and contingent linguistic categories or names, as divine constructions of reality, as literary narratives, and as typological and comparative classification schemes founded on the observed attributes of single entities:

The essence of Bahá'u'lláh's Teaching is all-embracing love, for love includeth every excellence of humankind. It causeth every soul to go forward. It bestoweth on each one, for a heritage, immortal life. Erelong shalt thou bear witness that His celestial Teachings, the very glory of reality itself, shall light up the skies of the world.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, page 66

Among these teachings was the independent investigation of reality so that the world of humanity may be saved from the darkness of imitation and attain to the truth; may tear off and cast away this ragged and outgrown garment of a thousand years ago and may put on the robe woven in the utmost purity and holiness in the loom of reality. As reality is one and cannot admit of multiplicity, therefore different opinions must ultimately become fused into one.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, page 298

... men of faith behold the reality of religion manifestly revealed in these heavenly teachings, and clearly and conclusively prove them to be the real and true remedy for the ills and infirmities of all mankind.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablet to August Forel, page 26

The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, page 155

In other contexts, ideal forms, essences, or realities are, reminiscent of Locke's real essences, the unknowable quiddities of spiritual and material particulars:

The rain itself hath no geometry, no limits, no form, but it taketh on one form or another, according to the restrictions of its vessel. In the same way, the Holy Essence of the Lord God is boundless, immeasurable, but His graces and splendours become finite in the creatures, because of their limitations, wherefore the prayers of given persons will receive favourable answers in certain cases.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, page 161

When, however, thou dost contemplate the innermost essence of all things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt behold the signs of thy Lord's mercy in every created thing, and see the spreading rays of His Names and Attributes throughout all the realm of being, with evidences which none will deny save the froward and the unaware. Then wilt thou observe that the universe is a scroll that discloseth His hidden secrets, which are preserved in the well-guarded Tablet.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, page 41

Physical bodies are transferred past one barrier after another, from one life to another, and all things are subject to transformation and change, save only the essence of existence itself -- since it is constant and immutable, and upon it is founded the life of every species and kind, of every contingent reality throughout the whole of creation.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, page 156

It may be said, for instance, that this lamplight is last night's come back again, or that last year's rose hath returned to the garden this year. Here the reference is not to the individual reality, the fixed identity, the specialized being of that other rose, rather doth it mean that the qualities, the distinctive characteristics of that other light, that other flower, are present now, in these.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, page 183

Briefly, therefore, the objective idealism in Lippitt's Science of Reality, reflecting a perfunctory approach to the (deconstructed) Neoplatonic concepts found in certain Bahá'í texts, is, in ASMÁ Theism, reconceptualized in nominalist terms. Lippitt's idealism is superseded by a particularist voluntarism (to coin a term, a post-neoplatonism).

Neoplatonism, including the views of Plato and Aristotle, is the literary framework, the vehicle, of Baha'i mysticism. Indeed, it might be said that superficially, at least, Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá were presenting a Neoplatonic religious model. However, an analogy might be found in Jean-François Lyotard, who took Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of language games and used it to deconstruct metanarratives or totalizing schemes. Here, the metanarrative is Neoplatonism.

Before all else, divine reality or truth (haqíqat) is God, the Real or True One (al-haqq). It may then be construed, though secondarily and dependently, as encompassing all that which the divine Essence wills to construct and create. ASMÁ Theism, a single attempt at understanding certain of those divine constructions and creations, is not presumed to depict the only, or even the most accurate, model of existence.

ASMÁ Theism is a weak theism. That is to say, while it establishes God's Will as sovereign, it also separates the sciences and humanities from religious authority. As such, it agrees with William of Ockham that secular, academic pursuits should not be governed by religious scripture.

ASMÁ Spirit: A Second Categorical Framework

Weil's construct of powers of the soul12 will here be named the human spirit (a.k.a. the innate character, rational faculty, rational soul, or common faculty/hiss-i-mushtarak). The spirits of particular souls, observed in various tropes or attributes, can be understood according to at least five names or categories. By reflecting on `Abdu'l-Bahá's example, such capacities enable the development of a soul's acquired characteristics and attributes (or spiritual virtues), inter alia, love, mercy, fairness, and trustworthiness.

