My dear Gilberto
Everything you wrote is received by my mind and heart with affection and
love apart from your comment below re Baha'u'llah and not seeing the green.
I swear by God [Allah] this last point is not fair were you to have read and
seen what I have seen.
At least I could say in all honesty that I have read the Writings of the
Awliyaa and keep an eye on the suffering of my fellow human beings but that
remark re Haz.rate Baha'u'llah is far from ins.aaf [equity] and 'adl.[
fairness]
God forbid it reminds me of the dismissive remark that the Imam Husayn's
Life would not have ended in Martyrdom on the fields of Karbila had He not
sought what He sought...
We have to be careful in all our remarks.
I love your letters
That is why this servant responds to this last point with candour and truth
[h.aqeeqat]
Humble and lowly towards the footsteps of His awliya khazeh
> We must go beyond Names [asmaa'] to a large extent.
>
> Look at the Writings Look at the Pen of Baha'u'llah. Look at His
> incarceration the fact the He was prevented from beholding greenery and
> verdure for nine years. Look at the transforming influence of His Son on
> someone like Martha root or May Maxwell or Thomas Breakwell...
But even today, there are good Muslims who are put in prison and made
to go through worse suffering and worse humiliation than not seeing
gardens for a couple of years. Even today there are people whose lives
are being transformed.
Peace
Gilberto
For your kind information were you to peruse it for some few minutes
***** "The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors," He Himself in His anguish
has cried out, "have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white. Shouldst thou
present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to recognize the Ancient
Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is altered and its brightness
hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the infidels. I swear by God!
His heart, His soul, and His vitals are melted!" "Wert thou to hear with
Mine ear," He also declares, "thou wouldst hear how Ali [the Bab] bewaileth
Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, and how Muhammad weepeth over
Me in the all-highest Horizon, and how the Spirit [Jesus] beateth Himself
upon the head in the heaven of My decree, by reason of what hath befallen
this Wronged One at the hands of every impious sinner." "Before Me," He
elsewhere has written, "riseth up the Serpent of wrath with jaws stretched
to engulf Me, and behind Me stalketh the lion of anger intent on tearing Me
in pieces, and above Me, O My Well-Beloved, are the clouds of Thy decree,
raining upon Me the showers of tribulations, whilst beneath Me are fixed the
spears of misfortune, ready to wound My limbs and My body." "Couldst thou
be told," He further affirms, "what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou
wouldst flee into the wilderness, and weep with a great weeping. In thy
grief, thou wouldst smite thyself on the head, and cry out as one stung by
the sting of the adder.... By the righteousness of God! Every morning I
arose from My bed I discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed
behind My door, and every night when I lay down, lo! My heart was torn with
agony at what it had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes. With
every piece of bread the Ancient Beauty breaketh is coupled the assault of a
fresh affliction, and with every drop He drinketh is mixed the bitterness of
the most woeful of trials. He is preceded in every step He taketh by an
army of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing
sorrows."
Was it not He Who, at the early age of twenty-seven, spontaneously
arose to champion, in the capacity of a mere follower, the nascent Cause of
the Bab? Was He not the One Who by assuming the actual leadership of a
proscribed and harrassed sect exposed Himself, and His kindred, and His
possessions, and His rank, and His reputation to the grave perils, the
bloody assaults, the general spoliation and furious defamations of both
government and people? Was it not He - the Bearer of a Revelation, Whose
day "every Prophet hath announced," for which "the soul of every Divine
Messenger hath thirsted," and in which "God hath proved the hearts of the
entire company of His Messengers and Prophets" - was not the Bearer of such
a Revelation, at the instigation of Shi'ih ecclesiastics and by order of the
Shah himself forced, for no less than four months, to breathe, in utter
darkness, whilst in the company of the vilest criminals and freighted down
with galling chains, the pestilential air of the vermin-infested
subterranean dungeon of Tihran - a place which, as He Himself subsequently
declared, was mysteriously converted into the very scene of the annunciation
made to Him by God of His Prophethood?
*****
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