Transcript:Ruhiyyih Khanum/On Shoghi Effendi, 1970
| Transcript of: On Shoghi Effendi: Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, 21 June 1970 by |
| Ruhiyyih Khanum speaking at the National Bahá’í Youth Conference in Evanston, Illinois, on Shoghi Effendi: Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, 21 June 1970 (from a cassette tape published by the Bahá’í Publishing Trust).Download: mp3, Source: © Gregory C. Dahl |
[0:00] [Introducer]. Hand of the Cause of God Amatu’l-Bahá Rúḥíyyih Khánum. [Applause].
[0:17] You know, it's so difficult to convey in a few words how wonderful Shoghi Effendi was. And that's why I recommend to the young people that you get this book that is coming out about him and read it and study it. You know a very strange thing is happening in the world. The people who are highly educated and have the greatest benefits, so called benefits of our so called civilization, namely ourselves, are becoming illiterate. Don't like reading anymore because why should they read when they can look at it on television during the movies or hear it on the radio? And yet the people outside of these highly civilized areas are so hungry for books, a book, a piece of paper with something written on it is the most precious thing in the whole world. Perhaps they will be the people who, during the next generation will appreciate the Bahá’í literature because in the Indian huts in South America, I have seen many times totally illiterate families, they have put the news bulletin on the wall of their hut. They have pinned it, it's the most precious thing they have. This was the news from their National Spiritually Assembly, and they have put it up on the wall, although they can't read a word and maybe there isn't even a child in the family who can read or write yet, but that is written. There's this thirst to learn how to read and write, and yet we who have this blessing carried to such a polished degree are throwing it overboard now. We don't seem to value what we have. And man has spent so many thousands of years of being able to get to the point where you could have a thing written in your hands, it could be yours for you to study and you to assimilate, and now we've got it, the first thing we want to do with it seems to be to throw it away. And I want to talk very seriously to the Bahá’í young people about this subject of reading and writing, especially reading the teachings. It is a treasury of life for yourself, and life for the whole civilization of the world, for the development of mankind.
[3:03] I sometimes think that one of the reasons that in the Bahá’í Faith we don't have any priests is because Bahá’u’lláh has brought, amongst His other blessings, this new development in science. And this has given us the printed word which was almost unheard of in the past. Some civilizations had writing, but reading and writing was usually the prerogative of the priestly caste. I was surprised to hear when I was in India that many of the kings, the marriages and rulers of different parts of India different states, in the past not recently, had never been able to write because they considered that this was the job of a scribe. This wasn't the job of a king. The job of a king was to be educated, to conquer, to lead, to stand out as as ruler of his people. And it was a job he often filled very well. But writing was the job of a much more inferior person who was like a secretary, and these scribes have existed all down history where there was writing in the civilization. And the priests were often the only people who could write and read, and because of that they protected the word of the religion. They talk the people. They had the scripture in their hand and they fulfilled a tremendously important role in history. And often I said to myself, well why is it Bahá’u’lláh has abolished priesthood? And then it seemed to me that one of the reasons is that now we can read for ourselves. We don't have to take anybody else's world for it. We don't need anybody to tell us what Bahá’u’lláh has said, because we have the bounty of being able to pick it up in our own language and read it and understand it. And we know that no one has the right to interpret it and that no one has the right to come along and say well you don't understand it, I am the one who is appointed to tell you what it means.
[5:24] So that this gift of writing is an immensely precious thing. Reading and writing, and I think that you mustn't lose it. The Bahá’í youth should think about this. Shoghi Effendi wrote and spoke the most exquisite English. And it has occurred to me, particularly since I came to the United States of America, that we must remember that as he was the authorized interpreter of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. And in that capacity he has given us in detail guidance for implementing, bring into existence, the world order of Bahá’u’lláh. He has elaborated the administration. He has explained the teachings. He has commented on the different things, the different aspects of the Bahá’í teachings, and he's done it in English. Now this is so important to the Bahá’í Faith that when the House of Justice wishes to make a decision, some question is referred to it, they have a research department that is working all the time. They are getting a detailed cross-index compilation of the tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the letters of show Shoghi Effendi, and whenever some question comes up the first thing they do is to get every single available comment or reference to that that has been made in the teachings, particularly by the Guardian because he made so many, he explained so many things. In fact he explains so many things that it is very difficult to conceive of questions affecting the Revelation and teaching of Bahá’u’lláh the Shoghi Effendi has not commented on.
[7:33] Everybody felt when he passed away that, aside from all the personal feeling of loss, the catastrophe of losing this Institution of the Guardianship, we all had the feeling of what are we going to do now when something comes up and we haven't any interpreter? Who is going to tell us what it means? Who is going to tell us what we should do? And it is almost miraculous to see the amount of things that Shoghi Effendi has referred to. They are there in black and white, and they are very, very precious. And we have the opportunity of referring to them, and the House of Justice is constantly referring to them. Now all this is written down in English. English is a very precise language. Aside from being one of the richest languages in the whole world, it is extremely precise. And I'm sorry to say that people are losing, at least in this part of the world, the appreciation of their language.
[8:44] I remember Shoghi Effendi used to say when... I'm not a scholar myself, but when he was writing he would take words that had the Romance languages, in other words the Latin roots, and he would take words that had the Germanic root, and he would find that the synonym, because of course they are synonyms in every language, and then he would say, do you see? Do you hear the very subtle difference between these two words? Now this is the word that is proper in this connection. You can't in the writings of the Guardian removed a dot from an "i" without losing some meaning. He is so precise, so exquisite in his use of the English language. And because of the nature of English and because of the fact that the Guardian had mastered it and that he was the interpreter of the teachings, where things were ambiguous in the Arabic or Persian languages—which are the two languages of the revelation of the Bahá’í Faith, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote in these two languages, Arabic and Persian and often a mixture of the two—where the original word is not clear and subject to being either this meaning or that meeting Shoghi Effendi's translation is unambiguous. So that in going back to the very fountain head of the revelation which is the original Arabic and Persian wherever any of us, and particularly the House of Justice who is responsible for these things now, can find that thing translated into English, or those words used by the Guardian that occurred this way in Arabic and there this way in English they then have an illumination on the original text.
