 I want to begin by saying that this is a remembrance of my brother who taught me the faith and who was pretty well known to pretty much all of you with his writing and his daring thinking. I want to begin with two remembrance of the first ABS plenary session I gave, which was in December of 1977, 38 years ago, there were about 60 of us in Bolton, Ontario, but among us were the founders of ABS, Doug Martin, my brother, Hossin Dinesh, and it was wonderful. David Smith was then an ABM, and he was here a few days ago. I don't know if he still is, but good to see him. He's still doing karate. I used to do taekwondo, but can't do it anymore. My presentation then was the metaphorical nature of physical reality, and I've pretty well been writing that same concept ever since, and that's sort of what this is going to be about. The epiphany of the prophet is, of course, focused on the point at which they have the first intimations of the revelation, and we really wonder what that's about. First we begin with the idea that it's amazing that God is an incredible subcontractor. He is among those who delegate the authority of himself, the most great delegator. Now that's the totally non-authoritative text of me, but it's a message from me to the Executive Committee that if God can delegate authority, so must you, because they put this whole thing together themselves, and I know they're going to welcome the rest when they get through with it, but this has been a wonderful experience for all of us, and it's come a long ways in 38 years from 60 people in a room in Bolton, Ontario. It really is. We're going to go over three stages of the manifestation. We're going to focus on the part of the second stage, which is when they have this intimation of their revelation, trying to figure out what that's all about, and what they're all about insofar as who are they really? Are they men transformed into something else? Are they just inspired individuals? What is their ontology and what is happening at this moment when they intimate that revelation? And then finally we'll deal with the post-incarnate stage. Now I'm dealing with the two other stages, the pre-incarnate stage and the post-incarnate stage, because they tell us something about what must be happening in that moment of intimation, what I've called epiphany, because it seems like they're suddenly enlightened, and yet really epiphany is not the correct word, and it's not the word the writings use. They use the words of the guardian, which is the intimation, the first intimations of the revelation. So let's begin with the pre-incarnate stage, before they take on a human persona. The prophets, unlike us the guardian says, are pre-existent, pre-existent. That means, of course, that they lived before they associate with the human temple in the world of the Spirit. And as Baha'u'llah himself says in the agdas, oh people of the bayan, we barely set foot within the school of God when ye lay slumbering, and we pursued the tablet while ye were fast asleep. By the one true God we read the tablet ere it was revealed. While ye were unaware, and we had perfect knowledge of the book, when ye were yet unborn. Meaning he knew the revelation before he even came to this earth. I infer. Again, these are all my ideas, and you can read the writings yourself and decide what you think they mean. People of the bayan is always a derogatory term when used by Baha'u'llah. You may not know that, but look at any time you see that phrase. It's derogatory in the sense that it's disdainful of those who are still following the bayan when the Bob said explicitly, when he, him whom God shall manifest, appears. If you're following the bayan, you're not following me, for I tell you to follow him. And so he doesn't use this term until after the Ayame Shirag, the days of stress, and then the most great separation where the people are no longer called Babis, but they're called Baha'is. They choose where to become manifest before they appear, obviously. How else could they choose, unless they did it before they became associated with a temple, a human temple? And where do we get that from? We get it from the advent of divine justice by the guardian who says, in the light of this fundamental principle, it should always be born in mind, can it be sufficiently emphasized that the primary reason why the Bob and Baha'u'llah chose to appear in Persia and to make it the first repository of their revelation was because, well, I won't read the rest because a lot of you are Persians and you won't find it nice, but most of you have fled from Persia for this very reason because it had sunk to such ignominious depths and manifested so great a perversity and that perversity is still persisting, I'm afraid. The pre-incarnate stage also has to do with their choosing the persona with whom they will associate. Now, this is my inference. You may not agree with it. Am I being called? Should I go towards that light in my eyes? Yet, as Abdu'l-Baha'u'llah later explained, the dissolution of the tabernacle, where in the soul of the manifestation of God had chosen temporarily to abide, signalized its release from the restrictions which an earthly life had of necessity