Dear friends, Continuing on with my review of the articles in *Reason and Revelation* would now like to discuss Christopher White's article "Prayer as Remembrance."
warmest, Susan Christopher White's article "Prayer as Remembrance" is perhaps more of an inspirational and reflective piece than an academic one. White suggests that the central human problem according to the Baha'i Faith is our forgetfulness of God which creates a gap between the human and divine worlds. Prayer enables us to remember God and reorient ourselves back towards Him. The Obligatory Prayers are more efficacious in that process because involve both the body and the mind in this process of remembrance. This article providing deep insight into the process of prayer in the Baha'i Faith. It is limited in its scope, however, by its exclusive reliance only on those materials available in authoritative English translations. The practice of dhikr or remembrance in Islamic mysticism is given only the most cursory treatment. The author states that it is his 'sense' that "many, if not most, of the specific dhikr practices were rejected or simplified" but without any evidence presented to sustain that 'sense.' No mention is made even of the most obvious form of dhikr in the Baha'i Faith, namely the recitation of the Greatest Name ninety-five times a day. One would expect a much more in depth treatment of the practice of dhikr in a paper on the centrality of remembrance in Baha'i devotional practices. The lack of sufficient background in Islamic mystical traditions is evident as well in the author's treatment of certain passages alluding to the pre-existence. White ties these passages into the Platonic tradition wherein secrets are imparted to the soul prior to its reincarnation but are then forgotten once we assume this earthly existence. The passages White refers to might have been better understood within the Islamic context of the Covent of Alast than by Plato's notion of recollecting the primordial forms. The Covenant of Alast is the Islamic equivalent of what we in the Baha'i Faith call the Greater Covenant. It refers to the primordial Covenant in which God asks all creation "Am I not your Lord" and creation answers "Yea, verily." One of the goals of Sufism is to reach such a state of remembrance as to recall the experience of Alast. Baha'u'llah refers very specifically to this in His Mathnavi. ---------- You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://list.jccc.net/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=bahai-st news://list.jccc.net/bahai-st http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist (public) http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ (public) To unsubscribe send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
