THE TRUE SOVEREIGN
BY ALFRED E. LUNT
"Verily,—those who have denied God and adhered unto nature as nature is, are indeed void of both science and wisdom,—are they not of the erring?”—BAHÁ’U’LLÁ.
THE law of cause and effect, being divinely ordained as a basic law of creation, is inexorable and ever active. In these fateful years when the nations have fallen into evil times; when the wheel of suffering presses ever more heavily upon every soul; when a rude awakening has come upon a people (organized humanity) whose forgetfulness of God in years of seeming prosperity instilled selfish pride and isolation from their fellowmen to a degree unexampled in human history; there stand out again, in words as luminous and as final as those first written upon the wall of Belshazzar’s ancient temple —“Thou hast been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
Such a sweeping judgment could owe its origin only to deepseated and prolonged disobedience to the divine law itself. And with equal force it may be said that for these present evidences of wide-spread collapse there must have existed an anterior cause. No student of human destiny in the mass could fail to analyze in a true spirit of research what lies behind this stupendous change that has suddenly afflicted not one country or race alone but the whole world. This depression, or crisis, or panic, by whatever name it may be termed, exhibits symptoms radically different from those that have characterized the recorded depressions of other periods.
It is, in the first place, a universal calamity. Other depressions have resembled a local or functional disease of one part or member of the body of the race. But we are witnessing, today, something far more basic and deepseated. The infection has penetrated to every vital organ and function. The body of humanity, itself, is sick and infirm, as if its life-forces were withdrawn, and the confirmation of health and well-being secluded. And just as a man, seriously ill, yields up both will and confidence, so in the confusion of thought, the baffling nature of the disease, and the absence of physicians sufficiently skilled to diagnose the cause of this illness,—men of business, the so-called captains of industry, await day by day new disasters, impotent and incapable any longer of summoning the daring, the cocksureness upon which they have always relied to preserve and stabilize their affairs and the affairs of the people generally who, in blind faith, have always entrusted their investments to the care of these giants of the industrial realm.
The real truth is—what is going on is the collapse of the pillars of the temple of the old order. The powerful stimulus of the “new wine,” that has been unsealed in this day of renovation, is tending the old structure with a force stronger than dynamite. This new wine cannot be safely put into the old bottles. Its effect upon the people has already stirred within them a distaste for the unsound and selfish system so long in control of their destinies, even though they, themselves, are still largely unaware of the sources of this new impetus. A penetrating light has illumined the secret recesses and exposed the deeds done in darkness. Every plotter against the true welfare of humanity, suddenly, to his dismay and astonishment, sees this searchlight of the divine assayer uncovering his hidden schemes to the eyes of the world. Small wonder at his astonishment at what he may deem to be his betrayal at the hands of those business and political elements, now powerless, that have so long sheltered such practices. In this manner, the bulwarks of a rejected system are crumbling.
When the waters cease to flow the soil
becomes arid, parched and dead. When a
people perversely turn aside from the Fountain
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of Living Water, and are full unto
repletion with the bitter water distilled by
Nature in her laboratories of insensate forces,
the health-giving life stream becomes diverted
and ceases to invigorate and renew
the mental and spiritual tissues. In such a
process, humanity becomes a mere distorted
image of the real man whose lineaments have
been so vividly described by Bahá’u’lláh when
He said,—“The true man appeareth before
the Merciful One like unto the heavens;
his sight and hearing are the sun and moon;
his bright and shining qualities are the stars;
his station is the highest one; his traces are
the educators of existence.”
