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>> Essays and poetry by Ron Price
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Abstract:
The building of the community & administrative
structure of this new world Faith was at the core of
Bahai programs & policies, goals & game-plans, so to
speak, from 1921 to 1996, a period of 75 years, and as
far back as the last years of the 19th century.
Notes:
Part 1:
. This book, of which this document at BLO is Part A, is
. 830 pages font 16, and 710 pages font 14. The book has
280 thousand words. It contains reflections and
understandings regarding the new Baha'i culture of
learning and growth, what amounts to a paradigmatic
shift, in the Bahai community. This international
community found in over 230 countries and territories,
as well as an estimated 150 thousand localities, has
been going through this shift in its culture since the
mid-1990s.
This Faith had its origins in mid-19th century Iran with
a century of several critical precursors going back to
the middle of the 18th century. The new Baha'i culture
or paradigm, which is the focus of this book, has just
stuck its head above the ground, so to speak. This new
culture of learning and growth will be developing in the

.
.

decades ahead, arguably, at least until 2044, the end of

the second century of the Baha'i Era(1844 to 2044), and
perhaps beyond into that third century of the Baha'i
Era, 2044 to 2144. Time will tell when the next
paradigmatic shift will take place in the international
Baha'i community, a community I have now been
associated with for more than 60 years: 1953 to 2015.
Part 2:
Comparisons and contrasts are made to several
previous paradigm shifts in the Baha'i community, as
well as the Babi community, the major precursor
community out of which the Baha'i Faith emerged by
degrees from the 1850s to the 1860s. Thoughts on
future developments within this paradigm, and future
paradigms, are suggested. In the first nine years, 2007
to 2015, of the presence on the internet of this
commentary, this book, it has contributed to an
extensive dialogue on the issues regarding the many
related and inter-related processes involved in the many
ongoing changes since 1996 in the international Baha'i
community and its 5 to 8 million adherents.
This work is dedicated to the Universal House of
Justice, trustee of the global undertaking which the
events of more than a century ago set in motion. The
fully institutionalized charismatic Force, a Force that
historically found its expression in the Person of
Baha'u'llah, had effloresced by a process of succession,
of appointment and election, at the apex of Bahai
administration for half a century by the end of April
2013.
I have also written this book as a form of dedication to,
by some accounts, an estimated 20 thousand Baha'is
and Babis who have given their lives for this Cause
from the 1840s to the second decade of this third
millennium. I have also dedicated this book to the

many best teachers and exemplary believers--those

ordinary Bahais--who have consecrated themselves,
indeed their lives by sensible and insensible degrees,
each in their own ways, to the work of this Faith.
This book has also been written partly in memory of
what has come to be recognized as a large and intrepid
band of early Bah men and women who blazed a
trail for those of us who have followed, and the evergrowing, ever-evolving global Bah community that
they helped to birth.
I am also grateful to have been in the warm embrace of
many Baha'i communities, a heterogeneous mix of
people who have often tested me to my limits, and I
them, but who taught me a great deal through the
chrysalis of social interaction and experience over my
more than 60 years of association with this newest, this
latest, of the Abrahamic religions. Finally, I have
written this work in memory of my maternal
grandfather, Alfred Cornfield, whose life from 1872 to
1958 has always been for me a model of an
engagement in a quite personal culture of learning and
personal growth.
Part 3:
This book is the longest analysis and commentary on
this new Baha'i paradigm that is currently available in
the Bahai community, although several other books,
which deal with this new Baha'i culture to some extent,
have appeared since this book was first launched in
cyberspace in 2007. The overarching perspective in this
book is a quite personal one that attempts to answer the
question: "where do I fit into this new paradigm?"
Readers are left to work out their own response to this
question, as readers inevitably must, now and in the
decades ahead, as this new paradigm develops a life of

its own within the framework already established in the

first two decades of its operation: 1996 to 2015.
The question now is not "if" but "how" each Baha'i will
engage themselves, will participate, in this new
paradigm as the first century of the Baha'i Formative
Age comes to an end in 2021, and as the years beyond
in this third millennium continue to challenge all of
humanity in ways we can, at this point, only dimly
imagine.
See also bahailibrary.com/price_pioneering_four_epochs.

Reflections on a Culture of Learning and Growth:

Community and Individual Paradigm Shifts: Part A:
A Contemporary, Historical, Futuristic and Personal
Context
by Ron Price
2008
PREAMBLE #1:
Section 1:
This book is 830 pages font 16, and 710 pages font 14, in length
with 280 thousand words. It is divided into two Parts: Part A which
is this document at Bah' Library Online(BLO), and Part B which is
also at BLO and can easily be accessed by interested readers by
typing the words "culture of learning" into the "Title Search" box at
the top of the access page. It was necessary to divide the book into
two Parts after some 15 years in the development of the new Bah'
paradigm as continuing elucidations and commentaries on its
structure and function, an ongoing exegisis, became part of an

extensive literature. This division into Parts A and B was also due to
the limitations in the size that is allowed for each document at BLO.
The book contains reflections and understandings regarding a new
Bah' culture of learning and growth, what amounts to a
paradigmatic shift, in the Bahai community. It has been going
through this shift since the mid-1990s.
This newest, this latest, of the Abrahamic religions, has been
developing a new culture in the last two decades, from 1996 to 2016.
This new culture, or paradigm, will also be developing and refining,
expanding and consolidating,in the decades ahead, arguably at least
until 2044, the end of the second century of the Bah' Era(1844 to
2044), and perhaps beyond into what will be the third century, 2044
to 2144. Time will tell when the next paradigmatic shift will take
place in the international Bah' community, the second most widespread religion on the planet according to several sources.
Comparisons and contrasts are made to several previous paradigm
shifts in the Bah' community, as well as shifts in the nature and
definition, the teachings and expression, which the Babi community
went through in its short existence of some ten to twenty years.
Thoughts on future developments within this paradigm and future
paradigms are suggested as the Bah' community evolves in the
decades and centuries ahead. The Bah' Faith is, in many ways, a
religion with the very future in its bones and tissues, its veins and
arteries, its cells and atoms.
In the years 2007 to 2015 during which this book, this commentary,
has been available on the world-wide-web, this work has contributed
to an extensive dialogue on the issues regarding the many related
and inter-related processes involved in the new Bah' paradigm.
There have been many changes in the international Bahai
community in the last twenty years as this new Bah' culture has

been developing. This community which exists in more than 230

countries & territories, and in a guesstimated 150,000 localities,
across the planet is what you might call a very wide church. This is
putting the subject somewhat colloquially, though, for the Bah'
Faith hardly resembles a church at all; nor is it a sect or a cult, a
branch of an old religion, a denomination or an ism. It does not exist
among the dozens of wasms, the dozens of outworn shibboleths that
fill the spaces of our planet with their useless weeds, long ago
having outlived their use and purpose.
Shibboleths are customs, principles, or beliefs that distinguish a
particular class or group of people, especially long-standing ones
regarded as outmoded and no longer useful to the human race.
(Note: the last statistic available on Wikipedia for the Bah' Faith
listed 127,000 localities in 2001. Readers with an interest in statistics
will find Wikipedia a helpful source across a range of numerical
figures for the international Bah' community. Since 2001, the
Bah' community has continued to expand; any numerical figures
after the turn of the millennium in 2001 are, at best, guestimations
on my part, drawing on annual reports of several national Bah'
communities, communities which publish their statistics annually. It
should be emphasized, though, that this new paradigm has, in its first
20 years, 1996 to 2016, placed far less emphasis on numbers than it
did in the previous decades of its expansion, previous decades when
I was associated with this new world Faith as far back as the 1950s.
Still, the growth in the international Bah' community according to
one source, Adherents.com, shows some 6 to 8 million. That site also
enumerates the 20 largest national Bah' populations, and the 20
countries with the largest proportion of Bah's. The source given by
Adherants.com is for the year 2000. The numbers are "estimated
Bah' statistics from David Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia,
2000; Total population statistics, mid-2000 from Population

Reference Bureau (http://www.prb.org). I have no figures for 2015.

Section 2:
This work is dedicated to the Universal House of Justice, trustee of
the global undertaking which the events of more than a century ago
set in motion. The fully institutionalized charismatic Force, a Force
that historically found its expression in the Person of Bah'u'llh,
had fully effloresced by a process of succession, of appointment and
election, at the apex of Bahai administration for half a century by the
end of April 2013.
I have also written this book as a form of dedication to, by some
accounts, an estimated 20,000 Bah's and Babis who have given
their lives for this Cause from the 1840s to the second decade of this
third millennium. The religious and cultural meanings of martyrdom
& witnessing, and their role in Babi history are found discussed in
detail in a thesis submitted for Master of Arts for the Dept. of
Religious Studies at the University of Toronto in 1997. I have also
dedicated this book to the many best teachers and exemplary
believers--those ordinary Bahais--who have consecrated themselves,
indeed their lives, to the progress of this Faith.
This book has also been written for what has come to be recognized
as a large and intrepid band of early Bah men women who blazed
a trail for those of us who have followed, and the ever-growing,
ever-evolving global Bah community that they helped to birth. I
am grateful to have been in the warm embrace of many Bah'
communities over my more than 60 years of association with this
newest, this latest, of the Abrahamic religions. I have been tested to
my limits more times than I can count, and I know I have also tested
the limits of others, both in my family and in many of the Bah'
communities with which I have been associated over those 60 and

more years. The Bah' Faith is not a tea-party, although there are
often times when it seems to resemble a party atmosphere due to the
highly social nature of this religion.
Finally, I have written this work in memory of; firstly, my maternal
grandfather, Alfred Cornfield, whose life from 1872 to 1958 has
always been for me a model within my own family of an
engagement in a quite personal culture of learning and personal
growth; and secondly, the many others who have been my mentors
in life, others whose learning or experience, or both, has been an
inspiration from my late teens when I began to read seriously in the
social sciences and humanities, and when I began to take part in the
community life of a religion which had come into my family's life
back in 1953 when I was just nine years old.
Section 3:
THE BADI CALENDAR
The letter of the Universal House of Justice dated July 10, 2014,
with its attachment about the Bah calendar, was a great surprise to
many of the friends in the Bah world. To clarify several technical
issues involved and to appreciate the timing and understand the
implications of this message, this article is offered to the readership
of this eminent journal. In this epoch-making message that launches
a unified Bah calendar, the Universal House of Justice pointed out
to us: The adoption of a new calendar in each dispensation is a
symbol of the power of Divine Revelation to reshape human
perception of material, social, and spiritual reality. Through it, sacred
moments are distinguished, humanitys place in time and space
reimagined, and the rhythm of life recast. The same message drew
attention to the fact that the launching of the new calendar will
further unite the Bah world. The friends in the West had always

known, through books such as God Passes By and The DawnBreakers, that many Bah historical dates were recorded and
mentioned based on the lunar calendar of Islam. They had been also
aware that a few Bah anniversaries were being observed in some
countries in the Eastin accordance with the lunar calendar, while the
rest adhered to the dates of the solar calendar.
To provide for resolving this disparity, the Bah texts stipulated
that the Universal House of Justice had to determine the locality in
the world that should be used as the Bah meridian and the manner
in which the Bah calendar could be adjusted to enable the
Birthdays of Bahullh and of the Bb to occur on two consecutive
days, as indicated in Bah texts attributed to Bahullh Himself.
In its letter of July 10, 2014, the Universal House of Justice gave its
answers to these two questions. As of Naw-Rz 2015, the Bah
meridian will be the city of Tehran, where the spring equinox will
determine the first day of the Bah year. From that year onward the
two Birthdays will be internationally observed according to a lunar
reckoning within the solar calendar, the dates of which will be
announced in good time by the Universal House of Justice.
The Writings and Utterances of Bahullh, such as those published
in Gleanings from the Writings of Bahullh, clearly stipulate that
Tehran was indeed the mother of the world, the source of the joy
of all mankind, the holy and shining city and the land of
resplendent glory. What other city had been so praised by the
Blessed Beauty? It seems Tehran was destined to be the meridian of
the future World Order. To an Oriental pilgrim Shoghi Effendi once
said that the Prophet Muh ammad had called Mecca the mother of
villages, but Bahullh had conferred the title mother of the
world to His native city. As to the question of the observances of
the Twin Birthdays, as indicated in Note 138 of The Kitb-i-Aqdas
(pages 224225), what Bahullh meant by the two birthdays

being as one day (in Questions and Answers #2) was that they
should fall on two consecutive days. This is confirmed in a letter
written on behalf of the Guardian. To explain fully this provision in
the Aqdas, I will quote the following passage from Note 138
mentioned above:
In the Muslim lunar calendar these [i.e. the anniversaries of the
Births of Bahullh and the Bb] fall on consecutive days, the birth
of Bahullh on the second day of the month of Muh arram 1233
A.H. (12 November 1817), and the birth of the Bb on the first day
of the same month 1235 A.H. (20 October 1819), respectively. They
are thus referred to as the Twin Birthdays and Bahullh states
that these two days are accounted as one in the sight of God (Q&A
2). I will discuss the calendar in more detail below.
ROLES STATUSES and IDENTITY
Roles and statuses are more diffuse in this 21st century, and a
personal sense of identity is the result to a higher degree from
structures and narratives pieced together by individuals from many
sources. This idea is found in: (i) Dominique Bouchet, The Lost
Bond and the Good Life: Identity, Family and Couples in a SocialPhilosophical Perspective; (ii) The Good Life: More than One's Self,
Ed. Niels Jakob Harbo, 2004, pp.149-68; and (iii) Charles Taylor,
The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1991. Individuals must be able to engage actively in the
construction of their roles, at any moment navigating from one
"reality" to another, mobilizing themselves in sense-making actions.
Individuals become entrepreneurs of their own lives, inventing and
reinventing identity by means of actions and choices. Consequently,
it becomes essential for many organizations, and especially the
Bah' Faith with its highly diverse membership spread over more
than 230 countries and territories, to provide an attractive narrative

framework of identity and purpose within which the individual can

construct and reconstruct his or her personal narrative. This new
culture of learning and growth does just that and has been doing it
with greater efficacy as the years have gone on in the last two
decades: 1996 to 2016.
This new Bah' culture has been, is & will be a response to
changing communication needs both outside & within the Bah'
organizational framework. This Faith has long recognized the
importance of creating a strong organizational culture as a means to
establish feelings of organizational uniqueness. From the perspective
of management and metaphors, stories and discourse practices have
been used strategically to constitute approved frames of
interpretation. Such practices influence the members' perception of
organizational life and values. Similarly, there is a recognition of the
strong link and necessary coherence between organizational identity,
that is, what members of organizations perceive as their own and the
organization's values, vision and mission, and corporate identity.
Corporate identity is the organization's identity, or brand,
communicated to stakeholders outside the organization. This has
been a slowly evolving entity since at least the 1980s, if not in the
decades before for possibly a century or more, and it has been
enhanced many fold in this new Bah' paradigm. To put this another
way, the public image of this Cause has been enlarged and
articulated in a much more specific framework of values and beliefs
since the mid-1990s.
THE STRATEGY OF NARRATIVE
The strategy of individuals and organizations using narrative
proceeds from an understanding that identity is constructed actively
by subjects. As former collectively defined understandings of roles
and identity have disintegrated in recent decades, individuals are no

longer primarily oriented by common, predetermined logics.

Formerly, individuals relied on preordained or inherited roles and
status to make sense of their lives. Today, however, roles and
statuses are more diffuse, as I say above, and identity results to a
higher degree from structures and narratives pieced together by
individuals themselves. They must be able to engage actively in the
construction of roles, at any moment navigating from one "reality" to
another, mobilizing themselves in sense-making actions. Individuals
become entrepreneurs of their own lives, as I say above, inventing
and reinventing identity by means of actions and choices.
Consequently, it becomes essential for organizations to provide an
attractive narrative framework of identity and purpose within which
the individual can construct and reconstruct his or her personal
narrative. After 60 years of going to Bah' meetings and interacting
with literally 1000s of people, both within the Bah' community and
within dozens of other communities I have watched this process in
fine detail. This is a somewhat complex subject which I will leave to
readers to examine to the extent their interest engages their reading
habits. The internet is now awash with sources and resources for
individuals to further their intellectual and academic, their social and
psychological proclivities.
However complex and confused the scene, the House of Justice
emphasized in its Ridvan 2015 message, "yet there is reassurance in
the knowledge that, amidst the disintegration, a new kind of
collective life is taking shape which gives practical expression to all
that is heavenly in human beings. We have observed how, especially
in those places where intensity in teaching and community-building
activities has been maintained, the friends have been able to guard
themselves against the forces of materialism that risk sapping their
precious energies. Not only that, but in managing the various other
calls upon their time, they never lose sight of the sacred and pressing
tasks before them. Such attentiveness to the needs of the Faith and to

humanitys best interests is required in every community. Where a

programme of growth has been established in a previously unopened
cluster, we see how the initial stirrings of activity arise out of the
love for Bahullh held in the heart of a committed believer."
"Notwithstanding the orders of complexity that must eventually be
accommodated as a community grows in size, all activity begins
with this simple strand of love. It is the vital thread from which is
woven a pattern of patient and concentrated effort, cycle after cycle,
to introduce children, youth, and adults to spiritual ideas; to foster a
feeling for worship through gatherings for prayer and devotion; to
stimulate conversations that illuminate understanding; to start evergrowing numbers on a lifetime of study of the Creative Word and its
translation into deeds; to develop, along with others, capacity for
service; and to accompany one another in the exercise of what has
been learned. Beloved friends, loved ones of the Abh Beauty: We
pray for you in earnest on every occasion we present ourselves at
His Holy Threshold, that your love for Him may give you the
strength to consecrate your lives to His Cause."
Section 3.1:
Narrative patterns and operations provide ways to make sense of
life's myriad elements, for seeing life as meaningful. Stories, as
Ricoeur writes, are a means of creating an interpretation of life, to
avoid the meaninglessness of a life unexamined. Life is, he writes,
"in quest of narrative". Individuals seek "concordance," or harmony,
among the countless components of existence. Through narratives,
logical connections and cohesion emerge among the many disparate
actions, impressions and events that occur over time. Emplotment, as
Ricoeur writes, enables the subject to gather and organize life's many
elements, which enables an interpretation and understanding of
them. This new Bah' paradigm is made to measure for individuals

to enhance the articulation of their life-narrative.

One decisive characteristic of the individual in this new Bah'
culture is his or her response to the call of a quest: an existential
journey with tasks to accomplish and obstacles to overcome. The
medieval knight slayed the dragon; the modern hero, participant in
this Bah' paradigm, uses knowledge, skills and talent to battle both
his inner life and the external challenges. The vast and complex
framework of Bah' activity provides an implicit model for an
individual to quest through concrete descriptions of community
work which demands both individual expertise and passionate
personal involvement.
This new culture requires individuals with a conscience; ethical
considerations play a central part in the construction of the
individual's personal and professional identity. In these
organizational-participant stories, experts and specialists are staged
as young and powerful characters in pathos-based stories of how to
make the world a better place for humankind. To be seen as "making
a difference" is a powerful part of professional and personal selffulfillment, as exemplified in the advertisements. As the House of
Justice points out in its Ridvan 2015 message the call to support the
work "evokes a response in every heart that aches at the wretched
condition of the world, the lamentable circumstances from which so
many people are unable to gain relief. For, ultimately, it is
systematic, determined, and selfless action undertaken within the
wide embrace of the Plans framework that is the most constructive
response of every concerned believer to the multiplying ills of a
disordered society."
The human desire to make sense, and create coherence, out of life's
flux of experiences and offerings, by holding out narrative models
for prospective identity-making, lies at the core of this new
paradigm. The communicative strategy of offering a story into which

the participant can write himself or herself is not only a break with
traditional genres of engineering discourse, but also an
acknowledgement by corporations that organizational identity is
flexible and can be shaped by stories, of which the individual
narrative is one. It is also this mutability that allows for the narrative
process of self-creation. At the same time, the narrative model
offered in this culture rejects scepticism towards science, technology
and progress, by asserting that science, and the company that uses it,
is a means to change the lives of individuals for the better. They are
based on assumptions that the world is, after all, improvable and that
an individual can make a difference.
Section 3.2:
This new culture makes direct appeals to individuals to convey the
value of the Cause to others; this is at the core of the teaching and
consolidation, service and social activism aspects of the Bah'
community. The emphasis placed on the individual, on developing
his or her talents, and on cultivating ambition for the sake of both
self-fulfillment and community cohesion; as well as the emphasis
placed on the wider community results in a bond between the
individual, the Bah' community and the wider society. Through the
narrative framework of individual stories, this new culture tries to
appeal to the identity and aspirations of the specialist and create
organizational scenarios in which professional and personal quests
can be fulfilled. In writing him or herself into the story of the
community then, the individual utilizes a narrative model as a tool
for creating coherence, and finding meaning, in professional and
personal life in organizational and social contexts.
Of course, this process with both simple and complex parameters,
does not always result in making an appeal to everyone who comes
in contact with a Bah' and/or the Bah' community. Each Bah'

community has its own history; some communities have grown into
the millions in the last century, at one end of the growth spectrum, &
some communities become stagnant with growth becoming an
impossibility and even resulting in decline in membership. In many
localities the growth in this new paradigm has been extensive, but in
thousands of localities this has not been the case.
Statistical estimates of the worldwide Bah' population are difficult
to arrive at. The religion is almost entirely contained in a single,
organised community, but the Bah' population is spread out into
almost every country and ethnicity in the world, being recognized as
the second-most geographically widespread religion after
Christianity, and the only religion to have grown faster than the
population of the world in all major areas over the last century. The
5-7 million figure for Bah's worldwide almost certainly started
with the first publication of the World Christian Encyclopedia.
Before that appeared, no third party figures were available.
Official estimates of the worldwide Bah' population come from the
Bah' World Centre, which claimed "more than five million
Bahs" as early as 1991 "in some 100,000 localities." That was five
years before this new Bah' culture came into being by degrees
from the mid-to-late 1990s. The official agencies of the religion have
published data on numbers of local and national spiritual assemblies,
Counselors and their auxiliaries, countries of representation,
languages, and publishing trusts. Less often, they publish
membership statistics. In recent years, the United States Bah'
community has been releasing detailed membership statistics.
Section 3.3:
In the 1930s the Bah's of the United States and Canada began
requiring new adherents to sign a declaration of faith, stating their

belief in Bah'u'llh, the Bb, and `Abdu'l-Bah, and an

understanding that there are laws and institutions to obey. The
original purpose of signing a declaration card was to allow followers
to apply for lawful exemption from active military service. The
signature of a card later became optional in Canada, but in the US is
still used for records and administrative requirements. Many
countries follow the pattern of the US and Canada.
Other than signing a card and being acknowledged by a Spiritual
Assembly, there is no initiation or requirement of attendance to
remain on the official roll sheets. Members receive regular mailings
unless they request not to be contacted. The fact that the religion is
diffuse rather than concentrated is the major barrier to demographic
research by outsiders. Surveys and censuses (except government
census, which ask individuals their religion in many countries)
simply cannot yet be conducted with such a scope, especially not at
the level required to accurately gauge religious minorities. In some
countries the Bah' Faith is illegal and Bah's endure some degree
of persecution, making it difficult for even Bah's to maintain a
count.
The World Christian Database (WCD), and its predecessor the World
Christian Encyclopedia, has reviewed religious populations around
the world and released results of their investigations at various times.
The Bah' Faith has consistently placed high in the statistics of
growth over these various releases of data: 1970 to 1985, 1990 to
2000, 2000 to 2005, and across the whole range of their data from
1970 to 2010. From the mid-1960s until 2000, the US Bah'
population went from 10,000 to 140,000 on official rolls, but the
percent of members with known addresses dropped to fifty percent.
Bah' community life often places demands both psychological and
social on those who join its ranks, demands that prove to be more
than the new member bargained-for. And so it is when the bloom

comes off the rose, so to speak, and the new Bah' comes to realize
just what it is that he or she joined. The initial spark of enthusiasm
loses its excitement, its attraction, and the person either resigns or
simply becomes inactive. They cease to take part in Bah'
community life and often they can not be contacted. The growth of
the Bah' community across more than 230 countries and territories
is a highly varied and complex narrative.
Most denominations make no effort at all to maintain a national
membership database and must rely on local churches or surveys of
the general population. Local church membership rolls are often
maintained poorly because there may be no need for an official
membership list (Bah's at least must maintain accurate voting lists)
and local congregations sometimes do not provide their
denomination's membership data even when asked. Counting
American Jews, half of whom are married to non-Jews and the
majority of whom do not attend a synagogue, is immensely difficult.
Estimates for the numbers of American Muslims and Eastern
Orthodox often vary by a factor of two. I mention these other faith
communities, as they are often called, because the entire field of
statistics is often a dog's breakfast to use a term I have come to
appreciate after more than 40 years of living Downunder. Australia
in one of the most secular and skeptical, cynical but delightfully
honest and humorous communities on the planet; I have slowly
come to appreciate and enjoy its vast landscape and its cultural
complexities which have grown on me by sensible and insensible
degrees since I arrived here in my mid-twenties from Canada.
INTRODUCTION TO A NEW BAHA'I PARADIGM
Context: 1796 to 1996
Part 1:

From the last years of the 18th, to the last years of the 19th, century;
from the early years of the twentieth century, to the first years of that
fin de siecle decade, 1990 to 2000, a large group of men and women
were themselves engaged in one of the greatest paradigm shifts in
history. The first of these men and women were connected with the
precursors of the Babi-religion(1796-1843); the next group with the
Babi-religion itself(1844-1863), then another group with
Bah'u'llh(1863-1892), and then yet other groups in a wide variety
of ways with Abdul-Baha(1892-1921), then with Shoghi
Effendi(1921-1957) and, finally, with the Universal House of
Justice(1963-1996). One and all, and in a myriad of ways and
means, circumstances and situations, they laid the foundation for
what has become, in the last 20 years, a new culture of learning in
the international Bah' community. Through this vast array of
shared membership and affiliation, activity and enterprise, over two
centuries they took part, knowingly and unknowingly, in a new, nonwestern, spiritual movement, engaged in a wide-ranging
transnational reform enterprise. They were the earliest forerunners,
and then eastern-born and western-born followers of the Bah
Faith, an Oriental religion originating in mid-nineteenth century
Persia whose twin founders, the Bb and Bahullh, claimed to
have inaugurated a new universal era of peace, religious harmony
and social progress.
A modern religious movement, the Bah faith has resisted the
equation of modernism or feminism with secularism, and religion
with secular and partisan politics. Instead what was for many
decades seen as a Movement gradually became an independent, a
separate, a new religion with its own scriptures and laws, its own
calendar and holy days, its own saints and heroes. It gradually
escaped the gravitational pull of the religion within which it had
been 'birthed.' In similar ways that Christianity became a new

religion, and not a Jewish sect, the Bah' faith had by the late 1920s,
and more and more as the decades of the 20th century advanced,
become a world religion, spreading its membership across virtually
every country on the planet by the 21st century. The Bah's saw this
religion they belonged to, under the guidance of its appointed and
elected leadership from 1921 to the present, as a means for the
liberation of men and women everywhere, and the foundation for a
new Order. This group of eastern and western men and women not
only exemplified a form of millennial religious enthusiasm in their
adoption and promotion of the newest, the latest, of the Abrahamic
religions, the Bah faith, and its mythology; but, more
significantly, they worked to inaugurate a new World Order
predicated on the spiritual and social equality of people everywhere,
and the vast literature and quite detailed teachings of the Central
Figures of their religion.
Part 1.1:
The Bah' calendar, also called the Bad calendar (bad means
wondrous or unique) was first used by Bbism and then the Bah'
Faith. It is a solar calendar with years composed of 19 months of 19
days each, (361 days) plus an extra period of "Intercalary Days".
Years in the calendar begin at the vernal equinox, and are counted
with the date notation of BE (Bah' Era), with 21 March 1844 CE
being the first day of the first year, the year the Bb proclaimed his
religion. The Bah' calendar's implementation has changed over
time. The calendar was first implemented and used by the Bb faith
and then adapted for use in the Bah' Faith, with some changes.
However, the Bah' scriptures left a number of issues regarding the
implementation of the calendar to be resolved by the Universal
House of Justice, the governing body of the Bah's, before the
calendar could be observed uniformly worldwide. Until 20 March
2015 the calendar was locked to the Gregorian calendar with the new

year always being March 21. However, on 10 July 2014 the

Universal House of Justice announced provisions that will enable the
common implementation of the calendar worldwide, beginning at
sunset 20 March 2015. Beginning in March 2015 the calendar will
no longer be locked to the Gregorian calendar and the new year will
start on the day of the vernal equinox. The period from 21 March
2014 to 20 March 2015 is the year 171 BE. This elaboration of the
calendar is just one of many areas of increasing specificity, and
increasing complexity in the functioning of the Bah' community
globally during this new Bah' paradigm.
The Bah' calendar in western countries was synchronized to the
Gregorian calendar, meaning that the extra day of a leap year occurs
simultaneously in both calendars so there would be 4 intercalary
days in most years, and 5 intercalary days during a leap year. The
practice in western countries has been to start the year at sunset on
March 20, regardless of when the vernal equinox technically occurs.
From Naw-Rz 2015. In 2014, the Universal House of Justice
selected Tehran, the birthplace of Bah'u'llh, as the location to
which the date of the vernal equinox is to be fixed, thereby
"unlocking" the Bad' calendar from the Gregorian calendar. For
determining the dates, astronomical tables from reliable sources are
used. In the same message the Universal House of Justice decided
that the birthdays of the Bb and Bah'u'llh will be celebrated on
"the first and the second day following the occurrence of the eighth
new moon after Naw-Rz" (also with the use of astronomical tables)
and fixed the dates of the Bah' Holy Days in the Bah' calendar,
standardizing dates for Bah's worldwide. These changes will come
into effect as of sunset on 20 March 2015.
The Bah' calendar is composed of 19 months, each with 19 days.
[2] The Nineteen Day Fast is held during the final month of Al (2
March 20 March), and is preceded by the intercalary days, known

as Ayym-i-H. There are four intercalary days in a regular year, and

five in a leap year.[16] The introduction of intercalation marked an
important break from Islam, as under the Islamic calendar the
practice of intercalation had been specifically prohibited in the
Qur'an.[4] The month of fasting is followed by Naw-Rz, the new
year. Until 2015, the calendar was effectively synchronized with the
Gregorian calendar so that Bah' leap years coincide with common
era leap years. In addition, the intercalary days include 28 February
and 1 March, causing precise synchronization of the 19 months with
the Gregorian calendar. After 2015, the number of the intercalary
days will be set as needed to ensure that the year ends on the day
before the next vernal equinox
. The names of the months were taken by the Bb from the Du'ay-iSahar, a Ramadan dawn prayer by Imam Muhammad al-Baqir, the
fifth Imam of Twelver Shi'ah Islam.[17][18] These month names are
described as describing attributes of God. In the Persian Bayan the
Bb divides the months in four groups, of three, four, six and six
months respectively.[19] Robin Mirshahi suggests a possible link
with four realms described in Bah' cosmology. The days of the
month have the same names as the names of the month - the 9th day
of the month for example is the same as the 9th month - Asm, or
"Names". In the following table, the Gregorian date indicates the
first full day of the month. The month begins at sunset of the
Gregorian date previous to the one listed, after which time that
month's Nineteen Day Feast may be celebrated.
I could outline many areas of increasing cultural and community
specificity in addition to those associated with the calendar as
outlined above, in the first two decades of the nature and functioning
of this new Bah' culture; examples could include, among others:
prayer and meditation, attitudes to non-believers in all sorts of
categories from homosexuals to people with a variety of disabilities.

The teachings insofar as the moral and ethical, spiritual and

community parameters are concerned have found a more extensive
set of refinements and explanatory frameworks. I leave this to
readers with the interest in the now massive articulation of the Bah'
teachings, especially available in cyberspace for interested seekers.
Part 1.1.1:
In their motivations and reform activities, these men & women both
resembled & diverged from the great pantheon of reformers &
missionary people, political evangelists and social activists. The
millennial new World Order they envisioned promised world peace,
social and economic justice, and a spiritualization of the planet,
similar to Christian expectations of the Kingdom of God on Earth.
However, Bah conceptions of a new heaven and earth differed
from those of other religious and millennial groups, other political
and quasi-utopian factions and formations. The differences were
found in the delineation of the doctrinal spiritual and social
principles contained in the sacred writings of the Bah faith. The
process was envisaged as being gradual; the revolution quiet and
unobtrusive, at least in some respects, although the deaths of more
than 20,000 of its early believers was anything but quiet and
unobtrusive. Also, unlike other western groups, efforts to implement
these principles were guided first by a centralized middle-eastern
leadership represented by Abdul Bah Abbas from 1892-1921 and,
then after His death, by His grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani from
1921-1957. After 1957, the centralized leadership was not middleeastern and, for more than 50 years, that leadership has been elected
by the international Bah' community by a process of direct and
indirect elections.
Bahs believe that a universal paradigm shift, instigated by Divine
Will and already in existence for arguably two centuries, would

gradually institute a new gender-equitable global civilization. This

civilization would gradually come into being through cooperative
human efforts both within the Bah' community and without in
which both men and women would play a major role. The story of
the last twenty years of the extension of this two-century-long
paradigmatic shift, an extension taken in a particular direction of
learning and growth, culture and activity, is at the center of this
book.
Part 2:
This book is the longest analysis and commentary on the last 20
years of this new Bah' paradigm, a continuation in many ways, a
further development, in the overall paradigmatic shift that first took
place within messianic Shi'ism, and then within Babism. The
particular development of interest here, the especial part of that
paradigm-shift, took place as a heterodox and seemingly negligible
offshoot of the Shaykhi school of the Ithna-Ashariyyah-sect, of
Shi'ah Islam was transformed into a world religion. That
transformation took place largely within the conceptual universe of
Shi'ism and, then from the 1860s, within the progressive expansion
and establishment of the Bah' faith. By 1996 I had been involved
with the Bahai Faith in many different ways for more than four
decades, and the Bah' Faith had developed a vast international
administrative apparatus that extended into at least a 130,000 centers
in the world and, perhaps, well over 150,000 localities.
By 1996, too, that two-century-long shift which was centered
quintessentially in the persons of Bah'u'llh and the Bab had
effloresced in fully legitimate and universally accepted elected
institutions for more than 3 decades, or 75 years, depending on just
how one defined and described that process of institutionalization of
charisma to draw on that erudite sociologist Max Weber. Weber's

terminology and his sociology of religion have provided, for me as

well as many other Bah's, a useful intellectual matrix for the
articulation of this institutionalizing process.
Context 1996 to 2016
THIS BOOK
Part 1:
This book is the longest analysis of the new Bah' culture of
learning and growth that is currently available in the Bahai
community, although several other books have appeared since this
piece of writing first appeared in cyberspace in 2007. Some of those
books have devoted part of their content to this new culture of
learning. The overarching perspective in this book is a personal one
that attempts to answer the question: "where do I fit into this new
paradigm?" Readers are left to work out their own response to this
question as readers inevitably must, now and in the decades ahead,
as this new paradigm has developed and will develop a highly
diverse life of its own within the framework already established in
the first two decades of its operation: 1996 to 2016. Each Bah' has
to work out what form his or her ready, or not-so-ready, embrace of
the unfolding guidance of the Plan will take. Each Bah' has to
work out what form, what attitude, what ways and means, what
particular activities their approach to learning and the cultural
attainments of the mind will take in this new paradigm.
The question now, as one prominent Bah' writer put it, is not "if"
but "how" each Bah' will engage themselves, will participate, in
this new paradigm as the first century of the Bah' Formative Age
comes to an end in 2021, and its second century unfolds in the years
beyond 2021. I will be nearly 80 in 2021 as this third millennium

continues to challenge all of humanity in ways that can now only be

dimly envisaged. In 2044 I will 100 and the Bah' Era(BE) will be
two centuries into its predicted 1000 year history. The Bah' cycle,
and the Revelation proclaimed by Bahullh, will extend over a
period of at least five hundred thousand years, such is the Bah'
belief, the long range Bah' historical and futuristic perspective.
Part 1.1:
In accordance with the principle of progressive revelation every
Manifestation of God must needs vouchsafe to the peoples of His
day a measure of divine guidance ampler than any which a preceding
and less receptive age could have received or appreciated. For this
reason, and not for any superior merit which the Bah Faith may be
said to inherently possess, does a number of prophecies bear witness
to the unrivaled power and glory with which the Dispensation of
Bahullh has been investeda Dispensation the potentialities of
which we are but beginning to perceive and the full range of which
we can never determine.
The Faith of Bahullh should indeed be regarded, if we wish to be
faithful to the tremendous implications of its message, as the
culmination of a cycle, the final stage in a series of successive, of
preliminary and progressive revelations. These, beginning with
Adam and ending with the Bb, have paved the way and anticipated
with an ever-increasing emphasis the advent of that Day of Days in
which He Who is the Promise of All Ages should be made manifest.
Part 1.2:
To the truths I have mentioned above, part and parcel of Bah'
belief, the utterances of Bahullh abundantly testify. A mere
reference to the claims which, in vehement language and with

compelling power, He Himself has repeatedly advanced cannot but

fully demonstrate the character of the Revelation of which He was
the chosen bearer. To the words that have streamed from His pen
the fountainhead of so impetuous a Revelationwe should,
therefore, direct our attention if we wish to obtain a clearer
understanding of its importance and meaning. I try to do this in my
book, a book which is getting longer as each month of this paradigm
advances. This book is in need of a good editor, but it may be some
time before such a skilled person is found.
Whether in His assertion of the unprecedented claim He has
advanced, or in His allusions to the mysterious forces He has
released, whether in such passages as extol the glories of His longawaited Day, or magnify the station which they who have recognized
its hidden virtues will attain, Bahullh and, to an almost equal
extent, the Bb and Abdul-Bah, have bequeathed to posterity
mines of such inestimable wealth as none of us who belong to this
generation can befittingly estimate. Those of us who have lived
through the first two decades of this new paradigm have only begun
to understand its quickening wind.
Such testimonies found in the Bah' writings, bearing on the themes
to which I have referred above, are impregnated with such power
and reveal such beauty as only those who are versed in the languages
in which they were originally revealed can claim to have sufficiently
appreciated. So numerous are these testimonies that a whole volume
would be required to be written in order to compile the most
outstanding among them. All I can venture to attempt at present is to
share with you only such passages as I have been able to glean from
His voluminous writings, and the writings of His legitimate
successors as I try to come to grips with the implications of this new
Bah' culture of learning and growth in the following pages.

THE INTERNET
Section 1:
In drawing on the works of other writers over the last nine years,
2007 to 2015, I should emphasize at the outset of this lengthy read
that, by mid-March 2015, when my most recent additions and
deletions, my most recent updates and editings of this book had
taken place, the internet had come to possess a myriad print and
audio-visual resources in connection with this new paradigm. There
was also a vast expanse, an immense extension, of primary &
secondary resource material that had become available in the last
two decades in cyberspace. More than a little emphasis is given in
this book, and in this new paradigm, to the internet. Since the mid1990s, when this paradigm began its life across the thousands of
localities where the Bahai community was and is found, this new
culture had become a critical means for the growth of a distinctive
Bahai ethos of learning. At the same time, the internet had
transformed communication on the planet, at least for those with
access to the world-wide-web. My book is just one of the seemingly
infinite number of resources now available for the 5 to 8 million
Bah's, and some of the 100s of millions, indeed billions, of others
on the planet who want to know or will want to know more about
this new world Faith, & about its unfolding paradigm.
The advanced computational and communications technologies of
the world wide web now play a highly varied, and diverse, set of
roles in today's global economic, social, cultural, political, and even
ecological orders. The new Bah' culture is one of the many cultures
that have been transformed due to the internet. Evidence of this
exists in technologies used to implement the internationalization, the
globalization, of this Bah' culture of learning & growth. The
world-wide-web lives in many of the individual & community

manifestations of the Bah' culture of learning spread, as it is now,

across 1000s of localities--arguably as many as 150 thousand or
more---on the planet. The tools that shape this new media and its
practices have transnational impacts and profoundly influence the
global outreach of the international Bah' community.
The many new media tools in cyberspace provide contexts for local,
regional, national, transnational, and global-scale interaction. The
academic study and the practical everyday use of the world-wideweb is a truly interdisciplinary undertaking that has no fixed
academic home and, by extension, no organized intra-disciplinary,
self-regulating value system or ethics. In other words: it has no
cohesive philosophical discourse. It is utilized by the Bah'
community at all levels in a virtually infinite number of ways. The
internet is embedded in the larger societal and cultural, subjective
and objective, economic and community structures of lived
experience on our planet of 7.3 billion members, the global
population as of January 2015. The systems and sequences, patterns
and frameworks within which Bah's exist and operate are now
deeply connected to the WWW. At the same time, through this
embededness, this new digital media, acts back on the social so that
its specific capabilities can engender new concepts of both the
individual and the social, of the possible and seemingly impossible. I
have devoted some of the initial paragraphs of this book to the
internet because of the very pervasiveness of cyberspace in today's
world, and because of the profound changes it has brought about not
only in the Bah' community, but in my own life as I head through
the last decade(70 to 80) of late adulthood, as some developmental
psychologists call the years from 60 to 80 in the lifespan, and as my
writings have begun to acquire a readership across cyberspace now
numbering in the millions, something I could scarcely have believed
in the opening years of this new paradigm.

Section 2:
The influence of science and technology on the experience and
growth of the Bah' community since the middle of the 19th
century, as well as the other kinds of communities on the planet,
would make a book in itself. The vast expansion of print culture, of
communication technology: the telegraph, the telephone, the radio,
the television; of the means of transportation: shipping, the car, the
train, the airplane and jet--have, one and all, overcome much of the
tyranny of distance that was the reality of human experience until the
19th and 20th centuries. They have transformed human activity and
resulted in changes that were and are more profound than any in
humanity's preceding history, changes that are, for the most part,
little understood by the present generation.
The communication and the communicating subject, the individual,
in cyberspace is endowed with a great deal of autonomy in relation
to, and over and above, many of the major and dozens of the minor
institutions and organizations of communication that exist in the
wide-wide-world. The paradigm shift that is the new culture of
learning and growth in the Bah' community has taken place at the
same time as the paradigm shift in communication. This latter shift
has resulted from the internet since at least those mid-1990s. This
transformation of communication is, in some ways, a transformation
from mass communication to mass self-communication. The
autonomy of social actors like myself has increased and, therefore,
the power relationships in the Bah' community as well as the larger
society have altered. The authority structure in the Bah' community
has not altered, but the power relationships certainly have. I do not
want to overemphasize this subject, but I would like to comment on
it briefly below.
In social science and politics, power and authority have come under

analytical scrutiny in the last half century, to say nothing of any

scholarhip in the previous century and centuries. My views of power
and authority come closest to those of Richard Sennett(1943- ), the
Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of
Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York
University. His books "The Fall of Public Man" and "Authority"
published in 1977 and 1980 respectively provide, for me at least, a
series of helpful perspectives on the concepts of authority and power.
The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate
within some social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but
the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social
beings. In the corporate environment, power is often expressed as
upward or downward. With downward power, a company's superior
influences subordinates. When a company exerts upward power, it is
the subordinates who influence the decisions of the leader. These are
all somewhat conventional views. Richard Sennett writes with a
gentleness rare in academically-styled prophets with a tone indeed as
well as a conviction like Toquevilles own. Readers here with the
interest might like to have a look at this French historian and
sociologist who wrote a two volume work on Democracy in America
when Bah'u'llh was in his teens and twenties, the 1830s and early
1840s.
Sennett has embarked upon an extended account over several
decades of the current state of affairs in our rapidly globalizing
world. His two books which I have mentioned above are the first of
several on the subjects of power and authority, and I leave it to
readers to further their interests, if interests they have in the
complexities of what power and authority actually mean. Alexis de
Tocqueville (1805-1859) also wrote two books in his role as French
political thinker and historian. He is best known for his works
Democracy in America which appeared in two volumes: 1835 and
1840. I leave all this with readers.

Section 3:
It is not my intention to go into the many tributaries of social and
political thought, and the many thinkers ancient and modern, whose
ideas are relevant to the several contexts that this book explores
within the paradigmatic reality of the new Bah' culture. A unity of
concept and knowledge has been slowly emerging and a framework,
a matrix that organizes thought and gives shape to activities and
becomes more elaborate as experience accumulates, has been
developing in recent decades. The notion of a framework is central
to advancing the work of the Bah' community within this
paradigm. Paul Lample expanded on this idea at a recent ABS
conference in Canada, in August 2014, and I leave it to readers to
Google his remarks, as they Google many a subject in their own
efforts to define the ongoing &important relationships between the
Bah' Faith and the wider society in which it exists and has its
being.
The nature of the altered power relations implicit in the recent
communication shift, due to the internet, has possibly four particular
features or sources of influence and significance. All of them are
complex and all of them will develop lives of their own in the
decades ahead. The internet and cyberspace and their several
accompanying technologies have several consequences in relation to
the power relationships with which I am concerned here. The new
mass self-communication provides for people like me: (i) with
networking power which is the power to include or exclude entities
from my system of communication; (ii) with network power which
is the power to set the terms of the interactions that take place within
the system through protocols that I define; (iii) with networked
power which is the power of enabled social actors over other social
actors within the system; and finally, (iv) with network-making

power which is the power to shape a system by installing protocols

that adhere to my particular goals and values. These ideas are, as I
say above, somewhat complex and I hope in the pages which follow
to be able to provide a context to assist readers in understanding the
concrete manifestations of these abstract ideas. They are also
complex and difficult for me to understand. We are all in a new
world, a parallel universe, a universe and a world which has been
transformed time and time again since the middle of the 19th
century.
Section 4:
Letter writing as well as writing prose and poetry across several
genres of literature, has taken-on a whole new context and meaning
in cyberspace for me after some 50 years of writing letters and
essays, prose and poetry, notebooks & books in real space: 1954 to
2004. Since emails and the internet emerged by sensible and
insensible degrees in the last two decades, 1994 to 2015, literary
communication has been revolutionized. In some ways, this new
form of literary exchange is not unlike previous decades and
centuries when writing was one of the major forms of
communication in society. At least this has become true for some
writers like myself who utilize cyberspace as their central medium of
publicizing their literary wares: books and ebooks, essays and posts
at internet sites, narrative and expository details and accounts.
I could spend all my time now writing emails and posting at internet
sites. I could write: (i) short and pithy posts of a line or two; (ii)
posts of medium length, say, a paragraph or two, and (iii) long pieces
of a page or more. But, since I have other literary interests, since I
have reinvented myself in recent years, in the years of this new
paradigm---and am now a writer and author, poet and publisher,
editor and researcher, online blogger and journalist, reader and

scholar, I try to keep the sending of emails and internet posts, these
new forms of communication, to a minimum. I spend as little time as
possible writing: (a) emails and internet posts, and (b) letters and
responses to others in cyberspace. If old friends wonder why I do not
send them the short and snappy emails that I used to send to them at
their email address, or at their Facebook page, or at some other
internet site from, say, in those fin de siecle years of the 1990s and,
even more recently in the first years of this 21st century, 2001 to
2009, this is the reason. In 2009 I went on an old-age pension and
gradually began to write less and less to the 1000s of people who
had come into my internet life. I slowly had to work-out an MO, as
they say it in the who-dun-its, or I would spend all my time, 24/7 as
they say these days, writing to others in cyberspace.
I elaborate in some detail in the paragraphs below on my new MO,
an MO that will take me through my 70s in the years 2014 to 2024,
and beyond 2024, if I last that long into my old-age. The explanation
I provide here is, in part at least, part of the general articulation of
my business plan, of the literary industry, of my cyberspace MO,
that has come to occupy my leisure-time, my retirement years, as I
head into the evening of my life and its inevitable nightfall, death,
that messenger of joy as Bah'u'llh refers to this universal
experience. This personal MO is also at the very centre of my own
participation in the new Bah' paradigm. Each Bah' must work out
their own personal MO, their modus operandi, for participation in
the international Bah' community. This book tells much about my
way of going about things. My way is not a model for others to
emulate. This book has a highly personal context and, as I say many
times throughout the book, each Bah' must work how how they
will engage in Bah' community life in this new paradigm.
Section 5:

At various times toward the end of those fin de siecle years of the
last century, say, 1995 to 1999, human character changed again. At
least that is how some social theorists in the fields of sociology and
history, psychology and anthropology, have expressed one of the
results of all the new technology that has avalaunched into our lives
in the last two decades. Human character, at least human interaction,
began in those last years of the 20th century to undergo a
metamorphosis that is still not complete. But it is profound! It is
troubling and challenging for many. For millions, of course, it is
irrelevant. This revolutionary change in communication patterns is
scarcely understood in its historical context. But, it has become part
of the very air we breath, seductively or not-so-seductively
insinuating itself into our daily life, we who are connected to some
or all of the new technologies. Peoples' responses to this technology
are as various as they have been to all technological and human
inventions since long before the agricultural, the neolithic,
revolution 10,000 years ago which began to transform hunting and
gathering communities all over the globe. This book is not an
exploration of the internet, nor is it an exploration of the effects of
science and technology since the emergence of homo sapiens
sapiens. In these opening pages of discussion of this new Bah'
paradigm, though, I have provided what I hope readers will find to
be a useful, a relevant, context for the new Bah' culture of learning
and growth.
When I think about those late 1990s, as I was retiring from the world
of paid employment and student life which had occupied me for half
a century, 1949 to 1999, it seems like a 100 years ago, another age,
another epoch. Whenever that last moment was, before most of us
were on the internet and entering the email world, before we had
mobile phones and cell phones, smartphones and iphones, that
moment and those years seem like the end of another era. A
technological paradigm-change has certainly taken-place in the last

20 years, at this climacteric of history as these first years of the 21st

century have opened to the world's 7+ billions. Back in those preepochal change years of the 20th century, letters came once a day,
predictably, in the hands of the postal carrier. News came in three
flavors radio, television, print and at appointed hours. Some of us
even had a newspaper delivered every morning. For more on this
theme, and a stimulating overview of the recent changes in
communication patterns, go to:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/rebecca-solnit/diary
As Martin Luther King, Jr. and, as many other philosophers and
thinkers of prominence have described modern life in different ways:
"...all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live
together because of the interrelated structure of reality...Before you
finish eating breakfast in the morning, youve depended on more
than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured; this is
its interrelated quality. We arent going to have peace on Earth until
we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality
and give this reality political and social expression in our
institutional life.(Ron Price with thanks to Martin Luther King,
Jr)..The new Bah' paradigm has this concept placed squarely at its
centre.
THIS BOOK AS A WORK OF ART:
Section 1:
Perhaps as a result of the lingering Symbolist inheritance, an
aesthetic notion of most potency in the last 40 years, years since I
became an international pioneer from Canada to Australia, and since
I began to publish my writing in the various forms of the mass

media---and certainly in the context of this new Bah' paradigm---is

the idea that a work of art is in some sense about itself. The starting
point of the Symbolist movement is the inner vision of the artist. For
more, and for a context for this movement, go to:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n11/barbara-everett/somebody-reading
Even in the fine arts, apparently most in love with the visible world,
the great painter will be said to paint himself in every portrait. The
exquisite old lady reading in a pool of light holds the stillness of
Rembrandt himself as he paints, and Velasquez looks back at us
through the eyes of a court dwarf. I mention Rembrandt and
Velasquez, two very famous artists, but I could just as easily have
named any two of literally 100s, indeed, 100s of thousands of others.
The artist, the poet, the creative personality, all recreate themselves
as they go about their artistic work. So, too, does everyone else in
the context of their daily life, although many would not express it
that way.
This self-involvement may all the more readily be found in literature
since most writers and, perhaps even more, poets tend to be experts
on themselves. I write all this since my writing is overtly and
explicitly, openly and directly, autobiographical. I am drawing here,
in this brief analysis and description, on a book review in the
London Review of Books, Vol. 6 No. 11, 21 June 1984 when I was
just beginning to be published in the print media and also beginning
to write my autobiography at the age of 40. The book review in
question was by Barbara Everett. Everett is a British academic and
literary critic. Her review is of a book by the famous poetry critic,
arguably the most famous and erudite of poetry critics now alive,
Helen Vendler. Everett is reviewing The Odes of Keats by
Vendler(Harvard, 1984).
Section 2:

This Book as the Current Centerpiece of My Literary Output

A. The programmer or maker of the work, for example this book, in
setting the terms of the conversation, can be said to shape the limits
of engagement in relation to that work. Both myself and my readers,
in turn, exert pressure on the system, the Bah' community. We can
strengthen the system, the Bah' community, by using it as the
forum for communicating what we are writing & doing, thinking &
imagining. But my book, potentially anyway, may also cause a
negative input into the general Bah' community. In the case of the
new media, the internet, my book can also result in little or no
influence or interaction. The digital media we now use are not
neutral tools. They enact social, ethical and moral worldviews as this
book attempts to do. The work I do as a writer and author is relevant,
or so I like to think, so I assume. But what I write must be sensitive
to Bah' core values and ethics. Writers like myself need to possess
both a disciplinary sense of being self-assured that what they are
writing is good work within the intellectual culture that is the Bah'
international community. Their work must be underpinned by a
strong ethical philosophy that is consistent with (i) the broad
framework of the Bah' teachings and (ii) their covenantal
relationship with the Cause. At least those are some of the core
parameters within which I work and have my literary being. Such, in
broad terms, is how I see the wide context for this book on the new
Bah' culture.
This book had become, for me, a sort of centerpiece, not only within all the
internet posts on the subject, but also within the context of my own writing in
these last two decades. Readers wanting to understand this new Bah' culture
were not, and are not, short on analyses and commentary if they want to get a
picture of what this new Bah' culture was, is, and will be all about. After eight
years of having this book in cyberspace this book has become somewhat
irrelevant to the mass of readers who prefer, and generally read, only short
posts, and for whom a book of this siz

s just too much in our 21st century world of print and image glut. Millions prefer
the short and the pithy, the terse and the taut, the concise and the cryptic, the
compact and the clipped to pages and pages of prose. Such is the preference
and the proclivity of the Facebook and Twitter generation. That is fine; to each
their own as we head into the first decades of this 21st century.

B. As 2015 entered its autumn season, at least in the southern

hemisphere,on 21/3/'15, and as spring had begun to open in country after
country in the northern hemisphere; as the 50th anniversary of the election of
the Universal House of Justice in April 1963 was about to become the 52nd in
April 2015 and, as I was myself going through the last half of my 71st year, I
found I was adding more and more to this book on a variety of topics that I had
no intention of writing about back in 2007 at the inception of this work. There
were always several occasions each year when the Universal House of Justice
sent further explanatory messages which: (a) extended this new Bahai culture
in either its structure and its functioning, or both, and which (b) provided a
continuing exegisis for the benefit of a community which was striving to put in
place the many dimensions of this new Bahai culture of learning and growth. I
was always able, therefore, to add and edit, comment and analyse this new
Bah' culture at least several times each year. Who knows where and when

this book would find its final edition? I had begun to find, though, as
this second decade of the new paradigm was coming to a close, that
it was becoming impossible for me to adequately cover all the
aspects of this new Bah' paradigm unless I gave to this book
virtually all my time. I was not able to do this for several reasons. I
began to think that this work was going to become a survey of the
first two decades of this new paradigm. By 2016, I frequently
thought to myself, I would have to bring closer to a work that had
already grown far more than I had anticipated certainly in the first 15
years of this paradigm: 1996 to 2011, the beginning of the current
Five Year Plan: 2011 to 2016.
Perhaps my own life would come to an end first, at least it seemed to
me that it would in all likelihood end long before this paradigm had
completed its continuing and complex delineation, its articulation. At
the centre of this paradigm was a community building function that
had begun as far back as 1996. The structure of this new Faith, as I
have already emphasized, had been slowly defined and described,

developed and adumbrated for over a century by 1996, but the

community within which that structure was to be articulated, within
which it was to live and have its being, required its own timeline.
Community building is a slow and difficult process, although it has
some simple and quite easy to understand aspects. After two
centuries of Babi-Bah' history, the Bah' community has been
slowly coming into being all across the planet; little by little and day
by day, a long and tedious process in many places, a series as
systematic advances, wondrous leaps and thrusts from epoch to
epoch, stage to stage, and Plan to Plan in other places. The Bah'
community has seen a remarkably dynamic period in which the
Bah' community has changed markedly since the mid-1990s, to say
nothing of the dynamism that I have witnessed as far back as 1953
when my family in Canada first came into contact with the
revolutionizing forces of this Cause. There are many indicators of
these changes and these forces, and this work sums them up in what
has become a far too lengthy book, far too lengthy for the average
member of this Facebook-Twitter generation.
THE BAHA'I WORLD CENTRE
With some 700 people now working at the Bah' World
Centre(BWC) in Israel and with 1000s of letters going out each year
from various Bah' institutions which operate at the BWC; with
over 180 national Bah' communities, some 12,000 to 15,000
locally elected Bah' assemblies; and, as I have already indicated,
an estimated 150 thousand localities where 5 to 8 million Bahais
reside, the printed matter that now pours out into both the internet
and real space is simply staggering. As Paul Lample pointed out at
an ABS conference in August of 2014, there are now some 200
clusters in the world where 100 or more individuals are supporting
the participation of 1000 or more individuals. The most advanced
clusters have 500 people supporting the participation of more than

10,000 people. This book makes no attempt to survey, in even the

sketchiest of ways, this Niagara, this avalanche, of text that now
flows out over the Bah' world as a result of the complex entity, the
vast structure with its myriad functions, that is the new Bah'
paradigm. My aim in this now lengthening book is to provide a
bird's-eye view, as it is often said, of the big picture. This newest of
the world's Abrahamic religions and its culture of learning and
growth as it has developed in the last two decades will keep serious
readers busy here for some time. You may be advised to skim or
scan, if you would like to get just those nuts and bolts which concern
you and your personal interests.
THIS BOOK AS A USEFUL RESOURCE TO THE BAHA'I
COMMUNITY
This book had become for many, but certainly not for most, a useful
resource for readers wanting a macroscopic view of the new Bah'
paradigm. As 2015 advanced to 21/4/'15, as the 5th year of the
present Plan(2011 to 2016) was about to open, and as the end of the
second decade of this new paradigm approached(21/4/'16), I
continued to edit a document that had grown to more than 830
pages(font 16). Editing is an endless task, as most serious writers
find. Time would tell, given the highly dynamic nature of this new
Bah' paradigm, and the extensive growth in the new Bah' culture,
just how large a book this piece of writing would become in the
remaining months of the current FYP, and the years taking the Bah'
community in 2021 to the end of the first century of its Formative
Age. There are now 1000s of books in cyberspace, books which best
serve as door-stoppers, and are never read by the vast majority of
human beings. This is, and will be, I am confident one of these large
and bulky books. Cyberspace at least allows readers to take their
contents in little chunks, chunks to suit their reading tastes and daily
capacities, if it is chunks that are wanted. From my experience of

some 20 years now in cyberspace, chunks is all people usually want

from the burgeoning books on the internet. As we have moved into
this 21st century, the pace of life seems to have accelerated with
news coming at us 24/7, dozens of TV and radio stations; indeed,
there are now more options for people to spend their leisure time
than ever before. Such is the story for those of us in the advanced
and developed economies.
What appears to be emerging from the digital revolution is the
possibility of a new mode of temporality for public communication,
one in which public exchange through the written word can occur
without deferral, in a continuously immediate present. It is a world
in which we are all, through electronic writing, continuously present
to one another, at least to the extent and in whatever ways we desire.
This is true for intense and active internet writers like myself,
although I am more than a little aware that this is not true of all
people. It is not true of millions for whom the parallel universe that
is cyberspace virtually does not exist.
Half the world is still not even connected to the internet and its
cyberspace. My remarks here are intended to be of some use to that
portion of the world for whom the internet is part of their daily bread
& butter, so to speak. There is, I would like to suggest, an
unprecedented and unpredictable set of qualities that have emerged
in recent years; the possibility of the escape of writing from fixity is
something that is difficult to grasp. What the digitalization of text
seems to have opened up is the possibility for writing to operate in a
temporal mode hitherto exclusively possible for speech, as parole
rather than langue, (Hesse, 1996: 32), to use expressions from the
analysis of language and linguistics. This continuously immediate
present of writing allows one's writing projects, and one's
conversations around those projects, to develop in a more fruitful,
more organic fashion. Such is the case here; such is the way I have

come to see this text among my many other writings in cyberspace.

To put all this in the context of the new Bah' culture: the
paradigmatic shift in the Bah' community has also involved a
paradigmatic shift in the way I have gone about writing and
publishing, interacting and communicating in the wide-wide-world
of the wide-wide-web. This is also true for millions of others and all
sorts of permuations and combinations unique to each person but, of
course, possessing some patterns followed by millions of others.
THIS BOOK AND THE INTERNET: MORE COMMENTS
Part 1:
This book has many styles of writing
There are now many ways that writing in cyberspace can be
described. I have just written a few things in the paragraphs above
and readers should not concern themselves if they don't understand
some of the ways, some of the words, I have used. The internet is a
new medium of communication, like the TV and the radio, the
telephone and the telegraph before it. There is now an extensive
literature on the subject of the internet and its ways and means of
communicating. Each reader will, of course, have their own
experience and their own level of interest in this subject. The
majority of the 5 to 8 million Bah's will never see this book; for
less than half the world had access to the internet as of 2015. I write
for a coterie, but so do all writers. Some coteries are big ones and
some are little. After some 30,000 to 40,000 hits, I'd say this coterie
is in the middle range; it is not likely to go viral, and I will never be
either famous or rich, entities which have become somewhat
complex in this digital age.
Writers like myself in this document are willing to expose some of

the process of editing online as they go about extending their work

in cyberspace, in public. This process allows some readers, at least
those with the interest who follow the ongoing changes in the text of
this now lengthy book, to see some of the bumps and false starts that
I have taken along the way, over the last eight years. I didnt at first
sense, as I wrote the first edition of this work in cyberspace back in
2007, that I was even embarking on a book-length project; I only
knew that I had a small, persistent series of questions that I wanted
to think about to some extent. Having formulated an initial stab at
some possible answers, and having been disagreed with, as well as
supported and encouraged by those who read my work in its first
three years online(2007 to 2009), the feedback from my
commentators made me think in more complex ways about the
issues Id presented. Only then was I able to recognize that there was
more to be said, that there was something in the ideas to which I felt
compelled to commit myself. Without the simple and highly focused
beginnings of this book back in 2007, without those first questions
and, by then, by 2007, a decade of thinking about this new Bah'
culture, as well as the often inadvertent process of drafting more and
more commentary in the public space that is the internet, I would not
have been led by sensible and insensible degrees to this longer text, a
text that is now, as I say above, 830 pages(font 16). The book has
come together bit by bit over the last 96 months.
Approaching my writing from the perspective of process, thinking
about how ideas move and develop from one form, one post, one
piece of writing to the next, and thinking about the ways that those
stages are represented, connected, preserved, and counted within
new digital modes of publishing, all helped to foster what has
become, for me, a highly fertile text. It may also be far too rambling
for many a modern reader. I'm sure it is far too long for most who
come across it in cyberspace at whatever site catches their eye, their
gaze, their surfing mentality and style, interest inventory and

personal circumstances. I took full advantage of the webs particular

and very real temporality, its sense of and use of time. A great deal
of stuff that appears, that is published, on the web exists, in some
sense, in a perpetual draft state, open to future change. Writers
therefore, like myself,recognize both the need this creates for careful
preservation of the historical record of the stages in a texts life and
the equal importance for all authors who utilize this cyberspace
mechanism of approaching their work openly, thinking about how
their texts might continue to grow even after theyve seen the light
of day in some 'published' form. The internet is a new world for both
writers and readers. As a writer and teacher over many decades, I am
fully aware of how much many find the process of analysis to be like
a disease and, with a weary sigh, they often turn to other topics if the
analysis goes on too long. Indeed, there are many potentially
tortuous considerations which, as a writer, I simply ignore. One can
not keep everyone happy all of the time with what one writes. As I
often say in this book: I write for a coterie. I, too, often tire of
analysis. One can not be on top of everyone's wordy wisdoms or one
would exhaust oneself and drown in verbiage.
Part 2:
This Book Has Many Authors
There is a continuously immediate presentin the writing of this
book which allows this writing project of mine, and my conversation
around this project, to develop in a more fruitful, more organic
fashion. This will require a fairly radical shift in both my
understanding and that of my readers in what it is I'm doing as I'm
writing. If my text is going to continue to grow even as it is being
published online, readers are going to need to be present in those
texts in order to shepherd that growth perhaps not forever, but
certainly for longer than they have been with traditional print

publishing. This thought will make many readers and writers

nervous, in part because readers and writers already have difficulties
with completing a project; if writers like myself have the opportunity
to continue working on something forever, well, then what? On the
other hand, would that necessarily be such a bad thing? I am freed to
shift my attention away from publication as the moment of
singularity in which a text transforms from nothing into something,
and instead focus on the many important stages in my works
coming-into-being.
In fact, all of this helps me as a writer to think of my career as a
writer in a more holistic sense, as an ongoing process of
development. I am free to take some or many key moments of
writing, what some now call 'the moment of complexity', and see
them not as a series of discrete closed projects. I can return again
and again to the scene of the text in order to make changes as a result
of changes in my thinking about something I had once committed to
print. Or I can take old material in new directions. In the past this
might have seemed somehow vaguely scandalous. Such abilities it
seems to me lead to work that is better thought-through, more
significant'. But in order to take advantage of these abilities, writers
and readers will first have to learn to value process over product, and
to manifest that value in the assessments of literary work. This, of
course, this emphasis on process over content has been part of the
teaching of writing in many western countries for several decades
now anyway.
As this text became increasingly available for the sort of ongoing
development to which I refer above, I recognized more and more the
degree to which I was no longer the sole author working on and in
this book. This work became far more collaborative than any book I
have written in the past. New modes of collaboration over time,
across distances made possible by networked writing structures

required me to think about originality quite differently, precisely

because of the ways that these new modes intervened in my
conventional associations of authorship with individuality, with this
work as mine. This was a new world of publishing and it was a new
Bah' culture as the fin de siecle closed and the first years of the
21st century advanced incrementally---and as I retired from FT, PT
and most volunteer work that had kept me busy for half a century.
The two facets of conventional authorship, individuality and
originality, are intertwined in complex and subtle ways: insisting that
a text must consist of ones own work is to insist that it make an
original contribution to the field. The bottom-line, as they say these
days, is that one's work is not simply one's own, not uniquely one's
own. Not only does the operation of the digital network exclude the
possibility of uniqueness in its very function, the links and
interconnections that the network facilitates profoundly affect the
shape of any given text. In digital scholarship, the relationships
between the authors whose ideas we draw upon, and the texts that
we produce are highly dynamic. The work of some of our
predecessors is, in some sense, contained within whatever
increasingly fuzzy boundaries draw the outlines of my use of texts.
And so it is that readers may find this work somewhat fuzzy and not
to their liking. It will be too long a read, as I say above, for many
but, "such is life" as the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is reported to
have said on his way to the gallows in NSW in 1880.
Part 3:
This New Bah' Culture Has Many Commentators
Since 1996, the year that this new Bah' culture of learning and
growth had its inception, there has been a wealth of new literature,
both primary and secondary. I make no attempt to survey this vast

landscape. I will cut-and-paste below a review of two books which

throw some light on aspects of Bah' culture which I have given
little discussion of, important aspects, from my point of view. The
two books also came out right at the start of this new Bah'
paradigm, although the reviews did not appear until the third year of
the new paradigm. The two books are: (1) Symbol and Secret and (2)
Revisioning the Sacred. The reviews are both by Jonah Winters and
they were published in Iranian Studies, Vol 32, No.1, pages 141-145
in 1999. I had just retired from a 50 year student and employment
life in 1999 and was beginning the reinvention of myself as a writer
and author, poet and publisher, editor and researcher, reader and
scholar, online blogger and journalist.
Symbol and Secret: Qur'n Commentary in Bah'u'llh's Kitab-i qn
appeared in Studies in the Bb and Bah' Religions, volume 7. The
author was Christopher Buck and the publisher Kalimt Press, Los
Angeles, 1995. The second book was Revisioning the Sacred: New
Perspectives on a Bah' Theology. This article appeared in Studies
in the Bb and Bah' Religions, volume 8. It was edited by Jack
McLean and was published again by Kalimt Press, Los Angeles,
1997. Kalimt Press is, and was, a small, independent publishing
house. It can fairly be described as the premier producer of academic
material on the Bah' Faith. Most notable of its contributions in this
area is the "Studies in Bb and Bah' History" series, volume one
of which appeared in 1982.(1) The volumes of this series have
consistently featured scholarship that is rigorous and often
groundbreaking. These Volumes seven and eight are no exception.
Part 4:
Christopher Buck
A. Symbol and Secret: Qur'an Commentary in Bah'u'llh's Kitb-i

qn (Studies in the Bb and Bah' Religions, volume 7) by

Christopher Buck, is an examination of the central theological work
of the Bah' religion and its relation to pre-existing Islamic
theologies and literary forms.(2) Written circa 1862, shortly before
Bah'u'llh first announced to his followers that he was the "one who
God shall make manifest" foretold by the Bb, the "qn" is
ostensibly an extended defense of the mission of the Bb. For
Bah's, though, it came to be seen as a defense of and theological
exposition on both Babism and the Bah' religion, and it bridges and
coordinates the two religions. Further, it is regarded as Bah'u'llh's
masterpiece of theological interpretation and exposition. To adduce
proofs of the Bb's prophethood and refute objections to it,
Bah'u'llh develops a coherent hermeneutic of creative scriptural
interpretation, an explanation of which is unfortunately beyond the
scope of this review.
The title of the book derives from its two main areas of focus. Buck
first examines the "symbol" by relating Bah'u'llh's hermeneutical
enterprise in the qn to the well-established traditions of tafsir,
Qur'anic interpretation. He demonstrates that, since the qn can be
seen as residing withinthough transcending and reshapinga
tradition of Islamic works of exegesis, it is itself an example of
Qur'anic exegesis. Much of the value of this examination lies in the
fact that comparative studies between Islam and the Bah' religion
have yet to be undertaken. Such studies are crucial, for it is only
through investigations into Islam that certain metaphors and
symbols, technical terms, and cultural assumptions in the earlier
Bah' scriptures can be understood. Second, Buck examines the
"secret" by exploring the theological underpinnings of the qn.
What was Bah'u'llh's "messianic consciousness" at the time of its
writing, asks Buck, and to what extent was he disclosing his own
secret: that he himself was the promised "Manifestation"? Here Buck
is on unexplored territory, for this topic has barely been addressed in

published Bah' studies. Along the way the book touches on many
other issues, such as the manuscript and publication history of the
qn, Sh` notions of the Mahdi, and Bah'u'llh's agenda of social
and religious reform.
B. Much of Buck's work in this book is to be commended. His
examination is groundbreakinghe broaches topics vital and yet
often ignored. The background work on the history of the qn
which precedes his main topics is conducted with a depth and
assiduousness that could be regarded as a model for future work by
scholars of the Bah' religion. He examines the publication history
of the qn, the dating and dissemination of other key Bah' texts,
offers solutions to certain historical dilemmas, and responds to
critical charges made by early opponents of the religion with a
diligence and concentration which offers great promise for the rest of
the book to follow.
The heart of Buck's project is a demonstration that Bah'u'llh's
agenda in the qn is prosecuted through innovative tafsr. Buck
examines many types of exegetical innovation pioneered by
Bah'u'llh. These include the "interscriptural exegesis," i.e.
explaining the symbolism in the scripture of one religion through
recourse to the scripture of another religion, and the appeal to
rationality, i.e. demonstrating the absurdity of literalism. Through
these, Bah'u'llh prepares the reader of the qn to transcend
traditional interpretation and become more receptive to a new
revelation. Finally, Buck adapts the tafsr typology of Islamicist John
Wansbrough to prepare a hermeneutical typology of the qn. This
section is among the most focused published examinations of Bah'
scripture and, even if a reader might disagree with some of Buck's
analyses, the endeavour itself is to be applauded.
C. Symbol and Secret's conclusion extrapolates from the above

discussions of Islamic context and content in the writings of

Bah'u'llh into the realm of Bah' theology. Here Buck examines
the implications of Bah'u'llh's exegetically-founded break from
Islam for issues such as post- Qur'anic revelation, religious and
social reform, and metaphorical approaches to scripture. This chapter
contains some of the most enlightening and useful discussion in the
book, and Buck quite successfully conveys the sense of urgency and
potency infusing the qn and the state of the early Bah'
community. Given the importance of the topics Buck addresses and
the skill with which he examines them, it is regrettable that some
readers might find Symbol and Secret impenetrable. The two main
obstacles in approaching this work are the opacity of Buck's prose
and the occasional disorderliness of the book's content.
Buck's writing can in places read as an unsuccessful juxtaposition of
poetic and academic styles. His use of metaphors, while colorful, can
be distracting. His fondness for polysyllabic alliteration, as in
"vituperative vaticination" (84) or "extraordinary extemporaneity,"
(294) can bog down the reader or, worse, bemuse him. As well, he
often opts for technicality over clarity. Why "variae lectiones," (139)
when "variant readings" carries exactly the same semantic value? A
more problematic aspect of Symbol and Secret is its somewhat
chaotic form. It lacks coherence both in formatting and in content,
giving the impression that it was composed in numerous parts which
were combined into a somewhat haphazard whole for publication. Its
inconsistent use of italics and diacritics might be no more than an
occasional distraction, but does indicate a certain lack of editingas
do the few dozen typographical errors occurring throughout the
book. The topics examined in the text can be jumbled, with unrelated
sentences, paragraphs, and whole sections inserted in the middle of
otherwise succinct presentations. Conversely, topics that should be
presented coherently can be found scattered across the book. One
further wonders what organization guided the layout of Symbol and

Secret when the book ends, not with a tight summary of ground
covered, but a discussion of Bah'u'llh's agenda of socio-religious
reform which does not bear direct relevance to the preceding book
and reads more as the introduction to a new, unrelated book.
D.These criticisms aside, Buck has undertaken a project that is to be
commended on many fronts. This study is daring in that it is the first
extended analysis of the Islamic context and content of Bah'u'llh's
thought and writings. The rigour with which Buck has treated his
topics is a model for anyone engaging in textual scholarship: his
research is broad, his attention to detail thorough, and his coverage
of the topics exhaustive. Finally, many of his conclusions, the light
he throws on the qn and its content, and in places even his methods
are frankly brilliant. Though Symbol and Secret can be a frustrating
text which is difficult to penetrate, it is a good study which will well
repay the diligent reader.
Part 5:
Jack McLean
The seven essays of Revisioning the Sacred: New Perspectives on a
Bah' Theology (Studies in the Bb and Bah' Religions, volume
8), edited by Jack McLean, cover a variety of topics on Bah'
theology. While the wide range of style and content of these essays
could, in a more established discipline, indicate poor editing or an
unfocused mandate, here they demonstrate the richness and potential
of this nascent field.
Bah' theology is currently a tentative subject. It faces the expected
obstacles confronting such a new and relatively unexplored field,
such as a lack of scholastic tradition to build upon, little or no
recognition and support from its faith community and institutions,

and the difficulty of obtaining formal training. More than this, it also
faces potential doctrinal obstacles. Bah's consider their religion the
most complete revelation from God to date. The figures in Bb and
Bah' historythe Bb, Bah'u'llh, 'Abdu'l-Bah, and Shoghi
Effendiconstitute an authoritative chain of revelation and
interpretation. The sheer volume of the tens of thousands of letters
and books they wrote can give the impression that every question
one could have about God must be contained somewhere in them,
hence what need for practicing theology? As well, Bah'u'llh sought
to correct abuses of ecclesiastical authority by, among other things,
limiting the exercise of interpretation. While individuals are enjoined
to come to their own understandings of scripture and religion,
authoritative interpretation is strictly limited that of the above four
individuals. There is thus a common sentiment that the only
appropriate theological endeavor is to read, catalogue, and study
these writings, and any form of systematic theology can be regarded
with suspicion.3
The development of Bah' theology is, however, a key component
in the gradual maturation of the religion. As McLean rightly notes,
the "Bah' Faith cannot come to be recognized as a distinct and
independent world religion without a distinctive theology." (xi)
Given the religion's emphasis on "independent investigation of
truth," combined with the constraints on authoritative interpretation,
it is likely that Bah' theology will develop along pluralist lines. In a
note near the close of the book, McLean observes that "The
universal scope of Bah' sacred scripture...would seem to defy any
one theological system." Rather, "it is rather more likely that a
number of differing theological and metaphysical thought systems
will emerge in time and coexist within the Bah' writings." (208,
note 12)
These seven essays indicate an auspicious future for the project.

Written by a veritable "who's who" within Bah' studies, they

address a wide variety of topics in an equally wide variety of styles
and methodologies. The book opens with Dann J. May's "The Bah'
Principle of Religious Unity: A Dynamic Perspective." May attempts
to "unpack" what can sometimes sound like a Bah' platitude: that
religious truth is, at core, unitary. In the Bah' view, religious
identity and phenomena can be isolated into two aspects, the
essential and the accidental. In "essence," religions are one in as
much as God is one; they share what May (following Frithjof
Schuon) terms a transcendent unity. The problem, of course, is that
the "accidental" aspect of religious experience is highly diverse,
which can lead to inter-religious misunderstanding and conflict. May
adapts Bah' theology to a six-tiered typology of pluralism of
Raimundo Panikkar to attempt to classify and better elucidate this
principle of religious unity. This essay contains some very useful
overviews of pluralist theologies, and May's adaptation of Panikkar's
typology is instructive. Given the complexity and variety of
contemporary discussion of pluralism, though, the essay can read
merely as an introduction which leaves many questions and
objections unaddressed.
Part 6:
Stephen Lambden
"The Background and Centrality of Apophatic Theology in Bbi and
Bah' Scripture" by Stephen Lampden would have more
appropriately been titled "An Overview of Apophatic Theology in
Western Religions." Lambden surveys negative theology in Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, Bbism, and then in the writings of Bah'u'llh,
'Abdu'l-Bah, and Shoghi Effendi. Most of the article is simply a
catalogue of sample instances of apophaticism in scripture, which
does serve well to highlight the variety and commonality of

apophatic approaches. Yet while the number of instances of the via

negativa Lambden finds in writings of the Bb and Bah'u'llh does
indicate that it was a well-favored approach of each figure, and
hence "central" in terms of frequency, Lambden offers very little
theological analysis to illuminate this. This is unfortunate, because
the via negativa could well prove to be a key in understanding and
resolving the very problems of religious diversity May has just
hinted at. If Bah's are to teach that religious truth is unitary, and yet
retain a respect for the diversity of religious expression, Bah'
theology might well have to insist on a form of relativism in which
all talk of God is ultimately founded on the via negativa. While this
article would serve as a fine introduction to the topic for readers
having no background in theology, it adds little to the field.
Part 7:
Juan Cole
Juan Cole's "Bah'u'llh and Liberation Theology" is, in contrast, a
very welcome piece which begins to fill a clear gap in Bah'
scholarship. Whether in an attempt to find common ground and
avoid offense, or simply because of non- religious concerns, the
Bah' Faith is sometimes presented more as a social development
organization than as a religious movement. In its quest for
legitimacy and its sincere desire to improve the lot of the
dispossessed, the sheer "religiousness" of the religion is often
downplayed. On the other extreme, theological discussion, in any
tradition, can lose sight of practical experience in its pursuit of
theory. Liberation theology offers promise to bridge this gap, to
apply theology to social welfare and vice versa. Cole pleas for such
an approach: "...the world desperately needs a new vision of spiritual
and social justice such as Bah'u'llh enunciates." (82) Cole
approaches this by first introducing Bah'u'llh's own social welfare

concerns and activities. He then discusses a number of Bah'u'llh's

writings to bring out aspects which are often overlooked, namely the
emphasis Bah'u'llh places on empowering the impoverished and
the degree to which such concerns were truly revolutionary for Qajar
Iran. This is a well-written and timely article.
Part 8:
Anjam Khursheed
Khursheed's survey of contemporary common philosophies of
science, "The Spiritual Foundations of Science," demonstrates that
most share a common empiricist philosophy. Such an approach, he
argues, exaggerates positivism and masks the fact that, historically,
science has been founded on spirituality more than materialism.
Given the Bah' view that truth is unitarythat religious truth and
scientific truth are complementaryKhursheed calls for a renewed
emphasis on morality and on value- oriented scientific practice. This
essay summarizes well common Bah' explanations of the religion's
principle of "unity of science and religion" and provides a fine
overview of competing paradigms of the twentieth century, but it
presents little original analysis or theological justification. One
weakness of this essay is that Khursheed bases part of his
explanation of the unity paradigm on the fact that the Bah' writings
often mention "science" and "arts" as complementary endeavors and
refer to both simply as "knowledge." (107) One suspects that this
stems partly from linguistic differences. Terms such as "science" and
"knowledge" had quite different meanings and connotations in
nineteenth- century Persian and Arabic than in in twentieth-century
English, and without a philological discussion some of Khursheed's
conclusions are suspect.
Part 9:

Seena Fazel and Others

In "Interreligious Dialogue and the Bah' Faith," Seena Fazel
addresses a concern that has been raised by numerous scholars
outside the religion: Bah' dialogue often starts and ends with the
claim that all religions offer truth from the same divine source, and
hence are to be respected in their own right. This, Fazel points out, is
"only... a beginning." (127) Dialogues which merely declare
commonalities will founder on the real fact of difference. Dialogue
is sometimes no more than a polite form of proselytism, an
opportunity to present one's own tradition in a friendly setting with
the covert hope of persuading the other. In the best dialogue, Fazel
argues, each partner comes away transformed. After discussing types
of, and challenges to, religious dialogue, Fazel proposes three
approaches Bah's could adopt in pursuing interreligious discussion.
The three "bridges" he presentsthe ethical, the intellectual, and the
mystical/spiritualare valuable and insightful. Fazel's topic is a
vital one, and his proposals welcome. One wishes that this essay
could be made required reading for all Bah's who seek to teach
their faith to others.
Most of the essays in this volume deal with abstracts, with theories
of theology. Keven Brown's "Hermes Trismegistus and Apollonius
of Tyana in the Writings of Bah'u'llh" is a reminder that much of
theology must concern itself with specific, practical questions.
Bah'u'llh mentions Hermes and Apollonius (in Arabic, Balns)
only a handful of times, but these infrequent citations pose a few
specific problems. One, what is the relevance of these citations to
Bah' theology? Two, how should Bah's treat texts which are
regarded to be infallible and inerrant in the face of conflicting
historical accounts? Much of the significance of these citations lies
in the fact that the mere mention of Hermes can invoke a range of

occult and alchemical associations, associations quite foreign to

contemporary Occidental Bah'sm.
After briefing the reader on the historical accounts and myths of
Hermes and Apollonius, Brown presents the more significant
citations of these two figures in early Bah' texts and examines their
meaning and relevance. This is useful partly because it is one of the
only published discussions of alchemy and the Bah' Faith. The
second question arises because Bah'u'llh stated certain historical
"facts" about Hermes and Apollonius with which modern historical
scholarship would disagree. Shoghi Effendi and, later, the Universal
House of Justice explained that Bah'u'llh wrote to convey truths
which sometimes required that he cite contemporary historical
views, even if incorrect, to make his points. Brown agrees that it is
the points Bah'u'llh was making, not any inaccurate historical
details, that are significant. While a convincing argument, it is
insufficient in that Abdu'l-Bah, whose interpretations are also seen
as infallible, would on occasion firmly emphasize the inerrancy of
Bah'u'llh's historical statements. (see 187, note 115) The first of
Brown's two topics in this essay is treated very well; the second is
far from settled.
MORE ON JACK MCLEAN
McLean's essay "The Possibilities of Existential Theism for Bah'
Theology" is, like most of his writing, a well-considered and
academically informed meditation on living the Bah' life. He
surveys the thought of a few key European "existential"
philosophers, relating each to Bah' thought and theology. Through
his discussion of existential concerns and approaches, McLean
argues that the scholar working within a faith tradition must not
completely objectify his field of study, must not divorce his studies
from the existential commitment. This article, drawing on

contemporary philosophy for a practical comparative approach,

offers many original considerations and provides an engaging
conclusion to the volume.
Like Symbol and Secret, this book suffers from the types of faults
that can plague underfunded, independent publishing houses. The
articles are inconsistently edited, both stylistically and
grammatically. Further, while most are quite accurate, one is
thoroughly riddled with errors of punctuation, diacritics, and
spelling. The table of contents lists an incorrect title for another.
These are no more than a minor distraction, though. Most of these
essays are of a high quality and address original, vital topics. Their
range of topics indicates the vastness and rich potential of emergent
Bah' theologies, and Kalimt Press and McLean are to be
commended for having produced a valuable addition to Bah'
studies.
Notes:
1 Volumes one through four were subtitled "Studies in Bb and
Bah' History"; beginning with volume five the series was renamed
"Studies in the Bb and Bah' Religions."
2 A more in-depth review of this book can be found in Jonah
Winters, "Review of Christopher Buck: Symbol and Secret: Qur'an
Commentary in Bah'u'llh's Kitb-i qn" (Journal of Bah' Studies
8:3, 1998).
3 See J. A. McLean, "Prolegomena to a Bah' Theology" (Journal of
Bah' Studies 5:1, 1992), esp. pp. 28-36, for further discussion of
these issues.
In some ways a comprehension of the complex and sophisticated

setting of the new Bah' paradigm cannot be divorced from the

extensive new literature that has come out in the years 1995 to 2015.
Those 20 years have been fertile ones for academics and scholars
both inside and outside this latest of the Abrahamic relgions. This
book is not able to provide an even cursory overview of all this new
literature and commentary. For this reason I have chosen to provide
the above brief comment on only two of the new books. I leave it to
readers to do their own searching, studying and reading.
Reflections on a Culture of Learning and Growth: Community and
Individual Paradigm Shifts:
A Contemporary, Historical, Futuristic and Personal Context by Ron
Price
George Town Tasmania Australia
PREAMBLE #2:
Section 1:
This book of 830 pages(font 16) and 280 thousand words contains
reflections and understandings regarding the new Bahai culture,
what amounts to a gradual paradigmatic shift, in the Bahai
community. This community is now found in over 200 nations and
territories on the planet. It is the second most widespread religion on
earth. This paradigm shift has been taking place since the mid-1990s,
with its first intimations going back arguably as far as April 1988 or
even the 1970s when the concept of the institute first became part of
the Bah' community's process of deepening its adherents. This new
paradigm will continue in its various permutations and
combinations, its wide-ranging developments at least until 2021, if
not until the end of the 2nd century of the Bahai Era in 2044. This
shift will possibly find an increasing elaboration beyond 2044 into
the third century of the Bah' Era, 2044 to 2144, as this new world

Faith plays an increasing part in the affairs of the world and its
peoples. From time to time in this book I make mention of the
paradigm shifts in our wide-wide world as it increasingly globalizes,
planetizes and becomes one world socially as it already is, to a
significant extent, technologically and scientifically. Of course, the
wider paradigm shifts that involve the entire planet are all very
complex and these wider shifts, are not the focus of this book,
although they cannot be entirely divorced from the Bah'
community and its 5 to 8 million adherents.
This book also aims to offer, such is my hope, many pages that help
its readers evaluate who they are, or think they are, in relation to the
ideal they perceive before them, the ideal conveyed in Bah' texts
and the ideal they see as they view their own lives. I feel somewhat
presumptuous insofar as this aim is concerned. I am sure most
readers who are Bah's are already very much aware and are more
than a little able to recognize the distance that lies between their
present capacities and actions & those toward which they strive. But
our real selves are so often hidden within us, even though we know
there are angels who can and do help us, and demons which provide
the centre of ongoing struggle. These angels are the confirmations
and the celestial powers that come our way in this paradigm and in
previous paradigms; these demons are the many manifestations of
what I will call for simple convenience "our lower self." The God
within is a somewhat complex idea: "Look within thyself and thou
wilt find Me standing within thee, Mighty, Powerful and SelfSubsistent," goes one of many quotations on the one hand, and "my
back is bower by the burden of my sin" on the other. The self, the
who that I am, will keep both me and others busy as long as we
occupy space on this mortal coil.
Section 2:

Intercession is often the result of generous devotion more than

logical analysis. I trust that my desires, my efforts to gain the
intercession of faithful souls over several decades, will overcome my
unmortified passions. The deepest need in our characters is right
desire and there are many prayers that express these right desires.
Right desire is very important for a writer who is trying to convey a
wide range of complex ideas. The impersonal power of the Cause, in
so many subtle ways, comes to be seen by writers and artists, indeed,
people in all walks of life, as one's personal power. The mind does
not countenance such an idea, but the ego proceeds undetected in its
insidious and evil course, underground, as it were. Each of us must
come to know ourselves; it is on this basis that we come to know
others. We each have to do battle with our inner demons and
dragons, our lower self; no one else can fight that battle for us. In
rejecting the sin and not the sinner, this also includes our own dear
selves. And, to conclude some of this particular variety of aphoristic
advice let me say that, so often the cup must become empty before it
is filled again. I think this is as true for ourselves as it is for others
who first come to this new Faith and study it for the first time, or
even for those who study it for years. Everyone fills their lives with
all sorts of stuff, and it so often is this "stuff" that keeps the cup full
and the person never really enters the garden of the Cause. He or she
stands at the gate and looks within, but never enters. This is true for
more reasons that we are aware.
I hope that I will not be hindered from that which has been ordained
for me, hindered by wayward appetites, appetites which cause the
profoundest trouble in my character.(Gleanings, p.315) I also hope
the same for my readers. And who knows what is ordained for each
of us as we travel the path. May God help my readers, as I pray that
He helps me, to disentangle each of us from evil, from great human
passions, and to deliver us from evil because so often we are not
strong enough to do it on our own. In this new paradigm Bah's

have to deal with so many forces in the world of existence. But, in

some ways, they matter not at all, if we only realized it, and realizing
this is no easy task. At least it is no easy task for me. What matters is
our own dear lives. They are of the greatest importance.(Paris Talks,
p.118) Our outward conflicts are but an echo of a more inward war.
It is a war that is fought with prayer, prayer which calls eternal
forces into alliance. This war is also fought with meditation, and the
sign of meditation is silence. Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also. Prayer provides an expression of the craving of a
man's heart. Prayers are always answered. Sometimes circumstances
change or He changes us. Of course, believing that what happens to
us is always for the best, does not mean we will not suffer. And it is
so often very difficult to believe that what is happening to us, to say
nothing of the billions of others, is "for the best."
Section 3:
The more than a century and a half of Bah' history, from its
inception in mid-19th century until today, is one that is filled with
suffering. As I examine Bah' history from time to time in this book,
I often examine it in a metaphorical sense. John Hatcher, professor
emeritus of English literature at the university of South Florida has
written about this way of studying and thinking about history and I
leave it to readers with the interest to examine some of Hatcher's
books. I also leave it to readers to study secular history, especially
history in the last century or more. Recent modern history throws
much light on this new paradigm. The literature now available in and
on this new paradigm is burgeoning. Very few are able to keep pace
with it all, and even fewer are able to read it all again and again so as
to remember, by the process of repetition, remember its many details
and programs, ideas and ideals.
The world we entered in this new paradigm in the mid-1990s, was

one in which catastrophe was writ-large. The world a century before,

in 1900, had no idea of the magnitude of the catastrophes ahead. The
vast majority of humankind lived outside the Western world. There
was vast and hopeless misery in many places especially: Russia,
China, India and Africa. Again, I leave it to readers to try and grasp
the general story of modern history and the light, if any, they can
find that throws our world a century later in an historical
perspective. I taught history for several decades, and I am more than
a little aware of the anarchic confusion that exists in the study of
history. This is not only true of history; it is true of all the social
sciences, young and inexact as they are, and far more complex than
the physical and biological sciences. Complexity faces us all in the
study of man, society, and the vast field of values, beliefs and
attitudes, in a word, religion.
In 1996 the Bah' world began to focus on a prodigious effort to
better understand and systematize its work of expansion and
consolidation, of growth and community building. Much as been
learned in the first 20 years of the application of this prodigious
effort that has profoundly influenced the pattern of activity in which
the community is engaged. The several Associations of Bah'
Studies, since the first establishment of the North American chapter
in 1975, have come to address a range of issues in the context of this
new Bah' culture. It is not my intention to expatiate on the
developments of the ABS into this second decade of the 21st
century, suffice it to say a unity of thought around essential concepts
is slowly emerging as is an evolving conceptual framework, a matrix
that organizes thought and gives shape to activities and which
become more elaobrate as experience accumulates. The Universal
House of Justice as written on this subject in a letter to the NSA of
the Bah's of Canada more than a year ago now in July of 2013. I
encourage readers to access that letter in cyberspace for its useful
delineation of the present and future challenges of the ABS.

Section 4:
It has become part of conventional thinking that the early
socialization of a child has an important role in determining the
overall life-trajectory, the total life experience of a person over the
lifespan. I have written a brief statement and analysis of my
childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood to provide some
explanatory framework for my life; I do not place that statement
here. In some of my childhood years and adolescence, the ages 9 to
19, and the first decade of my young adulthood, 20 to 30, the years
1953 to 1975, the seeds of what I now regard as, and what I firmly
believe to be, a divine knowledge were sown in the soil of my heart.
It was a heart which had a degree of receptivity to things outside the
small-town culture in which I was immersed.
By the age of 31 in 1975, with my years of youth behind me, my
sense of conviction in what one could call the unseen creative force
of the universe, in God, was firmly implanted in my being. His act of
Self-Revelation through a chosen human instrument occurring
periodically in history, and most recently in the Person of
Bah'u'llh, was also part of this conviction. The hypothesis that
man's social evolution is due to the periodic intervention in human
affairs of the creative force of the universe, in the form of especially
chosen souls, the Founders of the great world religions: this
hypothesis is at the centre of the Bah' Faith; this Faith provides
fresh empirical evidence for this assumption for those with the
interest in the subject. This Faith also provided a core, a compass, a
framework, for my moral and intellectual universe as it evolved
through my teens and twenties. And it continues to do so four
decades later as I head through my 70s in the years 2014 to 2014.
This process has also happened to millions and it continues to
happen in this new paradigm. Perhaps the most important aspect of

this process is learning in action, the participation in an ongling

process of action, reflection, study and consultation in order to
address obstacles and sdhare successes, re-examine and revise
strategies and methods and so systematize and improve efforts over
time.
Section 4.1:
For many reasons, and over many decades now, I have kept that
divine knowledge hidden, and still do, at least mostly, due to the
disinterest of those around me in the content of that divine
knowledge, that hypothesis, that assumption. Their unwillingness:
friends and family, co-workers and the associations who were part of
my world in the 1950s and 1960s, to investigate, to search-out the
claims of this new world Faith became a pattern that has existed all
my adult life. I go public, that is, I let others know about my
convictions, from time to time when it seems appropriate to do so. I
have kept my energetic evangelism, my enthusiasm, quiet and
unobtrusive due to the cultural conservatism, the customs and mores,
the social milieux in which I have lived from the 1950s to this
second decade of the 21st century. For me, this cultural milieux in
which I have lived and had my being has been Canada and Australia.
That knowledge, and those convictions I have espoused now for
more than half a century, were also kept hidden from others because
the emotional reorientation that others needed to assimilate the new
truths of this Faith, if truths they be, almost always seemed too great.
I, of course, regarded these views as truths but I have often had a
tendency to go to extremes of either applying my framework of
understanding too rigidly or ignoring it completely. I have also had
the problem, one shared with most of my fellow believers of not
learning to live within and work within the framework of the
administrative order. As the Guardian wrote many decades

ago(Lights of Guidance, p. 182) "the friends tend to crystallize the

Administrative Order into too set a form, or they rebel against what
they feel to be a System, and do not give it sufficient support." This
was true far back in the 20th century and it is still true we the Bah'
community goes about applying this new paradigm. Most of those
who came across my path never joined me in my spiritual journey in
this Cause which I have now been associated with for some 60 years.
This is also true for virtually all the Bah's in the world. This was
also true, it is some comfort to know, of the very experience which
Bah'u'llh had Himself in the decades from 1852 to 1892, the four
decades of His Revelation.
The philosophical and religious inertia, if inertia it was, of others,
the hardening of attitudes, other interests which captured people's
time and their enthusiasms, their resistence to fundamental change in
their religious and philosophical perspectives and orientations; the
nature, extent, and the emotional strength of their existing
assumptions, the very complexity of not only the issues involved,
but of the great shifts and changes in the wider society itself with its
myriad of religious and political groupings in recent decades, as well
as many other difficulties which others had and have in even
investigating this new Faith from a distance---this all resulted for
most people who crossed my path in too much of a wall of words,
concepts, and ideas. This is a common experience of those who have
entered the Cause in my lifetime and, I hesitate to say, I think this
will likely continue for some time to come, inspite of all the
expressions of enthusiasm and zeal, publicity and media scrutiny.
Section 4.2:
In the last decade, though, with literally millions of my words spread
across 1000s of internet sites, my public face as a Bah' is much
more overt, as is the Cause itself. I still wear my enthusiasms and

convictions far from the aggressive proselytizing of many political

and religious groups. My evangelizing is a cautious and measured
one. There is often, too, an aggressive advocacy which impels many
in our largely secular society to be stridently propagandistic in
relation to their many views and causes, interests and enthusiasms.
People's interest in sport and gardening, entertainment, job and
family often has an enthusiasm, indeed, excitement which occupies
people's lives in ways very similar to religion or a philosophy of life.
As one famous theologian, Paul Tillich, once put it, everyone has
what might be called 'a ground to their being', everyone possesses a
certain set of values, beliefs and attitudes, which is the centre of his
or her life. Call that centre their religion or their philosophy, if you
like; and, if you don't like those terms or that use of words and
views, call their centre: secular humanism, agnosticism, atheism,
theism, or any one of a number of other words which attempt to
capture the core of people's value and belief system. When one gives
some serious thought to these sorts of questions, the subject becomes
quite complex, and it can not be dealt with in a sentence or a
paragraph--although it often is dealt with in a dismissive line or two
due to people's incapacity or their disinclination to discuss such
fundamental aspects of their lives.
This has been true of most, except for a small handful of people,
mostly youth, from 1953 to 2015 in my lifespan. After living in
some two dozen towns, travelling to more than 100, and dwelling in
more than 3 dozen houses in the years 1943 to 2003, my life as a
travelling teacher-lecturer-pioneer now takes place in cyberspace
from the comfort of my study: 2004 to 2015. My life-style now, with
less than 5 months to go to the age of 70, is a highly sedentary one
similar, in many respects, to that of my maternal grandfather whose
autobiography has inspired my own memoiristic literary efforts.

The challenging and revolutionary perspective at the centre of this

new world Faith, what seems to me to be a fascinating picture of
reality and a unique approach to history, man and society, have
resulted in my being the only Bah' in virtually every work-place,
and every educational institution, of which I have I been part. In the
wider world though, which grew from about 2.2 billion when my
parents met in the early 1940s to the current 7.2 billion, the Bah'
community grew, during those same years, from approximately
100,000 members globally to some 5 to 8 million adherents.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica it is the second most
widespread religion on the planet.
Section 5:
The Bahai community had already put in place, through the
guidance of its leadership over more than a century-and-a-half,
through prayer and meditation, through sacrifice and suffering, and
through much else, an evolving structural base for community
building. During those decades, filled as they were with appauling
suffering across the face of the earth and unparalleled scientific and
technological change, the Bah' Faith spread to every corner of the
planet and forged its administration in many thousands of localities.
The latest of the Abrahamic religions, which is what this new Faith
claims to be, entered the 21st century with a structural-base that was
just in embryo. It was, and still is, in what you might call the
chrysalis phase, even after more than a century of its evolution. The
community-building that has been taking-place in the last two
decades, 1996 to 2016, has been built on this structure, a structure
which was in its earliest stages and phases of development in the last
half of the 19th century. This same community-building of the last
two decades has also been built on the work of several million
adherents in the Bah' community.

Bah' institutions and the millions of individuals who have been

part of its tapestry over some 150 years before the emergence of this
new paradigm have a story that I encourage readers to become as
familiar with as they possibly can. This new religion has grown up in
the light of modern history and there is much to study, in some ways,
far too much for any of us to really take in to its fullest. We can but
try and, hopefully, we have the interest and the discipline to make
the effort and avoid the massive distractions that beset us all in this
new digital age of print and image-glut, and especially in this new
Bah' culture accompanied as it is by the internet and its Facebook
and twitter focus, and a mass media so full of distractions that it is a
miracle that more than a few ever rise above its myriad and
enmeshing media-grip.
Community building became a focus for a process that the
internationally and democratically elected body of the Bah's, the
Universal House of Justice, said began, that had its kick-start, at the
outset of this new paradigm in the mid-1990s. Most of my life as a
Bahai, as far back as the 1950s, and before that in the lifetime of my
parents who were also Bahais, during that first epoch(1937-1963),
and its three stages, of Abdul-Bahas Divine Plan, the major goal and
emphasis was on building the structure, the institutional base of this
"nascent Faith of Bahaullah. The House of Justice referred to
present Bah' administration in its Ridvan message of 2011 as the
harbinger of the New World Order. "The evolving administrative
structures offer glimmerings, however faint," the House of Justice
pointed out, "of how the institutions of the Faith will incrementally
come to assume a fuller range of their responsibilities to promote
human welfate and progress."(Ridvan 2012)
Section 6:
The building of the structure of this new world Faith, the evolution

of the pattern and framework, the shaping and consolidation, of its

administrative institutions with their many functions, was at the core
of Bahai programs and policies, goals and game-plans, so to speak,
from 1921 to 1996, a period of 75 years. The rudimentary
institutions of this Faith had already been erected under the
leadership of Abdul-Baha, and the very fabric of these institutions
was to evolve from 1921 to 1996. In those years, the Spirit born in
Shiraz in the 1840s, was incarnated in institutions designed to
canalize the energies and stimulate the growth of this new Faith.
(GPB, p.324) In the three decades before 1921, during the ministry
of Abdul-Baha and before that in the lives of those two-God-men of
the 19th century--the Bab and Bah'u'llh--the laws and principles,
the essential precursors of the architecture of this new System were
disclosed and described. Those were the years of the lives of my
grandparents and great-grandparents, lifespans and life-narratives
which I make no attempt to integrate into this discussion of a Bah'
paradigm which only emerged in the last two decades.
In the last 20 years, 1996 to 2016, the focus has been on
"community" in addition to "structure." Of course, teaching this
Faith, extending the base, the number of localities, the numerical, the
statistical, foundation as far and wide as possible, making a larger
group of believers, has always been high on the agenda of Bah'
communities everywhere since the origins of this newest of the
Abrahamic religions in the middle of the 19th century. The latest
messages from the House of Justice during this current Five Year
Plan, 2011 to 2016, are examples, par excellence, of the elaboration
of the details of this community building focus. This book attempts
to incorporate commentary on the messages from the House of
Justice and national assemblies as they are published, and as they
relate to this new Bah' culture. The messages from the Supreme
Body have virtually been showered upon the Bah' community in
the first two decades of this new paradigm. I have added passages

into the text of this book from many letters to the Iranian Bah's,
and many of the Ridvan messages, as well as special letters on a
wide range of subjects. Each message from the House of Justice
serves as a continuing exegisis, an exegisis that goes back well
before the emergence of this new Bah' culture in the mid-1990s.
Section 6.1:
"On each front," the Supreme Body closed its Ridvan message of
2013,"we see the Bah' community moving steadily forward,
advancing in understanding, eager to acquire insights from
experience, ready to take on new tasks when resources make it
possible." For readers I leave the pleasure of studying this message
as I am confident many did in the southern hemisphere's winter and
summer, and in the northern hemisphere's summer and winter,
respectively. By 2013 summaries of Ridvan messages were available
for students, and those who wanted to seriously examine each
Ridvan message. I am also confident that the document entitled
"Insights from the Frontiers of Learning", prepared by the
International Teaching Centre at the request of the Universal House
of Justice for distribution at the Eleventh International Bah
Convention, was also studied in the months of 2013, and beyond into
the first months of 2015. I try to keep up-to-date with the latest in a
series of documents, beginning in 1998, a document of some 12,000
words. All of these documents have been issued to provide a broad
overview of the progress being made across the globe in advancing
the process of entry by troops, and the latest issue came out in
January 2015.
It has now been more than 30 years years since the House of Justice began to
prepare the Bah' community for "a phenomenon" that can be sustained once
it has started, namely: entry-by-troops. As a Bah' who began his experience in
the Bah' community in 1953, I remember well when the Guardian referred to
this process of entry by troops. I mention it here, in passing, because that

preparation process is still on-going in this new

century, indeed nearly six decades, entry-bytroops has been part of the preparatory package that is at the heart of
Bah' community life. It has often seemed strange to many in the
Bah' community given this emphasis on such a significant entry of
' culture. After half a

new believers when, so often, decades seem to go by with what in 1979 the
House of Justice referred to as a discouragingly meager response to the Bah'
message among our contemporaries. Understanding of the context and content
of this emphasis is crucial to both the novitiate and the veteran Bah', if he or
she is not to be discouraged by what is often a somewhat harsh community
experience at the grassroots level with little growth year after year.

Two further lengthy letters, one to all delegates to Bah' National

Conventions in May 2013, and two, to the participants at the 114
youth conferences throughout the world that took place in July 2013,
also added to the commentary on the new Bah' culture, as each
letter from the Supreme Body tends to do in various degrees as that
culture advanced from year to year. I also add some of the contents
from letters on: 17/7/'13, 27/8/'13, 5/12/'13, 29/1/'14, and 21/4/'14.
But I do this only briefly. I will leave it to readers, to those who
would like to further their understanding of this new Bah'
paradigm, to read and study each letter as it unfolds some of the
developing aspects of that new culture. All this is the job of each
Bah', and whatever I write can be no substitute for reading and
rereading those messages and letters, those continuing forms of
exegisis. In today's world, of course, with so much to read and so
much to take in from the electronic media, the average individual is
swamped and those messages from the Supreme Body often languish
in an archive that is rarely revisited after the message has first been
examined. Bah' life is a challenge on many fronts of which print is
only one.
Section 6.2:

If we understand community as a place where we share a common

identity, or as being-together in the same spatio-temporal presence,
then the intimate relationship between the text and the solitary reader
seems to work against communality itself. Literature in the form of
Bah' writings or any other writings, invites us away from the
common sphere, to a virtual space of intimacy where nothing else
seems to exist but the reader and the text. At the same time, however,
we may also argue that solitary reading creates some kind of what
you might call a virtual community. The text is not for me alone '
there might be other rooms, in other times, in other places, where
someone is having the same kind of experience with the same text as
I am, as if nothing could disturb their ecstatic communication. And I
feel certain complicity with that unknown other. Yes, we both are
within this text, and the text is in both of us; we both belong to the
community of its readers, even though we will probably never meet
each other in real life. And here a community of solitary readers
seems to differ from the community of lovers who share a text. In
textual encounters, there is usually no jealousy, no need to
appropriate the other. Texts are promiscuous, even though we
perhaps do not like the idea that literally everyone reads them (we
perhaps still want to think that communities have an outside). With
the help of singular texts, we identify with communities that are
perhaps not visible but that still have at least one distinctive feature:
they are formed by readers of the same singular text.
In fact, every book creates several textual communities. I do not
necessarily feel a sense of being-together with all the readers of a
given book; I mostly only identify myself with those readers who
share my values, who share the same 'interpretive community' as I
do ' an interpretive community that is defined in many different
ways. But is any interpretive community really one? The secret
sense of complicity that we feel when we read in solitude, the sense
that 'there are people out there that are reading the same lines and

understanding the same thing as I do', is, in fact, mostly an illusion.

In reality, we do not know what other readers get out of the text, how
they interpret it, or what enjoyment they draw from it. This often
becomes evident when textual communities become public, when we
learn to know who our virtual reading companions were and how
they actually received the book. It is always a shock when I learn
that an old friend of mine, a friend whose values and thoughts I have
always believed to be similar to my own, has read and understood
some book, or some portion of a book, in a totally different light
than I. Should I doubt my judgment of the book, or my judgment of
my friend? Do we live in the same world? It seems that in order to
think communities of solitary readers we need a new concept of
community that is not based on the ideas of a shared time, space, or
identity.
Section 6.3:
There are many good, and many not so good, reasons to read and to
participate in study circles and devotional meetings, Feasts and
deepenings---places for actual working communities of readers.
They might include: gaining cultural capital, developing our
emotional skills, learning more about other cultures, satisfying our
curiosity, enjoying voyeurism, wanting to kill time, etc. But for the
most part, these 'reasons' imply that there is some other, more
fundamental desire for reading together, desire that cannot be
pinpointed or defined exactly, except perhaps by the following loose
and not really very clear definition. "We read because we are not
self-sufficient creatures, because we acknowledge, perhaps
unconsciously, the imperative of the Other, the necessity to stay open
to the call of otherness.
When we read and listen to other read there is, ideally, an openness
to the vocative that we hear in the voice of others, openness that

precedes what is said and whatever reasoning is taking place. This

openness constitutes subjectivity and also the possibility to form
instrumentalist working communities around the text. It is what one
student of the subject calls 'friendship prior to friendship', readiness
of the reader to welcome the other that takes place before we
actually read, before we even know what to expect. Without this
openness, there cannot be any genuine reading at all. The voice, the
call, the words, may become, however, forgotten as soon as they are
read. The words may be replaced by the insistent daily life, its work,
and all those good or not so good reasons that we use in order to
justify our reading.
The dimension of otherness in reading, in literature, is multiple, and
the emphasis differs from genre to genre, text to text, and reading to
reading: sometimes the other in the text is experienced primarily as
the author's voice, sometimes as a presence of a fictive person or
entity, sometimes as History or Nature, sometimes as the sheer
materiality of language. However, in every textual encounter, the
other in the text is in some way transformed from a sheer object or
machine to something that carries marks of subjectivity; the text
becomes a prosopopoeia, a personification of the other. In a textual
encounter, the reader feels that he or she is no longer only reading a
text, but, in a curious and paradoxical way, the text is also reading
him or her. In reading, we are both active and passive: we use texts
for our own desires and purposes, but we also, in a way, encounter
texts, almost as we encounter other human beings, taking the risk
that the encounter may change us in a way that we cannot totally
know or control beforehand. For quite a detailed discussion of the
above process go to: Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006):Textual
Communities: Nancy, Blanchot, Derrida by Kuisma Korhonen.
Section 7:

The House of Justice noted, in forwarding the document entitled

"Insights from the Frontiers of Learning," the vital role that the ITC
continues to play in the prosecution of the global Plans of the Faith
and its diligent efforts to capture, in documents such as this one, the
richness of the experience of the believers and institutions on every
continent. The House of Justice also expressed the hope that this
material would lend an impetus to the endeavors of the friends who,
in diverse circumstances, were tirelessly engaged in building vibrant
communities. In some ways this document coming, as it does, at the
completion of the first two years of this current FYP(2011-2016),
and emphasizing the "close examination of the pattern of action
characteristic of the clusters at the forefront of learning," is aimed at
helping the international Bah' community move from 1200 clusters
to 5000 by April 2016.
Individuals, communities, and institutions around the world are
learning how to set in motion a process that attends to the spiritual
and material needs of a population. These three major piullers, if you
like, of the Bah' community are also reflecting on how this
burgeoning capacity can be further nurtured. The ITC emphasizes
and reemphasizes this in the now several dozen issues of the
document Reflections on Growth. Prepared under the auspices of the
International Teaching Centre for the institution of the Counsellors,
extracts from many incoming reports are made available. All or
portions of this publication may be reproduced or distributed within
the Bah community without permission from the Teaching Centre.
I have not done so here, but I encourage readers of this book to
access these several dozen issues of "Reflections on Growth" to get
updates on how the new Bah' paradigm is working itself out at the
grassroots level across many of the more than 230 countries and
territories where Bah's exist. The latest edition of Reflections on
Growth came out in January 2015. This document "shares
experiences about how a cluster can begin its movement towards the

first milestone, where core activities are sustained by those

progressing through the sequence of institute courses and committed
to the vision of individual and collective transformation they foster.
(Message dated 28 December 2010 written by the Universal House
of Justice to the Conference of the Continental Boards of
Counsellors)
"Drawing on the assistance of friends acting as travelling teachers
and homefront pioneers," the ITC points to "numerous examples of
individuals who, having gained practical experience in contributing
to the material and spiritual transformation of their own community,
arise and serve in other clusters. The successful prosecution of the
Plan, the Universal House of Justice stated in its message dated 23
May 2011 to the Bahs of the world, will require the services of
consecrated souls who, spurred on by their love for the Blessed
Beauty, will forsake their homes to settle in villages, towns and cities
in order to raise to 5,000 the number of clusters with programmes of
growth. The ITC also emphasizes developing the capacity to share
experiences and resources between clusters. They give several
examples of how "friends in clusters with existing programmes of
growth are coming together to identify how they can help
neighbouring communities to draw on the spiritual forces released
by the teachings of Bahullah. As I was writing the latest additions
to this book in January 2015, there were some 3000 IPGs in
existence on the planet and 2000 more to go in the next 18 months.
"The rich insights arising from clusters, and from centres of intense
activity within them," the House of Justice pointed out in April 2015,
"where the dynamics of community life have embraced large
numbers of people deserve special mention. We are gratified to see
how a culture of mutual support, founded on fellowship and humble
service, has quite naturally established itself in such quarters,
enabling more and more souls to be systematically brought within

the pale of the communitys activities. Indeed, in an increasing

number of settings the movement of a population towards
Bahullhs vision for a new society appears no longer merely as
an enthralling prospect but as an emerging reality.
The International Teaching Center, sometimes referred to as "the
ITC", is a Bah institution based in the World Center in Haifa,
Israel. Its duties are to stimulate and coordinate the Continental
Board of Counsellors and assist the Universal House of Justice in
matters relating teaching and protection of the faith. The
membership of the International Teaching Center is made up of nine
Counselors appointed by the Universal House of Justice.
Membership terms last for 5 years and new appointments are made
immediately following the International Convention and election of
the Universal House of Justice. There are many messages from the
ITC which deal with this new Bah' culture, as well as from the
UHJ and many NSAs. Readers are advised to: (i) do some Googling
if they want to get a good grasp of the literature now available on
this new Bah' paradigm, and (ii) study some of the central ITC
messages of which this latest ITC message provides the most
comprehensive statement of the current state of play in the
achievement of the goals of this new Bah' paradigm as we near the
completion of the third year of the current Five Year Plan.
Section 7.1:
Back on 12/12/'11, some 40 months ago now as I write this update, a
particular, a special, message from the House of Justice was six
pages in length and it foreshadowed many developments in the
community in the decades to come. I discuss this message in detail
toward the end of this now lengthy book at BLO. The Ridvan
message of 21/4/'12, some three years ago, among the many other
Ridvan messages, I comment on briefly in this book from time to

time---as I have already done to some extent in the first parts of this
book. The next Ridvan message from the House of Justice is due this
month, April 2015 and, at that point and as I say above, the current
Five Year Plan will be 80% over. The letters from the UHJ to the
Iranian Bah' community, while not about the new paradigm
explicitly, have also contributed their part to the international Bah'
culture, and that culture's most newsworthy, controversial and
terrifying maelstrom of turmoil and trouble. The many letters to the
Iranian Bah' community offer a whole segment of commentary on
Bah' experience in recent decades, and in this new paradigm.
Indeed, serious students of the Cause, especially many who have
been Bah's over many decades, are more than a little aware of the
vast reach, the extensive commentary, that exists in the corpus, the
oeuvre, the body of letters and messages from the chief institutions
of the Cause, words which define and redefine the history and
present state of the Bah' community.
While all these messages and all this community-building is takingplace, in the form of home visits and study circles, devotional
meetings and children's classes, junior youth and youth activities,
inter alia, the process of becoming a Bah' goes on and on for each
of us. We each have to be patient with ourselves to say nothing about
being patient with others. This is done little by little and day by day.
Often one dies daily, as St Paul told the Christians at Corinth; the
ego is subdued, at least that is one of each Bah''s personal goals
over a lifetime. Sometimes it is not subdued and often the result is
problems and tests which are meant, among other purposes, to be
educative and facilitate the transition from potentiality to actuality.
In this new paradigm, as in life itself, there are winners and losers.
You and I do not win all the battles. Many lose contact with the
Cause and withdraw, become inactive, focus their energies on all
sorts of activities that, in the end, do not draw them closer to the
Cause of God, to its institutions or to their fellow-believers. As

Shoghi Effendi once said and in many different ways: "the only real
battles in life are within the individual."
INTRODUCTION #2:<
Part A:
The process I have described above and below is far more complex
than the simple sketch I am outlining, a sketch that goes back to the
first intimations of this Order in the 1840s. Whatever aphorisms, and
moralistic preachments I include are but a small portion of the
immense Revelation and what is now a staggering corpus of
commentary, far more than each individual is capable of taking-in as
a student of the Cause. We each garner our thimble-fulls or our
gallon-measures from the Ocean of print.
The unveiled brilliance of the gilded dome that crowns the exalted
Shrine of the Bab, which the House of Justice referred to in its
April 2011 message four years ago, is a tribute, a memorial, to the
memory of the Man who was martyred in 1850. It was a martyrdom
that acts as a central part, a critical moment, in the blood-bath in
which this new System was born. This System's structures &
functions, its communities and its millions of believers find their
historical origins in the life of the Bab and His Successor Who
initially sketched this System: He Whom God would, should and
will make manifest, Bahaullah. That sketch is found in His
voluminous writings as well as those of His Successor, Abdul-Baha.
Still, this international Bah' community is only glimpsing, only
manifesting, the first streaks of the promised dawn that is the
promise and vision within the new Order to which this System has
given birth. The full force of its implications are only slowly
developing within the embryo that is the present paradigm. Like
many of the processes in geology and archaeology, in palaeontology

and the other physical and biological sciences, the wheels of God
grind slowly. Often the process is far too slow for the people of our
age and time who far prefer immediate gratification and instant
rewards for effort. Ours is an instant society in so many ways.
Part B:
Section 1:My Way of Putting Things
What I have written in the above, of course, is my own way of
putting things, my own thoughts, as the rest of this now lengthy
book continues to explore these thoughts, thoughts put on paper
beginning in 2007 and continuing in the eight years since then.
These were years of receiving messages from the elected and
appointed branches on this new world Faith, messages which, as I
say above, have provided a continuing exegisis on this new Bah'
culture. I have also drawn on the thoughts of others extensively.
Some who read this book will say I have drawn on these many
sources far too extensively. But I make no apologies for the ample
quotations from the words of others, individuals and institutions.
This book has grown over the last eight years largely through the
writings of others, institutions and individuals, and this needs to be
emphasized at the outset.
The plane of words and appearances is not the only one on which
one truly and productively meets the Blessed Beauty. The realities of
the Cause are found on the plane of rational thought, personality and
raw emotion. But they are also found on a divine level, in the sphere
of the soul where one sees the world as a mirage, an ash heap, vain
and empty, bearing the mere semblance of reality. Here one sees
oneself as a caged-bird with the potential to soar in the greatest
happiness, joy and freedom to the nest of the bosom of God. This
book has grown as a result of many things of which the collective

memory of the international Bah' community and my own

individual memory are the core. The nature and function of
individual and collective memory is, from my point of view,
something that is constructed, and I want to say a few things about
that memory below.
Section 1.1: Memory
Remembering often emerges or begins, certainly for me, in an
attitude and/or an emotion, a feeling. The recall is then a
construction made largely on the basis of this attitude or feeling. Its
general effect is that of an explanation, a description, even a
justification of the attitude. I am both skeptical and convinced of the
constructive nature of my individual remembering. I also concede
that social organization, in this case Bah' administration, gives a
persistent framework into which all detailed recall must fit, and it
very powerfully influences both the matter and the manner of my
recall. In other words, only individuals have the capacity to
remember, but preliminary, and, indeed, prior, to the process of
individual recall there exists a mental pre-disposition that has been at
least partly shaped by the social or communal environment. To speak
of the memory of a group is to reify and transcendentalize. I
encourage readers to check-out the meaning of these two words I
have just used because they contain a world of meaning that I don't
want to stop here to explain and discuss.
In the Bah' Faith this shaping of memory, this exegisis, is done by
the Supreme Body, an elected institution that is, to use Max Weber's
term, the institutionalization of the charismatic Force that gave birth
to this new Abrahamic religion in mid-19th century. To speak of
memory in a group is to acknowledge both the singularity of
individual recollection and its relation to a surrounding society or
communitythe global Bah' community, and the global society in

which that community is embedded.

Section 1.2: Awakening an Attitude
It is my hope that, in its small way, this book may help to awaken an
"attitude" of recall, to help bring to the surface a memory, to help
create a "framework" of remembrance that will enable my fellow
Bah's to build and retain a certain consciousness, a consciousness
that is intimately connected with memory; indeed, without memory
that consciousness is hardly functional. As Bah's we need to be
aware of the unique and often fragile communities and environments
in which we work, and the difficulties in trying to resist the
homogenizing & degrading effects of much that is found in modern
society. Forgetfulness is driven by many things of which a belief in
progress is but one. A pervasive social and economic dynamic in
which oblivion and novelty feed off each other, flourish in the same
shopping mall as "planned obsolescence," "rampant subjectivism,"
"blind materialism, and superficial humanism." Memory is crucial to
the reclamation of men and womens full humanitytheir sense of a
continuity, even a comradeship, between present, past, and future
generations. As the philosopher Edmund Burke expressed the idea
famously in 1790 in his Reflections on the Revolution in France:
"society is a contract, a partnership not only between those who are
living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and
those who are to be born."
Without this contract the human race and its sustaining environments
are doomed to become the victims of pernicious and widely ranging
cultural and personal values. The Bah' community is not immune
to these pernicious forces. This problem has arisen partly because we
have become, almost overnight, a complex global society, a society
that is especially prone to "social amnesia," to the "refusal or
inability to think back." Thinking back to the past has been for the

most part something that has taken place in a local and or national
context. The new global context of over 200 nations is more than we
can handle and our ability to think critically about this planetary
civilization is limited. We find it difficult to use language accurately,
to understand and exercise our democratic rights and responsibilities
in this world framework. We are in many ways citizens of a new
world, but we are also embedded in an old world. We are a world
rich in history and values as well as hopes and resources. The West
is a vast and privileged portion of the globe in which memory and
understanding may yet so nourish right thinking and right action that
they become rhizomes.
Section 1.3: A Sense of the Future
Without the memories of the past cultural and intellectual continuity
is not possible; there can be no fully comprehended present either for
a collectivity or for an individual. With no remembered past to
define and direct the present, there can be no planned or idealized
future. To misunderstand, to not know the past, is to have no sense of
the future. If a person's roots are shallow, their trunk and branches,
stems and offshoots do not grow fully. As the famous Roman orator,
Cicero, put it as the Roman republic was gradually being
transformed into an empire: "to be ignorant of what occurred before
you were born is to remain always a child."
A key element for the realization of our individual destiny as Bah's
is memory; it is also a means by which relatively powerless and
poverty-ridden clusters of cultural and personal identity are able to
resist the coercions of larger powers. These larger powers often
possess economic or ideological systems that can convince them that
their own history can be treated either selectively or as "bunk," to
use Henry Ford's words. In view of the possibly enormous stakes
involved, a concerned look at the state of memory in the Bah'

community, at what is remembered and forgotten in Bah' history

and its culture, could prove both valuable, indeed, intriguing and
telling.
The same man, Henry Ford, who proclaimed history "bunk," also
invented the assembly line and the monochrome car. His hostility to
history and a dehumanizing drive towards uniformity are by no
means unrelated aspects of our consumer culture, a system which
has every economic reason for coercing people to live a presentparticiple existence, an existence of drinking, eating, sailing, and
having fun, in a perpetual present that, even as it happens, is obsolete
by design. Some people may be immune to such coercion but, if so,
it will not be by the grace of todays educational system. Under the
pressure of a liberal ethos, an ethic of individualism, and with no
common agreement of the nature of the human being who is being
educated, the educational system is often the victim of forces similar
to those that govern the consumer culture. This consumer culture has
allowed itself, at nearly every level, to be predicated on a belief in
process. This belief in process is at the root of the notion that the act
of thinking and writing about issues and problems is as important as,
or more important than, what is thought or written about
The idea of memorizing something, for examplea great poem, an
historically important speech, a piece of purple prose from a novel
(the Bible, of course, cannot be mentioned, even for its style)
seems to modern educators and students to be as pointless as
studying Latin or some other "dead language." It has become, for too
many people, sufficient to know a few sentences and slogans and,
not surprisingly since, after school, the greatest influence on most
children are the media. Most of the sentences and slogans that
people find in their minds are from advertisements: "Harveys makes
a hamburger a beautiful thing," "Just for the taste of itDiet Coke,"
"Come to where the flavor is." The issue of educational content and

process, theory and practice is far too complex, though, to deal with
here. Still, educational systems, like the many forces of socialization
and culture can not be ignored in any analysis and description of the
new Bah' paradigm.
Section 1.4: Bah' Culture
The generality of the world's peoples are eager to leave behind them
the memories of the suffering that the decades of the 20th century
brought with them. As a recent document published at the Bah'
world centre in the year 2000 began: "No matter how frail the
foundations of confidence in the future may seem, no matter how
great the dangers looming on the horizon, humanity appears
desperate to believe that, through some fortuitous conjunction of
circumstances, it will nevertheless be possible to bend the conditions
of human life into conformity with prevailing human desires." The
opening page of that review of Bah' experience in the 20th century
went on to say that: "such hopes are not merely illusory, but they
miss entirely the nature and meaning of the great turning point
through which the world has pssed in these crucial years." Only as
humanity comes to understand, during these years of this new
paradigm, the implications of what has occurred in the last century
and a half will it be able to meet the challenges that lie ahead. The
value of the contribution we as Bah's can make to the process
demands that we grasp the significance of the historic transformation
wrought by the 20th century and especially these early years of the
new Bah' paradigm.
This history, this Bah' culture, is something that must be chosen if
we want to be part of it. It is a history and culture filled with
simplicity and complexity, with peace and violence, with vast
diasporas over decades, leaving home and making new homes. The
present Bah' culture, like a landscape, is part of a fascinating and

mysterious narrative going back at least two centuries, if not several

millennia. It is a narrative of catastrophe and slow accumulation, of
new generations arising and building on the old, of the sublime flow
of ideas generated by turbulence and tragedy, by heroic
individualism, great, intense, drama, and by irreconcilable forces,
and an immense, a staggeringly massive literature, by a great
turning-point in the world's religious history and fanaticism. "Our
greatness rests," writes Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, "in faithful orbits that
circle around the great souls now living or dead."(Four on an Island,
p.119) Often, she continues, "our preoccupations with our own
patterns result in personal tragedy." The prison we need to be most
conscious of is that of self which we carry around with us wherever
we go. This is often a dark-some well and a blind pit which our idle
fancies dig over and over again burying us in the process and, if not
burying us, at least leaving us the victim of our idle fancies. It is so
often these fancies which the many pundits of error exploit. Illequipped to interpret the social commotion at play throughout the
planet, and troubled by forecasts of doom, they and we do battle
with the phantoms of a wrongly informed imagination. It is, in part
at least, the function of this new Bah' culture to help the millions of
individual Bah's deal with imagination and memory, with history
and society. This task is far from simple.
Section 2: This Book
If there is any inventiveness here in my work, it is in putting the
writings of others into some warp and weft, some pattern of
significance to me, a pattern I hope is also significant to readers. I
hope to outline some of the dynamics of light and darkness, idealism
and disillusionment that are characteristic of the revolution at the
heart of this paradigm. Light and darkness are words with vast
metaphorical implications. The coming of the light into the world
does not attract everyone. The hawk, the owl and the bat all flee in

consternation. Many find the Cause very unattractive; as much as we

would like everyone to come in, we often find our entire lives have
been spent with most of those whom we knew remaining outside the
Cause. We should take heart, though, for--as Moojan Momen points
out in relation to the life of Bah'u'llh: most of those who met the
Blessed Beauty did not become Bah's. One's expectations, as one
travels the road, the spiritual path, need to be realistic. A lack of
realism often courts disappointment and even bitterness in the long
run. Of course, again, this is not always so. It is difficult to make any
statement that covers the experience of everyone on the planet.
People, personalities, are highly idiosyncratic.
Section 2.1: This Religion
A religion as revolutionary in its origins and development over the
last two centuries, a religion that has grown-up in the light of
modern history, has a different set of issues to deal with than any of
the old religions, religions which are all as busy as beavers trying to
become, to remain, to be relevant in our age of change. This
paradigm does not eliminate the issues which the Bah' Faith has
faced for decades, indeed, for at least a century and a half. This
paradigm takes to a whole new stage some of the intractable issues
that this Faith has had to deal with for more than 150 years, and
attempts to deal with them in new ways. The growth of this newest
of the Abrahamic religions has been both an amazing, an
unparalleled, process, and one filled with difficulties, tests and
problems of all sorts and sizes which anyone who takes that history
seriously and reads extensively is only too aware.
Part C:
There is now, on the internet, an extensive body of work devoted to
the concepts: culture of learning, culture of growth, paradigms,

structure, function, and many other related ideas. You can Google
"cultural learning", "culture of learning", "culture of growth",
"organizational culture", inter alia, and the literature on these
concepts is burgeoning. Cultural transmission, so goes one site, is
the way a group of people within a society or culture tend to learn
and pass on new information. Learning styles are greatly influenced
by how a culture socializes its children and young people. Crosscultural research in the past fifty years has primarily focused on
differences between Eastern and Western cultures (Chang, et al.,
2010). Some scholars believe that cultural learning differences may
be responses to the physical environment in the areas in which a
culture was initially founded (Chang, et al., 2010). These
environmental differences include climate, migration patterns, war,
agricultural suitability, and endemic pathogens. Cultural evolution,
upon which cultural learning is built, is believed to be a product of
only the past 10,000 years and to hold little connection to genetics
(Chang, et. al., 2010).
The above paragraph is but one of dozens which readers, who would
like to widen their understanding of some of the concepts utilized in
the new Bah' paradigm, can study. Not all readers here will be
interested in many of the secular and academic useages of terms
used in this culture of learning in the international Bah'
community, but, for those who would, you may find some helpful
parallel perspectives in the general field of knowledge. I leave this
with you, with each reader who has their own interests and activities,
time-frames and circumstances, desires and goals---their highly
individual life-narratives.
THE END OF THE CURRENT FIVE YEAR PLAN(FYP)in 2016
By the end of this current Plan, 2011 to 2016, Abdul-Bahas Divine
Plan will arguably be one century old and the religion in which this

Plan is being put into action will have some two centuries of
historical experience. Much of our knowledge in life is acquired by
experience (Ridvan 2012)Much is also acquired by learning. The
House of Justice wrote at Ridvan 2014 as follows about what it
referred to as: "the centrality of knowledge to social existence." The
Supreme Body continued: "The perpetuation of ignorance is a most
grievous form of oppression; it reinforces the many walls of
prejudice that stand as barriers to the realization of the oneness of
humankind, at once the goal and operating principle of Bahullh's
Revelation. Access to knowledge is the right of every human being,
and participation in its generation, application and diffusion a
responsibility that all must shoulder in the great enterprise of
building a prosperous world civilizationeach individual according
to his or her talents and abilities. Justice demands universal
participation."
They continued: "Thus, while social action may involve the
provision of goods and services in some form, its primary concern
must be to build capacity within a given population to participate in
creating a better world. Social change is not a project that one group
of people carries out for the benefit of another. The scope and
complexity of social action must be commensurate with the human
resources available in a village or neighbourhood to carry it forward.
Efforts best begin, then, on a modest scale and grow organically as
capacity within the population develops. Capacity rises to new
levels, of course, as the protagonists of social change learn to apply
with increasing effectiveness elements of Bahullh's Revelation,
together with the contents and methods of science, to their social
reality. This reality they must strive to read in a manner consistent
with His teachingsseeing in their fellow human beings gems of
inestimable value and recognizing the effects of the dual process of
integration and disintegration on both hearts and minds, as well as
on social structures.

The Author of the letters providing the details of the Plan for the
extension of this Faith around the world, penned His first words in
March and April 1916 nearly three years after returning from His
epoch-making journeys to the West. Those journeys were described
by Shoghi Effendi as a service of such heroic proportions no
parallel to it is to be found in the annals of the first Bahai century
(GPB,p.279) They were both celebrated and commemorated during
the first two years, 2011 and 2012, of this FYP.
The messages and literature which have flowed in celebration of
these 100th anniversaries has been extensive and has added
significantly to the tissue and texture of this new paradigm. This
Plan and this history, going back as it does into the 19th century;
Bah'u'llh's life and writings and that of His Son Abdul-Baha, the
appointed and legitimate Successor, is at the core of this new
paradigm. This new Bah' culture is inseparable from this Plan and
this history.
It was in September 1911, when Abdul-Baha arrived in London, the
city He chose, the metropolis of the British Empire, as the scene of
His first appearance before the public, that His western tour could be
said to have begun.(Balyuzi, Abdul-Baha, p.141) In the last century,
1911 to 2012, the light of this Cause has penetrated, suffused and
enveloped many a region of this planet and this process will go on
inexorably in the next hundred years: 2012 to 2112. In some ways,
Abdul-Bahas journey to the West simply initiated, or perhaps more
accurately, extended and began to systematize a process of teaching
in the West begun in 1894, if not as far back as the 1840s when the
first reports of this new religion began appearing in Western
newspapers in Europe and North America. During this centennial
period of that historic whistle-stopping journey, the Bah'
community turned again and again to Abdul-Baha's words and His

emphasis on the new social forms that will emerge in this Bah' Era.
(Ridvan, 2012)
GLOBAL DIFFUSION: A LONG WAY TO GO
This Cause has not suffused the entire planet after the passing of
nearly 170 years of the Bahai Era(BE): that goal is far from being
fulfilled.(UHJ, April, 2011) In the course of the evolution of this
new paradigm the international Bah' community may see that goal
fulfilled. Perhaps during one of the next major shifts in the Bahai
administrations way of going about things, so to speak, that goal
will be completed. Time will tell when and how. I have no doubt that
this goal will be fulfilled. My belief, like so many of the beliefs of
the adherents of this new world Faith, is characterized by a sense of
its inevitability. It is only a question of time in the ongoing evolution
of this new world Faith, this newest of the Abrahamic religions when
its promise and purpose will be fulfilled. In many ways the work of
the penetration of that light into all the remaining territories of the
globe(UHJ, April 2011) has just begun in this first century, 1911 to
2011, the first century since the travels to the West of the Bah'
Faith's exemplar, Abdul-Baha.
As Paul Lample, one of the current nine members of the House of
Justice, notes in his useful discussion of this new paradigm: Of the
more than 16,000 clusters at the start of the second Five Year Plan of
this new paradigm in 2006, some 10,000 remained unopened to the
Faith and less than 2% of those that had been opened were capable
of taking on the challenge of growth. (Paul Lample, Revelation and
Social Reality, Palabra, 2009, p.104.) The implications of this
statement of Lample's, of course, around the thousands of Bahai
communities in dozens of countries is obvious: this Faith founded by
Bah'u'llh in the 19th century, has grown very slowly in many,
many places and this slow growth may continue for some time in

many places. It is important, it seems to me, not to infuse this new

paradigm with a problem Bahai communities have had for decades:
unrealistic expectations of the growth in the numbers of believers.
The assumption that numbers will increase by hard work and effort
is true, but only partly and only in some places.
In some places this assumption is warranted. The experience I have
had in the more than 60 years I have been associated with this new
Faith, and the experience I am aware of from my reading and study
of the vast literature of this Cause, leads me to have high
expectations for this Faith's growth. But these expectations have
become, over the decades, more realistic ones due to this Faith's
slow growth in many parts of the globe. My last 60+ years of
experience(1953-2015) are the basis for my judgement. My
experience often, but not always, makes me feel "sure-footed in the
application of the knowledge I have gained through this
experience."(Ridvan 2012)
The Bahai Faith has grown from some 100 thousand at the outset of
the first organized and systematic Plan in 1937, when my parents
were about to first meet and marry in the lunch-pail city of Hamilton
Ontario, to some 200 thousand in 1953. That year, 1953, was a
historic juncture in the history of this Cause for a number of reasons,
not the least of which personally, was that my mother joined the
Bah' Faith that year. I was into sport, in love with at least three
different girls, busy keeping on top of my school-work, and growing
through my last years of childhood at the time. The Bah' Faith was
far out on the periphery of my young life.
The Bah' temple in Chigao was dedicated that year; the Ten Year
Crusade was launched and the Shrine of the Bab was completed. It
was a big year for the emerging international Bah' community, an
historic juncture in the gradual evolution of a religion which claims

to be the newest of the Abrahamic religions. This Faith now has

some 5 to 8 million depending on what set of statistics one draws on.
The subject of numbers, of statistics, has complex dimensions and
the subject is one that seems to raise controversy from time to time
due to the long-standing emphasis on numbers, an emphasis both
inside the Faith and out.
In most places I have lived in my day-to-day life and in many, many
places I have not lived, growth has been 'discouragingly meagre'
and, from my point of view, this has often, but not always, been due
to those unrealistic expectations, among other reasons. This slow
growth is also due to many other factors which this book alludes to
from time to time. The whole question of the growth of this Cause is
a complex one with complex answers. Peter Smith's book(2004),
Bah's in the West, gives an excellent overview of the growth of the
Cause from decade to decade, up to 1990. I cannot do better than
refer readers here to this book if they are interested in the statistical
side of this new Faith up to the emergence of this new paradigm in
the 1990s. In the last decade of internet activity, 2004 to 2015, there
have become available a host of sites with statistics for: local,
cluster, regional, state, national and international levels of the Bah'
community. This book does not make any attempt, though, beyond
some very general observations, to provide a vast and detailed
statement regarding the numbers of men and women, children and
youth, in country after country and cluster after cluster who are part
of this immense global tapestry of believers.
COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS WITH OTHER
PARADIGMS
I could make extended comparisons and contrasts between the
current culture of learning and growth, the new Bahai paradigm,
and the several previous paradigm shifts in the Bahai community

going well back into the 19th century. And I do make these
comparisons and contrasts in Part B of this book. I could also
anticipate future developments within this paradigm and future
paradigms, but I leave most of those anticipations to others who
have written and still write both in cyberspace and real space. In
spite of the enthralling, the stupendous, vision that Bah'u'llh gifted
to the world, as the House of Justice put it in its Ridvan 2012
message nearly two years ago,regarding the future of humankind this
temptation is for the most part avoided. My own particular
proclivities in sci-fi writing also tempt me in the direction of
hypothesizing on the developments of this Faith in the decades and
centuries, indeed, millennia and epochs, eras and cycles. But I shall
resist that temptation at this juncture.
The scope of what was originally an essay in the middle of 2007,
and is now a book of 830 or 710 pages(depending on what font-size
is used), does not allow for any detailed comparisons and contrasts
with previous paradigms beyond some very general observations.
The elaboration of what will clearly seem to many like the utopian
visions of this world religion is also something I do not deal with.
Such comparisons and such visionary statements can be found in
many published Bahai works, at posts on the internet for those
readers who are interested, and in the talks of various Bahai
speakers--some published and some not. The Bahai vision is so
enthralling that it inspires the optimist and leaves the skeptic and
cynic laughing and somewhat bemused---and I mean this quite
seriously, for I have often read the posts of writers who find the
Bahai vision too utopian for words, or too poetic as I have often
heard, or far too theistic, and on and on goes several litanies of why
person X or person Y found the Bah' Faith "not for him or her." As
I say, though, I only make some general and limited comments later
in this book for those readers who enjoy or who persist in their
reading through these 100s of pages.

The new paradigm, I should emphasize here, is best conceptualized

as a mixture, a dynamic mixture, of past paradigms and present,
making-up this new Bah' culture. This new Bah' culture has not
sprung-up ex nihilo. This new Bahai culture is also not some
monolithic scheme superimposed everywhere and anywhere in the
same way. There is what you might call a case-specific
contextualization. This new paradigm is a vast meta-text in which
the smaller contexts, the local communities and our individual lives,
have been cast. This has been the case throughout Bahai history,
throughout previous paradigms. As we approach this new metacontext, though, we must be on our guard that we avoid what has
always seemed to me to be our curious tendency towards
oversimplification and absolutism when it comes to spiritual matters.
Our knowledge in many aspects of the individual and society is
notoriously imprecise, a fortiori, in relation to spiritual matters. So
often, too, we cherry-pick aspects of the Cause and place them at the
centre: some apocalypticism, some Hindu-Buddhist matrix of
thought and practice; the cherry-pickers are many and, in my 60s
years of association with this Cause, I have done my share of cherrypicking.
Uncertainty, with its implications of trust, is our spiritual condition
and it is quintessential to our spiritual development. So much of the
Bah' journey is dynamic and continuously changing, a moving and
fluctuating system, a flexible road-map to all possibilities. There is
"an extraordinary reservoir of spiritual potential" available to the
individual to draw on(Ridvan 2012) to help him or her act and, in the
process overcome the "layered veil of false premises," the apparent
"insurmountable obstacles," and "the prevailing theories of the age"
which "seem impervious to alteration."(Ridvan 2012)As the House
of Justice went on to say in this same context in April 2013, writing
about the complexity of this dynamic process:"it does not lend itself

to ready simplification." At the same time, there is an important, a

significant, place for certitude, a theme Bah'u'llh has written about
extensively in book after book.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY
Unity in diversity has always been the watchword in spite of the best
efforts of individuals to impose some simplistic and sterile
uniformity. Each cluster, each assembly, each community, each
Bah', develops in their own way given the special circumstances of
each individual and each community. The Bahai community and the
individuals within it in this new paradigm, and in the old, have been
one and all expected to master worldly evils as they have gone about
creating the Kingdom of God on Earth. As they have done this, of
course, they have needed to reject the sins people commit, but not
the sinners. We all need to do battle with our inner demons and not
worry too much about the demons of others. The context for all of
this is what you might call contraries which we so often try in vain
to reconcile and balance: principles of mercy and justice, of freedom
and submission, of the sanctity of the right of the individual and of
self-surrender, of vigilance, discretion and prudence on the one hand
and fellowship, candor and courage on the other.
To act in accordance with this new Faiths teachings has always been
an imperative and it has always been a challenge. This has often
been against popular opinion, but it has not been against secular
authority. This has often been difficult and it has required a robust
optimism. This is true, a fortiori, in this new Bah' culture. A goodly
portion of humility is also a prerequisite in the Bah' life since no
Bah' knows what his or her own end shall be and, without humility,
so many activities simply do not come to fruition. This is not a
religion which guarantees individual salvation through either belief
or good works. The Bah' community and its adherents are more

interested in saving the planet. The ultimate judgements about souls

is left to God. There are many people in the world doing good work
for humanity, but it is the Bah's who have the blueprint for the
erection of the dam that will in time stop the flood which, at present,
threatens to engulf humankind. At least that is one way the Bah'
game plan has been stated all my Bah' life since the 1950s and the
century in Bah' history before I became a Bah'. This new
paradigm is, in some ways, just another chapter in the ongoing
growth and development of this latest of the Abrahamic religions.
This nascent Faith of Bahaullah, this harbinger of the New World
Order, requires of the faithful to labor on His behalf to create that
humane Kingdom in His behalf. Such labor requires method and
system and a movement away from egocentric individual interests
toward far broader tasks. This mission requires a religious
obligation; this mission ties individuals into a community. The
purpose is far higher than utilitarian calculations and the pursuit of
material gain. A family of trust and helpfulness exists in this
community and it serves as a natural training ground for group
participation skills. This training ground has an increased specificity
in this new Bah' culture. Habits and theories of blame have no
place in this paradigm but, given the nature of human beings, the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the lack of personal
development in many souls if not most, many obstacles limit the
growth of this new culture in ways similar to the limiting factors in
previous paradigms.
THE PROBLEMS OF BLAME AND COMPLEXITY AND THE
ARDUOUS TASKS AHEAD
Blame is a negative reaction to the limitations we struggle with
daily, and like doubt, which undermines the very basis of that daily
struggle, it is a mental habit that often produces adults more aware of

human weakness than human strength. There is, too, a gradual and
inevitable absorption in the manifold perplexities and problems
afflicting humanity as Bah's everywhere try to put into place the
complex structure and increasingly elaborate community at the heart
of this paradigm. We are buffeted by circumstances and distracted by
crises both in the wider secular and religious world, and in our own
relatively small international community. The arduousness of the
task we face in this new paradigm, is one we sometimes dimly
recognize as we aim high and hope for the best. The problem of nonpartisanship, the Bah' approach to political non-involvement, has
always provided Bah's with its set of tests and difficulties in a
world where often one's very soul and lifestyle is measured by active
stands vis-a-vis some politicized issue like conservation and mining,
abortion and homosexuality, inter alia.
The tasks we face are not easy. They are often very difficult and the
acceptance of this difficulty at the centre of our psyche is important.
There is a pain at the heart of life and it cannot be denied, although it
often is in our adoption of various kinds of popular psychology like
the power of positive thinking and "she'll be right, mate." All things
really worthwhile are, it seems to be just about by definition, very
difficult. Much of the education most of us have is like a knife
without a handle and it is, at worse, dangerous and, at best, often
useless. We labour under so many misconceptions and false
assumptions: literalism, the heavy burden of ludicrous expectations
of others and of our own dear selves, as well as the notion, the
falseness, of a spiritual life not rooted in our animal existence. The
totality of the human condition embraces both the sublime and the
daemonic. They have always been part of the existential realities and
they will be seen, ad nauseam, in this new Bah' culture, immersed
as it is in the life and the times of this 21st century.
Readers here must acknowledge the magnitude of the ruin that the

human race has brought upon itself during the last century to century
and a half. The loss of life alone has been beyond counting. The
disintegration of basic institutions of social order, the violationindeed, the abandonment of standards of decency, the betrayal of the
life of the mind through surrender to ideologies as squalid as they
have been empty, the intervention and deployment of monstrous
weapons of mass annihilation, the bankrupting of entire nations and
the reduction of masses of human beings to hopeless poverty, the
reckless destruction of the environment of the planet--such are only
some of the more obvious in a catelogue of horrors unknown to even
the darkest of past ages. A tempest is, indeed, sweeping the face of
the earth.
As I say above, a failure to accept that pain and anxiety, tests and
difficulties, are always a necessary tiller of the heart's soil, and the
soil of human civilization, leads the believer into a range of
problems that arise when the tests come. This has always been true
in this and in other paradigms right back to the 1840s, as Shoghi
Effendi describes in his Epilogue to the Dawnbreakers(See p. 652)
I MAKE NO PROMISES
I trust that readers who stay with this text will have some reward. Of
course, as in any writing, writers cannot promise and---if they do---it
is either at their peril or it is because of their previous literary
successes. This I cannot claim due to my many unsuccessful efforts
to write books and I don't like to venture into perilous territory,
literary and otherwise, if I can help it. I have developed a more
cautionary approach to life as I have come to head into its evening
hours. In the first nine years, 2007 to 2015, of the presence of this
book, this commentary on the new Bahai culture, on the internet, this
work has contributed its part---as some posts on the internet do---to
an extensive dialogue on the issues regarding the many inter-related

processes, complex structures and community functions involved in

the ongoing changes in the international Bahai community in these
last two decades.
This book at BLO has received perhaps as many or more than
40,000 hits at this site and the many 100s of other sites at which I
have placed it in whole or in part. My current guestimation is some
40,000 hits as of 21/3/'14. This is but one measure of the extent to
which this book has been clicked-on, and if read at least to some
extent. But words, I must emphasize, are one of the least parts of
faith; faith I have often thought is a gift to be lived and, even after
several decades, I feel as if I am a beginner---however much I write
in this analysis of the new Bah' culture. I cannot give others faith
nor understanding. That is their job. You can lead a horse to water,
goes the old saying, but you cannot make it drink. My task, and the
task of those who are Bah's and who read this work, is to offer
their gifts with a purse heart and a correct motive and to detach
themselves from the responses of those to whom they offer the
chalice, the light, the fire, of the Cause. No one is really adequate to
the Message that we bear and which we offer to others as a gift.
There are many writers in cyberspace who are leading all sorts of
horses to all sorts of drinks. Cyberspace has become, in many ways,
a parallel universe besides the real space we all live in. In real space
the small handful of Covenant-Breakers and people who identify
with and refer to Bah' sects, are given not only publicity but a
profile out of all proportion to their real existence, their existence in
real space. People coming across these so-called sects in cyberspace
get the distinct impression that the Bah' Faith is a house divided
into at least half a dozen sects. In cyberspace the Bah' Faith
becomes, for many, just another cult. The terms cult and sect have
specific definitions and meanings to academics who study the
sociology of religion, the history of religion, of religion within the

rubric of some other academic field. The Bah' Faith is neither a

cult, nor is it divided into sects, but the casual and uninformed reader
is led to quite another opinion as he or she surfs the net wanting to
learn about the Bah' Faith and its sects that they have heard about
in some casual conversation. The Bah' Faith has always had people
bent on its destruction. This was true in the first years of the Babi
Faith from 1844 to 1848, and this opposition and hatred existed both
outside the Cause and, often, within the Cause itself. Bah' history
is a fascinatingly complex story that the internet has given a
visibility to for those who want to study and read about it. Of course,
only about one-third to one-half of humanity has access to the
internet, and most of the Bah' community, most of its 5 to 8 million
members live in communities with no internet facility.
TEMPERAMENT AND TEMPERAMENTS: PERSONALITY
CONSTRUCTS AND PARADIGMS
The word temperament comes to us from medieval physiology. A
temperament was seen as a balance of multiple humors, a composite
of multiple psychical forces, a concept for the general trend of the
soul. Temperament was seen, and it is, a vague sensibility, a kind of
broad appraisal of a persons attitude. It is a category that spans
ones nature and education across the lifespan from childhood to oldage. People's temperaments guide our attention, but they are also
reflections of their past experiences. Temperament changes, such
was the medieval view, according to the balance of humors in the
body; it changes with age, and it is reflective of ones upbringing and
general cultural inheritance. A temperament is also part of the culture
of an individual, but it extends beyond the individual into deep and
often unconscious attitudes, habits, prejudices and capacities.
Temperament is both indirectly and directly expressed; it is
uncovered through the analysis of actions. Ones temperament shows
through as a vague or quite specific and general propensity, the sum

total of many disparate and unrelated acts. It is a broad composite,

built and undone, and rebuilt over the course of a lifetime. It is a
psychic and emotional, as well as rational and irrational process
embedded in complex social processes, and individual inclinations.
It lies behind and under and is also within what I am writing in this
book about the new Bah' culture. It is also at the heart of what one
does in this new Bah' culture as it did in the old paradigms. It is a
reality we all have to deal with in the drama that is our life-narrative
and community life.
In writing this book it is my hope that I have uncovered and
exemplified a certain philosophical-historical spirit which is
grounded in the living specificity of my 60 years of association with
this new world Faith. It is a philosophical spirit echoed among a
number of my contemporaries and historical predecessors in the
Bah' community. It is a philosophy of the street and of the
neighbourhood, of the local and of the specific, of the problemcentred and of the community-oriented. It is also playful and
affirmative. It is a type of spirit that contains a genealogical criticism
and evaluation, as well as a social critique. It construes the historical
sense as attitude, perspective, and a way of life rather than as system,
as book, or as an ascetic and transcendental attitude. It means
affirming temperament, locality, and problems. I hope readers who
stay with this now lengthy work, do not find it to be a glib and
pervasive criticism, written from a type of expert contrivance.
Although this book contains many criticisms, it is far from glib and
far from contrivance. I see this book as one that has grown-out of
experienced conviction over many decades. Still, I do not expect this
book to receive a popular reception; it is far too long to ever be
popular and the reading public is now drowning in images and print,
a glut of stuff that overwhelms Everyman. There is much else in
cyberspace for readers to get their teeth into and give them pleasure.

Still, with the words of the Supreme Body in 2015, hope springs
eternal. "We wish to address some additional words to those of you
in whose surroundings marked progress is yet to occur and who long
for change," the House of Justice commented, "Have hope. It will
not always be so. Is not the history of our Faith filled with accounts
of inauspicious beginnings but marvellous results? How many times
have the deeds of a few believersyoung or oldor of a single
family, or even of a lone soul, when confirmed by the power of
divine assistance, succeeded in cultivating vibrant communities in
seemingly inhospitable climes? Do not imagine that your own case
is inherently any different. Change in a cluster, be it swift or hard
won, flows neither from a formulaic approach nor from random
activity; it proceeds to the rhythm of action, reflection, and
consultation, and is propelled by plans that are the fruit of
experience. Beyond this, and whatever its immediate effects, service
to the Beloved is, in itself, a source of abiding joy to the spirit. Take
heart, too, from the example of your spiritual kin in the Cradle of the
Faith, how their constructive outlook, their resilience as a
community, and their steadfastness in promoting the Divine Word
are bringing about change in their society at the level of thought and
deed. God is with you, with each of you. In the twelve months that
remain of the Plan, let every community advance from its present
position to a stronger one.
My modus operandi seeks out origins and explanations, but only to a
limited extent; it attempts to make interventions into particular habits
and attitudes that I have lived with and observed for decades. The
practices of reading and interpreting, of arguing and analyzing, are
each and all woven into the very field of the new Bah' paradigm
itself, as a part of its game-plan, its aims and objectives. My writing
has been shaped by a century of tempestuous violence on the planet
as well as the historical and intellectual tradition of which I am a
part---now a global cultural tradition. I write in order to help heal

whatever wounds I find in my life and the life of my society. I also

write to express my appreciation for differences between people,
differences which are part of living together in community.
Ironically, I write as much to create and to clarify problems for
readers who come to this book, as to dissolve and solve them. That is
one of many ways I define my writing exercise here. Some problems
are intractable both in my own life and in the life of my society;
others are simple to solve, and still others have already been solved.
SENSE OF, AND CONCEPT OF, COMMUNITY: SOME
HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
Part 1:
There are a myriad notions of community that lie behind my activity
in cyberspace. I have come across these notions over the last halfcentury in my studies in the social sciences. The Aristotelian idea of
community understandably approved the classical duty incumbent
on men no less to love others than themselves. Not all philosophers
saw community as Aristotle(384-322 BC) did. Machiavelli(1469-1527), the
Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philo
her, humanist and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance, was very
pessimistic about human nature and, consequently, about community. Others,
philosophers and thinkers of many ilks, saw people as naturally induced to seek
communion and fellowship with others. Some thinkers are optimistic souls,
some pessimistic, some practical realists, some utopian. Each thinker and
philosopher has their own take on things, their take on human nature and
existential reality, their take on the nature of community and the individual. Of
course, this is just saying the obvious.

Part 1.1:
Michel de Montaigne(1533-1592), one of the most influential writers
of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a
literary genre, and commonly thought of as the father of modern

skepticism, echoed an Aristotelian perspective. "There is nothing for which

nature seems to have given us such a bent as for society," he assured his
readers. Aristotle wrote that good lawgivers have paid more attention to
friendship than to justice. Friendship is the "peak" of a "perfect society."
(Montaigne, Essays, pp. 92-3). In these secular terms, friendship was generally
esteemed. Etienne de la Boetie(1530-1563), a French judge, writer, anarchist,
and one of the founders of modern political philosophy in France, advised that
"our nature is such that the common duties of friendship consume a good
portion of our lives" (Charier, A History of Private Life, p. 21).

Part 1.2:
The idea of "duty" is important in many conceptions of friendship.
For many, the idea of friendship was immediately idealised, in
classical terms, as a matter of responsibility to fellow members of
the community. In his Book of the Governor, Sir Thomas
Elyot(1490-1546) defined the good magistrate as one who was a
"plain and unfeigned friend." The secular aspect was, then,
intimately related to classical models of public and civic association.
James Harrington(1611-1677), an English political theorist best
known for his controversial work, The Commonwealth of Oceana
(1656), described friendship more in terms of agricultural settlement
and rural life than in terms of ideals of Roman civic governance. His
views were firmly based on received models of citizen "virtue."
Indeed, as John Pocock(1924- ), a writer and historian of political
thought, noted, the importance of Oceana lies precisely in its
translation of classical ideas of association into a world determined
by the jurisprudence of the common law.
Since many readers who come to this sub-section of my webpage
come here as 'friends' from a multitude of internet sites at which I
post, you might enjoy a book published in 2006 by one of the
English speaking world's finest essayists, Joseph Epstein. The book
is entitled: Friendship: An Expose. This is a rambling, shambling,
highly personal survey of a universal relationship. It is a relationship

whose fluidity and changing nature---through history and through

the stages of a single life---make it rich pickings for an erudite
essayist of Mr. Epsteins caliber. A review of that book is found at
this link at The New York
Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/books/26grim.html
GRIEF AND LOSS
"Dealing with grief and loss," as Susan Gammage writes, "is never
easy in this paradigm or at any time. One can not always forgive and
forget, and even as one does, it is often a process that is very slow in
working itself out. Often, it is best not to force oneself to do things
for the Cause; not to fret and worry about what you can't do; one's
health, among other factors, often prevents us from engaging in
certain aspects of community life. In cases like this it is often best to
engage in avenues of service which do not interfere with one's
health, or even withdraw into solitude where the forces within can
adjust the balance and you are able to be set on your feet again. We
should not interpret this as a dereliction of duty. Advice from wellmeaning Bah's often acts as a weight; to be told one should
transcend one's psychological problems and not judge is often not
good advice at all.(Letter to an individual believer, 23/10/'94)
It is useful to keep in mind that service to this Cause takes an infinite
shading of forms and styles. The conventional gestures of service are
often safe and secure. Being hurled into forms of service with too
much turbulence, too much distress, is often the cause of withdrawal
and inactivity. The so called and often used term "the inactivebeliever" is often the result of this turbulence. We love the truth, but
often dread what it might do to us, and so it is often necessary to
keep a safe distance from the blazing summons that Bah'u'llh has
issued on thousands of pages of what is now the sacred Text.