[10:50] So you see, nothing is going to do away with English in the Bahá’í Faith. We are going to have till the end of the dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, which we know will last a minimum of 1,000 years, and there's quite a lot of it still to run, we are going to have our scriptures in Persian and Arabic and in English. Now that doesn't mean English is going to be the universal language. That's not what I'm saying, nobody knows what it's going to be. Shoghi Effendi said this was the job of the nations of the world to choose a language, either an existing one or one that is designed and created by men, like Esperanto or one of the others, and is decided upon by the nations of the world to be taught as a secondary language in all the schools of the world. Has nothing to do with the Bahá’ís, the choice is up to the nation's and not to the Bahá’ís. Neither the House of Justice nor a committee of Bahá’ís is going to tell this planet which should be their international language, because it must be voted on and accepted by a body like the United Nations. Maybe they'll do it, maybe if they don't some future body will. But it was something that must be decided as I say by consensus of opinion, of representatives of nations. Otherwise it can never be adopted and enforced. And whatever that languages we Bahá’ís will immediately learn it with joy. We can't wait to get a hold of it to learn it, but the fact remains that Persian and Arabic and English are going to be the source material of the Bahá’í Faith till the end of this dispensation.
[12:34] Now, in view of that it does seem to me, and it has occurred to me very strongly since I came to the United States that young people, older people too obviously, but particularly young people, you're all at the age where you're going to high school. You're going to universities. You should bear this in mind and you had really better get with it as far as English is concerned because one of these fine days you'll find that what you are speaking is no longer something that resembles what Shoghi Effendi has translated the teachings into and what he has written in. And then what are you going to do? Your faith is embodied in that language for you. And if you no longer know the correct value of a word in your own language as used in the text of your religion, it would seem to me you're just as much out of luck as somebody who was a Spanish speaking Bahá’í is trying in broken English to understand what the Bahá’í teachings are about because he knows that this is the best source if he can read it in the original.
[13:47] What I'm trying to say is friends that I doubt very much if a day ever comes when we have to translate Shoghi Effendi into broken English, in other words back into some language that is developed in the Western Hemisphere, in northern part of the Western Hemisphere, that would be very sad. So that it seems to me the Bahá’ís, particularly the Bahá’ís, you've got so much brains, if you're smart enough to go and do what Dan Jordan said yesterday, go into a career or going to a trade, this requires some degree of intelligence. Well, if you're that smart you're smart enough to speak your own language and to read the writings in your own language and understand what they mean. I thought that I was, at least in English, quite a well educated person. And when Shoghi Effendi began to send these great letters to the Bahá’í world, particularly to the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada, which was the strongest point in the Western world, I had to refer to the dictionary many times to understand what he meant. But then this opened my mind. This was my education. Through reading the teachings you not only read the writings in the original, but you get the most marvelous educated vocabulary.
[15:18] When I was a little girl there was a Bahá’í in New York. Her name was Carrie Marsh, I'm glad to mention it in front of so many other Bahá’ís. She was a little tiny thing. She was very, very strong. She was a strong as a man and I was very afraid of her because she loved me very much and she always hugged me so tight that I could feel my ribs crack. And she was a very humble woman. Her profession was carrying around a little box in which she sold notions, needles and thread and things like that. And she used to peddle it in the big shops where the sales girls had so little chance to get out and make any purchases. And this is the way she earned her living. Now you know Carrie was so passionately addicted to the Bahá’í Faith, she loved the teachings so deeply that she had a vocabulary that you could have sat her down next to a Harvard professor, he would have had hard going to speak better English than Carrie Marsh. And there it is, a whole free education in one of the most beautiful languages in the world, right in our own writings. Right at hand for us to absorb and to enjoy.
[16:36] I'd like to tell you something very adorable about Shoghi Effendi. Any of you who have studied his writings knows that he sometimes used very long sentences. [Laughter and applause]. And I can remember when he was writing God Passes By, as I remember now, I think that this paragraph was two and a half pages long. So I looked at him, of course I never... I certainly hope that I was never impolite to the Guardian, and I looked at him reproachful and I said, Shoghi Effendi, you know that is rather long paragraph. It's two and a half pages long. He looked at me [laughter], if he weren't the Guardian of the Faith I'd say sheepishly, [laughter and applause] and and he didn't answer, but it's quite clear he got the point. But he didn't change it either, it's still there. He used to just play with the beauty of English, and sometimes he would write, as you remember probably, very, very short sentences. And it'd just be five or six words and then a period. And another few words and then a period, and a period. He said you see? You see the punch that this has? You see how different this is from the long sentences? Listen to it. And he would call my attention to it. He enjoyed it. He loved English, really. You could say that he was in love with the English language.
