THE CENTURY OF LIGHT

 

 

 

… in times to come they shall glorify the twentieth century, saying the twentieth century was the century of lights, the twentieth century was the century of life, the twentieth century was the century of international peace, the twentieth century was the century of divine bestowals, and the twentieth century has left traces which shall last forever.        (‘Abdu’l-Baha, PUP 125-126)

 

 

 

I.                    Importance of understanding the 20th century

 

What happened in the 20th century?  With all its darkness, why was it the ‘Century of Light’?  And why is it important that we should study about it, and come to understand it?

 

“The Century of Light” has been prepared under the supervision of the Universal House of Justice.  The purpose of this talk, like all Winter School talks, is to stimulate further study by the friends of this document , as well as of the many Tablets, documents, letters, passages which are highlighted, quoted and referred to therein in throwing light on understanding this century

 

“During the past hundred years our world underwent changes far more profound than any in its preceding history”, which for the most part are “little understood by the present generation”.  “We commend it to the thoughtful study of the friends”. 

It will prove, on the one hand, spiritually enriching, and on the other, of ‘practical help in sharing with others the challenging implications of the Revelation’ of Baha’u’llah.

 

The value of our contribution to the future ‘demands that we ourselves grasp the significance of the historic transformation wrought by the twentieth century.’

 

 

 

II.                  20th Century:  twin processes

 

Rising above the horizon of this century was the “luminous” figure of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the Centre of Baha’u’llah’s Covenant, the perfect exemplar of every Baha’i virtue, Baha’u’llah’s greatest creation.  The second great figure who occupies the century, directing the spiritual forces created by the Revelation and marshaled by the Centre of the Covenant, is Shoghi Effendi.  For an appreciation of the daunting task facing him, read page 85. 

 

The document outlines the operation of two major processes at work in the world.  The Guardian outlined these two processes in the following passage from World Order of Baha’u’llah:

 

“A twofold process, however, can be distinguished, each tending, in its own way and with an accelerated momentum, to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the face of our planet.  The first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive.  The former, as it steadily evolves, unfolds a System which may well serve as a pattern for that world polity towards which a strangely-disordered world is continually advancing; while the latter, as its disintegrating influence deepens, tends to tear down, with increasing violence, the antiquated barriers that seek to block humanity's progress towards its destined goal.  The constructive process stands associated with the nascent Faith of Baha'u'llah, and is the harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong establish.  The destructive forces that characterize the other should be identified with a civilization that has refused to answer to the expectation of a new age, and is consequently falling into chaos and decline. “

            (Shoghi Effendi:  World Order of Baha'u'llah, Page: 170)

 

The first major process, ‘the Major Plan of God’, operates outside the Faith and is disintegrative, disruptive, chaotic; characterized by advance and reverse. 

 

 “A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course, catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth… Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury.  It can neither perceive its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome.”

 

“’The time for the destruction of the world and its peoples’," Baha'u'llah's prophetic pen has proclaimed, ‘hath arrived.’" 

 

The purpose of this process is twofold:  punishment for a mankind which has abandoned its God, and a cleansing chastisement for a mankind which will not be abandoned to its fate.

 

“This judgment of God… is both a retributory calamity and an act of holy and supreme discipline.  It is at once a visitation from God and a cleansing process for all mankind. Its fires punish the perversity of the human race, and weld its component parts into one organic, indivisible, world-embracing community.”

 

While acknowledging and cataloging the great ruin brought upon mankind in this century, the document charts the changes brought about by these calamities; the destruction of an old order and the irreversible steps taken which will lead to world government and a new order. 

 

It charts the ominous downfall of religion, the rise of ideologies, ‘false religions’  to take its place, the fall of the most aggressive of those ideologies, and the rise of the infection of materialism.

 

It writes of Communism that under its name were committed “crimes so enormous and follies so abysmal as to have no parallel in six thousand years of recorded history.”  Loyalty to these ideologies – Fascism, Nazism and Communism – represented such ‘a willful abandonment of reason on the part of a considerable section of the intellectual leadership of society’ as to ‘demand an accounting to posterity’.  This highlights the call of ‘Abdu’l-Baha during His visit to America, that the world needed not only moral reform, but intellectual reorientation as well. 

 

“We must arise to service in the world of morality, for human morals are in need of readjustment.  We must also render service to the world of intellectuality in order that the minds of men may increase in power and become keener in perception, assisting the intellect of man to attain its supremacy so that the ideal virtues may appear.” 