That mystic and pregnant saying—“And when they forgot God He caused them to forget themselves,” illumines the picture with a profound wisdom, and is the keynote of our subject. One of its clear implications is that the reality of man, his true self, is always in the state of remembrance of God. So, also, one who is conscious of Him, forgetting and forsaking Him not, is ever conscious of that Holy reality within him, and is rightly guided. But the state of a people who have forgotten God, and turned to the false sovereign, is identical with that of one who is not himself but is lost in the wilderness of aberration and imagination. He has forgotten himself. False perspectives, misleading and fanciful conceptions of life, an utter failure of guidance characterizes him who has forgotten that "Essence of Life,” his true identity, placed within him by the Hand of Power. What more terrible penalty than to lose remembrance and contact with that luminous reality within can be imagined? Surely, this can only be the result of a deliberate and radical departure from the sweeping command of the Supreme Executive Power of the universe. In short, the quoted words themselves are the best pronouncement and definition, for they clearly state that this departure, this sin, was no less than forgetfulness of God. It is an arraignment of the idolators who by forgetting Him have denied His Sovereignty, and have thus disobeyed the first and greatest commandment.
The burning issue, beside which every ordinary problem becomes trifling, is the struggle in the breast of man between the sovereignties of the nether and the divine worlds. The Sacred Books of every people bear witness to the divine mandate on this question. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” “I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” ‘'O Son of Spirit! There is no rest for thee except if thou dost renounce thyself and turn unto Me.” “O Son of Light! Forget all else but Me and commune with My Spirit.” “Today is the Day wherein the Throne of the Lord calleth among the people unto all the dwellers of the earth and commandeth them to glorify and sanctify God.” "And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that Day.” “For the Day of God is He, Himself, who hath appeared with the truth.” "Beware of hesitating to accept this Beauty after the Ruler of Might, Power and Glory hath appeared.” “This Day is the Day of God and God alone is speaking in it, and none should be mentioned save Him.” “This is the Day in which the inhabitants of all the world shall enter under the shelter of the Word of God.”
The coming of every major Prophet and Manifestation of God to the earth has been distinctly marked by this clarion call to the people to accept and be humble before the True Sovereign of the nations. With power and authority, as well as with love and pleading, these Holy Ones have commanded the people to forsake the idols and return unto the true King. Invariably, the advent of a Prophet has been at a time of great spiritual darkness. Invariably, the people have been found cleaving to the glittering counterfeits of reality, whether to gold, to fame and exaltation, to worldly absorptions, or to the water and clay. All these counterfeits, reared up as idols though not acknowledged as such by the people, are and have been the mirages of Nature, cleverly fashioned to resemble the true allurement of the divine reality, itself. Regardless of outer and claimed beliefs, of sectarian adherence to the form of a religion, of pharasaical conformity to the external requirements of traditional observance, —at the heart of the people, speaking generally and not failing to note individual exceptions, has reposed the hidden love and quest of the soul for the things that Christ declared to be strong barriers to entrance into the Kingdom of God.
The things or objects we love best, for
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those we sacrifice the most. What sacrifices,
what energies, what life-long pursuits have
been laid at the feet of these idols that men
have preferred to God, the Author of their
being? In such a life, God is essentially
forgotten however much He is mentioned with
the tongue.
Read the powerful utterances of Bahá’u’lláh with insight, and a great underlying motive and purpose is revealed as the reassertion of the Divine Sovereignty, that that Sovereignty has in this Age reentered the world with mighty power and will and must be reestablished in the consciousness of all men. Only the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit could accomplish this task which has baffled mankind for so many long ages. But the clear explanations of the Word of God regarding this supreme issue have been reserved for this day and hour and for the first time mankind as a whole is brought face to face with this eternal question. Victory in this matter could not have been achieved in former ages. Both capacity and destiny were lacking in the race only now entering into the dawn of its maturity. But the clear promise of the revealed Books of every prophetic cycle authoritatively pronounced this transcendent change to be certain and inevitable in the Day of Universal Manifestation, a day so startling to mankind as to be made synonymous with the “end of the world,” a day whose transformation would be of a magnitude so stupendous as to cause even the memory of the old order to become a misty tradition and confused dream.