[18:33] And I don't think that people realize that Shoghi Effendi wrote every single thing out loud. Very interesting, all of this is in this biography of the Guardian that's coming out, you can read it all there. But um, the Báb you remember when He began to write the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ on the night of His revelation to Mullá Ḥusayn of His station, He was intoning these verses. In other words chanting because Persian and Arabic can be chanted, English can't be chanted but it can be spoken out loud. And I thought, well that was something, you know, confined to the Báb. It never occurred to me that anybody would ever dream of doing this in English. And the Guardian had a very strange custom, he liked to have someone in the room when he was writing, either in Persian or in English. He always had had someone in the room long before I was married, one of the secretaries if it was Persian, a member of his family, and this was his custom and he always wrote it out loud. He said it and he wrote it. So I had the great bounty of hearing him compose out loud, because he wanted me to be in the room when he was writing, everything that he wrote or translated after I was married and including that marvelous book God Passes By. And his approach to it, the cadence of the words, if you read it out loud, this is really a trick about Shoghi Effendi's writings, even such heavy going is those big paragraphs in God passes by, if you know English and you understand the punctuation and how to read it, and you read this thing out loud, it is even more beautiful than when you read it silently to yourself because it was written out loud. It doesn't seem possible that anything that is as tightly woven together and as heavy going, because there's no doubt about it Shoghi Effendi's writings are heavy going, it's like eating a very quintessence of beef steak, you know nothing that you can afford to lose, every bit of it is nourishing. And as you read it out loud, you see the words and the value of the words. You hear the words and value the words even better than when you read it silently to yourself and try it sometime. It's also a very wonderful way of learning English diction. If you will read out loud and listen to your own voice and the way you are emphasizing and breaking the sentences, you will find that you enjoy English much better and you speak it very much better.
[21:29] Another strange thing about the Guardian when he used to write was that I can't remember his ever giving up. He would try and compose a sentence, unfortunately I have a very bad memory and I never can think of examples when I want them, and I never know where anything is in the teachings and I never know what pages it is on, and so on. The point is that he used to say the forcefulness of his character, the beauty of his face, the curliness of his hair, you know whatever it was, he'd build up a sentence this way, then he'd come to one that you just can't do that way in English, you have to invert it, it doesn't come out right. Well he wouldn't give up and I've seen him struggle a half an hour, three quarters of an hour with a long sentence where this could not be done in English. Now I was sitting there, I was supposedly to be of some use... I can cite four things that I suggested to him in 20 years, or four words. [Laughter]. But nevertheless I sat there and I say well Shoghi Effendi, why don't you invert it? Because that way you can get that one in too, you see. Just turn the whole thing around, all of them, and then that would have come out right. He said I don't want to, it doesn't sound nice. Listen to it, this sounds beautiful, now that one I've got to get it in there. And he would get in it. I never quite understood how. But it was really like somebody that was wrestling with something, he wouldn't give up. He would go on and on and around and around and around and around until somehow or other, like I always said like mosaic work, he would get this little tiny piece of mosaic stuffed into that pattern where he wanted it, and then he would go on to the next thing. He had this infinite, infinite capacity for work.
[23:22] I think that people must realize that although Shoghi Effendi was the sign of God on Earth, the descendant of Manifestation of God and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, nevertheless aside from all of that spiritually power and heritage, divine guidance and everything else, I have often thought that he was a genius in his own right. And I think one of the definitions of genius is a person who has the capacity for a tremendous amount of persevering work. You know in science, in art, in music, in literature, if you study those people that get to the very top and are outstanding so often it has been done by a very, very simple process of just hard work. They didn't work three or four hours and then lie down and have a ginger beer and look at the television. They went right straight on 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hour, 16 hours. And it is that kind of work that means that at the end of his life a man has accomplished a great deal. Now Shoghi Effendi was that kind of a worker. I have never in my life seen anybody with a power of work and concentration that the Guardian had. And it was really an example to all of us. He just kept at it until he did it. He drove through until he had succeeded. Whatever it was, didn't matter what the nature of the thing was. Whether it was having a wall built, or having the side of the mountain demolished and carted away, or something that he was writing or something he was going to write and he was doing a tremendous amount of reading and making notes, he did it all the slow, thorough way. And that's why you have so much that he is accomplished and it's of such high caliber in every single field.
[25:34] I know when he wrote God Passes By, he sat down for a year and he read every single thing. And of course he had an exhaustive library of Bahá’í books and things. He read all the tablets that had been sent in to the archives. He read all and he made copious notes throughout the years, the important excerpts and things that he had come across, he had taken out in his own handwriting and made excerpts. This was the source material for these marvelous quotations. And he read all of these things and everything Bahá’u’lláh had written, and the commentators on the Faith had written, the non-Bahá’ís had written, the Bahá’ís have written, the enemies had written, because he was the Guardian and he had a right to study all of this material. He knew that it couldn't do him any harm or poison his mind. And he had gone over all this for a year and then he kept constantly making notes and excerpts. You see how far that was from lazy man's way? He didn't click a tape recorder and say on page 13 of such and such thing there may be something I want to refer to click, and turn it off again. He just then and there quietly sat down, copied it all off in his own handwriting and made sure he hadn't made any mistakes. And this was building up his reference material, his source material. And then he would go on to other things. Then when the time came after about a year he began to write the book. He just would sit down and he would compose by the hours. As I say he liked to have someone in the room so I was almost invariably in the room with him. And he would write and write and write and write and write. Then he would make a clean copy often of what he had written, in his handwriting.
