Detachment
Seeker to cleanse heart from (blind) loves or hates[edit]
"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."
- (Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán, par. 213; also in Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, sec. 125, p. 264)
Should not have hate or love for a soul linger in his heart to hinder him from attaining[edit]
"In this journey it behoveth the wayfarer to detach himself from all save God and to close his eyes to all that is in the heavens and on the earth. There must not linger in his heart either the hate or the love of any soul, to the extent that they would hinder him from attaining the habitation of the celestial Beauty."
Be freed from strangers and friends so as to behold lights of the most great gift[edit]
"I ask God that it may become realized, and day by day, thou mayest walk more and more in the path of the Kingdom, in order that thou mayest be freed from the strangers and friends, be disengaged from attachment to the material world and be attached wholly to the divine Kingdom. At that time thou wilt behold the lights of the most great gift."
Not to literally not love, but avoid passions that may turn us from God[edit]
"We must never take one sentence in the Teachings and isolate it from the rest: it does not mean we must not love, but we must reach a spiritual plane where God comes first and great human passions are unable to turn us away from Him. All the time we see people who either through the force of hate or the passionate attachment they have to another person, sacrifice principle or bar themselves from the Path of God.
- (From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer, October 4, 1950: Spiritualism, Psychic Phenomena and Related Subjects, A Compilation from the Universal House of Justice, February 14, 1973 to National Spiritual Assemblies, in Lights of Guidance, no. 1734)
Analogies regarding[edit]
Detachment as the Sun[edit]
"Detachment is as the sun; in whatsoever heart it doth shine it quencheth the fire of covetousness and self..."
- (Bahá'u'lláh, Cited in "The Baha'i World", vol. 1, p. 42)