In such a day our generation came upon the earth. To the people of faith the events of this period, calamitous and inexorable as they outwardly seem, are the expected symptoms of a body racked by disease into whose vitals a powerful, alterative, healing elixir has been poured. Stimulated at first into restlessness and pain, the benumbed tissues which have become lethargic under the devastating toxins of the poisons ignorantly self-administered by the patient are beginning to quicken. This elixir is none other than the Love and Knowledge of the Creator, the true diagnostician and physician for the ills of humanity. His prescription for health and wellbeing have been His Commandments, the chief of which is His Right to universal acceptance of His Sovereignty. Upon this recognition depend the receptivity and worthiness of mankind with respect to the merciful bestowals that ever flow to loyal subjects. The Love and the Knowledge of God, the divine assurances, the heavenly stations ascribed to the people of sincerity, the knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom, the order and welfare of the social, political and economic life of the race, the immortal and eternal life, are the rewards of the firmness and loyalty of a people, not of their disobedience and rejection. The Covenant of God is bi-lateral and mutual; its benefits cannot flow except to those who, on their part, perform faithfully the promises taken from them in exchange. And of these promises the recognition of His Sovereignty precedes all else.
Therefore, what is necessary? Is that sovereignty universally recognized and obeyed today,—and, if not, what sovereignty rules the people? We have previously commented on the fact that the masses of the people irrespective of class or origin have turned their faces to the idols emblematic of a false sovereign. This false sovereign is none other than the usurping power of Nature, whose qualities and characteristics, imitations of the real, instill attraction into the material images of life. Bahá’u’lláh in no unmeasured terms declares such worshippers to be of the “erring.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us that these erring adorers of Nature are enmeshed in the talons or claws of Nature. A moment’s reflection suffices to prove the unworthiness of this sovereign possessed only of blind instinct, lacking intelligence and reason, a congeries of elemental forces deposited by the Creator in the pit of the universe as the womb of life, a sign of wisdom and also a testing ground for the development of divine consciousness and the achievement of human destiny.
And yet, because these elemental forces
are involuntary and in a certain sense
automatic in their operation, they are deprived
of the merciful qualities. Ruthless and cruel
are they, when unrestrained. Sad it is that
a being like man, endowed with the divine
inheritance, with potentialities from the
Hand of God so exalted above Nature as to
be utterly incomprehensible to her, should
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bow the knee to that which has neither sense
nor feeling. Fire has no sentiment and will
destroy not only a great city but human life,
itself. The tidal waves of ocean as they roll
over the homes and fertile fields of man are
impelled by a cause that knows no mercy.
That instinctive hunger that animates the
animal world fails to implant in the
consciousness of a great fish either knowledge
or concern that in one mouthful he swallows
perhaps a hundred thousand smaller fry.
The tiger, obeying his natural instinct, has
absolutely no awareness of the anguish of
the man or beast into whom his rending fangs
are plunged. And, astonishing as it is, many
a victorious general, on the embattled fields
of a war of aggression, misled by his imaginary
patriotism and wholly dominated by
the destructive, cruel principle of nature, is
strangely unconscious that, by a single word
of command, he has sealed the fate and consigned
to death a hundred thousand men.
While as a result the fatherland perchance
obtains a few more square miles of territory,
or, more likely, becomes involved in disputes
as to indemnities ultimately resulting in misery
for both victor and vanquished. For
such inconsequential gains myriads are
compelled to yield up life. Such are the mandates
of sovereign Nature.
Nature, in short, has no sense of values as we know them. A library of precious manuscripts is only fodder for her fire. The premature slaughter of those thousands of soldiers, ordained by leaders bereft of guidance, is heralded by the unthinking as a triumph befitting exaltation and commemoration. But let us not suppose that the men of war, possessed in common with all other men of the capacity to know God and to understand His law, are excused in comparison with the tiger who is deprived of that capacity. In such a comparison we see the vast gulf that lies between responsibility and the lack of it. The striking element in common, however, is the utter subjection of both to the dictates of the inferior sovereignty. As a consequence, these men although vested with reason and spiritual susceptibilities place themselves below the plane of the animal who, responsible only to his instincts has broken no law. For this human bloodthirstiness, this violation of a higher, binding law, is it to be supposed that no retribution will follow?
