Re: Questions for the Next Manifestation



The learned men, that have fixed at several thousand years the life
of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their
observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other
planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have
resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that
every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own
creatures, whose number no man can compute.

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 162)


All praise to the unity of God, and all honor to Him, the sovereign
Lord, the incomparable and all-glorious Ruler of the universe, Who,
out of utter nothingness, hath created the reality of all things,
Who, from naught, hath brought into being the most refined and subtle
elements of His creation, and Who, rescuing His creatures from the
abasement of remoteness and the perils of ultimate extinction, hath
received them into His kingdom of incorruptible glory. Nothing short
of His all-encompassing grace, His all-pervading mercy, could have
possibly achieved it. How could it, otherwise, have been possible for
sheer nothingness to have acquired by itself the worthiness and
capacity to emerge from its state of non-existence into the realm of
being?

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 64)

You don't need to wait for an answer. Baha'u'llah alludes to the fact
that the universe was created from nothing. It could be my
interpretation is wrong, so you should read it for yourself. But I'd
imagine at some point in time there may have been nothing (whatever
that is?).

Baha'u'llah has also alluded to the fact that the earth is ancient in
several locations beyond those cited, well beyond the 6-10,000 year
limit placed on it by some of the 'scholars' of his time. He never
gives a specific age (to my knowledge) but does seem to indicate that
it is grossly beyond the conventional 6000 year time frame given by
his peers.

Consider how all other phenomenal existence and beings are captives of
nature. The sun, that colossal center of our solar system, the giant
stars and planets, the towering mountains, the earth itself and its
kingdoms of life lower than the human, -- all are captives of nature
except man.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith - Abdu'l-Baha Section, p. 235)

Alot could be said about animals and man. We know they share many of
our emotions like love, hate...etc. But the most telling difference is
we are not captives to nature. You'll find ants that farm, and herd
other insects or worms, and that they can have complex social
structures and some animals have basic languages, even a limited tool
making ability. But the key is their ultimate captivity to nature.

I'd like to also interject my own thought that free will to a
certain extent is lacking in animals. A dog's sense of fairness,
loyalty and in large part its' freedom to operate is explainable by
conventional psychology and genetics. But people still defy those more
conventional explanations. You can breed a dog to exhibit noble
qualities and it will do so because it must. But a human is more
complex.

In regards to your evolution question I've come to really like the
seed analogy. You can find the DNA code that codes for the leaf in a
seed for a tree. When a tree grows, every step of the way, that part
of the tree was destined to be a leaf. While it may have shared forms
and DNA with other parts of the tree along the way, that specific code
for the leaf was always going to be a leaf. If you correctly
transplant that code into another tree, you'll get that leaf. I'd
imagine that evolution for man is much the same. We may have shared
forms and even intelligence with many other species out there, but we
were always man, right back to the code.

Since the inception of religion evolution for man has moved from
being the preservation of our genetic code to the preservation of our
conscious state. You can easily see how evolution for animals seems to
always center on fitness and viability, but with man, our goal isn't
to preserve our genetic code so much as it is to preserve who we
are.

.

Relevant Pages