Every other word of Bahá'u'lláh's and 'Abdu'l-Bahá's writings is a preachment on moral and ethical conduct; all else is the form, the chalice, into which the pure spirit must be poured; without the spirit and the action which must demonstrate it, it is a lifeless form.
-- From a letter dated October 25, 1949, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual Bahá'í and cited: Living the Life, page 20

The human spirit, or rational soul, appears to have been used by `Abdu'l-Bahá as a category, a rubric, for those areas of functioning which distinguish humans from animals. What now follows is an attempt to descrbe the capacities (powers), and categories of capacities, named the human spirit. I have, over the years, made extensive modifications to Weil's framework. The resulting model is designated ASMÁ Spirit™.

1. mental faculties: the intellect (aql) or intellectual capacities of the human spirit, including imagination, thought, understanding, and memory
   
     "Man has also spiritual powers: imagination, which conceives things; thought, which reflects upon realities; comprehension, which comprehends realities; memory, which retains whatever man imagines, thinks and comprehends. The intermediary between the five outward powers and the inward powers is the sense which they possess in common - that is to say, the sense which acts between the outer and inner powers, conveys to the inward powers whatever the outer powers discern. It is termed the common faculty, because it communicates between the outward and inward powers and thus is common to the outward and inward powers."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 210
   
     "Now concerning mental faculties, they are in truth of the inherent properties of the soul, even as the radiation of light is the essential property of the sun. The rays of the sun are renewed but the sun itself is ever the same and unchanged. Consider how the human intellect develops and weakens, and may at times come to naught, whereas the soul changeth not. For the mind to manifest itself, the human body must be whole; and a sound mind cannot be but in a sound body, whereas the soul dependeth not upon the body. It is through the power of the soul that the mind comprehendeth, imagineth and exerteth its influence, whilst the soul is a power that is free. The mind comprehendeth the abstract by the aid of the concrete, but the soul hath limitless manifestations of its own. The mind is circumscribed, the soul limitless. It is by the aid of such senses as those of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, that the mind comprehendeth, whereas the soul is free from all agencies."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablet to August Forel, page 8
   
     "Now regarding the question whether the faculties of the mind and the human soul are one and the same. These faculties are but the inherent properties of the soul, such as the power of imagination, of thought, of understanding; powers that are the essential requisites of the reality of man, even as the solar ray is the inherent property of the sun. The temple of man is like unto a mirror, his soul is as the sun, and his mental faculties even as the rays that emanate from that source of light. The ray may cease to fall upon the mirror, but it can in no wise be dissociated from the sun."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablet to August Forel, pages 24-25

---



2. the spirit of faith: the magnet of faith and service or power and capacity of faith in the Prophet to transform the human conscience or free will; results in the acquisition of virtues, such as love (biologically experienced as spiritual joy or happiness), kindness, mercy, truthfulness, service, etc.
   
     "Faith is the magnet which draws the confirmation of the Merciful One. Service is the magnet which attracts the heavenly strength. I hope thou wilt attain both."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbás, volume 1, page 62
   
     "Happiness consists of two kinds; physical and spiritual. The physical happiness is limited; its utmost duration is one day, one month, one year. It hath no result. Spiritual happiness is eternal and unfathomable. This kind of happiness appeareth in one's soul with the love of God and suffereth one to attain to the virtues and perfections of the world of humanity. Therefore, endeavor as much as thou art able in order to illuminate the lamp of thy heart by the light of love."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbás, volume 3, page 673
   
