Planet Bahá'í

It's not easy to define religion. Some people think of religion in terms of rules and laws, others in terms of structure and organization. Religion can be described in terms of belief systems or corporate bodies formed by groups of like-minded people. Certainly all of these are involved in religion, but I'd like to propose something quite different for your consideration: religion as experience, as a relationship with the divine.

Shoghi Effendi noted that the essential aspect of religion is neither laws nor organizations nor even the community itself. Rather, the essential aspect of religion is experiential:

For the core of religious faith is that mystical feeling which unites man with God. This state of spiritual communion can be brought about and maintained by means of meditation and prayer. And this is the reason why Bahá'u'lláh has so much stressed the importance of worship. It is not sufficient for a believer merely to accept and observe the teachings. He should, in addition, cultivate the sense of spirituality which he can acquire chiefly by means of prayer.

(From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer, December 8, 1935: Bahá'í News, No. 102, August 1936, p2, reprinted in Lights of Guidance, p. 506)

This "mystical feeling which unites man with God" lies entirely on the plane of the subjective. It is not something that can be readily shared with other people, although it can be spoken of and demonstrated through the effect it has on a person. To know it, one must not merely hear about it from others. One must experience it. A Zen author I read many years ago noted that although we can objectively measure the temperature of the water in a cold stream, we won't know what cold water feels like until we plunge our hand into it. Bahá'u'lláh spoke of the need for direct experience in spiritual matters thus:

The story is told of a mystic knower, who went on a journey with a learned grammarian as his companion. They came to the shore of the Sea of Grandeur. 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. The knower called out to him, "Why dost thou not follow?" The grammarian answered, "O Brother, I dare not advance. I must needs go back again." Then the knower cried, "Forget what thou didst read in the books of Sibavayh and Qawlavayh, of Ibn-i-Hajib and Ibn-i-Malik [famed writers on grammar and rhetoric], and cross the water."

(The Four Valleys, p. 51)

Here the "mystic knower" is the master of direct experience, while the "grammarian" is a materialist, trusting only what can be objectively demonstrated. The latter's reservations prevent him from the ocean of knowledge that is available only through "crossing the water" for himself. None of this is to belittle objective knowledge, of course. It is only to say that there is so much more to be learned than can be known through the methods of logic and science.

So what precisely do we mean by "experience of the divine"? This is a difficult question to answer, because religious experience is by its very nature such a broad field. Some people have had, at critical times in their lives, a powerful sense of God's love enveloping them. Others have experienced dreams of an apparently spiritual nature. Yet others "hear the voice of God" when reading Scripture. We recently had an interesting discussion in the Planet Bahá'í Forum on this very question. You might like to browse it to get a feel for how various Bahá'ís explain their experiences.

But ultimately, we must return to the point Shoghi Effendi made in the above quote. In order to really experience the divine, we have to seek out the experience. We must, as the "mystic knower" did, "fling ourselves into the waves." For this reason, prayer and meditation are the center of the spiritual life. Through these activities, we enter into communion with the divine.

And finally, we should consider the character of this relationship we enter into, this experience we seek to have. For what are we searching? Knowledge? Power? Material advantage? Clearly not. Rather, the mystical experience is neither more nor less than love. Ultimately, this is why religion is, at its most fundamental level, a matter of direct experience. You can be loved by many, but nobody else can love for you. You were called into being by God's love, but "If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee." Here we might ponder the parable of the prodigal son, related by Jesus in Luke 15:11-32, in which the rich man rejoices at the return of his son, who "was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."

Those who wait for someone to "prove" to them that this or that religion is "true" will likely be waiting a long time. Like the grammarian, they stand on the shore and refuse to dive into the sea to discover for themselves what pearls lie hidden in its depths. But those willing to swim for themselves, those willing to take a chance on God's love, they will "see with their own eyes and not through the eyes of others" and will "know of their own knowledge and not through the knowledge of their neighbor." This, I believe, is the essence of all true religion.