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The spiritual practice of ASMÁ (Arabic, 
or
asmá' for names), a conversation, is an acronym for Applied Studies in Mythic Analysis™, and it functions as the conceptual framework for The Center for The Emergence of ASMÁ™2. Yet, it should be noted at the outset that the term, mythic3, is here used, in its common academic sense, as a thoroughly neutral designation for sacred stories, and not as a deprecative reference to fiction or fairytales. In mythopoeia, the process of myth-making, we read the homiletic stories contained in sacred scriptures, localize them into their relevant contexts, relate them to our own personal stories, and, finally, retell them to others through both conversation and performance.
The program reflects a reframing, a recontextualization, of the theologically progressive arm of the emerging movement4. The roots of that movement, anchored in the emerging culture of postmodernity, lie in Emergent Village and, more broadly, in the emerging church, a postmodern Christian ecclesiastical style and mode of religious discourse and praxis. The diverse manifestations of the emerging movement and similar perspectives span the liberal-to-conservative Christian theological spectrum and have even extended to sectors of Judaism, Islam, and the new age movement. Structurally, the theological and hierological characteristics of ASMÁ are common to many of these progressive manifestations of the emerging movement: postmodernism, poststructuralism, contemplative and other alternative forms of spirituality, postliberal or Yale school (narrative) theologies, postcritical theologies, and theologies of liberation.
More specifically, ASMÁ is a Bahá’í deepening process, a study circle5 proposal, and a deconstructive and constructive narrative spirituality™6. It advocates a radically inclusive 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. ASMÁ is, in brief, the orthopraxy of virtuous living.
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 constructions 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. Consequently, all descriptions of worlds or kingdoms, and of the content and ordering of spiritual conditions and substances, are axiological. They are predesigned to convey to us, through sequences of literary symbol pictures, a series of pedagogical morality plays. That is to say, Bahá’u’lláh is the divine Educator, not the divine theologian, and His utterances are principally pragmatic and remedial, not metaphysical.
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 constructions, 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, illustrated by the parable of the blind men and the elephant), 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. These groups, some which even function presently, would consist of Bahá’ís who, while accepting the authority of the Bahá’í primary sources, may differ in their relative understandings of, or approaches to, certain substantive issues. By the same token, one should also have reason to expect 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 (from Jacques Derrida, discoursive "meaning" as simultaneously present and in continual process), 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.
For instance, in Bahá’u’lláh's revisioning of the Persian poet `Aṭṭár's Conference of the Birds, The Seven Valleys, we are presented with one such language game. While engaging in its contemplation, we might begin at the end, namely, in the condition of faná (self-annihilation), a term translated, quite colorfully, by Marzieh Gail as The Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness. Moreover, the evanescence of self-will, al-faná al-nafs al-ammára (the extinction of the commanding self), might well be regarded as the culmination of other spiritual attributes, such as, search, love, knowledge, and contentment. That is to say, the first valley, the Valley of Search, and the six others discussed subsequently in the Tablet, could together be actualized by a surrender of the human heart to the Will of God.
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 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 constructions, 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.
The effectiveness or efficiency of the languages games played out in this paper should be evaluated on a utilitarian basis, which is to say, whether participating in these games satisfies the spiritual goals and objectives one had set forth at the outset. Speculating on any supposed isomorphisms between the linguistic pictures provided and existence per se is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, horribily misleading. Words are only words, and, perhaps, several, even contradictory, models of truth could be accepted as legitimate.
Furthermore, applying the Aristotelian law of noncontradiction to a matter of spirit is an anthropomorphic dead end. To phrase that another way, when an individual imposes one of many logics, or other language games, on an incompatible text, one not written specifically with that narrative in mind, she commits an intellectual colonialism or hegemony of the worst sort. Thus, we rely upon methodological pragmatism while repudiating linguistic realism and the presumed universalism of any metanarrative.
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 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 and its categories which she developed, and then later implemented with her coworkers, was simply the Writings and not merely the product of a single individual's deepening and personal interpretation. This view effectvely attributes to Lippitt a type of verbal plenary inerrancy:
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 Neoplatonic 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 constructions, 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 God10 has, over several decades, been reformulated by this writer as the categorical framework of ASMÁ Theism™. 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, a constructivist outline, not the realist map presented by Lippitt, may better serve to illustrate this arrangement. Please not that, although there are nineteen categories (the abjad value of vaḥid for unity), that number was not intentional.
From one standpoint, Neoplatonic 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, phrase regimens, 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.
Furthermore, 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 the spheres of academic and other secular pursuits – framed, in his own day, as the Pope's authority and magisterium over governments – should not be governed by sacred religious texts or, by extension, by scriptural hermeneutics.
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 human spirit is the agency or instrumentality of the soul. 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 terms, human spirit, rational soul, rational faculty, and common faculty, appear to have been used by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as a category, a rubric, for the soul acting as a unifying agency over the body. These areas of functioning distinguish humans from other animals.
Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. Examine thine own self, and behold how thy motion and stillness, thy will and purpose, thy sight and hearing, thy sense of smell and power of speech, and whatever else is related to, or transcendeth, thy physical senses or spiritual perceptions, all proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty. So closely are they related unto it, that if in less than the twinkling of an eye its relationship to the human body be severed, each and every one of these senses will cease immediately to exercise its function, and will be deprived of the power to manifest the evidences of its activity. It is indubitably clear and evident that each of these afore-mentioned instruments has de- pended, and will ever continue to depend, for its proper functioning on this rational faculty, which should be regarded as a sign of the revelation of Him Who is the sovereign Lord of all. Through its mani- festation all these names and attributes have been revealed, and by the suspension of its action they are all destroyed and perish.
