Atomic Mandate/Text

[Page 2]ATOMIC MANDATE

by Marzieh Gail

It was 5:30 of a dark morning, July 16, 1945, on the New Mexico desert. The head of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory stood tensely waiting. Six miles away, mounted on a robot-controlled steel tower, an unknown thing was poised. This thing had cost two billion dollars ; it had cost the toil of thousands of scientists over many years ; whole cities had been built to build it, and great factories spreading over miles of countryside. Now they would set it going. If the test failed, all their work was lost. If it succeeded too well, this scientist and his waiting colleagues might be the first victims of an uncontrollable force, released by them to roam the earth.

Time signals, broadcast by radio, remorselessly mea- —

sured out the last moments. The man held -onto a post, steadying himself as the time ran out. Then a voice called: ‘‘Now!”

And there came a great explosion of light, many times brighter than noonday sun. Then there came a shock wave, knocking men down. And after that, with a long roaring, a multicolored cloud boiled seven miles high. The man recognized that sound: it was the last death cry of many human beings, still alive then across the planet, matter-of-factly going about their business

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Pa [Page 3]in the quiet July night. At this moment he heard in his mind two lines from Hindu Scripture: ‘J am _ become death, the shatterer of worlds.”

Someone lit the first fire, long ago. About a million years ago, man was already using it. In our time, man has just come upon atomic energy. Like fire, it can mean life just as well as death. And like fire, it is here to stay.

People seem to feel, these days, as if a genie had been let out of a bottle and were lying in wait to kill them. But there is really no new danger in the world. There is just the same old one: the human mind and heart. Man is dangerous ; his tools are not.

The answer to the Bomb is not another Bomb. The only possible answer is a new kind of man.

There is a way of living in the world now which will make the Bomb as harmless as a toy bow and arrow. There is a new way of putting the individual and_ the nation and all nations together in a pattern which makes peace.

There are now local, national and _ international Baha’i communities on the planet which are islands cf world peace.

The people in these communities all feel the same way. They are Chicagoans or South Americans or New Yorkers, East Indians or Ethiopians or San

Franciscans ;

they are black, white, yellow, brown, any

3 [Page 4]color ; they are rich or poor, schooled or unschooled; their parents were Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muhammadans, free-thinkers, of any religion, of no religion. They are citizens of many countries, but they take no political sides. ‘They all feel the same way now.

Here are some of the things Baha’is want: All races equal and non-segregated. Men and women equal. The nations united, as states in a world government.

A world police. A world language, taught in all schools. A world calendar.

World education ; the same chance for education everywhere.

Science and religion equally important.

Work for all; no idle rich and no idle poor; no extremely rich and no terribly poor. A single standard of right and wrong for everyone. Justice for everyone. The love of God and His Prophets. Prayer. Preparation now for life after death.

One of the loveliest buildings in the Western Hemisphere, the Baha’i House of Worship at Wilmette, Illinois, was built by Baha’i communities as a symbol of their purpose: to create one world, united under God.

4 [Page 5]The design of these communities was drawn almost a hundred years ago by the Persian nobleman Baha’u’llah (the Glory of God). He showed how ll religions. promised peace on earth ; He said the time for that peace had now come. He showed how world peace would begin first in the individual, then in the group, and then spread over the whole earth.

He had nothing to gain by bringing a new religion, everything to lose. He lost His rank in Persia ; His palaces and possessions ; His freedom. Driven away from His country, He was a prisoner and exile nearly forty years. Twenty thousand followers were killed in Persia: homes broken into, whole families butchered, dead bodies left to be trampled and stoned.

His voice, at first, made no more stir in the world than that first roaring of the Bomb across the desert. But, today, people are listening to both voices, and one says Die, and one says Live.

Here are some of His words:

“Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust ? That no one should exalt himself over the other.

Breathe not the sins of others so long as thou art thyself a sinner.

The best beloved of all things in My sight 1s Justice ; turn not away therefrom....Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.

on [Page 6]Thou art My dominion and My dominion perisheth not, wherefore fearest thou thy perishing ?”

He says “I” and ‘“‘We’’, as the mouthpiece of God. He speaks directly to man, with the authority of all God’s Prophets. That is why religious and worldly leaders, jealous of their own authority, rose up to destroy Him. But they failed. Though He died still a prisoner, in the Holy Land in 1892, His Cause will never die.

Baha’u’ll4h wrote a hundred books. He knew our modern problems, and discussed them, showing the solution. He knew the questions of our time, and answered them. He knew, prophetically, about the Bomb. After Him, His son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, knew of it. In 1911 ‘Abdu’l-Baha said this to a Japanese Ambassador, Viscount Arakawa :

“There is in existence a stupendous force, as yet, happily, undiscovered by man. Let us supplicate God, the Beloved, that this force be not discovered by science until spiritual civilization Shali dominate the human mind. In ihe hands of men of lower material nature, this power would be able to destroy the whole earth.”(!) In 1920, He wrote to friends in Japan: “In Fapan the divine proclamation will be heard as a formidable explosion. .. .(*)

Here are others of Baha’u’llahs words, showing how to live in this atomic age. ‘These nine sentences were chosen by Shoghi Effendi, world head of the Baha’ Faith, SES The Chosen Highway, Lady Blomfield, p. 184.

(2) Tablets to Japan, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, p. 12.

6 [Page 7]to be inscribed under the great dome of the Temple at Wilmette :

All the Prophets of God proclaim the same faith. Religion is a radiant light and an impregnable stronghold. Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.

So powerful is unity’s light that it can illumine the whole earth. Consort with the followers of all religions with friendliness.

O Son of Being! Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. O Son of Being! Walk in My statutes for love of Me.

Thy Paradise is My love ; thy heavenly home reunion with Me. The light of a good character surpasseth the light of the sun.

Baha’w’ll4h was used to wealth and ease. In His Persian gardens, attendants spread silken carpets for Him, by a stream twisting down from the snow mountains. White-mulberry trees dropped their fruit into dark pools there, and nightingales sang in the jasmine flowers, all through the sapphire night. His companions were princes, delicately nurtured, wearing their jewels and brocades.

Then He was seized because of His beliefs, and chained underground in the Black Pit of Tihran. This. Pit, an abandoned reservoir, was three flights down in the earth. It was peopled with criminals, most of them naked, covered with vermin, sitting on the bare ground in their own filth. No light ever fell there, through the cold dark. No sweet air ever came. It was during the months He was condemned there, His feet in the stocks,

7 [Page 8]His body wasted and bent under His chains, that He slept and heard a voice say: “Verily We will aid Thee to triumph by Thyself and by Thy pen....Ere long shall the Lord send forth and reveal the treasures of the earth, men who shall give Thee the victory by Thyself and by Thy Name wherewith the Lord hath revived the hearts of them that know.”

There is nothing new about killing. Men have always killed one another and the Bomb is just a better way of doing it.

But living without inflicting death on others is brand new. It has never been done before. It calls for a brand new way of thinking and acting ; for new behavior which will create a new kind of people.

. Such behavior can only result from religion. Religions begin in the East. They arrive periodically, as they are needed, down the ages. Today, answering man’s desperate need, the Glory of God has come.

Find out how you can step into the new world and live at peace with your own self, your neighbors and all men ; how you can come nearer to the one God of all the Prophets, the one Father of the human race. Investigate the Baha’i Faith.

BAHA’L PUBLISHING TRUST Post Box 19, New Delhi

Available from BAHA’f PUBLISHING TRUST 110 LINDEN AVENUE WILMETTE, ILLINOIS (U.S.A.)

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