Chapter 4

The power through which these goals will be progressively realized is that of unity. Although to Baha'is the most obvious of truths, its implications for the current crisis of civilization appear to escape most contemporary discourse. Few will disagree that the universal disease sapping the health of the body of humankind is that of disunity. Its manifestations everywhere cripple political will, debilitate the collective urge to change, and poison national and religious relationships. How strange, then, that unity is regarded as a goal to be attained, if at all, in a distant future, after a host of disorders in social, political, economic and moral life have been addressed and somehow or other resolved. Yet the latter are essentially symptoms and side effects of the problem, not its root cause. Why has so fundamental an inversion of reality come to be widely accepted? The answer is presumably because the achievement of genuine unity of mind and heart among peoples whose experiences are deeply at variance is thought to be entirely beyond the capacity of society's existing institutions. While this tacit admission is a welcome advance over the understanding of processes of social evolution that prevailed a few decades ago, it is of limited practical assistance in responding to the challenge.

Unity is a condition of the human spirit. Education can support and enhance it, as can legislation, but they can do so only once it emerges and has established itself as a compelling force in social life. A global intelligentsia, its prescriptions largely shaped by materialistic misconceptions of reality, clings tenaciously to the hope that imaginative social engineering, supported by political compromise, may indefinitely postpone the potential disasters that few deny loom over humanity's future. "We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions", Baha'u'llah states. "They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy."(54) As unity is the remedy for the world's ills, its one certain source lies in the restoration of religion's influence in human affairs. The laws and principles revealed by God, in this day, Baha'u'llah declares, "are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men."(55) "Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure."(56)

Central to Baha'u'llah's mission, therefore, has been the creation of a global community that would reflect the oneness of humankind. The ultimate testimony that the Baha'i community can summon in vindication of His mission is the example of unity that His teachings have produced. As it enters the twenty-first century, the Baha'i Cause is a phenomenon unlike anything else the world has seen. After decades of effort, in which surges of growth alternated with long stretches of consolidation, often shadowed by setbacks, the Baha'i community today comprises several million people representative of virtually every ethnic, cultural, social and religious background on earth, administering their collective affairs without the intervention of a clergy, through democratically elected institutions. The many thousands of localities in which it has put down its roots are to be found in every country, territory and significant island group, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, from Africa to the Pacific. The assertion that this community may already constitute the most diverse and geographically widespread of any similarly organized body of people on the planet is unlikely to be challenged by one familiar with the evidence.

The achievement calls out for understanding. Conventional explanations--access to wealth, the patronage of powerful political interests, invocations of the occult or aggressive programmes of proselytism that instil fear of Divine wrath--none have played any role in the events involved. Adherents of the Faith have achieved a sense of identity as members of a single human race, an identity that shapes the purpose of their lives and that, clearly, is not the expression of any intrinsic moral superiority on their own part: "O people of Baha! That there is none to rival you is a sign of mercy."(57) A fair-minded observer is compelled to entertain at least the possibility that the phenomenon may represent the operation of influences entirely different in nature from the familiar ones--influences that can properly be described only as spiritual--capable of eliciting extraordinary feats of sacrifice and understanding from ordinary people of every background.

Particularly striking has been the fact that the Baha'i Cause has been able to maintain the unity thus achieved, unbroken and unimpaired, through the most vulnerable early stages of its existence. One will search in vain for another association of human beings in history--political, religious, or social--that has successfully survived the perennial blight of schism and faction. The Baha'i community, in all its diversity, is a single body of people, one in its understanding of the intent of the revelation of God that gave it birth, one in its devotion to the Administrative Order that its Author created for the governance of its collective affairs, one in its commitment to the task of disseminating His message throughout the planet. Over the decades of its rise, several individuals, some of them highly placed and all of them driven by the spur of ambition, did their utmost to create separate followings loyal to themselves or to the personal interpretations they had imposed on Baha'u'llah's writings. At earlier stages in the evolution of religion, similar attempts had proved successful in splitting the newborn faiths into competing sects. In the case of the Baha'i Cause, however, such intrigues have failed, without exception, to produce more than transient outbursts of controversy whose net effect has been to deepen the community's understanding of its Founder's purpose and its commitment to it. "So powerful is the light of unity", Baha'u'llah assures those who recognize Him, "that it can illuminate the whole earth."(58) Human nature being what it is, one can readily appreciate the Guardian's anticipation that this purifying process will long continue--paradoxically but necessarily-- to be an integral feature of the maturation of the Baha'i community.