It would be wholly untrue to maintain that this
faculty is the same as the power of vision, inasmuch
as the power of vision is derived from It and acteth
in dependence upon it. It would, likewise, be idle to
contend that this faculty can be identified with the
sense of hearing, as the sense of hearing receiveth
from the rational faculty the requisite energy for
performing its functions.
-- Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the
Writings of Bahá’u’lláh,
pages 164-165
"... 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
In man five outer powers exist, which are the agents of perception ; that is to say, through these five powers man perceives material beings. These are sight, which perceives visible forms; hearing, which perceives audible sounds; smell, which perceives odours; taste, which perceives foods; and feeling, which is in all parts of the body, and perceives tangible things. These five powers perceive outward existences.
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.
For instance, sight is one of the outer powers; it sees and perceives this flower, and conveys this perception to the inner power the common faculty which transmits this perception to the power of imagination, which in its turn conceives and forms this image and transmits it to the power of thought; the power of thought reflects, and having grasped the reality, conveys it to the power of comprehension; the comprehension, when it has comprehended it, delivers the image of the object perceived to the memory, and the memory keeps it in its repository.
The outward powers are five : the power of sight, of hearing, of taste, of smell, and of feeling.
The inner powers are also five : the common faculty,
and the powers of imagination, thought, comprehension,
and memory.
-- ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions,
page 245-246
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™.
Weil also believed that the individuality, accompanied by what he regarded as its twin potentials for accomplishment and inner change, and immortality were "powers of the soul." Even so, my own suggestion is that individuality is merely a name for the uniqueness, particularity, or this-ness of each soul, a view which is distinguished from St. Thomas Aquinas' essentialistic and Aristotelian conception of the rational soul and human nature. The potentials of a soul would reflect the degrees to which the mind's mental faculties and free will, of inner vision, and of the spirit of faith can be expressed. Additionally, immortality might be understood as 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 emancipatory or 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.
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, 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 necessarily 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, a unity in diversity, given the spectrum of talents and interests of individuals, of categories in Bahá’í service projects are those involving an active participation in social and economic development. Opportunities for volunteerism could run the gamut 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. One of the focuses might be 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, what is more, 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 constructions (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 deconstruction 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 constructions 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 constructions can, reaction by reaction, be progressivelly conquered and replaced with the spiritually proactive constructions of a new mind.
Clearly, not all scripts can, must, or should 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:
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 constructions 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 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 reconstruction might produce nonoppressive, or minimally oppressive, systems of communicative 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 narrative construction, various content delivery systems, including seminars and workshops14, will, over time, be developed, and persons will be qualified as ASMÁ Trainers™.
Endnotes
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 Center for The Emergence of ASMÁ™
is an agency of The MarkFoster.NETwork™. It is
not a Bahá’í institute.
3Visit The History of Mythology page for more information.
4Emerging 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 emerging community.
5ASMÁ 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. Although this
writer is not involved with the Ruhi program (having only attended
one or two sesssions in the past), neither is he opposed to it. From
his perspective, Ruhi is more about the cultivation of love than the
attainment of knowledge.
6My term,
narrative spirituality, is adapted from narrative theology.
7For other perspectives on
Lippitt's work, visit the official website of The Foundation for the
Investigation of Reality. I am a former member of the Foundation, a
former member of its Board of Trustees (1996-2001), and, at one time,
its Academic Director
(1994-2003). I also continue to maintain the Foundation's previous official website.
Useful historical context can be obtained by reading this selection from
some of Lippitt's written materials:
GOD, the Source of all Existence; (Unknowable Essence)
DEITY, condition of Infinitude, Eternality, Divinity
=====================================================
GREATER WORLD that God manifests- Condition of Prophethood
World of Manifestation -
In His Kingdom:-His Manifestation who manifests-
Causing of God - Holy Spirit - Will of God - Word of God
(God's Cause)
======================================================
CREATION
LESSER WORLD that God creates ---Condition of Servitude
World of Human Souls - Manifestation in the form of a
Human Creature, reflecting Reality
and capable of reflecting ALL the
Attributes of God
KINGDOM OF DEPARTED SOULS
KINGDOM REVEALED -Revealed Condition
progressively to SO'Ls - of Spirituality
thru REVELATION and
translated into RELIGION
This is where each SOUL begins its prenatal life
as a SO'L, grows, receives Enlightenment,
and develops its maturity.
WORLD ORDER OF BAHA’U’LLAH
Below are Worlds proceeding from Human vision or spirit:
MANKIND , condition of Human Beings or SO'Ls as currently
developed; personalities, each with its own
human consciousness and spiritual powers;
man as a part of Humanity.
HUMANNESS, condition of the Human organism that serves, as
a mental and emotional agent, the SO'L of which
it is a part.
RATIONALITY, the Human Thought World and of the Human
organism thru which the RATIONAL faculties
of man function.
MATERIAL WORLD, condition of MATERIALITY of the physical
universe composed of mineral,
vegetable, and animal organisms
perceptible to the body senses.
Note: SO'L is used to denote the Soul on this plane because the real
U is not fully present here.
Consciousness:
Material World, Human Thought World, Humanness,
Mankind, Spirituality, are formed by our levels of
awareness or vision
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