It’s Pillar Time!
\Apologies to McCann-Erickson/
In the comments appended to the article Plato, Modern Physics and Bahá’u’lláh, written by Vahid Houston Ranjbar— who is both a Bahá’í and a physicist — he and another Bahá’í physicist (known only as Markus) briefly speculated on the meaning of a passage in Bahá’u’lláh’s Writings concerning earth, water, air and fire. They did not develop the theme, as they were making but fleeting comments on a subject tangential to the article. Consequently, I herein include a section on that same topic from my forthcoming ebook.
By-the-by, I recommend reading all of Mr. Vahid Houston Ranjbar’s articles. They have a unique but well-reasoned approach to harmonizing the scientific and the spiritual endeavors.
Any background on the Bahá’í Faith one may need in order to understand my article can be found here. Article begins:
Having generated the Law of Creation (i.e., Absolute nothing cannot exist, therefore something absolutely must exist), Logos, keeper of the Ideal Forms — a/k/a the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, the pre-existent Cause, and many other titles — goes on to build creation from the tiniest tools. Bahá’u’lláh testifies:
Know that the first tokens that emanated from the pre-existent Cause in the worlds of creation are the four elements: fire, air, water and earth…Then the natures of the four appeared: heat, moisture, cold and dryness…When the elements interacted and joined with one another, two pillars became evident for each one: for fire, heat and dryness, and likewise for the remaining three in accordance with these rules…[117]
When 1st I read this extract, I was stunned. “What!?” I exclaimed. “This old alchemy teaching is true? How can that be?!”
Then I recalled that Bahá’u’lláh had to speak in metaphorical language. He often used the parlance in which the recipient of His Tablet was versed. Frequently, He responded to questions from sages and mystics, who were themselves steeped in Hermetic lore, Aristotelian cosmogony and/or Sufi metaphysics. Finally, He revealed His explanations before the development of modern physics, with its attendant vocabulary. Nevertheless, Bahá’u’lláh, as Manifestation of God, can reveal naught but infallible Tablets.
What, then, could this quotation, when updated to the jargon of today’s physicists, reveal? Let us start with the 4 classical elements, which the pre-existent Cause created 1st. (The 5th Element — sweetly nicknamed Leeloo <Luc Besson> — the quintessence or the aether, is the fluctuating QED vacuum. `Abdu’l-Bahá informs us that this vacuum is the physical reflection, on our level of existence, of that “pre-existent Cause”. In older Scriptures, this vacuum was called the waters above, the Akasha and many other names.)
The interpretation of this Scripture about the 4 elements that I am about to pursue is but 1 of its inexhaustible meanings. It may be the least important.

Firstly, Bahá’u’lláh specifies the way energy, and then matter, appeared in our universe. The Big Bang unleashed incredibly hot energy (Fire). In this initial plasma (also Fire), radiation (also Fire) and matter (Earth) are in thermal equilibrium. Hence, radiation and matter could freely convert to 1 another. As `Abdu’l-Bahá specified before modern physicists knew, primordial matter was 1. Not only was this true in, and even before, the original fluctuating vacuum specified in the class of inflation theories, it remained true, in other guise, in the plasma ball of the Big Bang. That is, all matter was merely potential matter. That initial plasma also behaved, for an instant, like a very dense, super-hot liquid (Water). At not quite 4 minutes post BB, helium and hydrogen gas (Air) begin to predominate as matter. Matter 1st appears as real substance, differentiated from both energy and from other matter. So the initial plasma contains all the seeds of Fire, Air, Water and Earth.
But Bahá’u’lláh doesn’t state that these 4 roots are the beginning of simply our universe. Rather, He declares they appear 1st “in the worlds of creation”. So these realities are Godnetic (God + genetic) elements. In some form or other, they are primordial substances in every world of God. They will have a spiritual reality as well as a physical reality. Whoa.
After the Primal Will creates them, then “the natures of the four appeared: heat, moisture, cold and dryness…When the elements interacted and joined with one another, two pillars became evident for each one: for fire, heat and dryness, and likewise for the remaining three in accordance with these rules…”
Here, I don’t believe Bahá’u’lláh means the pre-existent Cause created the elements without their natures and then gave them those natures. Obviously the elements (which the Chinese call the “changes”) were created with their characteristics, and from their pillars. Rather, 1st something appears, then perception of that something reveals its nature.

The 2 pillars of each element are defined so (deasil): Fire is (or is composed of) hot and dry, but more hot (energy dispensing) than dry. Earth is dry and cold, but more dry (solid) than cold. Water, which quenches fire and is its thermodynamic opposite, is more cold (energy absorbing) than wet. Finally, Air, which is earth’s density opposite, is more wet (fluid) than hot.
The World According to Guth
\Apologies to John Irving/
According to Professor Alan Guth’s inflation theory, the birth of our cosmos begins with pressure — which is the mother of a repulsive, rather than attractive, gravity — and negative energy. The characteristics of each flip after the Big Bang. Hence, in our subsequent universe, gravity becomes attractive and energy propagative.
Not coincidentally, the axes of the above diagram reveal that the pillars of the elements stretch across, vertically, energy; and horizontally, pressure, as they are manifest in our cosmos. Hold pressure constant and increase energy, and matter expands from 1 form to another deasil around the grid: 1st solid, then liquid, then gas and finally plasma. Contrarily, hold temperature constant and increase pressure and matter contracts widdershins from plasma (hot) to gas (moist) to liquid (cold) to solid (dry).

