My essential question has been to ask, to beg bahai to clarify what their manifestation or manifestations are.
Are they multiple entities, sharing the same will and purpose and or substance and or spirit that each incarnate at different times?
Is there only but one manifestation that exists, incarnating himself in different times
“The songs which the bird of thine heart had uttered in its great love for its friends have reached their ears, and moved Me to answer thy questions, and reveal to thee such secrets as I am allowed to unfold. In thine esteemed letter thou hadst inquired which of the Prophets of God should be regarded as superior to others. Know thou assuredly that the essence of all the Prophets of God is one and the same. Their unity is absolute. God, the Creator, saith: There is no distinction whatsoever among the Bearers of My Message. They all have but one purpose; their secret is the same secret. To prefer one in honor to another, to exalt certain ones above the rest, is in no wise to be permitted. Every true Prophet hath regarded His Message as fundamentally the same as the 79 Revelation of every other Prophet gone before Him. If any man, therefore, should fail to comprehend this truth, and should consequently indulge in vain and unseemly language, no one whose sight is keen and whose understanding is enlightened would ever allow such idle talk to cause him to waver in his belief.”
Ignatian:
- As per Moses. When, in Scripture, God is “chastising a Prophet”, what this means is that God is chastising the People to whom that Prophet is sent, for He is the “symbol” of this people. It is not Moses who is guilty of turning away from God and refusing to walk the path of the spirit, but the people. Even as Christ took upon Himself the sins of the world, of which He was not guilty, and was crucified, so, too, Moses accepted the burden of the sins and rebellion against God of the Jewish people, that they may advance across the spiritual River Jordan and enter the Promised Land, even as Christ took our sins that we might be free. He remains, in a sense, as St Peter standing at the entrance gate of heaven, bidding us to enter…
- Buddha appeared among Hindus who had multiplied God by the millions and did not “add yet another God” to their pile, but rather prescribed an 8 fold path of restoring them to sanity and spiritual capacity. As to God, He said:
“There is, O monks, an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed” i.e. God!
- Baha’u’llah refers to the Manifestations (plural) of God as “Pure Souls” (plural)
Viewed through human eyes, we see the human vessel. Thus these Glorified Beings appear to us as “human”, although it is true that they are what we might call “superhuman”, in that their reality exceeds human reality, immeasurably so…
Do we compare a gnat to an eagle? Or a candle to the sun?
That the Manifestations of God appear to us human gnats does not mean that they are not spiritual eagles.
That they appear to us as mere candles, does not mean that they are not the Suns of Reality.
They are the Dawning Points of the Laws of God, the Daysprings of His Revelation, the means by which the Infinite Creator makes Himself known to the finite creatures.
. “Know thou of a certainty that the Unseen can in no wise incarnate His Essence and reveal it unto men. He is, and hath ever been, immensely exalted beyond all that can either be recounted or perceived. From His retreat of glory His voice is ever proclaiming: “Verily, I am God; there is none other God besides Me, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. I have manifested Myself unto men, and have sent down Him Who is the Day Spring of the signs of My Revelation. Through Him I have caused all creation to testify that there is none other God except Him, the Incomparable, the All-Informed, the All-Wise.”
. He Who is everlastingly hidden from the eyes of men can never be known except through His Manifestation, and His Manifestation can adduce no greater proof of the truth of His Mission than the proof of His own Person.” Baha’u’llah
. You ask: “Are they multiple entities?”
. My answer: Are there multiple days in the week?
It is one and the same sun which shines on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
It is One and the Same God who appears to us through Moses, Jesus, Baha’u’llah
So yes, Ignatian, if we look at the calendar we see multiple days of the week.
Yet if we look at the sun, there is but one sun.
If we look at the human Manifestations of God they are multiple.
If we look at God, He is One.
It depends upon what eyes we are using to see God and His Manifestations.
You seem to be confounded by the verses which indicate the concept of a Single Manifestation of God Who appears from Age to Age in the multiple human appearances, Those Human forms which we ourselves relate to, Whom, in my thinking, are infinitely more than human, but Whose mission is to bring us closer to God, not the words in our head, which tend to get in the way of us and our Creator.
Their mission is to help us overcome all this noise in our heads, become untangled from the fledgling garment of words, eventually setting them aside, for they become a veil between us and God.
Those, however, who cling so tenaciously to human words of their own making and continuously reject the Words of God are themselves confounded by His Words, entangled within the instruments of the intellect, and fail to overcome the gravity of syllables and sounds, thus depriving themselves of the bounty of spiritual flight, wherein we “meet the Lord in the air”