     "From the exalted source, and out of the essence of His favor and bounty He hath entrusted every created thing with a sign of His knowledge, so that none of His creatures may be deprived of its share in expressing, each according to its capacity and rank, this knowledge. This sign is the mirror of His beauty in the world of creation. The greater the effort exerted for the refinement of this sublime and noble mirror, the more faithfully will it be made to reflect the glory of the names and attributes of God, and reveal the wonders of His signs and knowledge. Every created thing will be enabled (so great is this reflecting power) to reveal the potentialities of its pre-ordained station, will recognize its capacity and limitations, and will testify to the truth that 'He, verily, is God; there is none other God besides Him.'...
     "There can be no doubt whatever that, in consequence of the efforts which every man may consciously exert and as a result of the exertion of his own spiritual faculties, this mirror can be so cleansed from the dross of earthly defilements and purged from satanic fancies as to be able to draw nigh unto the meads of eternal holiness and attain the courts of everlasting fellowship."
   -- Bahá'u'lláh:, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, page 262
   
     "Then know, O thou virtuous soul, that as soon as thou becomest separated from aught else save God and dost cut thyself from the worldly things, thy heart will shine with lights of divinity and with the effulgence of the Sun of Truth from the horizon of the Realm of Might, and then thou wilt be filed by the spirit of power from God and become capable of doing that which thou desirest. This is the confirmed truth."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbás, volume 3, page 709
   
     "The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul, and these two names - the human spirit and the rational soul - designate one thing. This spirit, which in the terminology of the philosophers is the rational soul, embraces all beings, and as far as human ability permits discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects, and of the qualities and properties of beings. But the human spirit, unless assisted by the spirit of faith, does not become acquainted with the divine secrets and the heavenly realities. It is like a mirror which, although clear, polished and brilliant, is still in need of light. Until a ray of the sun reflects upon it, it cannot discover the heavenly secrets."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, pages 208-209
   
     "Service is the magnet which draws the divine confirmations. Thus, when a person is active, they are blessed by the Holy Spirit. When they are inactive, the Holy Spirit cannot find a repository in their being, and thus they are deprived of its healing and quickening rays."
   -- From a letter dated July 12, 1952, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual Bahá'í and cited: Living the Life, page 18
   
     "In serving a Cause for which your mother sacrificed so much you will no doubt come to find the very purpose of your life, and the true secret of happiness in this, as well as in the next world."
   -- From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi in Arohanui: Letters to New Zealand, page 42
   
     "But the Spirit of Faith which is of the Kingdom (of God) consists of the all-comprehending Grace and the perfect attainment (or salvation, fruition, achievement) and the power of sanctity and the divine effulgence from the Sun of Truth on luminous light-seeking essences from the presence of the divine Unity. And by this Spirit is the life of the spirit of man, when it is fortified thereby, as Christ saith: 'That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.' And this Spirit hath both restitution and return, inasmuch as it consists of the Light of God and the unconditioned Grace."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbás, volume 1, page 115
   
     "The maid-servants of the Merciful should love each other with heart and soul; for though there be many bodies, the spirit of faith is one13 and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is universal. There is one Light but many lamps; there is one Wine but the glasses differ."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbás, volume 3, page 505
   
     "Do thou ponder these momentous happenings in thy heart, so that thou mayest apprehend the greatness of this Revelation, and perceive its stupendous glory. Then shall the spirit of faith, through the grace of the Merciful, be breathed into thy being, and thou shalt be established and abide upon the seat of certitude."
   -- Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitáb-i-Íqán, page 236
   
     "The fourth degree of spirit is the heavenly spirit; it is the spirit of faith and the bounty of God; it comes from the breath of the Holy Spirit, and by the divine power it becomes the cause of eternal life. It is the power which makes the earthly man heavenly, and the imperfect man perfect. It makes the impure to be pure, the silent eloquent; it purifies and sanctifies those made captive by carnal desires; it makes the ignorant wise."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 144

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3. inner vision: capacity for insight; experienced as spiritual knowledge
   
     "God grant that, with a penetrating vision and radiant heart, thou mayest observe the things that have come to pass and are now happening, and, pondering them in thine heart, mayest recognize that which most men have, in this Day, failed to perceive."
   -- Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, page 58
   
