The Baha'i Faith like other Abrahamic Faiths sees humanity as a central purpose to God's creation.
I see this as their central limitation then. I'll explain why. To presume we are the "best" of God's creation, or that everything in the entire Creation itself has us up at the pinnacle, is reflective of the height of self-importance. It is the height of the ego projecting itself into God's scripture writ large upon the Universe. The true key to the Realization of God is not our "specialness" held in our own eyes about ourselves, not in inflation of self-worth and importance projected onto how we imagine God must see us because that would mean something important to our egos, but rather is is accessed through our humility. I see this as a central barrier to the Realization of God and Reality as it is.
We are special, of course, but that specialness is not realized in our imagining we are "more special" than the whole of Creation. Rather we are "uniquely special", just as the earthworm is equally, neither less nor more,
uniquely special in the whole of Creation. God does not have a hierarchy of rankings of specialness, some "more special" than others. To assume so reflects the mind of a young child who imagines its parent loves its sibling more than themselves, or the other way around that in order to feel good about themselves, they imagine their parents love them more. The truth is rather, that all creations of God are equally, and perfectly brilliant and shining creations in what they are. God does not play favorites, but favors all. And well it should be, as all are creations of God in whatever form or shape they occur, including our human one.
The more elevating view held in humility is that we are one beautiful shining diamond among the myriad other beautiful shining diamonds of God's creation is enormously liberating and empowering. We don't have to be "better", than everything else God creates, we just have to be the truest to what we are in how we were created. To view ourselves as "better" than the rest of God's Creation is human arrogance of the human ego, and that prevents us from truly seeing God because we are instead admiring ourselves with one eye in the mirror, rather than seeing Truth through the eyes of humility which stops with all the self-admiration and its attendant over-compensations.
Assuming we can not directly know God (unless you wish to equate God and His Creation as being One) then how can we know?
That is a major assumption, and one which has countless times been demonstrated as incorrect, not only by direct personal experience of people the world over, but as a matter of reason itself. Why wouldn't we be able to? Is this some inherent "cap" God build into its creation to block access to him? That would make no sense. How can God create something that is separated from the nature of God, when that creation is an expression of the Divine itself? You see, all of this problem begins and ends with the human perception of itself and creation at large, beginning with the ego's-eye view and ending with the same.
I can tell you from personal experience that we can quite directly know God. It's as easy as opening your eyes to see what is fully Present at all times, in all things created, radiating through like all suns of all universes at once in even the smallest speck of dust. It fills the mind and the soul and the body with its Brilliance. It is Love, Light, and Life as the foundation and Source of all Reality that we breathe, eat and sleep in every day of our existence in this skin-sack we call a human. Each breath we take moves the entire universe and the being of God through us. Spirit moves through everything, to everything, and from everything to everything, from nowhere, from everywhere. And our minds see clearly the Truth of Existence itself. And that Truth is God.
Everything I just described is my own personal way of talking about my own experience. And if that isn't direct, well....
The Abrahamics answer is through His Messengers. For you this way of thinking is foolishness (contradictions and loopy rationalisations). I doubt if too many Abrahamic faith adherents would agree.
This is not what I was referring to as foolish when I stated that. However, I do see this as an error, or rather as an externalization of something not yet realized internally in the minds of the followers of this way of imagining God as outside of themselves. Again, logically alone this wouldn't make sense at that level since an Infinite God cannot be other to our outside of Creation. To be outside of something, to be separate from it, make you a finite being with limitations and boundaries around you. You could not claim to be Infinite and separate at the same time. This is the limitation of dualistic thinking. It breaks down when you approach the Infinite, which is God. To define God as dualistic, separating the subject from the object, is not God at all, but is rather a reflection of our dualistic thinking. The dualistic God, is an anthropomorphic God. And that thinking itself, puts the cap that blocks us from seeing God or Reality as it truly is.
Ideas that prophets are miraculous almost supernatural beings who God selectively has chosen, is all a creation of the human mind seeing God in dualistic terms, and particularly one that imagines itself separate from God and seeks through the ego mind to find its way back to Source. The reality of it is, the secret is, to stop seeking with the ego-mind. Stop the ego-mind, pull back the curtain, and simply see. It's that easy, yet as frightening as face death itself for most of us. Until you do it.
Hmmm. Most Abrahamic Faiths do not interpret genesis literally.
If you believe that humans are higher and more special than all of creation, you are reading it literally. If you deny that evolution brought forth humans from other non-human species (which I have had a very long discussion about with a Bahai' on these forums here), that is reading it literally. If however, like me, you read it as a story of humans about themselves, written allegorically as an "as if" reality, a metaphor about ourselves in the Mystery of Creation, then such demands of a God who demands obedience of us, a serpent to tempt us off the path, etc, are held as informative stories about our minds, not the Truth of God itself. It's a beautiful story full of symbolic truths about how we see ourselves. And that is true for the whole of scriptures as well.
To assume these are magical supernatural truths that miraculously bypass the natural processes of creation and the unfolding of truth in our minds, is well, more like the way a child would imagine the world as full of magical forces that miraculously just make things appear out of nothing. One can still see the "magic" of Creation in all its natural processes, such as evolution, without needing to limit how one thinks to that particular set of eyes thinking about itself in magical terms. That's not meant as an insult, but rather to show there is a way to see the truth of it, to hold that Baby, without having to preserve the bathwater of mythic thought.
Muslims do not and only a minority of Christians do. I suspect most Jews don't either. No Baha'is do.
Actually, I think that is not true. Would you say you fully accept that evolution is correct in saying we evolved from non-human animal forms? I think most people do accept it literally, at least in some of the major ways, such as God created humans after the animals as the pinnacle of his own Creation, humans at the top. That is what a literal reading of Genesis will give you. That assumption is what you started this reply with.
It is true that we can be the recipients of Divine inspiration and that inspiration can come through the natural world.
It's much more than that. Of course inspiration which points one to God. But then there is Realization itself, where the veil is pulled back and we see Reality as it is, all through the natural world, as well as the subtle, as well as the causal world. "There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard". (Ps. 19).
Baha'u'llah experienced a mystical vision amidst desolate surrounding in a prison where it appeared certain He would die. He later spent two years in the mountains of Kurdistan where He meditated and later had discussions with Sufis (a mystical sect of Islam). This became the basis of His first major work, the seven valleys and four valleys. It explores in some depth the question of whether or not we really need the likes of Jesus or Muhummad or we would be better off freeing ourselves from their influence.
Bahá'í Reference Library - The Seven Valleys And the Four Valleys
I'll look into that and see what he has to say and compare it with my own experience. One thing I wonder though, is that maybe this whole "Messengers" only club with exclusive access to God whereas the rest of creation is somehow incapable of the same level of realization, is not a teaching of these people themselves, but rather the followers who themselves lacked Realization and assume because they don't, no one other than the prophet they adore can either? Like Alan Watts said, "The church kicked Jesus upstairs".