"A corollary of the abandonment of faith in God has been a paralysis of..."

A corollary of the abandonment of faith in God has been a paralysis of ability to address effectively the problem of evil or, in many cases, even to acknowledge it. While Baha'is do not attribute to the phenomenon the objective existence it was assumed at earlier stages of religious history to possess, the negation of the good that evil represents, as with darkness, ignorance or disease, is severely crippling in its effect. Few publishing seasons pass that do not offer the educated reader a range of new and imaginative analyses of the character of some of the monstrous figures who, during the twentieth century, systematically tortured, degraded and exterminated millions of their fellow human beings. One is invited by scholarly authority to ponder the weight that should be given, variously, to paternal abuse, social rejection, professional disappointments, poverty, injustice, war experiences, possible genetic impairment, nihilistic literature--or various combinations of the foregoing--in seeking to understand the obsessions fuelling an apparently bottomless hatred of humankind. Conspicuously missing from such contemporary speculation is what experienced commentators, even as recently as a century ago, would have recognized as spiritual disease, whatever its accompanying features.

If unity is indeed the litmus test of human progress, neither history nor Heaven will readily forgive those who choose deliberately to raise their hands against it. In trusting, people lower their defences and open themselves to others. Without doing so, there is no way in which they can commit themselves wholeheartedly to shared goals. Nothing is so devastating as suddenly to discover that, for the other party, commitments made in good faith have represented no more than an advantage gained, a means of achieving concealed objectives different from, or even inimical to, what had ostensibly been undertaken together. Such betrayal is a persistent thread in human history that found one of its earliest recorded expressions in the ancient tale of Cain's jealousy of the brother whose faith God had chosen to confirm. If the appalling suffering endured by the earth's peoples during the twentieth century has left a lesson, it lies in the fact that the systemic disunity, inherited from a dark past and poisoning relations in every sphere of life, could throw open the door in this age to demonic behaviour more bestial than anything the mind had dreamed possible.

If evil has a name, it is surely the deliberate violation of the hard-won covenants of peace and reconciliation by which people of goodwill seek to escape the past and to build together a new future. By its very nature, unity requires self-sacrifice. "...self-love", the Master states, "is kneaded into the very clay of man."(59) The ego, termed by Him the "insistent self",(60) resists instinctively constraints imposed on what it conceives to be its freedom. To willingly forgo the satisfactions that licence affords, the individual must come to believe that fulfilment lies elsewhere. Ultimately, it lies, as it has always done, in the soul's submission to God.

Failure to meet the challenge of such submission has manifested itself with especially devastating consequences throughout the centuries in betrayal of the Messengers of God and of the ideals they taught. This discussion is not the place for a review of the nature and provisions of the specific Covenant by means of which Baha'u'llah has successfully preserved the unity of those who recognize Him and serve His purpose. It is sufficient to note the strength of the language He reserves for its deliberate violation by those who simultaneously pretend allegiance to it: "They that have turned away therefrom are reckoned among the inmates of the nethermost fire in the sight of thy Lord, the Almighty, the Unconstrained."(61) The reason for the severity of this condemnation is obvious. Few people have difficulty in recognizing the danger to social well-being of such familiar crimes as murder, rape or fraud, nor the need for society to take effective measures of self-protection. But how are Baha'is to think about a perversity which, if unchecked, would destroy the very means essential to the creation of unity--would, in the uncompromising words of the Master, "become even as an axe striking at the very root of the Blessed Tree"?(62) The issue is not one of intellectual dissent, nor even of moral weakness. Many people are resistant to accepting authority of one kind or another, and eventually distance themselves from circumstances that require it. Persons who have been attracted to the Baha'i Faith but who decide, for whatever reason, to leave it are entirely free to do so.

