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181: Regarding the statement in The Hidden Words, ...
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     Regarding the statement in The Hidden Words, that man must renounce his own self, the meaning is that 
he must renounce his inordinate desires, his selfish purposes 
and the promptings of his human self, and seek out the holy 
breathings of the spirit, and follow the yearnings of his 
higher self, and immerse himself in the sea of sacrifice, with 
his heart fixed upon the beauty of the All-Glorious.  
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     As for the reference in The Hidden Words regarding the 
Covenant entered into on Mount Párán, this signifieth that 
in the sight of God the past, the present and the future are 
all one and the same--whereas, relative to man, the past is 
gone and forgotten, the present is fleeting, and the future is 
within the realm of hope.  And it is a basic principle of the 
Law of God that in every Prophetic Mission, He entereth 
into a Covenant with all believers--a Covenant that 
endureth until the end of that Mission, until the promised 
day when the Personage stipulated at the outset of the 
Mission is made manifest.  Consider Moses, He Who conversed 
with God.  Verily, upon Mount Sinai, Moses entered 
into a Covenant regarding the Messiah, with all those souls 
who would live in the day of the Messiah.  And those souls, 
although they appeared many centuries after Moses, were 
nevertheless--so far as the Covenant, which is outside time, 
was concerned--present there with Moses.  The Jews, 
however, were heedless of this and remembered it not, and 
thus they suffered a great and clear loss.  
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     As to the reference in the Arabic Hidden Words that the 
human being must become detached from self, here too the 
meaning is that he should not seek out anything whatever 
for his own self in this swiftly-passing life, but that he 
should cut the self away, that is, he should yield up the self 
and all its concerns on the field of martyrdom, at the time 
of the coming of the Lord.  
 
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