imposed upon it. Now, the important part of that for me is had chosen to abide. Now, you may say it just means he chose to manifest himself, but to me it sounds like he chose the persona, that the manifestations have something to do with, okay, where can I best appear that will have the greatest effect by showing the power of God to transform even the lowliest people or the most ignominious people and what would be the best guys I can appear in to bring this off. So if the people of Israel are waiting for a king on the throne of David, I'll appear as the illegitimate son of a carpenter. God will blow their mind. So we go then to the incarnate stage of the manifestation and we go to the powers of the manifestation. They are omniscient at will, which means I guess sometimes they choose to shut out all the clutter of everything they could know. You can interpret it how so ever you wish. Shogi Effendi further points out that he is not like the prophets omniscient at will. They're omniscient. They know everything or can know when they choose to. They have foreknowledge of their own revelation. Of course, we know that because it's already said that they know about the revelation when they're in the school, the prophets before they're even manifest in a human form. But this of course is an anecdote, or referring to an anecdote that you're all familiar with, of Zunuzi who was promised by the Bob that he would behold the face of him whom God will make manifest. And he did, walking in the streets of Kabbalah. He recognized in the countenance of Bahá'u'lláh, him whom God will make manifest. And Bahá'u'lláh of course said to him, you're right, but keep it quiet. Not now is not the time. One of the most devoted disciples of the Bob was celebrated, Sheikh Hassan Zunuzi. The Bob had intimated to him that he would attain the presence of the promised Hossain in the city of Karbala, where Sheikh Hassan used to live. Bahá'u'lláh visited Karbala in 1851, about a year before his imprisonment in the Siyah child. So of course he knows he's going to be a manifestation, they know it very early on. Not going to be that he is a manifestation and he will reveal himself. Thirdly, they choose when to reveal themselves. Now this is important because the Bob, of course, his religion was supposed to last nine years. And it did because nine years after 1844 and 1853, December of 1952 and for the next four months, Bahá'u'lláh received the intimations of his revelation in the Siyah child. And that was nine years after the revelation of the Bob. But in a letter from God to God, and that's how this tablet begins, the second tablet to him whom God will make manifest by the Bob, and the letter begins, this is a letter from God to God. Because in their station of essential unity they are the highest form of God that we in this station of our existence can understand. And they will remain so, but we'll get to that later. So in this letter the Bob says, I know you can do whatever you wish, but on behalf of my loved ones, would you please withhold revealing yourself until nineteen years, nineteen years in 1844, fifty-three, sixty-three, excuse me, when Bahá'u'lláh revealed himself in the Garden of Rizván in Baghdad. Do thou grant a respite of nineteen years as a token of favor so that those who have embraced this cause may be graciously rewarded by thee. And of course what the Bob foreknew was that all of the leaders of the Bobby faith would be slaughtered, that his writings would be only minimally dispersed, and that there would be no chance for the faith to spread and become established as it should. And so that was the job that Bahá'u'lláh took on when he was exiled to Baghdad and rebuilt the Bobby community. First he attempted, could not, because everything he did was perceived as being a power takeover by the Azalees. And so are Suviyaz and he fled to the mountains until even Suviyaz said, please come back. I can't do this. They have an inherent gift of the most great infallibility. Well, omniscience would cover this too. But in other words, they don't acquire infallibility. When Bahá'u'lláh in this relates very specifically to the epiphany in the Siya child, in the sense that he says, I was but a man like others asleep upon my couch when low, all of these things happened to me. Now you interpret that out of context. It sounds like the same thing Mohammed said. I'm but a man like you and yet I am a prophet of God. Well, that's not really what he means. Well, this is not really what Bahá'u'lláh means. He means I was asleep like a man on a couch. But there were no couches in the Siya child. So it obviously is metaphorical. So why do I quote this passage here? This is from Abdu'l-Bahá. And he says, the reason that the manifestations have the most great infallibility is because unlike us, whose spirit surrounds our bodies, and so therefore I know my hand is out here because I have an inherent gift of awareness of myself. He says the reality of the manifestations surrounds reality itself. And so they are inherently aware of reality. Therefore their knowledge is divine knowledge, not acquired. And that's why when Bahá'u'lláh says in the epistle to the Son of the Wolf, over