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Search After Truth
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Pages 73-74
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Search After Truth
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Bahá'u'lláh enjoins justice on all His followers and defines
it as: -- "The freedom of man from superstition and imitation,
so that he may discern the Manifestations of God with the eyes
of Oneness, and consider all affairs with keen sight." -- Words
of Wisdom.
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It is necessary that each individual should see and realize for
himself the Glory of God manifest in the human temple of
Bahá'u'lláh, otherwise the Bahá'í faith would be for him but
a name without meaning. The call of the Prophets to mankind
has always been that men should open their eyes, not shut
them, use their reason, not suppress it. It is clear seeing and
free thinking, not servile credulity, that will enable them to penetrate
the clouds of prejudice, to shake off the fetters of
blind imitation, and attain to the realization of the truth of a
new Revelation.
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He who would be a Bahá'í needs to be a fearless seeker after
truth, but he should not confine his search to the material
plane. His spiritual perceptive powers should be awake as well
as his physical. He should use all the faculties God has given
him for the acquisition of truth, believing nothing without valid
and sufficient reason. If his heart is pure, and his mind free
from prejudice, the earnest seeker will not fail to recognize the
Divine Glory in whatsoever temple it may become manifest.
Bahá'u'lláh further declares: --
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Man should know his own self, and know those things
that lead to loftiness or to baseness, to shame or to honor,
to wealth or to poverty. -- Tablet of Tarazát.
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The source of all learning is the knowledge of God,
exalted be His Glory! and this cannot be attained save
through the knowledge of His divine Manifestation. --
Words of Wisdom.
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The Manifestation is the Perfect Man, the great Exemplar
for Mankind, the First Fruit of the tree of humanity. Until we
know Him we do not know the latent possibilities within ourselves.
Christ tells us to consider the lilies how they grow, and
declares that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
of these. The lily grows from a very unattractive-looking bulb.
If we had never seen a lily in bloom, never gazed on its matchless
grace of foliage and flower, how could we know the reality
contained in that bulb? We might dissect it most carefully and
examine it most minutely, but we should never discover the
dormant beauty which the gardener knows how to awaken. So
until we have seen the Glory of God revealed in the Manifestation,
we can have no idea of the spiritual beauty latent in our
own nature and in that of our fellows. By knowing and loving
the Manifestation of God and following His teachings we are
enabled, little by little, to realize the potential perfections
within ourselves; then, and not till then, does the meaning and
purpose of life and of the universe become apparent to us.
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