four pillars
Editorial introduction
Four stations: divinity, prophethood, sanctification, servitude. Four aspects of a single name. Four essences, directions, streams, and days. Four pillars of religion in the Báb’s early writing, unity, prophethood, guardianship, and the community of the faithful, each gate unsound without the last. The number keeps returning, and the temptation is to treat it as a master key. The Writings themselves ask for something slower: each fourfold pattern organises a different field, some are explained, one is openly debated among learned men, and one belongs to a mystical language of the Point and the letters that circle it. Held apart, the patterns become a real question about how sacred order helps memory and contemplation, and about what further study a symbol needs before it can be interpreted. The foursquare city of Revelation, measured with its twelve gates and foundations, shows another tradition giving holiness a numbered shape [1]. From here the path leads back into Islam, where the Báb’s pillars have their roots, into the person of Muḥammad, and into the degrees of divine unity that the first pillar, tawḥíd, names.
The first station is the station of Divinity; the second is the station of Prophethood or Manifestation; the third is the station of Sanctification and the fourth is the station of Servitude."
It can be read from four points - the same "Baha" - One is the station of Identity, - one of Qualities or Attributes - the third the Name, the fourth Deeds or Function, because everything contains Identity, Attributes, Qualities, Name or Function - it gives Light.
So, the four essences, four directions, four streams, four streets, four stations and four days are much mentioned in the words of the ancestors and those who lived in former times. When on the fourth day, the sun, the star of the fourth heaven, faces the fourth station, every one who is godly will return to God and every one who is ungodly will return to the Evil One.
Having understood this noble premise, know that this upright religion also has four pillars: The first pillar is Unity (Tawhid), the second is Prophethood, the third is Guardianship, and the fourth is the Shi'a.
Haji Murtada has written that however much we studied the books, we could not find the source of the Fourth Pillar except in the book of some Indian person who wrote "The Fourth Pillar is in the impurities..."
None hath ever attained to the true understanding of that Word as it truly is. From but a single point thereof hath appeared the knowledge of all the first and the last. He is the Dawning-Place of the divine Books, the Day-spring of the revelation of the Lord of Oneness, and the Source of divine laws and ordinances. His are the four pillars, in each pillar lie hidden mysteries and treasured bounties.
And verily religion is established upon four pillars: the unity of God [al-tawhid], the reality of prophethood [al-nubuwwa], the succession of authority [al-walaya], and the community of followers [al-shi'a]: four gates, the first of which cannot be sound without the last.
Praise be to God Who created the Point and appointed for it four pillars, and brought forth from the first pillar an Alif which spoke of its own self and circled round it, being the mirror reflecting it in the station of Oneness, wherein the believers profess His unity, the sincere ones glorify Him, and those nigh unto God proclaim that He is God, there is none other God but Him, the All-Knowing, the One. And from its second pillar He manifested that same Form in another station, and shed upon it the lights shining forth from His Most Great Horizon, whereupon it called out, turned towards Him, arose in the station of multiplicity, and proclaimed that verily there is none other God but Him, the Mighty, the Bestower. … And from its third pillar He brought forth another Alif and made it the Dawning-Place of His most exalted attributes, and it proclaimed that verily there is none other God but Him, the Mighty, the All-Knowing. And from its fourth pillar He manifested that which reflected the first, third and second pillars, and it proclaimed in this station that He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden, there is none other God but Him, the Mighty, the Peerless.
For thought and discussion