     "In the mirror of their minds the forms of transcendent realities are reflected, and the lamp of their inner vision derives its light from the sun of universal knowledge."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, page 21
   
     "If, then, the spirit were the same as the body, it would be necessary that the power of the inner sight should also be in the same proportion. Therefore, it is evident that this spirit is different from the body, and that the bird is different from the cage, and that the power and penetration of the spirit is stronger without the intermediary of the body."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 228

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4. free will: the conscience, will power, mirror of moral choices, or power of volitional accomplishment
   
     "Man's physical existence on this earth is a period during which the moral exercise of his free will is tried and tested in order to prepare his soul for the other worlds of God, and we must welcome affliction and tribulations as opportunities for improvement in our eternal selves."
   -- From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual Bahá'í, July 16, 1980, and cited: Lights of Guidance, page 368
   
     "Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. Examine thine own self, and behold how ... thy will and purpose ... proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty."
   -- Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, page 164
   
     "... though the choice of good and evil belongs to man, under all circumstances he is dependent upon the sustaining help of life, which comes from the Omnipotent. The Kingdom of God is very great, and all are captives in the grasp of His Power. The servant cannot do anything by his own will; God is powerful, omnipotent, and the Helper of all beings."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 250
   
     "... conscience is never to be coerced, whether by other individuals or institutions.
     "Conscience, however, is not an unchangeable absolute. One dictionary definition, although not covering all the usages of the term, presents the common understanding of the word 'conscience' as 'the sense of right and wrong as regards things for which one is responsible; the faculty or principle which pronounces upon the moral quality of one's actions or motives, approving the right and condemning the wrong'.
     "The functioning of one's conscience, then, depends upon one's understanding of right and wrong; the conscience of one person may be established upon a disinterested striving after truth and justice, while that of another may rest on an unthinking predisposition to act in accordance with that pattern of standards, principles and prohibitions which is a product of his social environment. Conscience, therefore, can serve either as a bulwark of an upright character or can represent an accumulation of prejudices learned from one's forebears or absorbed from a limited social code.
     "A Bahá'í recognizes that one aspect of his spiritual and intellectual growth is to foster the development of his conscience in the light of divine Revelation ...."
   -- From a letter dated February 8, 1998, written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to Dr. Susan Maneck.

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5. bodily agency: coordination of bodily functions
   
     "As the body is sustained by the spirit, it is in relation to the spirit an essential phenomenon. The spirit is independent of the body, and in relation to it the spirit is an essential preexistence. Though the rays are always inseparable from the sun, nevertheless, the sun is preexistent and the rays are phenomenal, for the existence of the rays depends upon that of the sun."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 280
   
     "... the various organs and members, the parts and elements, that constitute the body of man, though at variance, are yet all connected one with the other by that all-unifying agency known as the human soul, that causeth them to function in perfect harmony and with absolute regularity, thus making the continuation of life possible. The human body, however, is utterly unconscious of that all-unifying agency, and yet acteth with regularity and dischargeth its functions according to its will."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablet to August Forel, page 13
   
     "The mind which is in man, the existence of which is recognized - where is it in him? If you examine the body with the eye, the ear or the other senses, you will not find it; nevertheless, it exists. Therefore, the mind has no place, but it is connected with the brain."
   -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, page 242

Weil also believed that individuality, with what he saw as its twin potentials for accomplishment and inner change, and immortality were "powers of the soul." My own suggestion, however, is that individuality is merely a name for the uniqueness, particularity, or this-ness of each soul, distinguished from St. Thomas Aquinas' more essentialist view of the rational soul (human nature), while its potentials are the powers or capacities of the mind's mental faculties and free will, of inner vision, and of the spirit of faith; and that immortality is an affirmation of each soul's simplicity and indestructibility. Both individuality and immortality are nominal descriptions of souls, not the instrumentalities of human spirits.

ASMÁ Praxis: A Surrender to God's Will

Parallels can be drawn between ASMÁ Praxis™, the liberative social service dimension of ASMÁ, and certain concepts in various religious communties. Only four will be mentioned.

