Hi Paul,
"If I sincerely do my best, am I to be condemned if I do not come out
where somebody else -- and that pointedly includes Baha'u'llah -- says
that I ought to?'
I believe that this is the exact problem with the absolutization of
any person's personal spiritual experiences whether that individual is
Baha'u'llah, Buddha, Muhammad, or whomever. What inevitably ends up
occurring is that you get Buddhists who believe that Buddha's POV is
the all in all, Christians who believe that Christ's POV is the all in
all, Muslims that believe that Muhammad's POV is the all in all,
Baha'is who believe that Baha'u'llah's POV is the all in all, etc.,
etc..
The thing with individual spiritual experiences is that they are tied
directly into the cultural norms which exist where and when those
experiences occur so they are each unique and in many ways are like
comparing apples and oranges.
Buddha's POV is radically different from Baha'u'llah's, there isn't
even a god or a soul present in Buddha's POV and there is no honest
way to reconcile this difference and the attempts of Baha'is to claim
that Buddha was a Manifestation of God makes a mockery of what Buddha
actually believed and taught.
IMHO a genuine recognition of the common validity of all spiritual
paths has to go deeper than this Baha'i over simplification which
attempts to force all spiritual systems to fit within the confines of
it's own religious POV, within the confines of a progressive
revelation supposedly directed by their god, the god of Abraham.
Cheers
Larry Rowe
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