 

The Second World War provided a seal to the process of destruction of an old order that began with the First World War.  With the end of this war “it gradually became apparent that a fundamental shift in consciousness was under way throughout the world and that inherited assumptions, institutions and priorities that had been progressively undermined by forces at work during the first half of the century were now crumbling”.

 

Along with this accelerated shift in consciousness, however, and as a consequence of the continued decline of religion and the abdication of responsibility on the part of the world’s religious leaders, there arose a terrible ‘disease of the human soul infinitely more destructive’ than the ideologies which arose in the early part of the century.  This disease of the soul stood ready to thwart, to blight, progress which otherwise was being made through mankind’s shift of consciousness and the rise of a fledgling international order, of which the United Nations was the greatest symbol.  This ‘cancer’, as Shoghi Effendi termed it, was materialism.  It emerged “as a kind of universal religion claiming absolute authority in both the personal and social life of mankind”.  “Its creed was simplicity itself.  Reality… is essentially material in nature”.  The goal of human life is satisfaction of material needs and wants.

 

The second major process, ‘the minor Plan of God’, integrative, steady, orderly, proceeding with holy discipline, is associated with the rise of the Cause of God. 

 

The role of America:  The Guardian described “two closely interrelated developments that are associated with the dawn of world peace”, “destined to culminate, in the fullness of time, in a single glorious consummation.”  The first is associated with the mission of the Baha’i community in the North American continent, the primary recipient of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Divine Plan for the spiritual conquest of the planet.  The document commends to our study the circumstances attending the establishment of a Baha’i community in North America, and the manner in which ‘Abdu’l-Baha brought it about.  For the community is the creation of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, tendered and nurtured by Him.  The second development is associated with the destiny of the United States as a nation.  “It must, however long and tortuous the way, lead, through a series of victories and reverses, to the political unification of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, to the emergence of a world government and the establishment of the Lesser Peace… It must, in the end, culminate in the … Most Great Peace”

 

The document gives a history of the growth of the Faith during the twentieth century.  One great area of development was in the expansion and consolidation of the Faith, conceived by ‘Abdu’l-Baha in His great charter, Tablets of the Divine Plan, and pursued by the twin institutions of the Administrative Order, the Guardian and the Universal House of Justice.  By century’s end the Baha’i community had covered the globe and had come to represent a cross section of the human race.  The second great development was the emergence of the Faith from obscurity and its rise in prestige in some of the highest assemblies in both national and international arenas.  Providing great impetus to this emergence was the persecution of and example set by the Iranian Baha’i community. 

 

The document charts two landmark events in the Faith’s history which took place during the century:  the election of the Universal House of Justice, the first global democratic election in history, and the completion of the Arc on Mount Carmel at century’s end.

 

It provides a masterful exposition of the growth of the Faith in the post World War II period, leading up to the discovery and establishment of systematic methods to carry forward expansion and consolidation.  

 

 

 

III.                Lessons for Baha’is

 

The role of the individual: 

 

“Through these connections [made by the Head of the Faith with the believers – ie, letters and pilgrimages] every individual believer was encouraged to see himself or herself as an instrument of the power flowing through the Covenant”.  [p 67, 6.6].  And in the “raising up of the supreme governing institution of our Faith, one is witnessing a striving to the utmost of human capacity to win the good pleasure of God”.  [p 92, 8.15, 8.16]

 

Contribution of the Cause to the unification of mankind; the force of example:

 

“The immediate responsibility of establishing world government rests on the shoulders of the nation-states.  What the Baha’i community is called on to do, at this stage in humanity’s social and political evolution, is to contribute by every means in its power to the creation of conditions that will encourage and facilitate this enormously demanding undertaking.”  “The power that the Cause possesses to influence the course of history lies not only in the spiritual potency of its message but in the example that it provides”.  [p94, 8.19, 8.20]

 

The nature of planning:

 

“… the capacities with which the Covenant had endowed the Guardianship were not a form of magic.  Their successful exercise entailed… a never-ending process of testing, evaluation and refinement.”  [p 85, 7.7]

 

The Baha’i community has not “assumed the responsibility of ‘designing’ a future for itself, as the concept of planning customarily implies.  What Baha’i institutions do, rather, is to strive to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world…”    [p 69, 6.11]

 

The role of history:

 

"History is a powerful instrument.  At its best, it provides a perspective on the past and casts a light on the future.  It populates human consciousness with heroes, saints and martyrs whose example awakens in everyone touched by it capacities they had not imagined they possessed… In the great body of literature and legend that it has left to humanity, history's hand can be seen at work shaping much of the course of civilization - in the legends that have inspired the ideals of every people since the dawn of recorded time, as well as in the epics of the Ramayana, in the exploits celebrated in the Odyssey and the Aeneid, in the Nordic sagas, in the Shahnameh, and in much of the Bible and the Qur'an.

