Hidden Word, Arabic 13: Noble Have I Created Thee

The thirteenth Hidden Word in Arabic is a single great question posed by God to the human soul. It is among the most often quoted utterances in the entire book and stands as a kind of spiritual mirror in which the believer must take time to look.

O SON OF SPIRIT! Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.

The compression is extraordinary. Twenty-three words contain a complete spiritual diagnosis and a complete spiritual remedy. The diagnosis: a creature created noble has, by its own choosing, abased itself. The remedy: it must rise to the height for which it was made.

The verb abased is in the reflexive — thou hast abased thyself. Bahá'u'lláh is not naming the soul's abasement as something done to it by an enemy. The soul has done it to itself. By small daily refusals of its own dignity, by the slow accumulation of cynicism, of grievance, of avoidance, of spiritual sloth, the soul that was created in nobility has set itself down in a low place and has come, with time, to consider the low place its proper home.

The remedy is not penance. It is not a programme of works. It is, simply, Rise. Rise to the actual stature in which the soul was made. Stand up at the height for which the human being was designed.

This Hidden Word has been used by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, by Shoghi Effendi, and by the institutions of the Faith as a constant reminder of the high vision the Bahá'í teachings hold of human nature. The Bahá'í community is not a refuge for the abased. It is a school for the noble — a school in which the soul is daily called to remember its own original dignity and to rise into it.

Source: Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words (Bahá'í Publishing Trust). Public domain text from the Bahá'í Reference Library.

Bahá'u'lláh. (1858). *The Hidden Words*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/hidden-words/