TWO TEXTS: TWO SOURCES

For this writer, and for each Bah', there are two texts: (i) the Book
and its legitimate interpreters and (ii) the forever unfinished,
decentralized text of historyforever supplemented, new chapters
being written in all sorts of places by all sorts of people not
especially, not necessarily, in touch with one another. There is some
work of correspondence, and some of production. I write, or so I
like to think, as a type of Emersonian-self, exhorting others through
my temperament or because of my particular temperament and
motivation, towards a fundamental faith in the possibility of
personality beseeching others with Emerson to, "affront and
reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the
times."
I also exhort others by means of this book "to hurl in the face of
custom, trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history,"
that there is a great responsible thinker and actor, an indwelling God
"within me mighty, powerful and self-subsistent." This indwelling
God is working wherever I work. I belong, as a true man, to no other
time or place, and I act at the center of things. Where he is, there is
nature.(Emerson, Self Reliance, p. 270). My temperamental prison,
made as it is of glass, is also a prism that reflects and refracts
thought so that it might be broken and colorful. I draw here on
Emerson and leave it to readers with the interest to read more of
Emerson. I encourage this reading of Emerson because of what I feel
to be the broad relevasnce of his writing to this new paradigm.
POWER AND AUTHORITY IN THIS NEW PARADIGM
Section 1:
Power, as I conceive it, is not seen as a property, but as a strategy. Its

effects of domination are attributed not to appropriation, but to

dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functionings. Power
in this sense is not only something exercised by the powerful, but is
a network of activities carried out by everyone in society each in
different ways. In short, power is something exercised rather than
possessed; it is not the privilege, acquired or preserved, of the
dominant class, but the overall effect of strategic positions. It is an
effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of
those who are dominated. The operation of power, or rather its
manifestation, is found in particular acts. As such, power does not
obey the law of all or nothing but is rather manifested in localized
episodes that have effects on the entire network in which it is caught
up. At the same time, power cannot be separated for purposes of
understanding its operation since power produces knowledge. There
is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of
knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and
constitute at the same time power relations. From the perspective of
the theory of power, individuals themselves are products of the
system of power relations. The individual man is already himself the
effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. What I have
just written is a complex subject and I leave it to readers with an
interest in the subject of power to do some reading because it is an
important subject in this new culture of learning.
What I have written in the above paragraph is, to reiterate, somewhat
complex, given the often simplistic view that people have of the
concept of power in everyday life. In organizations, in the
international organization that is the Bah' Faith, authority is the
scope of the legitimate power of the elected institutions of this new
world Faith, or legitimate power possessed by individuals when
acting on behalf of these elected institutions. Authority and power
are two different concepts. This authority is conferred through
officially recognized channels within the Bah' Faith, and represents

a portion of the power of these elected institutions. For example, a

Bah' institution might have the authority to deprive an individual
of his voting and administrative rights. That institution could also
provide an authorized person to determine if a member of the
community should have such rights removed. In contrast, a group of
Bah's might have the power to do all of the above things, but still
lack the authority because the actions would not be legitimate.
Authority in the Bah' community can also be seen in situations in
which authority is an institutional function. An elected Bah' body,
for example, might hire employees as a standard function of its
existence. However, most of that body's members are not authorized
to hire employees. This authority is passed down through Bah'
administration to specific individuals sometimes with limited
institutional involvement. Authority and power are complex entities;
they are abstractions about which much has been written and this
book does not go into these two terms as much as it should. Perhaps,
as this book evolves in future years I will deal with these two terms
in more detail. They are important to understand because they lie at
the basis of so much that takes place in Bah' groups and in this new
paradigm. I encourage readers, again, to make a personal study of
these two concepts and their relation to the individual and the
community. In the process they will be better prepared for
understanding the nature of this new paradigm.
Section 1.1:
Before concluding these few words on the subject of power and
authority, I want to quote quite extensively from a letter dated 2
March 2013 from the House of Justice to the Bah's of Iran. "At the
heart of the learning process," writes the Supreme Body "is inquiry
into the nature of the relationships that bind the individual, the
community, and the institutions of societyactors on the stage of

history who have been locked in a struggle for power throughout

time." The House of Justice makes a series of pertinent remarks
about power and politics which I will simply add in the several
paragraphs below.
"....(T)he assumption that relations....will inevitably conform to the
dictates of competition, a notion that ignores the extraordinary
potential of the human spirit, has been set aside in favour of the
more likely premise that their harmonious interactions can foster a
civilization betting a mature humanity. Animating the Bah effort
to discover the nature of a new set of relationships among these three
protagonists is a vision of a future society that derives inspiration
from the analogy drawn by Bahullh, in a Tablet penned nearly a
century and a half ago, which compares the world to the human
body. Cooperation is the principle that governs the functioning of
that system. Just as the appearance of the rational soul in this realm
of existence is made possible through the complex association of
countless cells, whose organization in tissues and organs allows for
the realization of distinctive capacities, so can civilization be seen as
the outcome of a set of interactions among closely integrated,
diverse components which have transcended the narrow purpose of
tending to their own existence. And just as the viability of every cell
and every organ is contingent upon the health of the body as a
whole, so should the prosperity of every individual, every family,
every people be sought in the well-being of the entire human race. In
keeping with such a vision, institutions, appreciating the need for
coordinated action channeled toward fruitful ends, aim not to control
but to nurture and guide the individual, who, in turn, willingly
receives guidance, not in blind obedience, but with faith founded on
conscious knowledge. The community, meanwhile, takes on the
challenge of sustaining an environment where the powers of
individuals, who wish to exercise self-expression responsibly in
accordance with the common weal and the plans of institutions,

multiply in unied action."

Section 2:
"If the web of relationships alluded to above is to take shape and
give rise to a pattern of life distinguished by adherence to the
principle of the oneness of humankind, certain foundational concepts
must be carefully examined. Most notable among them is the
conception of power. Clearly the concept of power as a means of
domination, with the accompanying notions of contest, contention,
division and superiority, must be left behind. This is not to deny the
operation of power; after all, even in cases where institutions of
society have received their mandates through the consent of the
people, power is involved in the exercise of authority. But political
processes, like other processes of life, should not remain unaffected
by the powers of the human spirit that the Bah Faithfor that
matter, every great religious tradition that has appeared throughout
the ageshopes to tap: the power of unity, of love, of humble
service, of pure deeds. Associated with power in this sense are words
such as release, encourage, channel, guide and enable.
Power is not a nite entity which is to be seized and jealously
guarded; it constitutes a limitless capacity to transform that resides
in the human race as a body."
"The Bah community readily acknowledges that it has a
considerable distance to traverse before its growing experience
yields the necessary insights into the workings of the desired set of
interactions. It makes no claims to perfection. To uphold high ideals
and to have become their embodiment are not one and the same.
Myriad are the challenges that lie ahead, and much remains to be
learned. The casual observer may well choose to label the
communitys attempts to surmount these challenges idealistic. Yet
it certainly would not be justied to portray Bahs as uninterested

in the affairs of their own countries, much less as unpatriotic.

However idealistic the Bah endeavour may appear to some, its
deep-seated concern for the good of humankind cannot be ignored.
And given that no current arrangement in the world seems capable of
lifting humanity from the quagmire of conict and contention and
securing its felicity, why would any government object to the efforts
of one group of people to deepen its understanding of the nature of
those essential relationships inherent to the common future towards
which the human race is being inexorably drawn? What harm is
there in this?"
POLITICAL ACTIVITY
Part 1:
"This brings us, at last, to the specic question of political activity.
The conviction of the Bah community that humanity, having
passed through earlier stages of social evolution, stands at the
threshold of its collective maturity; its belief that the principle of the
oneness of humankind, the hallmark of the age of maturity, implies a
change in the very structure of society; its dedication to a learning
process that, animated by this principle, explores the workings of a
new set of relationships among the individual, the community and
the institutions of society, the three protagonists in the advancement
of civilization; its condence that a revised conception of power,
freed from the notion of dominance with the accompanying ideas of
contest, contention, division and superiority, underlies the desired set
of relationships; its commitment to a vision of a world that,
benetting from humanitys rich cultural diversity, abides no lines of
separationthese all constitute essential elements of the framework
that shapes the Bah approach to politics set out in brief below."
"Bahs do not seek political power. They will not accept political

posts in their respective governments, whatever the particular system

in place, though they will take up positions which they deem to be
purely administrative in nature. They will not afliate themselves
with political parties, become entangled in partisan issues, or
participate in programmes tied to the divisive agendas of any group
or faction. At the same time, Bahs respect those who, out of a
sincere desire to serve their countries, choose to pursue political
aspirations or to engage in political activity. The approach adopted
by the Bah community of noninvolvement in such activity is
not intended as a statement expressing some fundamental objection
to politics in its true sense; indeed, humanity organizes itself through
its political affairs.
Part 2:
Bahs vote in civil elections, as long as they do not have to identify
themselves with any party in order to do so. In this connection, they
view government as a system for maintaining the welfare and
orderly progress of a society, and they undertake, one and all, to
observe the laws of the land in which they reside, without allowing
their inner religious beliefs to be violated. Bahs will not be party
to any instigation to overthrow a government. Nor will they interfere
in political relations between the governments of different nations.
This does not mean that they are naive about political processes in
the world today and make no distinction between just and tyrannical
rule. The rulers of the earth have sacred obligations to full towards
their people, who should be seen as the most precious treasure of any
nation. Wherever they reside, Bahs endeavour to uphold the
standard of justice, addressing inequities directed towards
themselves or towards others, but only through lawil means
available to them, eschewing all forms of violent protest. Moreover,
in no way does the love they hold in their hearts for humanity run
counter to the sense of duty they feel to expend their energies in

service to their respective countries."(UHJ, 2 March 2013)

The approach, the strategy, the Bah' way of going about things,
with the simple set of parameters outlined in the foregoing
paragraphs enables the community, in a world where nations and
tribes are pitted one against the other and people are divided and
separated by social structures, to maintain its cohesion and integrity
as a global entity and to ensure that the activities of the Bahs in
one country do not jeopardize the existence of those elsewhere.
Guarded against competing interests of nations and political parties,
the Bah community is thus able to build its capacity to contribute
to processes that promote peace and unity without become part of,
and getting enmeshed in, the tortuous partisan politics which
threaten to derail so much that is good in contemporary society by
getting caught up in the polarizing and competitive game that is
politics in our modern world.
THE LANGUAGE OF PARADIGMS
Part 1:
The language of paradigms has been used across many academic
disciplines and fields of discourse to describe current and shifting
understandings of knowledges, beliefs, assumptions, and practices.
Thomas Kuhn (1962) made the term paradigm recognizable with
his publication of Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the very year
before the emergence of another Bah' paradigm in 1963---the year
of the election of the Universal House of Justice in 1963. That was
the same year--1962--my own travelling and pioneering for the
Canadian Bah' community began. For Kuhn, a paradigm was a
collection of shared beliefs, a set of agreements about how the world
may be understood. According to Kuhn, the differences between
Newton's mechanical universe and Einstein's relativistic universe

represented a shift in paradigms. Each of these two approaches to

physical science represented a worldview, or a paradigm, that
guideed how scientists saw the world.
Hans Kung (1988), the great Catholic theologian, is among those
who has applied Kuhns understanding of paradigms to religion. He
identified several paradigms that have shaped religious history.
Among recent Christian worldviews are the modern, Enlightenment
paradigm and the emerging Ecumenical paradigm. In comparing
these two paradigms, Frederick Schleiermachers (1996; 2001)
contributions that shaped much of modern liberal theology have
been challenged by the pluralism of more recent ecumenical and
interfaith theological understandings (Cobb, 1982; Hick, 1982). The
new does not replace the old, yet it does provide an alternative
foundation of thought for understanding contemporary religious
practices. This is also true of the new Bah' paradigm: it does not
replace the old, but it does provide an alternative foundation, an
altered, an additional, structural, institutional, organizational scheme
or framework, a new language so to speak. This framework, this
structural embellishment, has assisted and is assisting the Bah'
community to deal with a multitude of functions: its emergence from
obscurity and the public image it has slowly acquired in the last
several decades; the new horizons and developments in the wider
society; the unfolding educational processes from childhood to old
age, the several stages in the lifespan, within the Bah' community;
the extension of the Cause to every corner of the planet and the
deepening of those people who are attracted to this global, this very
wide-spread, religion---and much more, a more that this book
discusses in its 830 pages(font 16).
Part 2:
A paradigm as a worldview containing deep-seated assumptions that

are so much a part of a person that it is often difficult to step back

and see what the assumptions are. Such assumptions and views of
the world are central to a persons belief system and to the ways that
a person lives and acts in relation to others. In some ways, as this
new paradigm has evolved in its first two decades(1996-2016),
Bah's need to be able to practice multi-paradigmatically, to discern
the assumptions most often used within the Cause as an organization
and then use their critical thinking and their personal skills to move
across different facets of the paradigm to accomplish goals
congruent with the values, beliefs and attitudes necessary to
implement the aims and goals of this new Bah' culture. This multiparadigmatic perspective is useful when deciding what course of
action to take when faced with the many options now open in both
individual and community life in this 21st century. A new
complexity has emerged both in the wider world and in the Bah'
community.
In the Bah' community this is particularly the result of
developments in this new Bah' culture of learning and growth,
developments that have been slowly introduced, incrementally
developed, and analysed each year in an ongoing exegisis that is top
down, an exegisis that flows from the legitimate and authoritative
Interpreter of The Book. This book, on the other hand, is an
interpretation of this exegisis, and includes a discussion of the
philosophical assumptions and the practical implications of this new
paradigm. Paradigms emerge from many sources and they are seen
in practical frameworks based on these assumptions. The practicval
framework here is the multi-paradigmatic perspective to which I
refer is, for me at least and I hope for others. It is a heuristic tool for
approaching so much that is found in this new Bah' culture. The
Universal House of Justice has been at the apex of Bah'
administration for 50 years, and the paradigmatic shift that has taken
place since I was first a Bah' in the 1950s, and especially since the

mid-1990s, has been extensive.

A PARADIGM IN A MULTI-PARADIGMATIC FRAMEWORK

Part 1:
There are several practical and theoretical elements to think about
when considering this paradigm, a paradigm which for me possesses,
as I pointed out above, a multi-paradigmatic framework. Religion
and spirituality have a range of meanings and they provide a
category for understanding the context of broad and diverse spiritual
and sacerdotal practices engaged in by individuals and communities.
With Bah's located in some 150,000 localities there is an immense
diversity of practice taking place within this paradigm. The
epistemology, the nature of the knowledge, that each Bah' has
acquired and will acquire, is as varied as there are Bah's. How does
one know what is true or real? Traditional sources of knowledge in
the Bah' community include: intuition, perception, testimony,
experience, and rational thought. Within Bah' history there are four
common sources: reason, revelation, tradition, and experience. There
are, of course, variations on these sources and the weight they carry,
with some sources dominating others. For example, the socially
hegemonic force of authority is found in Bah' religious tradition, in
what Bah's call "the Writings" or The Book. This is balanced by
what you might call individual thought and emotion as an
experiential source of knowledge. This latter source lacks authority
but it is crucial in determining what each Bah' does in practice,
what he or she does in the context of this paradigm.
It is here, in the practice and activities of each of the several million
Bah's, that what I call the multi-paradigmatic framework is born.

Here, we begin to see one important factor: the distinction between

hard knowledge, which is capable of being transmitted in a tangible
form, the tradition of sacred writings, and soft knowledge, which is
more innate, more experiential, and more personal. A rational,
orderly approach to the new Bah' culture and a feeling that there is
one best way or a commonly accepted right way to accomplish
tasks characterize what you might call a functionalist approach to the
new Bah' paradigm. Most assumptions and theories that have
guided Bah' practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are
also central to a functionalist approach to this new paradigm. A
second approach, an interpretive approach, to this new paradigm has
as its focus consensus and equilibrium. But this interpretive
approach is subjectivist in nature so that the social reality of the new
paradigm for each individual is based on human experiences and
these experiences exist primarily as a human, an individual, a social
construct. Interpretations of what is real in life and what each
individual engages in within the new Bah' culture reflect individual
understandings and inter-subjectively shared meanings. The
individual Bah' seeks to understand written texts and his or her
lived experiences as well as those of the Bah' community.
The populations served by the Bah' community, what are
sometimes called targeted or receptive populations, those small
pockets of the population where the limited resources of the Bah'
community can be brought to bear, brought to a focus in the teaching
and service work of individuals and the community, are an important
part of the community building process in this new Bah' paradigm.
Each Bah' approaches these pockets of the population in their own
way guided by the institutions of the Cause, institutions which have
been around for decades and new institutional forms which have
arisen only in the last twenty years and which constitute the evolving
institutional nature of the new paradigm. As the House of Justice
pointed out in its most recent Ridvan message released just this

week: "it does not follows that every person must be occupied with
the same aspect of the Plan." In addition, the Supreme Body goes on
to say, that each cycle of the expansion phases of the programs of
growth does not need to be directed toward the same end. Diversity,
as always, is the watchword.
Part 2:
As part of this multi-paradigmatic perspective to which I refer
above, Bah's must watch that no trace of paternalism, superiority
or prejudice comes into their interaction with others or estrangement
and disaffection will result among those whom they want to
teach/reach. This is not an easy call; much of the work in the Cause
is not an easy call. It never has been. Rather than seeing the new
culture's issues in black and white terms, there are many Bah's who
are more comfortable with many shades of gray and they see
themselves and their roles in this new paradigm in many different
ways. What I seek, and what the Bah' community has been aiming
at for decades---and no less in this new culture---in this articulation
of the context of this new Bah' culture is a basis for universal
participation. Volition and choice, a variety of lines of exploration
and walking the path in the company of others in different ways, or
walking alone, depending on the circumstances, are all part of this
interpretive approach.(12/12/'11)
Another approach to this new paradigm might be called the radical
humanist. With a focus on emancipating the human consciousness, a
major concern of this paradigm, in this context, is releasing human
development from the constraints of the status quo. Postmodern
philosophers who concentrate on individual changes rather than
social change, including Foucault (1980) and Derrida (1981) may be
relevant to this approach to the new paradigm. Due to their
generalizing nature, few theoretical perspectives are found in this

approach; rather, the individual focus of emerging spiritual,

transpersonal and holistic practice modalities align with the
assumptions of this approach. If a Bah' values the subjectivity of
the interpretive approach, but feels that the change emerging from
the understanding of the community consensus doesnt match their
own understandings, and he or she sees contradictions which they
cannot resolve, then the change-oriented and consciousness-raising
relativism of this approach may be a more appropriate fit. This is a
complex idea to which I hope to return at a future time here at BLO.
The multi-paradigmatic approach offered here reflects one
understanding of the complex intersections of theory and theology as
well as the integration of the individual and the community, the
institutions and the immense variety of Bah' groups. With the
knowledge and expertise that individuals develop, as well as their
own understandings, hopefully each person will find a heuristic for
considering the problems and successes of this new Bah' culture
from diverse perspectives. I feel that the information in this multiparadigmatic framework can be of value to individuals who seek to
put into place this new culture. This understanding of paradigms
may serve as a teaching tool for promoting increased selfunderstanding, for conducting organizational analysis, for evaluating
practice theories, and for discussion related to the integration of
everyone into a system of universal participation---what has been an
elusive goal in the Bah' community for decades. The philosophical
assumptions can be utilized in conversations about self-awareness
and a more professional use of self in community, so to speak. The
continuums or the spectrums of approach to this new paradigm, can
also be of value in framing our thought and practice.
Part 3:STUDY CIRCLES AND RUHI BOOKS
3.1:

This framework may also serve to aid in understanding differences

and similarities among Bah's and the assumptions of each Bah'
about the world and society. Any time we say or hear, Well, God
expects us to.... The Writings say...., or even, the new paradigm
demands..." we have an opportunity to reflect on our assumptions,
and this matrix of paradigms provides a tool to aid us in considering
these things. Whether used in teaching human behavior, practice or
reflection, in discussing the relationships between faith and
knowledge, or in introducing teaching in relation to different
religious perspectives, this framework can be built into existing tutor
and study circle practice in an effort to encourage students to
consider the role of our many underlying assumptions that often go
unnoticed and unmentioned.
The term study circle has become common terminology in the Bah'
Faith during this new culture of learning and growth to describe a
specific type of gathering for the study of the Bah' teachings, with
an emphasis on "promoting the well-being of humanity." Study
circles are a form of distance learning designed to systematically
bring education about spiritual concepts to the grassroots level.
Because they are intended to be sustainable and reproducible on a
large scale, study circles shy away from formally taught classes,
opting instead for participatory methods. They are usually led by a
tutor whose role is not to act as an expert but rather to facilitate the
rhythm and pace of the study circle. In this way, attendees of study
circles are expected to become active participants in their own
learning process.
Another foundational principle of study circles is a heavy emphasis
on the Bah' writings as a means of finding unity of vision and
action by focusing on the essentials of Bah' belief. At the present
time, the most common curriculum used in study circles is one that

was originally developed at the Ruhi Institute in Colombia but is

now used in Bah' communities all over the world. Because of its
origin, most Bah's refer to this curriculum as the Ruhi sequence or
Ruhi materials. Additional courses used by study circles vary from
country to country and include the "Fundamental Verities" and "Core
Curriculum" materials developed in the United States, among others.
3.2:
The Ruhi Institute was, at least originally, an educational institution,
operating under the guidance of the National Spiritual Assembly of
the Bah' Faith in Colombia. The general idea of an institute in
Bah' terms originates with the beginning of the Nine Year Plan
(starting in 1964) designated by the Universal House of Justice. The
institute or training institute was especially for countries where
large-scale expansion was taking place to meet the needs of the
thousands who were entering the Faith. At that time, the emphasis
was on acquiring a physical facility to which group after group of
newly enrolled believers would be invited to attend deepening
courses. Over the years, in conjunction with these institutes as well
as independent of them, a number of courses referred to, for
example, as weekend institutes, five-day institutes, and nine-day
institutes, were developed for the purpose of promulgating the
fundamental verities of the religion and how to serve it.
The Ruhi Institute developed in Colombia after the 1970s from this
general form and eventually was organized under the guidance of the
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bah' Faith in Colombia. Since
1992 it has been registered as the Ruh Foundation, a legally
independent non-profit organisation. The Ruh Foundation dedicates
its efforts to the development of human resources for the spiritual,
social, and cultural development of the Colombian people. Although
its center is in the town of Puerto Tejada in the department of Cauca,

its area of influence extends throughout the entire country.

Especially in recent years, its educational programs have been
adopted by an increasing number of agencies worldwide. Like any
other institution involved in the process of education for
development, the Ruhi Institute has formulated its strategies within a
special framework and a philosophy of social change, development
and education. In this case, that understanding has emerged from a
consistent effort to apply Bah' teachings to the analysis of social
conditions.
3.3:
Readers with an interest in a more detailed and comprehensive
picture of the content and context, the text and the texture of the
Ruhi program can do so at Wikipedia. At that useful online
encyclopedia they can read about: (i) the Three Cycles of main Ruhi
courses, and (ii) the content of the nine books and their branch
courses. The outline is as follows:
1.1 The First Cycle, Books 1 to 7
1.2 The Second Cycle Books 8 to__
1.3 Planned: The Third Cycle
2 Main Sequence of Courses-- The First Cycle
2.1 Book 1: Reflections on the Life of the Spirit
2.3 Book 3: Teaching Children's Classes, Grade 1
2.4 Book 4: The Twin Manifestations
2.5 Book 5: Releasing the Powers of Junior Youth
2.6 Book 6: Teaching the Cause
2.7 Book 7: Walking Together on a Path of Service
3 Main Sequence of Courses-- The Second Cycle
3.1 Book 8: The Covenant of Bah'u'llh
3.2 Book 9: Family Prosperity (planned)
4 Branch Courses

4.1 Book 3 Branch Courses (for children's class teachers)

4.2 Book 5 Branch Courses (for Junior Youth)
3.4:
The Ruhi Institute's main sequence of courses aims, in its entirety, at
achieving three overall objectives: providing insights into spiritual
matters, promoting moral awareness, & helping to develop specific
acts of service. Each study circle using the Ruhi Institute's materials
involves at least one tutor, with generally 3-10 participants. As
mentioned below, the format is not rigid, so each gathering may be
different from the next, or different between countries and cities. The
materials prepared by the Ruhi Institute focus on the Bah' writings
by assisting participants to understand the texts on three different
levels. The first level is that of basic comprehension, understanding
the meanings of the words and sentences. Towards this end,
participants formulate questions whose answers are direct quotes
from the texts, in order to gain a literal understanding of the
meanings and context of various quotes. The second level relates to
the application of the texts to various real-world situations. For
example, this would entail examining simple daily acts (lying about
one's taxes, cheating on an exam) in light of the Bah' emphasis on
truthfulness. Finally, the third level deals with the implications of the
various quotations on other aspects of Bah' belief.
There are currently eight books in the Institute's main sequence of
courses, with more courses in development. Each book is broken up
into three units each with many sections. Tutors are encouraged to
apply the arts, using music, games, crafts, and such during the
training. Each book has one or more practices that can be done
outside of the training. For example, the third book helps people to
become teachers of children's classes, and the practice is to give an
actual class. Also encouraged throughout the books is the practice of

memorizing passages and prayers.

3.5:
Of the many, many, curricula that were developed over the years,
and especially over the 60 years of my association with and
membership in the Bah' community, each fostered a certain kind of
interaction with the Word of God, the Ruhi program proved through
experience to be the most effective. Perhaps it was the most effective
because it wasnt the brainchild of a group of people who worked
very hard and very sincerely to come up with a set of courses based
on their theoretical understanding; rather it emerged from decades of
practical experience trying to learn about effective methods. Its
system of knowledge and practice is based on evidence. Maybe we
dont exactly know why it works, but we know it does. A great
foundation place to start to gain knowledge, to learn more about
reality, answering the why questions is a place that works in
practice, that is practical.
Let proven practice guide our quest for knowledge. We know that
the Ruhi Institutes sequence of courses effectively fosters individual
and collective transformation. Given this, what, now, can we learn
about the elements of interaction with the Word of God and the
spiritual dynamics of the environment within which it takes place?
As we build a conceptual understanding from effective and rich
practices and experiences at the grassroots, we learn to exercise
moderation and avoid extremes. We avoid arrogance and passivity
and instead become active protagonists with a humble posture of
learning; we avoid blind obedience and extreme individualism and
instead become empowered through cooperative action towards
collective betterment; we purposely exert creativity within fruitful
areas of inquiry; and, as is the pattern since humanitys birth,
learning propels progress.

THE CONCEPT OF EMOTION:

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THIS NEW PARADIGM
Over the last decade and a half, since the emergence of this new
Bah' culture, there has emerged a growing interest in the concept
of emotional intelligence(EI). This is particularly true within
literature relating to occupational psychology, leadership, human
resource management, and training. EI is especially relevant to the
importance of social constraints and self-restraint. The general
emphasis in the Bah' writings is not on repression and restraint, on
gult and on that moral crmapinbg of the soul so familiar to us in
systems of thought and belief which depend upon domination and
suppression for control. On the contrary, we are called upon to focus
our eyes on the intense power and the majesty, the unconstraining
glory of the Cause so that our greater attraction towards its beauty
will motivate us to "conform ourselves to that meekness which no
provocation can ruffle, to that patience which no affliction can
overwhelm, to that integrity which no self-interest can shake."
EI can enshrine a more general move towards greater emotional
possibility and discretion both within the Bah' community and
beyond an ostensible emancipation of emotions from the attempts
of others to script the management and display of the feelings of
individuals. Rather than offering a simple liberation of our emotional
selves, EI can be seen to present demands for a heightened
emotional reflexivity concerning what is emotionally appropriate in
interaction with others. EI involves both greater emotional freedom
plus a proliferation of new modalities of emotional control, albeit
based now on the expression of feelings as much as their repression.
People often regard emotion as a value-laden concept which is

inappropriate for life in communities. In particular, emotional

reactions are often seen as disruptive, illogical, biased, and weak.
Emotion in this context is seen as a deviation from what is sensible
or intelligent. It should be linked to the expressive arenas of life, not
to the instrumental goal orientation that drives groups. Emotions are
often regarded by people as a pollutant to clear-headed decisionmaking: something that needs to be checked on entry to any group
setting because they are a deviation from intelligence. Emotions in
this context are seen as being linked only to the expressive arenas of
life: to leisure, to pleasure, to personal life.
EI embodies the understanding that the degree and pattern of control
exercised over emotions is something that is learned, developed,
enhanced, and can be harnessed to the advantage of the group. The
notion of EI, as it has evolved in the last two decades, aims at
dissolving the traditional opposition between emotionality and
rationality, cognition and affect, thinking and feeling. It stylistically
renders all activity as profoundly personal. It potentially offers an
emancipation of the emotions within the group and beyond a
corrective to the myth of the rational group, and to traditional
models of intelligence which stress only cognitive functioning and
abstract reasoning ability. EI is about how we handle ourselves and
others. EI can essentially be defined as how well you handle
yourself. It refers to the extent of our emotional literacy, our ability
to recognise our own emotions and those of others. It relates to a
persons capacity both to manage their emotions and to draw upon
these as a resource. As Aristotle writes: Anyone can become angry
that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right
degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way
that is not easy. It is precisely these kinds of capacities that are
not detected by conventional models of intelligence, and yet, they
matter fundamentally.

EI serves to highlight that institutions cannot simply script the

emotions of the individuals in the community, cannot simply
manufacture a desired subjectivity. Individuals inevitably resist such
attempts and, moreover, the model of power that is implied in such
notions itself needs to be revisited. Indeed, as a consultancy
discourse, EI centrally involves the notion that the kinds of control
practices involved in any organizational scripting of emotions, any
engineering of feeling, are profoundly unintelligent. A key theme
behind the application of the concept of IE is that, within a group,
individuals should be afforded considerable personal discretion
concerning how they display, manage, and monitor their feelings. In
this way, then, the discourse of EI ostensibly offers the conditions
for a liberation of emotional expression.
In the place of scripting or defining how others should behave, EI
promotes the development of a heightened emotional reflexivity
concerning what is emotionally appropriate in group settings and in
the inner life and private character of the believers. Put simply, EI
involves a discursive shift towards implicit, unstated, and mobile
standards of what is emotionally fitting, apposite, appropriate, or
intelligent. And these shifting and flexible standards of behaviour are
in many ways more demanding, more difficult to negotiate than
scripts or clearly delineated formal rules regarding what is permitted
and correct, and what is not.
Thus, rather than offering a simple and unequivocal free play of
emotions expressed in a group, EI presents the discursive conditions
for a proliferation of new modalities of emotional control, albeit
based on the expression of feelings as much as their repression. As
far as long-term changes in the character of social/self-control are
concerned: freedom and constraint are conceived not so much as
opposites, but as two sides of the same coin. I leave it to readers to
further their understanding of EI and its application to the new

Bah' culture. Like many of the concepts I introduce in this book,

they are not simple. Like the new Bah' culture itself, it takes much
time and effort both to understand the concepts and put them into
practice. Whom the gods would destroy they first make simple, then
simpler and simplest. In this new paradigm and, indeed, in the wider
world, we must all learn to live with higher degrees of complexity.
THE CONCEPT OF A LEARNING COMMUNITY
The concept of the learning community has been promoted in many
places in recent decades. Educational effectiveness is enhanced
when people are part of a learning community. The Bah'
community is not a classroom, but it is a social environment, and
each member of each Bah' community has psychological and
cognitive, sociological and historical understandings, personal
constructions of knowledge which depend on relations with others.
Bah's are engaged in community building and they aim to create a
safe environment for their learning community, safety for taking
risks and for authentic collaboration. In this new paradigm the
perception of individuals that they are members of a community and
this membership is the basis for their collaborating and learning is
important. The community provides its members with shared goals
and culture, a shared feeling of being part of a greater whole. The
ability to negotiate meaning, and the ability to reproduce the
community through acquiring new members is part of the group
ethos and experience. Mutual support among community members
or communities of learners, has long been considered beneficial in
the Bah' community long before this new paradigm.
The sense of community affects the success of all programs.
Understanding what is meant by community can be challenging, as
members do not always have the same definition of community as
they go about their work. Community has been described as shared

experiences in which both individual and group needs are met, either
linked to a place and time or transcending place and time. Another
way of seeing a community is as a group of individuals interacting
and connecting with each other either through formal or informal
organizationat activity. The presence of experienced community
members provides the learning context for new members as they
enter. As the House of Justice emphasized in its most recent Ridvan
message in making a general comment about the worldwide Bah'
community: "this community is refining its ability to read its
immediate reality, analyse its possibilities, and apply judiciously the
methods and instruments of the Five Year Plan."
That Ridvan message of 2013 had a great deal to say about this new
Bah' culture. Readers here could do no better than to reread that
message yet again since that message contains a continuing and
extensive exegisis on the meaning and progress of this new
paradigm. Teachers or tutors can engage students or participants in a
process of mutually negotiating the norms and values of the learning
community. Empowering members to establish the criteria for
designing and assessing their learning community has its theoretical
foundation in constructivism. The perspective supported by
constructivism states that the instructor is a facilitator and the learner
is an active constructor in knowledge creation. Similarly, the
recently popular concept of the guide on the side encourages
increased interaction among participants, with the tutor stimulating
consultation as needed.
Members of a Bah' community are almost always given the
opportunity to assess their experience. Teaching and learning do not
always consist simply of the teachers planting knowledge in the
students garden. In this new paradigm all Bah's learn from each
other. Further, having students self-assess is a skill they may have to
do professionally, since giving and receiving feedback is a vital part

of social work practice. The study presents the results of a

community-building exercise in which three cohorts of students
create the assessment standards and later use the standards to assess
faculty and their peers.
SOCIAL RELATIONS
Part 1:
Individuals and groups in this new Bah' culture need to be
understood as relational beings. Indeed, the entire paradigm is one of
social relations and relationships. The lack of interpersonal skills has
an immense effect on the effectiveness of the new Bah' culture.
Rather than marking a structure of static or passive relations,
individuals whether singular persons or groups of related persons are
agents whose relations are manifested in purposive action. In human
relations we never react to another person, but to you-plus-me; or to
be more accurate, it is I-plus-you reacting to you-plus me. I can
never influence you because you have already influenced me; that
is, in the very process of meeting, by the very process of meeting,
we both become something different. In this process, called circular
response, we are creating each other all the time.
Agents on this account emerge not as separate individuals, identical
with themselves---that is, individuals as understood through a logic
of identity---but rather as intersections, as the activity-between.(I
thank Mary Parker Follett for this idea) Reality is in the relating, in
the activity-between. From this perspective, individuals, of whatever
sort, are such because of their ability to act with purpose and to do so
in response to the actions of others. As a result, who one is, must be
understood as a co-constitutive process that has the double effect of
marking off one from others and of connecting one to a larger whole
where the differences between individuals are connected. As agents,

individuals are not merely passive but act in accord with desires.
Desire, in this sense, is a goal-directed disposition that marks an
agent and has its meaning in action.
The character of individual agentsagents whose desires are formed
and are to be fulfilled through reactions to relations to others in the
Bah' culture-are framed by three factors: (1) one's response to an
environment that is not to a rigid static one, but to a changing
environment; (2) to an environment which is changing because of
the activity between it and me; (3) that function may be continuously
modified by itself. In this sense, agents are always situated in
relation to an environment in terms of which their desires are a new
relation formed by the intersection of the agents history and
interests with the interests and constraints that emerge from the
environment.
Part 2:
The situations in the Bah' culture that we each encounter and
ourselves change through the process of interaction, and formulate
new desires to be realized. Put another way, as individuals encounter
other individuals, their desires change and develop in relation to the
desires and the activities of the other individuals. In order to realize
these changing desires, individuals must take action in the newly
emerging situation. They must become parts of new wholes. This
process of becoming parts of new wholes is the process of
integration in which the desires of individuals interact in a way that
evolve new desires and new individuals that include the original
individuals but which are also more than a mere sum of its parts.
Follett calls this more a plus value, which then becomes new
collective desires of the community. They lead to still more action
and still more new wholes. Or it might be put thus that response is
always to a relating, that things which are varying must be compared

with things that are varying, that the law of geometrical progression
is the law of organic growth, that functional relating always has a
plus value.
The House of Justice, and before in the 36 years of the ministry of
the Guardian, often refers to the organic nature of the Cause and the
fact that "the work of the Cause proceeds at different speeds in
different places and for good reason."(Ridvan 2013) This approach
marks a psychology, individual and social, that studies integrative
processes. These processes are concerned with activities; when we
are watching an activity we are watching not parts in relation to a
whole or whole in relation to parts; we are watching a whole amaking. The participants in the process, however, are not just the
recognizable human agents, but the environment as well which
constitutes another individual in relation. The environment too is a
whole a-making, and the interknitting of these two wholes a-making
creates the total situationalso a-making. To summarize,
individuals gain their identity as embodied habits and desires formed
at the intersection of body, place, and the desires and habits of
already present wholes that form ones environment. Identity is a
slow binding together process; it binds material, social, and spiritual
selves in an individual consciousness that is also a whole a-making,
that is, subjects are more than mere sums but rather new agents.
At the same time, the forming desires of individuals become
manifest in their relations with others, the process of reacting to you
reacting to me reacting to you, and so on. As we interact, we begin a
process of unification that at once affirms our differences and
generates a new level of desire evolved through our shared needs
and disagreements. This new whole a-making is the evolving
collective will that in turn interacts with a still wider environment of
desires and again seeks a new unification, new agency, and new
plus values.

Part 3:
We can have power only over ourselves. In order to achieve selfhood, individuals actualize desires and in so doing exercise power.
What the formula I am using shows us is that the only genuine
power. It is that over the selfwhatever self may be. When you and
I decide on a course of action together and do that thing, you have no
power over me nor I over you, but we have power over ourselves
together. In contrast to power as non-subjective intentionality this
conception of power is self-control or, put another way, the ability of
an individual to self-govern where he may be as an individual human
being, a neighbourhood, a city, region or nation. In the new Bah'
culture this form of power is sovereignty as looking in, as authority
over its own members, as the independence which is the result of the
complete interdependence of those members
When we at the same time think of this independence as looking out
to other independences to form through a larger interdependence the
larger sovereignty of a larger whole this kind of power, power-with,
is what democracy should mean in politics or industry. While
genuine power is power with, power that emerges as control of
others, called, power-over, stands as an obstacle to fostering agency
and its potential for a larger collective life. Power-over marks an
invasion or an intervention from outside the agent/situation that,
since it is from outside, simultaneously denies the possibility of selfcontrol and leads to subjection. Power-over undercuts the ability of
agents to actualize their own desires and so leads to pain and
suffering even as it destroys differences that make integration and
new life possible. From this angle, the idea of power-over provides a
framework for a kind of critical theory, in terms of which present
social structures, institutions, and practices can be examined. Just as
Foucaults conception of power offers a method of analysis to show

the ways in which widespread practices construct systems of that

foster ongoing oppression, so the idea of power-over can provide a
means to identify practices that undercut the free play of desire and
the ability of people to self-govern.
Readers are advised to make a study of psychology and sociology
for the vast fields of knowledge in these two disciplines and how this
knowledge relates to the new paradigm. I have made a start in the
above, but each readers must approach these two fields of the social
sciences on their own and draw out what is for them meanings and
understandings to help them make the new Bah' paradigm a
meaningful whole as they work out their style of participation.
COMMUNITY BUILDING AND HOUSES OF WORSHIP:
Section 1:
With the construction of the last of the continental temples in
Santiago nearing completion in the months ahead, the initiation of
projects for building national Houses of Worship offers yet another
gratifying evidence of the penetration of the Faith of God into the
soil of society. The House of Justice made this point nearly three
years ago in its Ridvan 2012 message. They went on to say that "the
Mashriqu'l-Adhkar, described by 'Abdu'1-Baha as "one of the most
vital institutions of the world", weds two essential, inseparable
aspects of Bah' life: worship and service. The union of these two is
also reflected in the coherence that exists among the communitybuilding features of the Plan, particularly the burgeoning of a
devotional spirit that finds expression in gatherings for prayer and an
educational process that builds capacity for service to humanity."
The community-building work, the House of Justice emphasized in
its Ridvan 2013 message, "influences aspects of culture."

In that same message the Bah' community was informed that they
were "entering into consultations with respective National Spiritual
Assemblies regarding the erection of the first local House of
Worship in each of the following clusters: Battambang, Cambodia;
Bihar Sharif, India; Matunda Soy, Kenya; Norte del Cauca,
Colombia; and Tanna, Vanuatu." To support the construction of the
two national and five local Mashriqu'l-Adhkars, a Temples Fund at
the Bah' World Centre has been established "for the benefit of all
such projects," and "the friends everywhere were invited to
contribute to it sacrificially, as their means allowed."(Ridvan 2012)
The House of Justice noted that the process of entry by troops had
advanced enough to merit the construction of a national MashriqulAdhkar in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Papua New
Guinea. According to the House of Justice, the construction of the
Temple in Chile and those new houses of worship marked the Fifth
Epoch of the Formative Age of the Faith. Bahais who have been
keeping up with the news of international teaching successes will be
aware of the logic of these building announcements. A document
from 2008, Attaining the dynamics growth: Glimpses from ve
continents prepared by the International Teaching Centre outlined
several of these localities. Among them: Bihar Sharif in India which
is a predominantly rural area with 1200 villages each with 1000
average population. Matunda Soy and Tiriki West clusters in Kenya
were noted for their achievements in the 2008 Regional conference
as part of the international Five Year conferences. A personal Bahai
blog from Tiriki West cluster offers a bit more detail. Another
locality with this distinction is Norte del Cauca in Colombia which is
the site of the original Ruhi courses.
Section 2:
"Responding to the inmost longing of every heart to commune with

its Maker," wrote the House of Justice at Ridvan 2008, many of the
believers are carrying out "acts of collective worship in diverse
settings, uniting with others in prayer, awakening spiritual
susceptibilities, and shaping a pattern of life distinguished for its
devotional character." And as the House continued: "As they call on
one another in their homes and pay visits to families, friends and
acquaintances, they enter into purposeful discussion on themes of
spiritual import, deepen their knowledge of the Faith, share
Bahullhs message, and welcome increasing numbers to join
them in a mighty spiritual enterprise. As a final note the first Bah'
temple, built in Ashkhabad, Russia, which no longer exists, was part
of a compound including schools, a hospital and a guest house. It
was completed in 1908 and there have been, then, more than 100
years of temple constructions around the Bah' world. In the years
following the Communist Revolution, sadly, nearly all Bah's there
were exiled or deported, the men to Siberia, and the women and
children to Iran. Today Bah's are still found in Ashkhabad, but the
government does not formally recognize the Bah' Faith. As part of
this new paradigm, the building of temples is yet another context for
the expression of the new Bah' culture.
As recently as 1 August 2014, nearly six months ago as I write this
update, the House of Justice wrote in relation to these new Houses of
Worship that "these undertakings, inextricably linked to the
development of community life now being fostered everywhere....are
further steps in the sublime task entrusted to humanity by
Bah'u'llh." In a lengthy letter about "the heartening advances" in
relation to the construction of several of these temples, the Supreme
Body emphasized what they referred to as "the dynamic interaction
between worship and endaevours to uplift the social, spiritual and
material conditions of society." I could quote at greated length
insofar as this recent letter is concerned but, again, I leave it to
readers to keep abreast with the ongoing elucidation of the many, the

multitude, of the aspects and details in relation to this new Bah'

culture of learning and community life.
Section 3:
During the first two decades of this new Bah' culture the institution
of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar has been frequently elaborated-upon,
refined and discussed in letters from the House of Justice. Horace
Holley, the long-time secretary of the NSA of the Bah's of the USA
before he died in 1960 wrote the following more than 75 years ago.
"Many discerning minds have testified to the profoundly significant
change which has taken place during recent years in the character of
popular religious thinking. Religion has developed an entirely new
emphasis, more especially for the layman, quite independent of the
older sectarian divisions. Instead of considering that religion is a
matter of turning toward an abstract creed, the average religionist
today is concerned with the practical applications of religion to the
problems of human life. Religion, in brief, after having apparently
lost its influence in terms of theology, has been restored more
powerfully than ever as a spirit of brotherhood, an impulse toward
unity, and an ideal making for a more enlightened civilization
throughout the world.
Against this background, the institution of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkr stands
revealed as the supreme expression of all those modern religious tendencies
animated by social ideals which do not repudiate the reality of spiritual
experience but seek to transform it into a dynamic striving for unity. The
Mashriqu'l-Adhkr, when clearly understood, gives the world its most potent
agency for applying mystical vision or idealistic aspiration to the service of
humanity. It makes visible and concrete those deeper meanings and wider
possibilities of religion which could not be realized until the dawn of this
universal age. The term `Mashriqu'l-Adhkr' means literally, `Dawning-place of
the praise of God'. To apprec
e the significance of this Bah` institution, we must lay aside all customary
ideas of the churches and cathedrals of the past. The Mashriqu'l-Adhkr fulfils
the original intention of religion in each

dispensation, before that intention

had become altered and veiled by human invention and belief.

The Mashriqu'l-Adhkr is a channel releasing spiritual powers for
social regeneration because it fills a different function than that
assumed by the sectarian church. Its essential purpose is to provide a
community meeting-place for all who are seeking to worship God,
and achieves this purpose by interposing no man-made veils between
the worshipper and the Supreme. Thus, the Mashriqu'l-Adhkr is freely open
to people of all Faiths on equal terms, who now realize the universality of
Bah`u'llh in revealing the oneness of all the Prophets. Moreover, since the
Bah` Faith has no professional clergy, the worshipper entering the Temple
hears no sermon and takes part in no ritual the emotional effect of which is to
establish a separate group consciousness. Integral with the Temple are its
accessory buildings, without which the Mashriqu'l-Adhkr would not be a
complete social institution. These buildings are to be devoted to such activities
as a school for science, a hospice, a hospital, an asylum for orphans. Here the
circle of spiritual experience at last joins, as prayer and worship are allied
directly to creative service, eliminating the static subjective elements from
religion and laying foundation for a new and higher type of human association.

Section 4:
"The Bahs of Iran are of course fully conversant with the concept
of the Mashriqul-Adhkr," as the House of Justice pointed out on
14/12/'14. "From the earliest days," that institution went on to say,
"following the revelation of this law, the friends in the Cradle of the
Faith became aware of its significance and committed to its
realization within the limited means that their circumstances allowed
them. In time, not only did they become the principal force for the
construction of the Mashriqul-Adhkr in Ishqbd, but within Iran
too the practice of regular dawn prayers took root and inspired
service to humankind, with the vision that the seed they were
planting would in time flower into tangible reality, yielding its fruit
not only in the construction of these centres of worship, but in the
creation of dependencies for humanitarian service which that
worship would inspire." I will conclude this section of my book with

the words of Shoghi Effendi on the subject. "Divorced from the

social, humanitarian, educational and scientific pursuits centring
around the Dependencies of the Mashriqul-Adhkr," the Guardian
emphasized, "Bah worship, however exalted in its conception,
however passionate in fervour, can never hope to achieve beyond the
meagre and often transitory results produced by the contemplations
of the ascetic or the communion of the passive worshiper. It cannot
afford lasting satisfaction and benefit to the worshiper himself, much
less to humanity in general, unless and until translated and
transfused into that dynamic and disinterested service to the cause of
humanity which it is the supreme privilege of the Dependencies of
the Mashriqul- Adhkr to facilitate and promote." I could quote
from this same lengthy letter & other sources extensively,but I leave
it to readers with the interest to search-out the development of this
Bah' institution during the last two decades.
THE INTERNET
Part 1:
We are all dwelling in cyberspace, coursing through the wires,
becoming cyborg and becoming human, alone at the keyboard,
together online. We are subjects of a realm which offers new ways of
envisioning Self & Other. Cyberspace is a type of parallel universe
where a global cyberculture is in the process of creation.
Cyberculture is devoted to an examination of the new subjectivities
& collectivities that are emerging. As a member of this new
technological society I am interested in the cultural and political,
philosophical and psychological, historical and economic issues
engendered, on all levels of the social. Of course, it must be
remembered that over half the world's peoples have no access to this
new technology as I write these words in January 2015.

The spectacular introduction of what are called the new technologies

into the production, diffusion, distribution and consumption of
cultural commodities, of which literary works of all kinds are but
one of these commodities, is in the process of transforming culture.
This is true, as I say, of the culture within which I live and have my
being, but it is not yet true for all the peoples of the world in our
planetary culture. This process, this transformation, was beginning to
occur just as I retired from a half century student-employment life,
1949 to 1999. The result is that, for me, reinvented as a writer and
author, poet and publisher, editor and researcher, scholar and reader,
online blogger and journalist, in the years 1999 to 2015, I was able
to find literally millions of readers. The Latin expression "mirabile
dictu" applies to my online experience; I learned the phrase in high
school Latin more than 50 years ago, and I leave it to readers with
the interest to Google it, as they say more and more these days.
Part 2:
The following passage from Century of Light(p.133), published in
2001 was prescient of developments that have taken place both in
the Bah' community and in the wider world: The system, so
prophetically foreseen sixty years ago by Shoghi Effendi, builds a
sense of shared community among its users that is impatient of either
geographic or cultural distances. This description of the sense of
shared community created by the internet was clearly, as I say, a
prescient insight into the evolution of internet use worldwide as
published in that Bah' publication in 2001. It is interesting to note
that Friendster began in 2001, Linkedin and Myspace in 2003, and
Facebook in 2004, and that statement in Century of Light, that
analysis, preceded the social networking revolution, or at least was
coextensive with its earlier years from the mid-to-late 1990s. This
book itself is part of that revolution in communication in the last two
decades, decades synchronizing with this new Bah' culture. At the

same time I am only too aware that we all communicate by means of

an instrument that is most powerfully aware of its inadequacy to
communicate. Language itself is often an expression of one's inner
tension. As the Guardian once put it: "the devoted believer always
feels that he has failed because in comparison to what he desires to
give, his services seem so inadequate."(Four On an island, p.100)
The information revolution set off in the closing decade of the 20th
century by the invention of the World Wide Web transformed
irreversibly much of human activity. Internet communication, which
has the ability to transmit in seconds the entire contents of libraries
that took centuries of study to amass, vastly enriches the intellectual
life of anyone able to use it, as well as providing sophisticated
training in a broad range of professional fields, again, for those with
the interest. The system, as I say, so prophetically foreseen many
decades ago by Shoghi Effendi, builds a sense of shared community
among its users that is impatient of either geographic or cultural
distances. It is this shared community that I have drawn on in my
own work both inside the Bah' community and out---especially in
cyberspace---in these years of my retirement from FT, PT and
casual-volunteer work. Coincidentally this has taken place in the
first two decades of the development of the new Bah' culture.
In the first year after I retired from FT work, July 1999 to July 2000,
Google officially became the world's largest search engine. With its
introduction of a billion-page index by June 2000 much of the
internet's content became available in a searchable format at one
search engine. The new Bah' culture had then just finished its first
organized teaching Plan within this new culture of learning. In the
next several years, 2000-2005, as I was retiring from PT work as
well as casual and most volunteer activity, that had occupied me for
decades, Google entered into a series of partnerships and made a
series of innovations that brought their vast internet enterprise

billions of users in the international marketplace. I was one and I

became a published author more extensively than I had ever been
with thousands upon thousands of readers, indeed, probably
millions; it became impossible to count my readership since it was
spread across some 8000+ internet sites and among some 2 billion
users of the world-wide-web.
Not only did Google have billions of users, but internet users like
myself throughout the world gained access to billions of web
documents in Googles growing index/library. The information
revolution set off in the closing decade of the 20th century by the
invention of the World Wide Web transformed irreversibly much of
human activity, especially communication between people. Internet
communication, which has the ability to transmit in seconds, as I
say, the entire contents of libraries that took centuries of study to
amass, vastly enriched the intellectual life of anyone able to use it, as
well as providing sophisticated training in a broad range of
professional fields, fields that I was very interested in exploring,
have done so and will do in the years ahead. It was a finer and more
useful library than any of those in the small towns where I would
spend my retirement in the years ahead in the third millennium. It
was also a library with a myriad locations in which I could interact
with others and engage in learning and teaching in ways I had never
dreamt of in the first five decades of my life as a student and teacher:
1949-1999, and the first four decades of my life as a Bah': 19591999.
Part 3:
This new technology had also developed sufficiently by the time I
had freed myself from FT, PT and all volunteer work(except that
associated with my writing) to a stage, as I say, that gave me the
opportunity, the capacity to post, write, indeed, publish is quite an

appropriate term, on the internet at the same time. From 1999 to

2005, as I say, I released myself from FT, PT, casual and most
volunteer work, and Google and Microsoft offered more and more
technology for my writing activity for my work in a Cause that I had
devoted my life to since my late teens and early twenties. But, most
importantly, I was able to teaching the Cause in direct and indirect
ways, more extensively than in the first forty years of my
membership.
I now go to religion and philosophy sites, history, sociology, indeed,
all the social sciences and humanities sites that I can find, as well as
the physical, biological and applied sciences. Sometimes I mention
the Cause right away and sometimes I dont, but I join the dialogue
as best I can across a wide-range of communities. The Internet has
become emblematic in many respects of globalisation. The sites I
join and the people on them are spread across the planet. The
planetary system of the web is a fibre optic cable system and it
instantaneously transfers information. By many accounts, one of the
essential keys to understanding the transformation of the world into
some degree of order and the ability to imagine the world as a single,
global space, is this world-wide-web. The Internet has widely been
viewed as an essential catalyst of contemporary globalisation and it
has been central to debates about what globalisation means and
where it will lead.
MILLIONS OF READERS:
AN EXERCISE OF PERSONAL INITIATIVE
There are now several hundred thousand readers, perhaps millions,
engaged in parts of my internet tapestry, my jig-saw puzzle, my
literary product, my creation, my immense pile of words across the
internet--and hundreds of people with whom I correspond on

occasion as a result. I keep this interchange as brief as I can when

people write to me; if I did not I would be worn to a pulp by the
sheer amount of literary contact with others. This amazing technical
facility, the world wide web, has made this literary contact and
success possible. If my writing had been left in the hands of the
traditional hard and soft cover publishers, where it had been without
success when I was employed full time as a teacher, lecturer, adult
educator and casual/volunteer teacher from 1981 to 2001, these
results and this contact with others would never have been achieved.
I have been asked how I have come to have so many readers at my
website and on my internet tapestry of writing that I have created
across the world-wide-web. My literary product is just another form
of published writing in addition to the traditional forms in the hands
of publishers. The literally hundreds of thousands of readers(perhaps
even millions since it has become impossible to keep even an
accurate account of all those who come across what I write and see
the name of the Cause) I have at locations on my tapestry of prose
and poetry, a tapestry I have sewn in a loose-fitting warp and weft
across the internet, are found at over 8000 websites where I have
registered: forums, message boards, discussion sites, blogs, locations
for debate and the exchange of views.
These are sites to place essays, articles, books, ebooks, poems and
other genres of writing. I have registered at this multitude of sites,
placed the many forms of my literary output there and engaged in
discussions with literally thousands of people, little by little and day
by day over the last decade. I enjoy these results without ever having
to deal with publishers as I did for two decades without any success.
I go to: Christian and Jewish sites, Buddhist and Hindu, Islamic and
Bahai sites, sites for sects and cults, denominations and branches,
isms and wasms.

The internet is a cornucopia of accurate, well-argued and

knowledgeable information. But it is also a place for specious and
spurious, inaccurate and beguiling arguments. People who know
little about an issue are often easily taken-in on the internet. Many
often believe a u-tube post they can see to one that requires study
and reading on their part. The internet, like many forms of
technology before it, is both boon and beast, asset and debit, to the
lives of its participants. Indeed, a quite separate section of this book
could be devoted to the negative and positive impacts of cyberspace,
a space which has itself developed a whole new world---a new
technological paradigm--during the first two decades of this new
Bahai paradigm.
SOME CRITIQUES OF THE CAUSE IN CYBERSPACE
Some writers with an axe to grind, so to speak, earnestly seek to
present their views of this new Faith as a detached commentary on a
body of neutral "facts." They often appear in the guise of
dispassionate scholars and commentators with their years of patient
research or extensive community experience. The concluding or
continuing efforts of their literary careers, or just their grinding axes
are found increasingly in cyberspace. Their posts often begin with an
assertion that they are writing for the purpose of presenting in a
concise or not so concise, an orderly or not so orderly fashion, the
facts which have been established, or other trustworthy scholars
have established. Sometimes their posts have nothing to do with
scholarship, but it is clear within a few words or a sentence or two,
that they don't like the Bah' Faith, that their experience of it over a
few months or a few, or indeed, many, years, has been negative.
The disgruntled and the disillusioned Bah', or X-Bah', or
disenrolled Bah', or covenant-breaker, that person as I say above
with some axe to grind, make it their job to let everyone who reads

what they write know that this latest of the Abrahamic religions is
many things, and they are all negative. In a religion of millions there
are inevitably going to be people who have negative experiences
when they join or after they have been in this Faith for sometime. If
one was to judge this religion by these people one would make a
quick exit. I should add that if one judged any religion or
philosophy, if one judged atheism, agnosticism or any of the isms,
by the experience of those holding some religious or philosophical
position one would not be anything. Even nihilists and indifferents,
or the so-called unbiased scholars, all have their members, all groups
holding any position at all, have people who do not represent the
best of those positions, people whose behaviour is far from
exemplary.
The posts of such people often end with the measured question "can
the Bahai World Faith be an adequate religion for the world today,
and for the millennium to come? The magisterial judgement of such
individuals is often "decidedly negative." Their opinions of Bahai
administration and the Bahai community often leave this reader
wondering if the community they are writing about is the same one I
have been a member of for over half a century. As I have also
mentioned elsewhere in this book, publicity is given in cyberspace to
groups of Bah's who are given the term 'sects.' If one took such
people seriosuly one would come away with the view that the Bah'
Faith is divided into at least half a dozen distinct and separate
divisions. The internet is, as I have emphasized elsewhere, a place
for highly informative and scholarly posts as well as erroreous and
ill-informed individuals---with that proverbial axe-to-grind.
At the same time, after decades of participation in many different
Bahai communities, I have seen many a person join the Cause,
become disillusioned and leave. I have seen many become so critical
of others and of Bahai institutions that they find it very difficult to

see the wonders and beauties of this Cause. When one becomes a
Bahai the tests often come hard and fast, as Abdul-Baha said they
would as far back as 1911---before He began his western tour of
Europe and North America. The frustrations involved in teaching
this Cause also add to the above mix which I have briefly
described---resulting in an emotional over-boil, so to speak. The
result is negative posts on the internet by frustrated and discouraged
Bahais, x-Bahais, disgruntled Bahais, inter alter.
Often the posts and articles, essays and think-pieces of various
writers on the world-wide-web have an air of thoroughness and
authority. Where matters of belief and religious practice are
discussed, the author's own opinions are closely woven into the
fabric of quotation and reference. The most damning conclusions are
presented in a tone of surprise and regret. Sometimes the writing is
heavily footnoted, drawing on an apparently wide range of sources;
and sometimes it is not. A degree of animus is often unmistakable,
an animus often deriving from some experience in Bahai community
life which, as I say above, has left the author cynical and sceptical, if
not totally disillusioned and wanting to tell everyone and anyone
who will listen and read what he or she has to say in cyberspace's
endless spaces.
In an international community of millions of souls it is not surprising
that some of its members lose whatever passion of belief they once
had. Such disillusionment happens to people in all groups, to say
nothing of disillusionment that sets into the lives of those who never
join a formal group. The last century or so is littered with the
disillusionment of people's former passions and ideals. The lives of
millions of souls and a library of books now documents the details of
this massive and personal discouragement both inside this new Faith
and outside across a myriad of groups and individuals.

PASSION AND DEDICATION

Whether an individual knows it or not he or she forms their own self
as they work toward the perfection of their lives. This self achieves
its highest, its finest, expression when burning passion and a cool
judgement work together in the same soul. This was the view of
arguably the greatest sociologist of the last 200 years, Max Weber.
But this passion and judgement must work together so that neither
the passion nor the intellectual guidance lose their commanding
force. They both need to be ductile enough so as to be relied upon
when, in the face of the passion that may blind us, we need to gather
the strength to subdue the soul, and when, in the face of a world
which seems to have dashed all hopes, we need to say nevertheless
and, immune from discouragement, be ready to make still another
effort?
We all need to be, increasingly, beings of insight and endurance who
can confront the fate of the times and, instead of passively yearning
and resignedly waiting, we can wholeheartedly embrace our longing,
whether in science, politics or art, whether in the context of the
Bah' paradigm or in our own personal and everyday lives, and,
spurred by this embrace, set out to the task before us. Such is the
context we need to meet the demands of the day and, beyond that, to
seek to bring about the highest human possibilities. It is true that
obligation is first, but it is not less true that devotion is higher.
We also need to experience a compulsion toward a cause, a cause
felt as if one has been called to it, or for which one has been born. It
is a kind of inner necessity stemming from love or desire and thus
inwardly generated. Contrary to the compulsion stemming from fear,
that stemming from love cannot, by its very nature, be imposed from
without. It is part of ones innermost being as given by nature.
Therefore, it is inescapable and yet at the same time amenable to

growth and development, and receptive to appropriate education

one able to arouse and foster it. It is this love which we need to be
able to summons in order to find and obey. This is the daemon
that holds the threads of ones life. The injunction become who
you are may be another way of expressing it.
This force, this summoning, is creative or productive; it is directed to
the positive construction of something worthwhile or to the
transformation of the world. It is not the mere avoidance of an evil,
although it is partly that. This productive character is a very complex
feature, as it is usually only through long and disciplined hard work
that the creative acts and productions of science or politics, art or
religion may come to light.
Devotion or dedication involves much more than diligence. We must
not only be diligent; he must be obsessed in our devotion. The core
meaning of this obsession lies in sacrifice or giving oneself over to a
cause, to the point of perishing in the calling. I am aware that the
mere mention of devotion or dedication may sound shrill, to say
the least, in liberal earsthose who conform to the prevailing fear of
any passionate commitment. What is desired is the strength of mind
and heart to be inwardly alive and persevere in ones devotion. Such
a person is not only the teller of what is, the teller of their own
story, but also the seeker after the highest possibilities in their own
life and the life of their community. Nothing is worthy of man as
man unless he can pursue it with passion, even if passion alone,
assuming that it could exist in any form other than as sterile
excitement, is of course not sufficient.
By linking biography and history, individual and society, self and
world, the famous sociologist C. W. Mills sought to show that
underlying peoples experience of difficulty, anxiety or apathy and
the troubles and issues they confront are the fundamental problems,

the problems of reason and liberty, which are not only the
imaginative sociologists problems but also Everyman's.(C.W. Mills,
The Sociological Imagination, Oxford UP, 1959; and Carlos Frade,
The Sociological Imagination and Its Promise 50 Years Later: Is
There a future for the Social Sciences as a Free Form of Enquiry? in
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy,
vol. 5, no. 2, 2009)
DEDICATIONS
This work is dedicated, as I have mentioned at the outset of this
book, to the Universal House of Justice, trustee of the global
undertaking which the events of a century ago set in motion. The
fully institutionalized and legitimate charismatic Force, a Force that
historically found its expression in the Person of Bahaullah, has
effloresced at the apex of Bahai administration by a process of
succession, of appointment and election, for half a century as I write
these words on 3/5/'13.
I have also written this book as a form of dedication to an estimated
15,000 to 25,000 Bahais and Babis who have given their lives for
this Cause from the 1840s to the first decade of this third
millennium. This dedication includes the many best teachers and
exemplary believers--those ordinary Bahais--who have run this
marathon of the spirit, consecrated themselves, indeed their lives, to
the work of this Faith before they continued their marathon and
stepped into the worlds of light in the mysterious country beyond.
Finally, I have written this work in memory of my maternal
grandfather, Alfred Cornfield, whose life from 1872 to 1958 has
always been for me a model of an engagement in a culture of
learning and personal growth. Undisturbed reading and research,
writing and solitude made my grandfather happy, and these same

activities have made me happy, especially in the evening of my life.

I also write this book in memory of the many mentors I have had in
my reading life, and as I went about my daily business. These were
mentors whose writing and habits, comportment and deportment,
have been an inspiration to me over several decades. Indeed, I could
write a separate book filled with mini-biographies of these
exemplary souls, people both within and without the Bah'
community who have helped me on my way, often unbeknownst to
themselves.
A LIFETIME OF LEARNING
The traditional division between work and play does not really apply
in the context of my life in these days of my retirement after a
working life, of FT and PT jobs, over a period of more than 50 years:
1950 to 2003. In his autobiography Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe(1749-1832) warned his readers that what they wish for in
their youth they may get in their adult life. I have spent a lifetime,
my adult life, learning and I am grateful that my fate has given me
precisely that. It was something I wished for in my youth: something
I could throw myself into with passion & intensity to fill my spirit to
overflowing. This something came into my life by sensible &
insensible degrees during the years of my adult life: early, middle
and late adulthood, the years from 20 to 40, 40 to 60 and 60 to 70,
respectively. This lifetime of learning was also the central means I
found to serve this Cause for I was: a teacher and lecturer, a tutor
and adult educator, among many other roles, over those 50 years.
In my many educational roles, it was a quintessential necessity that I
became a learner not only from books but from my students. I also
became, by those same sensible and insensible degrees, a writer and
author, a poet and publisher, an editor and online journalist and
blogger, an independent scholar and researcher with an obsession,

what became a type of compulsive creativity. Some have blamed,

indeed I often think this is the case, the source of this tendency on
my bipolar disorder(BPD). That may be partly true. I have written a
300+ page book here at Bahai Library Online(BLO) on my
experience of BPD if readers want to follow-up on this idea. In all of
these roles, among others, I have been able to serve the Bah' cause,
among other occupations and duties, demands and responsibilities,
sometimes with satisfaction and pleasure, and sometimes with
confusion and bewilderment. As it says in the Quran the pen of a
scholar is more valuable than the blood of a martyr. This is an
interesting concept which I have written about in other contexts, but
will leave for a more detailed discussion later in this book.
FINDING YOUR NICHE
Finding a niche within which to serve this Cause is a sine qua non
for all Bahais: for the veteran and the novitiate, for those who were
Bahais before this new paradigm and for those who entered the
Cause after those fin de siecle years of the twentieth century when
this new paradigm found its inception. Although the niche in which I
now serve the Cause is one heavily laden with print and
communicating with others in cyberspace, I long ago learned to
avoid the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge of
the world but that of books. "The most learned," that fine essayist
William Hazlitt once observed, "are often the most narrow-minded."
Having spent many years in institutions of higher learning I am more
than a little aware of this reality.
This new paradigm provides a multitude of niches; indeed, this book
argues that everyone can find a niche if they want to be active agents
of their own learning, if they want to engage in some pattern of
action suited to their own personality constructs, if they want to be
involved in what has become a complex of networks in a growing

new religion with an important part to play in the unification of the

peoples of the world. Some of those who are at present wholly
unaware of Bahaullah's coming and who are not acquainted with the
society-building power of this Faith will, in the years ahead, enter
into conversation with Bahais and come into contact with this new
culture of learning and growth which has been so painstakingly
developed in the last two decades: 1996-2016, and in its several
global Plans.
This culture of learning is part of a global enterprise of personal
concern now to millions of adherents of this Cause. Indeed, the wellbeing of the total human family and the individual families of the
Bahais are interlocked in a common concern, in a communitas
communitatum, a community of communities. For many, as has
always been the case, since the Babi-Bah' Faith had its origins in
the middle of the 19th century, their niche is largely on the sidelines.
Such people were, for decades, called "inactive believers", but this
term has died away in most places. All organizations, and the Bah'
Faith is no different in this respect, have a portion of their members
who play passive and inactive roles.
One can use many terms for such members across all groups and
causes, organizations and institutions: apathetic and asleep, noncompliant and docile, going through the motions and idle, indifferent
and inert, motionless and phlegmatic, quiet and sleepy, static and
stolid, unassertive and uninvolved. Some Bah's worry about such
members of the community, and some don't. There are always, and
in addition, some members who actively work against the aims and
purposes of the Cause and this, too, has always been true. One can
not and should not measure the organization they belong to by its
weakest links. Otherwise no organization would be seen as an
attractive entity, and individualism itself would be a cause not
worthy or anyone's commitment. Millions in the wider world sleep-

on-indifferent, chilled and vulnerable to the evils the night conceals.

Each of us must be vigilant for vast numbers are sleeping and dark
terrors stalk the streets. Many of these terrors are as insidious as the
shadows that rise up in peoples' minds to diminish this new Faith
and deflect us from the purpose of our existence. We are so easily
deflected by the distractions of our culture that fill the spaces and the
many hours of our time. People are easily disaffected and we should
not worry about them; they are as foam as Abdul-Baha once referred
to many who are called. The price of ecstacy in the Cause exacts
heavy dues and not all the dues get paid as the journey has many
twists and turns in our lifespan.
THIS BOOK: AN OVERVIEW
This book is, as far as I know, the longest analysis and commentary
on this new Bahai paradigm that is currently available in the Bahai
community. The overarching perspective in this book is a quite
personal one that attempts to answer the question: "where do I fit
into this new paradigm?" Readers are left to work out their own
response to this question as readers inevitably must now and in the
decades ahead as this new paradigm develops a life of its own within
the framework already established in the first 20 years of its
operation: 1996 to 2016. By 21 April 2013 this current Plan will be
two years old. By the end of the current Five Year Plan, 2011 to
2016, on 21 April 2016, this new Bahai culture will have been
developing, as I say, for two full decades. The question now is not
"if" but "how" each Bahai is to engage themselves, to participate, in
this new paradigm, this system of limitless potentiality. This is a
work that I like to think is of value to anyone who has ever thought
at all about this new Bahai culture and who would like to think about
it more deeply than he or she has thusfar. I am more than a little
aware that more than 700 pages is just too much in our world of
print and image-glut, and that simple talks and videos, little booklets

and short posts on the subject get a better press, are more popular,
but this lengthy analysis has its place in the same way that many,
very many, big and fat books have in Bah' libraries all around the
world, a place they have had for the last two centuries of Babi-Bah'
history.
Still I have little doubt that the mass of humankind, as well as the
Bahai community, will eat, drink, sleep, and perform their many and
diverse tasks, and do as their lives dictate by circumstances and
creativity, desire and duty, without casting an eye on this book. They
will care nothing for my scribbling and enthusiasms as well as
whatever carping and quibbling readers see here.I like to think these
finely-spun distinctions, interesting theories and lines of analysis and
demarcation that I include in this work, will be seen by a significant
coterie,if not significantly, due to the great mass of information now
available. We in the West face a print and image glut. I would argue
there are many useful lines of thought here, but these pages will not
possess, for many a reader, any advantage over their own wit,
genius, shrewdness, or melting tenderness. Sometimes, of course,
they will; sometimes they won't. With some two-thirds of the world
still without access to the net and with most of the several million
Bahais engaged in activities other than reading extensive postings
like this one, I have no illusions about the impact of this work. As I
say above: this book has had some 30 to 40 thousand clicks over the
last eight years, a needle in the haystack that is cyberspace.
In two February 2013 messages from the House of Justice here in
Australia a focus was placed on the receptivity of youth in the
Sydney area. The House also announced in a February 2013 message
that 95 youth conferences would be held around the world from July
through October 2013. In October 2013, the current Five Year
Plan(2011-2016) will be exactly half over. In April 2013, the House
of Justice celebrated 50 years at the apex of Bah' administration.

Youth have always made a decisive contribution to all the Bah'

paradigms. Many youth, after only a brief association with the
Cause, contribute significantly to its community-building.
Community building, as I have pointed out elsewhere in this book,
and as the Supreme Body points out again and again,"influences
aspects of culture." In some ways this hardly needs saying; it is only
too obvious.
Youth, generally speaking those in their teens and twenties, have
often been the recipient of messages from the House of Justice as so
often, from the 1920s to the 1950s, the Guardian wrote about the
contribution of the youth. Ninety-five conferences is an
unprecedented number over the face of the globe and it will be an
opportunity for youth to steel themselves for service as this current
FYP comes to its end in 2016 and the first century of the Formative
Age comes to its end in 2021.
As the House of Justice concludes this 8/2/'13 message to youth, or
more accurately about youth, the goal of the youth is "to bring those
who have been excluded into the circle of intimate friends." This
was a goal I had back in the 1960s when the House wrote its first
message to youth on 10 June 1966, but this message enlarges on the
role of youth and sets it in a framework of this new Bah' culture.
Each of the youth, according to their individual capacities and the
possibilities before them, is being asked to reach out to their
families, their friends, their colleagues and acquaintances inviting
them, as circumstances permit, to core activities and going to their
homes for Home Visits, among other things. This is all part of this
new Bah' culture.
"So overwhelming has been the response," wrote the House of
Justice in April 2013, "that a further complement of gatherings is
required." An additional 19 conferences will be convened in this

same period. This announcement came on 1 May 2013. This most

recent announcement illustrates that it is impossible in this book to
deal with all the developments that arise each year in the context of
this new Bah' culture. There are also hundreds, indeed, thousands
of letters and messages that go out to specific national Bah'
communities as well as to individuals in the 150,000 localities where
Bah's reside. With between 700 and 900 people working in Israel
at the Bah' world centre dealing on a daily basis with incoming
communications from the 200+ Bah' national communities it is
impossible for this book to cover what is happening except by means
of the Universal House of Justice messages to the Bah's of the
World. The House focusses in their letters and messages on those
who are becoming active participants in establishing copmmunitybuilding activities, and populations that are moving in various ways
toward the teachings of Bah'u'llh. People who are immersing
themselves in some aspect of the Bah' culture or just having more
contact with: its literature, its buildings, its study circles and tutors,
its devotional meetings and its youth animators,inter alia, are given
more emphasis and regular activities that are having more success
than others are highlighted. The deep reservoirs of commitment, for
example, that youth often possess toward significant social change
are spoken-of highly by the House of Justice time and time again.
Before concluding this emphasis on youth, I should mention the
merit of the junior youth empowerment program which, as the
House wrote in a letter to the NSA of the Bah's of Australia on
20/2/'13: "lies in its effectiveness at enhancing the power of
expression and the quality of spiritual perception within its
participants." The House wrote much more but these words give the
tone and texture of the current emphasis of this youth empowerment
program which is embedded in the wider scheme of community
building, and which is part of the organic unfoldment of the
educational process and the institute process within this new Bah'

culture.
BURGEONING RESOURCES AND THE NEW MEDIA
Ours is a world of burgeoning sources and resources from the print
and electronic media, of that print and image-glut. A writer like
myself should have no illusions about the popularity of his work
which is but a drop in the ocean of visual and auditory material and
their worlds which threaten to swamp, to inundate, the average
person who seeks to get a handle on the plethora of issues facing him
and his society. Today, as I was working on this latest update, this
latest edit, of this book, the Bah' World Centre released a video, a
film, over one hour in length, which summarizes this new Bah'
culture. The film is entitled: Frontiers of Learning. For those who
prefer audio-visual means in their learning, this film will accomplish
what this book is trying to do. And it will do so much more simply.
The new media of which the world-wide-web is but one, play an
important part in providing on-demand access to content any time,
anywhere, on any digital device. It can also provide, on many
occasions, what is now called interactive user feedback. This is a
form of creative and often critical participation. It is also an aid to
community formation and consolidation around the media content
and around the planet; as well, it might be added, it is an aid to of
divisiveness and fractured community.
Another important promise of what some now call the New Media is
the "democratization"---the creation, publishing, distribution and
consumption of media content. The rise of this new media has
increased communication between people all over the world in
cyberspace through the Internet. It has allowed people to express
themselves through blogs, websites, pictures, and other usergenerated media. As a result of the evolution of these new media

technologies, globalization occurs much more extensively.

Globalization consists of more than just the expansion of activities
beyond the boundaries of particular nation states. Globalization
shortens the distance between people all over the world by the speed
of electronic communication. These activities and processes have all
taken place in the background, in the wider society, and a part of this
new Bahai paradigm from 1996 to the present. Part of the success in
achieving the goals of this new paradigm is the extent to which
youth, as well as adults, utilize the internet effectively in bringing
this new Faith to their contemporaries.
PERMISSION TO PUBLISH ON THE INTERNET
I have been given permission by the Review Office of the NSA of
the Bahais of the USA to publish my autobiographical writing on the
internet. That Office pointed out to me several years ago that, if I
wanted to put this writing in the cover of a book, I would have to go
through a further process of review. In Australia, no process of
review is required on the world-wide-web. Much of this book is
simply a literary instrument tempered in the crucible of my
experience, an experience of this Cause going back to the beginning
of the ninth stage of its history, the years 1953 to 1963, what was
and is called the Ten Year Crusade, the third stage of the first epoch
of Abdul-Baha's Divine Plan. This Plan could be said to have now
witnessed several paradigmatic shifts since its inception in 1919 and
its systematic implementation after a hiatus of well-nigh two
decades---in the first Seven Year Plan of 1937 to 1944. That first
Plan had more than a little importance to me because it was then that
my parents met and married and I was born. This Plan has provided,
in some ways, a framework for my entire life. I can now see, as I
head into my 70s in the next few months, how my entire life has
been shaped and contextualized in terms of Abdul-Baha's divine
Plan.

I sought permission to publish in cyberspace as the 21st century

turned its corner because a great deal of serious discussion was
taking place on the net. After more than half a century of association
with this Cause, I had spent a good deal of my life studying it. The
internet provided for me, as it does for all those who are well-versed
in the Bah' teachings and are attracted to the immense value that
sites on the world-wide-web provide for teaching, a myriad
opportunities for teaching. Cyberspace is like another world where
every possible view of the Cause is found and this has only been the
case during the years of this new Bah' culture. I have done more
explicit teaching, direct-mainline, so to speak, than I had done in the
years from 1953 to 2003, half a century in real space. I go to the sites
of all the major religions, the major philosophies, the sites for
skeptics and cynics, every conceivable topic under the sun and
spread the seeds of the Cause in the best way I know how. Many
other Bah's are in cyberspace. Given the fact that there are between
5 and 8 million Bah's in the world, my guess is that something
approaching a third of these people use the net in some way or
another. That is just a guesstimation.
INTERPRETATIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS
However personal my perspective may be I want to emphasize that
no single perspective is adequate to the task I have set myself in this
book. The story, the narration, of my own experience is an
interpretive one, a refashioning so to speak of my past and not a
simple mirroring of what I have experienced; it is a re-figuring and
an updating. Standards are various, the actions and events of
individuals and communities are many-faceted and the most
important activities often proceed from mixed and complex motives
of individuals and groups. My language and my approach is intended
to open-up a multiplication of meanings. The result I am sure will

be, for some reader of this now 500+ page book, a tension between
what he or she expects of me as the author of this book and what
they experience as they read its many pages. I feel somewhat like the
poet W.H. Auden who was fond of quoting the woman in the novel
by the English novelist E.M. Forster(1879-1970) who said: How do
I know what I think until I see what Ive said. This book is, then
and in some ways, a thinking out-loud.
Because of the contradictions and complexities of social life
everything that happens to individuals and groups depends on the
specific context in which the events of life are embedded. In many
ways it becomes nearly impossible to predict how individuals and
groups will behave or what outcomes will extend from deliberate
organizational policy. The role of social scientists in general, and
sociologists in particular, as one of the many categories of engineers
of the future often dissolves into a much less attractive role as
professional doubters and critics. Some people, then, come to see
such critics and sceptics, such commentators and analysts, as
unfaithful members of the community who are not responding the
way they are supposed to respond to the directives of the Supreme
Body. Awareness of the paradoxical character of many institutional
policies, much of the social and organizational structure and the
nature of group dynamics leads naturally, at least to people like
myself and others who come across what I write, to caution. The
critic is often aware of this and some members of the community
come to see him or her as a threat to the general orthodoxy of the
way policies and programs are supposed to be implemented. I do not
see myself as a threat; indeed, I see what I write as part of the very
warp and weft of this new paradigm. I see this book as part of the
exercise of my individual initiative in the promotion and the
consolidation, in my service activity and in my social activism in
relation to this wondrous Cause.

In many cases, as I say above, it is impossible to predict what will

happen as a result of individual initiative and organizational policy.
On the other hand and in many places one can predict what will
happen with great accuracy. In hundreds of towns and cities across
the world where the Bah' Faith has been part of that location's
group composition, the growth of the Cause is so slow as to give the
local believers great frustration as they try and try to teach their
contemporaries from many walks of life. The Bah' Faith is not
some rabbit's-foot which one can rub and instantly achieve all that
the local Bah's want to achieve. Often, as is the cause in individual
lives, the processes involved are slow in working themselves out,
and complex in their functioning. This very slowness is a great
contributing factor to the pessimism and scepticism of many a
believer. In one's assessment of this new paradigm and its workingout in one's own locality, one must be realistic and not have aims
that will inevitably lead to disappointment, and disappointment's
potentially soul-destroying effects on individual initiative.
MESSAGE TO CONTINENTAL BOARD OF COUNSELORS: A
SPECIAL FOCUS
As the House of Justice pointed out some 40 months ago now, in its
28 December 2010 message to the Conference of the Continental
Board of Counselors assembled in the Holy Land: "opportunities
afforded by the personal circumstances of the believers dictate how
the process of growth begins in a cluster." What often happens, the
Supreme Body went on to say more than two years ago now:
"follows no predetermined course." In this message of nearly 10,000
words, a message that continued to define and describe, outline and
analyse this new culture of learning and growth, the House of Justice
responded to the concerns and criticisms, the problems and
exigencies of the international Bahai community in implementing
this new Bahai paradigm, as it did in previous letters and messages

in the ongoing process that is the development of this new Bahai

culture. That December 2010 message is but one of a long series of
messages from the House of Justice to assist the Bahais of the world
to implement the Divine Plan of Abdul-Baha which He began to
write between 26 March and 22 April 1916. I refer to the above
message of 28/12/'10 again from time to time in this book as I try to
integrate both the House of Justice messages, the general body of the
Bah' writings and the words of many others that are now found in
books and in cyberspace. As the last weeks of the last year of this
current FYP come to an end in April 2016, this Divine Plan will be
100 years from its initial drafting by its Author.
THANKS TO DR. MARK FOSTER
I want to thank Dr. Mark Foster, a professor of sociology in Kansas,
for the ideas contained in the following paragraphs. Indeed, in some
ways, this book is a pot-pourri of ideas, as I indicated above,
gathered from others. Acknowledging as one must that individual
narratives and experiences are inexact and perspectival, as illustrated
by the parable of the blind men and the elephant, and allowing for
diverse, even contradictory, divine and human reality constructions,
one should simultaneously recognize, even advocate and celebrate, a
radical multidoxy or polydoxy of variegated Bah faiths. These
groups, some which even function presently, would consist of
Bahs who, while accepting the authority of the Bah primary
sources, may differ in their relative understandings of, or approaches
to, certain substantive issues. By the same token, one should also
have reason to expect a similarly radical orthopraxy of covenantal
obedience which contrasts with orthodoxy, an emphasis on a correct
belief and activity. Orthopraxy places emphasis on correct action,
activity, or practice and not on rituals. Right belief is combined with
right practice, with the emphasis placed on the latter. Some of this
language and these terms were especially used in Latin American

liberation theology, often in contrast with an orthodoxy that is seen

as insufficiently interested in the practical and political content of
faith.
The aim is, to put some of these ideas of Foster's another way, "to
reach a common vision for the growth of the Bahai community,
discuss strategies for action and help the friends to steer away from
thinking merely in terms of the mechanics of projects and to infuse
their plans and subsequent action with the spirit of the Faith."(UHJ
in Bahai Canada, April 2011, p.23) We all need to "learn to read our
own reality and see our own possibilities as well as make use of our
own resources."(UHJ, 28/12/'10) Part of this common vision is our
belief in the mysterious power of spirit and its existence as an
integral element of our universe. This leads us into behaviors which
are sometimes essentially irrational from a material perspective. A
consequence of the fact that we believe in strange and almost
indefinable entities like: soul, spirit, indeed, a whole range of
abstract forms--is that our teachings call upon us to behave in ways
which are strange, somewhat bewildering and, indeed, in the toohard-basket for the society around us, if not for us as well, from time
to time. The Bah' Faith provides for its adherents many easy to
reach goals and many ideals to guide their lives, but not all of the
package of beliefs and practices are easy. In some ways this hardly
needs to be said.
BLIND FREDDIE
The inevitable contradictions between, often within, certain faithbased scriptures can only be resolved in the linguistic texts of
religiously authorized interpreters: in the case of our Faith, the Bahai
Faith, by the House of Justice. For some believers resolution,
inevitably, will not and does not, take place. In an organization of
millions of souls in which there cannot be some rigid imposition of

formulae, protocols and processes; in which there cannot be a simple

emphasis on technique; in which the spirit of the law is often more
important than its letter; in which an unintentional stifling of
personalities results from dominating personalities; in which
temporary imbalances and stumbling blocks are part and parcel of
any learning process; in which tendencies to over-instruct and
dangers of complacency exist because teaching and learning are
rarely perfectly executed processes, indeed, are often highly subtle
and complex; in which unmet needs and a haphazard, hasty and
controlling atmosphere is often found in communities--with all these
realities I have outlined as part of community life at various levels
from the local to the international community---not everyone is
going to be happy with things all of the time. Even blind Freddie
could see this!
This entire culture, this immense and complex Bahai machinery, is a
means and not an end. Many get caught-up with the means to such
an extent that it becomes an end. Some souls have been, are and will
get disgruntled; some have left the Cause, and will leave the Cause
in the years and decades ahead; some will take years, if not decades
to join; some will never join; some will show complete indifference
and even opposition; some people need protocols of piety, formula
and instructional packages to help them feel secure and they look in
vain in the Bah' teachings for forumulaic fixtures to help them
make sense of complexity. The range of reactions to this wondrous
Cause is as varied as there are Bahais and as those who are outside
its formal institutional boundaries. The laws, principles, and
exhortations of the Cause are not translated into practice in a fixed
and inflexible manner, a code that determines what must be done in
every circumstance. A very wide area is left to the conscience of the
individual and binding pronouncements are only made on details
which are considered essential

However binding such pronouncements may be, there will always be

some souls who will not feel bound by them and will not follow their
implications and apply them in action. Anyone who has been
associated with the Bah'Faith for any significnat length of time is
only too well aware of this reality, a reality one comes to accept with
some equanimity if one is not to be paralysed by negative thought,
by the downside of life, and the behaviour of one's fellow believers.
In the end one is not responsible for the success of the Cause locally,
regionally or nationally. One is only responsible for what one does
oneself and, even then, there are often factors which result in a
sharing of that responsibility with a few others.
The Bah Faith advocates a prima scriptura, that is: the written text
first, more than a sola scriptura, that is: only the written text,
scriptural hermeneutic. Thus, Martin Luthers view of sola scriptura
would establish the sovereignty of individual exegesis over the
authority of Rome. He objected, not to tradition per se or to using
interpretive tools external to the Bible. He objected to the sola
ecclesia, an "only the church", approach to texts in the Roman
Catholic Church. Bahs, in both their study circles and as
individuals, are not sola scriptura, in the manner of Luther or the
Protestant Reformation, in that they accept the authority of the
Guardian to interpret and the authority of the Universal House of
Justice to legislatively elucidate. Bahais have a living canon. On the
other hand, given the right to personal interpretations or
understanding of Sacred Texts in the Bah community, the Bah'
community has nothing quite like the traditional sola ecclesia
approach of Roman Catholicism either. For readers who find this
line of thinking of personal value I encourage them to read the work
of Dr Mark Foster, an American Bah' who has written
voluminously in cyberspace.
SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT AND SPIRITUAL

TRANSFORMATION
The methodology of spiritual development in this new paradigm
involves the radical deconstruction of one's old mind, including its
socially scripted patterns of reactions. Given that individuals
habitually react to situations from their human imperfections, and if
they desire to escape these socialized, reactive constructions of the
mind, they must, each time, fall into the habit of pausing, reflecting,
and making a spiritually informed, salutary decision. Through this
means, and by associating with a community of like-minded souls,
their reactive constructions can, reaction by reaction, be
progressively conquered and replaced with the spiritually proactive
constructions of a new mind. Of course, even blind Freddie would
realize that this is a process and it takes a lifetime. For some, the
process seems to work faster and, for others, often the process seems
to be so slow as to give the appearance that nothing is happening at
all. Spiritual transformation has its mysteries and is only partly
quantifiable. The mind of man is like a clock that is always running
down, and requires to be constantly wound up. The heart is more like
a pump that runs out of renewing blood and requires to be constantly
refreshed. We all have quite different clocks and pumps, and
sometimes we feel our clock or our pump is seriously damaged and
ineffective. For others, they seem to be always impressed with the
workings of their pump and clock. We each have our own personal
stance vis-a-vis the judging of ourselves. Sometimes our self-image
is far too high and sometimes it is far too low. It is difficult to be
spot-on in the evaluation of ourselves; that is one reason we are
given a community in which to get feedback from others however
uninvited that feedback often is.
The character and temperament of individuals, such has been my
experience, often possess the same image and quality as he or she
grows and is strengthened with the years. In this sense, as in the

English poet William Wordsworth's phrase, "the child is the father of

the man" makes this point in another way. The same tendencies may
not always be equally visible, but they are still in existence, and
break out, whenever they dare and can, and often even more for
being checked. Again, we often distinctly notice the same features,
the same bodily peculiarities, the same look and gestures, in different
persons of the same family; the colour of our lives is woven into the
fatal thread at our births: our original sins, our socialization, and our
redeeming graces are infused into us; nor is the bond, that confirms
our destiny, ever cancelled. Transformation possesses continuities as
well as changes in personality. To expect otherwise is often to court
disappointment.
The whole notion of transformation is a topic unto itself which I
only occasionally refer to in this book. This book is not essentially
one of psychology and sociology, history and applied science,
although I make use of various important disciplines in the social
and applied sciences from time to time. There are also many topics
besides 'transformation' which this book makes no attempt to survey.
To expect to be able to locate a manual with a series of simple steps
to achieve transformation is also to court simplicity's many
problems. The House of Justice, the Guardian and the Central
Figures of the Cause have made mention of this fact on many
occasions in Their voluminous writings. Whom the gods would
destroy they first make simple, then simpler and simplest! Seekers
will find no manual to follow. This Faith is not a mere list of
prohibitions to preen ourselves on our pious ability to adhere rigidly
to a limited course. These rules and prohibitions are merely
preparation, merely a context, for the wondrous experience of the
Cause. The social sciences have much to say about the concepts of
simplicity and complexity, about rule-making and rule-breaking, for
those readers who would like to further their understandings of not
only these concepts but the disciplines in which they are enmeshed.

THE ROLE OF CRITICS

Despite the many limitations of the roles of critics in Bahai
community life, their role often seems preferable, at least to them if
not to others, to that of the enthusiastic but naive visionary. The
skeptical stance of these critics can lead, under certain conditions, to
a more sophisticated understanding of the culture under
consideration: in this case the culture of learning and growth in this
new Bahai paradigm. This new paradigm has had its critics, as this
Cause has had its critics far back into the recesses of the first two
centuries of its history. The process of march and victory has not
been without crisis and calamity, themselves often produced by
savage and unfriendly critics who would do all in their power to
frustrate the aims and objectives of this new and revolutionary
world-encircling Faith. The stimulus in this Cause, the stimulus
towards civilization and culture grows stronger in proportion as the
environment grows more difficult: such is one view of the polarity of
crisis and victory in both personal lives and the history of the Cause.
I find this is especially true at the individual level where "whom the
Lord loveth He chasteneth." This new Bahai culture is certainly
providing that stimulus, that chastising element, as it has for two
centuries, as many millions have found, and will find, out.
THE POWER OF UNDERSTANDING AND THE CRITIC
Section 1:
This new Bahai culture will provide what this Faith has always
provided for its adherents: the power of spiritual understanding
which surpasses, in the end, any materialistic understanding or
ideological power and authority. It provides the basis for true
civilization, the secret of Divine civilization. Here the story has been

long and it will play itself out for many decades, and perhaps
centuries, to come in a host of complex patterns and ways. This Faith
does not provide a quick fix to the problems of the world and their
staggering complexity inspite of the apparently simple core belief of
"one God, one religion and one humanity."
Slogans, often used by political parties and the many isms and
wasms in the world, have the function of bringing simplicity to
complex issues. The last thing this new Faith needs to secure the
belief of the seeker and the skeptic is a slogan. It's difficult for the
individual believer not to invoke some simple phrase or slogan in the
midst of an immensely complex human condition. Millions do battle
with the phantoms of a wrongly informed imagination, as the House
of Justice pointed out in their 1999 Ridvan message and these same
millions, that Supreme Body went on to say in April 1999, "are illequipped to interpret the social commotion at play throughout the
planet as they listen to the pundits of error." There are pundits of
error both within and without this sacred Cause and we all must
learn to deal with them as we travel the spiritual and social path that
is our lives. It is for reasons like these that the House of Justice in
December 2011 cautioned those who would work in the junior youth
programs not to dilute the educational content into "a mesmerizing
sea of entertainment." Our culture is drowning in entertainment and
hype, in sloganeering and advertising's endless sales-pitching. To
free oneself to see things with our own eyes and hear things with our
own ears, which Bahaullah equates with justice on the first page of
His inimitable book Hidden words, is no easy thing. We are all part
and parcel of our culture and, as several commentators have said in
my 60 years of contact with this Faith, most of our behaviour is
produced by the dominant culture in our life. Again, this subject of
socialization and belief has many complex aspects which I leave to
readers to ponder and study in their years ahead.

Clusters and LSAs need to assist junior youth, the House of Justice
pointed out in its Ridvan 2008 message nearly five years ago now,
"to navigate through a crucial stage of their lives and to become
empowered to direct their energies toward the advancement of
civilization. With the advantage of a greater abundance of human
resources, an increasing number of these junior youth are able to
express their faith through a rising tide of endeavours that address
the needs of humanity in both their spiritual and material
dimensions. The message of the House of Justice, on 8 February
2013, had a great deal to say in this area and I leave it to readers to
refresh their reading of that seminal message about youth.
The institutional policies that are aimed at enriching that culture of
learning and growth can often be understood with more clarity by the
enlightened critic. This is because such a critic is not blinded by excessive
enthusiasm
d unreasoning religious zeal, by an ignorance of the importance of moderation
and taking one's time and by little knowledge of the history of the Cause. If he
or she keeps himself informed, well-read in the writings of the Cause and
develops qualities which will attract the hearts of others; if this said critic does
not try to stamp all situations with universally applicable blueprints, blueprints
that are often the products of his own imagination and sense of selfimportance; if that same critic scrupulously avoids the glorification of the self
and the bolstering of the ego in the name of confidence-building(UHJ: 12/11)--he or she can contribute enormously to the consultation on whatever the issue

the cluster, the assembly, the registered or

unregistered group, the committee, or simply in some informal
discussion. "The hearts," wrote Abdul-Baha, "are as a blank scroll of
paper upon which thou canst write any phrase."(he Bah' World,
Vol. XIII, p.283.)
is being reviewed in:

Section 2:
The wider community can benefit from honest and sincere criticism; indeed it
should be open to criticism. This book deals with this issue of criticism at some
length if readers persist or just use their word-processing tool and scroll
through all the references to the subject in these 750 pages. The section
devoted to the work of Dr. Irving Janis in this book is especially pertinent in this

regard. The entire subject of criticism, though, is complex and needs much
more attention than I give it in this online book, and much more attention by
readers since one's own life-narrative has to deal with criticism from cradle to
grave. Overlooking the shortcomings of others is just one facet of a complex
subject, a subject involving many obstacles that can only be overcome with
forbearance, patience, and love.

A relentless questioning of the initial blueprints and an examination

of the various contingencies at each step of program implementation
in this paradigm, or in relation to any policy and program, can be
very helpful to the institutions whose role is to implement policy. In
particular, this approach, this questioning, should not be seen as ratbaggery since it often results in two eventualities. First, the
eventuality that results from the reality that so often change proceeds
in measured and unmeasured steps, with close attention to fortuitous
events and pressures from outside forces; second, the eventuality
that results from knowing the actors involved in the process we are
examining. The actual and personal goals of these actors need to be
known in order to anticipate their reactions to external interventions.
As the House of Justice, and before that Supreme Body, the
Guardian of the Faith, to say nothing of each of the Central Figures
of the Cause as far back as the 1840s, have emphasized and
reemphasized the importance of: (I) questioning---and especially
self-questioning and (II) understanding. These two factors cannot be
over-estimated.
Without the painstaking searching and the lifetime of effort involved
in trying to understand human situations, the context in which plans
and programs are intended to take place, no matter how much
planning, no matter what the organizational blueprint, no matter how
well it is devised, the results will often be discouraging. These
results will often come to no fruit. Hopes will completely vanish as
they have for individuals in the Bahai community since its inception
more than a century and a half ago. How often has the very life of a

Bahai community been exterminated by dogmatic assertions and

overzealous enthusiasm, by fixed points of view and rigid attitudes.
There are so many sources of social extermination, so many
deficiencies of interpersonal skills that result in a lack of fertility and
social-stasis. Narrowness of vision and intolerance toward differing
points of view have often produced and will continue to produce
sterile relationships; religious habits of mind often have little to do
with essential truths. A religious habit is often not the same as a
spiritual attitude. This is a subtle and complex process which I do
not intend to elaborate on here, but it is important in our
understanding and execution of this new paradigm.
THE GUARDIAN AS CRITIC
The Guardian, himself, in his review of Nabil's narrative and its 600
pages, makes some telling criticisms of the Babis which I would
encourage any enthusiast of the new Bahai culture of learning to
examine. His criticisms may very well provide some telling
comparisons and contrasts between this paradigm shift in the 3rd
millennium and that paradigm shift which took place in the middle
of the years 1844 to 1850 or 1852. The Guardian concludes, though,
on very high notes as he always does, after informing and cautioning
the Bahai community through his wise exegisis(Nabil, 1974, p.652
and following). I do the same in this book for this book is essentially
a pean of praise for the new Bahai paradigm inspite of appearances
to the contrary, appearances which some readers have already found
objectionable as they travelled through the text of this work.
After referring to some of the Letters of the living who were
"leading an obscure life in some remote corner of the realm", the
Guardian briefly describes the wreckage of the slender hopes of the
Babis amidst the confusion of the late 1840s and very early 1850s.
"The mass of the devotees were cowed and exhausted....the Cause of

the Bab....seemed to have failed in accomplishing its purpose."

Among the many reasons for the apparent failure of the Babi cause
was the failure of the Babis to observe the moderation that the Bab
had exhorted them to put into practice. They had, Shoghi Effendi,
states simply, "forgotten."(p.652)
This work is entitled: Reflections on a Culture of Learning and
Growth: Community and Individual Paradigm Shifts: A
Contemporary, Historical, Futuristic and Very Personal Context. I
encourage readers to delve into the history of this Cause for many of
the directions that need to be taken in this new paradigm. Many
readers need to make revisions in their understandings of the present
paraqdigm as I do, too, as I travel through this book.
REVISIONS TO THIS BOOK
Some of the revisions to this text are a result of feedback I have
received. The feedback in the last eight years has been provocative
constructive and sometimes useful but, at least thusfar, it has not
been aggressive or defiant, contumacious or insolent. I am neither
unconcerned about how this book is received, nor am I unresponsive
to what reception it receives, as I observe and react to the specific
reactions of others. Not everyone puts down in writing what they
think of this book, nor of any other book for that matter. Indeed there
is, for the most part, what you might call a languid indifference of
private life to the musings of writers of books of this nature, indeed,
of any nature. In a world like our own with its booming and buzzing
confusions, its powerful and pervasive media intrusions, its frenetic
passivity and its multitude of forms of hype from the print and
electronic worlds which surround us, any writer who expects a
serious view of his work on the part of masses of people, inside or
outside the Cause, is barking up the wrong tree.

People may enjoy or be critical of a book but the exchange of views,

except in the occasional journal review and in the occasional
comment on the internet, is largely left to informal exchanges
between individuals, exchanges which are verbal and not written--and when they are written they so often die a quick death due to the
failure of the author to incorporate what is often good advice into the
text of his work. Here at BLO it is possible for readers to make
suggestions to writers and for writers to have these views
incorporated into the text. This is true in this particular book and has
been true for the last eight years. I am appreciative of everyone who
has written to me even those whose criticism is harshest. Sometimes
I can make alterations as a result of incoming feedback and
sometimes I can't for various reasons.
MY AIM IN THIS BOOK
My aim in this book is to be true to my own leanings which I trust
will impart direction, movement and life to this work and prevent me
from being overwhelmed by the minutae of historical and
geographic, sociological and psychological, statistical and
philosophical facts. Over the last 20 years I have heard and read
many a criticism of the Ruhi, the institute, program, as well as just
about everything the Cause stands for and attempts to place into the
world of actuality from potentiality. Readers here will find no
criticisms of this new Bahai culture from my pen, although I do
point out some of the criticisms of others. My Bahai library is one in
which there are some twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over
and over again in the course of my 60 years of contact with this
latest of the Abrahamic religions. These books are not the only ones
that I have a desire to read, but they are old friends. I do not think
altogether the worse for a book for having survived the author a
generation or two. I do not have more confidence in the dead than
the living authors.

Contemporary writers may generally be divided into two classes for

me: the deep and meaningful and the peripheral. Of the first I also
read and reread, and of the last I virtually ignore. Given the
burgeoning nature of the print that is becoming, and has become,
available during the time this culture of learning has been in place,
we each have to choose the library of books and journals, essays and
articles, both on and off the internet, with which we will engage.
This depends on many factors, factors which are different for each of
us in this new paradigm. Learning is a highly idiosyncratic exercise,
inspite of some broad and similar principles and process.
All these details, these reflections, on my reading should give those
who come across this book some idea of my personal activity within
the Bahai culture, new and old. As that fine British essayist William
Hazlitt once wrote and I paraphrase: "the dust, smoke and noise of
many modern books have nothing in common with the pure, silent
air of immortality." But, I must add, many modern books do have,
for me, an air of immortality and this new Bahai culture of learning,
in addition to the Ruhi resources, has a rich reservoir of reading far
beyond anything available in any previous paradigm. Some people
are literally drowning in the print and many are hardly aware of its
existence. Inevitably, there are many who are not print-oriented
types: the garden, the kitchen, the TV, family and friends, and a host
of leisure activities are central to the lives of many. Print has to take
third or fourth place. That has probably always been the case; indeed
it is a subject all unto itself.
Readers will not find in this book a systematic, a detailed and
organized history of the 20 years from 1996 to 2016, the first two
decades of this new paradigm. Nor will readers find a systematic
study and analysis of the new Bahai culture of learning and growth
at the centre of this paradigm. The history of this Cause over its first

15 decades(1863-2015) is far beyond the scope of this work,

although I allude to it from time to time to illustrate some point or
other of the Bahai story and its teachings. This culture of learning is
set in an historical context and it is important to get a handle on this
context to appreciate the setting in which this new Bahai paradigm
has been introduced. There is also a virtual, a literal, mountain of
print about this new Bah' culture for those who want to study it
systematically.
There is no unity of form and content in this now sprawling book. It
is, rather, a sort of pot-pourri of thoughts in which performance
struggles with ideal, a personal and quite idiosyncratic ideal. I try to
handle divergent and often unfocussed material and bring it into the
light of day, a light for my own use as much as the use of readers. I
trust readers will not find the series of thoughts, gestures and
episodes which they have already read and which follows too
unconnected. The messages of the Universal House of Justice and
the International Teaching Committee as well as the letters and
internet posts of many individuals and institutions from the elected
and appointed sides of this Faith have provided more than enough
systematic and organized commentary on this new paradigm as well
as commentary. The materials I have had to work with are far from
scanty. The perfections and imperfections of the inspired as well as
the uninspired followers of Bahaullah both illuminate and cast a
shadow over the history and the present implementation of the
current paradigm. As I point out elsewhere in this book, the potpourri of information now available, especially on the internet, is
often erroneous, fallacious, false, hollow, idle, illogical, and
inaccurate. What is often unsound, untrue, vain, and simply wrong
becomes, in the hands of those with casuistic skills, a distracting,
diverting and beguiling set of words that manipulate the ignorant and
uninformed.

THE WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ABDUL-BAHA

In eight years the Bahai community will have spent a century
beneath the benevolent shade of the Will and Testament,(UHJ,
April, 2011)a document one commentator described as the charter
of world civilization, the Bill of Rights of all mankind.(David
Hofman, 1982, p.9) But we stand too close, wrote the House of
Justice in 1969 in relation to that same document, to the beginnings
of the System ordained by Bahaullah to be able to fully understand
its potentialities or the relationships of its component parts.(UHJ,
Messages: 1968-1973, 1976, p.44.) After more than 40 years since
this statement was made by the Supreme Body this is still the case,
but the broad outlines of its component parts and its potentialities are
beginning to surface in this contingent world and, the greater the
understanding of the individual believer, the greater the
understanding of both the covenant and its future role in the
international, national and local developments of the Cause, and
especially in the lives of the individual believers. The literature now
available on the subject of the Covenant is extensive, particularly
when one compares what literature was available in the late 1960s
when the House of Justice made the above statement.
The channel for the protection of the Word and to ensure the
continuous flow of Divine guidance has been dug deeply in the last
150 years. The ultimate sanction for the authentic interpretation of
the "Book," the gift to the current generations of believers, is
flowing through this new paradigm from the Universal House of
Justice. There is no constricting of the creative force latent in the
human soul which, when evoked by the Word of God is the
motivating power of civilization. Excesses, wastefulness and
confusion which have beset all the old religions in their history, will
not beset this everlasting candle, at least not in the centuries
immediately ahead. Those working in this new paradigm need to

have this idea firmly in their minds and hearts as they work in the
Cause and for the Cause. I encourage readers to examine David
Hofman's commentary on the Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha
published over 30 years ago to help them understand the
phenomenon that is this document, a document that pies at the base
of this new Bah' paradigm.
100 YEARS OF BAHA'I HISTORY
As this paradigm was opening in 1996 the Bahai community had just
completed its first 100 year history in North America and was about
to complete its first 100 years on the European continent. Other
continents and other countries each had their own story, their own
history, most of the approximately 230 to 240 countries and
territories where the Cause had been introduced had less than a
century of Bahai experience. Of the nearly 20,000 LSAs in the
world, most of them had a history going back for less than half a
century. It is not the purpose of this book to explore those histories. I
leave such historical study to readers with the curiosity and interest.
I make mention of this brief timeline, though, to provide a cursory
historical perspective on where this new paradigm fits into the
overall history of the Bahai Faith, a history one could arguably take
back to the time Shaykh Ahmad left his home in northeast Arabia
about the time of the French revolution in 1789 at the very beginning
of some versions of what is called modern history. Since that time,
for more than 200 years in the history of this Cause and in the lives
of its two chief precursors, people have been leaving their homes to
create a home where it did not exist before. The process is often
arduous, often unrewarding, lonely and immensely routine in many
respects. These people have spent their lives removing strangeness
from the heart to make it a home. Their efforts are focussed upon
adapting the teachings to the temperaments of the diverse races and
nations whom they are called upon to attract. They aim to find a

home for this Revelation wherever they go. But it is not easy and so
often the result is easy platitudes. We leave behind the comfortable
and the safe and, so often, enter into bewilderment. But the Cause is
not a system of philosophy; it is a way of life in which one believes
something as true and acts upon it as best as one can. The makeshift
shelters of pop-psychology and pseudo-political jargon need to be
left behind with sagacity in motion to install the lover to become
seated within the heart.
Bah' history, in at least 100 countries, only goes back to the Ten
Year Crusade. This makes the Bahai experience in at least half the
world a period of about half a century. The institutional development
of the fabric of Bah' administration on the planet and of the NSAs
which are all in the first century of their operation, places this new
Bah' culture in an institutional perspective that, for this believer at
least, makes him more than a little aware of how new this entire
institutional framework is for us who labor in the vineyard. The
desire to act over many years often results in disappointment;
sometimnes this results fairly quickly for the new believer. As time
passes many find it easier to abdicate responsibility for doing
anything at all within the framework of Bah' activity. Nothing they
do, so often, seems the slightest bit effective. This reality lies behind
the immense number of Bah's in the West who are not contactable,
have no return address or telephone number. They have become part
of the great unwashed mass of inactive believers, so to speak. This
has always been part of Bah' history and not talking about it does
not take away its reality.
Others, though, find in their Bah' experience that each tiny act,
each gesture takes on magnitudes of meaning and channels of
communication. They find that the days of their lives, when viewed
in the mirror of the Bah' Revelation, become mightier than a
mountain. The very chains of limitation that encumber him in

material terms, paradoxically, transform into his wings and speed

him on his way. The process is nothing less than mysterious and
fascinating. Why is it that some believe and act and some don't? I
have found that gradually, over many decades, that the words I write
have become, for me at least, deeds. The dance of my words on
paper express my very life. My writing reflects my meditations on
and the expression of the power of the Word of god on the tablet of
my existence. Like Mishkin-Qalam, I can no more still the flood of
my words than the blood in my veins as I shape my art to many a
purpose. In many ways, though, it is not the writing itself which is so
wondrous, but my awareness of the greater purpose toward which it
is bent. I find, as Bahiyyih Nakhjavani puts it, a freedom in plunging
into "the water of metaphorical exploration." I invite readers to
plunge as well, if they can "dig it" as the hippies of the 60s used to
say, and as John Hatcher expresses the process so well in several of
his books.
MEMBERSHIP LISTS
Most denominations of Christinaity make no effort at all to maintain
a national membership database and must rely on local churches or
surveys of the general population. Local church membership rolls
are often maintained poorly because there may be no need for an
official membership list. Local congregations sometimes do not
provide their denomination's membership data even when asked.
Counting American Jews, half of whom are married to non-Jews and
the majority of whom do not attend a synagogue, is immensely
difficult. Estimates for the numbers of American Muslims and
Eastern Orthodox often vary by a factor of two. I mention these
comparative figures because the Bah' community must maintain
accurate voting lists. The World Christian Database (WCD), and its
predecessor the World Christian Encyclopedia, has reviewed
religious populations around the world and released results of their

investigations at various times. The Bah' Faith has consistently

placed high in the statistics of growth over these various releases of
data from 1970 to 1985, from 1990 to 2000, from 2000 to 2005, and
across the whole range of their data from 1970 to 2010. From the
mid-1960s until 2000, the US Bah' population went from 10,000 to
140,000 on official rolls, but the percent of members with known
addresses dropped to fifty percent.
The fact that the Bah' Faith is so extensively diffuse rather than
concentrated is the major barrier to demographic research by
outsiders. Surveys and censuses, except government census, which
ask individuals their religion in many countries, simply cannot yet be
conducted with such a scope, especially not at the level required to
accurately gauge religious minorities. In some countries the Bah'
Faith is illegal and Bah's endure some degree of persecution,
making it difficult for even Bah's to maintain a count. In the 1930s
the Bah's of the United States and Canada began requiring new
adherents to sign a declaration of faith, stating their belief in
Bah'u'llh, the Bb, and `Abdu'l-Bah, and their understanding that
there were laws and institutions to obey. The original purpose of
signing a declaration card was to allow followers to apply for lawful
exemption from active military service. The signature of a card later
became optional in Canada, but in the US it is still used for records
and administrative requirements. Many countries follow the pattern
of the US and Canada. Other than signing a card and being
acknowledged by a Spiritual Assembly, there is no initiation or
requirement of attendance to remain on the official roll
sheets.Members receive regular mailings unless they request not to
be contacted.
By the time the new Bah' culture of learning and growth was
developing in the late 1990s statistical estimates of the worldwide
Bah' population had become even more difficult to arrive at. The

religion was almost entirely contained in a single, organised

community, but the Bah' population was spread out into almost
every country & ethnicity in the world, being recognized as the 2ndmost geographically widespread religion after Christianity, and the
only religion to have grown faster than the population of the world
in all major areas over the last century. The 5-7 million figure for
Bah's worldwide almost certainly started with the first publication
of the World Christian Encyclopedia. Before that appeared, no third
party figures were available. Official estimates of the worldwide
Bah' population come from the Bah' World Centre, which in
1991(5 years before the new Bah' paradigm was created)claimed
"more than five million Bahs" as early as 1991 "in some 100,000
localities." The official agencies of the religion have published data
on numbers of local and national spiritual assemblies, Counselors
and their auxiliaries, countries of representation, languages, and
publishing trusts. Less often, they publish membership statistics. In
recent years, the United States Bah' community has been releasing
detailed membership statistics. Generally, though, as the second
decade of this new Bah' culture was coming to an end in 2016, the
Bah' data-base was much more detailed with more accurate figures
than had ever been known in its history. Paradoxically, the
demarkation, the division, the categorization, the dichotomy, of
believer vs non/un-believer, Bah' vs non-Bah', novitiate vs
veteran, member and non-member, pioneer vs local/indigenous were
sets of terms that had become more blurred, had slipped to the
periphery as the Bah' Cause became more and more inclusive, had
developed more of an outreach and much less of an "us-and-them"
mentality. All of these terms I have listed above were labels which
had more importance as this Faith grew from 1000s to millions from
the 19th century to the mid-to-late 20th century.
WHO IS WRITING BAHA'I HISTORY?

This history, that is Bah' history, is also, I want to emphasize, one

that continues to be constructed, interpreted, created, forged,
fashioned, defined, produced and formulated within this new
paradigm. As this new Bahai culture establishes greater and greater
social and community cohesion the view of Bah' history itself
changes and gains a fresh and in some ways, more fertile context.
This new Bahai paradigm also plays a continuing historical role in
the legitimation of the Bahai authority structure and helps to create a
variety of cultural frameworks at local, cluster, regional, national,
transnational, intercontinental and global levels. Bahai tradition is an
ongoing phenomenon, both its creation and the meaning it has to the
present Bahai community; it is crucial--this history and our view of
it----to the construction of the international Bahai community at all
levels. The House of Justice, through its many letters, plays an
ongoing role in what might be called the live broadcasting of history.
It produces an experience through its many communications where
private and public moments, where history, present activities and
future plans coalesce into one ongoing narrative. It is a narrative that
is an authorized interpretation; it enjoys the imprimatur, the stamp of
authority, the acknowledgment of the body of the Bahai community
that this is the straight path, this is the set of principles in this Cause
and how they apply in today's world, in the Bahai community in
which they are currently being implemented in the context of this
new Bahai culture.
Although reports of the Babi Faith, the critical precursor of the
Bahai Faith, and especially Bb persecutions appeared in the
European press from 1845, and although Bah'u'llh resided on
European soil in 1863-8 in the course of his final exile to Palestine,
it was not until 1898 that the first Bah' group was established in
Europe. From small foundations in Paris, Bah's from Europe have
distinguished themselves in many ways in the international Bah'
community. This book does not attempt to survey some of the unique

features of that regional community or the Euro-centric communities

in our global world. Nor does this book attempt to review some of
the European Bahai community's distinctive contributions to the
development of the Bah' Faith in the decades of the systematic
execution of Abdu'l-Bah's Plan from 1936 to 2015. Nor does this
book attempt to review the special developments in the amazing last
half-century, say, 1963 to 2015, in other parts of the world since
many territories were first opened in that astounding 10 Year
Crusade: 1953 to 1963. All of this history, though, sets the stage, the
setting, the mise en scene, as it were, for the most recent
developments in this new paradigm in a religious community now of
several million members spread across the face of the Earth, spread
more widely than all but one other religion according to no less an
authority than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
PARADIGMATIC CHANGES IN BAHA'I HISTORY
Paradigmatic changes have occurred during the nearly two-and-ahalf centuries, 1753 to 1996 before this latest of the Bah'
paradigms emerged in that fin de siecle decade of the 1990s. Those
250 years take one back to the earliest settings for the matrix of the
Babi-Bahai Faiths. Those 250 years take one back to the beginnings
of the industrial, agricultural, and many of the scientific changes,
indeed, revolutions of modern history. Nabil, that useful historian,
traces the years 1753 to 1853 in his seminal historical work, but they
are not explored in this book except, occasionally and in a cursory
fashion, in order to place this new paradigm in what I hope is a
helpful perspective. This book is, in the main, about the 20 years
from 1996 to 2016, and the closing years ahead of the first century
of the Formative Age, the decade 2016 to 2021. This author has his
eye on the vision of this Faith's and this Formative Age's second
century, though, the years beyond 2021 within this new paradigm.

This book does not survey, except in the briefest of ways, the
immense shifts that have and are taking place in our global society
during this new paradigm. Nor does this book focus on the "matrix
within which a world spiritual civilization will gradually
mature."(Ridvan 2012) There is much that this book does not
attempt to do, as I often say. But there is much that it does attempt to
explore as it sets this new Bah' paradigm in a range of contexts and
textures to help both himself and others understand what is not a
simple entity. Unlike all the old religions which grew up far from the
light of modern history, the Bah' Faith is drenched in the colours
and the hews of contemporary history. The believers and the
historians are not short on information as they so often are when
they study the origins of any of the old-time religions. If anything,
there are so many facts and features, details and delineations, that the
critical observer is faced with so much information he is not sure
where to begin, and when he does begin he is faced with two
centuries of massive detail in English, Farsi and Arabic, to say
nothing of the many other languages into which this Faith has been
translated and which is another story in itself.
SHIFTS IN THE WIDER SOCIETY
The shifts in the wider society cannot be ignored, indeed they often
play a crucial if indirect role, as this new paradigm struggles to be
put into place across the dozens of countries and thousands of Bahai
communities into which it is articulated. We cannot divorce this last
decade and a half, either, from the wider historical setting out of
which this new paradigm emerged. The vision of the future is also
critical, as I often emphasize in this book, in examining this
paradigmatic shift. John Hatcher, that prolific professor and director
of graduate studies in English literature at the University of South
Florida in Tampa, and widely published poet and distinguished
lecturer, has spent three books emphasizing the metaphorical nature

of Bahai history. He provides a metaphorical, a mythological

framework, for the interpretation of the time we live in and the Bahai
paradigm that will be with us for perhaps some decades to come.
That metaphor and its myriad of meanings is one of the core features
of the lives of Bahais since those fin de siecle years when this
paradigm emerged. Each Bahai must and will, each in their own
way, make of this metaphorical reality their own meaning. I can only
point the way to Hatcher's extensive commentaries on the Bahai
revelation and leave it to readers to make of them what they will as
this new Bahai paradigm develops in the years ahead, and as each
Bah' and each reader here seeks to implement this new culture in
their own ways and their own lives.
The success of any organization carries with it the need to
continuously redefine its strategy in order to progress. The Bahai
Faith, as a religious, a cultural, a non-partisan political, a
community, organization, has redefined its strategy many times in
the 15 decades of its existence(1863 to 2015), as its religious
precursor had done during the Babi period going back to 1844. The
many results of these shifts are evident both in the world, in Bahai
history and in much that I have recounted in this book. I do not
recount them all, all the shifts and all the paradigms; indeed, I
recount very few and, as in many aspects of this analysis, I leave it
to readers to understand, to analyse and to figure out what it all
means. For we are, in the end, each the author of our own meaning
systems, the significance of our own experience, in this new world
Faith. Many meanings are never complete unless they carry within
them the seeds of other meanings. And the job is for each individual,
each community, and each Bah' institution as it sets about putting
into place the increasingly complex context of this new Bah'
culture.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

At this critical juncture in history and in the Bahai community

perhaps the most important question facing each of us is whether or
not we can begin to ask the correct questions soon enough and
provide for our individual lives the correct meanings soon enough to
halt the deadly consequences of asking the wrong questions and
finding the wrong meanings, of taking the wrong actions and of not
really understanding the nature of this new Faith we belong to. In
this book I do not address such questions and such meanings in any
depth. There is an increasing literature, a literature that has been
coming on stream especially in the years of this new paradigm.
Again, each reader is on his or her own here as we are so much of
the time even after all the messages from the Supreme Body have
arrived in our hands, all the writings of the Central Figures have
been spread before us on our book shelves and we have come home
from all the meetings, deepenings, study circles and Feasts.
METAPHORICAL NATURE OF BAHA'I HISTORY
Bahai history provides metaphorical and mythological stories which
can, if understood, provide powerful forces for the motivation and
justification for the individual behaviour and collective activity of
the groups in which they are told and retold. They provide, in other
words, existentially meaningful narratives to help people deal with
the present and the future. Put another way, this history and these
stories can exist within webs of significance that determine what we
should value and what we need to learn to value. Thereby, through
their mediations, these ritualised story-telling performances
significantly contribute to socialising us in our present day to day
lives. It is precisely because culture's many forces, of which these
stories are but one, matter so much that culture deserves full critical
attention. This book gives that attention to culture, the new Bahai
culture of learning and growth.

FREEDOM AND COMPLEXITY IN THIS NEW PARADIGM

At the same time, as the philosopher Merleau-Ponty pointed out half
a century ago, there is no way of living with others which takes
away the burden of being the person you are, that takes away either
the responsibility and the freedom which allows you to have an
opinion; there is no inner life which is not, in some ways, a first
attempt to relate to another person. In this ambiguous, ambivalent,
partly polarized position, we can never know complete rest unless
we are totally sedated and half asleep.
Life has a heavy side to put this in simple terms: "he aint heavy; he's
my brother", as the song says. But life has a million other sides
which are expounded in religious and philosophical books, novels
and works in the many humanities and social sciences. Both
subjectivity and the social construction of our reality are cultural
impositions and they cannot be wished away. They form the
introspective and interpersonal core of this new Bahai paradigm in
what you might call a sociological, a psychological, sense. The fear
of giving offense and the ease with which we are often offended
often tend to limit if not destroy sincerity, and without sincerity there
can be no true enjoyment of society, nor unfettered exertion of
intellectual activity.
As one noted poet once remarked: sincerity tastes of pain, and it is
better to be sincere about our doubts than hypocritical about our
faith. And pain, the philosopher might argue, is preferable to
oblivion--although not always and not for everyone! The art of life
in community is often to know how to enjoy a little and to endure
very much. The capacity to endure, the sacrificial mode and manner
so to speak, is not the same in each individual. Over many decades
of one's Bahai experience one usually finds the limits of one's

devotion, of one's capacity to suffer for the Cause. Some, though,

seem to have an unlimited capacity; perhaps they are the martyrs.
Some, too, pursue the aims of the Cause under a myriad social and
economic guises. All of this, and many other variables, make
community life the complex phenomenon that it is. It also helps to
make the growth of the Cause the complex entity, the enigma, that it
is for the believers--both the veterans and the novices.
"Initiatives for social action of various kinds," the House oof Justic
emphasized in April 2015, "continue to multiply in many countries,
enabling much to be learned about how the wisdom enshrined in the
Teachings can be applied to improve social and economic
circumstances; so promising is this field that we have established a
seven-member International Advisory Board to the Office of Social
and Economic Development, introducing the next stage in the
evolution of that Office. Three members of the Board will also serve
as the Offices coordinating team and be resident in the Holy Land."
Humans have a degree of freedom but its extent is nowhere near to
the level which millions believe or would like to be the case. Our
destinies are, in my view, significantly and essentially conditioned
by the structures internalized within us and the communities of
which we are a part. Thus, free will is relative, relative to social
structure and far from being an absolute freedom. Freedom operates
within certain parameters, parameters of which we are often unaware
on the one hand or too much aware on the other. One of the essential
goals, both now and in the decades ahead, must be the establishment
of a more humane system of normative coercion based on a
consultative and volitional unity in diversity. To do this we need to
be able to make and break patterns ceaselessly in our efforts to find
ways of expressing the purity of the Cause through word and deed.
Most of us are so preoccupied by our own patterns. Although this is
an aspect of our creativity, it is also and often a tragedy because so
many of our patterns are self-suffocating. We seem to be singularly

inept at breaking out of our patterns, patterns that have resulted from
the forces of socialization, habit and the simple need to survive in a
complex world. An acute level of self-scrutiny is required, and this is
not easily done; it is often rarely done.
This consultative and volitional framework, this structure of
complexity, is behind this new Bahai paradigm. And it is an evolving
complexity. Members of the community need to avoid the tendency
to speak more and more in terms of simplifying slogans. "The habits
the friends are forming in study circles," the House of Justice
emphasized in 2010, "to work with full and complex thoughts" are
necessary "to achieve understanding and to extend the work of the
Faith to various spheres of activity. "Closely related" to this question
of complexity and simplifying tendencies, "to the habit of reducing
entire themes into one or two appealing phrases," the House
continued, "is the tendency to perceive dichotomies, where, in fact,
there are none. It is essential that ideas form part of a cohesive
whole. Sometimes ideas need to be held in opposition to one
another, to contain the maximum paradox. We are each and all a
bundle of contradictions and our power to survive and revive our
civilization depends on our ability to find structures capable of
serving our individual and social needs. The new culture of learning
is just that, but it will take some time before its uniquely flexible and
disturbingly comprehensive system evolves into a form capable of
sustaining and supporting conflicts without abdication or
compromise. For more on these fascinating themes I encourage
readers to go to Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's writings, especially her Four
On an Island, and Asking Questions: A Challenge to
Fundamentalism.
SHORT TERM AND LONG TERM GOALS
And so it is that short-term goals and activities are important to us,

but so also are the long-term perspectives. As Peter Khan pointed out
at the end of a talk he gave in 2006: "its an expression of zealotry to
say, Forget the long-term; only focus on the short-term. Such an
expression is a confusion between priority and exclusivity. Our
priorities are the objectives of the current Plan. But that is not all;
that is not exclusively the whole story. We should maintain the
richness of our diversity of Bah expression and activity so that we
are prepared for the distant future in 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. In this
way we will be able to meet the needs of the Bah community at
that time. We have to prepare now by addressing the long-term as
well as the short-term. Sometimes, ironically the goals of our life can
be expressed in the words: "what am I going to do now?" Doing
what is in front of our nose and attending to our immediate
responsibilities keeps most of us busy most of the time. But then
there is leisure and the product use of leisure-time. That is an isse
that could take its own book. But I will not begin that book here.
CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORY
As I have contemplated and analysed this new Bahai culture over the
last several years I have come to see it in terms of a constructionist
theory, that is, a theory which holds that humans are social
constructs and that their institutions of all sorts are constructs upheld
by humans acting according to their images of what reality is, of
how they perceive that reality. I reproduce and transform the Bahai
paradigm in personal terms as I shape my daily activity. This new
paradigm provides for me one of the critical constructs through
which I envisage and reproduce my reality. As I see this new Bahai
paradigm, in order to understand the individual, one must begin with
the synergetic concept of social structure, on both the macro and
micro levels. In a psychologistic society, such as exists in the West,
conceptualizing social structure as a force which dominates, and acts
over and above, any individual influences, is difficult for people to

internalize. As Firuz Kazemzadeh put it as far back as the 1960s:

"we are 1% Bah' and 99% our society, our culture."
THE ADVICE IN THE WRITINGS
This book also attempts to deal with the many difficult and human
tendencies that militate against the carrying out of the advice AbdulBaha gave in His Tablets of the Divine Plan for the spread of His
Father's Cause. It was advice that is as difficult to implement in this
new paradigm as in the old. The tendency to argue and prove one is
right, the tendency to stay in ones place of residence either by birth
or immigration surrounded by hundreds of Bahais and the simple
tendency not to follow the many, many injunctions, wisdoms, forms
of advice and guidance given in the Writings. There is a very strong
tendency to invent a false, unrealistic and finally personally
justified(but falsely so), image of oneself as an exceptional
phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but justified in the
sins one inevitably commits because one does not want to admit to
the many omissions and commissions in life which become part of
ones journey over the years. At the opposite end of the self-image
continuum there is a strong tendency to underestimate one's self.
Getting the balance right is no easy game, task or exercise. We each
must deal with this struggle all our lives and there is an extensive
literature both within the Cause and without to help us here. I
encourage readers to google this subject for the now extensive
literature available in Bah' books and journals.
SELF-C0NCEPTS and CONTRADICTIONS
"The degree to which our self-concept is false," writes William
Hatcher(Bahai Studies, V 11, p.21) "is the degree to which we will
experience unpleasant tensions and difficulties as we become
involved in various life situations." We are all a mosaic of true and

false, real and unreal. Often it is our self-righteousness that leads to a

misunderstanding, not only of oneself but of the nature of man and
the cosmos. The mythologist Joseph Campbell, argues this in his
works on mythology. One cannot emphasize all of this too much as
one goes about dealing with this new Bahai culture as this book
attempts to do. Difficulties seem to be part of our common lot:
slipping into one argument after another, taking up poses of
defensive safety within our self-constructed ideology that
anaesthetizes us from life's turbulence, shying away from paradox
and contradictions. There are, as Abdul-Baha has emphasized "secret
wisdoms, enigmas, inter-relationships and rules which govern our
lives." There is no simple rule-book or set of aphorisms to cover the
journey.
RELIGION IN OUR GLOBAL SOCIETY SINCE 9/11

In the years of this new paradigm and especially after September 11

2001, when this new Bah' culture was in its 6th year, religion has
become an ever more vital, and contested, part of the many national
cultures across the world. The aftermath of September 11 has not
seen a re-assessment of what legitimately constitutes the domain of
the religious or the spiritual. But it has seen an emphasis on the
political implications that stem from religious belief. Debates over
abortion, gay marriage, terror legislation, Israeli settlements, Middle
East policy and so on are inflected with religious beliefs and
practices, yet these debates so often take religious positions as given.
The terms shift depending on the context, of course, but there is a
marked tendency to take religious beliefs as unified positions, static
and fixed traditionsbecoming variously: religious/secular,

Christianity/Islam, Judaism/Islam, East/West, and so on. Both

atheists and religious adherents make this presumption, the former
from a disdain of religion that often simplifies in order to rebut as
outmoded; and the later in advocating the eternal, fixed truths of
religion. All of this makes the extension of the Bahai paradigm into
the teaching fields difficult for the individuals working to share the
message among their contemporaries. The domain of the religious
has become a complex, divisive and more emotive field for Bahais
actively involved in their new paradigm of learning and growth. In
many places the word 'religion' is, as they say, on the nose. It's about
as popular as a python; it is seen as irrelevant as an old and dead
tooth, and it is also seen as the cause of more problems for any
culture that takes it seriously. This, of course, is but one view shared
by millions and it is a view mixed with dozens of other views all
rattling around in the psyches of the souls of western man, to say
nothing of those in eastern adn underdeveloped countries. The view
of religion is, at rhew very least, is very mixed bag of tricks--making the teaching efforts in this new Bah' culture highly
challenged and often unsuccessful no matter how much effort is
poured onto the teaching program.
The industry and zeal of individual Bahais, inspite of the above, will
diffuse this Cause even more than that industry and zeal has diffused
it in the more than a century and a half in which it has been taken to
the remotest and fairest regions of the world. After the evolution of
15 decades(1863-2015) most--if not all--of the Bahai principles are
accepted everywhere as the voice and example of enlightenment.
These principles are not seen as Bahai principles as such but as
expressions of advanced and enlightened civilization wherever such
civilization exists. In this complex world where the forces of
traditionalism and obscurantism darken the horizon, of course, many
of these principles have yet to be recognized. Again, the picture
across the more than 230 countries in the world where the Bah'

Faith is practiced, is a complex whole of many levels of the

application of these principles.
THE SEARCH FOR A NEW VOCABULARY
What I do in this book is to complicate the discussion and many of
the matters even more substantially by pointing out how the sacred
and profane have become so very entangled within one another both
in the world's literature and in the minds of the 7.4 billion residents
of the planet. We live in an age with many labels: modernist,
postmodernist, transmodernist, nihilist, sceptic, cynic, obscurantist.
Our world is awash with many isms and wasms. There are labels
which seek, which seem compelled to formulate, a new vocabulary.
However suggestive much of the new terminology may be it is
graphically, hopelessly inadequate to grasp the reality of the
experience of our time. Since at least the 1950s, since at least the
beginning of the Ten Year Crusade and the passing of Shoghi Effendi
to the years before and within this new paradigm, more than half a
century, we have lived in an age in which the roots of faith in large
parts of the planet have been severed. In other places these roots
have spread even deeper while the trees they still feed have become
mundane and irrelevant to the needs of a bewildered humanity. This
issue of modernity and traditionalism, modernism and postmodernism, is far too complex to deal with here in any degree of
depth, but it is part of the essential socio-political milieux in which
this new paradigm exists and is trying to fertilize the world with its
new Bahai culture.
METANARRATIVES AND POLARIZATIONS
One of the characteristics of this age, too, is that it has collapsed the
many polarized, binary, distinctions between, say, high and low
culture or the religious and the secular. This, of course, has not

happened for everyone and everywhere. I do not want to make of

this book an object of extraneous complications but, as I proceeded
along the path of its 750 pages, I may have made its content unduly
complicated to some readers. In the process I'm sure I will have lost
some of those who started out in this work with some enthusiasm.
That is a common experience when reading a book. A writer cannot
win all those readers who come across his work and who begin with
an optimistic fervour in its opening pages.
It should not be surprising that many other social distinctions and
differences, what are sometimes called worldviews or metanarratives
should also have collapsed in this age. This age is one which, in
some ways, is without faith, and in other ways, is characterized by a
plurality of faiths as I have intimated above. No society can long
endure without faith. The enduring legacy of the twentieth century is
that it compelled the peoples of the world to begin seeing themselves
as the members of a single human race, and the earth as that races
common homeland. As they do this, millions still cling to
cosmologies with a narrow ecclesiasticism, a religious exclusivism
and fundamentalism. As I say yet again, the picture is highly
complex.
Despite the continuing conflict and violence that darkens the
horizon, prejudices that once seemed inherent in the nature of the
human species are everywhere giving way. Down with these
prejudices have come barriers that long divided the family of man
into a Babel of incoherent identities of cultural, ethnic or national
origin. That so fundamental a change could occur in so brief a period
virtually overnight in the perspective of historical timesuggests
the magnitude of the possibilities for the future. I quote, in the
following paragraphs, a statement from the Universal House of
Justice in 2002. These paragraphs provide a useful backdrop for
much of the work in this new Bahai paradigm.

ORGANIZED RELIGION IN OUR WORLD

"Tragically, organized religion, whose very reason for being entails
service to the cause of brotherhood and peace, behaves all too
frequently as one of the most formidable obstacles in the path; to cite
a particular painful fact, it has long lent its credibility to fanaticism.
The dark past has not been erased, nor has a new world of light
suddenly been born. Vast numbers of people continue to endure the
effects of ingrained prejudices of ethnicity, gender, nation, caste and
class. All the evidence indicates that such injustices will long persist
as the institutions and standards that humanity is devising only
slowly become empowered to construct a new order of relationships
and to bring relief to the oppressed."
"A threshold has been crossed, though, in the years from the
appearance of the Bab and Bahaullah in the 19th century up to the
emergence of this new paradigm from which there is no credible
possibility of return. Fundamental principles have been identified,
articulated, accorded broad publicity and are becoming progressively
incarnated in institutions capable of imposing them on public
behaviour. There is no doubt that, however protracted and painful the
struggle, the outcome will be to revolutionize relationships among
all peoples, at the grassroots level. As the course of civilization
demonstrates, religion is capable of profoundly influencing the
structure of social relationships. Indeed, it would be difficult to think
of any fundamental advance in civilization that did not derive its
moral thrust from this perennial source. Is it conceivable, then, that
passage to the culminating stage in the millennia-long process of the
organization of the planet can be accomplished in a spiritual
vacuum? Part of the filling of that spiritual vacuum is the work of
this new Faith in the context of its new culture of growth and
learning." Since 1996 a new vocabulary is found in the Bah'

community; it is not a vocabulary created ex nihilo, though. There

are still the basics of Bah' administration: LSA, NSAs, the
Universal House of Justice, ABMs, Continental Borads of
Counsellors, inter alia.
It is evident that growing numbers of people are coming to realize
that the truth underlying all religions is in its essence one. This is
more and more in evidence in this new paradigm, but at the same
time there is lots of conflict deriving from religious roots. This
recognition of the oneness of religion arises, not through a resolution
of theological disputes, but as the House of Justice puts it "as an
intuitive awareness born from the ever widening experience of
others and from a dawning acceptance of the oneness of the human
family itself. Out of the welter of religious doctrines, rituals and
legal codes inherited from vanished worlds, there is emerging a
sense that spiritual life, like the oneness manifest in diverse
nationalities, races and cultures, constitutes one unbounded reality
equally accessible to everyone. In order for this diffuse and still
tentative perception to consolidate itself and contribute effectively to
the building of a peaceful world, it must have the wholehearted
confirmation of those to whom, even at this late hour, masses of the
earths population look for guidance. This diffuse and still tentative
perception will also be consolidating itself at the grassroots level
where Bahais all around the world will be working with others to
contribute effectively to the building of a peaceful world."
"The Bah community," the House of Justice continues, "has been
a vigorous promoter of interfaith activities from the time of their
inception. Apart from cherished associations that these activities
create, Bahs see in the struggle of diverse religions to draw closer
together a response to the Divine Will for a human race that is
entering on its collective maturity. The members of the Bahai
community will continue to assist in every way they can in the years

of this new paradigm not only to stimulate the development of

interfaith activities but, indeed, a range of social and economic
projects far more in both quantity and quality than those initiated in
the international Bahai community in the previous epochs of its
existence." This notion of maturity also needs to be given a context
since for many it does not mean what is used to mean. Maturity used
to mean the ability to get along independently in society as it is,
conscious of one's moral responsibility. So often in recent decades
the word maturity has come to mean, to be defined as, the emotional
disposition to subject society as it is to radical criticism and to help
in the work of changing it according to one's own view. This often
happens in Bah' communities.
"With every day that passes, danger grows that the rising fires of
religious prejudice will ignite a worldwide conflagration the
consequences of which are unthinkable. Such a danger civil
government, unaided, cannot overcome. Appeals for mutual
tolerance cannot alone hope to extinguish animosities that claim to
possess Divine sanction. The crisis calls on religious leadership for a
break with the past as decisive as those that opened the way for
society to address equally corrosive prejudices of race, gender and
nation. In matters of conscience the world is waking-up to a wide
cross-section of social issues aimed at serving the well-being of
humankind. At this greatest turning point in the history of
civilization, the demands of such service could not be more clear.
The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are
unattainable, Bahullh urges, unless and until its unity is firmly
established."
THE TRANSMODERN AND THE POSTMODERN
Contemporary culture in developed countries has become soaked
through and through with simulacra or images which some

theorists--and I for one borrowing the term from Mark Foster-describe as trans-modern. This is as true for the sacred as it is for the
profane. The process has resulted in an increase in the complexity of
social phenomena as individuals try to make sense of their culture
and seek answers to the dilemmas of their lives and their society.
This trans-modern thought in the decades preceding this new
paradigm and in the decades in which this paradigm is taking place
in history has challenged and is challenging the assumptions and
approaches of all systems and collective approaches to human
endeavour. In the process, trans-modernism has opened the way for
new and more effective orientations to be established for people to
deal with their worlds. These new orientations also lie at the
backdrop of the cultures within which Bahais, acting within this new
paradigm, will develop new directions of activity, thought and
imagination.
In the Bahai community these new ways will all be part of this new
Bahai paradigm. This is at least one of the possible, the many,
contexts in which to analyse the emergence of this new Bahai culture
in the last 15 years. In some ways this modern world of image-glut
and the many forms of media underline the notion that life is but a
show, vain and empty, bearing the mere semblance of reality, like a
vapour in the desert which the thirsty dreams to be water. The
complexity and confusion of the real world lies behind the world of
fantasy created for us by these media. This world of fantasy often
seems more real that the real world which seems increasingly unreal.
All of this, too, underlines what for the Bahai is reality: the inner life
and private character--his thought. What matters is our personal
singularity of thought, analysis and language behind the hyper-reality and the images, the excesses and the speed of meaning and
events, the spectacles and the horrors as well as the information and
knowledge explosion.

Instead of attacking the paucity and inadequacy of the modern,

postmodern or trans-modern worldviewswhich is the standard
move by spiritual and new-paradigm advocatesit is perhaps more
useful to reformulate and reconstruct the pre-modern interpretations
of religion in light of developments in this tenth stage of history.
There are enduring fundamentals of the pre-modern, modern, and
postmodern forms of religion which contain truths which are
perennial but not archaic. As social beings, learning takes place as
we come into a tension with the social structures around us. But to
become engaged in any activity in society one needs to develop a
sociological imagination and avoid conceptualizing one's
experiences in purely personal categories. Rejoicing in a unity in
diversity is the sine qua non without which only an anarchous
society prevails. At the centre of this sociological imagination is a
powerful ideology that can serve as a cultural base for our social
structure.
This new Bahai paradigm offers a framework for this ideology, a
framework for the social construction of reality within which we as
Bahais can live and have our being. The notion that every question
has a noble answer or that there are reliable structures of ideology to
believe in wholeheartedly has become, at best, quaint in these fin de
siecle and 3rd millennium years. Some believe that the once-reliedupon audience of learned readers has disappeared, giving way to a
generation desensitized to complex argumentation by television and
the Internet. This is only partly true for there are millions more
readers now and millions can handle human and intellectual
complexity. Ideologies still abound in our world and the Bahai Faith
offers yet one more. Many a soul goes down before his or her
intellect and is imprisoned behind a wall of rationalization. The
skeptical ego and the proud intellect must solve their own problems
in their own way. One's spirit and one's mind cannot force itself
upon others but must be invited. Others must make their own

preparation; we cannot do it all for them. The power of the Cause is

an impersonal one and we cannot see it as our own spiritual,
personal, power. This is a subtle and dangerous development that
happens all-too-easily in the lives of believers. The Most Great
Prison is more than a place in Bah' history. It is part of this new
paradigm as we all carry around the prison of self, the darksome well
which we build through our vain imaginations. It is the blind pit of
our idle fancies which we dig over and over again.
THE CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY
The concept of ideology is used in many ways in social science
literature. In one of the main ways it refers to the values, the
attitudes and the world of thought or understanding of the world
which the majority share. In this sense, ideology is the worldview of
a group at a particular time and historical period. In practice, then,
the concept of ideology refers to worldviews and structures of
meaning in a certain socio-cultural context, as to what is considered
to be important or make up correct descriptions and standards for
collective and/or individual actions.
The single individual's frames of understanding and value systems
for the social world are thus considered to be the result of mirroring
the frames of understanding and values which dominate on the
collective level. The concept of ideology refers then to how a society
at the collective level understands, conceptualizes or describes the
material and social world. This collective level is then laid down or
mirrored in the individual's consciousness.
This new culture of learning and growth is, in fact, a micro and a macro-society
that is both a web of consciousness and an imaginative framework. The
restoration and the acceptance of the many approaches to truth as well as the
acceptance of transcendent reality itself cannot be accomplished by engaging
in ideological warfare. Dogmatic battles between ideologues who assert

propositions as evidence of the truth of their ideology will not re-establish

consciousness of transcendence. More philosophically-minded individuals will
recognize that the preconditions for rational debate include the acceptance of
human experience and transcendence. "Questions of social order can be
discussed rationally only if the whole concept of the order of human existence,
of which the social order forms a part, is viewed in its entirety and right back to
its transcendental origin." The failure to accept this condition is precisely what
Eric Voegelin called logophobia and what he understood as at the core of what
has corrupted the modern world. There are many ways of describing or
accounting for this 'corruption.' Science cannot deal with moral values, nor can
it provide ultimate purpose for human beings because it cannot determine the
nature of man. When the motivation to avoid what is forbidden is weak there is
a storng temptation to live, not by the Decalogue, but according to the 11th
commandment: thou shalt not get caught. To appoint reason as the ultimate
arbiter and ruler on earth is tantamount to abandoning everything to caprice.
As Schopenhauer emphasized that the concept of 'ought' cannot be based on
reason, on some categorical imperative, some sense of human dignity. These
are empty phrases, cobwebs and soap-bubbles when divorced from a
metaphysical base. It is this metaphysical
e which is at the centre of this Bah' paradigm, as it has been at the centre of
this religion for more than a century and a half. Bah's in trying to extend their
Faith to others have an uphill battle laying the foundations in the lives of others
of this new metaphysical base.

THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE IN THIS NEW PARADIGM

In this new Bahai paradigm there is a strong, an important, relation
between public issues and private troubles, between community
problems and personal difficulties. There is an equally important relationship
between the larger historical scene at all levels of society and the inner life of
the individual. Each individual in this paradigm is involved in an experiment
that helps to shape the society, the culture, of learning and growth that is this
new paradigm. Each individual is involved in grasping both history and
biography; he or she is intimately involved in Bahai history and the history of
his society and the stories of his own life and the lives of others: biographies
and autobiographies. This complex of polarities, of biography and history, of
society and autobiography is at the centre of each of our journeys in and
through this new paradigm. In addition, the final battle of Armageddon turns
out to be a war not between nations but within our own selves. It is not waiting
to be fought. It is already upon us and we have been engaged in this battle for
some time. All attempts to base morality and politics on worldly intelligence are
built upon illusions, as Max Horkheimer, one of the founders of the Critical
Theory in sociology has argued. But try to get this idea out there in the public
domain where there is only a multiplicity of non-obligatory values and opinions.

The consensus omnium is weak and unstable and it is this aspect of society, a
highly vulnerable and pluralistic miliex, that makes teaching and consolidation
work in community life the struggle, the battle, that it is. A society without
taboos and a binding system of values cannot function properly, indeed, cannot
continue to exist. Without the roots of faith, no society can exist. It best it is
moribund. An obligatory ethic and a common sense of purpose are essential
and conveying this, this unified Weltanschauung in which science and religion
go hand in hand, to our contemporaries is no easy task. I have been trying for
more than half a cnetury, both before and during this new paradigm. This has
been at the heart of my silent war, a war without weapons and guns, swords or
uniforms.

Each Bahai is, in the end and in their own way, oriented to this new
paradigm as one of their central and continuing life-tasks. Each
Bahai is called upon to understand the nature and drift of this new
paradigm, the shaping of its forms and the meanings of its
increasingly complex structures and processes, relationships and
activities as well as their relevance to the wider society in which
they exist and attempt to serve and act. All the other major
orientations--political and religious--have virtually collapsed as
adequate explanations of the world and of ourselves. Although they
have collapsed, they are still drawn on and discussed; they still fill
the public space in the print and electronic media and they cannot be
ignored by the individual Bahai as he or she sets about integrating
the new Bahai paradigm into the wider society of which it is a part.
This new paradigm does not assign labels or crystallizations of
opinion into such contending and contentious, predetermined and
fixed positions and polarities as: conservative and liberal, deepened
and uninformed, veteran and novitiate, radical and progressive,
active and inactive. It is a paradigm in which human beings, each
human being, investigate reality, seek to interpret and understand it,
and then act/s in such a way to achieve consensus and shape social
reality. Knowledge and reality in this new paradigm are intimately
tied to language and to Bahai culture, to the transcendent and to a
moral cohesion at the centre of this community of communities, this

culture of learning and growth.

This knowledge and this reality are tied to experience and are
sensitive to context. They are also tied to theory and, at least for me
and for my purposes, universal norms deriving from the transcendent
myth which is at the core of Bahai ideology. Our personal
knowledge and the theory we draw on are both part of a neverending process of investigation, of study, and of learning. The
certitude which Bahais possess in this paradigm is one of belief in
the goals, methods and teachings, but it is not a certitude based on
some set of absolutes and its base in factual knowledge. The norms
within this new paradigm are functional and native to the process of
experience. They are not, as I emphasize in this book, arbitrary
absolutes that uphold some set of categorical imperatives which call
down fire from heaven. Our ends, our goals as Bahais, should not be
confused with complete objective reality. They are purely functional
and relative. Reality, one could say, is like a white light and this light
is broken into the prism of human nature and its spectrum of values,
values that are derivative aspects of the same reality. We try as far as
it is humanly possible to avoid arbitrary orthodoxy. Our values
should aim at a tolerant assertion of preference not an intolerant
insistence on agreement of finality. "We must spurn the temptation,"
the House of Justice warns us in hits Ridvan 2012 message, "to insist
on personal opinion." Bah' institutions must seek to nurture and
encourage not control" the behaviour of individuals.(Ridvan 2012).
Cultural similarities must be discovered beneath deceptive but often
superficial institutional divergence.
UNCERTAINTIES DOUBTS AND ENTHUSIASMS
There is always some theoretical doubt as we travel the road of
dialogue. Faith implies doubt. The grasp of truth for the Bahai lacks
certainty's assurance, its totality of conviction. The grasp of truth,

though, is not a totally arbitrary one; nor is it associated with an

irresponsible freedom. There is always a theoretical uncertainty even
with the surest of statements. It is the explicit awareness of this
uncertainty which is, in some ways, the greatest asset for Bahais in
adapting to their human situation (Bahai Studies, Vol. 2, p.9). That
road of dialogue or that journey in Bahai community life is one we
know more about by having travelled it year after year than by all
the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
The uncertainties I refer to above, though, should not result in some
reluctance to express wholehearted enthusiasm. Nor should they
result in an avoidance of the total response of the heart. This new
Bahai paradigm invites a totality of response unchecked by any
"maybe," as Bahiyyih Nakhjavani writes in her analysis of "Artist,
Seeker and Seer."(See: Bahai Studies,V.10, p.3) For me, as I go
about implementing this new paradigm, my imagination works in
two contexts, at two levels of consciousness so to speak. In one of
the contexts I see my life and the new Bahai culture as a house, a
body, a landscape and sometimes a suburb, a space in which I move
with a storehouse of images, very crucial images made up of aspects
of physical reality and their metaphorical significance and aspects of
Bahai history and its living reality in the present. In the second
context, I see myself as working and living, having my life and
being in a series of concentric circles, mostly in the outer concentric
circle with a focal point at the Bahai World Centre with the holy dust
of the Bab and Bahaullah, the epicentre of the Bahai order and its
system, its physical reality. This centre does not dissolve and its
energies flow out to the world, to my world.
The artist knows what inspiration is all about. He or she is not the
only category of person who knows about inspiration, of course. But
inspiration has descended on him or her, palpably and they know its
pure effects. If he or she is a true artist and an artist who is detached

and knows the value of humility and the taste of sacrifice, they will
enable others to make the leap of trust knowing that without it
anything that is uttered is so often spiritless. What I am talking about
here is a highly varied phenomena from person to person. What I
would like to emphasize in this discussion of inspiration and an
accompanying certitude are the levels of consciousness applied both
in and before this new paradigm.
It is important to emphasize and to restate here within the context of
developments in this new Bahai culture is that there are so many
new perspectives for Bah's. The new Bahai culture is faced with
many crises that are new. The modern crisis in the study of literature
is but one. It is a practice of reading that begins with the assumption
that meaning is a textual construction and it is a construction in the
hands and mind of the individual reading the text. For the last
quarter century deconstruction as a literary theory has challenged the
way many literary theorists and analysts think about texts. Perhaps
even more useful than the noun construction is the verb
constructing because deconstruction is a continuous process of
interacting with texts.According to deconstruction, a text is not a
window a reader can look through in order to see either the authors
intention or an essential truth, nor is the text a mirror that turns back
a vivid image of the reader's experiences, emotions, and insights.
DECONSTRUCTION
Deconstruction eludes definition and detailed description. It is a
practice of reading that aims to make meaning from a text by
focusing on how the text works and is connected to other texts as
well as the historical, cultural, social, and political contexts in which
texts are written, read, published, reviewed, rewarded, and
distributed. The individual reading is the one who makes meaning,
but it is meaning within a intelligible pattern of beliefs established

over time by the reader. It is meaning in the context of language.

Human reality, to the deconstructionists, is linguistic and infinitely
complex. Speech, words, continually shape and reshape our vision of
the world. If we do not give shape and meaning to the words they
are, to that extent, meaningless. We not only must give shape to
thought, we must act. This is the fundamental unity and coherence of
philosophy and religion within this deconstruction---at least as I see
it, as I interpret it. Deconstruction helps the individual discover the
continuity of history and truth in language.(See: Beyond
Deconstruction by Kenneth Kearans.
Deconstruction is, for me, part of the whole metaphorical nature of
the Bahai Writings. The new Bahai paradigm is experienced, from
my perspective, as a way of studying the Bahai writings and Bahai
history. Each tutor, each Bahai and each person who examines Bahai
texts will sift the material in his or her own way. For my money
deconstruction offers heuristic insights and I, therefore, emphasize
this method of reading and study within this new paradigm, a
paradigm which allows for many types and styles of reading.
Readers need to be reminded frequently in this book that my views
are just that--my views. They are my approach to the study and
interpretation of the Bahai writings as an activity within this
paradigm and its implementation in Study Circles. Readers are left to
work out their own approaches. We all have to do this as Bahais all
our lives whether we are discussing Study Circles, interpretation of
some aspect of the Cause, this new paradigm of culture and growth
or one of an infinite number of other topics. Man is an animal at the
apex of creation and he is suspended in webs of significance which
he himself has spun. This Bahai paradigm provides a context for the
spinning of these webs of significance. If the individual does not
spin these webs, and their meaning and significance, knowledge and
action will not get caught in their net.

