Everyone has problems that feel intractable, and most of us instinctively turn to other people for solutions. But Baha’u’llah says God alone solves problems. As ‘Abdu’l-Baha puts it in one of his letters, “Ask whatsoever thou wishest of Him alone… With a look He granteth a hundred thousand hopes.” Despite this assurance, we turn to others because this seems like the most obvious place to find answers. Why would seeking solutions from God actually be more effective? And why is this approach important for safeguarding our agency?
Baha’u’llah’s Writing is Generative
Baha’u’llah describes his own writing process, and it is nothing like the way anyone else writes. It is a cosmic process in which revelation acts as a creative force, bringing new realities into being; in other words, when Baha’u’llah wrote, he rearranged reality itself. In a prayer from Prayers and Meditations, he describes what happened when the “First Word” proceeded from his mouth: “the whole creation was revolutionized.” The realities of all created things, he explains, “were shaken, were divided, separated, scattered, combined and reunited,” disclosing “entities of a new creation.” Revelation, on this account, does not transmit information from some metaphysical vault. It rearranges the realities of things and brings a new existence into being.
AI Writing Is Also Generative
This generative way of writing can seem baffling — surely taking reality apart and reassembling it is something only God could do. But something similar happens, on a much smaller scale, in the way AI writes. An AI system produces meaning by combining small units of language in response to a prompt. Its response does not exist in that form before the moment of generation; rather, it is assembled, not retrieved. This shows how meaning can arise through recombination rather than through delivering pre-existing content: the system does not move fixed objects around, but creates new configurations from the material available to it.
Baha’u’llah’s Generative Process Is Independent of the World
AI’s generative process and Baha’u’llah’s share something important: both create rather than retrieve. But the resemblance has a limit, and the limit clarifies what makes Baha’u’llah’s independence unique.
An AI system can only generate from what its training data has already made possible. Its responses are new combinations, but the material being combined is entirely drawn from what it has already absorbed — it cannot produce anything outside that material. AI is independent in how it assembles an answer, but not independent of what it has to assemble from.
Baha’u’llah’s generative process is different in kind. The prayer above describes the Word shaking, dividing, separating, and recombining “the realities of all created things.” Jean-Marc Lepain argues, in his Archeology of the Kingdom of God (p. 26), that these “realities” are not the fixed essences of traditional philosophy, nor the fixed substances of the contingent world. What they are exactly is a harder question, one Lepain says human beings cannot know. But for our purposes, what matters is what they are not: the raw material of Being or existence.
The point is that if the Word were confined to reflecting meanings already present in the contingent world — the way AI is confined to its training data — the world would become a partner constraining God’s creative power. Instead, God writes as He pleases, and creation rearranges itself accordingly.
Baha’u’llah’s Generative Process Is Never-Ending
The passage from the prayer describes the “First Word” proceeding from Baha’u’llah’s mouth and revolutionizing the whole of creation. Read one way, this sounds historical — something that happened once, long ago, whose consequences we now simply inherit. On this reading, our access to Baha’u’llah’s creative power would be indirect. It would be limited to the after-flow of a completed process, not something we can call on directly for our own difficulties.
But this reading sits uneasily with other things Baha’u’llah says. In the Tablet of Wisdom, he states that creation is renewed at all times: “Verily, the Word of God is the Cause which hath preceded the contingent world—a world which is… being renewed and regenerated at all times.” So the activity of the “First Word” is not a one-time historical event whose effects we merely inherit; the Word is the ongoing cause of creation, generating reality continuously. This means the generations who live after Baha’u’llah have standing access to his generative power, not merely its residue.
If revelation is the act through which reality itself is reshaped, then turning to God is not a matter of seeking advice but of entering the place where new possibilities can come into being.
Seeking Solutions From God and Protecting Our Agency
Why, then, is it more effective to seek solutions from God?
Because when Baha’u’llah answers a plea for help, he is not limited to giving advice. He can, if he chooses, alter reality itself. What looks to us like an intractable problem may be resolved by this reconfiguration of the world around it. Furthermore, divine generative power is not confined to reordering external circumstances. God can also transform the heart and understanding of the person seeking help. Sometimes the solution is not a change in the world at all, but a change in how a situation is seen.
On the other hand, turning to other people has a natural limit: they may alleviate the situation, but they cannot change reality itself, the way Baha’u’llah can. Moreover, their advice and assistance is always conditioned by their own outlook and not necessarily in our best interests. If we turn to God, however, we remain in control of our own agency and destiny.
In the end, the purpose of our difficulties is to drive choice. Turning to God is a free act of the heart. It is the action of a human being, created to love God, freely choosing the One who wants to be cherished above all else. And so it stands to reason that when we turn to God alone for answers, God will respond with assistance beyond our reckoning.
Quote from Prayers and Meditations
“I testify that no sooner had the First Word proceeded, through the potency of Thy will and purpose, out of His mouth, and the First Call gone forth from His lips than the whole creation was revolutionized, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth were stirred to the depths. Through that Word the realities of all created things were shaken, were divided, separated, scattered, combined and reunited, disclosing, in both the contingent world and the heavenly kingdom, entities of a new creation, and revealing, in the unseen realms, the signs and tokens of Thy unity and oneness.”
(Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah, CLXXVIII)