“O Rebellious One! My forbearance hath emboldened you and My long-suffering made you negligent, in such wise that ye have spurred on the fiery charger of passion into perilous ways that lead unto destruction. Have ye thought Me negligent or unaware?”1
In this indictment of the darker aspect of Nature’s sovereignty emphasis is laid solely upon those natural elements that inter-penetrate and mislead the minds. The other side of the natural duality, associated with the beneficent law of composition, with the fruitful bountiful provisions of aesthetic beauty, food and comfort, the growing crops, the sweet spring breezes, the refreshing rains and glorious sunlight,—constitutes an outpouring of the constructive forces of the universe that guarantees existence, and is a sign of the unchangeable, universal bestowal of the Creator. With this aspect of Nature we can have no quarrel. Its service is, on the whole, to the otherwise helpless physical structure of the race, and has less to do with our mental reactions. Even if to the unthinking these unfailing bounties tend to endear man to nature to the extent of veiling him to the menace of the forces of her “left” or sinister side, no fault can be traced to this merciful provision, for it is, per se, the "sine quâ non” of life upon the earth.
The real menace, however, which has imprisoned man in chains stronger than steel, and lulled him into a coma and a forgetfulness deeper than that set up by the most potent anaesthetic, is that serpentine phase of nature that pertains to the subtle, invisible emanations finding reception in the motivation of human conduct. For these have influence with the mind of man, and, hence, with the downward flight of the soul. Described by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in “Some Answered Questions” as one of the meanings of the serpent in the creational story of Genesis, and explained by Him to be “attachment” to the world, this interior, compelling natural power is, in fact, that hynotic, miasmatic and counterfeit reality which has usurped, in the mind of man, the true sovereignty of the Merciful One. Concealing its real face in a mask of allurement, we have been unaware of its lineaments of horror and cruelty,
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1Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words (Persian) verse 65.
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its poverty of honor, worth or
intelligence, its fiery, death-dealing lust,
its fatherhood of lies and deceit, its
instinctive unreasoning
tyranny, or its evil suggestiveness. It is this
sphinxlike countenance, traces of which we
are led to believe men have attempted to
enshrine in the grotesque, horrible idols
common to certain nations lost in superstition,
that exerts a paramount power over human
destiny. This is because of the things we
have in common with her, derived from the
ancient inheritances. It is this benumbing
and tyrannical power that, in the fulness of
time, Bahá’u’lláh in the divine arena has
challenged as the seducer and betrayer of
mankind’s ordained destiny.
Have not the songs of the prophets illumined this historic page of humanity’s advancement with the glad tidings that in the Day of God this dragon should be cast into the pit? Granted that without the divine dynamic, lacking the penetrating power of the Word of God revealed to this generation, the people would be unable to achieve this victory and emerge from the prison of the self.
Admitting that the seeds of allegiance to natural sovereignty are implanted in the deep roots of our beings, nevertheless the revelation of knowledge from the Apex of Truth is the dispeller of superstition and ignorance. If the Divine Will has ordained this deliverance, as is clearly stated, nothing can withstand it. The regeneration of the human race is in large measure held back by ignorance of its hidden and latent powers. Largely, also, by the failure of the individual to investigate the reality and see with his own eyes. An understanding of the real produces invariably repudiation of and disgust for the counterfeit. The secrets of unity and its irresistible power unloose the supreme forces of the Realm of Might to destroy the armies of the nether world. And today the light of unity is breaking over the horizon. “Ye are all the leaves of one tree, the drops of one sea.” Unity reinforced by the Divine Love, indeed synonymous with it, is laden with a mysterious power flowing from the Oneness of God and incorporated into the very core of creation. Informed and armed with this supreme weapon, humanity will find wings with which to rise above the water and clay and attain its true place in the boundless spaces of the Kingdom of God, the goal of its high destiny.
For Nature's selfish isolation and discord, the True Sovereign grants union and brotherhood. For her cruelty and unreason He establishes love and heavenly knowledge. For her dark and treacherous suggestions, her hypocrises, her sanguinary wars, and her economic injustice, He bestows guidance, truth, order and that happiness that the exile feels when at last he has entered his real home.