In using deconstruction, the reader uses interpretive strategies that

reveal how a text unravels many meanings. Deconstruction is a
strategy for revealing the under-layers of meaning in a text, underlayers that may not have been considered or assumed by others from
the obvious and the clearly intended meanings. Texts are never
simply unitary in meaning; they include resources that run counter to
their overt assertions or even their authors intentions. In other
words, deconstruction helps the reader examine the givens in a text
and create his own meaning system based on these givens. One of
the givens in some schools of Western metaphysics has been that
language can be put aside by reason to arrive at a pure, selfauthenticating truth or method.
However deconstruction, as an interpretive strategy, assumes that
language is unstable and ambiguous, can often be inherently
ambiguous and contradictory; meaning therefore is only partly, and
never fully, grasped. One must often defer meaning. There is often
no one and only answer to the many questions that arise from a text.
For me, this is all part and parcel of the opening out of the Bahai
culture to a host of interpretations and ways of looking at both the
Bahai writings, Bahai community life and the wider society. To the
Bahai studying the writings, he or she assumes these writings matter.
In the beginning was the word and, as the deconstructions would
emphasize, the word is not on trial, everything is in the text itself.
(Frank McConnell, "Will Deconstruction Be the Death of
Literature?," Wilson Quarterly, Winter, 1990.
RE-CREATION AND SELF-RENEWAL
We moderns, post-moderns, trans-moderns or whatever term one
wants to use for us as Bahais are centred, so to speak, in this new
paradigm; those doing this literary deconstruction, are rather like
Michelangelos captives struggling for meaning out of their

formlessness. We are each a self-producing system. We are

involved in a system that is engaged in a constant recreation and
redefinition of itself, of us as individuals, and of the community.
This is done through the selective reorganization of the order and the
disorder, the endless sensory and ideational diversity present in the
surrounding worlds and within ourselves. This way of seeing life as
a constant form of self-recreation and self-renewal as well as
community recreation and renewal is all part of a narrative process.
The construction of identity takes the form of a narrative. The
narrative-self occupies a position in a vast web, a nexus, a host of
points of intersection, a linkage of past, present and future. We are
all intimately involved and preoccupied with what is real, with an
image and print glut and especially an image glut.
This self aims at learning and the cultural attainments of the mind,
but it must possess a sense of its own nothingness so that the ego
does not dominate the social interaction in which the self is engaged.
No self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now
more complex and mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or
woman, rich or poor, each of us is located at nodal points of
specific communication circuits however tiny these may be. Or
better: one is always located at a post, a place in the landscape,
through which various kinds of messages pass. The self in this sense,
then, is a type of social nexus. The self exists only within webs of
interlocution or interchange. We are not the centre of the universe;
we revolve around a centre; we endow the world with its
significance and provide meaning for our world. There is only one
essential Centre and one Text and all the participants in this new
paradigm revolve around this Centre and this Text.
This may sound to some readers as all too abstract and complex to
take in. Such readers are partly right. The process is complex and in
many ways very abstract. I encourage readers to persist through this

written, this verbal, complexity that I am trying to describe. In true

consultation diverse points of view can reverberate across the wide
range of Bah' writings. Individuals dominating and a majority
being passive and watchers of the spectacle of interaction is not true
consultation; having tidy discussions with conclusions arrived at is
not always a sign of success. This process is much like the Bahai
journey itself. it is not about arriving; it is about being committed to
tread step by step on the never-ending journey towards more
sympathy and understanding, wider relationships and definitions. To
draw on and refer to Bah' standards will often mean bearing in
mind the constant possibility of standards other than those restricted
by the gravity of our own experience. Hang in there, then, as I try to
explore the implications of this new paradigm.
In the Bahai teachings there is a convergence of spiritual, scientific
and philosophical thought, indeed, a unified model of the universe in
all it complexity and wonder, its mystery and awesomeness. The
universe is infinite and spiritual knowledge is infinite. Our inner and
outer struggles will never be over. This new Bahai culture of
learning and growth invites both Bahais and interested seekers to
take a spiritual journey that does not rely on gullibility but on one's
deepest desire to know and understand oneself in relation to the
Unknown. The Bahai paradigm asks readers to put the world's
current paradigms on hold and to examine a renewed way of looking
at things, a way that is philosophically logical, scientifically accurate
and spiritually unifying. The Bahai model ties together and connects
many of the floating abstractions into one logical and cohesive unity.
This unity, and its notion of truth, results from how we use our
language. To put this another way: Truth/truth verbalizes
Reality/reality in this latest of the Abrahamic religions and its
profoundly anti-clerical stance.
It is not my purpose in this book to go into any detail regarding

Bahai theology or ontology, Bahai cosmology or cosmogony, Bahai

philosophy or sociology, Bahai psychology or history, among other
disciplines. These many subjects have begun to be explored in other
books which the serious reader can access either on the internet or in
a good Bahai bookshop. The new Bahai culture of learning and
growth does imply what Bahai culture has always implied both
explicitly and implicitly a deep reading program. The simple core of
the Ruhi materials serves as a beginning but it is not the end. When
one has finished the Ruhi sequence one has arrived at the end of the
beginning so to speak.
ANTHONY LEE AND THE RUHI PROBLEM AS HE SEES IT
Such an understanding of the new Bahai culture will help to deal
with some of the criticisms of the Ruhi, the institute, process as were
outlined in Anthony Lee's essay "The Ruhi Problem"(See BLO)
some six years ago in February 2005 at the end of the first decade of
this new paradigm. I would encourage readers to go to this essay for
it contains just about all of the criticisms I have come across in the
first two decades of the implementation of this new Bahai culture:
1996 to 2016---the end of the current FYP. None of us should be
afraid of criticism, for it can be life-giving, life-enhancing, indeed,
crucial for the maintenance of any group. But, as I state elsewhere in
this book, the problem of criticism is a separate issue that readers
need to do a word check in order to read all the references I make to
this subject in these more than 750 pages and 300,000 words.
THE COMPLEXITY OF THE NEW PARADIGM
In many ways what I am writing about here is, as I say, complex and
it is a result of: (a) the complexity of the subject matter and (b) my
decades of learning as a student from the multitude of my teachers.
What I am writing about here is the result of my own learning and is,

as the historian Peter Gay emphasizes about the choice of topic, "a
deeply emotional affair." My style of writing is, as the historian
Edward Gibbon once wrote, the image of my mind. The choice and
command of my language is the fruit of my exercise of it over more
than six decades and it is the fruit and function of both nature and
nurture. I hope it is a bridge to a helpful substance of content and
analysis for readers. What I write and how I write will not appeal to
all readers. This literary exercise is the result of years of meditation
and a sincere and deep interest in the subject matter. In the end, of
course, one's work appeals to some and not to others. So, too, does
deconstruction, a word, a topic, I mentioned above, appeal to some
and not to others.
We in the developed nations live in a world of the virtual, in which
media permeates everything and everyone. In this tenth and final
stage of history which began in 1963, to use one of Shoghi Effendi's
outlines of the past, the media has shifted from its former semisaturation by/with what we could call old media: radio and
newspapers, magazines and journals, as well as the first 3/4 of a
century of cinema and, perhaps, two decades of television. A shift
has taken place in the last half century, since the election of the
House of Justice in 1963, involving the development and
convergence of new forms of media and distribution. This has
produced profound social changes. The task of analysing what these
changes are and mean is even more important than it was twenty
years ago in the years before this new Bahai paradigm emerged and
before some of these new media emerged.
The task of theory now, at least as I see it, and one of the tasks I take
on in this book, is to trace the changes in society in this tenth stage
of history and especially since the emergence of this new paradigm
in 1996. Most of those in the West, those who are immersed in these
new media, are influenced by the culture, and mediated culture that

is saturated with an often disempowering and ultimately unsatisfying

consumerism. The saturation of images, a type of image-glut laid on
top of issues of immense complexity, has produced the world in
which this new paradigm operates, its mise en scene. All of the print
and electronic media are, in some ways, a form of public pedagogy
which are a crucial means for the organizing, shaping, and
disseminating of information, ideas, and values. These media are
components of broader cultural politics that have been co-opted by
corporate power, shaped by neoliberal, market-driven ideology. This
public pedagogy is seen as a powerful ensemble of ideological and
institutional forces whose aim is to produce competitive, selfinterested individuals vying for their own material and ideological
gain. Media, then, bear influence on society not only by shaping
ideas and perspectives, but also by doing so in the context of
broader, increasingly concentrated corporate interests. Many argue,
too, that media play a stronger role than either family or school in
the shaping of individual values in this 21st century. Whether this is
true or not, there is little doubt that the new Bahai culture, the new
Bahai paradigm, must contend with these powerful strongholds of
public pedagogy and try to understand their insinuating as well as
educative affects if the influence of what one might call the spirit of
a true Bahai consciousness is to be developed. This issues here are of
great complexity and my few comments here are only intended to
skirt the edges. I leave it to readers to tease-out their own meanings
and interpretations of the issues.
MATERIALISM AND GAPS
The emphasis on materialism, on consumption, connects directly to
religious values. Lives spent valuing acquisition of material
possessions tend to place less value on the intangible, the spiritual,
and the self-sacrificing. Materialism becomes a distraction from a
God-centred life. Excess materialism is a social contagion, draining

global resources, straining lives, and debasing values in the dogged

pursuit of more. This cancer makes the efforts of individuals to teach
the Cause as difficult, if not more difficult, than ever. The gap
between the rich and the poor among the world's 7.4 billion people
has been widening for some time and it is impossible to separate this
gap from the operation of this new paradigm. This new Bah'
culture operates in the context of a range of social values and
attitudes, and these values and attitudes have a strong affect on how
the new Bah' culture is put into practice.
There is another gap of equal or even greater importance to those
who take part in this new paradigm. It is the gap between the
thoughts we had and the words we found, the desire we felt and the
achievement we made, the vision of what a Bah' should be and the
effort of being one. This gap tells us something is missing. This gap
is also an expression of where we are in relation to the Perfections
manifested in the history of this Cause and of our desire to find a
better expression for the union, the home, of our yearnings. There
exists a tension in our lives that is not the result of our faith or lack
of it, our love or the lack of it, our earnestness to serve and to act or
their deficiencies. This tension is the result of our separation from
those Perfections, and our awareness of our failures, our poverty. As
we slowly become angels of fire and snow there is much melting
that takes place and much fire which flames in our inspiration. This
experience I am describing here is all to familiar to the veteran
believers and it becomes, soon enough, the experience of the
novitiates.
Believers rifle and flick, scan and turn, the pages of the Text, looking
for that elusive and imminent glimpse of what we might have read or
should have read, what we could have been said or quoted. We yearn
to find and to manifest that hidden Word. So often more than its
presence we feel its absence and that gap tells us more than we

realize or admit. How many theories and ideologies, movements for

reform or even revolution, that have inspired groups of people to act
in certain ways. In the end they have been prevented from achieving
the very hopes toward which they have been motivated. In some
ways, it is intrinsic to human aspiration that it should constantly be
aware of this gap.
RECEPTIVITY
Receptivity to the Cause has been great since Abdul-Baha told us it
was great back in the years of the Great War nearly a century ago,
but the manifestations of this receptivity are often subtle and require
understanding on our parts if we are not to be disappointed by the
meagre outward and quantitative results of our teaching efforts and
in our own inner lives. This has been true all my Bahai life and it is
true, a fortiori, in this new paradigm. It has been true in all the places
in the West where I have lived since World War 2. From a planetary
perspective there has been an increase in the growth, the size of the
Bahai community since my mother joined this Cause in 1953, but in
most places in the West numbers continue to see only a slow, if
steady, increase. Understanding the dynamics of growth,
understanding and knowing about the patterns of growth in the last
two centuries, as far back as the lives of the two chief precursors,
indeed, as far back as the middle of the 18th century, helps the
individual Bah' in this 21st century deal with the realities of his or
her Bah' experience in their own life, in their community, cluster,
region, nation and across the wide-wide-world. Without
understanding, often a great deal of anxiety is experienced.
Commenting as recently as Ridvan 2013, on the dynamics of
growth, the House of Justice, remarked that: "a worldwide
community is refining its ability to read its immediate environment,
analyse its possibilities, and apply judiciously the methods and
instruments of the Five Year Plan." Now at the beginning of the third

year of the present Plan, 2011 to 2016, there has taken-place much
refining and there is much more to take place in the years ahead.
"Receptivity manifests itself, wrote the House of Justice in its
Ridvan 2010 message, "in a willingness to participate in the process
of community building set in motion by the core activities. In cluster
after cluster where an intensive programme of growth is now in
operation, the task before the friends this coming year is to teach
within one or more receptive populations, employing a direct
method in their exposition of the fundamentals of their Faith, and
find those souls longing to shed the lethargy imposed on them by
society and work alongside one another in their neighbourhoods and
villages to begin a process of collective transformation." The House
went on to say that: "If the friends persist in their efforts to learn the
ways and methods of community building in small settings in this
way, the long-cherished goal of universal participation in the affairs
of the Faith will, we are certain, increase within their grasp by
several orders of magnitude. To meet this challenge, the believers
and the institutions that serve them will have to strengthen the
institute process in the cluster, increasing significantly within its
borders the number of those capable of acting as tutors of study
circles; for it should be recognized that the opportunity now open to
the friends to foster a vibrant community life in neighbourhoods and
villages, characterized by such a keen sense of purpose, was only
made possible by crucial developments that occurred over the past
decade in that aspect of Bah culture which pertains to deepening.
But a vibrant community, indeed, community building itself, is still
in its early years as the House of Justice informed us as far back as
the mid-1990s. It is important to understand that we are still near the
beginning of a process that, it is my view, will take many decades
and perhaps centuries.
INDIVIDUALISM AND EGOISM: ASOCIAL TENDENCIES

The one-dimensional calculating ego-based idea of the individual

which dominates as the a priori taken-for-granted basic assumption
of individual human nature, makes psychology and the social
sciences, as I see them, unable to solve most of today's pressing
problems. To attack our civilization's problems with knowledge
based on the predominant position of the individual as an asocial
egoist, is totally insufficient. Practice cannot any longer be based
only on this particular voice or conception of human nature. We
must therefore, I would conclude, try to understand the social
individual on the basis of a broader perspective of assumed ideas
other than the individual only being concerned with calculating and
evaluating own individual advantages and disadvantages. An
alternative a priori assumption about social and collective behavior
and development is at the basis of this new paradigm; notions which
have received little attention from psychology and the social
sciences. There are deep urges and needs for solidarity, community,
sharing, and reciprocal understanding. It is these fragile experiences
that must be preserved and fostered if we want to keep alive the idea
of moral and social development.
THE SACRED IN OUR TIME
How is the sacred modified in this new paradigm through its
interaction with virtual, media culture? Subjectivity in the
contemporary is clearly what Scott Bakutman (1993, p.5) calls a
terminal identity, one formed in front of the computer, television
and mobile screens, at the intersection of various information
networks. Media news seems unable to relay real events without
first mediating them through popular culture references from music,
films or TV; indeed the lines between journalism, entertainment and
advertising are blurry at best. This is the age of the spin-off, of
product placement and infotainment. Symbols slide through different

mediums, from the movie screen to the television to the computer to

the mobile phone to the written page to the clothing with which we
brand ourselves. The new Bahai paradigm is set in this context
among many contexts.
Not every reader here will find my emphasis, my theoretical
position, a helpful framework for analysis of this paradigm. For me,
though, there is a cultural logic to my analysis with its emphasis on
the global, the dispersed and the virtual in culture. It is very
important to understand our society, to understand our world---if we
want to have an understanding of the new Bahai paradigm. For
billions of others in our planetary culture all these new media forms
have no meaning for theirs is a world of poverty, third world status
and simple survival. The world people in these third-world cultures
have to understand is, in many ways, a very different one than the
typical world of those in the Western middle class. This reality of the
different cultural and social worlds in which the Bah's in over 230
countires live, this multiple-reality must be kept before us as we
explore the implications and the realities of the new Bahai paradigm.
To put this another way, the new Bah' paradigm is many things to
many people across the infinitely varied world that is our 21st
century.
The devoted believer often feels a certain poverty in the outward
forms, the actions, that make up his or her contribution to this new
world Faith. Abdul-Baha was fully aware of this inner feeling that is
so often part of our inner life. That is probably the reason, among
many reasons, why He stressed the wealth of sincerity within.
"When sincere intent hath been attained and the power of
detachment," He wrote, "an eloquent tongue is bestowed and this
attracts mighty confirmations."(unpublished tablet quoted in Four on
an Island, p.98). It is not the separate elements themselves but the
subtle interaction that creates this magnetic field. Success lies not in

our single lives, but in our striving for unity. This has become
especially true in this new paradigm as millions more are and will be
entering this community of the sacred.
The sacred in our time, though, has come to consist of forms that are
consumed by the mass, by millions in the world of popular culture.
These forms are consumed, in part, for their spiritual content, for the
experience of the transcendent they provide to their votaries. The
sacred is often ambivalently situated on the boundary of formal
religious and spiritual traditions. The new forms of the sacred are
everywhere once one begins to look for them; popular culture is rife
with the detritus of millennia of religious traditions. Because of the
suspension of the usual rules of the real world in their textual
universes, the new forms of the sacred often occur in the literary and
visual genres of science fiction, horror and fantasy--what might be
termed the fantastic postmodern sacred. Although they are
produced for the profane purposes of capitalism and entertainment,
these texts are heavily packed with spiritual signifiers cobbled
together from various religions and myths. All of these, I argue,
refract religious symbols and ideas through a postmodernist or transmodern sensibility, with little regard for the demands of real world
epistemology, real world systems of knowing.(See John C.
McDowell, Wars Do Not Make One Great: Redeeming the Star
Wars Mythos from Redemptive Violence Without Amusing
Ourselves to Death," in The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture,
Spring, 2010.)
What I am writing about here in the above paragraph is really quite
complex and readers might like to do some reading in sociology,
psychology and media studies to try and get a handle on what I am
saying. Our world in recent decades has become infinitely complex,
arguably as far back as the birth of the postmodern in the 1950s and
1960s. Up until that time the good guys and the bad guys were easier

to identify; the world's polarities were simple, at least simpler than

they have become now in the 21st century. They were simple
politically with the party-system; they were simple religiously and
socially as well: the rich, the poor and people in the middle. The
whole picture has become, just about overnight, a complex whole
and the new paradigm, it seems to me anyway, is built to cope with
this pluralistic, multi-paradigmatic, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic,
gender-rich and varied, exceedingly complex global community. All
such diversities in this global Bah' community are recognized and
valued. But so long as some withdraw or feel threatened, feel
excluded or undermined, then to that extent are the confirmations
attending the collective effort of this community not experienced.
THE WIDER CULTURE, THE CULTURE THAT IS OUR
SOCIETY
While Bahais in the developed cultures, in my case, virtually all the
Bah's I have known since my lifeline was part of the Bah'
narrative--while Bah's experience various activities in their new
culture of learning and growth, they are also experiencing so many
media forms in much more extensive proportions than previous
generations. A study circle of two hours a week must compete in the
consciousness of many, if not most Western, Bahais with dozens of
hours of television and cinema, radio and music. As Firuz
Kazemzadeh, the 'oft-time secretary of the NSA of the Bah's of the
United States, said back in the first plan of the House of Justice
when my pioneering life had begun to take-off: "we are one per cent
Bahais and 99 per cent our culture." I make this statement several
times in this book to give it the emphasis I think it needs to receive.
The new Bahai culture, though, provides for the Bahai community a
living and developing tradition. It is not some dead weight from the
past, but something that informs and shapes thought and is, itself,
evolving. Meaning emerges over time; the meaning of the Bahai

texts also evolve within an infinite process, and this evolution

always takes place in the context of an authoritative, a legitimate,
succession. This aspect of the new paradigm is absolutely crucial. It
is the Covenantal centre, the authoritative centre without which the
entire ediface would fall apart. It would fall apart in the same ways
that all the old religions are, indeed, falling apart at the seams due to
division. This age has become the era of a 1000 Christianites, a 1000
Buddhisms, inter alia.
The Bah' Faith has grown-out of the Shaykhi school of the IthnaAshariyyish sect of Shia Islam and it has fulfilled the prophecies of
the old-time religions. Of course there are many interpretations of
these prophecies. But the crucial question is: who is right? Only time
will tell. For now the playing field is littered with views. This
littering is not only with respect to prophecies, but also with respect
of all the major issues outside the world of science. Our 21st century
is built on science and it needs a religion to join with science. That
religion is the Bah' Faith; science and religion will grow together
in this new paradigm in this 21st century making this latest of the
Abrahamic religions an immensely powerful force in the decades
ahead, little by little, day by day. The game-plan so to speak, though,
is partly based on that aphorism: slow and steady wins the race.
EDWARD GIBBON
As a final opening note I would like to add here some words of
Edward Gibbon which hopefully place this new Bahai culture in
what is, at least for me, a helpful perspective. The words come from
Gibbon's book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the book
which Shoghi Effendi often read for the pure pleasure of enjoying
gibbon's use of the English language:
"There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish

in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and
the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning,
improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just
regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of
the greatest part of the happiness of private life." There is, in this
Cause, a great emphasis on the inner life and private character and
how this one feature of our life is more important than all the
organized plans and programs. As Shoghi Effendi once wrote:
"Not by the force of numbers, not by the mere exposition of a set of
new and noble principles, not by an organized campaign of teaching
no matter how worldwide and elaborate in its characternot even
by the staunchness of our faith or the exaltation of our enthusiasm,
can we ultimately hope to vindicate in the eyes of a critical and
sceptical age the supreme claim of the Abh Revelation. One thing
and only one thing will unfailingly and alone secure the undoubted
triumph of this sacred Cause, namely, the extent to which our own
inner life and private character mirror forth in their manifold aspects
the splendor of those eternal principles proclaimed by Bahullh."
The Guardian prefaced the above words with: "Humanity, through
suffering and turmoil, is swiftly moving on towards its destiny; if we
be loiterers, if we fail to play our part surely others will be called
upon to take up our task as ministers to the crying needs of this
afflicted world." This, of course, is taking place as literally
thousands of organizations have arisen, especially during the years
of this new Bah' culture, to minister to the crying needs of our
afflicted world for the most part at the local level, but often with
regional, national and international organizational affiliates.
"The love of action," Gibbon continues, "is a principle of a much
stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to
ambition, and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of

propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue,

and, if those virtues are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a
state, or an empire may be indebted for their safety and prosperity to
the undaunted courage of a single man." Indeed, this, too, is more
and more evident as we go from decade to decade in this new
paradigm. The internet is full of these men and women of action and
so too is real space. How often it is that some expression of
appreciation is given in one of the many print and electronic media
to such individuals that society is deeply indebted to.
"To the love of pleasure," Gibbon goes on, "we may therefore
ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute
most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in
which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised
would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature."
This new Bahai paradigm provides, it seems to me, an excellent
context for the manifestation of these two natural propensities in the
individuals across the Bah' world. Perhaps, though, more than
either of these propensities, is the soul's motion in relation to its
Beloved unfolding in the process so much of the meaning of life as
the lifespan develops from its early years through middle and old
age---if one lasts that long.
Looking back from these days of my retirement from the world of
jobs and endless meetings and administrative responsibilities, no
longer bitter with feelings that I once had of anxiety and gloom due
to my bi-polar disorder, I often recall with appreciation and gratitude
those unmistakable evidences of affection and steadfast zeal which I
have seen and now see from time to time, and which served to
encourage me, in no small measure, that the realization of this
Cause's goals and vision are slowly taking place in this tormented
world. I can well imagine the degree of uneasiness, nay of affliction,
that often agitates the mind and soul of many loving and loyal

servant of this Cause during these long years of global trouble and
woe. We all need to rest assured that this Cause is protected in ways
no religion in the past has been protected. Each Bah' needs to
evince such tenacity of faith and unceasing activity as they have
never displayed for its promotion. This cannot but in the end be
abundantly rewarded by Abdul-Bah, who from His station above
is the sure witness of all that we have each endured and suffered for
Him, each in our own way.
AN OPENING NOTE: IT'S ABOUT TIME
This book of 750 pages and 300,000 words contains my personal
reflections and understandings regarding the new culture of learning
and of growth, the paradigmatic shift that the Bahai community has
been going through since the mid-1990s. Back in the mid-1990s the
pattern most prevalent in the Bahai community, the pattern that had
existed for many decades, for helping individual believers increase
their understanding of the Cause they had joined consisted primarily
of occasional courses and classes. Some were offered locally, some
were part of national deepening programs and for the most part
individuals were left to deepen or not to deepen their knowledge as
the case may be. This is still the case; individuals are free to
participate or not; there has never been in the Bahai Faith the kind of
compulsion one often finds in other religious and quasi-religious
movements.
The efforts to teach the Cause, to spread it to every corner of the
Earth, have continued in this new paradigm as they had done since
the formal inception of this new Faith in the 1860s. The focus, too,
in the organizational structure of the Bahai community during the
first six decades of the formal implementation of Abdul-Bahas
Divine Plan, 1936 to 1996, was on the spread of the Cause, the
building of an international Bahai community, of national and local

spiritual assemblies as well as a broad infrastructure of committees

and agencies at the international, national, regional and local levels.
The result was an organizational form for the Bahai community, a
form which entered a new, a Four Year Plan, in 1996 and which
began to make some major adjustments to its outward and inward
structure for the purposes of teaching and consolidation, ethos and
functioning as well as effectiveness and efficiency.
The methods of teaching and consolidation as well as the
organizational focus and form that had existed during the lives of
virtually the entire Bahai community since the opening of AbdulBaha's Plan in 1936/7 began to undergo a paradigmatic shift in the
years 1996 to 2015. Those methods and forms that were seen as
satisfactory as the Cause spread first from the Middle East in the
19th century and then to many countries outside the Middle East by
and after the 1930s, were reviewed and revised, reoriented and
reinvented in such a way that the overall patterns and programs,
indeed, the ethos and outreach of the Bahai community could be said
to have begun a paradigmatic shift. This subject can be studied in
more detail, in a systematic way in a series of letters, papers, articles
and books.
In this book I have been compiling and composing, writing and
editing in the last four years I subject this paradigm to a personal
examination and survey, a seeing it with my own eyes and not the
eyes of my neighbour, an idiosyncratic focus that places the
emphasis on what role I have and will play in the years ahead. This
book is, then, a highly personal statement and readers need to see it
as such. I engage in some of the core activities, but most of my
teaching time is spent on opportunities which arise on the internet.
They are outside the box activities and they are rooted in my
individual initiative. If this book helps others to work out their own
role in this new paradigm, both inside and outside the box, as it

were, I will be more than pleased. As the House of Justice pointed

out in its message of 28/12/'10, Bahais need to "discern with ease
those areas of activity in which the individual can best exercise
individual initiative and those which fall to the institutions alone."
As the Supreme Body continues: "wealth of sentiment, abundance of
good-will and effort are of little avail when their flow is not directed
along proper channels."
It should be obvious to readers by now, at the early stage of this
book, that much of what I write applies in the main to the Western
world, to developed societies and not to those many parts of our
planet that do not have, as yet, access to the enormous benefits of the
world's scientific, technological and material developments. To
choose but one example: of the 7 billion inhabitants of the planet
less than two billion use the internet. Much of my work in the
international Bahai community in the last 15 years has been on the
internet and my guess is that, of the approximately seven million
Bahais, less than two million are on the internet. Much of the
quantitative success in teaching and in the implementation of much
of the new paradigm applies more to village life in the third world.
This is not to say that the urban centres of the West do not require
the harmonious interaction of the three key participants--the
individual, the institutions and the community---for they clearly do
and have for decades.
SIXTY YEARS BEFORE THIS PARADIGM: 1936 TO 1996
Since the 1930s the Bahai Faith has taken-off, so to speak, across the
globe from the first systematic plans and the inception of that Plan
and its teaching programs from 1936 to 1996, a period of sixty years.
The spread of this Cause during those sixty years was
unprecedented. It came to cover the face of the Earth and it had done
so, for the most part, during my lifetime. I do not mean by this, of

course, that the Bahai Faith can now be found in every town, city,
hamlet, village and rural locality. Far from it. This would occur, as
the Bahai vision would have it, in the decades and indeed centuries
to come with an inevitability that was part of this Faith's teleological,
providential, religious, view of history. Still, the spread of this
Cause, in some ways, has been a most extraordinary achievement in
my lifetime: some four epochs. This book is not a historical
documentary of those epochs, those sixty years, but a sort of 'what's
next?' story. The 'what's next' is the first 20 years of this paradigm
and the years to come which will also be in the historical and
contemporary context of this paradigm. More than half the clusters
into which the Bahai community now divides the earth's landscape
have no Bahais. The spread of this new world religion still has far to
go and it will be done in the context of this new culture of learning
and growth. The goal of the Plan from 2011 to 2016 is "to raise the
total number of clusters in which a programme of growth is
underway--at whatever level of intensity--to 5000." There will still
be about 10,000 clusters out of the 16,000 total with no Bahais
and/or little growth in 2016. There will still be much work to do at
the end of the Plan the Bahai community is currently embarked
upon: 2011-2016. Indeed, there will be much work to do in all the
Plans that remain to 2044 when I am 100 years old, if I last that long,
and the Bahai world, the Bahai Era, is at the opening of its third
century.
CLUSTERS
Part 1:
There are now online a vast range of resources on the new Bah'
paradigm. Go to this link for one such source:
http://www.bahaisunite.org/baha-i-resources/baha-i-administrativeorder/ ......A Bah' cluster is a group of Bah' communities working

together to enrich community while developing and fostering bonds

of friendship through offering study circles, children's classes, youth
activities, devotional services, and other activities which build
fellowship and bonds of friendship throughout a designated area. All
activities listed on this website are open to everyone. We look
forward to meeting you and welcoming you into our community. In
the several thousand clusters, though, "which have embarked on
intensive programs of growth, or are at the threshold of doing so the
Regional Bah Councils have appointed an Area Teaching
Committee, whose role is to coordinate and unify the collective
teaching activities of the friends in the cluster, and to work closely
with the institute coordinator and the Auxiliary Board member in
planning the cycles of growth and the cluster reflection meetings".
(letter from NSA of Australia to LSAs 29/7/2008). Each year the
House of Justice comments on these reflection meetings and their
role in providing the opportunity for "earnest and uplifting
deliberation."(ridvan 2013)
Cluster Reflection meetings are an important part of Bahai
community life now, but depending on the community one lives in,
attendance can sometimes be low and its still something many
communities are learning about. The importance of these meetings
and why Bah's should make an effort to attend is discussed breifly
below. Farzam Arbab, in the foreword of Learning About Growth,
states: "The sharing of experience is extremely valuable. Reflection
on the dynamics of the efforts of others yields insights into the
causes of crisis and victory in ones own endeavors. The value of
reflection is indisputable. As Bahais and as a community however,
its value requires more than mere acknowledgement: Reflection is
one of the fundamental principles underlying the mode in which we
operate.
Part 2:

In the above document Farzam Abab prefaced with the above

mentioned words, the story of the Colombian Bahai community and
their efforts to achieve large-scale expansion is told. It tells of their
humble beginnings, their journey to bring about growth and the
subsequent evolution of the Ruhi Institute. Of their role as teachers
and administrators of the Faith, it states that, the most they could
expect from themselves was to engage wholeheartedly in an
intensive plan of action and an accompanying process of reflection
and consultation. Over time, the process of action accompanied by
reflection and consultation became their method of learning and
service, giving rise to the eventual development of course and
educational materials that we now refer to as the Ruhi Books. It is
hard to imagine that something as comprehensive and powerful as
the Ruhi Institute process could have been developed through
anything less than a set of ideas put into practice, subjected to
reflection and consultation, and then further modified.
Similarly, in our own efforts to reach out to the wider community,
we operate in a cyclic, not a linear, pattern. As the Universal House
of Justice describes, a community ideally grows through three-month
cycles of activity:the burst of expansion experienced as a result of
intense action; the necessary period of consolidation during which
increases in ranks are fortified; and the opportunities designated for
all to reflect and plan. Each stage of the cycle: expansion,
consolidation, reflection and planning---is equally important, leading
to the enhancement of the next and the effectiveness of the whole.
The stage of reflection is to not only celebrate our accomplishments,
but to analyze our challenges and learn from both to inform our
plans for the next cycle.
Key to the progress of an intensive program of growth is the phase
dedicated to reflection, in which the lessons learned in action are

articulated and incorporated into plans for the next cycle of activity.
Its principal feature is the reflection meeting as much a time of
joyous celebration as it is of serious consultation. Having a voice,
having a choice In the 2013 Ridvan Message, the Universal House
of Justice stated: "Gatherings for reflection are increasingly seen as
occasions where the communitys efforts, in their entirety, are the
subject of earnest and uplifting deliberation. This description in no
way excludes members of a community who are not formally
registered Bahais. The purpose of a cluster reflection meeting is to
deliberate on the affairs of a community and as such, all members of
the respective community are encouraged to participate."
Part 3:
To see the purpose of a cluster reflection meeting is to see its
potential. For instance, a friend attending a cluster reflection meeting
in an area of Nepal explained that some 300 people attended while
only around five of the attendees were declared Bahais. In Toronto,
Canada as well, as seen in the film Frontiers of Learning released by
the Universal House of Justice, reflection meetings are held on a
neighborhood level to more acutely address the needs of a particular
community. Whether you are a child attending a neighborhood
childrens class, a junior youth supporting a local groups service
project, a participant in a study circle or an individual believer not
involved in any formal core activity, the cluster reflection meeting is
a space in which you can become an active protagonist in your
community.
In Insights into the Frontiers of Learning, a document released to
supplement the aforementioned film, particular mention is given to
the increased capacity in formerly underrepresented population
groups, such as women & girls: Women & girls have gained
increased confidence by initiating core activities and are having a

greater voice in community affairs through participation in reflection

meetings and other gatherings. While individual capacity is built
through the educational process offered by the Bahais, so too can a
communitys capacity be built by providing collective spaces in
which voices are heard. For action to be collaborative, the forum that
gives rise to it must be participatory.
The value in reflecting as a greater whole becomes clearer as we
understand both its practical and spiritual implications. When
following the narrative of the Colombian community, the importance
of collective reflection becomes apparent: The purpose of joint
reflection was to seek in the unfathomable depths of the ocean of
Revelation the answers to questions, challenges, and problems and to
discover the next steps in a path that, if trodden with absolute faith,
would lead to unprecedented expansion. We also see the necessity
for collective reflection in the Insights into the Frontiers of Learning
document: As with other structures in the cluster, the means for
planning and reflection has also developed organically, becoming
more organized, systematic, and varied as complexity has grown.
Initial informal interaction eventually gives rise to a cluster
reflection meeting and to other formal and informal occasions for
reflection.
Part 4:
How then should a reflection gathering look and what form should it
take? Again, we look to the Universal House of Justice for guidance:
"In gatherings for reflection participants learn what has been
accomplished overall, understand their own labours in that light, and
enhance their knowledge about the process of growth by absorbing
the counsels of the institutions and drawing on the experience of
their fellow believers. Careful analysis of experience, through
participatory discussions rather than overly complex & elaborate

presentations, serves to maintain unity of vision, sharpen clarity of

thought and heighten enthusiasm. Central to such an analysis is the
review of vital statistics that suggest the next set of goals to be
adopted. Plans are made that take into account increased capacity in
terms of the human resources available at the end of the cycle to
perform various tasks, on the one hand, and accumulated knowledge
about the receptivity of the population and the dynamics of teaching,
on the other.
However, as mentioned in the Insights from the Frontiers of
Learning document, we should also not lose sight of the intended
purpose of a reflection meeting: Reflection meetings sometimes
centred too much on planning or instruction rather than the
opportunity to learn from experience and revise action accordingly.
Above all, regular reflection gives us an opportunity both as
individuals and as a community, to make each morrow richer than
its yesterday and where we fall short to try again.
SYSTEMATIC PROGRAMS OF GROWTH: began in 1936/7
There has unquestionably been a freshness and a radiance associated
with this new Faith both within its community life and externally in
its visibility across the planet in the decades since my family in
Canada made its first contact, went to its first fireside in 1953--after
the Cause had been in Canada for a little more than half a century.
The indirect effects of this Cause are, from a Bahai perspective,
immeasurable, incalculable. As the Bahai Faith has gone from
strength to strength and as millions of its adherents found it was
'bliss to be alive' under a new dispensation so much has happened
since the formal and systematic beginning of Abdul-Bahas Plan in
the mid-1930s. Not everyone, of course. felt that bliss and the
feeling of bliss did not prevail in the heart of each believer 24/7, as
they say these days. Trials and tribulations generally tend to make

the feeling of bliss a transitory entity. The individuals in the

developing Bahai community were clearly part of the many are
called and each one of its members might wonder if they were part
of the 'few are chosen.' For this was not a community of the saved,
the elect, the chosen, in the traditional exclusivist sense. An
instrument of God's will and purpose with a new Book, the Bahai
community had spread across the surface of the Earth and, in this
new paradigm, the spread was continuing and would continue based
on many more systematic Plans, all part and parcel of that vision of
Abdul-Baha as outlined, among other places, in His Tablets of the
Divine Plan written during the Great War and unveiled in New York
in 1919.
EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment in this new Bahai culture is multilateral and multidimensional. Competence and meaning, self-determination and
individual choice, impact and trust are all emphasized. This new
paradigm aims to induce a strong commitment among the members
of the community. This sense of commitment has several
dimensions: affective, continuance and a normative aspect.
Empowerment and organizational commitment are important and
they are issues in all modern societies and organizations. Success in
the global marketplace of culture and growth comes to organizations
built on synergy, collaboration, flexibility and partnership. An
organization that expects individual accountability in return provides
a good deal of individual freedom to its members. Compulsion,
coercion, demand, force, pressure, domination, control: these are not
part of the Bahai paradigm; they are rarely conducive to
empowerment. A kindly longue, understanding, empathy, a host of
spiritual qualities and an awareness of the distance between our
visions and the form they take, our aspirations and their expression
are all part and parcel of any genuine sense of the many-faceted

nature of this chameleon thing we call empowerment.

Despite its widely recognized role, there has been no consensus on
the definition of empowerment. Scholars have considered it mainly
in connection with organizational practices or managerial
techniques; they have often neglected to investigate its underlying
process. In addition, the word has been used with a variety of
meanings such as delegation of power, autonomy, leadership skills,
teambuilding experiences, intrinsic motivation or self-determination,
effectance motivation or competency, sense of control, need for
power, and self-efficacy. It is not my intention to address all these
components of empowerment in the context of this new paradigm
but, suffice it to say, they are all addressed in one way or another
within this paradigm's framework.
Empowerment is the delegation of decision-making prerogatives to
members of the community, along with the discretion to act on one's
own. There is a dual emphasis in this paradigm on working in groups
and on individual initiative. Empowerment is the process which
enables people to gain power and influence not so much over others,
over institutions or over society as over their own selves.
Empowerment is many things. It blends and embodies a dozen
different contexts: agreement, concession, acquiescence, freedom,
liberty, indulgence. Readers need only look the word up in their
thesaurus to get the immense range of its potential meanings.
Probably the totality of the following or similar capabilities provide
a helpful context for understanding empowerment:
(i) Having decision-making power of one's own
(ii) Having access to information and resources for taking decisions
(iii) Having a range of options from which one can make choices
(not just yes/no, either/or)
(iv) Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision-making

(v) Having a positive and realistic attitude on one's ability to make

change
(vi) Ability to learn skills for empowering one's personal or group
power
(vii) Ability to change other's perceptions by democratic,
consultative means, by means of the power of words
(viii)Involvement in a growth process and its changes, a process that
is never ending and self-initiated
(ix) Having a self-image that is a mosaic of true and false, real and
unreal
(x) Having an increase in intentionality, that is, the willingness and
the desire to act. We want to act because we are anxious to
experience the sense of increased mastery: this acting, this action, is
the dramatization of our intentionality. The greatest drama in the
world of existence is the drama of people in community.
The spiritual growth process is lived and dramatized by each individual in a way
which is unique to him though the basic mechanism of progress and the rules
which govern it are the same. The fact that this process is unique to each
individual means that we each must come to know our own selves. As Socrates
said 25 centuries ago, and as the Bahai writings emphasize time and
in, "the unexamined life is not worth living." This is the base from which we

cliche; it has many

depths of meaning which when understood provide a wealth of
understanding of: why we do what we do, what we should and
should not do. The concept, the issues at stake here, are complex.
The story is long, too long to go into in more detail here.
each must act: a knowledge of our own selves. This is no

One psychological perspective on empowerment views it as a

subjective phenomenon. Empowerment in this view is a motivational
construct where power and control are seen as motivational states
internal to individuals. As a psychological construct empowerment in this sense
raises the convictions of community members about their own effectiveness.
Some studies view empowerment as a psychological construct where the
responsibility for motivation lies with the individual; others see the

responsibility lying with the group, the leadership in the community. Again, this
aspect of empowerment can provide much insight but the concept would
require too many words to explore here in detail.

Another assumption about empowerment is that members who feel a

sense of power are more likely to obtain what they desire and be of
genuine value to a community. Community members who have this
sense of power are more likely to achieve outcomes that are desired
by the community they are part of. Members who lack the sense of
power are more likely to feel critical of others, feel their activity is
not effective and never realize their personally desired outcomes.
Empowerment in the sense I am using it here is defined as a
dynamic, continuous variable. There is no "final" state of
empowerment. It is a continuum with group members feeling
various degrees of intrinsic task motivation. And again, readers are
encouraged to follow-up on this topic.
A community's shared beliefs, ideology, values, language, ritual and
myth define its culture. The culture of any community is comprised
of a set of shared beliefs and assumptions that are actualized through
artefacts and rites, rituals and symbols, activities and attitudes. A
group`s culture emphasizes its unique or distinctive character, a
character that provides meaning to its members. Culture is deeply
embedded, enduring, and often slow to change. The culture of any
community exerts control over its member's behavior in a host of
ways and that subject is deserving of a book unto itself.
THE NEW BAHA'I PARADIGM AND EMPOWERMENT
One could posit five elements of the Bahai culture of learning and
growth that reflect a sense of empowerment in the individual
members:

Systems thinking: Systems thinking challenges the illusion that the

world is created of separate, unrelated forces. It is a conceptual
framework that rests on the underlying assumption that actions and
events are interconnected.
Personal mastery: Personal mastery is a philosophical element
whereby individuals establish personal aspirations and live to serve
these aspirations. There are no simple formulas here and often this
sense of mastery is built-into conversations with others which are
distinguished by depths of understanding. This sense of self-mastery
takes place when individuals see themselves as active agents of their
own learning.
Mental models: These are the deeply ingrained assumptions,
generalization, and/or pictures and images that influence how we
understand the world and how we take action. This is the foundation
on which a group's culture is built. It draws on history and sociology,
psychology and the humanities. It is built on the cultural attainments
of the mind.
Building shared vision: This represents creating a shared picture of
the future that the group wishes to create. Creating a shared vision
instils the genuine commitment of its members and this vision is a
form of control that softens or negates the use of compliance
mechanisms. This shared vision can be created without the
individuals even meeting each other. Ties of friendship can result, as
they now are doing by the millions and billions, as a result of
cyberspace.
Team learning: Teams learn when the intelligence of the team
exceeds the intelligences of the individuals making up the teams and
the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have
occurred otherwise. These teams can work together or they can work

apart. In our planetary culture, individuals can benefit from the

experience of others even if they never meet in real time and space.
In the international Bahai community, there is now one team
working across the nations of the world.
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE: SUMMUM BONUM
One of the aspects of our secular culture and civilization in the West,
and an aspect radically distinctive from all previous cultures is not
science and technology, however wonderful that has been, but the
lack of a summum bonum, an end. We are the first civilization that
does not know why we exist outside of the here and now, material
advancement and learning, pleasure and some individualist end.
(Peter Kreeft, C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium: Six Essays on
The Abolition of Man, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1994, p.46).
The new Bahai culture seeks, in the decades ahead, to provide for
millions a common summum bonum, a summum bonum in which
religion and science can exist side by side.
Science in any of its forms and disciplines is a structure, a series of
judgements, continuously revised, the systematic use of man's
rational faculty. But technology and science do not fulfil any
promise of transcendence. The kind of progress suggested by much
in the world of science and technology, reason and the senses, is
only progress in a certain materialistic sense. Often it amounts to
regress. The last century offers some proof of this. Kreeft, in his
analysis of The Abolition of Man, suggests that to understand
progress, one needs first to understand the difference between kronos
and kairos. Kronos is objective, measured time and kairos is the
time measured by human consciousness and purposive reaching out
into a future that is not yet but is planned for. Only kairos knows
anything of transcendent goals and values.(Kreeft,p.53)Only spirit
can progress because only spirit lives in kairos. For only kairos

touches eternity, knows eternity, aims at eternity. Progress means not

merely change but change toward a goal,a goal which is far, far more
than what is offered by the gloomy and sterile philosophy of
materialism.
The changes along the way toward goals are, of course, relative and
shifting, but the goals provided by this new Bahai culture involve the
complex and enigmatic unity of the children of humankind. This will
be achieved by a religion that is not competing with others but one
with a unique contribution to play in the future of man. The goal, the
goals, change along the way in the context of this paradigm and with
the movement toward each step along the way. From a Bahai
perspective the key word is progress and not just change; two other
key words are spiritual-ethical and universal-global. This Bahai
culture has as part of its continuing goal to free those with whom it
comes in contact from what is so often a lingering and transient
assumption that a new Revelation of God, a new major world
religion is incompatible with the object of society's long search.
A NEW CIVILIZATION
We are living through the birth pangs of a new civilization whose
institutions are not yet in place. Those involved in this new paradigm
believe they are part of a process involved in the smooth and not-sosmooth spread of a transition to a new civilization, a new set of
spiritual and political, economic and social institutions. This new
Faith does not merely enunciate a set of universal principles or a
particular philosophy, however potent and sound it may be, but it
provides a new set of Laws and establishes definite institutions that
are part of the Revelation Itself. No previous religion can offer a
parallel, especially insofar as providing a more complete and more
specific set of provisions, a more definite framework of guidance in
the matter of succession. The problems arising in the matter of

succession, the continuance of legitimate authority for interpretation

of the Text, the Word, have been the source of so many, if not all, of
the dissensions and controversies in the religions of history.
The language is clear, unequivocal and emphatic regarding the
provisions for the unity of this new Faith. It is in this that the unique
feature of this Cause lies. This was true before this new paradigm
and it is true, a fortiori, within the context of this paradigm. This
aspect of the new paradigm must not be lost sight of in all the new
discussion about a culture of learning and growth. For this new
culture of learning and growth draws much of its sustenance from
the guidance in this matter of succession, guidance which will
protect the Cause from the heresies and calumnies which will assail
it in the years of this new paradigm and which have already begun to
be a source of some concern in the first decade and a half of the
implementation of this new paradigm. I deal with problems which
have arisen in this context to some extent in this book.
As it was written in the Psalms(cxviii, 22-23): "This is the Lord's
doing and it is marvellous to our eyes," I often mused as the decades
of my own life rolled by. The Bahais have been spiritually
conquering the planet for decades and this process is continuing,
although the world does not know it; indeed, the flame of this Cause
is being ignited in the hearts of humankind: one by one and quietly.
And this has happened, as I say above, is happening and will
continue to happen in my lifetime and my children's lifetime---and, I
have little doubt, their children's. This book contains some of that
story but, mostly, the story I write of here is one that only came on
board after I turned 52 in this new paradigm. I am now 68.
THE THEOLOGICAL AND THE PROPHETIC IN THIS
PARADIGM

It is important, though, to understand some of the historical, indeed,

the theological and prophetic context in which this paradigm was
first introduced and is now developing. Both the Bb and Bah'u'llh
undertook a courageous, for its time, demythologisation of
apocalyptic scenarios anticipated in Biblical and Islamic scripture
and tradition. It is the Bah' belief that the "catastrophe" or the
apocalyptic upheaval of the last days has very largely, if not
completely, been realised in the troubled yet brilliant 20th century. In
the Bah' view, the coming of peace will be gradual and realized as
a process in the 20th and 21st centuries. In the light of the Bah'
teachings it is possible to argue convincingly that with the end of the
cold war during the Plan that preceded the Four Year Plan(19962000)in which this new paradigm began---the "lesser peace" has all
but been realised. One can also argue, perhaps not as convincingly,
that this lesser peace is a process which began as far back as
Woodrow Wilson's proposal for the League of Nations in his final
address in support of the League of Nations in September 1919. The
increasing trend towards disarmament, international co-operation,
and globalisation, though, makes the argument that the "lesser
peace" has all but been realised a strong one--at least in my mind.
Yet this secular, politically oriented "lesser peace" is not comparable
to that peace which is spiritually rooted; the future truly millennial
peace which is more than a virtual cessation of many intractable
global conflicts. Realistic about the establishment of global, political
peace, 'Abdu'l-Bah predicted multi-national disarmament. The
Montreal Star of 11 September 1912 reported that He had stated that
nations would be forced into a peace process in the 20th century.
Humanity would sicken over the cost of warmongering. Prior to the
unfoldment of that secular disarmament which is the "lesser peace,"
varieties of "calamity" or "catastrophe" were and are clearly
anticipated in Bb-Bah' scripture. It is clear, however, that Bah'
scripture does not expect or support a literal apocalyptic collapse of

the cosmos or an absolute "end of the world." Scriptural writings

that appear to suggest this possibility are not interpreted literally, at
least not in a Bahai context. Of course, one will come across
individual Bahais who argue with some fervour for a highly
apocalyptic and cataclysmic future for not all Bahais, all the millions
of Bahais, see everything in the same way, whether it be prophecies
or paradigms.
This new paradigm comes, in one of the many time-frames in which
one could set it, half a century after the following words of Shoghi
Effendi in 1947: "The stage is set. The hour is propitious. The signal
is sounded. Bah'u'llh's spiritual battalions are moving into
position. The initial clash between the forces of darkness and the
army of light is being registered by the denizens of the Abh
Kingdom in the "celestial worlds". The Author of the Plan that has
set so titanic an enterprise in motion is Himself. He is mounted at the
head of these battalions, and leads them on to capture the cities of
mens hearts."(Citadel of Faith, Wilmette: Bah' Publishing Trust,
1965, p.26) I have spent my entire adult life, and some of my
adolescent life, as one of the members of that army of light. By
2007, the year this paradigm had been in place for more than a
decade, I had been part of the discussion of this paradigm's content
for three years. I had also been in that army in varying capacities for
more than fifty years.
I had written an 800 page account of my experience, an account
housed in the Bahai World Centre library. This account, this memoir,
was not so much my story as it was an analysis, a personal
commentary, on that half century. This new Bahai culture is part and
parcel of the new Order of Bahaullah. It is an Order, to use Biblical
language, built upon the rock. The civilization in which this new
Order is growing is, from a Bahai perspective, built upon sand. It is
an old tree whose roots are gradually decaying and the tempest of

our times is tearing them up and overthrowing the solid trunk. The
Bahai Order is a young sapling whose stems are swaying in the
breeze while its roots remain firmly planted deep in the soil. The
traditional and time-honoured strongholds of orthodoxy--political
and religious---are, what you might call, dead-alive, while the Bahai
Order is animated by a fresh vitality. The orthodoxies are now
moribund and the Bahai Order is engaged in an act of creation due to
the germ of creative power which it harbours. It is a chrysalis out of
which will emerge in the fullness of time a new society, a globalized,
planetized civilization. The Bahai community sees itself as the
author, the genesis, of the spiritually-based society of the future. It is
indeed, the emerging world religion and this new Bahai culture of
learning and growth is a critical part of this emergence.
A major shift in Bahai community life, in the study of the writings
and in the overall organization and patterns of interaction both
within and without the Bahai community itself was announced in the
years from 1996 to 2000, a Four Year Plan, the 6th initiated by the
House of Justice since that institution was first elected in 1963. The
aim of this new direction, this shift, this alteration, this rearragement
of the deck-chairs which some critics thought all this coming and
going, all these new programs and policies merely constituted, was
in order to spur large numbers in the community into the field of
action. Indeed, the purpose of this new paradigm was multifaceted
and aimed at accomplishing many things, things this book deals with
in circuitous ways.
I had been in the army, as I say above, for more than half a century.
As Roger White, that unofficial poet-laureate of the Bah'
community back in the 1980s and early 1990s, had written: "I had
tired of this old war" and "my barren fields were parched beneath the
sun." I was a "mute witness to misfortune's scorching kiss." And yet:
"each endearing stratagem" of "my beloved foe" "enchanted me"--at

least sometimes. I could wax eloquent or not-so-eloquent with that

poet White and his words which gave expression to some of my
Bahai experience over those decades before this new paradigm came
into being and the new millennium opened in 2001--and as the first
Plan of this new paradigm also closed. This new Plan which opened
in 1996 with its goal of advancing the process of entry-by-troops
placed an emphasis on developing the capacities of the believers.
(Century of Light, p.109). that emphasis has continued until now and
looks like it will be one of the essential emphases in the decades
ahead as more and more people join this Faith.
BAHA'I EDUCATION: 1964-1994
Part 1:
A universal system of Bahai education had begun to take place in the
three decades 1964 to 1994, the first three decades of my adult life.
That system was significantly reinforced in the context of this new
paradigm by the Ruhi Institute--a system which allowed for the
almost infinite development by various user communities of a series
of levels of study and branching sub-sets of topics and themes that
served particular needs.(ibid, p.155). This new paradigm, focussing
as it does on extending this universal system of Bahai education, was
initiated for a number of purposes not the least of which was, as I
say, in order to facilitate the process of entry-by-troops which has
been emphasized in the Bahai community since the early 1990s. It
was a process, this entry-by-troops, which the House emphasized
would accelerate in the years and decades ahead. It was a process
which the community could prepare for, and it has been doing just
that for the last two decades. It was a process at first envisaged,
arguably, in a letter of the Guardian as far back as 1953. Forty years
later, in 1993, the Bahai community was gearing-up and this new
paradigm was part-and-parcel of a crucial preparatory period.

Inspite of, or perhaps because of, the extensive literature that became
available on the process of entry-by-troops, or perhaps, again,
because many aspects of this Faith are not simple, many of the
Bahais anticipated a mass entry of new believers and when this mass
entry did not occur discouragement and disappointment set in. The
key word, as one of the more prominent Bahais emphasized at the
outset of this new paradigm in 1996, was not "entry" or "troops", but
"process". After a quarter-century then--1990 to 2015--of this new
emphasis on troops, most of it in the context of this new paradigm, it
is clear that the key word was and is "process." For entry in more
than a trickle has not occurred except in a very few places.
Part 2:
This spurring into action was one of the main aims of this new Bahai
culture. It is taking place in the last half(1992-2021) of the second
epoch(1963-2021) of 'Abdul-Baha's divine plan, a plan which was
unveiled, as I say above, in New York in June 1919 and was
formally inaugurated in an organized form in North America in May
1937 after a year of preparatory work. This plan is now in its 8th
decade of systematic implementation and it is destined to unfold
over many epochs, generations and, indeed, I have little doubt, many
paradigm shifts to come. The process is often slow, stony and
tortuous and it often leaves the believers in a state of perplexity. This
is in part due, as I mention above, to the need that individuals often
have for immediate gratification and instant success which the social
forces of their society, especially after world-war 2, have socialized
them to expect at least in the more affluent parts of Western society.
Immediate gratification, the personal difficulties people have in
delaying gratification, is at the root of many of the frustrations that
Bah's, to say nothing of individuals in the woder society, have
throughout their lives.

As the Guardian wrote in God Passes By, though: "The process

whereby the unsuspected benefits of this new Cause have been
manifested to the eyes of men has been slow, painfully slow."
"Crises," he went on to say, "at times threaten to arrest the
unfoldment of the Cause and blast all the hopes which any former
progress has engendered."(GPB, p.111) These crises and this slow
unfoldment have often been the Cause of the disillusionment and
discouragement of the believers. In some ways this is natural; it is to
be expected. But this slowness set side-by-side a process like entry
by troops provided a contrast, a paradoxical, an enigmatic,
experience which was for thousands, if not millions of Bahais, a test
to their intellectual and spiritual selves. This test could be seen as
part of the core experience of the many tests of many generations
which could and would come to those who were the spiritual
descendants of the Dawnbreakers, a complex role which would
inevitably have its unpleasant aspects.
Part 3:
I make comparisons and contrasts in this book to previous paradigm
shifts in the Bahai community, as I have indicated several times
above. I also make suggestions regarding this new paradigm's future
development that seem to me will take place in the years ahead and
which have already begun to take place in recent years. Some of my
suggestions will also appear in this book in the years ahead as this
work develops: for this book is an evolving entity here at Bahai
Library Online(BLO). A brief commentary on the history of the
Bahai Faith, on the history of our time and my own life is also
included. I attempt to integrate these several histories into one
organic, if not systematic, whole in the context of this new paradigm.
I do this exercise of integration as much, if not more, for myself, as I
do for readers. Each Bahai is involved in integrating his life, the

Cause and the wider society into some complex and, hopefully
simple whole.
Hopefully, then, what I am doing in this book may be of use to
readers as they travel on their own path and work out their unity in
multiplicity, their unity in diversity. In the first nine years of the
existence of this book on the internet(2007-2015) this book has
begun to contribute, as I say above, to a dialogue on the issues
regarding the many related processes involved in this ongoing
paradigmatic shift. The book has also provided, at the same time,
part of a relevant and much wider context in which some of the
fundamental issues within this paradigm are being discussed--not
only on the internet but also in the international Bahai community.
This is, of course, due to the fact that the internet is an international
community in its own right--whatever the many different attitudes to
it may be.
As a matter of principle, individual understanding or interpretation
of this paradigm is not and should not be suppressed. Sometimes,
such is the view and the experience of a small group of Bahais,
views are suppressed. It is difficult to experience the cut-and-thrust
of any genuine community life without a feeling that one cannot say
what one wants to say. The problem is a little like the problem
associated with honesty and frank consultation. One can go through
ones life and ones relationships saying everything one feels and
thinks if one wants to create chaos wherever one goes. The issue is
not so much honesty but knowing what to say and when to say it:
tone, manner, mode, etiquette of expression, tact, how much to
disclose, timing, measuring the reception of ones remarks, wisdom,
knowledge, understanding. What each person says needs to be
valued for whatever contribution it can make to the discourse of the
Bah community, but this process of verbal interchange is one of
the most complex entities for human beings in community. The

virtues project, a global program in its own right, has contributed

much to this understanding of the many qualities needed in Bah'
community life.
And so it is that frankness and civility, courtesy and kindness are not
easily achieved when people consult. An individuals verbal output,
through dogmatic insistence on one's opinion, should not be allowed
to bring about disputes and arguments among the friends; personal
opinion must always be distinguished from the explicit Text and its
authoritative interpretation by Abdul-Bah and Shoghi Effendi and
from the elucidations of the Universal House of Justice on
problems which have caused difference, questions that are obscure
and matters that are not expressly recorded in the Book. These are
the words of a recent House of Justice letter and they act like a
refrain through this book. This book is not part of the recent internet
noise in relation to this paradigm or in relation to developments in
the Cause outside the explicit paradigm that have stirred-up so much
controversy in the last 15 years. I trust there will be no readers who
come to see this work as part of that seemingly endless verbiage and
conflict, dissention and distrust that have characterized a corner of
the internet since the mid-1990s. Given the increasing complexity
not only of the Bahai paradigm, but also the society in which it
engages, it is likely that some will come to see my book as part of
the critical thrust of lance and parry that has arisen in the last decade
and a half. Often when a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy,
it ceases to be a subject of interest. On this basis the new Bahai
paradigm is still of interest.
My aim has not been to pass verdicts and conclusions and, in the
process, not to find a sense of closure, but to open up questions,
examine a complex set of events from different angles and enlarge,
what often seems to me anyway, the often narrow circle in which
this paradigm is discussed. I try not to impoverish the facts of this

paradigm by discounting or softening some of their complexity.

There seems to be an emerging system of learning and growth across
the international Bahai community, a system of great simplicity as
well as a system with some complex features for the community to
comprehend as this paradigm develops a life of its own in the
150,000 localities and 6000 clusters where Bahais presently live--as
well as in the 10,000 clusters where at present there are no Bahais.
For this culture is an expanding one, as I have emphasized above, as
the Cause itself by its very nature has been expanding and will
continue to expand in the decades and, indeed, centuries ahead.
I have detected the complexity to which I refer above in both the
literature and in the discussions that have taken place in the first 17
years of the implementation of this paradigm. As a retired teacher
who used booklets like those in the Ruhi program as part of what in
post-secondary education in Australia was often called the core
curriculum and extension resources; I am more than a little
conscious of their apparent simplicity as well as some of the
complex problems associated with their implementation by teachers,
tutors, lecturers or whatever names one gives to those who help
students learn through their use. This dichotomy of simplicity and
complexity is not a new thing in the Bahai community. I would
argue that the complexity-simplicity spectrum has been part and
parcel of Bahai history since its beginning. Indeed, it is one of life's
polarities that contributes to its richness, its fascination, its enigmas
and its paradoxes.
The Universal House of Justice mentions this complexity to which I
rewfer above in one of its most recent message, a message of 13,000
words, at Ridvan 2010. They refer to the "growing complexity" of
the Cause and the need to manage it with "greater dexterity." I
should emphasize, en passant, that this book attempts to integrate
many views contained in the most recent messages from Bahai

institutions as well as letters and internet posts from significant

individuals in the Cause as well as many others, especially those
who now post on the internet and who contribute effectively to an
ongoing and virtually continuous dialogue in that world of
cyberspace. In the process of this literary integration over 700+
pages, some readers may find I have ered on the side of complexity
when they were searching for simplicity. What I am trying to do in
this book is very much along the line of Mr. Lample's comment in
June 2010 in relation to the Ridvan 2010 message. I am trying to get
my bearing and answer two fundamental questions: Where are we
going next? and Where have we been? That 8,000 word 2010
Ridvan message has gone a long way to help me answer these two
questions.
ONE PERSON'S VIEWS ON THE RUHI BOOKS, THE
INSTITUTE PROCESS:
Section 1:
As I indicate in this book, I am not providing a systematic study of
this new Bahai culture. I would like, though, in the following
paragraphs to outline the experience of one person who has been
associated with the Ruhi Books since their inception and with
deepenings for a decade or so before the implementation of the new
Bahai culture of learning. I do this because what this person has
written is, from my point of view, an excellent overview of the many
pluses and minuses of this new learning process that the Bahai
community has embarked upon in the last decade and a half and
which, as I see it anyway, is merely the beginning of an elaborately
detailed learning mechanism and process that will evolve in the
Bahai community in the decades ahead.
This person begins by saying that back in the early 1990s early

drafts of Ruhi Book One began to appear in North America. Early

drafts of other Ruhi books also appeared before the implementation
of the entire sequence in country after country in the late 1990s and
in the first decade of this third millennium. As I write there is a
sequence of seven Ruhi Books with more on the curriculum-design
books to come. Many people enjoy the exercises and activities, the
memorizing, the quizes and the word games associated with some of
the Ruhi content. The problems associated with deepenings in the
decades before the implementation of the Ruhi program in the late
1990s and the first decade of the new millennium were eliminated by
this new curriculum.
This same person continues: "many study classes or deepenings
from the 1930s to the 1990s were both good and bad as Abdul-Bahas
Plan was put into place. There was a wide variety in the quality of
study classes and deepening meetings in the Bahai communities in
which I lived. I'm sure this was a common experience for most
Bahais who have been in the community for decades. The Ruhi
method has been a very useful addition to what was taking place in,
say, the years 1937 to 1997, the first 60 years of the systematic
implementation of Abdul-Bahas Plan. The Ruhi books have
demanded that Bahais continue to focus on the actual Writings as
previous programs of study always did. It uses some innovative
exercises and introduces a strong element of systematization and
commonality across the planet."
This person goes on: "Anyone who has witnessed first-hand the
mass teaching and mass enrollment in parts of the world also knows
the difficulties associated with the consolidation and deepening that
should have followed, but did not. Such consolidation was plainly
inadequate in most places. There are stories where tens, hundreds
and sometimes thousands of people have declared their belief and
then received nothing from the Bahai community as follow-up. The

institute process is a counter to these sad realities of previous

decades."
Here is a short list of the things this person has written about why
they like the Ruhi sequence of books:
1. There are no lectures from an authority figure. Instead a facilitator
keeps the process going.
2. The facilitator emphasizes that there are no right answers, and
encourages participants to have fun and be creative.
3. The Ruhi course often has some very creative and humorous
people involved, so there is often also plenty of laughter and
imaginative thinking.
4. People enjoy some of the "games" played with the Holy Word
where participants try to think of concrete examples of concepts and
words in the passages they are studying. In the process of checking
definitions, and doing interesting things with the exercises there is
much learning going on. For example, people often share their visual
imagery and this helps people memorize the passages from the
scripture.
5. Sometimes people poke fun at the questions and exercises and
have a good time with them. Everyone in the group understands that
the Ruhi books and the exercises are just tools to give people a fun
way to embrace the Creative Word.
6. People can look things up. The citations and the commentary
gloss in Ruhi seems inadequate to some extent, but people meet in a
Bahai context and, if there is a good library, the members of the
study circle can frequently look up things to see the context, or trace
the notes back to original sources.
7. There are service activities. The service is often fun. Members of
study circles can initiate devotional meetings, and experiment with
devotional meetings. Participants can try visual effects, play with the
atmosphere, try new things with music and lighting, vary the seating

arrangement, the types of devotional readings, and so forth.

8. The people in the Ruhi study circle usually like each other and
often get together outside of the Ruhi course.
9. The people in the Ruhi study circle often spend more time on
preparing the devotions and the devotional service than they spend
on the Ruhi exercises and books. Probably for every 40 minutes
spent on Ruhi study circles, participants often spend over an hour on
their devotional meetings service.
10. The people in the Ruhi study circle spend more time together as
friends socializing and supporting each other than they spend on
either the Ruhi books or the service work. In a typical month they
might have two hours of time with the Ruhi book, nearly four hours
preparing and holding a devotional meeting, and five or six hours
eating meals together at each other's homes for get-togethers and
parties, not firesides or deepenings. The act of just sitting together
and talking about life and politics, society and television, what they
are reading and what is going on in the wide-wide world helps to
foster relationships without which teaching in groups, accompanying
each other, does not take place fruitfully.
Section 2:
On balance, this person writes, the Ruhi books and their learning
packages are a force for good in the Bahai community. On the other
hand, this same person writes that the Ruhi sequence of learning
materials is not the greatest thing they have ever experienced since
the invention of the car, the TV or cinema. If Bahai study classes
were nearly uniformly awful before Ruhi, then Ruhi probably has
raised the level of Bahai study. Prior to the Ruhi Books community
study groups and classes were, of course, not uniformly awful.
People's experience was that study courses, retreats, and schools
were a mixed bag, with some good and some not-so-good, and even
a single class could have a mix. Ruhi reminds this person, he

continues, of an antidepressant medication. It seems to smooth out

the extremes and prevent a class from getting really awful or really
great.
Until the late 1990s, this writer goes on, Ruhi and institute activities
were but one item on a menu of courses, and Bahai communities
were encouraged to develop their own plans and programs. Ruhi had
a fairly positive image in those earliest decades, say, 1970 to 1995.
Gradually, in the first 15 years of the new Bahai culture, 1996-2011,
national spiritual assemblies everywhere have decided, under the
direction and encouragement from the ITC and the House of Justice,
to implement the Ruhi book sequence as the core of all study circles.
Everyone who wants can and should do Ruhi as the core of the
institute process. It is, of course, left to the individual to opt into
these study circles or not. There is no compulsion. The formal
development by institutions of the Cause of other courses has been
abandoned. Everyone who wants to do a series of courses trys Ruhi
books for a year or two or more. If they want they can go back to
developing their own courses, perhaps drawing on their common
experience in Ruhi courses. But as Ruhi courses have become the
dominant theme and core of the institute process everywhere other
courses have been abandoned or so it seems from all the information
I have at hand. This, of course, is impossible to judge in a worldwide community of some 150,000 localities in which diversity has
always been encouraged. Bahai literature is now so extensive and
individual communities are free to have deepenings and study
programs on virtually any topic they like. Inevitably, then, in the
wide-wide Bahai world other programs will be found in the
interstices of Bahai community life across the planet.
As this same person continues in their commentary on the
implementation of the Ruhi books: "Ruhi isn't that great. We can
certainly do better. It should remain an option, and it should be

encouraged in some circumstances. It's not the best thing going. In

fact, I wouldn't dream of insulting my colleagues and neighbors by
inviting them to a Ruhi study circle. To do so would be extremely
unwise, and it would show a lack of wisdom, a lack of tact, and a
lack of empathy on my part. The Ruhi exercises and the formats of
the books are different from other study materials. Visiting people,
saying prayers with people, and performing acts of service, may
seem strange to some people. They are all things, though, that I can
do. They can be done tactfully, and with wisdom, and people can
enjoy those things."
"I'm also one who thinks the art projects which are part of the Ruhi
activities are excellent especially for some participants. I take a
social-worker and do-it-yourself approach to art and music. I'm
influenced by the punk rock and the counter culture movement. I'm
glad that Ruhi attempts to let people experiment with arts. I
recognize,though, that some people feel that such activity is not
really art, or they just hate doing the craft activities."
Section 3:
Here are the things that concern this same person about the Ruhicentred study circles:
1. Ruhi's emphasis on the actual Holy Word is a strength, but the
gloss written by the authors of the compilations of quotations is
sometimes misleading. The quotations that are chosen are given
without context, and quotations from non-scriptural sources are
mixed in with scripture. The very process of the memorization and
the exercises encourages a literal understanding of the quotations
that are used.
2. The Ruhi course emphasis on service seems, in practice, to be

mainly about service to the Bahai community. I'm a social worker,

and I think Bahais have a duty through their institutions and
especially through the "Dawning Place of the Mention of God" to do
service for the entire, the wider, community. Bahais should also do
much more than children's classes. It seems the Ruhi courses are
asking Bahais everywhere to become very good at doing moral
education and children's classes in order to teach the Bahai Faith and
its message to the children in their communities. The strategy is
perhaps to become good at two things, and then after the Bahai
community has mastered the art of doing excellent moral education
and children's classes it can move on to other avenues of service.
This is far too limited for the Bahai community's service to
humanity. I think that sometimes the emphasis on doing service for
Bahais goes too far. Let our deeds rather than our words speak for
us, and let our deeds be bold. We should be a balm to humanity, and
admonishers to the wealthy and to tyrants.
3. The Ruhi books are not scripture. There is nothing in the Holy
Writings about study circles, core activities, the Ruhi sequence of
courses, and so forth. These things are tools. But, I'm afraid that
instead of seeing Ruhi courses as special tools, many Bahais are
incorporating Ruhi courses into the core of their religious
experience. As such, I'm afraid Ruhi courses, including the
limitations of the Ruhi books, are becoming an accretion, a manmade addition to the Revelation, a ritual, an unauthorized source of
dogma, and a method of unifying Bahai thinking in a way that
defeats the more essential teaching of unity in diversity.
4. The more I study the Ruhi material and do its exercises, the more
tiresome and tedious they become. Some of the questions and
answers we often give are inane. In some cases it seems the Ruhi
exercises and questions are attempting to push us toward a literalist
and very conservative approach to religion. I'd even say the Ruhi

books betray a hint of the spirit of fundamentalism. So long as Ruhi

is just one way of studying among many ways of studying, that is
fine for me. But by making Ruhi books so strongly emphasized, I
think we are pushing a particular aspect of our faith, a particular
agenda, and it's not the agenda of Bahaullah, of 'Abdu'l-Bah or
Shoghi Effendi. So I'm worried.
5. The books seem very clearly aimed at people from cultures where
the education level is very low. The courses seem well-designed for
children, or persons who never got past the ninth year of schooling,
or for people of sub-average intelligence. If you happen to be
intelligent or well-educated, it's difficult to take the books seriously.
6. I've been in many classes where there is an obvious rush to get
through the Ruhi courses. Instead of thinking deeply about the
teachings and exploring their meaning I feel that I am rushing
through the books. This rush to do what is on the page, and the
corresponding insistence that we stick to only what is there on the
Ruhi pages, is upsetting to me. It doesn't meet my social or spiritual
needs. I think facilitators need to let people take Ruhi at their own
pace and have fun with it. Study circles should not be like assembly
meetings or business meetings.
7. The service component of Ruhi has never been emphasized in any
course I've taken since a single good one that I did in the late 1990s.
All the courses I've taken since 158 B.E.(2001) have either done
nothing or very little with service programs and exercises. When we
do just a little of the service component, it's a matter of personal
experience rather than part of the class. That is still far better than
the classes where the service is just an afterthought or ignored
completely.
8. The choices of passages for study are usually pretty good. But the

choices are not perfect. I think it would be easy to produce books

with better choices of quotations from scriptures in order to achieve
the lesson objectives. I also think the citation system in the Ruhi
books is inadequate, as if the people putting the books together were
not especially familiar with the Writings. The books should at least
be revised with decent scholarship getting the citations right, and
citing original sources where possible.
9. I am appalled that merit and honor seems to apply to persons and
communities who complete Ruhi courses. Those who have not
completed the Ruhi books are often seen as less than those who
have. If a national spiritual assembly will only use its resources to
render assistance to communities where there is enthusiasm for
Ruhi, that is wrong; for example, if advertising and special support
only comes to places where everyone is doing Ruhi, then only places
where everyone is doing Ruhi will get the benefits of advertising and
special support. We will also be limiting our potential if only people
who have done particular Ruhi courses can be allowed to teach
children's classes. The number of Ruhi courses a person does should
carry no more weight than the number of years of schooling a person
has experienced. That is to say, it should have almost no importance.
10. I am aware that members of the Universal House of Justice,
including Paul Lample and Peter Khan, for example, have said that
the regular firesides and deepenings and study classes must continue,
and should not be abandoned for Ruhi. Rather, Ruhi should
supplement, and be an addition to the community on top of the
previous teaching efforts. The question that I hear is, "how many
people joined the Faith because of your old methods?" and the
answer is usually "not many" and the conclusion is, "then try this
new thing, this Ruhi-institute process and see if you do better than
you have been doing with the old methods, because in some places
loads of people are embracing the Faith and staying active in it

because of Ruhi." I agree that the old method and old culture in the
Bahai communities where I lived weren't bringing in new believers
and sustaining them. I agree that we need changes and new things
and new approaches to improve the quality and capacity of our
communities and our individuals. I see that Ruhi is doing some of
this needed transformation. But, I also think Ruhi has replaced what
we were doing well.
Section 4:
Finally, this person writes: "I came into the Faith without the Ruhi
courses. I have become less active in Bahai studies in my local
community because I am unenthusiastic about Ruhi. I am less active
in my teaching because I'm embarrassed by Ruhi courses and would
be ashamed to bring almost anyone I know to a Ruhi study circle as
they have been recently taught. In fact, all this emphasis on Ruhi
courses is making me feel alienated from the wider Bahai
community at least the administrative aspects of it. I agree it's nice to
check with Bahai friends around the world and find we've studied
the same Ruhi materials, but I'd rather we were checking with each
other about the same Hidden Words or the same sections of the
Kitab-i-Iqan and so forth. I'd rather that we were comparing notes
about things that we really found inspiring and challenging, instead
of laughing about how silly the Ruhi books are, whether we read
them in English, Spanish, or Mandarin, and how strange it is that
we're being pushed to do these, and how out-of-touch people must
be in Haifa to think Ruhi is the greatest thing to come along since
the passing of 'Abdu'l-Bah.
Such are some of the views of one person. As the years go on there
will undoubtedly be a much more extensive analysis of the entire
institute system as there has been of the elected and appointed sides
of Bahai administration as it has developed in the last century and

more. The above comments of one individual do not represent the

generality of the Bahai community throughout the world. It would be
impossible for one person's experience to be representative of that of
the millions of adherents of this new world Faith. I have included the
above comments because they are representative of a range of views
after 15 years of Ruhi, of institute, implementation.
These comments have some parallels to my experience with books
of a very similar educational and curricular design in my work in
technical and further education, post-secondary education, here in
Australia. Many of my students back in the 1990s in a college in
Western Australia said similar things about instructional booklets I
used in my classrooms in similar, indeed, in the same ways to the
Ruhi books. The story of these resource materials has just begun in
the last two decades. In my experience, any learning program has its
positive and its negative features and, to some students, the negative
outweigh the positive. That is only natural. It's paret of education
systems everywhere and at all times.
MORE THOUGHTS ON STUDY CIRCLES
Part A:
Over the last 19 years, 1996 to 2015, Bah's have had the
opportunity to participate, tutor, and be involved to varying degrees
in numerous Bahai study circles in different parts of the world.
Some are experienced as "very goood." Some "could use a little
work." Some complete a particular Ruhi book, and some fizzle-out
before completion. There are Ruhi books that are run at an extremely
intensive and accelerated pace, and others that take over a year to
complete. Some bring people into the Faith, and some arent very
well-received by some or all of the participants. The fact is that no
matter what you think about study circles or what your involvement

has been with them over the years, study circles have and continue to
revolutionize many Bahai communities worldwide, helping to
change the overall culture of the Bahai community--and I think for
the better.
Of course theres always room for improvement, and the participants
are all learning through action and reflection while continuously
developing and working on improving their posture of learning.
Bah' Blog, a popular Bah' website, in August 2013, outlined six
of the ways that study circles have helped the Bahai community.
They were listed as follows:
1. Becoming less insular as a community and helping us reach out.
Bahai study circles are not just for Bahais. By now most Bahais
should know that, but reaching out to our friends and neighbours to
join us in a Bahai study circle is not easy for everyone, but the fact
is that study circles have helped the Bah' community to start
thinking outside the parameters of the Bahai community. Theyve
served as a catalyst for many Bah's to reach out, invite, and talk
about the Faith with others, reminding them of the fact that the
Teachings of Bahau'llah are for everyone, and not just Bahais.
They are for the community at large no matter what their beliefs.
2. Emphasis on reading and studying the Bahai Writings.
Bahais are encouraged to read and study the Writings. Many Bah's
did this already, but for those who needed a little guidance or a tip or
two of what exactly to read, going through the Ruhi sequence of
books definitely helped guide the Bah' community to the important
concepts they should be studying. Once a person has completed
books one through to seven of the Ruhi sequence of courses, they
would have read and studied with their study circle a total of 545

quotations from the Bahai Writings?

Although Bah's are meant to study the Bahai Writings, and even
read the Writings every morning and evening, many never had the
discipline to do this, and so study circles provided the Bah's with a
systematic opportunity to deepen in the Writings, and furthermore
as mentioned in the first point the participants are not just reading
the Bahai Writings, theyre reflecting and discussing these
quotations and the concepts they present with a group of people who
quite often have varying beliefs and understanding.
3. Nurturing a sense of ownership.
Before Bahai study circles hit the scene, one could argue that many
Bahai communities had developed what could perhaps be classified
as a culture of dependency on certain individuals in the community.
These individuals were often seen as more knowledgable on issues
relating to the Faith and its history, so community would turn to
them for all of their Bahai knowledge, and not turn to the Writings
to learn about a topic themselves. For example, Bah's would go to
a deepening class based on a certain book or topic, and often the
dynamic of the deepening would be a one-way interaction between
the speaker and the participants. Sure, there were a few questions
here and there, but by-in-large the person holding the deepening
would be the person everyone looked to for the answers. Such
deepening classes were valid and they had a role in community life,
but many community members were indirectly, and unintentionally,
dis-empowering themselves from delving into the Writings. They did
not really internalise and digest the Words of God for themselves.
Study circles have countered that culture of dependency by
removing the middle-man. They encourage everyone to deepen in
the Bahai Writings for themselves, and even charge the Bah's with
the task of memorizing the quotes found in the Ruhi books. With

approximately 70,000 friends capable of serving as tutors of study

circles, Bah' culture has definitely changed as a result.
4. Encouraging the Writings to become a part of us through
memorization.
In one of Bahau'llahs Tablets, He encourages the believers to
memorize the Bahai Writings: "From the texts of the wondrous,
heavenly Scriptures they should memorize phrases and passages
bearing on various instances, so that in the course of their speech
they may recite divine verses whenever the occasion demandeth it,
inasmuch as these holy verses are the most potent elixir, the greatest
and mightiest talisman." The Ruhi sequence of courses encourage
Bah's to memorize the Bahai Writings, and theyve even done a
lot of the work for us by hand-picking them for the participants.
Between the pages of Ruhi books one through to seven, there are
137 Bahai quotations Bah's are asked to memorize? The results of
this emphasis on memorization amongst those who have been
involved in the sequence of courses are evident. A significant shift
over the last several years has taken place in the way in which the
Bah's are using the Bahai Writings in their everyday speech. This,
inevitably, has a direct effect on the ability of Bah's to engage in
meaningful and distinctive conversations. Furthermore, by
participating in study circles Bah's have had to come up with
creative ways to memorize these quotes, and this has not only been
fun, but its helped ensure that Bah's did some memorizing.
5. A unified vision and systematic action.
In a letter to the to the participants of the 114 Youth Conferences
currently taking place around the world, the Universal House of
Justice wrote: "The possibilities presented by collective action are
especially evident in the work of community building, a process that
is gaining momentum in many a cluster and in neighbourhoods and

villages throughout the world that have become centres of intense

activity." Before the Institute Process was adopted by the entire
Bahai world, Bah's were doing their own little thing in their own
little corners. Now that there exists a structured and systematic road
map, Bah's are all able to focus their energies with unified vision
and action, and this has proven to be practical and powerful. Being
able to chat to someone in Nepal, South Africa or Canada and know
what theyre talking about when they mention what Ruhi books
theyve completed or are participating in provides a common bond.
This is especially true for those who move around from place to
place. A person can turn up to a community anywhere in the world
and just plug themselves straight into the activities.
6. Community building and a focus on service.
Bahais know that service to others is an integral part of their Faith.
As Abdul-Baha explained: "all effort and exertion put forth by
man from the fullness of his heart is worship, if it is prompted by the
highest motives and the will to do service to humanity. This is
worship: to serve mankind and to minister to the needs of the people.
Service is prayer." Service is also fundamental to the sequence of
courses developed by the Ruhi Institute. As the Ruhi Institute
explains: "the Institutes main sequence of courses is not arranged
according to a series of subject matters, with the specific aim of
increasing individual knowledge. The content and order are based,
rather, on a series of acts of service, the practice of which creates
capacity in the individual to meet the exigencies of dynamic,
developing communities. And as also noted above, the enhancement
of such capacity is viewed in terms of walking a path of service
The acts of service treated in the Institutes main sequence of courses
are intended, then, to establish a dynamic pattern of action that will
lead to the sound development of local communities." The Universal
House of Justice explains this in the 2010 Ridvan Message: "More

important is that every soul feel welcome to join the community in

contributing to the betterment of society, commencing a path of
service to humanity"
The recent video from the Bahai World Centre called Frontiers of
Learning provided the Bah's with examples of what community
building can look like so that they could reflect on their experiences
and learn to put into practice community building initiatives from
around the world. The world embracing vision of Bahaullah is now
being executed in all corners of the world. Before leaving the subject
of this new video, I would like to make a series of comments on this
subject of the frontiers of learning.
Part B:
With the release during the Ridvan 2013 period of: (i) the Ridvan
2013 message, (ii) the film Frontiers of Learning, and (iii) the ITC
document of some 12,000 words, the international Bahai
community, now found in over 140,000 localities, has a good deal of
additional reading on its plate. The present 1200 clusters working to
move beyond the first several milestones in their development(1)
will become 5000 by April 2016, if the goals of the current Five Year
Plan are to be achieved.
The services of several thousand consecrated souls will be
required to forsake their homesin order to raise to 5000 the
number of clusters with programmes of growth.(2) The ITC
document, in its review of the Bahai experience since the beginning
of this Bahai culture of learning in the mid-1990s, describes a
number of approaches which may enable Bahai communities to
accelerate the process and the progress that has begun in the last two
decades.

The ITC expressed the hope that theirclose examination of the

patterns of action characteristic of the clusters,now at the forefront
of learning, will assist others at the earliest stages of
development.(3) It is not my intention in this brief post to provide
an overview of that ITC document. Each Bahai, each locality, each
assembly, indeed, each Bahai institution and agency will do their
own studying of this lengthy statement from the ITC in the weeks
and months ahead.
My intention, rather, is to outline what is happening in the small
Bahai community I have been part of for the last dozen years. I do
this because each locality has its own story, its own history, and its
own program of action, as it attempts to become a part of the new
Bahai paradigmin the years since it was initiated in 1996. Neither
am I going to give an overview of the 23 year history of our small
Bahai group, currently a group of 5 members, nor am I going to
outline the broad spectrum of our activities as they are presently
taking place.

Part A:
I am going to write briefly about the home visits(HVs) which are but
one element of what the George Town Bahai Group(GTBG) sees as
a coherent pattern of action over many years. Ours has been a
campaign in which HVs relate to other activities in this locality of
George Town: devotional meetings, deepenings, firesides, study
circles, advertising, a display, joining and taking part in local groups,
and developing friendships. The GTGB sees no hard and fast rules
regarding the methods of teaching in which it engages. Each BahaI
attempts to read their own reality, see their own possibilities, make
use of their own resources.(3)

The term HV was first introduced in the previous Plan, 2006-2011.

Visiting in peoples homes has been a long-established activity in the
Cause, as long as I have been associated with this Faith since the
1950s. During that last Plan, 2006-2011, HVs took on new
dimensions. It is my intention here to comment on one particular
variety of HV. It is visits to families, friends and acquaintances.(4)
It is not my purpose here to focus on HVs to those who are already
Bahais, HVs which often become deepenings. It is these
deepeningswhich the Statistics Officers(SO) report to the regional
SOs. The HVs I am writing about here are those which are reported
to the SO, but not to the regional SO.
Part B:
For statistical purposes the GTBG defined a HV on 15 November
2007, one month after the concept was first introduced in the second
year of that FYP, and when it was first required in the statistical
reports to the then Bahai Council for Tasmania for the NSA of the
Bahais of Australia, Inc., as: a visit to anyones home, Bahai or
non-Bahai, with some degree of regularity with the intention of
teaching and/or deepening.
All of the homes and people visited thus far, at least those who are
not Bahais, in the six years that HVs have been taking place in the
BahaI locality of George Town, have not been serious seekers, at
least initially. It has obviously been the hope that some of these
people would become serious seekers. The GTBG would like to
emphasize that as of 21/4/13 the point at which, as I say, 40% of the
current Five Year Plan has been completed, there is still no one in
this category.
It could be argued, though, that there are as many as two to four in

this categorydepending on how one defines the term serious

seeker. Sixteen homes are visited regularly, that is in every
Gregorian month, and reported to the SO. In an average of 8 of these
homes a deep conversation on spiritual matters takes place.
A deep conversation on spiritual matters is required for a visit to a
home to be considered a HV. But, a deepening is not listed for the
SO because the Bahai writings are not viewed by those present as
they are in some of those HVs by Bahais to other Bahais.
Part C:
I would like to emphasize that for our Group the new emphasis on
the institute process in the last dozen years or so does not result in
a limiting of other Bahai activities and programs like: deepenings
and scholarship, firesides and other individual initiatives. There is
much to be done in service to the Cause and many avenues of
activity; not everyone needs to be doing the same thing. Many of the
activities in the Cause are tools not goals, instruments for the
achievement of ends, not the aims and ends in themselves. Indeed,
the entire administrative apparatus is a means, at this stage of the
growth and development of the Cause, is but a medium, an
instrument for the prosecution of the teaching work.(5)
Part D:
The following, as I say, is a comment on some of the HVs of
members of the GTBG. Most of the members of the GTBG have
been involved in various forms of direct teaching now for: (a) the
period involving HVs as discussed above and (b) many years before.
This direct teaching has been carried out in an appropriate manner
which respects the wishes of the recipient....and as a means of
attracting interest in the Cause.(6) The manner in which this direct

teaching has been carried out takes cognizance of the cultural

norms of this locality and the preferences of the people living here.
This direct teaching does not involve making a series of points of
information that are enumerated for the listener,6but, depending on
the circumstances, aims to touch the heart and/or mind of the listener
in relation to some aspect of the teachings.
We have come to see direct teaching as related to the method and not
the venue, although in the last 6 years the HV has become an
important aspect of the teaching work in the GTBG.We do not see
direct teaching as synonymous with street teaching or going from
door to door to: (a) invite people to a local event or (b) some other
purpose but, rather, we define it as an open and bold assertion of
the fundamental verities of the Cause(7) in whatever style and
context is relevant.
The unit/the locale of activity in which this direct teaching takes
place, as far as the GTBG is concerned, is the locality, not
necessarily the neighbourhood or even the cluster in which we as
Bahais live. After ten years of holding devotional meetings, the
GTBG now has two monthly events, a history of advertising in the
form of posters, and items in the print and electronic media, HVs
and, of course, the regular Feasts, Holy Days, and CRMs.Everyone
has done at least one Ruhi book and two of our members have done
the entire series of Ruhi books.
All these items could be the base of a collective teaching effort, but
we do not have the resources for IPG activity. Occasionally over the
years of the IPG in Launceston, one or more of the members of the
GTBG help out with that IPG, but this has been a rare occurrence for
many reasons.The above article is the first of what may become a
series of short articles on HVs, if the editors of the Northern Lights
Newsletter find this initial piece of sufficient interest and value in

the teaching work.

---------------------------FOOTNOTES------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1.Insights from the Frontiers of Learning,
International Teaching Centre, April 2013.
2. Ibid
3. Message dated 28 December 2010 written by the Universal House
of Justice to the Conference of the Continental Board of Counsellors
4. Ridvan 2008 message written by the Universal House of Justice to
the Bahais of the world.
5. Ali Nakhjavani, A Talk, 11/12/08.
6. Message dated 28 December 2008 to the National Spiritual
Assembly of Australia
7. Shoghi Effendi, Bahai Administration, p.109.
THE HOUSE OF JUSTICE: RIDVAN 2010
I would like to conclude this section with three quotations from the House of
Justice Ridvan 2010 message, nearly four years ago now, on the institute
process and the role of cluster activity, the wider framework within which the
Ruhi materials are implemented. These quotations illustrate the increas
definition of both the institute process and the cluster in the broad map of the
Bahai community structure and functioning. The community building process
which the House of Justice referred to as "just beginning" back at the outset of
this new paradigm is, indeed, being incre asingly

elaborated upon within

the organizational structure of elected and appointed institutions. All
of these quotations come from the Ridvan 2010 message nearly a
year ago now.
"The believers and the institutions that serve them will have to strengthen the
institute process in the cluster, increasing significantly within its borders the
number of those capable of acting as tutors of study circles; for it should be
recognized that the opportunity now open to the friends to foster a vibrant
community life in neighbourhoods and villages, characterized by such a keen
sense of purpose, was only made possible by crucial developments that
occurred over the past decade and a half in that aspect of Bah culture which

pertains to deepening." And secondly:

"In every cluster, once a consistent pattern of action is in place,

attention needs to be given to extending it more broadly through a
network of co-workers and acquaintances, while energies are, at the
same time, focused on smaller pockets of the population, each of
which should become a centre of intense activity. In an urban cluster,
such a centre of activity might best be defined by the boundaries of a
neighbourhood; in a cluster that is primarily rural in character, a
small village would offer a suitable social space for this purpose.
Those who serve in these settings, both local inhabitants and visiting
teachers, would rightly view their work in terms of community
building."
"To assign to their teaching efforts such labels as "door-to-door",
even though the first contact may involve calling upon the residents
of a home without prior notice, would not do justice to a process that
seeks to raise capacity within a population to take charge of its own
spiritual, social and intellectual development. The activities that
drive this process, and in which newly found friends are invited to
engagemeetings that strengthen the devotional character of the
community; classes that nurture the tender hearts and minds of
children; groups that channel the surging energies of junior youth;
circles of study, open to all, that enable people of varied
backgrounds to advance on equal footing and explore the application
of the teachings to their individual and collective livesmay well
need to be maintained with assistance from outside the local
population for a time. It is to be expected, however, that the
multiplication of these core activities would soon be sustained by
human resources indigenous to the neighbourhood or village itself
by men and women eager to improve material and spiritual
conditions in their surroundings. A rhythm of community life should
gradually emerge, then, commensurate with the capacity of an

expanding nucleus of individuals committed to Bahullh's vision

of a new World Order."
And thirdly:
"As learning has come to distinguish the community's mode of
operation, certain aspects of decision making related to expansion
and consolidation have been assigned to the body of the believers,
enabling planning and implementation to become more responsive to
circumstances on the ground. Specifically, a space has been created,
in the agency of the reflection meeting, for those engaged in
activities at the cluster level to assemble from time to time in order
to reach consensus on the current status of their situation, in light of
experience and guidance from the institutions, and to determine their
immediate steps forward. A similar space is opened by the institute,
which makes provision for those serving as tutors, children's class
teachers, and animators of junior youth groups in a cluster to meet
severally and consult on their experience. Intimately connected to
this grassroots consultative process are the agencies of the training
institute and the Area Teaching Committee, together with the
Auxiliary Board members, whose joint interactions provide another
space in which decisions pertaining to growth are taken, in this case
with a higher degree of formality. The workings of this cluster-level
system, born of exigencies, point to an important characteristic of
Bah administration: Even as a living organism, it has coded within
it the capacity to accommodate higher and higher degrees of
complexity, in terms of structures and processes, relationships and
activities, as it evolves under the guidance of the Universal House of
Justice.
"The all-important work of expansion and consolidation," the house
of Justice pointed out in April 2015, "lays a solid foundation for the
endeavours the Bah world is being called to undertake in

numerous other spheres. At the Bah World Centre, efforts are

intensifying to methodically catalogue and index the content of the
thousands of Tablets which constitute that infinitely precious
bequest, the Holy Texts of our Faith, held in trust for the benefit of
all humankindthis, so as to accelerate the publication of volumes
of the Writings, both in their original languages and in English
translation.
SOME QU0TATIONS FROM RUHI BOOK 6
Here are some excellent quotations from Ruhi Book 6 on: Teaching
the Cause
The Ruhi Books are full to the brim with relevant quotations and no
book on this new Bahai culture would be complete without
acknowledging these quotations. Here are some from Book 6 which
are especially germaine to the new Bahai paradigm:
"The proclamation of the Faith, following established plans and
aiming to use on an increasing scale the facilities of mass
communication must be vigorously pursued. It should be
remembered that the purpose of proclamation is to make known to
all mankind the fact and general aim of the new Revelation, while
teaching program should be planned to confirm individuals from
every stratum of society." (From the 1974 Naw-Ruz message of the
Universal House of Justice, published in Teaching the Bah' Faith:
Compilations and a Statement Prepared by the Research Department
of the Universal House of Justice, no. 312, p. 160)
"Having on his own initiative, and undaunted by any hindrances
with which either friend or foe may, unwittingly or deliberately,
obstruct his path, resolved to arise and respond to the call of
teaching, let him carefully consider every avenue of approach which

he might utilize in his personal attempts to capture the attention,

maintain the interest, and deepen the faith, of those whom he seeks
to bring into the fold of his Faith. Let him survey the possibilities
which the particular circumstances in which he lives offer him,
evaluate their advantages, and proceed intelligently and
systematically to utilize them for the achievement of the object he
has in mind."(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 51)
"Let him also attempt to devise such methods as association with
clubs, exhibitions, and societies, lectures on subjects akin to the
teachings and ideals of his Cause such as temperance, morality,
social welfare, religious and racial tolerance, economic cooperation,
Islam, and comparative religion, or participation in social, cultural,
humanitarian, charitable, and educational organizations and
enterprises which, while safeguarding the integrity of his Faith, will
open up to him a multitude of ways and means whereby he can enlist
successively the sympathy, the support, and ultimately the allegiance
of those with whom he comes in contact."(Shoghi Effendi, The
Advent of Divine Justice, p. 51)
"Let him, while such contacts are being made, bear in mind the
claims which his Faith is constantly making upon him to preserve its
dignity, and station, to safeguard the integrity of its laws and
principles, to demonstrate its comprehensiveness and universality,
and to defend fearlessly its manifold and vital interests. Let him
consider the degree of his hearer's receptivity, and decide for himself
the suitability of either the direct or indirect method of teaching,
whereby he can impress upon the seeker the vital importance of the
Divine Message, and persuade him to throw in his lot with those
who have already embraced it."(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of
Divine Justice, pp. 51-52)
"Let him remember the example set by Abdu'l-Bah, and His

constant admonition to shower such kindness upon the seeker, and

exemplify to such a degree the spirit of the teachings he hopes to
instill into him, that the recipient will be spontaneously impelled to
identify himself with the Cause embodying such teachings. Let him
refrain, at the outset, from insisting on such laws and observances as
might impose too severe a strain on the seeker's newly awakened
faith, and endeavor to nurse him, patiently, tactfully, and yet
determinedly, into full maturity, and aid him to proclaim his
unqualified acceptance of whatever has been ordained by
Bah'u'llh."(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 52)
"Let him, as soon as that stage has been attained, introduce him to
the body of his fellow-believers, and seek, through constant
fellowship and active participation in the local activities of his
community, to enable him to contribute his share to the enrichment
of its life, the furtherance of its tasks, the consolidations of its
interests, and the coordination of its activities with those of its sister
communities."(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 52)
"Let him not be content until he has infused into his spiritual child so
deep a longing as to impel him to arise independently, in his turn,
and devote his energies to the quickening of other souls, and the
upholding of the laws and principles laid down by his newly adopted
Faith."(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 52)
TO CONTINUE ON OTHER THEMES:
I should mention here, thanks to the feedback of one of my readers,
that I use many terms and sets of words for the elected institution at
the apex of Bahai administration, a crucial institution that represents
the full institutionalized charismatic Force which entered history
over a century ago, the trustee of all which that Force represents and
which, after its physical dissolution in 1892, continued to "energize

the whole world to a degree unapproached at any stage in the course

of its existence on this planet."(GPB, p.244). I use, as the case may
be and as seems appropriate for the context the following terms: the
Seat, the House, the House of Justice, the Supreme Institution, the
Supreme Body, the apex of Bahai administration, that
institutionalized and charismatic Force, and, in some cases and
especially in footnotes, the UHJ. I trust that some readers do not
interpret my flexible and varied use of these terms for the Supreme
Body as being disrespectful or discourteous, do not see my language
as inappropriate in whatever context they come across my varied
terms. I want to thank readers, at this point, for their continuing input
into this evolving document and I look forward to the contributions
both critical and in praise of what they find here at BLO. Some of
this input is direct and some of it is by by use of quotations from the
writings of others. I like to think of this book as a collected work in
more ways than one.
In the minds, in the eyes, of many Bahais who have been attempting
to get a handle on the many processes and activities involved in this
new Bahai culture, all is not a simple exercise in understanding.
Much of life and much of this paradigm presents to the student who
would go about setting out its microscopic and macroscopic content
an awkward and tangled reality. Penetrating below the surface of the
paradigm's many dimensions is the result, for me, of a wondrous and
distant gaze as well as a minute scrutiny. The power of this
paradigm, to some extent, eludes the net of language, my language,
as much as I would try to capture it in my mental and verbal net.
This is partly because the implementation of this new culture of
learning and growth is across the entire planet and partly because the
experience of each cluster, each region and each national community
is so very diverse. At this stage in the evolution of this new paradigm
it is, indeed, impossible for me to do justice to the vast tapestry of
the implementation of this new Bahai culture and the weaving of its

innumerable strands of warp and weft.

The implementation of the essential features of this paradigm, the
evolving nature of its structures and functions and the successes and
failures from region to region, cluster to cluster and country to
country are simply beyond the scope of this book. This book is a
general and somewhat idiosyncratic statement, a view of the process
and content of this new Bahai culture from down at the bottom of the
world in Tasmania where I live and have my Bahai being. And the
aim of this book is, as I have said, highly personal and idiosyncratic.
I want to answer the question: where do I fit in? I leave it to readers
here to work out this answer for themselves.
Although I have found the writing of this book more tedious and
toilsome than I had anticipated, I have also found, somewhat
paradoxically, that there exists a fascinating immensity in the subject
matter. The result is for me a literary performance that I enact before
readers with the deepest observations and the most lively analysis
and images that I am able to convey. In the process I hope to both
clarify and enlighten on the one hand, both myself and readers. I aim
to set this new paradigm in a wider perspective than the one in which
it is usually set. It is good to aim high and I achieve this aim only in
part. And, it must be stated often that this book is just one man's
view; it possesses no authority and does not seek to impose any
particular view of this paradigm on anyone. This book is, as I have
already stated and as I will state again, merely a pot-pourri of
thoughts and I hope readers will enjoy their time swimming about in
the pot and tasting some of the flavoured soup which it is my hope is
contained therein.
This dialogue, this discussion of the new Bahai culture, beginning as
it did in the last years of the twentieth century really, got going--at
least for me---with Moojan Momen's essay "A Change of

Culture"(September 2004) when this paradigm was in its 8th year of

execution. There was at that time, by 2004, in those earliest years of
the first decade of the implementation of this new paradigm in the
Bahai community, little written analysis by major writers in the
Bahai community and little discussion on the internet, although the
major institutions of the Cause and many NSAs had produced a
wealth of literature to launch the framework for this new Bahai
culture.
In the next ten years, from 2004 to 2015, an immense dialogue has
taken place both on and off the internet about the nature and
purpose, the details and structure of this new paradigm. This book is,
among other things, the story of some of this dialogue, a summary of
some of its essential features and the elaboration of its details by the
Universal House of Justice and the International Teaching
Centre(ITC) on the one hand, by many of the NSAs and individuals
among the appointed and elected sides of the Cause on the other--as
well as an increasing host of individuals. But this book does not
presume to be an organized outline, a systematic analysis, as I say
above, of this new paradigm. For this, readers need to seek other
sources and there are many. Indeed, serious students of this new
paradigm will not find a shortage in available literature on the
subject. By April 2011, the month of the opening of the fourth Plan
of this new paradigm, some 15 years into this new Bahai culture, a
wealth of messages and letters, internet sites and internet posts,
formal and informal analyses as well as dialogue in clusters and
localities around the world had resulted in a plethora of written
material available for anyone wanting to get a handle on this new
paradigm.
In 2015, two years after of the celebration of the first half-century of
the House of Justice at the apex of Bahai administration, this new
paradigm will have been in place for 19 years, nearly two decades.

As far back as Ridvan 1988, the House of Justice had already

referred to "a new paradigm of opportunity for further growth and
consolidation" of the world-wide Bahai community. By 2015, then,
after a quarter of a century with the word paradigm in the air, so to
speak, there will be even much more written about this paradigm's
development and much more will have taken place in the field of
action. I hope to incorporate these developments into this book as
both the paradigm and the book evolve in the years ahead in this
space at Bahai Library Online which allows for ongoing additions,
subtractions and alterations, in a word, editing. The literature on the
subject of this new Bahai culture, as I say, is now burgeoning
making the interpretation of the nature and purpose, the functioning
and the myriad-sided structure of its features capable of many
meanings to many people. We each come to see it through the lens of
our own minds and hearts. This is only natural. This book is the view
through one man's lens and the story of how he sees not only the
participation of others, but his own participation in this new Bahai
culture. Readers of this book, in the end, must work out the story of
their own participation. Hopefully this book will help them in their
decision-making process.
CRITICISM OF THE CAUSE IN GENERAL AND OF THIS
PARADIGM IN PARTICULAR
After several years of what became a heated discussion of this new
culture of learning and growth the temperature seems to be cooling
down to more moderate levels, although not everywhere either on
the planet or on the internet which has become a sort of cyber-planet.
In a community of some six million souls one can be sure that there
is lots of both criticism and praise of just about everything. That is
partly the nature of people in community, the greatest drama of our
lives. The Central Figures of this Faith encouraged the use of the
mind, the rational faculty, and each Bahai must use their mind to see

where they fit in, where they can make their particular contribution
to the many aspects of the workings of this new Bahai culture. There
is, as I say, criticism and praise of this paradigm outside the internet.
Each cluster where Bahais reside, for Bahais only reside in some
6000 of the 16000 clusters around the world, each Bahai locality-and there are some 150,000 localities--has, as I say, its unloving
critics and its critical lovers.
Those who are actively engaged in cluster and community activity to
some degree are always only a portion, for there are nearly always(if
not always) those who could not possibly be defined as participants
using virtually any of the possible criteria of community
engagement. But this has always been the case; the notion of
everyone being active at the same level of intensity and engagement,
involvement and participation, is not and has never been achieved. It
is not only not realistic it is not the way groups work in either the
Bahai Faith or in any other organization. Like so many things in life
individuals and groups achieve only so many of their aims and goals,
only so much of what they want to accomplish. One needs to be
conscious of the point made by George Bernard Shaw about
socialism and politics in general in relation to Bahai activity and that
is the tendency to evaluate ones fellow members by how many
meetings to which they come or go.
"The trouble with socialism," Shaw once said, "is that there are too
many meetings." Universal participation, though, I would argue, is a
more achievable entity in this new culture where the menu of
activities to choose from is greater. There is something for everyone
to do, if they want to be a participant and, if the various institutional
organizers arrange things to enable community members to feel they
are participating, however humbly, however simply and minimally.
Of course, the line between "anything will do" and "do whatever you
want" and actual participation in this new paradigm may wind-up

being one with a very fine distinction if universal participation is

actually achieved. On the other hand, if the criteria for participation
in the new Bahai culture, if the bar is set too high, to use a modern
and popularized expression, then universal participation will remain
as elusive as ever.
A note of practical realism must often be struck as one goes about
the utopian tasks the Bahai community has set itself in order to keep
its expectations at levels which will not be productive of
disappointment and discouragement. To keep themselves motivated
to achieve greater success there are many roads to travel. There are
also many roads to take them down which decrease their levels of
participation. And then, to draw on a famous poem by the American
Robert Frost, there are roads less travelled by others and as he says,
"they may make all the difference." Some members of the Bahai
community attend virtually every gathering and some attend
virtually none; some are 50-50; some 60-40. The variations are
infinite. Everyone has a part to play if they want to be a part of this
new Bahai culture, and if the various institutions of the Cause define
participation in a flexible and diverse, inclusive and non-absolutist
manner, as I have mentioned above. In this new Bahai culture the
definitions of participation have made universal participation just
about guaranteed...but not quite. There is always a but!
Everyone will, in the end, be a part of the Bahai community, will be
part and parcel of that all-inclusive, world-wide participation if they
are faithful to the core elements of the Covenant and recognize the
Supreme Body as the fully legitimate institutional interpreter of the
Word and the Texts. If, on the other hand, only a small handful of
explicit criteria for participation are used to define the engagement
of the individual Bahai in the community programs--as one does
hear from overly enthusiastic individuals who are keen to get
everyone going their way--then, inevitably, participation rates--or the

ever elusive goal of universal participation--will continue to be just

that--elusive. There is, too, an element of uncertainty, ambiguity and
arbitrariness either latent or manifest, or both, in community life.
These realities can only be held in check to an extent by customary
forms, routines and regularities of the social and community
existence.
The Bahai community is not a formal educational institution which
has compulsory attendance and a degree, a diploma or a certificate at
the end, although there are certainly some aspects of the paradigm
which are formal, systematic, organized and require attendance in
order to move from one step to another. Within this paradigm, within
the international Bahai community there are schools, certificates of
attendance, indeed, the whole panoply and pageantry of the
educational apparatus found in the vast secular society of which the
Bahai community is but a small part. Those remarks of that English
critic about meetings are useful to emphasize from time to time as
each Bahai, as he or she desires, goes from Ruhi Book 1 to Book 8,
attends devotional meetings, LSA meetings, cluster meetings and, if
he or she is involved with youth or children, one of these programs
or one of many other community activities.
This new paradigm of learning and growth is not like that Anisa
Model which was current in the Bahai community back in the early
1970s. This new paradigm has some of the goals, the aims and
purposes of that Anisa Model for educational planning: it attempts to
translate potentiality into actuality; it attempts to interpret large
fields of reality; it attempts to transform experience into attitude and
unify factual knowledge and belief; it emphasizes interaction with
the environment as the general means by which the process of
translating potentiality into actuality is sustained; it is a process with
an order and a rhythm; the role of the tutor is, in part, to help the
student attain more learning competence and not just acquire more

information; it aims to deal with content and process, with

translating learning into service and activity. Albert Schweitzer's
words apply as much now in this new paradigm as in the years when
the Anisa Model inspired some of the Bahai community with its
learning model. Schweitzer wrote: "I don't know what your destiny
will be, but one thing I do know; the only ones among you who will
be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."
How true it is Albert! How true it is! Such a simple aphorism, a
simple remedy but, so often, easier said than done for many.
I encourage readers to google the Anisa Model and the various
deepening programs--like one entitled the Bahai Comprehensive
Deepening Program(USA, 1974)--once in existence and still
available in the Bahai community for comparisons and contrasts
with this new paradigm and its new culture of learning and
community growth. The exercise for readers will be, hopefully, a
heuristic one for the Bahai community has always been engaged in
learning and growth. Readers will also gain an insight into how this
new paradigm is so much more than the deepening programs of the
years 1936/7 to 1996/7 ever were. This new paradigm has not
sprung-up ex nihilo. It has profited much from those many decades
of experience with growth and learning, with teaching and
consolidation, with service and community building.
MY ROLE IN THIS NEW PARADIGM
Part 1:
As I have pointed out in the opening passages of this book, and as I
repeat from time to time to give what I feel is a necessary emphasis,
this work is highly idiosyncratic and focuses on my own role in this
new Bahai culture. This section of my book will contain a greater
elaboration of my role. By 2003, forty years into "the war" which I

have mentioned above and which I had become a part of as a

member of that 'army-of-light' I had become quite ill. I do not want
to go into the details of this illness here, but readers can examine my
illness in some detail here at BLO in a 60,000++ word 190 page
document entitled "my chaos narrative." My illness prevented me
from actively participating in many of the aspects of this new Bahai
culture. But my illness also forced me to focus on what I could do,
on what was within my capacity and, as the House of Justice often
put it, "as my circumstances permitted." What follows then is a
result, an outline, of what I have been doing and will do in the years
ahead. This book deals as much with my experience, my story within
this new paradigm, as with the generalities of the paradigm itself.
But my story is not so much narrative, as analysis. This book is no
life-narrative, engaging story-line, novelistic exercise to keep readers
involved until the last page as any thriller tries to do.
In many of the writings one comes across on the internet, as I have
already pointed out, one sees negative and earnest presentations of
views and experiences, some within the paradigm and some without.
Of course, one comes across earnest presentations of views off the
internet in simple daily conversations. Such earnestness is part of the
very core of Bahai experience along with humour and the many
things that are part and parcel of people in community. This has
always been the case for me in the more than half a century I have
been a Bahai. Sometimes these views one comes across in
cyberspace are intended, as I have also emphasized above, as a
detached commentary on a body of supposedly neutral facts gathered
in a seemingly dispassionate way through much patient or not so
patient experience and research. Sometimes these views are not so
detached. Sometimes the internet posts carry with them a venom and
a bitterness that has resulted from some negative experience of an
individual.

It is difficult to go through a Bahai life for years without

experiencing some challenges to ones personality, to ones way of
being, to the core of one's life, challenges that hurt and hurt deeply.
In the years before this paradigm, when there was no internet to
read, none of the sad tales of the searing emotional experiences of
others were as accessible in print form as they now are. One could
keep oneself insulated from the exit-narratives, as one Bahai writer
calls some of the experiences of marginal Bahais who eventually left
the Cause. Now, if one wants in this new paradigm one can read a
variety of these experiences of Bahais who passed from marginality
to apostasy, of people who are or were preoccupied with a variety of
campaigns against the Bahai community. I was aware of such
campaigns in the years before this new paradigm for such campaigns
have been part of Bahai history since its inception. But the presence
of such campaigns on the internet at a few clicks of the wrist was a
new experience for me and for many of my fellow believers.
For many, too, indeed for most of the Bahais, these stories were not
part of their reading. They simply did not expose themselves to such
accounts either because they had no access to the internet or, if they
did, they simply did not read such accounts and, if they did read
them, they never engaged in any written dialogue. I read a few of
them but they were the sorts of accounts I had heard verbally in the
decades before this new paradigm, in the decades before the internet
became the public vehicle it became after the inception of this
paradigm in the mid-1990s. Only on rare occasions did I engage
with one of the many who had sad tales to tell. Suffering from
mental illness as I had for years, I tended to focus my helping role,
my compassion if one could call it that, on Bahai internet sites for
the mentally-ill and others who experienced various traumatic
disabilities. I also engaged in dialogue with various artistic and
literary groups both within the Cause and without, sometimes
defending the Faith as I went and often not discussing the Cause

explicity at all.
Part 2:
Most Bahais I have come across on the internet at the many sites
now available do not write more than a few lines here and there;
most are not engaged in a critical examination of the Bahai
community. Most Bahais on the internet are engaged in a wide
variety of ways which it is not the purpose of this book to examine
in any detail.
When many of these criticisms which I refer to above are examined
at closer range the carefully constructed and sometimes scholarly
illusions begin to rapidly fall apart. The most serious shortcoming of
such criticisms, indeed the fatal one, is the use which is made of the
sources. This is an old problem for critics and it will be one they will
face increasingly in the decades ahead within this new paradigm.
The problem takes several forms, the first of which is an attempt to
provide in concise and orderly fashion the facts which have been
established by E.G. Browne and other scholars. There is now a rich
body of historical material on which to draw. The rise of the Bahai
Faith in the 19th and early 20th century very early attracted an
impressive group of scholars and observers: Joseph Arthur Comte de
Gobineau, A.L.M. Nicholas, Clement Huart, E.G. Browne,
Alexander Tumansky, Baron Victor Rosen, Mirza Kazem Bek, and
Hermann Roemer, to mention only the most important. (See Douglas
Martin, The Missionary as Historian, footnote # 7: E.G. Browne
provides a valuable bibliography on the Babi and Bahai Faiths prior
to 1917 in two of his works: A Traveller's Narrative Written To
Illustrate the Episode of the Bab, trans. Edward G. Browne
(Cambridge, England: The Univ. Press, 1918), pp. 175-243.)
Of course, there are criticisms written by non-Bahais with academic

credentials and levels of scholarship and reading far in excess of my

own and I can not compete on the playing field of such discussions. I
simply do not know enough; I have to leave the defence of the Cause
in relation to such critics to other Bahais with the academic
knowledge. We all have to do this. Until this new paradigm the
critics were usually in learned journals and now they are more
accessible, if one wants to access them, on the internet. This is a new
problem in the Bahai community and each Bahai deals with this
problem in his or her own way.
A book written by a disinterested non-Bah scholar about the Faith,
as the House of Justice emphasized in a recent letter, even if it
reflects certain assumptions and puts forward conclusions acceptable
within a given discipline but which are at variance with Bah
belief, poses no particular problem for Bahs, who would regard
these perceptions as an honest attempt to explore a religious
phenomenon as yet little understood generally. Any non-biased effort
to make the Faith comprehensible to a thoughtful readership,
however inadequate it might appear, would evoke genuine Bah
appreciation for the perspective offered and research skill invested in
the project. The matter is wholly different, however, when someone
intentionally attacks the Faith whether they be non-Bahai scholars,
leave-takers and defectors, dis-enrolled Bah's or X-Bah's, terms
that came to be applied in the early years of this paradigm to those
who had left the Cause, or apostates, those involved in contested
exits and affiliated with some oppositional coalition to the Cause.
An inescapable duty devolves upon the friends, the Supreme Body
went on to say, so to situate themselves in the knowledge of the
Teachings as to be able to respond appropriately to the challenges of
critics as they arise and thus uphold the integrity of the Faith. In the
last decade on the internet, 2001 to 2011, I have come to so situate
myself to "respond appropriately." The words of Bahullh

Himself shed light on the proper attitude I should adopt. He warns

the believers not to view with too critical an eye the sayings and
writings of men. Let them, He instructs, rather approach such
sayings and writings in a spirit of open-mindedness and loving
sympathy." Those people who have been led, in their inflammatory
writings, to assail the tenets of the Cause of God, are to be treated
differently, Bahaullah Himself emphasizes. "It is incumbent upon all
men, each according to his ability, to refute the arguments of those
that have attacked the Faith of God. The internet, since the outset of
this new paradigm, has offered an excellent venue for such lance and
parry activity.
Part 3:
According to my ability I engage in defence of the Cause on the
internet. I have come to see this as a legitimate, and often useful,
activity for me as a Bahai. It was an activity I had been engaged in,
anyway, for decades but not in such a public manner as the internet.
What I wrote became easily accessible by others who wanted to read
what I wrote. This activity is, in some ways, not an explicit part of
the new paradigm, but it is a task I have set myself within the
confines of my abilities and interests. This writing is also a simple
manifestation, a result, a form, of individual initiative. On the other
hand, I have no difficulty seeing my role on the internet as a Bahai
actively involved in this new paradigm with its wide menu of
choices for engagement. I see myself as involved in: strengthening
the pattern of expansion and consolidation; developments at the
more profound level of culture; the steady increase in the tempo of
teaching, a fundamental feature of Bahai life, across the globe;
conversations with souls; participation in community building; study
and service carried out concurrently; the active agency of my own
learning; an increasing understanding of the importance of humility,
delighting in the accomplishments of others and realizing there are

no formulas and no shortcuts; a capacity building that is long-term;

lending assistance to the building of a global civilization;
contributing my part to a rich tapestry of community life;
contributing to prevalent and relevant discourses in society; a type of
social action that can not be measured by an ability to bring
enrolments; not projecting an air of triumphalism and; finally, not
being premature in my various forms of social engagement. All these
phrases can be found in the Ridvan message of 2010. The messages
of 2011 to 2015, reiterate these same points. "Social action," the
House of Justice emphasized at Ridvan 2013, "happens naturally as
a growing community gathers strength." "The transformation of
society, they went on to say, requires much more thought and
reflection in order to understand the processes involved.
To those whose familiarity with Bahai history is limited, and this is
often a significant portion of the Bahais in the many clusters
especially as they grow significantly in numbers, they are placed in
the difficult position of being unable to defend the Cause from
outside criticism due to their limited knowledge. For the most part
this does not matter since most of the Bahais on the internet do not
engage in the endless historical and theological hair-splitting, the
casuistry regarding the new Bahai paradigm and the culture of
learning and growth with which it is sometimes associated. In this
paradigm, though, this engagement in literary dialogue is increasing.
Bahai intellectuals and non-intellectuals are coming home to roost;
Bahais with academic backgrounds from the physical and biological
sciences, the humanities and the social sciences can be found all
over the internet as can those without academic credentials but who
like to write, like to argue a case, like to state a view often at
variance with either orthodoxy or convention. There are many in life,
both on and off the internet, who enjoy argument and disagreement,
and who so often play the devil's advocate, so to speak.

Part 4:
At the other end of the literary spectrum are the Bahais on the
internet who write in phrases and single sentences and rarely put
more than two or three lines of print into a post. The internet, like the
real world, is a place for people of all kinds, all capacities and
talents: good writers and poor writers, writers of excess and high
ability as well as writers of more modest talents who write in various
quantities and qualities. The internet, like this book, is a place for a
pot-pourri of people, places and things, analyses and observations,
cut-and-thrust, backs-and-fourths. In the case of this book, though, I
like to think the process of literary expression here is one
characterized by a high degree of civility and etiquette of expression
as well as that brilliant inventiveness which one noted Bahai writer
said was a useful quality in consultation. Bahais are encouraged to
aim high. "However modest," the House of Justice wrote in 2013 in
commenting on the exertions of individual Bah's, "they need to
coalesce into a collective effort." This book is a good example, at
least I like to think so, of this collective coalescence. I leave it to
readers to assess whether, in fact, this collective literary effort has
been a useful one. One can but try.
A different type of challenge had arisen on the internet, when an
individual or group, using the privilege of Bah membership,
adopts various means to impose personal views or an ideological
agenda on the Bah community. In one recent instance, for
example, an individual has declared himself a Bah theologian,
writing from and for the Bahai community with the aim to criticize,
clarify, purify and strengthen the ideas of the Bah community, to
enable Bahs to understand their relatively new Faith and to see
what it can offer the world. Assertions of this kind, the Universal
House of Justice made clear in a recent letter, "go far beyond
expressions of personal opinion which any Bah is free to voice."

Here was a claim, the House of Justice went on to say, that was well
outside the framework of Bah belief and practice. The book in
which the views were expressed was not reviewed before publication
and the author was removed from membership rolls by the House of
Justice. This was toward the end of the first decade of this new
paradigm.
It seemed to me that what the House of Justice was doing was
nipping in the bud an individual's attempt, an individual's assertion
of what amounted to a declaration of 'theologian status.' Perhaps the
attempt was unintended, but the Bahai Faith has no caste with
ecclesiastical prerogatives, prerogatives that seek to foist or impose
in even an indirect way some self-assumed authority upon the
thought and behavior of the mass of believers. Bahaullah has
prescribed a system that combines democratic practices with the
application of knowledge through consultative processes. It seems to
me that to call oneself "a Bahai theologian" is like calling oneself "a
Bahai poet." I am, indeed, a poet; but I am a poet who is a Bahai.
The distinction is not arbitrary but goes to the heart of Bahai
ideology, philosophy, politics, theory and practice. As the artist Mark
Tobey once quoted Shoghi Effendi: 'there is no official Bahai art.'
This is also true of music and theology. What is official comes from
the writings and the Supreme body: all else is interpretation. When
someone is removed from membership, it is always a test not only
for the person involved but for those around him or her since such an
act seems to be a contradiction to the entire ethos of what the Bahai
Faith is about. It is one of the many aspects of Bahai life and belief
which is far from easy, far from the notion of liberalism which
characterizes so much of the Cause.
Every individual has the right to hold and express personal views. I
do this, have done and will do in the years ahead as a writer and
poet, an editor and publisher. This does not mean, however, that

whatever I say is always consistent with the Bah Teachings.

Bahullh has established the criteria for understanding and
practicing His Faith, and no one who professes to be a Bah can
systematically propagate personal interpretations that violate these
criteria. An individual who insists upon a personal view in an effort
to change the essential character of the Faith places himself outside
the circle of Bah belief. This has been true in the last half century
of my Bahai experience as I have gone about getting what I write in
book form reviewed by various reviewing committees to which I
have sent my books.
Part 5:
My treatment of whatever topics I have dealt with in my books must
be factually accurate, philosophically sound and must meet the
approval of whatever authorized reviewing body examines my work.
What I write and the extent that I use the various themes I do cannot
be done as a vehicle to justify and underpin some personal authority.
For I have no authority. I am free to criticize, clarify, purify and
strengthen the ideas of the Bah community but not from a position
of any presumed authority, not outside the system of Bahai review.
If the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States chooses not
to market the books of Kalimt Press through Bah agencies,
bookshops or other venues in that country, they have that right.
Individuals and institutions have not been prevented from
purchasing Kalimts books or from keeping them in their libraries.
Rather, the National Assembly has simply decided that Bah
agencies will not sell Kalimat Press's books. The general policy in
this regard, well-known to Bahs, to Bahai institutions and Bahai
publishers of Bah books, is that even after a text is reviewed,
publishers have the right to decide what books they will carry and
promote. A National Spiritual Assembly, through its Publishing Trust

or any other agency, decides what books will be stocked, promoted

and advertised for sale. I have written several books and none of
them are for sale in Bahai bookshops. One has been reviewed; no
Bahai publisher wants to sell them in a hard cover since I have been
told the books are not likely to sell well. And so I have made them
available as ebooks and have been given permission to do so.
I mention all of the above simply to comment on some of the
developments within the Bahai community during this paradigm,
developments of interest to me, if not to the readers of this book.
They are developments of interest to me because they relate to the
role I am playing as a Bahai--not within the major features of this
new paradigm: the institute process, the Ruhi books, the study
circles, inter alia--but within the larger context of expansion and
consolidation, within my capacity to converse with others on
spiritual matters and speak about this new Revelation. I see my
work, especially on the internet, as part of the steady increase in the
tempo of teaching across the globe, part of the discharge of my
fundamental spiritual obligation, an indispensable feature of my
Bahai life, and an exercise of individual initiative, a quality often
given emphasis by the Central Figures of the Cause and its appointed
interpreters.(Ridvan, 2010)
Much of the field of criticism that I come across on the internet is
somewhat esoteric but, given the increasing interest in Iran, in Israel
and in the Middle East in general, for many reasons, there has been
an increasing interest in the Bahai Faith. Topics which formerly did
not arouse any public interest in relation to the Cause are now doing
so. The field of historical and textual studies of the Babi and Bahai
Faiths is one in which controversies abound. Non-Bahai researchers
often disagree with Bahai accounts and interpretations of the
movement's history and doctrine. Sometimes non-Bahai critics are
unduly dismissive of the work produced by scholars who happen to

be Bahais. They often see Bahai scholars as essentially learned

apologists due to their willingness to accept prior review of their
work, who slavishly follow 'a party-line' while pretending to be
independent scholars. The result is often long-winded internet
exchanges of interest to a few, read by a small section of the Bahai
community, contributing little to the community in general, but
having the function of defining the limits, the structure of freedom
for the Bahai community by means of its Administrative Order.
Within this framework of freedom, a pattern is set for institutional
and individual behaviour which depends for its efficacy not so much
on the force of Bahai law and Bahai institutional policy, which
admittedly must be respected, as on the recognition of a mutuality of
benefits and on the spirit of cooperation. This spirit is maintained by
the willingness, the courage, the sense of responsibility and the
initiative of individuals---all expressions of individual devotion and
submission to the will of God as defined by the House of Justice. As
the House of Justice emphasized(29/12/88)in one of its extensive
and important letters on the questions of freedom and authority-among other issues--there exists a balance in the Cause in relation to
freedom between the institutions and the individuals who sustain
their existence. When this balance is not achieved, when the standard
of public discussion is not high, when candour and civility are not
combined in proper measure, when discussions are conducted which
undermine the authority of the institutions, the order of the Cause
itself is endangered. The Guardian emphasized this during a major
paradigm shift entre deux guerres in the 1920s. The House of Justice
has reiterated this theme, this same emphasis, and I'm sure it will be
a thread of concern long into the future of this Faith as it goes from
strength to strength in the decades ahead.
Part 6:

Another variety of criticism in the last 15 years are those critiques

associated with: the many exit-narratives, contested and uncontested;
the apostate stories and a varied mix of leave-takers. Many marginal
and peripheral members of the Bahai community, people who for
decades were just considered inactive with the associated and
seemingly endless discussions of how to encourage their
participation, have written often sad accounts of their experience in
the Bahai community. There are new web sites for X-Bahais,
unenrolled Bahais, disenrolled Bahais, orthodox Bahais, dissatisfied
Bahais, Bahais on the attack, subversive Bahais, indeed, a range of
the strangest bedfellows imaginable. There are personal situations
described in great detail, in many degrees and varieties of dissidence
and disunity; there are covenant-breakers and quasi-covenantbreakers and all of this is mixed in with devoted believers,
enthusiasts, the dedicated and the sincere.
Most of the organized and collective activity in many of these
categories takes place only on the internet and, since most of the
Bahai community's five to seven million adherents are not on the
internet, the international Bahai community is not affected by all this
coming and going, all this verbiage, however justified or not
justified, however eloquent and well-reasoned, however poorly
argued and shrill, however intellectually impoverished or erudite.
For many of the Bahais like myself who have been around for
decades, in my case since the 1950s, much of this negative verbiage
has arisen only during this new paradigm and only on the
internet,although much of the dialogue, the points at issue, have been
heard before but not in writing. Such stories were heard in the backblocks, the stories of the disaffected. Disaffection in the community,
as in most communities of any substance with peoples lives and
commitments at stake, is part of the drama of community, of social,
life. Work and participation in the Bahai community is not an easy
process as any veteran of decades will easily attest and as new

recruits will soon find out.

Some of the critics one encounters on the internet are people with an
obsession. Although some of these critics have a wide ambit of
interests by profession or by inclination or by both, they have come
to focus a great part of their energies as writers and internet posters
on the subject of the Bahai Faith. It often seems to this writer as if
the final flowering of the writing of some of these critics has become
a preoccupation with criticism of the Bahai Faith. Some of these
critics do not regard their subject with any affection and readers are
cautioned not be distracted even momentarily by the introduction of
academic conventions in the writings of some of these critics.
Others, of course, have a genuine love of the Cause. There has come
to be a mixed bag of folks on the net and readers need to keep a
watchful eye on what my wife calls "their credentials." What is their
status in the Bahai community as defined by the House of Justice, if
that institution has in fact made some statement about their position.
If one is unsure one can always consult with someone on the
appointed side of the Cause or one of the many elected institutions.
The Bahai Faith has developed an extensive apparatus of protective
institutions out of necessity over the more than 150 years of its
history.
Many critics possess a highly partisan opinion of the Bahai Faith
which is often formed by some personal and negative experience
with a Bahai, a group of Bahais or one of the institutions of the
Cause. To what extent these views have come to represent the results
of objective, concrete experience and reality and to what extent they
are the spontaneous reaction to the barren and not-so-barren fields of
interpersonal conflict is impossible for the impartial observer to
know as they read the internet accounts, most of the time. Posts,
articles, blogs, message boards, ebooks, indeed, an increasingly wide
range of critical apologetics are sometimes heavily footnoted,

drawing as I say on an apparently wide range of sources. While a

degree of animus is unmistakable, the authors sometimes pay an
occasional conventional tribute to the sacrifices which Bahais have
made for their beliefs. After nearly sixty years of association with
this new world religion, listening to the criticism of others is not a
new experience for me. I would go so far as to say: I have heard
most of the venom before which I have come across on the internet
in the last 15 years. Australia is an anti-authoritarian culture and
given to a good deal of criticism of others. In addition, Bahaullahs
emphasis on not gossiping and keeping one's criticism mild is due to
the difficulty most people have in implementing His advice in this
critical area of community life. This whole domain is given a high
priority in Bahai morality because it is so very prevalent or because
it is so very difficult to achieve or, I think much more importantly,
because it is so very important to the development of trust and
confidence as well as any sane and meaningful community life.
Part 7:
This religion is made up of people, fallible people, people who are
far from perfect, and they often rub each other the wrong way. In the
process people's feelings are often hurt to the point where they can
take no more and you don't see them anymore. Large segments of
many Bahai national communities have what the Bahai community
has for years called, as I say, 'the inactive believer.' And more than
this, large segments of many communities have members without
addresses or means of being contacted. The Bahai Faith is not a teaparty, often inspite of appearances to the contrary. Bahai community
life is often demanding as is any other organization with a significant
role to play in society. To play a part in its culture has, from my
point of view, never been easy. This will be true in this new
paradigm and even more as this Faith expands and plays an even
more important role in society in this new millennium.

Some critics on the internet and not on the internet do not seem to be
able to leave Mason Remey alone and the Orthodox Bahais who
have come after him. Remey's unsuccessful efforts to create a rift in
the membership of the Faith is no doubt relevant to any
comprehensive discussion of modern Bahai history from the later
1950s onward, but his efforts can usually be more than adequately
dealt with in a paragraph, illustrated by an extract from one of Mr
Remey's statements, if that seems necessary to the writer's argument.
To present a figure like Remey as a major historical source on Bahai
history is unacceptable in any serious argument, at least to me. Mr.
Remey was an aged man at the time he produced his polemical
writings against the Custodians in the late 1950s and 1960s. His
condition made him seem, to many, a pathetic figure and his mental
state could not have been unknown to anyone in even limited contact
with him. His statements throw no light whatever on the
extraordinary expansion of the Bahai Faith in the past seven decades,
decades both before and after Remey's death in 1974.
Few people, either within the Bahai Faith or outside, took seriously
Mr Remey's pretensions, and he died in his hundredth year, bereft of
supporters or attention. But the Orthodox Bahais can be found on the
internet as if they represented a split in the Cause. Not all the Babis
became Bahais in the 1860s and 1870s but the notion that there was
a split in the Cause is a piece of historical casuistry which I imagine
will be with us for decades if not centuries to come. A tiny storm can
be made in a tea-cup as we used to say. I've heard that story and seen
that tea-cup around for my entire life as a Bahai.
According to the court documents themselves there are only about
thirty followers of the so-called Orthodox Bah' Faith or Remeyites,
as I prefer to call them. But the real problem with the discussion in
the last decade, and particularly since the reopening of the court-case

in the USA, is that it distorts the subject. The National Spiritual

Assembly of the Bah's of the United States has been merely
attempting to enforce an *existing* court order which came as a
result of a lawsuit the Remeyites had themselves filed in 1964. In
that lawsuit anf under Mason Remey's direction, they themselves
attempted to claim a monopoly, not only over the term "Bah'" but
to claim all Bah' properties as well. Had Mason Remey believed
this was something that should be decided in hearts and minds, and
not in the courts, this court order would never have been issued in
the first place.
Remey, by the way, accepted that court order and ordered his
organization to disband and stop using the term "Bah'." That is
when Joel Marangella broke with Mason Remey and claimed the
Guardianship for himself, forming the "Orthodox Bah' Faith."
Their argument has been that since they are a separate organization
they are not bound by the court order issued against Mason Remey's
organization. The National Spiritual Assembly holds that this new
organization was but a subterfuge around the court's original
decision. This is what is being argued in the last year or so before the
Court of Appeals. It is an issue of who owns the Bah' trademarks,
not which faction is really 'orthodox.' The National Spiritual
Assembly is not trying to infringe on anyone's religious liberty,
merely to safeguard the names and symbols of their own
organization.
Part 8:
The Bahai Faith does not have what in Islam has been called takfir.
Sen McGlinn makes this point in his essay "Defending Shoghi
Effendi." Bahais cannot call other people kafir, infidel or unbeliever
with the resulting ruling that their marriage is annulled and they
become in the process unclean. In the Bahai Faith there are not a

group of believers who have to go through acts of purification before

saying their prayers if they have contact with such persons; for
example, because his beliefs were thought to be unorthodox, Shaykh
Ahmad was subject to a takfir issued by the religious leaders of
Qazvin.The term takfir derives from the word kafir,impiety, and is
described as when one who is, or claims to be, a Muslim is declared
impure. Those to whom takfir is applied are considered
excommunicated in the eyes of the Muslim community. The Bahai
Faith has no takfir in at least two senses: there is no concept that
anyone is unclean, and being declared a covenant-breaker does not
affect ones legal status or rights. Its simply a non-confrontational
strategy for dealing with conflict. By separating, as Bahau'llah
separated from Azal in the Istanbul period, the true value of each
group will become evident. In practice it has usually amounted to
giving the person or persons enough rope to hang themselves, so to
speak. If there is a real positive value in the position held by the
person; they are simply removed from the community, that becomes
evident over time.
Of course, the Supreme Body has the authority to judge a person's
religious beliefs and declare someone a non-believer, unenrolled or
disenrolled, or a covenant-breaker. The House of Justice has the
authority to disenroll or unenroll a Bahai. Abdul-Baha said that it is
not permissible to silence or humiliate others. The House does not
silence anyone; the unenrolled Bahai is free to express his views but
not as a declared Bahai. The Bahai approach really is a nonconfrontational stance, intended to exclude all kinds of personal
attacks, labelling, infringement of rights etc.. When the Supreme
Body excludes a Bahai from membership that, of course, has a
labelling effect. The person so excluded becomes an outsider,
marginal. One can use one of several other terms. That doesnt mean
there is no apologetics; there are still arguments about the issues; it is
difficult not to be involved in some labelling of the person, direct

and/or indirect. If someone is an apostate, thats not a label used to

humiliate someone who thinks they are a believer. The term was
used, for example, by Shoghi Effendi, in its correct sense for
someone who has turned their back on one religion and joined
another. As in much theological discussion, though, useless hairsplitting definitions abound, empty and profitless debates with a vain
concatenation of imaginings that lead to no result except acrimony.
(SDC, p.106)
Removal from Bahai membership seems to be a different thing than
apostasy in recent useage both in and off the internet. There are
varying significances to being accepted as part of the Muslim
`ummah, to being declared an infidel or kafir, to being a church
member or to being excluded from sacraments. It is partly a matter
of personal identity and sometimes even salvation. Enrolment in the
Bahai community is given a different weight than in the examples I
have given above from Islam and Christianity--depending on what
Bahai institution is doing the enrolling. There are still some
countries and territories among the 246 in the wide-wide world
where there is no enrolment. There have been many exemplary
Bahais in the history of the Cause long before enrolment even
existed. We can perfectly accurately say that Abul-Fadl was not
enrolled, but he was certainly a Bahai, arguably the most erudite in
Bahai history.
So far as I understand it--and this is something the House of Justice
will in all likelihood clarify in this new paradigm--being on the
membership rolls is meant to be like voluntary membership of an
association, which is a free choice on both sides. There are
procedures and reasons for taking away membership or not giving it
in the first place and these are exercised by Bahai institutions.
Sometimes no explanation is given. Its like the coach deciding who
doesnt make the cut. It's also part of the Bahai religion, a part which

is not popular among what might be called the more liberal of the
Bahais. Although there are not official liberal and conservative
Bahais, the issue often has more to do with Bahais simply accepting
what the House does, what it writes and what it implements in the
Bahai community as expression of official institutional policy.
Again, for some Bahais this is not always easy and when it becomes
too difficult for their reasoning minds to accept some feel they must
tender their resignations. In a community of millions of souls this, it
seems to me, is occasionally inevitable. Much in the Bahai Cause is
simple, very very simple. But much is also complex: very, very
complex.
Part 9:
The reason for the policy of shunning the violators has not been that
they had a different religion, it has been because there is such a thing
as a Covenant, and the Covenant is no trifle to be played with. The
Covenant, combined with the policy that we do not use violence, or
in any way discriminate against the legitimate rights of the covenantbreakers, but simply leave them to God, is the greatest protection for
the children and great-great-grandchildren of Bahais from the curse
of sectarian strife that has clouded the light of both Christianity and
Islam. The blood on the robes of past religions comes not just from
their lack of an explicit written covenant identifying the successor to
the Founder and His authorities, but also from the lack of a clear
principle that sectarian tendencies must be seriously combatted.
Shunning those who form sects is a serious means of combatting
schizmatic, sectarian, tendencies.
I have found Momen's article in the journal Religion(2007) entitled:
Marginality and Apostasy in the Bahai Community has provided a
helpful overview of much of the content in the above paragraphs and
I encourage readers to examine this article and the internet

discussion which it provoked to get a better handle on these many

themes, some rather complex to understand. I have been involved
directly with this issue of marginality and the kinds of concerns
expressed by Kalimat Press since I was the editor of the arts section
of Dialogue magazine back in the mid-1980s. So many of these
problems are not new but a new generation of Bahais gets exposed
to them on the internet or not exposed to them as the case may be.
Bahais who don't spend much time engaged in these internet
discussions and prefer to read and interact on other subjects with
other groups of people, for the most part, never come across these
issues and for the most part never take an interest in them. There is a
complexity to all these terms and statuses in the community and,
unless one is engaged in internet discussions on these subjects or
takes some academic interest in the casuistry associated with these
discussions, participants in this new Bahai culture can simply give it
all a miss---and not miss anything. I have sometimes involved in
these issues of membership because of my extensive internet
teaching in literally hundreds of discussions over the years of this
paradigm but, for the most part, I avoid the exit-narratives, the
covenant-breaking sites, the endless bickering which can be found
here and there in cyberspace.
Few if any of the Christian and Islamic writers who have chosen to
attack the Bahai Faith over the past several decades have shown the
patience to try to grasp the fundamental distinction between the Bahai Faith
and previous religions. On the individual believer the divine command of this
Cause lays the duty of acting with love, mercy, forbearance and forgiveness.
Going one step beyond the so-called "Golden Rules" of earlier stages in
mankind's moral evolution, Bahaullah calls upon the individual to "prefer ot

himself and teaches that such a standard is the only basis upon
which the Bahai principle of "unity in diversity" can be realized,
with all its implications for the protection of individual identity and
the avoidance of dissention and the wide variety of interpersonal
conflicts that can be avoided with the use of a battery of virtues and
s" to

interpersonal skills. Preferring others to oneself, like the golden Rule

itself, will keep each Bahai spiritually busy for generations, if not
millennia, to come---or so it would seem to we who are part of the sceptical and
cynical, critical and untrusting generations at the turn of the third millennium.
In many ways it is easier to study and explore the principles than to practice
them in daily life given their number and the very high standard that the Bahai
community is asked to reach in their execution.
Part 10:

No one would claim that the high standards of Bahai morality are
easily achieved, but they are essential parts of Bahai morality and
community life if, indeed, that community is to be worthy of its
name and if it is to attract others to it in the context of this new
Bahai culture of learning and growth. For followers of previous
religions, faith and virtue, belief and practice has been essentially an
individual matter. The individual is saved alone, and society as such
is irredeemable. At least this contemptus mundi as it is sometimes
called is often, if not always, the case. Any social theology, if you
can call it that, varies of course from denomination to denomination,
sect to sect, cult to cult, branch to branch and religious division to
division. The "coming of the Kingdom" is for the most part an event
outside history, often so far outside indeed as to occur in another
world entirely.
To be sure, these basic elements of Christian theology have been so
muddied, as I say, by conflicting sectarian interpretations and by
twentieth-century attempts to create a "social gospel" that the
intellectual issues associated with this social gospel probably have
little relevance for the average member of most Christian churches.
Yet Pauline theology itself has not changed. However weakened or
inarticulate, it continues to appear in habits of thought and in
assumptions which reveal their presence when a mind conditioned
by them tries to grapple with new elements in religious truth. And
the Bahai Faith contains many new elements of religious truth.

Although this religion has a preeminent simplicity, it also possesses

a complexity which will keep the finest intellectuals, thinkers and
social analysts busy for millennia to come.
In recent decades, with a vast increase in education and the
simultaneous breakdown of ecclesiastical authority, the open
vilification of religions continues in some circles and has given way
to caution in others. Some of the anti-Bahai polemic on the internet
is a representative example of the former and some of the latter. But
the spirit and the essential methods of critique continue with the
centuries. The aim so often is to attack and create contempt and
aversion for beliefs which differ from one's own. The perennial
explanation is that truth must be served, whatever the cost to human
sensitivities. It would obviously be pointless and unseemly to
dignify such arguments with any serious attention in the face of the
methods by which earnest polemicists seek to serve their conception
of truth. To many, of course, religion is simply irrelevant, but this
has been the case in the West for decades and in some places for
literally centuries as anyone with some familiarity with history over
the last several centuries on this planet can easily testify.
Perhaps Bahais can regard the persistent efforts of some critics and
their seeming obsession with the Bahai Faith with a certain degree of
equanimity. Whatever interest these critics may arouse that interest
must inevitably excite a wider discussion of their Founder's message,
well, sometimes anyway! If at the same time such criticism
stimulates Bahaullahs followers to a deeper study of the implications
of that message, as it often does in the lives of some Bahais, these
Bahais will surely have derived much benefit from such an
experience.
Believers in all ages before the present have had similar experiences
in dealing with critics. The gradual but unmistakable disappearance,

too, of the ecclesiastical profession around the world seems likely to

be part of this overall process. Of course, where that profession has
not disappeared, it is often held up to a ridicule which is so pervasive
as to make religious belief a laugh in the eyes of millions in our
secular age. This is not always the case as fundamentalism continues
to capture much ground.
CRITICISM FROM WITHIN THE CAUSE
Most of the critics of the Cause whom I have encountered on the net
are not believers in traditional religions but this, I'm sure, will
change in the years of this new paradigm. This is not to say that such
believers are not present, but the main body of critics which Bahais
have had to deal with thusfar in the first 17 years of this paradigm
have been in the Cause in some way or another, at one time or
another.
Some people, some Bahais, view dissent positively. In the context
of the unassailable authority of the Bahai institutions, dissent is seen
by some as a positive activity or response. Assailing the House of
Justice is for some---a virtue. If the authority in question is
unassailable, that is, not liable to doubt, attack, or question, then
dissent is merely noise with no positive result. If the purpose of
dissent is to create an atmosphere of discord, then one could argue
that such an initiative might be considered successful. Much discord
has indeed generated. In our highly adversarial world, this is not
surprising. That this is often the case in some ways is just part of the
air that is the very texture of our critical and secular society.
Indeed dissent is a norm in some ways in our pluralistic society. To
look at a dictionary or a thesaurus once again, though, dissention is
defined as disagreement and it is often engaged in an especially
partisan sense with contentious quarrelling as a noise-some

accompaniment. Dissent, then, for good old Roget and his thesaurus,
is a synonym for discord.
It is the partisan nature of dissent, the seeming need for dissenters to
attract others to their cause or position, that is one of the major
characteristics of the negative, soul-blighting essence, of dissent.
Dissent often goes beyond free expression of opinion and becomes
ego-centric and corrosive. Instead of saying "I offer these views for
your consideration," the dissenter takes a much more strident and
confrontational position. Dissent then becomes more fundamentalist
in its confrontational, argumentative and oppositional nature; it often
lacks any genuine etiquette of expression, any moderation and
modesty. It proposes that only one side of the debate is possible, that
only one view may be true. It is the five blind men examining the
elephant picture with which we are all familiar. Were the one holding
the trunk to say, "This animal appears like a snake; some aspect of
the elephant is snakelike;" he would merely be expressing his
opinion. But when he says "An elephant must be a snake; do not be
fooled by others. Listen only to me, not the zoologists." In this
context he is expressing dissent.
Dissention is a moral and intellectual contradiction to those who
would be unifiers of the children of men, wrote the House of Justice
back in 1988 before the inception of this new paradigm. What is
desired in interchange is a tolerant assertion of preference and not an
intolerant insistence of agreement of finality. And if, one must assert
some categorical imperative, some arbitrary absolute, then calling
down fire from heaven while one does the asserting is neither wise
nor productive. To put this another way, the ends, the goals in a
discussion should be seen as functional and relative and not be
confused with objective complete reality. Reality here might be seen
as a white light broken-down into the prism of human nature into a
spectrum of values, derivative aspects of the same reality.

CONSULTATION
Consultation does not stress the emancipation, the freedom, from the
authority and from the legitimacy of the organization. Rather,
consultation is intimately bound up with and supportive of that
authority and the institution that is the expression of that authority
and within which that consultation takes place. At least this is the
case with Bahai consultation in the myriad groups of Bahais on the
planet. The very essence of groups of Bahais is some form of "social
contract", some personal right that is offered to the group in
exchange for some personal good. Bahais learn from the Writings
what surrender is expected of them and some of that surrender is to
the Administrative Order which they are asked to support. Just as
you might surrender your right to drive in an intoxicated state in
order that the forces of society will protect you from drunk drivers;
so you relinquish certain rights, including the right of dissent, as part
of your Bahai "social contract" which is actually with Bahaullah.
This does not mean you cannot freely express your insights, ideas, or
opinions; it is rather that such expression is done in the manner
prescribed in the Writings: to uplift all, without dissent or discord.
This is the theory but in practice it is often difficult to achieve the
theoretical position or aim.
Principled dissent and dissension is not equivalent to unprincipled
discord and disunity. The subject of disagreement in dialogue and
consultation is a separate one that I cannot thoroughly deal with
here. It is not my intention here to pummel readers with the
Writings, chapter and verse, book by book, but if readers were to
search on Ocean, an internet site with an extensive body of the Bahai
Writings accessible with a few clicks of the fingers on your
keyboard, or any one of several Bahai internet libraries for the word
dissension or dissent, readers will readily see that what I am saying

here is entirely consistent with these many references. This is not to

say that the subject is complete at this point. The whole question of
dissention is a complex one which I come at several time in this
book from different perspectives. Although complex, the subject of
harmonious dialogue is crucial to the process of the workings of
Bahai administration. The Guardian wrote, as far back as 1923: "the
Great Plan of the Future, as unfolded by the Master's Will and
Testament, will be rudely disturbed and grievously delayed," indeed,
"the whole structure is sure to crumble" if what he calls "this
fundamental requisite" is not realized.(NSA, UHJ, 1972, pp.8-9.
Those with access to the internet, for the most part, dont seem to
take part in the heated discussions, in the endless casuistry and hairsplitting, in the extensive analysis as well as the fine-tuning and the
defining of terms. But for a coterie the action is hot and fast, furious
and fastidious. A great deal of heat has been generated both within
the parameters, within the box, of the paradigm and outside the box
of this new culture of learning and growth since 1996. This heat is
still, and has been, part and parcel of the thematics, part of the
picture and part of the whole of the Bahai world for more than a
decade now but, from my perspective living as I do in the Antipodes,
the temperature is cooling. The heat may not be entirely off, but the
waters are hardly boiling anywhere except, at least as I see it, on
several internet locations. There has always been an element, a
portion, of the community, with some axe to grind. This was true on
23 May 1844 within the Shaykhi school of the Ithna-Ashariyyih sect
of Shi'ah Islam and it will, in all likelihood, be true for the entire
history and future of the Cause, although I'm sure there will be some
who will not agree with my emphasis here.
Before saying a few words about combating criticism the Guardian
emphasized the problems associated with the unfettered freedom of
the individual and the need to temper that freedom. High aims and

pure motives must be supported by measures which are practical and

methods which are sound. NSAs are trusted guardians and supreme
authorities in all matters under their jurisdiction. The guidelines for
mature deliberation are many but the capacity to put them into
practice is often lacking. This problem will beset the implementation
and success of this paradigm as it has always done in previous
paradigms throughout the 17 decades of Bahai history. The
dissipation of precious energies often results from the incapacity of
the believers, from conflicts between personalities and these aspects
of community life, aspects which have been present as I say since
the start of Bahai history, need to be remembered when the hopedfor plans do not materialize as quickly as the Bahai community, and
the individuals which compose it, would like.
The process is often, indeed, it has always seemed to me, in some
ways---slow. This slowness, though, is a matter of perspective. Since
my mother joined the Bahai Faith in 1953 the total number of Bahais
globally has increased 30 times. One could argue that this has been
an exponential growth. Toynbee alluded to this growth and to the
Bahai Faith in general in the early 1950s as "the religion of Western
civilization" when there were only about 200 thousand Bahais in the
world. As the great body of humankind has been invaded by
violence and tempests of many and divergent kinds, as the remaining
civilizations of the world were increasingly undermined by slow
decay, this new and pure religion, humble in many ways insinuated
itself into the remotest corners of the planet and the minds of men in
the most unobtrusive ways; it has grown up in silence and obscurity,
except in places of savage opposition and it aims to erect a
triumphant banner on the ruins of planetized civilization by sensible
and insensible degrees not unlike Christianity did some 2000 years
ago.
COMBATING CRITICISM

The institutions of the Cause have tried to combat as effectively as

they can the forces of separation and sectarian tendencies and to deal
with equally divisive forces of extreme orthodoxy on the one hand
and irresponsible freedom on the other and the tendency to divide
the believers into categories such as deepened and uninformed. The
institutions have continued to keep this Faith united as they have
done thanks to the mystery and the wonder, the reality and practical
efficacy, of the Covenant and they will continue to do so. The
significance of this accomplishment nor of the Covenant is hardly
appreciated. A new, an additional, Book 8 on The Covenant has been
added to the sequence of Ruhi resources recently aimed at giving
Bahais an appreciation of this element of the basic core of Bahai
beliefs and teachings. Keeping this Cause unified after nearly two
centuries could well be considered its chief accomplishment. It is an
accomplishment of enormous, of crucial, proportions. It is also an
accomplishment that, in some important ways, is more of a process
than an event for, as I say, the problems associated with disunity and
divisiveness may always be with us. They are part of the reality of
unity in diversity, harmony and dissonance, conflict and peace, the
many and inevitable polarities of life itself. They are part of the very
air we all breath and will have to continue to be worked through in
this and future paradigms by both the institutions of the Cause and
the individuals who are the community's warp and weft.
The institutions of the Cause use logic, argument and various forms
of intellectual and moral suasion to make whatever cases need to be
made to combat the critics and the concerned, the worried and the
worrisome. These institutions do not expect every member of the
community to think, to feel and to act in some preconceived way. To
expect everyone to do the same thing would not only be unrealistic it
would be absurd. I have discussed criticism above in some detail
and, although criticism is itself not an explicit part of this new

paradigm, I have chosen as one of my many roles on the internet to

deal with it in the best ways I know how. I see this as a useful
contribution to the work of the Faith.
Some Bahai centres, localities, groups and assemblies have more and
some have less of such critical individuals. Only a relative few, as I
say, ever put their complaints and contentions on the internet for all
to see and even fewer ever get into the many historical issues which
the Bahai Faith has dealt with in the last century and a half. Of
course, all of this is part of the drama of people in community, in the
Bahai community and this new paradigm will see more of this play
of light and shadow, of enthusiasm and criticism in the years ahead.
For it is all part of the greatest of all dramas for Bahais, for it is their
lives and it is their communities; it is their history and their future-to say nothing of their present experience--with all the passions and
prejudices, practices and policies that inevitably characterize an
international organization of millions of people across more than 230
countries and territories on the planet.
A Bah' of many years experience is also aware of the reality of
what might be called temporary religious enthusiasms, enthusiasms
which return by degrees to their natural level and resume those
passions and prejudices that have characterized their lives and to
which they had adapted their daily lives before hearing of this new
Faith. Not everyone who comes in contact with the immense Force
that is the Bahai Faith is transformed and those who are transformed
often do so by an insensible process, a process that is a far cry from
that characterized by the firey zeal and heat of charismatic groups. It
is also useful to emphasize as this Faith expands in the decades
ahead, to say nothing of its expansion in the first century and a half,
that this Cause often attracts what are sometimes called the poor in
spirit who have minds afflicted by calamity. Such people are often
attracted by the visions and promises, by some mysterious spark of

truth and light; whereas those who are satisfied with the world's
possessions and the so-called worldly-wise dispute the truths of the
Cause with their superior reason and knowledge. Such people often
bring so much doubt to the investigative process that the teachers of
the Faith have little chance of success in winning over their
adherence.
This book or long essay is, I like to think, part of the more moderate
phase of discussion that has emerged in the last year or so. I like to
think of this book as one among the many moderate voices that exist
beside some of the more shrill voices that still can be heard in the
international Bahai community of some 150,000 localities, 6,000
clusters and approximately six million adherents. Now that this new
paradigm has been in place for some fifteen years most of the major
criticisms have been raised that are going to be raised, although one
should never speak too soon. The guidance Bahais now receive in
relation to this new paradigm is not simply a list of suggestions from
which individuals and institutions choose according to their own
preferences. The question is not, as one writer put it succinctly, does
the guidance and this paradigm apply to me but rather how does the
guidance apply to my life and activities?
Acceptance of the paradigm is largely in place with the flow of
achievements, successes and new victories heard increasingly. There
are still, as I say, those unloving critics and the critical lovers amidst
what seem to this writer an incredibly diverse mix of Bahais with
varying degrees of submissiveness and devotion, action and inaction,
consistent patterns and inconsistent, among the millions of adherents
and servants of the Cause around the world. Most of the forms, the
types, the content, of the incoming and outgoing criticism of this
new Bahai culture, at least that I have read and listened to, are on the
internet which, it should be emphasized, really only began to
become the popular and frequently used medium of communication

that it has become since the start of this new Bahai paradigm in the
mid-1990s.
BAHAI APOLOGETICS AND THE CRITICS
Bahai apologists like myself need to be aware how easy it is to
appear to be smug and attitudinally deficient in the eyes of critics. In
the last 15 years the critics whom I have listened to for several
decades in my private life are now on the internet and they represent
a new force to be dealt with, arguably the first significant force of
opposition, of dissention in the Cause, since the ministry of the
Custodians from 1957 to 1963 and the entre deux guerres years of
the 1920s and 1930s. There always seem to have been small pockets
of intense opposition, though, in some form or another since I first
became associated with this Cause in the early 1950s. On the
internet I am now coming across people, some of whom claim to be
Bahais, who do not view the official Bahai Faith as it is currently
constructed as an authentic world religion. This should not surprise
students of the Cause who know their Bahai history. Intense
disagreement was present in 1844 when the Shaykhi community
divided into the followers of the Bab and the followers of others.
The history of the 1840s and the divisions in the Shaykhi community
are interesting and I encourage readers to examine Momen's
Introduction to Shi'i Islam.
Some of these internet participants see the Bahai Faith as a religious
surrogate or substitute metaphor for a splinter faction of Shi'a Islam.
Their descriptions of the Bahai Faith leave me wondering, at times,
if the religion I believe in and the one they describe are the same
thing. Some critics of this Faith go so far as to call it a family
business! They go on to say that the Bahai Faith might have emerged
as the meta-religion for humanity in this the new, this third,
millenium but that it has instead become an obscure and isolated sect

that places the idiosyncratic interpretations of Shoghi Effendi above

the inclusive, culminatory revelation of Bahaullah. For them much
of the development in the Cause since 1921 is a sham, a loss, and a
pity. I have not had to deal with this, with views like these, in my
lifetime, in my half century of membership in the Bahai community.
Critical positions like this, clearly a form of covenant-breaking, had
always in my lifetime as a Bahai been dealt with by Bahais assigned
by the institutions of the Cause to deal with them. In this new
paradigm, though, I have had to become much more informed, as
have my fellow Bahais, if I and they are to deal with historical views
and criticisms aimed at the core of my belief system, if I am to
participate in some of the more critical internet discussions. I keep
my participation limited and avoid the covenant-breaking sites for
the most part. Occasionally I am drawn in out of a desire to deal with
the often outrageous statements made by some posters at some sites.
In the past, as I say, if such views did emerge-and they did
occasionally-they were dealt with by scholars in the Faith and I did
not need to know more than the little that I knew. That does not seem
to be the case anymore, not in the years of this paradigm, at least not
for me. In the end, of course, each Bahai will become as informed as
he wishes, as he needs to be, as his circumstances permit. The menu
for his or her activities in this new paradigm is more extensive than
it has ever been. The opportunities for engagement exist at all levels.
At this new paradigm entered the 21st century there were some 700
Bahais at the World Centre in Haifa whose work for the Cause is not
in the form of an engagement in many of the aspects of this
paradigm. This is partly because Bahais in Israel are not allowed to
teach their Faith. As I have indicated elsewhere in this book, 1000s,
if not millions, of Bahais live in isolated localities or in very small
groups, groups without children or junior youth, little communities
where intensive programs of growth can not be contemplated, places

with Bahais who are illiterate, indeed, the new paradigm, all the
features of this paradigm are simply not possible to implement or
are, at best, "a work in progress."
"Just as in the world of politics there is need for free thought,"
Abdul-Baha was quoted at the turn of the 20th century as saying in
The Promulgation of Universal Peace(p. 197), "likewise in the world
of religion there should be the right of unrestricted individual belief.
Consider what a vast difference exists between modern democracy
and the old forms of despotism. Under an autocratic government the
opinions of men are not free, and development is stifled, whereas in
a democracy, because thought and speech are not restricted, the
greatest progress is witnessed. It is likewise true in the world of
religion. When freedom of conscience, liberty of thought and right
of speech prevail--that is to say, when every man according to his
own idealization may give expression to his beliefs--development
and growth are inevitable."
It is the view of some critics of the Bahai Faith that there are far too
many calculated attempts to dismiss the criticism, and limit the free
expression of thought of those Bahais who seek to analyse this new
relgion in some critical way or another. Some of these critics go on
to point out that it is no longer possible to stifle the views of such
critics. Criticisms must be heard. It is not enough to say, as these
critics do, that the Bahais stifle criticism because criticism is an
expression of a sense of self-importance or some personal
entitlement on the part of the critic. These critics of the Cause see
these attempts to block the critic and these insinuations of the stifling
of views as a sign, a symptom of a weak and effete religion, unsure
of itself and thus defensive. At the root of much criticism in the
minds of these opponents of the way the Cause is administered is the
endorsement of change in the direction they see that this Cause must
go. This is, in some ways, not surprising, given that this Cause has

come out of an obscurity in which it had been enshrouded for the

first century and a half of its existence.
The American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson
among others is quoted by some critics of the Faith to bolster their
position, to bolster their concerns that the views of critics are not
heard, not listened to. Emerson wrote that: "Change is the law of life
and we consequently obey the law if we choose to live a life of
change. Only conformists try to be fixed, and that in a democratic
society, where change is allowed as a matter of principle, only
conformists crave fixity." And so it is that the religion I have been
associated with for more than half a century becomes seen, by some,
as yet another religious group that is conformist, conservative, fixed
in the past, rejecting of modernity and even intellectual tolerance,
that regards criticism as tantamount to blasphemy, and that
anathematizes the results of research in the social sciences as biased
and materialist.
Such religious groups of which this Faith of mine is but one, and so
these critics continue to argue, will inevitably become completely
obscure and isolated, cut off from the mainstream of modern society,
inhabiting a self-referential, hermetically-sealed, apocalyptic
universe of their own. The adherents of such closed systems, of
which the Bahai Faith has become one, so some of these same critics
continue, have no recourse but to take a kind of perverse pride in
their ignorance and intransigence and reject all counsel to the
contrary. They are an insult to humanity, a sin against God, and a
betrayal of Abdu'l-Bah. On the internet one finds such views again
and again in a great confrontation between unfettered liberal
attitudes on the one hand and extreme orthodoxy on the other. If one
does not read on the internet; if one only reads the messages of the
institutions one does not come across such views. But over time, in
the future years of this paradigm, Bahais will increasingly have to

deal with all sorts of criticisms and the process has just begun in bits
and pieces in these first two decades of this new paradigm.
Of course, the whole question of change and its causes could be
made the subject of another book to add to the massive number of
books already in existence on this complex subject in sociology,
history and other social sciences and humanities. Wars and
technological changes, economics and religion are often cited as the
root causes of change in history. But this book, this analysis of the
new Bahai paradigm, is not a piece of sociology or one of the other
social sciences that seeks to offer an analysis of change.
From a purely personal point of view and from the point of view and
purpose of this book I am more interested in the function of this
paradigm in creating change in the Bahai community and in my own
life as well as the changes that took place in society, in the Bahai
community and in my life in the years 1996 to 2015 whether they
had to do with this new cultural paradigm or not. Readers will find
that I do this in all sorts of ways. Readers may come to say, after
skimming and scanning this work, that I draw too wide an ambit, try
to cover too wide a range of material and that I don't focus as sharply
as I should on the specifics of this paradigm. And they will be partly
right!
Perhaps I should apologize early in this book for what readers may
come to see as irrelevant directions for the content. This book has
given me, though, an excuse if you like for making all sorts of
observations and for taking an intellectual and observational flight in
many directions which readers who want to travel with me must
inevitably go. Such readers do not have to agree with me;
disagreement is healthy if it all takes place in the context of a search
for a context in which relevant and fundamental questions may be
discussed. For me, this book, is just that: it is a context or, more

accurately, a search for a context, for dealing with the immense

challenge that is involved with being a member of this great Cause.
This book is also part of my attempt to contribute to the resolution of
some of the tensions that have arisen in the last decade and a half
both outside this paradigm and within the wider Bahai community.
Some of my observations are connected directly with the details of
the paradigm and some are not. I cast my net wide and many are the
fish in the sea that get caught in the net. I hope some readers enjoy
the fish dinner that can result for those who have travelled with me
through these many paragraphs. But readers, in the end, will have to
make their own dinners as I must make mine. In the end, too, no
matter how much this Faith has a community focus, it also has an
essentially private focus on the individual where all the real battles
in our lives are won or lost.
I try to convey some of this private focus which I have experienced
and which all Bahais experience in their lives---in the following
prose-poem which I wrote at the end of the first decade of the
implementation of this new paradigm:
LANDSCAPES AND ELSEWHERES
My poetry has come to be defined by some things, some topics, to
such an extent that it is simply unimaginable in any setting outside
these subjects, except on the rarest of occasions. The essence of my
poetry is so very much associated with this typical, prototypical,
subject matter. The particularities, the details, of my poetry's
description and definition, result in the construction---in the process
of writing my poetry---of a world, a home, a place, a mise en scene,
where these topics invariably occupy locations in a physical and
intellectual landscape and domain. These subjects appear again and
again. For some readers this repetition will be tiresome, Im sure.