and over again, look where I live. Find out if I studied anywhere and I didn't. Well, he's not professing that I don't know anything. He's saying everything I know is not from human resources. That's what that passage means. They shape language. Who shapes the language? Well, when you read some of the scriptures of Christ, it sounds like I say only what the Father tells me to say. And you get the same sense, I am but a leaf in the wind of God. Really this thing is not from me, but from one greater than I am. And yet they clearly are the designers of their own revelation and the designers of their own language. Here's two passages that point this out. O Son of beauty by my spirit and my favor, by my mercy and my beauty, all that I have revealed unto you, unto thee with the tongue of power, hath been written for thee with the pen of might, hath been in accordance with thy capacity and understanding, not with my state and the melody of my voice. What does he mean by that? Well, he explains it a little more here in this quote from the agdas. These words are to your measure, not to God's. To this testifyeth that which is enshrined within his knowledge, if ye be of them that comprehend, and to this the tongue of the Almighty doth bear witness, if ye be of those who understand, I swear by God, were we to lift the veil, ye would be dumbfounded. In other words, if I spoke as I could, ye wouldn't understand a word I was saying. In the same way that, of course, he had Mirzaka John throw away hundreds of thousands of verses repeatedly because we would not be ready for them in this dispensation. Well, that's a whole talk there. Why did he do that? Well, for one reason we know about it is because we know there's yet more to learn that will be coming in the next dispensation. Effectively, and this is very important here to what I'm about to where I'm trying to take you, that may blow your mind a little bit, but it certainly blows my mind. Effectively the manifestation is God expressed as best it can be expressed in human form. The essence of belief in divine unity, and this if you take nothing else away from this talk, this is the same passage I used on Thursday morning. It's a remarkable passage. The essence of belief in divine unity consisted in regarding Him who is the manifestation of God and Him who is the invisible, the inaccessible, the unknowable essence as one and the same. By this is meant that whatever pertaineth to the former, all his acts and doings, whatever he or dayneth or forbiddeth should be considered in all their aspects and under all circumstances and without any reservation as identical with the will of God himself. Everything they do and say is calculated to teach us something. Nothing they do is accidental. There is a dream that a friend of mine, when I was in Haifa a few weeks ago, told me he had that. He dreamed he was Baha'u'llah and that he was about to take a sip of the water that had been poisoned by Mirza Yahya. And he, of course, foreknew that it was poisoned and yet he knew that he had to drink it. Meditate on that. Not ours the living witnesses of an all-subduing potency of his faith to question for a moment however dark the misery that enshrouds the world, the ability of Baha'u'llah to forge with the hammer of his will and through the fire of tribulation upon the anvil of this travelling age and to the particular shape his mind has envisioned these scattered and mutually destructive fragments into which a perverse world has fallen into one single unit solid and indivisible able to execute his design for the children of men. He designs the conceptual framework of his own revelation and of where we're going for the next thousand years. His design. So he's not merely an emissary. He's not merely a translator of God's words. He is the translator of God's will but he is the creator of his own dispensation and the designer of the edifice that he has bequeathed us. So now we get to the heart of this discussion. What happens and what do we mean by intimation of revelation? Well, of course, intimation means the first sense of it, the first signs of it. The most great spirit, of course, is that spirit that appears to him in the dream vision he has in the Si'achal. It's not an actual maiden that appears before him, of course, because nobody else in the Si'achal saw it. It is a vision that appears to him and it is the vehicle that he says through which God speaks to him. And the Guardian in his writings here in God Passes By says it's comparable to the similar intermediary symbols he uses in the other revelations. Symbolized in the Zoroastrian, the Mosaic, the Christian and Mohammedan dispensations by the sacred fire, the burning bush, the dove, and the angel Gabriel respectively, descended upon and revealed itself personated by a maiden. The words, she isn't the Holy Spirit. It's personified. It's a, if you will, a literary device that Bahá'u'lláh is using. We'll get to deal with it a little more in just a second. Here we have our traditional account of this from the letter to Nasir al-Dinshah. But don't forget, this is not Bahá'u'lláh's frank and forthright account of what really happened. It's how he's presenting it