The Family of Man
The writings of the Baha’i Faith extol the oneness of humanity. What does it take for a child to understand this fundamental truth? For me, it was an exhibition of photographs.
Click to download or listen. To be a Baha’i.
“Bahá’u'lláh taught the Oneness of humanity; that is to say, all the children of men are under the mercy of the Great God. They are the sons of one God; they are trained by God. He has placed the crown of humanity on the head of every one of the servants of God. Therefore all nations and peoples must consider themselves brethren. They are all descendants from Adam. They are the branches, leaves, flowers and fruits of One Tree. They are pearls from one shell. But the children of men are in need of education and civilization, and they require to be polished, till they become bright and shining. Man and woman both should be educated equally and equally regarded.”
‘Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Abdu’l-Baha in London
I went to the Museum of Modern Art at least once a week and sometimes more often for a period of about three years. I began visiting the museum when I was 14 and had just finished reading a life changing book that the Museum published. It was called The Family of Man.
“Hailed as the most successful exhibition of photography ever assembled, The Family of Man opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in January 1955. This book, the permanent embodiment of Edward Steichen’s monumental exhibition, reproduces all of the 503 images that Steichen described as ‘a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world. Photographs made in all parts of the world, of the gamut of life from birth to death.’ A classic and inspiring work, The Family of Man has been in print for more than forty years. The New York Times once wrote that it ’symbolizes the universality of human emotions.’”
You can see even from the brief synopsis above that discovering that book put me on an inevitable path toward the Baha’i faith. My days at the Museum represented not just inspiration and beauty; they were an escape from the emotional abuse inflicted by my parents. My ambition changed. From that point on all I wanted to be was an artist. From minutes after I opened the book onwards, I believed in the transcendent human soul.
That was what I loved about New York. Besides the Museum of Modern Art, the only other things I loved about the city were classical concerts at Carnegie Hall, Shakespeare in Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When I was 15 years old, I watched Shakespeare in Central Park. Just as the Macbeth witches came on stage and began their act, someone shouted out that there was a shooting star overhead. Thousands of people all looked towards the clear night sky and cheered wildly. You cannot duplicate or emulate an experience like that and you never forget it.
Tags: Artist, Baha'i, Baha'i Faith, faith, London, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photography, The Museum of Modern ArtRelated posts
Mirror Neurons and the Exemplar
I’m in the process of writing a long article on mirroring which includes the function of mirror neurons, their relation to religious teachings and the Bahá’í concepts of the Covenant and Exemplar. These are my preliminary notes and a few sources.
Of Mirrors and Exemplars, a Brief Compilation
Abstract
One of the most fundamental human social attributes is the ability to interact. Through interaction humans learn by imitation and share collective centers of attentions that lead to common knowledge. Social organization is based on the way we interact with one another. Previous sociological studies were focused on the development of those social processes but they did not concern those proximal aspects. The discovery that was made in the last decade of the twentieth century revealed the neurobiological mechanism that seems to enable social interactions. Mirror neurons are the motor neurons that function not only when we perform an action but also when we observe it. Moreover, mirror neurons allow us to understand intentions and emotions hidden behind actions. The ability to understand intentions of others is considered as a fundamental mechanism that determines social relations and, thus, influences social organization. Mirror neurons are the main factor that coordinates imitation and, hence, they are responsible for social conditioning. Mirror neurons provide explanation for social processes that are based on interactions such as common knowledge and social norms. Furthermore, mirror neurons are considered as a biological mechanism that makes social relations possible.
Original document in PDF format: http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/jproos/ESABulinska.pdf
From Mirror Neurons to the Mona Lisa, Relating Art and Science
Artists have long looked to science for inspiration. Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy and engineering and applied his knowledge to the creation of lifelike visual art. Today, artists use scientific iconography and concepts not only to produce realistic images but also to produce abstract and poetic images. The scientific lexicon can lend itself to visual experiences that have little in common with the methodical march of scientific inquiry. “Art is about uniqueness while scientific experimentation depends on repeatability,” said Suzanne Anker, a visual artist and department chair at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “What joins art and science together is the visual image.”
Unfortunately this article is no longer available on their website.
Mirror neurons play a role in cultural diversity, imitation, understanding intentions, empathy, language, and gender differences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_cells. Also see “theory of mind.”
An overview of the work of neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran on mirror neurons including their possible role in human evolution is here. The essayist is clearly a materialist who puts forward a non-theistic theory of the function of mirror neurons. What, we may ask, is a religious view of mirror neurons? The medieval Christian view was brilliantly put forth by Thomas á Kempis in his book “The Imitation of Christ,” one of the most widely read theological works in history.
Bahá’ís have the concept of the Covenant and the Exemplar. Briefly, the Covenant is God’s promise of a chain of unbroken guidance and our agreement to abide by it. The Exemplar is the perfect human whose traits we are instructed to emulate, a person who in this unique case in known religious history is the son of a Manifestation of God.
