No. 117 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The All-Seeing God
To call upon the All-Seeing God is to place yourself before the One from whom nothing is hidden, not your pain, not your fear, not the parts of yourself you cannot even name.
I call on Thee O Thou Who penetratest all things, O All-Seeing God, O Lord of Utterance! Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One! Bahá'u'lláh, The Long Healing Prayer · read the full prayer
Plain meaning · Seeing
(but originally a present participle). In view of the fact (that); considering; taking into account (that); insmuch as; since; because;
Definition from Webster's Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain). When these Writings were translated into English, the translator relied on Webster's New International Dictionary, 1934 edition, of the same Webster's tradition. source
What “The All-Seeing God” means
The meaning above is the plain dictionary definition of the word. What follows reflects on it as a name of God, offered for your own contemplation, and not as an authoritative interpretation of the Bahá'í Writings, which rests with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone.
The name 'All-Seeing' points to something more than watchfulness. It suggests a vision so complete and so penetrating that every dimension of a person, physical, emotional, spiritual, is simultaneously known. This is not the gaze of surveillance, but of intimate comprehension. To be seen by God in this sense means to be understood in ways that go beyond what any other person, or even we ourselves, can fully grasp about our own condition.
There is a subtle gift embedded in this name. Human sight is partial; we see surfaces, we miss context, we misread what we observe. The All-Seeing God, by contrast, perceives the whole of any situation at once, its causes, its depths, its possibilities. When we reflect on what it might mean for such a vision to rest upon us, it can be quietly liberating. We do not have to explain ourselves completely. We do not have to find the right words for what aches inside us. That gaze already reaches where our language cannot.
The name also appears in the prayer alongside other names, the Sufficing, the Healing, the Abiding, which suggests that divine sight is not passive observation. It is sight bound up with care, with capacity, with presence that endures. The One who sees is also the One who can act, sustain, and heal. The vision and the mercy belong together.
Calling on The All-Seeing God for healing
When illness arrives, whether in the body, the mind, or the deeper layers of the spirit, one of its cruelest companions is the feeling of being unseen. Pain is private. Exhaustion is invisible. Grief is often carried alone. Calling upon the All-Seeing God in the context of this prayer can be an act of surrender to the possibility that your suffering is not, in fact, invisible. Every symptom you cannot describe to a doctor, every fear you cannot share with a loved one, every moment of doubt that visits you at night, these are not hidden from a God whose sight penetrates all things. That recognition alone can be a form of relief, a beginning.
It is worth holding this name gently and without demand. Trusting in the All-Seeing God does not mean bypassing the care of skilled physicians, therapists, or other healers, it means bringing your whole situation, including those human efforts, into the light of a wider trust. The outcomes of illness are held in a wisdom larger than our own. What this name invites is not a guaranteed cure but a quality of presence: the willingness to be fully seen, and to rest, however tentatively, in that being-seen.
Also sought as: all-seeing god bahá'í prayer · god who sees all things · divine omniscience prayer · bahá'u'lláh healing prayer names of god · long healing prayer all-seeing · lawh-i-anta'l-kafi names of god · god who sees suffering · being seen by god healing · penetratest all things bahá'í · omniscient god healing prayer.
Living the Word
Applying The All-Seeing God in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The All-Seeing God being asked of you right now, and how will you practice it? Keep a short note each time you return, and watch your own path with this name take shape over time. It stays on this device.
In the Bahá'í Writings
“3 Our meaning is that every existing thing is of necessity the seat of the revelation of the divine splendours; that is, the perfections of God are manifested and revealed therein. It is even as the sun which shines upon the desert, the sea, the trees, the fruits, the blossoms—upon all earthly things. Now, the world of existence, indeed every created thing, proclaims but one of the names of God, but the reality of man is an all-encompassing and universal reality which is the seat of the revelation of all the divine perfections. That is, a sign of each one of the names, attributes, and perfections that we ascribe to God exists in man. If such were not the case, he would be unable to imagine and comprehend these perfections. For example, we say that God is all-seeing. The eye is the sign of His sight: If this faculty were lacking in man, how could we imagine the sight of God? For one born blind cannot imagine what it is to see, any more than one born deaf can imagine what it is to hear, or the lifeless what it is to be alive.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“21.1That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error. 22.1Beware, O believers in the Unity of God, lest ye be tempted to make any distinction between any of the Manifestations of His Cause, or to discriminate against the signs that have accompanied and proclaimed their Revelation. This indeed is the true meaning of Divine Unity, if ye be of them that apprehend and believe this truth. Be ye assured, moreover, that the works and acts of each and every one of these Manifestations of God, nay whatever pertaineth unto them, and whatsoever they may manifest in the future, are all ordained by God, and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“5 For example, the mind and the spirit of man are aware of all his states and conditions, of all the parts and members of his body, and of all his physical sensations, as well as of his spiritual powers, perceptions, and conditions. This is an existential knowledge through which man realizes his own condition. He both senses and comprehends it, for the spirit encompasses the body and is aware of its sensations and powers. This knowledge is not the result of effort and acquisition: It is an existential matter; it is pure bounty. 6 Since those sanctified realities, the universal Manifestations of God, encompass all created things both in their essence and in their attributes, since They transcend and discover all existing realities, and since They are cognizant of all things, it follows that Their knowledge is divine and not acquired—that is, it is a heavenly grace and a divine discovery.”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about The All-Seeing God
- Why does the Long Healing Prayer invoke God by so many names in a single line?
- The clustering of names in a single invocation is characteristic of Bahá'u'lláh's devotional style and reflects a theology in which no single name exhausts the divine reality. Each name illuminates a different facet, sight, sufficiency, healing, abiding presence, and together they build a fuller picture of the One being addressed. It is less like a list and more like turning a gem so that different light catches it from different angles.
- Does calling God 'All-Seeing' mean God is watching to judge us?
- Reflection on this name within the prayer's context suggests something quite different from judgment. The name appears alongside 'the Healing' and 'the Sufficing,' framing divine sight within care and provision rather than condemnation. Many who pray this prayer find that the sense of being fully seen brings comfort rather than fear, the comfort of not having to hide or explain what is already known.
- Can this prayer replace medical treatment?
- No, and it would be a misreading of the prayer to use it that way. The Bahá'í teachings consistently encourage consulting competent physicians and valuing the medical sciences as themselves a gift. Prayer and medicine are understood as companions, not competitors. If you or someone you love is unwell, please seek qualified medical care alongside whatever spiritual practice sustains you.
- What does it mean that God 'penetratest all things' in the prayer's line?
- The phrase points to a divine awareness that is not blocked by any barrier, physical, psychological, or spiritual. It is a way of saying that no layer of reality is opaque to God. For someone in the midst of suffering, this can be read as an assurance that even the hidden or inexpressible dimensions of their condition are present to divine awareness, which in the context of the prayer is also a healing awareness.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer