Patterns of Faith

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Updated weekly at 04:30 GMT (sat)

In Patterns of Faith this week, we end our series on the religious significance of numbers by examining the number seven.

Our reporter, Judi Herman, counts up to seven and discovers why this number is central to so many faiths.

Did you know that seven is at the heart of some of the world's great religions? For example the significance of the number seven in so many faiths starts with the seven day week.

So get counting and join us for Patterns of Faith.

NOTE: This program features a section on Bahá'u'lláh's Seven Valleys.

"Baha'u'llah, founder of the Bahá'í Faith..... teaches that the spiritual development of the soul is in seven stages. Moojan Momen is an Iranian-born Bahá'í who has been studying his Faith for twenty years: 'Bahá'u'lláh describes the seven stages or the seven valleys through which the travller has to pass, if the traveller is to reach his goal, which is reunion with the Beloved, and he has to go through the first valley to get to the second valley, and through the second valley to get to the third valley. The first valley is the valley of search, in which the traveller is searching for the path, as it were. The second valley is the valley of love. The third valley is the valley of knowledge. The next is the valley of unity, and then the valley of contentment, and then the valley of wonderment, and finally the valley of true poverty and absolute nothingness. So these are stages in the traveller's journey'."

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