[27:31] And it was so interesting, Shoghi Effendi you know was small. And that's often a very great comfort to small people. You know not everybody happens to be size of the Americans. And some of the people of this world are just little tiny people, the American Indians, many of the tribes are tiny, tiny little people, even on me they come up to here, the men. And when I tell them that, you know, Bahá’u’lláh was very small in stature, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was a little taller, and Shoghi Effendi was like Bahá’u’lláh, very much like him physically, and very small in stature, it's a great comfort to them because bigger and better, you know, seems to be one of our ideas in this world, and it gives lots of people an inferiority complex. They really think that there's something the matter with them if they're small, they feel badly about. So I'm so glad that the Manifestation of God was small because it encourages other people. Well anyway, Shoghi Effendi always wrote on a little piece of paper, pads of this size, he had pads that size. Never a big piece of paper I don't know why, he liked it. He was very, very meticulous and concise and precise. And he had these little pads and all of his manuscripts are written on that. Now, this thing that I'm writing on is small for me because I go like this, you know, from one side to the other, nobody can read my handwriting and he was just the opposite. Tidy and neat and concise. And, as I say, he would often make another copy, a clean copy.
[29:08] Well, when he had finished writing God Passes By, which took him as I remember about a year, took him two years for the whole book, and he was under great pressure because he wanted to have it published for the centenary of the Declaration of the Báb, 1944. Then he sat down and he typed the whole thing himself. And of course then he could put those little finishing touches on the manuscript as he typed, and one of the things that he did when he typed he had, I think, only two, maybe sometimes when he got very active he had four fingers in use, but usually it was just two fingers and it was a little tiny portable typewriter that big. And he typed his whole manuscript on that. We had, what was it, an original and five copies, because we had to have enough copies so that we could mail them out and they would, you know, if anything was lost during the war, this was in the middle of the war after all, a very difficult period to get things to reach their destination. And therefore he had a number of copies. And then when all this was done, we would sit at night, beginning after dinner around, what, eight o'clock and go on, perhaps till twelve or one o'clock. He would have three copies, and I would have three copies to correct and to put the accents on. And he would say dot under the H, accent on the first a, accent on the last i and so on. And he would read this out loud, copying three copies and correcting three copies. And I would sit beside him and correct the other three. And we'd do it until we were blurry with fatigue. He do it till his eyes were red and bloodshot, and he was absolutely exhausted. But then we got God Passes By in the hands of the Bahá’ís in 1944.
[31:11] When you read this book, which I hope that you will read about the Guardian, you will see that along with his wonderful feeling for English and his command of English, he had something else which is mastery of a language. Now supposing you... I'm not a musician but there are many people in this audience that are very musical, obviously, and musicians, supposing you were going to play something and you were restricted only to one key. There was only one single way that you could ever play, refer to in a melody, it would be rather sad. It's the fact that you have a number of ways of producing it, a number of keys in which you can get the melody out that makes for variation and beauty. Now the same thing exists in English. There's more than one way of saying something, and if you refer to the Guardians writings, you will find that he had many ways of saying that a person had become a Bahá’í, and I plead with you for God's sake, stop saying declared all the time like a bell, bang! Declared. He declared, I declared, she declared, we declared, they declared. They are going to declare, we've had six declarations, three declarations, four declarations. I don't know. It's ghastly. It's simply ghastly, ghastly English in the first place and in the second place it really hasn't got much meaning. If you go back to the paragraph in which Shoghi Effendi said that you will find that it's embedded in a whole paragraph, and it's something to the effect of, those who have declared their faith in Bahá’u’lláh and this, that and the other thing. Now, at some period in our modern world, that worships the clichés where everything has to have either an abbreviation tagged onto it or a sign or a slogan or something that's neither good living, good thinking, nor good English. And it doesn't have to be that way in the Bahá’í Faith. Shoghi Effendi said those who have enrolled under the banner of Bahá’u’lláh. He said converts to the Bahá’í Faith. Good old missionary term. These are all in writing thank God you don't have to take it for me you go look it up. He said those who have embraced the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Those who have accepted His Revelation. Those who have become Bahá’ís. He used many, many terms. I can't say exactly how many, but I venture to say if somebody wants to do a research project on it they'd find that he used about 10 at least, all meaning the same thing: he became a Bahá’í. So don't let us always restrict ourselves to one word. And it sounds so funny in front of non-Bahá’ís. You must remember that we're trying to attract humanity, not repel it. And you speak in front of educated people, university students, young people with their modern attitudes towards society, older people that are embedded in the church like rocks or something, and they hear this pat phrase come out, declared, declared, declared and they wonder what on earth we're talking about? And I think that... I only passed this on to you, I feel it very, very strongly, obviously or I wouldn't be so behemed[?] on the subject, but it's bad English and it's not necessary.
[34:48] The other thing is Bahá’u’lláh, nowhere in His writings, mentions signing your declaration card, signing your card. Now that doesn't mean that people don't have to register. But we must, I believe, get it clear in our minds and get it clear in the minds of the people that we are teaching that you do not accept God and the supreme Manifestation of God by signing a piece of paper, it's not a pledge. You become a Bahá’í in your heart, or alternatively if your heart isn't very active, you become a Bahá’í in your intellect. But there comes a point where you accept Bahá’u’lláh, you believe that He has come with a message and a system for this age which should be accepted in which is the hope of the world. Now you can put it in thousands of fancy phrases, but that's really what it amounts to. That is becoming a Bahá’í. You build on that and you go on from that. Everybody has to be registered because otherwise how could they have their rights as Bahá’ís? I know in many primitive places where we're teaching the Cause we don't present it to the people in a clear way. Many people in countries where they are illiterate they don't want to sign anything and in some places they won't give their name. Why? Because they think you're enlisting them in the Army. They think it's the politics. They think that if they give their name they are captivated by you somehow or other, you're going to get a grip on the way the government has got a grip on them by taking a census, and then they get a tax paper and they won't give their names, and they're afraid. And then you have to explain to them that the reason that we want their names and the reason we want them to be recorded... there are many different ways of doing it. In India they handed 2,000 names, a list that the teachers made of 2,000 new Bahá’ís. Usually they have the thumb print by the side of it, so there's some way of finding out who on earth they were, at least some proof that this person existed or it's an X and then the teachers written in the name. But the point is not that, the point is that when the person becomes a Bahá’í, they must understand that they are receiving great privileges. That's why you're registered. You can get your national newsletter if there is one. You can be elected on national bodies and appointed on committees, local, national what not. If you're a man can be on the House of Justice. If you're not registered as a Bahá’í, if you don't belong to this organization of the Bahá’í Faith, which is the vehicle for the teachings and spirit of Bahá’u’lláh, then what good can you do? It's all flimsy and nebulous and it has no power of cohesion, no power of force to execute things, to carry them out. So that these are the reasons that people should be told they have to sign something. They can get to the fund, nobody else can give to the fund. They will be transferred to another community. They can walk in anywhere in the world and say I'm a Bahá’í from Chicago and my name is so and so, I'd like to introduce myself. They will be accepted. They can be on the next Spiritual Assembly, they can be immediately a part of a Bahá’í family in another place of the world and that's all it means. And I think that we really must understand these things, and I would beg at least the youth to give up all of these standard phrases. Everything nowadays is an abbreviation as I say, or cliché. I wander around, I don't know what on earth people are talking about, it's the W.O.P and the U.H.G-Geeks and the something... Everything is all abbreviations. And yet in order to get those three letters out, if you listen, you'll hear about 25 words that really aren't even coherent. So why not use the word that describes the thing coherently? Then forget all the verbiage that you get around it usually, that's wholly unnecessary. In other words, let us think a little bit about these things. Let us get back to that marvelous brilliant clarity that characterized the Guardian.
[39:37] What made Shoghi Effendi happy? Well, what made Shoghi Effendi happy was the progress of the Cause. What kept him alive was the progress of the Cause. He used to get so exhausted, he used to get so disheartened because of the problems in the Cause. And often the problems were problems of covenant-breaking. Often they were problems of inharmony amongst the Bahá’ís. And these things that held the Faith back, that endangered the spiritual welfare of different communities at different times, these things would affect him so deeply that they would practically make him ill. And the thing that would raise him up and give him strength and giving vitality and happiness and enable him to go on and to pour out more of this wonderful guidance and instruction to the Bahá’ís was good news of the progress of the Faith.
[40:37] Nothing in the world revived the Guardian more than a piece of news that something had happened. A goal had been won. Something had been translated into another language. There was a whole Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Wisconsin, I remember the first Indian Bahá’í Assembly, my goodness how overjoyed Shoghi Effendi was. When we had the first mass conversion in Uganda, the first mass conversion as we understand that word today, which really means what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, the entering in troops into the Faith of God. It began, really, aside from that early flood, like fire flooding the whole country of Persian when so many people accepted the Báb and were martyred. But after those heroic days had passed, the first entering into the Faith in troops took place in Uganda, in Africa and this was such a joy to the heart of the Guardian. And he used to send messages to the whole Bahá’í world saying there are 200, there are 500, it has reached 800 and so on. Then, just before he passed away the 1st 1st glimmering of mass conversion began in Bolivia amongst the Indians, and he was so happy over this. Particularly the spread of the Faith to those people who deserved so richly to hear about it. This was so dear to his heart.
[42:15] And you know this was a revelation to the older Bahá’ís because they had passed through a period, again I refer you to this book, I can't go into a 16 page book in one hour, but they had passed through a period when the Guardian, following the initiation of this process by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was beginning to wean us away from the old order, wean us away from the churches, the secret societies the things that we belong to which were in some aspect inimical to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. And during that period he told the Bahá’ís they should be very careful to ascertain that the person who wanted to become a Bahá’í knew what they were doing. That they were stepping out of the old order, so to speak, into the new order. And it was in those days that we had the gradual beginnings of this term declaration and we had to be very precise and very carefully done. Then, Shoghi Effendi found out that like all human beings, we are prone to going to extremes. First we go way up here and then pendulum swings we go way up there. We very seldom get a proper balance. And then he said the Bahá’ís are making it too difficult for people to enter the faith. They must make it easier and they must accept them. Now obviously people like yourselves should know more about the Bahá’í Faith. You have the opportunity of studying and knowing more about it and reading the writings that an illiterate man in a jungle does not have. But the fact remains that the day came when the Faith and its institutions, particularly the Faith was always strong, but its institutions had grown strong enough so that we could bear the impact of many, many people coming into the Cause. And this of course now is spreading and growing all over the world.
[44:28] It is the dawn of the period of mass conversion, and it is a tremendous thing that you young people have the bounty of seeing. You are not only going to see it, you're going to partake in it and you're going to carry it forward at a pace that it has never seen before. And this is the job, really of the youth. This is one of the great bounties of being your age. It has disadvantages, it also has tremendous advantages that you as young Bahá’ís can study the teachings, grasp the teachings, and you can be the ones to go out and bring in tens of thousands of Bahá’ís, eventually millions of Bahá’ís. Because, as I said the other day, the Cause has two aspects. Its effect on our individual life, changing the individual and its impact on society, changing society. And you cannot change society unless you have tremendous numbers of people to work with. And you can't give them all a college education in the Bahá’í Faith and then bring them in because they'll all either be dead or interested in something else, so you have to bring them in while there is that possibility.