Are these insidious enemies of our true welfare the inheritance of aeons of life when man was emerging from the slime of the waters, when Nature wholly dominated him, or are they the results of a gradual yielding to the natural allurement, the real fall of man enshrined in a mysterious tradition wherein he deliberately chose to dwell in the water and clay of the lower self and to forsake the heavenly delights of the divine provision? Certain it is that in the countless milleniums of his life on earth he has been brought face to face with the prophetic admonishments, and, flouting them, suffered the pains and punishments of disobedience. Nothing is clearer in the Sacred Books than that in a day concealed in the mists of creation he took a covenant with his Creator by which the infinite bestowals of God were promised him in exchange for his guerdon of obedience and acknowledgment of the True Sovereign.
If, now, these bestowals appear to be
withdrawn; if in their place we are confronted
with depression and unhappiness more
widespread and more poignant than men have
hitherto experienced; if the utmost ingenuity
of our leaders is powerless to find the key
to the solution,—can it be doubted that, if
these premises are true, the reason for this
deprivation is mankind’s own default? Not
the vengeance of God, but the unchangeable
law of cause and effect operating in the
arena of human affairs, has brought upon us
these scourges. Long continued disobedience
to the Command, forgetfulness and doubt
of the True Sovereign have created in the
heart of humanity a potent magnet of
attraction for the indrawing of the destructive,
death-dealing force of Nature which is ever
ready to seize hold of those who madly stray
from the impregnable stronghold and
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wander in the morasses of remoteness and ignorance.
At what point in its evolution the race became endowed with that capacity to know God that is commensurate with the assumption of responsibility, no record exists. Man has always stood at the forefront of the army of life, despite the unproved theories of certain anthropologists that he is merely a branch or descendant of inferior animals. Humanity is the main stem of the creational order. Concealed in the matrix of life as is the great oak in the acorn, his superior potentialities have slowly unfolded in the march of the centuries.1 And in the long succession of aeons and ages, when civilization after civilization became buried and submerged by earthshaking cataclysms, who can say with accuracy that our present civilization surpasses or even equals the apex attained by former peoples, our remote ancestors? Man is very ancient. And the succession of divine teachers known as prophets stretches back to a period little imagined by the orthodox literalists. The building of these cycles of human existence, whose climax is to witness the entrance of all mankind into a universal era of brotherhood, peace and knowledge of reality, is the evident creational purpose indelibly recorded in the Word of God revealed to every nation. Herein lies food for thought. For it betokens the latent capacity of the race to evolve the supreme achievement of attaining a worldwide unity. As well to say that the oak tree, having reached the leafy stage is incapable of putting forth its seed-fruitage, as to insist that man is forever bound by the limitations, superstitions and prejudices he now exhibits. The little acorn, a mere pulpy mass, is in nature bound, once buried in the rich soil, to increase in stature and grandeur until its full fruitage bursts forth.
And, yet, many so-called leaders of thought upon whose conclusions the people lean, the materialistic philosophers, the shallow thinkers whose vision is veiled to the intangible, controlling power that governs the world of reality,—have taught that if there is a Creator He has absented Himself from His creation and forgotten it; that
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1‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Some Answered Questions.”
mankind is left wholly to its own resources. This is forgetting God, with a vengeance. Were it not for the redoubtable Champions of Truth, who resolutely arise amidst mankind in the time of need, revealing the Will and Word of God, such a philosophy might well attain a proud and irrefutable eminence, since all admit the evident truth that the Essence of God is unknowable. But the very existence of these divine intermediaries, dotting the pages of history at times most inconvenient to the oppressors of humanity, is and always has been an irritating, insurmountable fact to the materialists. Either must they deny their actual historical existence, or otherwise explain their enormous and unique influence upon the masses of humanity. Briefly, the materialist philosophers have endeavored to link man to the animal in such fashion as to deny to him and cause him to despair of the spiritual qualities and powers resident within him. But these qualities have ever been emphasized and certified by the Messengers who have ceaselessly called the people to awaken and put forth this glorious fruitage of the human tree of life.
