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Matter, substance, and form

matter; essence; substance and form

17 selections · 17 reading entries · Current subject view ↗

Editorial introduction

A seed is sown, disappears into stem and leaf and fruit, and at the end seeds appear again; are they the same seed? ‘Abdu’l-Bahá uses that homely puzzle to open the question of what persists when things change. Bahá’u’lláh offers another clue in ink and letters: the ink exists before any letter is written and could take any shape, the shape exists in the writer’s mind before it touches paper, yet neither can appear in the world without the other. Matter and form can be told apart in thought and never in the thing, which is close to what Aristotle found when he asked whether nature is the underlying stuff or the defining shape [1]. Around this centre very different voices gather: the Báb’s symbolic account of Will and Purpose as father and mother of all things, the Sufi debate over whether existence is a substance or an accident of the mind, alchemical descriptions of a subtle substance filling all interstices, and reported remarks about atoms in the vocabulary of their time. None of it is modern physics, and the fairest question to ask of each is what kind of explanation it offers. The path continues into the indestructibility of elementary matter, the law of transformation and change, the four elements, and the uncompounded reality beneath them all.

Selected passages

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01

A seed comes into the world of existence. It is planted, and it sprouts and grows. The plant puts out branches, leaves, and flowers, and bears fruit. The seed has disappeared, and has appeared again in all these forms. After all this it returns as seed; that is, seeds appear like the seed which was sown.

Now in fact no one of these new seeds is the same seed which was sown; but the qualities and essence of that seed have reappeared in these seeds.

The essence of that seed has been manifested.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Words to Myron Phelps and Madame Canavarro in Dec. 1902 -- ABU2645)
02

The sun is born of matter and form, which can be likened to father and mother, and still it is absolute perfection; darkness has neither matter nor form, neither father nor mother, and yet it is sheer imperfection.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Chapter 18, The Greatness of Christ, 1904 ca. -- AB01218)
03

For every part of the universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever. … Physical bodies are transferred past one barrier after another, from one life to another, and all things are subject to transformation and change, save only the essence of existence itself -- since it is constant and immutable, and upon it is founded the life of every species and kind, of every contingent reality throughout the whole of creation.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 1902-Sep-13, to Mrs J O Wilhelm -- AB01624)
04

There is but one reality and one essence that is expounded in the worlds of outer form and, at each of its stages, is described by a specific name... in accordance with the degrees of its particular manifestations on the plane of this limited world.

(Bahá’u’lláh -- BH11861)

The available source contains an omission or incomplete wording; sentence boundaries need review.

05

Matter, the corporeal, consists of atoms which are alike; they, the atoms, fill up space, they are units without magnitude conceived as points, on which all spatial corporeal existence is based. The atoms do not penetrate into each other, they move, they change.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Words spoken in the house of Abdu'l-Baha in Feb 1910 -- ABU0226)
06

For example it has been stated that all things are composed of two elements: the "Fashioner" [qabil] and the "Fashioned" [maqbul]. By "Fashioned" is meant substance [madda] and primary matter [huyula] and by "Fashioner" is meant the form and shape which confines and limits the primary matter from its state of indefiniteness and freedom to the courtyard of limitation and definite form. For example, letters and words are composed of two things: The first is the substance which is ink and pencil-lead and is the "Fashioned" while the second is the forms and features of the letters and words which are the "Fashioner". … For it is not possible for a thing to have an external existence and not to be formed into a shape because substance and primal matter in order to exist need shape and form; while shape and form in order to appear need substance.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tafsir-i-Kuntu Kanzan Makhfiyyan (Commentary on the Hadith of the Hidden Treasure), 1868 or <, to Ali Shawkat Pasha -- AB00006)
07

The Kaf is the rank of the Primal Will, and the Nun is the rank of Purpose, and the Primal Will is the father of all things and Purpose their mother. … Through the Kaf God created the substance of things and the sign of His uniqueness and the temple of His oneness, indicating God alone, and it is the highest consciousness in contingency wherein God alone is known, and it is called the heart. Through the Nun God created things from the beginning of inclination toward Himself to the uttermost multiplicity, from infinity unto infinity.

(The Báb, Tafsir (huruf) al-basmala -- BB00022)
08

For the generality of the Sufis understand by "Existence" that common existence which is conceived by the mind and intellect of man; that is, which man can comprehend.

This common existence, however, is only one accident among others that enter upon the realities of created things, while the essences of beings are the substance.