…God, praised and glorified be He, took a line, split it lengthwise into two, rotated the one about the other, and so made from them the universe.[107]
I go into this quote extensively in my ebook. For now, just know this is 1 way Bahá’u’lláh introduces 1 of His descriptions of cosmogony. Clearly, 1 depiction of this idea is a simple grid with 2 axes. For anything to arise, for something to happen, 2 things must be acted upon, or 2 opposing forces must react to each other, or 2 dimensions of an attribute must appear. What good is gravity, matter’s mass’ master, without the force of gravity, which can only manifest where 2 masses exist?
Consequently, for those who care to follow up on this idea, one would see, for instance, that the entire class of inflation theories based upon Guth’s proposal, including Alexander Vilenkin’s theory, or even the disparate Hawking-Turok concept of fluctuation displayed against a 4D instanton, require algebraic energy to develop a geometric where. Two attributes for 1 fluctuation.
Therefore, when that “line, split…lengthwise into two, [and then] rotated the one about the other”, that symmetry break gave rise to energy (propagation) and pressure (contraction). Energy and pressure are 2 types of force, but opposite in effect. Just as mathematicians can transform data sets and plot them on new axes, we could model the cosmos on the dimensions of energy (propagation) and pressure (contraction). In this specific transform spacetime would then manifest as a universe of “enerssure” or “pressergy”.

An explanation of the explicit symmetry break of the Law of Creation is a whole article by itself. In brief, the absolute on (or 1) value of the Law is at odds with its own Law of Motion, so that something can exist. For a force carrier to exist, there must be somewhere to carry the force. So an inverse is required, so that vectors may be possible, and so that a relationship could exist. On (one) must be able to turn almost off (zero). Off must be able to turn almost on. The zero-point fluctuations ultimately arising from the intangible uncertainty principle mirror this spiritual reality.
In our cosmos, energy requires sequence in order to manifest, as is wonderfully demonstrated by that uncertainty principle’s expression as a relationship between time and energy. Pressure is force per area, meaning pressure mandates place. Pressure is applied energy (the acceleration of mass) locked into place, so pressure is sequence married to space. Thus the creation of the pillars and elements require, in our universe, the underpinnings of space and time.

Scientists know already about space, time, energy and pressure. The 2 things we now know that we didn’t before are
1. Scripture told us before science even had the vocabulary; and
2. Since Scripture did tell us before science, we can trust Scripture when it tells us that those original crumbs from which our cosmos sprang are in some manner Godnetic across all manner of creation.{XX} Hence, the cross symbol also endures across perpetuity.
Pressure, energy and the 4 initial elements, as well as their sustaining pillars, also have at least metaphorical existence and roles both in the creation of the Primal Will, and in all the limitless worlds of God. They could not exist “here” did they not, in some form appropriate to those realms, exist “there”. As explained below, Godnetics is.
Certain key concepts incorporated in a Tablet of Baha’u’llah, the Lawh-i Haqqu’n-Nas, are insightfully expounded further by Alison Marshall in her Intro to Keven Brown’s provisional translation of that Tablet as follows:
…we have the general principle that every thing is, at core, a reality and essence, and that this reality and essence manifests itself in different forms in all the worlds of God. Probably, the primary example of this general principle is the Manifestation of God. The reality and essence of the Manifestation is the Primal Will, or Word, of God. The Primal Will manifests itself in infinite forms in all the worlds of God…Further on in the Tablet, Bahá’u’lláh encourages the reader to see all the worlds of God, including the physical world, as metaphorical.
“God willing, to the extent you are cognizant of the divine worlds, you will recognize and understand the metaphorical nature of this world, and will be able to extend it to the limitless worlds.” — Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Lawh-i Haqqu’n-Nas
[117] Bahá’u’lláh, Má’idiy-i-Ásmání, compiled by ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd Ishráq Khávarí, New Delhi Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1984. Provisional translation by Keven Brown.
[107] Bahá’u’lláh, unpublished tablet contained in the Bahá’í International Archives (“Origin” 38), provisional translation by Keven Brown.
{XX} Stream-of-consciousness moment5, or doggerel
Atom machs into a star where he percEives a sparkling little hottie named Con-cEve, who quickly makes her move. “♪ If you’ve got the cubby, Sunny, I’ve got the time ♫,” she flhertz. (From The Dao of the Wow) \Apologies to Lefty Frizzell/
