The soul’s path to Reunion lies through love, love so all-abandoning, so complete, that it means hatred of all else save God; it means severance, detachment, purity. Christ taught that the pure in heart would have the blessedness of seeing God. The first counsel of
Hidden Words is to possess a pure heart. Man to love God must turn away from himself; to seek God’s pleasure he must not regard his own. He must glory not in his own name but in God’s, must trust not in himself but in God. He will find no peace save by self-renunciation and by turning to God. Renouncing all save God he must turn his face to God’s face and forgetting all save God hold communion with God. He is to seek no helper other than God; no other will ever suffice him. Nor in all the expanse of space and heaven will he find rest anywhere save in humbleness and submission before God. The proof of true love is fortitude and patience, and the true lover yearns for tribulation as the rebel for forgiveness and the sinful for mercy. Indeed, so well content with God’s good pleasure, so thankful for whatsoever God ordains must man be, that he will give up all and seek a martyr’s death.
4For man, by his constitution, has an ego, a lower self within; has a Satan, as well as an angel. Elsewhere
Bahá’u’lláh speaks of him as the Essence of Error. Here in
Hidden Words He calls man, on the one side, “O Essence of Negligence”, “O Bondslave of the World”, “O
Quintessence of Passion”, “O Weed that Springeth out of Dust”; and on the other, “O My Brother”, “O Companion of My Throne”. This ego is as incompatible with the higher self as fire and water; it allies itself with God’s enemy; through it man may wander away and be lost; may remain remote from God; for it drugs men to a sleep