[44:28] It's going to mean that we have to have very, very strong, well informed believers because it doesn't take much to make anybody understand that if you bring in a great many people who are not very well grounded yet in what it is they believe, then you have to, the ones that are inside and firmly rooted have to be strong enough to hold tight and to receive that pull of devotion, enthusiasm but not yet informed and learned understanding of the Cause and the teachings. So that this is what you young people can really do, you see. You can become a focus, each one of you, through deepening in the understanding and knowledge of the Bahá’í teachings, in your spiritual life and in your information be informed, well grounded, educated Bahá’ís. I don't care what other kind of education you get to get that one, for heaven's sake, and then you yourselves can each one not only be a teacher of the Faith, but you can be a strong point to hold firm all these people that come into the Faith because we want them to accept Bahá’u’lláh, we want them to be redeemed spiritually through believing in the Manifestation of God for this day. But we've got to hold them firm and tight so that we don't upset the apple cart, so to speak. And this is what you are really here for as I understand it, and this is what you were going to be able to do. And I for one think that you are more than qualified to do it.
[47:45] You know, in our lives we have many, many tests. And I'm sure that whether you're young or whether you're old, the fact remains that you no sooner get over one bump and one problem then along comes another. You know, Mohammed outlined for us what the great tests of the soul of man are. He said God tests man through five things: hunger, children, illness, death and money. You know isn't it... after all Mohammed was a messenger of God. And He said that we are tested in life, in our faith in God by hunger, children, illness, death and money. And if you see the number of people who give up serving the cause because of their children, they give up serving it because of their money, their ambition, their desire to have more money and more things. They lose their faith in God because why did God do it to me? How could my child die? How could my husband die, how could my wife die, my mother? Whatever it is. How could God be so cruel? Death becomes the stone on which we trip and fall and lose our faith in God, our connection with God. Because that is the test that trips us up. Illness, so often people lose their contact with God and the warmth of their faith and confidence in Him because of illnesses. They say how did God do this to me? I did this for Him, and I did that for Him and I said my prayers and this that the other thing. Now look at the way He treats me. Now look how He abandons me. What did I ever do to deserve to be so sick and so on? And as I said, children, probably one of the greatest tests I have seen so many pioneers leave their posts all over the world because of children. When the children get old enough, pioneering is good enough for the parents. Not good enough for the children. I've never understood why. But no I know I'm telling you it's no joke. I have seen this happen all over the world and people of maturity and experience in this audience like my two fellow Hands here and many, many others, some of them themselves who have been out for years traveling in the pioneer fields. They know how many pioneers have left their post because of the children. The time came for the education of the children, or they were worried over the children or something to do with the children or they were separated from the children. Or the grandchildren were growing up somewhere else and they were stuck in a jungle and they decided that they had done their bit for Bahá’u’lláh, they were going back to the children. It's a great, great test. I sometimes think of all the tests that God afflicts the soul of man with. This is one of the greatest. Hunger is not often our test in our part of the world. It's the test of people that are living on the border of starvation, but it's very interesting, these words of Mohammed and we should bear them in mind.
[51:13] I just like to tell you, speaking of the test of death, about one of the pioneers, and this is the sort of story that brought happiness to the heart of the Guardian. We arrived in Niger, which is the middle of Africa, and hanging onto the tail of the Sahara Desert, and Mohammeden people, Muslims most of them. Very, very nice people, lovely country, lovely people, great open spaces. And as I remember, not a very big population. To this country four years ago, went two Persian Bahá’í families as pioneers. They were all decided to go, the two husbands and wives and their small children. But the women were so eager to get there to teach the Cause of God that they agreed with their husbands that they would precede them and go and settle down. And as soon as the husbands have disposed of their business and their affairs and wound things up, they would follow. Now these two young Persian housewives, knowing almost no French and only a few words of school English, started out for the heart of Africa with five children. The oldest child of one of them was five years old and when they got there, they all got a malaria. Now Persians have a lot of malaria in their own country, and I imagine that they didn't realize that this might be a different variety malaria. Of course it would be, it would be a different strain in another continent. And they all came down with it, terribly ill when one of the women was a little better, not the mother of a five year old child, she got to her feet and straggled out. They'd been there three weeks and looked for a doctor and in her broken English and French finally got somebody to come and bring a doctor. And the doctor saw this child, took him to the hospital. It was too late. And he died of cerebral malaria. And his name was Omid, which means hope, was a little boy. Well, what do you think was the reaction on this family? The mother, the father came out and he had the pleasure of visiting his oldest son's grave when you got there. And this family, Violette and I asked that we wanted to go to the grave of a child and have some prayers and they now have some very fine Bahá’ís in that city. And they have a Spiritual Assembly and they're beginning to establish the Cause in villages surrounding it and in some distant places a few Bahá’ís. Remember it's a Muslim country, it's hard to teach. And this woman, the mother of the child with a radiant face, she said, all we pray Bahá’u’lláh is that He will accept this child as an offering and that He will bless our services here and enable us to remain here forever. So you see, this is the right kind of attitude towards your children. It is the right kind of attitude towards pioneering. And it makes you so humble in your heart when you see people that are like this, when you come in contact with a spirit like this, and you find many, many Bahá’ís all over the world out serving in the pioneer field that have this spirit.
[54:39] Now it was news such as this that was really the breath of life to the Guardian. When he heard things like this his heart would be uplifted. He used to say so many times something that was to me so utterly tragic. He'd look at me and he'd say, if I were happy you would see what I would do for this Cause. Let them make me happy. Really it was heart-breaking and the poor Bahá’ís, loving Shoghi Effendi so much, the pilgrims would come and always they had this feeling, we haven't done enough. We haven't made our Guardian happy. It's our fault that he isn't happy. And then I would say, my dear friends, it's not your fault. This isn't the sorrow in Shoghi Effendi's life, really it's the Bahá’ís that have made him happy. His sorrow has come from his family. From their jealousies, their opposition, their defections from the Cause of God. This is the source of his sorrow. These are the blows that have been rained upon him as a Guardian all of his life. It isn't you that have made him grieve so much. It is his own relatives and the descendants of Bahá’u’lláh.