… Now, the substance is undoubtedly superior to the accident, for the substance is primary and the accident secondary; the substance subsists through itself while the accident subsists through something else; that is, it needs a substance through which it can subsist.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Chapter 82, The Unity of Existence, 1906-Dec-12 -- AB00062)
09

Those pre-eminent Sufis who founded the doctrine of the "unity of existence" never intended by this term the universally predicated existence which is conceived by the mind. For such an existence is but an accident among others occurring in association with the realities of things. That is to say, these realities are the substance, whereas that existence which is conceived by the mind, the universally predicated existence, is but an accident associated with them.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Commentary on the Unity of Existence, 1919-Oct-27, to Abdu'l-Hadi Zayyan -- AB00153)
10

Thus you have the conservation of energy and the infinitude of phenomena, the indestructibility of phenomena, changeless and immutable because life cannot become annihilated. The utmost is this; that the form, the outward image, throughout these changes and transformations is dissolved. The realities of all phenomena are immutable and unchangeable. Extinction or mortality is nothing but the transformation of pictures and images but the reality back of these images is eternal.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Words spoken at The White Lodge in Wimbledon, 1913-Jan-03 -- ABU0055)

Further quotations · supplied wording and references

11

For the motion of the hand of the writer is not the source of the writing itself, but only the cause of its coming into being. But the writing is composed from the ink and the form of the ink.... The recipient of the action (al-maf'ul) is not composed from the action but existentiated by the action and composed from matter and form.

(Shaykh Ahmad, Sharh al-Masha'ir p. 153. Translated in Brown (2001), 73)

Supplied quotation · catalogue passage not verified

Sentence boundary needs source review; the supplied wording is retained.

12

The fact that the word, latif, is one of the Divine Names [Qur'an 31:16] is, for Ibn 'Arabi, extremely significant. The Name latif or 'Subtle' with this particular connotation represents the Absolute as a Substance (jawhar) which, immaterial and invisible, permeates and pervades the entire world of Being just as a color permeates substances. This substance which is infinitely variable runs through everything and constitutes its reality.

(Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism, p. 141. Ibn 'Arabi identifies this Substance with the Absolute [al-Haqq]: "However (there is also a fundamental difference between my position and the Ash'arites; namely), I assert that (the Substance here in question) is nothing other than the 'Absolute', while the (Ash'arite) theologians imagine that what is called Substance, although it is a 'reality', is not the same absolute Reality as understood by the people who (uphold the theory of) 'unveiling' and 'self-manifestation'. But this (i.e. what I teach) is the profound meaning of God's being latif." (from the Fusus, quoted in ibid., p. 142) This identification is probably from the standpoint of tajalli, and not the Essence (dhat), as Ibn 'Arabi elsewhere states: "The Reality called the 'Essence at the level of Unity' (al-dhat al-ahadiyah) in its true nature is nothing other than Being (wujud) pure and simple in so far as it is Being. It is conditioned neither by non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred (muqaddas) to be qualified by any property or any name. It has no quality, no delimitation; there is not even a shadow of multiplicity in it. It is neither a substance nor an accident..." ibid., p. 25. Cf. 'Abdu'l-Baha: "As to the station of the Godhead, it is exalted above and sanctified beyond the understanding of all created things, how much more above resolving itself into their realities!" provisional translation, JBS11:3-4, MKT3:356)

Supplied quotation · catalogue passage not verified

13

As for jawhar, God protect you, it is the one thing by which the interstices are filled (al-mamlu' bihi al-khalal). It is capable of taking any form. Everything is in it, everything is constituted out of it, and everything dissolves back to it. … This is the body which is in all three kingdoms of nature, namely animals, plants and stones....

(Jabir Ibn Hayyan, in Syed Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures and Things, pp. 54-56)

Supplied quotation · catalogue passage not verified

Sentence boundary needs source review; the supplied wording is retained.

14

...the bearer of the essence (jawhar) is the active agent (fa'il)...

(Baha'u'llah, provisional translation, MA1.037)

Catalogue reference: BH00088 · passage alignment is approximate; supplied wording retained.

Sentence boundary needs source review; the supplied wording is retained.

15

The substance (jawhar) is a single word which hath shone forth from the mouth of the Will, and by it the heat appeared which God made to be the cause of motion in the universe. By it all things came forth.

(Baha'u'llah, provisional translation, in "Fa'il va Munfa'il" 'Andalib v5#19 p. 33)

Catalogue reference: BH11218 · passage alignment is approximate; supplied wording retained.

16

...in philosophy the spirit is energy and all matter is endowed with energy; and this power is inseparable from matter, as in electricity. In other words, matter is a vehicle for spirit but the transformation of matter does not involve the extinction of that power because transformation and transference are in the properties of matter.... The manifestation or appearance of the spirit varies due to changes in matter and bodies.

(Mahmud's Diary, 17 Oct. 1912, p. 335)

Catalogue reference: ABU2233 · passage alignment is approximate; supplied wording retained.

Sentence boundary needs source review; the supplied wording is retained.

17

The essence of existence is a spiritual reality because invisible forces of the spirit are the origin of matter and the foundation thereof.

(From a letter of Shoghi Effendi, 18 Feb. 1930, translated from the Persian, published in the Journal of Baha'i Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, p.29, fn22)

Supplied quotation · catalogue passage not verified

Continue exploring

For thought and discussion

Questions to carry forward

  1. What remains continuous when a thing changes its form, and how do the seed and writing analogies answer differently?
  2. Which passages offer metaphysical explanations, which use spiritual images, and which preserve questions for research?
  3. What becomes clearer when matter and form are distinguished, and what becomes misleading if they are treated as entirely independent?
  4. How could a conversation between these texts and contemporary science respect the different questions each is equipped to address?
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