Let us assume for a moment as true the
definitions of the Manifestations of God
concerning the true station of man. That in
the sight of his Creator, he is, as it were,
the pivot of creation, a microcosm containing
within himself the secrets of heaven and
hell, the divine and nether worlds. That he
has been given dominion over every lesser
plane of life including the elemental forces.
That his soul is capable of both upward and
downward flights. That he possesses powers
unrivalled and unequalled by animal,
vegetable and mineral realms, among them
reason, spiritual susceptibility, the
capacity of discovery and invention, and
the ability to
know his Creator, which implies a
consciousness, amounting to certainty,
of the realities
of the divine world. That his heart is above
all else the home of the Spirit of God,
endowed with capacity to become the
recipient of the Divine Love, than which no
greater bounty is imaginable in the world of
creation. That he is destined, through the
establishment of unity in his own ranks, to
uncover in this world the fragrant flowers
of the Kingdom of God. That because of the
free will of his soul he may choose the high
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or the low flight. That the ancient myth
of the “devil” and all his works may be
traced to man, himself, in his excursions
into the dark caverns of Nature and his
submission to her behests.
Not only this but, as a result, he becomes an emissary of that cruel sovereign, supplementing its impulses with his all powerful will, and registering its cruelties upon his fellow-beings with all the accumulated force of his (God-given) mind. Thus he has used gifts of which Nature is totally lacking, to refine and augment her blind forces. For this reason the “devil” has been reputed to be intelligent, capable of plots against the divine Sovereign, challenging His authority and His right to command humanity, and asserting in place thereof his own egoistic supremacy.
Such are the actual and latent glories and abasement of man described in the Book of Life. Can we doubt that the Will of his Lord, Himself the Creator, through His wisdom, of the natural forces, will become enacted and established on this planet? Already, glorious signs of this fulfillment are witnessed in the earth. The hour, concealed in the Book of Fate, has arrived when a new order is in process of institution. And the first and greatest step is the enthronement of His Sovereignty, through wisdom and explanation and the awakening of the new consciousness. “For every hour there is a fate,” asserts Bahá’u’lláh. The destined hour for this consummation is here and now, consonant with the declaration of the Divine Decree.
“Beside Him, every one changeth by the will on His part, and He is the Almighty, the precious, the Wise . . . Nothing can move between the heaven and earth without My permission, and no soul can ascend to the Kingdom without My Command; but My creatures veiled themselves from My power and authority, and were of those who were negligent.”1
“O, My servants! The Ancient Beauty commands: Hasten to the shadow of immortality, nearness and mercy, from the shadow of desire, remoteness and heedlessness. . . . Be ye ablaze like unto fire, so that ye may consume thick veils and quicken and immortalize cold and veiled bodies through the heat of the divine love. Be ye pure like unto
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1Bahá’u’lláh. Bahá’í Scriptures, pp. 219, 220.
air, that ye may enter the sacred abode of My Friendship.”2
One of the greatest superstitions of our race is the one held by the pessimists who insist that what is commonly regarded as human nature is unchangeable, that its manifest weaknesses are fixed and static. This view is ignorantly misleading and but panders to the suggestions of the inferior sovereignty. In the first place, the real human nature is by no means the powerless entity portrayed by the pessimist. Human nature is definitely associated with a world infinitely removed from the realm of instinctive obedience that characterizes the lower beings. The animal spirit, the highest of these lower orders, has been defined by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as "the virtue perceptive, resulting from the admixture and absorption of the vital elements generated in the heart, which apprehend sense impressions.” But the human spirit, He tells us, “consists of the rational faculty which apprehends general ideas and things intelligible and perceptible.” But the Spirit of Faith, the next stage above that of the human spirit, He explains,—“is the life of the spirit of man, when it is fortified thereby, as Christ (to whom be Glory) saith ‘that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit—,’” The human spirit then, according to this exact definition, possesses the power to acquire and reinforce itself by appropriating the eternal gifts of the Spirit of Faith. Thus the faculty of reason may become illuminated, rather united with that Spirit that confers the immortal existence.