I have made my home, my place of residence, in life in so many

places, so many towns and houses where the sense of home did not
exist before. It had to be created, recreated, again and again. I always
had a mother and a father, or just a mother, or a wife or a wife and
children to help in the process. Im not so sure Id do a very good
job if I was on my own with none of these core elements of identity
which most of us carry from cradle to grave. I might have found the
task too lonely without these human accompaniments. Life has an
immensely routine aspect and many tests and difficulties and most of
us are not capable of doing these tasks alone. I will never find out for
now in the evening of my life, even if my wife dies, I have three
children and three step-grand-children to help provide that identity
which keeps many, if not most Bahais, in the large cities of the
planet congregating in communities of like-interest: Los Angeles,
New York, Sydney, Perth, several cities in Iran where 300,000
Bahais are now found, and on and on goes the litany of urban
agglomerations where Bahais can be found in large numbers.
None of us are islands; we all tend towards insularity in some
respects. That has been especially true of me since I retired. We also
contain multitudes within us. I became very conscious of this
internal diversity as the decades advanced in the 50 years before I
retired(1949-1999), years filled with high levels of social interaction
and movement from place to place. Shakespeare says that we need to
be able to people our solitude and know how to feel alone in a
crowd. That is what I do now that I am in my sixties. These
insularities and these social engagements are, it could be said, the
countries of our soul, countries mostly unnamed and unknown. My
poetry begins to name, to describe, these unknowns.
We all have, too, what Hugh Kenner calls elsewhere communities,
places we travel to and things we do and think about to find out who
we are. The traveller, the pioneer-travel-teacher, absorbs this

elsewhere community into himself to become what defines him

throughout life.(1) -Ron Price with thanks to (1)Hugh Kenner,
Massey Lecture in Canada, 1997.
I have my own Grand Tour now,(1) my elsewhere community, and
my
journey through what I know to
to much that I have yet to know;
and when the war is over I will
go home to the Land of Lights..
(1) In the eighteenth century the Grand Tour was the trip from some
place in European civilization through Europe to Italy and Rome.
This is no longer the Grand Tour. We all make our own Grand Tour
now and this is especially true, from my point of view, in this culture
of learning and growth, this new Bahai paradigm.
April 22nd 2006
Every text of the Writings, every message from the House of Justice
has both an internal and an external context on which the reliability
of its interpretation is causally dependent. Aside from its explicit
content the message has an origin, a purpose, an
evolutionary history, and an intended readership. The House of
Justice, in each message, pursues a goal, represents interests, draws
upon hteir own knowledge and perspective, advances a point of
view, presents their own opinions, selects according to
circumstances what to say and what not to say. A number of these
factors can be easily recognised on the basis of text-internal clues,
provided that the text is of sufficient size; one or more of them might
even be explicitly addressed by the House itself. The briefer the text,
the more meagre the internal textual context, and thus the greater the
possibility of a misreading.

The external context, which in the case of a passage extracted from a

letter means the entire sequence of correspondence of which it is a
part, thus becomes all the more important. This context is missing
entirely in the available compilations of letters from Shoghi
Effendi--and yet the usefulness of such compilations lies precisely in
their extensive breadth of theme, which in turn is only possible
because the individual entries are kept extremely brief. In other
words, compilations are problematic not by virtue of their quality,
but by their very nature. In any case, the pursuit of literary criticism
in a methodologically sound and systematic manner is not
practicable on the basis of such compilations alone.
In no religious community before have primary documents been
preserved with such authenticity and in such plenitude as they have
been in the Bb-Bah revelations; bible critics, for example,
cannot even venture to dream of such felicitous circumstances. And
yet it is precisely this quality which exposes literary criticism to
fresh challenges which demand the development of new departures
for analysis.
SOME COVENANT-BREAKERS
If one googled the words "Alternative Perspectives on the Bah'
Religion" one could get access to a host of views of the Bahai Faith
from: (i) x-Bahais, (ii) unenrolled Bahais, (iii) Christian critics, (iv)
Muslim critics,(v)Bahai critics, (vi) pre-Guardianship Bahais, (vii)
Universalist Bahais, (viii) covenant-breakers, (ix) a variety of
Orthodox Bahais, indeed, the list seems to be endless. If I took the
list at all seriously I would wonder what had happened to the
religion I have belonged to for decades. On close examination,
though, and placed in a general context, all of this verbiage is, as
Abdul-Baha emphasized, just so much froth at the edge of the ocean,

froth that collects on the shore's edge and is here today and gone
tomorrow, froth that one does not take seriously but which occupies
one attention for a short time or no time at all. The froth may
actually be gone tomorrow but it is different froth as a result of
different waves of people none of whom have or will have any
success in breaking the Covenant into pieces. This ancient term is
now endowed with new meaning and it stands at the very centre of
what it means to be a Bahai and what our own personal
understanding of our place in the unfolding plan of God(NSA of
USA, 1988, p.5).
As the fourteenth year of this new paradigm was ending in the early
months of 2010, to choose but one of the more curious examples
from this confused medley of dreams that constitutes this new world
of disgruntled and discontented people with various axes to grind-and who seem on the surface of things to be grinding away with
some success--Bahais on the internet were able to read the somewhat
surprising phenomenon of an attempt to revive the claims of Mirza
Muhammad Ali, the arch-breaker of the Covenant after the passing
of Bahaullah. These claims have been revived by a group known as
the Unitarian Bahai Association in order to lend legitimacy to their
existence, as what they see as a newly-established sect. This
Unitarian Bahai Association avows loyalty to Bahaullah but
rejects the authority that Bahaullah gave to Abdul-Baha and the
Universal House of Justice. These claims have been made on a web
site and in postings to discussion groups. These peoples own public
statements have already told the part of the world that engages in
internet discussions at several sites what they are about.
This group has even arrived recently--in 2010-and been publicising
their efforts, their attempt at creating an impression of a divided
Cause on facebook. This is a popular internet site, although efforts of
this kind tend to get lost in a sea of names and posts. The effort is

nothing if not ingenious. Bahais are given an opportunity to

demonstrate why the rehabilitation of Muhammad Ali is not a
realistic alternative to accepting the authority that Bahaullah gave
to Abdul-Baha to lead the Bahai community. As this new paradigm
progresses knowledgeable Bahais are beginning to arise to refute the
wild and inaccurate, often unbelievable claims and opinions of some
internet posters.
A man by the name of Neal Chase began to appear in cyberspace in
2001. Neal Chase claimed to be the next Guardian and announced
that he had been adopted and appointed by Joseph Pepe who had
since died in 1994. The Bahais Under the Provisions of the
Covenant(BUPC) accepted Mason Remey's adopted son Joseph
Pepe Remey as the third Guardian. Chase claims to be the greatgrandson of Abdul-Baha. He sees himself as the third President of
the Universal House of Justice of Bahaullah. He also sees himself
as the current Guardian of the Bahai Faith seated upon the throne of
King David which is to last for ever (Psalms 89; Will and Testament
of Abdul-Baha, page 15). In some ways Chase is merely an
extension of the Bah's Under the Provisions of the Covenant
(BUPC),a small Bah' group of something less than 100 members
founded originally by Leland Jensen in the early 1970s. The claims
of the BUPC focus on a dispute in leadership following the death of
Shoghi Effendi in 1957, and a subsequent dispute among the
followers of Mason Remey. As a follower of Remey, Jensen believed
that the majority of Bah's were deceived, and attempted to create a
new administration.
Jensen also made specific predictions for worldwide catastrophes,
including a specific date in 1980 for the apocalypse, where followers
were observed by researchers as a study in cognitive dissonance.
They noted that from 1980 to 1996 membership fluctuated, but
probably never exceeded 200 nationwide, declining significantly

during the 1990s. In January 1997 the House of Justice sent a

statement to all NSAs entitled "Mason Remey and Those Who
Followed Him." The statement was most comprehensive and dealt
with the issues surrounding claims involving "the third Guardian."
As this new paradigm evolves issues involving the covenant will
continue to raise their heads as they have done since the inception of
the Cause in the 1860s and since the earliest years of the Babi Faith
in the 1840s. The institutions of this Faith will continue to respond
as they did in the first years of this new culture of learning---to
maintain the unity of the Cause which has been its major
achievement in the first two centuries of its existence.
These are samples of some of the developments within this new
paradigm. Most Bahais find such discussions singularly unattractive
and are, indeed, discouraged from participating in them at all. But
again, as Abdul-Baha has stated, we should not be alarmed by this
foam on the waters edge in the ocean of the Cause. The defence of
the Cause in the context of covenant breaking has always been left in
the hands of certain appointed Bahais before this new paradigm.
This is still largely the case. In this new paradigm, though, the
writings of covenant-breakers can be easily read on the internet.
Although they attract hardly any Bahais, seasoned or novitiate,
veterans or newly enrolled, they are a presence that is part of the
backdrop of this new Bahai culture in the last 15 years.
Many intellectual issues have come to the fore in the last fifteen
years in addition to new variations in the long saga of covenantbreaking. One, for example, is infallibility. It is a complex term in
Bah' scripture that has not been much discussed in Bah'
secondary literature. The concept, which has analogies in
Catholicism and Islam, is historically burdened, as Udo Schaefer
notes and has become obsolete in secular thought. Schaefer's paper
on the subject in the journal Bahai Studies Review(1999) analyses

two categories of infallibility: essential infallibility which is inherent

in the messengers of God, and conferred infallibility, which is a
characteristic of the institutions of the Guardianship and the
Universal House of Justice. His paper focuses on the Universal
House of Justice. Does the House of Justice's infallibility operate to
an unlimited extent? Are every one of its decisions infallible and, if
not, what are the boundaries of that infallibility? The possible and
immanent limits of this charisma of office and infallibility are
analysed and a detailed argument provided that supports a defensible
restrictive interpretation.
In the critical discourse on the nature of infallibility, the discussion
of these immanent limits of conferred infallibility is of crucial
significance, Schaefer states. The idea that the Universal House of
Justice is invested with unlimited infallibility leads to untenable and
unacceptable consequences for some Bahais. Unfortunately,
experience has shown that in the Bah' community a critical
discussion on this subject is not an easy thing since the convictions
of many Bahais are simply too strong. Bah'u'llh's assurance that:
"Whatever they decide is of God," as valid for absolutely every kind
of decision, implies to many that the Bah' community is in
possession of a kind of oracle that can be consulted and from whom
the community gets infallible guidance in all matters. To the secular
world in which Bahais must live and have their being, a world in
which religion is seen by millions as irrelevant, this concept poses a
serious intellectual dilemma. And there are other serious dilemmas
which this book raises.
Indeed, there are many other issues which have come into the world
of discussion in internet circles where some of the members of the
Cause read a great deal. The only way to avoid being exposed to
some of the more intense, divisive and intellectually challenging of
the intellectual clashes on the internet is to stay off the sites where

such dialogue is found. Just don't go there and, when you do, don't
participate in the discussions where liberal and conservative
temperaments engage in their punitive and not-so-punitive-rebuttals.
The air is often filled from left and right on the emotional and
psychological spectrum with strong language, grievances and
emotionally loaded dialogue. Generally, for many if not most
Bahais, it is better to stick one's head in the sand so to speak, stay on
the fence and not confront issues about which participants really
have to: (a) know a great deal and/or (b) be a good writer----in order
to "play the game," as it were. Of course, one is not compelled to go
to these internet sites, to read and to engage in this internet dialogue.
In this new paradigm, though, there are a host of strange bedfellows,
as they say, inhabiting the interstices of cyberspace.
As I say in this book, it is only a relatively small handful that do take
part in this endless casuistry, endless lance and parry, and the "I am
right and you are wrong" game which we sometimes call debate,
dialogue, discussion or interchange. Perhaps the word game is too
pejorative a term. It may be, as one prominent historian put it not so
long ago that: "the day of the theologian has finally arrived." Not
many have ever wanted to be theologians, not that many in the sum
total of people in a community. Those who do want to be theologians
should not call themselves Bahai theologians. I dont call myself a
Bahai poet but, rather, a poet who happens to be a Bahai. My words
possess no authority and I do not try to steer readers into waters
which by their nature are intended to question the House of Justice.
If I have a question that I want some authoritative answer for, I write
to that Supreme Body or one of the many institutions of this Cause.
There are many issues in public life in which it is better to stay on
the fence, avoid the discussion and, as I say, put one's head
somewhere else: in the sand or one of many other more comfortable
and useful places. The world is overflowing with issues both inside

and outside the Cause and what issues a person takes on is highly
personal, idiosyncratic and reflects a person's own areas of
knowledge and interest, what is happening locally in their Bahai
community as well as in the wider world at the time.
THIS BOOK TRIES TO BRIDGE THE GAP
This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between the many
polarized and contending views as well as between the erudite and
the ordinary man, those who read extensively, the serious students of
this Faith and the average non-erudite fellow who prefers gardening
and watching TV, who may live in the world of text messages, short
print passages and the local newspaper--whose reading level is not
very high or, if it is high, he or she is not academically inclined and
really has no expertise in some of the more critical subjects required
for participation in many of the discussions. I am not the only person
trying to bridge this gap. Many, if not most, simply are unable to
engage in many of the complex literary exchanges and participate in
the often highly complex game of discussing intricate historical,
psychological and community problems. That, of course, is not a
new thing. I stick my neck out as I have been doing for decades, but
only occasionally and only when I think I can make a useful, a
positive and constructive contribution. Many times this is not
possible and silence is the best response. There are many issues
about which I simply do not know enough and, given the plethora of
issues in the world, I confine myself to a select few.
One of the reasons I do a great deal of writing both on the internet
and in books is that I don't have to go to work in the morning or raise
kids any more. I am on a pension; I don't like gardening; I have few
manual skills; I watch little TV; I like to write and I don't have to go
to many meetings any more. So it is that playing the game of words,
for it is a game, so to speak, is a challenge, but, again, only to an

extent. Sometimes the game feels like a war after one has gone back
and forth in dialogue for hours on the internet. We all have our limits
when it comes to writing and talking on serious issues. I often tire of
the dialogue or even with friends after about two hours maximum.
then I have a cup of coffee, a snack, go to bed and wait to live
another day.
On the internet one can go forever, hopping from site to site,
discussion to discussion, thread to thread, twisting and turning over a
myriad issues. After playing on the internet at many a discussion site
I tire and sometimes I go elsewhere and work on writing books or
doing research for my writing. I leave the internet and its neverending chats and discussions about 'what to do Alfie?' or 'what's it all
about Alfie?'or the 'deep-and-meaningfuls,'DMs as some people call
such discussions. The internet provides people like me with plenty of
opportunity when I want to throw the literary ball around so to
speak. I offer to readers one man's views, one man's experience, one
man's integrative, hopefully unific, views--and I do so at some
length in very personal ways in books like this. One is never
completely successful in these casuistical discussions or when
writing a book. There are always people with plenty of advice to
give you. I have already been criticized in many ways for being far
too personal, too focussed on my own experience, but that is one of
my main aims. This book is not unlike my life, a work in progress.
And, as in life so on the internet one can only win some of the time,
only appeal to a coterie of readers.
I wrote the following piece for myself and others to help in dealing
with criticism that often arises in internet threads. Much, indeed, the
far greatest part, of my teaching and consolidation work in the Bahai
community in the years of this new paradigm has been on the
internet and it has had nothing to do with the wrangling between
various sub-groups of believers. Anyone who plays an active part in

internet discussions, an active part that includes writing and replying

to the writings, the posts, of others, must learn to deal with incoming
criticism without escalating the conflict. Those who do engage in
extensive internet writing activity need to: like writing, be good at
facilitating, possess a brilliant inventiveness and a strong dose of
humility. I do what I can; it's a challenge; teaching the Cause has
always been a challenge whether one writes in its defence or talks
about it to others.
If aspiring internet participants, those who engage in a dialogue that
is more than conventional one-liners, more than a kind of 'hey-there
here I am' mentality with endless use of colloquialisms and even the
occasional invective--if such participants do not possess goodly
portions of the literary and personality skills I refer to, they will
simply be unable to continue with the dialogue. They will find
themselves getting upset and upsetting others. In the end they will
withdraw to save their sanity, their emotions, their very skin. For the
waters in cyberspace can be hot and heavy. In the last dozen years I
have received my share of internet invective from those who "C" and
"F" their way through discussions, from those who have a low
tolerance for people's idiosyncrasies--and, when writing,
idiosyncrasies are often more apparent. There are many on the net
who simply take delight in 'taking-the-mickey,' as they say
Downunder. I have written the post which follows on the subject of
criticism as one of several examples of a response to help both me
and others with the criticism that is a common variable, an extensive
presence, in cyberspace. I have posted this piece at many an internet
site when the dialogue between the participants got hot and
heavy....sometimes my remarks were useful and sometimes they
weren't.
THOUGHTS ON THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS

Preamble:
The first criticism of my writing, at least the criticism that I
remember, was in 1950 when I was in grade one in the then small
southern Ontario town of Burlington, a part of what is still called the
Golden Horseshoe. Its jammed right at the left-hand end of Lake
Ontario. Im sure I received criticism of my writing in the three
years before that from my family members and playmates, perhaps
as early as 1947 when I was three or four and colouring or printing
my first words on paper, but I have no memories of that incoming
criticism, no memories until, as I say, 1950. That was more than 60
years ago(1950 to 2010).
Early in this new, this third, millennium, in 2004 to be precise, I
began to receive written criticism of my prose and poetry on the
internet. I had received criticism, mostly verbal, of my published
writing from 1974 to 2004 during which time I was able to get some
150 essays published in newspapers and magazines in Australia.
Writing had become, by the 1970s, a more central focus to my life,
much more central than it had ever been, although it had always
been central in one way or another at least, as I say above, since
1950. When one is a student receiving criticism of what one writes is
part of the core of the educational process. Sometimes that criticism
is fair and helpful; sometimes it is unkind and destructive.
Being on the receiving end of criticism on the internet has been, in
some ways, just a continuation of that half-century(1950-2000) of
comments on what I wrote. The internet is full of lumpen-bully-boys
who prowl the blogosphere. There are the hysterical secularists who
proliferate among that immense commentariat. There are the
dogmatic Islamists and Christian fundamentalists who try to impose
their interpretation of the Quran or the Bible on the rest of the
Muslim or Christian communities, respectively. My experience on

the internet, as I say, was just a continuation of the decades of

criticism I had already received. Writers, as F. Scott Fitzgerald says
so succinctly over dinner in a film of his last years, Last Call, must
get used to criticism. Its part of the air they breath if they are going
to be out in the public domain.
Literary tyrants, people who are going to tell you where, when, why
and how you have gone wrong in no uncertain terms, without
mincing their words or pulling any punches, without what you might
call an etiquette of expression and tact, have always come in all sorts
of shapes and sizes. One must learn to deal with them in one way or
another as their criticisms come your way in the daily round. There
are many MOs, modus operandi, to use a term from the who-dun-its,
in dealing with the harsh and not so harsh words of others. Of
course, it is not only writers who have to deal with critical tongues
and words in many forms. A vast literature now abounds on how to
deal with this reality of life.
The reactions to criticism of their work of two famous writers are
discussed below in this 3300 word essay because their reactions
throw light onto my own way of dealing with this inevitable reality
of existence if one is, as I am, a writer, a poet, a man of words, a
writer of belles-lettres, a belletrist. For many writers the term belles
lettres is used in the sense to identify literary works that do not fall
easily into the major categories such as fiction, poetry or drama.
Much of my writing has become, in the last twenty-five years, 1985
to 2010, a hybrid that does not really fit comfortably into the major
categories of writing.
And so it is that after more than sixty years of having to deal with
the phenomenon of critical feedback of my written work I pause here
to reflect on the incoming criticism of what I have written and what I
now write drawing, as I say, on the experience of two other writers

in the last century, writers of fame and much success.

LAURA RIDING
In 1936, right at the start of the Bahai teaching Plan, a Plan in
which I have been myself engaged in a host of ways during the last
fifty years(1959-2010), the American poet Laura Riding(1901-1991)
wrote to a correspondent: "I believe that misconceptions about
oneself which one does not correct, but where it is possible to
correct, act as a bad magic. That bad magic has been at work on the
reputation of Laura Riding for many years, for well over 70 years.
One of the criticisms levelled at her in her later life, and repeated
recently by the renowned literary critic Dr. Helen Vendler, was that
she "spent a great deal of time writing tenacious and extensive letters
to anyone who, in her view, had misrepresented some aspect, no
matter how minute, of her life or writing." Vendler found Riding,
somewhat predictably, "more than a little monomaniacal, in relation
to criticism of her work. It is true that despite advanced age and
failing health, Riding continued her vigorous and valiant, one might
even say, fanatical attempt to halt the spread of misconceptions
about herself and her writing to the very end of her life. But the "bad
magic" was too powerful to be overcome. Incidentally, this view of
criticism that Riding held, the view that it was bad magic," was
held by a woman who was also accused of being a witch and of
exercising a literary witchcraft by some of her zealous critics.
Why was Riding so scrupulous in her attempts to correct
misconceptions of her life and writing no matter how minute? It was,
partly at least, because she recognized the importance of details to
the understanding of human character. "The details of human nature
are never a matter of infinitesimals," she wrote in an essay published
in 1974. "Every last component of the human course of things is a

true fraction of the personal world, reflecting a little its general

character." She, like many other writers and non-writers it should be
added, never welcome criticism. Some react to the slightest criticism
like a cornered wildcat and others like a barking dog.
My approach to incoming criticism is more diverse than Ridings,
not as consistently intense and defensive, not as sensitive to
infinitesimals, not like that wildcat or that barking dog. Sometimes I
ignore the comment; sometimes I am tenacious and write an
extensive response; sometimes I write something brief and to the
point. Sometimes I deal with the comment with some attempt at
humour, sarcasm and wit, if I can locate these clever sorts of written
repartee in my intellectual and sensory emporium. I certainly agree
with Riding that we should not be judged by some infinitesimals, but
it is difficult when one writes extensively in the public domain not to
be judged by all sorts of things of which infinitesimals are but one of
the many.
THE INTERNET
After a dozen years, from 2004 to 2015, of keeping some of the
written and critical feedback sent to me by readers on the internet, I
must conclude that, thusfar, the negative feedback hardly amounts to
much that is of any significance, at least to me. This is not to say that
this criticism has not been useful. Most of the feedback has to do
with my participation at various websites, participation that was
negatively viewed. My posts were seen, when viewed in a negative
light, as: too long, not appropriate, raising the hackles of some
readers because they were seen as irrelevant, boring, inter alia. I
thought this personal statement here, this brief overview, analysis
and comment, would be a useful summary of both the incoming
criticism I have received in the last six years and my views on that
criticism.

Some people on the internet let you know, as I have already

indicated above, in no uncertain terms what they think of your posts.
Frankness, candour, invective, harsh criticism, indeed, criticism in
virtually every conceivable form, can be found in the interstices of
cyberspace, if one writes as much as I do at more than 6000
locations among the 260 million sites and 4.6 billion subjects, topics
or items of information at last count, that are now in existence in that
world of cyberspace. In the last six years I have been on the
receiving end of everything imaginable that someone can say
negatively about someones writing and someone. This negative
feedback has been, as I say, useful and I have tried to respond in
ways that improve readers opinions of my work and, sometimes, of
me. Sometimes I am successful in these efforts of explanation, of
self-justification, of defence, and sometimes I am not. Such are the
perils of extensive writing and human interaction; indeed, such are
the perils of living unless one is a hermit and does ones own
plumbing and electrical work, never goes shopping and relies only
on the products of ones garden for food.
ISAIAH BERLIN AND IVAN TURGENEV
To draw now on a second writer and how he dealt with criticism, I
introduce Sir Isaiah Berlin(1909-1997). He was a leading political
philosopher and historian of ideas. In a lecture he gave in 1970 on
the Russian poet Ivan Turgenev, Berlin pointed out that this famous
Russian writer altered, modified and tried to please everyone in
some of his works. As a result, one of the characters in his books
suffered several transformations in successive drafts, up and down
the moral scale as this or that friend or consultant reported their
impressions. Berlin went on to say in that same lecture that
Turgenev was inflicted by intellectual wounds as a result of the
criticism of his works by others, wounds that festered by varying

degrees of intensity, depending of course on the nature of the

criticism, for the rest of Turgenevs life.
Turgenev was attacked by writers and critics of many persuasions on
the Left and the Right of the political spectrum in those days when
these terms left and right had more clear and understandable
demarcations. This Russian writer possessed, Berlin noted, what
some have called a capacity for rendering the very multiplicity of
inter-penetrating human perspectives that shade imperceptibly into
each other, nuances of character and behaviour, motives and
attitudes, undistorted by moral passion. Turgenev, like Riding,
could never bear the wounds he received from incoming criticism of
his writing in silence. He shook and shivered under the ceaseless
criticisms to which he exposed himself, so Berlin informs us.
THE PROCESS OF BAH' REVIEW
After sixty-six years(1949-2015) of having my writing poured over
by others; after more than fifty years(1964-2015) of having my
writing reviewed before its publication by Bahai reviewing
committees at national and local levels of Bahai administration and
its institutions, and even by some individuals and groups at the
Bah' World Centre in Haifa Israel; after trying to write in a way
that would please various groups of people both within the Bahai
community and without by committees, colleagues, professors,
tutors, students and teachers at a multitude of educational
institutions---before my writing saw the light of day in some
publication or school-handout, I came to enjoy writing on the
internet.
The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahs of Australia Inc, the
nationally elected body by the Bah' community in Australia does
not require writers like myself to have their writing reviewed before

it goes onto the internet. The Review Office of the NSA of the
Bahais of the USA has given me permission to post my works on
the internet, although they have advised that further review is
necessary if I want to place my writing in book form, in a hard or soft
cover, for general and public consumption. In some ways though, given the fact
that writers who are Bahais can place their pieces of whatever length on the
net, the process of review has become far less the issue that it once was. If a
writer is keen is just goes to sites and cuts-and-pastes his works at these
places. Readers download the writing and no review, no publisher, is involved
at all. Such is the new world of cyberspace and, I might add by extension the
new Bahai culture in the last 15 years. Of course, I am not talking about the
explicit Bahai cul
e of study circles and Ruhi books, institute activities and devotional meetings,

but the mise en scene, the milieux, the socio- technological world
that has shifted immensely during the years of this new paradigm,
the years since the mid-1990s and that is the backdrop to this new
Bahai culture.
Bahai novels, or to put these two words in a more accurate context--novels
written by Bahs--are not simply the result of an author's idiosyncratic
intentions but are the product of the collective activity of Bah' gatekeepers
who work within the constraints of the Bahai publishing industry. This industry
works under the guidance, the authority, the imprimatur, of elected national
Bah' institutions. These gatekeepers must attend to the sensitivities of Bahai
institutional policies, policies that have been framed over the decades by an
organizational framework and principles of operation that are part of the Bah'
doctrines themselves.

Bah'u'llh Himself outlined the features of the Administrative Order

of the Bah' Faith, and the authority structure of this Faith lies
behind the gatekeepers in relation to any published fiction. The role
of these gatekeepers is to keep a vigilant watch over the content of
the printed matter on behalf of those Bah' administrative
institutions that they serve and on behalf of the audience for which
the books are intended. In resolving the tension between the Bah'
Faiths institutional policies and intentions as well their several
literary-imperatives on the one hand and the literary proclivities and
personal desires of writers who are also Bahais on the other, the

gatekeepers of Bahai publishing maintain the general conventions

that shape the popular Bahai evangelical, intellectual and literary
aesthetic.
Interpretive analyses of fiction written by Bahais tend to examine
the content of fiction and often neglect to account for the social and
institutional factors that influence its production. Since fiction
written by Bahais is the product of the collective activity of the
increasingly extensive and world embracing culture industry of the
Bah' community, the content of fiction must be understood as more
than simply the product of an author's idiosyncratic intention. There
is a social-institutional context for Bah' publishing and the
arrangements made by Bah' institutions in making symbolic
elements of Bah' culture available to a wider public affect the
nature and content of the elements of culture that are produced.
In some ways what I have just written is really only indicating the
obvious. But this publishing pattern is slowly changing with the
world of cyberspace in these first decades of the new paradigm of
learning and growth in the Bah' international community since the
mid-1990s. Taking into consideration the roles of gatekeepers, the
influence of the audience, the conventions of the genre, and the
nature of the popular intellectual Bahai aesthetic provides a more
comprehensive explanation of the content of Bahai fiction. In
resolving the tension between institutional intentions as well as
industry imperatives and the preferences of writers, gatekeepers
construct conventions that: (a) reflect institutional policies, (b) guide
the production of fiction and (c) influence the formation of a popular
evangelical and intellectual Bahai aesthetic.
The task of regulating the content of Bahai fiction, for want of a
better term, rests upon the reviewing committees established by each
National Spiritual Assembly(NSA) in the Bah' international

community. If a reviewing committee does not accept a piece of

writing, the author can appeal to the NSA and NSAs have been
known to overturn a reviewing committee decision. The primary
producers and distributors of the fiction: the authors, editors, and
booksellers do not function as gatekeepers except in a broad and
indirect sense. The role of gatekeeping has been in the hands of
reviewing committees is solely that of the reviewing committees for
decades, arguably over more than a century, working under the aegis
of their respective NSAs and sometimes LSAs.
Since the religious aspects of a novel written by a Bah' mark it as
unique in the world of fiction generally, the remarks I am making
here concentrate on how gatekeepers conscientiously uphold the
primarily pastoral function of such fiction and maintain the Bah'
community's boundaries within an essentially secular and pluralistic
form of popular culture. My remarks also focus on this world of
gatekeeping which is undergoing a radical shift due to the internet.
The mission of the Bahai publishing industry, insofar as novels are
concerned, correlates with its dual function: to entertain and to
inspirewithin a context of a full and frank, legitimate framework
of authority, the very structure of freedom for our age, moderate
freedom that guarantees the welfare of the worlduntil just the
other day when the world-wide-web changed the whole ball-game
on our big planet.
The predictability of popular fiction is a chief factor in the novel's
ability to bring enjoyment to a reader..this includes familiar plot
structures and, more often than not, happy endings with a
construction of characters with whom readers can and do identify.
All this enhances the entertainment value of fiction. Novels also
function as a form of escapism for Bah' readers in much the same
way that novels provide escapism for secular readers.

Bahai readers may be escaping from the demands and stresses of

everyday life and escaping to a safe and confirming imaginative
world. In these & many other ways fiction for Bahais is an
enjoyable way of experiencing the world. Such entertaining fiction
differs from secular fiction in two primary ways: it must be written
from a Bahai perspective. It must also adhere to a correspondingly
confined popular Bah' aesthetic and inspiration which encompass
areas of intention reinforcing the faith of the converted, witnessing
to the unconverted, and providing sophisticated and literary
explorations of our complex human condition.
Such fiction is intended to strengthen and validate the faith of
readers through the reader's identification with the characters. Such
fiction is written to challenge a reader's faith, but rarely do such
novels challenge religious, social, cultural, or political boundaries set
by the reviewing committees because doing so will simply result in
the book not getting past the reviewing committee. But, as I say, this
is all changing on the web. The uniqueness of fiction which passes
inspection by reviewing committees is found in its perspective: it
mediates knowledge about the world indirectly; its very purpose is
not found in its capacity to increase any of the reader's conceptual
frameworkbut so much more........
What readers learn from these novels is in the realm of the education
of their sensibility, not in the increase of their conceptual equipment.
Reading fiction involves aesthetic apprehension: the submersion of
readers into a fictional reality and the openness of the reader to what
is presented therein, a quiet contemplative act, a learning experience
that proclaims its relevance to life in subtle but significant ways.
Reading fiction, therefore, is an aesthetic experience that
communicates knowledge about the world indirectly via aesthetic
modes.....Apprehension can occur as the result of the author
intentionally communicating Bah' messages, yet in other instances

fiction communicates subsidiary and unintended messages that are

often an implicit consequence of writing from a Bahai worldview.
Because of the many possible meanings associated with Bahai
myths and symbols, readers can interpret symbols in a variety of
ways, and so writers intrinsically incorporate unintended and
subsidiary messages along with their intended message.
The interpretation by the readers of unintended messages often
surprise authors and editors--but not much yet-- because the writing
of novels, of fiction, for Bahais and others by Bahais has only just
begun---just the other day it seems in this new culture of learning
and growth this Bah' paradigm(1996-2010) The vast literature
that has come into Bah' bookshops in the last three decades(1980
to 2010) is not of the genre of novels.(1)
------------------------FOOTNOTES---------------------------------------------- (1) For more ideas on this subject go to: (a) Jonathan Cordero,
The Production of Christian Fiction, The Journal of Religion and
Popular Culture, Volume 6, Spring 2004 and (b) Barney Leith,
Bah' Review: should the red flag law be repealed? BAH'
STUDIES REVIEW, Volume 5.1, 1995.
Ron Price
6 April 2010
BACK TO THE INTERNET
Pleasing others, of course, is still important but, for me, there is a
new found freedom of expression that the internet provides. Part of
this freedom is due to the advantages and pleasures of age. Now in
the early evening of my life, these middle years(65 to 75) of late
adulthood as human development theorists refer to the period in the
lifespan from 60 to 80, with jobs and the many employment
positions far behind me, no one checks what I write before it goes

into the light of cyberspace. My own editing pen is kept busy and I
can edit as much or as little as I desire. I do get feedback and I read
everything I can get my hands on, so to speak, this helps provide a
synoptic view, a very from different angles, a wide-angled view, of
the topic of the new Bahai culture. This helps provide a steroscopic
vision of the subject, a vision not obtainable from a single pair of
eyes and one mind. Eventually, though, I take a synthesized line of
my own and must live with that line until yet another revision
occurs. The internet provides writers like me the opportunity for
endless revision.
Editing has never been one of my favorite activities and I tend to
rush this part of the writing job, at least initially. I then revise, alter,
subtract, add, delete and edit in a multitude of ways as a result of
incoming comments, both encomium and opprobrium. Sometimes I
make no changes at all to my initial internet post. In the case of a
book, this book, the changes seem endless. The editing of this book
went on day after day in 2007 and 2008 as it was taking form and,
from 2009 to 2011, the editing has been periodic.
After my writing gets onto the world-wide-web it is ignored,
criticized, diagnosed, interpreted, subjected to hair-splittings and
logic choppings by readers, posters, moderators and administrators
at internet sites. I am on the receiving end of invective and negative
appraisals, accusation and berating, blame and blasphemy,
castigation and censure, condemnation and contumely, denunciation
and diatribe, epithet and obloquy, philippic and reproach, revilement
and sarcasm, scurrility and tirade, tongue-lashing and vilification. I
am given more advice than I receive at home from those I love and
who love me and more than I ever got as a student and teacher. This
happens not so much in relation to this book but in relation to many
of my posts at various internet site on a host of topics.

I am viewed as tactless, insensitive, awfully boring and told where to

get off, where to go, where to go for further writing courses to help
me in my literary vocation and avocation and why I should
discontinue the practice of writing entirely. I am also told what a
wonderful inspiration my writing is. Compliments, flattery and
praise abound. These words of encomium and opprobrium that I
receive, as I say, are really not much different than; indeed, are much
the same as, the words many other writers get when their words are
found between hard and soft covers. Even the writings of
Shakespeare, the Bible and other major works in the western
tradition get great buckets of criticism poured on them from the
generations which have come on the scene since the post-world-war2 years, those now 65 and under, to choose a convenient timeframe
for most of the incoming criticism I receive.
Most of those who have come to inhabit the parts of the WWW
where I post say are the Y-generation. They were born between the
mid-1970s to the first years of the 2000s. These generation Y people
are today's teens, 20s and 30s, the millennial generation, the net
generation. Some say that generation X are those born between 1974
and 1980. The fine-tuning of these labels gets a bit complex. The
first generation on the internet, the years 1990 to 2010, have a wide
range of personality constructs which would need a separate
statement to discuss in sufficient detail.
DEALING WITH CRITICISM: AN ANSWERING THEOLOGY
Critical scholarly contributions or criticism raised in public or
private discussions should not necessarily be equated with hostility.
Questions are perfectly legitimate, indeed, necessary aspects of a
person's search for an answer to an intellectual conundrum. Paul
Tillich, that great Protestant theologian of the 20th century, once
expressed the view that apologetics was an "answering theology."-

Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, U. of Chicago, 1967, Vol.1, p6.

I have always been attracted to the founder of the Bahai Faith's
exhortations in discussion to "speak with words as mild as milk,"
with "the utmost lenience and forbearance." This form of dialogue,
its obvious etiquette of expression and the acute exercise of
judgement involved, is difficult for most people when their position
is under attack from people who are more articulate, better read and
better at arguing both their own position and the position of those
engaged in the written criticism than they are. I am also aware that,
in cases of rude or hostile attack, rebuttal with a harsher tone, the
punitive rebuttal, may well be justified, although I prefer humour,
irony and even gentle sarcasm rather than hostile written attack in
any form. Still, it does not help an apologist to belong to those
"watchmen" whom the prophet Isaiah calls "dumb dogs that cannot
bark."(Isaiah, 56:10)
In its essence criticism is often just another form of confrontation, an
act of revealing one's true colours, of hoisting the flag, of
demonstrating the essential characteristics of one's faith, of one's
thought, of one's emotional and intellectual stance in life. Dialogue
does not mean self-denial, wrote Hans Kung, arguably the greatest
of Catholic apologists. The standard of public discussion of
controversial topics should be sensitive to what is said and how; it
should be sensitive to manner, mode, style, tone and volume. Tact is
also essential. Not everything that we know should always be
disclosed; not everything that can be disclosed it timely or suited to
the ears of the hearer. To put this another way, we don't want all our
dirty laundry out on our front lawn for all to see or our secrets
blasted over the radio and TV. Perhaps a moderate confessionalism
is best here, if confession is required at alland in todays print and
electronic media it seems unavoidable. Much of internet dialogue,
though, is far, far, below standards of even a reasonable literacy as

posters f, c and s their way through discussions with the

briefest of phraseology, a succinctness that approaches sheer
nothingness and an inarticulateness that has more in common with
grunts and sighs as well as whimpers and whims and betrays a basic
knowledge based on visual media and little reading.
My findings, my views, rooted as they are in many places, in many
philosophical positions or fields: subjectivity, relativism and
pragmatism, can be verified only by individuals capable of assuming
and willing to assume my point of view. The illiterate person, to
choose an example of someone who is not capable of assuming my
point of view unless, of course, someone reads to him or her, is not
capable of assuming my point of view. There are many who are not
willing. This is true in all scientific endeavour: in the physical and
biological sciences, in the social sciences and in the various studies
in the humanities of which religion is but one of these many fields.
One can be convinced of the truth of something, have a sense of
certitude and know little to nothing at all about the object. Faithful
self-abandonment is sometimes more valuable than cerebral consent
and sometimes it is not. Ideally, it seems to me, the full engagement
of the rational faculty is essential down life's long path and one
abandons reason at one's risk. But the full engagement of one's
emotions is also essential to help provide motivation, a get-up-andgo and the necessary enthusiasm without which much of life's
activity is a dry bone-yard. And emotions, however fully engaged,
are often untrustworthy and cause immense inner turmoil.
This is true in many fields beside religion in the journey of life from
cradle to grave. Society and the millions of individuals in it are
caught in heated cross-fires between non-commitment and
skepticism, cynicism and defensiveness on the one hand as well as
varying degrees of the upholding of categorical imperatives, of the
justifying of arbitrary absolutes, of the insistence on finality and

complete agreement, of irrational commitment and aggressiveness

on the other. This cross-fire results in many deaths, spiritual,
intellectual and social. It also results in dialogue, in a type of
apologetics in which there is a fundamental discrepancy between the
respective fields of thought, Bahai thought and the thought of those
in other interest groups. In some ways, the gulf is unbridgeable. This
the case between much secular thought and much thought in the
Christian or Islamic religion or, for that matter, between variants of
Christianity or even within what are often the muddy and pluralistic
waters of secular thought itself.
This is the general climate in which much apologetics takes place in
our world with its interdependence of diverse points of view, with
passionate expressions and proofs all lying along linking lines and
lines that cannot be and never will be linked. The world has become
very complex for the votaries of its multitudinous faith positions. In
addition, we have so often been duped by charismatic personalities,
so often gulled by forceful and baseless arguments, so frequently
bombarded through politics and media by salesmanship and power
mania that we confuse the effects of all these with the luminous
truths and their hosts that are found in this Bah' culture and its
history. We so often are not sure, we are not absolutely convinced
about the promises due to our inability to distinguish between the
claims we come across inside and outside the Cause and the
contents, the real character, of those making the claims in question.
Critical scholarly contributions or criticism raised in public or
private discussions, an obvious part of apologetics, should not
necessarily be equated with hostility. Questions are perfectly
legitimate, indeed, necessary aspects of a person's search for an
answer to an intellectual conundrum. Paul Tillich, that great
Protestant theologian of the 20th century, once expressed the view
that apologetics was an "answering theology."(Paul Tillich,

Systematic Theology, U. of Chicago, 1967, Vol.1, p6.) I have always

been attracted to the founder of the Bahai Faith's exhortations in
discussion to "speak with words as mild as milk," with "the utmost
lenience and forbearance." This form of dialogue, its obvious
etiquette of expression and the acute exercise of judgement involved,
is difficult for most people when their position is under attack from
people who are more articulate, better read and better at arguing both
their own position and the position of those engaged in the written
criticism than they are. I am also aware that, in cases of rude or
hostile attack, rebuttal with a harsher tone, the punitive rebuttal, may
well be justified, although I prefer humour, irony and even gentle
sarcasm rather than hostile written attack in any form. Still, it does
not help an apologist to belong to those "watchmen" whom the
prophet Isaiah calls "dumb dogs that cannot bark."(Isaiah, 56:10)
In its essence apologetics is a kind of confrontation, an act of
revealing one's true colours, of hoisting the flag, of demonstrating
the essential characteristics of one's faith, of one's thought, of one's
emotional and intellectual stance in life. Dialogue does not mean
self-denial, wrote the famous, and for some infamous, Hans Kung,
arguably the greatest of contemporary Catholic apologists. The
standard of public discussion on controversial topics should be
sensitive to what is said and how; it should be sensitive to manner,
mode, style, tone and volume. Tact is also essential. Not everything
that we know should always be disclosed; not everything that can be
disclosed it timely or suited to the ears of the hearer. To put this
another way, we don't want all our dirty laundry out on our front
lawn for all to see or our secrets blasted over the radio and TV.
Perhaps a moderate tone and mode, a moderate manner and
confessionalism is best here, if confession is required at alland in
todays print and electronic media it seems unavoidable.
I make all these comments about criticism and apologetics at the

outset of this book in some ways to get them out of the way. I have
felt the need to deal with them even if many readers who come to
this book do not feel the need. As I say above, one of the chief aims
in my writing of this book is for the clarification of my own thoughts
and the elaboration of my own role in this new paradigm so that I
can answer the question: how do I fit into the new Bahai culture of
learning and growth--not if I fit in.
BOOKS WRITTEN ABOUT THIS PARADIGM
Books discussing the nature of this paradigm have also begun to
appear like Paul Lample's Creating A New Mind(Palabra, 1999) and
Revelation and Social Reality(Palabra, 2009). Both these books
contain excellent overviews of this new culture of learning and
growth as well as reflections on the individual, the institutions and
the community. In future editions of my own book, in the next two
Five Year Plans, 2011-2016 and 2016-2021, I hope to provide a good
bibliography on the subject of this new Bahai culture. A great
number of internet sites now explore the developments in these last
15 years and readers of this book are encouraged to google to their
hearts' and minds' content the many aspects of what is written about
this new Bahai culture in that world of cyberspace. Indeed, what you
could call a new transnational community feeling has been created
on the internet among its participants in these last 15 years, years
synchronizing with the emergence of this new Bahai culture. This
world-wide-web is a seedbed for diverging and often controversial,
stimulating and informative discussions.
I'd like to quote from the last paragraphs of Paul Lample's Creating a
New Mind before leaving the many useful commentary from that
Universal House of Justice member. "The collective experience of
the Bahs from the dawn of the Revelation to the present point on
the path they are treading," writes Lample, "makes up the tradition,

or culture, of the global community. Accumulated beliefs, methods,

knowledge, systems, habits, stories, and patterns of behavior are
containedin this tradition, which shapes the understanding and
practice of the believers at any given moment in their journey.
Because the Kingdom is not yet built, each generation must add to
and continually modify some aspects of the tradition through
systematic action and learning.
Not every problem can be solved, or even properly understood at a
given juncture; it may have to wait for a later age, and only harm can
come from trying to impose a premature resolution. In looking
ahead, the community holds a vision of the future that directs its
steps. This vision is clarified continually through ongoing study of
the writings and the accumulation of experience. The path on which
the Bah community advances is widevery wide. It is not
necessary that everyone walk along the same line, believing and
doing the same thing. There are, however, extreme perspectives on
each side of the path that represent a danger to unity and progress.
Such extremes views have afflicted religious dispensations of the
past, driving their followers from the path of guidance into the
wilderness of confusion ruled by human passions. It is our primary
task to keep the most vigilant eye on the manner and character of its
growth, Shoghi Effendi advises us about the Faith, lest extreme
orthodoxy on one hand, and irresponsible freedom on the other,
cause it to deviate from that Straight Path which alone can lead it to
success.5 Extreme orthodoxy involves an exaggerated conviction of
the validity of ones grasp of truth, literalism in interpreting the
meaning of the teachings and a rigidity of practice. Irresponsible
freedom implies a relativistic perspective that causes disintegration
of the community as individuals choose what they will or will not
believe, or what they will or will not do. In between these extremes
is a balanced perspective that recognizes the existence of truth and,
at the same time, acknowledges human limitations to comprehend

and act on it. The Bah world, therefore, transcends the false
dichotomy of fundamentalism and relativism, conservatism and
liberalism. Truth exists, we can take hold of it and do not need to be
subject to the imprecise understanding of every believer. Yet, in
time, through learning grounded in action, the understanding of truth
evolves and is deepened, allowing for a greater expression in action.
The discourse, the systematic action, and the learning needed to
progress on the path depend upon proper relationships that are to
characterize the believerswith God, with the institutions, with
each other. Bahullh has provided His Covenant in order to
preserve these relationships, thereby safeguarding the ability of the
community to continually progress. Thus, the Covenant is the
vehicle for the practical fulfilment of the believers duties, the
potent instrument by which individual belief in Him is translated
into constructive deeds, the divinely conceived arrangements
necessary to preserve the organic unity of the Cause.
It is in this light that we can appreciate the wondrous blessing
bestowed on the Bah world through the gift of the Universal
House of Justice. For this body is specifically designed by
Bahullh with the powers to infallibly guide the believers in their
journey into the Golden Age: to decide all matters which have not
outwardly been revealed in the Book; to resolve problems which
have caused difference; to prevent individuals from imposing their
views; to ensure that no body or institution within the Cause abuses
its privileges; to serve as the final arbiter on disagreements
concerning the translation of the teachings into practice; to protect
the unity of the believers; to establish plans for growth and
development; to broaden the scope of the influence of the Faith on
society. The guidance that constantly flows from the Universal
House of Justice is indispensable; yet it does not eliminate the need
for learning. It provides the framework within which the

understanding and practice of the community advance. God will

verily inspire them with whatsoever He willeth, is Bahullhs
incontrovertible assurance. They are the recipients of the divine
guidance which is at once the life-blood and ultimate safeguard of
this Revelation.
The worldwide web also has sites where utterly inadequate
perspectives and discourse on Bahai doctrines and activities are
found. Anyone who surfs about in cyberspace comes across an
international dialogue among hundreds of thousands of the millions
of Bahais and internet users around the world. There is a rich world
available for potential internet users, a world in which everyone who
wants to can take part in some way or another in writing. Users of
the world-wide-web can just read what others write. Alternatively, of
course, individuals are free not to go to any sites at all. It is not a
requirement to click onto the internet and play around in cyberspace.
There are dangers lurking in the interstices of cyberspace for the
would-be student of the Cause. Be warned: all is not enrichment and
relevant reading. There are many twists and turns and casuistical
discussions if one wants to venture into the complex labyrinths of
words on a myriad of subjects. There is enough to keep the minds of
the best of the students of the Cause fully engaged in questions
which believers have often never considered before and, if
considered, are not thought through and, if thought through, require
a good deal of back-and-forthing as subjects are often pursued by
many to the very nth degree and often beyond the knowledge of the
would-be reader or student of the Cause.
Readers with a tendency towards a fundamentalist pose, a pose with
its roots in the oldest traditions of scholarship and priestcraft, may
find themselves confronted with material that is highly objectionable
to their sensibilities, highly contentious and outright violations of
their spiritual and religious susceptibilities. I trust this is not the case

with my book. I do not aim to be objectionable but, when writing as

in talking, one does not win them all. My book is, it seems to me, a
sanctimonious exploration of many a theme and also a selfquestioning of my life and my community, my society and much
else--especially my assumptions and those of others. I use the word
sanctimonious in the sense of adulatory, flattering, and to some
extent openly pious and even moralistic. Readers should not see
what they read here as an expression, though, of some fixed or final
point of view. I try to polish ideas not finish them. Along the way I
thank Bahiyyih Nakhjavani for her stimulating approach to Bahai
dialogue as outlined in her book: Asking Questions: A Challenge To
Fundamentalism(George Ronald 1990). I, like this fine Bahai writer,
seek creative solutions and I am often disturbed by fundamentalist
attitudes and dogmatic assertions, what is often referred to as the "I
am right you are wrong" attitude.
One of Nakhjavani's main points in her novel Saddlebags is that we
are all locked irrevocably in the trappings of our lives, just as
soundly and thoroughly as our brains are locked within the boneprisons of our skulls, and she uses her considerable novelistic skills
to prove this. It's not only difficult, she suggests, but totally
impossible to perceive the dynamic of another person's life, or even
the so-called "evidence" of the "objective" outside world.
Nakhjavani has written three novels during this new Bahai paradigm
and they have much to say to each of us as we travel though the
paths of this new culture of learning that the Cause is now
establishing in these first two decades of its implementation: 1996 to
2016.
The dogmatism that this novelist, this writer whom I first read back
in the early 1980s, is an attitude I have to watch, not only in others
but also in myself. Rigid attitudes, narrowness of vision and
unrelieved intolerance toward the points of view of others I deal with

in a host of ways in this book--but mostly through style and

indirectness rather than confrontation. I also try to maintain an
attitude that hopefully enables ordinary people not to become
divorced from the creative Word, a divorce often based on a
patriarchal mystique that has existed around learning and scholarship
for centuries. It is easy to mistake religious habit, routine and
community regularities and rhythms for spiritual actions and
attitudes. In this paradigm Bahais need to try to recognize this
difference, for it is more than some superficial reality. They (and I)
need to apply their understandings of the gap, the division, in these
two inner and outer attitudes and actions and learn from this
understanding. It is a slow process but it is crucial if their Bahai
communities are to become models of the kind of society that
attracts others.
We need to stay away from what could be called conservativeeverything-by-the-book rigidity and loosey goosey liberalism
where everything is OK. Overall, I call such behavior an
engagement in Bahai ideological partisanship and we need to be
warned to stay away from it.
There are many questions in relation to this paradigm and many
shadow areas and zones of contradiction and paradox where these
questions arise. To be a student of the Cause is to be a person who
has the courage to question the half-light in which we all dwell.
Often we assume this Cause is offering answers when, in reality,
what it is doing is helping us to pose the right questions. Questions
often have little to do with doubt and answers are not always about
certitude. This book is aimed at creating an openness of mind, a
humility of response and a readiness of apprehension that finds
resolution rather than--or in addition to--solutions.
This is a book which, like its author, aims to rest as easily with the

enigmas of paradox and contradiction as with the pleasures of peace

and consistency. Nakhjavani emphasizes succinctly that history is
full of the wrong questions being asked and search in the wrong
places for the wrong things. The complexity of our world requires
much more than simplistic responses and an air of triumphalism. As
the House of Justice put some of this problem in its Ridvan 2010
message: "While conveying enthusiasm about their beliefs, the
friends should guard against projecting an air of triumphalism,
hardly appropriate among themselves, much less in other
circumstances. Hopefully this paradigm and this book will help in
the process of getting some, if not large, sections of the Bahai
community to ask the right questions and asking these questions
soon enough to aid in humanity's survival and in limiting the
suffering that has already drenched its billions in a veil of tears.
Questions themselves are a form of answer and often no answer is
complete unless it carries the seeds of another question. And
suffering itself unless it is faced heroically and triumphed over often
means very little. "Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for
he is both the marble and the sculptor."--Dr. Alexis Carrel
There is a catechizing tradition of question and answer through
which religious instruction is derived and it is useful to compare this
tradition with what we find in Bahai history. There is no assumption,
as catechism requires, of set answers, of questions tailored towards a
specific doctrinal response from which the mind may not deviate. To
many the Ruhi books appear to be part of this catechizing tradition.
But it all depends on how the tutors and teachers utilize the
materials. Filling in the spaces with written responses does not
necessarily imply fixed answers. There are often, if not usually,
many responses that can fill the lines of the spaces in the questions
in the Ruhi sequence of books. There often appears to be a repetitive
element in catechizing, with answers that are closed, that aims to
teach and learn by rote and this, it seems to me, is antithetical to the

spirit of independent investigation of the Cause. Many of what are so

often called the Bahai principles can only be pinned down in practice
by the spawning of a thousand questions which will send us
scurrying into apparently unrelated areas of concern. Generally, we
need to question ourselves and the writings and everything else we
experience and read. We are not dealing in this new paradigm with a
mere code of laws and words on paper to be regurgitated at examtime. We are not dealing with the idle repetition of the endless facts
of Bahai history and this Faith's mountain of teachings. Not every
tutor on the planet, like not every teacher in every school, has a
flexible orientation. Some tutors have fixed approaches but blaming
the curriculum is usually not the answer.
The latest statistics of internet users posits two billion of the planet's
seven billion people. Of the approximately six million Bahais I
would guesstimate no more than a million are actively involved in
internet reading, far fewer in actual dialogue and interchange at the
many internet sites and, of these few, only a small handful are
engaged in that endless analysis and casuistry, hair-splitting and
criticism as well as experiencing the anxious concern and worry to
which I have referred above. A book could be written about this new
paradigm and not refer at all, as I have done above, to cyberspace
and not deal with the criticisms that have surfaced in the first decade
and a half of the paradigm's existence. But, again, as I say, this is a
quite personal book, a quite personal perspective, reflecting as it
does much of my own teaching efforts in the last fifteen years.
This book has behind it a certain driving power, a certain inspiration,
a certain literary proclivity that has resulted in my dealing with the
twists and turns of life and especially twists and turns on the internet.
That driving power and inspiration has taken this book in directions
which many readers would not have gone if they were to examine
this new Bahai paradigm and their role in it. Readers will have to

work out their own stories, their own roles in this paradigm. My
receptivity and curiosity, my Bahai dreams and visions lie behind
this book. Without the fire of this un-abating curiosity, without the
kindling of the undying glow of seeking to understand--which has
been with me for decades as a Bahai--this book would never have
developed. Irresistibly beckoning me onward, urging me to press
forward into new worlds was Time's winged chariot and its hurrying
clatter. This book has been an intellectual lure and I sometimes feel
as if I have not captured its quarry. But my energies have been
running at full stretch at least from time to time between meals, TV
programs, conversations and sleep among other quotidian activities.
I have felt a sense of urgency pushing me onward and this book is
the result of that running and that urgency.
THE INTERNET: GLOBALISM AND LOCALISM
The new culture of learning and growth in the Bahai community has,
as part of its mise en scene: the chatter, the glitter and tinsel, the
immense literary pool of words, the technological wonder, the
brilliant new tool that is the internet. This is true in many parts of the
Bahai world, in many of the 200++ territories in which this Cause is
now found. This world wide web brings to those who are interested,
to those who can read, to those who have access to this technology,
the finest thoughts and ideas in the history of civilization and the
worst, the garbage, the detritus of our post-industrial, post-modern
age. That is the internet. As Shoghi Effendi wrote over half a century
ago: "A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised,
embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and
restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect
regularity." And so it does; it brings into the visual fields, for those
who so desire and who have the technology, the criticism and praise
of this new paradigm from virtually anyone with the interest in
putting their fingers on their computer keyboard and composing their

thoughts for a sector of the world's peoples who have access to this
marvellous mechanism. For at least two or three million Bahais,
though, the internet is not partof their culture, their social and
community experience.
A new Bahai culture had already emerged by the passing of the
Founder of the Bahai Faith, Bahaullah, in 1892. More than a century
after His passing, indeed, nearly 120 years, the Bahai community is
concerned not with the birth of that culture but with its growth and
development. There are now in existence several histories which
deal with this incredible growth and development. that is not the
purpose of this book except en passant and indirectly.
All of this cyber-world is as much a part of this new paradigm for a
small but significant slice of the Bahai community as the bread and
butter on their table--or so I would argue--although this cyber-world
is obviously not an explicit part of the paradigmatic framework itself
as defined by the House of Justice and the International Teaching
Centre, institutions that set the initial structure and skeleton, the
schema and fabric, as well as developing and refining its application
in the last decade and a half. The food on our table and the air we
breath, among perhaps millions of other aspects of our physical
environment are, like cyberspace, to put the idea more accurately,
part of the context in which this new paradigm operates. For this
new paradigm is set in a social, a historical, a sociological, a
psychological, an economic, a contemporary context that must be
factored into any analysis and comment on this new Bahai culture.
And the individual Bahais, you and I, are merely sojourners,
pilgrims, travellers for a time in this culture. Many fellow travellers
who have been with me at various stages of my life, travellers who
once shared this hazardous journey have gone in different directions
to me. We now have little in common but we hold each other in
affection. Many a hound pursueth the gazelles of this world; many a

talon claweth at the thrushes; pitiless ravens lie in wait. Not

everyone escapes and enters the shelter of the flame of this Cause.
The virtual globalization of the planet, the crystallization of its unity,
has been stimulated many-fold during this paradigm in ways that are
often obscure and unbeknownst to the world's inhabitants who do
battle with the phantoms of a wrongly informed imagination. Illequipped to interpret the social commotion at play, millions listen to
the pundits of error and sink deeper into a slough of despond,
troubled by forecasts of doom. The commotion, that slough of
despond and the crystallization of the planet's unity, will continue
apace in the decades ahead as these things took place and continued
apace in the decades before this paradigm in previous Bahai
paradigms which I discuss briefly in this book, in the pages ahead.
The Internet has become an important tool capable of spreading a
complex message to a large audience. Religious movements like the
Bahai Faith are a growing social force that employs modern
communication criteria. There has been an extensive convergence
between religious communication and the Internet. Although
sociologists and anthropologists among others have studied religion,
this topic is not particularly relevant to communication studies.
Marketing, which involves communication issues, deals with
religion in other contexts, like the influence religion exercises on
consumer behaviour and decision-making processes. However the
communication of religious ideas is not dealt with since it is not
linked to consumption.
During the years of this new paradigm, in the economic, social and
political worlds, vast changes have been taking place; indeed, many
of them are themselves paradigmatic shifts in several of the global
cultural domains. But this book does not focus on this immense and
complex wider world and its systems. Science and electronic

technology has made it possible to connect with individuals across

the planet while simultaneously providing users with a world of
information. People are now able to mask or reconfigure their own
identities into online persona. The overall result of globalizing
influences is to cultivate an overwhelming sense of human anxiety
regarding placelessness. To put this a little differently, individuals
are faced with identity issues. The inability to forge identity based on
a sense of local or regional belonging is, for many a new problem
and often not a recognized one. According to one writer: "This
anxiety makes the human subject long for a diversity of places, that
is, a difference-of-place that has been lost in a worldwide
monoculture. This is not just a matter of nostalgia. An active desire
for the particularity of place, for what is truly local or regional,
is aroused by such increasingly common experiences. Place brings
with it the very elements sheared off in the uniformity of site:
identity, character, nuance, history. The issue is too complex to deal
with here in all its ramifications.(John Casey, The Fate of Place: a
Philosophical History. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997, p.xiii)
Arguably one of the consequences of this globalism is an emphasis
on localism. In cluster after cluster among both the Bahai and nonBahai populations around the world entertainment and varied
cultural installations, agricultural and commercial shows as well as
arts and sports festivals are springing-up with increasing abundance.
They all tend to have certain common messages. Their intent is to
promote ideas about cultural celebration and collective unity among
the region's inhabitants. The events occur in sites that are specially
constructed for the dissemination of these life-giving and unific
messages and, as such, serve as a space for discourse among the
different cultural groups and as a transmitter of officially sanctioned
ideas by local authorities. They also serve as representations of a
location as a differentiated place, establishing and upholding their
uniqueness among places for the benefit of an audience that lives

within and outside their borders. Events of celebration: olympics,

international games of all kinds, electronic media and cinema awards
of many kinds, the list of these celebratory activities goes on and on.
Some of these events have become an increasing part of the outreach
by Bahai communities around the world. To put all this in a different
way, the whole world has become a vast tourist experience and fun
house and every locality which can is cashing in on the abundance.
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum of human experience is
despair, destruction and tragedy which whip-up the emotions of
human kind as millions concern themselves with the tempest of
chaos and confusion that blows with increasing fury year after year.
All of this provides the mise-en-scene of the new Bahai paradigm.
The world wide web could be seen as an extension of the abundance
I refer to above and an opportunity for people to express their
concerns for the plethroa of tragedies in the world. The new Bahai
culture of learning is immersed in this vast sea of cultural
possibilities, a sea in which the international Bahai community is
swimming with a fertile and vibrant new life. This new life can be
seen in clusters, LSAs, registered and unregistered groups, localities,
regional councils, NSAs and a whole panoply and pageantry of
Bahai agencies and administrative bodies around the world. This is
not happening everywhere, of course. The picture is mixed and
incredibly diverse in its manifestations. But, as the House point out
as recently as its 2010 Ridvan message regarding the strengthening
of the culture of learning: "learning is the mode of operation, a mode
that fosters the informed participation of more and more people in a
unified effort to apply Bahaullah's teachings to the construction of a
divine civilization."
As the American philosopher John Dewey once wrote: "Education is
not preparation for life; education is life itself." This new Bahai
culture of learning and education, it could also be said, is life itself.

It is, again as the House noted on 21 April 2010 part of "the

evolution in collective consciousness." But as Dewey also
emphasized in his lengthy discussion of education: "The routine of
custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way
of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and
inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a
coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of
view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the
store on hand."(Reconstruction in Philosophy) I will let readers
unpack this fascinating quotation and apply it to this new Bahai
paradigm.
Just as Christianity spread using the Roman road system and the
immense apparatus of Roman civilization which conquered the
European world in the centuries just before and after the appearance
of Christ, the Bahai community and its administrative order has
spread in the present and previous paradigms due to the spread of
print and electronic media: magazines and journals, newspapers and
radio, recording equipment and musical technology, television and
the internet, indeed, a cornucopia of advancements in science and
technology. With the internet this Cause has gone to virtually every
corner of the world, at least those corners which were hooked into
this globalizing technology. And this has happened in the years of
this new paradigm: 1996-2010. Of course, like most generalizations,
there are exceptions and the picture, as I say, is not a simple one as I
may be implying here by these broad brush stokes of analysis.
Like the Roman road system and Rome's civilization which were
crucial to the spread of Christianity, modern technolgy and Western
civilization have been crucial to the spread of the Bahai Faith.
Rome's civilization was complex and historians like Edward Gibbon
and Arnold Toynbee, among others, have attempted extensive
analyses of the often subtle and intricate relationships between the

new and growing religion of Christ and the crimes, the follies and
the misfortunes of mankind in those early centuries of the eventual
triumph of Christianity over Greco-Roman culture. Western
civilization, which as Toynbee argues has become synonymous with
global civilization, and its scientific and especially communications
technology is the cultural milieux in which the Bahai Faith is
emerging as the religion for mankind. This paradigm is but one of
the important embryonic stages in that development.
Some 15 countries have no internet access or they restrict it. Very
poor people, of which there are millions and billions have no access.
Arguably some three-quarters of the world's population is still
unconnected. Nevertheless, the Cause has spread immensely due to
this new technology and there is a strong, a pervasive Bahai
presence on the net and its two billion users. This new apparatus
involves new techniques and new techniques involve a new spirit.
The computer, the world-wide-web, has injected a new spirit into our
age. For some it is a miracle and a wonder. For others it has little to
no value at best and is a nuisance at worst. It is impossible to
summarize all the experience and the lessons learned in the first 15
years of internet teaching or in the vast global institute process, the
new culture of learning and growth. This book provides a broad
survey and a personal context. I try to strike a balance between
personal experience and opinion on the one hand and clinical, factual
developments on the other. Some may find my perspectives too
personal. If I have any justification for this personal approach it is
that: this book is an attempt to answer the question "where do I fit
into this new paradigm?" It is a question each of us must answer for
ourselves.
The Internet has become a very powerful means of communication
through which not only information, but emotions and empathy, are
exchanged, and where socialization occurs. Following a purely

information stage, when people surfed the net just to seek

information, today people go online to seek other people, to socialize
within virtual communities, thus adding a social dimension that may
be considered even more relevant than the informational one. Once a
cold medium, the Internet has become a hot medium, in the sense
that emotions and feelings can be experienced and communicated
online. Therefore, even religious communication, which is an intense
emotional experience, is at home in this new medium. Religious
movements were pioneers in adopting new media to spread their
beliefs and thoughts. This has also been true of the Internet. Since
religious communication deals with abstract concepts, involves
profound sentiments and can have specific and difficult goals such as
converting people, it differs radically from business communication.
At the same time, it can be studied as a benchmark in order to obtain
insights for other types of communication and to explore the
potential of web-based communication. Religious communication
via the web is quite lively and can elicit strong reactions. So strong
that some religious websites has been forced to close their forums
and chat rooms due to the excessive fighting that sometimes
emerged among the participants. The religious communication via
the web can be so intense that it often takes on forms of blessing,
virtual prayers and pilgrimage.
This book and its analysis is designed for use not ostentation and I
trust it contains multiple layers of insinuation, innuendo and hidden
meaning. For history and sociology, psychology and philosophy, in
the end, have no meaning, only that which we each give it in our
inevitable subjectivity. Total objectivity is never achieved, an
impossible position. I offer readers options and hold my own
judgements, at least some of them, in suspense. We are all dramatis
personae who are never able to fully fathom, control and command
events in this or any paradigm. We are caught in an endless
succession of engagements, engagements which are our lives.

Diligence and accuracy are important merits and useful skills that I
try to bring to this literary exercise. I am more than a little conscious
of my incapacities in both these departments of intellectual virtue.
Character in the end, is so-often associated with an unstable entity, a
complex life-narrative. Character is only partly explainable in a
person only partly understandable. This is true of my life which I
know better than anything and it is true, a fortiori, of other
individuals and this paradigm which I have come to participate in as
well as to study and read about in these past 15 years.
Still, the implications of the Bahai Revelation increase when study
and service are joined and carried out concurrently, when efforts are
made to translate the Bahai teachings into reality. The new Bahai
paradigm involves an ethos and a worldview which comes to be
understood in greater measure as that same study and service
continue with the years. The worldview of the members of a group
is, the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are,
their most comprehensive ideas of order. Their ethos reflects the
tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style
and mood." To put it crudely and perhaps too simply, the worldview
of this paradigm provides the is component of the Bahai
experience of this paradigm.
We all live and die, and along the way we are subject to certain
intractable patterns within nature and our society. Yet certain moods
and motivations, with their accompanying moral impulses that
supply our ethos and our worldview, resist that ethos and worldview.
The result is a continuous, a perpetual is/ought struggle and
dialectic. A religious ritual, a routine and a set of practices resolves
this tension by integrating ones ethos and worldview into a
harmonious whole, into consistent patterns of action, but only to an
extent. This is beccause we are notperfect and we only ever partially
understand that ethos and worldview. Religious activity, our activity

in this paradigm, tunes human actions to an envisaged cosmic order

and projects images of cosmic order onto the plane of experience,
our experience. Our everyday experience, then, is drawn-up into a
larger whole. While all of this is going on the sheer
incomprehensibility of the metaphysical world is always with us. We
keep trying to translate our beliefs and language into actions.
The new Bahai paradigm defies a simple definition that would aid
the casual observer in his effort to grasp its broad landscape. Upon
entering the paradigm believers find themselves pulled in a variety
of directionsall under the aegis of institutional guidance, patterns
of Bahai community activity and a host of individual interpretations.
In the end each Bahai must resolve the pulls and pushes in the name
of action and, hopefully, some consistent pattern of action and
centres of consistent activity. Each Bahai finds for themselves a
rhythm of activity which gradually emerges that is highly diverse so
that it is not the rhythm of a single foot as one critic of authoritarian
regimes put one of the problems of control and order in community
life. That I have given great emphasis to the internet in the above
paragraphs is part of my take, as they say these days, on this
paradigm. Clearly, though, the world wide web is just part of the
background to the paradigm, as is family life, television, radio and a
host of other features of our culture. They are not the paradigm itself.
My writing about it tells more about me as the author of this book
than it tells about the paradigm.
THE BIG PICTURE OF ALL THE 16,000 CLUSTERS AND
WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Of the 16,000 clusters across the Bahai world 10000 were still
unopened in 2006, as I mentioned above, and of the other 6000 only
two per cent of them are capable of sustaining any significant
growth(See Paul Lample, Reason and Revelation, 2009) Lample

wrote this in his book "Revelation and Social Reality"in Palabra

Pub. 2009). Now six years later, in January 2012, there are many
more than 1600 IPGs. Go to this link for a useful essay on IPGs by
Dr. Farzam Arbab:http://bahai-library.com/talks/arbab.2001.html I
do not try to keep track of the IPGs. This means that of the 6000
clusters which are opened to the Cause in 2006, 25% of them are
capable of sustained growth. To put this another way: of the 16,000
clusters in the world--1600 have IPGs or 10% of all the clusters on
the planet. Another reliable source has stated that: of the 250 total
territories and countries in the world(yahoo), 150 of them have at
least one IPG and 100 have no IPGs.
One of the major quantitative goals of the Five Year Plan(2011 to
2016) is to have some degree of growth in 5000 clusters by April
2016. To place these IPGs in a context of the vast global
urbanization allow me to add the following. Cities have undergone
"macro-cephalic" growth to the point where they burst at the seams
not so much with opportunity and differentiation, but desperation
and sameness. UN HABITAT estimates that a billion people reside
in slum conditions, a figure expected to double in the next three
decades. In 1950, only London and New York were big enough cities
to qualify as megalopolises. By 1970, there were 11 such places,
with 33 projected for 2015. The fifteen biggest cities in 1950
accounted for 82.5 million people; in 1970 the aggregate was 140.2
million; and in 1990, 189.6 million. Four hundred cities today have
more than a million occupants, and 37 have between 8 and 26
million (Garca Canclini 1999, 74; Scott 1998, 49; Dogan 2004,
347). Almost 50% of the world's population lived in cities in 2000,
up from 30% in 1960. In fact more people are urban dwellers today
than were alive in 1960; and for the first time in world history, more
people now live in cities than rural areas. Most of the remainder are
desperately poor peasants (Davis 2004, 5; Observatoire de la
Finance and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research

2003, 19; Amin 2003).

Across Latin America, for instance, 70% of people moved from the
country to the city in the four decades from the mid-20th century,
with Mexico City growing from 1.6 million residents in 1940 to 19
29 million today, depending on which figures you consult (MartnBarbero 2003, 40; Garca Canclini 2001, 13). The emergence of
capitalism in China is another key instance. It had 293 cities in 1978.
Today it has 650. These changes are reactions to economic, military,
and social policies, such as neoliberal economics' insistence on
agricultural trade over subsistence, military planning, and corporate
domination over local concerns. In India, as many as 55 million
people may have been displaced from agricultural life because of
dams constructed in the name of development: the Green Revolution
dispatched surplus workers away from rural disappointment and
towards urban hope (Castles and Miller 2003, 3; Roy 2004; Davis
2004, 10, 7).
In the post-1989 epoch, crises of cognitive mappingwhere am I
and how do I get to where I want to be?have been added to by
crises of ideological mappingwho are we and what do we stand
for? (UN HABITAT 2003; Martn-Barbero 2000, 336). No wonder
Mexico City's people live with the heavily ironic motto "La Ciudad
de Esperanza"the city of hope. They go there for a better material
existence. In doing so, they lose the familiarity and security of the
everyday in a world that sometimes appears to be "rushing
backwards to the age of Dickens" (Davis 2004, 11).
Not all is dark and dreary, though. The internet, to chose one
example of immense technological and social communication, is
giving access to this new Faith to people in many of those 16,000
clusters and territories with no IPGs, at least to those who are
interested and possess this new technology--perhaps one quarter of

humanity as I say above--with an easy access to information about

this new Faith. This fact, this feature of the technological and
communication backdrop to this new paradigm, cannot be
appreciated too highly. Approximately thirty per cent of the globe
now has this cyberspace access and the implications this has for the
spread of the new Bahai culture is staggering. Even though some
8000 clusters have no Bahais and only a small percentage are
capable of sustaining significant growth as I write this paragraph at
the beginning of 2012, the internet is providing millions of people
with easy access to information about the Cause, if they are
interested.
There is a great deal more than urbanization that is the backdrop to
this new Bahai culture. The Bahai culture which has been
developing since the passing of Bahaullah, under the guidance of His
legitimate successors in the last twelve decades,1892-2012, has been
developing as Western civilization has been sweeping the face of the
Earth with its industrialism and post-industrialism, with its global
wars and globalization, with its science and technology, with its
many transforming influences, too many to cite here and too
complex to describe in even the most summary fashion in a book
like this. But it is also a civilization that is moribund, broken down
and in a decline which must end in a fall unless the downward
movement can be arrested. As the English writer and populist
historian, H. G. Wells argued more than a century ago, this Western
civilization is rushing down a steep place to the sea. This is one of
the essential contexts within which the Bahai culture has been
operating for more than a century. This same civilization also has
many integrating features; all is not lost and all is not bleak; again
the picture is complex. this paradigm and this world wide web are
part of this complex picture.
The progress which the Bahai community calls growth is a

cumulative one and its cumulative character is apparent in both its

outward and its inward aspect. Indeed, the entire process is part of a
growing civilization: the growth of a Bahai civilization and that
civilization of which the Bahai Faith is but a part--and at this stage a
very small part. The Cause has, in recent decades, become an
expansive movement which is both easy and difficult to observe in
quantitative and qualitative terms. The wider-world has become in
the lifetime of the Central Figures of this Cause, and its trustees in
the first century of its Formative Age, one single human society
embracing all the habitable lands and navigable seas on the face of
the planet. What some call this Western Civilization has washed
round the coasts of all other civilizations; it has encircled their
frontiers, knocked at their gates, broken through their defences and
forced an entrance into their inmost citadels.
This very Homo Occidentalis mistrusts its own elan and this very
uncertainty has ominous symptoms of social disintegration which
are everywhere apparent. The very growth and expansion of this
Western Civilization is beset by both external challenges and inward
ones of self-articulation & self-determination. These challenges
contain moral and spiritual questions of immense magnitude. The
new Bahai culture of learning and growth, this new Bahai paradigm,
is set within this wider global context. It is hardly surprising that this
paradigm presents to the believers its own challenges of immense
magnitude. The Cause has always presented its votaries with
staggering challenges, immense personal tests as well as spiritual
rewards, rewards not dissimilar to those provided by the great
religions throughout history. The Bahai Cause is at the very core of
the evolutionary thrust on the planet and working within its new
paradigm provides those who can see the wisdom of its complex
structure the very raison d'etre of their activities in daily life. At least
that is one way of expressing the nature and reality of this paradigm.

Of course, what makes the Bahai Cause so victorious is not so much the lives
and examples of its individual believers but, rather, the convi
ng evidence of the doctrines themselves and the ruling providence of its great
Author. Still the lives of the Bahai martyrs in Iran cannot but excite the wonder
and curiosity of the West and the East.

IRAN CONTINUES TO GET MEDIA ATTENTION

The arrest, trial and reported sentencing of the seven Bahai leaders
as well as the ongoing persecution faced by Irans 300,000-strong
Bahai community has prompted governments, nongovernmental
organizations, and prominent individuals to issue statements in
response. Some are reproduced here and the rest were available on the
internet by 2012. While not a part of the new culture of learning, the Bah'
experience in Iran acts like some kind of background music that gets the
attention of the media, while the new Bah' paradigm grows from strength to
strength around the world.

Germany: Human Rights Commissioner describes "alarming

treatment" of Irans ethnic and religious minorities
European Parliament: Resolution passed on situation of minorities in
Iran
United States: Assistant Secretary of State calls attention to jailed
former Bahai leaders
Iran's persecution of Bah's "one of the great tragedies of modern
times."
Canada concern at Irans continued persecution of Bahais and other
religious minorities
U.S. Department of State condemns Irans persecution of Bahais
Worldwide campaign highlights 10,000 days in prison for Bahai
leaders
U.S. Senate calls for release of religious prisoners in Iran
USCIRF condemns Iran's abuses of religious freedom
Scientists call for release of Bah' educators
Canadian MP: We cannot abandon the people of Iran.

Amnesty International: Report documents expanding repression of

dissent in Iran
USA: Representatives promote resolutions condemning Irans
human rights record
Bulgaria: Conference includes pledge of support from Prime
Ministers office
Australia: MPs call upon Iran to respect human rights
Canada: Senators call for the immediate release of Iranian political
prisoners
This is just the first few on a very long list. Readers wanting the
complete list need to go to this link:http://news.bahai.org/humanrights/iran/iran-update/international-reaction
As recently as 8 August 2012 came this report of Bah' experience
in one of Iran's cities. See this link:http://news.bahai.org/ ...It is
impossible to ignore or to separate the persecution of the Iranian
Bah's from the new Bah' paradigm. I leave it to readers to google
the ongoing media story, a story which is, in some ways, nearly 2
centuries old!
BAHA'I EPOCHS: AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
What Karl Marx wrote about human anatomy, namely, that it
contains a key to the anatomy of the ape, and that the intimations of
higher development among the subordinate animal species, can be
understood only after the higher development is already known. Our
modern world thus supplies the key to the ancient. The true character
of each epoch comes alive in the nature of its children? Why should
not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding,
as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? (Marx,
Grundrisse, London, Pelican Books, 1973, p. 105, and 111) This, it
seems to me, is just as true of the Bah' epochs. Bah' history

exercises an eternal charm and meaning, metaphor and value to the

meaning of this current paradigm.
WHERE DO I FIT IN?
This paradigm and this Western-global Civilization is, then, the
context in which each individual Self or Personality rests. I have
capitalized these two words, Self and Personality to give emphasis to
the primary focus in this book. It is a focus which attempts to answer
the question: "where do I fit into this new paradigm?" I also try to
answer the related questions: "where has this paradigm been and
where is it going?" I answer these questions for myself, give hints to
readers and leave readers to work out their own responses, their own
form of participation, as they are and have been doing in the last
decade and a half and will do in the decades ahead. Each single
human being in the Bahai community is part and parcel of an organic
whole. Bahai primary and secondary literature is awash in organic
analogies and like individual cells, the basic functional unit of life,
the individuals all over the Bahai world respond to the inner
structure of their needs, wants, meanings, purposes, personal
circumstances and their environment with its many features:
community, socio-historical context and its needs and circumstances.
The cell is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing,
and it is often called the basic building block of life. The individual
in the Bahai commuity is the essential part of what Shoghi Effendi
used to call the warp and weft of the Bahai community. Some
organisms, such as most bacteria, are unicellular and consist of a
single cell. Other organisms, such as humans, are multicellular.
Humans have about 100 trillion or 10 to the 14th cells. A typical cell
size is 10 m; a typical cell mass is 1 nano-gram. The largest cells
are about 135 m in the anterior horn in the spinal cord while
granule cells in the cerebellum, the smallest, can be some 4 m and

the longest cell can reach from the toe to the lower brain stem. One
could describe the variation in human beings as I have described
here the variation of cells, but I simply wanted to elaborate here on
the nature of the cell. I leave it to readers to draw their own
analogies between cells and individuals. Organic analogies are
potentially alive with parallels to individual and community life.
The wider organic whole for the Bahai is the civilization he or she is
helping to advance each in their own way. This civilization was born
through the awakening of the mighty soul of Bahaullah which came
to flower in Iranian soil. The relation of the individual Bahai to the
whole is in the form of mechanisms called institutions both Bahai
institutions and a multitude of other societal institutions. The
activities of each Bahai exist in a field, a framework, a paradigm, a
new paradigm now 15 years in the making. I encourage readers to
become familiar with what the House of Justice, in its Ridvan
message of 2010, referred to as "the crucial developments that have
occurred over the past decade in that aspect of Bahai culture which
pertains to deepening." The long-cherished goal of universal
participation is much more within reach in the context of this new
Bahai culture. The sacred duty of each believer in many ways is the
same as it always has been: to diffuse among his friends and
relations what he sees as the inestimable blessing which he has
himself already received.
In the broadest of senses, at least philosophically and abstractly, we
are each a part of, that is, we exist in everything that we perceive--at
least so goes one strain of thought in the literature of the humanities;
but, as Bahais, we are also part of a new race of men, a new spiritual
species which have evolved from a former and temporary state of
quiescence into a lifelong bout of dynamic activity, activity which
seeks, among other things, to draw men toward a Cause. It is for this
purpose, among others, that each Bahai was created and has come

into the world. This was true for the Christian as it says in John xii,
32 and xvi, 28 and it has been, is and will be true for the Bahai. It is
true in this paradigm and it was true in all previous Bahai paradigms.
We as Bahais are virtually commanded to put our essence into life
and action in order to be, to become, what we potentially are. Our
field of action lies within this new paradigm which lies in a
community, a society which is the common ground between our
individual fields of action and those fields of action of a host of
others; and it is here that the necessity, the obligation, the duty of our
lives, translates itself into many things among which is an external
pressure, a pressure to both transform ourselves and others. The
transformation takes place in a social context. This transformation is
not inevitable nor is it, often, observable. The changes required of us
are resisted by inertia, indifference and sometimes by active
hostility. Often the necessary changes do not take place because of
our lack of understanding or our unwillingness. The reasons for our
lack of change, our transformation, are legion. So many dangerous
temptations lurk in ambush to surprise the ungarded believer and
assail him. He must engage in a persistent and strenuous warfare
against his own instincts and natural inclinations; he must try to
safeguard himself from the trivialities of the world without and the
pitfalls of the self within.(Shoghi Effendi, Bahai Administration,
p.140.)
The Bahai community, inspite of the weaknesses of its individual
members, provides the very Salt of the Earth through its devotion
and of living the life for remote and mighty ends. Each Bahai is
overwhelmingly outnumbered by society's mass, by its great
majority, although he or she may enjoy the companionship of a few
kindred spirits. In this new paradigm there is an anticipated kindling
of belief from soul to soul and this must be done by a combination of
sheer mimesis, of drill or of inspiration, of strenuous intellectual

communion and intimate personal intercourse or of all these factors.

The process is at once mysterious and complex, direct and simple
and, it would seem after the observation of over a century and a half
of experience, it is a process that is characterized by an endless
movement from the world of contemplation and solitude, of prayer
and meditation, of reading and study---to the world of action by the
individuals and the communities concerned. Conversation and
interaction enriches the understanding but prayer and meditation,
solitude and silence are the major school of learning and the cultural
attainments of the mind.
Each individual must work out for themselves, both inside and
outside the paradigm, their own combination of social interaction on
the one hand and solitude and silence on the other. Each of the
individual misfortunes and merits, the often transitory and
sometimes decades-long experience, the events of the life-narratives
as they come into play each day must be transmuted by the collirium
which is knowledge and understanding, wisdom and intellect. These
are the two most luminous lights in the world of creation, and they
must be transmuted into acts of engagement as our daily life takes its
course--sensibly and insensibly. The dross of egotism and animus
needs to be refined away within the limits of our incapacity as we
exercise this engagement in the multitude of ways that is our lives.
The public misfortune, the global disasters of our age, our epochs,
are so catastrophic in the wider world in which we are enmeshed that
each person must find their personal form of identification with the
pubic sphere, its disasters and its slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune. May we all find a part to play and may we each appreciate
the contribution of others.(UHJ, 6/12/08)
As we "grunt and sweat," as Shakespeare puts it so graphically in a
famous soliloquy, under what is often, but thankfully not always, a
weary life, we must act--or lose in our lives "the name of action." We

each need to possess a sense of our own nothingness, or our own

private spiritual malaise on the one hand and a sense of the
transforming effects of the indwelling God on the other. There is also
much else that we need: many other emotions and thoughts inbetween and these thoughts and emotions need to possess an
intensity that moves us beyond the passive state, a state inculcated
by much that is the backdrop of our civilization, our contemporary
society. The result of this concern for humanity is a great many
different things to a great many different people: from a sting of the
conscience, to a sense of guilt, to the exercise of gregarious
inclinations, to the sheer joy in activity--to each person a
constellation of different emotions, thoughts and activities. The
result of that constellation is a degree of participation in this new
paradigm which is different for each Bahai and ranges from total
obsession on the part of some of the believers with the paradigm to
total indifference and non-engagement. "Humanity is weary for want
of a pattern of life," the House of Justice emphasizes, "to which to
aspire."(Rivan 2012) That pattern is part of the goal of this new
paradigm.
Readers need to exercise caution, it hardly goes without saying,
when evaluating the experience and views of people like myself.
These views do not necessarily represent truth or
comprehensiveness. Empathy and the ability to use words are not the
same as understanding and, even when they are, they are still only
one person's views and they do not possess any authority, at least not
in the Bahai Faith. Relying on what believers say about themselves
and their religion is not enough; it is only a start to a long process.
Readers need supplemental information from the ocean of words in
order to enlarge their own understanding. Readers need a great deal
to make things clearer than they were before reading someone's
views and after reading those words. If readers are to correct
erroneous information they need to be continuous, life-long, scholars

of the Cause. Even then there are no guarantees. The process is not
like "the five easy payments" and "guaranteed or your money back."
The famous existentialist John Paul Sartre stated: 'We only become
what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal to be what others
have made of us.' Whether it is in discussions about the legitimacy of
one's moral behaviour which others seek to impute as immoral;
whether it is in the suppression of reasoned criticism and principled
critiques of various kinds which others attempt to engage in to put
down our views; whether it is in the oblique and unacknowledged
imposition and enforcement of religious orthodoxy at the expense of
inclusion, diversity and integrity; Bahai apologists and the Bahai
community in general need to be aware that arrogance in the
expression of one's views enters easily into the heart of discourse, of
apologetics. What we each make of the views of others may not
always be entirely correct. The use and command of language is the
fruit of exercise and, in its written form, that exercise, is done well
by only a few--and even when it is done well, especially when it is
done well--it is intended to predispose readers in favour of a
particular interpretation of history, of our times or, indeed, of
whatever the writer is on about. The game is complex; the stakes are
high and the exercise is not like the simplicities of poker or the
subtitles of cricket or golf.
EDITING, MANNER, TONE, AND HUMOUR IN THIS WORK
At this stage in the evolution of this work I could benefit from the
assistance of one, Rob Cowley, affectionately known in publishing
circles back in the seventies and early eighties --as the Boston
slasher. Guy Murchie, a noted Bahai writer, Chicago Tribune
photographer, staff artist and reporter (1907-1997) regarded
Cowley's work as constructive and deeply sensitive editing. If he
could amputate several dozen pages of this book and take his editing

pen across my pages with minimal agony to my emotional

equipment Im sure readers would be the beneficiaries. But alas, Bob
is dead. He died right at the outset of this new paradigm. I did find
two editors, a copy and proofreader, though, who did not slash and
burn my pages and paragraphs but left my soul quite intact as they
waded through my labyrinthine chapters and pages, smoothed them
all out and excised undesirable elements. But both of these men tired
of the process and for various reasons were no longer accessible by
the time I had this book in reasonable shape but in need of an editor
over a year ago in early 2009.
John Kenneth Galbraith had some helpful comments for writers like
myself. Galbraiths first editor Henry Luce, the founder of Time
Magazine, was an ace at helping a writer avoid excess. Galbraith
saw this capacity to be succinct as a basic part of good writing.
Galbraith also emphasized the music of the words and the need to go
through many drafts. I've always admired Galbraith, a man who has
only recently passed away. Ive followed his advice on the need to
go through endless drafts. Ive lost count, but Im not sure if, in the
process, I have avoided excess. I can hear readers say: are you
kidding? In some ways I have found that the more drafts I do, the
more I had to say. And excess, is one of the qualities of my life, if I
may begin the confessional aspect of this work in a minor key.
And so I have Galbraith watching over my shoulder and his mentor,
Henry Luce, as well. Galbraith spent his last years in a nursing home
before he passed away in 2006 at the age of 98. Perhaps his spirit
will live on in my writing as an expression of my appreciation for his
work, if nothing else. Spontaneity did begin to come into my work at
perhaps the first draft of the third edition. This work is now in its
third year of writing and in the first eight months of this third year it
has gone through at least six drafts. Galbraith says that artificiality
enters the text because of this. I think he is right; part of this

artificiality is the same as that which one senses in life itself.

Galbraith also observed with considerable accuracy, in discussing
the role of a columnist, that such a man or woman is obliged by the
nature of their trade to find significance three times a week in events
of absolutely no consequence. I trust that the nature of my work here
will not result in my being obliged to find significance where there is
none. Im not optimistic. Perhaps I should simply say no comment
and avoid the inevitable gassy emissions that are part of the world of
writing. I do hope to do much more personal editing of this work for
it is in need of people like that Boston Slasher.
The capacity to entertain and be clever may not occupy such an
important place in the literary landscape in the centuries ahead. But
this is hard to say. There is something wrong it seems to me if
millions have what the famous American critic Gore Vidal says is
part of the nightly experience of western man: the pumping of
laughing gas into lounge rooms. While this pumping takes place
millions, nay billions, now and over the recent four epochs about
which this account is written, starve, are malnourished and are
traumatized in a multitude of ways. The backdrop to this book is
bewilderingly complex. Still, I like to think readers will find here a
song of intellectual gladness and, if not a song, then at least a few
brief melodies. I would also like it if this work possessed an
unwearying tribute to the muse of comedy that instils the life and
work of writers like, say, Clive James and many another writer with
the flare for humour. Alas, that talent is not mine to place before
readers, at least I am not conscious of its presence. Readers will be
lucky to get a modicum of laughs, as Ive said, in the 750 pages that
are here. I avoid humour, although not consciously, except for the
occasional piece of irony, play with words or gentle sarcasm that
some call the lowest form of wit.
Not making use of the lighter side of life, not laughing at oneself and

others in a country like Australia or America is perhaps an unwise

policy. I do this a great deal in my daily life but readers wont find
much to laugh at here. They will find irony in mild amounts and
even enough of that Benthamite psychology of the pursuit of
pleasure and the avoidance of pain to satisfy the value-systems of
readers, at least in Australia and America. I came to write this work
as I say above, after living for more than three decades in Australia.
Part of this book unavoidably analyses the things, the culture, around
me, for this new paradigm is immersed in a global culture that can
not be separated from the Bahai culture of learning and growth that
this book seeks to explore.
In some ways I dont mind the relative dearth of humour in this
work. If that fine American essayist and critic Gore Vidal was right
in a recent interview when he said with his tongue planted firmly in
his cheek where he often places it to the pleasure and amusement,
the annoyance and frustration of many a listener--and laughing gas
is, indeed, pumped into most homes every night as society amuses
itself to death, then, to avoid humour's paradox, its ambiguity and
complexity at the heart of our world, my world, seems fitting in this
serious text and analysis. I do not want to deny the pain, the tempest
of trial and suffering, that is at the very heart of our existence in this
age. To gainsay such pain is, for some, a central crime of the
bourgeois part of our society. For me, the issues and offences, the
challenges and struggles in relation to this polarity-paradox, this
conundrum, are exceedingly complex and I only deal with them
briefly and indirectly here in this somewhat personal statement,
however long it may be.
If readers miss the lighter, the more humorous, touch in this long
essay, they may also miss the succinctness that they find in their
local paper, a doco on TV or the pervasive advertising medium that
drenches us all in its brevity and sometimes clever play on words

and images. One thing this book is not is succinct and I apologize to
readers before they get going if, indeed, dear readers, you get going
at all with this work. I like to think, though, that readers will find
here two sorts of good narrative, the kind that moves by its
macroscopic energy and the kind that moves by its microscopic
clarity. I wont promise this to readers at the outset in these prefatory
words, but such is my hopespringing eternally as hope does and
must, at least for me, as I write about the/my Bahai experience in the
last 15 years in the font of life casting an eye as I go along to the
earlier phaes of my life and those of the Bahai Faith and iuts history
going back, arguably, more than two centuries.
My curiosity, as I mentioned above, has been stimulated for many a
long year through being tormented by longings to understand, by
being racked by unfulfilled ambition to understand on many fronts.
Some divine wind of curiosity's unflagging inspiration has generated
higher activities, has caused my mind to rise to higher flights in
order to make something of my learning, to add something to my
society, to increase the quantum of my own virtue. After fifty years
of being first a student and then a teacher, I have been able during
this paradigm to contribute something to the common knowledge of
my community. That is a crucial element, motivation, behind my
writing and the part I play in this paradigm.
I have long felt as if I was, as Plato put it, "like a light caught from a
leaping flame." In my case it has been the flame of a new Revelation
in which I was caught up in as a youth. My role in this paradigm is
an expression of this light and this flame. It is also the result of a
generalist's knowledge. I play my part not as someone who has a
special knowledge of any one of the physical and biological sciences
or the humanities and social sciences. I play the role of a generalist
in which there are always many 'pastures new,' as Milton referred to
the fields of learning. I have grown fonder of life in late middle age

and the early years of my late adulthood after years of having to

suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. As far as laughs
are concerned, I have made much ha ha, as Voltaire called it, in the
public domain in these last six decades, especially since coming to
Australia in 1971, 40 years ago. A goodly portion of my life has been
light and cheery and Im confident, with that American literary critic
Gore Vidal, that it will stay this way, barring calamity or trauma,
until my last breath.
I hope some readers will enjoy this narrative and analysis in all its
excess, its voluminosity and its serious note and tone. In one of John
Steinbecks letters he wrote: Anyone who says he doesnt like a pat
on the back is either untruthful or a fool. Perhaps Steinbeck never
met many of the Aussies Ive known who dont like pats on their
backs or anywhere else, are suspicious of those who give them and
are certainly not fools. But I am, alas, not a full-blood Aussie; I am
at best a hybrid and I look forward to many pats on the back, if and
when they come my way. Australians have taught me not to be too
optimistic, too dependent, too attached to such pats; perhaps, though,
it is simply life, my experience and my own particular brand of
skepticism that has taught me this.
SOME OF MY FIRST WORDS IN THIS BOOK
I wrote a short essay on the subject of the new Bahai paradigm in the
southern hemisphere's spring of 2007 and extended that essay for the
Online Journal of Bahai Studies in 2008. It was a journal which
appeared, some said, to be ahead of its time. The journal was not
sustainable for various reasons and was closed at its website in early
2009. I hope that in this autumn of 2011, at least the autumn in the
southern hemisphere, what has become a book of 750 pages will
serve readers as a useful extension of their own reflections and
understandings regarding this culture of learning and of growth.

"Our success," wrote the Universal House of Justice on 10 January

2009, "depends upon the extent to which a more profound
understanding of the dynamics of the Plan can permeate the entire
community."
May our understanding of this most recent paradigmatic shift in the
execution of this Plan and in the life of the Bahai community--a
shift this community is currently going through and has been going
through since the mid-1990s--increase in the Five Year Plan that is
on the horizon(21/4/11-21/4/16). May that understanding go on to
increase in depth in the years ahead as the first century of the
Formative Age draws to a close in 2021 after the two Five Year
Plans, 2011-2016 and 2016-2021, are completed in the next decade.
May all the developments examined in this new paradigm, as the
House of Justice concluded its 8,000 word Ridvan 2010 message, be
"an expression of universal love achieved through the power of the
Holy Spirit." "Undeterred by divisive social constructs," the House
of Justice concluded that most detailed message, we were
encouraged to "press on...."
The Five Year Plan of 2011 to 2016, unlike the current Plan of 2005
to 2011, will not likely focus to anything like the same extent on
numerical goals and their IPGs. There will be, in all probability, a
greater focus on the Bahais moving deeper into the life of society,
which means more emphasis on social discourse and social action.
Another anticipated feature of the next Five Year Plan, as one noted
Bahai writer put it, may be capacity-building in weaker countries,
so that they become stronger. In the same way that the 10-year
Crusade brought many souls into the Faith in the 1960s after the
long period of pioneering and the extension of the Cause to the four
corners of the Earth and the consequent development with the Bahai
community in the years 1953-1963, the hard work that has been put
into the past 15 years will yield limitless possibilities for the next 10

years: 2011 to 2021--the end of the first century of the Formative

Age.
The impulse to ponder and to try to distil the events that took place
in the Bahai community in those fin de siecle years, that are taking
and will take place in the first two decades of this new
millennium(2001-2010) and (2011-2020)--indeed as I write--has led
to this book. The balance of my writing has been tipped towards
analysis and away from narrative and, for some readers especially
those who prefer narrative, this will result in a partial loss of
equilibrium and meaning. The sheer variety and diversity of these
last two decades make it difficult to arrange this book in some
simple order of events.
You have, it goes without saying dear reader, the freedom to disagree
with the tone, the texture, the content, the thrust, indeed, whatever
points you desire to disagree with--as you travel on this brief journey
of 190,000 words in this book and its 750 pages. For this book is
simply a man speaking for himself. As the Roman poet Terence put
it: quot homines, tot sententia. Each man must speak for himself. I
do this with a little help, much help, from the words of others. Isaac
Newton once wrote: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants"(Letter to Robert Hooke). I do not see any
further than others, but this work has certainly benefited from
standing on the shoulders of many other writers, pouring over their
books, articles and internet posts and synthesizing understandings
which would never have come my way without them, without their
shoulders and their minds.
I have had the happiness that comes from having an aim in life, a
raison d'etre, a vocation, a calling from God as it says in the Acts of
the Apostles to "feel after Him and find Him."(The Bible, Acts,
xvii,27). Bahaullah has written that: "Whomsoever Thou willest

Thou caused to draw nigh unto the Most Great Ocean and on
whomsoever Thou desirest Thou conferrest the honour of
recognizing Thy Most Ancient Name."(Bahai Prayers, USA, 1985,
p.120) I have certainly drawn nigh but the degree and the extent of
the nearness that I have achieved will remain a mystery before I go
into a hole for those who speak no more, as the Bab put it so
graphically in one of the passages of His voluminous writings.
This book is part of a larger vision, an angle of vision--dim and
partial--of God revealing Himself in action to souls that were
sincerely seeking Him through His Manifestation in the person of
Bahaullah. Bahaullah was and is a Person Whom Bahais regard as
the most wondrous soul ever to exist on the Earth. But my vision,
like everyone's, of Him and the Cause He established is but a
piecemeal one in the ever-rolling stream of time at its varying pace
and unpredictable path. This vision, this sense of human destiny, is
expressed here in the context of a new paradigm in the Bahai
community. This vision is part and parcel of the community within
which I have lived my life and in which this book finds its place.
Some creative stirring, some spark, of curiosity regarding this new
paradigm has resulted in what are now quite familiar and even
impressive developments in both my own mind and the minds of
millions in the Bahai community around the world in over 230
countries and territories. The developments in this paradigm in these
last 15 years, 1996-2010, are described and analysed in these 750
pages. This curiosity is, at least for me and as I say above, but a
small part of what has been an undying glow of curiosity in my life
regarding this new Faith since at least the 1950s. My burning zeal to
widen and deepen my knowledge of this Faith has not always been
steady and has often been interrupted by the changes and chances,
the tests and trials, of life and their sometimes quite demoralizing
effects. Indeed, on one or two occasions the fire nearly went out.

The play of my instincts and natural inclinations, my inability to

subordinate my personal likings to the imperative requirements of
this Cause, the allurements and trivialities of the world and the
pitfalls of the self within have all played their roles in limiting the
extent and intensity of my flame, my candle-power, my ability to
lead, to live the life, as Bahais often use that phrase.(See Shoghi
Effendi, Bahai Administration, p.140) Perhaps through some grace
of God, some unmerited favour, rather than through some native
common sense or planning, I have been able to develop a generalist's
rather than a specialists's knowledge and to obtain a wide lifeexperience rather than one confined to one or two towns, one or two
jobs, one or two Bahai communities or one or two psychobiological
states. Looking back over nearly 60 years of Bahai experience(19532010) I feel I have had to remake myself many times as the Bahai
communities I have lived in have also had to remake themselves. If
anything has been achieved in the realms of thought it has been by
the grace of God and not thanks to any native common sense. And it
will continue to be so during this paradigm.
MY YEARS OF RETIREMENT
During the first years(2006-2015) of my retirement from FT, PT and
all casual-employment, a process took place by stages firstly in the
years 1999 to 2005, and then gradually after 2005. It was a process
by which I accustomed myself to making both reading and writing
the dual occupations of my time and energy, with the reading
essentially in the form of research for the writing. The softer
occupation of reading for its own sake was not an indulgence I
permitted myself. Travelling, which has always been a useful
stimulus for my mind, like reading, I did only in my head and with
the aid of the print and electronic media, after decades of moving
and travelling from town to town, to over 100 towns and cities. I

have been able, as 'Abdul-Baha writes in one of His thousands of

letters, "to focus my thinking on a single point" in the hope that "it
will become an effective force."(Selections, p.111) The restlessness
which had characterized my life as far back as my memory takes
me(the late 1940s) was transferred by degree, sensibly and
insensibly, from my former roles of teacher and tutor, student and
adult educator as well as many other roles involving paid
employment, into a range of new roles. They were roles in which I
reinvented myself: writer and author, poet and publisher, editor and
researcher, online blogger and journalist, reader and scholar.
This restlessness has never really left me alone in peace, but was
always asking for more. Now, my life within the new Bah' culture
is "a rich and intricate pattern of life" with, as the House of Justice
expressed my experience in its 2013 Ridvan letter, many insights
being gained from my endeavours. It is a highly dynamic process
which does not lend itself to ready simplification and it is a process
which recognizes that not everyone can do the same thing or should
be occupied with the same aspect of the Plan. At the same time each
Bah' should make every effort to push the frontiers of their
services, increase the degree and widen the scope of their activities.
In so doing they will bring into play what I often find to be an odd
and yet insistent need within the human psyche to do and see and
have and understand more and more and more.
This restlessness is not necessarily associated with unease or
frustration, but with a sense of urgency and eagerness often allied, in
reference to the Writings, to the soul and its inner life. It's a spiritual
restlessness that tosses us toward transcendence. Abdu'l-Bah
describes the Greatest Holy Leaf as "astir and restless every hour of
her life." Tahirih was "restless and could not be still." Such
restlessness not only transforms the individual but it can influence a
whole civilization. the impulse to express this spiritual restlessness

in action can be conducive to the establishment of a new world

order.
I did have, though, many years of difficulty in town after town as far
back as my youth and I began to realize, during these years of the
new paradigm, and as I approached my retirement and my
experience of it, that all the tribulations I had suffered over those
decades had been for a purpose. They had a preparatory function as
described in the newly published book "Memories of Nine years in
Akka" on page 184. I am not going to go into detail here for the
details are very personal and deeply meaningful and, if readers are
curious as to my meaning here they can go to the wonderful new
book by Dr. Youness Afroukhteh(2003). It is one of the many new
books published during this new paradigm. Publishing is an element
of the paradigm that should not go without notice in a review of its
central features and the Bahai experience during its fate-laden 17
years thusfar at the turn of the millennium. Readers can also go to
my own autobiography in 3 parts here at BLO if they want more
details of my life-narrative.
I have been breaking new soil frequently since my teens, always
moving on: new addresses, new towns, new states and provinces,
new houses and new countries. In retrospect I can see how my life
has been one continuous journey of pushing past frontiers, breaking
new soil, establishing fresh outposts and, in the process, contributing
to the greater diversification of the Faith. This is one of the vital
characteristics of pioneering, an activity that now goes back in my
life for more than half a century: 1962 to 2013. When the Bab called
upon the people of the West to "issue forth from your cities," he was
summoning them to rise above their limitations, reach outward and
do more that they had already done for the Cause. this is true, a
fortiori, in this new paradigm.

And so it is that my book has become part of a strenuous, but

pleasurable, plenitude of activity in these years of my retirement
from another strenuous but often pleasurable world that had kept my
nose to the grindstone, in one way or another, for forty years(19591999). Of course, to imply that all of life up to my retirement at the
age of 55 in 1999 had been a 'nose-to-the-grindstone' experience
would be far from the truth. My nose was often lifted-up to the skies
with pleasures and enjoyments that were far, far, from that
grindstone. During my retirement, though, and as this paradigm
progressed I accustomed myself to making writing and not reading
the first charge on my time and energy. Much of my human action
was in the form of writing. Indeed, it was Life in Action. As the poet
Longfellow once wrote:
I shot an arrow in the air,
It fell to earth I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
Longfellow goes on to describe the role and function of the writer
and poet and it is much like the description given in the book of
Ecclesiastes(xi,1): "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt
find it after many days." The effects of my writing, I could see very
plainly in the last several years, were being produced at distances
thousands of miles and years away from by birthplace and my place
of current residence. I came gradually to the view that my work, my
writing, was not going to die with me, as Leonardo da Vinci once
wrote. Of course, absolute certainty I did not have and I had to live
with the possibility that, as Robert Burns once wrote: "the best laid
schemes" of mice and men might indeed, "gang a-gley."(To a
Mouse, stanza 5)
To some people this activity of writing in which I have now been

engaged in during this paradigm for more than a decade is not a sign,
an expression, of a man of action. Writing is an enterprise, a form of
work, that appears inert to the human eye because this occupation
involves no movement or at least a very minimal one and one that
takes place from a sitting position. In my case the sitting position is
in my study just beside my wife's garden. The activity I am engaged
in, though, is a creative one and, as I quote above from Ecclesiastes
(xi,1), the act when completed and placed in cyberspace is like
casting one's bread upon the waters and finding it after many days.
On the waters of the internet, I have indeed found much of my
writing after many days, months and, now, years. The activity of
writing this book about/within this new paradigm, for that is where I
locate this work in the narrative that is my life, has the power of
producing effects at distances thousands of miles away from where I
am writing.
I am rather of the view that these thoughts I am now putting on the
page will not die with me although, to reiterate, one cannot be
absolutely sure of just how one's words go on living after they are
put on the page and then clicked into place onto sites on the worldwide-web. In life there is much about which one cannot be
absolutely sure. I see this book and my writing as part of my human
mission to work, not as some writers see themselves, for the coming
of the Kingdom of God on Earth but as part of an exercise within the
framework of that Kingdom having already arrived. This new
Kingdom needs workers and I am one of them. This culture of
learning and growth, this new paradigm, is a great event in the Bahai
community in the last two decades and it is part and parcel of this
Kingdom--from a Bahai perspective and certainly from the
perspective of this Bahai who writes and sits and who thinks and
moves about--moves about far less than he did for more than the first
five decades of his life. As Edward Gibbon wrote in his memoirs
"the first of earthly blessings is independence." I cannot claim to

have this intellectual gem in totality but I have it more than ever
before in my life.
This new paradigm is at the core of the real war which has motivated
me to write this book. We each must select our wars and battles, our
skirmishes and engagements, in life in order that we may fight the
fight and walk the walk. My belief in the importance of this theme,
this topic, this new culture of learning and growth, is attested by my
writing this 420 page document. I have cut back other activity, other
writing projects, from necessity or desire, due to sickness or to my
being "a burnt-out case," as I sometimes see myself. I have been able
to strengthen every fibre of my being for this literary exercise in
which my wings were and are free to soar. I chose my writing
projects; but sometimes they seem to choose me. In the last several
years, the last decade of this new paradigm(2001-2011)I have never
found my mind more vigorous or my composition more happy in
spite of the rigours of the bipolar disorder with which I must deal.
Food, warmth, sleep, literary sources and my good wife--these are
all at present I ask - the ultima Thule of my life of wandering
desires, as I paraphrase Hazlitt's expression. A walk in nature is a
vital necessity in my life. My morning and evening pills keep a
steady hand on my emotions and my bipolar disorder. I watch the
boats go by and the flowers in my wife's garden. My walk through
life is now on a literary path with a thin curtain drawn around it to
protect my solitude. On this path are ranged rich portraits of the
history of a new Faith and its developing new paradigm. I aim on a
daily basis to lift aside the veils, for life has many to keep us from
the beauty of the unseen, to see the wonders of existence and play
the music of the spheres. Memory recalls other times in my life,
other places which occupied me in Bahai community life. I go on
some 10 home visits every month and return home, take up my
writing and draw my chair to the fire of creativity. I often fall short

in my literary aims as a writer, a writer who has inherited a vast

tradition with its high standards. I try to capture the vitality of my
own experience of life and art and help make my readers richer for
sharing in that experience.
The pains, the tests and difficulties of life and the desire to engage in
what seemed to me to be a more profitable, a more successful, form
of teaching drove me, by my mid-fifties and in the first Plan(19962000) at the start of this new paradigm, to seek consolation in
intellectual activities. I have taken to writing as some men might
take to drink, to drive away tensions and difficulties which could not
be solved on the physical plane. This involved a rigid cutting-back of
other activities. There was a great release of strength that came from
a long obstructed stream that could at last break forth. Years of
training shaped my approach and my daily activity. I had developed
the habit of letting my mind play around a problem and trying to
grasp it whole before plunging into an attempt to solve it in detail in
a literary form. The acquisition of information is only a start. I
needed to reconstruct and rediscover the nature of this paradigm to
place it in a personal context in which I could play as extensive a
part as was possible--given the limitations of my health. This was
true as I went about constructing this book and as my health
continued to be a problem throughout the first 15 years of this new
Bahai culture.
I construct my reality and it, in turn, constructs me. This means, so
goes one of the many theories in sociology first described in the
1960s as the social construction of reality, that I am shaped within
the stories I, as a human being, tell. This is true of all of us to greater
and lesser extents depending on several factors like our story-telling
capacity and our imaginations, our memories and the details of our
social experience. The processes of the evolution of this Cause have
long caught my imagination and the cultural heritage that has been

my Faith, the Bahai Faith, has made me sensitive to all sorts of

heroism and hints, features and facts and from this heritage. Many of
the intuitions, the hints and the facts and their implications are found
in this work.
The world, modern history, in my lifetime and the lifetime of my
parents has been so full of shocking public events and these events, I
have little doubt, have tended to be fecund, to be productive, of the
intellectual inspiration for this writing. These events, beginning
arguably with the Great War to end all wars and continuing into this
third millennium, have been so catastrophic that the historian and
sociologist in me, as well as the psychologist and the spiritual
journeyman that inhabits my being--have led me to ask questions
and seek answers. The poignant woes in my personal life, in my
society and in the experience of the Bahai community offer to my
imagination very promising subjects; in some ways the tragic
subjects are more promising that those which are the joys and
victories--and there have been many. In some ways, too, it has been
my good fortune to be born in a Time of Troubles for it has been
these troubles that formed the basis, at least in part, for my desire to
deal with what has been flung at me by this current of events. This
book is a natural bi-product of my life experience, both directly and
indirectly as an observer. This experience in all its forms has led to a
fertility of creative expression of which this book is but a part: or so
it seems to me. If there was a barrenness of intellectual and creative
power in my life in the years before this paradigmatic change in the
Bahai community, it was due to many reasons that would be a
tangent to the thrust of this work.
The stream of my intellect I feel, looking back over several decades,
had been forced by circumstances to be obstructed by either practical
concerns or by the lack of an all-consuming literary task. It has only
recently been able to break forth and it has been doing so for at least

the last decade,2001 to 2011, if not longer on this and other literary
tasks, goals and projects. It has taken me some years to apprehend
more than a fragment of the mental wealth that has been poured into
my lap by sensible and insensible degrees in the years of this
paradigm. I still have only a very inadequate notion of the limits and
the extent of this theme, this personal aspect of the paradigm--as
well as other aspects of this Cause as it has been efflorescing in
recent decades, in the years that have been my life, the several
epochs of Abdul-Bahas Divine Plan.
In the earlier decades of my life I have had a schooling, a training, a
grounding, a priming, a coaching, an accustoming, of my mind and
heart in the communication of ideas to other minds over these same
long decades. I had to develop so many skills in precision, in the
acquisition of information and transferring it to others. All these
skills have been and are indispensable in the art of literary
composition on which I am now focussed. This literary work, this
constancy in intellectual labour, is as much a goal-oriented creative
mission, an occupation-vocation-process as a consolation, as a
pleasurable employment and transmission of energy. As that
successful novelist Anthony Trollope emphasizes in his
Autobiography, "these things conquer all difficulties."(chapters 7 and
20). Well, to some extent, Anthony.
In writing, as in daily life, one does not connect with everyone. Like
the paradigm itself, I have my unloving critics and my critical lovers
and a vast host of indifferents as well as those who will never know
of my writing at all immersed as they--as we all--are in a knowledge
explosion that they/we can scarcely keep their/our heads, their/our
minds and hearts from being inundated by and disconnected with
from time to time for fear of drowning. We are all living at what
appears to be the greatest climacteric in the history of the evolution
of human kind at least since the agricultural revolution some twelve

thousand years ago.

My working tempo is set for me by a psychic chronometer with
intellect and a spiritual creativity like the hands of the clock, my
clock, my working psychology, so to speak. This work is no mere
passive receptivity but one of active curiosity, the asking of
questions, the search for meaning and the quest for an understanding
of God's vision at work in history through the channel of this
paradigm. Indeed, my receptivity manifests itself in a willingness to
participate in the process of community building which is just
beginning in this new paradigm. It is I who do the defining of the
extent and form, the way and means of my participation. This book
had been incubating and gestating for several years before I started
writing it four years ago. I can hear at my back time's winged chariot
hurrying near. I roll all my strength and sweetness into a ball and,
though I cannot make the sun stand still, I like to think I can make
him run as Andrew Marvell puts it in his poetic masterful words.(See
his poem: 'To His Coy Mistress'). The shocking events of my time
and age, going as far back as the early years in the lives of my
parents during the Great War(1914-1918), if not those of my
grandparents and great-grandparents during the lives of Bahaullah
and the Bab Themselves, have been a fecund source--as I say
elsewhere in this book--of inspiration. I feel it is my good fortune to
have been entering retirement at this stage in this climacteric of
history-just as the Bahai community was crossing the bridge to the
third millennium on history's stage.
This book is a product of the good fortune that has been my life and
its diverse experience. Further literary efforts within this new
paradigm will continue so long as I am not afflicted by any
barrenness of intellectual and creative power. This book is also but a
fragment of a harvest that has resulted from years of plowing
intellectual, inter-disciplinary and highly diverse fields of

knowledge. This book is, in addition, but a fragment of my

participation in the discourses of society in many of the social spaces
I have inhabited since leaving my home in the Golden Horseshoe at
the western end of Lake Ontario in the mid-1960s. Living in 25
towns and 37 houses, teaching groups as diverse as Inuit and
Aboriginals, senior executives and pre-primary kids, children at all
levels of education and adults at all levels of life, living across two
continents, experiencing two marriages and at least two of my own
personalities at each end of the planet, I was ready to travel in
cyberspace by the time the third millennium turned its corner a
decade ago after the first five years of this new paradigm. Life had
given me, by the time I retired in 1999 and turned to writing fulltime, a rich base for dialogue, for interchange, for analysis and for
my work on the internet. In the last decade I have been involved in
an exercise in teaching and consolidation as well as social action
undreamt of in the first four decades of my life as a Bahai: 19591999. Finally, my belief in the importance of this paradigmatic shift
is attested by my act of writing this book.
At the start of the particular project of writing three-and-a-half years
ago(9/07-2/11), and even after much serious labour on it, I had a
very inadequate notion of the possibilities or the limits, the extent or
the outreach of this theme. The progressive expansion of this oeuvre
to some 750 pages has been no flash of inspiration but, rather a
gradual expression of feelings and thoughts in the form of poetry and
prose within the factual base that is this paradigm. These feelings
and thoughts find expression here in lyrical, epic, narrative and
dramatic genres of writing which readers may find a little over the
top, as they say these days, too emotive, too grandiose, even too
evangelical, to use a term that is not enjoying much of a press these
days.
Some readers will certainly find this book too long for their tastes

coming to Bahai Library Online and hoping for a short exposition,

an essay of digestible length that they can chew over during a few
pages of reading. After spending more than half a century in
classrooms as either a teacher or a student, from 1949 to 2005, I am
only too well aware of the human incapacity to digest print when it
comes in large doses. But write I must even if only for a coterie and
even if it goes on at far too indigestible a length for most readers.
Much of life for me has been, as it has been and is for millions, a
fatuous cycle of impulse and activity on the one hand and idleness
and sloth on the other. This no longer is the case. Materialism,
Tocqueville, once emphasized, enervates and soul and unbends the
springs of action(Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy,
Marvin Zetterman, Stanford UP, 1967, p.64); domesticity is
reinforced and social ties are loosened, he continues in an analysis
that explains much of the problem and dilemma behind participation
in the new Bahai paradigm.
EVANGELISM AND PROPHECY
The evangelism in this book, if there is any, and in this new Bahai
paradigm is very different from that found in the many forms in
other religions, especially Protestant Christianity which western
readers get exposed to in their daily lives in different ways. One of
the best knownand most controversialtheological varieties of
evangelism, for example, is the doctrine of the rapture, a belief
underpinned by a reading of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 in which the
true church is expected to be caught up in the air to meet Jesus and
the saints in heaven. According to some proponents of this view,
Christ will effectively return twice: first, secretly, to rapture the
church, removing true believers from earth while the rest of
humanity suffers the tribulation; and again, publicly, at the end of the
tribulation, after which he will set up his thousand-year millennial
kingdom on earth. Between these events, a seven year period of

suffering known as the tribulation will take place, in which God

will unleash his wrath upon those who have failed to accept Jesus as
their personal saviour.
The Bahai view of prophecy, of apocalypticism and
dispensationalism is very different from the many Protestant views
of which this particular variety of evangelism is among the more
popular. The Bahai views of prophecy are worlds away from the
many Protestant forms. The Bahai views in many other areas of
modern Christian theology, as well as much modern secular thought,
are also worlds away. Bahais aiming to put into place many of the
goals of this paradigm need to keep in mind the immense gaps
between the many cosmologies they will find in their dialogue with
others and the several major articulations of the Bahai cosmology.
It has been this way, living with this immense gap in thought, in all
my Bahai life, and in the lives of Bahais in the West for as long as
this Faith has been ploughing in the fields of hopeful expansion. The
intellectual paradigm which underpins the new Bahai culture of
learning and growth and many of the paradigms underpinning much
that is taking place in the wider society and its pluralistic culture,
though, have been growing closer since the mid-1990s--or so it
seems to me. The new Bahai culture and its community building,
initiated only within the last two decades, is growing to meet a
multitude of other cultures in the context of this new paradigm. Who
knows what will transpire in the decades ahead as the world seeks
answers to its enigmatic problems and puzzles and finds in the Bahai
community a model for world fellowship.
JOY AND CELEBRATION
Lyricism, rejoicing, exultation and celebration at the achievements
of the Bahai community all find expression in this book as well as

the spirit of evangelism. I have nothing but praise for the amazing
qualities of endurance and patience exercised by the Bahai
community in the more than a century and a half of heroism in Bahai
history. My work is, in some ways, both an elegy and an eulogy, a
commemoration and a memorial, a monument and a remembrance,
an acclamation and an accolade, an adulation and an applause,a
commendation and a compliment, an encomium and an exaltation, a
glorification and a laudation,a paean and a panegyric, a plaudit and a
salutation to the achievements and victories, the sorrows and
suffering found in this and other paradigms in the Bahai historical
experience.
There is a joy at the dawn of this new Order which has begun to flow
around the planet by sensible and insensible degrees in the years
after the passing of Bahaullah in 1892. My feelings echo
Wordsworth's famous lines: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be
alive,//But to be young was very heaven. And I might add "to be in
the evening of my life with decades of work within these years of the
dawn behind me--is also very heaven." I see this work as part of my
soul's response to an epiphany that is something more than a merely
temporal event. The dawn that has awakened this joy is an irruption
into time out of eternity by a Manifestation of God in our time.
THE TRUE MEASURE OF A RELIGION
I am not blind, though, to the interpersonal problems, the failings,
the ineptitude, the gross stupidity and the many, many inadequacies
both in myself and in the behaviour of my fellow believers. If one
was to judge this Faith by the believers, indeed, if one was to judge
any religion or philosophy, by its adherents, one would find that
group wanting. The greatness of this Faith does not lie in the
comings and goings, the deeds and doings of those who claim to be
its members. The greatness of this Faith lies in the most wondrous

human being ever to exist on this planet, the Founder of the Bahai
Faith, Bahaullah and the explicit provisions He made for His
legitimate succession and, in the process, for establishing an Order, a
System, which is seen by the Bahai community as part of the
Revelation Itself--and is known as the Covenant. The result of His
life and those provisions will be the gradual realization of His
Wondrous Vision, a Vision which constitutes the brightest emanation
of His Mind and the fairest fruit of the fairest civilization that the
world has yet seen. The realization of that Wondrous Vision has
made a remarkable start in these years of my life and some of that
story is found here. Some of it is taking place in the context of this
new paradigm.
One cannot look at the followers of the Truth of any of the great
religions for the truth; the sign of the truth is to be found in the Great
Beings Who were the Founders. This if true of Jesus and
Christianity, of Muhammad and Islam and on and on through other
major interventions of the Divine in human affairs at periodic times
in history. I could write more here about this important concept and
what you might call the cross-cultural messianism that the Bahai
Faith espouses. I could write more about the theophanology, the
much fuller theophany that is found in the Bahai religion.
The world hardly suffers from a shortage of ideas in the vast field of
religious studies. In this paradigm or in previous paradigms the
opposite is the case. Humanity runs the serious risk of suffocating in
a surfeit of ideas which are either so vast, so self-evident and so
urgent as to generate intense anxiety--or so esoteric and divisive as
to preclude any unified approach to their exmaination and even
discourage any general interest. This paradigm provides, at least for
the Bahai community, a unified approach. The Bahai Cause has a
vital contribution to make to the unity of the children of men, to the
search for world unity. Its central theme was enunciated more than a

century ago in a remarkable series of letters and books by this Faith's

Founder addressed from His penal cell in the Turkish colony of
Akka. That theme was the emergence of a global civilization and,
after more than one hundred years, humankind has moved into its
long struggle with the enormous new social and material forces, not
in the context of a search for unity, but rather, in one of attachment
to the sectarian, political, nationalistic and racial loyalties of the past.
The result is the world we live in and it is this world which is the
backdrop to this paradigm.
A ONE MILLION YEAR CYCLE AND ITS PERIODS
The cycle which began with Adam is divided into three periods
ending nearly 500,000 years from now. The Bahai Era(B.E.),
beginning in 1844, is the second period in that cycle: 1844 to 2844.
This entire cycle is dominated, according to Abdul-Baha, by the
specifically Bahai principle of the political and religious unification
of the planet for human welfare. The theophany expressed in the
Bahai teachings flows through this new paradigm. This is a much
wider focus, a different topic, and it concerns itself with the next half
a million years. Those years will see changes in the sphere of
cultural evolution much different than those which have taken place
in the cycle since the emergence of Homo heidelbergensis 500,000
years ago, a now extinct species of the genus homo and arguably a
distant precursor to Homo sapiens sapiens.
I wrote the following two prose-poems about Homo heidelbergensis
and I trust these pieces of writing which follow place for readers the
million years I refer to here in a long-range, a colourful and
intellectually stimulating perspective. This perspective may not be
that useful to readers as they go about putting this new paradigm into
practice in the years ahead; for we all must focus on the here and
now, on what is in front of our nose so to speak. But, for me, this

long range, what you might call this anthropological and futuristic
perspective is part of the Bahai vision, at least my version of it--and
vision creates reality as Horace Holley used to say.
FORTUITOUS
The political and religious unification of the planet for human
welfare is the principle that is gradually coming to dominate this
cycle, a cycle which began about 6000 B.P., several thousand years
after the first signs of the emergence of agricultural civilization in a
known as the neolithic revolution. The first full-blown manifestation
of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern
Sumerian cities(ca. 5,300 BC) whose emergence also inaugurates the
end of the prehistoric Neolithic and the beginning of historical time.
This cycle, according to Abdul-Baha, will last for 500,000 years
and we are, at the moment, at the start of the second period in this
cycle(1844-2844).(1)
The first proto-states developed in Mesopatamia, Egypt and India at
about 6000 B.P. The concepts and the principals involved in the
development of the nation state can be analysed and discussed as
they are in political anthropology, political sociology and history
among other social science disciplines. For my purposes here, the
union, the federation of seven Dutch provinces in 1581, independent
of a monarch could be said to initiate the start of the modern phase
of the nation state. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, signed when
parties who had been at war for 30 years came together, could also
be seen as marking another critical stage in the development of
modern nationhood. It was the first time that a European community
of sovereign states was established. And it was only possible because
all of its members recognized each other as having equal legal
standing, and guaranteed each other their independence. They had to
recognize their international legal treaties as binding, if they wanted

to be an international community of law.

Previous cycles in physical and cultural evolution are not referred to
as cycles, as far as I know, by Abdul-Baha. But if one goes back
to 500,000 B.P. we find, at least since 1907, Homo heidelbergensis,
the possible direct ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis. He is seen as
part of the proto-human species. He hunted, buried his dead and was
developing a complex mind.(2) And so began the story of the million
year period in which we are at the mid-point. -Ron Price with thanks
to (1)Juan Cole, The Concept of the Manifestation in the Bahai
Writings, Bahai Studies, Vol.9, pp.36-7; and (2) Science and
Nature: Prehistoric Life, bbc.co.uk, 18 December 2007.
It really only began just the other day-several thousand years after we began
to settle into agriculture and with the
development of those proto-states in
Mesopotamia, Egypt, India: 6000 B.P.
It really only began just the other day-after that union of Dutch provinces in
1581 and that Treaty of Westphalia in
1648, landmarks on the way to that big
year 1844
the start of the 2nd Period

of this Bahai Era: 1844 to 2844, precursor

of the 3rd period: 2844 to 501,844 A.D.
It really only began just the other day-the political and religious unification
of Homo.sapiens, sapiens, sub-species
of Homo.sapiens of the genus Homo of
the family Hominidae of that order of

Primates of the class Mammalia of the

phylum Chordata of the kingdom Animalia-after the great treck out of Africa thousands
and thousands of years ago to cover the globe
in the greatest of journeys, stories, ever told,
but gradually being unfolded by modern science.
And so the units of social organization grew:
clans and chiefdoms, tribes, city states,nations
and now a federation across the face of this planet.
Little by little, day by day in larger and larger
interdependencies. A fortuitous series of synchronized
events bringing this national state, a cultural artefact
created through a spontaneous distillation of discrete
historical events, into existence just at the time
as a Light of Divine guidance appeared in the
Middle East: Shaykh Ahmad, Siyyid Kazim, the Bab,
Bahullh and Abdul-Baha as well as a complete(1)
institutionalization of this immense charismatic Force.(2)
(1) 1743-1921
(2) 1921-1963
ONE MILLION YEARS:
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS UNIFICATION:
THE DOMINANT PRINCIPLE OF THIS CYCLE
Last night I watched As It Happened: 1929-The Wall Street
Crash.(1) I could not help but reflect on the letters of Shoghi
Effendi published in The World Order of Bah'u'llh in 1938. These
letters had a different aim and a far larger scope than his first letters
to the North American Bahais from 1922 to 1929. These letters,

these communications, from 1929 to 1936 unfolded for the Bahais a

much clearer vision than they had previously possessed of the
relation between the Bah' community and the entire process of
social evolution under the dispensation of Bah'u'llh. This body of
letters were first written just eight months before the Wall Street
crash and Shoghi Effendi continued writing these letters into the
years of the depression. They were finally published in a collected
edition in 1938 as war approach and the depression was finally
ending. The period was one of the nadirs of civilization.
The distinction between the Bah' community and the sects and
congregations of former religions were made apparent in these
letters. These world order letters established in one volume, among
other things, the Bahai; Administrative Order as the nucleus and
pattern of the world civilization that was then emerging. In the
introduction, Horace Holley, the then secretary of the American
Bahai community wrote: "In light of the existing international chaos,
these letters reveal the most significant Truth of this era, namely that
the old conception of religion, which separated spirituality from the
fundamental functions of civilization, compelling men to abide by
conflicting principles of faith, of politics and of economics, has been
forever destroyed."(2) -Ron Price with appreciation to (1)SBS TV, 3
July 2009, 8:30-9:30 p.m. and (2)Wikipedia, 4 July 2009.
The dominant principle of this cycle
is the political and religious unity of
the human species--since the great...
dispersal, radiation, homo erectus...
hominid....Out-of-Africa 2 million
years ago...establishment of sapien
human lineage, genus homo, stone
tools, a rudimentary technology...
Homo heidelbergensis, 500,000 ya

and Homo neanderthalenis-physical

anthropologys branch and cultural
and social anthropology telling us
of clans, tribes, chiefdoms, then
city-states, nations and now global
...yes...going global since perhaps
early explorers, say, a 1000 years of
travel on the waters of the earth now
.......
overnight its one world on our way
for another 500,000 years of political
and religious unificationthats the
trip we are now on day by day in the
midst of a tempest, fiery and furious.
THIS EPIC LITERARY WORK
I hope it is obvious to readers by now that there is also an epic
response in both this commentary on the new Bahai paradigm and in
my total literary oeuvre. There is an expression here of a certain
romance that is evoked by conquests and defeats, by treks and
voyages, and by both the anarchy and the musical flow of the allembracing ocean of history in our time, a history that this new Faith
is caught up with in ways we can scarcely appreciate. The poignant
woes and the advancements in modern history in our planetizing
society offer to my imagination subjects as equally promising as the
history of the successes and tragedies in the Bahai community in the
last two centuries.
The successes, the advancements, the progress, in the pluralistic
society I have had my being in all my life have been bright with
promise; and they are bright with promise in this new Bahai
paradigm and especially as the international Bahai community

headed into the third millennium a decade ago with the completion
of the Arc Project on Mt. Carmel and the developments at the Bahai
World Centre in the decade since then. The successes in the Bahai
community are beyond doubt and they presage the gradual
realization of that Wondrous Vision which constitutes the brightest
emanation of Bahaullahs Mind and the fairest fruit of the fairest
civilization the world has yet seen.(WOB, p.48)
For many years I have thought how closely the Bah' teaching
activities resemble a romantic relationship, and how easily the
hungering heart of a new believer can confuse the gift of the
teachings with those he experiences for the giver. How often does a
new Bah' become the object of such marked attention and
disinterested love that he or she feels he is in love with the person
who has been his teacher. This, of course, is not something that only
occurs in the Bah' Faith. The language of the lower emotions and
the flesh is the first we learn, it is all to easy to translate one's first
spiritual awakening into those terms of the flesh.
TRUE HEROES
The true heroes of this and any cause are so often the conquered, not
the conquering Achilles, but the conquered Hector; these heroes are
not always the Bahai teachers who have been responsible for
thousands entering the Cause, but they are also the Martha Roots, the
George Townshends, the many who have suffered, Abdul-Baha and
Shoghi Effendi none of whom rise on page one of their biographies
to positions of victory but who lead lives of trial and tribulation,
great victory as well as crushing defeat. This study of the new
paradigm does not expatiate on the lives of saints and the martyrs,
the heroes and heroines over the many decades of Bahai history,
however inspirational these lives have been. Other books do this job
only too well and there are now, in the years of this new paradigm,

many books found in Bahai bookshops made available by the

publishing houses of the Bahai community which have dramatically
increased in number around the world in the last quarter century.
These books can and will enrich the knowledge base beyond the core
of learning provided in the Ruhi Books.
In the treks and voyages of Abdul-Baha and Bahaullah, in those of
Bahiyyih Khanum and Lua Getsinger, of Martha Root and of Keith
Ransom-Keilor, in those of the many others of significance and
insignificance in the epic story-narrative that is Bahai history, the
wondrous history of the Bahai community has just begun; the path
has just been landscaped; the garden has just been planted. The story
has continued and will continue in the decades ahead in this new
paradigm. The epic theme, the great and grand metanarrative that is
the history of this Cause will continue within the years of this new
paradigm on projects and plans, with perils and pitfalls that we can,
as yet, scarcely imagine. This paradigm is part of the latest chapter in
a long story, a story that this book takes back to the middle of the
18th century, although with only brief stopovers in the years from
the 1740s to the 1840s and the 1840s to the 1940s.
I was not born until 1944 and I do not go into any detail on
paradigms in Bahai history before my birth. This book, readers must
remember, has a very personal retrospect and prospect. There is a
poetry in this long narrative of more than two centuries and in this
latest chapter of only 20 years. To a significant extent it is my poetry
and a poetry which could never have been written without a
community context. I convey some of this poetry in these pages with
a feeling for the drama in the facts of the story and even a degree of
awe at the epiphany of God's plan in the context of Abdul-Bahas
Divine Plan that is playing itself out in our time--in its first epochs. I
convey some of the historical panorama of this new paradigm which
impinges on my eyes as a spectator and participant in its often

seemingly mundane events. And I try to "run with patience the race
that is set before me."(The Bible,Hebrews,xii,i)
When a man or woman find their true qiblah, their spirit rises to the
full height of their powers and in each person the process seems to
work itself out differently. There is a feeling that is transfigured into
a sense of awe and, for some, the result is poetry. Readers will find
some of that here.
In its totality, this book gives glimpses of a complex whole that is
the Bah community as seen in the light of this new paradigm at
the centre of this community spanning as it does some 6,000 clusters
and 120,000 localities around the globe. But only glimpses of this
whole are found here because this essay or book is not a history of
the Bahai Faith nor a review of its teachings, not a scholarly study of
its community life nor the Faith's philosophy, not on overview of its
sociology or psychology. This book has become a sort of pot-pourri
of many aspects of the above, but with a focus on this new paradigm,
a paradigm that is now part and parcel of the way this new world
religion goes about much of its community life, its outward thrusts
and its inward being. This book is not a review of contemporary
Bahai history since 1996, since the start of this new paradigm, nor
any one of a number of topics that are dealt with in a host of other
books in what is now a burgeoning literature on this new world
religion, a literature that few can keep up with as this new paradigm
takes off into what seem like quickening years and quickening winds
in a global tempest unprecedented in its magnitude in this new
millennium.
This book is part of what seems to have become a permanent lure on
my intellectual literary horizon, an ever-receding and never captured
intellectual quarry, like that electric hare for the greyhound on the
racing track. It is part of a process that keeps my brain running at

full-tilt, at full-stretch, these days with an eagerness which flags

every day after some eight hours of work as I try to catch what I can
with this vaulting curiosity. I am able to satisfy, though, a craving
which has been damned back for decades and has accumulated, in
the process and over time, a powerful sense of urgency. I have also
been inspired in my writing by the work of many others, too many to
name here. This renewed, rather than unflagging, curiosity, like
some divine wind which blows my ship, shows no sign of becoming
becalmed. It generates higher faculties, higher flights, goals to make
something of my life, to leave a mark, to provide some useful
knowledge to add to humanity's common stock. Time will tell, of
course, just how useful that knowledge becomes to the Bahai
community in the future. From the feedback I have received thusfar,
I have no doubt of its present utility at least to a coterie, a few
readers out there in cyberspace.
SOLITUDE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION: AN INDIVIDUAL
RECIPE AND MENU
As I mentioned above, each individual must work out for themselves
their own combination of social interaction on the one hand and
solitude on the other as they go about working out their role in this
new paradigm. The permutations and combinations that are found in
the myriad relationships that constitute the tone and texture, the
fibre, of the Bahai community are staggering in their immensity
when viewed across the globe amongst the several million Bahais.
There are many shoulds and musts, many obligations and duties,
many responsibilities and activities on the agenda of our lives as
Bahais in this new paradigm----and no one can dismiss these
realities, realities which sometimes may appear harsh and
demanding. Each of us must work out what we can cope with, what
is within our competence, our capacities, our circumstances.

Many of of the realities of the overall commitment of being a Bahai

are not new with this paradigm. The commitment that is at the centre
of our lives as Bahais determines so much that becomes the life we
have led. We each must chose for ourselves what part we will play in
what often may appear to be a litany of endless and weighty tasks.
Each of our individual misfortunes and merits, our transitory and
decade-long life experience, must be transmuted into acts of
engagement if the dross of egotism and animus is to be refined away
and replaced by virtues. It all takes place within the limits of our
incapacity as we exercise this engagement in a multitude of ways
during our years on Earth.
The public misfortune, the global disasters are so catastrophic in the
wider world in which we are enmeshed that each person must find
their personal form of identification with the pubic sphere and its
disasters and its outrageous fortune. Our sense of private spiritual
malaise on the one hand and the transforming effects of the
indwelling God on the other needs to be so intense that one cannot
be left in peace. The result of this concern is a sting to our
conscience with an urge to action, a push to participation. The result
and that sting requires of us participation in this new paradigm, each
in our own way. the push we receive must come from within and not
from the sense of duty imposed upon us by overzealous fellow
believers. Indeed, the capacity to say "no" and to be our own person
is crucial if we are not to be crushed in the drama that is this new
paradigm in these hours before the dawn, as the House wrote in a
recent message, in what well may be the darkest hours in history.
In my case, after 50 years of various forms of practical activity in the
Bahai community(1959-2009), I am now pursuing the practical life
by literary means and entering into the mansions of the finest
thoughts and writings, the most relevant analyses of history and
sociology, psychology and philosophy, among other social sciences

and humanities and eating of the ambrosia that I like to think I was
born to eat--although complete certitude that I am doing the right
thing at the right time--in this as in any other activity in one's life is
an elusive emotional experience. Still, this writing and this book
invite a totality of response unchecked by any "maybe" and it
stimulates a critical reaction unstigmatized by the blame of the
blamer. Bahaullah is the archtypal Poet and he has called each of us
with such a calling that we cannot but run towards the Ocean of His
Cause:
with the whole enthusiasm of our hearts, with all the eagerness of
our souls, the full fervour of our will and the concentrated efforts of
our entire beings.(Gleanings, p.321).
In these hours of mental retreat in these recent years of my
retirement from FT, PT and most casual-volunteer work, this
exhausted practitioner, this burnt-out case, this sufferer from: bipolar
disorder, an obsessive compulsive personality disorder and a good
dollup of Tourette's Syndrome among a list of practical everyday
activities and concerns which must be attended to like: Feasts,
firesides, deepenings, devotional meetings, dusting, vacuuming,
cooking, washing dishes and taking care of the garbage--this sufferer
is freer from the burdens of the practical life than at any other time
in his path, except perhaps his early-to-mid childhood back in the
mid-to-late 1940s and early 1950s.
I have been able to transmute the energies which I formerly devoted
to the world of being a student and a wage earner, being a parent and
a highly active Bahai in the social dimension of community
experience, being a much more socially involved person with an
extensive agenda of practical concerns associated with people in
community--to a series of intellectual works. Hopefully these
thoughts will have some longevity but, even if they do not, they have

a field of discourse in the contemporary world which I could hardly

have dreamt of in those five decades of down-to-earth activity, say,
1953-2003.
The events which I have chosen to write about are not only those in
the first 15 years of this new paradigm, but also my experience and
the Bahai experience of community over the seven decades, 1937 to
2007, the first seven decades of the extension of this Cause to the
four corners of the Earth, an event, a phenomenon unprecedented in
the annals of humankind and scarcely appreciated by humankind at
this juncture in history. There are many minds infatuated with other
spectacles and other studies. This book is an expression of my
infatuation with what I see as a field of immense personal
profitability. I hope others can share in my sense of enthusiasm. I
can but hope. I have been an eyewitness to the Westernization and
globalization, the planetization of humankind to a degree
unapproached in previous epochs of this Cause. This unific series of
events, highly complex in their several manifestations, are events
which have been synchronized and coextensive with the expansion
of the Bahai Faith to the interstices of the globe in the first century
of its Formative Age, 1921-2021--and they are especially
synchronized with the first years of this new paradigm, 1996 to
2010---and, a fortiori, beyond into the second century of that
Formative Age. And I will see these developments beyond 2021 in
all their anarchy and chaos, all their wonder and awe, should I live
beyond the age of 77!
The Bahai view of history is teleological. The natural world is, as
Abdul-Baha stated "under the complete control of God"(Some
Answered Questions, p.196). The entire creation was from the
beginning subject to a plan which evolved according to law. The
history of humankind is to evolve toward the endless perfections of
the species. This is an a priori system. It is slow and is accomplished

by degrees. It is organic and there is progress through providential

intervention and providential control of the historical process. This
Bahais sometimes call progressive revelation. This of course is only
stating the obvious to the Bahai of many years standing however
complex the process is in its actual working out. There is no
contemptus mundi here--no historical pessimism. Each of our roles
as Bahais is to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization and now,
in these years, we do this in the context of this new culture of
learning and growth. The core of the struggle for each of us is to
improve ourselves. The readiness and the intelligence with which we
each play our part affects our happiness and progress.
In these periods of enforced leisure, between short spurts of
engagement in some of the everyday aspects of this new paradigm, I
continue my literary work, my act of creation. While the world is
going to wrack and ruin, as it often feels bewildered, agonized and
helpless and as this Cause is expanding in ways hardly appreciated
by the vast bulk of humankind--and, I might add, by many of the
Bahais themselves--we each must put one foot in front of the other,
so to speak. This literay work of mine is no pearl of great price but it
is for me, at least, a small gem cast upon the waters. My writing in
all its forms may, in the end, be what Roger White said of most
poetry: it may only make a sound and have a significance like that of
a feather dropped into the rushing waters of the river at the foot of
the grand-canyon. But write I must driven by some inner force that I
can only partly explain.
My life, by the age of 55, was rudely shattered yet again by the
vicissitudes and rigours of bipolar disorder, by a physical enervation
requiring injections of testosterone as well as utter fatigue with my
work as a professional teacher and with the demands of my activity
in both the Bah' community and the other communities which were
part of my life. But this shattering took place as my generation was

experiencing a crystallization of the forces of unity, titanic forces

under the various names of planetization, globalization, technoelectronic unification which will be with us as a species for
millennia to come. This eruption of unific forces, this volcano of
global energies, had been breaking out, arguably, for more than a
century, but it took off in my generation and especially during this
paradigm. This work, this book, is in part my response to this
eruption. It is a response, an engagement in a hearty endeavour that
feels more effectual than the many years spent in company and
conversation, in meetings and in coming-and-going from room-toroom, home-to- home, group-to-group and town-to-town during the
decades from the 1950s to the 1990s. I still do some of this comingand-going a dozen years into my retirement but far less than I did in
the years 1959 to 1999.
I now feel as if I have time to mend my partial understandings, to
correct some of the defects and infirmities of my constitution and
nature by observation and reflection. I have become much more
conscious of how weak and foolish so much of my former activity in
life has been and how blind I have been as a surveyor of the
inclinations and affections of both myself and other men. I am not
beating-myself-up over these sins of omission and commission, but
these understandings help to moderate any sense of pride and
posturing that I might be inclined to let slip from the dogs of my
inner life. I am sometimes horrified when I see various amounts of
pride and vanity residing in my bosom; sadly my will, like an
indifferent landlord, often lacks the necessary indignation that might
inspire me to evict such unhealthy tenants. Still, I now enjoy a
tranquillity and serenity of mind not equalled in any previous year of
my life. It is this ease and quietness which allows me to pursue this
literary work with a focus I have never been able to achieve except
in employment, community work and family life. Much of this
tranquillity is due to a package of medications which took me many

years to fully accept and to entertain with a full compliance, but it is

tranquillity nevertheless. Whether what I write will achieve a breadth
and profundity of vision and form, whether it manifests any
intellectual power, I must leave for others to judge whether they be
my contemporaries or future readers whom I will never know. My
soul's motion in relation to my Beloved is the unfolding of all the
meaning of life, but that motion is a subtle and highly complex
quotient. Indeed, the soul is, in the end, an unfathomable entity as
we travel this earthly life.
SOME PERSONAL BACKGROUND
I came into the Bahai community in the 1950s at a time when this
infant Faith community was still in its earliest days in the West. It
had just finished the sixth decade of its history in the West: 18941954. There were, perhaps, three hundred Bahais at the most in
Canada and less than one hundred in Australia at the time my mother
saw a Bah' advertisement in the local paper. I have lived all my life
on this mortal coil in these two countries, these two Bahai
communities which were struggling then in the 1950s as they are
struggling now to expand their membership beyond a meagre few.
Now Canada is struggling with its 30,000 membership and Australia
with its (circa) 20,000 strong community. I became a Bahai in the
last half of the third major organized teaching Plan of 1953 to 1963
as a dark heart of an age of transition was about to open, as humanity
sat on the edge of self-destruction in that post-world-war II society
of the Cold War. They were the first years, the first decade, after the
discovery of the A-bomb: 1945 to 1954. The signs of social
breakdown were increasing with every passing day then as they are
now and as they have been, arguably since the coming of Bahaullah
and the Bab. The processes of breakdown, of progress and decline
are complex ones, though, and too difficult to deal with her ein any
detail.

After several decades of community experience and work as a

teacher both in the Bahai community and professionally at all levels
of formal education, the seeds of my thought began to germinate
more extensively as the Arc Project advanced in those fin de siecle
years. By the fifth decade of my Bahai experience(1993-2003) I
began to put my burgeoning thoughts into some order and I will go
on doing so, for it is an endless task, until the last syllable of my
recorded time, or until some trauma, like senile dementia, takes over
my faculties. It is not possible for me to be sucked back into the
turmoil of practical affairs from which so many never extricate
themselves due to my several infirmities, illnesses which simply do
not allow me to engage in any activity for more than about two hours
at any one stretch. Nothing can now draw me back into that
maelstrom of a fully engaged community life since such
engagement, such an intense level of social/people involvement, is
simply beyond my physical and psychological, my emotional and
social capacity. If readers want to read about my health problems in
more detail they can go to Bahai Library Online, this very site and
read a 90,000 word description.
But I have also found a fullness of life, of participation in this new
paradigm, that is and was not possible to achieve in any other way; I
had found a haven where my mind is/was as free as it could be from
the various worries which had occupied me all of my Bahai life.
Whatever stale and flat existence was mine form time to time, from
my childhood to my late middle-age, say, the late 1940s to the late
1990s, I am now cheered by a new-found courage to seize
opportunities to write about the Cause across the wide spectrum
which is the internet. Of course, there have always been many
opportunities, but I now have a heightened sensitivity due, in part if
not mainly, to my new roles of writer and author, poet and publisher,
editor and researcher, online blogger and journalist.

I make the occasional passing comment on contemporary history and

politics, current events and the recent crises of the recent fin de
siecle years and the first decade of the 21st century. I will insert here
three prose-poems in the context of what is the most extensive
comment in this book on contemporary times, the years of this new
paradigm and some events leading up to it. I wrote these poems in
2001 on the day after the 9/11 event, in 2003 and in 2008 by which
time the paradigm was largely in place with criticisms at least
partially losing their heat on the internet. These small literary efforts
were written 5, 7 and 12 years, respectively, into this new paradigm,
just after I retired from FT and PT work and as many of the forms of
casual-volunteer activity as I could to make, what seemed to me, a
more significant contribution to this new paradigm than I had done
in the last years of the 20th century, indeed, in the forty years of my
previous Bahai life from 1959 to 1999. The three prose-poems are
entitled "A New-Old War," "Those Minarets of the West," and
"Forces of Darkness."
A NEW-OLD WAR
In my last weeks in the classroom as a full-time teacher from
February to April 1999 and in the first weeks of an early retirement
at the age of 55 from a profession that had occupied me since the
1960s; in what was spring in the Antipodes and living as I was in
one of the most remote cities on the planet, Perth Western Australia-a series of meetings finalized the organization, the leadership and the
financial backing for a coordinated suicide attack that had been
initially proposed to Osma Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in 1996. That
attack was centred on the crashing of two airliners into the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Five years and
five months after that series of meetings, on 9 September 2001, two
hijacked airliners crashed into the Twin Towers and the Towers

collapsed. A War on Terrorism had begun, at least that was the

argument in a series of TV programs, The Secret History of 9/11,
SBS TV, 12:00-1:00 a.m. 11 September 2008.
Between that spring of 1999 and the autumn of 2001: President
Clinton expressed the view that the greatest regret of his presidency
was his failure to take serious action against al-Qaedi and Osama
Bin Laden. George W. Bushs presidency had begun; I had moved
to Tasmania from Western Australia in what Downunder is called a
sea-change; I had gone on my pilgrimage to the Bahai World Centre
in 2000 and begun to receive a Disability Support Pension in 2001.
The story of my disability can be found on the internet at
"RonPrice,BPD." In the spring of 2001 I also began a new life of
publishing extensively on the internet of which my disability story
was but one of the 1000s of pieces of writing. -Ron Price, Pioneering
Over Four Epochs; and with thanks to (1)Internet Sites on The
Secret History of 9/11, SBS TV, 12:00-1:00 a.m. 11 September
2008.
When the War on Terror began
I was ready for I, too, had been
part of a long and secret war for
some four decades with all the
ideal forces and confirmations
rushing to support, reinforcing
and opening doors, razing those
impregnable castles to the ground
so that I could attack the right and
left wings of the hosts wherever I
lived and had my being, so that I
could break through the lines of
the legions and carry my attack to
the very centre of earths powers.

I had tried to be firm in that Covenant;

I had tried to show fellowship and love;
I had travelled north to south, east to west,
across two continents: my spirit attracted,
my resolution firm, my magnanimityat
least some of the timeexalted; my intention
purewell, as far as I was able. I tried to
avoid controversyas far as I was able.
My thought at peaceas far as I was able.
To each, it seems, we have our engagements
with only some doors opening and some
thoughts at peace and only partly pure.
FORCES OF DARKNESS(1)
This poem started, was inspired, by watching a history of terrorism
in the twentieth century on ABC TV in Australia.(2) The writers and
producers of this program took July 22nd 1946 as the starting point
for terrorisms new affliction for human society. This hypothetical
beginning to the history of terrorism coincided with the first months
of the second Seven Year Plan(1946-1953) of Abdul-Baha's Divine
Plan. July 22nd was also the eve of my second birthday. On that date
in 1946 the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed by members
of a Jewish terrorist organization in Palestine killing 91 people.
Shoghi Effendi made no mention of this event in the massive
compendium of his published letters to the various countries of the
world. In the previous year, though, Shoghi Effendi wrote two of the
longest letters of his ministry, some 8000 and 12,000 words, letters
which defined the nature, direction, the history and the future of the
then embryonic Bahai community of North America, a community
that had just completed the first half century of its history: 18921942. -Ron Price with thanks to (1)Shoghi Effendi, Letter to

American Bahais, July 20th, 1946, Messages to America: 19321946, Wilmette, 1947, p.105; and (2)ABC TV, The Big Picture: The
Age of Terror, August 13th, 2003: 8:30-9:30 pm.
I was just turning two, then,
back in '46 when terrorism had
just unleashed its first savage
blows and His Plan had just begun
its 2nd stage completely unbeknownst(1)
to anyone in my small world and in most
of the small worlds of everyone else,too.
His successor was turning, always turning
his mind to the needs of the Plan,a Cause,
a community,creating as he did a portrait
coloured and enriched by his subtle vision
of history, history as a performance that
was enacted before a divine audience by
ordinary mortals with a plot and script
composed by Providence and played out by
those same mortals on a stage that was their
lives. Always there was fidelity to that script
when attempting to set in motion those actors,
one of whom became me back in that 3rd stage.(2)
(1) 1946-1953
(2) 1953-1963
Ron Price
15 August 2003
THOSE MINARETTES OF THE WEST

Today we all witnessed on our television screens the collapse of the

twin-towers of the World Trade Building. Thousands were killed and
another eight-hundred in the Pentagon when a jet crashed into its
centre. The heart of America's military and industrial complex
shattered in the most savage act of terrorism in American history.
This poem is an attempt to make some sense, to express some
understanding of the tragedy that occurred.-Ron Price, Pioneering
Over Four Epochs, 12 Sept 2001.
He called them minarets
with such gentle irony
that we nearly missed His point.
I'm sure He knew they would
come crashing down upon our heads
as our civilization was to come
undone in the years, the decades,
perhaps, centuries ahead....
For those time-honoured
and powerful strongholds
of orthodoxy, political
and religious, can not save us...
And this military and industrial
complex, blown apart in front of our
eyes one-hundred-and-twelve days
after the Opening of the Terraces.
Is there any connection, Horace?(1)
You always said: religion is cause
and history is effect in a tortured
interaction just about beyond reason.

It reminded me of the Kennedy

tragedy, World War II and I,
horrific events following
in rapid succession:
(i)the election of the House,
(ii)the beginning of the Plan, and
(iii)'Abdu'l-Bahs trip west,
....respectively...respectively...
(1) Horace Holley, secretary of the NSA of the United States for
many years and Hand of the Cause.
Ron Price 12 September 2001
SOME CURRENT ISSUES IN THE WIDER SOCIETY
Before passing on from the crises of the last two decades, crises that
took place in the historical backdrop to this new paradigm, I will
draw on one quotation from Shoghi Effendi written during the
depression of the 1930s. He refers to "the uncertainties, the perils
and the financial stringency afflicting the nation" and the need for
the continuous and abundant flow of funds; he emphasizes in that
same letter to LSAs that they "desist from insisting too rigidly on the
minor observances and beliefs which might prove a stumbling- block
in the way of any sincere applicant." This letter could very well have
been written with the same sentiments by the House of Justice in the
recent years of the international financial crisis and in these years as
the Cause became more open to people outside the Cause, more
inclusive in its orientation and necessarily more flexible in setting
out the qualifications for membership with an emphasis, not a new
emphasis in many ways, on gradually winning over those who
become Bahais to the unreserved acceptance of whatever has been

ordained in its teachings.