Covenant-breaking is a phenomenon fundamentally different in nature. The impulse it arouses in those under its influence is not simply to pursue freely whatever path they believe leads to personal fulfilment or contribution to society. Rather, are such persons driven by an apparently ungovernable determination to impose their personal will on the community by any means available to them, without regard for the damage done and without respect for the solemn undertakings they entered into on being accepted as members of that community. Ultimately, the self becomes the overriding authority, not only in the individual's own life, but in whatever other lives can be successfully influenced. As long and tragic experience has demonstrated all too certainly, endowments such as distinguished lineage, intellect, education, piety or social leadership can be harnessed, equally, to the service of humanity or to that of personal ambition. In ages past, when spiritual priorities of a different nature were the focus of the Divine purpose, the consequences of such rebellion did not vitiate the central message of any of the successive revelations of God. Today, with the immense opportunities and horrific dangers that physical unification of the planet has brought with it, commitment to the requirements of unity becomes the touchstone of all professions of devotion to the will of God or, for that matter, to the well-being of humankind.

"Everything in its history has equipped the Baha'i..."

Everything in its history has equipped the Baha'i Cause to address the challenge facing it. Even at this relatively early stage of its development--and relatively limited as its resources presently are--the Baha'i enterprise is fully deserving of the respect it is winning. An onlooker need not accept its claims to Divine origin in order to appreciate what is being accomplished. Taken simply as this-worldly phenomena, the nature and achievements of the Baha'i community are their own justification for attention on the part of anyone seriously concerned with the crisis of civilization, because they are evidence that the world's peoples, in all their diversity, can learn to live and work and find fulfilment as a single race, in a single global homeland.

This fact underlines, if further emphasis were needed, the urgency of the successive Plans devised by the Universal House of Justice for the expansion and consolidation of the Faith. The rest of humanity has every right to expect that a body of people genuinely committed to the vision of unity embodied in the writings of Baha'u'llah will be an increasingly vigorous contributor to programmes of social betterment that depend for their success precisely on the force of unity. Responding to the expectation will require the Baha'i community to grow at an ever-accelerating pace, greatly multiplying the human and material resources invested in its work and diversifying still further the range of talents that equip it to be a useful partner with like-minded organizations. Along with the social objectives of the effort must go an appreciation of the longing of millions of equally sincere people, as yet unaware of Baha'u'llah's mission but inspired by many of its ideals, for an opportunity to find lives of service that will have enduring meaning.

The culture of systematic growth taking root in the Baha'i community would seem, therefore, by far the most effective response the friends can make to the challenge discussed in these pages. The experience of an intense and ongoing immersion in the Creative Word progressively frees one from the grip of the materialistic assumptions--what Baha'u'llah terms "the allusions of the embodiments of satanic fancy"(63)--that pervade society and paralyze impulses for change. It develops in one a capacity to assist the yearning for unity on the part of friends and acquaintances to find mature and intelligent expression. The nature of the core activities of the current Plan--children's classes, devotional meetings and study circles--permits growing numbers of persons who do not yet regard themselves as Baha'is to feel free to participate in the process. The result has been to bring into existence what has been aptly termed a "community of interest". As others benefit from participation and come to identify with the goals the Cause is pursuing, experience shows that they, too, are inclined to commit themselves fully to Baha'u'llah as active agents of His purpose. Apart from its associated objectives, therefore, wholehearted prosecution of the Plan has the potentiality of amplifying enormously the Baha'i community's contribution to public discourse on what has become the most demanding issue facing humankind.

If Baha'is are to fulfil Baha'u'llah's mandate, however, it is obviously vital that they come to appreciate that the parallel efforts of promoting the betterment of society and of teaching the Baha'i Faith are not activities competing for attention. Rather, are they reciprocal features of one coherent global programme. Differences of approach are determined chiefly by the differing needs and differing stages of inquiry that the friends encounter. Because free will is an inherent endowment of the soul, each person who is drawn to explore Baha'u'llah's teachings will need to find his own place in the never-ending continuum of spiritual search. He will need to determine, in the privacy of his own conscience and without pressure, the spiritual responsibility this discovery entails. In order to exercise this autonomy intelligently, however, he must gain both a perspective on the processes of change in which he, like the rest of the earth's population, is caught up and a clear understanding of the implications for his own life. The obligation of the Baha'i community is to do everything in its power to assist all stages of humanity's universal movement towards reunion with God. The Divine Plan bequeathed it by the Master is the means by which this work is carried out.

