“For two years or rather less,” He, likewise, in another Tablet, declares, “I shunned all else but God, and closed Mine eyes to all except Him, that haply the fire of hatred may die down and the heat of jealousy abate.”
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)
Finally, discerning, as He Himself testifies in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “the signs of impending events,” He decided that before they happened He would retire. “The one object of Our retirement,” He, in that same Book affirms, “was to avoid becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance unto Our companions, the means of injury to any soul, or the cause of sorrow to any heart.” “Our withdrawal,” He, moreover, in that same passage emphatically asserts, “contemplated no return, and Our separation hoped for no reunion.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
…Bahá’u'lláh reached the decision to take Himself away from Baghdád and from the society of men whom He knew and who knew Him. Such seclusion from the gatherings of men has always occurred in the lives of the Manifestations of God. Moses went out to the desert of Sinai. Buddha sought the wilds of India. Christ walked the wilderness of Judaea, Muhammad paced the sunbaked hillocks of Arabia.
- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)