There have been many issues which have come to a head in the
wider world in these early years of this new paradigm, arguably the
first years of community building in the international Bahai
community. Many of these issues are highly complex. The global
financial crisis, several crises associated with global terrorism, as
well as climate change and global warming are but three apposite
examples. I will comment briefly here on the latter. In 1997 the
Kyoto Protocol set binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions by
industrialised nations of 5% against 1990 levels, over the five-year
period 2008-2012. Globally 1998 was the warmest year ever
recorded, enhanced by a strong El-Nio. The IPCC, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the
World Meteorological Organization and United Nations
Environment Programme, stated in 2001 that most of the warming
over the last 50 years was, with at least a 66% probability, to have
been caused by man-made greenhouse gases. This was its strongest
statement to date on man's contribution to climate change. In 2003
Europe experienced its worst heatwave in 500 years leading to an
estimated 30,000 additional deaths.
A separate book could be written on this and other controversial
issues of the last two decades, on the many technological and
scientific developments, some of which amount to virtual paradigm
changes in various fields of communication, astronomy and the
several physical and biological sciences--to say nothing of the
several humanities disciplines. In the quixotic and unpredictable
tournament surrounding events in the sociopolitical world there are
often seismic shifts in priorities as the world continues to confront
the unprecededed and unpredictable tempest of our times. This book
does not attempt any minute and detailed analysis of subjects which
have been and now are at the forefront of general discussion in the

print and electronic media and which act as a backdrop for this
Bahai paradigm in the wider global world. The House of Justice and
the ITC also tend to avoid discussing any specific controversial
social issue in their major messages and letters to the Bahais of the
world.
A project taking place at The European Organization for Nuclear
Research successfully circulated two beams each with a power of 3.5
trillion electron volts. The engineers then lined-up two beams so that
they smashed into each other. This was like "firing two needles
across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other" according to
the main engineer Steve Myers, director for accelerators and
technology at this Swiss laboratory. On the 30th of March 2010 two
proton particle beams smashed into each other. They were travelling
at 3.5 trillion electron volts(TeV) with a resultant force of 7 TeV. At
the moment we only have a general knowledge of about 5 per cent of
the universe and this new project may open up the other 95 per cent.
This is just a taste of paradigmatic shifts from the world of physics.
This book does not discuss the complex issue of political noninvolvement which is the substantive position of the Bahai
community on partisan socio-political issues. The major Bahai
institutions pick this issue up in separate letters when appropriate but
leave this matter, for the most part, out of their major
communications with the Bahai community. These institutions have
made the Bahai position clear in message after message over the
decades as the Guardian did before them and, again for the most
part, they have no need to reiterate the Bahai position on politics yet
again. Bahais are to rise above partisanship and particularism, the
transient passions and petty calculations, and the inevitable
entanglements and bickerings inseparable from the pursuits of the
politician. This book will say no more about the relation of this new
paradigm to these issues. The House of Justice will provide the

necessary guidance over time to apply this principle to existing

circumstances.(Bahai Canada, October 2009).
FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE
This Faith attaches a great deal of importance to freedom and
initiative and to the interpretation of its texts, its programs and its
community life. If I can make but a small contribution, while
exercising this freedom and initiative, in assisting the bringing about
of a personal, an individual, paradigm shift in the lives of some of
my fellow believers across the globe, as well as my own life, a
paradigm shift as important as the one in the wider Bahai
community, this book will have achieved one of its central purposes.
To understand this new culture, this new paradigm, students and
readers will find it helpful, it seems to me, to take into account Bahai
history, its teaching and practices and their unique elaboration over
some 133 years: 1844 to 1996--as well as the history of the critical
century before 1844 during which the stage was set for this new
religion to come to its birth through, in the context of, the lives of its
three main precursors. Although the Bahai Faith takes very specific
positions on many issues in contemporary society, I make no secret
of changing my mind on many important issues as they evolve in the
popular press and the print and electronic media. I've never thought
it a virtue to adopt a fixed position and then defend that position like
a purveyor of some brand name. The social world is immensely
complex and Bahai apologetics and hermeneutics are not like selling
cornflakes, saving whales, giving money to a save the children
campaign or taking more vitamin C.
I have found, in writing down my thoughts on this subject of the new
Bahai culture, that I have created for myself a taking-off point and
hopefully a taking-off point for readers, one that draws on many
serious and complex ideas. I have experienced, as I have tried to get

beyond the new language of this paradigmatic shift both personally

and analytically, an auspicious beginning to my own reflections on
the new paradigm, on the new culture of learning and of growth in
the operational life of the Bahai community that has begun to
emerge in the last two decades. The act of writing is an effort of
understanding. It is also an effort in caring. Writers write about
things in which they invest their energy and care, their thought and
their feelings, although this is not always the case. The famous
sociologist, at least famous in some academic worlds, Richard
Sennett, wrote many years ago that the clearer and more vocatively
writers can write, the more they feel in touch with their subject. But
writing evocatively and involving readers is easier said than done.
I feel that this book is a multi-dimensional space in which a variety
of writings, only some of them original, blend and clash. There is an
intersection in these pages of many lines of thought, a pattern of
intellectual diffusion and a diversity of ideas, a conflict of opinions
and, hopefully, some sparks of truth. As the German theologian and
philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote nearly two centuries
ago: "Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the
other, it is never possible to eliminate the non-understanding of
others completely."(The Academy Addresses of 1829: On the
Concept of Hermeneutics) As Bahaullah put a similar idea: there are
no two souls who are both outwardly and inwardly united.
Differences of points of view, it is axiomatic, are with us to stay in
this as in all paradigms.
This statement is a personal one and some readers may find it too
personal, too self-obsessed as one reader has already put it in one of
the many emails and posts I have already received on the internet. I
am going to say a few words about obsession, mine and obsession in
general because of its importance not only in my life and in my
personal response to this new paradigm but around the world in the

lives of many Bahais and in the wider culture in general. Readers of

this book can easily send me feedback on this world wide web of
communication if they would like to offer their comments as they
have already done in the last three years. I have received many
responses to what was initially an essay and is now this 200 page
book. I have received both encomium and opprobrium and I'm sure
these responses are but the beginning to what is the most extensive
commentary on this new paradigm currently available--at least in the
first 15 years of this new Bahai culture.
OBSESSIONS
Self-obsession, as I say and in those words of one of my critics, is a
common problem today and I would not want to claim that I have
been free of its taint during my seven decades of living. I am the first
to admit to having obsessions, to being driven. Indeed, the
dominating passion of teaching the Cause could be said to have been
a a ruling passion, my mother and my first wife would have called it
an obsession, in my life since at least 1964-5. Obsession is a word I
have grown comfortable with after nearly fifty years of dealing with
its results: its fascinations and glories, its tragedies and complexities,
its brilliance and darknesses, its energizing and debilitating features.
A commitment sensibly and insensibly came into my life in the late
1950s and early 1960s, in my teens and early twenties. In many
basic ways it took over my life. Perhaps I could blame my bipolar
tendencies for my obsessiveness.
It has always been and still is important, though, that this obsession
with teaching and the Bahai Faith, did not appear to be an obvious
one in the public domain. Teaching is one important component of
my Bahai life and that Bahai life is, indeed, my life. I have always,
at least since those early sixties, seen both the Bahai Faith and
teaching as crucial to my role in life, indeed, to my very existence. It

became over the decades a significant part of my very raison d'etre

my modus vivendi to use a Latin expression. The context for the
expression of this Cause in my day-to-day life is one I have always
tried to make one that was characterized by social normality, at least
as far as this was possible. I have tried to look and be as many-sided
and normal, as well-balanced and well-oriented, as happy and as
mentally and spiritually integrated, as I have been able. Wholeness
or integration, though, as Charles Fair put it in his book "The New
Nonsense"(1974, p.45) is not really a goal but more of a battle--at
best a balancing act, a perpetually unstable reconciliation of forces
which, unreconciled, simply fear us and/or our societies to
pieces...We tend to see inner conflict as a clinical disorder when in
fact it is almost a first law of inner psychic life." This has certainly
been the case for me, although not 24/7 and not every decade from
my childhood to late adulthood. My life is far too complex to reduce
it, to explain it, in terms of my BPD.
This balancing-act, as Fair puts it, this reconciliation of forces, has
not always been easy, though, especially with my strong religious
commitment, with my bi-polar disorder as well living in a society
obsessed with many different things. Everyone has their own lifetrajectories, involving as they do a pantheon of obsessions: sport,
gardening, media, job, family, sex, fun and cleaning among a long
list of other obsessions and compulsions. Obsession by the 1990s, as
one prominent writer put it, became both a dreaded disease and a
noble and desirable cultural goal and endeavour. Indeed, it is seen as
necessary for those who have a commitment and who act in the
context of some personally motivating metanarrative which
underpins their day-to-day lives. Such people need to be highly
focussed and preoccupied with what the French call their idees fixe.
Obsession is paradoxical and can generate tragedy and despair. It has
a dark, pathological, side which society is all-too-familiar with, a

side which is: dangerous, fanatical, very intense, filled with quiet or
not-so-quiet desperation, characterised by various forms of
compulsion and is now a much more common medical problem
requiring diagnosis and treatment. It is something that makes a
person literally possessed, not by the devil as was said for centuries,
but by some complex combination of internal and external forces. It
is a common practice in psychiatry to separate obsessions (thoughts)
from compulsions(practices). OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
is the name psychiatry gives to this disorder in some of its more
extreme forms. There has developed an interesting literature on the
subject. It is a literature which sees obsession as: (a) a disability or
sin to be treated in religious terms, (b)a genetic disorder to be treated
in medical terms, (c) a cultural problem to be analysed and
accommodated or (d) an artistic entity to be valued. I leave this
subject to readers to follow-up in their own way, if the subject
interests them. I will give the final word here, not on obsession but
on possession, to the French sociologist Alexis de Toqueville who
wrote: "that which most vividly stirs the human heart is certainly not
the quiet possession of something precious but rather the imperfectly
satisfied desire to have it and the continual fear of losing it again." In
this new culture of learning and growth there will be many more
believers who will be characterized by that "quiet possession of
something precious." This has certainly determined much of my
activity as a Bahai both before this new culture of learning, during
its existence thusfar and, I trust, as farasmy eye can see.(Alexis de
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1831)
MY RETIREMENT IN PERSPECTIVE
Now in retirement I am not holding on by the skin of my teeth in
search of an income to pay the bills and feed my family. I am not a
frustrated liberal trying to fulfil some vision that has been taking a
beating in recent years. Nor am I a frustrated conservative

complaining about the decline in traditional values. Nor am I a Bahai

discouraged by the meagre response, at least as defined by a longawaited increase in membership, especially in Western countries, to
this new Revelation. I have my frustrations and my discouragements
as well as my pains and aches and readers are welcome to read about
some of them if they google RonPrice BPD or if they google one of
a number of other sets of words beginning with my name in their
search engines. I am not backward in coming forward about my
complaints, about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that I
have suffered from nor which my society or my religion have
suffered from. But, for the most part, I do this commiserating at
other posts, on other threads, in other essays, articles and books now
on the internet: not here.
The practical affairs of my life in the years 1959 to 1999--and which
can be found described on the internet at many a site with a little
googling--have been a magnificent apprenticeship for the creative
intellectual work of the last decade, this partially involuntary
withdrawal from much of practical life. The literary tasks which I
have taken up and which, in some ways, were forced upon me by
circumstances, I am convinced of their rightness--as much as I have
been convinced of the rightness of anything in my life--I carry out
with a good deal of executive capacity, that is: (a) to the best of my
power the duty which presents itself to me on a daily basis and (b)
using the skills I have acquired in life through self-education and
self-discipline which require that I do something with both these
skills, this discipline and this knowledge. All of this is, for me, a
triumph of intellectual purposiveness over intellectual dissipation
and a disciplined use of time.
My literary schemes have come to take ever more powerful hold
upon my imagination during these new years of this culture of
learning and growth. They are my consuming passion, my obsession,

my commitment, now that I am not tightly chained to the world of

job, endless conversations and socializing, meetings and community
responsibilities. The intellectual and literary objectives I pursue, I do
so at a steadfast pace, not unlike the tortoise's slow but sure gait,
dealing as I must with the soporific effects of a bipolar disorder and
the inevitable demands of simply living and keeping body and soul
together in relationships with others especially my wife, my family
and my community.
By forming internet relationships with Marxists, atheists, radical
feminists, agnostics, Muslims, among so many others of different
religious and philosophical persuasions I'm not just refuting
arguments, I'm responding to people who, in the end, have come to
occupy some degree of relationship that is hopefully positive. One
could call them by many terms: friends, associations, mutual
discussants. The internet provides a great opportunity to break out of
our isolated bubbles and go out and put a personal face on those we
disagree with. Some call this personalism. When we get to know
those we disagree with, whether its about faith, politics or anything
else, we are far more likely to attempt to understand them before we
coldly demonize them from afar. The process tends to build
communion. This can open minds and allow the Holy Spirit to work
miracles. And that is no simple task.
So much of my internet work is about apologetics, but I have no
time for polemicism. I like to see all the commentators as people
around the after-dinner table having more tea or coffee or an extra
helping of dessert. This is a New Apologetics and it must be the
apologetics of love and cooperation, not enmity and confrontation.
Hence it must also be a dialogical apologetics. Dialogue is what I do
now for my spiritual bread and butter. I love to make connections
with people who have different ideas to me - as long as they are
really interested in searching for the truth and living by it that is. I

would rather spend time in conversation with a Buddhist, or an

Atheist, or a Muslim or a Feminist who actually seriously is seeking
the essential things of life, than with someone who has no interest at
all in reflecting upon their life and its meaning and what it means to
live and to die well. In my internet work and in my leisure, I have
become les interested in winning arguments and more interested in
responding to human beings.
THE FIRST 20 YEARS OF THIS PARADIGM IN PERSPECTIVE
The historical record of the first 20 years of this new paradigm, the
Bahai experience of this new paradigm and its factual base as it
exists for me, as I write this book, is a congeries of contiguously
related fragments. I put these fragments together to make a whole of
both a particular and of a general kind. These fragments are put
together in similar ways to those that novelists use to put together
figments of their imaginations to display their creative and ordered
worlds, their cosmos, their cosmology, where only disorder, chaos
or, indeed, nothingness might appear if they had not put pen to
paper. As I write I create some order, some of my cosmology and
some hopefully useful words about this new paradigm for others to
read. And I write to get my own house in order. The path on which
the Bahai community advances is wide--very wide--as Lample
emphasizes on the last page of his analysis of the first several years
of the Bahai experience of this new paradigm. There is a place for
me in this paradigm and a place for all Bahais. The community must
avoid, though--and these are Lample's final words of advice as the
Bahai community entered the final year of the first Four Year
Plan(1996-2000)within this new paradigm--the extremes of
fundamentalism and relativism, conservatism and liberalism,
extreme orthodoxy and irresponsible freedom. Interpreting the
meaning of the teachings in a literal way leading to rigid practice on
the one hand; or having such a relativistic perspective that anything

is seen as an appropriate course in a Bahai life; or, again, possessing

an extreme orthodoxy, an exaggerated conviction in the validity of
one's grasp of the truth--these are all dangers that we as Bahais must
avoid if we are to walk the path of progress and unity. And let there
be no mistake. This path is not an easy one, ridden as that path is
with the many pressures that exist on the lives of those who try to
walk the walk and talk the talk. The Bahai life is no tea party inspite
of what are often appearances to the contrary.
The future for the Bahai, and certainly this Bahai, in these years of
the new millennium and this new paradigm has never looked so
bright. Of course, I can not speak for all the millions of Bahais. Each
person has and will have their own story. Some of my story is found
in this book. This piece of writing which began as a relatively short
essay right after reading an essay on a similar theme by Moojan
Momen(A Change of Culture, 2004) in the spring of 2007 has
become, by degrees, over these last 70 months a book of more than
700 pages. This analysis, this description, this account, does not
assume an adversarial attitude to the developments in the Cause
since 1996 as has often been and still is the case especially on the
internet, with analyses and comments about these new developments
in the international Bahai community; it attempts to give birth of as
fine an etiquette of expression and as acute an analysis as I can
muster. I like to think that this book puts into practice both candour
and critical thought on the one hand and praise and delight at the
several processes within this new paradigm on the other. I invite
readers to what I also like to think is a context on which relevant
fundamental questions regarding this new paradigm may be
discussed within the Bahai community.
SOME THOUGHTS ON COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT
Part 1:

There are a multitude of manifestations of a general cultural

orientation toward clash, controversy and argument. To put this more
simply: we all see and experience conflict and controversy
differently. The way people talk with one another in social situations
offers an insightful analysis of the trend toward argument and its
consequences in any set of relationships. There is and has been an
emphasis on clashing and individual rights rather than common
ground and reasonable compromise within our larger culture, a
culture that privileges and rewards on the basis of that emphasis.
Programs do better in television ratings, for example, if there is some
clash and loud arguement rather than quiet talking heads. The lack of
mainstream popularity for less incendiary television talk hosts and
discussions is testament to the role that combative communication
and clash play in popular media. There is also a strong tendency in
much public discourse to the use of humour and, while this is often
entertaining, it often masks the essential complexity of many issues.
While this new Bahai paradigm encourages candid and critical
thought, encourages the use of humour in consultation as a
marvellous device for releasing tension and also tries to stimulate the
brilliant inventiveness that is so necessary in truly effective
consultation, this book also aims to avoid dissention which is a
moral and intellectual contradiction to those who would be
peacemakers among the children of men(UHJ, 29/12/88).
I would argue, with the sociologist Jurgen Habermas in terms of
communication in general, that Bahai consultation in this new
paradigm, has two central features. The first is communication that is
oriented toward reaching understanding such as common definitions
that would inform consensual action. The second is communication
that concerns consensual action. Consensual action assumes a
common set of definitions of the situation and then moves toward
what can collectively be done in response(Habermas 1979, p.209).

Participants, in this context, must have equal opportunity to initiate

and continue communicative acts. Participants must have equal
opportunity to present arguments, explanations, interpretations and
justifications; no significant opinions should go unexamined.
Participants must have equal opportunity to honestly express
personal intentions, feelings and attitudes. And finally, participants
must have equal opportunity to present directive statements that
serve to forbid, permit and command. If each participant in the
dialogue lives out these assumptions then fair turn-taking may occur.
The ability to question the common sense and assumed values of
others must be freely allowed without defensiveness, and
concessions and compromises can be offered without feeling
vulnerable to the opposition. Such a consultative orientation or set
of goals has been present in previous Bahai paradigms, but they are
goals which require continued effort to achieve on the part of Bahais
the world over as the Bahai community becomes a much larger one
in these years and decades ahead. To achieve an etiquette of
expression and civility on the one hand and a critical and candid
expression of views on the other is not an easy achievement. The
potentiality for this goal, this etiquette of expression, to use a term
the House used in a letter to the Bahais of the USA over 20 years
ago, needs to be actualized more and more if Bahai consultations are
to be characterized by both frankness and civility.
Part 2:
These goals are ideals that are best understood as hypotheticals to be
strived for rather than things easily achieved. Communicative
competence operates within this framework of goals and is a more
achievable set of characteristics for an individual communicator to
acquire and enact. The competent communicator, again drawing on
Habermas(1979), can engage in communicative action that pursues
truth. One might imagine this as the next step in creating

understanding and moving forward toward consensual solutions.

Various constraints on democratic communication must be
eliminated in order to produce rational outcomes; communication
competence addresses internal abilities and choices by individual
participants. The communicator must have command of the basic
structures of language and purpose of communication. The
competent communicator also must be a competent thinker and be
able to put such thoughts into expression in rhetorically effective
ways without invoking harmful rhetorical techniques that are
associated with what he calls strategic communication
communication intended to persuade through manipulation. This
seems like a rather minimal standard upon first glance. The
analytical implications, though, suggest that a competent
communicator should be able to analyze discourse at several levels.
These levels include sensitivity to the general limitations of language
and expression such as: (a) the struggle to communicate ideas that
defy easy expression, as well as (b) specific situational constraints
such as specific relations between communicators and thinking
through the implications of the assertions being made (e.g., what if
this is really true?).
Most of the above concepts can be understood as diagnostic in focus.
They are useful for clarifying problems, but the solutions are
complex because they require behavioural and interpersonal skills
that are often, if not usually, lacking among the participants. The
concepts above do point generally toward a direction of healthy
discourse but they are filled with specific behaviours or ideas that
need to be embraced and put into practice when talking with others
in groups. When the social worlds of individuals collide, each person
finds that the words of others often constitute a repudiation of that
which he or she holds most dear. The results are familiar patterns of
reciprocated diatribe in which each side rudely tells the other what is
wrong with it. Useful discussion of the ostensible issues becomes a

casualty of the bickering. In April 2015 the House of Justice,

recognizing these complexities, emphasized that "the social
consensus around ideals that have traditionally united and bound
together a people is increasingly worn and spent. It can no longer
offer a reliable defence against a variety of self-serving, intolerant,
and toxic ideologies that feed upon discontent and resentment. With
a conflicted world appearing every day less sure of itself, the
proponents of these destructive doctrines grow bold and brazen."
It is crucial in this new paradigm to avoid such casuistry, but it is not
easy. Both sides in what could be called "verbal wars see the other
as aggressors. Such views are based on a large set of assumptions.
Liberals are fighting the good fight against historically oppressive
voices of tradition. Conservatives are fighting the good fight
against historically rebellious voices of unbridled liberalism. Moral
conflicts are made more complex because participants clash within
unique social worlds with distinct values and rules. Because ways of
dealing with conflicts are a part of ones social world, when these
conflicts do occur, they lack a common procedure for dealing with
them. Actions taken by one side to be good, true, or prudent, are
often perceived by the other as evil, false, or foolishperhaps even
sinister and duplicitous. The intensity of moral conflicts is fueled
when such actions are treated as malicious or stupid by the other
side.
Part 3:
These moral complexities were underlined yet again the the 2015
Ridvan message as follows: "Well-meaning leaders of nations and
people of goodwill are left struggling to repair the fractures evident
in society and powerless to prevent their spread. The effects of all
this are not only to be seen in outright conflict or a collapse in order.
In the distrust that pits neighbour against neighbour and severs

family ties, in the antagonism of so much of what passes for social

discourse, in the casualness with which appeals to ignoble human
motivations are used to win power and pile up richesin all these
lie unmistakable signs that the moral force which sustains society
has become gravely depleted."
Ethicist Martin Buber(1971) stressed the need to emphasize the strong ties
between participants in a conflict. He focused on the quality of their
relationship rather than the pattern of choices and outcomes. He suggested
that participants examine the mutual effects on the relationship between the
participants in the conflict when
aluating various communication options. Communication theorist Walter Fisher
(1986) suggests that we can assess the quality of an argument by asking about
the character of the audience that would believe and act on it. Buber parallels
this by suggesting that we can assess the quality of our process of
argumentation by examining the quality of relationships it fosters among the
participants. I could go on and on with this sort of communication analysis and
in this new paradigm there will be much discussion on the necessary
communication skills to produce effective and efficient action. For now, though,
I leave this complex subject with the most recent passage from the House on
this subject: "Learning as a mode of operation requires that all assume a
posture of humility" and they go on to emphasize among other things insofar as
human relations are concerned that we should delight "not so much in our own
accomplishments but in the progress and service of others." I leave this subject
now to readers to take in directions they desire and directions they will require
as this paradigm is put into increasing practice in the years ahead.
UPDATING THIS BOOK
It is my intention to update this literary sojourn in the months and years ahead
as the current Five year Plan comes to its conclusion in 2016 and in the decade
beyond as the first century of this Faith's Formative Age comes to its end in
2021. One of the advantages of this BLO site where this article is placed and to
which I often refer my other internet posts and my cyberspace readers, is the
freedom it gives to writers to update their articles and books, whatever they
write on the site in what is in reality a continuous editing process. These
updates in the months and years ahead will be part of an ongoing exercise as
new insights from major and minor published and unpublished writers who are

Bahais, and the writings of those from other interest groups who post on the
internet, become available. Information and analyses, quotations and ideas,
from the elected and appointed institutions of the Cause in the 20 years(19962016) and the 15 years beyond that(2016-2031)will also embellish future
editions of what may very well become a very large book or series of volumes.

Much has already been written about this new paradigm and much
will be written perhaps too much, in all likelihood, for the average
person to synthesize. But burgeonings of print are a reality of
contemporary society and everyone must work out their own
response to this complexity, this swim in printed matter, a response
that suits their talents, their interests and their circumstances. Each
of us only works this problem out to an extent; each of us
experiences a certain intellectual dyspepsia given the information
overload we must contend with if we want to engage with the issues
of our time. As the burgeoning of print hits us all there is a
coextensive burgeoning of audio-visual, of electronic, media for our
eyes and minds to deal with. Often the eye is quicker than the mind
and the flashes that come at us daily on billions of screens make
longer periods of concentration on print more difficult, at least for
some, perhaps for billions, of viewers. But, again, this issue of
learning via print and learning via electronic media and a range of
issues relating to literacy and understanding are too complex to deal
with in this broad survey of this new Bahai paradigm.
In some ways this book of 700+ pages is really a long essay. Essayer
is the French verb meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An
essay is something I am writing to try to figure something out.
Figure out something I don't yet know. I don't begin with a thesis; I
don't have a fixed and final view; I don't have one now and I may
never have one. This essay doesn't begin with a statement, a fixed
position, but with a question, a series of questions and with many
analytical and descriptive, informative and factual statements. Some
of all this will be or will seem to be facts and some will just be the
musings of a 69 year old Bahai who is on a pension, who goes for
walks every day and who is taking a rest from extensive human
interaction after fifty years of membership in a community and a

religion he joined back in the 1950s. His membership and his

activity kept him as busy as a beaver at times, wore him out at others
and stimulated his sensory, intellectual and spiritual emporiums at
still others.
CREATING OUR OWN WORLD: THE SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
People create their social and cultural world through their everyday
actions and interactions as several theories in the social sciences
argue. Everyday practices of ordinary people are the effective tools
that make supposedly passive users behave as active subjects. This
new paradigm provides a very wide activity-menu for individuals in
the Bahai community to chose their own particular system of
production, activity and interaction. As social actors they each and
all invent and create, moment by moment, the meaning and
functions of things that circulate in their social space. They develop
their own tactics and follow paths in often unforeseen and
unpredictable ways. These approaches to social and community life
and its varied phenomena share a theoretical assumption that it is the
strength of human agency and subject intentionality that is the
crucial factor in making the context and meaning of the dimensions
of the world that people inhabit. The material features of our
everyday life contexts are more than an inert background for culture
construction. And let there be no mistake: this new paradigm is itself
a background for culture construction and especially our own
personal culture construction.
LET'S GET GOING WITH THIS PARADIGM, EH?
What, then, is this new culture of learning and growth, this new
paradigm in the Bahai community? Read on, dear reader, you still
have 100,000 words left to read. Be patient: little by little and minute
by minute it shall be revealed but only in part, only from a wideangled lens, from a personalized perspective. You have no need for
more of the factual basis of this paradigm. The factual basis, the
details of its organization and all its parts and processes can be found

in many other places on the internet, in letters from the institutions

of the Cause and in books and pamphlets. As I say, I'm not taking a
position of evaluation and defending it; I'm not providing a potted
summary of its content. I'm polishing ideas not finishing them. I
notice things, a door that's ajar, a window that's open and I open it;
perhaps I walk in to see what's inside; perhaps I just look out the
window into my wife's garden and across the street here in
Australia's oldest town. I do this in my study here on the north coast
of Tasmania virtually everyday and I do this in part and at least here
to create what I hope is a book that will be of some value to readers
who chance by its contents here at BLO.
I must confess to an extensive rummaging and foraging about in the
Bahai writings for quotations that please me and I carry them back,
like a bird with its seeds, to this book, to what has become by a long
series of posts and revisions here at BLO a 200 page book. I also
forage about in the cultures of learning and growth outside the Bahai
community. Learning and growth are abstract and concrete entities
which many, indeed, myriad organizations and cultures are "into."
Learning and growth are both massive, enormous, burgeoning,
industries across the planet. My foraging exercises also take me into
the context of my own life and the life of my society in a host of
ways. I try to connect both my life and my society to this new
paradigm. Foraging, of course, has been part of human society
depending as it does on a combination of hunting, fishing and
gathering wild foods for subsistence for hundreds of thousands of
years. Until about 11,00012,000 years ago all peoples on the planet
were foragers and some still practice this ancient form of social
organization. It is an ancient practice with many modern variants one
of which takes places in our print-oriented culture by votaries of
many causes, many movements, many volunteer organizations and
literally billions of people in search of the modern equivalents of
those products of hunting and fishing and searching for wild foods
that occupied our ancestors for most of our existence as homo
sapiens sapiens.
Perhaps I have bitten off too big a bite, too much content. Perhaps I

won't get it all chewed, won't get it all masticated and digested.
Sometimes a proper mastication of ones food takes longer than one
is prepared to take and one suffers later from indigestion. Some food
can not be masticated due to dental problems, the bad taste of the
food, the toughness of the meat, indeed, a host of reasons. Much of
life, of society and of this new paradigm is also beyond our capacity
to understand it. We can only connect with a portion of the great
burgeoning mass of information coming in at us now at the speed of
light. This is true of the new Bahai culture of learning and millions
of other topics, subjects, disciplines and fields in the knowledge
explosion set in motion, arguably, by the latest Manifestation of God
for this age.
Some readers I know, and as I have already indicated above, have
found my literary exercise here at BLO too much for them to chew
and they have told me. One person I know, in fact, has no teeth, and
there is no way he can even put my writing on his plate. Frankness is
one of the many characteristics of dialogue, of participation, on the
internet and it often gets one into hot water, so to speak. To such
readers who find this book, this post at BLO, simply too big a read,
too long, prolix as some might call it, I simply advise that they
implement an exercise in skimming or scanning, find the parts that
are relevant to their particular perspectives or, if the worst comes to
the worse, just click me off their radar screens. I do this clicking off
exercise all the time; I did it for decades long before the internet
came along.
I have already reached a broad audience and that is reward enough
for me in the evening of my life, in these middle years(65-75)of late
adulthood as the human development theorists in psychology call the
years from 60 to 80 in the human lifespan. In writing as in talking
one only wins some of the time. No book, whether it is scholarly or
popular, escapes the slings and arrows and the criticisms of
disappointed readers, readers who are all too keen to offer their
advice, their wisdoms and their many ways to improve on what they
have just read. It is an inherent property of any intellectual enterprize
to generate discussion, debate and criticism. That is why it is often

said that "silence is golden."

SKIMMING AND SCANNING--AND SWIMMING
Having spent 50 years in classrooms, 18 as a student and 32 as a
teacher, I know that a major problem, among the many, confronting
readers is the length of the text. By the time readers get to this point,
if indeed they get this far, they are often ready to give it all away.
And so, as I say, do some skimming and scanning if you would like
to get your teeth into the subject of this new paradigm as I deal with
it in these pages. The skimming process contains the following key
actions: reading the title and subtitle, headings, introductions, first
sentences in paragraphs, key words and final paragraphs. The three
general types of skimming are previewing, overviewing, and
reviewing. The steps involved in the scanning process include:
checking the organization of the book and forming specific
questions; anticipating clue words and identifying likely answer
locations; using a systematic pattern and confirming your answer.
Some combination of these techniques will assist readers whose
interest in the topic is minimal, whose time is limited and who find
my writing style and/or approach is not their cup-of-tea, so to speak.
These skills of skimming(one of my students asked me if this meant
skimping) and scanning are important ones for readers to put in
place to help them deal with the great mass of literature now
available on this new paradigm and, indeed, on many other topics in
their life. The intellectual and the non-intellectual, print-oriented and
non-print oriented readers who chance by this writing of mine on
this new Bahai culture need many a skill. In this rapidly changing
world upskilling, reskilling, retuning, refining one's abilities is a
constant exercise. We all need to be multi-skilled these days and I
wish you well, dear readers, in trying to get handles on the many
implements in and for your learning and the cultural attainments of
your mind, what may very well be the first attribute of perfection
within this new paradigm. As I say, to those who have already begun
to find their eyes glazing over and their minds wandering, let me
advise that you just click me off your radar or send me an email, a

response, a written message. I'm happy to send you smaller chunks

of wisdom, wee-wisdoms from the vast compendium available. Such
an act will help you engage with this book and what I like to think
are some useful comments in the more than 100 pages ahead--for
these are still introductory words!
FEEDBACK ALREADY RECEIVED
This article or book has received many thousands of clicks in the
nearly three years(9/07-9/10) of its posting, but I'm sure many
readers and clickers have come and gone from its contents as quickly
as the twinkling of an eye or shortly after that twinkle, that first
click. I began my writing before the international financial crisis.
Much has happened since I started this exercise in analysis. This post
at BLO and at the several internet sites where I have placed all or
part of this book of 750 pages has attracted a good deal of attention
for several reasons not the least of which is that it appears to be the
most lengthy statement on this new paradigm that is currently
available.
As much as I would like to think there is something original here, I
must acknowledge a tension between the many forms of received
knowledge in the form of quotations and the ideas of others and my
efforts to make the knowledge and wisdom, the facts and fancies, of
others part of my own intellectual fibre. Fibre in one's breakfast
food, like fibre in print needs to be ingested, digested, assimilated,
assiduously examined and interpreted. I must bring some form or
system or, to be more honest, some non-system into existence as I
write in order to transmute all this stuff into purest gold or, as is
more often the case, base metal. Sometimes this transmutation takes
place largely as a result of a sprinkling process and at other times
this transmutation of the ideas and writing of others takes place in a
deep and sensitive process of steeping--like making a strong tea or
engaging in the often lengthy process of dying cloth. Then there is a
subsequent regurgitation, hopefully in a form that pleases readers.
One can hope.

CREATIVE SOLUTIONS AND DOGMA

I seek creative solutions and try to avoid dogmatic assertions about
the Cause and this new paradigm. But dogma is difficult to avoid as
many readers and writers and people in all walks of life find today
even while they are assiduously trying to avoid being dogmatic. In a
religion like the Bahai Faith it is really impossible not to be
dogmatic or to put the case more accurately, not to engage in an
exercise of dogmatics. The truths of Bahai dogma are perennial, or
so I would argue, rather than being archaic. The study of Bahai
dogmatics is still in the early days even after a century and a half or,
perhaps more accurately, about three decades at the most, of its
development. This field, this discipline of dogmatics, is still in its
early days like so many aspects of the study of this new Cause.
Perhaps, as I say above, readers can simply read and take from this
book what they like and integrate or incorporate what they read,
what catches their fancy and their tastes, into their own frameworks
for action. Keep in mind, as you go about selecting what action you
want to take in this new paradigm, the following two aphorisms. The
first is from the former US President Harry S. Truman: Actions are
the seed of fate, deeds grow into destiny," The second clever turn of
phrase I want to insert here, I hope in a timely fashion for readers, is
found in the voluminous writings of psychologist William James. It
is one of his many pithy sentences: "Act as if what you do makes a
difference. It does."
In my own selective use of quotations from Bahai and non-Bahai
texts I attempt to integrate as I go along. I incorporate them when I
can and I incorporate what I can into my own life and whatever
sense of destiny I can sense from within life's mysterious
dispensations that come often unbeknowst from the hand of
Providence. The process seems, as I look back over the decades, to
be lifelong, at least since my first contact with this Cause back in
1953, a point coincidentally of paradigmatic change of some
significance in the first two centuries of Bahai history. It was a point
that in some ways had nothing to do with me and everything to do
with significant developments in the then culture of learning and

growth in the Bahai community when this Faith spread to some 100
countries of the world in the first year of the Ten Year Crusade.
THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CULTURE OF LEARNING AND
GROWTH
For there has always been a culture of learning and growth in the
Bahai community. Culture is not a set of ideas imposed but a set of
ideas and symbols available for use. The symbols and ideas in this
new paradigm have been shifted from their former shapes and
designs. Individuals in the last dozen years or so select the meanings
they need for particular purposes and occasions within this new
paradigm, from what seems to me to be a more extensive menu,
from the varied cultural menu that their given cluster, their given
local Bahai community and the wider society provides. Once the
human resources in a cluster are in sufficient abundance, the House
emphasized as recently as April 2010, "and the pattern of growth
firmly established, the community's engagement with society can,
and indeed must, increase." In this view of culture, culture is seen as
a resource for social action more than a structure to limit social
action. This is but one of the dozens of definitions of culture and I
found it in Michael Schudson's 2002 article: How Culture Works:
Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols, pp.
141-148 in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn Spillman Oxford, UK,
Blackwell Publishers. I could select half a dozen other definitions of
culture and procede to draw on their relevance to this new paradigm
but such an exercise would be repetitive and would lead to prolixity
of theme and content.
PUTTING IDEAS IN WRITING
Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a
word. Most of what ends up in my essays and books I only thought
of when I sat down to write them or I take stuff I have chewed over
many times but want to spit it out, want to separate the wheat from
the chaff to use one of many possible metaphors to describe, to hint
at, the process involved. That's why I write them. In the things

people write in school one is, in theory, explaining oneself to the

reader, the teacher. In a real essay or book, certainly in this one that I
am writing, I'm writing primarily for myself and only secondarily for
readers. I'm thinking out loud, although not exactly. Just as inviting
people over to your home forces you, or at least some people, to
clean up your lounge-room, writing something that other people will
read forces you to think well or as least to try and present a surface
of solid thinking even if, underneath, the thinking is not as solid as
you'd like to think or that others you want to persuade may be
persuaded to think.
All analysis is to some extent autobiographical. The only civilized
form of autobiography and the accompanying description of
community life that such an autobiography like mine or indeed
anyone elses that I might want to read might contain, is not the one
that deals with lifes events, but with lifes thoughts; not with lifes
physical accidents, deeds or circumstances but with spiritual moods
and the imaginative passions of the mind. I thank the American poet
John Ashberry(Modern Critical Reviews, Harold Bloom, editor,
Chelsea House Publishers, 1985, p.217) for what for me was the
brilliant inventiveness of this idea and which, however brilliant, does
not contain all the truth on the subject of thought and the action
behind thought. But Ashberry's words go far to help us all
understand some of the complexities that are part of our lot as we go
about dealing with some of the enigmas, the contradictions, the
paradoxes and the conflicts in our individual and community
existence on the path that has attempted, is attempting and will
attempt to implement this new paradigm.
Although I would like to please as many readers with this exposition
as possible I write primarily, as I have said above, to please myself
and to please those of the reading public who share some of my
tastes and some of my limitations, some of my cosmology and some
of my very raison d'etre. "How do I know what I think until I see
what I've said," goes one of the popular sentences that tries to
capture one of the major purposes of the process of writing and
talking. Much of what I write has developed due to paths not

anticipated at the start, but which opened up under the pressure of

the spark of the differing opinions I had from others in my
community. These paths also opened up due to my desire to circle
around and meander, to muse with intent and to polish, to hone and
think out loud.
I aim to be as coherent as I can possibly be regarding a precise
statement of the contribution: (a)I have played, (b) I now play and
(c) I can, hope or may play in the ongoing story of the growth and
development of the Bahai Faith over four epochs. Often there is little
I can do to determine what actions others take on within this new
paradigm, but there is much that I can do. As Shoghi Effendi
emphasized so succinctly many decades ago: all the problems in life,
in the end, lie within the individual. I have quite enough, problems
that is, to keep me busy until the end of my days. And you?
There is here no definitive procedure of analysis as I go about laying
a line of words, no detailed and accurate picture nor searching
criticism of this new paradigm of opportunity, of previous paradigm
shifts in this Faith or shifts in my life and society. I have visited this
subject day after day for a period of two and one half years
now(9/07-3/10), trying to gain some mastery over a subject I had
been chewing over and playing with in my mind for several years
before the writing, from the late years of the twentieth century and
into the early years of this new millennium after it burst upon us in
2001.
Some readers will find my perspectives far too personal,
idiosyncratic, opinionated and, as I say above, self-obsessed, not
dealing as objectively and analytically, not dealing in as distanced
and impersonal a way, with the new paradigm as a book of this
nature should do for its readership as these readers suggest. Much of
this book is, as I say in the title, "a contemporary text and a personal
context." I am working out as I go along what contribution I have
made, am making and intend to make to this new paradigm. And I
want readers to do the same as they travel with me in this literary
journey through the labyrinth of this new paradigm. Use this book, if

you come to see it as useful as you read on, come to see it as helpful:
as a sort of sifter, shape-sifter, matrix, mirror, evaluation mechanism,
tool, instrument, means of appraisal, appraisement or assessment, as
a way to calculate or estimate, guesstimate, interpret, voice your
opinion, rate, take stock of and work out your own role in this new
paradigm.
Some readers I'm sure will find my analysis, my lengthy statement
here at BLO but an extension of what they already see as an endless
circular debate with its countless calls to action. Such readers will, in
all likelihood, tire in the first several paragraphs. Many will not have
even read this far and will have clicked me off earlier in this
exposition. For many readers exhaustive and extensive analysis dulls
their understanding of the subject until, finally, teaching is
something addressed merely in terms of sales techniques, the
implementation of some simple formula, some handle they use to
make a beginning and continue their work. We each have our own
way of dealing with the call to teach and I am not trying to twist
anyone's arm, although I do some twisting of my own as I go along.
Working out one's own path is no easy trick, no easy ride. Even as
the House mentioned just this month in April 2010: "there are no
shortcuts, no formulas."
There have been and there will be many other readers, though, for
whom this book will be what I have intended that it should be: an
extension of their own analysis and thoughts. I have received much
feedback thanking me for this book, this contribution to the
discussion of the new culture of growth in the Bahai community.
There is very little in the way of any extended commentary on what
might be called the literary-literature industry on this new paradigm.
There are now many thousands of posts, of threads, of letters, of
newsletters, of magazines, of internet sites, to say nothing of the
mountains of verbal analysis at endless meetings all over the globe at
all levels of Bahai administration and community activity. There are
short digests and short summaries, brief critiques and commentaries
as well as letters and reports filled to overflowing with what now
amount to literally 1000s of pages of resources for the would-be

student of this new Bahai culture. But there is nothing as extended

and in one place at this 420 page book, at least as far as I know. I'm
sure this will change in the years ahead for these are still early days.
Readers who would like to study some of the commentary that has
been generated in the first two decades of the implementation of this
new paradigm are advised to read:
(i) the Universal House of Justice Ridvan messages from 1996 to
2013. They can be found at Bahai Library Online;
(ii)several reports of the NSAs of the Bahais of the USA, Canada,
and other national Bahai communities which are available on line
with a little googling;
(iii) posts at the internet site Reaching and Teaching Efforts for a
broad context for Bahai activity especially in the last 17 years: 1996
to 2013;
(iv)Learning and the Evolution of the Bahai Community, a talk by
Paul Lample given in 2008;
(v) Revelation and Social Reality, Palabra Pub., 2009, Paul Pample;
and
(vi)much else with some ingenuity and online googling by readers
with a desire to keep up-to-date on the many resources that come out
month after month, resources generated by the elected and appointed
arms of the Bahai Faith, by individuals and institutions of the Cause
around the world.
PUTTING OUR OWN WORLD TOGETHER
The world is very big, very complicated, and replete with so many
marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to
notice that it is also, and in some ways, irretrievably broken. We
could call this period of our lives, our early research, our stage of
childhood. The Bah' community, by means of this new paradigm is
slowly making a new world; it utilizes some of the content of this
old broken world and it adds a new structure and community by
means of this new culture of learning and growth. There follows,
then, as childhood changes to adolescence in this new paradigm, a
program of renewed inquiry, sometimes even involuntary, into the

nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure,

cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the adolescent researcher
learns the histories of these experiences and their bitter lessons. He
or she often comes to know them by heart. Along the way, he or she
discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can
remember. The individual struggles to reconcile this fact with the
ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the
researchers heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost
wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at
which this ache first arises adolescence. The feeling haunts people
all their lives, and in this new paradigm that aching heart has the
opportunity to heal its wounded feelings.
Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness.
The question becomes: What to do as one builds a life, in spite of the
broken pieces. Some members of the Bah' community pass among
the scattered and broken pieces of the great overturned jigsaw puzzle
that is the world and simply try to reconstruct their private world.
They don't do it in community; they withdraw. They start to pick up
a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that
perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back
together again in their private worlds. Others go about the exercise
in community, in the context of this new Bah' culture.
Two difficulties arise with the scheme that does not take place in
community. First of all, the individual has only ever glimpsed, as if
through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle
box that is their vision. Second, no matter how diligent he or she has
been about picking up pieces along the way, they will never have
anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most they can
hope to accomplish with their little handful of salvaged bitsthe
bittersweet harvest of observation and experienceis to build a little
world of their own. When these individuals die, they will have built
their little worlds and fulfilled their little visions to some extent. The
worlds they build out of their store of fragments and their partial
visions can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate, of those
private visions. Yet however successful or however much they fail,

in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps,

accurate scale models, of their beautiful vision in the midst of this
broken world. One could call these scale models of individual efforts
their works of art.
Those who work within the context of this new paradigm do their
work in community, working with several million others, playing a
part in a great undertaking, amidst what is clearly a terrifying
maelstrom of turmoil and trouble enguling humanity. They are, in
effect, adapting themselves to the present expression of the new
social form through which the justice of God is becoming manifest
throughout human affairs. They are working within the context of
the stupendous vision that Bah'u'llh has gifted to the world,
however distant the gulf that separates society as it is now arranged
from the efflorescence of that vision, however many the obstacles
preventing the realization of that vision, however distorted the
human spirit and the sense of despair prevailing in the world. They
work within the context of an extraordinary reservoir of spiritual
potential available to the human souls who draw on it.
SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS
If I was to compare where we are in this paradigm shift to where we
were in the shift instituted by the Guardian in those entre deux
guerres years of the 1920s and 1930s, 2011 as the 15th year after the
inception of this paradigm shift would be the equivalent of the year
1936/7 which was the 15th year of the paradigm shift instituted by
Shoghi Effendi. In 1936/7 the Bahai community of the USA began
to put its first systematic teaching Plan on paper and put it into
action. It was the year that the dome of the temple in Chicago was
completed. It was the first year of the first major teaching Plan:
1937-1944. Little did the Bahai community in the USA know what
was ahead of them in that paradigm. Little, it might be added, do we
now know what is ahead of us in this one.
If I were to compare where we are in this paradigm with where we
were in the Bahai paradigm of, say, 1863 to 1921, I might be

inclined to say we are about in the same time-frame as that in which

Abdul-Baha was returning home from His tour of the West. By
1914, that initial paradigmatic timeframe of 1844 to 1914, a seventyyear period, this new Faith and its precursor, the Babi Faith, had
suffered an estimated 25,000 deaths, a blood-bath of slaughter, in
Iran. Gibbon says that the Christians have "grotesquely exaggerated"
the scale of the persecutions they suffered under the Roman empire.
If anything, the Bahai community has underplayed the narrative of
the horrors of the persecution the Iranian Bahai community has
experienced. The Babi-Bahai story has been drowned somewhat in
the sea of suffering in which humanity has been embroiled since the
19th century. I leave it to readers to play with the many possible
Bahai paradigms and timeframes, epochs and stages, phases and
periods of the more than two centuries since the birth of Bahaullah
and the Bab.
TEACHING THE CAUSE
Individuals often tire of the subject of teaching and retreat into
gardening, television, sport, family activity and a wide range of
leisure-time pursuits. One can not blame them given the
discouragingly meagre response in the last several decades in many
countries to their teaching initiatives. And there is nothing wrong
with these pervasive pastimes, endeavours and occupations which
enrich one's daily life. Teaching the Cause has never been easy
especially in the direct sense as the Bahais are often asked to do in
this new paradigm. Even the indirect sense when carried out, carried
on, in one's life over the decades of the lifespan requires persistence
and dedication, vision and patience as well as more qualities than
most of us possess. they are often qualities that are not easy to come
by and to exemplify, day after day, year after year, from our youth
into our old age, if we last that long! But the indirect approach often
takes some of the heat out of what would have been the unsuccessful
evangelism of direct teaching. I think this is especially true in the
more secularized of societies to say nothing of the more
fundamentalist.

Bah community life can be, often is--and often is not--a

distinctive pattern of action transforming spiritual, social and
administrative affairs. Disassociated from its mission and its vision,
though, it can and does deteriorate into frustrating meetings and
consultations on trivial and hair-splitting concerns. This has been the
experience of many in the last several decades. Indeed, I'm sure this
has characterized participation in community life for many
thousands of believers for decades before these recent epochs and far
back into the 19th century. For thousands of those who came in
touch with the transforming power of the Cause little transforming
took place. The Bahai Faith is not like a rabbit's root or Niagara
Falls. It's not some magic bullet or open-sesame. Not everyone gets
transformed. When tests come hard and fast which they seem
inevitably to do, the crucible of transformation yields an array of
results from exit narratives to people whose lives are utterly
transformed by this Cause.
As one noted writer once put it commenting on the forty years of
Bahaullahs ministry, 1863-1892: the greatest tragedy of the life of
this Great Soul was that most of those who did come in touch with
Him, with this immense spiritual Force, did not join this new Cause.
And those that did join this new Faith did not become saints
overnight, endowed with wisdom and endless supplies of patience to
deal with human eccentricities. Each generation has been tested and
tried and the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon were not
qualities everyone was given in ample amounts, nor are we as we
travel along the way in these generations of the half-light.
In the culture of learning and growth that each generation of Bahais
has found itself in--the distresses and disturbances, the heartaches
and hindrances, the inconveniences and irritations--have kept
everyone busy coping, each in their own way. As the Guardian wrote
in God Passes By: "The process whereby the unsuspected benefits of
this new Cause have been manifested to the eyes of men has been
slow, painfully slow." "Crises," he went on to say, "at times threaten
to arrest the unfoldment of the Cause and blast all the hopes which
any former progress has engendered."(p.111) This has been true for

more than a century and a half. It is, therefore, not surprising that
disappointment sometimes sets in the hearts of believers. That the
apparently slowly crystallizing institutions and its policies are often
barely understood should come as no surprise if, indeed, they are
crystallizing slowly. Speed of development in this new culture is
often as hard to assess as it has been in the past, in previous
paradigms. Much in this Cause is in the hands of, and part of the
processes involved in, those mysterious dispensations of Providence.
What I say above was true in the years of the ministry of all the
Central Figures of this Faith as anyone who is more than a little
familiar with Bahai history in those earlier stages of the Cause will
easily confirm. In the century of the Formative Age since the passing
of Abdu'l-Bah this has also been true, a fortiori. Hopefully this
analysis and comment, this historical overview, will contribute in
some way or other, as I indicated above, to an inevitable and
necessary dialogue on the issues regarding the many related
processes involved in this latest and ongoing paradigmatic shift. It is
my hope, too, that what readers find here will serve as a useful
extension of their own reflections and understandings regarding the
culture of learning and of growth and the paradigmatic shift the
Bahai community is currently going through and has been going
through since at least the mid-1990s.
THE YEARS OF THIS PARADIGM
The impulse to ponder and try to distil: (a) the events in the Bahai
community in those last fin de siecle years of the 20th century and
these early years in this new millennium as well as (b) my own
contribution---has led to this essayistic reflection. I invite readers to
follow me into what I would like to think is a world of intellectual
rigour, a world in which I preserve my distance from you and have it
annihilated all at once, as one writer expressed what happens
between writer and reader in the reading-writing process. I have
been inviting people into my world of ideas, words and writing for
decades with only a modicum of success and so I do not approach
this exercise with high expectations. My assumptions and

presumptions are imbued with a good dose of healthy realism and

low to medium-range expectations. I approach this exercise, this
relationship with you the reader, with a belief in the power of
questions. The significance of questions and of what the creative
writer Bahiyyih Nakhjavani calls shadow regions where questions
can arise, where we see sharp contrasts between ideals and realities
and where we grapple with contradictions and paradoxes--these
questions and these shadows underpin much of this literary raison
d'etre, my MO as the who-dun-it folk call their modus operandi,
their modus vivendi.
Edward Gibbon, the great historian of the Roman empire, thought he
was describing the greatest and most awful scene in the history of
humankind. It is my view that our time can lay claim to being the
great climacteric, the great turning point, the great paradigm shift of
paradigm shifts, the greatest and most awful scene in the long climb
of life on our planet. This book describes but one aspect of one
chapter, one small scene, one mise-en-scene, one setting, in the great
drama of our time. I have choreographed this work, brought in a
team of talented people and I hope you enjoy the show, as it were.
But I make no guarantees. This book is now in your hands and each
reader must, will, give to my words his or her own particular
meaning. Readers will give them their own 'take,' as we say these
days.

SOME STATISTICS AND SOME CELEBRITIES

Though this new world religion has steadily grown over the last
century, the Bahai community in western countries remains small:
one twentieth of one percent of the total American population, one in
one thousand in Canada, one in 1200 in Australia and I could go on
and on for each western country in similarly small proportions.
There are many examples of small movements' having a noticable
impact on culture or religion. In the USA Unitarianism, Theosophy,
and Vedantism are good examples. But for a small movement to

produce a large impact on the scene in the USA, writes Robert

Stockman("The American Bahai Community in the Nineties," by
Robert H. Stockman, Bahai Research Office, Wilmette, Ill.
Published in Dr. Timothy Miller, ed., America's Alternative
Religions, SUNY Press, Albany, 1995) three conditions usually must
be fulfilled. First, the movement must advocate ideas--usually a few
simple ones--that resonate strongly with existing trends in the
culture. Second, the movement must be able to advocate those ideas
in a language that is appropriate and effective in the society outside
it. Third, the movement must have articulate people or celebrities as
spokespersons. These celebrities provide what is sometimes called
'charisma by association' and leading intellectual or literary figures
provide an intellectual legitimacy or patina of influence in the
culture.(John Travolta and Tom Cruise in Scientology are good
examples) Usually the presence of the first two virtually assures the
third. Of course, Stockman is addressing the experience, the
retrospect and prospect of the American Bahai community and, by
implication, many nations in the first, the developed, world. Other
national communities in the third world and the non-English
speaking world, have their own stories.
While reflecting on the relationship between celebrities and politics,
sociologists David S. Meyer and Joshua Gamson concluded, "the
resources that celebrities bring to bear in social movement struggles
do not generally include citizen education or detailed political
analysis" (Meyer and Gamson 1995, 202). In essence, few celebrities
have the educational and political skills that would allow them to do
sustained, in-depth and nuanced presentations. Thusfar in this new
paradigm, celebrities have played no significant role as far as I
know. Who knows what the future holds as the Faith expands and
finds new fields of both enthusiastic support and intense opposition!
Historically, the Bahai community has rarely been able to fulfill
these three requirements for influence, not in the USA and not in
other countries. The basic Bahai teachings are usually expressed in a
terminology that is difficult to translate into mainstream language,
although this is slowly changing and some can translate the language

and concepts of the Bahai idiom into a language of contemporary

relevance much better than others. their books are available for all to
read, for those who take any serious interest. But the Bahai literature
is now immense and your average reader inside and outside this
Cause simply can not keep up with the deluge. Further, the ideas, the
Bahai messages, are usually part of a much larger complex of Bahai
teachings and they are inextricably intertwined. One idea or theme
cannot be easily separated from another. In some ways the Bahai
Faith is a total package. For example, the application of the principle
of interracial and interethnic unity to society is difficult because
Bahai scripture prohibits Bahais from partisan political activity and
breaking the law. Consequently few prominent blacks and few Civil
Rights leaders have been attracted to the Bahai Faith in the more
than 100 years of Bahai history in that country, in the USA(18942009).
The Bahai vision of a united, peaceful world, similarly, has been of
limited appeal to those outside the Bahai community because the
implementation of the Bahai vision cannot be established through
partisan political efforts, through anti-government demonstrations
and a whole plethora of activities through which many people seek
to influence society, to measure their reformist zeal and their very
claim to a righteous life, in the public eye. Furthermore, the Bahai
conception of world unity and of interreligious relations are
dominated by the belief that the new world order envisioned by the
Bahai scriptures can occur only if the world accepts Bahaullah as its
Lord. This is and has been far from a popular notion. It was not a
popular notion in previous paradigms and it is not a popular one
now. It may be some time, after many more years of Bahai
experience in this new paradigm, before this staggering claim, this
difficult truth, becomes a reality in the general public eye. In the
meantime Bahais must avail themselves of as many means as they
can of qualities that will attract the hearts of others and develop
those attributes on which true happiness and greatness lie and which
are elaborated on in the Bahai writings--repeatedly, time and time
again. And which, I should also add, are part and parcel of the
implementation of this new culture and its multi-paradigmatic

emphases.
This picture of the future of the Bahai World Order and its
relationship with not only the present but the future governments of
the world has found its most comprehensive discussion thusfar at a
thread entitled: Defending Shoghi Effendi Posted by Sen on
November 22, 2009. McGlinn has devoted many years of study to
this subject and the evidence of his scholarship is everywhere
apparent on this thread on a quite complex subject.
History has shown that great increases in the numbers of American
Bahais occur when social turmoil is high, Stockman points out. The
Bahai Faith in the USA experienced large increases in the late 1960s,
the 1930s, and the 1890s. If American society enters another period
of turmoil, a substantial increase in Bahai numbers may occur. If, on
the other hand, society remains more or less as it is now, Bahai
growth is likely to remain in the range of three to five percent per
year for the foreseeable future. Even at that rate the American Bahai
community, Stockman estimates, is likely to reach a quarter million
a half million members by 2025. With 15 years to go and with a
present Bahai population of about 150 thousand it will take the most
significant growth in the history of the Bahai Faith in America to
occur to reach that number. This new paradigm of learning and
growth in the next fifteen years will certainly be busy in achieving
the numbers that Stockman has envisaged. Stockman's analysis is
one I like but his analysis is but one of many and it is not the whole
story. Growth is a far-too complex phenomenon to reduce it to the
tri-factored hypothesis that this fine writer does in his published
essay.
Here in Australia, where I have lived for four decades, the major
growth factor has been the influx of Iranian refugees, their children
and the birth in Australia of their children's children. There are now
several generations of Iranians in Australia making up more than
half of the nearly twenty thousand Bahais Downunder. I could site
examples in several other countries and territories among the more
than 200 in the world where Stockman's thesis is not even relevant.

As I say the whole question of growth of the Bahai community

across the planet is complex and multi-factorial. This new paradigm
takes this multiplicity of factors into account. It does so in quite an
overt and simple paradigmatic way, but also in quite a surprisingly
deceptive way, a way that is difficult to penetrate, to appreciate, to
see its true significance, its true outreach and impact.
It is difficult for the student of the process to get a handle on a
community of six million members in a world of six billion amidst a
tempest that is graphically tearing at the very fabric of society in
unprecedented proportions. The tearing process is also a seductive
one as western peoples in all classes continue to enjoy the fruits of a
materialist way to life. This way of life insinuates itself into the
psyches of human beings and they lose, in the process, any name of
action, as Shakespeare put it in that famous soliloquy from Hamlet.
As these same human beings watch the world's horrors continue on
apparently unabated night after night and day after day and illequipped to interpret the social commmotion at play throughout the
planet, they listen to the pundits of error and sink deeper into a
slough of despond. The process has always reminded me of the
Greeks in the 5th century BC during that golden age as the sophists
poured their advice on a hapless Athenian democracy before that
experiment was snuffed out as fast as it had arisen.
As the Guardian wrote so eloquently back in the midst of WW2 as
the German war-machine was still gaining in strength and inflicting
its terror on the European continent: humankind can neither perceive
the origins nor discern the outcomes of this tempest, a tempest that is
deranging the equilibrium of the world's inhabitants. Bewildered,
agonized and helpless these inhabitants watch and wait. And so, in
many ways, do we all whether we are active participants in this new
culture of learning, this new paradigm, or whether we chose to be
bystanders and observe it all from a distance, from the comfort of
our homes as it is often said.
Of course, the growing size and influence of the worldwide Bahai
community will spark and is already sparking a much more thorough

investigation by outsiders of what this community is all about. One

result of such an investigation has been the asking of tough questions
about the many ways the Bahai religion's teachings deviate from
cultural norms. This investigative process, as I say, has already
begun to happen in these first years of this new paradigm. Some of
the questions have been tough; some of the answers have been tough
and differing opinions have resulted not only in the generation of
sparks of truth but in the generation of ranglings and resentments,
resignations and recriminations. The Bahai rules of discourse and
their emphasis on an etiquette of expression, on solid thinking, on
the attainment of correct perspectives, on the adoption of proper
attitudes, on moderation in all things as part of the critical base of
true liberty, on the ramifications in speech of the many dynamics of
the term 'freedom of expression'--these are discussed in only a
cursory fashion in this book. They are only one example of an aspect
of the Bahai Faith that differs markedly from accepted practice in the
United States in particular and in western countries generally.
RESTRICTIONS ON DISCOURSE?
If the Bahai religion is ever to have substantial influence in these
western countries, the Bahai distinctives--both positive ones from a
cultural point of view, such as racial integration--and negative ones,
such as restrictions on discourse--will also have to be explored and
sharply debated more than they already have. Already in the first 15
years of this new paradigm the debate has gone on certainly just
about ad nauseam--at least for those with internet access, those with
literary tastes and proclivities and those who like to ask provocative
questions about the religion they have joined. I trust this book will
contribute in its own way to this ongoing inevitable and necessary
dialogue. As I say the interchange has already begun in earnest in the
first two decades of the operation of this paradigm. Friederich
Hayek(1899-1992), the Austrian-born economist and philosopher
known for his defense of classical liberalism, wrote in his The
Constitution of Liberty that: "Liberty not only means that the
individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also
means that he must bear the consequences of his actions...Liberty

and responsibility are inseparable." The members of the Bahai

community are also faced with this dichotomy of the opportunity
and the burden of the freedom of choice on the one hand and the
responsibilities on the other.
FINALLY: PARADIGM ANALYSIS AND INTELLECTUAL
UNDERPINNINGS OF THE PARADIGM
Paradigm analysis, as Christopher Buck put it in his review of Udo
Schaefer's book Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of a
New Paradigm(Zero Palm Press, Prague, 1995)is an integrative
approach to the study of a religion as a system. It has heuristic or
explanatory power in disclosing the concatenating or the
interconnected logics of belief: faith, doctrine, ethos; and of praxis:
ritual, piety, and ethics. Precisely because it takes this approach, Udo
Schaefer's Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of a New
Paradigm is an important contribution to Bah' studies. It is more
than coincidental, it seems to me, that this book appeared the year
before the emergence of this new paradigm and Buck's review
appeared in the same year that this paradigm was launched.
The consequence of the modern world's subjectivisation of truth,
Schaefer argues, is that social standards are no longer viable or
possible. Indeed, while Schaefer asserts that the stability of society is
bound up with a generally accepted value system, he is quick to
point out that universal standards of morals and human values are
largely lacking in modern and postmodern society. In this spiritual
vacuum, New Age movements fail to provide any consensus on
whatever direction society ought to take. New Age spirituality is so
polymoral that it is functionally amoral. In the final pages of this
essay, Schaefer introduces the Bah' Faith as offering a new
paradigm anchored in revelation, in which the will of God for the
world today is apprehended and affirmed by faith, and a universal
value system is offered.
In contrast to "the old ecclesiastical paradigm" of Christian
salvation, "the new paradigm depicts a divine economy of salvation,

according to Schaefer. The nature of this "economy" is

paradigmatically different from traditional Christianity. The nature
of this new paradigm is developed in the second essay, "On the
Diversity and Unity of Religions." This essay begins with a
"Prefatory Note on the Concept of Paradigm," in which the author
assimilates Thomas Kuhn's definition of "paradigm" as "the entire
constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by a
member [sic; read "the members"] of a given community." Schaefer
then speaks of the "unity paradigm" central to Bah' belief and
praxis. The rest of the essay unpacks this core concept. Udo Schaefer
has effectively adapted Kuhn's concept of "paradigm" and
"paradigm-shift" from the history of science to the history of
religion. Udo Schaefer's work could be said to be one of the several
intellectual underpinnings for this new paradigm in the Bahai
community, a paradigm that began to form in Bahai groups all
around the world in the decade after Schaefer's book was published.
The new paradigm of culture and learning in the last two decades, it
seems to me, could be said to find one of its broad, sociological,
psychological and historical frameworks for action, an intellectual
and analytical overview in Schaefer's timely book.
The writings of Bahais like Lample, Arbab and Martin, among
others, have been useful in providing initial sketches of this new
paradigm. The work of The International Teaching Centre, that
institution which has been specifically invested with the twin
functions of the protection and propagation of the Cause of
God(sometimes I use the acronym ITC), cannot be ignored in
providing preliminary and early consultation in relation to the
paradigm that was put in place by the House of Justice in 1996. The
International Teaching Centre has had a pivotal and primary role in
this entire shift in the Bahai community. It is an institution
established as far back as June 1973 and it brought to fruition the
work of the Hands of the Cause of God residing in the Holy Land
and provided for the extension into the future of functions with
which that body had been endowed as far back as the late 19th
century by Bahaullah Himself. It has brought a "degree of energy,"
as the House pointed out in its Ridvan 2010 message, "to this

worldwide enterprize," to this new paradigm. The ITC is now

turning its attention, the House wrote in that same message, to
questions related to the efficacy of activities at the cluster level and
to childrens classes among other foci of concern.
"Aware of the aspirations of the children of the world," wrote the
House of Justice at Ridvan 2008, "and their need for spiritual
education, clusters are extending their efforts widely to involve evergrowing contingents of participants in classes that become centres of
attraction for the young and strengthen the roots of the Faith in
society."
MY OWN CONTRIBUTION: A RETROSPECTIVE
As much as I would like to see the words of my own book here, this
very long essay, contributing to the correction of some of the
inappropriate attitudes, at least inappropriate as I see them, and as
much as I would like to see a resulting enlargement of the
perspectives of readers, what some might see as a somewhat
pretentious goal, my aim rather and simply is to have this somewhat
lengthy piece of writing contribute to that inevitable and necessary
ongoing dialogue, as I have called it above, on any and perhaps
many of the questions regarding this complex and ongoing process
of paradigm change. If this book can assist in opening up, in helping
readers pose questions rather than providing some set of answers; if
this book can help lead to an openness of mind, a humility of
response and readiness of apprehension; if it can help readers find
resolutions rather than solutions; and if it can help them be
comfortable with the many paradoxes not only within this Faith but
within life itself, I will have achieved much pleasure as a member of
this mysterious Cause.
Such, then, are some of my simple and not-so-simple goals in
posting this essay, this article, this book, within this immense
archival collection of print resources at Bahai Library Online. As I
go about this mediation and meditation on several themes, a process
that involves differentiating my incoming sensory information, my

intuitions, my reasonings and the long tradition of thought on the

subjects in the Bahai community--I aim to integrate all of this into
generalizable patterns of interpretation. This is no easy task and I'm
sure I only achieve it in part. I am enabled, though, to some extent at
least, to make more meaningful decisions myself and to act within
the context of this new paradigm as I decide just what it means for
me and my participation.
What action each of us takes and makes is, in the end, what is crucial
and understanding lays the foundation for this action. As I write this
book I am extending the foundation and defining that part of the
foundation I have already laid for future activity in this Cause.
Participation in this new paradigm is never finished; one's work may
be relaxed and occasionally abandoned to give the spirit a rest.
Michelangelo put this concept of one's work the same way in
relation to his creative activity, his art. As much as this paradigm
shift contains many changes in the ways I and my fellow Bahais go
about things, it is not the basis of a revolution and, for those who see
it as a revolutionary change, it is in the character of Bahai
revolutions-a quiet one, at least in most places. Much of Bahai life
will go on as it has done in its two century-long history for at its core
the revolution we are all involved in is: spiritual, universal and
entirely outside of man's control.
This book has two parts. The first part is the document above and the
second part is also at Bah' Library Online. To access the second
part of this book, go to the access page and click on "Title Search",
then place the words "culture of learning" in the search box. This
will take you to the document.
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Abstract:
The building of the community and administrative
structure of this new world Faith was at the core of
Bahai programs & policies, goals & game-plans, so to
speak, from 1921 to 1996, a period of 75 years, & as
far back as the last years of the 19th century.
Notes:
Part 1:
This book, of which this document at BLO is Part B, is
830 pages font 16, and 7100 pages font-14. The book
has about 280 thousand words. It contains reflections
and understandings regarding the new Baha'i culture of
learning and growth, what amounts to a paradigmatic
shift, in the Bahai community. This international
community found in over 230 countries and territories,
as well as some 120 thousand localities has been going
through this shift in its culture since the mid-1990s.
The Baha'i Faith claims to be the newest, the latest, of
the Abrahamic religions.
This Faith had its origins in mid-19th century Iran. But
this new Baha'i culture, or paradigm, has just stuck its
head above the ground, so to speak. This particular
form of the Baha'i culture will be developing in the
decades ahead, arguably, at least until 2044, the end of
the second century of the Baha'i Era(1844 to 2044), and
perhaps beyond into that third century of the Baha'i
Era, 2044 to 2144. Time will tell when the next
paradigmatic shift will take place in the international
Baha'i community, a community I have now been
associated with for more than 60 years: 1953 to 2014.

Comparisons and contrasts are made to several

previous paradigm shifts in the Baha'i community.
Thoughts on future developments within this paradigm,
and future paradigms, are suggested. In the first nine
years, 2007 to 2015, of the presence on the internet of
this book, this commentary, it has contributed to an
extensive dialogue on the issues regarding the many
related and inter-related processes involved in the many
ongoing changes since 1996 in the international Baha'i
community and its 5 to 8 million adherents.
Part 2:
This work is dedicated to the Universal House of
Justice, trustee of the global undertaking which the
events of more than a century ago set in motion. The
fully institutionalized charismatic Force, a Force that
historically found its expression in the Person of
Baha'u'llah, had effloresed by a process of succession,
of appointment and election, at the apex of Baha'i
administration for half a century by the end of April
2013.
I have also written this book as a form of dedication to,
by some accounts, an estimated 20 thousand Baha'is
and Babis who have given their lives for this Cause
from the 1840s to the second decade of this third
millennium. I have also dedicated this book to the
many best teachers and exemplary believers--those
ordinary Bahais--who have consecrated themselves,
indeed their lives by sensible and insensible degrees,
each in their own ways, to the work of this Faith.
Finally, I have written this work in memory of my
maternal grandfather, Alfred Cornfield, whose life from
1872 to 1958 has always been for me a model of an
engagement in a quite personal culture of learning and

personal growth.
Part 3:
This book is the longest analysis and commentary on
this new Baha'i paradigm that is currently available in
the Bahai community, although several other books
have appeared since this piece of writing first appeared
in cyberspace in 2007. The overarching perspective in
this book is a personal one that attempts to answer the
question: "where do I fit into this new paradigm?"
Readers are left to work out their own response to this
question as readers inevitably must, now and in the
decades ahead, as this new paradigm develops a life of
its own within the framework already established in the
first two decades of its operation: 1996 to 2016. The
question now is not "if" but "how" each Baha'i will
engage themselves, will participate, in this new
paradigm as the first century of the Formative Age
comes to an end in 2021 and in the years beyond as this
third millennium continues to challenge all of
humanity.
See also bahailibrary.com/price_pioneering_four_epochs.

Reflections on a Culture of Learning and Growth:

Community and Individual Paradigm Shifts: Part B:
A Contemporary, Historical, Futuristic and Personal
Context
2014
As I pointed out at the beginning of Part A of this book here at
BLO, comparisons and contrasts are made to several previous
paradigm shifts in the Bah' community. Thoughts on future

developments within this paradigm, and future paradigms, are

suggested. In the first seven years, 2007 to 2015, of the presence on
the internet of this commentary, it has contributed to an extensive
dialogue on the issues regarding the many related and inter-related
processes involved in the many ongoing changes in the
international Bahai community and its 5 to 8 million adherents.
Some of those comparisons and contrasts are found below.
This book is 830 pages font 16, and 710 pages font 14. There are
approximately 280 thousand words as the 7th year of this book in
cyberspace comes to a close. It is divided into two Parts: Part B
which is this document at Bah' Library Online(BLO), and Part A
which is also at BLO and can easily be accessed by interested
readers. It was necessary to divide the book into two Parts due to
the limitations in size of each document at BLO. The book contains
reflections and understandings regarding a new Bah' culture of
learning and growth, what amounts to a paradigmatic shift, in the
Bahai community. It has been going through this shift since the
mid-1990s. This newest, this latest, of the Abrahamic religions, has
been developing a new culture during a series of Plans in the two
decades, from 1996 to 2016. This new culture, or paradigm, will be
developing in the decades ahead, arguably at least until 2044, the
end of the second century of the Bah' Era(1844 to 2044), and
perhaps beyond into that third century, 2044 to 2144. Time will tell
when the next paradigmatic shift will take place in the international
Bah' community, the second most wide-spread religion on the
planet according to several sources.
THE NATURE OF BAHAI COMMUNITY LIFE
The House pointed out back in 2002(22/8)in describing the nature
of Bahai community life: "To mistakenly identify Bahai
community life with the mode of religious activity that

characterizes the general society--in which the believer is a

member of a congregation, leadership comes from an individual or
individuals presumed to be qualified for the purpose, and personal
participation is fitted into a schedule dominated by concerns of a
very different nature--can only have the effect of marginalizing the
Faith and robbing the community of the spiritual vitality available
to it." It should also be emphasized that we should not mistakenly
identify Bahai community life with what we see at the local level in
our own communities. These are still early days. Such local
examples are only the here and now in a very specific location and
there are a myriad locations on the planet where this community
life exists. Maintaining and deepening Bahai culture, one of the
functions of this new paradigm, is dependent on how the Bahais
live their daily lives, on the strength of their beliefs and on the
nature of their values as well as on possessing the appropriate
attitudes. The post-modern citizen in the West is trapped in a
culture which in many ways is a setting for a 24 hour frenzy of
competing messages, instincts and desires, all playing with their
self-esteem.
Living in a culture where even private space is invaded by the
unforgiving demands of the public sphere and even the natural
effects of ageing are seen as a sign of moral laxitude inevitably has
an immense impact and often an unhealthy effect on perceptions of
the self and the whole issue of health. The Bahai culture of learning
and growth has to deal with this dominant culture and its frenzy
which, as that emmminent professor emeritus of history at Harvard
University, Dr. Firuz Kazemzadeh, said as far back as the 1960s,
this dominant culture makes the Bahai 99% dominant culture in the
expression of his daily life and 1% the new age Bahai. Even if that
erudite professor of history is only partly right, his point is clear
and especially relevant to this new paradigm and its goals and
acheivements.

The Canadian sociologist, Will van den Hoonaard, in the very last
paragraph of his study of the first fifty years of Bahai history in
Canada(1898-1948) emphasizes that the Bahai community is
quintessentially a global one and Bahais and others need to
"delocalize" their understanding of new religious movements like
the Bahai Faith. The bona fide context, the viability, the measuring
tools for the study of this new Faith, is an international one and not
what happens in one particular bailiwick, one cluster, one locality,
down the road in woop-woop, where often there is no overtevidence of this new Cause at all. The spread of this Cause is
universal, gradual and, like Christianity over several centuries of its
expansion in the first millennium, a spiritual revolution in the
Hands of God with some help from the followers of His latest
manifestation.
GIVING SHAPE MEANING AND INTEGRATION TO OUR
TIME
Part 1:
The Bahai cosmology and its metaphorical-mythological base does
what any myth and cosmology must do in our time, in the words of
T.S. Eliot, "give shape and significance to the immense panorama
of anarchy and futility which is contemporary history." Generally
speaking, the shifting confusions and complexities of today's
postmodern moment require historical, sociological and
psychological contexts, explanatory frameworks to help people
make sense of their society and their lives. William S. Hatcher, in
his Essays on Science, Religion and Philosophy, entitled Logic &
Logos, provides a concise description of the organismic theory of
history where he associates childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
in the life of an individual to primary integration, differentiation,

and secondary integration, respectively, in humanitys social life.

He writes: "Primary integration...is characterized by a relative lack
of a sharply differentiated human awareness. In this stage, people
tended to perceive themselves as part of a whole, as one with
nature and a preestablished natural order into which they fit. This is
strongly analogous to the childs perception of himself as
undifferentiated from his family and immediate environment."
The second basic stage in the process of social evolution, that of
differentiation, is analogous to adolescence in the life of the
individual. For the individual, adolescence is characterized by
mature physical development coupled with relatively immature
emotional and spiritual development. Through competition and
conflict, analysis and criticism, the adolescent forges selfawareness. The adolescent stage in the collective life of humanity is
characterized by a relatively high degree of scientific and
technological achievement, coupled with relatively immature forms
of social organization and human interaction.
The third basic stage in collective human growth, that of secondary
integration, corresponds to maturity or adulthood in the life of the
individual. The individual seeks self-integration through a new
synthesis, a synthesis based on the analytical and critical
distinctions he has made and the differentiated capacities he has
developed. Thus, to achieve its collective maturity, humankind
must move forward towards an entirely new synthesis. This
synthesis, this new culture of learning, this new paradigm is at the
service of all of humankind. All the qualities of each Bahai acquire
dignity if that Bahai knows that the collectivity he or she serves and
in which they participate needs them. If proud of that collectivity,
that new Order, his or her own pride rises in proportion. The Bahai
collectivity or community has aspects that are like a spiritual army
and the individual is nourished to the extent that they feel genuine

pride in the new Order that Bahaullah has brought. This aspect of
the new culture, though, is complex for the army of Bahais is not
like your regular army with its guns and swords and uniforms. This
army requires wisdom and understanding on the part of its
members; indeed, it has some interesting parallels to the army
envisaged by Carl von Clausewitz's in his study "On War" which he
wrote in the early decades of the 19th century.
Part 2:
ALI NAKHJAVANI'S 4 APRIL 2015 LETTER
A. "We can clearly see," writes Ali Nakhjavn, who served for 40
years as a member of the Universal House of Justice, "the dates of
the Twin Festivals, which have a lunar character, will be moving
constantly with respect to the solar calendar. The July 10, 2014,
message has set their movement to correspond with a fixed number
of lunar cycles after Naw-Rz, so in any given year they will fall in
October or November. The Bah world has enlarged its
membership over the years, has become well known to the general
public as well as governments of the world, and has openly
established branches of its Administrative Order wherever it was
legally possible. The Bah International Community has been
duly recognized as a nongovernmental organization by the offices
of the United Nations. There is no doubt that the eyes of the world
will be watching with keen interest the forthcoming planetary
celebrations by the Bahs of the two-hundredth anniversaries of
the Births of Bahullh and the Bb, in 2017 and 2019
respectively, and the commemoration in 2021 of the hundredth
anniversary of the Ascension of Abdul-Bah, which had
signalized the inception of the Formative Age of the Faith. Thanks
to the action of the Universal House of Justice, they will not see a
Bah world divided between East and West in its calendar dates,

but will witness one unified world community, as the Universal

House of Justice indicated in its message of July 10, 2014.
It should first be remembered that each Bah day begins at sunset,
and not at midnight as it is now commonly reckoned. For the
coming year, the Universal House of Justice has fixed important
datessuch as those for Nineteen Day Feasts, Bah Holy Days,
Ayym-i-H and the fasting periodand apprised all National
Spiritual Assemblies of them. These dates will be available from
the national Bah offices of every country, and in some countries
they have already been shared with the friends. In an authentic
statement published in The Bah World series from Volume IV to
Volume XX, titled Bah Calendar and Festivals, there is an
entry in the last section, described as Additional Material Gleaned
from Nabils Narrative, that is substantial and of great importance.
Toward the end of this section it is stated that the Bb divided the
years following the date of His Revelation into cycles of nineteen
years each and had given a name to each year. The ninth cycle
began in 1996 and is due to end just before Naw-Rz in 2015. We
are now in 171 B.E., the last year of the ninth cycle. The training
institute: A new institution is born Rid vn 1996 was not only the
start of the ninth cycle, it was also the beginning of the Four Year
Plan of the Universal House of Justice.
The Houses message on that occasion called upon every National
Spiritual Assembly in the world to consult with the Counselors on
their continents, then to establish training institutes in each country
to undertake core activities aimed at promoting the teaching and
consolidation work. A few years later, in its message of Rid vn
2004, the Universal House of Justice stated that this new institution
had proved to be an engine of growth for the community
wherever it was established. In a letter on behalf of our beloved
House, written to an individual believer and dated March 15, 2009,

its Secretariat wrote: All men, Bahullh asserts, have been

created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. The
central purpose of the training institute process is to raise up human
resources who can contribute to this objective. And we then read,
in its Rid v n 2010 message, the following: [T]he Bah world
has succeeded in developing a culture which promotes a way of
thinking, studying, and acting, in which all consider themselves as
treading a common path of service.
B. Indeed 1996 proved a turning point in the destinies of our
beloved Faith. It is interesting to see how the unity reflected in the
worldwide implementation of the Bah calendar corresponds with
an unprecedented unity of thought and action that has gradually,
over these 19 years, surrounded the emerging framework of the
current series of Plans. Immediately after the decision to establish
training institutes, the Universal House of Justice announced in its
Rid vn 1997 message that another new institution should
complement the work of these institutes. This marked the creation
of Regional Bah Councils, to function under the supervision of
each National Assembly and become an added link to support the
activities of Local Spiritual Assemblies. The ninth cycle was
steadily evolving and rapidly unfolding. It was clear that in
addition to establishment of training institutes and Regional
Councils, other detailed measures had to be initiated to systematize
the work of these two pivotal new institutions. Gradually and
patiently the Universal House of Justice had to formulate new
courses of action. Among the most important was the need for each
National Assembly, in consultation with the Counselors, to divide
its country or territory into workable and sensible clusters, taking
into consideration means of communication in use in each cluster.
Further steps were clearly necessary. Thus guidelines were
provided for initiating core activities, forming study circles,

holding devotional meetings, undertaking home visits as seemed

appropriate, organizing childrens and junior youth activities with
the energetic and vital support of Bah youth, conducting
reflection meetings to evaluate progress with the welcome
participation of interested seekers and inquirers, planning the
expansion and consolidation work in cycles of activity, and
establishing regular programs of growth to sustain the
developments accomplished. A survey of activities such as those
described above will amply demonstrate that since the inception of
the ninth cycle in the Bah calendar, the majority of communities
throughout the Bah world have developed a new culture of free
and open association with the general public & the social
environment around them, and that they are for the most part
especially among the precious Bah youthvigilant, alert, wide
awake, & determined to push forward in their efforts to carry out
enthusiastically and in their varied aspects the wishes and hopes of
the Supreme Body.
C. Progress on major projects calls for processes, and by its very
nature has to be gradual. We see how the development of the
gardens in Bahj, in the Haram-i-Aqdas and in the other three
quadrants of the large wheel of gardens that surround the Most
Great Shrine, has been a gradual process. Similarly we see how the
construction of the Shrine of the Bb, with its golden dome and the
beautiful terraces that adorn it, has also been a process extending
over several decades. It is quite evident that our increasing
discourse with the society around us, on the one hand, and the
significant publicity we have received through the surge in the
oppression and persecution of the Bah community in the land of
its birth, on the other, have given rise to a great eager interest on
the part of the peoples, governments and media of the world to be
informed of our status, our activities and our plans worldwide. It
would be appropriate to seize this opportunity to look at the

standing and position of the Bah community in the world today:

(i) Three National Assemblies have been re-formed in recent years
in the Muslim world: those of Egypt, Indonesia and Iraq.
(ii) More than 5 million Bahs reside in virtually every country
and territory around the world, in well over 100,000 localities.
(iii) There are 182 National Spiritual Assemblies operating around
the world.Over 40 percent of the membership of these national
councils are women.
(iv) National Spiritual Assemblies in countries with extended areas
of jurisdiction have all established Regional Bah Councils.
(v) The number of Continental Counselors has reached 81, with
990 Auxiliary Board members serving under them.
(vi) The number of countries where Bah marriage certificates are
recognized has reached 60.
(vii) Bah literature is available in 802 languages.
(viii) Over 27,000 classes for the spiritual and moral education of
children and junior youth, open to children of Bahs and those
belonging to other denominations or groups, are conducted by
Bah communities on a regular basis.
(ix) More than 600 Bah elementary schools, mostly in rural areas
where formal schools do not exist, are operating throughout the
world.
(x) Seven continental Bah Houses of Worship have been

established in virtually all the continents of the globeall open for

prayers and readings for the spiritual upliftment of Bahs and
interested friends. The eighth and last continental Temple is being
built in Santiago, Chile.
(xi) Plans for the construction of two national and five local Bah
Houses of Worship have been set in motion.
(xii) Countless devotional gatherings all over the world are held
regularly in Bah centers and in Bah homes. These are open to
the believers and to the public as well.
(xiii) In all such meetings, whether in Bah Temples or in
informal devotional gatherings, Bah prayers and readings are
offered as well as appropriate extracts of scriptures of other
revealed religions.
Most of the above data were kindly shared with Ali Nakhjavani by
the Statistics Department of the Bah World Center.
D. The progress of the Bah world as noted above was achieved
through the systematic prosecution of a series of Plans initiated by
Shoghi Effendi, the stages of the Divine Plan authored by AbdulBah. These Plans, which unite the entire Bah world in a
common vision and mission, are now set forth and directed by the
Universal House of Justice. As we carry these Plans out, individual
effort and community activities reinforce and complement each
other. They never cancel each other out. They are like two rails of a
train track that need and supplement each other. In one letter,
written in English and dated July 28, 1954, Shoghi Effendi gives us
three analogies to enable us to comprehend the efforts of the
individual believer in the community. He likens the individual
believers to the warp and woof that determine the quality of the

whole fabric and to the countless links of the mighty chain

of Gods Holy Cause, and each one of the friends to one of the
multitude of bricks that support the structure of His Faith.
In another letter, written in Persian and dated Naw-Rz of 111 B.E.
(i.e. in 1954), Shoghi Effendi likens the individual isolated believer
to a point, a group of fewer than nine to a letter of the alphabet, a
Local Spiritual Assembly to a word, a National Spiritual Assembly
to a sentence, and the Universal House of Justice to a Book. What
an inspiring concept this is, indicating that although each one of us
is just a point, yet this point is not only associated with, but is part
of, one of the pages of His glorious Book! In one of His Tablets
Bahullh praises the believer who considers himself or herself to
be the sole and only believer in His Cause. In other words, He is
calling on each of us to consider oneself to be a Mull Husayn.
Shouldnt we, then, each endeavor prayerfully and persistently to
become an instrument in the hands of our Lords heavenly Faith?
I leave it to readers with the interest to go to Ali Nakhjavani's letter
which was published on 4 April 2015 for his summary of the
present state of the new culture of learning and growth in the
international Bah' community.
THREE OF MY PROSE-POEMS
I'll place three prose-poems into this book at this point. They are
somewhat tangential to the main theme but they reflect my
experience both before and after the beginning of this paradigm and
they place the orientation of my work, my participation, in this new
paradigm into a helpful perspective. I hope the following three
prose-poems are, indeed, helpful to readers.
THE KIND OF WAR

Carl von Clausewitzs book or series of essays which became the

book "On War" was written in the years 1817 to 1829. Clausewitz
was trying to gain an understanding and clarification of the
principles of conflict, of war. The nature of war has changed in
ways Clausewitz did not anticipate, and they will continue to do so
in the centuries ahead I have little doubt. Certainly for me and my
daily life and my contemporaries in the half century, 1960-2010,
warfare has a new mise en scene. All the wars I fought were in my
personal life, in my private domain. Even here, though, inspite of
all the changes, the principles of warfare outlined by Clausewitz
are relevant. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs,9 February
2003.
Its a different war these days
than the ones my father
and his father and fathers before
went to with guns and uniforms
and marching, marching. Marching.
A tightening in the gut, real fear,
morning after morning,
wanting to run away
from this stoney, narrow and tortuous path,
learning to love it, slowly, slowly, slowly-well, most of it.
Its the kind of war that wears you
down, year after year as you learn
to keep your forces concentratedthat simple law of strategyand keep faithful to the principles
you--and he--have laid down.(1)

(1) These were the first two principles laid down by Clausewitz in
his book.
SUBTLE ELUSIVE AND COMPLEX
Often men go to war and are there for several months, a year,
several years. The souls who make up the armies of God, who
attack the armies of the world and the right and left wings of the
hosts1 often must fight in this spiritual contest for most of their
lives. Having been in the field now as a pioneer for more than fifty
years and been a student of my own life, taking account each day, I
can see some of the reasons for my failure or, to put it more gently,
some of the reasons why I have not been more successful. One: I
lack the purity on which so much depends. Abdul-Baha says
sanctified breath will even affect the rock; otherwise there will be
no result whatsoever.2 I am only too aware of the quantity and
quality of my sins of omission and commission. My secret thoughts
are far from pure. May future soldiers in the army take note and
learn from the mistakes of soldiers of the first two
generations(1963-1986) and (1986-2010) of this tenth and last
stage of history. Two: I have failed to eliminate contention,
disputation and traces of controversy from my life. Abdul-Baha
commands that I do this.3 -Ron Price with appreciation to AbdulBaha, Tablets of the Divine Plan, USA, 1977, 1 p. 48, 2 p.51 and 3
p.53.
These are but two reasons why
my success has been less than
the best. For when you are
talking a lifetime you must be
faithful to the principles of war(1)
even more than in those limited

contests of short duration, for the

affair is subtle, elusive and complex;
but we are still talking war, inspite
of all appearances to the contrary.
I seem to be fighting, now, on
last legs, confining my skirmishes
only to battles that I can clearly
contribute some results and see
ideal forces and lordly confirmations...
rush to my support and reinforcement.(2)
These fifty years have worn me down
and, like Zaynul-Muqarribin, I long
to rise out of this life, awaiting departure
from day to day.(3)....I pushed too long and
hard and intense, not being a man of much
moderation; I was also more than a little
aware that my weaknesses might sweep me
into that fathomless gulf so sadly!!(4)
1 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1817-1829. The first systematic
study of war and its principles.
2 Abdul-Baha, Tablets of the Divine Plan, p.47.
3 Abdul-Baha, Memorials of the Faithful, p.153.
4 ibid., p.119.
ON WAR
"The idea of modern total war," writes sociologist Robert Nisbet,
"was born in the famous decree of the National Convention, August
23, 1793." This decree resulted in the creation of a mass army, a
citizen army, the first in human history in France. Carl von
Clausewitz's book On War followed forty years after. Clausewitz

wrote, according to Nisbet, "the single most influential book

written in modern times on war" in the years 1817 to 1827. On
War, a book on strategy and tactics, on the philosophy of war and
the relation between society and the individual, was begun one
hundred years before another book on war, a spiritual war, The
Tablets of the Divine Plan. In 1793, too, Shaykh Ahmad left his
home in Bahrain to begin the process of that spiritual, that total
war, a war of quite a different character, characterized in those
Tablets by what you might call 'a military metaphor.' -Ron Price
with thanks to Robert Nisbet, The Social Philosophers: Community
and Conflict in Western Thought, Heinemann, London, 1973, p.70.
Sharper than blades of steel
and hotter than summer heat,
placed somewhere inside,
pervasive,but as natural as
the weather, unassuming,
unobtrusive, you'd never
know or guess that it was
war. 'Twas more like a fun
park with distractions and
pleasures enough to keep us
all laughing to the grave and
all this amidst a tempest that
threatened to tear us apart in
a third world war that does
its insinuations while we go
shopping, watch movies and
get entertained more than any
generation the world has seen.
THE NUCLEUS AND PATTERN OF A GLOBAL COMMUNITY

Bahais are dealing now, as they have been for over one hundred
years, with the nucleus and pattern of the new global community
the world will one day adopt in its entirety in a process that can
hardly be envisaged at this very early stage of its embryogenesis,
its first stages of institutional evolution. Some writers try to grasp
this complex process but, as the Guardian emphasized, we stand
too close to it and these are too early days to even sketch the
process of that evolution in even the briefest of contexts. We have
other things on our agenda and they can be found in this new
paradigm. This new paradigm is just another stage, another step in
the long road toward the establishment of a unified society with
justice and peace. The dominant principle of this cycle is the
political and religious unification of the planet and the process has
been underway for at least six millennia: during three periods in
one great cycle beginning metaphorically, symbolically,
mythologically, with Adam in 4000 BC(circa) and ending some
500,000 years hence(Bahai Studies,V.9, p.37). The process is
majestic, extremely complex, anarchistic in some of its essential
aspects but one which will gradually unfold to the eyes of the
generations in the decades ahead in this and future paradigms in the
evolving World Order of Bahaullah.
To the mass of the Bahais is given many functions. The "power to
accomplish the tasks of the community resides primarily in the
entire body of the believers" and this is true more than ever before
in this new paradigm. Without muscle,effort, energy and action in a
myriad forms the organism that is the Bahai community is doomed
to inaction and inactivity. To quote one reference which places this
growth process in perspective: "The World Centre of the Faith itself
is paralyzed if such a support on the part of the rank and file of the
community is denied it"(Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith 130-131).
The organism that is this new world Faith can be likened to a tree
with a massive root system, an immense trunk, branches, buds,

stems, off-shoots, twigs and folliage. It is now spread over the

surface of the Earth. It is growing larger and larger and, one day,
will be found in every locality where human beings are gathered.
This culture of learning and growth, this new paradigm, has a
theoretical base. Theory comes first in any analysis of the practice.
I dont assume that some natural instinct or some simplistic
description is all that is required in responding to this paradigm. If
you say you dont have a theory, what youre telling me is that
youre a natural or youre open minded and that you just read or
hear or see whats there. You dont have a filter of understanding;
you dont mediate what's there, you don't mediate the process and
the content of the paradigm. I dont think that is good enough. We
are all wearing prescriptive lenses as we go through our lives. I
have a theory that asks whats my prescription? What is my
prescription right now in my life? The isolated self in this new
culture of learning and growth pays attention to the cultural
surroundings, to as much of this new paradigm as possible,
including all the variant stories that Bahai history and the history of
our wider society reveals. If this does not take place, then this selfdesigned life is no more than a self-enclosed and oxygen-deprived
entity. He or she is rather like a plant whose roots turn inward,
toward eventual death, although it is surrounded by what would
invigorate it if it would only act and do, think and be in a wider, a
social, context. And for each of us their experience of their cultural
surroundings is different as is their response and their activity
within this new paradigm.
TRANSFORMATION
Central to this theme of spiritual development lies the process of
transformation which results from, and is part of, the function of
nourishment. Transformation constitutes undeniably the life force

in all living organisms releasing new powers and revitalizing the

old. By transforming food substances into minerals, vitamins, and
proteins cells are able to multiply and able to sustain the organisms
growth. The body of believers similarly is bound by this vital law.
In its 1989 Ridvn Message, the Universal House of Justice
affirms: "It is not enough to proclaim the Bah message, essential
as that is. It is not enough to expand the rolls of Bah
membership, vital as that is. Souls must be transformed,
communities thereby consolidated, new models of life thus
attained. Transformation is the essential purpose of the Cause of
Bahullh." The transforming, nourishing, agent in Bah
community is the Divine Word and the act in the play is the
ongoing spiritual intercourse between the soul and its Creator, just
as nature derives its sustenance and energy from the omnipresent
rays of the sun.
Some people, of course, see this as purely utopian fantasy. But, to
quote old Oscar Wilde: those who would build a new world, those
who would work at social improvement, an improvement that is not
ultimately utopian in its form and spirit, should work at some other
task. Some writers might see the Bahai paradigm as one of utopian
realism. This could be defined as a vision of alternative futures
whose very propagation might help them be realised. A
community is.....a comprehensive unit of civilization," so wrote the
House of Justice back in 1996 at the outset of this new paradigm,
"composed of individuals, families and institutions that are
originators and encouragers of systems, agencies and organizations
working together with a common purpose for the welfare of people
both within and beyond its own borders; it is a composition of
diverse, interacting participants that are achieving unity in an
unremitting quest for spiritual and social progress. To this
common purpose there is added in this new paradigm a shared
vocabulary about growth and an extension of various disciplined

foci in several indicators of Bahai community life and its vitality

and strength. But the acquisition of spiritual qualities, motivations
to "conform ourselves to that meekness which no provocation can
ruffle, to that patience which no affliction can overwhelm, to that
integirty which no self-interest can shake" is not done overnight
and, even after a lifetime, the individual often falls lamentably
short in this and in any of the Bahai paradigms past, present
orfuture. This reality must be faced squarely, admitted and
accepted. We can't be too hard on ourselves or on others if they or
we do not reach the heights. Still we each must arise and struggle
within the context of our own limitations and abilities.
Transformation is not an overnight event from copper to gold. With
fire We test the gold and with gold We test Our servants. I leave
you, dear reader, with the copper, the gold and the fire--and the
complexity of the concept of tranformation.
BAHAI ADMINISTRATION:ELASTICITY AND FIXITY
The elasticity and specificity which characterizes Bah
administration ensures that Bah communities are able to
reproduce themselves in different localities without losing
essential features of their identity. This elasticity and this
specificity is at the core of this new paradigm. While such elasticity
and specificity are necessary they are not sufficient to keep the
body of this Cause intact. It is here that the laws of the Covenant
come into play wherever and whenever the Cause expands as it is,
as it will and as it inevitably must in the decades ahead. The
adherence of Bahs to a legal structure guaranteed by the
authenticity of its constitution protecting the body of the Cause
from internal divisions secures a process whereby Bah
communities are able to reproduce themselves in dramatically
different cultural settings without destroying the power of unity. I
have watched this process now since the 1950s and it is a

deceptively simple concept with transformative implications. There

is a strong collective Bahai identity at local, national and
international levels. It is not a fiction and this identity does not
suture over the individual identities in the community.
TRANSFORMATION, CHRISTIANITY AND THE BAHAI
FAITH
This transformation, however fast it proceeds in some ways, it also
proceeds in ways that are slow and often unobservable to the casual
observer. I have often thought that the Bahai Faith is insinuating
itself into modern society in ways not dissimilar to Christianity in
its first centuries as it grew along the edges of Roman society and
its mature, well-organized, rich and intellectually sophisticated
empire. Christ's message prevailed because it won its way into the
hearts of living men and women. It triumphed because its spiritual
force could no longer be denied. Acting upon his faith, the early
Christian does what the modern Bahai does; he or she goes about
quietly and for the most part, obscurely, to bring about the
promised day. Responding to opposition, Christianity defined itself
slowly, sensibly and insensibly, as the decades and the centuries
advanced. Christianity's success though, it seems to me, was due to
its essential truth rather than its usefulness, although that is not a
simple dichotomy and the subject is far too complex to deal with
here in even a cursory manner.
After more than fifty years of observing this new world religion
and being a teacher of ancient history myself, I have often been
struck by the remarkable parallels between the growth of
Christianity and the Bahai Faith. External opposition to and internal
disagreements within the Bahai Cause have been, are and will be
one of the main ways that this Cause comes to define itself over the
decades and centuries. The process of dealing with opposition, with

persecution, with conflict and arguments of many kinds takes place

within the context of a special armory of spiritual incentives within
and protracted struggles without. Over time, over the decades and
centuries, the struggle changes its colouration, its intensity, its
dynamics. Man suffering, striving and doing as he is and was and
ever shall be is at the centre of the process and gradually the basic
orientation of the Founder becomes the way of life for a whole
society.
Iranian clerics see the new Force, the new Revelation, as a form of
heresy to be eradicated. Critics within the Cause, often with some
axe-to-grind such as the view that impositions of orthodoxy or of
dogma are being foisted on the community; such as the view that
conservative institutions with authoritarian methods, dictatorial
decision-making and ecclesiastical prerogatives---these critics are
on the scene from decade to decade with their particular agenda
which they bring before the wider community of believers. Their
polarized, their divisive, often hair-splitting, often legitimate
concerns occupy the places of dialogue for a time before the topics
and themes change with the epochs, the stages, the phrases and the
ages of the new Faith. For the most part, though, this paradigm is
developing a culture in which the Bahais support one another and
advance together in a movement which, over time, will be
irrepressible. In saying this, though, the process and the game, so to
speak, is not easy and tests and difficulties are built into every
movement forward.
OPEN AND FIXED BOUNDARIES: EXCLUSIVITY AND
INCLUSIVITY
The Bahai community has been moving toward a more open and
inclusive community in the first two decades of the implementation
of this paradigm. The history of the Cause over 17 decades has

seen a range of policies and attitudes to exclusivity and inclusivity.

There has been a history of alternating positions from fixed and
definite boundaries on the one hand to loose and amorphous edges
of belief, membership qualifications and definitions on the other. It
is a story unto itself and I do not deal with this story here. But,
however inclusive and flexible membership policies are and
attitudes to those in other interest groups as well as the various
categories of the alienated and marginal Bahais within this new
paradigm, the spread of the internet during the first two decades of
its existence led to unprecedented situations for the institutions of
the Cause and some of the Bahais on the internet.
Almost overnight at the start of this new paradigm the institutions
and individuals on the internet had to deal with a wide-range of
dissidents, people whose exit-narratives were available for all to
read, the stories of unenrolled Bahais and covenant-breakers. All
they had to do was exercise their wrists with a few clicks on their
mouse and be curious enough to want to read these stories and
investigate these sites. Some believers, well-versed in the
teachings, also arose in cyberpsace. They responded to the
arguments of these covenant-breakers and various souls with axes
to grind as they exited from the Cause or hung on its periphery
complaining of this or that. One such believer was a Brent Poirier
who directly took on the specious arguments of the covenantbreakers. It was a good thing there were the Brent Poiriers on the
net. New believers or even old one who had never really got their
study of the Covenant up to scratch, who came across covenantbreakers' sites and threads--knowingly or unknowingly, they would
usually not have the intellectual weaponry to deal with the often
clever turns of phrase and old arguments in new dress.
COVENANT-BREAKING: OLD AND NEW

As the fifteenth year of this new paradigm was about to open in

April 2011 Bahais on the internet were able to read the curious
phenomenon of an attempt to revive the claims of Mirza
Muhammad Ali, the archbreaker of the Covenant after the passing
of Bahaullah. These claims have been revived by a group known as
the Unitarian Bahai Association in order to lend legitimacy to
their existence, as what they saw as a newly-established sect. This
Unitarian Bahai Association avowed loyalty to Bahaullah but
rejected the authority that Bahaullah gave to Abdul-Baha and the
Universal House of Justice. These claims were made on a web site
and in postings to discussion groups. These peoples own public
statements have already told the part of the world that engages in
internet discussions at several sites what they are about. One of
those who have been publicising this attempt on facebook was an
Eric Stetson. Stetson gave Bahais, so he wrote on his site, an
opportunity to demonstrate why the rehabilitation of Muhammad
Ali was not a realistic alternative to accepting the authority that
Bahaullah gave to Abdul-Baha to lead the Bahai community.
This is a sample of some of the developments in the narrow-world
of covenant breaking within this new paradigm.
The reason for the Bah' policy of shunning the violators of the
Covenant was not that they had a different religion; it was because
there is such a thing as a Covenant, and it is no trifle to be played
with. The Covenant, combined with the policy that the Bahai
community does not use violence nor in any way discriminates
against the legitimate rights of the covenant-breakers, but simply
leaves them to God, is the greatest protection for our children and
great-great-grandchildren from the curse of sectarian strife that has
clouded the undoubted light of both Christianity and Islam. The
blood on the robes of past religions comes not just from their lack
of an explicit written covenant identifying the successor to the
Founder and his authorities, but also from the lack of a clear

principle that sectarian tendencies must be combatted only by

shunning those who form sects. Still, shunning is a difficult concept
for western and liberally-minded people of secular humanistic
proclivities to get a handle on. One often reads of criticisms of the
shunning policy and the Bahai community will have to deal with
arguments, with the lance-and-parry of words, dealing with its
issues for some time to come in this new paradigm.
THE DISGRUNTLED, THE ALIENTATED AND THOSE WITH
SAD STORIES TO TELL
As that fine essayist in Canada whom I used to know in my youth,
Jack McLean, has observed, the Bah community has not seen the
end of the complaints of the constantly disgruntled, the doctrinally
innovative and the permanently embittered. McLean goes on to say
that he does not doubt for a moment that Bah's get hurt and
continue to feel hurt, that some have been betrayed by a fellow
believer or that some decision by an administrative body has not
gone their way. Most Bahs, if they live long enough, will find
some ax-to-grind or be the subject of an administrative decision
that has not gone their way. This applies to those who are now or
have been members of LSAs and many other branches of the quite
complex organization, some might say labyrinth, that is now Bahai
administration. These experiences contribute to the awakening of
all of us to the stark realities of the human condition.
One of the keys to the sympathetic ear temporarily lent to the many
disgruntled souls one comes across in the Bah' world of several
millions has to do with the way that organized religion is generally
perceived in contemporary society. In modernity, religion and
spirituality have gone their separate ways. Individuals may
willingly affirm their theism or spirituality, but many disavow
being official members of an organized religion. The Bahai Faith

is a religion whose organizational structure is part of the spiritual

base; indeed, as Shoghi Effendi often emphasized, the
organizational form is the crucial factor in what distinguishes this
new Faith from all others.
The whole notion of being against organized religion per se is a
strange one, when one thinks about it. People, generally, do not
object to organized government, to an organized judiciary, to
organized political parties, to organized education, to organized
medicine, clubs, associations and societies. But except for official
members, the religious organization in a secular age has become
definitely suspect. Of course, even these other organized bodies
and especially their authority structures, are the object of criticism.
Our age is, as one priminent sociology put it, characterized by the
twilight of authority. In Australia where I have lived for nearly
forty years, any organized body, any authority figure sets
themselves up for receiving criticism. It's part and parcel, the given,
in the life of authority figures and organizations. If they don't earn
respect, they don't get it and not everyone is good at getting
everyone's respect all the time. There is probably no one who has
ever lived who has received the respect of everyone in their
community, except back in the band and chieftom societies, the
first units of social organization on the planet whose groups were
very small, usually less than one hundred as anthropologists inform
us, and a sense of crisis was always present.
Uninformed observers, consequently, and there are plenty of these
people around in community life since there is so much to be
informed about these days, tend to be predisposed to accept the
viewpoint of the critic or dissident without further reflection or
investigation. If the person has dissented from a religious
institution, ergo, the charges must be true and they must be a
victim: at least, that is often the hasty conclusion of some doco on

TV, some newspaper article or some internet post. This

predisposition has clearly been at work in the last 15 years on the
internet in a number of cases, some noteworthy and most
insignificant. What these critics and dissidents fail to realize, and
often do not accept, is that the Bah Faith, while it allows for a
fair and reasonable largesse of individual interpretation, has
nonetheless its own doctrinal boundaries and ethical norms.
In the final analysis these doctrinal boundaries and ethical norms
are simply not accepted by some individuals who, driven by
frustration at the non-acceptance of the perceived moral rightness
of their cause or by their ego-mania, by what you might call a
hyper-individualism or by the insinuating principles of 2500 years
of democracy's threads and five hundred years of Protestantism
which often elavates individual conscience to an ultimate position
of authority--engage in corrosive attacks which by definition are
beyond the ethical norms and the principles of consultation which
Bahullh has mandated to replace acrimonious and divisive
debate.
PLAUSIBILITY STRUCTURES OF ALIENATION
The activity of many of those who become in various ways
alienated from the Bahai community build up what one writer has
called "plausibility structures." Many of those who were anxious
and frustrated in the Bahai community worked and reworked their
experience in detailed and graphic accounts to tell people about
their disappointments, the axes they wound-up grinding in often
graphic detail and what became over time their many criticisms of
the Cause. As I say, the major platforms for these exercises in the
last 15 years during this new paradigm have been the internet and
its plethora of sites. The Bahai Faith has a massive internet
presence for those who want to investigate what it is all about. The

world wide web is a place where anyone who wants to tell their
story can do so and we all have stories to tell. Telling stories of
ones life, writing engaging narratives, watching them on TV and
listening to them on the radio in the print and electronic media is all
the rage these days. If we dont watch out we will literally drown in
stories. I do alot of telling stories in this book. I, too, have had deep
anxieties and concerns, but my writing does not place me into the
many negative categories that are popular in some internet circles
and that are ennumerated above.
The history of the Faith over more than a century and a half is filled
with people who have had axes to grind and who have had sad
stories to tell. Covenants have often been broken, an inevitability in
more than a century and a half of historical and community
experience involving millions of souls. Not all of life, inside and
outside this Cause, consists of joys and deep and meaningful
experience. Bahai history has its tragic side, its hatreds, its
jealousies, its story of sins of omission and commission. One can
no more judge this Cause by the behaviour of its members, its
narratives of encomium and opprobrium, than one can judge this
Faith by the ineptitude of its embryonic institutions, the weakest
links among its millions of adherents or some of the horror stories
that have begun to emerge in the narratives told by those who want
to expose the downside of this Faith's two century-old history.
There are now many more sad tales available for all to read. The
impression has often been created among those who were curious
enough to read the many stories of bitter experiences spread across
cyberspace, stories of various forms of disaffection, of a whole new
generation of divisive forces within the Cause of a house divided,
indeed, of a very unattrative religion. Perhaps the greatest
achievement in the fifteen long decades of the history of the Bahai
Faith is that its unity is still firmly intact. All of this internet
casuistry and complaining, this criticism and contention is but the

expression of yet another generation of forces which have not had

the least affect in dividing a religion which in the centuries ahead
will play a critical and mysterious role in the unification of our
planet.
Often these narratives of division, though, are more than
impressions. This Cause has always had to deal with divisive forces
right from May of 1844 when there were many Shaykhis who did
not follow the Bab but remained outside the new fold which
emerged from within that Shaykhi school of the Ithna-Ashariyyih
sect of Shi'ah Islam. In the 1850s and 1860s these divisive
tendencies continued. This book is not intended as a history which
provides an outline of these tendencies. The history, the narrative in
relation to divisive forces has been no tea-party. The story is long
and complex and, for a student of history like myself, it is a
fascinating account. The student of this Cause should not expect
this paradigm to be any different. In some ways the Cause itself
comes to define itself by dealing with the differences that arise in
each generation.
A recently published memoir by Dr. Youness Afroukhteh(George
Ronald, 2003)of his nine years in Akka from 1900 to 1909 is one
good example of what I am writing about here. This Bahai
historian-memoirist outlined three types of covenant-breakers: (i)
openly offensive people, (ii) those who were entirely severed from
the Cause and played no part in its activities and (iii) troublemakers, evil-doers, spies and informers. Each of the Central
Figures of this Cause, Shoghi Effendi and the House of Justice
have all had to deal with divisive forces and people in these
categories. The remarkable thing is that this Faith has remained a
religion that is still unified after nearly two centuries of its history.
Those who have broken the Covenant and, in various ways, been
harbingers of conflict and contention, or bred opposition and its

dreadful schizmatic consequences have no place in this Cause. As I

mention elsewhere in this book, the internet gives the impression of
schism, but the impression is utterly unreal. As Toynbee points out
in volume 1 of his A Study of History it took Western Christianity
"more than three centuries to final achieve a schism.(p.66) And
Christianity had none of the protections that this new Faith
possesses. What exists now is simply a handful of disgruntled and
disaffected people.
Bahaullah has protected this Faith against the baneful effects of the
misuse of criticism; indeed, "dissidence is a moral and intellectual
contradiction of the main objective animating the Bahai
community."(UHJ, Letter to Bahais of USA, 29/12/88) We must be
constantly on our guard, therefore, lest destructive and divisive
forces enter our midst. The building of community, playing the role
of custodians of unific forces will keep us all busy in the years
ahead within this new paradigm as the Faith goes from strength to
strength. After fifty years of participation in Bahai community life,
I have found that the fine details of the story are only of interest to
a relatively small circle of the Bahais and only a small handful of
those outside this new Faith, those with some ax-to-grind. This
reaction to a very complex history, of course, will change as this
Cause comes under attack in the decades ahead within this new
paradigm. Indeed, in the last 15 years there has begun to emerge a
significant increase in the numbers of new recruits in several
countries in the world and this story of an increase in numbers will
be part and parcel of this new paradigm in the years, the decades,
ahead in its implementation. The Bahai world waits with wonder as
it has always waited with wonder at the increase in numbers, an
increase which has made it the second most widespread religion on
the planet with its second century far, far, from over.
The impression of divisiveness and critical opposition, as I say, has

been correct, but it has only been part of a new generation, a vocal
part, a literary part. Their opposition is, in the main, to this Faith's
administration, and to individuals within the institutions of the
learned or the rulers. Often the opposition is just a simple
disobedience to direct instructions from the House of Justice. With
increasing numbers of people entering the Cause in the years ahead
within this new paradigm, I'm sure we have not heard the end of
what you might call these 'opposition-narratives.' With millions of
members and millions more to come there are and will be many a
dead branch that will be cut off from the tree as there are many who
will be on the tree but who derive little sustenance from it. And this
has always been the case back to the 1860s and in the two decades
of Babism before the clear emergence of the Bahai Faith from
Babism by the late 1860s.
This has been the story, this tendency to diviseness, as I say, since
1844 as well as in the history of this Faith's precursors in the
decades before 1844. But it has only been a tendency; it has not had
the effect of cutting the tree, of dividing the boughs and branches,
the stems and the offshoots. This Faith has remained united for
well-nigh two centuries and this, it could be argued, has been its
greatest achievement in spite of immense efforts to divide---and the
story is far from over!
The basic problem of what you might call the negative side of
behaviour is not the essential effect they have,although that is
destructive, but fundamentally the fact that we repel from ourselves
spiritual powers. Positive obedience and following divine law
attract to us spiritual powers. The existence of spiritual powers is
vital to the activities of our daily lives. But we are vulnerable to
being influenced by the lack of belief unconsciously and to behave
in ways in which the rest of the society is behaving. This is only to
be expected. Everyone around us is going in that direction. Were

like the salmon seeking to swim upstream but we end up going

downstream with everyone else because thats what the society
around is doing. This happens from time to time; it happens to us as
individuals as we struggle to retain our vision of the teachings
while surrounded by people whose values are of a different kind. It
even happens to our Bah institutions from time to time.
Often the capabilities of our community or of our own dear selves
need to be re-evaluated. We need to possess a greater realization of
the power of Bahullh to reinforce our individual and
community efforts. Our deeds are indeed impotent without divine
assistance. Any evaluation of a situation is entirely misleading if it
does not take this supreme power into consideration. Any
evaluation is wrong if we dont take into account the power of
Bahullh to reinforce our efforts. We are all capable of falling
into the trap of going the way the world is going rather than the
way the teachings tell us to go. What this means is that we are
called upon to continually refresh and renew our understanding of
this vital abstract concept. Its difficult because of its abstraction.
We cant answer the most basic questions about what is spirit and
issues like that, but we know its a vital concept. We need to refresh
and renew our consciousness of this concept. How do we do that?
By the use of prayer which requires a formal belief statement.
We are faced with the life-long task of maintaining a vision of the
Bah worldview in the face of a largely unbelieving society. It
requires courage; it requires great determination to persevere in
views that are contrary to the prevailing views. There are a few
instances where our teachings call upon us to do things which from
the perspective of the world appear to be somewhat irrational.
SOME THOUGHTS ON BAHAI HISTORY ADMINISTRATION
AND ADMINISTRATORS

Bahai history is not a simple, happy and innocent bedtime story. It

is a fascinating one and this new culture of learning and growth
grows out of this history in all its complexity. Every movement,
religion, cause and person has what you might call its dirty laundry,
its sins of omission and commission, its members who bring badadvertising with them whereever they go and, if one wants, one can
live and move and have ones being immersed in this downside of
Bahai history. There is plenty of stuff there if one wants to read it
from those who were disaffected, alienated, mischief-makers, those
who have denied its truths, repudiated its teachings and rose-up
against its leaders or its institutions in some way or another. The
media one day I'm sure will revel in the complex and often
gruesome history of the Cause with its several generations of
covenant-breakers. The media is often inclined to dwell on the
cracks and fissures, the weak links and those disaffected
individuals in what is now a more than 200 year history going back
to the first days of the ministry of Shaykh Ahmad in the 1790s. The
road for both the individuals and this Cause is often narrow, stony
and tortuous and the life on the tree is often a hazardous one with
many storms, strong winds, cold winters and hot dry summers. We
are not called upon to be so successful and so happy that we never
suffer. Our willingness to suffer is part of our demonstration of love
for this Faith and what we believe it can and will do for
humankind. We must also develop the spiritual muscle not to dwell
on our suffering but to turn to the many sources of joy in this Faith.
It is the life processes which this Faith has set in motion in which
we must trust knowing that things take time and the process
includes many setbacks.
The attitudes we hold to the positions, the people, who hold office
in Bahai administration at all its levels is an important aspect of the
unfolding of this new paradigm. The Guardian refers to their "all-

important though inconspicuous manifestation" of sincere and

earnest devotion. Such individuals are not the "central ornaments"
of this Cause. They are not intrinsically superior to others in
capacity or merit. I have always found such positions very
demanding, when I have held them, and I hold these servants of the
Cause in "great regard."(Shoghi Effendi, Bahai Administration,
pp.78-80) not because they have earned my high regard but
because I have been asked to give them this regard, this respect by
the architect of its present administration, Shoghi Effendi. But I
have not always held such individuals in high regard in my fifty
years as a Bahai. The growth of appropriate attitudes to others,
whether these others are within the administration or whether they
are in the broader community and have idiosyncratic personalities
who present difficulties to us personally is often a slow one. Even
when one feels one has acquired the right attitudes one is often still
tested and one finds one's right attitudes not-so-right. It is a lifelong
test and challenge.
The qualifications of those in administrative positions set out by
Shoghi Effendi are not ones which, in their entirety, that many
possess. It is not easy for such individuals to win over the
confidence and affection of everyone whom it is their priviledge to
serve. Indeed, it seems to me, this is just about an impossible task.
Individuals in positions in Bahai administration can but try and we
as the served can do our best to hold them in "great regard." This,
too, is often an impossible task if we are practical realists. In a
letter written on behalf of the Guardian just before WW2 broke out
in commenting on Bahai administrators, we find the following
words: "such individuals can never hope to entirely fulfil those
ideal conditions set forth in the Teachings" due to "their human
limitations and imperfections."
MY OWN SAD TALES

I could tell a sad tale for I have many to tell; I could 'dump' on
people in this book. Dumping was a term I used as a hippy in the
1960s. I have had my rancourous divorce from my wife and periods
of alienation from the Bahai community. I got into hot water with
my mother and father because of my beliefs. I could go on and on
with my personal psycho-pathologies and my deep distresses. I do
this in my autobiography in five volumes and 2600 pages if anyone
wants to have a read at a host of internet sites where I go to be to
help to those with: mental health problems, interests in creative
writing and other subjects. The Review Office of the NSA of the
Bahais of the USA has given me permission to post my material on
the internet and so readers here may come across some of my
autobiographical experience and writing at many a site if they want
to do some googling.
I could very well have been one of those many marginal or inactive
Bahais who have made a career out of their varying degrees of
separation. But: "Here I stand," as Martin Luther once said in his
now famous phrase in 1523 and I do not have the vituperation
toward religious authorities in this Cause, the vituperation that
Luther possessed toward his religious authority, the Papacy. The
lists of those whose address is unknown and who are not
contactable in the Bahai community in many countries is
surprisingly high and those who have been Bahais for decades and
who have lived in Bahai communities of substantial size have had
many a discussion about these 'inactive believers.' The reasons, of
course, are many and I could expatiate on this subject for some
time. I tend to the view that this is not only an old problem but a
problem that will be with us well into this new paradigm. Indeed, it
has been a problem right back to the 1840s. Being an active
member of the Bahai community, a member on the address list and
accessible in some way or another to other Bahais, is not an easy

ride, so to speak. It no longer surprises me, after an association

with this Faith going back to the opening of the Chicago temple in
1953, that thousands of Bahais in many national communities have
an "address unknown." I am rather of the view that, when this
Bahai community has many million more members in the coming
decades there will be many more of these Bahais in name only. I'm
sure the inactive believer is one of the many variants of the "many
are called but few are chosen" theme. But it is difficult to know
who these few are...perhaps some of these inactive believers!! This
Cause presents to its votaries many a complexity. One of the
complexities is that the individual Bahai should not attempt to
divide the community into: the deepened and the shallow, the saved
and the damned, the sheep and the goats, or any one of those many
dichotomies that religious communities have lived with for
centuries.
I dont have any trouble, any intellectual difficulties, any hassles---a
term we hippies also used to use half a century ago---with the
institutionalized form of the charismatic Force at the centre of the
Bahai Faith, those trustees of the global undertaking initiated by
Bahaullah more than a century and a half ago. Neither do I possess
what might be called an adversarial relationship with the
institutions of the learned and the rulers in the Cause. I am familar
with the tendency of the institutions to over-administer the handful
of often inexperienced souls as if they had large populations of
Bahais to regulate, as the Guardian put it in a letter written on his
behalf several months before he died in 1957. I am familar,too,
with individuals who want to control others and tell people what
they think they ought to do. And I am only too familar with my
own foibles and failings. All of this, all the negative attitudes
people hold, will not go away simply because we have a new
paradigm of culture and learning, of growth and community
organization. As the Cause expands in the decades ahead it will

have to deal with many more difficulties than it has in my lifetime.

This Cause will be protected, though, from the mischief of the
aggressor and the hosts of tyranny that will arise against it in a
spiritual battle at the very centre of the greatest drama in the
spiritual history of the planet. The many people I have listened to,
though, in my lifetime who have been critical of individuals,
critical of groups of Bahais at the local, regional or national levels
and/or critical of the culture in which they live will all be with us
for some time at this nadir in civilization. These are the darkest
hours before the dawn and one should not expect anything less. The
Central Figures of this Cause all had to deal with such criticism and
now the burden of that criticism falls upon the shoulders of the
mass of the believers who take up the task and responsibilities of
Bahai life. The process of community building, now
the last years of its second decade, will take all our energies in the decades
ahead. Let there be no mistake. The cherished goal of universal participation,
the Supreme Body emphasized in its Ridvan 2010 message will "move by
several orders of magnitude," but, I am rather of the view that there will be
many orders of magnitude to be yet achieved when I pass from this Earth in
the next two or three decades.

BAHAI EXCOMMUNICATION AND DINROLMENT

The idea of Bah' excommunication or Bah' "takfir" (the Muslim
declaration of unbelief) has acquired prominence in polemics
directed against the Bah' community generally, and specifically
against the Universal House of Justice, to a degree that has gained
remarkable currency even in the informal discussions of
individuals, members, ex-members and non-members of the Bah'
community, critical of Bah' institutions, even in non-polemical
contexts on the internet. It has been applied, in good faith and
without polemical animus, to the loss of administrative rights and
expulsion by a Local Spiritual Assembly of openly gay believers.
There exists a wide range of written opinion within this Faith on virtually all

the major issues in society. The sensitive critique of and comment on the
Bah' position on homosexuality posted at the Bahai Epistolary site is a good
example of some of the recent dialogue within this new paradigm and its
engagement with social issues. For the most part, this book does not engage,
as I have already indicated, in dialogue on these social issues.

"More elaborately, inflammatorily, or influentially," as one writer at

the Bahai Epistolary site notes, "Bahai excommunication has been
prominently emphasised in blogs, internet lists, and even serious
academic journals by individuals with a clear and long-standing
opposition to the administrative institutions of the Bah'
community. Concretely, the accusation of Bah' excomunications
and takfirs centre on the very exceptional disenrolment, over
several years of a very small handful of individuals by the
Universal House of Justice on the grounds that their public
statements and actions are not judged by that Supreme Institution to
be compatible with membership in the Bah' community.
This same writer emphasizes at this same site that the voices that
are arguing for radical, nefarious and highly pessimistic readings of
these recent events have been taking place especially since the
inception of this new paradigm. These voices raised in association
with excommunication and covenant-breaking are speaking
perfectly legitimately from within their own innevitably painful
experience of these processes. If one looks beyond the painful crux
of these encounters, though, one might see very much a natural,
long term process of community development inherent in the
nature of religious community itself. This process is not always
harmonious; in the past it has been infinitely more explosive than is
the case today, inspite of the very explosive tones in which
protagonists of these tensions may address it. In the future the
explosive tones, I'm sure, will be even more explosive for the
process of community development, of growth and learning, is
complex and is part and parcel with the very development of the

Bahai community's contribution to the global civilization evolving

all around us with a speed which we can scarcely comprehend.
This same writer goes on to say that the intense feeling expressed
in much of the internet discussion with all of the arguably severe
decisions of Bah' instituions is a far cry from the thundering
jeremiads of Eusebius, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts of
James the VI, the fatwas and takfirs of Khomeini or the secular
purges of Stalin and Mao---or even the comparatively tender and
not-so-tender probings of the McCarthy era. It is perfectly correct,
and hardly surprising in a society which allows no stone to go
unturned, usually by a media culture wanting to get to the bottom
of everything possible in the name of truth, publicity or ratings, to
identify an area of tension in outlook and in the communication
culture between the Universal House of Justice and those
intellectuals who have run into this kind of conflict with this
institution at the apex of Bahai administration.
Like so many aspects of this new paradigm, though, the nature of
the conflict, the disagreement, the tension is not primarily doctrinal
as processual, not primarily a content problem as a context one
with a linguistic and casuistically centred focus--or so it seems to
me as an observer at the end of the world down in the Antipodes
about as far away from the Bahai World Centre in Haifa Israel as
one can get on the planet unless one lives in Antarctica where, as
yet, there are no Bahai communities. Mine is just one perspective
on this highly complex subject, a perspective which I don't expect
others to necessarily share. The dilemmas of inclusion and
exclusion, of individual interpretation and community cohesion, of
institutional authority and individual freedom, will remain with us
for many a long year as they have been with us for more than 160
years. Such issues are part of any community's history, religious or
secular. Within the first two decades of this new paradigm, though,

the scenario is not one of extremism and not one of human rights
violations. Nor is it the end of academic freedom for all Bahai
academics. It is really a transitory yet painful, altogether mild and
somewhat benign culmination of a process of competing discourses
and identities within a constituted,institutionalised community
setting. Of course for a few individuals, the experience is neither
mind nor benign.
That within such a setting the perspective of a community's elected
institutions should come to prevail is only to be expected. This is
an inevitable outcome and should not be accompanied,
notwithstanding the suggestions that this should be the case, by
calls for attacks and hostilities. A respect for the conscience of
dissenting individuals and for their right and freedom to express
their thoughts on the matter especially if such individuals are
outside of the community is and always has been a preferred course
of action. The institutions have been elected to guide and indeed
shape community processes and this is what they do, inevitably in
the context of some opposition and some institutional estrangement
for a small handful of members of the community. That is quite a
natural phenomenon and should not surprise those who are even a
little familiar with Bahai history over the last two centuries. That
dissension and conflict arise from time to time is also natural and
has been so in human society since those theoretical and
mythological first individuals, Adam and Eve, when they
represented both individual and society, both man and his
institutions.
THE PROCESS OF REVIEW
The Bahai process of literary review, to focus briefly on what has
often been experienced by Bahais who are writers as an
uncomfortable and divisive process, as something often seen as

unnecessary and certainly unwanted, is radically different from the

experience of writers in the Catholic church. The concept of
excommunication of writers whose views are outside the orthodox
line has as its aim the forcing of a change of belief or action in the
excommunicant. Its aim is often expressed through penance, thus
infringing on the freedom of the writer's conscience. The
consideration by an elected, constituted body that a set of
individual statements and behaviour are incompatible with its
criteria for membership does not carry with it a demand for a
change of opinion, much less a call for penance. It is even farther
removed from the catholic concept of anathema, which, in addition
to the excommunication, condemns the anathemised person to
everlasting hell.
One Bah' scholar has persuasively argued for the role of review in
the future: "at this still formative stage in the world-wide
development of the Bah' Faith when we seem to be on the verge
of "entry by troops" in many parts of the world, I think it would
prove unwise to do away with review at this time. As "entry by
troops" continues to happen, we can envision all kinds of people
entering the Bah' Faithunity notwithstandingamidst a great
welter of cultural backgrounds, dissimilar attitudes and various
temperaments. In the intellectual realm, such a mix can lead to
powerful ideological storms which may serve to undermine the
very unity the Bah' Faith aims to create.
Barney Leith had a different take on the issue as far back as the
year before the beginning of this new paradigm. Leith pointed out
in his excellent article: "Bah' Review: should the red flag law
be repealed?"(Bahai Studies Review, Vol.5 No.1, 1995)that
between 1878 and 1896 British law limited the speed of mechanical
vehicles to 4 mph and insisted that each vehicle be preceded by a
man with a red flag. Leith believed as far back as the mid-1990s

that the provisions for review were in a "red flag" law situation.
Traditional "vehicles", such as books, were subject to review (the
man with the red flag). But, newer faster vehicles were increasingly
coming into use. On the information super-highway the man with
the red flag was in danger of being run over. In the last 15 years, he
has indeed been run over.
The Universal House of Justice, in defending the continuation of
the practice of review, now and into the future, has made the same
moral appeal as did Shoghi Effendi. It has done this in a number of
documents, notably in Individual Rights and Freedoms in the
World Order of Bah'u'llh (of 29 December 1988), and in a letter
dated 5 October 1993, written on behalf of the Universal House of
Justice to an individual which restates the case for review in a
specifically academic context. Some NSAs do not insist that
writing and writers on the internet obey the red flag law.
In many respects the Bah' community is being decentralised and
deregulated as it grows in size and maturity. Its diversity and
plurality are increasingly being acknowledged. Greater emphasis is
being placed by the House of Justice on the need for individual
initiative, and institutions are learning how to facilitate rather than
control Bah' activities. These are processes that will continue and
become more pressing as the community grows explosively in
many places. Many National Assemblies have recognized that it is
no longer possible to try to control the kinds of things Bah's
publish about their Faith on the internet. The process of review has
undergone radical change during this new paradigm.
Sincere Bah's will always have "the dignity and unity of the
Cause" at heart, even if they differ on how these are to be achieved.
Responsible Bah' publishers of traditional printed matter and in
the newer media will exercise, as most do now, editorial control

and responsibility over what they publish. Attacks on the Faith can
continue to be answered by individuals suitably briefed by the
institutions or, indeed, by the institutions themselves and their
agencies. The life and richness of the Bah' community has been
greatly enhanced as it has been freed from review as a form of
control. Individual Bahais like myself are now encouraged in this
new paradigm to explore ways of using consultation, formally and
informally within authorial and editorial teams, as well as between
individuals and institutions and their agencies. New and exciting
presentations of the Faith have resulted and the best interests of the
Cause have been served.
THE TERM SPLINTER GROUP: NOT APPROPRIATE
There are today what some refer to as a number of Bahai splinter
groups of one or a few people, who do not accept the Universal
House of Justice as Head of the Faith. Their number in total is only
a few, but cyberspace gives voice to these few and the impression
is created of a Bahai house divided when, in reality, these splinter
groups are so small as to hardly be worth a mention. Indeed, the
word splinter, split, or fracture is not really appropriate; the word
fragment is a fitting one for the infinitessimal, miniscule sliver or
shavings. Still---impressions are impressions--however false.
Cyberspace allows readers on the internet to see the sometimes
bitter feelings possessed by members of these dots or traces on the
landscape between these snipets or molecules and the main body of
the Cause. These morsels or driblets serve as a living
demonstration that unity is not created by the anarchous and
divisive methods of a few.
It would be better for these numerically insignificant crumbs or
dollups if they each focussed their energies on achieving good in
the world rather than taking up the cudgels of opposition with those

they really cannot agree with. The Bahai Cause possesses an

authority, a legitimate one, followed by 99.9% of the community
and they decide when enough is enough, and some opposing person
is declared a covenant-breaker or loses his or her voting rights.
Such an Authority is derived from a written Covenant and Its
authorised interpreters. This Covenant finds its origins in the pen of
Bahau'llah. Bahau'llah has already spoken and passed on. So even
if individual members of these groups do abandon disputation and
get on with demonstrating the virtue of their principles, the fate of
these groups as a whole is sealed by the quandary they have put
themselves in. They are smidgen on the scrap heap of history. After
160+ years the Bahai Cause is not a house divided in spite of
appearances on the world-wide-web, appearances to the
uninformed, to the contrary.
In a passage of the Guardian cited by the House of Justice in its
letter on theocracy from 1995 makes clear:"...the mere fact of
disaffection, estrangement, or recantation of belief, can in no wise
detract from, or otherwise impinge upon, the legitimate civil rights
of individuals in a free society, be it to the most insignificant
degree. Were the friends to follow other than this course, it would
be tantamount to a reversion on their part, in this century of
radiance and light, to the ways and standards of a former age: they
would reignite in men's breasts the fire of bigotry and blind
fanaticism, cut themselves off from the glorious bestowals of this
promised Day of God, and impede the full flow of divine assistance
in this wondrous age."
The recent policy of dis-enrolment of a relatively few individuals,
perhaps less than half a dozen on the planet, can be and is often
cast in the rather inflammatory discourse of excommunication or
takfir. I think a much closer parallel to this Bahai policy of disenrolment would be the much more common policy found in all

kinds of voluntary associations. Sometimes policies of exclusion in

many organizations result in acrimonious situations; sometimes
they entail moral judgments and even metaphysical consequences;
sometimes they require recantation associated with religious
practices. This subject has many permutations and combinations,
but I shall leave this subject for now. I could write more on this
subject but I encourage readers to Google the Bahai site entitled
Epistolary with its excellent discussion on many a controversial
issue.
THE COVENANT
Any discussion of this new paradigm must place the concept of the
Covenant at the very centre of the discussion. Enunciated as "the
most great characteristic of the revelation of Bahullh, a specific
teaching not given by any of the Prophets of the past", the
Covenant signifies obedience to the successive ministries of
Abdul-Bah and Shoghi Effendi and the agency of the Universal
House of Justice to preserve the integrity of the Faith, maintain its
unity and stimulate its world-wide expansion. By the process of
written appointment and the provision of a legitimate succession
the Bahai Faith has been safeguarded and protected against
differences and schisms, making it impossible for anyone to create
a new sect or faction of belief."(Abdul-Bah, The Promulgation
of Universal Peace 455-456)...The Universal House of Justice, the
present trustees of the global undertaking which the events of
Bahaullah's life set in motion has a much more complete and
specific set of provisions in the matter of succession, in clear,
explicit directions, in unequivocal and emphatic language. These
facts, at the centre of all the Bahai paradigms of the past, remains at
the centre of this one.
This new paradigm, this new organizational framework for action

of the last two decades has been on the receiving end of the baneful
forces of dissension, divisiveness, factionalism and inordinate
criticism aimed at undermining the authority of the elected or
appointed institutions of this Faith. Dissidence is a moral and
intellectual contradiction of the main objective animating the Bahai
community as the House pointed out back in 1988 when the word
paradigm first came into their Ridvan messages. The notions of
various categories of Bahais, informally institutionalized by using
such terms as: conservative, liberal, progressive, reactionary and so
forth, is but one of the results of much of the ill-directed criticism
which dignifies conflict in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Obedience is a difficult art to learn in these times of individualism,
a "I-Me-and-Mine" attitude and the seemingly ever-present concern
with fulfilling one's potentiality.
"He who has learned how to obey, said the famous Greek poet and
statesman Solon 600 years before Christ, "will know how to
command." Solon embodied the cardinal Greek virtue of
moderation. "Every individual man carries, within himself, at least
in his adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man," wrote the
German poet, philosopher and historian, Friedrich Schiller, "The
great problem of his existence is to bring all the incessant changes
of his outer life into conformity with the unchanging unity of this
ideal(Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man). For the Bahai
in this new paradigm as in previous paradigms such a purely ideal
man has existed in the person of Abdul-Baha. The incessant
changes of my outer life and this new outer paradigm I must now
bring into conformity with this new paradigm--as all Bahais must
in the decades ahead.
INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY AND INITIATIVE
There is a strong place in this new paradigm, as there has been in

all previous paradigms, for the place of individual initative,

creativity and an unbounded confidence in the powers of human
rationality and science. The intellectual foundations of the
Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century philosophical movement
characterized by rationalism, a trust in reason, empiricism, a trust
in the senses, and scepticism, a trust in mistrust or doubt, that is, a
refusing to believe in anything without good evidence are part of
how an individual like myself puts this paradigm into practice in
his life. The Enlightenment faith in progress, science and reason
which the Bahai is able to put at the centre of his philosophy due to
the general Bahai teachings forms only part of the philosophy of
this paradigm, however, it seems to me. I often feel a little like the
main characters in the original series of Star Trek and The Next
Generation, such as Spock and Picard, who constantly reveal a
belief in dispassionate logic and a trust in technological or
scientific solutions to problems. But I also am strongly influenced,
as many characters in that series were, by their awareness of
philosophical or religious answers and an awareness of the place of
intuition and spirituality exemplified by Counsellor Deanna Troi. I
don't want to push this analogy too far but, it seems to me, that this
new paradigm has very eclectic aspects, aspects that enable each
individual to work out their role in their own ways.
When every human being is the judge of the norms of his life-style
and of the social order, and when there is no recognition of an
authority which cannot be questioned. When social utility and
reason is substituted for tradition as the main criterion of social
institutions and values, egotism grows as does the spread of
pessimism and a concern only for getting the best for oneself. Udo
schaefer discusses this aspect of modern society, an aspect which
this new paradigm attempts to counter. But it is an uphill battle
because for millions the sense of purpose once provided by religion
has been replaced by a sociological interpretation of existence, a

sort of political messianism, in which hope is now placed in

everything but religion: science, technology, political parties,
democracy, socialism, inter alia. We are seen as social beings not as
beings created by God with no relationship, therefore, to any
transcendent reality. To compound the problem for the Bah' trying
to implement this new paradigm, he must deal with the many who
espouse religious views which possess a mythologized and
irrelevant eschatology. The mind of modern man cannot accept so
much of the baggage of the old religions and the transcendent
retreats from the social sphere into a private realm(The
Imperishable Dominion, p.14)
One final note I want to strike here is the importance of confidence
in the ultimate success of the venture on which we are embarked.
We may, and inevitable will, fail many times along the way, But the
overall success of the Plan at the centre of our efforts is assured.
STILL EARLY DAYS AND ENDLESS MEETINGS
As one Bahai writer put it recently: The majority of local Bah'
communities, and many, if not all, national Bah' communities are
really embryonic entities, with very crude systems, agencies and
organisations in place, a limited number of individuals and
families, as well as few subsidiary institutions to speak of beyond a
Local Spiritual Assembly, the Nineteen Day Feast and, perhaps, a
host of committees and elected and appointed members in a variety
of roles. The Order brought by Bahullh is intended to guide
the progress and resolve the problems of society, the Universal
House of Justice states, but "our numbers are as yet too small to
effect an adequate demonstration of the potentialities inherent in
the administrative system we are building; and the efficacy of this
system will not be fully appreciated without a vast expansion of our
membership. Compared to the earliest years of Bahai

administration, say, up to 1936 when the first formal, organized and

systematic teaching Plan was initiated, the current administration of
Bahai affairs is far from embryonic. But the contrast between the
present development of this Bahai administration, this nucleus and
pattern of a future world order, and its development in the fullness
of time is so stark that it is necessary to apply the word 'embryonic'
to the present form of its operation and activities in all countries,
regions, cities and towns. However stark the contrast, the main
foundations of this new world Order, this new structure for society,
this new elan, are being laid within the framework of this paradigm
and it will be laid on the ruins of this present lamentably defective
political and religious orthodoxy that has its pervasive hold over
the thoughts and consciences of men.
Often believers live under assumptions that endless meetings and
activity will somehow, as one writer, put it, "save the day." These
are, as I say above, still early days in the establishment of this new
Order. In many places, if not most, the Faith was introduced
virtually just the other day on the horizon of history. Bahai
administration could be said to be still in its first century. Balance,
harmony and a relaxed attitude to things, though, are not easy to
achieve when one is engaged in what are often long hours of
commitments both inside and outside Bahai community life, when
one has a desire to achieve great things in ones personal life and in
the life of the Bahai community and when one also has to deal with
the mundane realities of everyday existence.
We, the generations of the half-light, are fortunate to be born into
epochs in which the challenges have been tremendous, the
experiences of our time momentous and the tasks set for us in this
Cause are aimed at producing an effect on our fellow man, by the
impact of will upon will.

One of the challenges that has faced me and the Bahais whereever I
have lived in both Canada and Australia for half a century has been
the lack of significant numerical growth in our communities. This
has been true in many Western and Eastern lands. Concerns about
the lack of enrolments expressed by many Bahais, as the House of
Justice expressed some eight years ago to a believer in a state of
some anxiety over this issue, is largely accurate and fully justified.
To see important Bahai communities markedly lacking in the
development of the human resources required to reach populations
desperately searching for solutions to the crisis in which society is
sinking is painful indeed to believers aware of the potency of
Bahaullahs Message, the House went on to say.
This consideration was an important element in the drafting of the
relevant sections of the document "Century of Light(2000)." Some
of the passages of that document attempted to acquaint believers
everywhere with the profound change in Bahai culture that the
preceding decades of struggle, achievement and disappointment
made possible and that was capitalized on through the agency of
the Four Year Plan(1996-2000). The culture emerging in this new
Bahai paradigm, the House went on to say, was one in which
groups of Bahaullahs followers explored together the truths in His
Teachings, freely opened their study circles, devotional gatherings
and children's classes to their friends and neighbours, and invested
their efforts confidently in plans of action designed at the level of
the cluster, that makes growth a manageable goal. The enthusiasm
with which Bahai communities in most parts of the world
responded to this challenge, and the results their efforts brought
have been a source of great joy to the House of Justice. This was
already true in 2002 and is even more true more than a dozen years
later in 2015.
The analysis found in that document Century of Light explained to

some extent the seeming impasse reflected in unrealistic

expectations on the part of many Bahais in those decades after
1963. Those difficult decades have now triggered a new culture of
learning and change. Many believers by the 1990s were unable to
see meaning or purpose in the seeming impasse of those difficult
decades. These believers saw themselves as inhabitants of
spiritually barren lands, as incapable of dealing with the mass
indifference to their efforts, and members of altogether
disfunctional local and national, and sometimes even international
Bah' communities.
As the 1970s became the 1980s and decade followed decade
discouragement set in to the spirits of many a believer. Desperate
exhortations to teach the Faith and a sense of urgency was
accompanied by an element of despondency or resentment. Many
strong and faithful Bah's chose to become inactive in the
community on account of their perceptions of dysfunctionality.
Steadfast perseverance in the teaching work was accompanied by
an inner hoplessness and lack of expectation. There were frequent
manifestations of disunity as Bahais sought answers to this
question in the abilities and deeds of one another. By the 1990s
these perspectives coalesced into systematic critiques of the
community in internet fora and academic publications.
All the plans since the outset of this new paradigm in 1996 have
been designed as progressive steps in achieving a change of Bah'
culture. The Four Year Plan(1996-2000), the Twelve Month
Plan(2000-2001) and then four Five Year Plans(2001-2006, 20062011, 2011-2016 and 2016-2021)are, in fact, seven of these
progressive steps. The Continental Boards of Counsellors around
the world have been intensely engaged in assisting National and
Local Spiritual Assemblies, Regional Councils and other
administrative bodies to understand the goals involved and to

devise strategies for their achievement. Large-scale consultative

sessions that have brought together the members of all of these key
institutions have, in most cases, been particularly successful in
achieving this objective. Where response has lagged, the House of
Justice frequently has intervened to reinforce the efforts of the
Counsellors by clarifying issues. Ultimately, the responsibility for
ensuring that their own community arises to the challenge must rest
with the elected representatives of the believers, at local and
national levels.
Of course, one must add that, in the end, the individual believer
must arise whatever the administrative apparatus exists behind the
scenes. This new paradigm has been aimed at the individual and,
after 15 years, great changes have taken place. This book discusses
these changes, not so much in a systematic way, but from time to
time as various themes arise.
The advancement of the Cause is an evolutionary process which
takes place through trial and error, through reflection on experience
and through wholehearted commitment to the teaching Plans and
strategies devised by the House of Justice. Believers, like you and
I, who appreciate the opportunities thus provided in this new
paradigm, can be of great assistance by encouraging their
respective countries and assemblies to similarly invest themselves
in the process. And if they are unable to do those things they must
each act in their own respective spheres of life.
A SEA-CHANGE: BUILDING INSTITUTIONS AND
COMMUNITIES
The fourth(1986-2001) and particularly the fifth epochs(2001 to
2021) of the Cause are witnessing a sea-change in the areas of
institution and community building as local communities generate a

broad infrastructure of systems, agencies and organisations

arising singly and collaboratively from the individuals and families
who make up the membership. I refer of course to the development
of study-circles, mostly focused around individuals; the
development of infanta or pre-school programs(0-4), children's(511) and junior youth(12-14) classes, mostly revolving around
families, Bah' and others; devotional meetings which, with socioeconomic development activities, can be seen as the seeds of future
local Mashriqul-Adhkars; the ever-evolving training institutes in
each country; and where these elements are in place, socioeconomic development projects, increasingly a spontaneous,
organic feature of Bahai community clusters in process of intensive
growth," as outlined in the letter written by the Universal House of
Justice to the Counsellors of January 9, 2001.
As one writer put it and very succinctly: if the second and third
epochs of the Cause were about building institutions, then the
fourth and fifth epochs have been and are about building
communities. Clearly, again, the aim is not merely to generate an
increased flow of individual enrolments or fill-up vacant LSA
spaces, but also and above all, to instil into the emerging
communities of the fifth epoch a sense of interdependence,
whereby a given community will work organically and inherently
for the welfare of its own locality and of localities beyond its own
borders. To the well-known Bah' notion of the locality we
now, therefore, add the compass of a cluster of localities to which
one also belongs and with whom one systematically interacts and
builds community. That this process will not take place at the same
speed, with the same effectiveness and efficiency everywhere on
earth, in all the 16,000 clusters should be as obvious as the sun in
the sky. To expect otherwise is not only unrealistic it betrays a sad
lack of understanding of the immense complexity of the process
that is taking place across the planet, a complexity that requires, as

the House emphasized in its Ridvan 2010 message, that NSA's

"think and act strategically" and learn "to analyse the communitybuilding processes at the grassroots with increasing acuity." By
2016 some 11,000 of the 16,000 clusters on the planet will still
have little growth, in all likelihood, given both recent patterns of
the last several decades and the goals that have already been set for
2016.
As the Bah community has moved from one stage to the next,
the range of activities that it has been able to undertake has
increased. Its growth has been organic in nature and has implied
gradual differentiation in functions. When the Bah community
was small in size, all of its interactions with society at large easily
fitted together under the designation of direct and indirect teaching.
But, over time, new dimensions of work appeared--involvement in
civil society, highly organized diplomatic work, social action, and
so on-- each with its own aims, methods and resources. In a certain
sense, it is possible to refer to all of these activities as teaching,
since their ultimate purpose is the diffusion of the divine
fragrances, the offering of Bahullhs Revelation to humankind,
and service to society. In the new culture of learning and growth it
is also possible to refer to all of the activities as service. As Albert
Schweitzer once wrote: "the only ones among you who will be
really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."
this could very well be a motto for this new paradigm. In practice
and certainly for statistical purposes, though, it is more fruitful to
treat the various activities as distinct but complementary lines of
action.
In all of this social and community activity the individual has what
might be called a dual relation. He or she is both and at the same
time standing within and outside the community. The unity comes
in what at some levels might be seen as logically contradictory

relations. Harmony and conflict, attraction and repulsion,

ambivalence and enthusiasm, creativity and routine. The members
of the community as producers both lose themselves in the
products, the interaction and they are separate. The heterogeneity is
too extensive to assimilate, to fully integrate. Heterogeneity is part
of the reality, the drama, of community and it is engaged in to
whatever extent the individual wishes, is capable of handling and is
socially oriented. Sometimes the group is rejected and the
individual withdraws; sometimes it is endured within the capacity
of the endurer; sometimes the individual slips to the periphery;
sometimes he is fully alive to the group and intensely involved.
Everyone has their own style and level of engagement.
Of the approximately 200 sovereign-states in the world, over 160
are culturally heterogeneous, and they are comprised of 5000 ethnic
groups. Between 10 and 20% of the world's population currently
belongs to a racial/linguistic minority in their country of residence.
Nine hundred million people affiliate with groups that suffer
systematic discrimination. Perhaps three-quarters of the world
system sees politically active minorities, and there are more than
200 movements for self-determination, spread across nearly 100
states. It is useful to describe this global context within which the
new Bahai paradigm exists and has its being.
The structure of the new paradigm can act as a constraint on action,
but it also enables action by providing common frames of meaning.
The individual is surrounded by a community which paradoxically
both constrains and influences his needs and deeds on the one hand
and liberates him from the bonds of attachment and dependencies
on the other. The individual is faced with these polarities. His
social, geographical and physical life shapes his spiritual life and
vice-versa. As David Reisman, the author of the Lonely Crowd, put
it at the start of the Ten Year Crusade in the most popular social

science book of the last half-century, heterogeneity is our problem.

To put the problem a little differently: other people are our problem
or hell is other people to put it as far as possible in the negative, as
Albert Camus once put it. People are also, of course, our heaven
and our culture of learning and growth. For most of us it is a
question of balance, of getting our interaction capacities and
potentials, our skills and abilities, expressed in the way that is both
best for us and best for others. This balancing process is, it could be
argued and it is by some theorists, the basis of our individuality, our
individualism. For most of us this process keeps us busy working it
out, adjusting it in our changing lives and their changing
conditions.
The culture of learning and growth is like a bridge that anchors the
individual in continuous relationships & overcomes his
separateness. A good bridge within this culture, a good relationship
sometimes takes years to establish and sometimes it seems
instantaneous. Human beings are bridge-builders within their
cultures of learning and growth. These bridges transcend their
separateness; they unite what is separate. They are not built mainly
for economic reasons within this culture of learning, although
sometimes they are. Bridges are built for many reasons. The
bridges are built within their minds and hearts. They help us to
carry-out our responsibilities to each other in ways that we would
not otherwise be able to achieve.So often one cannot move forward
without first retracing our steps and laying a firm foundation for
further progress. Healing often hurts and rebuilding bridges one has
rashly burned are often impossible. "Stories about people are
seldom good; a silent tongue is safest," said Abdul-Baha with his
many words of wisdom to those whom my father used to call "the
chin-wagers." These bridges are just some of the tissues of this new
paradigm. The tissues are built, are made, from all sorts of things in
our relationships besides bridges. But these tissues are not unlike

the tissues of old paradigms; some of the patterns and processes of

engagement are different; many of the deck-chairs have been
moved around, and moved to such an extent that those looking for
some of those old chairs find themselves perplexed. Still, it's the
same boat, and the same ocean, and many of the problems being
confronted by the passengers on the ship are the same-old, the
familiar tests and difficulties that have existed all our lives. As one
of those famous sayings in French goes: plus ca change, plus c'est
la meme chose; the more things change the more they stay the
same.
The wholeness that each person experiences is a construction of the
mind and comes from the will to relate. How often an individual
crosses the bridge and in what way is dependent on each person.
The picture is one of endless fragments. To create a sense of
wholeness and synthesis is the task of the individual and to achieve
this the Bahai institutions and the community are there to assist
and, in the process, make a Bahai society. To reach our goals we all
proceed along increasingly long and difficult paths, as Shoghi
Effendi once wrote, paths that are tortuous and stony. The
connection between ends and means is often elusive, veiled,
obscured and sometimes lost entirely. In community life
compassion and love not power hold the keys to dealing with, if not
overcoming, egotism. But the process is far from simple. There is a
strange mixture in this culture of learning and growth of selfless
devotion and desire, of humility and elation, of sensual immediacy
and spiritual abstraction, of piety and faith and it is this mixture of
ingredients in the context of the Covenant than makes Bahai
society possible.
There are also doors and locks in our culture of learning and
growth. Doors open us to endless possibilities of relationship and
locks which keep people out and prevent our inundation. Our new

paradigm has faces and windows and each of us creates their own
world of faces and windows. Sometimes there are bars on the
windows; sometimes individuals want more faces and sometimes
less. I have drawn on Georg Simmel(1858-1918) for the analysis of
group interaction, the sociology, the metaphors and insights that he
provides to help me in my understanding of some of the
dimensions of this new paradigm. I have really only touched the
surface, only begun to explore the implications of his writing, his
ways of analysing people and groups, his sociological
constructions.
DRAWING ON BAHA'I AND SECULAR WRITERS
I have also drawn on other writers, both Bahais and others. The
philosopher Isaiah Berlin(1909-1997) for example says that
injustice, poverty, slavery and ignorance may be cured by reform or
revolution and there are millions in the world trying to fight these
evils. "But men," he emphasizes, "do not live only by fighting
evils. They also live by positive goals, individual and
collectiveones, indeed a vast variety of them, seldom predictable
and at times incompatible."(Four Essays on Liberty) This new
paradigm provides a vast variety of goals for Bahais. Often the
results are unpredictable and often, too, in the eyes of some of the
Bahais they seem incompatible. I would argue, though, that this
new paradigm provides an organic, an integrated, mix of goals that
everyone can play a part somewhere, in some context, in achieving.
That historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin also wrote that: "There exists a
great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a
single central vision and, on the other side, those who pursue many
ends, often unrelated and even contradictory. The first kind of
intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the
second to the foxes.(The Hedgehog and the Fox)In this new culture
of learning and growth the hedgehog and the fox can work together.

This new paradigm makes allowance for human idiosyncrasy and

what the English essayist William Hazlitt was talking about when
he wrote that: "Perhaps the weak side of his conclusions also is,
that he has carried this single view of his subject too far, and not
made sufficient allowance for the varieties of human nature, and
the caprices and irregularities of the human will. 'He has not
allowed for the wind'...it might be plausibly objected that he had
struck the whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim,
with his petrific, leaden mace, that he had 'bound volatile Hermes,'
and reduced the theory and practice of human life to a caput
mortuum of reason, and dull, plodding, technical calculation." This
new paradigm is no "petrific leaden mace," although some, it seems
to me in the first 16 years of its implementation have made it into a
"dull, plodding technical calculation" and have bound that volatile
Hermes in a single construct. This tendency to over-simplification
is very human, very natural and we should not be surprised when
we see it expressed in community consultations.
THE MICRO-MACRO SCALE AND IDENTITY
Part 1:
The paradigm structures with its institutions, its moral incentives,
its sets of expectations and its established ways of doing things
provide a stable activity core. But they can be and are changed,
especially through the unintended consequences of action and as a
result of people ignoring the explicit routines and principles,
replacing them or reproducing them differently as inevitably
happens in everyday life. On a micro-scale, the scale of individuals'
internal sense of self and identity, individuals are free to choose
what activities they will engage in and how to relate to these
activities. It is not a prison of processes. This tendency to work out

individually unique activities within the larger, the overall, pattern

of the paradigm, often creates new opportunities. The relationship
of the individual to the community often becomes a reflexive,
introspective project that has to be continuously interpreted and
reinterpreted, assembled and reassembled,revised and redefined
over a lifetime. For many, if not for most, this process is highly
dynamic. These micro-level changes cannot be explained only by
looking at the individual level or, indeed, at any one individual.
I don't want to get into the many permutations and combinations of
the concept of identity, but one of its more common concepts is that
identity is a ceaselessly evolving entity and, in some ways, less an
entity, less something that can be defined, and more a kind of
awareness, an ongoing process of redefinition. Writing about one's
experience of this new Bah' culture, or about the global Bah'
community's experience of this new culture, then, when viewed in
such "a context of process and evolution" becomes a pattern and
meaning in a life at the time of writing. The part one plays in this
new paradigm, this new culture of learning, then, can be seen as
part of this way of looking at one's identity and the narrative that is
one's life. It is not a static process, but dynamic and it takes place in
a highly interactive individual-community context. One could also
say, as a concluding note here, that this process is part of the
phenomenon that continually gives birth to the self or a congeries
of selves. This notion is too complex to deal with in detail here and
I trust these few comments will suffice to raise some questions
about the area of our lives where we try to have some power over
our destiny, our choices, and what we do with our lives. In the
Cause, in this new paradigm, to put all this another way, the
individual Bahai has an extensive menu of activity from which to
choose.
Part 2:

There is also the macro-level and this paradigm must be analysed

on a macro scale, on a scale outside the individual and a scale that
encompasses the entire globe. This global context directly and
indirectly influences individuals often unbeknownst to themselves.
A serious explanation of the processes within this paradigm must
lie somewhere within the network of macro and micro forces.
These different levels cannot be treated separately. They are in fact
revealed as having significant influence upon each other and cannot
really be understood if studied in isolation. This book deals with
this complex interaction, although not as systematically as I'd like
and not as systematically as many of my readers I'm sure would
like. Perhaps, as this book evolves in its second set of seven years,
it may become more systematic, more coherent, more simple for
Everyman who comes across it in cyberspace generally and here at
BLO in particular.
In the end, however one analyses and describes both the micro and
the macro level of Bah' experience--as I have attempted
somewhat unsatisfactorily above, the individual is faced with the
ever-present questions: What will I do? What should I do? How
should I act? Who will I try to be? These are focal questions for
everyone living in circumstances of these years of late modernity.
They are questions which, on some level or another, all of us
answer all our lives and through our day-to-day social behaviour.
Individuals and institutions, it would appear to me, now require
much more analysis and thought before they take action than ever
before. We all are involved in different ways now in piloting our
way through the major revolutions of our time: globalisation,
transformations in personal life and our relationship to nature. That
these revolutions are essentially spiritual is one of the assumptions
of this new paradigm and not one easily transmitted to a secular
culture and the diverse interest groups within it, groups with

assumptions highly at variance with those of this new paradigm.

The purpose of any description and analysis of the part I have
played, now play and will play in the new Bah' culture is: the
recreation, the nostalgic and not-so-nostalgic, the simple and notso-simple delineation, of the recent years of my life. The new
Bah' paradigm goes back to my early 50s in the mid-1990s. For
those who were Bah's back then, their life in this new paradigm
also goes back to the late 20th century. The purpose of this
autobiographical, this quite personal, statement, is now found in my
memoirs, my diary or journal writing and in my essays and poetry.
A search for some clear understanding of my identity since those
early 50s, nearly 20 years ago, is a commonly found aim in the now
massive literature on the subject of why a person writes about his
or her life. For some people their literary work is animated by the
purpose of proving that their lives are ultimately purposeless. The
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead states, with his tongue in his
cheek in his book "The Function of Reason", that the examination
of the writings of those who see their lives as purposeless would
constitute an interesting subject for study. My written work in the
last 20 years, in contrast, is animated by a significant sense of
purpose and by what some literary critics have come to call a
metanarrative. I do not possess any incredulity in relation to this
metanarrative. Mine would not therefore be among those works
that Whitehead might find interesting in the context of lack of
purpose.
My literary, my autobiographical, exercise involves a significant
psychological dimension with its interface between my active,
public self and my more contemplative private underside--side by
side. Since autobiography constitutes a process of investigation
rather than a finished product, it is inevitably open-ended. Until my
early retirement at the age of 55 in 1999, my identity was tied-up

with my career and my family life, my Bah' community life and

far, far back in fourth place was my writing-life fitting itself into
corners that saw the light of day only when necessity or some
selected sense of literary duty and, sometimes, pleasure called.
I had no trouble agreeing with Herbert Marcuse(1898-1979), a
twentieth century sociologist and philosopher, when he wrote that:
people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their
soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen
equipment. Ones appearance, clothes, hair-style and deportment
became entwined with identity in the nineteenth century so argues
one analyst. Clothing, the body, its allurements and images have
become, for millions, a significant part of their identity. The idea
of the Self as a Work of Art, also came to be seen as a false self.
This falseness was expressed by Simone de Beauvoir in her book
The Second Sex: The least sophisticated of women, once she is
dressed, does not present herself to observation; she is, like the
picture or statue, or the actor on the stage, an agent through which
is suggested someone not there, that is, the character she represents,
but is not. It is this identification with something unreal, fixed and
perfect that gratifies her.
In my case I have a different set of commodities which play a role
in the formation of my identity: books and essays, ideas and
concepts as well as, and especially as I got into my sixties, the
metaphorical nature of the flora, fauna and material phenomena of
existence, the close connections between physical and spiritual
reality. My wife takes a serious and active role in the beautification
of our home and garden and I am a beneficiary of her domestic
enthusiasm. I am sure my identity is also formed by my domestic
surroundings in ways that are subtle and complex. This is a subtle
and complex subject, though, and is difficult to deal with here. John
Hatcher, a former professor and director of graduate studies in

English literature at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and

now emeritus professor, deals with it well in his book Close
Connections and I have dealt with it in my autobiography in a
chapter entitled memorabilia.
In the last 20 years, 1994 to 2015, my life as a writer and poet, an
editor and publisher has shaped my life and my identity in different
forms and directions than it had been shaped in the previous halfcentury, say 1944 to 1994. As the poet e.e. cummings once wrote, if
the artist does not shape his or her identity to their work, their life
will crack open. My life had already cracked open several times
before my early retirement. With the medication package I acquired
for my bipolar disorder during this last decade, this decade of
extensive writing--and as I entered my 60s--I think I have seen the
end of those cracking-open experiences. This new-found
tranquillity is not in the main because I am free at last to write,
although that is an important factor; it is due to the new
medications for my bipolar disorder.
My religious identity as a Bahai acknowledges the place of
history, language and culture in the construction of my particular
subjectivity, my particular sense of who I am. I also acknowledge
that all discourse, all writing, is placed, positioned and situated. All
of my knowledge, all of my writing, to put this another way, is
contextual. I find it helpful and fertile, useful and engaging, if the
way of looking at my Bahai identity is contested by others,
subjected to a dialectic and praxis, dialogue and discussion,
apologetics and rhetoric. The assertion of differences, a clash of
opinions, is a helpful way of establishing identity. In this way my
identity develops from, is clarified by and is based on a process of,
engaging and asserting difference rather than suppressing it.
This identity acknowledges the reality of, and the need for,

decentralised and centralized, diffuse and specific, as well as

systematized and fractured knowledge. This sense of identity
acknowledges a sense of power which also has a diffuse set of
sources. At the same time this inner and outer sense of identity
accepts the useful concepts of periphery and centre, margins and
depths, surfaces and heights in the expression of that power. Once I
clarify the notion of identity, once it is redefined in a universal and
non-derogatory way, once it engages difference without implying
superiority and hierarchy, I hope that this expression, this set of
views, will help those who read this. I write, in part, to be of help to
those who are both part of the Bahai community and those in other
interest groups, help them express their own group consciousness,
help that consciousness to develop in a manner which is unfettered
by the accrued and often inaccurate associations of history and
culture, tradition and ignorance.
My identity and my autobiography is wrapped-up in, is part and
parcel of, my search for and experience in a collective solution to
the problems of our age. This collective solution is presented to me
as both a moral imperative and the logical consequence of reason
applied to my intelligible, and I trust intelligent, rendering of
history and the nature of my society. The measures needed to cure
the ills of civilization are identical with those needed to cure the
individual but these measures must be practiced in a social milieux.
Indeed the social milieux, the social interaction within the social
order revealed in the Bah' scriptures, is the workshop for both my
individual fulfilment and for the collective solution that I see
myself as part of a functioning unit by my free choice. Individual
identity and a more inclusive identity as part of a social structure
and as a world citizen are inextricably conjoined for meand they
are examined in this memoir.
There are so many ways of looking at identity. One popular view is

expressed as follows: What really shapes and conditions and makes

us is somebody only a few of us ever have the courage to face: and
that is the child you once were, long before formal education ever
got its claws into you--that impatient, all-demanding child who
wants love and power and can't get enough of either. It is those
pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors
and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they
are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were
five years old."
My autobiography, which in many ways is a series of depictions of
my identity, is presented as a pastiche of many types of writing:
first, second and third-person point of view narration, the use of the
past as well as the present tense, letters, newspaper articles,
speeches, lists, historical accounts, scientific jargon, definitions,
photographs, recipes, conversations, obituaries, wedding
announcements, telephone conversations and assorted memorabilia.
The inclusion of all these kinds of writing both loosens and
strengthens the genre boundaries within which I work and points to
blurring and cross-pollinating between genres as being more useful.
This work is no mere imparting of information. Alfred North
Whitehead once wrote: no university has had any justification for
existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth
century. I would not go that far with Whitehead but the point he
makes about information certainly applies to my autobiography. It
is not essentially an information base, a data base, for my life.
The sociologist, Anthony Giddens, has much to say of relevance to
the autobiographer and the literary expression of his identity. Each
of us not only 'has', but lives a biography, writes Giddens, it is
reflexively organised in terms of flows of social and psychological
information about possible ways of life. Modernity is a posttraditional order, in which the question, 'How shall I live?' has to be

answered in day-to-day decisions about how to behave, what to

wear and what to eat - and many other things - as well as
interpreted within the temporal unfolding of self-identity.
In writing my memoirs, my autobiography, I am defining myself
because I am putting consciousness into text. In some ways I'm
exploring personality, trying to understand myself better and at the
same time I'm opening-up personality. I'm writing out of
personality and it's my canvas in a sense. I could never have written
my memoirs and or got a handle on my identity without
postmodernism, without the licence to collapse generic conventions
and see myself as many selves. I like the idea of calling my work a
novel and then to define it further as creative non-fiction. But,
again, I must emphasize, the overview of all of this life-narrative,
the general context, the total orientation, the moulding and
remoulding of my world, is in the form of a conscious
participation, often on a very small scale, in the forming of a new
society. The context is one of commitment, of solitude and
solidarity.
The Bah' community which I have been a part of for more than
60 years gives to me a happy mix of creative expression and group
solidarity. Originality, writes the psychologist Anthony Storr,
implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.
Sometimes it involves being misunderstood or rejected by one's
peers. In these last six decades I have often been misunderstood
by my fellow Bahais. Such an experience is an inevitable part of
virtually any intense group experience. Those who are not too
dependent upon, or too closely involved with, others, continues
Storr, find it easier to ignore convention. Primitive societies find it
difficult to allow for individual decisions or varieties of opinion.
When the maintenance of group solidarity is a prime consideration,
originality may be stifled.

