In sum, there is no end to the description of these stages, but because of the wrongs inflicted by the peoples of the earth, this Servant is in no mood to continue: The tale is still unfinished and I have no heart for it—, The pen groaneth and the ink sheddeth tears, and the river, After scaling the high summits of wonderment the wayfarer cometh to. For the infidel, error—for the faithful, faith; The steed of this Valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end. Only 1 left in stock - order soon. In like manner, when thou strippest the wrappings of illusion from off thine heart, the lights of oneness will be made manifest. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Turning His back on a life of luxury, He early championed the Cause of the Báb. Now is the traveler unaware of himself, and of aught besides himself. How shall a curtain part the lover and the loved one? They cannot tell one limb from another, one part from another. For instance, in a yellow globe, the rays shine yellow; in a white the rays are white; and in a red, the red rays are manifest. Thus it hath been made clear that these stages depend on the vision of the wayfarer. I had forgotten how deeply influenced Baha'i faith was in its beginning by Persian Sufism. Many committees and councils have worked hard for religious harmony but World War II supplied the spectacle of Protestants fighting Protestants and Catholics killing Catholics. While reading Rumi, I was reminded of these tablets over and over, and then had to go back to read them again. by Bahai Publishing. Love accepteth no existence and wisheth no life: He seeth life in death, and in shame seeketh glory. When the pen set to picturing this station. We shall give an example of this, that its meaning may become fully clear: Consider the visible sun; although it shineth with one radiance upon all things, and at the behest of the King of Manifestation bestoweth light on all creation, yet in each place it becometh manifest and sheddeth its. If the travelers seek after the goal of the Intended One (, On this plane, the self is not rejected but beloved; it is well-pleasing and not to be shunned. And they swim in the sea of the spirit, O my friend, look upon thyself: Hadst thou not become a father nor begotten a son, neither wouldst thou have heard these sayings. Please try again. How crystal this cool water that the Cup-Bearer bringeth! I seek thy nearness, dearer than sweet Heaven; When I entrusted this message of love to My pen, it refused the burden, and it swooned away. “Should God punish men for their perverse doings, He would not leave on earth a moving thing! “His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation.”, In this Valley, the wayfarer leaveth behind him the stages of the “oneness of Being and Manifestation”, In all these journeys the traveler must stray, If any of the utterances of this Servant may not be comprehended, or may lead to perturbation, the same must be inquired of again, that no doubt may linger, and the meaning be clear as the Face of the Beloved One shining from the “Glorious Station.”, These journeys have no visible ending in the world of time, but the severed wayfarer—if invisible confirmation descend upon him and the Guardian of the Cause assist him—may cross these seven stages in seven steps, nay rather in seven breaths, nay rather in a single breath, if God will and desire it. Until thou enter the Egypt of love, thou shalt never come to the Joseph of the Beauty of the Friend; and until, like Jacob, thou forsake thine outward eyes, thou shalt never open the eye of thine inward being; and until thou burn with the fire of love, thou shalt … Likewise He saith, “Go straight on then as thou hast been commanded.”. For whatever the creatures have is limited by their own limits, and whatever the, This is the plane whereon the vestiges of all things are destroyed in the traveler, and on the horizon of eternity the Divine Face riseth out of the darkness, and the meaning of “All on the earth shall pass away, but the face of thy Lord....”, O My friend, listen with heart and soul to the songs of the spirit, and treasure them as thine own eyes. %PDF-1.4 %���� Wert thou to harken to the melodies of this mortal Bird. And if, by the help of God, he findeth on this journey a trace of the traceless Friend, and inhaleth the fragrance of the long-lost. I have no possessions, no power, and this is what God hath ordained. On a sudden, a watchman followed, And there he beheld his beloved with a lamp in her hand, searching for a ring she had lost. 0000004262 00000 n God, the Exalted, hath placed these signs in men, to the end that philosophers may not deny the mysteries of the life beyond nor belittle that which hath been promised them. The knower straightway flung himself into the waves, but the grammarian stood lost in his reasonings, which were as words that are written on water. Here followeth a supplication to God, the Exalted, the Glorified: O Lord! We’d love your help. Behold how many secrets are deposited therein, how many wisdoms treasured up, how many worlds concealed. There must be work for all with no idle poor and no idle rich. He seeth neither ignorance nor knowledge, neither doubt nor certitude; he knoweth not the morn of guidance from the night of error. I have had several brushes with Bahai’ism: I had just read about Bahaiism in my senior world religions course. Those who progress in mystic wayfaring are of four kinds. The denizens of this plane speak no words—but they gallop their chargers. I just reread this after reading a collection of Rumi