A Trust to God

Abdu'l-Bahá, who was the son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. once interpreted a dream that was brought to him by a very troubled woman. She told the dream: “A young girl became evident to me as belonging with the family, but I could not make out who she was. She spoke of a horse that my son had once had long ago, but I did not understand what she meant. After a time it became known that she was my daughter and I felt grieved to think that I had not been conscious of her presence in all the past years. She seemed not hurt, but surprised that we did not understand her. Just as I was waking, I realized that she was our little baby who had passed away over 21 years ago, when only nine months old.” At this, the dream ended. The troubled woman added, “She was my idol, and because I loved her so much, I tried hard to put her out of my thoughts, and the dream made me feel that we should not do this.”

Abdul Baha responded: “That child is your trust within the charge of God. She was a child when she went, but you shall find her full grown in the Kingdom of God. You shall find her mature. You shall not find here there as a child. You shall find her perfect and mature. As to the horse once belonging to your son of which she spoke in the dream, this means a wish. It shows that your daughter has fulfilled her wish and her desire, and that shows the loftiness of her station. The wish is one in which your son shared,you’re your daughter has attained to it. It is my hope, God willing, that he too will attain to it.”

The aggrieved woman was still crying and Abdul-Baha continued: “Do not cry. Be happy because you saw her, and you saw her perfected. You must be happy. She is your trust with God. You have not lost her out of your hands. The only difference is this; that you gave her as a trust to God as a child, but you will take her back as a fully mature person. I had a son who was four years old, and when he died I did not at all change my attitude. I gave my son to God as a trust, and so at his death I did not grieve.”

The woman said: “But there is a difference, you gave your son to God, but God takes ours.”

Abdul-Baha replied: “It is the same thing. In both cases it is a trust of God. The cause of her surprise in the dream is this – that you are crying. Your departed daughter would say: “I have a good mother. She must be happy. Why does she cry?” Your daughter now belongs to a realm in which everything becomes mature, and she expected you to see her in the state of perfection in which she manifested herself to you. It is not good for one to try to forget (those who have departed). One must always remember them. But you must be happy. You gave her as a trust to God.”

Remembrance and Celebration: Jordis Ruhl

Jordis Elaine Langness Ruhl
12/7/56-9/22/08


Jordis Ruhl, wife of Dr. Jerry M. Ruhl, died this week after two-and-a-half years of living with a brain tumor. Jordis' life was characterized by love for and service to others, in the tradition of the Bahai teachings that were instrumental in guiding her adult life.

A friend once asked Abdu'l-Bahá, the Bahai prophet and leader, “How should one look forward to death?”

Abdu'l-Bahá replied: “How does one look forward to the goal of any journey? With hope, and with expectation. It is even so with the end of this earthly journey. In the next world, man will find himself freed from many of the disabilities under which he now suffers. Those who have passed on through death have a sphere of their own. It is not removed from ours; their work, the work of the Kingdom, is ours; but it is sanctified from what we call ‘time and place.’…Those who have ascended have different attributes from those who are still on earth, yet there is no real separation. In prayer there is a mingling of station, a mingling of condition. Pray for them as they pray for you. When you do not know it, and are in a receptive attitude, they are able to make suggestions to you; if you are in difficulty, this sometimes happens in sleep. It is not possible to put these great matters into human words; the language of man is the language of children, and man’s explanation often leads astray.”

Musings on Hell

A perinatal (the period around the time of birth) interpretation of Hell tells us that if there is an astral hell like the one some people report in near-death experiences, hell's function is not damnation, but spiritual transformation (as one may read in Christopher Bache's thought-provoking work, Dark Night, Early Dawn).

The metaphysical vision that emerges is one that balances accountability with compassion. It integrates the necessity that we learn from our mistakes with the realization that our ability to make mistakes is one of the things that makes us precious to the Creative Intelligence. Instead of being the final resting place of those who have rejected God, hell may be part of a developmental sequence of imperfect persons who are drawing closer to their inherent perfection. For spiritual practitioners, it is their passionate impatience to awaken to the transcendent dimension of being, and to awaken others, that causes them to plunge deeper and deeper into this purifying ordeal.

As we draw near to the source of our existence, to that from which we originally came and in essence always are, we approach as a small flame drawing close to a large fire, Bache notes. Fire merges with fire effortlessly, but due to our history, our fire nature has partially crystalized into the constricted patterns of fragmented consciousness. As we approach this larger fire, our inner flame flares as if in response to its presence. The closer we come, the more brightly it glows until it begins to burn away and set free everything in our history that constricts it. Because our history is a record of our life in space-time, as it is burned away we suffer the excruciating "loss" of that life. The more brightly the flame burns, the more we suffer until we think that surely there is no surviving this, and there IS no surviving it. That is the point.

Only when the work is finally done can we possibly begin to understand hell's mercy. Only when it has freed us from that which we mistakenly cherished most can we comprehend its love.

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT HELL IS NOT HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE BUT THE GUARDIAN AT THE DOOR WHICH HEALS EVERYTHING? HELL MAY BE GOD'S CLOSEST COMPANION, FOR IN TRUTH IT MAY BE SIMPLY THE TRANSIENT FLASH OF PAIN EXPERIENCED BY OUR URGENT RETURN TO OUR SOURCE. THERE IS NO PUNISHMENt HERE AND CERTAINLY NO BANISHMENT.

Rather, there is simply the brief if terrible combustion that results when we feel we must shed our history as fast as possible, and "safely" staying apart from the Divine Presence is a far worse fate than suffering in it. Hell may indeed be heaven's purifying fire.