I have not found a stifling of my creativity to be the case in this

new faith, this new international community. This is not to say that
I have not experienced tension in the many Bah' groups of which
I have been a part. As Alfred Adler writes: "we make our own
choices on how we are to belong." I have done this all my Bah'
life. Decisions on how best to make my contribution to the whole,
to the local and to the national and international Bah' community
have not always been easy. I have done this by means of my efforts
in my career, in my intimate relationships, in my friendships and,
as I say, in the larger Bah' community. In all these areas of my
existence there has also been frustration and tragedy. Fulfilment,
the release of psychic energy, has been an emergence, at least as I
look back over my life, from the tragedy among other sources.
Perhaps this is, in part, due to my view of religion as world loyalty,
of unity as the first and last word and of tolerance as the requisite
of high civilization.
The ultimate ends of my lifelong education process are a living
religion, a living aesthetic enjoyment and a living courage which
has urged me toward a creative adventure. I play my part in the
maintenance of the language, the history, the symbolic code, of my
Bah' society and in the relevant application of its teachings to the
society I live in. My identity is, therefore, bound up with an
appreciation of the past, with history and with tradition. All of these
things are necessary to a full life, a life which develops organically
rather than one which is radically cut off from its roots.
The roots of my society are Judaeo-Christian and Greco-Roman,
and the new Faith that has inspired my life and which is at the
centre of my identity has a rich appreciation of these two roots.
However I express my identity, though, I must acknowledge my
appreciation to these words of Virginia Woolf: "I sometimes think

only autobiography is literature--novels are what we peel off, and

come at last to the core, which is only you or me."
Since moving to Australia in my late twenties, in 1971, humour has
become an important part of my identity, a humour that has helped
to balance the serious side of my personality and life-experience.
Many things in life conspired to make me a highly serious person:
the nearly total absence of humour from the Bible, from the Bah'
writings and, indeed, from most of religious and philosophical
literature which I imbibed, a literature in which I have also
immersed myself for several decades. My seriousness also flowed
easily from a socialization process centred in parents who were in
their 40s and 50s when I was a child, who worked hard, were
serious readers, very religious and highly politicised, and an
educational system that was, compared to today, highly
authoritarian.
Living in Australia has brought-out in me an appreciation of the
funny side of life. I became conscious of this slow development
when, in 1980, I got a job as a probation and parole officer in
Tasmania and it was largely due to my sense of humour, or so I was
told by the interviewing panel. More than thirty years later, now in
2015, humour is part of my souls salvation, my modus operandi,
Downunder, one of the main gainers from living in the Antipodes
for more than 40 years. The American essayist Joan Didion has also
contributed to my sense of identity, the identity which writes, and I
conclude this brief essay with a paraphrase of her words, words
which she acknowledged from George Orwell: "In many ways
writing is the act of saying I and of imposing oneself upon other
people. Its a way of saying: listen to me, see it my way, change
your mind. It also can be seen as an aggressive, even a hostile, act.
You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of
subordinate clauses, qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with

ellipses, evasions, and with a whole manner of intimating literary

gestures rather than claiming, of alluding thoughts rather than
stating them plainly; but theres no getting around the fact that
setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an
imposition of the writers sensibility on the readers most private
space. Didion says that she stole the title Why I Write? not only
because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum
up, in a no-nonsense way, all that she has to tell us as readers. Like
many writers, she says, she has only this one "subject," this one
"area": the act of writing. She can bring readers no reports from
any other front. She acknowledges other interests, as I do, but
like Didionin these my latter years, my years now in my 70s, and
80s, if I last that longwriting is my game.
Like Didion, too, I needed a degree back in the '60s, by the end of
the summer of '66 so that I could enter teachers college. Like
Didion, my attention was always on the periphery, on what I could
see and taste and touch. But, unlike Didion, it was also on ideas,
hundreds of them. Like Didion, though, I knew only too well what
I couldnt do. I knew what I wasnt, what did not interest me,
things in life about which I seemed to lack not only the intellectual
capacity but also the bodily gestures and movements. It took me
some years to discover what I was. By the age of 55, even more by
60, and even more by 65, and certainly by the age of 70, I knew I
was a writer.
Didion goes on to say that when she said that she knew she was a
writer--she meant not a "good" writer or a "bad" writer but simply a writer. To
her this meant a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are/were
spent arranging words on pieces of paper. In Didions case, she emphasized
that had her formal academic credentials been in order back in the crucial
early days of her employment career and lifespan, she would never have
become a writer. Had she been blessed with even a limited access to her own
mind, her own thoughts and an ability to put them into words, there would
have been no reason to write. She wrote entirely to find out what she was

thinking, what she was looking at and what it meant, as well as what she
wanted and what she feared. I had a different set of reasons, a different raison
detre. I explore this raison detre in these essa
on autobiography, on identity, as well as many other subjects.

29/12/'09 to 15/3/'14
THE DANISH RENNER PROJECT
The Danish RENNER project is a research network on the study of
new religions. This research network, which is supported by the
Danish Research Council for the Humanities, has been active since 1992. In
1998, a new grant from the Research Council resulted in a specific study on
new religions and globalisation. A project was initiated with several separate
studies of new age religion and globalisation. The book, Bahai and
Globalisation, which is the seventh volume of the book series Renner Studies
on New Religion, is the second of the case studies of the project. Another
book, which emphasises the theoretical and methodological aspects of the
study of new religions and globalisation, will be volume eight in the series,
rounding off this special RENNER topic. Globalisation is the conventional term
used to describe the present,rapid integration of the world economy
facilitated by the innovations and growth in international electronic
communications particularly during the last two decades.

In one of the chapters of that 7th volume, Denis MacEoin pointed

to the triumphalist aspect of the Bahaisself-understanding as
representing the religion to unite all religions in the culmination of
globalisation. However, on the path ahead lie issues of secularism,
and MacEoin discusses the challenges which secular values present
to a religion that, rooted in Islamic thinking, aims to fuse the
spheres of religion and society. Still this book, the first anthology in
Bahai studies that deals with globalisation is a sign of things to
come within this new paradigm.
MAKING CONNECTIONS AND THE BURGEONING OF
PRINTED MATTER

When asked what he thought of conveying the truths of the Cause

in the form of writing fiction, Shoghi Effendi's secretary replied on
his behalf: "He would not recommend fiction as a means of
teaching; the condition of the world is too acute to permit of delay
in giving them the direct teachings, associated with the name of
Bahaullah. But any suitable approach to the Faith, which appeals to
this or that group, is certainly worthy of effort, as we wish to bring
the Cause to all men, in all walks of life, of all mentalities."(Shoghi
Effendi in a letter written to an individual believer on 23 March
1945 in Writers and Writing, p. 412) This has been my own MO, as
it were, since I joined the Cause in the late 1950s. Reaching and
meeting the mentalities of men and women from all walks of life is
not easy. To achieve this with any degree of success has been a
challenge in this or any paradigm that has been at the centre of
Bahai life. Part of the quintessential problem, it has always seemed
to me, especially since I am a professional teacher and since I have
now spent fifty years in classrooms dealing with printed matter in
one form or another, is that the Bahai community, the Bahai Faith,
is a religion of The Book, par excellence.
Printed matter is at the core of Bahai experience and the growth of
this Faith is taking place, as some argue, in a society that has been
in many basic ways moving very forcefully toward an aural, an
audio-visual culture. Print does not turn millions on in anything
like the same ways that video, cinema, hi-fidelity sound systems,
radio and the apparatus of a whole electronic industry does. I don't
want to deal with this issue in any detail since the field involved is
indeed very complex and a whole literature has grown up which
analyses the permutations and combinations that surround the core
of the social changes involved. But the paradigm change the Bahai
Faith has been going through and will go through in the years
ahead can not ignore this complex sociological and psychological
phenomenon of a vast print and electronic media. Ironically, of

course, much of the large and significant growth patterns are not in
the so-called educated West but in the third world. The question,
the issue of the basic learning mode that turns people on, the basic
styles of print that people turn to in their daily lives for stimulation
and entertainment, is a complex one and outside the scope of this
book to deal with in any detail. But the quantitative successes, the
statistical increases, within this new paradigm in many locations
are in part at least bound up with this issue.
Since the mid-1990s there has emerged a paradigmatic shift in
communications technology. Children born after 1995, at least in
the affluent West, live in a fluid, connected, always-on, digital
ecology of hybrid intercommunicating forms, messages, content
and activities: personalised, individually and immediately
available. It is a world controllable and manipulable at will and
feeding-into, promoting or giving rise to personal production,
content and meaning-creation. This generation of the digital postbroadcast era, their media world and their experiences are radically
different from my generation, the war-babies and the baby boomers
at their age. Their world is not entirely different; they may still be
watching Star Wars and Doctor Who, but a chasm separates the
childhoods of this new generation and those of the past, those born
before the mid-1990s, before the onset of this new paradigm.
As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes of this digital
generation, it is liquid or fluid and is representative of much of
contemporary life. As opposed to many of the solidities of the past,
this more fluid culture, more fluid environment of the last two
decades, the years of this new paradigm, has far-reaching
consequences for the social sphere. An even greater individualism
and a more fractured society as well as a freedom from social
bonds, and an increased inability to connect meaningfully with
others has produced a need to constantly adapt or transform

according to one's social environment. This last feature, the ability

to become socially malleable and fit into multiple social situations
becomes, perhaps, the most valued personal commodity of this
state of liquidity. This new culture of learning and growth caters
to this more fluid social world.
Web-publishing also represents a paradigm change since the mid1990s. This essay or book has now been seen by thousands of
people and it has got nowhere near a publisher or, for that matter, a
Bahai reviewing committee. By the time a book has been written
and passed through a series of readers, editors and proofreaders to
make it to the shops where it is eventually noticed, bought, read,
reviewed and quoted, years can have passed by. Today the media
world moves very fast. Web-publishing allows for cheap, instant,
global publication. It allows for faster, updateable commentary, for
freer expression, more original ideas, more debate, real feedback,
rapid responses to the world and ongoing critical dialogue. Even if
this new form doesnt replace books, web-publishing is taking
subjects to the world and throws out faster, draft responses to new
developments. It engages people more directly with each other and
challenges and pushes the field forward. This is all part of the new
paradigm change in the Bahai community. It is also part of my own
engagement and participation in the new Bahai paradigm. It is a
very rich, satisfying and meaningful interaction and it was not even
possible before the mid 1990s when this paradigm got off the
ground.
THE WORK OF ESSAY WRITING AND WRITING A BOOK
Half the work of essay writing or writing a book is finding
surprises, curious juxtapositions, arresting metaphors and clever
turns of phrase that readers can enjoy, readers who have become
used to having their senses titillated and their minds stimulated

with little to no effort on their part. The other half of the work in
writing essays or writing in any genre is knowing a good deal about
the subject one is writing about, the subject one is bringing to the
attention of readers. As writers go about this dual-role, this twosided field of work, they often see themselves as proxies, as people
acting for their readers, as agents or substitutes for their readers.
They also try to write about things they've thought about a lot.
They aim for good ideas, but good ideas are not always easy to
come by. Good ideas can often be funny because the connection
may be a surprise. Surprises often make people laugh and surprises
are what some writers, at least this one, wants to deliver.
A person who has thought about a topic a lot, will probably, will
hopefully, surprise at least some of his readers. Surprises are things
that not only the writer did not know, but they are also things that
often contradict what a writer thought he or she knew. For this
reason they're one of the most valuable sorts of facts a writer can
get. They're like a food that's not merely healthy, but counteracts
the unhealthy effects of things the person has already eaten. Some
of the most interesting surprises are unexpected connections
between different fields. Making people laugh in my writing and
coming up with surprises are not skills with which I feel
particularly endowed. Readers of my various works must put up
with a high seriousness more than humour and plain talk rather
than a good layering of surprises. I often aim for things in my
writing that I do not achieve; the process is not unlike much of my
work in the Bahai community. Some goals one achieves and some
one does not. Some things one can change and some one cant and,
hopefully, one has the wisdom to know the difference as the
Alcoholics Anonymous organization emphasizes time and again in
their literature.
Here are two examples of the kind of surprise and interesting

juxtapositions I am talking about. Firstly: jam, bacon, pickles and

cheese, which are among the most pleasing of foods, were all
originally intended as methods of preservation. Books and
paintings are also methods of preservation. A writer, if he or she is
clever enough, could play with this juxtaposition and be quite
entertaining. I leave it to readers here to try this one on for size and
see what they can do to bring into literary creation some surprising
turn of phrase--and do this in relation to this new paradigm. For a
second example: Oscar Wilde said that human beings often make
the mistake so common among the English that of degrading truth
into facts. Wilde complained in a newspaper article he had
published in 1894 entitled "Maxims for the Instruction of the OverEducated," that: "When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its
intellectual value." Of course, not everyone will get the surprise or
appreciate the juxtaposition. In writing, as in life, one only wins
some of the time.
Due to this notion of surprise, juxtaposition and metaphor, I make
comparisons and contrasts between this new paradigm and insects,
plants, human development and evolution. I hope readers enjoy
these extensions into wider worlds as I travel, as they travel with
me. Enjoying the provocative nature of this quotation from Oscar
Wilde and seeing some truth in what he is saying, I try to get
behind the multitude of facts within this new paradigm. Sadly or
not so sadly, this book has many of these so-called facts, but I trust
I have given them an engendering, an enriching, perspective, a
renewed intellectual value. One can have lofty hopes and high aims
and I hope, for the sake of the readers who travel with me for these
190,000 words, they get a payoff for their time spent.
If there's one piece of advice I try to implement when writing it is:
don't do what you're told like some parrot; avoid imitation and its
loathsome odours; don't believe what alot of others have told you to

believe and what they think you are supposed to believe. Don't
write the essay or book that readers are expecting to read. Readers
often learn little to nothing from what they expect. And, finally,
don't write the way someone taught you to do back in school. The
internet may well make our age the golden age of the essay, the
book and many other literary form. It may also help to make it a
dark age since so much of the stuff on the internet has a high
degree of literary illiteracy. There are wonderful examples, models,
exemplars, mentors, out there on the world-wide-web, more than
the writing and reading world has ever enjoyed. Sadly and at the
same time, as I say, there are piles and piles of garbage that readers
must learn to avoid as they look for the flowers, the gems and the
wisdom embedded in printed matter.
After fifty years of learning and teaching English and after nearly
15 years of reading the essays and the books of others on the web
as well as writing a few of my own, perhaps something of the skills
in using this language has rubbed off. Perhaps I have found some
gems and flowers. I leave it to each individual reader to make their
own assessment as inevitably they do and will in the years ahead. I
hope for your sake dear reader that you find some pleasure here. I
have received much praise and have for decades; the examples of
written encomiums, had I saved them, would fill a small book; but I
have also received my share of opprobrium. I have been advised to
take classes in writing, to simplify my writing and to write less.
Had I taken the advice, the criticism, I have received seriously I
would have stopped writing long ago. One can only please some of
the people some of the time and not everyone's style and method of
writing suits the taste of every reader. I have my enthusiastic
readership and I have my detractors. This was true when I was a
student and teacher of English for fifty years and I have no doubt it
will be true until I am called up yonder and go to the place where, I
anticipate, there will be no more writing and talking. But who

knows, eh?
I am certainly conscious of much rubbing and polishing of the
writing process in my personal life as I look back over my writing
since the late 1940s when the Bahai Faith was about to go through
a paradigm shift in the remaining years of the then Seven Year
Plan(1946-1953) and the Ten Year Crusade(1953-1963), a
paradigm shift which took its teachings to the four corners of the
planet for the first time, saw the Mother temple in the West
completed and its holy places in Israel embellished beyond
anything they had enjoyed in their century-long history.
As a writer and editor, as an essayist and critic, as an analyst and
commentator I have inherited several traditions and read the works
of many who have set a high standard for my own work. Many of
those whom I read possess that rare gift of capturing the vitality of
their own experience of life and art and of making their readers
richer for sharing that experience. I hope I achieve some of this rare
writing gift to give to readers. We all have gifts that are useful in a
Bah' community; some of these gifts I'm sure assure some a place
within the precincts of the courts of the Lord, and a seat at the
revelation of the splendors of the light of His countenance.(Bah'
Prayers, 1985, p.236)
LACK OF INTEREST IN THIS PARADIGM BY OTHERS
The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote that his scientific
papers on butterflies, an area in which he possessed some expertise,
had absolutely no interest whatever for the layman and little to no
interest to most scientists. He was expressing both his pride as
much as his melancholy in relation to this topic. This book on the
new Bahai paradigm has no interest whatever to the vast majority
of people who know little about the Bahai Faith and/or take little

interest in it. Even for the 5 to 7 million Bahais, several million of

these members are not on the internet and several million of those
who are will never read this article. So much that is written in the
wide-wide world is inevitably for a coterie; it is useful to keep this
reality of literary life in mind as one goes about the exercise of
expatiating in written form on some topic of personal interest. Such
a view helps to provide perspective, balance and a sense of
detachment from what one is describing and analysing. I do not
anticipate changing the world with these words. As much as the
idea of being a major agent of change has its appeal to my sense of
personal meaning, my sense of achievement in life and some of the
goals I have lived with for over half a century, I goabout this
writing quietly in my study, post it on the internet and wait. My
mother used to say to me: "boy, most of life is waiting." I have
slowly come to appreciate my other's wisdom is this and many
areas as the decades have rolled on.
I have had several thousand "hits" or "clicks" on my article in the
last two years but given that success in our modern age at many a
site, at many a video site like U-tube is often measured in the
millions, this piece of writing, this exposure of an idea is in the
minor leagues to use a baseball metaphor. But there are some
readers out there, perhaps more than if this article/book had found a
place in a hard or soft-covered journal or magazine, bulletin or
newsletter. Such is the mystery and the wonder of the internet, of
cyberspace. I have no list of the readers any more than someone
who writes a book knows the names of those who buy his books.
But it's immensely rewarding to think that so many people, from
such farflung places, have found this book. Of course, a click has
many meanings and one should be aware of the possible low end of
the spectrum where readers simply turn you off right at the start of
their reading journey through your extended and extensive piece of
writing, however constructive, however self-obsessed or however

significant your writing may be.

STATISTICS
Section 1:
Some observers had the view that in the years from, say 1976 to
1996, the Bahai Faith did not grow. While this has been true in
some of the countries of the world, it is not true in most. In the
USA from 1976 to 1996 the Bahai population doubled from about
75,000 to 140,000(circa) and I could site similar stats for the
Canada and Australia among other countries. From 1956 with some
250,000 believers, from about one million in 1976 to 1996 and,
arguably, four million believers; from a religion with most of its
members in Iran in the 1950s to a religion with its members
scattered to the four corners of the world, this new global religion
could be said to have experienced a paradigm change in these years
as well, although the language of paradigms was not invoked. That
the growth I have referred to was not in places where many
westerners lived in the two decades from 1976 to 1996 was a cause
of more than a little concern, was a test to the spiritual fibre of the
Bahai membership in the West, those refined inheritors, those
spiritual descendants of the Dawnbreakers, those believers who
lived in the half-light as the Guardian called these years of the
Formative Age.
The Bah' population of the contiguous forty-eight states was
about 110,000 in 1992, but Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico
together have about six thousand more. Reconstructing the
membership figures for the American Bah's decade by decade is
complicated by changing definitions of membership and poor data
collection, but the following numbers have been determined: From
1899 to 1921 the number of Bahais ranged between 1500 and 2500,

depending on how many of the Bahai sympathizers one includes. In

1936 the membership had risen to 2584; in 1944, to 4800; in 1956,
to 7000; in 1963, to 10,000; in 1969, 13,000; in 1971, 31,000; in
1974, 60,000; in 1979, 75,000; in 1987, 100,000. See: "The
American Bahai Community in the Nineties," by Robert H.
Stockman, Bahai Research Office, Wilmette, Ill. Published in Dr.
Timothy Miller, ed., America's Alternative Religions, SUNY Press,
Albany, 1995. In 2010 the numbers had arisen to 165,000. With
some effort, indeed much effort and research, readers could find
out the statistical development within the more than 200 countries
wherein the Bahai Faith is now found. In the years of this new
Bahai culture the BWC has developed a statistical section to deal
with the many issues that now arise in relation to numbers.
Section 2:
Statistics, postal addresses and Bahai membership records are
themselves a complex entity. Numbers and details, documents and
dossiers, facts and figures, measurements and memoranda, reports
and quantitative results as well as testimonies and stories, however
important they are in the Bahai community, are not the essence of
Bah' community life. The use of statistics in all fields is a
discipline in itself and I do not want to get into the permutations
and combinations of this discipline in relation to this paradigm.
Statistics often exhibit a snowball effect: arbitrary figures become
widely repeated, and soon become part of the conventional
wisdom. In his book Damned Lies and Statistics Joel Best notes
that a number "takes on a life of its own through repetition." Best
continues: "the number comes to be treated as a straightforward
fact -- accurate and authoritative."
It might seem unfair to criticize various sources for statistical errors
in books and articles which are not primarily concerned with

statistics. But it is precisely because these works are thoughtful and

articulate that they serve as good examples. Numbers are
unforgiving: small errors can become big errors; even faulty
statistics are still imbued with authority by virtue of their source.
How can we separate good statistics from the bad? The first step is
to approach all numbers with some skepticism.
The statistics department at the Bahai World Centre housed now in
The Seat on the 4th floor, as I say above, is dealing with some of
these complex questions. Some additional comments to those made
above on numbers and stats, though, are necessary and I will be
brief. The Bahai Faith is, for the most part, highly diffuse rather
than concentrated and this, among other major barriers to
demographic research by outsiders, makes surveys and censuses,
except of course government censuses which ask individuals their
religion, simply unable to be conducted with any degree of
comprehensiveness. This is especially true at the statistical levels
required to accurately gauge the extent, dispersion and membership
of many religious and other minorities in the world.
Section 3:
In some countries the Bah' Faith is illegal, making it difficult for
even the Bah' community in these places to maintain an accurate
count. The movement of Bahai refugees out of Iran in and after the
1970s significantly altered the demography of many Bahai
communities in western countries. In Australia, where I have been
living for four decades, there were some 17,000 Bahais by 2006,
the end of the first decade of this new paradigm, on the lists of
believers and about 10,000 of these are made up of Iranian born as
well as first and second generation Australians with Iranian
ancestry.

In Canada, where my Bahai life began, there are now some 30,000
Bahais more than sixty times the number there were when my
mother saw an advertisement in the local newspaper in Ontario and
then attended her first fireside in 1953. Iranian Bah's make up a
significant part of this national community as well. In the bigger
global picture and according to an article which appeared at a
Foreign Policy website in its May 2007 edition, the Bahai Faith had
a growth rate of 1.70 percent and the number of its adherents was
7.7 million. This was reported from the World Christian
Encyclopaedia. Their methodology is apparently statistically
sophisticated and includes, as I understand, people who will
identify themselves as Bahai but who wont necessarily have
enrolled with the Bahai communities. This is but one of the
variable stats reported around the world.
Localities where Bahais resided on the planet went from 3,117 in
the early 1950s, to 11,092 in the early 1960s, to 31,883 in the late
1960s, to 69,541 in 1973, to 102,704 in 1979, to 112,137 in 1988
and to 119,276 in 1994. For all practical purposes this article, this
book, assumes a 120,000 locality base on the planet and 16,000
clusters, a new term within this paradigm. There were 1600 IPGs,
intensive programs of growth, in January 2011. Until further notice,
readers should not expect a discussion of the numbers of IPGs in
the remaining years of the current FYP. The entire organizational
structure of this new paradigm is one of the many factors now
assisting the Bahai community in developing an accurate statistical
base. Already in use in some cities around the world before the
emergence of this new paradigm, the intimate level of the
neighbourhood gradually occupied a more important position in
Bahai administration as it would do, without doubt,in the decades
ahead in the literally millions, if not billions, of neighbourhoods,
depending of course on the multitude of possible definitions, of
permutations and combinations of such collectivities on the planet.

The instituting of the practice of what is essentially a

decentralization of Bahai activity to the neighbourhood level has
brought both advantages and new problems which I hope to discuss
in a future edition of this book and as this process of
decentralization advances under this new paradigm. Of course, in
most places, most localities where Bahais reside, this decentralizing
process has not begun, indeed, is not relevant, as yet and may not
be for decades and possibly centuries to come, if ever. This new
paradigm has many new features, features which had already
emerged before this paradigm began in the 1990s, and other
features which have yet to emerge within this new framework of
organization, analysis and action.
Sectrion 4:
The rapid increase in localities and numbers since I became
associated with this Faith in the 1950s as I point out in this article,
has produced its own problems associated with growth. Some areas
paused for a time while attempts were made to deepen the
knowledge and experience of the new Bah's. Concern with
quantities and numerical successes often limited concern for
quality. This new paradigm is partly concerned with this reality,
this problem of quantity and quality, the problem of boom and bust
as it is sometimes called. The problem of numbers: too many or not
enough will, it seems to me, be with us for some time to come,
perhaps centuries as it has been a problem since the inception of
this Faith in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1892, on the passing of
Bahaullah, it has been estimated that there were 50,000 Bahais; in
1921, 115,000, in 1953 some 200,000 and in 1963 about 400,000.
The Bahai community has been making efforts for many years to
obtain accurate statistical data. As the International Teaching
Centre pointed out in April 2003 statistics have been an ever-

present problem, a phenomenon that always needs to be addressed:

the task of refining the criteria needed for valid assessments of
what the community is actually achieving.....is proving to be an
ongoing challenge to institutions. The counterproductive nature of
rigid criteria is obvious, but the necessity for a well-defined scheme
to carry out evaluation is essential." In the last four years, 2007-11,
a new scheme of statistical data-collection has been introduced and
it is still a-work-in- progress. This whole paradigmatic shift in
emphasis is a-work-in-progress, as people say somewhat
colloquially these days. When I come to revise this commentary, as
I hope to do in the months and years ahead, the content of this
lengthy piece of writing will, I have little doubt, alter in extent,
focus and content.
During the years of this paradigmatic shift thusfar, the Bahai
community in the West and much of the East is not being faced
with the many problems that come from vast and significantly
increased enrolments. Accelerated and sustained growth is now
taking place in some two per cent(see below, Lample) of the 6000
clusters in which Bahais reside. Outside of this two per cent it
would appear that enrolments are sporadic, a few new believers
here and there. Significant increases have yet to be realized in most
places including most A clusters, defined as those clusters with the
largest number of Bahais. In many A-clusters the rate of enrolments
has actually decreased in the first fifteen years of this new
paradigm. Learning about growth has not resulted in a simple
formula for action. Indeed, as the House of Justice emphasized in
their Ridvan 2010 message among other messages: there are no
simple formulae, no hard and fast rules. Rather, sacrifice and
perseverence, critical thought, constant valuation and the revising
of methods are required. Moving into the new and uncharted waters
of this paradigm has often resulted in new obstacles.

Section 5:
The more than 1500 A-clusters with their IPGs, intensive programs
of growth, by 2010, helped to turn the tide of concern for numbers.
The Bahai community had two full years, from April 2010 to April
2012,to strengthen the pattern of expansion and consolidation
established around the world in country after country. This turning
of the tide, as one writer put it more than ten years ago at the
beginning of the Five Year Plan(2001-2006), saw a significant
increase in numbers compared to the years, say, 1975 to 2000 in
many parts of the world, but not everywhere. I hope to keep readers
abreast of these statistics as best I can as the current Five Year
Plan(2011-2016) comes to an end in the next 16 months, and the
new one,(2016-2021) the sixth in the series with the explicit aim of
advancing the process of entry by troops--unfolds. But, as I say
elsewhere in this book, the game is not solely and especially about
numbers or, in many places--if not most in the West--the Bah's
would have given up long ago. In addition, this book is not a report
on Bah' statistics. Each Bah' with the interest can now access
many internet sites for such information.
Significant growth patterns are now being achieved in many
localities on the planet, although not in many places in the West.
One writer has noted that, of the 16,000 clusters in 2006, "some
10,000 remained unopened and less than 2% were capable of
taking on the challenge of growth."(Lample, p.104) As another
reliable source for this writer has indicated: in 150 of the 200
territories in the world there is at least one IPG; in another 50 there
are no IPGs. The picture of growth and statistical details is highly
mixed, complex and is a work-in-progress as I refer to above. It has
always been this way and it looks like it always will be for some
years and decades to come--if not centuries! Much of the teaching
work is unpredictable in its outcome; and much is predictable. So

what is new! Sadly, much of one's teaching efforts are quite

predictable, at least in terms of enrollments. For this reason the
House of Justice has reiterated that the Bahai community should
not measure their efforts in terms of enrollments.
This book dwells on statistics to a limited extent and I may pick up
this theme in more detail in the years ahead as this book unfolds
here at BLO. Wikipedia has an excellent discussion of statistics in
terms of National Spiritual Assemblies. Readers with a fascination
for statistics can read estimates at a range of internet sites. Statistics
have long been used by individuals and groups to prove and
illustrate, disprove and counter, claims of growth and decline,
development and regress. for now I leave this often complex and
elusive subject.
The achievements of the last 15 years have not come without
difficulties; the successes are not realized universally but neither
are the failures. There is no rigid formula or set of procedures for
the teaching work as I have indicated above quoting the House of
Justice in the process. There is no doubt that a breakthrough has
occurred in the last 15 years from a global perspective. Lample puts
it well: "the guidance we receive is not simply a list of suggestions
from which individuals and institutions choose according to their
own preferences. The question is not does the guidance apply but
rather how does the guidance apply to me?
20000 LSAs----1600O CLUSTERS---120000 LOCALITIES----5
TO 8 MILLION MEMBERS
Although Bahais have always been interested in numbers, an
increase in numerical quantities, in the number of believers;
although the Bahai community has always given priority to the
establishment of groups at the local level throughout the entire

planet, paradigm shifts like this one do not mean, nor have they
ever meant, that numbers will necessarily increase as day follows
night with some in-built and natural inevitability anywhere and
everywhere. Far from it. I see one of the many roles of this shift as
yet another preparatory period, another phase, stage, as another
paradigm shift in the long process of entry by troops, the prelude to
an eventual mass conversion. Not all the individuals who come
together in Bahai communities have chosen the path of servitude;
indeed, they have each chosen different levels of servitude and
sacrifice. Some come together in their respective communities for
the sake of the Cause; some come together for the social, the
companionship, the stimulation; some readily assume a posture of
learning that is indispensable for collective endeavour within this
new paradigm and some do not. A systematic process is set in
motion in some ways more systematic with each Plan within the
community. In this process the friends review their successes and
difficulties, adjust and improve their methods accordingly, learn
and move forward, sometimes hesitatingly, sometimes
unhesitatingly. Sometimes the study of the Creative Word is
systematic and sometiems it is not.
This all takes place within an immensely diverse field, with
common patterns but also with the creative force of individual
initiative and not everyone doing the same thing across 20,000
LSAs, 6,000 clusters and 120,000 localities where Bahais reside.
The balance between the subordination of the individual to the
group and the right of the individual to self-expression, to personal
rights and freedom of initiative is often a difficult balance to
achieve. The aim is not to lose individual in the mass and to allow
the individual to find their own place in the flow of progress. This
balance, it seems to me, is part of what this new paradigm aims to
achieve as it develops its community focus and its focus on the
primary development of the individual.(UHJ, Letter to the Bahais

of the USA, 29/12/88).

WHERE ARE THE LARGE NUMBERS?

The Bah' Faith may be the second most wide-spread religion on
Earth, but large numbers of new believers have not characterized
growth patterns in the West in the Bahai community since at least
the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. In the places where I have lived, in
Canada and Australia, this has certainly been true. Large numbers
certainly did enter this Faith in the late 1980s in many other parts
of the world. From 1970 to 1990 the numbers grew globally from
about one million to four million. From time to time, the Universal
House of Justice expressed its concern for the slowness of the
growth, the statistical side of things. In the USA numbers have
increased after the bubble of enrollments in the late 1960s and early
1970s, but discussions about enrollments in most places in western
countries are not a source of excitement and encouragement. Since
the late 1970s the number of LSAs have actually dropped in Africa,
Asia, South America or so it would appear from some statistical
reports I have read on the internet. Something like a third of the
Bahai comity in the USA has no known address. In Australia where
I live, over 4000 members on the list of some 17,000 believers in
2015 have no known address, no contact point.
Many believers in western Bah' communities wondered what
their attitude should be to the prolonged and sustained absence of
growth for at least a quarter of a century, say, 1975-2000, or the
40+ year period from 1974 to 2015. The British Bah' community,
for instance, remained static and even had slightly reduced numbers
since the mid-1970s. I understand from anecdotal reports that many
communities in Western Europe, France and Switzerland for
example, share this pattern of low or negative growth. In the United

States, according to Robert Stockman (bahailibrary.com/essays/membership.stats.html), the Bahai community

in the period 1979-1998 grew from 77,396 (48,357 confirmed
addresses) to 138,168. Of these 138,000 however, roughly half are
mail returns and address unknown. This has led Juan Cole to
estimate a Bahai population in the USA of circa 60,000. Margit
Warburg estimated that 10-20% of Bah's were "inactive" in
Denmark and anyone familiar with continental Europe could site
chapter and verse on many a sad situation statistically for the last
quarter of the twentieth century.
An entire generation of Bah's, particularly those that entered the
Faith in a period of high expansion in the 1950s, 1960's and 1970's
and also their children, have experienced constant disappointment,
frustration and powerlessness in the teaching work. This has
coincided with a growing emphasis on entry by troops, expansion
and a consequent development of high expectations. This resulted
in a sense of apparent failure and discouragement in large sections
of the community. The life-giving task of teaching the faith came to
be associated with feelings of pain and inadequacy. In 2002 the
department of the secretariat wrote on behalf of the Universal
House of Justice that the lack of significant numerical growth in
Bah' communities in Western lands, while more precisely
applicable to some countries than others, is largely accurate and the
resulting distress many Bahais feel was fully justified. To see
important Bah' communities markedly lacking in the
development of the human resources required to reach populations
desperately searching for solutions to the crisis in which society is
sinking is painful indeed to believers aware of the potency of
Bah'u'llh's Message. This consideration, that letter went on to
say, was an important element in the drafting of the relevant
sections of the document "Century of Light", to which it made
reference. Several passages of that document attempted to acquaint

believers everywhere with the profound change in Bah' culture

that the preceding decades of struggle, achievement and
disappointment made possible and that was capitalized on through
the agency of the Four Year Plan(1996-2000).
CHILDREN:
Part 1:
The culture now emerging is one in which groups of Bah'u'llh's
followers explore together the truths in His Teachings, freely open
their study circles, devotional gatherings and children's classes to
their friends and neighbours, and invest their efforts, at times
confidently and, at times, cautiously and somewhat timidly in plans
of action designed at the level of the cluster, that aims to make
growth a manageable goal. The enthusiasm with which Bah'
communities in most parts of the world are responding to this
challenge, and the results their efforts are beginning to garner have
been a source of great joy to the House of Justice. The number of
children in most parts of the world who have benefitted from
organized classes of instruction from grade to grade in acquiring
knowledge of the Cause, its history and teachings, has been few,
but this has begun to change in the first 18 years of this new
paradigm. The beginnings are promising but there is much work to
be done and, inevitably, more work as expansion proceedes in the
years ahead.
Let me quote but one example from one of the 1000s of examples
of work with children in Bahai communities around the world in
relation to the core activity of children's classes. The example is
found in that talk I quoted earlier in this book that the composer
Ludwig Tuman gave in Florida at that social and economic
development conference. Tuman is also an educator who has

worked with children as well as adults for many a year. He said in

that talk that he had always been impressed with childrens ability
to grasp spiritual principles and make them their own. He talked
about a young six year old girl named Jasmine who studied
composition and piano with him. Tuman brought her along to his
talk and she sang a song she wrote about Abdul-Bah. It was
called Softly His Voice is Calling. Its words were written more
than a century ago by a Louise Waite, an American believer and
writer of hymns, to whom Abdul-Bah gave the name, Shahnaz
Khnum.
Tuman gave Jasmine the words written by Louise Waite and asked
Jasmine to set them to a melody of her own making. She wrote the
melody and then Tuman added the rest. Together the two came up
with the song. Tuman suggested to his audience to imagine how the
general public attending an open devotional meeting in their own
local community would feel when they saw and heard expressions
of faith rendered through art works and performed by children as
well as adults. Of course, not every community has a Ludwig
Tuman in it and not every community has children. The Bahai
community I am in has neither a Tuman or any children and our
engagement in core activities in correspondingly different than the
community Tuman cites as his example. To each their own. From
each according to their capacity and circumstances as the House
keeps saying in letter after letter.
Part 2:
In the 2000 Ridvan Message, the House of Justice said the
following of children: "Children are the most precious treasure a
community can possess, for in them are the promise and the
guarantee of the future." There are many ways that Bah's are now
engaging the children of their community more in the activities.

These are some I have heard about.

1. Change the time of events
Many families with young children often find it hard to attend
evening programs. A simple change in the starting time of regular
community events (e.g. 7 pm instead of 7:30 pm) have gone a long
way in encouraging participation of young families (and hence
their children) in these events. Even just a 30-minute adjustment
can make all the difference! In addition to this, any Holy Days or
Feasts that fall on a weekend could be held during the day where
possible, perhaps with a barbeque, picnic or big spread of kidfriendly food and activities to celebrate.
2. Showcase the childrens class work
Many teachers brainstorm ideas with the kids in the class, engaging
them on many levels to dream up projects that incorporate the arts
and various forms of technology into their childrens class. Asking
the children to showcase their work not only shows them you value
it but also gets them excited to come along to events. Children are
now performing plays theyve written, playing movies theyve
created, showing artwork theyve created (including a quilt!) and
singing songs theyve written themselves. Dont let their shyness
fool you. Children love to be acknowledged for a job well done!
<br< 3.="" make="" events="" child-focused="" where="" possible
Rather than have an adult-centric Holy Day why not have the next
one focus on the kids? One Ayyam-i-Ha, a friend and I organized a
specific afternoon party for the kids in the neighborhood park. We
sent out flyers inviting all of the kids in the block to join us in our
celebration about a week before the party. Our community
organized lots of cooperative games (e.g. three legged race), face

painting, virtue sharing, party bags and pass the parcel. It was an
absolute joy to organize each activity and the children couldnt
have been more appreciative! The Bahai kids (although few in
number) were beaming with joy at the partys success and felt great
pride in being able to say that this was one of their Holy Day
events! To this day, they still mention it and I am touched by how a
small act meant so much to them.
4. Get the children involved in the program
From what I hear, many Bahai kids have pretty good reading
skills. Another neighboring communitys childrens class teachers
have noticed that instead of telling stories to some of the older kids
at the childrens class, the kids get a kick out of reading for each
other. They have harnessed this enthusiasm to get them to share
some of these stories at each Feast. In another local community, the
local treasurer often has stories printed out about the Fund and
gives them to kids before the Feast so that they can practice and
then share them with the whole community. In addition to this,
whenever the kids are at the Feast, they are asked to read a Reading
in the devotional portion of the program. If they arent comfortable
with that, they can choose to say a prayer they are really familiar
with instead. And if theyre not comfortable with that, the
community will join them in singing a prayer together whatever
works for each child!
5. Encourage the children to work together and host an event
I have heard it said that the best way to show someone you trust
and respect them is to give them some responsibility. Kids enjoy a
challenge and take pride in being given responsibility for
something you care about. Inviting them to host a Feast or
devotional meeting is a great way to let them take the reins. Of

course, youll need to accompany them along the journey. Provide

some time at the preceding childrens classes to organize it, and
discuss how theyd like to welcome the community, run the
devotional program, what theyd like to serve during the
refreshments, the set-up of the Feast etc. Youll be amazed at what
creative minds they have, and what grand ideas they can put into
action. Where theres a will, theres a way! Do you have any other
ideas as to how we can engage children more in community life?
Share them in the comments!
THE GENERAL PICTURE WORLDWIDE
Part 1:
All is not bright and rosy, but not all is sad and depressing. Just as I
was beginning to write this book in 2007, the NSA of the USA
expressed its general view in an annual report of the Bah'
communitys spiritual vitality and prospects for growth. They said
they were inspired and confident that the elements required for a
concerted "robust and capable" effort to infuse the USA with the
spirit of Bah'u'llhs Revelation were present. Public awareness
and receptivity to the Bah' Faith, that NSA pointed out, was high.
Tens of thousands of Bah's had been trained in the core activities;
well over 1,100 childrens classes had been held regularly; 41
programs of intensive growth were in operation and Local Spiritual
Assemblies and cluster agencies evinced increasing vigor in their
pursuit of the Plans goals. This pattern is true in country after
country around the world insofar as the core activities are
concerned. I could quote from later NSA reports in the USA and
other countries but this book would assume dimensions that are too
extensive. The picture from country to country is highly diverse
and I find it difficult to generalize across the immense world that is
this new Bahai world. In some ways this book is a continued
commentary on this process and progress of growth.

Generally there is an increase in the numbers in all core activities

nationally in most western nations. Nevertheless, as the NSA of the
USA reported some eight years ago, in 2006, growth still remains
low. In the 19 years, 1996 to 2015, in the first two decades of this
new culture of learning and growth, there has actually been a
decline in enrollments in many countries. The picture looked much
brighter in the USA in 2008 and 2009 than in 2007 and 2006. Each
country in the Bahai world has its own story as the new paradigm is
being put in place around the Bahai world in these first two
decades: 1996-2016.
Part 2:
I will try and summarize and generalize, bring this book up to date,
in the months and years ahead as this book is revised and reworked
as more and more information comes in, as the the Bahai world
puts into action the plans and programs developed at all levels of
Bahai administration, as the capacity building of individuals
continues especially in the areas of inner life and private character
and as the agonies of humanity deepen as they inevitably will.
This book is not intended, though, to become a statistical report.
Believers can get this from a number of sites on the internet and it
is not my purpose in this book to provide a statistical base for
Bahai developments in the 190 countries and 46 territories of the
world to which this new Cause has spread and where excerpts of
Bahaullahs writings have now been translated into 802
languages.(The Bah World 2003, p.311). So many of the
processes in this paradigm are long-term ones & this applies
especially to capacity building. Indeed, like learning, it is a lifelong activity. So many of the processes involve a rich tapestry of
community life in the greatest drama of all--the drama which is our

lives, our lives in society and in our private domain.

GOALS IN BITE-SIZED CHUNKS
It can not be overemphasised how important it is to set reasonable
goals and take small steps in order to turn bite-sized changes into
lasting change over the long term. This process is sometimes called
the Swiss-cheese method. As groups sit at the table of their cluster
and other institutional meetings, as they come together in their
several ways: study circles, Feasts, deepenings, LSAs and NSAs, as
well as in the many forums at the Bahai World Centre: sometimes
with all of the stakeholders, sometimes with only a few, present-they are often reminded that there is no singular solution. The
whole thing is a vast tapestry or jig-saw puzzle and it is the
individual in the end who has to put it together in his personal and
community life. He or she has to put this paradigmatic shift into his
or her own life. For this reason I have focussed, perhaps too much
for some readers, on a quite personal perspective in what was first
an essay, and is now a book, here at BLO. I have focussed on what
I have done, what I want to do and where I hope to go in my
service to the Cause within the framework of this paradigm and its
action-oriented programs. I invite readers to work out their own
role, their own goals, aims and objectives. As readers go about this
process they might like to keep the Guardians words at the
forefront of their minds: our past is not the thing that matters so
much in this world as what we intend to do with our future.
Feelings of guilt can be crippling; they can also be protective; they
also can help us find the balance.
This new process, this paradigm change, was initiated in 1996 and
perhaps even earlier. For at least the first 19 years(1996-2015)it has
been aimed at capacity building, at a culture of learning and of
growth in the size of the community as well as an accompanying

paradigm shift in Bah community life. This process has resulted,

sometimes by sensible, sometimes by insensible, degrees---in the
flowing into the waters of the Bahai community what has seemed
to many of the veteran believers a sometimes strange, often new,
sense of activity. This activity has a new vocabulary involving
many of the same old things and many new things. A systematic
study of the Creative Word is not more pervasive; learning &
teaching have taken-on new dimensions, there has been a vast
extension of individual teaching endeavours "irrespective of
circumstance." A wider circle of people has become involved in the
last two decades. Obviously, this does not mean that in every town
and city, village and hamlet of the 120,000 localities where Bahais
live that there has been or will be in the years thus far and
immediately ahead an increase in the number of Bahais, however
desirable such an increase may be. It also does not mean that
building the Bah' community is now easier or less demanding or
that the tests which individual Bah's face are somehow less
intense. This new paradigm is, for each individual, a different story
within a vast framework of commonality.
Statistics, as one analyst put it in gloomy terms, are the triumph of
the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory
of sterility and death. While I would not want to hit statistics that
hard, for they are a key ingredient in the success of science and
consequently a crucial basis for our technological and material
culture, they are not the last and only word in the social world.
Still, in this new paradigm, statistics in the Bah' community have
moved to a whole new level of organization and interpretation. For
most of my Bah' life, beginning as it did in the 1950s, "the
numbers game" had some quite simplistic content: 9 here and 9
there, how many new Bahais this year, how many LSA do we have,
et cetera, et cetera. I will not try to summarize the new paradigm of
statistics; suffice it to say, the statistics game is much more

complex in this new paradigm; I'm sure there are even more Bah's
than before who are no more impressed with this side of the Cause
than they were before. As has often been said, both inside and
outside this new Abrahamic religion, "statistics can prove anything
you want." This is especially true if you want to prove something
badly enough.
THE NEW BAHA'I PARADIGM: MORE OVERVIEWS AND
FURTHER COMMENTS
Paradigm shifts do not take place easily because they involve a
change in basic assumptions within the current and dominant
theory of operations and activities in whatever field in which they
occur. My hope is that this piece of writing may play one of the
thousands of incremental or microcosmic, sensible or insensible,
significant or minor, parts in a process which is now well into its
second decade(1996-2006) and (2006-2016). At the outset I would
like to thank Moojan Momen for his useful and critical essay which
was instrumental in creating the first stages of serious discussion of
this paradigmatic shift in Bahai community life. Back in the early
years of this new millennium, in the first decade of what has
become an ongoing dialogue about this new culture of learning,
Momen started some balls rolling, so to speak. The tide is now
turning to an appreciation of the significance of this new paradigm
after some initial but not always moderate, balanced or realistic
criticisms of its context and content.
My own experience as a Bahai has undergone a paradigmatic shift
in the last two decades and especially the first ten years of my
retirement from full-time work, 1999 to 2009, coinciding as my
retirement has with the first years in the shift in the wider Bahai
community. Experience, it has been said, is the name people give to
their mistakes and after forty years of experience as a Bahai(1959-

1999) I made plenty of them. My work on the internet and the

direct teaching done in this connection and five weeks spent at the
Bahai World Centre in that same decade have altered the focus of
my Bahai experience as I entered the first years(60-65) of late
adulthood as human development psychologists call the years from
60 to 80.
According to Thomas Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a
scientific community, and they alone, share."(The Essential
Tension, 1977). In the case of this Bahai paradigm it is one shared
by the international Bahai community--and it alone. A paradigm, in
Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire
worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which
come with it. It is based on features of a landscape of knowledge
that scientists can identify around them. There are anomalies for all
paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable
levels of error or simply ignored and not dealt with. And this, it
seems to me, is also the case with this paradigm of change in the
Bahai community. The comparisons and contrasts with paradigms
that scientists deal with in the scientific community and which
Kuhn is concerned with are apt, are relevant, in relation to this
study of the Bahai paradigm.
When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current
paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis,
according to Kuhn. It seems to me, again, that the previous Bahai
paradigm, the dominant one until 1996, the one that operated for
virtually all of the years of this tenth stage of history(1963-1996), if
not all of the years as far back as the beginning of the formal
implementation of the Teaching Plan in 1937, had grown outworn
if not in a state of crisis. During this crisis, a crisis that had
gradually come into the Bahai community sensibly and insensibly
for perhaps two or three decades, new ideas, perhaps ones

previously discarded, were tried. Indeed the Bahai community that

set out in 1996 within the framework for action of this new
paradigm capitalized on the insights gained and the resources that
had been developed during the Plans as far back as the first one
within which my own life had been experienced: the Ten Year
Crusade.
A new paradigm, especially during the time of its initial appearance
and formulation, does not simply replace, reject or invalidate the
preceding one. For this reason, the previous paradigm, although
clearly in something of a state of crisis, can still be useful, albeit in
a highly restricted capacity and circumscribed situation. Within
Newtonian physics, for example, what is true and what is false, is
determined by the entities, rules, and conditions that come to be
exhibited within the Newtonian system. As long as one operates
inside the framework or paradigm of this system, it is possible to
define what is and what is not valid for the Newtonian
characterization of physical reality. All this changes, of course,
when the normal functioning of Newtonian science is confronted
with an alternative, like that formulated by Albert Einstein.
Einsteins innovations, however, do not invalidate or foreclose
Newtonian physics. They simply reinscribe Newtons laws within a
different context that reveals other entities, rules, and conditions
that could not be conceptualized as such within the horizon of
Newtons theorizing. In an analogous way, the change in paradigm
that has been in place and developing in the Bahai community
since the mid-1990s does not disprove or simply put an end to
Bahai community activity that went before 1996. That would be
absurd. Instead the new paradigm redefines Bahai activity as a
highly specific set of ways and means for what needs to be a much
more comprehensive understanding of the role and function of the
individual, the community and its institutions. This should come as
no surprise to the Bahais now after 15 years experience of this new

paradigm. In fact, the Bahais already know this for the most part
and currently operate within this new perspective, even if they do
not always acknowledge it as such, understand all the new
dynamics of this paradigm or are able to articulate all the newness
in all its forms.
The Bahai community has always achieved many, if not most, of
the quantitative goals it set itself during each Plan; it often
struggled in vain to reach some of the lofty qualitative goals. So is
this often the case in individual lives. Each of the Central Figures
of this Cause experienced great disappointment in Their lives,
disappointment that this Faith, the Faith They had initiated or
inherited, had not spread faster and that, in the process of its
extension in Iran and then throughout other countries, sadness that
much suffering had resulted in the process of that extension. More
recently and in my own lifetime, high expectations of the decades,
say, from 1956 to 1996, led to disappointments because these high
expectations did not yield their hoped-for results. They were simply
unrealistic expectations based on inadequate understanding of the
Bahai community itself and the wider society in general. The
several successes that did occur in the West, first in the early years
of the Ten Year Plan and then in the Nine Year Plan, among other
successes in other parts of the global Bahai community in the years
from, say, the 1950s to the early 1990s, did not in themselves build
a Bahai community life that could meet the needs of all of its new
members. Of course, this was not new. It had been true in the years
1844 to 1944.
Both novitiates and veterans have often faced problems for which
their experience provided few answers. When hoped for
quantitative results did not materialize deep discouragement often
set in and inactivity followed for many as night follows day. But
slowly, through the 1980s and early 1990s a maturing Bahai

experience, and especially with the guidance of the Universal

House of Justice, the trustees of the global undertaking that had
been initiated more than a century before by a charismatic Force
that was arguably the greatest that history had ever experienced, led
to the formation of this new paradigm.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES
Part 1:
The introduction of many more social and economic projects,
especially since the 1960s, has broadened the range of activities in
many of the 120,000 Bah' localities and communities around the
world. Although this book does not deal with the vast development
in the social and economic spheres(S&ES) during the three decades
before this new paradigm(1966-1996) as well as the last two
decades during this new culture of learning, a few words are in
order. From time to time in this book I make mention of aspects of
the S&ES; the following paragraphs are one of the more important,
more detailed, coverage of this aspect of the new Bah' culture.
Most Bah' social and economic development efforts have been,
and are now, fairly simple activities of fixed duration in which
Bah's in villages and towns, cities and rural areas, around the
world apply spiritual principles to the problems and challenges
faced by their localities. These activities either originate in the
Bah' communities themselves at the local level, or are a response
to the invitation of other organizations. It is estimated that in 199697, at the outset of this new paradigm, there were some 1,450
endeavours of this kind, including tree-planting and clean-up
projects, health camps, workshops and seminars on such themes as
race unity and the advancement of women, and short-term training
courses.

The second category of Bah' social and economic development

consisted, even in the earliest years of this paradigm, of more than
200 ongoing projects. The vast majority were and are academic
schools, while others focus on areas such as literacy, basic health
care, immunization, substance abuse, child care, agriculture, the
environment, or some micro-enterprise. Some of these projects are
administered by nascent development organizations which have the
potential to grow in complexity and in their range of influence. All
projects seek to apply or explore particular Bah' principles.
Part 2:
Certain Bah' development efforts have achieved the stature of
development organizations with relatively complex programmatic
structures and significant spheres of influence. They systematically
train human resources and manage a number of lines of action to
address problems of local communities and regions in a
coordinated, interdisciplinary manner. Also included in this
category are several institutions--especially large schools--which,
although focusing only on one field, have the potential to make a
significant impact in contributing to the welfare of the communities
in which they operate. In this category there are currently 31 such
organizations, which are located in all continents of the globe.
Holly Hansen looked at the evolution of Bah' involvement in
social and economic development and highlighted some current
projects in her article which appeared in the 1992-93 edition of The
Bah' World( pp. 229-245). But these developments, partly within
the Office of Economic and Social Development at the Bahai
World Centre, partly within the Bahai International Community, an
NGO of the United Nations, with offices in Geneva and New York,
and partly at other levels of Bahai administration are not the focus

of this new paradigm. Indeed there is much about the Bahai Faith
that is not the concern of this article, this book, and readers with a
wider interest are advised to consult other sources to further their
specific interests, interests largely unrelated to the focus in this
paradigm analysis.
Part 3:
Overview of Bah' Social and Economic Development: Holly
Hansen
The development activities of the Bah' community express a well-articulated
alternative paradigm of development, of interest in its unusual approaches to
the dilemmas of sustainability, of meaningful project design, and equitable
North/South interaction. The singularity of the Bah' approach is rooted in
Bah' scripture and is evident in the history of the Bah' community's efforts
to create social progress since the mid-nineteenth century. Although most of
the 1300* or so Bah' social and economic development projects are small in
scale, they occur in over 100 countries throughout the world. The trends
discernible in current Bah' social and economic development activities
include increasing collaboration with U.N. organs, international aid agencies,
and non-governmental organizations; a growing willingness to openly assert a
Bah' origin for ideas and projects; an increasing recognition of the utility of
Bah' administrative institutions in facili
ing development with justice; and a shift towards a greater degree of
coordination and systematic implementation of development possibilities
throughout the worldwide network of Bah' communities.(1)

A Bah' Development Paradigm

The Bah' paradigm asserts a central role for spirituality in
development: the vision of how to create social well-being comes
to humanity through the revealed word of God, and human beings
develop the capacities to take effective action through their
relationship with their Creator. Bah'u'llh states that "the purpose
for which mortal men have, from utter nothingness, stepped into
the realm of being, is that they may work for the betterment of the

world and live together in concord and harmony." Hence, Bah's

view their involvement in development activities as a fulfillment of
this spiritual obligation to serve humanity.2
Bah's orient their development efforts in terms of principles
expounded in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the central work in Bah'u'llh's
Writings, and other Bah' scriptures which call for universal education, the
creation of mutually beneficial ties of economic interdependence, and the
elimination of prejudices of all forms, and which exhort individuals to
trustworthiness, to high moral standards in their individual lives, and to the
voluntary sharing of wealth.3 The most thorough exposition of Bah' beliefs
regarding the process of development is `Abdu'l-Bah's treatise on the
potential advancement of Iran, The Secret of Divine Civilization.4 Writing in
1875, `Abdu'l-Bah called for the mobilization of the masses through their
own efforts to obtain education. He identified ignorance and the absence of
genuine faith as causes of the perpetuation of injustice and oppression;
outlined the characteristics of effective administrators; and demonstrated
that, throughout history, the coming of a new religion has brought about
major societal transformation. In The World Order of Bah'u'llh, Shoghi
Effendi, the Guardian of the Bah' Faith, further expounded on the
relationship of the Bah' Faith to the social evolution of humanity, outlining
the need to imbue human endeavours with spirituality.

The over-arching context for the design and implementation of

development projects is Bah'u'llh's mission to weld the diverse
elements of the human race into a dynamic and spiritually organic
world community. This means that Bah's are extremely concerned
about development processes. As important, or more important,
than the immediate concrete results of any development
undertaking, is that people are drawn together, that they develop
the ability to hear all of the voices in a community, and that they
begin to learn the process of collective action.
Since Bah's view development activities as practical expressions
of the central tenets of their Faith, they focus their attention on
those aspects of development which are not usually explicitly
addressed in development discourse. Among these are the

aspiration that development activities will contribute to a

rehabilitation of human society and will eliminate extremes of
poverty and wealth, a belief that a desire to serve others is
ultimately the most sustaining motivation for participation in
development activities, and the conviction that high standards of
morality can and should be intentionally cultivated by every
person.
Bah's place a priority on cultivation of the moral qualities which
they consider to be essential for successful development. "Material
development may be likened to the glass of a lamp, whereas divine
virtues and spiritual susceptibilities are the light within the glass."5
In Bah' religious practice, each individual attempts to improve his
or her character through daily prayer and introspection. Bah's
consider qualities such as trustworthiness, sincerity, and selfsacrifice to be the invisible infrastructure for development, and try
to organize their efforts in ways that foster these qualities. The Ruhi
Institute training course for teachers, developed in Colombia and
adopted by Bah' communities all over the world, contains units
on prayer, developing a sense of joy and radiance, and thinking
about life after death, as well as units on how to organize a learning
environment and how to promote healthy development of
children.6
Bah' development activities are also based on the perception that
initiatives which lead to social transformation begin inside the
heart, in the human longing to express love for God through acts of
service to humanity. This means that Bah's care about the
motivations which people bring to their participation in
development activities, and direct significant attention to
inculcating a system of values that affirms the spiritual nature and
capacities of human beings. Developing attitudes and habits of
service is a core element of curricula for Bah' schools and

training centers. The Human Development Program of the Maxwell

International Bah' School in Canada aims, for example, to train
students to "develop self-knowledge, to work with diverse people,
to solve personal and collective problems, to establish healthy
relationships with others and to be of service to their community
and the world through a comprehensive sequence on practical and
transcendent subjects which include Knowing and Loving God,
Living in a Material World, and The Role of Youth."7 Each student
contributes three hours of service each week in activities which
have included constructing an interpretive trail in a provincial park,
tutoring, coaching, and finding ways to participate in children's
classes or in literacy training with people from nearby Native
American Reserves.
The centrality of social service in Bah' religious practice means
that Bah' development projects are able to rely on volunteer
participation from individuals and communities. The Guaymi
Cultural Center in Panama, for example, operates a radio station,
holds annual music and dance festivals, an annual children's
festival, regional womens' conferences, regular consultations where
Guaymi and other indigenous people can consult about their future,
and other meetings. It provides training for teachers of the rural
secondary curriculum and for adult literacy instructors, assists
eleven village schools, and supports local Bah' communities in
the area by disseminating information on health care, farming, and
other development topics. Ten permanent staff (seven of whom are
Guaymi), eleven volunteer teachers who are supported by their
communities, and twelve volunteers who translate and do
programming carry on the work of the Center on an annual budget
of about $30,000.8 The practice of seeking out volunteer staff,
especially women and youth, enhances the ability of Bah' radio
stations to serve as the voice of the people, and also reduces
operating costs.9

Some Bah' projects, particularly those in non-formal education,

have chosen to depend entirely on local volunteer labor and
resources. Seen as a way to make religious principles effective in
the world, this strategy to draw out people's capacities and to
encourage community self-reliance, has had both positive and
negative results. A network of almost one hundred self-sustaining
literacy centers was established in Bah' communities in the Kivu
region of Zaire in the early 1980s. On the other hand, the number
of Bah' literacy schools in India has dropped from 262 in 1986 to
slightly less than 200 in 1993, partly because of a lack of
administrative support or funding.10
The experience of village Bah' schools in the Mangyan areas of
Mindoro, Phillippines, suggests that well-trained rural teachers,
however, can help to set in motion far-reaching processes of social
transformation. In the past eight years, the number of Mangyan
Bah' village schools has grown from five to eight. Five of the
school teachers are now Mangyan, and students from the schools
have received high marks on national examinations.
Bah' development projects such as these are encouraged and
supervised by the Bah' administrative structure made up of
Spiritual Assemblies. On the local and national levels they are
elected annually by secret ballot from among the adult members of
a Bah' community. Every five years all the members of National
Assemblies gather to elect the Universal House of Justice, the
international governing council. Assemblies organize devotional
services, religious instruction and other functions carried out by
clergy in other faiths, but Bah' Assemblies are also called on to
consider themselves responsible before God for the material and
spiritual well-being of their communities.

In well-established Bah' communities, Assemblies have become

recognized, truly local, representative bodies, able to focus people's
attention on actions that are conducive to their welfare. The
capacity of Bah' administrative institutions to create order and
inspire progress has been demonstrated in the past several years by
the activities of 200 Liberian Bah' refuguees in Cte d'Ivoire, who
fled from civil war in their country in 1990. The Bah' refugees
held a large gathering soon after their arrival, re-elected six Local
Assemblies based on the communities that people had come from,
and began to organize the spiritual and material dimensions of life
in their new homes. They established regular Bah' meetings,
choirs, classes for children and built several Bah' centers. In the
fall of 1991, they invested the equivalent of $20 in order to buy
tools for the eleven vegetable gardens and four fish ponds which
are now having a perceptible, positive impact on the local
economy. The solidarity and self-assurance of the Bah's has
attracted attention, and there are now about 1,000 Bah's and 25
Local Assemblies in the area. A Liberian Bah' who serves as
community development facilitator explained the undertaking: "if
work is done in the pathway of humanity, it brings a lasting result.
We think development is the practical application of the spiritual
potential that God has given man."11
The obvious creativity and strength of the Liberian refugee
community in Cte d'Ivoire encourages Bah's in their efforts to
nurture the 20,000 Local Assemblies that now exist around the
world. Bah's are deeply committed to the principle that
democratically-elected, spiritually-focussed local institutions are
critical for social transformation and the creation of a dynamic and
stable society. They have invested significant energy and resources
in the development of these institutions since the 1920s, and
continue to consider it one of their most important priorities.

Historiographical Survey
The earliest Bah' development projects were schools established
by the Bah's of Iran at the turn of the century in response to a
stream of letters from `Abdu'l-Bah extolling the importance of
education, especially for women.12 More than ten schools in urban
areas and approximately forty rural schools were operated by the
Bah's between 1888 when the first kindergarten opened in
Ishqabad, Russia and 1934 when all Bah' schools were forced to
close because they would suspend classes on Bah' Holy Days.
The character of these institutions, and the other cultural, primary
health, and agricultural activities of the early Iranian Bah'
communities have been described elsewhere.13
For more on this survey go to Holly Hansen
Current Trends in Bah' Development
More Bah' communities are gaining experience in carrying out
collaborative projects with United Nations agencies, governments,
and non-governmental organizations, and the size and complexity
of these endeavours have also increased. The Bah' approach to
collaboration with non-Bah' agencies is summarized in the words
of the Universal House of Justice in a letter to the National
Spiritual Assembly of Bolivia in 1989: "External assistance and
funds (Bah' and non-Bah') may be used to make surveys to
initiate activities, or to bring in expertise, but the aim should be for
each project to be able to continue and develop on the strength of
local Bah' efforts, funds and enthusiasm." Bah' National
Spiritual Assemblies and the Office of Social and Economic
Development which coordinates development activities for the
Universal House of Justice, have maintained a policy that the
decision to start a project should not be based on the availability of

outside funds, but rather on the extent to which community support

and commitment can sustain the project once external funding is
terminated. Sometimes this policy has meant that Bah'
communities have found it necessary to refuse funding that was
offered to them.
For more on current trends go to Hansen
Finally, a trend towards a greater international coordination of the
possibilities for development is emerging in the Bah' community.
This is evidenced by current initiatives to intensify literacy
education within the Bah' community. In July 1989, the Universal
House of Justice asked all National and Local Spiritual Assemblies
to make efforts to eliminate illiteracy among Bah's. Pointing to
the salience of reading for transformation of the individual soul and
of society, the House of Justice called literacy "a fundamental right
and privilege of every human being," and asked every Bah'
community to institute their own literacy programs or join those
organized by others.25 In response to this call, a task force of
Bah's with experience in basic education met at the Bah' World
Centre to create and disseminate effective literacy methodologies to
Bah' communities worldwide. The task force prepared
suggestions for utilizing spiritually empowering words and themes
(called generative words) in literacy training, and arranged
conferences in Nairobi and Bangkok in 1992 where Bah' literacy
workers and leaders met to discuss the implications of this
approach for languages and populations in their respective
continents. These two meetings led to a number of workshops and
the initiation of several new literacy programs.
Conclusion
Considering its small numbers and modest financial resources, the

Bah' community's contributions to social and economic

development are quite remarkable. Bah' participation in social
and economic development has grown rapidly in the past decade,
and in some nations, Bah's have made a visible contribution in
rural education, in community health worker training, and in
programs for the promotion of equality of the sexes and the
elimination of prejudice. From the perspective of Bah's
themselves, these actions are only the beginning of what they
believe to be possible using the tools of vision, inspiration, and
organization which they find available in their Faith.
*For the most recent statistics concerning Bah' development
activities see Bah' Development Projects: A Global Process of
Learning
Part 4:
The 16th Annual Report of the International Environment
Forum(IEF) summarizes the events and activities from December
2011 to June 2012 between its annual conferences. The report was
presented at the 16th General Assembly of the IEF in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil on 18 June 2012. For more information on this IEF
go to this link:http://iefworld.org/report2012 ...This book can not
and does not attempt to outline either in detail or in general terms
all the developments, all the annual reports of Bah' activity across
its international agencies or its National Spiritual Assemblies. If
this book did attempt a more comprehensive picture of
developments in the social and economic spheres in relation to this
new Bah' paradigm this book would swell to several volumes of
100s of pages per volume. Readers who would like to get a more
detailed picture of Bah' communities around the world in relation
to the implementation of this new Bah' culture can go to many
links. This one will provide annual reports of the NSA of the USA

as far back as 2007. Annual reports of the dozens of NSAs around

the world, to say nothing of the 1000s of LSAs, are generally not
provided in cyberspace. To serious scholars many of them, though,
are accessible.
The information available to the Bah' community and any
interested person on the developments within this new Bah'
paradigm is really burgeoning and I make no attempt to even
summarize the data. Needless to say, those who want to know
about this new Bah' culture in its first two decades of operation:
1996 to 2016, will have plenty to read for many evenings and
weeks to come.
I would like to close this section, though, with some comments
from a talk given at a Bahai conference on social and economic
development at Orlando Florida in 2000 by Ludwig Tuman. Tuman
said that, ever since the Bah community began to involve itself
worldwide in the area of social and economic development, the
House of Justice has reminded the Bahai community repeatedly
"that societys material development will be solid and lasting only
if it is built on the foundation of a spiritual understanding of life."
The Universal House of Justice put it succinctly when it stated:
..The working of the material world is merely a reflection of
spiritual conditions and until the spiritual conditions can be
changed there can be no lasting change for the better in material
affairs. Weve seen that the highest aspiration of art is precisely to
help uplift humanitys spiritual condition. This means that the
practice of art, along with models of learning such as the Ruhi
Institute, should be regarded as one of those essential activities that
can help to spiritualize both the Bah community and society as a
whole. Art, then, clearly belongs among the primary activities that
help lay the very foundation for Bah social and economic
development.

One of the implications of the above paragraph and this aspect of

the spiritual understanding of life is the extent to which individuals
attempt to place the Bah' principles in the front of their life.
Individual initiative has resulted, in the last two decades, in literally
thousands of projects, some achieving high levels of publicity but
most, such is my view, by unsung, unknown, unpublicized, projects
and indivividuals as this Faith grows quietly and pervasively along
the edges of society, not unlike the ways Christianity did in its first
four centuries before becoming the soul of western society for a
1000 years.
PARADIGM PARALYSIS: THE OLD AND THE NEW
PARADIGM
This new paradigm has now gained virtually complete acceptance
by the LSAs, NSAs, regional councils, clusters, local Bah'
communities and individuals across the planet in the more than
100,000 Bah's communities. For many, at least at the outset of
this paradigm shift, an intellectual battle took place in relation to
what some Bah's regarded as an essentially unattractive package
of policies, plans, and ways of dealing with both the Bah'
community itself and those outside the community. That battle
gradually ceased by the end of the first decade of this new Bah'
culture, 1996 to 2006. Of course, there are still small pockets of
non-participation in this new culture of learning, but there have
always been some members of the Bah' community who have
played virtually no part in its community life or in its private
practices like: fasting, prayer, reading the writings on a daily basis
or any other basis, inter alia. In some ways this is inevitable when a
community numbers in the millions.
After a decade of varying degrees of dissension, between the

followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old

paradigm, one rarely comes across the kinds of criticism of this
paradigm that one did back in those fin de siecle years and the first
years of this new millennium. This is not to say, of course, that
every Bah' takes part in all aspects of this new culture of learning,
this new paradigm. In fact, I think it is fair to say that by the close
of the second decade of this new culture, and the end of the current
Five Year Plan in 2016, most Bah's took part in only some aspects
of the package of paradigm activities. There are now, as there have
always been, what used to be called "the inactive believers" for
whom the Bah' Faith represents an organization they once joined,
once had some enthusiasm for and took part in its community
activities, but now play little to no part in either its community life
or its private practices.
"In many ways," the House of Justice pointed out at Ridvan 2014,
"the communities that have progressed furthest are tracing an
inviting path for others to follow. Yet whatever the level of activity
in a cluster, it is the capacity for learning among the local friends,
within a common framework, that fosters progress along the path
of development. Everyone has a share in this enterprise; the
contribution of each serves to enrich the whole." They continue in
relation to activities within advanced clusters: "a people,
increasingly aware of the Person of Bahullh, is learning,
through reflection on experience, consultation, and study, how to
act on the truths enshrined in His Revelation, such that the
widening circle of spiritual kindred is ever more closely bound
together by ties of collective worship and service." And: "In more
and more clusters, the programme of growth is increasing in scope
and complexity, commensurate with the rising capacity of the
Plans three protagoniststhe individual, the community, and the
institutions of the Faithto create a mutually supportive
environment."

Perhaps the greatest barrier to the paradigm shift across the

international Bah' community, in the first two decades of the
existence of this shift, is the reality of what some students of the
concept of paradigms call 'paradigm paralysis.' This is the inability
or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking, to think
outside the old box, the old paradigm. In some ways, though, the
whole notion of an old and new paradigm is a false dichotomy
since there are elements in both paradigms that are the same or
similar. At the centre of both, for example, is that God's voice is
now heard in a new message that came down from heaven, a new
revelation, an additional heavenly message. I am still, as a Bahai,
the exotic outsider I was under the old paradigm. At best I and my
religion are an interesting subject for debate but not a vital force in
life for my society, at least this is true in all the places I have lived
and where I now live. Reason and the senses, long ago replacing
revelation, are still enthroned across the wider secular culture in
which I live and move and have my being.
The great intellectual movements of the last hundred years are all
devoid of religious faith with a demythologised and secularized
eschatology. The battle under the new paradigm remains largely the
same. The individual Bahai must deal with secularism, nationalism,
tribalism, nihilism, hedonism, the permissive society, escapism,
meaninglessness, normlessness, and the pluralism, the multiplicity,
of non-obligatory values, values torn loose from their former
metaphysical moorings, inter alia. I could go on and on here and I
invite readers to examine Schaefer's book The Imperishable
Dominion for a more detailed examination of the themes I have
listed here. If lightening and thunder need time and the light of the
stars need time to reach earth, if many deeds need time even after
they are done to be seen and heard, if two great wars and the blood,
sweat and tears of several generations are slowly producing what is

latent in this cycle, my guess is that the Bah' community itself

will slowly appear, will slowly become part and parcel of the wider
secular culture and slowly come to play a larger and larger part.
During this new paradigm, what is and will be for millions, a
strange, a somewhat queer and flowery, a typically oriental and
seemingly unsuitable idiom for the West, the language of Bahaullah
will become a more common voice in the councils of men. Amidst
the poverty of emotive language that exists in our secular and often
arid literary culture, the language, the community, of the Bah'
Faith will come to be seen and heard with greater and greater
understanding and acceptance.
Much of the spirit of nationality and tribalism in our current global
society is like a sour ferment. The new wine of internationalism
requires new bottles and they are slowly emerging in our time. The
practical politics of our time has come to be needed in ecumenical,
humanitarian and global forms. The sense now of being part of a
larger whole is one that underpins this new Bahai paradigm. The
field of analysis for this new paradigm is at once local, cluster,
regional, national, continental, intercontinental and planetary. No
local analysis, no local understanding, becomes intelligible until it
is viewed under the perspective of internationalism and its
institutions, until we first, or at least also and at the same time,
focus on the whole. Our society is the whole of humankind; any
one group is but a subdivision of a single group--the human family.
This is the ethos which operates behind and under the new
paradigm. It operated before this new paradigm, but it has operated
a fortiori in the first 18 years of this new Bah' culture, and it will
operate in the decades to come for the very survival of the species.
TIME TAKES ITS COURSE
Sometimes the convincing force of the new paradigm is just time

itself and the human toil and toll it takes. Kuhn said, using a quote
from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by
convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows
up that is familiar with it." Kuhn vehemently states that when a
scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a
complex social process, the new one is always better, not just
different. It seems to me that this is clearly the case with this new
Bahai paradigm. Kuhn argues that the language and theories of
different paradigms cannot be translated into one another or
rationally evaluated against one another. They are
incommensurable. I like this and I like the relevance this idea has
when applied to the Bahai paradigm.
In the latter part of the 1990s, 'paradigm shift' emerged as a
buzzword, was popularized in marketing-speak and appeared more
frequently in print and publication. In his book, Mind The Gaffe,
author Larry Trask advised readers to refrain from using it and to
use caution when reading anything that contained the phrase. The
term is referred to in several articles and books as abused and
overused to the point of becoming meaningless. The term
"paradigm shift" has found uses in other contexts, representing the
notion of a major change in a certain thought-pattern: a radical
change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations,
replacing former ways of thinking or organizing with radically
different ways of thinking or organizing at the operational levels.
Sometimes the pejorative terms groupthink and mindset are found
in the literature, literature that is critical of the vocabulary of
paradigms. I will say more on this later.
This new culture of learning and growth is now nearing the end of
its second decade. Each of us must work out where we fit into this
new paradigm. In the end, we all must see where each of us fits into

this new picture however extensive the analysis, however complex

the process often appears and however enthusiastic or critical of the
process we may be as we live through it in our individual and
community lives. My "fit" is just one of millions of others and I
leave it to others to describe their own "fits." I would like to think
that in this commentary, this book, on the new culture of learning
which follows I can give voice to insights at the heart of the recent
changes in the experience of the Bahai community. I would like to
think that I can enlarge and awaken my own mind and the minds of
others as well as articulate spiritual verities through wilful daily
action and my own wilful and engaged rational faculty. I have been
trying to do this as a classroom teacher and lecturer for the last
several decades. From 1967 to 2005 I certainly tried as a teacher of
pre-primary, primary, secondary and post-secondary students as
well as of senior citizens. I had tried before this as a student in my
Bahai junior youth, adolescent and young adult days, say, 1957 to
1967. And so, I feel I bring to this overall written exercise half a
century of trying. As one noted humorist once said, though, in a
joking fashion: "I feel a little like the marriage guidance counsellor
who has been married ten times. He has never pulled off a
successful marriage, but he has had much experience trying."
MY OWN EXPERIENCE OF WRITING AND MY MEMOIR
I have addressed this change of culture at the start of Part 2 of my
memoir, a memoir I have placed here at BLO and which readers
can download free of charge. It is a memoir I have been writing
during the first two decades of this paradigm change. My life was
affected by this paradigm change and it seemed relevant, at least to
me, to discuss these paradigm changes in relation to my ongoing
life. After discussing the affect of this paradigm change on my own
life in my memoir, I then continued with my memoir, in that Part 2,
in the wider context of my life. This change of culture was

something, as I say, that I experienced and it is to this subject that I

turned to in my autobiography or memoir. Readers interested in this
wider context and my memoir are invited to download it here at
BLO in all its 1800 to 2500 pages.
I go about analysing this new paradigm and attempting to fit the
several paradigm shifts in the Bahai experience since 1944, to
shifts in my own life, as I have indicated above, as well as to shifts
in the life of my society. The exercise of examining these more
personal and society-wide shifts is one that I take on in my
memoirs(see BLO "Pioneering Over Four Epochs"--Parts 1, 2 and
3), not in any systematic way, but periodically and when it seemed
relevant. I would have to write a separate book on the shifts in the
world in the first two decades of this paradigm shift or, for that
matter, in the previous paradigm shifts in the several decades from
the 1930s to the 1990s when previous paradigms were--arguably-in place. If I were to engage in a minute examination of the shifts in
my public and private life here in this discussion of the Bahai
paradigms this already lengthy work would become out of reach of
readers due to its sheer size. I settle, then, in my memoirs for a
brief examination of my whole life in terms of the paradigm shifts
that have taken place in the Bahai community, but this is not my
aim here in this book. I deal, I'm sure for some readers---ad
nauseam--on this paradigm and I take over 830 pages(font 16) to
do it.
My aim in what was originally an essay or an article, and is now a
book, to focus on the recent change in culture that has come centrestage in the last two decades in the international Bahai community.
The way we see, it is often said, defines the objects we observe just
as the way we live actively shapes our thoughts on life. This
aphorism is a useful one within which to view this paradigm shift.
To look at this thing, this new paradigm, is very different from

seeing it. One does not see anything until one sees its order and
beauty, its value and purpose, its meaning and truth. Then, and then
only, does it come into existence. I have Oscar Wilde to thank for
that idea and, like many of his ideas, it provides provocative food
for thought. Wilde is begging us to rediscover the artist in
ourselves, to be more imaginative and more creative and in doing
so to create a more effective and efficient community life. This new
paradigm certainly challenges the Bahai community to a new order
of participation.
We hardly begin to learn anything about the nature of life for the
individual or the community until we succeed in distinguishing the
points of relative discontinuity in the ever-rolling stream: the
bends, the straight stretches, the crests and troughs of the waves
and even the myriad forms that arise when the waters are frozen
into a glacier. The very concept of continuity is only significant as
a symbolic mental background on which we can plot our
perceptions of discontinuity in all their variety and complexity.
This new paradigm provides a crucial discontinuity in which the
Bahai community can view the continuities and discontinuities of
the last 250 years of its history going back to the life of Shaykh
Ahmad as he "arose with unerring vision" to prepare the way for
the Bab.(Nabil, p.1) This history can become, in the process, not a
burden on the memory, but an illumination of the soul and a story
that can contribute to the common fortunes of humankind.
I do not regard myself as a scout who is helping to guide the Bahai
expedition on a journey into unexplored territory. But I am
someone who is participating actively in the journey with 1000s,
indeed, millions of my fellow believers with my little knowledge,
skills and experience. Each of our contributions, a thimble-full or a
gallon-measure, we make as best we can always acknowledging
that we could have done better for our perfection is inevitably and

always elusive. Hopefully I can: (a) discuss intelligently various

aspects of the Bahai community struggle and help that community
to make progress, (b) draw constructive perspectives from the past
to inform the present and future;(c) provide insight and some
degree of technical knowhow or capacity for an ongoing study of
the Bahai text;(d) have a role in problem posing and problem
solving; and(e) help the defining of culture and intercultural
relations. On this journey I do not have any authority; while
making some hopefully meaningful contribution, like any other
participant, my views are fallible; I am just one of the many are
called. Whether I am one of the few that are chosen will remain to
be seen until after my parting from this mortal coil. This hardly
needs to be said.
I found as I wrote my memoir, the wider context for this study of
the paradigm shift in the Bahai community, a quiet emotion of
curiosity blended with a certain intensity and superfluity within me
all of which led to my essaying many aspects of life at once:
myself, my society and my community. The result is, what you
might call my style, my way of seeing this interrelated triangle of
subject matter. In some ways the process is a perceptual experience
put into words, an attempt to interpret a large field of reality, to
unify factual knowledge and belief and to transform my experience
into attitude and further action. My creativity, guided by purpose,
alters my perception as I go along; it also changes how I feel about
the subject I am writing. This analysis is not some literary
ornamentation or a matter of choice of vocabulary or an amusing
linguistic set of tics or wordy mannerisms. As I see it, this book
provides a rhythmic alteration between two activities--the
collection of materials and their arrangement, the finding of facts
and their interpretation. In order not to be beleaguered by the mass
of facts and ideas, issues and contexts which now exist in this new
paradigm I have to sort them out and arrange them into some kind

of order of meaning to me---and hopefully to others. This will help

me to continue my study of this paradigm in the years to come: for
this new Bahai culture has just begun! I will be lucky if the Good
Lord grants me another 30 years so that I may live to the end of the
second century of the Bah' Era(BE). If He does, I will be 100 in
the year 2044 and, since I am a member of the British
commonwealth, I will get a letter from its chief monarch.
The role of this analysis is to throw light not only on my personal
story, my memoir but also, and much more importantly, on this new
paradigm. As I go about this exercise it has been my intention to
also throw some light on several of the old paradigms and to
provide a means for the: (i) engagement of my life in a process of
actualizing my potential, (ii) gaining more control over my life and
(iii) facilitation of my own learning competence. I also aim to
provide these means for others, for readers who come to these
threads of thought, this long post, this far too long article, essay or
book. This new paradigm has many roles and this commentary
discusses some of them. It attempts to give them a fuller context
and a wider direction than is often found in discussions in other
places. Such, anyway, are some of my aims and the roles I like to
see this exposition possessing and addressing. Fresh facts must be
found as the years go on so that the process of synthesis and
interpretation can be carried further. No collection of facts is ever
complete because this new paradigm is without bounds and the
arrangement of the facts and ideas is always provisional.
A PARADIGMATIC CONTEXT:
GENERAL COMMENTS ON BAHAI HISTORY AND
TEACHING THE FAITH
The solution to the ever-present teaching question in the more than

two centuries of Babi-Bahai history going back to Shaykh Ahmad's

teaching role in the fin de siecle years of the eighteenth century is
different for each generation, each epoch of Bahai history. That the
solution is a complex one at some level, at many levels, should not
be a matter of surprise given the part played in the process by
imperfect men and women, people with one foot in the past and its
patterns, one foot in the future and faced squarely with the everpresent on a day to day basis. It is a future where dreams,
aspirations and plans lie in wait to stimulate the vision and on
which to take action. When the visions in question seem the most
utopian of any group on the planet, at least as some of its critics
argue; when the plans and aspirations so often seem to exceed their
realistic achievement, at least in the short term, frustration often
sets in. And so the House of Justice emphasizes that: "Those of us
who are alive to the vision of the Faith, are particularly privileged
to be consciously engaged in efforts intended to stimulate and
eventually enhance" the achievement of that vision, its pre-eminent
purpose & its grand design all inherent in this new Revelation. The
vision must be alive for it is vision that creates reality but we also
must be practical realists to keep the dogs of discouragement from
eating away at our very souls.
THE BABI DISPENSATION
Part 1:
In 1999 a 700 page book written by Afnan Abu'l-Qasim was
published. Its title was: The Babi Dispensation: The Life of the
Bab. There have been several books which have appeared for the
Bah' community on the Babi period. The first was, arguably,
Nabil's Narrative which appeared in 1932. I would like to focus on
the first major paradigm shift in the history of the Babi-Bah'
Faiths which took place in the 1840s. I thank Udo Schaefer for his

Foreword to Gerald Keil's, Time and the Bah' Era: A Study of the
Bad' Calendar for the following paragraphs which place one of the
major paradigm shifts in the Babi period in perspective.
That which has already transpired and which we collectively
consider noteworthy or important becomes history, and the
question whether world history makes any sense at all the
endless historical episodes, the rise and fall of systems of political
rule, the origin and demise of great cultures is the subject of the
philosophy of history. History is an empirical science; but since
human reason is capable of judging very little concerning the
meaning and goal of history, the interpretation of world history lies
beyond the reach of empirical knowledge. Without appeal to
religion and theology, history remains uninterpreted.
According to Bah teaching, God is the Lord of history. He
manifests Himself to mankind through His successive prophets and
messengers, leading mankind progressively to salvation. World
history is salvation history. It proceeds in universal cycles, within
which the founders of the worlds great religions leave behind
historical caesurae, each of which invariably gives rise to a new
chronology. The Adamic cycle entered its final phase with the
coming of Muhammad, the last prophet in this series and
accordingly called the Seal of the Prophets in the Qurn, who
foretells the great upheaval at the end of days, the Day of
Decision. With the coming of the Bb a new universal era began
and the prophetic cycle attained fulfilment: The Day of
Resurrection was the advent of the new Revelation. The
consummation of mankind will take place during the new cycle
which began with the Bb. The fulfilment of the prophetic
promises of the unity of mankind and of the messianic kingdom of
peace will follow in the wake of an upheaval of apocalyptic
proportions. The Bad calendar, revealed by the Bb in his Persian

Bayn and taken over in slightly modified form by Bahullh in

the Kitb-i Aqdas, signalizes both: the incursion of transcendence
through Gods self-revelation and the upheaval announced to
mankind, in which the present-day order will be rolled up, and a
new one spread out in its stead.
Part 2:
The Bb, as his adopted title implies, had at first raised his claim
within the traditional Shite paradigm of expectation, in
conformity with the concept of the Babl-Imm (Gate to the
Hidden Imm). He withheld from revealing his true spiritual
identity for a considerable period of time and, like the Jesus of the
Gospel of St Mark, kept his messianic secret concealed. Only
gradually did he announce his prophetic claim to be a
Manifestation of God, a claim which transcended the horizon of
expectation of the orthodox Sha. At the Conference of Badsht in
1848 some of the prominent members of his community announced
the abolition of Islamic religious law. This was, as I see it anyway,
the epi-centre of the first paradigm shift in the Babi-Bah'
religions.
Yet the true claim of the Bb was discernible in his writings from
the very beginning.The abrogation of the Islamic shara is
impossible to overlook, especially in the Persian Bayn, which he
composed during his imprisonment in Mh-K. The changes which
the Bab undertook during His ministry clearly demonstrate the
break with the past. In one work, the Bb not only announced his
teachings, rejuvenating all aspects of religious life, he also
introduced a new religious law, thus making clear that his mission
was far more than an Islamic reform movement: he endowed
mankind with an independent revealed religion, with its own
Book, its own teachings, its own legal system and its own ritual.

He thereby accomplished what no Islamic reformer had ever

managed: a complete severing with the past. And nothing makes
this severance more explicit than a new basis of time calculation
and a new calendar.
One might wonder what the purpose of the Baynic law was, many
of the details of which appear strange and severe to the uninitiated
Western reader and which was ultimately to be superceded by the
legislation of the Kitb-i Aqdas less than two decades later. Shoghi
Effendi provides an answer to this question:
. . . the Bb Dispensation was essentially in the nature of a
religious and indeed social revolution, and its duration had
therefore to be short, but full of tragic events, of sweeping and
drastic reforms. Those drastic measures enforced by the Bb and
His followers were taken with the view of undermining the very
foundations of Shih orthodoxy, and thus paving the way for the
coming of Bahullh. Designedly severe in the rules and
regulations it imposed, revolutionizing in the principles it instilled,
calculated to awaken from their age-long torpor the clergy and the
people, and to administer a sudden and fatal blow to obsolete and
corrupt institutions, it proclaimed, through its drastic provisions,
the advent of the anticipated Day . . .
The Bad calendar promulgated in the Persian Bayn is to be
numbered among the revolutionary innovations which convulsed
the bastions of Islamic orthodoxy; it heralded the end of the Islamic
era with unsurpassable clarity, to the chagrin of the Islamic
authorities. Even recently, in a Sunnite fatwa from the 1990s, the
fact that the Bad year consists of nineteen months, when of course
everyone knows that there are only twelve, was noted with
particular indignation.

Part 3:
Gerald Keil has not restricted his investigations to the historical
background, the theological implications and symbolic significance
of the new calendar; nearly half of his study is devoted to the
problems surrounding its practical introduction. It is obvious that
the official, formal introduction of the Bad calendar is not the
most pressing issue facing us today. The Bah community must
progress much further before this matter becomes topical. We
cannot predict when the critical point will be reached we might
continue to approach it slowly and steadily, or we might get there
spontaneously, suddenly spurred on by unexpected events. But an
appreciable span of time will undoubtedly lapse before the calendar
project can be taken up in earnest.
"The decisions of the Universal House of Justice," Schaefer
reiterates, "are not revelational in character. The Universal House
of Justice is not a mere recipient, transformer and mouthpiece of
the Holy Spirit.Its decisions do not come about through quasiprophetic inspiration(Latin: quasi per inspirationem, Divino
afflante Spiritu), but instead they are arrived at in the course of a
rational discursive process in which, subsequent to the
establishment of the facts and the clarification of the normative
guidelines set out in the Writings, a formal process of consultation
leads to consensus, & finally to a decision reached by majority vote
or by the achievement of unanimity.
As the Universal House of Justice has expressly stated, it is not
omniscient. Like any other decision-making body, the Universal
House of Justice is dependent on information. The divine, unerring
guidance which is vouchsafed to the Universal House of Justice
does not hover over it like a deus ex machina. Instead, it manifests
itself through the conduct of consultation which precedes the

decision stage and in this manner enables infallible decisions

through the assistance of the Holy Spirit.
Legislation is a highly complex process and impossible without
expert knowledge. Among the necessary foundations are legal
dogmatics and legal techniques, but every act of legislation also
requires that the legislator have at his disposal all-encompassing
knowledge of the relevant material. The legislation involving the
introduction of the calendar presupposes that all astronomical and
technical information pertaining to the calendar be considered and
befittingly taken into account in the legislation. No lawgiver in the
world could draft such legislation without the support of competent
experts. The procedure of clarifying all relevant questions cannot
begin early enough, since the shining spark of truth will first
come forth after all the various differing points of view have
undergone the ordeal of a public scientific discourse, so that those
positions which do not stand up against critical examination need
no longer be taken into consideration.
Such discourse conducted world-wide can, in the first instance,
relieve the wheat of much chaff. Profiting from the collective
reasoning of the community at large, open discourse over the Bad
calendar would enable a preliminary scrutiny of all legal, technical
and historical questions. Its fruits would represent a valuable source
of information for the commission of experts which will one day be
convened for the purpose of preparing the ground for the calendar
legislation. This commission would not have to begin at square
one, so to speak, but instead would profit from the results of
informed discourse.
I will leave the rest of Schaefer's Foreword for readers to go to who
have the interest. I simply wanted in the above paragraphs to
intimate some of the context of the first major paradigm shift in the

history of the Babi-Bah' religions. It was a shift which took place,

in some ways like that of the new paradigm, 1996 to 2016, in an
evolving, an organic, manner, culminating in the conference of
Badasht--in the case of that first of many paradigm shifts from
1844 to the present. The period before the revelation to Bah'u'llh
in the Siyih-Chal was a complex was for the Babi community. Time
and those mysterious dispensations of Providence are slowly
allowing us to come to a more full understanding of that period we
now know as the dispensation of the Bab.
INDIVIDUAL-INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION
If the individual is not purged of his attachment to his own
preferences and preconceptions and to his partiality, reason will be
hindered from working through to the truth. Bahullhs call to
independent search for truth, such that the searcher see with his
own eyes and hear with his own ears and know with his own
knowledge, is well the most revolutionary innovation in His entire
revelation and a leitmotif which pervades His writings. This
innovation, it could be argued, is at the very center of each
paradigm shift in the history of the Bah' Faith. Whether this is
true, a fact, or not, there is no doubt that it is part and parcel of how
Bah' consultation should take place in this new paradigm now
just two decades into its evolution.
Independence of judgement is a condition of justice (insf) and has
been called the essence of all that We have revealed for thee, and
the purpose of justice is for man to free himself from idle fancy
and imitation [taqld], discern with the eyes of oneness His glorious
handiwork, and look unto all things with a searching eye.
Bahullh writes, scrutinize the writings with thine own
eyes . . . scatter the idols of vain imitation [taqld]. The endeavour
to arrive at the truth of things, the search for a hermeneutic

comprehension of texts, is ijtihd, the right and the duty of every

believer. The Bah community possesses no clergy, no ulam
with vested authority, no mujtahids, and the Bah Faith knows no
taqld, i.e. there exists no circle of authoritative and influential
mentors whom one is obliged to follow and imitate
unquestioningly. Shoghi Effendi made patently clear that every
believer has the right to his own understanding of scripture and that
he is entitled to express his opinion.
THE FIRST GENERATION OF BAHAI CULTURE
From the 1860s to the 1880s, the first three decades of Bahai
historical experience, the new culture, the new paradigm, if you
like, of learning and growth for the first generation of Bahais,
typically criticized the clerical establishment and formulated an
alternative, spiritualized and disestablished view of its place in
society, legitimizing the sovereignty of secular rulers independently
of clerical authority. The Bahai teachings gave nineteenth-century
Persians who wished to do so a vehicle to resist the cultural and
hence social and political hegemony not only of the ulama, but of
the intruding Western world. The Bahai teachings could
appropriate the idiom not just of Persianate Islam, but also of the
West and use it to resist Islamic and Persian cultural hegemony, in
the same way as Islam gave the Sassanids a means to appropriate
the cultural idiom of the Arabs to resist their attempt at cultural
dominance. In other words, the Bahai teachings opened an avenue
for a new, post-Islamic identity that promised to overcome and
finally resolve the cultural and, by implication, political and social,
tensions of the day. These teachings of Bahaullah also posed an
unmistakable challenge to the existing order. What was seen by
some as the fulfilment of Islam, was regarded by others as its open
subversion. This was, if nothing else, a new paradigm for the
Iranian Bahais of that generation, perhaps the greatest of all the

paradigm shifts in the Bahai community in its 170 year history

going back, as that history does, to the "commencement of the most
turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the Bah' Era."(GPB, p.1)
Perhaps, though, the greatest element of the shift was from Babism,
the Faith which came into being in 1844 and, in some ways, could
be said to have ended in 1863, if not before during the ten year
prelude as Shoghi Effendi calls the decade from 1853 to 1863, the
decade of the first intimations and first significant aspects of the
Bah' revelation came into being in the Person of Bah'u'llh. That
Heroic Age marked, as Shoghi Effendi emphasized in the opening
sentence of his comprehensive and reflective history of the first
hundred years of the Cause, a history that threw open a window on
the spiritual process by which Bah'u'llh's purpose for humankind
was being realized. Of course, Bahaullahs message that the
world should be unified would probably not have fallen on fertile
soil much before the 1870s, because the impact of globalisation had
not yet begun to be felt among potential proselytes. In the late
nineteenth century, and in the beginning of the twentieth century,
the climate for this idea was more receptive. The history of
globalization, though, has become quite a complex study for
students of history since the term first emerged in post-WW2
western society.
I would like to make one more general observation here regarding
these earliest decades of Bahai experience and I thank the blog
writer at "Bahai Epistolary" for the observation which follows. The
theological transition from Islam to Bahai theology has recently
been mapped by Chris Buck. Buck described Bahaullahs
doctrinal teachings as an ideological bridge to a new worldview.(
See: Chris Buck, Symbol and Secret (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press,
1995), chapter 5) This new worldview implied sociological
innovations too. Traditionally, the energies released by large-scale

Islamicate responses to a messianic claim have sought outlet in

military enterprises. Such indeed was the case with Babism. The
idea of the conquering Mahdi or Qaim pervaded prophetic
expectations, and the conquest was expected to occur by military
and supernatural means. This Islamic ideal of messianic conquest,
like so much else in the Islamic heritage, was not rejected by
Bahaullah, but it was recast in spiritualized form, community
building, and moral regeneration taking the place of physical
combat as the proper instruments of victory. Bahaullah and His
teachings would eventually conquer the world, but He and They
would do so by spiritual means, through the attraction of hearts,
and the battle would be waged by Bahais through a consecrated
dedication to community building and the cultivation of moral
rectitude.
Not surprisingly, a doctrinal outlook that appropriated the prophetic
expectations of all religions and yet, at the same time, upheld the
relativity of truth led to early experiments in multiculturalism. On
the one hand were the imperatives from Bahaullah to consort with
the followers of all religions; on the other was the conversion of
non-Muslim minorities, which initiated a slow and gradual process
of cultural rapprochement between converts from these various
backgrounds, as has been broadly examined by Stiles-Maneck.
(The Conversion of Religious Minorities, Journal of Bahai
Studies 3. 3 (1991)) One could analyse this paradigm shift for this
first generation of Bahais in much more detail, as indeed it already
has to an extent far exceeding the interests, the time and the energy
of most of the successors of that first generation of Bah's, those
who you might call "the Facebook generation."
THE NEXT GENERATION: 1890 TO 1920
If one was a Bahai in Iran in the next generation, say, the years

from 1890 to 1920 a paradigmatic shift was also taking place. What
did contemporary Persians of that generation themselves regard as
innovative about Bahaullahs teachings? One testimony comes
from a Bahai convert from the later period of Bahaullahs
ministry, a former cleric, writing in 1911 when the Bahai
community had been securely established in the East and was in its
second decade of penetration of the West. The features he
highlights as the most significant innovations of Bahaullah
include: abstaining from crediting verbal traditions; prohibiting
individual claims to authoritative interpretation; abrogating conflict
and controversy on the basis of differences of opinion; the
prohibition of slavery; the obligation to engage in allowable
professions as a means of support, and obedience to this law being
accepted as an act of worship; the compulsory education of
children of both sexes; the command prohibiting cursing and
execration and making it obligatory upon all to abstain from
uttering that which may offend men; the prohibition on the carrying
of arms except in time of necessity; the creation of the House of
Justice and institution of national parliaments and constitutional
governments; the exhortation to observe sanitary measures and
cleanliness, and to shun utterly all that tends to filth and
uncleanness; and the provisions of inheritance laws designed, in his
view, to prevent the creation of monopolies.[Mirza Abul-Fadl
Gulpaygani, Letters and Essays, 1886-1913, trans. Juan R. I. Cole
(Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1992)]
As I have already mention above, a recently published memoir by
Dr. Youness Afroukhteh(George Ronald, 2003)of his nine years in
Akka from 1900 to 1909 outlined three types of covenant-breakers:
(i) openly offensive people, (ii) those who were entirely severed
from the Cause and played no part in its activities and (iii) troublemakers, evil-doers, spies and informers. Each of the Central
Figures of this Cause, Shoghi Effendi and the House of Justice

have all had to deal with divisive forces. The remarkable thing is
that this Faith has remained a religion that is still unified after
nearly two centuries of its history. Those who have broken the
Covenant and, in various ways, been harbingers of conflict and
contention, or bred opposition and its dreadful schizmatic
consequences have no place in this Cause. Bahaullah has protected
this Faith against the baneful effects of the misuse of criticism;
indeed, "dissidence is a moral and intellectual contradictions of the
main objective animating the Bahai community."(UHJ, Letter to
Bahais of USA, 29/12/88) But we must be constantly on our guard
lest destructive forces enter our midst.
The building of community, playing the role of custodians of unific
forces will keep us all busy in the years ahead within this new
paradigm as the Faith goes from strength to strength. After sixty
years of participation in Bahai community life, I have found that
the fine details of the story, the account are only of interest to a
relatively small circle of the Bahais and only a small handful of
those outside this new Faith, those with some ax-to-grind. This
reaction to a very complex history, of course, will change as this
Cause comes under attack in the decades ahead within this new
paradigm. Bah' history is immensely complex and, unlike the
early Christian religion of, say, the first two centuries, to say
nothing of the life of Christ and His disciplines, the Bah'
community and the wider society which takes an interest in its
history has too much information not too little. The average person
in our emerging global society, whose interest in history is, at most,
minimal does not tend to take a deep interest in the intricacies and
complexities of modern history and the Bah' story within it. It is a
history going back, as the earliest decades of the lives of the two
precursors of the Cause do, to the early years of modern history in
the mid-to-late 18th century. The tempest has indeed been raging
for perhaps two-and-a-half centuries.

THE YEARS 1794 TO 2015

The years of this Faith's chief precursors, the years in the lives of
the Central Figures of this Faith and, indeed, the years since the
inception of the institutionalization of the original charismatic
Force, the years, say, 1892 or 1921 to now, are, if nothing else,
titanic, tragic as well as triumphant--and worthy of the term
paradigm shift. If one wanted to press a point one could argue for
several paradigm shifts during that period. The achievements of the
last two centuries are gigantic and stupendous but only barely,
partly understood. We stand too close to the achievements, the vast
changes, of these last 22 decades(1794 to 2015) to really appreciate
them. Like a great symphony written by a famous composer and
being played by a talented orchestra, the music, its beauty and
meaning is simply not heard by most of the potential audience--as
yet. Given the currents of skepticism, the blank walls of
indifference and the immense complexity of these epochs in our
fast emerging--if not already emerged--global society, many of the
members of this discouragingly meagre audience within the Bahai
community which has to grapple with this new paradigm are often
only naturally befuddled and even bemused by much of its content.
The Faith in its entirety, in addition to the paradigm itself-is a tour
de force, a magnum opus, an epic, a cosmology, a metanarrative, a
massive framework for a mythopoetic, metaphorical interpretation
of reality, a universe, that far exceeds the individual's, any
individual's, capacity to comprehend it.
A wise man or woman must forget the inevitable calamities that
come along the path of human life, must alter their internal mental
set, if he or she is to participate in---and in time achieve---the goals
that are often set by Bahai institutions, by small groups or even by
their own dear selves. This, of course, is easier said than done. I

have found it this way for more than half a century now since the
earliest days of my Bahai life as far back as the 1950s. There are
always goals set in the Bahai community for each and all of us. In a
world of chronic and passionate dissension, of strong
opinionatedness, an extreme individualism and a cancerous
materialism, it is and has been predictable that new paradigms in
the Bahai community are met with enthusiastic espousal on the one
hand and more cautious and even indifferent attitudes on the other.
The nature of our society, at least for millions of us in the West, is
that it offers us an ample leisure, idle amusements and many
unprofitable studies and activities. Often some combination of
gardening, shopping, sport, an engagement in some fancy hobby
apparatus and an endless series of activities involving job, family
and a very small circle of friends is wrapped around our psyches
like a vice.
We are hardly tempted, votaries of this or any Cause, to venture
forth from the comfort of this personal and private domain and it is
this factor alone that has held back the prosecution of plans for
many a long year. This social reality is complex, difficult to
penetrate and describe and this book cannot possibly explore the
many patterns of social withdrawal that result from it. This factor
without doubt militates against a more rapid spread of the Cause in
this or any paradigmatic shift, but it also has the value of
maintaining a type of business-as-usual modus operandi/modus
vivendi so that the Cause can continue to grow along the edges of
society in much the same way as Christianity did 2000 years ago
before it burst on the world in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. in a
process that most people now hardly appreciate or understand
unless, of course, they take a particular interest in Christianity in its
first 5 centuries.
EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMANS COMPARED

WITH THE BAHA'I FAITH AND IRAN IN OUR TIME

Only the occasional ripple occurred in the Roman Empire in the
first centuries of Christianity as the religion of Jesus had to deal
with Roman persecutions. In our time only the occasional ripple
has occurred due to the persecution of the Bahais in Iran, a ripple
which has disturbed the surface of the international Bahai
community. This disturbance has resulted in headlines again and
again. The experience of the Iranian Bahai community in dealing
with massive and periodic persecutions has become a continuing
thread throughout several of the community paradigm shifts in
Babi-Bahai experience as far back as 1844. Outside the frequent
polemics from various political and religious bodies in Iran,
polemics that formed part of this periodic oppression and that
resulted in frequent media publicity, the Bah' community was
relatively speaking non-existent in the west before the early 1980s.
If one were to judge by the utter absence from the written discourse
of their fellow countrymen until, it seems, just the other day:
intellectuals, activists, artists, journalists, both inside Iran and
abroad, Iranian Bah's certainly "exist" now in the voices and the
minds of their compatriots, as never in this Faith's 170 year history.
It is almost a truism for Bah's, borne out not only scripturally, but
by the long experience of repression, yet one that cannot ever lose
its pathos, that each wave of persecution, each effort to erase this
Faith's existence, is unfailingly accompanied by an unprecedented
victory, that only digs its roots deeper and establishes the claims of
this new Faith before the sight of men.
The latest chapter of ex
me and nation-wide oppression, from the 1980's to the 2010's has achieved,
globally speaking, the Bah' Faith's emergence from obscurity. This
oppression has endowed the Bah's with an extraordinary capacity for global
concerted action, that countless activist organizations admire and respect, as
Bah's across the world for the first time arose as one voice in creative and

united ways to seek redress and protection for their fellow believers,
mobilising public opinion from city councils and local press to the European
Parliament and the United Nations, and averted genocide. This important
feature of Bahai experience in the last three-and-a-half decades can not be

this
oppression does now what it has always done back to the 1840s: it
fertilizes the seed of growth. The oil is ignited and the resulting
light spreads around the world even more than it already has as the
second most widespread religion on the planet.
separated from the new paradigm of learning and growth; indeed,

Our role is to spread the light as far and wide as we are able. With Edith
Wharton we can "be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. Edith
Wharton(1862-1937) died right at the start of the implementation of the first
systematic teaching Plan. She was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist,
short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930, years when the Bah' Faith in North
America was beginning to grow from an informal network of groups into a
vastly enlarged and well-organized religion under the guidance of a man the
Bah's call the Guardian. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's
privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive

stories of social and psychological insight. She was

well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public
figures, including Theodore Roosevelt. As far as I know, though,
she was like nearly all the significant writers of the period wholly
uninformed of even the existence of this new Cause in the West
even after it had been part of its social fabric for nearly 40 years.
novels and short

As one Bahai writer put it five years ago, in 2009, the most
immediate victory that the present episode of persecution has
already achieved in a manner that has astounded observers,
foremost among them the Bah's themselves, is the final
integration of the Iranian Bah's into the broader identity of their
nation. For the first time in their history, the Bah's are not the
other, the outsider, the heretical apostates to be shunned, persecuted
and violated in so many ways. The Bahais have become, for a new
and significant wave of non-Bah' Iranians, the prominent and the
obscure alike, elite and ordinary people, from all walks of life, "one

of us", fellow citizens, and the silence of the past is not only finally
and irretrievably broken, but explicitly repudiated, and for all time.
This experience of the Bahai Faith in the land of its birth is at the
core of the Iranian culture of learning and growth, the new
paradigm as it is expressed within Iran. The repercussions have
spread around the world and provide a context for this new culture
of growth that has, as yet, hardly been appreciated, at least from my
point of view. I encourage readers to go to the blog entitled "Bahai
epistolary" for an expansion of this theme. Of course, this is not
true in every hamlet, town and every neighbourhood of every city.
The persecution and oppression is not over. The 170 year story for
the Bahais of Iran is, indeed, far from over. And the beginning of
the beginning of this Cause in the West is also far from over. One
could say that this Faith has just stuck its head above the ground
but, unlike the proverbial groundhog, it will not be going back into
the burrow.
I would like to make some comments on the paradigmatic change
in how the Bahais of Iran have been viewed in the last century.
Seven decades ago, when the Bahais of Iran were first accused of
espionage, they responded with astonishment. Until then, they had
constantly been accused of corruption, blasphemy, and atheism but
not of being Russian or English spies. During the course of the
Iranian constitutional revolution and its aftermath, however, Iranian
society had become increasingly skeptical of the negative role
played by foreign powers, and had decided that its problems were
rooted, not in atheism, but in imperialism. This gave rise to new,
often grossly illogical, conspiracy theories, many of which
implicated Bahais. Thus, the old enemies were redefined to suit
the new understanding. It took some time before Bahais came to
realize that anti-Bahaism has indeed gone through a paradigm shift
and was now defining its self-confessed enemy, the Bahai Faith, as
a foreign conspiracy against Iran and Islam.

In the last 35 years there has been a gradual corrosion of this old
way of perceiving the Iranian Bah' community, what might be
called the old paradigm. We have seen the emergence of a common
sense of identification, a move towards a reality-oriented
understanding of history. the Bah's, the House of Justice pointed
out, are now seen "as caring citizens...who always have Iran's
prosperity and honour in mind.(UHJ, 21/2/'13). Today, most Iranian
intellectuals, as well as many well-educated middle-class
individuals, are no longer willing to succumb to extravagant
conspiracy theories. For anti-Bahai propagandists, this implies that
the old spy stories will no longer be effective. Thus, in practice, we
are gradually shifting towards a new paradigm. Some critics in Iran
are now using terms such as New Babists to refer to the members
of opposition factions. They are also actively drawing parallels and
exploring the possible links between their worldview and those of
the Babi-Bahai religions. I don't want to go into detail here for the
picture is complex, but new paradigms are replacing old ones in the
views of the Bahais in Iran by the non-Bahai majority.
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
Cultural differences have always created misunderstandings and
they will continue to do so in the years ahead within this new
paradigm, whether the discussion is centered in the experience of
Iranian Bahais or the experience of Bahais elsewhere. Perhaps this
will be even more true with the many more new believers that will
be part of the Bahai community in the decades ahead. Subtle and
not so subtle cultural differences often create dislikes and even
contempt among people of dissimilar backgrounds. We all have
backgrounds filled with minute details which make our experience,
our culture, unique. There are so many examples: punctuality,
cleanliness, eating all the food on ones plate, respect for sacred

objects, the need to be together at gatherings or the need to have

space and be alone, variations in the sense of humour, admitting
that one does not know something and pretending one knows when
one does not, interrupting people when they are talking,
domineering personalities, timidity and on and on. This new
paradigm does not assume that suddenly all of the differences,
cultural, social and personality, which cause irritation and hurt
feelings are going to disappear and everyone is going to exhibit
qualities of endless patience, compassion, tolerance, acceptance,
consideration and understanding, inter alia. The struggles in
community life will continue as they have in the past right back to
1844 and, indeed, as far back as the years when Shaykh Ahmad left
his homeland in northeast Arabia in the last years of the 18th
century. In some basic ways these cultural struggles and
discontinuities are part and parcel, part of the very nature of our
social and community existence, certainly in the epochs we are
living through with their immense cultural, social, economic,
psychological and sociological shifts in society, with people being
thrown together who for centuries, perhaps never in history, would
never have met and certainly would not have eaten together and
discussed life, society and its problems.
THIS GREAT TURNING POINT IN HISTORY
An understanding of the nature and meaning of the great turning
point we are passing through at this climacteric of history as well as
an appreciation of the implications of what has occurred since the
coming of the Bb and Bahaullah,will help us to meet the
challenges ahead and the social and interpersonal struggles that are
and will be our lot in community life. What is occurring in our
lifetimes and what will occur in these early decades of this new
millennium, as the House of Justice pointed out, has many features:
a magnitude of ruin that the human race has brought upon itself, the

loss of life beyond counting, the disintegration of basic institutions

of the social order, and on and on goes the litany. These
understandings, the House emphasizes, will also help us to fathom
the nature of this paradigmatic shift that the Bahai community is
engaged in and will be engaged in for some time to come.
Intellect and wisdom are the two most luminous lights in the world
of existence, wrote Abdul-Baha as far back as 1870. When those
lights are turned on understanding is one of the crucial products
and this understanding will help me and you make snese of our
own lives. Like salvation itself, this shift has no final point of
attainment. Like salvation and like the spiritual realities behind it,
the language behind this new culture of learning and growth is, as I
say above, often allusive, poetic and abstruse because the reality it
is attempting to reveal is often unseen, ephemeral and veiled. The
concepts being put under the microscope do not lend themselves to
simplistic definition, description and discourse. This is not to say
that there are no quantitative, measurable and easily definable
aspects to this new paradigm. But its overall conceptual place and
role in the Bahai community, it seems to me, is often missed in the
heat of discussion and the plethora of print now available on the
subject as we go about with our yardsticks of quantitative
measurement. Exaggerated expectations and ill-advised actions
often hold latent as well as manifest dangers to the Cause,
especially when put into print. Rigorous discipline on the part of
Bahai writers has always been important in the history of the Cause
and this may be true, a fortiori, within this new paradigm.
I have found the book, Century of Light, published in the opening
year of this new millennium, provides a wonderful analysis of this
turning point and I leave it to readers with the interest to read or
reread this short 150 page description of what it calls "changes far
more profound than any in our history, changes that are, for the

most part, little understood by the present generation."(Foreword)

WHAT ROLE CAN YOU AND I PLAY?
The question as to what is the optimal role one can play as a Bahai
is one of the dominating questions all of one's Bahai life. The
answer or series of answers to that question is part of the lifelong
journey at the heart of Bahai experience, or so it seems to me and
so it has seemed to me in my own life in the Bah' community
since the 1950s. It was at the beginning of the Ten Year Crusade
when my mother became a Bahai and I was but in the first years of
my late childhood(1953-1957.) Since those quiet years of the 1950s
I slowly, gradually, came to understand that this Cause was giving
me the very raison d'etre, the framework, the cosmology,the
direction for my life and my very existence. I often think the Cause
insinuated itself into my psyche when I was not looking;
unobtrusively it came to be the dominant force in my life as I
played sport, watched TV, developed my ego, superego and id--to
draw on Freud's model of human development, among the many
models now available to students of that young and inexact science
of psychology.
The teaching question challenges and torments, perplexes and in
various ways befuddles the minds and consciousnesses of each
person in the Bahai community and will do so for generations still
to come. There is a certain anguish associated with the teaching
process as there was in connection with this same process, although
in a vastly different context, in the mind, the heart and the day-today experience of Shaykh Ahmad right at the start of this now twoand-a-half century narrative. One can read about that Shaykh's
experience on page 1 of The Dawnbreakers.
The desire to serve has translated and will translate into plans to

dedicate various periods of time, from part of a day to one's entire

life to full-time service especially at times of "anticipated
acceleration" like after the recent youth conferences around the
world which witnessed "an outpouring of energy." That phrase
comes from the Ridvan 2014 message in which the House of
Justice emphasized, in relation to those youth conferences, that the
Bah' world now possesses " an expanded capacity to mobilize
large numbers of young people in the field of service."
Individual initiative is so important that "the Constitution of the
Universal House of Justice protects it. Readers here are encouraged
to read an ITC document which came out far back in July 1989
when the word "paradigm" was first on the lips of those who were
regular readers of the House of Justice messages. It is a letter which
outlines a series of concepts in relation to teaching in general and
teaching groups in particular. It was a letter which has been
expanded upon by many of the House of Justice letters in the last
25 years. Readers, students, of this paradigm, need to be
increasingly familiar with the entire corpus of messages and letters
from the House of Justice, to say nothjing about those of the
International Teaching Centre, the NSAs, the Counsellors, the
pageantry and panoply of Bah' elected and appointed institutions.
That corpus, that oeuvre, of print is, for most Bah's an inundation.
SOME MORE THOUGHTS ON THIS NEW PARADIGM
The new Bahai paradigm has called for restructuring, redistribution
and expansion of helping behaviours by those who ordinarily, who
in the past, functioned as consumers of help, as consumers of Bahai
programs and activities. Consumers in this new paradigm are to
become much more producers as well as consumers. What matters
about the Bahai writings in this new paradigm is something that has
always mattered about these writings and that is their exemplary

character, their capacity to firstly induce Bah's to produce and

secondly their capacity to put an improved apparatus, Bahai
administration and the creative Force of this new Revelation, at the
disposal of the Bahais. This apparatus is better the more consumers
it is able to turn into producers--that is, readers or spectators into
collaborators. Walter Benjamin made this point in his article "The
Author as Producer"(New Left Review I/62, July-August 1970) and
Benjamin's idea applies a fortiori in the Bahai community in this
new culture of learning and growth.
The result is an expansion of the help-giving resources
quantitatively by converting helpees into helpers. The help is also
changed qualitatively because the peers and the self-helpers possess
an indigenous or inside understanding of the problems and the
people to whom they offer help. Heins Kohut, a brilliant
psychoanalyst, suggests that the key to therapeutic change may not
be insight or understanding, but rather being understood. Who
better to understand than those who have been there? But, of
course, the whole process is far from simple. When one is dealing
with a population of Bahais spread over nearly 200 countries and
several million people one can not reduce the entire exercise to
some simple paradigmatic explanation however much one tries or
however much others may try. And often, new recruits often seem
better informed than old veterans. For the times, it has often been
said, are a-changin', to draw on old Bob Dylans model of societal
experience in recent times.
THIS NEW PARADIGM AND COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
This new paradigm, now in its second decade, has similarities to
the new field of community psychology. The development of this
sub-discipline within psychology required a shift in thinking from
the individualism espoused by Western culture and the traditional

practice of psychology to the embrace of a multifaceted, complex

understanding of individuals within contexts. An emphasis on
individualism and individual explanations limits the ability to
create social change. In the field of psychology this was initially a
revolutionary idea and it required more than an academic
acknowledgment; it required a seismic shift in the foundation of
thinking in the field of psychology. Many programs in which
professionals in psychology aimed at helping individuals and
communities in the last several decades failed to adequately
address community needs and this had byproducts of dependency, a
lack of ownership of ideas and a sense of identity with the group in
the process. People were acted upon and not actors. Community
psychology presents a vision in which power is exposed and turned
on its head. Groups influenced by this shift in the dominant
paradigm in psychology become groups where people who need
help function as producers of help. Community psychologists have
been intimately involved in the research and implementation of
these groups. It is a trend which looks like it will continue to
increase in the decades ahead.
THIS NEW PARADIGM AND SOCIOLOGY
I could also include here new theoretical constructs in sociology
which have shifted the frameworks in that discipline as well; but
such an inclusion would take this book too far afield from its
central purpose. The social construction of reality, the Thomas and
Luckman theory from the 1960s and enlarged upon for the last
forty years, is one such area of sociology I could discuss here. That
theory is not unlike the one discussed above in psychology and it
has some interesting intellectual parallels to this new paradigm
which some readers might like to pursue.
It is often easy to forget how difficult change can be for

communities and organisations. To truly achieve change in a setting

requires a complete re-evaluation of the relationships, rules and
structures which comprise those systems. Resistance to change can
be high and long-standing patterns of behavior are often difficult to
reverse. This requires time, patience and consensus-seeking on the
part of all the members. With this in mind, it is sometimes difficult
to acquire, to develop, a long-term view when seeking community
change, especially when program success is highly desired in the
short-term and personal and community prestige are on the line.
For change to endure, we must think about how the community will
be affected 5,10, or 20 years down the road. No writing is more
influential or encouraging in thinking about this process of change
than Karl Weicks book Small Wins, published 25 years ago in
1984. Weick described and defined 'small wins' as limited
approaches to problems, approaches which reduce negative and
emotional arousal and make progress more possible because this
negative arousal is delimited. These minute steps often create a
momentum which opens the door for more comprehensive changes.
THE INDIVIDUAL: THE WARP AND WEFT
Calling on every believer to respond to Abdul-Bahs Divine
Plan, Shoghi Effendi underscored the privilege to initiate,
promote, and consolidate, within the limits fixed by the
administrative principles of the Faith, any activity an individual
deemed fit to undertake for the furtherance of the Plan." Shoghi
Effendi continued" "Without his support, at once whole-hearted,
continuous and generous, every measure adopted, and every plan
formulated, by the body which acts as the national representative of
the community to which he belongs, is foredoomed to failure. The
World Centre of the Faith itself is paralysed if such a support on the
part of the rank and file of the community is denied it. The Author
of the Divine Plan Himself is impeded in His purpose if the proper

instruments for the execution of His design are lacking." When

opportunities for action are seized, individual effort is characterized
by courage, creativity, lofty aims, and enthusiasm.
The challenge that faces each believer is to find ways in which to
serve the Cause. "Neither the local nor national representatives of
the community, no matter how elaborate their plans, or persistent
their appeals, or sagacious their counsels, nor even the Guardian
himself, however much he may yearn for this consummation, can
decide where the duty of the individual lies, or supplant him in the
discharge of that task. The individual alone must assess its
character, consult his conscience, prayerfully consider all its
aspects and manfully struggle against the natural inertia that weighs
him down in his effort to arise. In responding to the needs of the
Cause, the individual must make a conscious decision as to what he
or she will do to serve the Plan, and as to how, where and when to
do it. This determination enables the individual to check the
progress of his actions and, if necessary, to modify the steps being
taken. Becoming accustomed to such a procedure of systematic
striving and, it might be added, the systematic study of the Creative
Word, lends meaning and fulfilment to the life of any Bah.
The need to harmonize ones initiative with collective action does
not imply that the individual must wait for others to act or be
hindered by their doubts and concerns. Let him not wait for any
directions, the Guardian urges, or expect any special
encouragement, from the elected representatives of his community,
nor be deterred by any obstacles which his relatives, or fellowcitizens may be inclined to place in his path, nor mind the censure
of his critics or enemies. Be not grieved, is Bahullhs own
appeal, if thou performest it thyself alone. This need for harmony
in the community, this need to teach, to demonstrate, to urge, to
love and to encourage does not mean to force, be responsible for,

nor be defeated by the present condition of our community. It is

difficult; it is very difficult.
"From time to time," writes the House of Justice, continuing on the
topic of obstacles in their Ridvan 2014 message, "there may be a
lull in activity or an obstacle to the way forward; searching
consultation on the reasons for the impasse, combined with
patience, courage, and perseverance, enables momentum to be
regained." An example of this kind of movement, they pointed out
in April 2014 "is especially in evidence in those clusters where a
local Mashriqul-Adhkr is to be established. One such, by way of
example, is in Vanuatu.
As the poet and philosopher Emerson once said: My tongue is
prone to lose the way; not so my pen, for in a letter we surely put
them better.(Emerson, Manuscripts and Poems: 1860-1869) This
pioneer, in a period going back now fifty years, has often found
that one way of doing something for another was: to write a letter,
since the mid-1990s send an email and, since the late 1990s, post
on the internet. Not endowed with mechanical skills and
proficencies with wood and metal; not particularly interested in so
many things in the popular culture like sport, gardening, cooking,
heavy doses of much of the content in the print and electronic
media; indeed, I could list many personal deficencies and areas of
disinterest, I found the letter was one thing I could do and write and
in the process, perhaps, document some of my sensory perceptions
of the present age, perceptions that were relevant to the future of a
religion whose very bones spoke of a golden age for humankind
which was scarcely believeable, but was worth working for and
was at the basis of my own philosophy of action in this earthly life.
Hopefully my letters would evince some precision and, perhaps, for
a future age they would be of value. I often wondered, though, how
useful this interest, this skill, was in its apparent single-mindedness

for it was not, as a I say, a popular sport! The exercise resulted, too,
in a collection of many a dusty volume of paper which, as T.S.
Eliot once put it with some emphasis, may in the end amount to an
immense pile of stuff with absolutely no value or purpose. In the
second decade of this new paradigm I deposited in the National
Bahai Archives of Australia(NBAA) as a gift for some future
student several 1000 of my letters and their replies. The letter has
had a significant role to play in the unifying fabric of the planet in
the Bahai community. It is one aspect of my individual initiative
which has been useful in this new paradigm. In my retired life,
retired form employment, I have more time to write letters and
emails.
INADEQUACY OF PERSPECTIVE
There are many aspects of what is involved in our understanding
and experience of this culture of learning and of growth and my
comments here make a reflexive, a critical, and hopefully a useful,
exploration of some of these aspects. Hopefully, too, members of
the Bahai community and interested observers will be assisted, in
the process, in clarifying and adding to some of their own
understandings, some of their misconceptions and confusions, if
they have any. Confusion and dislocation, disempowerment and
frustration have been reported in various national communities in
relation to this new paradigm. In addition, it is often difficult to
even know if one has any misconceptions and confusions unless
one is confronted with views different from ones own and views
which are challenging, realistic and framed within the context of
the new paradigm. These words of mine at BLO aspire to play a
heuristic, a clarifying role, through that collirium which is
knowledge and understanding, a metaphor Abdul-Baha uses. I trust
my aspiration is realistic and not seen as pretentious. I would be
more than a little pleased, to say the least, if this book comes to

have some value to readers. There has certainly been an inadequacy

of Bahai perspective and there have been inappropriate attitudes,
at least from my point of view, which have developed in these first
years regarding several fundamental issues involved in this new
culture of learning.
Inadequacies of perspective are often the case on all sorts of
matters in and out of the Bah' world in these difficult and
complex times in which we live in our emerging and traumatized
global society. Some readers may see my book, this far too-long
essay, as not sufficiently critical of the new paradigm, not
sufficiently challenging in its tone, challenging to what these same
readers might regard as its underpinning of entrenched dogma
from/of Bahai quasi-ecclesiastical authority; some readers of this
book of 700+ pages may, on the other hand, see my disagreements,
however well-based, as a form of disention and not sufficiently an
echo of their view of a Bahai orthodoxy. The world and this new
paradigm are not simple packages of data and concepts to be
learned, experienced and understood. Like much of learning the
Ruhi experiment is not like memorizing the multiplication tables,
the names of the Kings of England and a pile of stuff for an exam.
This new paradigm is not some rigid formula to be applied
simplistically in a series of lock-steps.
SOME COMMENTS ON THE RUHI INSTITUTE
As Bahais around the world celebrated the last day of Ridvan in
2013 and the Bahai world witnessed the election of the Universal
House of Justice, the Bahai World Centre released a new film
entitled Frontiers of Learning. This uplifting film captured the
insights and experiences of four different communities on four
different continents in relation to the institute process. In these
communities, children, junior youth, youth, and adults were all

seen taking part in a process of community building based on

concepts enshrined in the Bahai Teachings. Filmed in Canada,
Colombia, India, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Frontiers of Learning was divided into four main parts and was
approximately 90 minutes in length.
Some critics of the learning processes involved in the Ruhi institute
programs around the Bahai world have expressed the view that the
courses are a form of monkey-see-and-monkey-do, programs based
on parrot-like repetition, rigid and fundamentally flawed formula
harckening back to anachronistic Shiite traditions of taqlid which
Bahaullah abolished over a century ago. This, it seems to me, is a
somewhat harsh rendering of the Ruhi institute learning process
and its sequence of books, a rendering found among the unloving
critics of this core element of the new paradigm. As Paul Lample
describes in his excellent new book Revelation and Social Reality:
"the focus is on raising up thoughtful, creative protagonists of the
progress of the Faith, nor mere technicians implementing a fixed
methodology or formula for expansion." (p.83) As the House
expressed the nature of the oft'-criticized Anna's presentation in
Book 6, the presentation should "give rise to a conversation
between two souls-a conversation distinguished by the depth of
understanding achieved and the nature of the relationship
established."(Ridvan, 22010)
My book does not provide a minute analysis of the sequence of
Ruhi books, an analysis one can find in other places both on and off
the internet. Those Ruhi enthusiasts in the Bahai world--and there
are millions now--may find this book sadly lacking in what they
hoped to find here: a detailed exposition of the permutations and
combinations of this learning program used, as it is, at the
grassroots level to train individuals to develop their skills and
attitudes, their values and the knowledge base they need. The aim,

among the many aims of the Ruhi institute program, is to succeed

in instilling in its participants the capacity, as well as the
confidence, to embark on service activities aimed at gradually
uplifting the wider community. The messages and letters from the
elected and appointed institutions of the Cause provide more than
enough detail for readers without me going into yet more detail.
A sincere longing for being of use and helping ones surroundings
is a natural driving force that most people have who call
themselves Bahais. In the Bahai Faith, love and service to
mankind are regarded as the worthiest and most laudable objects
of human endeavor, through which Bahais can also develop
virtues and spiritual qualities within themselves. The Ruhi Institute,
as I point out elsewhere in this book, is an educational system that
was originally developed under the guidance of the Bahai
community of Colombia in the 1970s. It is now being used all over
the world and is at the core of this new paradigm. Based on the
Writings of the Bahai Faith, the material aims at giving its
participants an understanding of the many presented topics, not
only on a level that generates reflection and analysis, but, more
crucially, on a level that facilitates action and change.
The main sequence of books in the institute consists of seven
booklets of what is essentially a core curriculum, each with a
specific theme and an act of service tied to some of them. The
books are studied in study circles consisting of one tutor and
several participants. Some of the themes of the main sequence are
Reflections on the Life of the Spirit and Teaching Childrens
Classes. The last book of the sequence is a book focused on tutor
training, after which the participant herself/himself can serve as a
tutor should they desire. As this paradigm has developed the role
and structure of the institute with its several critical elements:
board, coordinator, tutors, study circles and participants have all

come under increasing analysis and scrutiny. The House provided

some seminal statements in relation to this analysis in its Ridvan
message of 2010.
The Ruhi Institute has come to spread all over the world, being
used by Bahais and their friends from the Kiribati Islands in the
South Pacific Ocean to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland in Northern
Europe. Of course, culture, weather and tradition influences the
shape and expression of the study circles in different corners of the
world, but they all have in common the purpose of educating and
training their participants to be of service to their fellow beings and
to mankind. The detailed analysis of the minutiae of this program,
as I say, is found in many other places, and I do not go into this
kind of detail in this book, I'm sure to the disappointment of some
readers who were hoping for a comprehensive delineation of the
entire Ruhi program and its institutional expression. Perhaps, as
this paradigm advances in the years ahead I may give this sequence
of books the kind of description and analysis it deserves due to
their importance in this new paradigm.
The evolving institute boards oversee the institute process as a
wholelargely through the periodic reports of the coordinator and
through occasional and varied consultations among the many
participants in the institute programs. The reports to the National
Spiritual Assemblies are through the Regional Bah' Councils. The
Boards consult with the Councils regularly concerning the role of
the institute to provide human resources to meet the teaching needs
of the region. Regional Bahai Councils(RBCs) were established in
certain countries at the start of the second year of this new
paradgim. The characteristics and functions of these Councils were
outlined in a letter found at: http://bahailibrary.com/uhj_regional_councils_policies. RBCs are to be
regarded as "expert advisers and executive assistants" to the NSAs.

RBCs came into being in the late 1990s and in the first years of the
21st century. They are, as the House of Justice refers to them, a
new element in Bahai administration and institutions of a special
kind. As an early letter from the Supreme Body to all NSAs noted:
The expansion of the Bahai community and the growing
complexity of the issues which are facing National Spiritual
Assemblies in certain countries have brought the Cause to a new
stage in its development. They have caused us in recent years to
examine various aspects of the balance between centralization and
decentralization. In a few countries we have authorized NSAs to
establish State Bahai Councils or RT and Administrative
Committees.a new element in Bahai administration, between the
local and national levels.(In Bahai Canada, Nov/Dec. 2012.
Like prayer, fasting, the celebration of Feasts and holy days,
indeed, in the entire panoply and pageantry of Bahai individual and
community life and its activities there is a great freedom. "The
quality of freedom and its expression, the very capacity to maintain
freedom in a society undoubtedly depends on the knowledge and
training of individuals and on their abilities to cope with the
challenges of life with equanimity."(House letter, 28/12/88)This
framework of freedom depends on the recognition of the mutuality
and balance of benefits and on the spirit of cooperation maintained
by the willingness, the courage, the sense of responsibility and the
initiative of individuals. These activities are not a prison-house of
musts and shoulds and or-elses. The oft-heard phrase over the
years: "this is the only way to do it," is an orientation that the Bahai
community has been trying to get away from in this new paradigm.
The whole idea of the existence of simple formula to follow in
order to find the sources of success has long been abandoned as a
wide range of approaches to teaching are being encouraged in
Bahai community life. This does not mean, of course, that many

individuals do not seek simple formula to apply. Ours is an instant

society with often high and unrealistic expectations and an
emotional unwillingness to accept that failure is often the best
recipe for learning.
QUANTITATIVE GOALS AND HARMONY OF APPROACHES
Many, if not most, of the quantitative goals in Bahai community
life in the half century I have been participating and watching the
process have been achieved. But with qualitative goals the story is
far different. We achieve them, it seems to me, mostly in part like
so many things in our Bahai lives. This is an observation of my
Bahai experience going back as it does to 1953. Win-win is not
always possible on every front for: to ere is human and making
mistakes seems to be one of our main methods of learning. To
know things, in many ways, we must act upon them, displace,
connect, combine, take apart and reassemble them. In writing one
does all of these things. Hopefully this process of writing results in
behavioural change on my part. I do all these things while I write
and I do them in relation to this new paradigm, this new culture of
learning and growth. I also do them within the limits of my
incapacity, my inexperience and my lack of knowledge and
understanding, as we all do when we write, talk and engage with
our environment in a process called living.
The firm and impregnable ediface of this new Faith, the Bahai
Faith, has been raised and preserved by the inscrutable wisdom of
Providence. The Bahai community around the world, united by this
Book and by Centres of authority, is challenged from time to time
by paradigmatic shifts: wise, simple and beneficent but not
implemented always and everywhere in the same way, with the
same set of understandings and level of enthusiasm. These various
modes of implementation in the Bahai world could all be viewed as

equally appropriate to the conditions but often inappropriate by the

critic. Toleration of the inevitable diversity of implementation
produces a concord of views; insistence on uniformity produces
discord. Where a mild spirit of toleration prevails and not the zeal
of fanaticism--the I am right and you are wrong and/or this is the
only way attitude--harmony existed and has existed in the Bahai
community. And when this harmony prevails the distinctively
different approaches insensibly coalesce into one great forward
movement united by Book, institutions, manners and the use of
language. The process is not easy, not always harmonious and not
always successful. One could hardly expect otherwise in a
community of several million souls across some 200 countries in
the world.
MAKING ONE'S MARK
Hopefully, as I do battle with the phantoms of what is often my
wrongly informed imagination and the imagination of others; and
even though I often feel ill-equipped to interpret the social
commotion at play throughout the planet as do millions of my
contemporaries, still I feel prompted to action and to fulfil the
intentions of this Plan as I have tried to do in previous Plans for the
last half century. Perhaps, hopefully, I will make my mark at this
crucial turning point in history, a turning point which may well be
the most awesome, the greatest and most eventful in the long
history of humanity. After more than fifty years of association with
this Cause hopefully I have learned a thing or two. One could
hardly expect otherwise. As Gibbon noted, providing an
importantly cautionary note: individuals often advance in
knowledge and truth but they proportionally decline in their
practice of virtue. That is why, among other reasons, Bahaullah also
wrote to the Bahais another cautionary but quite profound note,
summarizing in the process the entire Kitab-i-Iqan; namely, that

none of us should judge this Cause by the behaviour of its

members. After several thousand years of other traditions based on
revelation, this should be obvious to all of us. But Bahaullah puts
this idea right up front in one of His central works: lest we forget.
The acquisition of knowledge often does not really engage the
minds of many who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of
study. The pleasures and resources of solitude and the necessity of
silence are not everyone's cup of tea in this electronic age of
supersaturated media. Enthusiasm and care for the body and the
senses often takes precedence over that of the mind and its care or
care for society. Without this kind of concern or caritas there is no
agency. In this new culture of learning such attitudes and
inclinations regarding the mind, the cultural attainments of the
mind, that first attribute of perfection which 'Abdul-Baha gave
primacy to, gave an especial emphasis, in His Secret of Divine
civilization are to be fostered anew. In this new culture of learning
the words of Ayn Rand are useful to keep in mind given the
emphasis placed on learning in groups. "Civilization," wrote Rand,
"is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole
existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the
process of setting man free from men. (The Fountainhead) In this
new paradigm there is a balance between man's solitude and his
social existence, his public and his private self. Of course, for
some, the balance will tip more for learning in the public sphere
and, for others, their learning will be primarily in a private context.
In an expanding Bahai community of millions of souls it could not
be otherwise. This is but another example of the pervasive nature
and reality of unity in diversity in the Bahai community.
There is much that is incomprehensible in the growth of this Cause
and much that can not be anticipated no matter how organized the
plan or program, no matter how competent or incompetent the

souls who must implement these plans and programs. But there is
much that requires little understanding, that can not possibly elude
our inquiry and only requires simple action. The spirit of doubt and
delay, the lack of any real sense of urgency which commonly
adheres to pusillanimous and skeptical minds and which
Shakespeare describes in Hamlet is his famous soliloquy "to be or
not to be," has a profound effect on Bahai Plans and will also affect
this new culture of learning as it has Bahai culture since its
inception. Shakespeare wrote that: "....the native hue of resolution/
is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought,/And enterprises of
great pitch and moment/With this regard their currents turn
awry/And lose the name of action." If an individual's sense of
personal interest in possessing high resolve and endeavour, in
acquiring a breadth of knowledge and an ability to solve difficult
problems of benefit to the community--if these things are not
aroused, not excited, in some way; if the sense of industry and
application loses its force and languishes in the glitter and tinsel of
an affluent society, the culture of learning and growth is to that
extent delimited.
I do not break any new ground in this literary exegesis but, rather,
just look over a patch in an intellectual action-oriented garden
which has been laid out in the last few years. I try to profit from the
work of other gardeners and to achieve as much lucidity and beauty
of expression as my skills permit--for beauty of expression has
come to interest me more and more in recent years, however
elusive such an expression may be. Exegesis is a methodical search
for meaning without which the Word of God would be inapplicable
and pointless. Every proclamation, every study, every activity, of
the Faith that goes beyond pure quotation, every translation into
another language, even reflection about the revealed Word, the
search for meaning in pectore, is ultimately exegesis. And so, while
I may not break any new ground, perhaps these words may offer

light on a complex subject.

INTERPRETATION THEORIES OF HISTORY AND
AUTHORITY
Interpretations by the believers are not at all forbidden. In fact, they
"constitute the fruit of man's rational power." However, Bah'u'llh
has monopolised authoritative interpretation by transferring it to
'Abdu'l-Bah in the Kitb-i-Aqdas and the Kitb-i-Ahd. 'Abdu'lBah in turn designated Shoghi Effendi as the authoritative
interpreter of Scripture in His Will and Testament. Establishing an
auctoritas interpretativa simultaneously implies the exclusion of
any other interpretative voice that claims any authority. In his Lawi-Ittid (Tablet of Unity) Bah'u'llh abolished the institution of the
clergy. Thus, there is no separate class of divines in the community
of Bah'u'llh who, such as the 'ulam' in Islam to expound
religious law or religious meaning with binding authority.
The centres of authority in the Bahai community are combinations
of the three clear-cut grounds for legitimate authority outlined by
Max Weber: legal, traditional and charismatic. The powerful
prestige of a prophetic message, Weber emphasized, though, makes
that message prevail in the end over all competing creeds in the
form of its institutional permanence and in the routinization of the
charismatic Force that gave it birth. History's dynamic element is
and has been the charismatic breakthroughs of great men or what
Bahais call manifestations of God. The charismatic inspiration
becomes a style of life within a distinct community and over time
the dominant orientation of a whole civilization. The central tenets
of this inspirational Source emerge, also over time, from a variety
of orthodox and heterodox views. The conflicts between rulemaking administrators and various interest groups in history
became a tangle of bureaucratic manoeuvers without public

accountability, Weber argues. But these problems are not present in

the Bahai system, the Bahai paradigm. But the road ahead within
this new paradigm will not be an easy one. As Weber concluded,
"the only hope for escape from the icy darkness and hardness of
our time, our age, lay in the hands of the very figures who are
excluded from sociological analysis-the advent of entirely new
prophets."(Max Weber, "The three types of legitimate rule,"
Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions, Translated by
Hans Gerth, 1958, p.182.
This is not the place, though, to expand on theories of history. This
would be far too complex a subject to deal with in the context of
this paradigm. This new paradigm cannot be separated, though,
from historical and, indeed, many underpinning frameworks from
the social sciences and their specific action- oriented subdisciplines of study. Suffice it to say, the turbulent stage of
transition, the discord reflected in the relations between the
citizens, the body politic and the institutions of society, is rooted in
a power struggle which ultimately proves fatal. Within quite
unassuming settings, a visible alternative to society's familiar strife
is emerging. Within the matrix of this new Bah' culture a world
spiritual civilization is emerging bearing the imprint of divine
inspiration. The process is gradual and the roaqd is often stony,
arduous and complex.
INDIVIDUAL STYLE OF ONE'S INVOLVEMENT IN THIS
NEW PARADIGM
God is the divine artificer fashioning a civilization and each of us is
slowly being empowered or disempowered, as the case may be. As
I mentioned above, each Bah' during his or her lifetime slowly
becomes a co-creator in fashioning God's poem from the earthly
materials of their lives, their clusters, their study circles, their

LSAs, their Bahai communities, their resource materials--Ruhi and

other--and much, much else. The art that is the life of a believer
gives, if it is effective, a permanence to some of what seems
ephemeral, because this art has the capacity to give concrete form
to the spiritual verities. The form is the result of a freezing of a
moment's vision into a lasting image, however imprecise and
allusive.
The participation of each Bah' in Bahai community life could be
said to be a fitful tracing of a portal, a window in the physical
world through which he or she gains a fleeting glimpse of the
eternal reality. I repeat myself here and I repeat the words of John
Hatcher because I think that what this emeritus professor of English
at an American university in Florida writes is crucial, at least for
me. It has been crucial in my slowly evolving understanding of the
entire process of learning, of growth and of paradigm shifts, as well
as an understaning of my life and society. What is required is not so
much a denial of self but an affirmation and fulfilment of self, an
expression of the self through the achievement of a more inclusive
identity which is, in turn achieved through a greater involvement
with others. Central to this paradigm shift is, as Hatcher
emphasizes, a greater involvement with others.
The degree, the type and the style of the social involvement is, of
course, different for each of us. Each of us has a different capacity
for social engagement in this social religion as Horace Holley once
called the Bahai Faith. Indeed, the very process of our spiritual
development, of acquiring what are essentially intangible spiritual
realities, of learning the subtleties of spiritual development
gradually, daily, but being aware that the process is useful,
necessary and possible, involves learning how to make appropriate
responses to various circumstances and how to initiate certain kinds
of actions. This is all part of our self-knowledge and involves

failures, tests, difficulties, suffering, discovering our limitations,

our imbalances, our immaturities and our imperfections as well as
our talents and capacities. Each of us will play different parts,
experience different degrees of intense inner life, attain different
capacities for mature relationships and possess varying degrees of
social conscience in the wider society in which we live. This is,
arguably, the main point which Abdul-Baha makes in His
Memorials of the Faithful written before He wrote the Tablets of
the Divine Plan and first published by the spiritual assembly of
Haifa in 1928.
This paradigm shift in the life of the Bahai community, therefore,
will mean different things to different Bahais. We will each and all
do different things; we will not all do the same things at the same
time and in the same way. The House of Justice, for example,
outlined a dozen specific things Bahais can do to find a fulfilling
path of service within this new paradigm--and especially for those
Bahais who do not want to take part in the institute process.(See
"Talk by Stephen Hall," in The Australian Bahai March 2009.) But
whatever path of service one takes, whatever way an individual
decides to contribute his or her part to the betterment of the world
and to this new and very precious Cause, the purpose of such
contributions, whatever contributions, they are always secondary to
the main purpose that animates the Bah'. That purpose is to assist
the people of the world to open their minds and hearts to the one
Power that can fulfil the ultimate longing of humanity for peace
and justice in society as well as the one Power that can bring the
human soul to what Bahaullah calls the Ancient of Days. Given the
menu of activities in this new paradigm people of any temperament
and whatever their experience in life can contribute. There is a
place in this community for virtually anyone whose spirit is
touched by this new revelation.

There are many sources in Bah history and in the Bahai writings
to help us to obtain a more adequate understanding of: (a) the role
each of us can and should play, (b) this turning point and (c) how
this Revelation relates to this new culture of learning and of growth
in the life of the community. Hopefully, these sources will help us
find a context for the discussion of several relevant fundamental
questions which have arisen in this decade-long exercise. We need
to be on our guard that in making merely superficial adjustments in
the context of the glitter and tinsel, of the oscillations and
fragments of our group activity, of the innumerable fleeting
moments, these adjustments will themselves fulfil the tasks at hand.
Far otherwise. I trust the lengthy journey of words in this book
across this terrain of Bahai activity and the part my study plays in
my larger work, my memoir, will not be in any way intimidating
and will not be lacking in a good deal of common sense as I
explore the nature of the process in which the Bahai community is
currently involved. Perhaps the absence of footnotes, an absence I
was unable to correct when I posted this commentary at Bahai
Library Online, will simplify this 190,000 word piece of writing on
the recent paradigm shift and make it less intimidating. Perhaps
readers can eliminate their academic concerns about who said what
and when and where. If the more academically inclined readers at
BARL find this impossible to do, if they find that virtually no
footnotes is annoying to their scholarly sensibilities, then they can
write to me at my email address and I will happily snailmail them a
footnoted copy. My email address is: ronprice9@gmail.com.
The desirability of engaging in this culture of learning and growth
is taken for granted, although I am sure that for many my exercise
in analysis is not needed, nor wanted, nor seen as even remotely
necessary. There has developed in recent decades a burgeoning of
print in all fields and I'm sure for many my exposition here will be
seen as just another addition to this expanse of analysis that is part

of what for many is a sea of overwhelming printed matter. This sea

is so deep that it drives people back to the movies, to leisurely
pursuits of a more manual nature and to the simple life, as simple
as possible as Henry David Thoreau used to say was the goal of
life. Who wants to drown in the sea? What has already emerged on
this subject in the last dozen years, as well as the dozen or so years
that clearly led up to this paradigm shift(say 1982-1996) as we look
back with the advantage of hindsight is no mean body of print to
engage the mind. I'm confident that this book will remain largely
unread, but that is true of so much print today, as I say, given the
burgeoning of the print media especially in the audio-visual age our
culture is immersed in on a daily basis and which often takes
precedence, primacy and great slices of time in the lives of the
votaries of all Faiths in the West where the electronic media has
become so pervasive.
THE PROCESS OF WRITING AND ESPECIALLY WRITING
ON THE INTERNET
The process of publishing has been made easier for writers in the
last decade due to internet-technology. There are now thousands, if
not millions, of writers like myself who publish on the internet.
Writers, both off and on the internet, who find themselves
published to an increasing extent are often asked to make their aims
explicit and their goals frank--up-front--as it is often said these
days. Sometimes writers engage in what T.S. Eliot once said is an
intolerable struggle with words and meanings. For me, this process
with words is more pleasure and, whatever struggle I am involved
with, it is far from intolerable. I hope readers benefit from my
pleasures even if they find my writing a little too verbose for their
personal tastes, a little too expansive and abstract and my sentence
construction too complex and long-winded for their personal
literary proclivities. May my style be a bridge to substance for

readers who persist with this work.

Not having abilities and interests in many avenues of life, not
wanting to occupy my leisure time with gardening, extensive use of
hobby apparatus, house repairs and fix-it jobs, great quantities of
TV watching, shopping and cooking, educating children,
adolescents and adults as I did for decades, among other activities,
I settle for a little cleaning and laundry, meals and dishes, watching
TV and visiting friends, pleasing my wife and emptying the
garbage in these middle years(65-75) of late adulthood(60-80).
Writing has slowly developed over the decades, by sensible and
insensible degrees, into an occupation, a vocation, an avocation that
brings me great pleasure. If others can share in my pleasure, get
pleasure from my writing, what further delight can I ask? As
Abdul-Baha wrote in another context: there is no greater bliss, no
more complete delight.
As the years of this new paradigm shift have developed from, say,
1996, through a four year plan(1996-2000), a one year plan(20002001) and two five year plans(2001-2006) and (2006-2011) the
Bahai world, the secular world and my own personal world have
seen immense changes, some would say paradigm changes. My
autobiography only touches on these changes. Even at 2500 pages
and five volumes, this memoir can only skim the surface of these
Plans and of nearly seventy-five years of recent history: threequarters of a century or more back to the first Seven year
Plan(1937-1944) or more than a century if I go back to the birth of
my parents--in what appears to be the darkest in the history of
civilization with a catalogue of horrors unknown to even the
darkest of ages past.
Not finding a soft or a hard cover with some bright colour to attract
a reading public, this book will most likely remain in cyberspace. It

will be read by a few, a select few I like to think. But I am inclined

to think that there will be even more readers in cyberspace than
there would have been if this article got into the hands of traditional
publishers and found a soft or hard cover. It is for these readers,
then, whoever they may be, that I write. As I indicated above and as
I reiterate here: in the first two years that I have had this site
published on the internet several thousand clicks have been
registered at this book. It is difficult to measure dialogue by clicks,
but such is one of the measuring sticks in this cyberage. In the end,
though, I must write for myself--as I say above--to help relieve
some of the complexity and burden, to clarify and enlarge some of
my own thinking. I look forward, as I write, to my enjoying the act
of discovery as I make room for new and fresh ideas, as I come-always hopefully--to find those wings of human life that are found
in the art of writing; and as I come to find that ladder for my ascent,
another epithet Bah'u'llh uses to describe the arts. Perhaps, as I
go along, my mind will be awakened and enlarged and some of the
veils will be lifted from the receptacle that is my thought and the
beauty of the world will be perceived with greater clarity and, with
that beauty, a greater understanding of this new paradigm of which
we are all a part each in our own ways. This book is part of my
own pursuit of the success that is excellence not the success in the
pursuit of dominance, not part of a competitive struggle with
others.
For years I tried to write stories, novels, sci-fi, but as the years of
my life lengthened I seem more destined to write books, nonfiction work and poetry and not fiction, stories, narratives of many
kinds. This book is one such effort on this seemingly predestined
path of essaying, of sailing on the shoreless sea of words. For
years, too, it was my hope that I would be an engaging speaker that
"my voice might be raised in great assemblies and from my lips
might stream the flood of His words," or something to that effect.

But I was not invited to give talks living as I did: among the Inuit
in Canada, the Aboriginals in Australia or among Iranians in large
cities like Perth and Melbourne Australia; or living in a small
mining town, small and remote towns in parts of Australia that
were so hot that listening to a talk was the last thing people wanted
to help them brighten their life and to help them cool off. I seemed
destined for analysis done in a small room with no one to read the
products of my overworked brain except, it now seems, in this new
space, cyberspace.
When the internet came along, well......more on that later. For
years, too, for decades, from the age of 15 to 55, I had a much
higher degree of social involvement but in these years of my late
adulthood(60 to 80) I did not want to keep up that pace of intense
social life. My voice is now raised in the form of written
expression. Each of us goes through great changes along our
lifespan and the part each of us plays in any paradigm is partly a
result of where we are in our life journey, of what type of
temperament and personality we have and of what taste of
nonsense and chaos, of madness and of dreams we have on our
tongues and in our minds and hearts in that part of our personal
journey. The part I play in this new paradgim is very different as
my particiaption heads toward the end of its second decade. When
this new Bahai culture began in 1996 I was a teacher in a college,
served on an LSA, was an active member of a large Bahai
community and now, 15 years later, my wife and I are the only
Bahais in a small town and I am retired from the job world. And
this is true for all Bahais: their role in the new Bahai paradigm
depends on their personal circumstances which, in turn, depend on
where they are in the lifespan.
INTERNET TEACHING

I would like to make some remarks about this internet work which
has coincided with this new culture of learning. In the first year
after I retired from FT work, July 1999 to July 2000, Google
officially became the world's largest search engine. I had only
begun to engage in internet activity and an extensive use of emails
in the Four Year Plan(1996-2000). With Google's introduction of a
billion-page index by June 2000 much of the internet's content
became available in a searchable format at one search engine. In
the next several years, 2000-2005, as I was retiring from PT work
as well as casual and most volunteer activity that had occupied me
for decades, Google entered into a series of partnerships and made
a series of innovations that brought their vast internet enterprize
billions of users in the international marketplace. Not only did
Google have billions of users, but internet users like myself
throughout the world gained access to billions of web documents in
Google's growing index.
In 1994, at the age of fifty, as I was beginning to eye my retirement
from FT work as a teacher and lecturer and as this new paradigm
was about to be launched, Microsoft launched its public internet
web domain with a home page. Web site traffic climbed steadily
and episodically in that Four Year Plan, the years 1996 to 2000.
Daily site traffic of 35,000 in mid-1996 grew to 5.1 million visitors
in 1999. Throughout 1997 and 1998 the site grew up and went from
being the web equivalent of a start-up company to a world-class
organization. I retired from FT work at just the right time in terms
of the internet capacity to provide me with access to information by
the truckload on virtually any topic. This new technology had also
developed sufficiently to a stage that gave me the opportunity, the
capacity to post, write, indeed, publish is quite an appropriate
term, on the internet at the same time. From 1999 to 2005 then, as I
also released myself from FT, PT, casual and most volunteer work,
Google and Microsoft offered more and more technology for my

writing activity. My life had experienced a paradigm shift certainly

one of its major shifts in the first seven decades of my life, in the
years 1943 to 2009.
There are now several hundred thousand readers engaged in parts
of my internet tapestry, my literary product, my creation, my
immense pile of words across the internet--and hundreds of people
with whom I correspond on occasion as a result. This amazing
technical facility, the world wide web, has made this literary
success and teaching enterprise possible. If my writing had been
left in the hands of the traditional hard and soft cover publishers,
where it had been without success when I was employed full time
as a teacher, lecturer, adult educator and casual/volunteer teacher
from 1981 to 2001, these results would never have been achieved.
Bahai teaching entered a dramatically new phase.
I have been asked how I have come to have so many readers at my
website and the tapestry or jig-saw puzzle of writing I have created
across the internet. My writing is just another form of published
writing in addition to the traditional forms in the hands of
publishers. The literally hundreds of thousands of readers I have at
locations on my tapestry of prose and poetry, a tapestry I have sewn
in a loose-fitting warp and weft across the internet, are found at
over 8000++ websites where I have registered: forums, message
boards, discussion sites, blogs, locations for debate and the
exchange of views. They are sites to place essays, articles, books,
ebooks, poems and other genres of writing. I have registered at this
multitude of sites, placed my literary products there and engaged in
discussions with literally thousands of people, little by little and
day by day. I enjoy these results without ever having to deal with
publishers as I did for two decades without any success, without
ever having to knock on doors, go to study circles or even open my
mouth. Cyberspace is a teaching medium, like the advanced in the

print and electronic media, which has brought a whole new world
of teaching possibilities to Bahais and, as I see it, is part of that new
paradigm.
The last sixteen years of internet posting, 2001-2015, have been immensely
rewarding. When one talks one likes to be listened to and when one writes
one likes to have readers. It is almost impossible, though, to carry literary
torches as I do through internet crowds or in the traditional hard and softcover forms, without running into some difficulties. My postings singe the
beards of some readers and my own occasionall
Such are the perils of dialogue, of apologetics, of writing, of posting, indeed, I
might add, of living. Life's perils, the problems we experience in our
relationships, verbal or in writing, often stimuate. The heavier the blow the
stronger the stimulus is an aphorism with many an example in history.(See
Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume 2) Toynbee writes of those who are
disabled in various ways and have used writing, poetry and the arts to
exercise a potent influence on their culture an d

this is true for many

Bahais in this new paradigm.