However central the ideal of the oneness of religion unquestionably is, therefore, the task of sharing Baha'u'llah's message is obviously not an interfaith project. While the mind seeks intellectual certainty, what the soul longs for is the attainment of _certitude_. Such inner conviction is the ultimate goal of all spiritual seeking, regardless of how rapid or gradual the process may be. For the soul, the experience of conversion is not an extraneous or incidental feature of the exploration of religious truth, but the pivotal issue that must eventually be addressed. There is no ambiguity about Baha'u'llah's words on the subject and there can be none in the minds of those who seek to serve Him: "Verily I say, this is the Day in which mankind can behold the Face, and hear the Voice, of the Promised One. The Call of God hath been raised, and the light of His countenance hath been lifted up upon men. It behoveth every man to blot out the trace of every idle word from the tablet of his heart, and to gaze, with an open and unbiased mind, on the signs of His Revelation, the proofs of His Mission, and the tokens of His glory."(64)

"One of the distinguishing features of modernity has been the universal..."

One of the distinguishing features of modernity has been the universal awakening of historical consciousness. An outcome of this revolutionary change in perspective that greatly enhances the teaching of Baha'u'llah's message is the ability of people, given the chance, to recognize that the whole body of humanity's sacred texts places the drama of salvation itself squarely in the context of history. Beneath the surface language of symbol and metaphor, religion, as the scriptures reveal it, operates not through the arbitrary dictates of magic but as a process of fulfilment unfolding in a physical world created by God for that purpose.

In this respect, the texts speak with one voice: religion's goal is humanity's attainment of the age of "in-gathering",(65) of "one fold, and one shepherd";(66) the great age to come when "the Earth will shine with the glory of its Lord"(67) and the will of God is carried out "in earth, as it is in heaven";(68) "the promised Day"(69) when the "holy city"(70) will descend "out of heaven, from ... God",(71) when "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it",(72) when God will demand to know "what mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor";(73) the Day when scriptures that have been "sealed till the time of the end"(74) would be opened and union with God will find expression in "a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name";(75) an age utterly beyond anything humanity will have experienced, the mind conceived or language as yet encompassed: "even as We produced the first Creation, so shall We produce a new one: a promise We have undertaken: truly shall We fulfil it."(76)

The declared purpose of history's series of prophetic revelations, therefore, has been not only to guide the individual seeker on the path of personal salvation, but to prepare the whole of the human family for the great eschatological Event lying ahead, through which the life of the world will itself be entirely transformed. The revelation of Baha'u'llah is neither preparatory nor prophetic. It _is_ that Event. Through its influence, the stupendous enterprise of laying the foundations of the Kingdom of God has been set in motion, and the population of the earth has been endowed with the powers and capacities equal to the task. That Kingdom is a universal civilization shaped by principles of social justice and enriched by achievements of the human mind and spirit beyond anything the present age can conceive. "This is the Day", Baha'u'llah declares, "in which God's most excellent favours have been poured out upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into all created things.... Soon will the present-day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead."(77)

Service to the goal calls for an understanding of the fundamental difference distinguishing the mission of Baha'u'llah from political and ideological projects of human design. The moral vacuum that produced the horrors of the twentieth century exposed the outermost limits of the mind's unaided capacity to devise and construct an ideal society, however great the material resources harnessed to the effort. The suffering entailed has engraved the lesson indelibly on the consciousness of the earth's peoples. Religion's perspective on humanity's future, therefore, has nothing in common with systems of the past--and only relatively little relationship with those of today. Its appeal is to a reality in the genetic code, if it can be so described, of the rational soul. The Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus taught two thousand years ago, is "within".(78) His organic analogies of a "vineyard",(79) of "seed [sown] into the good ground",(80) of the "good tree [that] bringeth forth good fruit"(81) speak of a potentiality of the human species that has been nurtured and trained by God since the dawn of time as the purpose and leading edge of the creative process. The ongoing work of patient cultivation is the task that Baha'u'llah has entrusted to the company of those who recognize Him and embrace His Cause. Little wonder, then, at the exalted language in which He speaks of a privilege so great: "Ye are the stars of the heaven of understanding, the breeze that stirreth at the break of day, the soft-flowing waters upon which must depend the very life of all men...."(82)

The process bears within itself the assurance of its fulfilment. For those with eyes to see, the new creation is today everywhere emerging, in the same way that a seedling becomes in time a fruit-bearing tree or a child reaches adulthood. Successive dispensations of a loving and purposeful Creator have brought the earth's inhabitants to the threshold of their collective coming-of-age as a single people. Baha'u'llah is now summoning humanity to enter on its inheritance: "That 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."(83)

FOOTNOTES