[56:00] And to digress for one moment. You know, sometimes when we go out in the pioneer field, we think that we shouldn't mention covenant-breaking. We shouldn't mention the black at the foot of the lamb. We shouldn't say that Bahá’u’lláh's half brother poisoned Him, tried to kill Him, didn't succeed, and that till the end of His life after that, His handwriting shook so much that even a person like me who Persian is not their own language, every time I look at a tablet of Bahá’u’lláh's, I know immediately whether it was before or after he was poisoned, because I could can see the shaking in the handwriting. And we're shy to tell them that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's brother Mohammed Ali defected and that he also tried to murder the Master and that Shoghi Effendi's family all left him, and left the Cause of God for personal interest because of jealousy and disobedience and so on, and we're afraid to say these things. But you know, the thing that's so interesting to me is that you can say these things to people out in the jungles, you can say this to the Indians, you can say it to the people in the towns of the West Indies, and they nod their heads and they love it because... I begin it by saying you remember the story of Cain and Abel and Judas? And then you can bring this subject. Far from distressing their hearts it makes them know that this Manifestation of God went through the same sorrows that all the other Manifestations of God went through, too. And it's another proof of the authenticity of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh that this immemorial play of darkness and light that has always existed and has existed in our Faith too, this to them is another proof of the reality of the Bahá’í Faith and its spiritual authenticity. And we mustn't be afraid when we go out to teach people to tell them just simply the story of the Bahá’í Faith. It will prepare them for some shocks and blows. It will prepare them if ever the day comes when in their area, somebody misbehaves in whatever field it may be to such an extent that they endanger the welfare of the whole good name of the Faith in the community and they have to have their voting rights removed or something worse happens to them. Then, when that day comes, they will say yes, we were prepared against that day because these things work according to spiritual laws. And it's wonderful to feel that everything in the Cause you can take out and share with other people, they will understand it too.
[59:08] And what the Guardian of the Cause gave us in understanding and in knowledge of this Faith is absolutely inconceivable. All the time, if you read his words towards the end of his life, you will see this great urgency: go forth while there is time. Win the goals, in those days it was the Ten Year Plan, Now it is the Nine Year Plan. It's all the same plan of God, go out while there's still time and bring in the victory. And I remember towards the end of his life, he spoke more and more strongly in this vein to the Bahá’í pilgrims. And he wrote, of course very strongly, and one day occasionally I was able, I had a pencil and a piece of paper and I was able to take down what he said the moment he said it, so I would get the exact words. It wasn't very often, but sometimes I did manage to do that and I brought a few of these notes with me on this trip and one of them was this. I remember he was talking to some of the pilgrims at the table, and he said "I can warn them", meaning the Bahá’ís, "I can urge them, but I cannot create the spirit." They have to, in other words create the spirit in themselves. We have to generate the spirit in our own hearts, through prayer, through longing to serve, through a willingness to arise in the footsteps of the dawn-breakers and give our all in the path of God. And he said, "I can warn them, I can urge them but I cannot create the spirit. It is unhappiness for me and danger for the believers that really results." And there you really had the whole thing in a nutshell. When they didn't respond to above all this call to pioneering, to carry the message of God all over the world, this was unhappiness for the heart of the Guardian and danger for the Bahá’ís.
[1:01:25] I think that we must realize that we are not playing around in a very quiet period of history. We don't know what the future holds, but we know from what Shoghi Effendi said over and over again, he said the immediate future is very dark. The distant future is very bright. Now if we, all of us because we're all the same generation, few differences of years don't make any difference, all of us here if we want to do something for the world, we'd better do it now to the best of our ability. Because the opportunities isn't going to be there. You know so often everything is mañana, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And you look at your tomorrow when you get it and it isn't very happy, it isn't very satisfactory, what you thought it was going to be, you thought it was gold and it turns out to be tensile after all. And you got it and you don't want it. And then you have to look back and see what you could have had and what you could have done.
[1:02:48] My idea of hell, if I ever have to go to one, I hope I don't I've been in lots of hells in this world, I don't want to go to any more. But my idea of hell is that I should seriously ever have to sit down and contemplate what I left undone. I have made many mistakes in my life, I'm sure I have done many things that were wrong, and I expect God to forgive me. I hope He will. I've suffered many times for my own wrongdoings and mistakes, but I think God is merciful and He will forgive me. But I don't ever want to have to look at the things that I could have done and I didn't do, because I was selfish, because I was lazy, because I was stupid, because I didn't seize my chance when I had it. And this is the time friends when we haven't got very much more time to seize our chances. Don't let it sit around forever. And I mean the college professors and the bigwigs in this room and the little fellows in this room, too. Don't let it sit around forever, fiddling while Rome burns. It's burning right down in front of our eyes. And let each one of us ask ourselves, what can I do? And what should I do to help establish the world order of Bahá’u’lláh now, before it is too late.