In the face of these evident truths, human nature is seen as a distinct creation fully endowed with power, through the exercise of its unique rational faculty and the power of selection and choice resident in the will, to inhibit and ultimately render powerless the inordinate impulses of the lower phase of its nature. To do this, however, it must have recourse to a superior power. This power, happily, has affinity and connection with the noble reality of man, and is the goal of the upward flight of the soul. This power which is no less than the Divine Reality, the Conferer of true existence, has established the station of the Spirit of Faith as a center of Its outpouring, and beyond
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2Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet of Aḥmad.
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this yet other stations of Divine Nearness, in
the journey of the soul toward its Creator.
But since the station of Faith is nearest to
man, it is the appointed place of his
transformation from the world of nature, just
as the vegetable realm raises and transforms
the stony particles of the mineral. By
attaining the consciousness of the spirit of
faith, a consciousness identical with
certainty—as contrasted with mere belief—we
enter the only Fortress against which
Nature’s onslaught is powerless.
Many of the natural impulses, rightly used and under the control of man’s reality, are by no means destructive. The perpetuation of the race, the satisfaction of the requirements of food, shelter and warmth, the physical zest of exercise and manly sports, the struggle against injustice, the ambition of achievement in the fulfillment of the individual destiny, the urge of work, and many other phases of life upon the earth are more or less primitive impulses quite outside the destructive, prohibited category.
The Command in this New Age is, on the other hand, directed against the plain sources of unhappiness and disorder now rampant in human society. Among these are disunity and discord in the religious, political and economic life; selfishness and treachery; living unto oneself; race prejudice; hypocrisy, lies and deceit; cruelty; slander, gossip and backbiting (this last trinity of sin being sternly forbidden by the Divine Law-giver of this new cycle); oppression in every form; becoming a cause of sorrow to others; war; supinely following the beliefs and practices of ancestors by failing to investigate for oneself the reality of every matter; mendicancy; parasitism; the separation of humanity by virtue of class, religious and racial barriers; making religion a cause of hatred and animosity between divergent sects; discrimination against womankind; the captivity of the world of Nature; political and industrial corruption; belief in those dogmas and imitations of truth that are not acceptable to both religion and science; departure from the Divine Foundations established by the Prophets of God and cleaving to man-made systems; denial or rejection of the True Sovereign.
Without exception, these seeds of unhappiness are emanations from the natural, contingent world. Without exception they are prohibited and condemned by God at this time. Human society has become so infiltrated with these poisons that our old friend, the pessimist, confidently says—“The burden of proof lies with those who dispute my conclusions.”
As against this, we would, with the right degree of modesty, refer to the fundamental structure upon which this exposition is based. And to the differentiations and demonstrations thus far made we would add, very briefly, this: Life is a process of emancipation from the grosser limitations into the refinements of true existence. All these proofs are sufficiently contained in the structure of creation, itself. The mineral substance shakes off its inertia by becoming absorbed into the expanding life of the plant. The cells of the plant, in turn, its roots firmly imprisoned in the earth, take on locomotion through assimilation into the swiftly moving animal, as well as into the perfected atoms of the human body. There, these lowly cells meet and contact with a being animated with the mysterious power of thought. This process is the emancipation and progress of the uncouth mineral atom to an infinitely high station.
This law of physical advancement is not reversed in the realm of mind and soul. The unity of arrangement uncovered by science in the atom is affirmed by the scientist to be the same as that disclosed in the great stellar systems. And since the law of unity is basic, and evidently an essential part of the celestial plan, we discover it, likewise, in the world of mind and spirit. Consequently the advancement of humanity, inspired by the mental and spiritual susceptibilities, must ever be in the direction of new conquests over the hampering shackles of its outgrown consciousness. This, in order that the new freedom may be availed of. Note, too, that the very nature and quality of the mineral cell is lost and transformed in its upward ascent.
