Sacred Scriptures state that
He who hath known himself hath known God. [Islam]and also
Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting. [Bahá'í Faith]
So it seems the knowledge of God comes as the fruit of the process of self-discovery. The self that is to be investigated is the self described in all the Holy Texts of the world. For example:
We made man in Our own image and after our likeness. [Christianity]and again
I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty. [Bahá'í Faith]
3 comments:
This topic seems familiar :). I've probably asked you this before, but how do you make your quotes look so neat?
I know you know this, but I think one word of caution on the topic is to make sure we are looking to the higher nature of ourselves. Since, just like in meditation, if our mirror, i.e. our heart or attention, is pointed towards worldly things, that will be what is reflected. We must try to direct ourselves toward spiritual qualities and truths, and learning how to change our focus is part of the journey.
Very good observation. That's also what inspired the second set of quotations because simply to know oneself could lead down any number of false paths.
The idea for this post stemmed from thoughts on the existence of God and each individual's experience of the divine. What struck me is the idea that each person can experience the divine without having to go through someone else. Furthermore, the divine is not some strange, far-removed outside entity but something that lives within us (though not to be confused with pantheism or other such notions of a diffuse Godhead) and in fact gives us life.
The question for me now is how to reconcile this idea with the need we all have for Universal Divine Educators, whom Baha'u'llah calls the Manifestations of God.
As for the quotes, it's funny you should like them because I actually don't. How is it done? Highlight a portion of text and click the quotation button when writing up the post. The drawbacks are that (a) the text is smaller than the rest, and (b) the graphic at the beginning interferes with reading.
Oh dear, I misread, well missed a sentence of, your last paragraph. I jumped ahead to read the quotations got something slightly different out of them. Thanks for pointing that idea out. I guess that's another consequence of having the quotations be formatted differently. The reader may read the quotation without reading the text before it. Interesting potential of individual investigation of truth vs. misinterpreting the purpose of the quote being there.
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