[Bahá'u'lláh's] eldest Son was made the perfect Mirror reflecting His light, and the Centre of His mighty Covenant … This peerless Covenant revolves around its Centre, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, extolled by Shoghi Effendi as Bahá’u'lláh’s ‘most exalted handiwork, the stainless Mirror of His light, the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, the unerring Interpreter of His word, the embodiment of every Bahá’í ideal, the incarnation of every Bahá’í virtue, the Most Mighty Branch sprung from the Ancient Root, the Limb of the Law of God, the Being round whom all names revolve, the Mainspring of the Oneness of Humanity, the Ensign of the Most Great Peace, the Moon of the Central Orb of this Most Holy Dispensation’. — Adib Taherzadeh, The Covenant of Bahá’u'lláh
Bahá’í writer, Julie Swan, wrote:
“This tendency of creatures to mirror one another … helps us all learn vital skills. It helps us empathize, adjust our energy and feeling tones…our body language to match another person. This helps them feel understood and not as alone, and it brings forth a feeling of connection to us.
“With Abdu’l-Bahá as our Exemplar, we have a wonderful Example to try to mirror. Of course, we must accept our own nature and limitations. Because He is our worthy example for all time, I think to the extent to which we try to mirror Him, we do increase our capacities.
Mirroring is often an unconscious process, by which we learn many positive (and negative) things by mirroring those around us. When we begin to observe this consciously (which takes great effort, resolve, presence), we can use this to join with others whom we deem healthy, worthy of our emulation. Or we can use it to have empathy with someone in need. By consciously disengaging the process of mirroring (detachment) we protect ourselves from influences where we might be in danger.
When making art or enjoying art forms, we can create or absorb content we want or need to through use of the mirroring principle. [Cary] wrote about going into a painting, joining with it.
This would be more than mirroring I think, and take a real release of our boundaries. We all do this to varying degrees with film, music, and literature as well as other art forms. The physics of it probably has to do with the play of light that emanates from all and affects all.” (Reprinted with the author’s permission).
There may be real physics at work and definitely related to light as Julie Swan mentioned. Some researchers have found that living cells emit photons and theorize that it may be one of many communication mechanisms. I recommend The Field by Lynne McTaggart.
“McTaggart, an investigative journalist (What Doctors Don’t Tell You), describes scientific discoveries that she believes point to a unifying concept of the universe, one that reconciles mind with matter, classic Newtonian science with quantum physics and, most importantly, science with religion.”
The Field focuses on recent experimental work in the area of Quantum Physics. When and if such discoveries are exhaustively verified they will go a long way to explaining how art, poetry, literature, and even sacred scripture really work.
Click for a brief scientific overview of mirror neurons on Science Daily.
Not by the force of numbers, not by the mere exposition of a set of new and noble principles, not by an organized campaign of teaching — no matter how worldwide and elaborate in its character — not even by the staunchness of our faith or the exaltation of our enthusiasm, can we ultimately hope to vindicate in the eyes of a critical and skeptical age the supreme claim of the Abhá Revelation. One thing and only one thing will unfailingly and alone secure the undoubted triumph of this sacred Cause, namely, the extent to which our own inner life and private character mirror forth in their manifold aspects the splendor of those eternal principles proclaimed by Bahá’u'lláh. Shoghi Effendi, Baha’i Administration, p. 66
A compilation from Baha’i sources on mirrors and the exemplar. 86 pages, 9.5 MB (large!)
Tags: Adib Taherzadeh, Baha'i, Baha'i Administration, energy, faith, Lynne McTaggart, Neurology, New York, ReligionRelated posts
Portrait(s) of the Artist
I’ve uploaded biographical information all over the place. The first place to look is on my website where I’ve redone the Artist Statement page. There’s now a link there and on the Contact page to the Artist’s Gallery site where I’ll be selling fine art prints of my photography soon. There are expanded statements and biographical data there. By next week I will have added about 40 prints. I haven’t determined a price for them yet. Not stopping with that I wrote Facebook and MySpace profiles also. They all contain essentially the same information but the Artist Gallery at Absolute Arts has the most comprehensive information. In the picture above I was standing in front of a poster of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I saw the original dozens of times when I was a teenager at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. With no more than a tiny return subway token in my pocket I went there almost twice a week starting when I was 15 and ending when I left New York permanently.
I spent hours enraptured by three very special paintings: Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh; Waterlilies by Claude Monet; and Guernica by Pablo Picasso. The latter two are wall-size murals. I had read virtually every available book about and biography of Van Gogh. It wasn’t until I read Kay Redfield Jamison’s now classic work, Touched With Fire a few years ago that I actually understood him but I loved his work anyway.
