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The Archeology of the Kingdom of God The Archeology of the Kingdom of God originally published in French as Archéologie du royaume de Dieu: Ontologie des mondes divins dans les écrits de Baha'u'llah Jean-Marc Lepain, author Peter Terry, translator ————— DEDICATION To the memory of Dr. 'Ali Murad Davudi, philosopher, martyr. “As for the question concerning the worlds of God, know that in truth that these worlds are infinite in their number as much as in their extent. No one can count or embrace them, except for God, the Omniscient, the Most Wise.” — Baha’u’llah (1817-1892) ————— TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION 1. Philosophical and mystical character of the work of Baha’u’llah 2. Baha’u’llah, his life and his work 3. The philosophy of Baha’u’llah 4. From hermeneutics to ontology 5. The hermeneutical question 6. Problems and methods THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD FIRST PART: HERMENEUTICS CHAPTER I. In search of the Kingdom 1. The Kingdom as intelligible structure 2. The Tablet of All Food 3. The hierarchy of the divine worlds 4. The world of Hahut 5. The world of Lahut 6. The world of Jabarut 7. The world of Malakut 8. Malakut as a metaphorical world 9. The unity of the divine worlds 10. The infinite continuum of the divine worlds 11. The Tablet of Haqqu'n-Nas 12. Hermeneutical character of the nomenclature of the divine worlds CHAPTER II. The Kingdom of Abha 1. The Kingdom of Abha as the world of the spirits 2. The mystery of preexistence 3. The soul and the world 4. The three spheres of Malakut 5. The leaven which makes the world rise CHAPTER III. The Aramaic origins of the nomenclature of the divine worlds 1. Malakut in the Qur'an 2. The Kingdom in Jewish tradition 3. The Kingdom of the heavens in the Gospel 4. The tenth sefirah in the Kabbala 5. Leibniz and Malkut CHAPTER IV. The divine worlds in the tradition of Islam 1. The lexigraphical origins of Hahut, Lahut and Nasut 2. The couplet Lahut-Nasut according to al-Hallaj 3. The metaphysical system of al-Makki 4. The divine worlds according to al-Ghazali 5. The influence of al-Suhrawardi 6. Ibn al-'Arabi 7. Jabarut as the world of decree 8. Malakut as the angelic world 9. The school of Isfahan 10. Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa'i 2 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD CHAPTER V. The divine worlds in the work of Baha’u’llah 1. Hermeneutical aspects 2. Vocabulary 3. Malakut 4. The Kingdom of Creation 5. The Kingdom of Names 6. The Kingdom of the Visible and of the Invisible 7. Jabarut 8. Malakut associated with Jabarut 9. The world of Revelation, of Commandment and of imperative theology 10. The world of Mulk or world below 11. The superior worlds 12. Hahut and Lahut CHAPTER VI. The divine worlds as theophany 1. Theophanic hierarchy and ontological hierarchy 2. The divine worlds in the Tablet of Varqa 3. The primal will 4. Volition, capacity and power 5. The archetypes of time 6. The time of the soul 7. The three metaphysical worlds 8. The condition of servitude and of lordship SECOND PART: THEOSOPHY CHAPTER VII. Gnosis and the interior transformation of man 1. Gnosis and reality 2. The veiled reality 3. The three conditions of the true seeker 4. The three kinds of gnosis 5. Gnosis as knowledge of the divine Manifestations 6. The unity of spiritual understanding 7. Certitude CHAPTER VIII. Hermeneutics and theosophy of the divine worlds 1. The macrocosmic man and the anthropic Spirit 2. The theophany of the divine Names 3. Anagogic hermeneutics and interpretation 4. From the active imagination to the spiritual vision 3 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 5. Exotericism and esotericism 6. The limits of spiritual hermeneutics 7. A Baha’i theosophy 8. The supreme Talisman 9. Man as the foundation of knowledge 10. The knowledge of self and the knowledge of God 11. The alchemy of the divine Elixir CHAPTER IX. Philosophical consequences of Baha’i theosophy 1. Revelation and tradition 2. The age of maturity 3. Process of individuation and process of spiritualization 4. Meditation and the spiritual hermeneutic 5. Reason and the re-enchantment of the world 6. The divine worlds and the angelic hierarchies 7. New aspects of the cosmo-anthropic principle 8. The Pleroma and the active imagination 9. Heuristic consequences of the speculative theology of the divine Names 10. The transcendence of the discursive and intuitive thought 11. Excursion in scholasticism CHAPTER X. Philosophical consequences of Baha’i psychology 1. Metaphysics and psychology 2. The psychology of the Old Testament 3. The soul according to the Church Fathers 4. First considerations of Origenism 5. The doctrine of the Syriacs 6. The spirit and the breath 7. The Spirit of Faith 8. The tribulations of the soul from Plato to Origen 9. New tribulations from St. Thomas Aquinas to