[1:04:30] You know, it's useless to say God is going to do everything. He isn't going to do everything. That's the sad part of it. You know, I've heard some strange things said since Shoghi Effendi passed away, one very dear young Bahá’í whom I love very much, and who was now a very active pioneer, I've just seen him again in this trip that I made. He was a very new Bahá’í when he came to Haifa as a guide in 1968, at the time of the commemoration in August. And he looked at me, I wouldn't call it the most tactful remark I've ever heard, and he said you know Rúḥíyyih Khánum I think it's a good thing that at the Guardian passed away cause I don't really think we needed that institution. No, he was so sweet, really. He's a lovely, lovely person. And he has gone out pioneering, and he is being a success at it. He's a wonderful Bahá’í. And he said this out of the purity and goodness of his heart because he didn't... he was a new Bahá’í, he didn't know much about Shoghi Effendi, he hadn't had time to read many of the teachings, he didn't quite see where it all fitted in, he'd come in under the period of the House of Justice and they knew that we had in Haifa this wonderful, divinely guided international body elected by the believers of the world, the crown of the administrative order and on top of it, this great guarantee of God that the hand of God would be overt and guide it, that he accepted. That was fine. But he heard that there'd been something that was hereditary in the Bahá’í Faith, and there was always descended of the Manifestation of God, were these tremendous powers. Because if you read the Master's Will and you read the Dispensation and other things you cannot help but deducing how great was the powers of the Guardian. And how great was the station of the Guardian, the function of the Guardianship. And he just, seemed to him being from dear old democratic America that this was not quite necessary, perhaps it wasn't too sad that it had disappeared.
[1:06:48] So I said, look my dear friend, you don't know what on earth you're talking about. Don't say it because you don't know Shoghi Effendi. First of all, how marvelous he was, and you don't understand what the Guardianship was. I have heard people say, um well Shoghi Effendi said that. But that was in 1932. As if it were a previous president who had said something when he was in the White House and now we've got another president. Well you see, that is such a limited understanding of the teachings of God, that it's just sad. And it is just a childish not to understand the greatness of the function of the Guardianship. And the fact that as Bahá’u’lláh gave us His revelation, the Master interpreted it, explained it and was our perfect exemplar, Shoghi Effendi was the one who took this and created from the instructions of Bahá’u’lláh and the Master, the Bahá’í world as we know it today. He gave us certain things, and the House of Justice is more than competent to say which those are, which were a temporary administrative provisioned for a period in history before we grew out of it and went into a much greater period in history. That's something else. But what the Guardian has given us in the Bahá’í Faith goes up to the next Manifestation of God appears. And it is infinitely precious and infinitely valuable. And you must realize that it is primarily, not exclusively but primarily, because the House of Justice is the supreme administrative body of the Bahá’í Faith, primarily it is from this source that they draw their daily inspiration and guidance. It is the words of Shoghi Effendi. And we need him always, we need his guidance.
[1:09:08] Now you ask me why we lost this institution? I don't know. Everybody has a right to their personal opinions. What is in a man's heart he has a right to. As long as nobody can come along and and this is disprove it to him in the teachings in black and white. And as nobody can disprove this to me, why this is my own personal opinion. I think we lost the Guardian, by the Guardian I mean the Guardianship, because we lost two things: we lost Shoghi Effendi and the institution when he died because he didn't have a successor or appoint a successor. We lost him because mankind had lost part of its opportunity in this age. I can't believe that God is capricious. I don't think God is flighty. I don't think He makes plans and then something stronger than God comes along and upsets the plans. But I do think God can change His own plan if He so wishes, because he is God the Almighty. And I think that mankind lost this part of the institutions of the dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh because of not responding to Bahá’u’lláh. This is my own personal deduction. And I think that we lost it because we waited so long, the human race to accept the Cause of God, and the Bahá’ís didn't do what they should have done. And between the two things, it just went. That's all. We've got quite enough to go on with for 1,000 years. We've evidently got what we deserved. We got the other half. Thank God we have it, this marvelous House of Justice, surely grounded in the Aqdas and the teachings and in the writings of the Guardian himself. And that is our hope that will carry us through to the next dispensation. But we lost that other thing, and I think the reason we lost it was because mankind didn't respond to the message of Bahá’u’lláh.
[1:11:13] Shoghi Effendi used to say... so many times he would speak of the condition of the world and he said, do you realize is over 100 years since Bahá’u’lláh appeared in this world and what has been the response to His message? And of course I would be heartbroken when I saw him in this condition and I would try and cheer him up, and I would quote his own statistics to him, Oh Shoghi Effendi just think of it their are 12 Spiritual Assemblies, National Assemblies, think of it, 12. And there are... or there are 14 or whatever it was, it went up as the Ten Year Plan progressed, and there are Bahá’ís in so many countries and there or this... He looked at me and said, what is this? Said there are millions of people in the world. What has been the response to Bahá’u’lláh? Now Bahá’u’lláh said in one of His writings a long time ago... I asked Shoghi Effendi when did He write it? He said He wrote it in Baghdad. He said if the Bahá’ís had been occupied with that which we told them now the whole world would be clothed with the robe of faith, words to this effect. Well I was horrified and I said Shoghi Effendi did He mean it? Well he said He wrote it, He must have meant it. [Laughter] Well it's pretty frightening, you see, it really is very frightened. And if part of the failure is the failure of mankind, and part of the failure friends rests squarely on all of us. It doesn't rest very heavily on you now because you're all much younger and you're many of them very new Bahá’ís. But people of my age, it rests heavily on us. That's why I don't ever want to see the things that I didn't do, that I could have done and didn't do.
[1:13:01] And I think that you have the opportunity not to go ahead in the same old jogging pace that the Bahá’í generations before you have gone, you can do what Shoghi Effendi wanted the young people of this part of the world to do. He wanted them to follow in the footsteps of the dawn breakers. There are powers in this Cause, as the Master said, mysterious powers far, far above the ken of men and of angels. We can call on these powers, we can rise to great heights. We can become heroes and heroines here in the service of the Cause in America and all over the world. But we have to attain that degree of consecration, devotion, conviction in our hearts. And I pray that all of you will be guided and blessed in your services and that you will arise and really be a new generation of Bahá’ís.
[Applause].