As expressed in some of the Judaisms, the translation of the Hebrew, and Lurianic Kabbalistic, term, tikkun olam, is repairing the world. Through its reinterpretation by the Jewish Renewal Movement, it has become a clarion call for environmental custodianship, peace, and social justice for the poor.

The word jihád is Arabic for struggle, not for holy war. Many Islámic moderates have situated its significance in the wrestling with one's nafs (Arabic cognate of the Hebrew nefesh), the multiple planes of the lower nature or ego, and in an exertion for human equity, peace, and the the rights of the poor. From their standpoint, only jiháds which are purposefully defensive, of one's own or another religious community, should be sanctioned on the battlefield.

With respect to Christianity, a myriad of liberals and postliberals, including those identifying with Every Church a Peace Church or Sojourners, promote inclusiveness, peace, and social justice among both Christians and those of other faiths. In the United States, the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ are two of the more open and progressive denominations.

However, conservative evangelicals, constituting one of the more influential categories of American Christendom, are among the most passionate advocates for corporate capitalism, considered by some to be oppressive of the poor, and among the most dedicated opponents of economic socialism. Yet, these positions would be difficult to support from the New Testament literature:

All who believed were together and held everything in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need. Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.
-- Acts 2:44-47 (from NET Bible)

Jesus also appears to have believed, in contradiction to prevailing evangelical conceptions of salvation without works, that the worthiness of individuals to inherit the Kingdom of God will be judged on evidence of their benevolence toward the poor. This text provides the locus classicus for his position.:

    When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.
    All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
    Then the king will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
    Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? "
    And the king will answer them, "I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me."
    "Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels! For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.
    I was a stranger and you did not receive me as a guest, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."
    Then they too will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not give you whatever you needed?"
    Then he will answer them, "I tell you the truth, just as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me. And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
-- Matthew 25:31-46 (from NET Bible)

Christ clearly expected His followers to serve the poor, and He assessed their qualification for eternal life, in the Kingdom of His Father, on the basis of their philanthropy. "And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me," (Matthew 10:38, NET Bible), He is quoted as saying.

In a similar vein, the Apostle James asserted that "... faith without works is dead" (James 2:26, NET Bible). While not inconsistent with Paul's condemnation of faithless works as indicative of self-righteousness, James would seem to have considered a workless faith to be a contradiction in terms.

Finally, from a Bahá'í standpoint, faith and works, or conforming oneself to God's Will, are inseparable and, for all intents and purposes, identical. Faith implies works, and, according to Shoghi Effendi:

Is not faith but another word for implicit obedience, whole-hearted allegiance, uncompromising adherence to that which we believe is the revealed and express will of God, however perplexing it might first appear, however at variance with the shadowy views, the impotent doctrines, the crude theories, the idle imaginings, the fashionable conceptions of a transient and troublous age?
-- Shoghi Effendi, Bahá'í Administration, page 62

Regarding the poor, Bahá'u'lláh wrote:

O YE RICH ONES ON EARTH!
The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, The Persian Hidden Words, number 54

And the Universal House of Justice sharply criticized the ideology supporting corporate capitalism for tending:

... to callously abandon starving millions to the operations of a market system that all too clearly is aggravating the plight of the majority of mankind, while enabling small sections to live in a condition of affluence scarcely dreamed of by our forebears.
-- The Universal House of Justice, The Promise of World Peace

Briefly, among the categories of service which might be utilized in Bahá'í service projects for ASMÁ are those involving an active participation in social and economic development. Opportunities for volunteerism could run the gambit from assisting non-profit agencies with low-income families and individuals to, perhaps more ambitiously, designing programs for aiding displaced victims, especially the poor, of natural and man-made disasters or planning and building intentional communities for the poor and disenfranchised. The last two of these projects are likely better suited to regional, rather than strictly local, operation.