Much of writing and dialogue in any field of thought derives from the
experience each of us has of: (a) an intimate or not-so-intimate sharing of
views in some serendipitous fashion or (b) what seems like a fundamental
harmony or dissonance between what each of us thinks and what some other
person thinks. In some ways, the bridge of dialogue is immensely satisfying;
in other ways the gulfs over the valleys of life are unbridgeable. When the
latter is the case and when a site is troubled by my posts, I usually bow out
for I have not come to a site to engage in conflict, to espouse an aggressive
proselytism but, rather, to stimulate thought and, as I say, share views. When
I see that my participation in a group is also a cause of tension and conflict I
also bow out, take alower profile. Dissention is a moral and intellectual
contradition for those who would be peacemakers and unifiers of the children
of men.

The new stage which has opened with this paradigm shift has
required of Bahais a fundamental rethinking of the presentation of
Bahaullahs teachings, a simple but radical shift. The internet has
provided for thousands of Bahais--and certainly for me--a medium
for implementing this shift. It does a disservice to the mission of
Bahullh, to the World Order which He has come to establish, to
focus the public message in religious categories. This talk by

Douglas Martin was, for me, a heuristic and stimulating

contribution to the up-and-coming discussion on the new Bahai
paradigm. That talk was one of the earliest intimations of the new
direction that the Bahai community was about to take in the next
decade. That talk was, it seems to me as I look back in retrospect at
nearly sixty years of my association with this universal system, part
of a decade-long warm-up(1986-1996) to the paradigmatic shift of
the mid-1990s. Bahai history has many of these so-called warm-ups
or shifts which go by many names: a hiatus or delay, a
discontinuity or continuity, interval or interstice, interlude or
intermission, suspension or termination. The Bahai timetable is full
of stages and phases, chapters and states, scenes and settings,
epochs and eras, periods and cycles.
To shift the focus from an "us-them" dichotomy, with insiders and
outsiders, and to present the Cause in a radically different form has
been no easy achievement. But it has been accomplished
incremental step-by-step over the nearly two decades since Martin
gave that talk. This is not to say that there is none of that old
dichotomy between believer and non-believer present. One would
not want to remove it entirely. There will always be outsiders,
people who are not members of this Cause; there will always be
Bahais who do not follow all the laws and ordinances of this Faith.
The perceptions we each have of others and their obedience to
direction are part of the experience of people in community.
Legitimate expressions of concern for the behaviour of others need
not be viewed as criticism or intimations of a need for
confrontation. All Bahais are in various degrees uninformed or
disloyal. Perfection is elusive. The issues confronting the
community are often very complex, perhaps necessarily so and they
often require high levels of interpersonal skills, skills which are
often simply lacking. Without the necessary skills conflict is

sometimes inevitable. Wide latitudes for action, the avoidance of

over-controlling personalities, a wide margin and tolerance for
mistakes, being easily pleased with others and not endlessly fussy
about all sorts of middle class proclivities and propensities--all
these will help in the context of this new paradigm. But they are not
qualities many people possess and even if many possess them,
there are always the few who can make life difficult in community
contexts. All the Central figures had to cope with these issues and
personalities, these kinds of conflicts and tests. And it is part of the
burden we, too, must bear if we are to refine our characters,
contribute to an ever advancing civilization and to this new Bahai
paradigm. The old maxim "possess the desire to please," and you
will be a useful asset in your community.
The issues involve the Bahais in a fundamental dialogue with the
wider society, a dialogue which has been slow in developing in the
last several decades but which has been moving much more quickly
in this new culture. Bah's have responded to the challenges facing
humanity in two ways: internally, by creating a promising operating
model for a spiritually based world society which has embarked on
an infinite series of experiments at the local, national and
international levels in its efforts to realize the vision of mankind's
oneness which it finds in the Writings of its Founder and of all the
messengers of God. In this great undertaking all people of good
will are free to participate. The Bahai community attempts to
reflect the principles in these Writings and this is the basis for the
model. In this new Bahai paradigm this process has been advancing
significantly. Externally, the Bahai community aims to help heal the
damage that inequality, injustice and ignorance have done to
society. This, too, has advanced in many ways in the last 15 years.
Still today, the House emphasizes, "can anyone claim to have
glimpsed anything but an intimation, distant and indistinct, of the

future society to which the Revelatioon of Bah'u'llh is destined to

give rise?" There is a vast distance that separates society as it is
now arranged from the stupendous vision that Bah'u'llh gifted to
the world."(Ridvan 2012)
The international Bahai community contains within it 2,100 ethnic
groups speaking over 800 languages. In some nations minority
groups make up a substantial fraction of the Bahai population; in
the United States, for example, perhaps a third of the membership
is African American, and Southeast Asians, Iranians, Hispanics and
Native Americans make up another 20 percent. Racial integration
of local Bahai communities has been the standard practice of the
American Bahai community since about 1905. Women have played
a major, if not central, role in the administration of local American
Bahai communities, and of the national community, since 1910.
American Bahai have been involved in education, especially in the
fostering of Bahai educational programs overseas, since 1909.
Worldwide, numerous Bahais have become prominent in efforts to
promote racial amity and equality, strengthen peace groups, extend
the reach and effectiveness of educational systems, encourage
ecological awareness and stewardship, develop new approaches to
social and economic development, and promote the new field of
conflict resolution. The Bahai Faith runs many radio stations in less
developed areas of the world that have pioneered new techniques
for educating rural populations and fostering economic and cultural
development. The Faith also conducts over 1000 schools, primarily
in the third world, as well as about 200 other literacy programs.
Bahai communities sponsor hundreds of development projects,
such as tree-planting, agricultural improvement, vocational training
and rural health-care. It would be impossilbe to list them here. The
Bahai international community is particularly active at the United
Nations and works closely with many international development

agencies. Many national and local Bahai communities have been

active in promoting interreligious understanding and cooperation.
Bah' efforts in the field of social and economic development
generally take the form of grassroots initiatives carried out by small
groups of individuals in the towns and villages in which they
reside. As these initiatives evolve, some grow into more substantial
programs with permanent administrative structures. Yet very few
can be compared with the kind of complex development projects
promoted and funded by government agencies and large
multilateral organizations. This is beginning to change in the
context of this new paradigm.
The Mongolian Development Center--a Bah' inspired
organization--offers training in health and nutrition, as well as in
growing essential vegetables. The distinguishing features of the
Bah' approach to development are the principles and processes
being employed by Bah' communities around the world rather
than the number or size of projects. In a very real sense, social and
economic development activities are an expression of faith in
action. Consequently, Bah' development initiatives are designed
to engage and benefit all the members of a community and not just
Bah's.
At the heart of all Bah' development undertakings is the
recognition of a deep and inseparable connection between the
practical and spiritual aspects of daily life. Creating a desire for
social change and instilling confidence that it can be achieved must
ultimately come from an awakening of the human spirit. While
pragmatic approaches to problem solving play a key role in
development initiatives, tapping the spiritual roots of human
motivation provides the essential impulse that ensures genuine
social advancement.

TURNING TO FUNDAMENTALS
We must turn again and again to fundamentals, at least I feel I
should as I discuss this new development in the religion I been
associated with for over half a century, since 1953 when the
Kingdom of God on earth made its beginning in Chicago
unbeknownst to the wider world and even to the majority of the
Bahais at the time I rather suspect. I say this for, in some ways,
paradigm shifts like this are not some revolutionary new wave of
thinking that has suddenly sprung up ex nihilo. A detailed and exact
knowledge of all the terms and language involved in this new
paradigm and of the many and varied applications of this culture of
learning and of growth and of the diverse conditions prevailing
around the world where this paradigm has been and will be applied,
while valuable in themselves, are not what this book explores. This
sort of detailed information cannot be regarded as the sort of
knowledge, learning and understanding that I outline and explore in
this now lengthy essay, although these details obviously underpin
any comprehension of this paradigm, at least to some extent.
This detailed knowledge and this new language is explored
elsewhere in many an essay, discussion paper, document, letter and
internet post. It is explored in fine detail with definitions abounding
and explanations tuned and retuned for various publics in and out
of the Bahai community. This book attempts an engagement with
the content and the issues, an examination of this topic, hopefully,
from a fresh perspective, a wide-angled lens, at an oblique, a
slanting, a slanted direction. Some might even find my approach
here too circuitous, roundabout, indirect--even tortuous and
devious, not to say bent--goodness--hopefully not that. I hope not
but, in writing as in life, one can not please everyone and one never
knows how a reading public and particular individuals in that

public will react to what one has written.

This literary and conceptual analysis moves on various and
different paths from most of the analysis and discussion of the new
paradigm that has been part of the Bahai community for a dozen
years--or so I like to think. I hope I am making a fresh, an original
contribution to the discussion even if I am going over old ground.
When this exposition goes over old ground, as it inevitably must, it
is my hope that the paths on this ground are seen in a new way with
new trimmings, new flowers along the edge and new-green grasses
under the feet. Sadly, gardening is not my speciality and so I
borrow from other gardeners perhaps too often to achieve my aims.
But writing has been a tool I have been working on for decades and
I have engaged in its discipline wilfully, dutifully and rigorously
with the aim of developing the tools and the craft of this medium.
Not possessing so many other tools in life, I have had to develop
this one particular tool to pay the bills and survive in this practical
world of practical people, to raise my family and to eat. The result,
dear reader, is what you read before you, for better or for worse, in
sickness and in health until death do us part as it is said in another
context of life's commitments.
PREVIOUS PARADIGMS DRAWING ON THE IDEAS OF
OTHERS: PERSONAL COMMENTS
I am going to expand here on an article which Moojan Momen
wrote and give a special emphasis to an aspect from that useful
article originally written in 2001(circa). Momen wrote about the
same topic I am writing here and he provided for me some of the
context in which I want to discuss this subject of the new culture of
learning--at least initially. Thanks to Momen's capacity for
analogical thought, a capacity which has enriched my reading of
his work for years, I want now to comment on the change in culture

that the Guardian initiated in the 1920s and 1930s. This change did
not spring up ex nihilo within the Guardians action-oriented
exegesis any more than other significant and paradigmatic shifts in
the life of the Bahai community have sprung up ex nihilo, out of
nothing. Like most change in science and the arts, change occurs
by what you might call a happy accumulation; an original approach
is not invalidated just modified or given a particular emphasis.
Thanks, too, to the literary and analytical efforts of some others
writers, my article here expands on the work of others and tries to
knit the material into one fine warp and weft, a carpet of fine thread
for the mind. I try to draw on all this reading and my experience
but I must admit to the difficulty of putting it all together and of
composing with a unified, unidirectional literary and intellectual
perspective. But as a serious writer, I am afflicted, perhaps
compelled, to try. I enjoy what I find to be an exquisite sense of
release and relief from getting the job done even if, in the process,
any unified perspective I find along the way, fades a little and loses
its gloss and focus. Writing, like life, has its dangers, its ups-anddowns; all is not consistency and clear sailing. The clearer and
more evocatively that I write the more in touch with the realities of
my subject that I feel even if, in the process, I lose some readers
along the way.
To draw on Momen, Kahn and others as well as expand on their
comments in relation to the work of the Guardian from 1921 to
1936 provides for me, if not for all the readers here, an irresistible
comparison and contrast in concept and method with the changes in
this most recent of shifts in our time and in the last years of my
working life(1996 to 2005). In those years I headed out from the
world of jobs and earning a living, raising a family and going to
meetings, as well as listening and talking for at least eight hours
every day and made a major shift in my own modus vivendi. I find
the comparison with the work of Shoghi Effendi in those years

after WW1, those entre-deux-guerres years as they are sometimes

called, the paradigm shift he put in place and developed, although
he would not and did not use the term paradigm, irresistible
because retrospection offers dimensions of understanding which
sharpen our perception of the current cultural and community shift
in the life of this Faith I have been part of even as far back since
1953.
My parents, indeed, none of my family had come across the Bahai
Faith in those years between the wars. It was not until 1953, the
year that DNA, was finally discovered and worked out, that any
contact between the Bahai Faith and my family was established. I
was then aged nine. While my parents went though most of their
young and middle adult life in the years 1921 to 1957, Shoghi
Effendi was engaged in transforming the religion that had been
entrusted to his care in 1921. Shoghi Effendi did much more than
explain the texts; he directed and guided the community through a
crucible of transformation that forged the Bahai community that
my parents came across in the 1950s. I dont want to go into the
details of this forging process. Glenford Mitchell did a fine job, one
of the best I have read in the more than fifty years of my reading
Bahai inspired print, a fine job of delineating the objectives and
purposes of this forging process some thirty-five years ago in
World Order magazine. I leave it to readers to enjoy the pleasures
of engaging in his well-written article in that very useful magazine
that has been in print since the 1960s. This forging process of
Shoghi Effendi had been preceded by decades of preliminary work,
preliminary work laid down during the early lives of my
parents(1895-1921) and my grandparents(1872-1921) and greatgrandparents(1844-1872: circa). This 'preliminary work' is a story
in itself; these two words are a simple expression for a complex
process, a process that had taken place for decades, arguably eight
decades, before this unassuming man assumed the reins of office in

1921. But it is not my purpose here to delineate this fascinating

preparatory period, a preparatory period that led in time, to my own
birth as a result of my parents meeting each other in the years of
that first teaching Plan, 1937-1944.
The Guardian, that offspring of Abdul-Bahas interpretive mind
and co-sharer in the genius of divine interpretation, assumed his
position as the legitimate successor of Abdul-Baha, as Mitchell
points out, a position which was and is difficult for people, for
Bahais, to estimate, to understand, to appreciate. An evaluation
and understanding of the grandeur of the Guardians work, his role
and status, his exegetical function, his place in the realm of words
and actions, was difficult for the Bahai community of that
generation in those inter-war and intra-war years to understand.
That generation was perhaps the first of the many generations of
the half light that were to come. As the British historian Thomas
Babington Macaulay(1800-1859)once wrote in another context and
in relation to another person, the historian and analyst needs some
standard by which to make a comparison or a contrast--and the
Bahais had none vis-a-vis Shoghi Effendi; they had no standard by
which they could measure and gain some historical perspective on
his position. The Guardians role and station was, in a Bahai
context, unique in history. The Guardian died when I was thirteen
and I had no appreciation of him and his role at that early age,
although my mother had had contact with the Cause for four years
by then and the Bahai Faith had spread its wings to over 200
countries in an international teaching enterprise than had been, in
that four year period, quite beyond the wildest expectations of even
the most optimistic believers-a period which could be termed a
mini-paradigm shift in itself.
The preliminary steps, the precursors, of the Administrative system
which Shoghi Effendi gave his paramount attention to building, to

permanently and systematically establishing in those entre deux

guerres years, had already been taken by Abdul-Baha and even by
Bahaullah in the years preceding His ascension in 1892. As I say,
I will not outline these steps here. Shoghi Effendi has done this for
us comprehensively in his extensive delineation of the first stirrings
of the Bahai Administrative Order in his magisterial work God
Passes By. It is a work whose vision and whose elevation of
historys role provided the Bahais with the majesty and meaning of
the narrative of the first century of their history and its several
paradigm shifts. In short, the cultural shift, the paradigm shift, that
Shoghi Effendi was so instrumental in developing involved, among
other things, what Horace Holley called and described briefly,
referring as he was at the time to the Bahai community of the
United States, as an evolution from a small and amorphous series
of local groups to a national unit of a world society.
The American Bah community consisted of an informal network
of groups, of small pockets of ingrown and amorphous
communities in 1921 and by 1936 it had developed into a vastly
enlarged and well-organized religion with a national
consciousness. It was able, by 1936, to plan and to initiate a
systematic, an international teaching campaign. It is this
development, this organizational evolution, this alteration in the
consciousness and direction of the Bahai community that is
involved in what Momen calls a change in the Bahai culture.
Momen draws on this paradigm shift to compare the present change
in culture in the life of the Bahai community in the last two
decades. The change in culture initiated by Shoghi Effendi was,
indeed, a gradual one characterized by phases, stages and
transitions, breaks and continuities with the past which added up, in
overview, to what very well might be called a multi-paradigmatic
shift. During these years my parents were in their young adulthood
for the most part, the years 20 to 40, making of their lives an event

that would cast the pearl of "pure and goodly issue on the shore of
life" and bring up "greater and lesser pearls." Would I be a greater
or a lesser pearl? Time would tell and even my memoir leaves such
a final question, such an ultimate outcome and question until the
last syllable of my recorded time in life. Such is my belief in
relation to quite a complex question whose answer I will not go
into here in even the most cursory manner.
Reading the study of early Bahai administration in the United
States by Loni Bramson-Lerche in one of Kalimat Press's series of
volumes on Babi-Bahai history is instructive, but I will only
comment briefly on her analysis here. Suffice it to say, the context
for the change in culture that Momen refers to in the 1920s and
1930s, and that Bramson-Lerche describes in her informative
description of the development of Bahai administration from 1922
to 1936, is a useful one for us to examine here in our study of the
change in culture that the Bahai community is currently
undergoing. The comparison and contrast between the two
paradigm shifts is instructive and rich in its potential to cast light
on our current culture change. The paradigmatic shift that the
Bahai community is now engaged in, like the one referred to
between WWI and WW2, needs to be seen in context. For this most
recent shift, like the one I have just referred to, did not spring up ex
nihilo. Indeed, it seems to me that this most recent of paradigm
shifts, is but another part, another stage in the long process of the
Bahai community providing the world with the long-awaited
workshop by which the collective social advancement of
civilization will support and work in concert with the individuals
attempt to fulfil their inherent purpose.
The Bahai paradigm, any Bahai paradigm, has always been
fundamentally a new, even if only an altered, institutional matrix.
Of course, it can also be seen as merely an adjustment, an

adaptation. The issue is partly a question of semantics, definitions,

perspectives and meanings. The answers, the interpretations, given
to these semantic issues of meaning all vary from individual to
individual and one can get caught up in endless hairsplitting and
casuistry, empty and profitless debate and a vain concatenation of
thoughts that lead nowhere except to dispute and acrimony. For the
Bahais, the generations of the half-light in the 20th and 21st
centuries, only a dim perception of the main features of this
institutional matrix, this paradigm of paradigms, is achievable. We
stand too close to its beginnings to appreciate either its potential or
the relationships of its component parts, as the House of Justice
once expressed the idea when I was but 25 and just starting my
work in this administrative Order, this System. Those words from
the House came in 1969 and they came when my work in this
Order was just beginning. By 1969 I had been associated with this
new order for more than 15 years beginning as that association did
as far back as 1953 in sensible and insensible degrees right back to
the beginning of the Kingdom of God on earth, a term used by
'Abdul-Baha for the year when the temple in Chicago would be
finished.
THE AXIS OF THE ONENESS OF HUMANITY
After more than half a century since I joined this Faith, I can see
some brilliant lights in the wide world that is the international
Bahai community. There are also many dark shades and clouded
visions of the whole, for we have only intimations of the subtle and
hidden relationships between the component parts of this Cause. In
these generations of the half-light we still see through a glass
darkly. We probe the many mysteries of this new Order and seek to
discover more and more of the picture it presents to our minds. We
do this as a Bahai community year after year as this Order, this
nucleus and pattern of a new society, spreads across the planet

quietly in the hearts and minds of millions. For the Bahai this is
not a subjective statement but one of fact. The Bahai paradigm, the
Bahai worldview, the Bahai model, the Bahai archetypal pattern
or exemplar, is not, at its heart, an organization, an ideology, a
cosmology, nor a framework for action among other possible
definitions and applications of the term paradigm. It is, as Douglas
Martin pointed out in the conclusion to a talk he gave in April
1992:
a universal reality operating within every soul and between all
souls. It is readily accessible to independent investigation and
discovery. It is the axis of the oneness of the world of humanity. It
is reality and ultimately it will engage the minds and spirits of all
people because it is the nature of reality to do so.
Martins words here are elusive, subtle and visionary; they are also
provocative, enticing and stimulating to the imagination. For the
Bah this Cause is the paradigm of paradigms. Our world and
especially our institutional world will be significantly centred on
this Cause in the centuries ahead. From time to time this paradigm
of paradigms needs a refinement, an extension, a variation, an
adjustment, a series of fundamental transition phases, what some
might call simply a shift. The new culture of learning and growth
that has been underway since the middle of that fin de siecle in the
twentieth century in the Bahai community is part of this latest
shift. Before going on in this book to discuss what is often called
the triple impulse, an impulse within whose context I want to
discuss this most recent paradigm shift, I would like to add some
words about the paradigm shifts that have taken place in the wider
context of society in the Bahai Era beginning as it does in 1844.
These remarks will be brief, a sort of parenthesis which adds colour
and texture, a certain fascination and interest, to the shift we are
presently observing and in which we are taking part. Such is my

aim and hope here in this part of the book.

MORE PARADIGMS: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE CAUSE OF
GOD
Parenthetically speaking, then, let me add that since 23 May 1844
there have been a number of major paradigm shifts in many aspects
of the various secular and religious worlds within which the BabiBahai world has grown and developed. Beginning on 23 May
1844 itself, to chose a starting point for the delineation of more
than a century and a half of paradigm shifts, a starting point which
is far from arbitrary for the Bahai, let me enumerate but a few: on
23 May 1844, coincidentally, the first message was sent over a
telegraph wire; in the summer of 1844 Karl Marx made his first
contribution to the world of sociology, history and philosophy; to
continue listing paradigms let us go into the world of science with
Charles Darwins Origin of the species in 1859. One could go on
and on, decade after decade into the 20th and 21st centuries,
through the lives of Bahaullah, Abdul-Baha, Shoghi Effendi and
the years of the House of Justice at the apex of Bahai
administration, outlining a multitude of paradigmatic shifts in the
wider society that accompanied the ones in the parallel universe of
the emerging Bahai community.
For fear of prolixity, though, I will say no more and leave this
fascinating and serendipitous series of juxtapositions to readers,
juxtapositions they can find in the biological and physical sciences,
in the social sciences and humanities, in society and everyday
experience. The list of major shifts is staggering in magnitude and
it virtually goes without saying to anyone with only a little
familiarity with history and the contemporary society in which they
are enmeshed. These shifts provide perspective, ambience, meaning
and helpful overviews that can add a wider understanding to the

process that is taking place before our eyes and has been for the last
dozen years in the Bahai community itself. Since 1996 the
paradigm shifts in culture and society, in science and technology,
indeed, across the whole panoply and pageantry of our global
society have been staggering in their magnitude. I have already
referred to this above and I shall say no more on this theme here,
although one can not limit its importance as a background to the
paradigm shift in the Bahai community.
I would like to hypothesize that since my mother first joined this
new Faith in 1953 there have been at least three major paradigm
shifts in the Bahai community: 1953-1963; 1963-1996 and 1996 to
the present or, perhaps, to 2021 the end of the first century of the
Formative Age and, I would guess, its fifth epoch. I will discuss
these shifts later in this 200 page sojourn. The future of my life, the
life of my fellow Bahais, the life of all the people of the world is at
the centre of this new culture of learning and growth in which we
are all searching for a new voice, a new identity, a new tradition
and the magical transformation that is taking place and has the
potentiality to actualize in the decades ahead is quite magnificent.
It is the combination of the best of many worlds, combining them
and coming up with something new that is truly breathtaking.
THE TRIPLE IMPULSE
I would like now to turn to that triple impulse I referred to above.
Whatever shift, whatever culture of learning and of growth that the
Bahai community is now going through, whatever phases and
stages that have characterized it and will characterize it in the years
ahead, they are each and all part and parcel of the three distinct but
interrelated processes set in motion by the triple impulse
generated through the revelation of the Tablet of Carmel by
Bahullh, the Will and Testament and the Tablets of the Divine

Plan bequeathed by the Centre of His Covenant. I want to place

this new culture, this new paradigm, within the context of this triple
impulse. While discussing this triple impulse, I try as far as
possible, and when relevant, to bring these three major foci into
interrelationship with my own life and the life of my society. At the
core of my memoir, my autobiography, now in five volumes, is
another triple impulse: my society, my religion and my own life
experience. As I indicated above, I feel I must apologize to readers
for the inevitably quite personal context that they will find in the
pages ahead as I go about connecting my own micro-world with the
macro and the triple impulse I have just mentioned.
The immense significance of this paradigmatic shift in its first
dozen years has coincided more than just serendipitously in
retrospect with an almost incredible if often inscrutable alliance of
social, economic and political forces in the wider world on the one
hand and developments in that triple impulse I have already
referred to on the other. To ignore this wider context, one within the
Bahai community and the other in our global society, is to deprive
this analysis, this exercise in the study of the new paradigm, of
some useful, indeed, critical understandings of the new culture of
learning and growth in which our international Bahai society is
immersed.
THE FIRST IMPULSE
The construction work at the Bahai World Centre is and was an
historic thrust in the context of that first impulse. This vast,
prolonged and costly building enterprize, relative to the small size
of the Bahai community that took the project on, fulfilling even
more than previous buildings and community achievements had
done the glorious vision of the efflorescence on Gods holy
mountain, is exerting, has exerted and will exert a profound

influence on the worldwide Bahai community. A series of

developments at the World Centre: the completion of the Seat of
the Universal House of Justice in 1984, the announcement in 1987
of the Arc Project which by 1988 had resulted in the emergence of
a new paradigm of opportunity and which by 1989 had resulted in
heightened expectations were all an expression in the world of
concrete, marble and architectural reality of that first impulse
generated well over a century ago just before the passing of
Bahaullah in His revelation of the Tablet of Carmel. This tablet is,
for the Bahai community, the Charter of the World Spiritual and
Administrative Centres of the Faith on that mountain. This
document established Mount Carmel as the physical location of the
Bah' World Centre. This project, this Arc, these terraces, are yet
another stage, a major stage, in the fulfilment of Bahaullahs words
that: "Ere long will God sail His Ark upon thee, and will manifest
the people of Bah who have been mentioned in the Book of
Names."
While all this was taking place, perhaps as far back as the 1970s
when construction of The Seat began or even as far back as 1951
when Shoghi Effendi wrote about the rise of the World
Administrative Centre of the Faith after a hiatus of thirty
years(1921-1951), the Bahai community was developing and
consolidating, a word that once used extensively in Bahai
community life. My personal life within the context of this new
Faith was also evolving along its lifespan. My autobiography, now
in five volumes, charts my story, my narrative and the several
paradigmatic shifts in the nature and expression, the form and the
context of my Bahai life in its individual and community contexts.
But I write only a little of that story here.
THE SECOND IMPULSE

This most recent change of culture, this historic paradigm shift, is

also intimately connected to the second and third impulses
specified above. The second impulse and this paradigmatic shift, I
would argue, is part of the striking impact of the Holy Year and
the publication during that same period of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the
Charter of Bahaullahs World Order and a Book of phenomenal
importance, a Book which opened wider the door of a vast process
of individual and community development. That Holy Year of
May 1992 to May 1993 witnessed: (a) an auspicious juncture in
the history of His Cause, the hundredth anniversary of the
commemoration of the Ascension of its divine Author and a
celebration of the centenary of the inauguration of His Covenant;
and (b) the implementation of Huququ'llah. All of this served as a
prelude to this new paradigm. It was, indeed, part of a paradigmatic
prelude, a prelude that could be seen as going back as far as the
1980s.
The Huquq became binding upon the believers in the West just four
years before the implementation of the new paradgim. One of the
developments in the first 15 years of this new Bahai culture has
been an increased understanding of many aspects of the
Huququ'llah. The Universal House of Justice has been primarily
emphasizing the spiritual aspects of this law, in particular the
attitude the believer must have. The House of Justice has not
provided detailed explanations in many aspects of this law,
preferring for the present time to leave these matters to the
conscience of the friends. It is not my intention to go into details
regarding the developments of Huquq in these early years of this
new paradigm but they are part and parcel of the overall framework
of Bahai life in this new Bahai culture, or so it seems to me.
Part of the paradigmatic shift involved the laws of the Kitab'iAqdas being reviewed by the House of Justice and it was seen as

timely to implement an extension of those pertaining to prayer: the

washing of hands and the repetition of certain specific verses. This
was announced on 28 December 1999, one month after another
announcement that: (a) there were "nearly 110,000" believers
benefiting from training courses and (b) the paradigm of the culture
of change for the next twenty-one years would be organized around
a single One Year Plan and four Five Year Plans to take the Bah'
community to 2021 and the end of the first century of the
Formative Age. The context for this new paradigm was given a
timeframe to the end of the first century of the Formative Age in
2021.
The erection of the buildings at the World Administrative Centre of
the Faith within the precincts and under the shadow of its World
Spiritual Centre is part of a process that has been underway, as I
noted above, since 1951. The construction of the eighteen
monumental Terraces are manifest expressions, it should be
emphasized, of the emergence from obscurity of the Faith of
Bahullh, an emergence which, like entry by troops, is very
importantly process as well as event: indeed, the event could be
seen as quintessentially a process. This emergence from obscurity,
associated with the developments at the Bahai World Centre,
resulted in the increasing emphasis, especially as that propitious
Year with its vista of new horizons concluded, on the process of
entry by troops which the House of Justice pointed out Bahai
communities could prepare for and help to bring about. This
emphasis on the process of entry by troops was foreshadowed in
the Ridvn Message of 1990 when the House pointed out that
almost one million souls entered the Cause from 1988 to 1990.
Entry by troops was also not a new phrase or a new concept which
suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It was also, as I say, a process, a
process which the Guardian had referred to as far back as 25 June

1953, four decades before the beginning of the recent song and
dance about the process which emerged on the dance floor in the
1990s. When the term began to be used extensively in the 1990s
and when many Bahs began dancing to this new tune, thinking it
a new concept and thinking it meant masses of new believers
entering the Cause, they slowly began to feel pangs of
disappointment. When the familiar one or two new believers, when
a few or none at all joined the Cause, or even when a decline in
membership was experienced and the enrolment lists remained
discouragingly meagre each month in the various Bahai newsletters
in most of the Bahai national communities at least in western
countries, many wondered what they were doing wrong. Eventually
those with high, unrealistic expectations, often based on false
assumptions regarding the processes involved, made the necessary
emotional and intellectual adjustments to their system of
suppositions and came to accept what Peter Khan had emphasized
as early as 1996. He had pointed out, in one of his many fine talks
in North America, that the key word in the expression the process
of entry by troops was "process. Indeed, one could argue that the
process of entry by troops has been part of the Babi-Bahai
experience since the 1840s, if not in Islam itself 1300 years before.
My autobiography tells of my own experience of this process as far
back as the 1950s giving emphasis as I go along to the heyday of
my experience of this process in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
But more of this later, although my memoir is not the focus in this
article at BARL.
The obstacles preventing the realization of great numbers of new
Bah's and the realization of the vision of the Cause often seem
insurmountable. Hopes often founder on erroneous assumptions
about human nature that so permeate the structures and traditions of
present-day society. These assumptions attain the status of
established fact. I leave it to readers to reexamine the Ridvan

message of 2012 in which the House of Justice discusses the

complex questions regarding these assumptions.
THE THIRD IMPULSE
The third impulse, set in motion by the Tablets of the Divine Plan
written in 1916 and 1917, appearing in part in Star of the West as
early as 1916, unveiled in their entirety in 1919 and first formulated
into a specific teaching Plan, the Seven Year Plan of 1937 to 1944,
is at the basis of the recent emphasis on this process of entry by
troops. For such a process to be successful now and in the years
and decades ahead, a new culture of learning, a paradigmatic shift,
is and will be required on a number of fronts. This was true in the
1950s when the Guardian first used the term in one of his letters
and it has been true wherever and whenever large numbers of
people entered the Cause or are part of the plans for their entry. In
all likelihood it will also be true throughout the coming centuries
and cycles during which Abdul-Baha said, in the first of those
Tablets, many harvests will be gathered. I sometimes think that it
was also true for those first Letters of the Living, the first Letters
generated from the Primal Point, in May 1844. They, too, had to
make a paradigmatic shift in their lives in the days, months and
years when they were launched upon their mission of promulgating
the message of the Bab. Not all of them were successful in
implementing their own paradigm shift as Moojan Momen points
out in his brief study of their lives in one of his many excellent
essays. And not all of us will be successful in implementing our
present paradigm shift nor will all the Bahai communities across
the face of our planet in these early decades of this new
millennium. We all achieve many things in our lives only in part:
we see many things darkly but then face to face to draw on an old
New Testament saying in relation to prophecy. After the first
decade of the implementation of this new paradigm(1996-2006), as

one writer has noted, "of the 16,000 clusters in existence some
10,000 remained unopened and less than 2% were capable of
taking on the challenge of growth." Five years later one can only
guesstimate that, perhaps, 8000 remain unopened.(Lample, p.104)
However few, however small the percentage of clusters capable of
taking on what are called IPGs, the House of Justice emphasized in
April 2014 that: "The two essential movements which continue to
propel the process of growththe steady flow of participants
through the sequence of training institute courses and the
movement of clusters along a continuum of developmenthave
both been immensely reinforced by the outpouring of energy
released at the youth conferences held last year." As far as the goal
of 2000 IPGs globally is concerned, the Supreme Institution
emphasizes that: "the community of the Greatest Name is well
positioned, before the expiration of this current plan, to add to the
clusters where IPGs have already emerged." "How glad we are to
see," they continue in relation to the current IPGs whose programs
are "vigorously advanced across the far-flung regions of the globe,
and in a diversity of circumstances and settings," that they now
number "some three thousand, and many clusters are at a point
where momentum is being generated through the implementation
of a few simple lines of action." I encourage readers to study the
latest Ridvan message for its brief summary of cluster
development.
I would like to make some final and additional remarks about those
Tablets since they form one of the three major foundation
documents, one of the rocks, for all the teaching plans including
this present paradigm. In the longest tablet in the entire collection
Abdul-Baha writes not about where to teach, since he does this in
the other tablets, but about what is required for success in teaching.
The rest of the collection of what are in some ways letters is

somewhat anticlimactic, at least for me. This Tablet caught my

attention overforty years ago and it does so as I reread it for the
umpteenth time. Here, it could be argued, is the true foundation of
the Divine Plan for our age.
First, 'Abdu'l-Bah talks about the term "Lord of Hosts", frequently
mentioned in the Bible as one of the Names of God and in the
Bah' Writings also used to refer to the Manifestation of God. I've
always assumed that "hosts" merely indicates a multitude, so "Lord
of Hosts" might be similar to "Lord of All". 'Abdu'l-Bah makes
reference here to an army, a heavenly army arrayed for spiritual
rather than physical battle. Filled with the love of God, this army
marches into metaphorical battle with its chief weapons being:
character, conduct and words. Reminding us of the Apostles of
Christ, He calls upon the Bah's of the United States and Canada
to become Apostles of Bah'u'llh and to go forth into the world
and teach. There are some conditions, however, which must be met
in order to achieve success:
Firmness in the Covenant of God
Fellowship and love among the Bah's
Continuous travel by Bah's to all parts of the world for the
purpose of teaching
Purity of motive on the part of the teacher
Education of children
Translation of the Holy Writings into all languages
A few other things are mentioned as well. Taken together, these
points form the bedrock upon which all of the activity of the global
Bah' community since that time has been based. Perhaps most
interesting of all, 'Abdu'l-Bah chose to end this Tablet on this note:
In brief, O ye believers of God! The text of the divine Book is this:

If two souls quarrel and contend about a question of the divine

questions, differing and disputing, both are wrong. The wisdom of
this incontrovertible law of God is this: That between two souls
from amongst the believers of God, no contention and dispute may
arise; that they may speak with each other with infinite amity and
love. Should there appear the least trace of controversy, they must
remain silent, and both parties must continue their discussions no
longer, but ask the reality of the question from the Interpreter. This
is the irrefutable command!('Abdu'l-Bah, Tablets of the Divine
Plan, p. 53)
GROWTH IN LIFE FORMS: USEFUL METAPHORS
In the study of human development, psychologists point out that
human beings in their lifespan have two phases of growth spurts,
one in infancy and one in adolescence. In between infancy and
adolescence there is a period of steady growth; adulthood is when
growth halts although, for millions now, weight gain insignificant.
It seems to me that the Bah' Faith is now in the period between
infancy and adolescence. There has been an initial spurt and there
has been a steady growth; the Bah' community in this new culture
of learning and growth will, it seems to me, experience that second
spurt of adolescence. Of course, it could be argued that this Cause
has had a series of spurts and in the decades to come it will
experience another series of spurts. This process could go on for
some time perhaps even centuries. I would not want to predict but
the field of biology and developmental psychology offers a useful
metaphor for an overall description of the historical process and the
growth patterns thusfar and into the future.
The growth of insects offers another useful metaphor or paradigm.
Insects possess exoskeletons, that is, exterior skeletons. Continuous
growth of the insect cannot occur until this outside skeleton, this

outside layer, has been shed. This process is called moulting and
after the moulting phase growth can continue. This moulting of the
skin allows body mass to increase. The Bah' religion has begun
its moulting phase, to draw on this insect analogy, in the context of
this new paradigm of learning and growth. Indeed, we could play
with this metaphor in many ways. We could see the Heroic Age as
the exoskeleton and the prelude to mass conversion as the moulting
phase with that mass conversion as the real, the massive growth in
the Formative Age. I leave further metaphorical interpretations to
readers.
The study of the cultures of plants, of the evolution of animal and
human life and their vast ranges of species provides still other
interesting metaphorical contexts in which to throw metaphorical
lights on the growth of the Bah' Faith. I could make more than a
few comments about plants, animals and man and their several
developments. I will let readers make their own comparisons and
contrasts between the growth of the Faith and the growth and
development of other life forms. But I will make two or three
observations: plants, require different amounts of light each day in
order to grow. The amount of time that a plant requires is called the
critical period. Some plants require more than 14 hours of light and
without this amount of light on a regular basis their stalks become
etiolated, yellow in colour, and the leaves of the plant will fail to
grow to their potential. This is partly because there is not enough
light available for photosynthesis, cellular processes and growth.
The latitude of where a plant exists also has great bearing on how
they will cope in their environment because, for instance, in the
extreme latitudes, there is not sunlight for 6 months, and the
following six months their is constant light. Seasons also play a
part and, taking both seasons and latitude into account, it is evident
why different climates make homes for different varieties of plants.

Plants have a balancing act between flowering, growing and

producing energy for the mass already present on the plant. Several
chemicals play their part internally while reacting to the outside
environment. All these reactions originate from one thing, the
genetic coding that made the plant operate the way it does. I could
write much more here about plant life. The metaphorical nature of
physical reality gives us as human beings whole worlds in which to
view this growth and learning process. Indeed, the very literature
and history of this Cause gives us mirrors in which we can see our
own lives. We become, as it were, spectators of our own life; we
are given many larger visions in which our life is contained and
through which we can interpret the reality of our lives. The entire
history of this Cause is one immense metaphorical landscape in
which we can view our lives.
Often we are blind to the truth of our holy writings because we read
them "with" rather than "through" our eyes; as a result, their
"visionary" spirit turns into the dead letter of history and dogma.
Fundamentalism and its accompanying rigidity of attitude,
narrowness and intolerance of differing points of view, enters our
worlds. Fundamentalism has more in common with a certain
mental attitude than it has with religious belief itself. What should
enlarge, instead terrorizes and enslaves with judgementalism and
moralizing. Instead of sin-covering eyes we are only too conscious
of the faults and failings of others. Ordinary Bahais often become
divorced from the creative Word; what should be spiritual attitudes
become religious habits. This is not to say that the habituation of
various practices like prayer and fasting are bad things. Far from it.
Questions are not signs of doubt and answers signs of certitude.
Just by being members of this Faith does not give us all the
answers to the imponderable, immensely complex questions of our
age. It is naive, simplistic and somewhat arrogant to twitter away

that we have all the answers. We are not a catechistic Faith. There
is no assumption, as a catechism requires, of set answers, of
questions tailored towards a specific doctrinal response. Teaching
and learning by rote and its dominant repetitive element is
antithetical to the spirit of independent investigation. Variety and
diversity not repetition and dogmatism is at the core of this new
paradigm. At least that is the emphasis I would give it. At the same
time,repetition and a certain catechistic attitude has its place and
this is evident all around us in the Bahai world: 95 Alla'u'Abhas
every day, 19 nineteen day feasts, a calendar of events that give the
Bahais celebrations and commemorations month in and month out
year after year, an emphasis on memorizing the writings, inter alia.
But, again, we must be on our guard that our Feasts do not become
more like restrained church services and our LSA meetings
predictable business meetings dealing with routines and the details
of organizing events and activities. Discussions often are better
when they are untidy and when one person does not rule the roost,
so to speak.
There has slowly developed over the years to 1996 a vast literature
on all the major institutions of the Cause. This literature has been
added to and will be added to as the years go on in the future
decades of this paradigm. I encourage readers who want to know
more about: the UHJ, NSAs, LSAs, the regional councils, the often
complex committee system that operates at local, national and
global levels, the ITC, the Feast, the Deepening, inter alia, to revisit
this vast literature. This new paradigm is, as I often point out, not
being instituted ex nihilo. It is and has been built on at least 133
years of Bah' history, 19 years of the Babi Faith and, arguably, the
lives of the two major precursors of the Bab's Cause, precursors
whose lives go back to the 1740s and 1750s. This latest of the
Abrahamic religions goes back to the earliest years of modern
history, if one defines modern history as the years after 1789. Of

course, there are many definitions of modern history, and I leave

this esoteric subject to those with a keen interest in history.
I also leave it to readers to follow-up on the fascinating
juxtapositions and the endless metaphors we can discover between
various forms of life, their workings, their development and their
several evolutions in this new Cause. The habit of analogical
thought is important to develop if one is to see the metaphorical
nature of physical reality in all its forms--and especially in the
Bahai writings. Through the juxtapositions which emerge, for me at
least, I am helped to explain and to illuminate the varied
developments and evolution of the history of this 165 year old
religion and its future in the centuries to come. John Hatcher has
developed this theme in a book in which he tries to answer the
question: "Why do spiritual beings-human souls-begin their lives in
the physical world?"
According to Hatcher the world is a classroom designed by God to
instigate and nurture mental and spiritual growth. His book The
Purpose of Physical Reality examines the components of this
classroom to show how everyday experience leads to spiritual
insight. Viewing life in this way, we can learn to appreciate the
overall justice of God's plan and the subtle interplay between
human free will and divine assistance in unleashing human
potential. The idea of physical reality as a divine teaching device
not only prepares us for further progress in the life beyond, it also
provides practical advice about how to attain spiritual and
intellectual understanding while we are living on earth. The Bah's
are "cultivating environments wherein true understanding can
blossom, and "so well have the features of the current Five Year
Plan been grasped" that the House "feels no need to comment
further on them." "To behold the Bah' world at work," the House
continues, "is to behold a vista bright indeed." Still, the evolving

administrative structures offer only glimmerings, however faint, of

how the institutions of the Faith will incrementally come to assume
a fuller range of their responsibilities. That ridvan message of 2012
is replete with guidance on this subject.
I leave it to readers, as I say, to investigate the implications of this,
of past, and of future messages as the exegisis of explanation and
description of this new culture of learning and growth, this new
paradigm and this paradigm of physical reality within the paradigm
of learning and growth continues.
MORE COMMENTS AND YET MORE COMMENTS ON THIS
NEW PARADIGM
The new culture of learning and the training institutes with their
increased and more regular socializing, with their emphasis on
memorizing, on accompanying service activities, on learning
methods that compliment individual learning and that are especially
useful for new Bahs has begun to generate, to be productive, as I
say, of a significant rise in enrolments. But, as I also said above,
this is not true everywhere. The present focus is on building up the
numbers in the A-clusters where there are already a significant
number of Bahais. The B,C and D clusters, indeed most of the
clusters on the planet are not the focus at the present stage of the
current Five Year Plan(2011-2016). I would venture to suggest that
in at least half the localities, some 60,000, significant growth is not
being achieved. This is partly due to the present Plan's focus on Aclusters. This picture is, in all likelihood, true in most of the 16,000
clusters into which the planet has now been sketched or organized.
As Paul Lample notes, Bahais only exist in some 6000 of these
16,000 clusters as of 2009. Perhaps by the end of 2016 the
community may open another 2000. Time will tell.

My guess is that in at least 60,000 of the 120,000 localities on the

planet where Bahais now reside no growth or very limited growth
has been achieved or will be achieved in the first two decades of
this new paradigm(1996-2016). But this is a guesstimation at best.
More significantly, though, from my perspective, there is now a
framework for action, a framework that is much more detailed,
systematic and energized than in the more than four decades of my
association with the Bahai Faith from 1953 to 1996. Of course,
within this context, many of the requirements for believers are
much the same as they have always been: prayer and fasting,
attendance at Feast and holy days, systematic study of the Creative
Word and engagement with society, inter alia.
Everyone can find some part to play, though, as I have already
pointed out, in the multifaceted requirements of this new paradigm
no matter what cluster in which they live. In the clusters in which
Bahais now live and have their being the diversity of activities and
the simplicity of many of these activities is beyond the scope of this
not-so-brief article. This is true right across the range of cluster
groupings from A to D. My own son Daniel was working as a
support secretary in the International Teaching Centre as a
statistical analyst. He was, as far as I know, the second person to
have this role in the context of this new paradigm; I look forward to
further conversations with him on some of these statistical matters,
matters which have always been with the Bahai community as long
as I have been associated with it----more than half a century now.
The renewed emphasis on the process of entry by troops and the
concomitant and associated united clarity of vision for the
expansion of the Cause and all its agencies, was and is, as I say,
part and parcel of this recent paradigmatic shift. It was ushered in
by the developments in the remarkably dynamic period of the Six
Year Plan of 1986 to 1992 and the accumulated potential for

further progress which was considered incalculable at the time;

as well as the view that some mysterious rampant force was
resulting in a quality of change in the world which the House of
Justice referred to as characterized by suddenness or
precipitateness. The rigorous effects of this rampant force were
like a quickening wind which was ventilating the modes of
thought of us all and renewing, clarifying and amplifying our
perspectives. It is against this background, this socio-historical
context, that this new culture of learning found its original
articulation in the mid-to-late 1990s.
This ventilation, this quickening wind, it seems to me in retrospect,
resulted among other things in: (a) the new focus of the Four Year
Plan of 1996 to 2000, a turning point of epochal magnitude, and
(b) a series of documents that tried to summarize the experience of
the Bahai world in advancing the process of entry by troops. These
documents, in addition to many letters beginning with a series of
three letters in January 2001: to the Conference of the Continental
Board of Counsellors, to the Conference marking the
inauguration of the International Teaching Centre Building and to
the Bahais of the World, laid out in some detail the nature and
meaning of this culture of learning, this culture of growth and this
paradigm shift. And there was much else. Part of the problem of
coming to grips with the realities of this new paradigm for the
ordinary, the average, the typical, Bahai--if there is such a person-is the plethora of print that is now available on this culture of
change: 15 years worth now(1996-2011) of letters, papers, blog
sites, messages, analyses, reports, inter alia.
These letters and these documents noted that, among other things:
the scheme could not be applied in every situation; we stood too
close to comprehend the magnitude of what was so amazingly
being accomplished; a coherence of understanding, a change of

time, a new state of mind and immensely promising prospects were

developing within the divinely driven enterprize with which we
were occupied; an unprecedented project, a fundamental change of
consciousness was taking place; and that the future had never
looked so bright. But such a view, such a prospect, such an
attitude, required of many, especially those believers who had seen
few to no enrolments for decades, what had been required all their
Bahai lives, wisdom and the power of understanding, often a short
commodity at the best of times, these new and wonderful
configurations, these dazzling rays of a heavenly power to chose
but two of the many phrases Abdul-Baha uses for intellect and
wisdom, the two most luminous lights in either this world or the
next. The process whereby both the suspected and unsuspected
benefits of this new Cause have been manifested to the eyes of men
has been slow, painfully slow. This has been true for more than a
century and a half. Crises which this Faith has faced and which its
believers have had to deal with have at times threatened to arrest
the unfoldment of this Cause and blast the hopes which its former
progress has engendered. It is, therefore, not surprising that
disappointment sometimes sets in and the apparently slowly
crystallizing institutions and its policies are often barely
understood.
THIS NEW PARADIGM: STILL GETTING OFF THE GROUND
AND CRYSTALIZATION
By 2011, a decade and a half after the inception of this new
paradigm, this culture of growth and learning: (i) had crystallized
into a framework for action, (ii) resulted in the friends engaging in
progressively more complex and demanding acts of service, (iii)
saw a steady increase in the exercise of individual initiative, (iv)
was characterized by the believers entering into closer association
with people of many walks of life, (v) was marked by a graceful

integration of the arts into diverse activities, (vi) issued in a

rigorous process of community learning that was a hallmark of its
community development, (vii) possessed a flexibility that
discouraged the tendency to confuse focus with uniformity or
exclusivity and (viii) saw this new process as the outcome of yet
another stage in the silent growth of that orderly world polity
whose fabric the Bahais themselves were weaving.
But more importantly, and with a necessary emphasis, it must be
stated that all these developments did not occur everywhere and to
the same extent. Indeed, in some places, as is virtually always the
case, things went backwards, or one step forward and two steps
back. In a global organization with Bahais in 120,000 localities the
picture is both difficult to summarize and, for most of us,
impossible to integrate into some unified perspective in our brains
occupied as they are with so much of quotidian and local reality.
An international picture emerges and is updated with each major
message from the BWC. The events outlined in these messages
possess a complexity that staggers the imagination of the humble
votaries of this Cause--that is you and I.
At Ridvn 2006 the House cautioned the Bahais not to be misled by the
painful slowness characterizing the unfoldment of the civilization they were
laboriously establishing. This cautionary note has been voiced on many
occasions over the years by each of the Central Figures and Their legitimate
successors. When hoped-for results did not readily materialize and a
measure of discouragement set in it became necessary for believers to
become aware that their high expectations of the early years were
..quite unrealistic. This problem of high expectations, of the flush of
enthusiasm, of the lack of what might be termed emotional moderation and of
unrealistic goals and aspirations is and has been in no small measure
responsible for the failure of the hopes many so fondly cherish within the
context of this new paradigm as well as the entire Bahai paradigm right back
to the days of the Bb. Discouragement, fatigue, frustration and
disappointment are part of the Bah' experience; indeed, they are at the core
of any person's life--with much else.

By 2011, though, statistics began to be included more extensively

in messages. This was partly due to the existence at the BWC of a
statistics officer or analyst, a department devoted to the
quantification, the numerical side of the Cause,a side which has
always been important and which has been in the process of
increasing efficiency over the last several decades. I won't
enumerate all the numbers of tutors, study circles, believers
engaged in this or that activity. Occasionally in this book I write
about statistics when it seems timely. After more than 60 years of
association with this new world Faith I must say that numbers have
always been high on the agenda of importance. This has become
somewhat less true in this new paradigm or, perhaps more
accurately, numbers have taken-on a new numerical scale, a new
place of significance that recognizes what are often the
inevitablities of slow growth. Now it is: home visits, deepenings,
attendance at Feasts and holy days as well as the number of
devotional meetings. The number of new believers, while still kept
in the record-system, does not occupy the attention of the believers
as it did before the mid-1990s and the emergence of this new
paradigm.
Readers can easily find this sort of data by simply reading the
messages and rereading them, keeping in touch with regional
newsletters and cluster newssheets as well, of course, as the
traditional national Bah' magazine usually under the direction of
the NSA of that country. Since the mid-1990s there have emerged a
wide-range of national and international journals and magazines as
well as internet sites. The average Bah' would not want to try to
keep pace with all the print and electronic material that has come
out like Niagara Falls into the computer directories and mailboxes
of those active members of the Bah' community. It is only in the
study of all this burgeoning print that any individual believer can

retain a comprehensive picture of all the information now existing

in relation to this paradigm at the global level. Most of the 5 to 8
million Bahja'is have a partial picture, enough of a picture to suit
their individual needs.
ENTRY-BY-TROOPS AND THE DAWNBREAKERS
Like the task of the Bb Himself back in the 1840s, as Shoghi
Effendi pointed out in his epilogue to the Dawnbreakers, the task
faced in the context of this new paradigm needs to be viewed as a
process. In the long term, as the Bahais have been told time and
time again since the earliest days in the history of their Faith, the
ascendancy of this process among the many processes in which the
Cause is engaged, however severe the disappointments, is
inevitable. However severe some crisis may be which threatens the
unfoldment of the Cause---making that unfoldment slow, painfully
slow and which in the process of that unfoldment often blasts the
hopes of some program and some of the hearts and minds of many
participants, triumphs unsurpassed in the past have occurred and
will inevitably occur in the decades ahead. I make this point
occasionally in this long essay, this book, because it is a point that
needs repeating, needs added emphasis by its very repetition. As
the future comes at us year by year, triumphs unsurpassed in
splendour are in store, down times long and not-so-long and stony
and not-so-stony path. This process of alternating rhythms of
decline and fall, victory and achievement, calamity and grace is
itself a paradigm of process that characterizes so much of the
activity of the Cause. Shoghi Effendi draws to our attention in that
same Epilogue of The Dawnbreakers as he discusses the tragedies
of the 1840s, tragedies in the growth of the Bab's new Cause, that it
was the very enthusiasm of those first believers, in what could very
well be seen as one of the first paradigmatic shifts in and after
1848, and in and after 1852, of Babi-Bahai experience, that was a

major cause of their failures. We need to take warning more than a

century and a half later. Often it is the enthusiasm of the believers,
their very attachment to the Cause, that causes so many problems in
commmunity life. The overzealous believer wanting to impose his
or her view of the Cause on others, often unknowingly, has been a
burden to individual Bah's and Bah' communities since the
inception of this latest of God's Revelations, latest of the
Abrahamic religions.
I have lived with the presence of the terms entry-by-troops and
mass-conversion as well as the notion of increased receptivity now
for over half a century. Entry by troops has been occurring in one
way or another, as I suggested above, since the 1840s and, I would
argue, so too has been the increased receptivity we keep hearing,
but about which we seem to have little understanding. Our
understanding of the implications of this deceptively easy phrase
which falls from our lips, of its long term role and of its
fundamental importance to our community life in the last century
and a half and in the decades to come--is crucial. Like so many
terms and concepts, the word understanding has many layers of
meaning. It is not my purpose here to dwell on the nuances of
meaning of this term entry-by-troops, nor do I intend to outline the
places where it has occurred and the variations as to its application
and realization but, like so many things in the Cause, we all stand
in need in this important epoch of transition of the new and
wonderful configurations of knowledge and understanding, the
dazzling rays of this strange and heavenly power, to embellish our
minds with fresh insights derived from wisdom and the power of
thought as applied to this important phrase: increased receptivity
within which entry-by-troops has and will take place.
KEEPING RECORDS: MORE WORDS ON STATS

When my mother first went to a fireside in 1953 in Canada there

were only a few 100 believers in the Canadian Bah' community
after the passing of nearly 60 years of Canadian Bah' history.
Some 200 thousand Bahais on an assortment of lists and non-lists
across the face of the Bahai community could be found on the
planet in that historic year of 1953. Record-keeping was not then
what it is now--in the Bahai communities on the planet and 90 per
cent of the Bahais then lived in Iran; now there are some six
million adherents and 90 percent of them live outside Iran. The
numbers have multiplied thirty times in those five decades. That is
one statistical measure of receptivity. Examining the paradigm shift
in the earlier years of my Bahai experience the years from, say,
1953/4 to 1973/4, could also provide for this work a useful context
for discussing my life, my society and my religion--a triple focus.
The size of the Bahai community went from some 200 thousand to
a million during those years. Two Plans were completed and the
apex of Bahai administration was first formed in the world's first
global democratic election. But, again, I leave the discussion of that
paradigm shift and its context in my life to my memoir and the
many documents now available in cyberspace for the interested
reader willing to do some internet research.
DEALING WITH DISCOURAGEMENT
DISAPPOINTMENTS OF THE CENTRAL FIGURES OF THIS
FAITH
Each of the Central Figures of this Faith Themselves faced
disappointment, as I mentioned above, at the results of the teaching
process, its slowness and the lack of receptivity of the human
beings who heard its message. Bahaullah, Himself, has written that
"had the ultimate destiny for God's Faith been in Mine hands, I
would never have consented, even though for one moment, to

manifest Myself unto you, nor would I have allowed one word to
fall from My lips."(Gleanings, p.91) In the last years of AbdulBahas life, after His journey to the West and after the revelation of
the Tablets of the Divine Plan, the years 1918 to 1921, were for
Him years of disappointment. If one reads the new Commentary on
the Tablet of the Holy Mariner, for example, by Jamsheed
Samandari one can get a view of the intense disappointment AbdulBaha experienced at: (a) the lack of response to His efforts to
promote His Fathers Cause by His trip to the West in 1912 and
1913 and (b) the behaviour of the Bahais themselves. The
Guardian's story is filled with disappointment. And so it is that, if
you and I experience similar disappointments as this Cause unfolds
within this new paradigm that is part of the process. It is a process
which is built into our very history, the very history of our Faith
going back to the 1840s, if not to the last years of the 18th century
and the first steps taken by this Causes first precursor, Shaykh
Ahmad. I find it especially interesting to read what happened in the
early months of 1844 before the Bab declared his mission, as well
as what happoened to the many Letters of the Living. All was not
joy and success; bitter disappointments and discouragements faced
the believers in every decades of the Babi-Bah' experience.
Discouragement is an oft-experienced emotion by individuals both
within the Cause and without. Indeed it is as common as air and has
been since 1844, to say nothinbg of the centuries int eh great
hisotirc religions in recorded history. As this new paradigm was
getting off the ground in the mid-1990s, there were many and
diverse manifestations of discouragement. And there still are and
I'm sure will be in the years and decades to come. On the one hand
Bahais see and hear desperate and not-so-desperate exhortations to
teach the Faith and this sense of urgency was and is often
accompanied by an element of despondency or resentment. Often
strong and faithful Bah's have chosen to become inactive in the

community on account of their perceptions of dysfunctionality and

the gap between ideals and reality. Steadfast perseverance in the
teaching work is not easy over an entire lifespan; it has never been
easy; often individuals experience an inner hopelessness; this
becomes a lack of expectation and then no effort at all. This exists
at one end of the motivational spectrum with zeal and enthusiasm
at the other end.
There have been frequent manifestations of disunity as Bah's
experienced problems in their community and in the meagre
response to teaching initiatives. The inabilities and misdeeds of
their fellow believers was often a cause of immense frustration to
the enthusiastic and committed Bah'. Skeptics and cynics often
pointed to lofty ideals in Bahai exhortations like:"Let deeds not
words be your adorning," and emphasized how these ideals just
crumbled in the face of the realities of life. "Nobody lives up to
their ideals, nobody," I have often heard it said. That's why in email
discussions I was always a bit uncomfortable if the word
"hypocrite" got thrown around. On some level all of us fit that
description because none of us act entirely according to what we
believe. So, I never thought it made much sense to point fingers.
Just about the only way not to be a hypocrite would be not to have
ideals in the first place. This would not be a good way to go. But it
was these sort of perspectives that often coalesced into systematic
critiques of the community in internet fora and academic
publications. This was not true everywhere, but it was one of the
many symptoms of discouragement and these symptoms and
characteristics of dialogue were found in many Bahai localities,
groups and LSA areas. When you have 120,000 localities where
Bah's reside, all will not be honey and bliss; sometimes poison
and indifference will be found as well.
In 2002 the Universal House of Justice wrote to an individual

believer who had expressed these sentiments of discouragement.

The House of Justice pointed out that this believer's description of
the lack of significant numerical growth in Bah' communities in
Western lands, while more precisely applicable to some countries
than others, was largely accurate, and the resulting distress many
Bah's felt was fully justified. To see important Bah'
communities markedly lacking in the development of the human
resources required to reach populations desperately searching for
solutions to the crisis in which society was sinking was painful
indeed to believers aware of the potency of Bah'u'llh's Message.
All the House members and those on the ITC are veteran Bah's
and they are more than a little aware of the problems and
frustrations of the Bah's around the world.
THE INTERNATIONAL TEACHING CENTRE
The International Teaching Centre, sometimes referred to as "the
ITC", is a Bah' institution based in the Bah' World Centre in
Haifa, Israel. Its duties are to stimulate and coordinate the
Continental Board of Counselors and assist the Universal House of
Justice in matters relating teaching and protection of the faith. The
duties of the International Teaching Centre include coordinating,
stimulating, and directing the activities of the Continental Boards
of Counsellors and acting as liaison between them and the
Universal House of Justice. The membership of the Teaching
Centre comprises nine Counsellors appointed by the Universal
House of Justice. The seat of the International Teaching Centre is
located at the Bah' World Centre in Haifa, Israel.
The ITC has itself written a host of documents since 1996. "In the
last few months," the ITC wrote on 8 June 2005, "the process of
growth on every continent has continued to gather pace as cluster
after cluster has reached the stage where intensive programmes of

growth can be initiated. In analysing the associated learning, drawn

from the experiences you have shared with us, we have identified
several patterns of action which have proven effective, as well as
certain pitfalls which should be avoided. We wish to take this
opportunity to share with you a few observations that we hope will
be of assistance in your ongoing efforts to promote further
programmes of growth and to maximise the effectiveness of the
existing ones. Care should be taken that the planning work does not
take too long and place an undue delay on the start of the
programme. Further, the plan of action, particularly in the early
cycles, should remain simple and be presented at the reflection
meeting with clarity so that it can be easily understood, eliciting the
friends willing and enthusiastic participation." I could quote
copiously from ITC statements. Until May 2013 there had been
more than 30 issues of a document entitled Reflections on Growth.
Those issues are themselves a detailed summary of the progress of
the new Bah' culture from a global perspective. As I write these
words in on the first days of January 2015, these issues and their
attachments are available in cyberspace. I leave it to the Bah's
who read this book to familiarize themselves with these issues and
the several 100 pages of information they contain in relation to the
developments in this new Bah' paradigm.
The latest Reflections on Growth newsletter is number #32. As a
publication of the International Teacher Centre it includes learning
from around the world. This one focuses on methods used to
strengthen growth in emerging clusters to assist them to achieve a
program of growth. With 20 months left of this current FTP(2011
to 2016) there are still many clusters in the world that need to
establish a program of growth, many requiring short or long term
pioneers.
"At the outset of the current Five Year Plan," this latest issue

begins, "the Universal House of Justice called upon the

community of the Most Great Name to raise over the next five
years the total number of clusters in which a programme of growth
is under way, at whatever level of intensity, to 5,000,approximately
one third of all clusters in the world at present.1 Some three years
later, the Bahs of the world had already established 3,000. With
2,000 clusters remaining of the goal, the Universal House of Justice
observed in its Ridvn 2014 message and again in later messages,
that, in the last months and years of the Plan, the critical tasks of
strengthening existing programmes of growth and beginning new
ones urgently beckon.
I will mention one development of interest to readers who, for one
reason or another, do not have access to the many issues of these
Reflections documents that have become available since 1996 and
which serve as one of the many types of commentary on the new
Bah' culture of growth. and do not want to acquaint themselves,
or reacquaint themselves with this massive amount of content.
There are now, writes the ITC, some 40 sites on the planet for the
dissemination of learning and they serve some 400 advanced
clusters. These structures are playing a critical role in the
advancement of the junior youth empowerment program
worldwide. The involvement of the Office of Social and Economic
Development is also outlined in issue #31. This book cannot
attempt to even summarize what the ITC has written to the Bah'
community in the first two decades of paradigm experience. The
Office of Social and Economic Development alone has had many
demands placed on its functioning in this new paradigm and this
book hardly scratches the surface of that institution's work and
activity in this new Bah' culture. In passing, though, I should
point out the existence of a new agency of the Cause: the Office of
Public Discourse established in 2013. The many agencies of the
Cause play an integrated role in the overall articulation of this

culture and its series of Plans.

SOME COMMENTS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF VIRTUE AND
CRITICAL THOUGHT
As the Bahai community goes through the early decades of this
new paradigm it will be important, as it has always been important,
for members of the community to have, as I used to say as a
teacher, their thinking caps on. Critical thought, as the House of
Justice once put it as far back as 29/12/88 in a letter to the
American Bah's, solid thinking, the attainment of correct
perspectives, the adoption of proper attitudes, moderation in the
expression of views among a host of other virtues, an awareness of
the different latitudes from one mind to another, the evocation of a
rarefied atmosphere of prayer and meditation in the context of
courtesy, dignity and care, indeed, a profound change in the very
standard of public discussion and a personal discipline necessary to
successful consultation are absolutely critical within this new
paradigm. Criticism has a baleful influence and yet, without critical
thought and candour it is impossible to get to the truth. If
dissidence is a moral and intellectual contradiction to those who
would be unifiers of the children of men, then an etiquette of
expression is called for. Indeed, it is one of the many sine qua nons
of success both on and off the internet in this new Bah' culture.
Of course all of this, it could be said, is nothing new. The Guardian
gave emphasis of these same ideas with a special focus right at the
start of his years in office in the 1920s. He wrote in 1923, in words
I have already quoted, but which deserve to be read twice: "Not by
the force of numbers, not by the mere exposition of a set of new
and noble principles, not by an organised campaign of teaching -no matter how worldwide and elaborate in its character -- not even
by the staunchness of our faith nor the exaltation of our enthusiasm,

can we ultimately hope to vindicate in the eyes of a critical and

skeptical age the supreme claim of the Abha Revelation. One thing
and only one thing will unfailingly and alone secure the undoubted
triumph of this sacred Cause, namely, the extent to which our own
inner life and private character mirror forth in their manifold
aspects the splendour of those eternal principles proclaimed by
Bahaullah."
But we can't wait around until our inner lives achieve some lofty
degree of perfection, a perfection far above our own individual and
present existential morass of sin and heedlessness. Bahaullah tells
us that sin and transgressions are part of our lifetime lot in that
Long obligatory Prayer. We have to arise and struggle; that, too, is
our lot on earth. As we arise and struggle we make our individual
efforts to get our ship afloat, our plane off the ground, so to speak.
We arise to play our part within this new paradigm.
Obstacles, as always, are part of this Bah' culture. When they
arise, they are ultimately resolved through perseverance and further
experience. Of course, this is not always the case. Some obstacles
we always have with us and, as Helen Kubler Ross that expert on
aging puts it: "we all have unfinished business" in our last years.
"Fruitless debate," the ITC emphasizes in its May 2013 document,
"insistence on personal views, creating false dichotomies, or the
'tendency to reduce a complex process of transformation into
simplistic steps, susceptible to instruction'(UHJ, 28/12/'10) can be
carefully avoided or wisely overcome. It is learning together that is
yielding the insights necessary so that stumbling blocks can be
made stepping stones for progress.
DR IRVING JANIS AND GROUP-THINK
I would like to make some comments below drawing on some of

the views of Dr. Irving Janis whose writings, it seems to me, offer
some useful perspectives as the Bahai community goes about its
work within this difficult and challenging process of learning and
culture change in this new paradigm, a new paradigm that must
deal, as the Faith has always had to do, with the human frailties, the
idle fancies and vain imaginings that we all exhibit in our own
individual ways. there are many other writers I could draw on here,
and I do draw on several in this book, but Dr Janis and his work is
the focus here.
Janis gives primary emphasis to what he calls Groupthink.
Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who
try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically
testing, analysing, and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity,
uniqueness and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of
group cohesiveness. The advantages of seeing many choices and
paths and achieving a reasonable balance within the framework of
these many choices and thoughts are skewed by a decision-making
process dominated by paradigm paralysis and various forms of
groupthink. During groupthink, a term that has its origins as far
back as the first years of the Ten Year Crusade, but popularized by
Dr. Irving Janis in the 1970s and 1980s, members of the group
avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of current
consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this development may
exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish or a desire to
avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group.
Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions.
Often individual doubts are set aside for fear of upsetting the
groups balance or other personalities. The term groupthink is
generally used pejoratively. When groupthink operates in a
decision-making process or in consultative settings it is not merely
instinctive conformity at play which is, after all, a perennial failing,

perhaps a necessary reality, of humankind. What is at play, what is

happening in the group when groupthink is present, is a
rationalized conformityan open, articulate philosophy which
holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as
well. Groupthink is a mode of thinking that people engage in when
they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the
members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to
realistically appraise alternative courses of action.
To make groupthink testable, Irving Janis, perhaps the major writer
and analyst in the last forty years to describe the processes involved
, devised eight symptoms indicative of groupthink which are
detrimental to the group and the achievement of a groups goals.

SYMPTOMS OF GROUP-THINK
These symptoms include the following:
1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and
encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's
assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing
members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group consensus as
people who are weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent,
stupid or one of a number of other qualities which stand in the way
of group goals.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions
the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
6. Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group

consensus. This is due to fear of others, fear of being able to speak

out, fear of challenging other views, the absence of the clash of
differing opinions when such opinions are needed for successful
consultation.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed
as agreement.
8. Mindguards: these are self-appointed members who shield the
group from dissenting information.
Groupthink results, Janis emphasized, from the symptoms listed
above and it results in defective decision making. Consensusdriven decisions are the result of the following practices of
groupthinking:
1. Incomplete survey of alternatives
2. Incomplete survey of objectives
3. Failure to examine risks of preferred choice
4. Failure to re-evaluate previously rejected alternatives
5. Poor information search
6. Selection bias in collecting information
7. Failure to work out contingency plans
WAYS TO PREVENT GROUP-THINK
Janis devised seven ways of preventing groupthink. They include:
1. Leaders should assign each member the role of critical
evaluator. This allows each member to freely air objections and
doubts.
2. Higher-ups should not express an opinion when assigning a task
to a group.
3. The organization should set up several independent groups,
working on the same problem.

4. All effective alternatives should be examined.

5. Each member should discuss the group's ideas with trusted
people outside of the group.
6. The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group
members should be allowed to discuss with and question the
outside experts.
7. At least one group member should be assigned the role of devil's
advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.
Janiss probing and insightful analysis of historical decisionmaking has proved much more common, much more accurate in
his findings, than originally thought. His analysis has often proved
correct; the symptoms of groupthink are pervasive. The
relationship to such symptoms and their outcomes include: the
suppression of dissent, polarization of attitude and poor quality
decisions. There is a high likelihood that symptoms of groupthink
will develop when there is intense group cohesion, when a sense of
crisis is present and when the group is insulated from criticism. As
an alternative to Janis' model, other analysts have presented other
models. One is known as "the strong ubiquity model" for
groupthink. The strong ubiquity model represents more a revision
of Janiss model than a repudiation of it. The ubiquity model
emphasizes strong group identification, the presence of salient
norms and a sense of low self-efficacy in many of the members of
the group. These factors are all necessary and sufficient, so goes the
argument, to evoke groupthink reactions and defective decision
processes.
The suppression of dissenting views, selective focus on shared
viewpoints, polarization of attitude and action and heightened
confidence in such polarized views are all factors preventing
critical thought and resulting in poor decisions. Elevated
confidence often evokes feelings of in-group moral superiority and

invulnerability. I invite readers to follow-up on this brief summary

I have provided here.

INCLUSIVITY NOT EXCLUSIVITY

I have referred above to Douglas Martin's 1992 talk and I will
reiterate his comments here. This former director general of the
Bahai World Centre Office of Public Information emphasized that
the Bahai community had not been able to escape a certain
connotation of exclusivity. Such a connotation, he went on to say,
had inevitably arisen from the efforts of the Bahai community in
the teaching field and the Bahai communitys consequent
preoccupation with conversion and membership as well as the
intrusion, like some necessary reflex action and its accompanying
impulse, of an us and them mentality. The culture of learning, the
paradigm shift, that the Bahai community has been engaged in
since the mid-1990s, and which had been initially intimated by
Martin, among other intimations in the late 1980s and early 1990s
that I have referred to above, involves a heroic effort to shed a
number of previous and now quite inappropriate views in the
Bahai community. This shedding of old, now archaic views, it
seems to me, is all part of this paradigm shift.
When I left the north of Australia, north of Capricorn, where I had
been living, pioneering and travel-teaching from 1982 to 1987,after
25 years in the pioneering field(1962-1987), it had already become
apparent to me that it was time for me to shed my own
preoccupation with conversion and membership. This
preoccupation had been part of my mental set, my pioneering
mentality, my community orientation as far back as the 1950s.
Along with it came a consequent intrusion like some necessary

reflex action and accompanying emotional impulses of an us and

them mentality. This was partly due to the fact that the first 25
years of my pioneering life(1962-1987) had been years of creative
experimentation, necessary ones for the refinement of my own
endeavour and the purification of my motives so that I would
become "worthy of so great a trust," to draw on some of the
expressions used in the publication Century of Light to describe
and analyse the Bahai experience in the 20th century. By the 1990s
I had already begun to orient my Bahai life without this strong
conversionist spirit and ethos and I am sure I had lots of company
in the Bahai international community.
This 25 year period from the 1960s to the 1980s had been one of
"small inconspicuous beginnings" for this Cause. These beginnings
widened and assumed "universal dimensions" in the next two
decades, 1987-2007(Century of Life, p.111)and these universal
dimensions are found described and scattered thoughout this book
in ways which I trust readers will pick up without me having to
point the way. Proving one is worthy of so precious a trust, the trust
of faith or belief in this Cause, is an ongoing exercise, it seems to
me. I seem to have had to prove this worthiness time and time
again for half a century. This memoir is partly the story of that
proving ground, my failures and successes. This attitude to Faith
should come as no surprise to Bahai readers here since "living the
life" and exemplifying the teachings is not about building-up credit
points for the next life. There are no guarantees in this Faith as one
finds in some sects, cults and religious groups about one's
salvation. Religious zeal, however intense, does not guarantee a
place among the angels or the seraphim in places beyond those
proverbial pearly gates. This helps to keep the religious
temperature cool and to counter the kinds of religious fanaticism
that one finds in all too many places on this planet and which gives
the name of religion the bad press that it has come to experience in

our time among other previous times in history.

Martin also referred to parochial views, views clearly outmoded,
counter-productive and militating against realistic and accurate
images of the Cause in the public mind. These images must be
reconfigured by public information programs in this new paradigm.
By the time I came to write this book in the years 2007 to 2011 this
reconfiguration was well underway. The several-decade long focus
in the public image, the public message, the very ethos of the
Bahai Faith, which had tended to preoccupy the Bahais with
conversion in one way or another was slipping away at last. It is not
the converting to a new religion that is now the emphasis in this
paradigm but, rather, the process, the provision of means to unlock
the secrets of the phenomenal world and bring about the Golden
Age of humanity. And that process is and will be long and complex.
Without the motivation of purpose to give meaning and usefulness
to our experiences of life, hope and happiness remain elusive.
Just as the Guardian had summoned the Bahais in the years
between WW1 and WW2 to reject a view of the Cause as a
movement, a fellowship and, even, as a religion in the familiar
sense, so too are the Bahais now being summoned to see the Faith
they belong to in quite different terms than was the case in the first
three decades after the election of the House of Justice in 1963 or
as was the case in the first six decades of the implementation of the
teaching Plans initiated in 1937(1937-1997). In virtually the entire
lives of most of the Bahais who are now members of the
international Bahai community that unavoidable parochialism
which had been part and parcel of the attitudes and values of the
Bahais themselves was slipping slowly but surely into a theological
and social dustbin. The very idea that the Bahai Faith once
possessed a narrow parochialism seems surprising in some ways
given the universalism and broad liberalism that is part of the very

ethos of this Faith. These parochial views Martin said, several years
before the emergence of this paradigm, must now be shed. During
the first 15 years of this paradigm shift this shedding is becoming
more and more apparent.
SHAHBAZ FATHEAZAM: GROWTH AND COMMUNITY IN
BAH THOUGHT
For many of the ideas which follow I want to thank Shahbaz
Fatheazam and his article Growth & Community in Bahai Thought:
The Organismic Metaphor. Fatheazam informs us of a good
example of this new inclusiveness and the integration of Bahai
methods, teachings and values back in 1992. He describes the
experience of some Japanese Bahs in the extension of the Bah
system of elections into the wider secular society. "The Bah
system of elections is too good to be monopolized by the
Bahs...Municipal organizations and citizens groups in this city
are experiencing terrible difficulties in electing their executive
councils...These organizations are easily caught up in the worst
forms of electioneering which split their members into opposing
camps...We felt that the Bah election system had much to offer
our fellow citizens: no nominating, no electioneering, secret
balloting, and valid ballots having to contain nine names." Various
groups, such as the local Businessmens Union and a senior citizens
organization, adopted the Bah proposal and experimented with
the idea. Aside from the one membership enrollment of an officer
of the Union currently serving on the local assembly, the initiative
has had the effect of discussing the Faith "very frankly with a large
number of people...while avoiding the anti-religious prejudices
which too often poison such exchanges... An unexpected byproduct of this approach has been that a significant number of local
politicians have been attracted to the Faith and some have sought to
join the Faith."

There is a danger inherent in simplistic applications of this new

paradigm and its normative guidelines for shaping practice. The
style of thinking suggested by the organismic metaphor that is so
frequently used by the Central Figures of this Faith shows that
people are not mere resources to be developed, but rather human
beings who are valued in themselves. They must be encouraged to
choose and shape their own future. Human society is composed not
of a mass of merely differentiated cells, but of associations of
individuals, each one of whom is endowed with intelligence and
will. Community growth and development in Bah thought is not
bound by the biological metaphor, but likened to it as a means of
understanding the intricate values and processes that govern
growth. A warning of following too rigidly the mechanical and/or
chemical instructions passed on by the body that holds the
component members together is given by Shoghi Effendi in the
following: "To dissociate the administrative principles of the Cause
from the purely spiritual and humanitarian teachings would be
tantamount to a mutilation of the body of the Cause, a separation
that can only result in the disentegration of its component parts, and
the extinction of the Faith itself." (Shoghi Effendi, The World
Order of Bahullh 5)
MORE ON INCLUSIVITY--GROWTH AND GLOBAL
CIVILIZATION<
The key forms of Bahai community experience, of the labour
involved in building Bahai institutions and communities in the
decades of my Bahai experience from the 1950s through to the
1990s; indeed, the processes and activities of the Bahai
community throughout the 20th century surrounded: the 19 Day
Feasts, Local Spiritual Assemblies and Bah' funds. Through these
and others forms of Bahai activity the Ark of God was erected on

Mount Carmel in the last years of that century. There was a beauty,
a music, in the architectural edifaces on Mt. Carmel. As the
German philosopher Friedrich Schelling once wrote:"Architecture
in general is frozen music." I rather liked this clever play on words
for there was a music at the Bahai World Centre for me as I went
through the first 15 years of this new paradigm. It was a new music
which had not been at the BWC in the years of the previous epochs
and paradigms.
All of the above, the essential organizational framework and
activity program that I had been engaged in constructing before
1996 was designed exclusively for Bahais. The new key agencies,
institutions and organisations Bahais are now building within this
new paradigm are not explicitly and exclusively for Bahais only.
In every dispensation," Shoghi Effendi writes elsewhere, "there
hath been the commandment of fellowship and love, but it was a
commandment limited to the community of those in mutual
agreement, not to the dissident foe. In this wondrous age, however,
praised be God, the commandments of God are not delimited, not
restricted to any one group of people, rather have all the friends
been commanded to show forth fellowship and love, consideration
and generosity and loving-kindness to every community on earth.
The embrace of the other, those outside the Cause, is a longstanding Baha virtue in a general sense. The systematic and deep
engagement of local Bah' communities with the world outside
their borders of place and of identity, is, however, relatively new to
a Bah' world that has spent the greater part of the last century
concentrating on the accumulation of individuals, families and
institutions within the banner of the Cause, and erecting and
maintaining at great personal cost a basic infrastructure of thinly
resourced administrative bodies: not having the luxury of looking
very much outside. As this outward looking, inclusive focus

deepens, the boundaries of Bah' identity soften, and what Bah's

call the "community of interest", become allies in this building of a
new civilization amidst the current, evidently tottering one. It is
thus not only Bah's who are empowered by the new culture of
Bah' community life to fashion the "systems, agencies and
organizations" of a new civilization.
Viewed in some ways this new, global and embryonic civilization
as well as this culture of learning and growth has been intertwined,
enmeshed, interconnected with the Bahai community since its
inception in the middle of the nineteenth century. It has been slow
in developing in some senses and in other senses it has developed
in leaps and bounds. Viewed from different perspectives this
growth and development has been momentous with prospects
which are quite dazzling. This has been the case all of my Bahai
life wherever I have lived. At Ridvn 2007 the House urged the
Bahai community to open up avenues to guide souls to the Ocean
of His Revelation and such an urging, such a tone and style of
writing, has been the case in many, if not most, of their statements
over these past five decades since the unique victory that the
Cause won in 1963 when the fully legitimate institutionalization
of that charismatic Force, what some sociologists call a
routinization of charisma, a charisma of office as opposed to a
prophetic charisma was completed. The potential significance of
the labours of the present-day Bahai community is and has been
breathtaking. Bahais are not merely building local Bah'
communities now in clusters and localities, but they are building
the basic units of a civilisation which Shoghi Effendi declares will
constitute the fairest fruit of the revelation of Bah'u'llh, and
signalise the advent of the promised golden age.
In a wider sense, as Shoghi Effendi wrote at the very start of what
may also have been considered a previous paradigm shift in the

1940s: The second century is destined to witness a tremendous

deployment and a notable consolidation of the forces working
towards the world-wide development of that Order, as well as the
first stirrings of that World Order, of which the present
Administrative System is at once the precursor, the nucleus and
pattern---an Order which, as it slowly crystallizes and radiates its
benign influence over the entire planet, will proclaim at once the
coming of age of the whole human race, as well as the maturity of
the Faith itself, the progenitor of that Order.(Messages to America:
1932-46, pp. 96-7; letter 15-JUN-46, "God Given Mandate")
GETTING BOGGED-DOWN IN PROCEDURAL ISSUES
The Universal House of Justice expressed the view, as they were
describing the operation of one of the key features of this new
paradigm, the cluster, that these clusters should discuss the
concepts of the culture of learning, of change and the paradigm
shift in Bahai community life. Consultations which take place in
the periodic cluster meetings, meetings instituted at the very start of
the Five Year Plan(2001-2006) and which are part of this new
culture of growth and learning, should generate a unity of thought
about the growth of the Faith.......maintain a high level of
enthusiasm and.....create a spirit of service and fellowship among
those present. Such discussions, they went on to say, in one of
their many letters should not become bogged down by undue
concern for procedural issues, but should focus on what can be
achieved and on the joy of witnessing the fruits of hard work and
diligent effort. This is easy to say but, for many groups, difficult to
achieve. I have watched this process of discussion now for decades
and what the House of Justice refers to here had been a perennial
and pervasive problem.
CASUISTRY

This tendency to get bogged down in casuistry, in definitions and

meanings of terms, is an oft-experienced problem both within and
without the Bahai community, both within academic circles and in
a host of other interest groups. Undue concern for minute detail, for
the machinery of administration and its channels and for the means,
the instruments of the process and not the ends is a danger all-toomany fall into as they go about all sorts of activities within the
Bahai Faith and this is no less true of this new paradigm of
learning. I do not want to contribute to this endless discussion of
terminological distinctions, this disease of words, this illness that
strikes at the heart of many a consultation on a myriad of issues,
but it is a problem that must be faced even if it is difficult to deal
with and solve. We need to be on our guard to protect ourselves
from the insidious affects of this casuistry on the consultative
process and on our very understanding of quite fundamental issues
in the Cause and, in particular, in relation to this new paradigm.
There is a paralysis, as one writer points out, which originates in
debates over the best method of teaching and arguments about the
success or failure of particular initiatives.
We need to be on our guard, too, less the new emphasis on the
institute process results in a limiting of other Bahai activities and
programs like: interfaith dialogue, deepenings, scholarship,
firesides and the many possible individual initiatives. The
individual believer, wrote the House of Justice,(17/2/04) "retains
the inescapable duty to teach the Faith on his or her own initiative."
There is much to be done; many avenues of activity and, to
reiterate a point yet again, not everyone needs to be doing the same
thing. Many of the activities in the Cause are tools not goals,
instruments for the achievement of ends, not the aims and ends in
themselves. Indeed the entire administrative apparatus is a means,
at this stage of the growth and development of the Cause, is but a

medium, an instrument for the prosecution of the teaching work. It

has always been thus and so shall it always be thus, at least as far as
most of our limited eyes can see in the first century or two of the
Formative Age. So it has often been argued by people like Ali
Nakhjavani(A Talk, 12/10/02).
PARTICIPATION--UNIVERSAL PARTICIPATION--EVERYONE
FINDS THEIR OWN NICHE
It is natural that any given educational program, involving
whatever resources and whatever format and wherever located, will
not appeal to everyone and that some Bahais will not wish to
participate in that program. That has always been the case.
Universal participation is and has been as elusive as its agreed on
definition. The House of Justice has recognized this reality and the
complexity of the concept. The very definition of universal
participation and of the variety of available methods of learning,
preferences for certain styles and approaches, have evolved with
the years. The House has consequently advised that the believers
not make their own evaluation and understanding of the new
programs and emphases a cause for disunity. We all can chose our
own method now and chose our own way of making a contribution
to the ongoing needs of the Cause. Universal participation is, at
least from my point of view, much more within the Bahai
community's grasp, its reach, than it has ever been in the past.
Participation, the House went on to say in this context in a recent
letter regarding the institute process, is not a requirement for every
Bahai, who, in the final analysis chooses the manner in which he
or she will serve the Faith. What is essential is that the institute
process be supported even by those who do not wish to take part in
it." "What is essential," they continued, "is that whatever the
personal efforts of individuals to teach and in whatever ways they

involve themselves in core and other activities that these

individuals should possess a sense of mission, a sense of
enthusiasm and the wisdom to know what to say and when to say
it." Education and participation, like the nature of deepening, has
many aspects and the House of Justice has often expatiated on
these terms and their meanings, some might say ad nauseam, over
their nearly fifty years at the apex of Bahai administration.
The print and electronic resources that have become available in
the Bahai community, especially in the resource-rich western
countries, in the years of this new paradigm have been exponential.
the process of this vast development began before 1996, indeed,
one can trace the development back to the opening message of the
Seven year Plan in April 1979. Films, videos, CDs, a plethora of
media productions that are ostensibly aimed at broader audiences,
live performances, and web contenthave high production values.
Newsletters have burgeoned. Unlike other media productions,
Bahai texts have been increased in both quantity and quality. They
have been produced, not primarily to induce conversion but instead
to strengthen the relationship between the believers and the
community. The newsletters, of course,are insider documents to
memorialize past triumphs and tribulations and also to provide
information on present objectives and obstacles. These texts help
readers to develop a collective identity or, to borrow political
philosopher Benedict Andersons term for a group that forms a
sense of unified purpose through self-recognition in print, an
imagined community.
For many Bahais in the years of this new paradigm, part of their
religious communicative tradition, especially in the third world,
involves public displays of emotional, verbal, performances which
often take place with great heights and depths of feeling, feelings
that often invoke great spiritual intimacies. It is part of the essence

of large groups activities and performances that they offer to the

participants a special enhancement of experience, bringing with it a
heightened intensity of communicative interaction which binds the
audience to the performer and to each other in a way that is specific
to performance as a mode of communication. Through these public
performances, the performer elicits the participative attention and
energy of his audience, and to the extent that they value his
performance they will allow themselves to be caught up in it. When
this happens, the performer gains a measure of prestige and control
over the audienceprestige because of the demonstrated
competence he has displayed, control because the determination of
the flow of the interaction is in his hands. In this new paradigm
there have been many conferences and public performances in
which this process has taken place.
Perhaps the most obvious, significant, and defining characteristic of
the approach to history in this new paradigm--and in paradigms
before--is the way it ascribes divine purpose to all historical
change. Bahais believe that God holds ultimate agency, nothing can
occur in contradiction to Gods plan, and it is their responsibility to
convey this message. This belief does not deny the importance of
human reason and will; however, it assigns to human agency an
auxiliary function: to apprehend, praise, and help realize Gods
designs, which is by faith perfect and incorruptible. The Bahai
community is a new evangelical community and writes its history
as a form of witness, describing its expansion as the result of
obedience to Gods instructions.
This evangelical, outwardly focussed, Bahai community that is
caught up in this new paradigm believes that secular models for
historical change erroneously focus on proximal, secondary causes
and that the divine source of all change will become clear to nonbelievers in retrospect, either after conversion or the end of their

lives. The prayers and the deeds of the believers, NOT the mayors
or prime ministers or presidents or presidents men or any other
political personalities, are the molders of history. This is because
human events are only a reflection or projection of activities
spawned, promoted, and propagated in the unseen worlds. The
emerging authority in heaven and in earth belongs to the new Bahai
institutions. Bahaullah has vested that authority in these new
institutions. this view is central to this new paradigm.
Decisions about what an individual should do in the context of this
new paradigm, though, must be made according to individual
circumstances and possibilities and the nature of the
populations with whom the Bahais interact. And again, the House
emphasizes that it is desirable that activities which give
expression to a diversity of talents become harmonized into one
forward movement, and that the stagnation caused by endless
debate over personal preferences about approach be avoided. In
this regard the House emphasized that it was most
noteworthy....that the spirit of initiative by believers had come to
extend over a very wide range of endeavours....But, again, it is only
too obvious that not everyone, everywhere is going to exemplify
that extension of the spirit of initiative. The Cause is, without
doubt, capable of helping us all understand ourselves; indeed, this
new paradigm is aimed at just this goal among other goals. But this
does not mean that this increase in understanding will result for all
believers, nor does it always mean an increase in the numbers of
believers. This is, by now, only too clear, at least in the short term.
The Cause is often relegated to some obscure and largely ignored
part of the lives of many Bahais. This is true in 2009 as it was true
in 1849, 160 years ago at the very start of the Bahai Era. Not
everyone will learn the required skills, acquire the necessary
attitudes and apply the appropriate tools inspite of Bahaullahs

command to immerse ourselves in the ocean of His words, inspite

of the best of institute programs and the most saintly conduct of
those implementing the Ruhi programs or, indeed, any other
program. This is only a simple note of practical realism. We all
must become pragmatists in todays world whatever our ideas and
ideals or we set ourselves up for loss, a sense of disappointment
and discouragement. Some things we can change, some we cant
and we all need to have the wisdom to know the difference.
Wisdom in this area is often in short supply.
The sense of misfortune and disappointment which more than forty
years of teaching the Cause in many places in the West with little
overt success may be diverted, assuaged or explained. But this is
not always easily done and, when done, it does not always result in
a new lease on life, renewed activity and heightened and more
robust teaching initiatives. Such discouragement often requires
more than the labour of thought and the inspiration of prayer and
meditation. The riches of history and the arts, of philosophy and
poetry, of biography and many of the social sciences and
humanities when applied to an understanding and interpretation of
these past decades can illumine the difficulties an individual or the
Bahai community has faced during these years---indeed, during all
of Bahai history and all of our own dear lives. Still, it is not
surprising that many of the believers, myself included from time to
time, have been worn down in the process. For others their wit was
sharpened and their resolve quickened. At this climacteric in
history, at this great turning point, at what may well be the greatest
and most aweful period in the history of the planet, to chose a
phrase from Edward Gibbon, it is not easy to make ones mark.
These days will pass more quickly than the twinkling of an eye the
House pointed out at Rivan 1999, in the month I retired from my
career as a full-time teacher. Millions are ill-equipped to interpret
the social commotion of our time; they sink deeper into a slough of

despond as they listen to the pundits of error; they are easily

entrapped and their visions are darkened. Bahais are not immune
from the phantoms of a wrongly informed imagination at this
portentious juncture in the history of the planet.
This Cause provides a bridge as sharp as a razor and it is suspended
over the gates of the Placeless by the master hand of Providence.
Many are called but few are chosen. This paradigm offers a call to
the many, a challenge to the souls of men. One of the many bridges
is to scientific perspectives like those represented by Fred Hoyle
when he writes that: "Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an
escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves.
Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as
to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then
that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a
sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with
people like me who say that this is illusory."(The Nature of the
Universe) This fundamental skepticism is a pervasive one in the
West as is its polar opposite, a religious fundamentalism. In these
decades of this new paradigm the Bahais will be acting as a bridge
between these two perspectives as well as other social and
intellectual polarizations that exist in our global society.
Having a certain number of believers complete a sequence of Ruhi
books is not a magic formula as the ITC pointed out in a letter to
Continental Counsellors as early as 28 November 2004. It is an
indicator that has to be viewed in the context of other propitious
conditions as well as the success at outreach and teaching already
achieved in the cluster. Doing the Ruhi books or responding to the
call for more direct teaching must not be distorted, as some have
noted, into trivialized notions that: (a) we are now all being called
to go door to door or (b) we are all being asked to become parrots
and give Anna's presentation anywhere and everywhere, or (c) the

Ruhi books only apply in the third world. As the House pointed out
in its Ridvan message of 2010 in relation to people who are first
contacted as a result of direct teaching: "whether the first contact
with newly found friends elicits an invitation for them to enrol in
the Bahai community or to participate in one of its activities is not
an overwhelming concern."
In a letter from the ITC wrote they wrote that in "C" and "B"
clusters emphasis is generally placed on individual initiative. The
role of the institutions is to encourage and facilitate the "spirit of
enterprise" that results in an ever-growing number of core
activities. As clusters develop, those individual initiatives often
become systematized in collective endeavours like forming
teaching teams or conducting invitation campaigns. This is
beginning to happen in many B clusters on their way to becoming
an A cluster. This has just happened in our cluster in northern
Tasmania. In "A" clusters where intensive programs of
growth(IPGs) are being launched, individual initiatives increase
further while the role of institutional planning becomes more
prominent in the overall design of the expansion and consolidation
activities. Naturally the institute process, the multiplication of core
activities, and the reflection meetings continue. The character of the
reflection meetings evolves and the collaboration among the
institutions intensifies. For more comments relevant here google:
"Intensive programs of growth>Inspiration for Bah' Teaching."
In the months leading up to the December 2008 regional
conferences the NSA of the USA reported that the bulk of service
related directly to the Five Year Plan was being undertaken by a
relatively small cadre of believers but, as the new Bah' culture
developed in the first years of its second decade, 2006 to 2015, this
small cadre was coalescing into a vast collective effort across the
planet.(Ridvan 2013) The number of individuals deployed in the

arena of action was not commensurate with the many thousands

who had received at least some training through participation in
institute courses. Of those who did engage in service, not all were
able to sustain their activities. In addition, the number of new
human resources being developed through the institute process was
beginning to flatten. I refer to this development in the USA in 2008
but this is only one of the 200 countries in the Bahai world and in
each country the picture is different. It is not possible in this book
to present even a general outline and certainly not a detailed
statement of what is happening across the Bahai world. For this
reason I draw on messages form national, regional and local Bahai
elected institutions as well as from many statements written by
Bahais on the appointed side of Bahai administration. Many
individuals are also commenting on this paradigm both on and off
the internet and I draw on this burgeoning mass of people when it
seems appropriate.
The 41 conferences around the Bahai world, announced on
20/10/'08 have become a story in themselves, as were the 95 youth
conferneces from May to October 2013. Those 95 conferences
brought to the process of growth a renewed vigor, as thousands of
believers pledged specific services within the context of the Plan.
They were designed to provide the opportunity for the friends to
gather together, as much to celebrate the feats already achieved
during the Plan as to deliberate on its current exigencies. These
conferences occurred between November 2008 and March 2009.
The 95 youth conferences, organized by the Universal House of
Justice, were designed as a series of regional conferences that
spanned the globe.
The Regional Councils and Auxiliary Boards lost no time following
those 41 conferences with various initiatives and programs. It has
now become clear, after more than two years since those historic

conferences, that in many clusters the resulting progress has been

dramatic. The true success of the conferences, one NSA reported,
must be measured not in weeks or months, but throughout the
remainder of the Plan, a Plan which ended in April 2011. The best
means of harnessing the energies created by these extraordinary
events, these great conferences, is to cultivate a culture of
accompaniment, whereby every believer receives loving and
continuing encouragement in his or her path of service. In some
places this is happening and in some places it is not. In an emerging
world religion like the Bahai Faith the pattern and the picture
across 200 countries and 6000 clusters is impossible to describe in
a book of this nature. And I do not try.
The obvious difference with these youth conferences is that they
are geared specifically toward youth in order to summon todays
youth to fully assume the responsibilities they must discharge in
the current plans of the global Bah community. So why
specifically for youth? Youth have always played an incredibly
important role in the history of the Faith. Many of the first people
who recognized Bahu'llh, and even gave their lives to promote
the teachings of the Faith, were in their late teens and early
twenties. Because of the central role that youth have played in the
Faith it is unsurprising that the Universal House of Justice has
dedicated these conferences specifically to youth, but, to my
knowledge, never before has the Universal House of Justice
organized such a global effort to provide opportunities for youth
specifically to gather together and reflect on their role in the
unfoldment of Bahu'llhs vision for humanity. In the words of
the Universal House of Justice: "To every generation of young
believers comes an opportunity to make a contribution to the
fortunes of humanity, unique to their time of life. For the present
generation, the moment has come to reflect, to commit, to steel
themselves for a life of service from which blessing will flow in

abundance.

The following is a list of locations for the youth conferences held in

2013:
Accra, Addis Ababa, Aguascalientes, Almaty, Antananarivo, Apia,
Atlanta, Auckland, Baku, Bangalore, Bangui, Bardiya, Battambang,
Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Boston, Brasilia, Bridgetown, Bukavu, Cali,
Canoas, Cartagena de Indias, Chennai, Chibombo, Chicago,
Chisinau, Cochabamba, Daidanaw, Dakar, Dallas, Danane, Dar es
Salaam, Dhaka, Dnipropetrovsk, Durham (United States),
Frankfurt, Guwahati, Helsinki, Istanbul (2), Jakarta, Johannesburg,
Kadugannawa, Kampala, Kananga, Karachi, Khujand, Kinshasa,
Kolkata, Kuching, Lae, Lima, London, Lubumbashi, Lucknow,
Macau, Madrid, Manila, Matunda Soy, Moscow, Mwinilunga,
Mzuzu, Nadi, Nairobi, New Delhi, Oakland,
Otavalo,Ouagadougou, Panchgani, Paris, Patna, Perth, Phoenix,
Port-au-Prince, Port Dickson, Port Moresby, Port-Vila, San Diego,
San Jose (Costa Rica), San Jose City (Philippines), San Salvador,
Santiago, Sapele, Sarh, Seberang Perai, South Tarawa, Sydney,
Tbilisi, Thyolo, Tirana, Toronto, Ulaanbaatar, Vancouver, Verona,
Yaounde.
GOOD OLD PETER KAHN
In a talk Peter Kahn gave in Toronto in August 2006, six years ago
now and before his recent death in 2011, he commented off the cuff
that if you dont want to participate in the core activities, its okay; youre
not being disobedient to the Cause. If your orientation is that you want to do
proclamation work or write poetry and thats all you want to do, God bless
you." What Bahais have to do is overcome the zealotry of people in the
community who are really enthused about this new direction. We do not want
to see those with the enthusiasm beat the drums, so to speak, to use these
new forms of activity as a club to beat others with. It is important that all

Bahais re-channel whatever penchant they have to pressure others into

pressure on their own dear selves. In some ways these enthusiasms are
natural and overly-zealous people have always been a test for the less
zealous. In the process of exerting pressure on others such people turn
encouragement into discouragement by laying what are often called
colloquially-'guilt-trips'-on those who don't want to do what others are doing.
It is not the intention of this new paradigm, this new institute process to
divide the community into those who have done the Ruhi program
those who have not, to develop a hierarchy, an elite; it is not the intention
that the Ruhi activities become a substitute for Bahai community life or,
indeed, provide a ladder to climb and thus attain some formal or informal
form of leadership. Each of us is not responsible for the whole community and
for what others do. We each are responsible for ourselves and for exercising
our responsibilities in our own ways. Having others tell us how we should
carry out these responsibilities doe not help. But, again, having others tell us
what they think we should do also seems to be part of Bah' community life.
It has been that way for me for nearly 60 years!

In yet another talk, this time on 3 July 2009, Peter Khan provided
the Bahai community with a very useful analysis of the Ridvan
2009 House of Justice Message and, in the process, a commentary
on the new Bahai culture. This talk can be googled and I
recommend that talk as a logical inclusion or extension of this
book. Much of what this wonderful teacher and administrator of the
Cause said in that talk some two years ago is found in this book and
much is not found here. Any bibliography on this new Bahai culture
would include that talk and readers of this book should keep in mind that
there is much that can be googled now if they want to learn about this
paradigm.
The core activities, Peter pointed out in yet another talk, have a certain basic
significance. The first is that they are a vehicle to avoid the dichotomy of the
active leader with the passive congregation that follows him. That problem
has never been solved in religious history. Every religion that we know about
has either started off or, after a fairly short time, settled down into the active
leader, who is on the edge of a nervous breakdown because he is so busy.
With him has been the passive congregation that is expected just to sit there
and do what it has been told. Bahullh has broken that dichotomy down to
create an active participating community of believers from which
administrators are elected or appointed for limited periods. We have a lot of
work to do to break down this tendency of Bah communities to fall into that
pattern of super-active individuals who either are exalted or who exalt

themselves, and the passive remainder who do what they're told and try not
to make too much trouble. We have to break that historic division down as our
teachings tell us it is not the right pattern. We have a lot of work to do to
absorb this new tendency into our very bones, to make this new form of
action an integral part of our functioning; it will take generations to do that.
Our core activities rest upon the fact that we do not have any leader or guru
who tells us what the words mean. We must now rely on the power of
personal initiative and/or group consultation and understanding in order to
develop for ourselves a deeper vision of what the Creative Word is about.

The core activities are a means of training us in the vital aspects of

Bah life. As we participate in the core activities we realize that
what we are doing is paying homage to the concept that humans
need spiritual food as well as material food. We are underlining the
supremacy of the Creative Word for understanding and devotion.
By the very act of our participating in core activities, we are
affirming that the Creative Word is supreme. We are recognizing
the legitimacy of individual understanding. If the study circle goes
well, each individual opinion is given a legitimate degree of
respect. We dont have people saying, Oh, thats stupid. You dont
know what youre talking about, or anything like that. We
emphasize the legitimacy of the sincere expression of personal
understanding. Through the mechanics of the operation of the core
activities we dont have authoritative individuals who acquire a
following; people dont hang on every word and say, Well, I
believe that to be true because I heard something he said and
therefore it must be right. We dont have any of that. Rather, the
Word is the authority. It gives us experience in consultation and in
forming a sense of community in the study circle, which is
generalizable then to the broader community.
Probably most important of all, the core activities are designed to
inculcate in us a culture of learning. That culture of learning is
fundamental to our religion because we are a religion of change.
The central body of our Cause, the Universal House of Justice, is

an institution committed to change, charged with the duty of

change by virtue of the statements in the Will and Testament of
Abdul-Bah, so intrinsically we are a religion of dynamic change
rather than seeking a static ideal condition. That philosophy of
change permeates all aspects of our religion, and change implies an
attitude of learning. If you believe you are learning, then you are
committed to continually changing and improving and developing,
which is fundamental to our religion.
As the House of Justice emphasized two years after what might be
said to be the earliest mention of this emerging paradigm in the
Ridvan message of 1988: "each person cannot do everything and
all persons cannot do the same thing." The Bahai community has
been forced, slowly but surely, to accept this reality in the last two
decades. But this sign of maturity in accepting that many will not
be taking part in what I take part in; indeed, many not only do not
want to take part in what I do, they often do not have the talent to
do what I do and vice versa: to each their own.
In the late 1980s and in the years leading up to 1996 the notion of a
paradigmatic shift, of the vocabulary of a Bahai paradigm became
more frequent. The fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, in the
year following the first mention of the term paradigm in a Ridvan
message from the House of Justice, was symbolic of what was
arguably the major paradigm shift in the socio-politcal landscape in
our post-WW2 age. In 1995 the English translation of Udo
Schaefer's book: Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of
a New Paradigm was published by Zero Palm Press in Prague.
Organizations and disciplines in the social and behavioural sciences
as well as the physical and biological sciences began to use the
term "paradigm" much more frequently than the term had been
used in the 1980s; indeed, in the years since the term was first
coined, so to speak, by Thomas Kuhn in 1962, the term was

increasingly used. In some ways, the time was right for the Bahai
community to bring the term into its organizational vocabulary.
The structure of LSAs, Groups and localities, committees, councils,
feasts, holy days, inter alia remains in place and is still at the heart
of the Bahai community. This paradigm shift is intended to enrich
the overall expression and diversity of Bahai community life not
replace what has been at the centre of community life for decades.
The guiding philosophy of this new paradigm has sometimes been
expressed as an integration of service activities with focused study
of the Bahai writings around a central core. This system allows
for the almost infinite development by various user communities of
branching sub-sets that serve particular needs.
In these early days, in what is now the early years of the second
decade of the implementation of this new paradigm, this new
process, this new system is still developing and its rich potential for
diversity of expression has yet to fully reveal itself. Some local
spiritual assemblies have felt that they were on the sidelines in this
new paradigm. In some clusters and regional areas there has been
tension between LSAs and ATCs. This is not surprising given the
extensive organizational and administrative shifts that have been
part and parcel of the overall paradigm shift in this new Bah'
culture. LSAs still have a central role to play. This hardly needs to
be said. One only needs to reread some of the essential, the core,
literature on LSAs to understand this. Along with the assemblies
distinct administrative functions, what has been added is the
responsibility to channel the communitys human resources into
needed areas and to become more of a loving parent to the
community, instead of a carpenter directing the human resources of
the community as if they are inanimate objects, as one noted Bahai
writer put it recently.

Spiritual development from a Bahai perspective has always

involved, always meant interaction with others. The Bahai Faith
has often been called 'the social religion' since the assumption is
made, indeed is repeated in the literature of its Central Figures,
over and over, that human development involves a growing
awareness of the collective or social self. Spiritual progress is seen
as almost entirely theoretical until learned and practised in a social
milieu and this assumption is put into yet another context in this
new paradigm. And we each have to decade to what extent we can
engage in this social milieux. To each their own. In this new
paradgim, it can not be stressed too often, there is a place for every
temperament, every person no matter what his or her index of
social enthusiasms and preferences, desire for solitude--indeed,
whatever their style of life.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CAUSE OFTEN NOT
GIVEN EMPHASIS
There has been much happening across the Bahai world since the
middle years of that fin de siecle decade of the twentieth century
when this new paradigm was being launched. Much that has
happened needs to be acknowledged as we all come to focus on the
new paradigm because there is much that has not been part of the
explicit framework of this paradigm. And again, much of these new
activities have not occurred ex nihilo.
In 1948 the Bahai International Community registered with the UN
as an international non-governmental organization (NGO) and in
1970 was granted consultative status (now called "special"
consultative status) with the UN Economic and Social
Council(ECOSOC). Consultative status with the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) followed in 1976, and with the UN
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in 1989. Working

relations with the World Health Organization (WHO) were also

established in 1989. Over the years, the Community has worked
closely with the UN Environment Program (UNEP), the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the UN
Development Program(UNDP).
The Bahai International Community has offices at the United
Nations in New York and Geneva and representations to United
Nations regional commissions and other offices in Addis Ababa,
Bangkok, Nairobi, Rome, Santiago, and Vienna. In recent years an
Office of the Environment and an Office for the Advancement of
Women were established as part of its United Nations Office.
An Office of Public Information, based at the Bahai World Centre
in Haifa and with a branch in Paris, disseminates information about
the Bahai Faith around the world and publishes a quarterly
newsletter, ONE COUNTRY. Distributed in English, French,
Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and German to readers in over 170
countries, ONE COUNTRY covers social and economic
development projects, relations with the United Nations system,
and global issues of interest to decision makers.
In the years before this new paradigm was initiated there had been
decades of Bahai work at the United Nations. In September 1994 a
document entitled "Comments on the Draft Declaration and Draft
Programme of Action for Social Development
(A/CONF.166/PC/L.13)" was presented at the second session of the
Preparatory Committee for the World Summit for Social
Development in New York, U.S.A. This is noteworthy in light of
the new paradigm that emerged in the Bahai community only two
years later. This new paradigm did not emerge ex nihilo or without
a wider context in the international and multi-cultural world that is

our emerging planetary civilization.

The dominant model of development in mostplaces on the planet

depends on a society of vigorous consumers of material goods. In
such a model, endlessly rising levels of consumption are cast as
indicators of progress and prosperity. This preoccupation with the
production and accumulation of material objects and comforts, as
sources of meaning, happiness and social acceptance, has
consolidated itself in the structures of power and information to the
exclusion of competing voices and paradigms. The unfettered
cultivation of needs and wants has led to a system fully dependent
on excessive consumption for a privileged few, while reinforcing
exclusion, poverty and inequality, for the majority. Each successive
global crisisbe it climate, energy, food, water, disease, financial
collapsehas revealed new dimensions of the exploitation and
oppression inherent in the current patterns of consumption and
production. Stark are the contrasts between the consumption of
luxuries and the cost of provision of basic needs: basic education
for all would cost $10 billion; yet $82 billion is spent annually on
cigarettes in the United States alone. The eradication of world
hunger would cost $30 billion[viii]; water and sanitation$10
billion. By comparison, the worlds military budget rose to $1.55
trillion in 2008.(See the May 2010 statement of the Bahai
International Community for more on this subject.
From a Bahai perspective a paradigm of development that seeks to
promote global prosperity must take into account both the spiritual
and material natures of the individual and society, while responding
to the increasing interdependence of the peoples and nations of the
planet. The Bah' Writings anticipate the emergence of a new
development paradigm as the regions of the world "unite to give
each other what is lacking. This union," we are assured, "will bring

about a true civilization, where the spiritual is expressed and

carried out in the material." The Bah' International Community
believes that the Declaration and Programme of Action can
contribute significantly to true social development for the 21st
century if they address both the material and the spiritual needs and
aspirations of the people of the world.
I will list below but a few of the developments at the international
level since the beginning of this new paradigm but not explicitly
part of its new culture of learning and growth. These developments
are not part of the advances in childrens classes, junior youth
programs, external affairs activities as well as the institutions of the
LSA, the NSA and both the elected and appointed arms of Bahai
administration operating as they do at the local, national and global
levels all of which extended their scope and depth during the first
fifteen years of this new paradigm. To outline all of these
developments would lead to an even greater prolixity than has
already come to characterize this book.
In 1997, for example, the Bahai International
Community(BIC)launched the Human Rights Education Initiative
with over 100 national affiliates worldwide to support the UN
Decade for Human Rights Education. In 1998 the BIC participated
in the World Banks World Faiths and Development Dialogue and
released a major statement titled, Valuing Spirituality in
Development: Initial Considerations Regarding the Creation of
Spiritually-Based Indicators for Development. That same year the
BIC participated in the World Conference on Human SettlementsHabitat II-in Istanbul, Turkey; the Turkish Bah' community
sponsored a campaign to promote the concept of world citizenship.
The BIC addressed the conference plenary with the statement
Sustainable Communities in an Integrating World. The BIC also
assisted with the establishment of over 30 national Bah' offices

and committees to promote the advancement of women.

In 1999 the BIC participated in the third Session of the Parliament
of the Worlds Religions in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2000 the
Bah' International Community representative, Mr. Techeste
Ahderom, served as co-chair of the NGO Millennium Forum and
addressed the Millennium Summit on behalf of the NGO
community.
In 2001 the BIC representative addressed the International
Consultative Conference on School Education in relation with
Freedom of Religion and Belief, Tolerance, and NonDiscrimination in Madrid. The BIC also published One Same
Substance: Building a Global Culture of Racial Unity for
distribution at the World Conference against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban,
South Africa.
In 2003 the BIC cosponsored the regional conference in India on
Education: The Right of Every Girl and Boy, with UNICEF,
UNESCO, and major international non-governmental
organizations. And in 2004 the BIC chaired the NGO Committee
on the Status of Women and facilitates the participation of over
2,500 NGO representatives at the Commission on the Status of
Women.
In 2005 the BIC Representative addressed the Conference on
Gender Mainstreaming and the Millennium Development Goals cosponsored by the Pakistani Prime Ministers office and the UN
Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Ms. Bani Dugal,
Principal Representative to the UN, spoke at the Annual Meeting of
the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on panels
dealing with global governance, gender equality, and values in

leadership. The BIC issued a statement on the right to freedom of

religion or belief titled, Freedom to Believe in response to the 2004
United Nations Development Programme Human Development
Report titled, Cultural Liberty in Todays Diverse World. The
statement served as the catalyst for a BIC-hosted Symposium with
His Excellency Piet de Klerk, Ambassador at Large for Human
Rights at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Asma
Jahangir, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief
and Ms. Felice Gaer, Director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for
the Advancement of Human Rights.
In the years 2006 to 2010 the BIC continued to build on more than
half a century of work at the United Nations. In May 2010 the BIC
contributed the following paper to the 18th Session of the United
Nations on Sustainable Development: "Rethinking Prosperity:
Forging Alternatives to a Culture of Consumerism." Serious readers
of the work of the Bah' International Community United Nations
Office should google that site and examine the many reports,
statements, papers and an assortment of presentations to many
conferences at the UN level. The new culture of learning and
growth is a multi-faceted paradigm with Bahais working in a range
of activities not highly or especially specific to the overall structure
of this new pattern in Bahai community life.
For the last 15 years the worldwide Bah' community has been
endeavoring systematically to effect a transformation among
individuals and communities around the worldto inspire and
build the capacity for service. The framework for action guiding
these activities has been rooted in a dynamic of learning
characterized by action, reflection, and consultation. In thousands
of communities, Bah's have set into motion neighborhood-level
processes that seek to empower individuals of all ages to recognize
and develop their spiritual capacities and to channel their collective

energies towards the betterment of their communities. Aware of the

aspirations of the children of the world and their need for spiritual
education, they have started childrens classes that focus on laying
the foundations of a noble and upright character. For youth aged
11-14, they have created a learning environment which helps them
to form their moral identity at this critical time in their life and to
develop skills which empower them to channel their constructive
and creative energies toward the betterment of their communities.
All are invited to take part in small groups of participatory learning
around core concepts and themes which encourage individuals to
become agents of change in their communities within a dynamic of
learning and an orientation towards service. Of course, this is not
happening in all the 120,000 localities where Bahais reside, but in
some 1500 communities a solid start has been made.
There are also a range of what you might call developments in the
creative and performing arts. If I was interested in compiling the
information and doing the research on the developments in the arts
in the Bahai community in the last 15 years a separate book would
have to be written. Film is a lot like the Bahai Faith. Film brings
together all the art forms. The Bahai Faith brings together all the
peoples and religions of the world. The two combine well and
Mithaq Kazimi, a young Bahai filmmaker and native of
Afghanistan, founded the Dawn Breakers International Film
Festival(DBIFF). DBIFF debuted in December 2008 at the 24th
annual Grand Canyon Bahai Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. The
public was invited to attend and some 600 people from around the
country participated in this two day event. In the coming year,
DBIFF plans to take its films on the road to several cities in the
United States and abroad. Bahais are also making films in the wider
culture. A full-length feature film, entitled "Serenades," was written
and directed by Mojgan Khadem, an Iranian-born Bahai from
Adelaide, South Australia. The film received a glowing review

ahead of its release in an industry publication, Screen International,

where critic Frank Hatherley described it as an international gem.
And there is much more, too much to include here.
The first significant success of the stand-up comedy career of Omid
Djalili was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was on the eve of this
new paradigm in 1995 with "Short, Fat Kebab Shop Owner's Son",
followed by "The Arab and the Jew" in 1996. In his act he claimed
to be the only Iranian comedian which, he said, was "three more
than Germany". His stand-up routines and jokes focus primarily on
multiculturalism and ethnic peculiarities. His hyperactive and
energetic manner of imitating accents, undercutting political
humour with absurd bellydances and singing has earned him a
significant worldwide following. Readers who would like to follow
his career in the years of this paradigm shift can get a telescopic
view at Wikipedia. There are other famous Bahais, celebrities,
people of renown from various fields and other outside this Cause
who have written statements of high praise endorsing this new
Faith and its teachings which I do not want to dwell on here. If
readers google the words "famous Bahais" they can get a list going
back to the earliest years of Bahai history and all the previous
paradigms.
There is so much happening in the print and electronic media:
Bahais on TV, on the radio, being interviewed in magazines, in
journals, writing in magazines and journals. Since 1996 there has
been a veritable explosion of Bahai activity across the creative and
performing arts in addition to what I have mentioned above. Just
google a few relevant terms/words and you will be more than a
little surprised. Of course, many of these developments come
outside the explicit scope of the new paradigm. But there is clearly
a new wind blowing as it was often said of the Cause back in the
1960s in the West.

As the Bah community has grown in the decades since I joined

back in the 1950s, I have seen many experts from numerous fields
become Bahs. I have also seen Bahs becoming experts. As
these experts have brought their knowledge and skill to the service
of the community and, even more, as they have contributed to their
various disciplines by bringing to bear upon them the light of the
Divine Teachings, problem after problem has been illumined. This
aspect of the growth of the Cause is often not given the emphasis
that it deserves, in part, due to the tendency of Bahais not to blow
their own horn, so to speak. The problems now disrupting society
in the decades ahead will be answered from the perspectives of the
Cause. The process often seems too slow for our instant coffee,
instant and immediate gratification society. But in the last 50 years
I have been amazed at this development within the Faith. In this
new paradigm this development that I have observed in the last half
century will continue to characterize the Bahai experience to an
even greater degree; I have little doubt. But, as I say, the processes
are complex and mysterious and everything in its own season.
Not all is in the hands of experts, though. The approach to
curriculum development in 1000s of Bahai communities for many
of the activities in Bahai life has been one of both design as well as
field testing and evaluation. The first step, often, in the writing of
any set of materials has been taken when experience emerges from
grassroots action in response to particular development needs.
Curriculum materials are continually refined in light of new
knowledge and insights. The cultural shifts taking place are evident
in the greater capacity to carry out collective action, to see oneself
as an agent of change in the community, as a humble learner, as an
active participant in the generation, diffusion and application of
knowledge. The continuous cycle of learning through action,
reflection and consultation has raised awareness of the needs and

resources across communities as well as strengthened the

mechanisms for collective action and deliberation. Again, as I say,
this is not happening everywhere in the immensely diverse tapestry
of the international Bahai community with some 17,000 elected
bodies and, as I say above, 120,000 localities where Bahais reside.
When a Bah' community is very small, and of the 16,000 clusters
in which the world-wide Bahai community is divided, most of them
are so small that much of the new paradigm can not be put in place,
into action. There is just not the men-on-the-ground, so to speak.
But the pattern exists, and as expansion takes place, the pattern is
simply--or not-so-simply replicated. The Bahai community I live in
with its four Bahais is an example of one of the infinite number of
experiments in Bahai commuity life. There is little that we can do
to implement the social teachings of the Faith beyond their impact
on the behavior of the four individual believers. Such a community
like my own with the resources in funds and manpower at its
disposal is but a drop in the ocean in comparison with the many
large agencies, governmental and private, which are engaged in
social improvement. When the Bah' community grows
sufficiently large, however, its activities can, must and do
proliferate and diversify.
This development is already taking place in many parts of the
world. In India, for example, the New Era School in Panchgani,
which has been developing remarkably for a number of years, is
closely associated with a rural development project in the villages
close by that is having dramatically favorable results in the life of
the villagers. In the province of Madhya Pradesh, where there are
hundreds of thousands of Bah's, the Rabbani School in Gwalior is
educating children from the villages of the area in the Teachings of
the Faith, in academic subjects and in agriculture, so that when they
return to their home villages, these pupils not only promote the

Faith but will influence their growth and development in every

way. In Ecuador the size of the Bah' community, scattered over
inaccessible terrain in the high Andes, made it both necessary and
possible some years ago to establish a Bah' radio station. "Radio
Bah'," as it is known, broadcasts not only about the Faith, but has
programs concerning health, agriculture, literacy and so on. It has
now become so well established and highly regarded that it has
been able to apply for and receive a Canadian Government grant
through C.I.D.A. to finance the development of certain social
service activities. Thus it can be seen that once the Bah'
community attains a certain stature it is able to work in fruitful
collaboration with non-Bah' agencies in its social activities.
DEEPENING PROGRAMS AND THE RUHI INSTITUTE: A
COMMENT
I have seen many a formal deepening program since my first
association with the Cause in the 1950s and I have drawn on just
about every one of them that has been circulated in North America
and Australia in the last several decades at least those in the West
and in English. The Ruhi program, the Ruhi Institute, is only one of
many new institute programs that I am confident will evolve in the
decades head. Right now it is the major institute program out and
about in the community. It is an indispensable engine that drives
the new paradigm forward. But, more importantly in some ways, it
is the enthusiasm, effectiveness and devotion, the wisdom and
understanding, with which the teaching work is carried out, not so
much the method. It is the capacity of individual believers to
demonstrate those spiritual capacities and virtues in interaction
that, in the end, obtains the quantitative results desired. For this
paradigm is, if nothing else, a simple or not-so-simple extension of
the workshop that is the Bahai community, a workshop for
individual aspirants to human spiritualization to advance

civilization itself.
Deepening programs have been around for decades, indeed, one
could argue, for over a century and a half. But the institute process,
centred as it is on a structure and on several roles, on the Ruhi
Institute curriculum and on study circles, on boards and
coordinators as well as on tutors and systematic training is a
different ball-game, as they say, to the old deepening programs
which still exist in many places especially small ones like the one I
live in. After perhaps thirty to forty years of the use of the term
'institute,' and at least thirty years of the existence of the Ruhi
Institute in different forms, the decision of many National
Assemblies around the Bahai world to make Ruhi courses the core
program of Training Institutes, yet another term that is part of this
new paradigm and a term with its own timeline, has resulted, in just
this last 15 years(1996-2010), in bringing the word 'institute' into a
much sharper focus than was the case as far back as I can
remember.
Jenabe Caldwell and others first used the term institute in the 1970s
and by the early 1990s the story of the institute process within a
Ruhi Institute framework could be read in a publication entitled:
Learning About Growth: The Story of the Ruhi Institute and Largescale Expansion of the Bah' Faith in Colombia (Riviera Beach:
Palabra Publications, 1991). Jenabe Caldwells story in From Night
to Knight(1995, New Delhi, India) is also the story of the
transformation of one man from spiritual timidity into a great
pioneer. This is a tangential aspect of the topic under discussion
here, but I would like to add some thoughts on the subject of the
pioneer before passing on to other aspects of this new paradigm. I
make these remarks due to the important role that the pioneer has
had in the first 15 years of this new paradigm and will have in the
decades ahead.

In the American cultural mythology, the cowboy stands firm as a

unique representation of America her people, her spaces, her
cultural belief that America is a land of the essential American
soulan isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring
man."( See:Jennifer Moskowitz, "The Cultural Myth of the
Cowboy, or,How the West Was Won," Americana: The Journal of
American Popular Culture (1900-present), Spring 2006, Volume 5,
Issue No.1) While the phrase is problematic, the figure of the
cowboy offers a myth that seems to substantiate the ideology
behind it which is certainly capitalist. In order to further capitalism
as the dominant ideology, the country needed to cultivate an
idealized self-image characterized by the individual, self-reliant,
transient qualities of the western hero, no matter that upon further
study the cowboy is not necessarily any of those things. The myth
prevails and masks the violence of the West, class and racial unrest
in America, and capitalisms control over American culture.
William Bevis contends that capitalist democracy seems to many a
natural yoking, and usually implies more, a modern industrial
capitalist democracy wed to progress, as if economic liquidity were
necessarily linked to political freedom, social mobility, and
individualism.(ibid) Placing Bevis contention in the late
nineteenth/turn of the century post-Civil War framework, then,
undergirds the importance of the archetype of the western hero, an
archetype which perseveres in contemporary American culture.
America aspired to be unified, powerful, industrial, and capitalist,
and Americans desired power and success. Therefore, if the western
hero held the traits of individualism, self-reliance, and permanence,
and if the future of the United States was to be finalized in the
West, then Americans would revere the perceived capitalist
tendencies of the western hero who managed to embody the desired
image of nation for all Americans. Thus it is in the literature that

the knight and the cowboy become romanticized archetypes

furthering the dominant ideology through their hegemonic
representations. And it is in western American literature that we
paradoxically draw on and deny the medieval knight as we
construct his mythsake, the uniquely American cowboy.
I make mention of this cowboy image because, it seems to me, that
the pioneer image in the Bahai community has had and will have a
similar function. I do not think that the image will become
hegemonic, though; the role and importance of the pioneer has
become softened in recent years. Still he or she is going to be an
important feature of the Bahai cultural landscape and this new
paradigm in the decades to come if the great spaces on the globe
where there are no Bahais are to be filled up in cluster after cluster.
Deep in the national mythos of the cultures in which I have lived:
North America and Australia--is the glorified figure of the loner:
the farmer, the cowboy, backwoodsman, gold miner, or some other
adventurer who lives by wit and grit a step from the frontier,
needing no organized religion or government to show him the way.
In some ways the pioneer which I have now been for more than
fifty years partakes of some of this mythos. At the same time,
though, pioneers struggle, as the decades of his or her experience
lengthen, to define themselves geographically, culturally and in a
non-partisan political sense. In so doing they assert some degree of
communal identity. The Bahai ethos, its history and teachings are
crucial in this regard. In the new culture of learning and growth the
pioneer will both contribute to and be aided by the many programs
and the inherent dynamics of this new paradigm in which his life is
embedded.
The Bahai community, one of the lives within it like my own and
all of the accompanying ideals and activities do not occur either
naturally or by accident. They are framed by design when a writer

like myself goes to put that design, that story, on paper with
description and analysis. An international organization like the
Bahai Faith requires some sense of congruence between its
international system, its paradigmatic features and the social and
cultural structures which are part of it if the account of its internal
life and external relationships is to hang together. If an international
movement is to exist an internationalist sentiment is required. Such
a sentiment exists when a feeling of anger is aroused by the
violation of internationalist principles, or when a feeling of
satisfaction is aroused by their fulfillment.
To put what I am trying to say in the words of the social critic
Raymond William, an international organization requires certain
hegemonic figures. In western history the knight and the cowboy
were such figures. In the international Bahai community the
pioneer is such a hegemonic cultural figure. The pioneer provides
the Bahai community with an organizational force, a person and an
activity which connects otherwise separated and even disparate
meanings, values and practices. The knight, the cowboy and the
pioneer are archetypes. The pioneer evokes part of the image of
what the international Bahai community should be. The term
appeals to disparate parts of the community, parts that are required
if the Bahai community is to extend itself to every section of the
globe in the decades ahead.
The stories of the knights were essential to defining England as a
nation in the late middle ages. Painted as romantic purveyors of
right, upholding chivalric ideals, and commencing on exciting,
colorful quests, the knights appealed to all, aristocrat, merchant,
and peasant alike. The timing of the overwhelming popularity of
the knights tales strongly suggests that these tales, and more
specifically, the knights depicted in them, provided England with a
central icon around which to establish identity as a nation. The

pioneer in the last eight decades and even more so in the next
several decades has been, is and will be essential in propelling the
Bahai community into the international arena so that every cluster
on earth is inhabited by Bahais and especially the approximately
10,000 existing clusters in which there are at present no Bahais.
In the attempts of the Ruhi Institute process to integrate religious
conviction and practice with concern for material advancement in
some places and service activities in most others, Bah's find
often, but not always, unique solutions to problematic issues in
development and community participation. For Bah's, the
essential goal of any development or service undertaking is the
implementation of Bah'u'llh's instructions regarding the creation
of a united world. Projects are sustainable when they harmonize the
inner need of human beings to understand their true reality with
their outer needs for sustenance, shelter, and support. The Bahai
community is slowly becoming more adept at accommodating a
wide range of actions without losing concentration on the primary
objectives of teaching, objectives we have always had with us:
expansion and consolidation. Much of the philosophy, the ethics,
the psychology and sociology of the Ruhi process and the hundreds
of development projects in the last three decades are written about
elsewhere and it is not my purpose here in this book to expatiate on
these aspects of the institute process as they have developed around
the Bahai world, except to a limited extent in this overall statement
which is attempting to provide some kind of synthesis of views and
ideas, concepts and notions regarding this new paradigm.
The institute process, although not an entirely new term, then, is
certainly one that has been given an elaboration and definition in
the last dozen years, a more detailed and focussed framework for
action for the international Bahai community. It is a framework,
initially designed by the International Teaching Centre after some

three decades of the Bahai community's use of some of the institute

nomenclature going back, at least in my memory, to Jenabe
Caldwell in the 1960s if my memory serves me well. The institute
process is a critical, a crucial, some might say, the centrepiece of
the new paradigm. Three documents were central to the initial
definition and elaboration of this international institute process, a
process that deals with teaching and consolidation on the one hand
and service and community building on the other. These three
documents were each prepared by the International Teaching
Centre and published in: April 1998, February 2000 and April
2003. They say a great deal about the institute process, a great deal
that was just not present in the Bahai world before the late 1990s-and readers are advised to begin with these documents if they want
to read about the initial description, the initial elaboration and
outline of the details of this paradigm that I leave out here in this
discussion.
Let me close this section with an excerpt from a talk by Universal
House of Justice member Dr. Payman Mohajer. Dr. P. Mohajer
encouraged the participants at a seminar held in Haifa in mid-2009
to reexamine the Ruhi Institute books from a society-wide, socialaction, perspective. He suggested that we reflect on how the
concepts embedded in this Ruhi-institute-educational program
could be used for social action and not just for the sake of
expansion and consolidation. The very first quotation in Ruhi Book
1, Dr. Mohajer emphasized, talks about the betterment of the world
through pure and goodly deeds. We need to remind ourselves, in
this context, that the reason for becoming more truthful is just as
much to contribute to a better society as it is for the sake of our
own spiritual progress. It is clear that we need to imbue institute
participants, those engaged in our core activities, with a vision of
social transformation as well as personal transformation. If
someone were to ask us, Dr. Mohajer concluded, whether the

purpose of our inviting them to join study circles is to make them

Bahais we can confidently say 'no' and tell them that the purpose of
our core activities is to assist in the transformation and betterment
of society. Indeed, the House cautions the Bahai community that
the nature and purpose of social action "is not to be judged by the
ability to bring enrolments." it also cautions the Bahais against
"projecting an air of triumphalism."
NOT AN "US AND THEM" PICTURE IN THIS NEW
PARADIGM
Mohajer's comments here echo the words of Douglas Martin, the
former director general of the Bahai World Centre Office of Public
Information, from a talk he gave in April 1992. Martin said at that
time, in the years immediately preceding the initiation of this new
paradigm that the Bahai community had not yet "been able to
escape a certain connotation of exclusivity. Such a connotation, he
went on to say, had inevitably arisen from the efforts of the Bahai
community in the teaching field and the Bahai communitys
consequent preoccupation with conversion and membership as well
as the intrusion, like some necessary reflex action and its
accompanying impulse, of an us and them mentality. Conversion
to a new religion is not the focus in this new paradigm, as I have
pointed out elsewhere in this book; it is, rather, the provision of th
emeans to bring about the Golden Age of humanity. The focus in
this process is on meaning and purpose to give hope and happiness
to everyday life.
The culture of learning, the paradigm shift, that the Bahai
community has been engaged in since the mid-1990s, and which
had been initially intimated by Martin, among other intimations in
the late 1980s and early 1990s that I have referred to above,
involves a heroic effort to shed a number of previous and now quite

inappropriate views in the Bahai community. This shedding of old,

now archaic views, it seems to me, is all part of this paradigm shift.
The process of spiritual development is essentially a solitary
pursuit....it is a process of refining ones character, of cultivating
the practice of prayer, meditation and regular reading of the sacred
Texts." These solitary activities are, by their very nature, things
done in the privacy of ones chamber, so to speak. This has always
been the case. This is not to say, of course, that these activities can
not be done in groups, again, as they always have been done, as the
option has always been present, coextensive with the private
aspects of the spiritual life for the Bahai. The process of learning,
like the spiritual life, is also and inevitably both an individual
exercise and a group experience in one of several of their many and
various forms. It is also something that requires an effort. Selfeducation and self-motivation, independent of group processes goes
hand-in-hand with formal and informal education if an individual is
ever to make any significant advancement in their life. In this new
paradigm, individuals can chose to weigh their learning on the side
of an individualistic approach or a group approach or some
combination of both. All of this is, in the end, left to the individual.
Whatever enterprize one engages in as a result of personal initiative
or as a result of engagement in some group activity like an institute
or a devotional meeting, a study circle or a cluster meeting, one
needs to purge ones heart and motives, otherwise, as Shoghi
Effendi emphasized as far back as 1923, it may "be futile to engage
in any form of enterprize." Over the years of his ministry, the
Guardian emphasized many other factors that determined success.
A thorough study of his writings will often explain why it is that
particular activities lack the success we would wish them to have
and why it is that gradually, gradually and little by little is the
nature of the process in which we are all engaged. It must be
recognized that there are often numerous stages that need to be

traversed before the desired goals are achieved.

If the Ruhi program promotes one way of reading Scripture, a way
that focuses on a plain, outward and acontextualized understanding
of a quotation, a quotation without any historical or major literary
context, this does not need to be seen as an undermining of other
approaches to interpretation, approaches which promote a
multiplicity, a variety or just one or two other methods. Scripture
can be read and studied in a multitude of ways and there has
grown-up, in the last several decades, a fine literature for Bahais to
draw on in their pursuit of these approaches. The field of literary
studies, the study of literature, now has much to assist any serious
student in the study of the writings of this Faith should he or she
wish to go beyond what is often some simple, superficial and
simplistic approach. Of course, not everyone is that serious and not
everyone has the time of inclination. We are all left to our own
approach, our own method and, in this new culture of learning, any
one of many specific forms and practices in groups and on ones
own.
Some Bahais devote their lives to the study of the writings of their
Faith and some only give this study very little time and effort.
There is no formula, no A to Z method, no just-follow-this and you
will come out on top approach. As I say, just to emphasize a point
and parenthetically: there is now an extensive, a massive, literature
in the field of literary studies that is useful should Bahais wish to
make use of it to illumine their understanding of the extensive
literature of this new world Faith. This new culture of learning is,
among other things, bringing new awarenesses of the many
approaches to learning and interpretation; and it is already
beginning to result in a growing confidence and commitment of
the believers which has been reflected in the thrust of individual
initiatives, a thrust which is gathering momentum. There is, as I

indicated above, a much richer expression of the diverse talents of

the friends, an expression which is beginning to appear in the
Bahai Worlda richness that bodes well for the future progress of
the Cause. Of course, this richer expression, this deepened study
and commitment to learning does not and will not take place
everywhere and with everyone across the thousands of Bahai
communities and the many millions of Bahais on the planet. This
point hardly needs making but, surprisingly, such an obvious point
is often missed as discussions seem to assume that either progress
is being made everywhere and on all fronts or, if the person is of a
more pessimistic and skeptical turn of mind he only sees
inadequacy and weakness, lack of commitment and failure to
deepen everywhere confirming, in the process, his pessimistic
skepticism. Perception and focus is often the mother of invention,
the mother of not only ones cosmology but also ones view of the
Faith to which one belongs.
STATISTICS YET AGAIN AND BAHAI BEST PRACTICE
That this richness and diversity will not appear in all 120,000
localities where Bahais reside, among all the more than 2000
indigenous tribes, races and ethnic groups, the 20,000 LSA areas
and the now 16,000 clusters that cover the planet, as I say, should
not be expected. In the early 1950s when my mother joined the
Bahai Faith there were less than 1000 LSAs and some 3000
localities. One could argue, as I have done in this book, that there
has been exponential growth. But the issue is far from simple and
too complex to deal with in the framework of this book. The Bahai
Faith should not be measured by its weakest links. There is a range
of statistics that I could draw on to paint a very discouraging
picture of the experience of the Cause in the West and in many
places in the third world. But as the sociologist Will can den
Hoonaard points out in the last paragraph of his illuminating study

of the first fifty years of Bahai history in Canada, what happens at

the local level in Bahai community life is not the major or the sole
measuring rod for the quality of the international Bahai community
or the quantity of its global membership. The term best practice, the
belief and the associated activity in which there is a method, a
process, an incentive or a reward that is more effective at delivering
a particular outcome. A given best practice is only applicable to
particular condition or circumstance and may have to be modified
or adapted for similar circumstances in other locations. In addition,
a "best" practice can evolve to become better as improvements are
discovered. As the term has become more popular, some
organizations have begun using the term "best practices" to refer to
what are in fact merely rules or frameworks, organizational
constructs, which cause a linguistic drift from previous patterns.
Documenting and charting these procedures and practices is a
complicated and time-consuming process often skipped by secular
and religious organizations even though they may practice the
proper processes consistently.
Naturally enough in the thousands of Bahai communities where the
numbers are very small, say less than a dozen of so, with great
distances to travel between localities, much of this new paradigm
goes by the wayside or, when implemented, may not be able to
follow the core sequences of activities to the letter. After 32 years
of teaching in classrooms and another 18 as a student, I am more
than a little aware of the need for immense flexibility when one is
involved in the teaching process and in the evaluation of programs.
This is true both in the Faith in and out of the institute process and
in classrooms in the wider society. Statistics, while a valuable tool,
do not tell the whole story in either ones private life or in the public
domain. They are a complex, a subtle, often misleading but
necessary entity in any pursuit with pretensions to being scientific.

In some ways the institute process is a type of best practice, a

template, to standardize a process and its documentation. The term
best practices has implications of finality, obedience, authority and
universality. The term also implies that some source has the final
answer to a matter in dispute or disarray. The matter is closed,
decided, set and resolved. The term "better practices" seems to seek
better ways, which may even lead to tweaking the suggested
practice to make it even better. It suggests that all of us together can
come up with something better than any one of us can arrive at
individually, and places authority in the community. The term often
implies that the better practice is not universal, but depends on the
specific situation.
Bahai localities, the innumerable small registered and unregistered
groups across the planet, one in which I live myself here in
northern Tasmania, are part of an endless, infinite series of
experiments at the local, national and international levels, part of a
global model, a global effort to realize Bahaullahs vision of
humankinds oneness. Of course, the Bahai Cause and its
paradigms, this immense experiment, is and has often been
measured by critics who focus on a plethora of negative factors:
(i)the words and deeds of mortal men, (ii) the behaviour of
individuals and communities, (iii) declining numbers or static
enrolments (iv) the slow development of the Cause in many a town,
city and region, indeed (v) one can now find a list of factors as long
as your proverbial arm posted on the internet by the cynical,
disillusioned, negative and critical people who expatiate on these
factors and these several criteria. Those who come across the
internet sites which dwell on these negative factors might wonder
what they have stumbled across and, as has happened to many
seekers across the planet I have little doubt, they have stopped their
search and gone elsewhere. I am often left wondering if such critics
are describing the same Faith as the one to which I belong. There is

much in the Bahai community to criticize; indeed, there is much in

the lives of everyone and anyone to criticize should one want to
focus on weaknesses and human deficiencies.
I will site two quotations from many possible ones, which underlie
a best practice which has always been in place in the Bahai
community at least since the Guardian institutionalized the
charismatic Force that initiated this whole process in the middle of
the 19th century. It is a best practice which had already been stated,
put in place, by the Faith's Central Figures Who had done the
preliminary work for this new administrative order in the years
1844 to 1921. The first quotation I will draw on was written, as far
as I know, in 1921, in the first year in which Shoghi Effendi was
the Guardian:
Not by the force of numbers, not by the mere exposition of a set of
new and noble principles, not by an organized campaign of
teaching - no matter how worldwide and elaborate in its character not even by the staunchness of our faith or the exaltation of our
enthusiasm, can we ultimately hope to vindicate in the eyes of a
critical and sceptical age the supreme claim of the Abha
Revelation. One thing and only one thing will unfailingly and alone
secure the undoubted triumph of this sacred Cause, namely, the
extent to which our own inner life and private character mirror
forth in their manifold aspects the splendor of those eternal
principles proclaimed by Bahaullah.(Shoghi Effendi, Bahai
Administration, p.66).
The second quotation underlining what might be called a view, an
underpinning, of Bahai best practice in this and all Bahai
paradigms is the first paragraph of Bahaullahs Book of Certitude:
The essence of these words is this: they that tread the path of faith,

they that thirst for the wine of certitude, must cleanse themselves of
all that is earthly - their ears from idle talk, their minds from vain
imaginings, their hearts from worldly affections, their eyes from
that which perisheth. They should put their trust in God, and,
holding fast unto Him, follow in His way. Then will they be made
worthy of the effulgent glories of the sun of divine knowledge and
understanding, and become the recipients of a grace that is infinite
and unseen, inasmuch as man can never hope to attain unto the
knowledge of the All-Glorious, can never quaff from the stream of
divine knowledge and wisdom, can never enter the abode of
immortality, nor partake of the cup of divine nearness and favour,
unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal
men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of
God and His Prophets(Bahaullah: The Kitab-i-Iqan, pp.3-4).
George Orwell put the same idea a little differently: "As with the
Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its
adherents.(The Road to Wigan Pier) This idea needs to be kept
firmly in place by those millions who will become attracted to this
Faith in the years of this new paradigm. George Orwell also had
another idea which is useful to keep in mind as this new paradigm
increasingly manifests itself across the planet. "In a society in
which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter
of behaviour is public opinion, wrote Orwell, "But public opinion,
because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious
animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human
beings are governed by "thou shalt not," the individual can practice
a certain amount of eccentricity; but when human beings are
supposedly governed by love or reason they are under continuous
pressure to behave exactly the same way as everyone else."(Politics
vs. Literature)And finally and to continue in the same vein I will
draw on the French sociologist Gustave Le Bon who wrote that:
"One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their

intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men
dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept
it."(Opinions And Beliefs)
Let there be no mistake. The Bahai paradigm is aimed at increasing
the number of adherents across the globe in every cluster &
locality. But the process is little by little and day by day, not by
force, but by the inner life and private character of individuals
within the framework of a new world order. This new world order
is described in the Bahai writings in many places and it is not the
purpose of this book to outline the character and the detailed
framwork of its operation. This book is about the process of
winning the hearts and minds of the people of the world in this new
community building narrative which began, as this book
emphasizes, in 1996.
NO SURPRISES ANY MORE
After fifty years of listening and talking as well as watching and
analysing the teaching process both in the Bahai community and in
the secular world, I don't get surprised to anything like the same
extent as I once did in my younger years by the failings and
inadequacies of my fellow Bahais, of those in the wider world or, I
might add, of my own self whom I have come to know so well in
all its weakness and deficiency. Destructive and negative forces can
and do enter Bahai community life and our own quotidian
experience so very easily. The world is tired of words and yearns
for human example, for models, for excellence and with new
people coming into the Cause all the time existing side by side with
veterans who are often worn-out and tired, words is often many of
the believers--old and new--have. This, of course, is itself a
somewhat harsh and pessimistic view, but it contains some truth as
many who read this book I'm sure will testify.

PROGRAMS--PRINCIPLES--REALITIES
Living up to principles is no easy task even within the context of
new paradigms. This has always been the case and, in all
likelihood, always will be; for this life is a world of contradictions,
paradoxes and immense complexity, human inadequacy and sin--to
use a word with old currency. But, as Bahaullah emphasizes so
often, one must cease to regard the words and deeds of mortals as
signs of true religion and the recognition of God and His prophets
or as signs, it might be added, of the progress of this new paradigm.
Adjusting principles to the reality, the lesson, of facts is no easy
matter, especially when the fires of enthusiasm and dedication are
burning in the breast and hoped for results are not forthcoming or,
as is often the case, the hoped for results bring more problems than
were originally anticipated or that can now be coped with without
much renewed effort and commitment.
If the expression of the diverse talents of individuals and if the
number of believers completing the Ruhi books has increased, but
this has not led to increased enrolments; if the mobilizing of
Bahais to do anything often attracts non-Bahais thus making what
some might call the non-specific aims and aspects of the study
circles that are working and not their specific aspects; if some
Bahs do not want to take part in the Ruhi-institute programs; if
some of the believers see this new paradigm as some uniform
system imposed coercively from the top-down on each and every
believer for each and every seeker no matter what their
background; if some believers see non-participation as a form of
covenant breaking; if an apparent lack of success of this new
program is placed at the door of the familiar phrase or the notion

that: it has not been implemented properly;" if the presence of

covenant-breakers on the internet is giving that old and tiresome
group whose numbers have always been negligible a public space
far out of proportion to that paucity of numbers; if in implementing
the core sequence of Ruhi books presents unanticipated problems
that make their very implementation a difficulty or a process that
raises new, unforeseen problems-these are just some of the tests
and issues, questions and criticisms, that such a work in progress in
the Bahai community must deal with. Community activities and
individual initiative are always confronted by new struggles and
difficulties for each and everyone of us. This has always been the
case and I would suggest this problem, these problems or variations
of them, will be with us for decades if not centuries in some form
or another as this new Faith grows in proportions and numbers that
we can barely envisage at the present time. Problems and
difficulties, like itches that must be scratched or endured or both-will always be with us.
NEW ENGINES OF INITIATIVE
The engine of initiative and group activity must always be ready to
adapt if it is to result in the many forms of successful engagement
in Bahai activity and in efforts to promote the Cause. Until this new
paradigm LSAs and Groups among other collectivities were the
focus of the need for adaptation. In this new paradigm, the Bahai
community now has clusters and study circles, institutes and direct
teaching processes among other activities and collectivities to do
the adapting. And adapting is not always simple and easy. It often
beats the best of us. Failure, the inability to adapt, to alter, method
and approach, habit and lifestyle, it must always be remembered, is
one of our best teachers--perhaps our best. But we do not always
learn from failure even when it brings fear as it often does. We are
often fixed in our temperaments, our lifestyles, our personalities,

our community group-styles and complexions, if you like.

TESTS AND INACTIVE BELIEVERS
Abdul-Baha informs us that the test comes again and again in more
severe forms until we learn. One of these tests is the simple lack of
growth, stasis, dealing with the same people, the same problems
year after year until our spirits are numb and we want to escape.
The inactive believer is one of these results and people on the
enrolments lists who have no phone numbers, addresses or contact
point of any form. There is always something on the plate of
Bahais, some criticisms, some difficulties, that must be dealt with
and answered from within and without the community itself. This
is a reality of community life and it has been the case right back to
the year dot in 1844 as well as in 1826 and in 1793 when Shaykh
Ahmad left home in those precursor years that prepared the way for
the Babis. And difficulties will be on our plates, so to speak, in the
decades and centuries ahead.
This religion attaches much importance to freedom and personal
initiative, as I have said above, and if there are some Bahais who
do not want to take part in some activity, they are free to do so in
the same way they are free to fast and to pray or not to fast or pray.
Compulsion is in so many ways contrary to the very spirit of the
Cause; penalties are not imposed on those who do not take part in
various aspects of Bahai activity, however central that activity is to
the development of the Cause. But personal grievances arise which
are difficult for members of the community to forgive and forget.
So much of our society is disillusioned and cynical and living
example in community or in an individual form that counters the
world's dark forces is no mean achievement. The work of this
Cause has always involved imperfections in ourselves and others.
And the struggle is ever-present.

TEACHING THE CAUSE IS LIKE FISHING

The following brief essay draws a parallel between fishing and
teaching the Cause.....Having been a fisherman for years, Id like to
comment on what drives a man to go fishing. First, fishermen are
all different. I dont really care if I catch a fish any more. But I do
want to enjoy the experience. I fish for pleasure; if the fish are
biting, well and good; if not, thats okay too. Id be the first to
admit that Im not that successful. If you define successful fishing
in terms of how many fish are caught, Id be a failure, at least for
the last 50 years. I could tell you some whoppers about the old days
when we caught lots of fish. I havent caught a fish in years. But I
still go fishing every day. I find it a little hard to get going in the
morning after all these years, but once Im out and about I still get
excited about the process of fishing.
My friends cant really understand why Im so excited about fishing. But I wear
my enthusiasm softly; I go about my work quietly without a lot of song and
dance; I carry my candle lightly; the flame, I trust, warms those with whom it
comes in contact. I enjoy the bright sun much more than I used to; the cool
breeze and the clouds in the sky I exp
ence with much more intensity than when I was young and keen to catch fish.
Fishing

has become, over the years, the dominant passion of my

life. But, as I say, I wear that passion lightly; I dont put my heart
on my slieve and talk to all my friends about my experience of
fishing.
I could no more imagine not fishing than not breathing. But then, as I said, I
see it as a process. Its a very big thing this fishing. Some days are sunny.
Why Ive even found some years have been the most pleasant imaginable:
dozens of nibbles, many big bites; some Ive had to throw back; others I even
caught, but they were stolen on the way home, or got eaten by the cat. Other
days, months, even years it was hard yakka.

I moved to a sea-side town, and took an early retirement. Ive been

out on that sea for years now doing some big fishing. The crew I
take is often untrained; the nights dark. It is often like a deluge. It is
no lark fishing at sea. A ship and the faint-hearted are soon parted
under these difficult conditions. This vulgar truth may seem
uncouth! Fishing requires an ardent spirit. Sometimes the boat itself
goes down. Many fishermen have died out on the open sea. Ive
seen it happen.
Others have got bored to death on the land waiting for some action.
Still others seem to fish and fish but not learn. They do not attract
any fish. In the end they give up the sport. They throw away their
rod and give away their tackle. Fishing is not for me, they say.
You can have it, they say. Courage, saith the Poet, is a bi-product
of fishing: the source of courage is the promotion of the Word of
God.(Bahaullah, Tablet of Wisdom) And you need it because the
sea is often fearsome. The long, dark nights do not seem to go
away even after the most ardent of prayers. You often feel as if
youve paid too high a price for all this fishing, all this waiting. Not
enough of a pay-off for many. There are many, indeed 1000s, of
inactive fishermen. I must say, too, that I cant blame them. As my
mother used to say: boy, most of life is waiting. And was she
right; little did I know back then as a child and adolescent with my
expectations far too high and built for an inevitable disappointment.
But, Ive always said, fishing is not about catching fish. If it was
Id have given up long ago. I would have stopped fishing, let me
think, sometime in the late 70s. Back then, I think it was in 79,
They said the results were discouragingly meagre.(Ridvan,
1979). By then theyd been meagre in my life for 7 years after
some heady days in the late 60s and early 70s. I find thinking of
fishing as a process is very valuable: it involves life and
death(when taken seriously) pleasure and pain, and the long wait
for the salient Dove to bring the living twig. -Ron Price 5/12/12.