Descartes 10. The spirituality of the soul 11. The nature of the soul and the theology of knowledge 12. The union of the soul and the body 13. The conscience and the divine self THIRD PART: METAPHYSICS CHAPTER XI. The philosophical and technical vocabulary of Baha’u’llah 1. A unique problem in religious history 2. The cultural heritage 3. Technical aspects of the vocabulary of Baha’u’llah 4 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 4. The implicit character of the metaphysics of Baha’u’llah 5. The Neoplatonic influence in Persian culture CHAPTER XII. The evolution of Neoplatonism from its origins to Baha’u’llah 1. The Neoplatonism of Plotinus 2. The Neoplatonic problematics 3. The One, principle of all things 4. The Intelligence 5. The Soul 6. The Procession 7. The Emanation 8. The pseudo-Theology of Aristotle 9. The book of Causes 10. Al-Kindi 11. Al-Farabi 12. Ibn Sina 13. Baha’u’llah and the hellenistic philosophy CHAPTER XIII. The emanationist metaphysic of Baha’u’llah 1. The divine Verb as Being 2. The Baha’i concept of emanation 3. Speculative theology 4. Emanation and manifestation 5. The function of the concept of emanation 6. The refutation of the system of the hypostases 7. The divine Verb as ontological cause 8. The world of the Aeon 9. Speculative theology and the divine Verb CHAPTER XIV. The World of the Manifestation 1. The divine manifestation as mirror of the essence of God 2. The veritable divine unicity 3. The Alpha and the Omega 4. Progressive Revelation 5. Progressive Revelation and the axiological hermeneutics 6. The World of Revelation 7. The divine Word 8. The primal Will and the Countenance of God CHAPTER XV. The nature of the sensible universe 1. The first nature of the universe 2. Sensible realities and intelligible realities 5 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD CHAPTER XVI. The world of spiritual realities 1. The Commentary on the Hidden Treasure 2. The station of the Hidden Treasure and the Absconditum 3. The mirror of the divine science 4. Love as the manifestation of the divine essence 5. Love as the organizer in principle of the Cosmos 6. The mode of existence of the hierarchy of essences and their speculative character 7. The question of the adventicity of the essential realities 8. Ontology and language 9. The essential degrees 10. The spiritual realities 11. The unity of the created world CHAPTER XVII. The world of images 1. The spiritual images, forms and realities 2. The hermeneutical scheme of the deployment of the essences 3. The spiritual realities of the world of images 4. The image realities and the cosmic laws 5. The world of images as intermediary world 6. The place of the active imagination 7. The nature of Nature CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY ————— FOREWORD The Occident has believed for several centuries that Islamic philosophy was lost in the sands of the desert after the death of Averroes (Ibn Rushd)1. It required all the talent and erudition of Henri 1Translator’s Notes: This electronic publication is with the permission of the author Jean-Marc Lepain, the translator, and the publisher Kalimat Press. As much as possible, a consistent use of bold, italics and underlining has been employed throughout this volume in order to facilitate the ease of its perusal. All terms in Arabic and Persian are rendered in italics, except for the names of persons and places and movements or communities, which will not be italicized. All references to written documents, be they epistles (Tablets, letters), commentaries, articles or books will be cited in quotation marks. Virtually no accents have been used in rendering the Arabic and Persian words; the alternative to omitting accents was to be consistent in providing accents and that would have entailed a great deal of unnecessary labor, which is not in any case conducive to a better 6 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD Corbin to reveal to the French public, that at the very moment when the great Andalusian civilization disappeared, and when the Maghrib (North Africa) and the Mashriq (Near East) slumbered in torpidity, there appeared in Persia with Suhrawardi, a flowering of new Schools that were to carry universal philosophy to one of its summits. In his principal work, “En Islam Iranien,” Corbin has retraced for us all of this course from the first Suhrawardian treatises to the Shaykhi School and he was one of the first to do justice to the founder of this School, Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa'i. It is to be feared furthermore that our misunderstanding of the civilizations of the Orient is impelling us to repeat the same injustice as our fathers, who imagined that Islamic philosophy perished with Ibn Rushd, and that we continue to ignore the extraordinary spiritual revolution which Persia witnessed in the 19th century.
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