to the king. And so he says, oh king, I was but a man like others asleep upon my couch when lo, the breezes of the all-glorious were wafted over me and taught me the knowledge of all that had been. This thing is not from me, but from one who is almighty and all-knowing. He bad me, lift up my voice between earth and heaven. For this there befell me what have caused the tears of every man of understanding to flow. The learning current amongst men I studied not. Their schools I entered not. In effect, then where did this come from? It's the same kind of device that Muhammad uses when he says, I was in this cave and the angel Gabriel appeared to me. And he runs home to Khadija and she unfolds him in a blanket because he's so shaken by this experience. How do we know about that? Who was with him in the cave? Nobody. So how do we know about that? Well, it was the intention of the manifestation we know about. How do we know what happened to Moses when he saw the burning bush and what was the burning bush symbolizing? But the divine lobe tree, right? The eternal tree. So how do we know about this? We know about it because Moses obviously told people about it. He was the only one there. So we're fortunate, so fortunate that Baha'u'llah bequeathed to Ban Abdu'l-Baha among his other mantles, the interpreter, the authoritative interpreter of his own words. And so the authoritative explication of what he means when he is writing this letter to the king is right here for us. But even the interpretation we must understand in our own terms. We come to the explanation of the words of Baha'u'llah when he says, O king I was but a man like others asleep upon my couch when lo the breezes of the all-glorious were wafted over me and taught me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from me but from one who is almighty and all-knowing. Now here's Abdu'l-Baha's explanation of what it means and it's going to take a few slides here. This is the state of manifestation. It is not sensible. It's not really happening. In a literal way. It is an intellectual reality. It's something that's happening in the mind of Baha'u'llah. Exempt and freed from time. From the past, present, and future. It is an explanation, a simile, a metaphor and is not to be accepted literally. So you don't have to take my word for it. Here is an authoritative explication of it. It is not a state that can be comprehended by man. So Baha'u'llah uses an analogy to explain what happened to him. In the same way I postulate, I assert, I present for your consideration that Muhammad did with the angel Gabriel. In other words, what I'm saying friends is that these manifestations just figure out a creative way to make an unlearned people believe in what they say. And so whenever Muhammad reveals something he would go into a trance state and presumably the people around him thought okay, the angel Gabriel is speaking to him write down what he says. And those became the surah. However, there are various authoritative hadiths that Muhammad said. The hadiths of the Twin Gifts, I give you my book and I give you my family. And the appointment of Ali at the pool of hum as his successor. Those were authoritative too, because everything they do and say is authoritative. And both Sunni and Shia agree on both of these hadiths. Briefly, this is a continuation of the same explanation of the intimation of the Revelation by Bahá'u'lláh. The epiphany. Briefly, the holy manifestations have ever been and ever will be luminous realities. No change of variation takes place in their essence. Before declaring their manifestation, they are silent and quiet, like a sleeper. And after their manifestation they speak and are illumined like one who is awake. Like one who is awake. Their manifestations before this point, they know they're going to be unmanifest. I mean, they're going to reveal themselves. They know they're going. So, let's complete this explanation. Verily, from the beginning, that holy reality is conscious of the secret of existence. The beginning. And from the age of childhood, signs of greatness appear and are visible in him. Therefore, how can it be that with all these bounties and perfections, he should have no consciousness? Meaning, as I understand it, consciousness of his own station and mission. The one story we know of Christ is when he was a child of 9 or 12, I think it was 9, and in the temple conversing with the scholars and his parents couldn't find him and they went back to the temple and they said, where have you been? He said, do you not know I must be about my father's business? And we have the story of the Bob, where he was absent from school, the teacher was concerned and said, where have you been? And he says, I've been conversing with my grandfather. And of course, as I said, this meant symbolically he had been conversing with Muhammad. The strategic approach of each manifestation is precisely geared to the context in which he appears. Moses is a shepherd exiled for murdering an Egyptian and has to be convinced, has to convince the Pharaoh and an enslaved populace that he has divine authority and leadership. Christ is reputed to be the illegitimate son of a simple carpenter