QUANTITATIVE RESULTS ARE OFTEN SMALLINSIGNIFICANT

The institute work has significantly reinforced the long-term
process by which a universal system of Bahai education will take
shape, but for many believers the process, the effectiveness, the
results, at the local level thusfar have been very small,
inconspicuous and problem creating--rather than problem solving.
The trials encountered seem to be, as they have been for more than
a century and a half, necessary and inevitable ones that refine
endeavour and purify motivation so as to render those who would
take part worthy of so great a trust. Not getting too upset over the
many unfortunate and often superficial things which occur in so
many aspects of our Bahai lives as individuals and as communities
is as essential as oxygen is in the air, if we are to breath easily and
continue to work and to serve. Feeling discouraged and anxious are
experiences that are part of our lives, even lives that are
fundamentally assured and happy ones. The standards by which we
measure this Cause are not to be found in the behaviour of others
and often, as we all know, some of our keenest tests arise out of our
relationships with the Bahai community itself.
Beyond and beneath all this, of course, is the necessity for each
believer to strive to become a more effective teacher. As the
International Teaching Centre pointed out, if we are not meeting
people to teach, all of the plans, campaigns and reflection meetings
aimed at finding ways to share the Divine Message with the
waiting masses are to no avail. To put this another way, no amount
of organization can solve inner problems or produce or prevent
victory or failure at a crucial moment. As Shoghi Effendi wrote
during the height of WW2: Ultimately all the battle of life is
within the individual. This battle, however private and personal,

however individually focussed and centred on the inner life, also

involves an individual alignment or conjoining of motives and
objectives with those of the larger society, with action and
involvement with others. The achievements are often, if not
mostly--and I can not emphasize this enough--to be attained little
by little and day by day. They are the work of a lifetime and, as
long as this new paradigm is part of our lives, this paradigm
provides yet another context within which these achievements can
find expression. I hasten to add that this process will in all
likelihood take place even unto our life in the world hereafter when
the paradigm shift of paradigm shifts comes part of our experience
in the land of light the journey continues.
INSTITUTIONAL MATURATION--GROWTH--ENTRY BY
TROOPS
If this new culture of change with its concomitant emphasis on
entry by troops was all about numbers, then Douglas Martin would
never have said that the maturation of the U.S. Bahai community
since the 1960s has been breathtaking; nor would Peter Khan
express his concern that, when he hears people talk about entry by
troops, he internally cringes. The Plans, Dr. Khan went on to say,
are about advancing the process of entry by troops. It is simply
unrealistic in many places to expect a large increase in numbers or
even a small increase in the short term. It should not surprise us
that all the Central Figures of this Faith have also made the same
kind of remarks as have Their legitimate successors, those who
represent the institutionalized form of the charismatic authority at
the centre of this new world Faith. The key word is process not
troops and not entry. I draw this to the attention of readers here
for the second or third time in this book because of its fundamental
importance to this discussion. The recent developments in the last
year or two, involving as they do, the distinction between direct

and indirect teaching, are often seen as new. Of course, in some

ways, they are, but in other ways they are distinctions that have
been around for decades. Sometimes they result in new programs
with promising results and sometimes they dont. They offer to the
believers yet more opportunities to engage in teaching activities,
more options, various types of teaching campaigns and activities
with results that will be seen in the fullness of time, if not
tomorrow and if not in ones own community the day after.
I would add that this new paradigm of the last two decades is about
membership, but membership seen in a different light than it has
been in the lives of those who have joined the Cause in the first six
decades of the teaching Plans(1936-1996). Although there is much
discussion about entry by troops and direct teaching in many ways
numbers are a secondary issue. The language of this paradigm is
not about us and them; it is not quintessentially about enrolments,
conversion and a range of other words and terms that have
preoccupied the Bahai community, that have focused its energies
and its goals, on numbers---a critical but necessary focus and
preoccupation of the first six decades of those plans and, indeed,
the three-quarters of a century before(1863-1937)the formal
implementation of Abdul-Baha's Plan in 1937. Douglas Martin
made this point in the early 1990s before this new paradigm came
into effect. He emphasized in a published talk that the Bah
community must make a heroic effort to shed much of the baggage
of the past. If tests and difficulties beset the Bahai community in
these early stages of the implementation of this paradigm then
such tests are the surest evidences of that process of maturation.
Such tests are the inevitable precursors to a broadening and a
widening of the very processes in which this community is
engaged. My work on the internet has been a broadening and a
widening of contact with others. I engage with people all over the
world in direct discussions about the Cause for more than I do in

this town in Tasmania and far more than I have in any other of the
24 towns where I have resided.
THE RISE OF A NEW RELIGION: INNER LIFE AND PRIVATE
CHARACTER
I have often thought that the work of the sociologist, Max Weber, in
his study of the sociology of religion provides a helpful context for
this new emphasis to which Douglas Martin alludes. Weber, one of
the last two century's major two or three sociologists, emphasizes
how world religions arise by a coming together of a secular ethic
and a religious ethic. The necessity for one world, a unified and
federated planet, places the Bahai Faith and its teachings in a
central place in the coming decades and this new paradigm and the
changes and chances that will take place within it in the coming
years, it seems to me, are part of the preparedness of the Bahai
community for this inevitable expansion however slow it is may be
in many places--like the place I live in here in Tasmania and the
places I have lived in most of my Bahai life. As we work through
this major shift, this new paradigm, though, it is important that we
keep before us, as I indicated above, a number of fundamentals.
The Guardian put some of these fundamentals in context right at
the start of his ministry in 1924 in an oft quoted passage:
"Not by the force of numbers, not by the mere exposition of a set of
new and noble principles, not by an organised campaign of
teaching -- no matter how worldwide and elaborate in its character
-- not even by the staunchness of our faith nor the exaltation of our
enthusiasm, can we ultimately hope to vindicate in the eyes of a
critical and skeptical age the supreme claim of the Abha
Revelation. One thing and only one thing will unfailingly and alone
secure the undoubted triumph of this sacred Cause, namely, the
extent to which our own inner life and private character mirror

forth in their manifold aspects the splendour of those eternal

principles proclaimed by Bahaullah."
Some of that complexity I referred to above, in light of this
quotation, reduces to a "living the life" answer to the questions and
issues. This new culture of learning implies that Bahais must not
only learn from their Scriptures and from the collective wisdom of
the group....in the study circles, but they must also learn from their
own experiences. More recently, Momen says he sees the
community as an aid to the individuals personal mystical
progress. This, of course, is hardly new, although Jack MacLean
in his interesting critique of some of Momens ideas emphasizes
that the basic thrust of Momens comments is to make a major
shift from the individual to the community. As the Bahai
community travels through the many stages of this paradigm shift it
must continue as it has tried to do for decades--and not always with
success--to avoid the tendency to divide into two antagonistic
groups: those who blindly follow and to the letter the teachings and
those who question and doubt everything. These two extrems
should be avoided.(UHJ, Letter, 1980).
SLOW GROWTH: AN INSIGHT FROM SHOGHI EFFENDI
AND ROGER WHITE
Another context for an analysis of this complexity that I would like
to include here because of the perspective it offers to both the
teaching process and, indeed, much that has been my life and my
efforts to promote the Cause. The quotation comes from God
Passes By. Shoghi Effendi writes that the process whereby the
unsuspected benefits of the Cause "were to be manifested to the
eyes of men was slow, painfully slow, and was characterized, as
indeed the history of His Faith from its inception to the present day
demonstrates, by a number of crises which at times threatened to

arrest its unfoldment and blast all the hopes which its progress had
engendered."(GPB, p.111). Frequently in my years as a Bahai and
also in my personal and professional life crises have arisen which
threatened to arrest whatever unfoldment had occurred in my life or
in the life of the Cause. Hopes have been blasted many times but
still, as Roger White puts it so well in his poem "Notes On
Erosion," hope "renews itself under the cool metallic stars, springs
up intractably like the p esky weed....yields its head but not its
root." "Neglect," he emphasizes, fosters, dismays and fertilizes "its
thrusting growth." Indeed, it "insinuates itself through the sockets
of despair's bleached skull." I quote the poet Roger White because
his poems so often, as they do here, express my Bahai experience
so essentially--far better than an outline of what I have actually
experienced, what is normally placed in a memoir and what I have
written in my analysis of this paradigm shift.
ABDU'L-BAHA'S MEMORIALS OF THE FAITHFUL:
DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE BIOGRAPHIES FOR A LEARNING
AND GROWTH PARADIGM
About twelve months, perhaps even less, before completing the last
of His books, Memorials of the Faithful, Abdul-Baha began His
Tablets of the Divine Plan, the foundation statement for all the
future teaching Plans and the framework of action within which the
Bahai community could put into practice all the good advice He
had given it in His Memorials of the Faithful among His many
other writings. Like The Will and Testament, though, it may take a
century or more to grasp the implications of this surprisingly subtle
and, deceptively simple, book and, indeed, the vast corpus of
Abdul-Bahas writings. These are the earliest stages of
community building, in fact just two decades of experience, with
clusters and core activities, with study circles and devotional

meetings, with childrens and junior youth classes and deepenings,

with external affairs and a range of other departments and agencies
of this efflorescing Cause. Getting a handle on Bahaullah's
teachings, those of His Son and Their legitimate successors, is the
basis for making our own personal deepening in the writings a
primary, if not the primary, focus of our lives.
If, in the end, personal commitment and deepening, a focus on the
inner life does not take place, the group experience loses its
relevance. It should also be emphasized, indeed it hardly needs
saying, that however deepened one soul is--for a community of
growth to result many other factors, aspects of community
building, need to be in place. If growth is going to result in our
communities with their novices and their veterans; if the patterns of
growth from the first century of the Formative Age and the Heroic
Age before that, are to be replicated in our time, in the epochs
ahead that are the backdrop for this paradigm, only time and those
mysterious dispensations of a Watchful Providence will unveil
what are growth's secrets. We who are called upon to bring about
this growth will do what several generations of Bahais have already
done in the last 17 decades. We need only read the history of this
Cause to see what they did: the active and the inactive, the
deepened and the uninformed, the several dualities we have lived
with so long and which have begun to fall away in this new
paradigm.
History is not predictive in many ways; it is not a science. But the
Bahai view of history is, at a minimum, religious. It is also about
providential control, but in quite a different sense in its workings
than in its seemingly and highly arbitary form found in either
Christianity or Islam. The Bahai view of history is teleological, that
is: it is under the complete control of God, under providential
intervention within the processes of historical evolution. It is not a

fortuitous composition and arrangement. There is no contemptus

mundi, no historical pessimism. The Bahai philosophy of history
has as its cornerstone a belief in progress through providential
control of the historical process. The Bahai view of the future is
also prophetic and speculative, visionary and utopian. This is the
wider context of mystery and wonder, of promise and threat, that
lies as a backdrop for the new Bahai culture. From speculative and
utopian pursuits we must be satisfied with speculative and utopian
benefits. (See Nash, The Pheonix and the Ashes, 1984, p.89)
WRITING BIOGRAPHIES MYSELF: LEARNING FROM
MEMORIALS OF THE FAITHFUL
As I look back over these six decades of pioneering and travelteaching, I contemplate writing more biographies as I had already
done following the model that 'Abdu'l-Bah has set before me in
that seminal literary work that I refer to here. For a period of
twenty-five years, from 1981 to 2005, I wrote some two dozen
biographies. They are found in Section IV of my autobiography
entitled Pioneering Over Four Epochs, the section marked
'biographies.' In 1981 I had taken my first excursions into writing
biography. Those excursions became part of, first, The History of
the Bahai Faith in Tasmania: 1924-80 and; second, The History of
the Bah' Faith in the Northern Territory: 1947-1997. The short
biographies I had written in the 1980s and 1990s are, for the most
part, now in the archives of the Bahai Council of Tasmania and the
NT. Some of these short sketches of human personality are in a file
in my study, a file which has increased in size since it was first
created in the early 1990s. Some of my sketches are on the internet
at bahai-library.com. But they will not be included in my
autobiography which I am posting on the internet since the people
are, for the most part, still living, and confidentiality is an issue.
The notes I have collected on the subject of biography, which I

began to collect seventeen years ago in 1993, have begun to assume

a far greater extent, a wider ambit than was initially planned due to
the plentiful resources available on the Internet and my own
general and increased interest in the subject. My current plans are
to write one major biographical work with material in much greater
depth of expression than I have done thusfar. This biography will
come from a more fertile base than I have been able to discover in
my first, my sketchy,attempts in the 1980s and the 1990s.
Whatever biographies I write, they will be part of Section IV of my
larger autobiographical work, Pioneering Over Four Epochs. My
biography file/s have developed into a more substantial resource in
recent years, as I have indicated above, and a brief examination of
the table of contents of these files will show the wide range of
relevant sub-topics. This biographical interest provides some
balance, although I must confess very little so far, to counter all the
autobiographical material I have collected in other files. It will,
perhaps, counter any impression of my narcissistic tendencies
which critics may be inclined to dwell upon. The material on
biography that I have collected will prove useful, or so I hope, in
my efforts to write some mini-biographies in the years ahead as
part of Section IV of my autobiographical work Pioneering Over
Four Epochs. Most of the people whose lives I have written about
were pioneers. In the decades ahead in the context of this new
paradigm in which, by 2006, there were still 10,000 of the 16,000
clusters in the world unopened, the Bahai frontier, the field of a
necessary and inevitable pioneering activity was still immense.
More than half of the globe, as measured in cluster-geography, was
still unopened. That part of the planet held great promise; it was a
garden of potential, a space with infinite resources and future plans.
In the decades ahead in this new paradigm this great landmass and
its peoples would be part of an increasingly discrete and

multicultural Bahai international identity. The Bahai pioneering

world, the physical, locateable frontier place across the planet, the
imaginative space that would help to rhetorically and conceptually
structure Bahai internationalism would be one of the continuing
themes and topics for discussion in this new context of learning and
growth--and in my own sphere if literary work as part of my
individual initiative, my own contribution to the growth, the
extension, of this Cause to every corner of the planet.
Pioneering will be in this new Bahai culture what it has already
been for decades in the Bahai community, an anchoring theme. It
was a theme not unlike the one used by John F. Kennedy when he
spoke of the New Frontier during his acceptance speech for the
Democratic nomination in 1960: "We stand today on the edge of a
New Frontier the frontier of the 1960s a frontier of unknown
opportunities and perils a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.
. .The new Frontier is here whether we seek it or not. Beyond are
uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace
and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice,
unanswered questions of poverty and surplus which demand
invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking you to be
pioneers on the New Frontier." President Ronald Reagan drawing
on the same theme in 1982 proclaimed at an Independence Day
celebration that the conquest of new frontiers is a crucial part of
the American national character.
It was not by accident that Abdul-Bahas Tablets of the Divine Plan
were addressed to the North American Bahais. Pioneering was a
theme which, as I write these words in 2010, has been in use in the
American Bahai community since the mid-1930s, if not as far back
as the 1890s. It is a theme which could be said to have helped
launch one of the greatest of the previous paradigm shifts,a shift
associated with the launching of the first formal teaching Plan in

1936. I leave this theme to readers to investigate as their interest in

Bahai history is developed in the decades ahead.
There are vast continents, frontiers of pioneering, awaiting the
Bahai community in thought patterns,in discovery, in social and
economic activity, in human relations and the interpersonal domain,
potentially more prolific in the release of human potential than ever
before. The concept of the pioneer and the frontier is so versatile
and can be so easily invoked to underpin spiritual and community,
economic and social, calls to action and to stimulate those who are
allegedly inactive, whatever their temperament. The concept of the
pioneer I'm sure will be preserved and extended in the decades
ahead. Frontiers breed frontiers, as Archer Butler Hulbert wrote
in Frontiers: The Genius of American Nationality back in 1929.
The frontier spirit is alive and well, Hulbert wrote, as Americans
continued to pioneer intellectual, social, and political frontiers
before the term pioneer even became common coinage in the 1930s
in the Bahai community. And this process has really only begun in
the last three-quarters of a century(1936-2015) both in the wider
culture and in the Bahai community. When Abdul-Baha returned
home from His own travel-teaching in 1914, He had prepared the
Bah' world for its own travel-teaching. There has now been 100
years of this form of Bah' activity on the planet. Within this new
paradigm pioneers and travel teachers will take this Faith to every
cluster on the face of the earth; I have little doubt.
The Bahai community, both the lives within it and all of their
accompanying ideals does not occur either naturally or by accident.
It is framed by design when a writer like myself goes to put its
story on paper with description and analysis. An international
organization like the Bahai Faith requires some sense of
congruence between its international system and the social and
cultural structures which are part of it--if the account of its internal

life and external relationships is to hang together. If an international

movement is to exist an internationalist sentiment is required. Such
a sentiment exists when a feeling of anger is aroused by the
violation of internationalist principles, or when a feeling of
satisfaction is aroused by their fulfillment.
To put this concept in terms used by the social critic Raymond
Williams, an international organization requires certain hegemonic
figures. In western history the knight and the cowboy were such
figures. In the international Bahai community the pioneer is such a
hegemonic cultural figure. The pioneer provides the Bahai
community with an organizational force, a person who connects
otherwise separated and even disparate meanings and meetings,
values and practices. The knight, the cowboy and the pioneer are
archetypes. The pioneer evokes an image of what the international
Bahai community should be. The term appeals to disparate parts of
the community, parts that are required if the Bahai community is to
extend itself to every section of the globe in the decades ahead.
The stories of the knights were essential to defining England as a
nation in the late middle ages. Painted as romantic purveyors of
right, upholding chivalric ideals, and commencing on exciting,
colorful quests, the knights appealed to all: aristocrat, merchant,
and peasant alike. The timing of the overwhelming popularity of
the knights tales strongly suggests that these tales, and more
specifically, the knights depicted in them, provided England with a
central icon around which to establish identity as a nation. The
pioneer in the last eight decades and even more so in the next
several decades has been, is and will be essential in propelling the
Bahai community into the international arena so that every cluster
on earth is inhabited by Bahais.
North Americans, the recipients of the Tablets of the Divine Plan,

have, it seems to me, a continuing urge to chart new paths and

explore the unknown. That instinct drove Lewis and Clark and a
host of other explorers to press across the uncharted continent and
into the extremities of its Arctic wastes and "sustained twelve
Americans as they walked on the moon."(James Beggs, NASA
Administrator, 23 June 1982) From the voyages of Columbus, to
the Oregon Trail,to the multitude of explorers all across the North
American continent, to the journey to the Moon itself and, for the
Bahai community, more than a century of pioneering, history
proves that Americans have never lost by pressing the limits of
their frontiers.(See: George Bush, 20 July 1989, in Catherine
Gouge, "The Great Storefront of American Nationalism: Narratives
of Mars and the Outerspatial Frontier," Americana: The Journal of
American Popular Culture (1900-present), Fall 2002, Volume 1,
Issue 2
A deep-space mission to Mars is a focus for the new century. It's
like westward expansion. The effort and journey will spark
creativity and imagination. So wrote Dr. Jon Bowersox, consultant
for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, 14 February
2000. For the Bahai community, both in North America and
throughout the more than 200 countries and independent territories
throughout the world, a focus for the 21st century is to build Bahai
communities in all the 16,000 clusters on the planet. The task is
immense and "throughout the coming centuries and cycles many
harvests will be gathered.(TDP, 1977, p.6)
In early 2015, with nearly 80% of the current Plan completed, the
House of Justice had already summarized the present task of the
Bah' community as follows: "their task is to identify what is
required for progress to occurthe nascent capacity that must be
nurtured, the new skill that must be acquired, the initiators of a
fledgling effort who must be accompanied, the space for reflection

that must be cultivated, the collective endeavour that must be

coordinatedand then find creative ways in which the necessary
time and resources can be made available to achieve it.
"The frontier that was opened by the voyage of Christopher
Columbus in 1492, over 500 years ago, is now closed,"
astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin has argued. "If the era of
Western humanist society," Zubrin went on to write, "is not to be
seen by future historians as some kind of transitory golden age, a
brief shining moment in an otherwise endless chronicle of human
misery, then a new frontier must be opened. Humanity needs Mars.
An open frontier on Mars will allow for the preservation of cultural
diversity and will create a strong driver for technological
progress(Robert Zubrin, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring
Civilization, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 1999. p.123).
For the Bahai community in this new paradigm the equivalent of
this frontier of Mars, indeed the many frontiers in our universe in
the sciences: biological, physical and social, is the new culture of
learning and growth and its accompanying pioneering and travelteaching venture in the decades and perhaps centuries to come.
Of course, Mars is not, in fact, like the American frontier; nor is the
American frontier like the Bahai pioneering experience. Mars is
150 million miles away; it's atmosphere is 7 milli-bars of CO2 so
that once you arrive there you would die instantly on the surface. It
doesn't have any of the qualities that the American frontier had, that
is, of individuals deciding, say, in the Old World of Europe or the
eastern states: "I'm fed up here. I'm going to sell everything that I
own. I'm going to jump on a boat. I'm going to be a poor person in
America because this will be better than what I had before." This is
the quality of the frontier that does not exist on Mars. The Bahai
pioneer is also not your frontierman or cowboy. Each Bahai pioneer
has his or her own story. My narrative entitled Pioneering Over

Four Epochs is but one of these stories.

It is impossibile to fit Mars into paradigms imported from Earth. It
is equally impossible to use the wild west analogy. There are no
really useful historical analogies and parallels for the Bahai
diaspora. Such historical or futuristic comparisons may have some
value in helping pioneers take moral responsibility for the complex
changessocial as well as biosphericinitiated by terraformation
and community building. Pioneers must be more humble about
their place in history, must accept responsibility for their actions
and yet resist the impulse to stake too large a claim for themselves
in history books, must resist the sense of triumphalism--to use a
word that has become more current, more popular, in recent years.
One recent article "Can We Go to Mars without Going Crazy?" in
the May 2001 issue of Discover magazine argues that "designing
and building a sophisticated spacecraft capable of getting to Mars is
just the beginning. This is also true of the Bahai pioneer. The
society, the community, he is involved in building is just at its
beginning. The ultimate challenge NASA faces may be building a
tiny computer that can psychoanalyze astronauts and keep them
from going nuts.(Weed, 38). The ultimate challenge the Bahai faces
is the building of a community that is part of the new Bahai
paradigm of learning and growth. The whole question of getting all
that we want in life, part of the pioneir-frontier drive is simply
unrealizable. The desire to realize one's hopes in the frontier as a
pioneer can be both deconstructive and self-destructive. It is not a
place of guarantees.
There is often a lean provision for the devotion the Bahai brings to
the challenge. Like the experience of Noah, there are often weeks
and months of never-ending dark. The challenge is not for the
timid, the vainly pious, the pusillanimous of spirit, the

overwrought. The voyage is a long one with unseasonable rains and

a long wait for the salient dove to bring the living twig.(White,
Pebbles, p.71). The investment of the Bahai in the promise of the
pioneering journey on the frontier to make him a whole and
powerful citizen often will simply ensure that he remains split and
inadequate. It's a basic condition of Bahai life to have ones identity
and sense of self challenged to the hilt. When a Bahai buys into an
a-historical fantasy, a view of Bahai life that is not imbued with
true understanding of the pioneering-frontier life, he or she may
become somewhat pathetic hoping to undergo an experience from
which, due to some deliberately built-in defect, he will remain
excluded. Everyone is called but few are chosen. Forgetting and
forgiving the harsh words that are part and parcel of community
experience is not something everyone can do. Being selfless is a
goal, and a reality only partially attained in our lives.
I have always seen the Bahai community as a pioneering society. It
is a community in which the script has been written and the parts
are assigned by its Central Figures and legitimate institutional
successors. But it's also an improvisational theater where people
can write their own parts, and in which anyone can play a useful
part, whether conceived by someone else or by themselves. So, it's
a very liberating thing and I think that's what the Bahai community
will create in the decades ahead in cluster after cluster. It is a very
progressive branch of international, the global, human culture. The
highly diversified Bahai community will produce conventions that
will be very useful as the international community struggles with
the challenges ahead. These conventions and the individual and
community inventions, the result of Bahai individual and
community ingenuity, will be useful in community after
community across the planet. The Bahai community will be an
example of a society that places a high value on each and every
person because each and every person is precious. But do not

expect the process to be easy; do not expect the life to be lived a

joy-ride. If you participate to any significant extent beyond being a
passive spectator, it will require all you have. In the end, as that
founder of psychology William James once wrote: the question will
be "to what extent can I give the all that is my life?" What is the
measure of your sacrifice of self? Each of us has his or her own
limits except for a small handful, a very precious few. Perhaps it is
these few who are the movers and shakers of true civilization?!*
From the perspective of those pioneering in to populate the various
sized clusters on the planet, prospective frontier places are often
spaces of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, like the frontiers in the
wild west they are often fantasy spaces of unlimited potential but a
potential not to be realized in the first years of pioneering or even
the years after much effort has been expended. It is this potential
which those who encourage the pioneers, the Bahai institutional
marketers of Bahai pioneering-frontier experience, the proponents
of frontier community development often exploit to secure the
participation of the community.
The Review Office of the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahais of the United States has given me permission to post this
work at internet sites like BLO. This work is a multi-genred opus
and includes: letters, narrative, poetry, prose-poetry and conceptual
material from the social sciences and humanities. The three Parts of
this work, of which this is the last here at BLO, are just a start to a
many-volumed work, a work that can only be found on the internet
and only in part. One day this vast memoir may appear in a hard or
soft cover set of volumes, but I am not holding my breath waiting.
Indeed, if this work ever does appear on book shelves I shall be
long gone into a world where man speaks no more, at least not in
the same way he speaks here.

Readers will come to understand the meaning of this broad play of

my mind, this reminiscent fieldwork on myself, this way of
pointing to who I am, to this self-creation, the more they read the
material in this cornucopia. My memory browses and grazes at will
stringing apparently dispersed and disordered parts into what is
hopefully a fine thread of many colours. It is not the coat of many
colours of the long lost Joseph but rather a rough-tough coat with a
fine and tender lining. The processes of age have worn down that
lining exposing my inner being to all sorts of unanticipated
developments that will in the end bring about my demise.
The storms of these epochs have reqired of me a good strong coat
to weather the tempest of the times. As I contemplate the past, my
past, and write I lose myself under the whole pressure of the spring
of my memory proceeding from my most recent revisitings and
their associated recognitions. If all goes well I make of the
revisiting a veritable hymn of the wonder of it all as the past floods
in with its particles of history, with its scrapings of gold dust, of
lead and base metals, with its wayward fragments and their
meditative extrapolations. I feel a little like the American essayist
Joseph Epstein who wrote that "if one wants to be a writer, he must
first make himself incompetent in everything else." I strive not to
be that bungling in the majority of my pursuits but, as I progress
through these middle years(65-75) of late adulthood, the years 60
to 80 as the human development psychologists call these years in
the lifespan, I have tried to limit my various pursuits however
competent or bungling I may be in their execution in order to focus
on my writing. I find in writing autobiography, poetry or essays, the
three major genres of my work, that material for my writing can
come from all over the place. For this reason readers may find this
memoir not the smooth running course they expected at the start.
So much of my life as a Bahai has been a life-in-community and

this paradigm shift is intended to assist in the process of

community building, a process that the House of Justice informed
us has only just begun at the outset of this new paradigm shift in
the mid-1990s. It seemed to me only appropriate that I would give
a few words on the subject of Bahai life in community to the
brilliant tactician 'Abdu'l-Bah who survived one of the most
difficult communities and advised us on how to live in difficult
communities in our time. Our own communities have been, are and
will be challenges for us to live in. For this reason 'Abdu'l-Bahs
words, written less than six years before He passed away, in
Memorials of the Faithful will be timely.
I can not deal with this relevance in sufficient detail to adequately
explore the implications of this book which often gets lost in the
avalanche of resources that have become available in the Bahai
community in the last three decades. Suffice it to say: the 77
individuals in this collection of mini-biographical sketches give us
every conceivable human typethe sort of diversity which is our
life in Bahai communities and which will be even more so in the
years to come within this new paradigm. Abdul-Baha recognizes
and describes the infinite variety of types in the new Bahai
community he lived in during the years, 1863 to 1915, when He
wrote His book. He saw this variety as a delightful thing, a thing to
accept, to acquiesce in it and enjoy it. That is our challenge as it
was His. For enjoying this diversity and dealing with it effectively
in Bahai community life is no easy thing. I have been trying to deal
with it in my personal and community life sometimes successfully
and sometimes with immaturity, with attachments, sometimes with
a type of love that has blindly inclined me to error; and sometimes
with dislikes and antipathies which have repelled me away from the
truth.
These personal inadequacies, of course, are what one could call

colloquially: "the same-old" and "the same old." Or to draw on a

French expression: "the more things change the more they stay the
same." These personal and community deficiencies are often
discussed in my memoir for they are part and parcel of my life but I
rarely talk about them and, in the process, name individuals; I don't
discuss the difficult people in my life in my autobiography in
personal terms; I rarely mention the sources of internal dissension,
the names of people who caused me or the community hardship
and tribulation. In this sense my autobiography is quite unlike
many of those in the modern marketplace which explore individual
failings of friends and family to the nth degree. I see such exposure
of individuals as a type of gossip and to be avoided like the plague.
What is true in writing is also true, a fortiori, in everyday
relationships in community life.
While we all go about working out how we will participate in the
life of this new paradigm, Abdu'l-Bahs 77 biographies are useful
to reread. Abdul-Baha had to deal with some very difficult people
as well as enjoy the company of some wonderful souls. Bahaullah,
Himself, often responded to major disputes by telling the parties to
work it out th.emselves or by declining to comment on the dispute.
For you and I this is often the best recourse as well. Bahaullah, it
seems to me as I look back at the first three decades of Bahai
history (1862/3-1892/3) in what could be seen as the first
paradigmatic expression of Bahai community life, exercised what
one might call moral suasion. He attempted to persuade; sometimes
He issued rather stern counsels or reproaches. But his authority was
often, and in the main, moral. His advice and counsel was often
ignored more often than we might like to admit. There was a core
of very devoted and sincere Bahais, of course, who engaged in an
almost court-like etiquette around Bahaullah. But Bahaullah had to
deal with the rude, the insolent, the unbalanced, the petty
squabblers, the independent of mind, indeed, some very difficult

people as did Abdul-l-Baha after Him. One forgets that most

Bahais in that first half century, say, 1863 to 1913, were very
lightly socialized to Bahai values. As one writer put it with some
insight, Bahaullah had more authority among Bahais than many a
mujtahid, but it was authority and not power--and it probably
worked practically in many of the same ways--persuasion, tacking
with the wind, encouraging people to get along.
My main point here, in referring to this first half century of Bahai
history and the lives of both Bahaullah and His Son, is that these
Central Figures of our Faith often had the kinds of problems we
already have and will have within this new paradigm. People in
community are the greatest drama in history and in our lives and
this drama contains joy and sorrow, tragedy and success, victory
and loss. Bahai history is, as John Hatcher has described so well, a
metaphor for our own time, our own experience, our own lives, and
not some factual and dry details that happened long ago. It throws
light on to our paradigm and we are going to need it as we travel
along that paradgim's road.
As we go about living and working, teaching and consolidating,
serving and building communities in this new Bahai paradigm, we
need to be conscious of avoiding what is sometimes called a
present-participle existence(drinking, eating, sailing, having fun)
and the devastating consequence of the perpetual bombardment of
the messages of consumer capitalism. The result is often that many
of our memories and ideas are not our own. The result too is that
the society we are trying to construct is often not that partnership of
the living, the dead and those yet to be born. Rembembering Bahai
history, knowing what went before is crucial to building and
thinking, feeling and understanding in the present. There is a
struggle involved in remembering, in knowing, what happened
from 1844 to 1996 and, if one include's Nabil's Narrative, what

happened back to the 18th century. If the struggle to remember

against forgetting or, worse, not knowing, is won the result will be
an achievement of the continuity in which individual and cultural
identity is founded. This identity will be part and parcel of the new
Bahai culture without which will often be a destruction,a vacuity of
thought, of feeling, of tradition and of spirit.
NEW PARADIGM: NOT CREATED EX NIHILO
It should be obvious to readers by now that a strong thread of my
theme in this analysis of the new paradigm and my experience of it
is an emphasis on its continuities with the past; this new paradigm,
this new shift, has not been created ex nihilo. It does not in the least
imply that we disregard the century and a half of divine guidance
which preceded these latest in the long series of fate-laden days.
Individual creativeness, collective creativeness, the acquisition of
consultation skills, an emphasis on a culture of learning and of
growth do not delimit one jot or one tittle, as we used to say, an
emphasis on the individual struggle with what you might call the
existential realities of life. Life tests which still come our way will
always remain opportunistic situations with potential for profound
spiritual and moral development and, one might add, opportunities
for loss, for failure and disappointment. For all is not about
winning and success. Shoghi Effendi pointed the believers time and
again toward these quintessential spiritual realities with his very
practical and down-to-earth exegesis.
"A persistent and strenuous warfare indeed, as one writer put it, a
personal jihad, is something we all must wage against our instincts
and natural inclinations. We must engage in a heroic self-sacrifice
in subordinating our own likings to the imperative needs of the
Cause of God. Suffering, matched with endurance are qualifiers of
greatness whether one reads Ruhi books, participates in institutes or

fasts--or not. The gift of acceptance seems to be a gift not given to

all. The acceptance of life and its difficulties is something all of us
only accomplish in part. It is one of the many gifts at the table of
bounty. We each seem to be given greater and lesser gifts and
radiant acquiescence is one of those rarer gifts. If this new
paradigm is helpful in finding souls on the planet who exemplify
such gifts--and I have no doubt that it will--even if not in my own
community or many others, then it will have instilled fresh vitality
into this world Faith.
Shoghi Effendi did not waste words on sheer argument, on
hairsplittings and disputes, on what is often called casuistry or
quibbling, on idle and endless discussions of the superfluous, but
emphasized, rather, the writing and discussion of high thoughts
which are the dynamic power in the arteries of life...the very soul
of the world. He knew only too well that the inner struggle we all
face is the ultimate battle in life and is not a popular sport to engage
in at the best of times. It often requires, as I mentioned above, the
discipline of waging a mental jihad, writes Jack MacLean, a jihad
against illusions that imbed themselves inside the souls of men and
often take possession of their very lives, what Bahaullah calls idle
fancies and vain imaginings, insatiable appetites and delusions
which, by their very nature, cannot satisfy nor appease the hunger,
cannot fulfil their tacit and often not-so-tacit demands of the ego
and its appetitive nature. In the world of jihads as in the world of
battles, many are lost--and in the case of the kind of jihads that
MacLean refers to: they are not engaged in at all. They are just too
hard for the average person and as I survey my own life that
incapacity includes me a great deal of the time if I am honest with
myself.
It seems to me, in retrospect, that what are sometimes called the
interregnum years, the years between the passing of Shoghi Effendi

and the election of the Universal House of Justice, were themselves

part of a wide paradigm shift, a shift that occurred during the two
decades, 1952/3 to 1973/4, in the international Bahai community.
Beginning with the Holy Year 1952/3 and the Ten Year Crusade and
lasting to the end of the first plan of the House of Justice in 1974,
this new world religion was transformed from a global community
of about 200 thousand, 90 percent of whom lived in Iran, to over
one million in some 120 countries. This five-fold increase in
numbers was without doubt one of a number of contributing factors
to that paradigm shift, not the least of which was the transition to
the fully institutionalized charisma in a globally and democratically
elected, a fully legitimated body at the apex of Bahai
administration.
It is not my intention here to describe in any detail or make any
general comments on the above paradigm shift as I have done in
relation to the shift that took place in the 1920s and 1930s,
although the first two decades of my Bahai experience took place
in these two decades, two decades which saw a transformation in
my own life from the age of 9 to the age of 29, the years of late
childhood, adolescence and the first decade of early adulthood. The
focus I want to put under the microscope briefly is not that period
of time but this most recent shift: 1996 to 2016 and beyond into
future phases, stages, episodes and epochs as this new paradigm
assumes a much more detailed, institutionalized and comprehensive
system of learning and growth for many more millions of people in
the decades ahead at this climacteric in history.
I would like to include here a quotation on the matter of authority
within the entire set of complex forms on the elected and appointed
side of Bahai institutions. Authority resides only in the duly elected
institutions. these are the Rulers of the Cause. "The authority to
direct the affairs of the Faith locally, nationally and internationally,

is divinely conferred on elected institutions. However, the power to

accomplish the tasks of the community resides primarily in the
mass of the believers. The authority of the institutions is an
irrevocable necessity for the progress of humanity; its exercise is an
art to be mastered. The power of action in the believers is unlocked
at the level of individual initiative and surges at the level of
collective volition."(Compilations, NSA USA - Developing
Distinctive Bah' Communities)
THE EMERGENCE OF A PUBLIC IMAGE
In the middle of the then Seven Year Plan from 1979 to 1986, the
signs of the crystallization of a public image of the Cause,
uninformed but friendly, were becoming evident and the emergence
of the Cause from obscurity was becoming more apparent. In my
own life I was, at last, emerging from my bipolar disorder with a
medication that would take me to new levels of healing, with
periodic alterations of medication and concomitant life-styles, for
the rest of my life or so it seemed even as I write these words
nearly thirty years later. The early signs of a crystallization of a
public image, in those 1980s were subjected to this fundamental,
this paradigmatic, shift just at the time when the Bahai Faith was
emerging from an obscurity in which it had been enshrouded for a
century and a half. Of course, the Bahai Faith, being the global
religion that it is with communities in some 200 countries and
independent territories, did not enjoy this public image everywhere
to the same degree and everywhere in the same context. Indeed,
this question of public image is far too complex to deal with in this
limited space as the emergence of my own life from the quagmire
of bipolar disorder, job loss and marital frustrations in which I
found myself in the late 1970s. I deal with issues of this nature
spread over the 2500 pages of my life-story. I make no attempt to
deal with these issues here for they would waylay my themes and

particularly my focus on this new culture, this new paradigm.

Still, I would argue that if I could come back in one hundred years,
say in 2108, and examine the quarter-century, the years 1983-2008,
it would be plainly apparent that the first global public image of the
Cause was given its initial crystallization in this twenty-five year
period, a period which also saw the very beginning of the process
of community building, a series of remarkable and dazzling
achievements, the awesome tapestry of beauty spreading over the
mountainside of Gods Holy Mountain and a stage in an immense
historical and institutional process that entered a critical phase in its
efforts to canalize the forces of a new civilization. And when the
roll is called up yonder and I look back over my own life, these
same 25 years, will be seen as a quarter-century in which my own
life was transformed, recreated and redefined--leaving me
sometimes in a state of ecstasy and at other times in a despair from
which I often hoped I could escape from by death. Sadly or not-sosadly I lacked the courage to end it all and always lived to see
another day patched up with medications to give me the partial
illusion of a spiritually-based life. But more on this later.
In 1983, the governing body at the apex of the Administrative
Order of this Faith, the Universal House of Justice, occupied its
permanent seat in an imposing marble building faced with 57
Corinthian columns at the top of an arc-shaped path. The final two
buildings, built on either side of the Seat of the House of Justice,
were completed in 2000: the Centre for the Study of the Texts and
the International Teaching Centre Building. I could expatiate on the
many other sources of this early crystallization of a public image in
addition to this complex of buildings and gardens on Mt. Carmel.
For example, the two new houses of worship, one in Apia in
Western Samoa and the other in New Delhi in India, completed in
1984 and 1986 respectively, as well as the vast increase in literature

that became available to seekers and to the many interest groups

which increasingly dotted the landscape of society helped establish
this public image and helped the Bah community at the same
time in the creation of a collective identity. In the same way I could
expatiate here on the developments in my own life: in writing, in
my career, in my family and marital life, in my Bahai community
life-and I do as this narrative memoir unfolds in all its labyrinthine
complexity.
One central part of this image, this identity, largely below the
surface of popular culture where most people spend the vast
majority of their time and where much that constitutes public
images is born and dies, is the extensive literary productions and
publications that have emanated from the Bahai World Centre. As
well as the several important messages, letters and books that have
been produced by this institutional trustee of Bahaullahs global
undertaking at the apex of the Bahai Administrative Order: The
Promise of World Peace(1985); Bahaullah(1992); The Prosperity
of Mankind(1995); Century of Light(2001); Letter to the Worlds
Religious Leaders(2002); One Common Faith(2005), a multitude of
statements were published as a result of the work of the Bahai
International Community which focus on the promotion of a
universal standard for human rights, the advancement of women,
and the promotion of just and equitable means of global
prosperity.
This latter category, largely subliminal even amongst most of the
Bahais due to the massive increase in print resources especially in
the last twenty-five years, but a crucial aspect of the Bahai public
image nevertheless, an image confined to a coterie but spreading
out across the planet in many layers of significance and meaning
with the infinite number of publics, was accompanied by other
manifestations of a public image which I wont dwell on here, for

that is not the purpose of this paper. The burgeoning quantity of

literature that has become available in this quarter-century, 19842009, has been paradoxically and ironically a contributing factor to
both a deepening and clarity of understanding on the one hand and
an obscurity and complexity on the other that has made the
discussion of many issues fraught with difficulty. That is one of the
areas, the motivations, that has given rise to my writing this paper,
this extended analysis of this new paradigm of culture and of
growth in the Bahai community. And so, too, has the massive
quantity of my own writing emerged in this 25 year period but
readers can find this topic covered in great detail over these 2500
pages.

THE INSTITUTE PROCESS: MORE THAN DEEPENING

Part 1:
In many basic ways the institute process with its study circles and
Ruhi materials, with its devotional meetings and childrens and
junior youth classes, with its operation in clusters and LSAs and
with several other Bahai activities, institutions and processes that
have come into a more integrated focus in the last 18 years--are
each and all ways and means for all of us to work together in these
earliest phases of community building, to learn together and grow
spiritually and numerically. This new culture of learning and
growth, this new paradigm of action is more than deepening
although, like some of the deepening activities that all Bahs are
familiar with, it is a decentralized system of locally based group
learning. There is no need for me to describe this institute process
in detail. It is not my intention in this book for this kind of detail is
provided in many other places and sources for Bahais everywhere
if they are interested. I do, though, make the occasional overall

description of this process becuase this new culture of learning

cannot be divercved from the institute process.
At Ridvn in 1967, after I had been associated with Bahai
activities for more than a dozen years, the House defined deepening
as an expression of our individual and group efforts to obtain a
more adequate understanding of the significance of Bahaullahs
stupendous Revelation and a clearer apprehension of the purpose
of God for man. But our Bahai community life is challenged, is
summoned, to what you might call a specific application of this
deepening process; indeed, we can now be said to be at the very
beginning of the process of community building itself. The House
of Justice reminded us and made clear that the institute process is
not a series of deepening classes. It is rather part of a very wide
framework for this community building process. But whether one
engages in deepenings or institutes, whether ones lives in large
urban agglomerations with thousands of other Bahais or pioneers to
remote places with only a few believers or none at all, whether one
goes to study classes or writes books, vulnerabilities and
propensities to evil, having to deal with ones dark, animalistic
heritage, ones lower nature, ones insistent self often seems to be
beyond our capacity. But as George Townshend once said: there are
mysterious turning points or watersheds and one finds the
wherewithal to deal with the test or one does not. Sometimes a
battle is won by inches; sometimes failure or defeat results because
we simply do not try hard enough; and sometimes this very failure
proves to be the next giant step on the path to spirituality. the
process is complex and it is not the purpose of this book to deal
with this complexity. There is coming to be an immense Bahai
literature on this and other subjects for the votaries of this Cause to
enlarge their understandings of such matters.
Part 2:

On 9 October 2005 Farzam Arbab defined a training institute as:

an agency for the development of human resources dedicated to
the advancement of the process of entry by troops." I discuss the
nature and purpose of the institute process, the study circles with
the Ruhi materials as their core curriculum, the clusters, the
devotional meetings, the childrens classes and junior youth
activities from time to time in this book. These topics are in need of
a general desciption for our discussion here as I have pointed out
above. There are several major sources of explanatory frameworks,
of talks by significant Bahs as well as comments by a multitude
of Bahs on the internet at many a site, of booklets of materials,
of resources prepared by innumerable NSAs, by clusters and by
regional communities/ councils, among other institutional bodies.
These sources, taken as a whole, leave no doubt that this institute
process is not a spasmodic, uncoordinated process characterized by
a series of exertions that lack clarity and single-mindedness. They
provide a context for lucidity and precision on a complex and
profound process. The extent to which each of us grasps this
complex process clearly at any one moment and the extent to which
many minds which are not easily satisfied understand this
deceptively simple, but in some ways quite profound, process is
quite another question.
Our task, my task and yours in the years to, say, the end of the first
century of this Formative Age in 2021, is to ask ourselves what we
can do to hasten the attainment of the goals of the current plan and,
in the process, inscribe our mark on this brief span of time so
charged as it is with potentialities and hope. These years will see
the first years of the 7th edition of my memoir, a memoir that
attempts, among other things, to place the work I do within this
new paradigm in focus and perspective. This memoiristic activity is
not part of a narcissistic "look at me...look at me" exercise, it

simply outlines one person's response to the challenge of this new

paradigm. That is all each of us can do is rise to the challenge in
our own individual ways.
The catalogue of terms, processes, issues, problems, tasks and
goals we are faced with in this new paradigm possesses a vastness
that I can only hint at here. Many, if not most, of these tasks and
goals existed long before this new paradigm of opportunity arose.
Some of them were given greater specificity during this new
paradigm--like junior youth programs. Programs are now open to
all junior youth, young adolescents between the ages of 11 to 14,
regardless of faith. They are increasingly being held at the
neighborhood level. The groups help junior youth to develop their
moral, ethical and spiritual framework in an enjoyable group
setting, facilitated by an older youth or adult, known as an
animator. The Universal House of Justice describes junior youth as
a special group with special needs, as they are somewhat in
between childhood and youth (Ridvan 2000 message). Children's
classes, junior youth, youth and other programs will be on my
spiritual and our community plates until I and most readers here
depart from this mortal coil. For, as I have said before, only this
time I will say it in French being from the officially bilingual
country of Canada: "plus c'est change, plus ca la meme chose."
Still, it is difficult for many to appreciate the immense strides in the
work with children, junior youth and youth that have taken place in
this new paradigm. For someone like myself who remembers the
picture in North America in the 1950s and 1960s, and knows from
his reading what it was like in virtually all countries in the West in
these age-categories of Bahai community life back then, the shift in
numbers, focus and systematic program implementation is
immense.
MORE ON JUNIOR YOUTH

Most Bahais, both young and old, can accept that the future of the
Bah' community and the driving force behind its growth will be
the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program--or JYSEP.
What fewer Bahais can reconcile with is their role within this
movement. There are children who become junior youth, and junior
youth who become participants, and older youth who become the
animators that accompany them. And then theres the rest of us. If
youre a youth in spirit though not in reality, you may feel you are
on the periphery of this phenomenon. As we are encouraged more
and more to support the youth, to support this Program, it is easy to
ask, But, how? if you are neither a youth nor part of this
Program. It is, of course, never too late to become an animator of a
junior youth group, particularly if you are in a cluster, community
or neighbourhood, in which the need outweighs the available
resources. If, for whatever reason, serving as an animator is not
feasible for you, there are still a number of ways you are able to
contribute to the JYSEP.
1. Know your product
As mentioned in the Insights from the Frontiers of Learning
documentnot all the believers, of course, are able to work
directly with junior youth groups Nevertheless, a sound
knowledge of the programme has proved to be invaluable for all
those engaged in the work of the Plan, since the insights acquired
help to shape the discourse with the wider community about the
mission of the Faith to contribute to the betterment of the world.
Having a sound and thorough knowledge of the JYSEP and being
able to articulate this to the wider community will play a significant
role in establishing a presence within a neighbourhood, creating an
awareness of the JYSEP and its effects, and contributing to a
culture, in which junior youth are perceived as active agents of

social change.
2. All roads lead to Rome
Coherence among core activities is both an approach and an outcome of
effective growth. Pursuing lines of action in a coherent manner by centering
activities around a particular point of focus can be a strategic way of
achieving organic growth. At the same time, initiating one activity, can, quite
naturally, lead to the emergence of others3 or enhance already existing
activities
potential offshoot of a junior youth group, for example, may be a childrens
class for their younger siblings. The Universal House of Justice states, that By
multiplying vibrant junior youth groups, a community learns a great deal

human resources are increased and

deployed and how capacity for service is raised within cohorts of
individuals.
about, for instance, how capable

As junior youth move through the program, they widen the pool of human
resources available to a community by becoming engaged in service. There
must, therefore, be activities to channel their energies study circles to
participate in, tutors to accompany them, childrens classes for them to teach,
junior youth groups for them to animate. The educational process is a
community-wide effort and though we may look to the junior youth to
spearhead community-building efforts, the community itself will be made up
of more than just junior youth: As such, each and every member has a role to
play and an equal though not identical contribution to make within it.

Supporting the JYSEP may look like supporting your community in

general and responding to its varying needs. Assisting a childrens
class, starting a Book 1, making regular home-visits, participating
in a collective teaching campaign all these efforts will eventually
feed into the advancement of the JYSEP as will the JYSEP
mutually advance the efforts of a community.
3. The ornaments of a home are the guests who frequent it.
For every actively engaged junior youth, there will be a parent

concerned about their welfare whether they are members of the

Bahai or wider community. Ruhi Book 5 states that: "An important
requirement for maintaining a dynamic junior youth group is
building trust and friendship with the parents. Animators need to
visit them either before or soon after the junior youth have formed
their group and explain to them the purpose of the program. They
should continue to visit the parents regularly thereafter, share with
them the various themes related to the lives of the junior youth that
the program exploresand consult with them about the well-being
and progress of their children. Home-visiting parents is something
that can be co-ordinated with members of the community.
Particularly when animators are younger youth, it is helpful to have
a mature adult to accompany them on a home visit to a parent.
4. Its not what you know, but who you know.
The most difficult aspect of running a junior youth group is starting
one. Finding enough participants to form a sizable group is
challenging particularly in the Western countries, where
approaching a junior youth you do not know can feel unwise or
inappropriate. Using an existing relationship as a starting point can
be advantageous. Do you know a junior youth or do you know a
family with children of junior youth age? Your contacts may be the
greatest contribution you can make to a budding junior youth
group.
5.Okay, and also a bit of what you know.
In Book 5, it asks: "How do you ensure that childish games are not
presented as a substitute for arts and crafts and that young people
are assisted to gain a true appreciation of arts, crafts and sciences
that uplift the world of being, and are conducive to its exaltation?
An essential part of the JYSEP is the incorporation of creative

endeavours and activities. If you have a particular skill, craft, talent

or passion that you are able to share, then facilitating a work-shop
in either one or part of a session may be your way of assisting the
lateral development of a junior youth.
6. Let deeds, not words be your adorning
Finally, JY groups will always constitute endless logistical
considerations: lifts to be organized, food to be prepared, art
supplies to be transported, parents to be called, venues to be
secured Offer your home, offer your car, offer your food but
more importantly offer your time, your energy and your service
because without it, no community can hope to prosper and with it,
we can only grow.
DR ARBAB HAD MANY THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE
INSTITUTE PROCESS
HE WROTE ABOUT THESE THINGS BEFORE THE PROCESS
WAS LAUNCHED AND AFTER
Dr. Arbab emphasized the importance of each individual taking
charge of his or her own learning....What is at stake is the level of
consciousness achieved, the will created, the desire aroused and the
degree to which what is learned is internalized and translated into
action. In the absence of willpower, it hardly needs emphasizing,
the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly
worthless.
Dr. Arbab said much more in his papers, papers I read as far back
as 2004 when he came to Australia and in his small booklet
'Lectures on Bahai-Inspired Curricula' published in 1994, a decade
before his public talks in Australia. I will add just two of the many

sentences that especially impressed me in that excellent series of

talks on the subject of: the institute process, learning and growth.
The overall process," he emphasized, "is enormously complex and
simplistic ways of approaching it can be counterproductive. And
secondly: Capability empowers a person to think and act in a welldefined sphere of activity and according to a well-defined
purpose. Perseverance is often difficult; rising above ones
limitations is easier said than done and, since so much of what we
are engaged in are processes, the work, the task, the passion of our
lives, is and will be forever incomplete, only partially satiated.
Insofar as my teaching on the internet is concerned, I feel that this
sentence applies very well to me and my work: Capability
empowers a person to think and act in a well-defined sphere of
activity and according to a well-defined purpose. And to each his
or her own it must be added. That is only obvious.
In Dr. Arbab's series of lectures published in 1994, containing as
they did some of the first published exploratory comments on the
Ruhi institute in its most recent dress, a dress it began to assume in
the 1990s, emphasized a range of factors in the development of
curricula materials: creativity, reflection, consultation and action.
As I read these lectures that came into my hands in 2004, ten years
later, ten years after their first publication, I was reminded of the
discussion of curricula in Bahai educational circles back in the
1960s and 1970s, especially the work of Daniel Jordan and Dwight
Allen at the School of Education University of Massachusetts.
Those discussions and their work, among the work of others in the
field, was for me in those years as a new teacher myself, part of one
of my own paradigm shifts in my understanding of education,
learning and teaching. Between the year my mother entered the
Cause in 1953 and the year I arrived in Tasmania as an
international pioneer from Canada in 1974, the Bahai Faith--and
my own life--experienced a paradigm shift and a significant part of

that paradigm shift was in the world of learning and the cultural
attainments of the mind. In one national report in 2007 a national
assembly noted a narrowness of focus and an inflexible system of
implementation as a result of the new paradigm and not enough
personal initiative, innovation, creativity and audacity.

Teaching On-Line
I have been teaching on-line now for more fifteen years, 20002015, for most of the time that this new Bah' culture has been
developing. Any Bah who would like to see some samples of my
activity can simply google my name: Ron Price. Placing these two
words into ones google search engine will give the googler access
to an array of sites at which I post. But, there are over 4000 other
Ron Prices on the internet! It is one of the more popular names in
cyberspace.
There is a simple process to ensure that those searching at search
engines have the right Ron Price when they are performing their
searches at any one of the array of sites under that name. They need
to: (a) type the words Ron Price and then (b) type the word Forums,
Blogs, or any one of many other words: apologetics, philosophy,
religion, history, social issues, psychology, sociology, Bah, Iran,
poetry, literature, terrorism, art, media studies, Islam, Christianity,
art, music, TV, inter alia. Googlers can also try any one of 100s of
other words and see what comes up.
Each Bah who teaches on the internet does their teaching in very
different ways. Each Bah has their own style in order to engage
with others, their own MO, to use a who-dun-it term, both on and
off the internet. I now have several books on the internet which

have received a total of several hundred thousand hits.

One of my books is this 650 page analysis of the new Bah
paradigm. The book is found at Bah Library Online and can be
accessed by: (i) clicking on the By Author box at the top of the
access page and then (ii) typing the word Price into the box. To
then access the book in question the reader needs to scroll down to
item #47 and click on that item; or go to this link: http://bahailibrary.com/price_culture_learning_paradigm
I also work with many interest groups associated with mental
health. Go to the following link for my book on the subject of
mental health, especially bipolar disorder, which I utilize in many
different ways at relevant websites on mental health issues:
http://bahai-library.com/price_mentalhealth_history_autobiography-memoir. I also have a new website
at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/ which functions as a central hub
for my online teaching. More details on this activity are available if
required at my email address: ronprice9@gmail.com
MARSHALLING OUR ENERGIES

This book in many respects is about marshalling our energies and

whatever reflections and actions we can bring to the processes of
this paradgim shift at the local and regional levels. This most recent
shift is the focus in this book not the other shifts which I comment
on briefly in the hope that those comments will increase our
understanding of this shift. As each of us does this in their own
bailiwick, domain or orbit, these processes will also take place at
the local and regional levels elsewhere in their own country and in
countries all around the world with continual guidance from the

NSAs, sometimes referred to as generals in the army of light.

Guidance will also be provided from the Bahai World Centre from
the several appointed institutions and the Universal House of
Justice. This Centre in Haifa Israel now has some 700 people
working in various capacities as part of the administrative and
spiritual focus of an international community. This guidance assists
Bahais everywhere in their understanding and in their
implementation of the plans and programs in both individual and
community lives. In the last two decades the focus, the work, at the
BWC, has itself gone through a paradigm shift as I discuss in small
part in relation to that triple impulse initiated in the three decades
between 1891 and 1921.
THE DECEMBER 12 2011 UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE
MESSAGE TO ALL NSAs
Part 1:
This section will contain a discussion of this most recent, and
lengthy, message of six pages from the House of Justice to all the
world's NSAs. I leave it to readers to read and reread this message,
a message which contains a survey of the most recent
developments in the new Bah' culture to the end of the year 2011.
Like all House of Justice messages, it needs to be read in the
context of previous messages as well as a knowledge of the wider
literature on the Cause. To read a message ex nihilo often depreives
a message of a relevant context and places the reader in a
bewildering situation, a situation in which he or she is faced with a
complex structure whose functions can not be grasped because
there is just too much to take in. Ours is an age that seems to
require simplistic explanations. Whom the gods would destroy they
first make simple, then simpler and even simpler, as one literary
critic once observed.

The House of Justice begins by informing all NSAs of the opening

of 100s of new clusters due to the movement of homefront
pioneers. Given the fact that over half the world's clusters had no
Bah's at the beginning of this new FTP in April 2011, this
movement of pioneers is a heartening development. It is also a
development which will increase in the years ahead as the
international Bah' community aims to open all, most, or at least
the majority, of the world's clusters in the years of this new
paradigm, a paradigm which introduced the concept of cluster only
at the turn of this 3rd millennium among many other terms and
concepts.
Given the difficulties and the challenges, that present themselves to
Bah's in small groups, in isolated localities, I will post here a link
to the experience of one Bah' in a rural area, in a small Bah'
group. Go to this link for a sad, but all too common an
experience:http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/bigquestions/history.html
It is not a new experience. Becoming and remaining an active
Bah' is no easy process and never has been in the more than a
century and a half of the history of this Faith. New believers are
often tested by their fellow Bah's, by an administration which for
many is a strange and complex phenomenon, and by a sea of new
literature in an age which has become, for millions, an audio-visual
one with print taking second place to what the House of Justice
calls a mesmerizing sea of entertainment and what media analysts
now call infotainment--for their modus operandi of learning.
Part 2:
This new message from the House of Justice provides guidance to
NSAs and their training institutes, in the main, on the
implementation of the main sequence of courses in the Ruhi

curriculum. This message: reiterates the organizing principle and

the purpose behind the Ruhi program; mentions the fact that there
will eventually be 18 courses; outlines the current paths to service
that exist; discusses the coordination of programs for children and
their teachers, junior youth and their animators, as well as adults
and their tutors on the one hand and the three month cycles of
activity on the other; discusses study circles, Area Teaching
Committees, and the 40 sites for the dissemination of learning
established by the OSED(Office of Social and Economic
Development; outlines in general the educational materials and
philosophy, as well as the projected 18 textbooks for junior youth;
and, finally, mentions the creation of an international Advisory
Board to assist the Ruhi Institute in the preparation and distribution
of resources.
In these last years of the second decade of this new Bah' culture,
this new paradigm is unfolding piece by piece and part by part,
agency by agency and program by program, initiative by initiative
and enterprize by enterprize---as the elected and appointed
branches of the Cause apply the many instruments which are
slowly tempered in the crucible of their personal and institutional
experience. As these individuals and institutions do this the
persecution of their co-religionists in Iran continues day after day
and month after month bringing the attention of the world to this
new Faith. The capacity needed to employ these instruments with a
high degree of coherence and in a pattern of life is slowly being
fostered year after year, sometimes with a predetermined path, but
often with no predetermined course. Stumbling bocks must be
made into stepping stones, as they always had to be in previous
paradigms. What is at stake, so often, is not complaince with a set
of procedures but the unfoldment of an educational process.
(28/12/'10) At a future time, hopefully before the end of this first
year of the current FTP in April 2012, I hope to integrate this new

message to NSAs into a coherent discussion of the previous

messages as well as the wider literature of the Cause. For all the
House of Justice messages need to be seen as a comprehensive
whole and not as isolated documents existing ex nihilo.
STUDY CIRCLES
Over the last 18 years the international Bah' community has had
the opportunity to participate, tutor, and be involved to varying
degrees in numerous Bahai study circles in different parts of the
world. There are very good ones, and ones that could use a little
work. There are Study Circles that completed the Ruhi book they
were working on, and ones that fizzled out before completion.
Some were run at an extremely intensive and accelerated pace, and
some that took over a year to complete. Some brought people into
the Faith, and some werent very well received by some of the
participants. The fact is that no matter what you think about study
circles or what your involvement has been with them over the
years, study circles have and continue to revolutionize many Bahai
communities worldwide, helping to change the overall culture of
the Bahai community-and I think for the better.
Of course theres always room for improvement, and Bah'
communities are learning through action and reflection while
continuously developing and working on improving their posture
of learning. The following are just six of the ways study circles
have helped the Bahai community:
1. Becoming less insular as a community and helping us reach out.
Bahai study circles are not just for Bahais. By now most Bahais
know that, but reaching out to friends and neighbours to join them
in a Bahai study circle is not easy for everyone, but the fact is that
study circles have helped the Bah' community to start thinking

outside the parameters of the Bahai community, and theyve

served as a catalyst for many of the Bah's to reach out, invite, and
talk about the Faith with others, reminding them of the fact that the
Teachings of Bahaullah are for everyone, and not just Bahais, but
for the community at large no matter what their beliefs.
2. Emphasis on reading and studying the Bahai Writings.
Bahais are encouraged to read and study the Writings, but for
those who need a little guidance or a tip or two of what exactly to
read, going through the Ruhi sequence of books definitely helps
guide many Bah's to the important concepts they should be
studying.
Once a person has completed books one through to seven of the
Ruhi sequence of courses, they will have read and studied with
their study circle a total of 545 quotations from the Bahai
Writings. Thats pretty significant! Although Bah's are enjoined to
study the Bahai Writings, and read the Writings every morning and
evening, many do not have the discipline to do this, and so study
circles have provided such individuals with a systematic
opportunity to deepen in the Writings, and furthermore as
mentioned in the first point--individuals are not just reading the
Bahai Writings, they're reflecting and discussing these quotations
and the concepts they present with a group of people who quite
often have varying beliefs and understandings.
3. Nurturing a sense of ownership.
Before Bahai study circles hit the scene, one could argue that
many Bahai communities had developed what could perhaps be
classified as a culture of dependency on certain individuals in the
community. These individuals were often seen as more

knowledgable on issues relating to the Faith and its history, so the

community would turn to them for all of their Bahai knowledge,
and not turn to the Writings to learn about a topic themselves. For
example, Bah's would go to a deepening class based on a certain
book or topic, and often the dynamic of the deepening would be a
one-way interaction between the speaker and the participants. Sure,
there were a few questions here and there, but by-in-large the
person holding the deepening would be the person everyone looked
to for the answers.
Deepening classes are still valid and they still have a role in
community life, but the fact remains that many community
members were indirectly (and unintentionally) dis-empowering
themselves from delving into the Writings and really internalising
and digesting the Words of God for themselves. Study circles
have countered that culture of dependency now by removing the
middle-man in a sense, encouraging individuals to deepen in the
Bahai Writings for ourselves, and even charging them with the
task of memorizing the quotes found in the Ruhi books. What
better way to really internalize them! With approximately 70,000
friends capable of serving as tutors of study circles, I think the
culture has definitely changed as a result.
4. Encouraging the Writings to become a part of us through
memorization.
In one of Bahaullahs Tablets, He encourages us to memorize the
Bahai Writings: "From the texts of the wondrous, heavenly
Scriptures they should memorize phrases and passages bearing on
various instances, so that in the course of their speech they may
recite divine verses whenever the occasion demandeth it, inasmuch
as these holy verses are the most potent elixir, the greatest and
mightiest talisman.

The Ruhi sequence of courses encourage Bah's to memorize the

Bahai Writings, and theyve even done a lot of the work for them
by hand-picking them. In fact, did you know that between the
pages of Ruhi books one through to seven, there are 137 Bahai
quotations were asked to memorize? You can already see the result
of this emphasis on memorization amongst those who have been
involved in the sequence of courses. There has been a significant
shift over the last several years of the way in which Bah's are
using the Bahai Writings in otheir everyday speech, and this has
had a direct effect on their ability to engage in meaningful and
distinctive conversations. Furthermore, by participating in study
circles Bah's had to come up with creative ways to memorize
these quotes, and this has not only been fun, but its helped ensure
that individuals do this.
5. A unified vision and systematic action.
In a letter to the to the participants of the 114 Youth Conferences
currently taking place around the world, the Universal House of
Justice wrote: "The possibilities presented by collective action are
especially evident in the work of community building, a process
that is gaining momentum in many a cluster and in neighbourhoods
and villages throughout the world that have become centres of
intense activity. Before the Institute Process was adopted by the
entire Bahai world, we were all doing our own little thing in our
our own little corners. Now that weve got a structured and
systematic road map, were all able to focus our energies with
unified vision and action, and this has proven to be extremely
practical and powerful. Theres nothing cooler than being able to
chat to someone in Nepal, South Africa or Canada and know what
theyre talking about when they mention what Ruhi books theyve
completed or are participating in. Especially for those of us who

move around a lot as well, you can turn up to a community

anywhere in the world and just plug yourself straight into the
activities.
6. Community building and a focus on service.
Bah's know that service to others is an integral part of our Faith.
As Abdul-Baha explained: "all effort and exertion put forth by
man from the fullness of his heart is worship, if it is prompted by
the highest motives and the will to do service to humanity. This is
worship: to serve mankind and to minister to the needs of the
people. Service is prayer." Service is also fundamental to the
sequence of courses developed by the Ruhi Institute. As the Ruhi
Institute explains: "the Institutes main sequence of courses is not
arranged according to a series of subject matters, with the specific
aim of increasing individual knowledge. The content and order are
based, rather, on a series of acts of service, the practice of which
creates capacity in the individual to meet the exigencies of
dynamic, developing communities. And as also noted above, the
enhancement of such capacity is viewed in terms of walking a
path of serviceThe acts of service treated in the Institutes main
sequence of courses are intended, then, to establish a dynamic
pattern of action that will lead to the sound development of local
communities.
The Universal House of Justice explained this in the 2010 Ridvan
Message: "More important is that every soul feel welcome to join
the community in contributing to the betterment of society,
commencing a path of service to humanity" The recent video
from the Bahai World Centre called Frontiers of Learning
provided the community with examples of what community
building can look like so that they could reflect on their
experiences and learn from them.

MISTAKES CRITICISM AND THE TENDENCY TO ARGUE

In the process many mistakes are and will inevitably be made at the
local, the cluster, the regional, the national, the continental and the
intercontinental levels, but these mistakes are, for the most part, not
serious enough to warrant creating inharmony and raising issues
that lead to endless argument, personality conflict and wasting
time. The human tendency to take sides and fight about some issue,
to challenge and criticize decisions of assemblies, thus presenting a
sense of a divided community, is so easy to do. Personality
conflicts have been part of Bahai experience since 1844 and there
does not appear to be any end in sight for these baleful influences
on (a) community life and (b) the expression of energy and
harmony at all levels of the Bahai community. Dealing with
criticism seems to be part of our lifelong search and labour, in the
challenges involved in overcoming estrangement that is the lot of
Bahais everywhere. This has always been the case. It was the case
in the 1920s and 1930s as well as in the period from the 1950s to
the 1970s. As the paradigm shifts take place, continuities also take
place in the life of the Bahai community and one of these
continuities is criticism. I do not want to dwell on other negative
aspects of community, life and society experience here, although
such discussions are unavoidable in this memoir. In a letter to the
NSA of the Bah's of Australia just over two years ago(19/1/'12),
the House of Justice point out the problems associated with
paternalism, and a sense of superiority which results, that
institution emphasizes, "in estrangement. disaffection and
exclusion." The elements of an effective organizational scheme,
they emphasize, assume a wide variety of forms in a wide variety
of circumstances.
I would now like to turn to other continuities in my Bahai

community life and the life of the international Bah' community

since the mid-1990s. In addition, I will deal with some of the shifts
in the paradigm of opportunities and activities that I have
experienced and that I have observed elsewhere not only in my
own region but around the wider world.
SOME PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE HERE IN MY OWN
COMMUNITY AND CLUSTER

DEVOTIONAL MEETINGS
Part 1:
With the Five Year Plan(2011-2016) that is now in its 4th year, I
would like now to make some comments about my local Bahai
Group(Reg) and the new paradigm. We began our devotional
meetings in 2003 in this town of 7000 in Tasmania at the end of the
Tamar River, five kms from the Bass Strait, an extension of the
Great Southern Ocean. Devotional meetings have been one of the
three core activities to use the language of this new paradigm. This
activity was an initiative of the Five Year Plan(2001-2006). This
core activity is now in its eleventh year in our town and will
continue until and if our plans change. All the Bahai teaching
initiatives in this locality over the previous dozen years(1991-2003)
during which there had been resident Bahais had not involved
advertised public meetings of any kind. In the decades before we
began our devotional meetings in 2003, Bahais had travelled to this
locality in various seed-planting exercises, sometimes called travel
teaching; quotations and phone numbers had been regularly placed
in the major newspaper throughout the 1990s and prayers had been
said by the nearby Bahai community for the progress of the Cause
in this town. Our community was what has been traditionally

known in the global Bahai program of teaching and consolidation,

of expansion and pioneering, as an extension goal of a nearby LSA
some 50 kms away.
Bahaullah's writings have always forbidden an aggressive
proselytism through which many religious messages have been
widely promulgated in society. Inviting people to meetings in
public places and in private homes, forming relationships with local
people in a wide variety of ways one of which is now called Home
Visits, joining local interest groups and what might be called a very
mild form of proselytism if one wanted to be critical: all this is and
has been part of a general policy of establishing small groups at the
local level throughout the Bahai world. The experience of this
small Bahai Group that my wife and I joined in 1999, 15 years ago,
has followed this normal process of Bahai group initiation, growth
and development.
Part 2:
The experience of the Bahai community over many decades in
Australia and, indeed, in most western countries where this new
Faith has grown, has shown that in most places few people ever
come to advertised Bahai public meetings of any kind, especially
since, say, the 1950s and 1960s and the arrival of TV, among other
socio-historical and technological changes in the last half century.
Passivity, perhaps one of many factors that results in few people
coming to public meetings, has been bred by the forces of society
and people everywhere, at least in the West,l want to be entertained
and led by those who appeal to their often superficial emotions. At
Ridvan 2014 the House referred to "the languor of passivity" and,
on the other hand, to "freneticism" and "the paralyis of volition" in
the context of "exerting an effort" and "the heavenly aid
vouchsafed in response."

And so it was that our Bahai Group approached its task of holding
advertising devotional meetings with expectations which were not
imbued with unrealistic goals thinking we would achieve, if we just
tried hard enough, some kind of 'entry-by-troops,' an oftmisunderstood process at the best of times, especially in the first
decade of its extensive use, the years 1991-2001. There are rare
exceptions, of course, but the patterns of action/activity and
response to Bahai initiatives in many areas of the teaching process
are as predictable as the sun getting up in the morning and setting
at night. One could say this is simply practical realism, a selffulfilling prophecy, a meagre response or any one of a number of
phrases to capture the experience most Bah communities have
had in the West in the last several decades.
If intensive programs of growth were to develop; if preconceived
notions about the lack of receptivity were to fall away; if a
commitment to the process of growth was to be raised to higher
levels; if direct teaching was to take place in this oldest town in
Australia, it would not be in the form of street teaching or door to
door; it would be little by little and day by day--down the track of
time as our cluster, our Regional Council and our NSA advanced
along their own institutional lines. In our locality of four believers
with an average age in the 60s time would tell how this new
paradigm was going to evolve.
Part 3:
In our local community we saw these devotional meetings as
opportunities to advertise the Cause, to give it a greater public face
in the northern half of Tasmania and, indeed, throughout the state.
Our energy was directed toward what we felt was a realistic goal.
The Faith had been in the north of Tasmania for over half a century

and in Tasmania--where a Regional Council replaced a Bahai

Regional Office in the early years of this new millennium and a
former Regional Goals Committee-for 80 years when we started
planning our devotional meetings eleven years ago in February
2003. But the public visibility of the Cause in many of the small
towns of northern Tasmania was nil or approached nil. Our
intention was to raise the visible profile, so to speak. And this we
did.
But other Bahai communities around the world have been more
enterprizing and more successful than we have been. Music and the
arts have been integrated directly into many development projects,
devotional meetings and a wide range of community activities. The
practical considerations of integrating the arts into development
programs were admirably addressed in a presentation given by
Donald Rogers in the 1999 Social and Economic Development
Conference, titled The Use of the Arts in the Bah Community.
If you havent already read it, I would encourage you to on the
internet. There was an example of a devotional meeting and it was
only one of many around the world showing how music and the
arts could lend their support to a specific kind of grassroots social
development project? In 1999 the Universal House of Justice called
on the Bah world to further develop local communities and reach
out to the general public by instituting regular meetings for
worship open to all. The Bahs of Oxnard, California, along with
the neighboring community of Ventura, co-hosted a regular public
worship program, held in a community center. Their Assemblies
jointly decided to enhance the public appeal of these programs by
calling on local talents to integrate the arts into the worship
services, especially with the use of live musicians. This stirred
enthusiasm in the community and attracted a number of seekers.
Melbourne Australia has now had a devotional program called
"Soulfood" which is similar to this worship program in California

and it is eminently successful--certainly more successful than here

in my local community. But, Bahais around the world have to work
within their capacities, limitations and circumstances as the House
of Justice has pointed out more times than I would want to footnote
here. In this new paradigm there are more and more initiatives
taking place through the use of the arts but not in my home Bahai
group.
Part 4:
Getting together to share prayers and writings from the Bahai
faith, from other scriptures and enlightened souls, is a staple of
Bahai life. These devotional gatherings are one of the core
activities and all Bahais are encouraged to not only attend, but to
host them. There is no set format or formula for running a
devotional, and they run the gamut from organized public events
through to informal sharing of prayers and readings around a coffee
table. And since there is no particular way that a devotional should
be held, its open for creativity and inventiveness. Here are some
ideas for devotional gatherings as they have taken place in the last
decade or so
1. Add a Visual Slideshow for Accompaniment
Beautiful images can be a magical addition to a devotional
gathering. PowerPoint presentations can be used to create a slow
running slideshow of images which can be projected on to a nearby
wall to slowly fade in the background during readings and prayer.
A dim room is all that is needed so that the projection really shines.
Organizers should make sure its all set up beforehand so they dont
have to flail about with any unplanned technical difficulties.
Selection of images is absolutely key because you want images that
are visually beautiful, interesting and consistent with the gathering.

Expect to spend a lot of time finding, choosing and cropping

images for your slideshow. And be prepared to cull images that
dont feel appropriate. The last thing you want is everyone getting
pulled out of their thoughts to wonder what the heck is that picture
doing there? Dont feel you need to create a slideshow of images
of Bahai buildings or gardens. Think outside the box and look for
creative, artful images that convey an idea, or abstract enough to
just give a visual ambience to the room. The site can provide some
wonderful inspiration.
2. Give Attendees a Memento
A common take-away is a copy of the programme so that attendees
can continue to reflect on the readings later, or perhaps use them in
their own devotions. A series of devotional gatherings can provide
attendees with a bookmark with a different virtue written on it.
After a few months of attendance those attneding will have a little
set of virtuous bookmarks to remind them of what virtue they were
supposed to be practicing that month.
3. Live Music Performances
Abdul-Baha says that We, verily, have made music as a ladder for
your souls. So what more fitting accompaniment to a devotional
than music? And when it comes to music, nothing beats a live
performance. It can be a bit tricky finding performers, especially if
you are organizing just a little get together, but if you can manage it
youll be glad you did! Of course if you can play an instrument or
sing, you need never worry about where to find a performer.
Drummers send out energy and inspiration during a Hush Harbor
devotional meeting at the New York Bah' Center.
4. Find a Special Venue

You dont need to live somewhere as picturesque as by Sydneys

beaches to have a special venue for your next gathering. Going
outdoors generally works well in any sort of natural surrounding
when the sun is out and the skies are blue. Alternatively you can
make an indoor spot special with the use of some decorative
ingenuity. A candlelit late night devotional can be pretty special and
very atmospheric. If you go for that sort of thing, just remember to
make provisions for the readers to, you know, read! A little torch or
reading light does the trick.
5. Run a Guided Meditation
The Guardian Shoghi Effendi has said that the core of religious
faith is that mystic feeling that unites man with God. This state of
spiritual communion can be brought about and maintained by
means of meditation and prayer. A guided meditation before you
begin your devotional is a really lovely way to get participants into
a deep prayerful and relaxed state. If you are comfortable leading
such a meditation you certainly could do it yourself, otherwise
guided meditation CDs and audio tracks can be purchased from
most music stores. One of the first times I ever tried meditation was
at a little devotional gathering and it was pretty serene. It was about
10 minutes long and played off a CD which the host had. There
were only five of us attending and we were seated amongst a whole
load of cushions that you could sink into. By the time we began
praying I recall feeling very calm and focused. It was lovely!
6. Explore Art and Devotions
Abdul-Baha once said that:"All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests
itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a

poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of
the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces
marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose,
when showing forth the praise of God. Abdul-Baha quoted in The
Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield. You might ask participants to
meditate on a handful of readings and then work to reflect on them
through painting or drawing. You may find some resistance if you
have not pre-warned your participants of the plan for your
devotional. But assuming you have a group of willing and
enthusiastic attendees, this could go down well! If youve ever
been to, or organized, a devotional that incorporated art, Id love to
hear about it in the comments!
7. Create an Experience
Beauty spas are the masters of creating a relaxing experience.
Through the use of location, environment, ambient music,
beverages, scents and lighting, they put their customers into a
tranquil state of being, even before the spa treatments begin.
Theres a lot we can learn from this! If you consider the whole
devotional experience you can better help your attendees to elevate
their minds and spirits by bringing them to the right space to begin
prayer and reading. Earlier I mentioned a devotional I attended that
incorporated guided meditation. I remember that as soon as we
arrived the whole room was setup to feel calming. The lighting was
warm, there were rose petals on the doorstep, the room had a light
floral scent coming from two candles burning, the room was small
and cozy with soft cushions liberally placed, and upon seating we
were given a glass of sparkling water with mint and slices of fresh
strawberries. Coupled with the guided meditation, it was quite the
experience!
8. Theme the Gathering

Themes make parties more awesome, so why not devotionals?

When you have a theme, you can make the devotional experience
that much more memorable by incorporating elements of the theme
into everything. Imagine a devotional gathering reflecting on the
life of Bahaullah where everything is set up to evoke images of
Iran. You could have a slideshow of historical imagery, beautiful
Persian music playing ambiently when guests arrive, a special
Persian sweet for each guest as they sit, readings could be printed
on paper with a Persian design embellishing it, and so on. There are
lots of themes you could run with too! The theme Refreshed could
be a devotional where everything is cool, refreshing and
invigorating. The theme Nature should be an easy one, as would
be Light. You could do a devotional on the theme of America or
Paris with readings from Abdul-Bahas trips there. Or you could
tackle themes like Oneness or Woman which might be a little
trickier but all the more rewarding for it! Theming your gathering is
definitely taking your devotional gathering to the next level, and
really combines many of the earlier ideas of creating an experience
around your gathering. Its not for the faint-hearted, but the results
will be worth it!
HOME VISITS CORE ACTIVITIES AND ADVERTISING

Being aware of my capacities and incapacities empowered me to

think and act in a well-defined sphere of activity and according to a
well-defined purpose, but outward results as defined by an increase
in membership at the local level have still been non-existent.
Community building as a process the Bahais were told was at its
very beginning in the mid-1990s at the start of this new paradigm.
More than a decade and a half after the House of Justice said we

were at the very beginning of community building, this still seemed

to be the case and I'm sure this sense of beginningness, if one can
call it that, will continue to be the case for many decades to come
in many, if not most Bahai localities around the planet. In our
locality, the oldest town in Australia(1804) with a Bahai history
going back two decades we were still taking our first steps or so it
seemed. Our community came to define a home visit(HV) as an
opportunity to enter into a deep conversation on spiritual matters. It
has been my experience now, after seven years of engaging in HVs,
that when the visit is clearly just a social call in which: (a) the Faith
is not even be mentioned and (b) there is no real engagement with
the person in any serious/intimate conversation then that visit does
not come into the category HV.

There is a type of educational process, a type of serious dialogue, in

which the teacher is clearly building a path to a direct discussion of
the Cause, a path he has followed before--and in my case a path in
which I have been engaged over many years and decades--and this
gives shape to the individual and collective activities that come
under the rubric HV. After five decades of firesides, of people
coming to the homes of Bahais, HVs took the Faith to others. It
reversed the direction; people no longer had to come to the
Bahais--although firesides continued. The menu of activities for
Bahais to engage in had clearly broadened in this new paradigm.

I would like to say a few things about the interchange that takes
place in these HVs. Any serious content, any objective discussion,
is engaged in for the sake of sociability. The content is a means to
liveliness, harmony and common consciousness in which all can

participate alike, all can give to the group. The ability to change
topics easily and quickly is crucial to the flow of conversation. The
individual, the person making the HV, functions as part of a
collective for which he lives and from which he derives his values.
But life must emerge in the flux of a facile and happy play of
interaction. A deep spring of beliefs feeds the realm of interaction
but it must be erected in an airy realm of feelings and attractions,
convictions and impulses and not become a lifeless schematism, a
serious prove-your-point and win-the-day, form.

The serious person derives from the sociability a feeling of

liberation and relief. Seriousness is sublimated,diluted and the
heavy content reverberates only dimly since, as Simmel puts it, its
"gravity has evaporated into mere attractiveness." There is an art to
conversation in these HVs and much of the advice of Abdu'l-Bah,
Dr. Johnson and Kahlil Gibran is relevant here; for example,
Kibran writes that: "Friendship is always a sweet responsibility,
never an opportunity." I will add to this subject at a later date.(The
Sociology of Georg Simmel, Chapter 3, Collier-MacMillan, NY,
1964,p.93.; and H.M. Balyuzi, Abdu'l-Bah, George Ronald, 1971,
p.27) There are also practical realities, questions of how much
social interaction each person can cope with, how much time he
has, indeed, a myriad factors that relate to how many HVs in which
a person can engage.

Devotional Meetings(DMs) have now taken place, as I say above,

once a month for nine years in our Bah' community of six
members. Advertising has included: (a) ads in the print and
electronic media--on four radio stations, two TV stations and in two

newspapers; (b) 35 posters/month and a total now of over 2100 in

the 40 shops in town in which we put posters; (c) 100 fliers/month
giving a total now of 10000(discontinued in Jan 2010); and (d) two
special Tasmanian internet sites among many non-Tasmanian sites.
The total cost of all of the above is: $20.00/month.($10 for a rented
country Womens Association room; $8.00 for one of the
newspaper ads and $2.00 for the paper, ancillary materials, petrol,
oil, water and wear and tear on clothes, vehicles and our psyches,
inter alia)Note: in 2009 the DMs moved into one of the two homes
of the Bahais.

It is this advertising that lets people in our Bahai locality of 7000,

and the wider Tasmanian community of about 500 thousand, know
that Bahais dot the Tasmanian landscape. Advertising in the 8
different mediums/media and 13 different individual outlets, and
more than half a dozen internet sites, through the repeated exposure
every month, through systematic and regular information bites, has
created a definite public profile for this Bahai Group and, more
generally, for the Bahai Faith. This profile is of a friendly but
largely undefined group, a group with multi-focused worthy causes,
internationalist, tolerant, but only understood superficially not in
any depth. Our DMs accomplish many things in the long road out
of obscurity and the exercise, we felt, should not be
underestimated.

We have been asked to take part in this core activity and we have
done so to the best of our ability--well, one can always do better, I
suppose, at least theoretically. Our aim is not to build a large
concentration of adherents nor even to concentrate on numbers,

membership and conversion in any sense. Our entire thrust is to: (a)
plant seeds and let people know that the Bahai Faith exists in this
region; (b) provide the opportunity for the population to find out
about this new Faith through as many channels as possible: by
phone, on the internet, by meetings in public and private, by the
powerful medium of advertising in a variety of forms/channels and
through the relationships each of us have with others.

THE COURAGE TO FAIL

I think the best line from the TV program1 I watched last night
was: it is important for each of us to have the courage to fail.
Fear and superstition in the general public slowed the progress on
open-heart surgery, heart transplants and the use of artificial hearts
in the field of cardiovascular surgery and medical pioneers like the
ones shown this evening simply ignored the opposition in the
public domain to their work.

In the years 1944 to 1953 pioneers like Dwight Harken, John

Gibbon and Walton Lilleher were three of the major founding
fathers of the field of cardiovascular surgery, a field that is arguably
just as old as I am: 65 years. Lillehei, with five university degrees
in his pocket, completed the first successful surgical repair of the
heart. He was 35 and the date was September 2, 1952. He was the
first person to look inside a beating heart, which beats 100
thousand times a day and four litres of blood per minute. On May
6, 1953, John Gibbon performed the world's first open-heart

procedure under extra-corporeal circulation.-Ron Price with thanks

to Dwight Harken in Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery, SBS
TV, 8:30-9:30 p.m. 13 January 2009.

During this same year, from October 1952 to October 1953, the
Bahai community celebrated a Holy Year marking the Centenary,
the hundredth anniversary, of the Birth of the Revelation, the first
intimations of the glorious Mission, of the Founder of the Bahai
Faith in the Siyah-Chal in Teheran. This event in the international
Bahai community was the anniversary of an epoch-making period
from 12 October 1852 to 12 December 1852, unsurpassed from a
Bahai perspective, by any episode in the worlds spiritual history
outside Bahai history. This Holy Year also saw the dedication of
the Mother Temple of the West, the holiest in all the Bahai world
in Chicago on 2 May 1953, an event which marked the inception,
again from a Bahai perspective, of the Kingdom of God on earth
and the appearance in the world of existence of a most wonderful
and thrilling motion.2 In 1953 gilded golden tiles were placed on
the dome of the Shrine of the Bb. This was the last unit of that
shrine and symbolized the consummation of the greatest enterprize
undertaken at the World Centre of this Faith. The year 1953 also
saw the inauguration on 21 April 1953, of a ten year world spiritual
crusade, the third stage of the first epoch of Abdul-Bahais Divine
Plan during which my parents and I became members of the Bahai
Faith in Canada. -Ron Price with thanks to Abdul-Baha in God
Passes By, Shoghi Effendi, Wilmette, 1957, p.351.
I was only in grade four back then and
just beginning my baseball-years-career,
a fleeting period and my ice-hockey life;
my adolescence and life in a little town

in a little house in a little world with its

birthday-parties, TV programs, endless
indulgences, straight lines at school and
pretty little girls marked: dont touch!!!
My mother accepted an invitation to a
home of one of those conspirators who
drank from one of those same wells the
ones that could be found, by then----all
around the planet. Not dismayed were
these co-conspirators by headlines they
called to their witness; they carried the
answers like neat balls of coloured yarn,
familiarly handled, spun of truth and in
their ready-made dresses, sensible shoes.
How did my mother get caught in their
web back then when Kruschev was on
his way to the top and a Holy Year was
giving a wonderful and thrilling motion
its kick-start, a kick-start to the Kingdom
of God on earthand no one really knew?
How did she get caught in their web when
This brutal, bloody and dangerous history
of surgery developed so rapidly because
men were not afraid to fail and so, too, we
refined inheritors, spiritual descendants, of
the dawnbreakers must not be afraid to fail
as we go about teaching the seekers among
our contemporaries year after year with only
discouragingly meagre results dealing as we
do with the fear and superstition of masses

who have no idea of the healing message we

bring as they sink deeper into a slough of
despond and as they do battle with phantoms
of a wrongly informed imagination, ill-equipped
to interpret the social commotion everywhere.
Ron Price
9 January 2009
Before passing on to another theme, I would like to briefly
comment on one of the developments during this paradigm, a
development described by Abdul-Baha in "one of the most vital
institutions of the world" Bah' community: the Mashriqu'lAdhkar which weds service and worship. It is the centre of one of
the community-building features of this new culture. There are
many letters and messages from the institutions of the Cause in
relation to a series of temples around the world, and I leave it to
readers to try to grasp some of the essential features of the first
Houses of Worship in several clusters around the world, Houses of
Worship which extend those which have been built in the 20th
century.
WHY DO I WRITE?
And so I write, not so much to tell the story of Bahai history, of
the Bahai community, for that has been told many times. I write as
a means of seeking my own understanding, of finding my own
voice and, in the process, it is my hope that others will benefit not
so much by my example, my insights and views, although I like to
think there are some insights in this book that have contemporary
relevance, but more from the tone and manner of this book and the
sense of encouragement I hope it provides and which I trust results
from an honesty about my battles and struggles. If I let others know

of my struggles, perhaps others will find the courage to fight their

battles when the chips are down. If they know of my trials and
despairs, perhaps they will approach their own with a sense of
practical realism and not unrealistic hopes and impractical
aspirations that so often lead, in the end, to embittered spirits and
discouragement which eats at mens souls.
Turning to the teachings, they may be able to overlook the
peculiarities and attitudes of others, inevitably to be found in
community, and also come to slowly acquire the skills and the
personal meanings, the capacity, that will enrich their own lives and
help them cope with the failures and loss they experience as part of
their own lives. Beginning with the writings of the Central figures
and the battles They had to deal with and continuing over more
than a century and a half with a genre of writing that has dealt with
the struggles of individual Bahais, this encouragement of the type I
refer to here can now be found in many sources both in Bahai
literature as well as the religious and philosophical literature on
other paths. Such literary sources can be inspirational. And, of
course, there are many stories of the experience of others in other
communities around the globe available in the mass media which
are often even more inspirational and often speak more directly to
people's experience.
THE SILENCE ABOUT OUR LIVES AND OUR SOCIALPRIVATE SELVES
There has been, for more than a century and a half, a great silence
on the part of most of my fellow believers when it comes to
autobiography, memoirs, life-writing, accounts of their experience
and that of their community. There has been an equal silence, a gap,
an abyss, which I find fascinating, between the outer self, in some
ways a fictitious but certainly a social, on-stage, person whom I

and others carry partly like a mask about the world and a secret,
inner, self. This is not due to any lack of self-reflection. I have
intended to write of both these worlds in several genres: poetry,
narrative and, of course, diaries. In some ways the interface
between these two worlds is immensely complicated, always much
more than can be recovered, revealed and understood and much
that can never be remembered or written down.
Not taking offence and not giving it also creates and requires many
silences in life and depends on a diplomacy that one gets lots of
practice at implementing if one is to avoid argument and dissent, an
intellectual contradiction to those who would be unifiers of the
children of men. If one is not to give offence it is often better that
one keep one's real opinions to oneself. If one is not to take offence
the avoidance of verbal lance and parry and punitive rebuttals is
useful but difficult. Autobiography and its epic nature as expressed
in my poetic prose helps me overcome these silences--at least
partly. There are many difficult lines to walk in life if those lines
are to be useful to others. In writing memoirs the writing of useful
lines is also difficult if one is to publish words that are more than
dry bones. Not taking and not giving offence, is just one of the
more demanding challenges the traveller is faced with obstacles at
every turn.
I want to release pent up emotion and give expression to my
deepest thoughts but also avoid the dangers in excessive but
genuine self-revelation, sometimes called confession. At the same
time I want to free myself from my present cotton-wool reality and
the potential remoteness of this autobiographical record of mine.
This can be done in the context of this new culture of learning, but
it is not easy. War-babies and baby-boomers, as well as generations
X,Y and Z, all face the challenge of, the encounter with, the
spiritual malaise and the disasters of the age. How was one to

transmute ones transitory experience, with its dross of egotism and

animus; how was one to refine away through, what Toynbee called
some tragic catharsis(V.3, p.296); how as one to deal with the
public catastrophes which overtook society in the 20th and 21st
centuries.
DRAWING ON THE THOUGHTS OF SOME OTHER
THINKERS
A.
Suffering ceases to be suffering when it has found a meaning wrote
Victor Frankl in his now famous book Mans Search For Meaning.
These words of Frankl were quoted by Elizabeth Rochester in her
long, fascinating and intellectually stimulating letter to Canadian
international pioneers over twenty-five years ago. I think Frankl is
partly right; sadly, many never find a meaning to their suffering.
Since all of us struggle with suffering, our own and the worlds, in
one way or another all our lives, the meaning of the suffering
eludes millions. It is important for the generations who are
experiencing this new paradigm in its earliest stages to be highly
cognizant of the multitude of spiritual verities that previous
generations of Bahais, perhaps as many as six if one defines a
generation as a twenty-five year period, have come to experience
and understand and which stand available in primary and secondary
literature as well as on cassette tapes, CDs and videos to help
illuminate their paths.
As the philosopher Nietzsche once wrote: lightning and thunder
need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even
after they are done, to be seen and heard. Many of the deeds, much
of the history of this Cause over more than a century and a half is
coming to light in the years of this new paradigm. It is coming to

light in a quite new and relevant context. Finding the relevancy of

Bahai history, the Bahai narrative and its metaphorical nature is one
of the aims of the millions of interpreters, one of the many goals in
the multitude of individual searches and journeys. As this new
culture of learning continues in the years ahead knowledge and
understanding will multiply many fold. As students of the Cause
ponder Bahai texts in their study circles, as they read them in their
devotional meetings; as youth, junior youth and children commit
some of them to memory; as the institute process translates the
understandings gained into action and as Bahai institutions and its
agencies take the lead in the many relationships with the wider
society, this new paradigm will advance and develop in the decades
ahead.
The generations being exposed to this new paradigmatic experience
are building on six generations who have been exposed to the
lightning and thunder of this new Revelation. Udo Schaefer,
quoting from The Dispensation of Bahaullah, writes: "Whatever is
latent in the inmost of this holy cycle shall gradually appear and be
made manifest, for now is but the beginning of its growth and the
dayspring of the evidences of its signs." This new paradigm
provides yet another opportunity for the further evidences of this
growth. A relevant aphorism here might be: opportunity without
capacity produces stress or, if you prefer, capacity without
opportunity produces stress. This new paradigm provides everyone
with opportunity and each person can channel their capacity, be it a
thimble-full or a gallon-measure, into some serving to the Cause,
somewhere in this all-encompassing paradigm. Such is my take,
my particular way of looking at it, as the 15th year of its operation
and gradual implementation is about to open in April 2010.
B.

I remember reading how both Arnold Toynbee and Edward Gibbon,

two of my favourite historians, acquired their initial inspiration for
what became their lifes magnum opus, their epic: A Study of
History in the case of Toynbee and The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire in the case of Gibbon. Epic histories, epic literature
and epic journeys had been part of my reading for over forty years
by the late 1990s. Epic histories, epic literature and epic journeys
are part of the literary culture, the culture of learning of all Bahais
who can read and who take the Bahai history and its teachings
seriously. The Bahai story, the religious narrative and the vision of
this Cause is nothing, if not epic. Much of my writing is and was a
hybrid incorporating the social, the physical and biological sciences
as well as literature and poetry. My writing gradually developed
what I came to see as an epic quality.
My writing and this book has also developed what the historian
Polybius emphasized in his Oecumenical History(Book 1 chapter
4): a unity of events. This unity seems to have been imposed upon
me by my attempt at a similar unity of composition. There is a
single direction and a single goal Polybius wrote in relation to his
age and, for me, this is also the case in this modern age, in this
paradigm. There is also a divine irony in human affairs, in the daily
life of the Bahai community which I cannot ignore. In addition, the
Bahai writings have given me an intimation of the divine presence
informing my fragment of this mysterious universe. By strenuous
intellectual communion and intimate personal intercourse the Bahai
writings can communicate a love of beauty and of knowledge like a
light caught from a leaping flame(Plato's Letters, No.7). Finally, in
listing some of the relevant factors in the production of this work,
one can not ignore the role played by the changes and chances of
the world and human limitation as well as what might be called
those mysterious dispensations of Providence.

In 1997-1998, in the first half of the Four Year Plan(1996-2000), I

began to think of writing a personal epic poem and so fashioned
some ten pages as a beginning; this particular poem with its ten
page beginning is still a work in progress and has not got beyond
those ten pages. But by September 2000 I began to envisage my
total prose-poetic output in terms of an epic since, by then, I had
written several million words of prose-poetry and prose across a
number of literary genres. As the efflorescence on Mt Carmel and
its tapestry of beauty began to unfold, I felt my writing pregnant
with meaning, at least for me if not for others. The sheer size of my
epic work in its several genres, it seemed, made the concept of my
total oeuvre as epic a natural one. I imposed, then, by sensible and
insensible degrees over a period of years, the epithet--epic--on this
great swath of my writing as it sat in my computer directory.
C.
In the year 2000, after I had crossed the bridge from that 20th
century, I began saying Alla'u'Abha 95 times a day. The enactment
of the ritual provisions of the Kitb-i-Aqdas referring to the
obligatory prayers, fasting and dhikr by the House of Justice's
announcement to the Bah' world on 28 December 1999. This has
been, as far as I know, the only enactment made by the Universal
House of Justice which I can discern as constituting an act of
legislation during the first 15 years of this paradigm. All my days in
the 20th century had come and gone and now I was on the internet
at thousands of sites and in published books. I was able at last to
attract receptive souls to the Cause more than ever before or so it
seemed to me as clear as the sun shining in the sky. As the
unfolding magnificence of the Terraces began to capture public
attention and as a sense of dynamic transformation and a coherence
of vision and activity began to give to my mind and heart and their
expectations a certain chronology for the future of my own

activity---I began to see how I could make my own mark and make
it quite specifically in the teaching work and in this new paradigm.
The idea of a paradigmatic shift, a new culture of learning and of
growth, had come to take on a whole new meaning for me as the
1990s unfolded, as I crossed that bridge into the new millennium.
My writing began to become a medium for teaching in a way it had never
done before. The early years of the new millennium and the first two of many
decades in the context of this new culture of learning and of systematic action
had opened-up new avenues of teaching for this Bahai now in his late
adulthood. My writing required the avoidan
of distractions and a sense of mission, as the House emphasized in that same
2007 Ridvn message; about this there was little doubt in my mind.
Deepening had always been synonymous to me, among other things, with a
process of having spiritual meaning infused into my life. And now that
infusion found expression in the written word par excellence, my own written
word and its focus was on teaching and consolidation, on the expansion of the
Cause and the consolidation of the community I had been involved with in one
way or another since the earliest years of my life, my late childhood, the
years 9 to 12 years old.

One of the best medicines, Daniel Jordan one of the Causes great
teachers in the last half century once wrote, for reducing anxiety is
having perceptions which make sense out of all the events going on
about us. I found this circling round, this mental
circumambulation process and these comparisons with the works of
others did just that; not all anxiety was eliminated, of course; but the work,
my work, could go on, in gusto, by leaps and bounds. My learning and writingtime was in seclusion, solitary; it required a deepened aloneness and it found
a new clarity. But, given the fact that I was interacting with more people than
ever before in a direct teaching capacity in cyberspace and not in real space,
as one could put it, I felt that my work was not escapist. My work did take
place in a condition of solitariness and solitude, but it also found a social and
intellectual intimacy that provided a real source of human happiness. My work
also found a source of what might be called internal processes of integration
for what had been many disintegrating factors and experiences in my life.
Readers who want to follow-up on these disintegrating experiences can read
my bipolar story, my chaos narrative as I call it, at this site.

D.

I have often felt in recent years that the burden of value, as that fine
writer Anthony Storr puts it in his book Solitude, with which we
are at present loading interpersonal relationships is too heavy for
those fragile craft to carry. But this is a separate subject too
extensive to deal with here. I would recommend readers follow my
comment here on Storr's book, on his many analyses of modern
society and the nature of the human beings who come across our
path in the expanding universe of the Bahai culture of learning and
growth.

I began to make comparisons and contrasts with a number of other

writers and poets, both ancient and modern, and the epic works that
flowed from their pens. I found such exercises useful in order to
throw light on the nature, the context and purpose of my own work.
As Bahiyyih Nakhjavani emphasized in her writing our greatness
rests not in ourselves, but in our capacity and desire to circle
around the great. In addition to circling round the great souls in
our Faith, through prayer and entreaty, through contemplation and
reading, I found comparisons and contrasts between my own work
and the works of other writers and poets, already acknowledged in
the literary world, the social sciences and the humanities, for their
significant contributions, provided a fertile base of insight into my
own literary endeavours.

I will include here some comparisons and contrasts between my

opus and that of some historians and the poetic opus of Ezra Pound

and Walt Whitman, although I found William Wordsworth and

Shakespeare(or whoever wrote those plays and sonnets) among
many others whom I refer to in many of my prose-poems were also
helpful by processes of analogical thinking, processes which are
valuable tools in life's journey of the intellect. This may sound
somewhat pretentious to some readers. Perhaps it is. The value of
these comparisons in illuminating my own literary efforts to serve
the Cause during these years of a paradigm shift or, perhaps more
accurately, a gradualist or even a multi-paradigmatic shift in the life
of the Bahai community and my own life, were extensive,
enriching and serendipitous.

The intensity and extent of this new form of action, of teaching the
Cause, on a new plane--the internet--has been made possible by the
employment of the written word, by an immense variety of
methods of expression and varying types of response to the written
expressions of others. I no longer had to focus on direct, personal,
face-to-face, interaction, although I did not give this up in my many
home visits. Necessity or perhaps circumstances, or Providence,
had taught me an alternative method of creating works of literary
art on the one hand and simple written exchange on the other. This
method was more etherial, a criterion of growth in civilizations
Toynbee argues, and it seemed to me much more effective: wider in
range and deeper in penetration. The influence of soul on soul that I
had experience in the years 1959 to 1999 always seemed narrow,
superficial and bounded by the confines of the personal and
institutional relations through which I was operating. I found, in
writing, that my human action was transmuted into perception,
thought, feeling and imagination, transcending at the same time the
limits of time and space and winning its way into a field that
extended to infinity.

I felt compelled, by the turn of the new millennium, in the first

decade of the implementation of this new paradigm, to limit my
field of action, to change my role, in what might be called practical
community affairs due to the infirmities of my bipolar
disorder(google: RonPrice BPD) and due also in order that I could
focus on a field of action in which, as Lucretius put it, I was able to
pass "far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traverse
throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable
universe."(Toynbee,V.2, p.289) I participated in these first years of
the new paradigm in both an etherial communion with posterity as
well as in my short and narrow-verged life of the flesh with its
inevitably transitory experience, its dross of egotism and animus. I
do not feel I am finding my life by losing it, as some of the more
enthusiastic of my coreligionists might put their story. With the
poet Shelley I feel no need to "boast of my mighty deeds" if,
indeed, any of my deeds are and were mighty.
E.
It is difficult to see my writing as a mighty deed written as it is
from the comfort of my home and study and in the leisure of these
years of my retirement. I was able to transmute, find relief from,
indeed, heal the wounds from what seemed like a lifetime of
different kinds of tests and difficulties, different experiences of
private and spiritual malaise into works of art, into what might
become an ageless and deathless human experience as some of the
written words of artists can be. The periodic experiences of malaise
in my life-narrative were not characterized by stings of conscience
as I looked back from these years of my retirement. Any long range
benefits from this writing would be a bonus on top of the present
teaching value that my writing has for the Cause.

As I say and I must emphasize, I am not trying to assuage the stings

of my conscience due to sins of omission and commission,
although perhaps I should, perhaps I do so unconsciously. I find my
identity, indeed, I sink my identity day after day into a world of
study, writing and thought as I try to transmute into creative
thought my energies which had for so many long years been
engaged in the practicalities of life. The writings of my religion and
of the many thinkers ancient, medieval and modern are like an
ambrosia which, in the evening of my life, I feel born to eat, as I try
to apply my literary output to the overwhelming experiences, the
titanic forces and upheavals, of my age and the panorama of my
times.

Time, of course, would tell whether these latter-day literary

contributions of my late middle age and these early years of late
adulthood would be not just an ephemeral tour de force but, rather,
a permanent contribution to knowledge, an everlasting possession,
a triumph of spiritual ambition, as was the case of the historian
Thucydides' great history of the Peloponnesian War. In the
meantime as time decides such an eventuality, I can enjoy the
climate of northern Tasmania which, unlike the climate of
California, is not too uniformly stimulating and, as the historian
Ellsworth Huntington argues in his Civilization and Climate, is
sufficiently diverse but not too violently hot or cold as in some of
the other places I have lived over the decades.(see pp.225-6)

For many a long year I have come to identify intimately and

seriously with the Plans and programs of the Bahai community.
Since the close of the Ten Year Crusade this Faith has occupied the

centre-piece-stage of my life's trajectory and aspirations. The

struggles of this Cause were my struggles although, in recent years,
I have come to take a more detached view of the processes. The
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the challenge of teaching
this Cause for several decades without any significant, indeed only
a meagre, response in those areas where I lived, have contributed to
my taking up the pen in these hours of mental retreat. This, I have
little doubt is an appropriate response to the external vicissitudes of
my life, my bipolar disorder. It is the best alternative to endless
talking and listening which I am unable to take part in any way for
more than very short periods of time--less than perhaps two or
three hours--without some ensuing exhaustion. Those wanting to
know the medical cause of this exhaustion can google, as I say
elsewhere in this book: Ron Price, BPD.

F.

In my lifetime the titanic forces unleashed by the revelation of

Bahaullah were shaking the world to its depths as they had done in
the generation of my parents and grandparents before me. The
movement toward a lesser peace was proceeding with a speed that
was as fast as it was obscure. When I came to write in these latter
years I was able to obtain a marvellous tranquillity and serenity of
mind after a peripatetic life filled to overflowing with people,
problems and the demands of employment, family and community
from wall to psychological wall--and inspite of some of the rigours
of my life which I discuss in that detailed googling exercise to
which I refer above.

My day to day life has come to possess a regularity and

studiousness not unlike Immanuel Kant's(1724-1804). His daily
walks and academic routines took him nowhere outside his
Prussian town but his thought radiated to the four corners of the
earth. In the last ten years my writing has radiated to the many
corners of a cyberspace world but my fame is measured in
nanoseconds among the 156 million internet sites. This
inconspicuous manifestation of my literary work has resulted in
more teaching activity than in the previous four decades, 1959 to
1999, of my Bahai life--as I have indicated elsewhere in this book.
I feel that I am now serving this Cause more effectively than I have
in all the other more active parts of my life and, due to the
infirmities of my body, it is unlikely that I will be sucked into the
turmoil of practical affairs from which I have been extricated now
for more than a decade.

Like the poet Dante(1265-1321) who was driven to withdraw from

his native city, who experienced many problems in love and life
and who wrote his lifework--the Divina Commedia--in the last
seven years of his life, I too have withdrawn but in a different way
than Dante did. My hopes for the world and my society have not
been extinguished as Dante's were, but both he and I were freed to
engage in our literary work, freed from the trammels of time and
space. In his case that freedom resulted in his ageless and timeless
masterpiece and, in my case, my new found freedom brought more
literary work in the teaching field than I ever could have imagined
at the outset of this new paradigm when the growth of websites on
the planet was just beginning. It brought a spiritual voyage into my
innermost thoughts in order to return to my community with a

series of writings which were seeds for a teaching and

consolidation activity, a new form of community service and social
activism, beyond my highest hopes at earlier stages in my life.

Unlike the poet Ezra Pounds epic poem Cantos which had its
embryo as a prospective work as early as 1904, but did not find any
concrete and published form until 1917, my poetry by 2000 had
come to be defined as epic, firstly in retrospect as I gradually came
to see my individual prose-poetic pieces as parts of one immense
epic opus; and secondly in prospect by the inclusion, as the years
went by, of all future prose-poetic and prose efforts. Such was the
way I came increasingly to see my literary anchorage in epic form,
sometimes in subtle and sometimes in quite specific and overt
degrees of understanding and clarity from 1997 to 2000 just as this
paradigmatic shift was beginning to take off in the Bahai
community as the last years of the twentieth century came to a
close and the new millennium was on the horizon.

MY WRITING AS EPIC

This concept of my work as epic, with the gift of good and

industrious hours, began, then, in 1997, after seventeen years(19801997) of writing and recording my poetic output and after five
years(1992-1997) of an intense poetic production of over 500
pieces per annum coming out of my poem factory. The beginning
of this quite intense period of poetic production synchronized with
that auspicious juncture in the history of the Cause, the Holy

Year of 1992/3, when that rampant force, that quickening

wind, that ventilation of modes of thought and that
encouragement to take time for inner reflection and for a
rendezvous of our soul with the Source of our light and life was
on our radar screens, so to speak, due to the Ridvn message that
year. We were all informed on 21 April 1992 that the Universal
House of Justice would not forget to supplicate at the Holy
Threshold in order that the Blessed Beauty from His retreat of
deathless splendour might fill our souls with His revivifying
breath. I liked this idea; of course one can never be sure that what
is filling our souls is His reifying breath or the many idle fancies
and vain imaginations that abound in our society and fill our minds
to overflowing with trivia, the allurements of immense
insignificance and what the Bahai literary critic Geoffrey Nash
once called the candy-floss entertainment world suited for ten year
olds.

In 1997 after five years and some 2500 prose-poems sitting in my

computer directory and in plastic booklets with crenelated tubes for
bindings, this epic work began to take on form. What I had written
between 1992 and 1997 dealt with a pioneering life of thirty-five
years, a Bahai life of thirty-eight years and an additional six years
when my association with the Bahai Faith was due to my mothers
interest, when I was still a child and junior youth. In those early
years in the 1950s, this new Faith was seen more as a Movement in
the public eye than a world religion in spite of the Guardians
efforts to dispel this anachronistic, inaccurate, view. That earlier
emerging paradigm was, in 1953, at about the same stage as this
current paradigm shift was in 1996.

In December 1999, just after retiring from full-time employment, I

forwarded my 38th booklet of poetry to the Bahai World Centre
Library(BWCL). The BWCL had 38 booklets of poetry for each
year of my pioneering venture, 1962-1999. I entitled that 38th
booklet Epic. I continued to send my poetry to the BWCL until 30
December 2000. By the time of the official opening of the Terraces
of the Shrine of the Bab on 21 May 2001 I had sent over 5000
poems to the BWCL. Perhaps this exercise of sending out my
poetry to the BWCL, among other libraries in the Bahai world,
was part of a desire for some connective tissue to be threaded into
the warp & welf of the literary work of this international pioneer.
Perhaps I felt my poetry, which had had a transforming affect on
the animate and inanimate features of my homefront, international
and changing pioneer life, needed to have other homes, other
kindred spaces, beside my own head. The affective kernel or centre
of my life was Mt. Carmel, the Hill of God, the Terraces and the
Arc which were just being completed. This Place had been the
cynosure of my life for my entire adulthood. Was it unreasonable
that I wanted my poetry to be in the library in Haifa? Perhaps.
Perhaps it was sheer presumption.

Did my writings deserve a place beside whose of the Central

Figures of my Faith? Recognition of this Revelation is not and has
not been an easy matter for the majority who here of it for the first
time, at least this is the case in Western countries and in Canada
and Australia where I have lived for over sixty years. If most of
those to whom I have tried to teach this Faith since the 1950s
probably regarded the Bahai writings(if they were ever to get so far
as to actually read them)as strange, queer, flowery, typically
oriental, far too poetic and unsuitable for the West; if the language

of our time, the language that fills magazines, newspapers and most
novels is impoverished and emotively undernourished, in some
ways it is not surprising that most of my contemporaries in Canada
and Australia had difficulty coming near to this Cause. And there
were many other reasons. The recognition of truth is often
associated with a series of requirements which demand quite a bit
from everyday man. Would my writing make it any easier? All of
this, of course, is essentially tangential, to the focus of this book
and I shall leave these complex questions and these subjective
statements about the Bahai writings, which I hope do not offend
some of my coreligionists, unanswered for now.

This lengthening work of my poetry and prose, which I now refer

to as epic, evinces a pride, indeed, a veneration for the historical
and cultural past of this new Faith. This history provides me with a
metaphorical, mythological, base of meaning in my life. A
significant part of my confidence and hope, my vision for the future
of humanity, derives from the history and the teachings of a
religion which I believe has an immensely important role to play in
the unfolding application of the principle of the political and
religious unification of the globe to human welfare in what is, has
been and will be, a long and tortuous planetization process.

ONES SCHOLARLY WORK DOES NOT HAVE TO JUSTIFY

ITSELF

There is also a practical use of my writing to local, quite personal

and private associations that I give expression to in this work of

poetry and prose. This work may turn out to be yet one more of the
many means that currently exist, I sometimes mused as I wrote, of
putting youth and adults in this new Cause in touch with the great
citizens, the models and the noble deeds of the past, inspiring them
with more personal, more succinct, blends of the historical,
psychological and sociological aspects of their religious heritage as
Bahais. However local my efforts were, though, the core of my
inspiration, both in my writing and in the derivation of my religious
enthusiasms, found their origins in a spiritual, an international,
perspective. I did not measure the viability and significance of my
writing, my literary work, by its local reception. Nor did I measure
it entirely by its teaching and consolidation function. As Paul
Lample point out in his talk on 'Learning and the Unfoldment of
the Bah' Community' in 2008 one's "scholarly work does not have
to justify itself on the basis of whether it contributes to the current
goals of the Five Year Plan. It is valid in its own right; it is an area
of endeavour in which we have to engage."

The local strength of the Cause wherever I had lived in some 35

houses and 22 towns in my life was, for the most part, not a visible
one in either the public eye or the eye of many of my fellow
believers. I did not measure the religion I belonged to, what was
still considered by many to be but a new religious movement, by its
local strength and reception. The bona vide context of this Cause,
as Will van den Hoonaard put it in the last sentence of his survey of
the first fifty years of Bahai history in Canada, is provided by the
advent of instant travel and international communication. The
fundamental context of the Bahai Faith is international; it is the
axis of the oneness of humanity. As I have been writing in the last
twenty years, I often felt as if I was there in Haifa at the Bahai

World Centre. This was especially true thanks to cinema, video,

DVD, cassette-tape, CD, photography, hi-fidelity sound systems, a
print and electronic media which had been sensibly and insensibly
transforming the world into a neighbourhood before my very eyes
in the last half of the 20th century and in this new millennium.
Indeed, much of history and life in contemporary society, its
content and context, were being restored, recreated, illumined and
revitalized before my intellectual eyes. The Tablet of Carmel itself
is full of allusions, symbols and metaphors which enrich and
enhance the meaning systems of the individuals in the Bahai
community everywhere. I had been trying to memorize this Tablet
for over twenty-five years and many of its sentences and passages
had become a part of my inner life. But again, these comments are
somewhat tangential to the thrust of this book.

While millions upon millions were ill-equipped to interpret the

social commotion at play throughout the planet, as they listened
to the pundits of error and sank deeper into a slough of
despond, I felt inspired by a vision, a culture of learning and a
sense of authentic guidance all of which propelled what I felt was a
constructive literary endeavour. Not having to do battle with the
phantoms of a wrongly informed imagination and their troubled
forecasts of doom, I was able to proceed with unabated action to
make my mark at this crucial turning point in history. This is not to
say, of course, that I see the solutions to the world's problems as
simple and that I have an angle on the world's complexities which
puts me in an all-knowing position. I am more than a little aware
that we all only understand in part and prophesy in even lesser part.
Human consciousness is simply inadequate to fathom the world's
complexity.

The disproportion between the complexity and our inadequate

consciousness is becoming more and more flagrant. Human
experience and reason, without an orienting aid for human
behaviour and existential questions, is no longer a sure guide to
social relations. These relations are simply so complex, so
differentiated and human experience so specialized, complicated or
incomprehensible that it is very difficult to find common symbols
to relate one experience to another. Part of the function of this new
paradigm is to provide another stage in the orienting structure that
is the Bahai community. Udo Schaefer explores this theme and the
spiritual bankruptcy of democracy very effectively in his book the
Imperishable Dominion. It is crucial, but quite a complex exercise,
to keep these ideas in mind as we go about our experience of this
new paradigm of growth in the Bahai community. Little by little
and day by day is an aphorism we all need to keep squarely in front
of our intellectual perspectives, in front of our eyes and in our
minds to counter the immense complexity of it all and to help us
keep our noes to the proverbial grindstone with the joy that is
essential and that we need if we are to keep us going day after day
and year after year.

MY PARADIGM SHIFT
AND THE COMMUNITY PARADIGM SHIFT

My writing journey in this last dozen years has coincided with a

process, a paradigm shift, that was taking place in the religion I had

belonged to for decades. This writing journey of mine has been,

and I anticipate it continuing to be, an activity that I trust is helping
to create memorials and monuments with an international ethos.
Perhaps, I sometimes muse, these prose-poems possess a
resolution, a perspective, a vision that might be indispensable to
others in performing the duties of a type of global citizen of the
future. Perhaps this literary work will also serve, so my musings
continue, as a dedication, as a form of natural piety, not so much
my own, but a dedication and a piety by which the present would
become spiritually linked with the past in the minds of others who
read what I wrote.

I liked to see my work as an extension into the sphere of

nationhood and even internationalism. Wordsworth saw his
autobiographical poetry this way. His poetry was part and parcel of
his desire for continuity in his own life and in the lives of others
"The Child is father of the Man; / And I could wish my days to be /
Bound each to each by natural piety." In writing it is useful to have
some overriding ethos, some structure of purpose and meaning,
some explicit intention and definition of ultimate concern. Rollo
May calls the totality of a person's orientation to the world-intentionality. We mould and remould our world in the process and
this is done, he argues, in the context of meaning and commitment.
This new paradigm is nothing if not yet another form of Bahai
commitment, the structure within which willing and wishing take
place. Intention is a turning of one's intention toward something.
And language is my way of conceiving it--hence this book which
gives expression to my potentialities and indeed my very
consciousness.

The man who governs his life by consciousness, by the use of the
rational faculty and the cultural attainments of the mind has a
completeness, writes Leach, and he can powerfully assist others.
This has certainly been the case for me in the years of this new
paradigm. But not everywhere and with everyone. One must accept
one's limitations and in my case they are many and various. But I
am the private artist with a public function. All is not seriousness;
there is also frivolity and play on the internet; indeed, it is just
about compulsory in many places. There is also a need for accuracy
and being methodical, persistence and continuity in so many
discussions which seem to never end. The internet is a flowing
fibre of teaching opportunities. Like so many things in life in
relation to the Cause, arising to serve in some capacity is important,
but there needs to be a permanent arising to stay. Endurance and
persistence often is acquired at the cost of loneliness and suffering.
Each of us has their own capacity to suffer. We are not all made of
the same stuff in spite of appearances to the contrary. There is the
inward pioneer and the outward one and they often have very
different complexions.

INCREASING OUTREACH OF THE BAHAI COMMUNITY

Part 1:
As this new Cause has grown and matured in the more than a
century and a half since 1844, there has been an integrated, organic,
a humanistic outreach as it went about affirming in many ways, in
its social and spiritual teachings, the continuity, the progression of
past, present and future. In the many countries and the multitude of
groups where Bahais have played their parts as individuals and as
communities, they eschewed militarism, imperialism and

aggressiveness in the world around them. They went about

celebrating and commemorating the cultural, national, international
and individual achievements of members of their Faith and of the
groups and individuals of whatever background and description
they were a part. This is not to say, of course, that harsh words
never arose among all the millions of Bahais, nor that violence and
abuse did not erupt from time to time in the myriad of relationships
that constituted the Bahai community.
As Bahaullah emphasized on the first page of his Book of
Certitude, though, one must not, indeed cannot, measure this Cause
by the behaviour of its adherents. Again, I have made this point
before in this book, but I make it again due to its cruciality in this
whole process. Bahais aim and try but do not always achieve;
inharmony and misunderstandings are part and parcel of any group
of people, any paradigm.
In order to maintain and foster their identity and independence as
well as their international spirit of solidarity, Bahais have tried to
sink deep into the recesses of the hearts & minds of othersfor this
aspect of their daily life, this intention in their interpersonal
relationships, is and has been part of their ethic and ethos for
decades. This process has taken many forms. But, one cannot have
deep and meaningful relationships with everyone; a certain degree
of anonymity is essential, indeed inevitable, in a modern mass
society or our spirits would burn up in a short time. For me, one of
these forms of both intimacy and anonymity has been this literary
work of mine. Since 1997 I have defined this literary form, my
work, as epic. The whole notion of community building and what it
means to have community has just begun within the period of this
new paradigmatic shift, this new culture of learning.
Coincidentally, this has taken place with the origin an growth of my
epic literary opus. I am only commenting on this concept of

community in this part of my book as a tangential part of the

overall theme. But I would like to say more about my writing and
about meaningful relationships for it is this which has been at the
core of my own paradigm shift, a shift that has been the crucial
enabling factor in my own teaching work virtually all over the
planet where people have access to the internet.
Part 2:
Over the past few decades, The Universal House of Justice, the
elected international body which guides the work of the global
Bah community, has outlined a vision of action for Bahs that
includes a number of separate but interrelated core activities: the
gathering together of friends for the purpose of sharing prayers and
reading writings of various religious traditions, the intentional
study of the sacred writings of the Bah Faith, programs for the
spiritual education of children, and groups designed to allow preyouth to explore themes of spiritual import and engage in service
activities together. Given the importance of these core activities to
the overall efforts of the Bah community, it seems prudent to
discuss a concept that The Universal House of Justice describes as
one of the primary impetuses behind all of these activities:
engaging in meaningful and distinctive conversations with our
friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and co-workers.
So what exactly does it mean to engage in meaningful and
distinctive conversations? Why is it so important to do so? And
what are some ways we can become more mindful of our everyday
speech? While this idea has received special emphasis from The
Universal House of Justice in its recent messages, in many ways
this concept has been discussed by all of the central figures of the
Bah Faith. Bahullh in particular has a number of passages in
which he describes the importance of speech. The following

passage is one of the most interesting of Bahullhs

descriptions:"Every word is endowed with a spirit, therefore the
speaker or expounder should carefully deliver his words at the
appropriate time and place, for the impression which each word
maketh is clearly evident and perceptible. The Great Being saith:
One word may be likened unto fire, another unto light, and the
influence which both exert is manifest in the world. (Tablets of
Bahullh, p. 172)
I cannot even begin to comprehend exactly what Bahullh
means when He says that every word is endowed with a spirit. But
even so, it is clear that our speech has a powerful influence on the
hearts and minds of those around us. It for this reason that
Bahullh frequently discusses the deleterious effects of the more
negative forms of speech. In different places He describes the
tongue as a smoldering fire and encourages us to refrain from
idle talk and gossip. (Falen DCruz has an excellent post in Bah
Blog on backbiting for those interested in a more thorough
treatment of this topic). But engaging in meaningful and distinctive
conversations requires more than simply refraining from gossip and
backbiting. In other words, one can say that refraining from
negative speech is a necessary but not a sufficient precondition of
such conversations. From my perspective, these conversations
require us to pay attention to both the substance of our discussions
as well as the method by which we delivery what we have to say.
From my perspective, all of this is part and parcel of my writing as
it has flowered in the last two decades in cyberspace.
Part 3:
I find many of the Faiths teachings on the latter point particularly
interesting. I think we often assume that those who speak with the
greatest passion, conviction, and unflinching resolve are the most

influential in conversations. However, Bahullh tells us that the

truly wise and enlightened should primarily speak with words as
mild as milk and with utmost leniency and forbearance so that the
sweetness of his words may induce everyone to attain that which
befitteth mans station. (Tablets of Bahullh, p. 172) Even if we
are having conversations with people whom we vehemently
disagree with on whatever the topic may be, engaging in fierce
debates and verbal sparring matches rarely results in the promotion
of mutual respect and understanding that can serve as the
foundation of collective and unified action.
Similarly, the Bah Faith teaches us that we should be particularly
mindful of the beliefs and capacity of those we are engaged in
conversation with. As Bahullh states: Not everything that a man
knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose
be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered
as suited to the capacity of those who hear it. (Gleanings from the
Writings of Bahullh, p. 176) Even the teachings and principles
of the Bah Faith were only gradually revealed to society as our
collective capacity to understand certain ideas developed over time,
so we should remember this fact when discussing spiritual topics
with those whose beliefs may be significantly different than ours.
There is no point in trying to convince someone of an idea that they
are not ready to consider or able to understand (I hope its clear that
Im using able here in the sense of their exposure to certain ideas
in the past that allows them to engage in particular conversations in
the present, rather than their innate ability to comprehend).
Instead, we should attempt to find points of mutual interest and
understanding and begin our conversations there.
Just as we must continue to refine our ability to discuss our ideas in
the most effective ways possible, we must also continue to find
opportunities to elevate our discussions to the realm of spiritual

import. In this sense, engaging in meaningful and distinctive

conversations requires us to reframe and re-imagine everyday
subjects: to find the profound in the mundane, the significant in the
trivial, the unifying in the controversial. One of my favorite
passages in the recent messages from The Universal House of
Justice made me re-think the way in which I tell people about this
amazing Faith that I care about so deeply. I used to believe that my
primarily goal should be to teach people about the revelation of
Bahullh, to clearly elucidate its central principles, and to
convince them of its truth. The Ridvn 2010 message made me
look at teaching in a completely new way. In the words of the The
Universal House of Justice: " Whether the first contact with such
newly found friends elicits an invitation for them to enroll in the
Bah community or to participate in one of its activities is not an
overwhelming concern. More important is that every soul feel
welcome to join the community in contributing to the betterment of
society, commencing a path of service to humanity
This obviously does not mean that we should not tell people about
the person of Bahullh or inform them of the central principles
of His revelation. However, what seems most crucial is that we
elevate our daily conversations in order to find others who have
similar visions of the most effective ways to spiritually transform
our communities. Because people with this vision come from every
racial, national, ethnic, socio-economic, and religious background,
we should always be attentive to opportunities to engage in
meaningful and distinctive conversations.
EZRA POUND

I had begun then, as I say above, to see all of my poetry and prose

somewhat like Pounds Cantos which drew on a massive body of

print or analects, a word which means literary gleanings: a
sequence of chapters, poems, pieces of prose-poetry, essays,
interviews and books often completely at random but not always
so, with themes of adjacent items completely unrelated to each
other, again, but not always so. Some central themes recur
repeatedly in different parts of my total work, sometimes in exactly
the same wording and sometimes with small variations, as they do
in Pounds work. Just as many central themes that had been part of
my life for decades as a Bah, recurred repeatedly in the new
culture of learning of the Bah community, sometimes with
exactly the same words and sometimes with only small variations,
so was this true in my writing, my memoir, my autobiography. And
it always remains unfinished. And so is this true of the expression
in the world of concrete reality of this new paradigm---it is always
a work in progress. Indeed, it is a cumulative progress in both its
outward and inward aspect. This is its growth, its expansion.

In the main the challenges within this new paradigm do not

impinge from the outside but they arise from within and the
victorious responses to these challenges do not take the form so
much of surmounting external obstacles or adversaries, but they are
to be found, they manifest themselves, in actions related to an
inward self-articulation, self-determination. It is here where the
criterion for growth is found. This is also true of the individuals.
Their creative acts are an expression of their inward development
from inchoate activity, from various forms of frenetic passivity,
psychic anarchy and unorganized centrifugal tendencies to
effective, psychic order and central control.

As it says in John xii, 32, in the process of this creativity they

draw men unto them and this is why they have come into the
world.(John xvi, 28) Living lives for remote and mighty ends is
part of the life of people in this new Bahai paradigm as it was in
the old. There is always the inert uncreative and unresponsive mass
of ones kin and ones kind even if one enjoys the companionship
of a few kindred spirits. The majority of the members of society at
this stage are inevitably left behind.

The Cantos, the longest poem in modern history, over eight

hundred pages and, in its current and published form, written
between 1922 to 1962, is, as I say, a great mass of literary
gleanings. So is this true of the great mass of my poetry, prose and
prose-poetry. The initial concept of my poetry as epic, though,
came long after I was first influenced by poetry, long after I began
writing poetry as far back as the winter of 1980 when I kept my
first poem in a file, possibly as far back as 1962 at the very start of
my pioneering life when I first remember writing poetry and
possibly all the way back to the 1950s when I joined the Bahai
Faith and when in 1953 my mother, also a poet, became a Bahai.
The view, the concept of my work as epic began, as I have
indicated, as a partly retrospective exercise and partly a prospective
one.

MY EPIC JOURNEY

The epic journey that was and is at the base of my poetic opus,
then, is not only a personal one of fifty-eight years going back to
1953, the time when my first steps in the realms of this new faithbelief took place; and the time when my firmer belief, commitment
and reflection came along in my lifespan by the early 1960s. My
epic literary road was and is also the journey of this new System,
the World Order of Bahullh, which had its origins as far back as
the 1840s and, if one includes the two precursors to this System, as
far back as the middle of the eighteenth century when many of the
revolutions and forces that are at the beginning of modern history
find their origin: the American and French revolutions, the
industrial and agricultural revolutions and the revolution in the arts
and sciences.

Generally, the goal or aim of my work and the way my narrative

imagination is engaged in this epic is to attempt to connect this
long and complex history to my own life and the lives of my
contemporaries, as far as possible. I have sought and found a
narrative voice that contains uncertainty, ambiguity and
incompleteness among shifting fields of reference mixed with
certainties of heart and spirit. Since this poetry is inspired by so
much that is, and has been, part of the human condition, this epic
seems to me centred in Life Itself and the most natural and
universal of human activities, the act of creating narratives as well
as, as the great historian of the Renaissance Jacob Burkhardt put it:
man suffering, striving, doing, as he is and was and ever shall be.

EACH OF US HAS THEIR OWN STORY

My prose and poetry, my epic, my religion and my society, are all

engaged in an epic adventure, a crisis, a process, of epic magnitude
that has to do with heroism and deeds in battle of contemporary and
historical significance and manifestation. If we each want to be in
contact with, in touch with, our reality, any reality we need to
understand its purpose. This is what will infuse our own, our
personal, epic narrative, with meaning and help us in this time of
crisis, this climacteric in society. As Mr H.G. Wells divined by
intuition at the turn of the 20th century Western Civilization was
rushing down a steep place into the sea. At the turn of the 21st it
appears to be nearly in the sea. We are indeed, in one of those
Times of Troubles as the historian Toynbee called them. They
often last for centuries and they precede a Universal State.(A Study
of History, V.4, p.4)

My work and my life, the belief System I have been associated

with for over half a century, involves a great journey, not only my
own across two continents, but that of this Cause I have been
identified with as it has expanded across the planet in my lifetime,
in the second century of its history. Sometimes that journey is lived
in solidarity and sometimes in a solitary, alone, state, keeping one's
distance from events, maintaining the peace of mind necessary for
listening to one's deeper self. Though opposites, solidarity and
solitude are part of this new paradigm as they always have been
part of the Bahai life since the first paradigm shift on 23 May 1844.

This journey also involves my society and its new historical and

social context in my time, my four epochs over the post-war years

and into this new millennium as well as the emergence in recent
decades, if not centuries, of a very complex set of moral ideas some
conceived against custom and vested interests with no
commonality, just by individuals with their own mythogenic
private zone. Some of these ideas reinforce a sub-group of
traditional religious and moral interests; some of them are part of
the new definers of social reality in the electronic media; and some
have a strong base among a very wide range of interest groups, idea
systems, meanings and individual behaviours.

This journey of mine and its commitment must accept that along
the way I may often be wrong; I may often do the wrong thing, say
the wrong thing. There is a crucial dialectic between certitude and
its sense of absolute conviction and perplexity and doubt. There is
also a profound joy in the realization that one is helping to form the
very structure of a new world. As I have gone about writing this
book in recent years, and writing my autobiography in the last
quarter century, I sense some inexplicable divine spark which has
been kindled into flame. The stars in their courses cannot defeat the
achievement of the vision of this Faith I have been associated with
for nearly 60 years. I trust my efforts will contribute their small
part to the attainment of the goal of the human endeavours of my
coreligionists.(The Bible, Judges, v, 20)

The epic convention of the active intervention of God and holy

souls from another world; and the convention of an epic tale, told
in verse, a verse that is not a frill or an ornament, but is essential to
the story, is found here in my rendition of this Bahai epic. I think

there is an amplitude in this poetry that simple information lacks;

there is also an engine of action that is found in my inner life as
much, if not more, than in my external story. In some ways, this is
the most significant aspect of my work, at least from my point of
view. Indeed, if I am to make my mark at this crucial point of
history, it will be largely in the form of this epic literary work
which tells of nearly 50 years of pioneering: 1962-2011 and a prepioneering decade that constituted most of the Ten Year Crusade:
1953-1963. The mark each of us makes finds its origins in our
inner life and private character and the extent to which they mirror
the teachings of this new Faith. This is the only mirror and mark
worth making. In some ways we are only too well aware of the
quality of our inner life and in other ways we are often blind to its
reality.

MAKING ONE'S MARK-PLAYING ONE'S PART

More importantly, though, the part I play, the mark I leave, is as an

individual thread in the fabric and texture of the Bahai community
in its role as a society-building power. This is true for all Bahais as
they attempt to find their place, to weave their thread, to define
their role in the overall texture and substance that is this emerging
world Order. The larger epic, the meta-epic, around which the epic
of my life, indeed all our lives, is centred, finds its strength in the
authenticity of the interpretation and exemplification of a religious
canon. And each of us has his or her own epic, our own marathon
journey, for many decades of living. For this life, this living, is
indeed a marathon, at this climacteric of history, the last stage, the
tenth stage as Shoghi Effendi called it in 1953-and it is all within

the context of the legitimate interpretation of the Bahai canon and

its authenticity. It is also part of the context, now, of a new culture
of learning, a new paradigm shift in Bahai community life.

The Bah Administrative Order is something all Bahais play a

part in on a multitude of fronts whether in serving it or receiving
from it. In their efforts to practice the teachings and be living
examples all Bahais are part of this new Order and this moral
aspect cannot be over-emphasized. This Order should not be
characterized by a membership which resembles a passive
congregational community nor should it be one with only a lipservice to lofty principles. Decision-making is by a group, a
consultative based system and is not the prerogative of learned or
ambitious individuals; and this process requires for its success the
skills and principles outlined by Abdul-Baha and Shoghi Effendi.
They are skills and principles not easy to acquire and apply. They
often require a brilliant inventiveness, keen perception and
discrimination and a high order of intelligence. They require
encounter and absorption. In many ways the Bahai method is the
antithesis of how current political and religious communities are
organized and run with their hierarchical, patriarchal and
authoritarian practices. Encounter and absorption, engagement and
intensity can be found in various degrees, manners and styles of
commitment. The process requires all we have and, in this work,
not only do we encounter our world, but we prepare our souls for
the world of light beyond this nether sphere.

As the Universal House of Justice announced, as far back as 1975,

the process of building the Arc on Mount Carmel will synchronize

with two no less significant developments-the establishment of the

Lesser Peace and the evolution of Bah' national and local
institutions.'' These institutions, these places of group-decision
making and increasingly refined consultative skills are one of the
critical places in which this culture of learning will manifest itself
in the decades and centuries aheadand this community building
process has just begun, has just taken off in our time. These
processes are often slow and obscure in their manifestations. The
processes involved in the Lesser Peace also have their critical
domains where equally slow and often equally obscure processes of
development are taking place.

My own life, my own epic, within this larger Bahai epic, had its
embryonic phase in the first stage of Abdul-Bahas Divine Plan,
1937-1944, the first of three phases leading to the election of the
Universal House of Justice in 1963 as the last year of my teen age
life was about to begin and as, most importantly, the fulfilment of
the prophecy of Daniel regarding that blissful consummation
when Divine Light shall flood the world from the East to the West.
Little did I know, of course, at the time. That is often the case that
we simply have no idea just where we are in the great process that
is history. We come to understand ourselves and our world
retrospectively.

In 1963 a unique victory was won and that victory has been
consolidated in the years since then. A process of consolidation has
also gone on during what is now more than half a century(1963 to
2015), and this consolidation has been especially apparent during
these paradigmatic years of this new culture of learning. It is a

consolidation of what the German sociologist Max Weber called an

institutionalization of charisma, a term he used as part of his
sociology of religion that he developed in the years before the
Great War to end all wars. This unique victory is part of this new
epic journey: for me, for the Bahai community and for humankind.

It is hardly surprising that the Administrative Order is described as

a theocracy. It is after all the internal order governing a religious
community. If theocracy is defined as rule by the institutions of the
religious order, any self-governing religious order is by definition
theocratic. The Methodists and Quakers are internally theocratic in
this sense, since they hope and have faith that the church, as part of
the body of Christ, will be guided (through its elected system) by
God. This is not the same as theocracy in the political sense,
which is the kind of government that was attempted in Iran after
1979, a government in which the persons and institutions of the
religious order either control or replace the organs of the civil
government. In this, which is the usual sense of theocracy, the
Bahai teachings are decidedly anti-theocratic, since they forbid and
condemn this usurpation of the power that God has granted to the
Kings and Rulers. Still, it is not the purpose of this book to deal
with the complexities of the form of governance in the centuries
ahead from a Bahai perspective. As Shoghi Effendi so eloquently
put it on the last page of his The Promised Day Is Come: "Not ours,
puny mortals that we are, to attempt to arrive at a precise and
satisfactory understanding of the steps which must lead a bleeding
humanity.....from its calvary to its ultimate resurrection.

THE TEMPEST

A tempest seems to have been blowing across the world's several

continents and its billions of inhabitants with an incredible force for
decades, for over a century and since the emergence of this latest
paradigmatic variant on one long Bahai paradigm, the tempest has
been blowing with increasing force yet again, a force much more
complex than the one that brought two world wars. It is a force that
is now raging in every corner of the world even where people
seemingly live in peace and comfort. I would hope that this literary
construction and analysis of what I see as an epic community
design that has been put in place over the last 15 years, will be of
use to others as this tempest continues to blow.

Indeed this tempest is showing no signs of cessation. I would like

to think that what I write here will help others translate their
potentiality into actuality--a process that Alfred North Whitehead
called concrescence. Whitehead also said that each of us is engaged
in a process of shaping the welter and often chaotic experience of
our thought and emotion into "a consistent pattern of feelings." But
I have no idea whether what I write will be of help to others or not.
In this exercise of mine I am quite aware that there are no
guarantees for myself or for others. One writes in faith and hope.
One provides the energy and one follows the guidance available in
this Cause, as far as one is able within the limits of ones incapacity
as Abdul-Baha once expressed the concept of ones failings to act
and to do. And consistency of feeling is a lifelong battle and
consistency is achieved only in the context of inconsistency. My
capacity, our capacity, to experience our world is what Whitehead
calls "feeling" and it is these feelings--and thoughts--which I must

shape into a pattern that increases my awareness and the

effectiveness of my participation in this new paradigm which will
be with me--and us--for the rest of our lives.

I want to express beauty in addition to wholeness, a different kind

of beauty than the painter or musician, to achieve a symmetry by
means of infinite literary chords and discords, showing all the
traces of the minds passage through the world; and to achieve in
the end some kind of whole made of shivering and many coloured
fragments. The wholeness comes from putting events into words.
This is for me a natural enough process but, however natural, this
type of literary flight of the mind is not so easily achieved. It is a
worthy and difficult objective to attain, not unlike a literary aim of
one of the 20th centurys greatest writers Virginia Woolf who held
the view that in much of our conscious life we are separated from
reality because we are surrounded by a protective covering of
appearances, of cotton wool. Her aim was not so much to tell a
coherent story but to convey moments of being, an aim that
developed right from the memoir that was her first piece of writing
in 1908. Her greatest pleasure, she said, was to put the severed
parts of her life together on paper, in words. To Virginia Woolf, and
to me, we are these words, this work of literary art. These words
are the result of our living and acting in community. And so is this
true of all of us not just those like Virginia Woolf and I, both of
whom have a bipolar disorder. Each in our own way, as we all go
through this culture of learning: we try to put our life together in
this complex world, this age of transition, these darkest hours
before the dawn.

I trust, too, that my epic work is not only a sanctimonious, openly

pious, exploration of literary, practical and life-narrative themes,
but also and simultaneously a self-questioning of these themes and
forms, actions and motivations. What I write should not be seen as
fixed and final, but what has been a lifelong attempt to polish and
not pontificate, a work in progress that tries to guard against blind
and idle imitation as well as against narrowness, rigidity and
intolerance--tendencies toward fundamentalist habits of mind--in
my own spiritual path and in the paths of others. What I write
reveals some of the decisive moments in my life, moments in my
inner world, moments which were, and usually remain, private.
Some of the decisive moments in my society and my religion are
also surveyed but not in any detail since: (a) they can be found
described elsewhere in books that now fill many a space in libraries
and great quantities of cyberspace and (b) the focus of this book is
not, in the main, my autobiography, although some of it is found
here.

OTHER THINKERS AND WRITERS

From time to time in this book I make a special reference, a special

drawing, on the thoughts and writings of others. The first here is
Hugh Kenner.

ELSEWHERE COMMUNITIES
In 1997 Hugh Kenner(1923-2003), a Canadian literary scholar,

critic and professor. gave the annual Massey Lecture in Canada.

Kenner pointed out that the greatest paradigm shift in Western
Civilization in the last thousand years has been from a Eurocentric,
Christocentric, tradition centred, civilization to a gradually
evolving global civilization with no special political and moral
centre in a universe of infinite space and time. It is this
phenomenon, this shift, that the following poem tries to speak to,
of, about. For in some ways the shift the Bahai community is
going through could be said to be yet another part of this greater
shift, one of the many paradigm shifts in what has been the
dynamic, complex and changing nature of the Bahai community
and its history.
I have my own Grand Tour now,(1)
my elsewhere community,(2)
my journey through what I know
to what I have yet to learn;
and when the war is over
I will go home.
There are no more Colosseums
or Roman Forums & education
takes me down different paths
past other Alps, another Paris,
some other Channel en route to
my salvation & the praise of my
Lord---& finding out who I am,

Some absorption to make me

someone else, discover impulses
of deeper birth which come to me
in solitude. The harvest of a quiet
eye, random truths around me lie.
In these verses I impart what broods
and sleeps what in my own heart and
mind still keeps.

In the meadows of His nearness

I try to roam to get some clearness.
For the Grand Tour is my own creation
and cant be found on any tourist guide,
only in my own world where I now abide.
(1) In the eighteenth century the Grand Tour was the trip from
some place in western civilization through Europe to Rome. This is
no longer the Grand Tour. We all make our own now.
(2) We all have what Hugh Kenner calls elsewhere communities,
places we travel to and things we do and think to find out who we

are. The traveller absorbs this elsewhere community into himself

to become what defines him throughout life. Part of this new
paradigm in the Bahai community is this elsewhere community, a
community the Bahai defines himself in by being immersed, as far
as he is able, in the community of the Greatest Name.
MORE ON EZRA POUND
I discuss in the following paragraphs some of the poet Ezra
Pound(1885-1972) an American expatriate poet and critic, and a
major figure in the early modernist movement. This controversial
figure and author of the longest epic poem of the twentieth century
was intent on developing an ideal polity for the mind of man. This
polity flooded his consciousness and suggested the menacing
fluidity, the indiscriminate massiveness, of the crowd, the mass of
humankind. The polity that is imbeded in my own epic does not
suggest the crowd, probably because the polity I have been
working with over my lifetime, over some four epochs of the
Bahai Faiths Formative Age, has been one that has grown so
slowly at the local level where my efforts have taken place and
where the groups I have worked in and with have been small.
At the same time, and over these four epochs(1944 to 2012) I have
become more and more impressed with what is for me this ideal
polity." It is a global polity that is slowly spreading to every section
of the world. As my experience of the Bahai polity and the Bahai
polity itself became more seasoned, more mature, more developed,
it has come to "flood my consciousness" as the decades have seen
my lifespan head into late adulthood. I could expatiate on this
System and how it deals with the essential weaknesses of politics,
weaknesses pointed out so long ago by Plato and Aristotle and
which continue in their myriad forms to this day. That is not the
purpose of this book, although I have expatiated on the subject

matter of this polity: (i) occasionally as a crucial part of the content

of this culture of learning, and (ii) a great deal in my poetry.
As the series of soul-stirring events that celebrated the
completion of the Terraces on Mount Carmel were coming to their
climax in the 1990s, that ideal polity of mind that I referred to
above experienced a new, a fresh impetus, what might be called a
type of spiritual springtime of auspicious beginnings. They were
beginnings that went back as far as the early 1980s when the
permanent seat of the Universal House of Justice on what Bahais
call the Mountain of the Lord was completed and the occupation of
the International Teaching Centre and the Centre for the Study of
the Texts took place. A creative drive, a revolutionary vision, a
systematic effort were all part of a culture of learning which was
emerging in the 1980s and it implied the slow emergence of that
paradigmatic shift that was foreshadowed by the House of Justice,
as I say above, as early as 1988. This shift became a more visible
reality as the 1990s turned the corner into the new millennium.
My style, my prose-poetic design, is like Pounds in so far as I use
juxtaposition, history and much in the western intellectual tradition
as a way to locate and enhance meanings. Like Pound, I stress
continuity in history, the cultural and the personal. At the heart of
epic poetry for Pound was the historical. It was part of the
reclaiming job that Modernist poets saw as their task, to regain
ground from the novelists; my reclaiming job is to tell of the
history of the epochs I have lived through from a personal
perspective, from the perspective of the multitude of traces both I
and my coreligionists have left behind. This reclaiming process, I
must emphasize, is a personal one. In many ways the events of my
time dont need reclaiming for the major and minor events of these
epochs both within and without the Bahai community are
massively documented in more detail than ever before in history.

The reclaiming process is one of seeing the meaning in the evening

of my life of what happened in my personal life, my society and my
religion in the earlier decades of my lifespan.
Perhaps, though, in the same way that Pounds work was, as the
poet Alan Ginsberg once expressed and defined Pounds work, the
first articulate record and graph of a mans mind and emotions over
a continuous fifty year period, my epic may provide a similar
record and graph. Unlike Pound, though, I see new and
revolutionary change in both the historical process, in my own
world and in the future with a distant vision of the oneness of
humanity growing in the womb of this travailing age. I see
humankind on a spiritual journey, the stages of which are marked
by the advent of two Manifestations of God in the 19th century, at
one of historys many climacterics. The nature of the universe, it
seems to me, points to something deeper and beyond itself. The
universe has, as the philosopher and statesman J. C. Smuts once
wrote, a trend, a list. It was an immanent Telos. It is making for
some greater whole.(Holism and Evolution, 1927, p.185)
My articulate record is so different than Pounds both in process
and content. The contrast with Pound is worth stating for it throws
light on what I am attempting to do. Pounds world, like Woolfs,
was all in scraps and fragments and he attempted in his Cantos,
that longest poem to which I referred to above, what some see as
quintessentially an autobiography, to document the uncongeniality,
the conflict, of the modern world. All that is and was solid, as Marx
said, had melted into air by the decades that both Woolf and Pound
were writing and all that was holy had been profaned. It was then,
in these decades, that the new Bahai paradigm of non-partisan
politics, of its Bahai Administration, the nucleus and pattern of a
new Order found its embryonic form.

That melting, that dissolving, process of the old order continued

into my time. Individuals tied too closely to that old order were and
are being rolled up as a new order is being spread out in a process
of parturition and rupture that is often subliminal and with an
imminence of a new bloom as history goes on in its disastrous
quest for meaning. The centre had, indeed, not held or, as
Frederick Glaysher states for it had never really existed; it was
only a fallacious structuring principle. But a new centre of the
holy had clearly emerged in my time even if it had just stuck its
head above the ground and even if it was recognized by only one
thousandth of the human population of this planet. It is this
authentic structuring principle, this new centre and a sense of the
holy associated with it that informs this autobiographical work and
informs the work and activity of Bahais at this new stage of this
paradigmatic process.
The fifty+ year period, 1963 to 2015, in which my life and my Faith has been
guided by the first full institutionalization of the charismatic Force that had
come into the world a century before in the person of Bahullh, has been
one of the most enriching periods in the history
this Cause. This Cause had always been, for me, a culture of learning. I had
for many a long year taken deep satisfaction from the advances of society
and had seen in them the very purpose of God. These things, too, had been
part of the culture of learning that had been in my life since the 1950s with
the Guardian always providing the exegesis, the light of interpretation, that
was a recipe for action, for understanding and meaning in my lifeand then,
after 1963, with the House of Justice providing a continuance of this divine
and infallible exegesis.

WALT WHITMAN
To turn to another poet, Walt Whitman(1819-1892), an American
poet, essayist and journalist, let me make some more comparisons
and contrasts that hopefully will illumine my epic work and the epic
work we are all involved with in this new global religion. Those who are
familiar with Whitmans poem Leaves of Grass may recall that his poetic work

attempts to merge both the writer and his poetry with the reader. In the same
way that Pounds work provides a useful comparison and contrast point for me
in describing and analysing my epic, so is this true of Walt Whitmans poem.
His poem expresses the theory and practice of democracy; mine expresses
quite a different polity: the theory and practice of a new Order, a new System,
what some call a democratic theocracy. I try to merge myself with the reader
but, I am more inclined to the view that, like Pound, I do not achieve this
desirable goal. In my case it is for different reasons than Pound, reasons which
would require too extensive an explanation to go into here.

Whitmans poem is, among other things, an embodiment of the idea

that a single unique protagonist can represent a whole epoch. This
protagonist can be looked at in two ways. There is his civic, public,
side and his private, intimate side. While I feel it would be
presumptuous of me to claim, or even attempt, to represent an
entire epoch or age, this concept of a private/public dichotomy is a
useful one, a handy underlying feature or idea at the base of this
epic poem. Learning as a mode of operation requires, as the House
of Justice emphasizes again and again, "that all assume a posture of
humility, a condition in which one becomes forgetful of self,
placing complete trust in God, reliant on His all-sustaining power
and confident in His unfailing assistance, knowing that He, and He
alone, can change the gnat into an eagle, the drop into a boundless
sea."
I also like to think that, as I have indicated above, this experience,
this poetry, this epic work, is in some ways part and parcel of the
experience of many of my coreligionists around the world as their
experience is part of mine, even though my work has an obvious
focus on my own experience; and their lives and activities have an
obvious focus on them. Paradoxically, it is the personal which is
the common in so far as it recognizes the existence of the many in
the one. In my own joy or despair and in and through this epic
work entitled Pioneering Over Four Epochs I express a shared
experience; I write of that which others have also experienced.
Such is my aim, my hope, at least one of my many ultimate desires
in composing both this book and my 5 volume autobiography,
some of which is found in this book on the new Bahai paradigm.

In my poetic opus, my epic, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, I like to

think that, with Whitman, the reader can sense a merging of reader
and writer. But I like to think, too, that readers can also sense in my
epic a political philosophy, a sociology, a psychology, a global
citizen--something we have all become. There is in my poetry a
public and a private man reacting to the burgeoning planetization of
humankind, the knowledge explosion and the tempest that has been
historys experience, at least as far back as the 1840s, if not as far
back as the days of Shaykh Ahmad after he left his homeland in
N.E. Arabia in the decade before those halcyon days of the French
Revolution and its bloody aftermath in the Jacobin Terror.
There is much more than verse-making here in my
autobiographical opus. My work is not the Leaves of Grass or the
Cantos. My epic is not one long poem. I use these works of these
now famous poets for comparative purposes, as I say, to throw light
on my own writing. I have no hesitation in making what Donald
Kuspit calls identitarian claims for my poetry and my prose. My
writing in all its forms expresses my identity; Kuspit emphazes
what he calls the idiosyncratic artist and it is the very
idiosyncrasies of the artist that make him convincing and give him
credibility in our postmodern era. Yes, Mr. Kuspit, but I might add,
only to a few.
As idiosyncratic artist and author, poet and publisher, I create my
own cosmology, my own identity, an identity which is a mosaic of
true and false, real and unreal. I pursue a sense of artistic and
human identity in a situation where both I and my literary
guidelines are idiosyncratic. My epic is a radically personal one as,
indeed, all individual epics are. Epics aim to establish both
conscious and unconscious communication between individuals.
The identities of those who write the epics often confuse their
egotistic pride with self-respect and honour. Their emotions are
often expressions of their attempts to locate the source of their
irritations outside themselves in external reality and who, like this
writer, are caught up with the allurements and the trivialities of the

world without, and of the pitfalls of the self within. I have found
the writing of this epic journey, in this epic literary form, a mystery.
As yet there has been no commentary on my total oeuvre by any
observer or critic. I would be happy to wait until after my passing;
indeed I would be happy to wait even unto eternity. I leave the
response in the hand of God, so to speak, with those mysterious
dispensations of that watchful Providence.
HUMANITY'S FALSE HOPES AND PARADIGMATIC VISIONS
The magnitude of the ruin that the human race had brought upon
itself and its catalogue of horrors, a ruin the Guardian had
described in a passage I had read as far back as the late 1950s, has
been at the centre of my life, my civilization and the religion I have
been part and parcel of for decades. The culture of learning that
was put into special focus in the mid-to-late 1990s made me
conscious of this reality more than ever and I knew, again as the
House pointed out, that humanity appeared desperate to believe
that through some fortuitous conjunction of circumstances it could
bend the conditions of human life into conformity with its desires.
The vision that had been at the centre of my Faith, a revolutionary
vision, helped me create a reality which again helped me create the
world in which I lived. For, as that long-time secretary of the NSA
of the USA Horace Holley once said, and as I repeat for the second
time in this book for emphasis, vision creates reality. This vision
has been an important part of the more reflexive, introspective
nature of my experience in the two epochs during which this
paradigm has been institutionalized. Vision, values, beliefs and
attitudes are all indispensable means of acquiring any historical
knowledge at all. But, of course, there are no guarantees.
This paradigm provides what might be called an ideal framework, a
pure form, a social construction, an ideal-typical construct, an
action-oriented overview which the Bahais aim to achieve in the
practical, real world but often, if not always or for the most part,
never achieve. The framework is put into practice, is realized, is

achieved in practice, in the conceptual imaginations, in the

visionary frameworks, in the many-sided models of community.
This framework is an important and useful tool for analysis for the
body of the believers. It comprises as a total paradigm what might
be called a conceptual utopia within which meaningful action is
placed in a context of practical material and community life.
The focus, for the believer, is on the interplay of meaning and the
conditions of action and an important part of this interplay is the
creative aspect of human action. Meaning for the individuals
concerned is an outcome of the creative activities in the changing
historical circumstances. Meaning emerges from the relations
between the actors and it emerges in the context of a new
normative order from a charismatic Source. In some ways this
context is much the same as it has always been. As the French say:
"the more things change the more they stay the same." As one critic
put it: the new paradigm seems to me just a movement of the
deckchairs with most of community activity remaining the same.
Im sure this is the case for many Bahais. In other ways, the
changes are significant and equivalent to a new paradigmatic
community construct.
Functioning as a medium of self-identification, the Bahai epicnarrative can provide individuals with an expression, an example, a
source for an increase in energy and an increase in courage. This
increase generates intentionality, a willingness and a desire to act.
For all of us the desire to act in ways that are part of this new
paradigm is essential. This action is in turn an experience of
mastery that comes from dealing with life and it can contribute to a
sense of identity, of authentic selfhood and intimacy in a
postmodern society where authenticity and intimacy are important
survival tools. For many, though, it must be recognized that there is
no desire for such intimacy. Such individuals often prefer
withdrawal from commitment and community involvement. Not
everyone is blessed with what one writer called a socio-hormone.
Many want to withdraw from what they, and T.S. Eliot, see as the
immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is modern

history. Indeed, the sound of this withdrawal, if it could be

measured, is deafening and it has complex roots which this book
cannot examine in any depth. The failure to achieve a sense of
community intimacy is a major source of people's alienation and
their rootlessness in society. And this alienation cannot always, not
frequently, be overcome. For still others withdrawal leads to return.
Withdrawal and return become a rhythm. This topic has been dealt
with in Bahai literature and I leave it to readers to follow the
literary journey down its labyrinthine paths.
BACK TO COMMENTS ON MY WRITING AND MY STORY
Part 1:
My writing, my poetry, contains within it, in page after page, an
expression of, an identity with what has been and is now the ruling
passion of my life: the Bahai Faith, its history and teachings. This
Faith seems to have wrapped itself over the landscape of my life
and filled my being over these nearly fifty years of a pioneering
life. Indeed, I have come to see myself with an increasing
consciousness, as a part of, one of the multitude of lights in what
Abdul-Baha called a heavenly illumination which would flow
to all the peoples of the world from the North American Bahai
community and which would, as Shoghi Effendi expressed it
adorn the pages of history. Of course, this vision must be
perpetually remade and adjusted like a hat. It must be placed in a
perspective that is not a pretentious covering for the self and not a
self-consciousness that is some sense of self-glorification and
aggrandizement. But it is a vision of self that attempts to place
within the context of my daily life an action-oriented mentality that
dramatizes my intentions. These actions become, or such is my
aim, the visible concomitant of an invisible process within me.
My story is part of that larger story, the first stirrings of a spiritual
revolution, which at the local level has often, has usually, indeed,
just about always, seemed unobtrusive and uneventful as far as the
wider world of public significance is concerned, at least where I

have lived and pioneered, growing not unlike Christianity as it did

against a background of the Augustan system half hidden, along
the foundations of society. But my inner journey is also, in basic
ways, an expression of this larger journey. As John Hatcher writes
in closing his helpful article on this process:
In this inner dimension, spirituality becomes a sort of dialogue
between the human soul and the Divine Spirit as channelled
through the Manifestation. It is within this subjective, but
nevertheless real, dimension of inner spirituality that one finds all
the passion, the exaltation of spirit, as well as the terrible but
somehow precious moments of despair, of utter helplessness and
defeat, of shame and repentance. It is here that one learns with the
deeply certain knowledge only personal experience can bestow,
that the ultimate category of existence, the absolute and
transcendent God who guides and oversees our destiny, is an
infinitely loving and merciful Being.
The narrative imagination, then, that is at the base of the Bahai epic
and my own epic poetry needs to be seen by readers in the context
that Hatcher describes above. As far as possible I have tried to
make my own narrative: honest, true, accurate, realistic, informed,
intelligible, knowledgeable, part of a new collective story, a new
shared reality, part of the axis of the oneness of humanity that is
part of the central ethos of the Bahai community. As I develop my
story through the grid of narrative and poetry, of letters and essays,
of notebooks and photographs, I tell my story the way I see it,
through my own eyes and my own knowledge, as Bahaullah
exhorted me to do in Hidden Words, but with the help of many
others.
Part 2:
My aim is not to rise in a Bahai community hierarchy or to become
part of a necessary and inevitable bureaucracy of Bahai institutions
on the appointive and elective sides of this Faith or in the everyday
life of a local, cluster, regional, national and international

community. But I do want to be part of this new society until my

dying days. It is a new society already in the making, a society in
which there is already concerted action toward a single goal, a map
for the journey and not just vague sentiments of good will, however
genuine. It is a society with explicit agreement on principles which
require coordinated action. But it is not easy and it is not simple.
My task is as a part of this new religion, this new community, this
organization that is not competing with other religions but is a
social force with a very special, perhaps even unique contribution
to make to the aims of global peace and unity of our planet.
My aim as a poet and publisher, a writer and editor, a journalist and
independent scholar, a husband, a father and a grandfather as well
as a retired teacher and lecturer, tutor and adult educator, taxidriver and ice-cream salesman--is to be a source of social good and
serve my society within the limits of my incapacity, as Abdu'l-Bah
once put it. The liberal spirit, the sense of freedom, in the Bahai
community is not a liberalism which, in many ways, is but a vast
argument about the extent, the limits, of bureaucracy. It is a
liberalism, a structure of freedom which has as its context, its
framework, a Bahai administration, a framework of a new Order of
action for our age. It has more similarities with the liberalism of
John Stuart Mill, but it would be utterly misleading to attempt to
compare this Order with any of the diverse systems of thought
conceived by the many minds of men throughout history, ancient or
modern. And this question of freedom and authority is far too
complex to deal with here in any proper and comprehensive fashion
in the middle of this book.
In the process of living, I leave behind me traces, things in your
present, dear reader, which stand for now absent things, things from
the past, from a turning point in history, one of historys great
climacterics. The phenomenon of the trace is clearly akin to the
inscription of lived time, my time and that of my generation, upon
astronomical time from which calendar time comes. History is
knowledge by traces, as F. Simiand puts it. And so, I bequeath
traces: mine and those of many others I have known, those of a

particular time in history. Sometimes I think that these traces

amount to a voluminous anatomy of self about which there is a
very questionable value; at other times I think these traces are so
intimately linked with the emergence of a new religion, a new
Order with the very future in its bones, that there is an inner thrill
and excitement that is difficult to keep in the form of a moderate
expression.
But however I see these traces, Hatchers words that I have quoted
above ring true and they offer a perspective on what is part of my
aim, my goal, my process and what is the content of this work.
These traces must be seen within a subjective but nevertheless real
dimension of inner spirituality where I find all the passion, the
exaltation of spirit, as well as the terrible but somehow precious
moments of despair, of utter helplessness and defeat, of shame and
repentance. This is true for all of us as we cultivate this culture of
learning. I raise my voice here as one person but what I write
applies, it seems to me anyway, to millions of my fellow believers.
Part 3:
In the years since the sense of my total oeuvre as epic was first
formulated, that is more than a decade ago in the period 1997 to
2000, I have been working on the 2nd to 6th editions of my prose
narrative Pioneering Over Four Epochs. In these last ten years,
September 2001 to September 2011, this narrative has come to
assume its own epic proportions. It is now 2600 pages in length and
occupies five volumes. It is one of the many extensions, one of the
many facets, parts and parcels, of the larger epic of my total oeuvre
that I have described above and which had its initial formulation
form from September 1997 to September 2000 at the outset of this
new Bahai culture.
After some 18 years then, from 1997 to 2015, nearly all the years
of this new paradigm, I have extended my epic, my world of prose
memoir, of narrative autobiography. I also completed in that same
period a 300 page study of the poetry of Roger White which was

placed on the Juxta Publications website in October 2003. It was

entitled: The Emergence of a Bahai Consciousness in World
Literature: The Poetry of Roger White. The first edition of my
website in 1997, also entitled Pioneering Over Four Epochs,
became a second edition on May 21st 2001 two days before the
official opening of The Terraces on Mt. Carmel on 23 May 2001.
My website is now 17 years old and is in its fourth edition. My old
website(2001 to 2011) contained some 3000 pages and 450,000
words and was, for me, an integral part of this epic. The 4th edition
of my website is the central matrix for several million words spread
over cyberspace.
There are so many passions, thoughts, indeed so much of ones
inner life that cannot find expression in normal everyday existence.
Much of my poetry and prose, perhaps my entire epic-opus is a
result of this reality, at least in part; my literary output is also a
search for words to describe the experience, my experience, of our
age, my age and the religion I have now been associated with since
DNA was discovered and Kinseys Sexual Behaviour in the Human
Female was published both in 1953. In 1953 another one of those
Bahai paradigms I have already mentioned was beginning as were
new paradigms in the secular and scientific worlds. My total oeuvre
of words in several genres could be said to be part of my very
psycho-biological-philosophical self. My poetry and prose allows
me to release surplus, excess, energy and an abundance of thought
and desire which I am unable to assimilate and give expression to
in my everydayness and its quotidian realities. This entire work is
an expression of thoughts, desires, passions, beliefs and attitudes
which I am unable to find a place for amidst the ordinarily ordinary
and the humanly human aspects of everyday life. This literary epic
adorns the ordinary; it enriches my everyday experience, as if from
a distance.
DRAWING ON THE THOUGHTS OF OTHER THINKERS: YET
AGAIN
Suffering ceases to be suffering when it has found a meaning wrote

Victor Frankl in his now famous book Mans Search For Meaning.
These words of Frankl were quoted by Elizabeth Rochester in her
long, fascinating and intellectually stimulating letter to Canadian
international pioneers over twenty-five years ago. I think Frankl is
partly right; sadly, many never find a meaning to their suffering.
Since all of us struggle with suffering, our own and the worlds, in
one way or another all our lives, the meaning of the suffering
eludes millions. It is important for the generations who are
experiencing this new paradigm in its earliest stages to be highly
cognizant of the multitude of spiritual verities that previous
generations of Bahais, perhaps as many as six if one defines a
generation as a twenty-five year period, have come to experience
and understand and which stand available in primary and secondary
literature as well as on cassette tapes, CDs and videos to help
illuminate their paths.
In 1997-1998, in the first half of the Four Year Plan(1996-2000), I
began to think of writing a personal epic poem and so fashioned
some ten pages as a beginning; this particular poem with its ten
page beginning is still a work in progress and has not got beyond
those ten pages. But by September 2000 I began to envisage my
total prose-poetic output in terms of an epic since, by then, I had
written several million words of prose-poetry and prose across a
number of literary genres. As the efflorescence on Mt Carmel and
its tapestry of beauty began to unfold, I felt my writing pregnant
with meaning, at least for me if not for others. The sheer size of my
epic work in its several genres, it seemed, made the concept of my
total oeuvre as epic a natural one. I imposed, then, by sensible and
insensible degrees over a period of years, the epithet--epic--on this
great swath of my writing as it sat in my computer directory.
The advent of instant travel and international communication has
made the fundamental context of the Bahai Faith international; it is
the axis of the oneness of humanity. As I have been writing in the
last twenty years, I often felt as if I was there in Haifa at the Bahai
World Centre. This was especially true thanks to cinema, video,
DVD, cassette-tape, CD, photography, hi-fidelity sound systems, a

print and electronic media which had been sensibly and insensibly
transforming the world into a neighbourhood before my very eyes
in the last half of the 20th century and in this new millennium.
Indeed, much of history and life in contemporary society, its
content and context, were being restored, recreated, illumined and
revitalized before my intellectual eyes. The Tablet of Carmel itself
is full of allusions, symbols and metaphors which enrich and
enhance the meaning systems of the individuals in the Bahai
community everywhere. I had been trying to memorize this Tablet
for over twenty-five years and many of its sentences and passages
had become a part of my inner life. But again, these comments are
somewhat tangential to the thrust of this book.
DRAWING ON OTHER WRITERS: YET AGAIN
A.I often mention Arnold Toynbee in this book
This book, as of 5/4/'15, has a total of 280,000 words and 830
pages(font 16; 710 pages font 14). It is found in two documents at
BLO: Parts 1 and 2.
B.Other Bahai Writers on Some Aspects of the New Paradigm
Tom Price, an inspirational speaker, gave 3 talks and they are found
at this link: http://bahaiblog.net/site/2011/09/27/5-year-plan-talksby-tom-price/
End of Document at BLO