Dialogical and Conversational Applications

The approach being proposed is a primary-source-based, or scriptural, study circle, one akin to the "radical traditions" approach within the postcritical theologies. Simply put, postcritical theologies turn to a particular set of religious scriptures, a canon perhaps, and engage in a dialogue or conversation about its relevancies to the issues and problems faced within an emerging community.

Postcritical theologies are also postliberal. Rather than looking for answers exclusively in an Enlightenment ideal of reason, or liberalism, almost in spite of the texts, these theologies advocate returning to the texts, not individually, but communally. Academic textual criticism is embraced, but it is a criticism which does not discount the commonsense theologizings by average believers.

Briefly, an ideal study circle methodology would, perhaps, be one which would allow the participants to dialogically engage with one another, with Bahá'í primary sources, and with the thinking of academic Bahá'í scholars. The focus would be on discovering narratives which could be applied to accomplishing the Plans published by the Universal House of Justice.

The objective is not to conduct a "free-for-all" discussion, as when the facilitator has each participant share her own understanding of a passage. Rather, texts would be carefully studied in their cultural, historical, and, if possible, linguistic contexts, including by introducing the views of persons who have studied these issues in some depth.

The Bahá'í Faith appears to advocate a prima scriptura (the written text first), more than a sola scriptura (only the written text), scriptural hermeneutic. Thus, Martin Luther's view of sola scriptura would establish the sovereignty of individual exegesis over the authority of Rome. He objected, not to tradition per se or to using interpretive tools external to the Bible, but to the sola ecclesia (only the church) approach to texts in the Roman Catholic Church.

Bahá'ís are not sola scriptura, in the manner of Luther or the Protestant Reformation, in that we accept the authority of the Guardian to interpret and the authority of the Universal House of Justice to legislatively elucidate. We have a living canon. On the other hand, given the right to personal interpretations or understanding of Sacred Texts in the Bahá'í community, we have nothing quite like the traditional sola ecclesia approach of Roman Catholicism either.

Instead, it appears that Bahá'ís utilize a prima scriptura method, one which affirms the preeminent place of the Bahá'í scriptures (including the writings of the Bab, Bahá'u'llah, and `Abdu'l-Bahá) but which also accepts the authority, under the Bahá'í Covenant, of the Guardian and the Universal House of Justice and, moreover, allows for individual interpretation, whether according to the views of academics or others.

More substantively, spiritual transformation, the higher alchemy (al-kímiyá), might be contextualized within the divine philosophy (hikmat-i-iláhí), theosophia, or wisdom teachings of the Bahá'í Revelation. To wit, that which is hakím, or wise, is relative to the divine Will (insh'alláh) revealed by a particular Prophet. Aside from God and His Manifestations, or Prophets, there is no eternal essence or ideal form of wisdom.

This higher alchemy is constructed, in mystical relationship with God through His Prophet, as a process beginning with the exercise of free will -- prayer, meditation, deepening, and service (order varies in the Bahá'í primary sources) -- attracting the assistance of the spirit of faith (the magnet of faith and service), which, in turn, enhances one's inner vision (insight) and illumines one's mental faculties, thereby allowing one's body to be coordinated in service to God's Will. The end result is the development of virtues (spiritual attributes).

The object is, over one's life course, to painstakingly replace one's human imperfections, the absence of virtuousness, with an attainment of spiritual qualities. Gradually, as the spirit of faith and faculty of inner vision, both capacities of the human spirit, are developed, one's conscience, or will, is uplifted, virtue by virtue, from the world of human imperfection to the world of human spirituality. Then, through an increased comprehension of the language games, or divine structurizations (constructions), included in the Bahá'í Revelation, and an application of one's understandings, one may progressively submit to the Will of God.

The methodology involves the radical destructurizaton of the old mind, including its socially scripted patterns of reactions. Given that many individuals habitually react to situations from their human imperfections, if a person desires to escape these socialized, reactive structurizations of the mind, she must, each time, fall into the habit of pausing, reflecting, and making a spiritually informed, salutary decision. Through this means, and by associating with a community of like-minded souls, her reactive structurizations can, reaction by reaction, be progressivelly conquered and replaced with the spiritually proactive structurizations of a new mind.