and must convince a populace entrenched in what has become a legalistic and staid religious tradition that he is their promised Messiah. Muhammad is an unlearned leader of caravans who must unite diverse warring tribes and create the model for constitutional governance, which he does. The Bob is an unlearned merchant who must convince a populace entrenched in what has become a legalistic and staid religious tradition that he is their promised Mahdi or the Qaim come to instigate the resurrection or the day of days. Bahá'u'lláh is a follower of the Bob who must convince the people of the Bayan that he is him whom God shall make manifest and a prisoner who must convince world rulers that he has been appointed to unite humankind. They all are fully aware of the devices and guises they use in my opinion. And that's what I'm trying to blow your mind with is that they know exactly what they're doing. We have consented to be bound and changed. We know that. That means we didn't have to be bound and changed. We know he could have saved Mirza Midi, but Mirza Midi chose instead to let his life be a sacrifice for those who were not then able to attain the presence of Bahá'u'lláh. The presence of Bahá'u'lláh. Let's deal with that. So we get to the post-incarnate stage and that will finish up. How many minutes do I have? Ten? Ten. We're great. So we're dealing with disease now. What power does the manifestation have after that? Well, we pray to Bahá'u'lláh. We pray through Bahá'u'lláh to God. We know Bahá'u'lláh is watching over us and so on, but let's get very explicit. We go back to the phrase I've already shown you. It's influenced no longer circumscribed by any physical limitations. No radiance no longer be clouded by its human temple. That soul of Bahá'u'lláh could henceforth energize the world to a degree unapproached at any stage in the course of his existence on this planet. So his power is to help us to guide his own dispensation. And this is what I understand to be true as well. Each manifestation overlooks and oversees and assists the progress of the dispensation. The age in which he appears. Here's one you may not know, though you probably do. He continues to be our intermediary. We enter the presence of God, but we really don't, not literally, because there is no presence of God. That implies physical proximity and God is essentially unknowable and has no physical aspects, other than the manifestation of himself in these beings from the world of the Spirit he sends to help us understand. We will have experience of God's spirit through his prophets in the next world, but God is too great for us to know without this intermediary. The prophets know God, though not his essence. That's my insertion there. But how is more than our human minds can grasp? We have, we believe, we attain in the next world to seeing the prophets, but they will continue to be our intermediaries between us and God, even in the next world. So entering the presence of God means entering in a relationship with his manifestation. So we can enter that presence right this minute. And it will continue to be that same relationship as we continue our lives of knowing and worshiping God by successive degrees in our life after this life. Their heavenly station rules supreme over all things. This is a nice passage about their powers after they ascend. Their bodies perceive things when they're associating with their human temple, to the capacity of the material world. So it is that they have, at a certain time, at certain times expressed physical weakness. Well, how long it gets poisoned? His hair turns white and his hands shakes forevermore. Right? Seems to be human. What's the value of that? Because if you don't discern the spiritual power, if you're attached to the physical person, you see a relatively short, diminutive man with an arm shaking and his hair turned white from poison, and you're going to believe this is a representation of God on earth. That's a test. All these things refer to the corporeal station of the manifestations, but their heavenly station encompasses all things, is aware of all mysteries, is informed of all signs and rules supreme over all things, and this is equally true both before and after the intimation of their revelation, both before and after. So this is, I've put it in the category of their post-incarnate power, but notice it applies to both before and after. This is why Christ said, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Is therefore has never been or never shall be to change your alteration in me. Recognition of the manifestation then is tantamount to entering the presence of God. Therefore whosoever and in whatever dispensation hath recognized and attained unto the presence of these glorious, these resplendent and most excellent luminaries hath verily attained unto the presence of God himself and entered the city of eternal and immortal life. So let's finish up with a couple of questions and a couple of answers and then I'll be done. What is meant by receiving intimation of revelation? Were the ten commandments conceived by God or by Moses? Were the parables of Christ his words or was he simply repeating what the Father told him to say? Were the surah of Mohammed the words of Gabriel as dictated by God or the prophet's own devising? Whose words are in the surah Haqqal, the maiden or Bahá'u'lláh? I don't know if you noticed but after about three pages in the surah Haqqal he says here's what the maiden said and the rest of the surah Haqqal is the maiden talking to the temple that will be the means by which Bahá'u'lláh speaks to us. He says temple you're going to have to have this power and your feet are going to be like this and you're going to have to have all of these capacities if you're going to get this job done. So the temple is writing down what the maiden had said to him in the surah Haqqal and that's a good question. What conclusion might we infer about these limitations the manifestations claim to have? I am but a man like you. This thing is not from me and so on. Well we really answered all of these haven't we? So I'll simply go over the answers very quickly as I implied them or stated them directly. While the manifestations are clearly aware of their station and what will be required of them when the process begins it is still rather an incredible thing and I use here the analogy of a start of an Olympic race. An Olympic runner is not surprised that he or she is at the Olympics they've trained for years for this. Their whole lives they've been training as an athlete but still when that starter's gun goes off it must be an experience like nothing they've ever experienced in their lives. So the manifestations know this is going to happen they know what they've been training to do they know why they came to earth but when it starts to happen it's still an incredible experience and we have several accounts of those who witnessed the revelatory process as Bahá'u'lláh was giving transcribing or not transcribing but was dictating the revealed text to his amulets or to the other secretaries he employed. No one was with Moses or Muhammad or the Bob. I've said this before. The Bob's intimation occurred in a dream. We don't talk about it much. He had a dream that the severed head of the Imam Hossain appeared before him and he drank the blood of the gory but that was his intimation. The first thing we know of the Bob is when he's talking to encounters Mullah Hossain for the most part but he did this was his intimation. The parables of Christ while divinely inspired were his creation devised appropriately for the specific audience to whom he was speaking and the age in which he appeared even as were the surah of Muhammad. The surah of Muhammad were authoritative but so were the words in the authoritative hadith because all the prophets say and do is identical with the will of God. These are not quotes from the writing streams these are my own conclusions which you can agree with or not derived from the inferences of the passages. Two more. While Baha'u'llah was doubtlessly inspired as he received the first intimation of a revelation direct from God, the composition of the surah hakel or the tablet of the holy mariner though citing various speakers was entirely his own devising. He's a very creative writer. In fact, you could say he's a perfect or writing perfectly for what we can understand. He could do much better, he said. Out of respect the Baha'is rather than addressing Baha'u'llah directly. Now this is an introduction to the loy maksu and it is stating that you're again you have this I don't know what word to use. It's not dissembling. It's not a lie. It's not an act. But it is a creative way of helping us accept this. Out of respect the Baha'is rather than addressing Baha'u'llah directly would write his amuletsist Mirzaka John surname the servant of God and servant in attendance. The reply would be in the form of a letter from Mirzaka John quoting words of Baha'u'llah but would in fact be dictated in its entirety by Baha'u'llah. Thus all the parts of the tablet of the loy maksu even those which ostensibly are the words of Mirzaka John himself are sacred scripture revealed by Baha'u'llah. I think you're getting my point. I hope you are. Finally, we necessarily conclude that the manifestation sometimes employ what me might call or what I might call. You might not be so frivolous as I am or daring or tasteless. I don't know what you want to call it to assign something to this. But as a teacher of literature what I call a divine allegory or a benign fiction for the benefit of the limitations possessed by those who live in the age in which the manifestations appear. Such is the case when Muhammad reveals the surahs and the Quran as if they were conveyed to him through the voice of Gabriel or when Baha'u'llah reveals the surah Haqal as if it were being narrated by the veiled maiden, the personification of the Holy Spirit speaking to the temple Baha'u'llah. In the same manner an omniscient narrator portrays Baha'u'llah as a mariner in the tablet of the holy mariner and the persona in most of the hidden words is that of the creator speaking to us. But it's really Baha'u'llah creating this. In conclusion, the manifestations are creative and employ whatever rhetorical devices and human guises best enable them to accomplish their appointed mission. Thank you.