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..In order to recognize the truth, one must first make a personal effort and hold a certain attitude towards life. Whoever encounters the light of truth with a prejudiced mind set on the religious traditions of the past and their conventional interpretation, whoever is guided by his self-made concept of the world, whoever is crammed with ideas of his own which he has come so to cherish that he is unwilling to correct them, for him truth will remain hidden behind the veil of his "idle fancies and vain imaginations". Only he who seeks the truth will find it. And a true seeker is only he who purifies "his heart... from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge": "He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error or that hate repel him away from the truth". This is the purity of heart referred to by Jesus when He said: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matt 5:8)" and "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice (John 18:37)". Baha'u'llah gives us the assurance that "He hath endowed every soul with the capacity to recognize the signs of God" and that to the sincere seeker who tears away the veils of preconceived ideas, the light of divine truth will appear as manifest as "the sun in its noontide glory". (22:1) see This discernment excels by far a purely intellectual understanding. It is bestowed upon the seeker in his encounter with light and truth. But for him both rational thinking and the experience itself are necessary. The words of Jesus are noteworthy on this point: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be o God, or whether I speak of myself (John 7:16-17)." And whoever reflects on the warning according to which false prophets, like true ones, must be recognized by their fruits (Matt 7:16), and considers with an unbiased mind what is beginning to take shape on a small scale in the Baha'i Community-- the unity of mankind in which all men of all races, nations and religions are integrated-- he will be able to recognize how Baha'u'llah quickens the hearts and unites men: "The proof of the sun is the light thereof, which shineth and envelopeth all things. The evidence of the shower is the bounty thereof, which reneweth and investeth the world with the mantle of life. Yea, the blind can perceive naught from the sun except its heat, and the arid soil hath no share of the showers of mercy." It is the profound experience of the Baha'i that the God who is said to be dead is alive and that He has fulfilled the promise He made to the prophets by leading mankind to peace and unity through Baha'u'llah. (23:1) see But Baha'u'llah does not represent the final stage in the history of the Salvation of Man. He proclaims that God will continue in the future to send His messengers to mankind "to summon all mankind to truthfulness and sincerity, to piety and trustworthiness, to resignation and submissiveness to the Will of God, to forbearance and kindliness, to uprightness and wisdom" and "to array ever man with the mantle of a saintly character, and to adorn him with the ornament of holy and goodly deeds" (Gl)
(23:2)
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