 

"God Passes By elevates this great work of the mind to a level ardently striven after but never attained in any of the ages of the past. . ."       [p.70, 6.13]

 

Attitude toward suffering and the power of opposition for the advancement of the Cause:

 

“The twentieth century has, alas, been overwhelmed by the suffering of countless victims of oppression.  What made the Baha’i situation unique was the attitude adopted by those who endured the suffering.  The Iranian believers refused to accept the all too familiar role of victims.  …they took moral charge of the great issue between them and their adversaries.  It was they, not revolutionary courts or revolutionary guards, who quickly set the terms of the encounter…”

[p 119, 10.14]

 

“By every human standard, the Cause should have succumbed to a barrage of opposition without parallel in recent history.  Far from succumbing, it flourished.  Its reputation rose, its membership vastly increased, its influence spread… Persecution served to galvanize its supporters’ efforts.  Calumny drove believers to seek a more mature understanding of its history and teachings.”  And ‘violation of the Covenant’ cleansed its ranks.    [p 141, 12.8]

 

The nature of the masses & the change Baha’u’llah is to bring about:

 

“Throughout history, the mass of humanity have been, at best, spectators at the advance of civilization.  Their role has been to serve the designs” of the controlling elite.

 

Despite their great strengths of openness of heart, “the greatest handicap of these same populations has so far been a passivity learned through generations of exposure to outside influences which… have pursued agendas that were often related only tangentially… to the … needs and daily lives of indigenous populations.”  “Baha’u’llah has come to free mankind from this long bondage, and the closing decades of the 20th century were devoted…  to creative experimentation with the means by which His objective can be realized.”

[p 110, 9.33, 9.34]

 

“The Ancient Beauty hath consented to be bound in chains that mankind may be released from its bondage”.   

 

 

 

IV.               Situation of world at present

 

The changes of the 20th century are irreversible – mankind is irrevocably set on the path which will lead it to world government, world justice, and world peace.  However, the document warns that the sufferings yet to come may even surpass the sufferings which have yet been seen.  What is the condition of the world at present?  On one level the international community, such as it exists, and however limited its current influence may be, has captured the vision of a global order.  On the other hand, there is deep skepticism over globalization, brought upon by the apparent absence of justice.  “The purpose of Justice is the appearance of unity”.  If globalization is to capture the imagination of the people of the world to a degree that it can become an aspiration with which the forces of nationalism will have to contend, then justice will have to be embraced as a sister force to unity; justice ‘the one means capable of harnessing these great potentialities to the advancement of civilization’.

 

At century’s end, materialism reigns supreme. 

 

Also at century’s end, one ideology has emerged virtually unchallenged. 

 

Philosophically & politically:  a kind of liberal relativism

Economically & socially:  capitalism

 

“The system is morally and spiritually bankrupt.  … Tragically, what Baha’is see in present-day society is unbridled exploitation of the masses of humanity by greed that excuses itself as the operation of ‘impersonal market forces. . . The destruction of moral foundations vital to humanity’s future, through gross self-indulgence masquerading as ‘freedom of speech. . . the pressure of a dogmatic materialism, claiming to be the voice of ‘science’ that seeks systematically to exclude from intellectual life all impulses arising from the spiritual level of human consciousness.”

 

 

 

V.                 Position of Baha’i community

 

“For a Baha’i the ultimate issues are spiritual.  The Baha’i community is the spirit in the body of the world. 

 

Every body calleth aloud for a soul.  Heavenly souls must needs quicken, with the breath of the Word of God, the dead bodies with a fresh spirit.

 

“Material civilization is like the body.  No matter how infinitely graceful, elegant and beautiful it may be, it is dead.  Divine civilization is like the spirit, and the body gets its life from the spirit…”  (`Abdu'l-Baha, SWB, 303)

 

The purpose of the Baha’i community is to assist the people of the world to open their hearts and minds to Baha’u’llah: 

 

"He hath chosen out of the whole world the hearts of His servants and made them each a seat for the revelation of His glory.  Wherefore, sanctify them from every defilement, that the things for which they were created may be engraven upon them.”