No. 31 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The Self-Subsisting
Of all the names we might call upon in a moment of need, perhaps none reorients the heart quite like this one: the One who needs nothing, and upon whom everything depends.
I call on Thee O Ruling One, O Self-Subsisting, O All-Knowing One! 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 · Subsisting
from “subsist”: 1. To be; to have existence; to inhere. And makes what happiness we justly call, Subsist not in the good of one, but all. Pope. 2. To continue; to retain a certain state. Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve. Milton. 3. To be maintained with food and clothing; to be supported; to live. Milton. To subsist on other men's charity. Atterbury. To support with provisions; to feed; to maintain; as, to subsist one's family. He laid waste the adjacent country in order to render it more difficult for the enemy to subsist their army. Robertson.
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 Self-Subsisting” 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 'The Self-Subsisting' points to a reality that sits outside ordinary human experience entirely. Everything we know in daily life depends on something else, our bodies need food, air, and rest; our relationships need tending; our plans need favorable conditions. We are, through and through, creatures of dependence. God, as the Self-Subsisting, is the single exception to that universal rule. His existence is not borrowed, not sustained from outside, not contingent on any prior cause. He simply is, and always has been, by virtue of His own being.
This is not merely a philosophical abstraction. When the prayer invokes this name, it is drawing our attention to a vast asymmetry: we who are utterly dependent are turning toward the One who is utterly independent. There is something quietly humbling about that act. We bring our needs, our illness, our fear, our exhaustion, before the One who has no needs of His own, and who is therefore in no way diminished by the weight of what we bring. His capacity to sustain is not a finite resource that might run low.
The word 'Self-Subsisting' also carries within it a kind of steadiness. Things that depend on other things can be shaken when those other things shift or disappear. The Self-Subsisting cannot be shaken in that way. Calling on this name is, in part, an act of anchoring, a conscious choice to place one's trust not in the conditional and changeable circumstances of life, but in the One whose existence is its own foundation.
Calling on The Self-Subsisting for healing
When illness arrives, whether in the body, the mind, or the spirit, one of its cruelest effects is the sudden, sharp awareness of how fragile and dependent we are. We depend on our physical strength, and it fails. We depend on our mental clarity, and it clouds. We depend on others to help us, and sometimes they cannot. Calling on God as the Self-Subsisting in those moments is not a denial of that fragility; it is an honest acknowledgment of where dependence ultimately belongs. We are, always, dependent creatures. The question is only whether we rest that dependence on things that can be taken away, or on the One who cannot.
This name also gently reminds us that healing, in whatever form it takes, through whatever means it comes, flows from a Source that does not run dry. Seeking help from skilled physicians, therapists, or counselors is not a departure from that trust; it is one of the channels through which care reaches us. But the name 'Self-Subsisting' invites us to hold even those channels loosely, grateful for them while remaining rooted in the deeper reality that all sustaining life, all restoration, all endurance comes ultimately from the One who sustains His own existence and ours without effort or end. Outcomes remain in His wisdom and care, not in our calculations.
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Living the Word
Applying The Self-Subsisting in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The Self-Subsisting 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
“6.1The Person of the Manifestation hath ever been the representative and mouthpiece of God. He, in truth, is the Dayspring of God’s most excellent Titles, and the Dawning-Place of His exalted Attributes. If any be set up by His side as peers, if they be regarded as identical with His Person, how can it, then, be maintained that the Divine Being is one and incomparable, that His Essence is indivisible and peerless? Meditate on that which We have, through the power of truth, revealed unto thee, and be thou of them that comprehend its meaning. 7.1To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the Divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. Far be it from His glory that human tongue should adequately recount His praise, or that human heart comprehend His fathomless mystery. He is, and hath ever been, veiled in the ancient eternity of His Essence, and will remain in His Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of men. “No vision taketh in Him, but He taketh in all vision; He is the Subtile, the All-Perceiving.” …”
Read in full at bahai.org →“However, when we ponder carefully it will be observed that these unceasing trials and afflictions, these successive ordeals, though they break one’s back, crush one’s strength, and exhaust one’s endurance, are among the greatest gifts of God, the Ever-Living, the All-Powerful, for He thereby accepteth the self-sacrifice which certain souls are prompted to make in His path, enabling them to attire their heads with the glorious crown of martyrdom and to establish themselves upon the throne of everlasting sovereignty. Such hath ever been the qualification of them that enjoy near access unto God, such are the attributes of the pure in heart.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“God Is the Great Compassionate Physician Who Alone Gives True Healing October 19th All true healing comes from God! There are two causes for sickness, one is material, the other spiritual. If the sickness is of the body, a material remedy is needed, if of the soul, a spiritual remedy. If the heavenly benediction be upon us while we are being healed then only can we be made whole, for medicine is but the outward and visible means through which we obtain the heavenly healing. Unless the spirit be healed, the cure of the body is worth nothing. All is in the hands of God, and without Him there can be no health in us! There have been many men who have died at last of the very disease of which they have made a special study. Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastric malady. Avicenna was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease. God is the great compassionate Physician who alone has the power to give true healing. All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power and independence.”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about The Self-Subsisting
- What does 'Self-Subsisting' mean as a name of God?
- It means that God's existence depends on nothing outside of Himself, He is not sustained by any prior cause, condition, or external source. Every other thing that exists depends on something else to bring it into being or keep it going, but the Self-Subsisting is the one reality for whom that is not true. This name points to God as the ultimate ground of all existence.
- Why is this name invoked in a prayer for healing?
- Healing, by its nature, involves dependence, we depend on our bodies to recover, on medicines to work, on caregivers to help. Invoking the Self-Subsisting reminds us that behind all those dependencies lies the One who is wholly independent and wholly capable. It reorients trust toward a Source that cannot be exhausted or taken away, even when the visible means of healing are uncertain.
- Does calling on this name guarantee that I will be healed?
- No, and the prayer itself does not make that promise. Bahá'í understanding holds that healing is in God's hands and expressed through His wisdom, not through any formula we can command. What the prayer offers is a sincere turning of the heart toward God. For physical illness, consulting qualified medical professionals remains important and is not in conflict with prayer.
- Is 'The Self-Subsisting' a name unique to the Bahá'í Faith?
- The concept appears across several religious traditions, in Islam, the name 'Al-Qayyum' carries very similar meaning and is often translated as the Self-Subsisting or the Ever-Living Sustainer. The Bahá'í writings draw on and affirm this ancient recognition of God's utter independence as one of His most fundamental attributes.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer