Unveiling the Húrí of Love

Abstract

Most people are acquainted with the major issues that science and religion must resolve in order to reconcile their sometimes mutually exclusive descriptions of reality. As Bahá’ís, we may feel privileged to have been made aware of what we believe to be foundational answers relating to the interplay between these twin expressions of rea lity. As Bahá’í scholars, however, we are obliged to help discover and forge pathways from the essential questions to those foundational answers, if we are to play a meaningful role in demonstrating how physical and metaphysical aspects of reality can be understood to be “exact counterparts of each other.” This article, taken from my Balyuzi lecture in 2005, attempts to explain a parallel relationship between (1) the means by which the essential unknowable intelligence we call “God” employs the intermediaries of extraordinary beings (Manifestations) to run physical reality, and (2) the means by which the essentially unknow able intelligence we call the human “soul” employs the intermediary of an extraordinary creation (the human brain) to run our physical bodies. The abiding theme of this discourse is to understand how the Creator’s love is the motive force instigating and sustaining these parallel systems.