poems for the first time. On our wedding invitation we put another quotation from the Seven Valleys: "To merit the madness of love, man must abound in sanity..." This reading I also compared the new translation found in "The Call of the Divine Beloved" with this first translation. Then wilt thou clearly see the meaning of “Neither doth My earth nor My heaven contain Me, However, let none construe these utterances to be anthropomorphism, nor see in them the descent of the worlds of God into the grades of the creatures; nor should they lead, Wherefore, the lovers of the face of the Beloved have said: “O Thou, the One Whose Essence alone showeth the way to His Essence, and Who is sanctified above any likeness to His creatures.”, Yea, these mentionings that have been made of the grades of knowledge relate to the knowledge of the. Hence, one of the Prophets of God hath asked: “O my Lord, how shall we reach unto Thee?” And the answer came, “Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.”. Being hath no existence in his kingdom; the wise wield no command within his realm. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. In 1934 Shoghi Effendi requested that Ali Kuli Khan translate the Four Valleys into English and re-translate the Seven Valleys, which he had translated in the early 1900's. January 1st 1945 Service is prayer. In this station the lover hath no thought save the Beloved, and seeketh no refuge save the Friend. Then we must labor to destroy the animal condition, till the meaning of humanity shall come to light. Yet those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and friendliness in anger. Indeed, O Brother, if we ponder each created thing, we shall witness a myriad perfect wisdoms and learn a myriad new and wondrous truths. and is tossed in the oceans of grandeur, and at every moment his wonder groweth. O light of truth, Hisám-i-Dín, the bounteous, No prince hath the world begot like unto Thee! In the Valley of Unity, the verses from Rúmí about, In the Valley of Wonderment, a line is quoted from, Too often has society suffered from outwardly pious men, pillars of churches and ornaments of communities, who were convinced that they were “saved” and that they could with impunity disregard the basic rules of decent conduct. 1611 0 obj<> endobj See also the authorized 2019 translation. Now he seeth the shape of wealth as poverty itself, and the essence of freedom as sheer impotence. Although at the beginning, this plane is the realm of conflict, yet it endeth in attainment to the throne of splendor. Two works written in Baghdad after Bahá’u’lláh returned from Kurdistan in 1856. He, It is clear to thine Eminence that all the variations which the wayfarer in the stages of his journey beholdeth in the realms of being, proceed from his own vision. Many a hound pursueth this gazelle of the desert of oneness; many a talon claweth at this thrush of the eternal garden. In 2019 an updated translation of the Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys was published by the Bahá'í World Centre in the compilation The Call of the Divine Beloved. The Seven Valleys of Bahá'u'lláh. Paperback. Give Thou glory to the watchman, and riches and long life. I am not of the Baha'i faith, but the passages contained in this book are inspiring and beautiful. These are the wicked doers.”, If the wayfarer’s goal be the dwelling of the Praiseworthy One (, “And thou mightest have seen the sun when it arose, pass on the right of their cave, and when it set, leave them on the left, while they were in its spacious chamber. Next. Did ever, God forbid, My devotion lessen, or My deep affection fail, that thou hast thus forgot Me and blotted Me from thy thoughts? To them the mirage is the real river; to them going away is returning. 0000001428 00000 n May it do them good, whoso drink thereof, and taste of its sweetness and attain to its knowledge. Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too; He hath bound a myriad victims in his fetters, wounded a myriad wise men with his arrow. This little book by Baha'u'llah is a very big statement about the nature of existence and the various conditions of the human soul as it attempts to unravel its mysteries and discover The Ultimate Unknown--God. Obey Me and I shall make thee like unto Myself. And shouldst thou, After journeying through the planes of pure contentment, the traveler cometh to. “One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. Beautiful. Rumi, the greatest Sufi poet, is quoted profusely. Praise be to God Who hath made being to come forth from nothingness; graven upon the tablet of man the secrets of preexistence; taught him from the mysteries of divine utterance that which he knew not; made him a Luminous Book unto those who believed and surrendered themselves; caused him to witness the creation of all things in this black and ruinous age, and to speak forth from the apex of eternity with a wondrous voice in the Excellent Temple, And I praise and glorify the first sea which hath branched from the ocean of the Divine Essence, and the first morn which hath glowed from the Horizon of Oneness, and the first sun which hath risen in the Heaven of Eternity, and the first fire which was lit from the Lamp of Preexistence in the lantern of singleness: He who was Aḥmad in the kingdom of the exalted ones, and, Further, we have harkened to what the nightingale of knowledge sang on the boughs of the tree of thy being, and learned what the dove of certitude cried on the branches of the bower of thy heart.

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