I was only 16 in my senior year at Bronx High School of Science. I had skipped eighth grade and my birthday is in June. I graduated with two awards (Creative Writing and Spanish) two weeks after I turned 17. In August I left for the San Francisco area by hitch-hiking across country by way of Toronto, Detroit, Indianapolis, Denver and Cheyenne. Except for four one-day visits I never returned to New York. I also never saw my parents again.
To read more about me click here.
Obviously I hadn’t had my morning double shot of espresso yet when I painted this self portrait. (Old glasses with big frames. I changed them a few months after making these images.)
How I Became a Baha’i
Berkeley Rose Garden (from Wikipedia)
If I hadn’t offered a pretty girl a can of beer at a Fourth of July party in the Berkeley hills I might not have heard of the Bahá’í faith until much later on. Her name was Sandra, a fourth-generation American Bahá’í who was raised in Japan. Sandra said that she didn’t drink (I hardly ever did either) so I asked her why. She said because she was a Bahá’í. I asked her what Bahá’í meant because I confused its name with that of a Jewish organization. I put my just opened beer can down and never picked one up again in my life.
Hours later that night we walked out several steps to the Berkeley Rose Garden, a stunningly beautiful hanging garden carved out of a steep hill. As we stood under a redwood arch in the center of a sort of bridge with 19 sections, she told me a little about the Bahá’í faith. We watched the sunrise and then parted but not before I asked her out on a date. She accepted so I went over to her house that afternoon. An hour later, after reading one page of the Hidden Words and a single prayer I declared my belief.
This is the background:
I was actively seeking a religion since I was about 12 years old. I thoroughly investigated Buddhism and was most sympathetic to it except for what I felt was its widespread lack of theism. I had briefly moved back to New York City from Berkeley in 1962. There my girlfriend Judy and I devised a plan to go out to San Francisco on the Fourth of July. We made a very big deal out of the abstract concept of Independence and we both even had dreams about it. That began after we saw a late-1930s French film called A Nous La Liberté. Its title became our motto. She went elsewhere and I couldn’t wait to get back out of New York so I left early and headed for Berkeley with a stop in New Orleans to see the Mardi Gras. When the Fourth came around I immediately connected it with my dream and was in a highly receptive state. Though I lived in Berkeley in the 1960s I was never a part of the hippie culture or attracted to it. I rarely listened to the popular music at that time because I had grown up loving classical music and Jazz.
On the evening of July 4th at a party in the Berkeley hills filled with antiwar protesters and wealthy radicals I met a young Bahá’í girl named Sandra. She stood out because she was the only one there not drinking alcohol nor was she one of the leftwing radicals. I drank alcohol very rarely myself because it made me ill the few times I tried it. I asked her why she wasn’t drinking and she said that she was a Bahá’í. I later found out that she was a fourth generation Bahá’í, very rare for an American. Her great great grandmother attended ‘Abdul-Bahá’s talk at Stanford where he presented her with an orange jade and gold Bahá’í ring. Sandra was wearing that ring when I met her. She was bilingual and had grown up in Japan where her mother was on the National Spiritual Assembly.
Impulsively I asked Sandra out on a movie date the next day. When I got to her house, I told her that I wanted to believe in God and only needed incontrovertible proof. I was sure intuitively that there was such a thing as the human soul. She said that I had to pray and I told her I had no idea how to do that. I grew up in a kosher but otherwise nonreligious Jewish immigrant family. She read the prayer that begins with “Create in me a pure heart, O my God, and renew a tranquil conscience within me, O my Hope! Through the spirit of power confirm Thou me in Thy Cause, O my Best-Beloved, and by the light of Thy glory reveal unto me Thy path.” While she was doing that I closed my eyes. I visualized a golden eagle with outspread wings and heavy cleansing rain coming at me from all directions.
When she was finished I described what I saw. She showed me a photograph in which she was standing in front of the grave of the Guardian. I saw that eagle. I asked to see more Bahá’í writings. Sandra showed me the Hidden Words and I read the first page. At that point I spontaneously declared my belief because the beauty and authority of Baha’u'llah’s words overwhelmed me. That was all the proof I needed that God existed or that He had a new messenger. I could not conceive how anyone could write words of such power and authority without direct revelation from the Creator. I never had a single doubt.
Monument on the grave of the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith
Thirty years later when we met again in Seattle Sandra gave me the very same prayer book that she read from when I declared. It was what we all used to call “the blue prayer book.” She had saved it all those years for me. There are now six generations of Bahá’ís in her family.
One rejected can of beer. Who could have imagined the transformational power that would follow!
Tags: A Nous La Liberté, Baha'i, Baha'i Faith, Berkeley Rose Garden, faith, National Spiritual Assembly, New York, New York City, Religion, San Francisco, the GuardianRelated posts