I started my research by reading some of the Bahá'í writings, supplemented by some reading from the Persian Bayan. I found Baháʼu'lláh’s works to be full of insight, with a really elaborate and complex emanationist theology, similar to Kabbalah or Neoplatonism, accompanied by a really good regiment of mystical practice, prayer and meditation. His writings, especially the earlier ones, are also written in an eloquent and easily understandable, yet lofty and poetic style.
Since the Bahá'í faith had roots in the Bab’s esoteric interpretations of Islam, all this does make sense. The Bahá'í faith started as a fringe esoteric movement, and this is well reflected in the writings of Baháʼu'lláh. He commonly spends time explaining his position as the Manifestation of God, on the meaning of it and his role in the broader Twelver Shi’ite eschatology.
After learning about this historical information, and after reading some of the writings, I decided to learn more about the faith today. As an occultist and a person interested in broader religious studies, the prospect of a fringe, Sufi influenced movement becoming a worldwide religion was very interesting to me. And after learning more about the Bahá'í faith today, I was left relatively disappointed.
A lot of the deeper mystical food-for-thought aspects of the Bahá'í faith present in the earlier writings seems to have been completely forsaken, in favor of generic statements that seem like little more than a public relations campaign. Instead of theology, most of the modern writings about the Faith primarily focus on proclaiming and parroting vague paroles about “the unity of religion”, “the unity of mankind”, “unity of science and religion”, and similar statements. Usually, nobody goes in depth on any of these points, nobody talks about the meaning of these statements or in any meaningful way explain it beyond “we are the universal religion!”.
From what I gathered, the whole idea about the unity of religion was a relatively minor point in the original Bahá'í writings, especially compared to other laws and topics. In the earlier writings, it is obvious that the Bahá'í faith was supposed to be the continuation of Shia Islam, rather than the more vague notion of it being the “universal religion”. As far as I noticed, these ideas were elaborated on and introduced as important after Baháʼu'lláh’s death by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, in an effort to make the faith more palatable to a Western audience, who couldn’t care less about Shi’a eschatology.
The issue with this is that all the claims of the faith are based on the idea that Baháʼu'lláh is the Islamic Mahdi. It is the foundation for Bahá'í theology and it all makes very little sense without it. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá also introduced the idea that various Eastern deities and religious figures, such as Confucious, Krishna and the Buddha are Manifestations of God. This is again at odds with the inherently Abrahamic nature of the faith, and it was, from my understanding, the beginning of the downfall of the Bahá'í faith. From that point on, it became more focused on gaining converts in the West as quickly as possible rather than elaborating on Baháʼu'lláh’s teachings, or even more importantly, translating his many writings, most of which are still inaccessible to this day.
Most Baháʼi converts today don’t know a lot about the theology or cosmology of their adopted faith, and they instead reduce the Bahá'í teachings to the level of a COEXIST bumper sticker. The UHJ seems to be actively sabotaging any further translations of the Bahá'í writings, and instead they focus on making books that are parroting the same paroles about some vague notion of unity of all mankind or world peace. The Bahá'í faith is also infiltrated with a lot of New Age ideas, such as Reiki or crystal healing, which seems to serve as a quick substitute for a lack of theological knowledge.
I would say that the Bahá'í faith had the potential to spread a reformed and purified form of Sufi mysticism throughout the world, and I would argue that Baháʼu'lláh’s original teachings were even more tolerant and peaceful than what the UHJ preaches today (for example, endorsing Shoghi Effendi’s homophobia). Like Mormonism, it lost its roots due to the focus shifting from staying true to the original goal to proselytizing and PR.
But, these are just some opinions and impressions I gained from my personal research over the last few weeks.
TL;DR- I enjoy Baháʼu'lláh’s original writings and ideas, but I feel like the Baháʼi faith today is not doing its job well in spreading or preserving them.
https://old.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/1b3azzh/an_occultists_thoughts_on_the_current_state_of/
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