Clearly, not all scripts can, or must, be avoided. The continuity, and effective functioning, of communities, societies, and organizations demands a degree of conformity to certain socialized roles.

Nonetheless, scripted behaviors must be countenanced and deliberate, and the individual, not the script, needs to exercise the final veto. It is she who is required not to forfeit her perquisite to redact, where indicated by her wisdom, any socially constructed scripts, whereas the scripts themselves should never be privileged to dominate her decision-making processes.

Suggestions for scripting ASMÁ include:

1. engaging in prayer, meditation (such as the Bahá'í dhikr of 'Alláh'u'Abhá ninety-five-times per day), study of the Bahá'í scriptures, and service to the Cause of God (amr'u'lláh)
2. voluntarily surrendering one's personal will to the Will of God (insh'alláh), the Covenant (ahd), including conforming one's behavior to the directives of the Head of the Faith (the Universal House of Justice)
3. respecting, without condemnation or judgement, divese structurizations of reality and knowledge, whether by Bahá'ís or others, and recognizing that all truth constructions are subject to a tiered relativism™ of divine and human wills
4. willfully and positively structurizing one's life and experiences (renaming or socially reconstructing reality), focusing on (thinking about and loving) solution-based structurizations rather than problematic ones, and proceeding to modify one's actions accordingly

Additionally, a section of ASMÁ will provide a rudimentary introduction to Arabic and Persian and to the history and culture of the Lebenswelten (lifeworlds) of Bahá'u'lláh, the Báb, and `Abdu'l-Bahá. The objective will be to prepare the participant for subsequent contextualized studies of the linguistic and historical structurizations of the Bahá'í texts. Branch courses can address dimensions of these topics in greater depth.

Furthermore, another section of this program will, taking a postanarchist standpoint epistemology, consider the destructurization™, or deconstruction, of the contemporary global discourse and its embedded power, including the nation-state system and its dysfunctional subtext of national sovereignty. Then, abandoning postanarchism, it will consider whether various processes of restructurization™, or reconstruction, might produce nonoppressive, or minimally oppressive, systems of discoursive power based, not on a new metanarrative, but on sets of voluntary relationships.

The transformational spirituality surveyed in this paper, ASMÁ with its pedagogy of ASMÁ♦Training™, is not intended as a program for the masses. It is, rather, designed for such intellectually oriented individuals with a keen interest in its subject matter. By surveying the participatory elements of spiritual and social structurization (construction), various content delivery systems, including seminars and workshops14, will, over time, be developed, and persons will be qualified as ASMÁ Trainers™.

1ASMÁ is lovingly dedicated to my spiritual mother and mentor, the late Elizabeth Thomas of Manhasset, Long Island. Elizabeth, having introduced me to Marian Lippitt and Henry Weil and to their respective work, always encouraged me to conduct original Bahá'í deepening projects, to make personal compilations of the Bahá'í literature, to devise innovative terminologies, and to arrive at my own interpretations of Bahá'í subject matter and not simply to rely on her own, on Marian's, or on Henry's views. Were it not for my friendship with Elizabeth, my Bahá'í life might have taken a significantly different and considerably less interesting turn.

2The Structurization Institute is an agency of The MarkFoster.NETwork™. It is not a Bahá'í institute.

3ASMÁ has no relation to Ruhi, nor is it being suggested that ASMÁ should be incorporated into, or become a branch course of, the Ruhi curriculum.

4S♦Paradigm™

5My term, narrative spirituality, is adapted from narrative theology.

6Emergent theology has originated within the post-evangelical emerging church. Although a bit simplistic, while neoliberal theology came out of liberal theology, emergent, or emerging, theology developed out of evangelicalism. Both narrative theologies appear to be meeting in a postmodern, poststructural center. It is from the emerging church movement, that I developed the concept of an emergent community. D.A. Carson explains the emergent church in this way:

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