{"id":15086,"date":"2025-01-01T13:46:37","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T10:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=15086"},"modified":"2025-01-12T13:36:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T10:06:56","slug":"an-occultists-thoughts-on-the-current-state-of-the-bahai-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=15086&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"An occultist’s thoughts on the current state of the Baha\u2019i faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 To begin, I have to say that I have never been a member of the Baha\u2019i<\/a> faith myself, however, lately I have been on a deep dive into the history, teachings and writings of the Baha\u2019i faith, and I have found it to be an incredibly interesting spiritual system, with so much to offer, as well as a fresh perennial perspective on the established Abrahamic faiths that are spread throughout most of the world today.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I started my research by reading some of the Baha\u2019i writings, supplemented by some reading from the Persian<\/a> Bayan. I found Bah\u00e1\u02bcu’ll\u00e1h\u2019s works to be full of insight, with a really elaborate and complex emanationist theology, similar to Kabbalah or Neoplatonism, accompanied by a really good regiment of mystical practice, prayer and meditation. His writings, especially the earlier ones, are also written in an eloquent and easily understandable, yet lofty and poetic style.<\/b><\/p>\n

Since the Bah\u00e1’\u00ed faith had roots in the Bab\u2019s esoteric interpretations of Islam, all this does make sense. The Baha\u2019i faith started as a fringe esoteric movement, and this is well reflected in the writings of Bah\u00e1\u02bcu’ll\u00e1h. He commonly spends time explaining his position as the Manifestation of God, on the meaning of it and his role in the broader Twelver Shi\u2019ite eschatology.<\/b><\/p>\n

After learning about this historical information, and after reading some of the writings, I decided to learn more about the faith today. As an occultist and a person interested in broader religious studies, the prospect of a fringe, Sufi influenced movement becoming a worldwide religion was very interesting to me. And after learning more about the Bah\u00e1’\u00ed faith today, I was left relatively disappointed.<\/b><\/p>\n

A lot of the deeper mystical food-for-thought aspects of the Baha\u2019i faith present in the earlier writings seems to have been completely forsaken, in favor of generic statements that seem like little more than a public relations campaign. Instead of theology, most of the modern writings about the Faith primarily focus on proclaiming and parroting vague paroles about \u201cthe unity of religion\u201d, \u201cthe unity of mankind\u201d, \u201cunity of science and religion\u201d, and similar statements. Usually, nobody goes in depth on any of these points, nobody talks about the meaning of these statements or in any meaningful way explain it beyond \u201cwe are the universal religion!\u201d.<\/b><\/p>\n

From what I gathered, the whole idea about the unity of religion was a relatively minor point in the original Baha\u2019i writings, especially compared to other laws and topics. In the earlier writings, it is obvious that the Baha\u2019i faith was supposed to be the continuation of Shia Islam, rather than the more vague notion of it being the \u201cuniversal religion\u201d. As far as I noticed, these ideas were elaborated on and introduced as important after Bah\u00e1\u02bcu’ll\u00e1h\u2019s death by \u02bbAbdu’l-Bah\u00e1, in an effort to make the faith more palatable to a Western audience, who couldn\u2019t care less about Shi\u2019a eschatology.<\/b><\/p>\n

The issue with this is that all the claims of the faith are based on the idea that Bah\u00e1\u02bcu’ll\u00e1h is the Islamic Mahdi. It is the foundation for Baha\u2019i theology and it all makes very little sense without it. \u02bbAbdu’l-Bah\u00e1 also introduced the idea that various Eastern deities and religious figures, such as Confucious, Krishna and the Buddha are Manifestations of God. This is again at odds with the inherently Abrahamic nature of the faith, and it was, from my understanding, the beginning of the downfall of the Baha\u2019i faith. From that point on, it became more focused on gaining converts in the West as quickly as possible rather than elaborating on Bah\u00e1\u02bcu’ll\u00e1h\u2019s teachings, or even more importantly, translating his many writings, most of which are still inaccessible to this day.<\/b><\/p>\n

Most Bah\u00e1\u02bci converts today don\u2019t know a lot about the theology or cosmology of their adopted faith, and they instead reduce the Baha\u2019i teachings to the level of a COEXIST bumper sticker. The UHJ seems to be actively sabotaging any further translations of the Baha\u2019i writings, and instead they focus on making books that are parroting the same paroles about some vague notion of unity of all mankind or world peace. The Baha\u2019i faith is also infiltrated with a lot of New Age ideas, such as Reiki or crystal healing, which seems to serve as a quick substitute for a lack of theological knowledge.<\/b><\/p>\n

I would say that the Baha\u2019i faith had the potential to spread a reformed and purified form of Sufi mysticism throughout the world, and I would argue that Bah\u00e1\u02bcu’ll\u00e1h\u2019s original teachings were even more tolerant and peaceful than what the UHJ preaches today (for example, endorsing Shoghi Effendi\u2019s homophobia). Like Mormonism, it lost its roots due to the focus shifting from staying true to the original goal to proselytizing and PR.<\/b><\/p>\n

But, these are just some opinions and impressions I gained from my personal research over the last few weeks.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 To begin, I have to say that I have never been a member of the Baha\u2019i faith myself, however, lately I have been on a deep dive into the history, teachings and writings of the Baha\u2019i faith, and I have found it to be an incredibly interesting spiritual system, with so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[823,985],"tags":[3138,2824,13229,2068,1390],"class_list":["post-15086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-articles","category-slidshow","tag-bahai-faith","tag-current","tag-occultist","tag-state","tag-thought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15086"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15162,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15086\/revisions\/15162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}