Introduction
The following Persian Tablet by Bahá’u’lláh describes how certain Bahá’ís, in His time, became disillusioned because of the immoral actions and divisive attitudes of some people who claimed to uphold His teachings. He counsels His followers to avoid those who are patently insincere in their claims to belief, and to understand that, since the emergence of such people is inevitable in every age, their existence does not undermine the essential integrity of the Faith nor need it vitiate the spiritual life of the community and individual.
The tablet can be found in the Phelps inventory under the code (Phelps inventory): BH02884; source: AHM.299. An interlinear file with the original Persian can be found at the bottom of the page.
Tablet on Avoiding the Disingenuous
Provisional Translation by Joshua Hall
In the Name of the Peerless Friend
The Most Exalted Pen giveth the glad-tidings of the bounties of the All-Merciful unto the people of Bahá, and counselleth all that they may attain, in accordance with the admonishment of God, the Lord of all names, to that which the Beloved Himself hath desired. Conflict, contention, and unrest, now as in the past, are to be scrupulously avoided. The friends of God must regard others with loving-kindness, and lead everyone to the horizon of guidance through compassionate counsels and virtuous deeds. How many have associated themselves with God and have yet become the means of the degradation of His Cause! It is necessary to avoid the company of such people.
Some of the people—those who have not apprehended the essential purpose [of the Cause] in the days of God, and who have failed to quaff the wine of inner meanings from the cup of utterance—become disillusioned by the actions of the heedless and the deeds of the insincere. It is thus that some souls who sought to soar into the heaven of faith, by reason of the words and deeds of the disingenuous, remained veiled from the all-glorious horizon, notwithstanding that for years they had heard the verse:
Though all should disbelieve in Him on Earth,
His robe of grandeur would not be besmirched.[1]
Some persons ascribe to God what they witness from those who have laid false claim to love Him. Miserable, indeed, is that which they do.[2] The righteous and the wicked have existed, and shall continue to exist, in every age. Take heed, O people of insight!
Unblemished hearts, illumined eyes, and pure souls should ceaselessly direct themselves toward the horizon of the Cause, and disregard the actions and words of the false and the deceitful. Supplicate ye God—exalted be His glory—to guide all men and enable them to attain to the good-pleasure of Him Who is the dayspring of His signs, which is naught save the good-pleasure of God Himself. He is the Answerer of prayers, the All-Bountiful, the All-Forgiving, the Munificent.
This Tablet hath been revealed from the heaven of the will of God, as a token of His grace and bounty, that all His loved ones may become aware of that which He hath desired, and may shun the wickedness of corrupt souls.[3] They are not to suppose that all who speak are truthful, nor to account every claimant to belief as among the people of the Crimson Ark.
He is the Expounder, the Speaker, the Truthful, the Exalted, the Almighty, the Faithful.
[1] A verse—according to the Lughát-námiy-i-Dihkhudá (under “gard nishastan”)—by the Sufi poet Khájih ‘Abdu’lláh Anṣárí. Many thanks to Dr. Moojan Momen for bringing this fact to my attention.
[2] An allusion to the Qur’án, 5:62.
[3] “Corrupt souls” (nufús-i-ammárih) is a play on, and allusion to, the Sufi concept of the “insistent self” (nafs-i-ammárih), which refers to the aspect of the self or soul—with its passions, appetites, and desires—that leads one into temptation and sin insofar as it is “insistent” (ammárih) on them. While the singular nafs refers to the self or soul, Bahá’u’lláh uses the plural nufús to refer to those souls, or persons, who are similarly ammárih—either having been corrupted by their insistent selves or having thereby become similarly insistent on wickedness.