Emergence from the fog-ridden swamps
of Nature presupposes and is conditioned
upon the acceptance of the True Sovereign.
For this task requires fortitude, faith and
understanding without which the capacity
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necessary to attract, as a magnet, the divine
confirmation cannot appear. So great a
salvation requires recognition of its Source;
such a sweeping emancipation can be viewed
only in the light of the mercy and
forgiveness of God, like unto the heavenly
table set before the returned, repentant prodigal.
“In this Day, a great banquet is celebrated in the Supreme Concourse; for all that was promised in the divine Books has appeared. This is the Day of the most great rejoicing. All must direct themselves to the Court of Nearness with the utmost joy, happiness, exultation and gladness, and deliver themselves from the fire of separation.“1
O Son of Man! My majesty is My bestowal to thee, and My grandeur the token of My Mercy unto thee. That which beseemeth Me none shall understand, nor can any one recount. Verily! I have treasured it in My hidden storehouses and in the tabernacles of My command, as a token of My loving-kindness unto My servants and mercy unto My people.”2
Finally, let it not be supposed that we fail to recognize the real battle-ground as resident in the very soul of man, for these elemental forces are very flesh of his flesh, fabric of his texture, interwoven into the fibers of his being and implanted in his consciousness as with barbed hooks of steel.
Yet, it is man who embodies these forces. It is he who supplies the intelligence to convert them into deeds. These intangible proclivities embedded within him find expression only through his entity and his instrumentality. So tenaciously do these tendencies cling to our every-day thoughts that were we to analyze our lives wholly from the point of view of the lower self, the problem would appear hopeless. In this dilemma, the pessimist is entangled. The attachment of the soul, through its downward flight, to the nether elements is encouraged by inheritance, tradition and example, as well as by its own mistaken hunger. But in every man whose departure from the divine command has not become habitual to the point of callousness, the consciousness of sin sets up the ever recurring fire of remorse. What secret and hidden agonies, what real
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1Bahá’u’lláh, Bahá’í Scriptures, p. 152.
2Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words (Arabic), verse 64.
suffering goes on in the hearts day after day throughout the length and breadth of humanity’s domain, as the voice of conscience, the stinging reproach of our inner reality and identity calls us to account. What despair and sense of bafflement oppresses us as we again and yet again submit to forces seemingly impossible to control. What sacrifice could be too great for deliverance from that taskmaster, that false guide, obedience to whose suggestions has brought upon us both the past and the present calamities. Sin, in this sense, is used as the equivalent of remoteness from God.
Our sense of shame is because the nobler element within us, the divinely bestowed reality, is fully aware of the surrender of the conscious ego to inferior and wholly mortal snares. The transfer of consciousness to the plane of reality, however, unfurls the wings of the human spirit and through this union with the conscious self, the fortification is perfected. Then are the words of the saying made manifest:
“Love does not accept a soul alive to its own desires; a falcon preys not on a dead mouse.”3
Herein is foreshadowed the Divine Purpose and the reason of existence of the human race. The field of nature is the battleground; the contending forces are the dual human elements each striving to control the flight of the soul; both opposing ensigns bear the insignia "Reality” but one is true and the other is false; the battle slogans are, respectively, "Know thy Lord”; and “Exalt thyself”; the rewards of victory are the immortal and eternal life, on the one hand; and, on the other, mortality; the sovereigns, the True One, and the usurper. Through the infinite wisdom of the Creator, this dramatic setting for the enactment of humanity’s salvation has been established. That the century and cycle in which we are fortunate enough to live marks the advent of the decisive struggle as well as the victory of the True Sovereign through the enlightenment of the race, none who are even slightly informed of the meanings of the Holy Books, or of the almost miraculous changes now taking place in human psychology, can doubt.4
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3Seven Valleys, by Bahá’u’lláh.
4The complete text of this essay is available in The Bahá’í Magazine.—Editor.
Bahá’ís of Baku, Caucasus.
