A Study of the “Secret of Divine
Civilization”
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Posting
5.
Secret of Divine
Civilization
A
few days after our fireside, Muriel and I finally got together again over tea
and a marvelous plate of pastries at a new little coffee shop in town. (It is almost as good as a certain coffee
shop in Roodeport.)
Muriel had a few questions about what she had read in Secret of Divine Civilization. One was about Socrates: “did he really go to Israel?” she asked. I wondered about this also. A quick call to my husband, the philosophy maven, shed some ( a little ) light on this. He told us that Pythagorus quite certainly went to Egypt and but our Western histories know nothing about Socrates going to Israel. He also reminded us that little is known about the life of Socrates but what we do knw relates to his later years when he hung out in the “agora” and “corrupted” the youth of Athens by getting them to think. It is, however, entirely possible that he could well have gone travelling in his youth. David also reminded us that academics might have some ethnocentric attitudes concerning knowledge. Perhaps, he suggested, there are things known to Islamic scholars that aren’t known or understood by “western” academia. As to the oneness of God, David believes that Socrates definitely understood this. Then he asked us to consider why Abdu'-Baha might mention Socrates at all. That was something to think about and we concluded that one reason was that Socrates was persecuted and killed for his ideas and he accepted his death with great equanimity.
Then we started to talk about this section of the book which we both found somewhat difficult to describe because Abdu’l-Baha discusses so many things all together. He lays out the qualities of the learned and discriminates between material and moral civilization. There are guides here for the individual who wishes to acquire learning and retain a moral and spiritual life. Muriel thought that perhaps Abdu’l-Baha in describing the qualities of the truly learned was seeking to open the eyes of his readers to become aware of the real nature of the leaders they did have. We reflected that sadly the people of Iran still have the same kind of leaders as shown by the wanton destruction of the house of Baha’u’llah’s father. Abdu’l-Baha is also giving a picture what a real civilization which has both material and spiritual advancement would look like. He uses the example of Europe which had all the enviable material and technological advantages but had also its obsession over conquest and exploitation and greed for wealth and power to show that material civilization is insufficient.
Muriel and I were both impressed with Abdu’l-Baha’s description of the European wars and the crushing burden of taxation created by the 19th. century arms race. Then we sat silently thinking about the immense carnage of W.W. I and W.W.II and the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and on and on to the present. Finally Muriel remarked that Abdu’l-Baha would, no doubt, find our present day civilization morally uncivilized. That is an understatement.
Our sad mood was lifted when Muriel reminded me that Abdu’l-Baha had also described the solution. I pulled out my copy of Secret of Divine Civilization and we read together the paragraph (115) where Abdu’l-Baha lays out the basic blueprint for achieving peace: the establishment of a binding treaty among the nations with boundaries determined and fixed and provision for collective security. It is very practical. Armies are not eliminated but are to be seriously reduced in size. These paragraphs constitute one major and definitive source of our Baha’I model for world peace. It is interesting that Abdu’l-Baha recognizes that there are times when use of force can bring about a peaceful solution. No treaty can be viable unless backed up by authority and power and this collective security provision does this.
We left the coffee shop feeling more hopeful and ready to raise our efforts to teach the Faith.
Belinda