Transcript:Ruhiyyih Khanum/Speech at close to Bahá’í World Congress, 1963

Transcript of: Speaking at the closing of the Bahá’í World Congress in London  (1963)  by Ruhiyyih Khanum

Ruhiyyih Khanum speaking at the closing session of the Bahá’í World Congress in London, 1963 (from reel-to-reel tapes of the Congress).Download: mp3, Source: © Gregory C. Dahl Proofread twice

[0:00] Friends, beloved friends. I want to ask you a question. Who does Bahá’u’lláh belong to? I've been thinking about this a great deal during this marvelous gathering that we have all been privileged to attend. And I often wonder if we ponder on this question. Who does Bahá’u’lláh belong to? No one would presume to say that the sunlight belonged to the east or the west or the north or the south. No one would dare say that the sun that shines in Persia is for some reason or other a better kind of sunlight than the sunlight that shines in the United States of America. Or that the sun in Africa is a different kind of sun from that in Southeast Asia and so on. The sun is far away from us. It shines on everything equally. It is its own master. Nobody owns it. Nobody controls it and nobody has a monopoly on it. The same thing is true of Bahá’u’lláh. None of us Baháʼís own Bahá’u’lláh. Sometimes, there seems to be an attitude on the part of individuals or of Baháʼí institutions, undoubtedly due to their immaturity, that gives one the impression that Bahá’u’lláh is something that they have an invested right in, as if it were a company that they had bought shares in or a secret society that they had been initiated into. And that being these very privileged people who have some kind of control of something very exclusive and marvelous, they are going to share it with others under certain conditions. I think all of us must realize, and perhaps all of us do realize, but then not all the Baháʼís in the world are in this room, there are a great many Baháʼís alas who are not privileged to be present in this room. But we must all realize that Bahá’u’lláh belongs to those who have accepted Him. It is not a derived right.

[3:15] This wonderful flowerbed behind the stage. These people from different countries that have accepted Bahá’u’lláh for the most part during the World Crusade of Shoghi Effendi have not a derived right to believe in Bahá’u’lláh. They have not had it passed on to them second-hand by pioneers or institutions. They have accepted Bahá’u’lláh because He belongs to whoever accepts Him and believes in Him. Just exactly the way the sunlight belongs to every plant in the world that accepts to grow under its influence. It seems to me that one of the great benefits of this gathering is that we have realized this truth more clearly than ever before. We have seen, and perhaps many of us have bowed our heads before the manifestation of it, how these new people, these people that are so far from the cradle of the Faith and the cradle of the administrative order, how they have taken this Cause into their hearts. They have distilled its teachings. They love it. They have accepted it. And not only in their hearts but in their minds. I am rather tired of hearing about the pure hearts of the primitive people of the world. They have pure hearts. And probably per capita, more of them are going to go to the Kingdom of Heaven when they die than people of my race because of course it is the pure in heart that enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

[5:28] I wish that we would appreciate the manifestation of what we have seen here, the wisdom of these people. We heard from one of the Baháʼís of Mentawai yesterday. And I got so upset listening to him that I was practically shaking from head to foot because I had heard a little about Mentawai from Dr. Muhájir and his wife. And I knew how supposedly primitive these people are. He himself said he had a beautiful costume of tattoo on from top to toe. And they live in jungles and they have a very difficult climate and a difficult country, but I understand a very beautiful one. But what he spoke to us was intelligent and intellectually refined. The same thing was true of the words of Max Kanyerezi from Uganda. It was true of our Bolivian friend. It was true of many of the people who have addressed us from this platform, whom for lack of a better term we call "primitive". I sometimes wonder if they do not look at some of the manifestations of our civilization and see us very much like monkeys hanging by our tails from trees. I'm not at all sure that they always look at us with admiration and wonder and envy.

[7:11] Literacy, and this is a subject that I feel very passionately about. Literacy and education have nothing to do with intelligence and with wisdom. And I hope that some of the friends in this room who claim to being illiterate will take these words to heart. Christ was illiterate, so were His disciples for the most part. And Muhammed could not read or write. But there were people in their days who could, you know. We might well pause for thought and say, isn't it strange that when there were so many Romans and there were so many people throughout the Middle East in the days of both Christ and Muhammed who had wonderful educations, were highly intellectual, that God should have chosen illiterate people to be the Signs of His power and glory and to convey to us the living Word of God? Let us not worship false idols. Literacy and education are wonderful things, but they are only a means to an end. They are part of the fundamental teachings of the Baháʼí Faith that everyone must be educated. Girls and boys, that they must have this great privilege. But it is not a thing in itself. It is a means to an end. If they are educated, then they can read the Writings of God. If they are educated, they can study and absorb the teachings of the manifestation of God. I don't think the purpose of literacy and education is to become a professor of astrophysics, because I doubt very much if those professions are pursued in the next world.

[9:40] There has been something also said here of poverty. And as our dear friend from Bolivia said, the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty, one of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. We all know how unjust this is and how wrong it is. But as there are a great many poor Baháʼís in the world today, in both the east and the west, and in Africa and in India and Asia, other countries, we must never forget that according to one of the scriptures of the world, the holy scriptures, it is the poor and the meek that inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. And it is more difficult for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. We must be very, very careful not to confuse extreme poverty with lack of dignity of the human soul, with nobility of character, with maturity as a human being. I had the great privilege of going on a trip through Africa to the villages and four of the Central and East African National Assembly members who are here today were my hosts. And I slept in their homes. I had the great bounty of being with them. And they know and I know that they are poor people, but I've seldom been happier. I've seldom been in happier homes. I've seldom met finer Baháʼís or people with more courtesy and consideration for others, more true good breeding and fine feeling than I found in those simple mud huts. And that's why I'm going back to Africa sometime and have a mud hut of my own.

[11:56] Bahá’u’lláh teaches us that education can be a great veil. The intellect can veil the heart of man from God. I don't know exactly how it works. All I know is that it does work. It should not be so, but it is so. There are a great many people in the world who have not gone pioneering because they were busy getting MAs and BAs and PhDs. There are a great many people in the world who are so educated that they could not possibly be uncomfortable and go and live as some of these marvelous Knights of Bahá’u’lláh have lived during the last 10 years. If that is the kind of education that the Baháʼís are advocating, I really suggest that we study the teachings a little more deeply. The purpose of education is to know God, and to recognize God, and to serve God. It is not to take you further from Him and make you proud before Him and make you cold towards your fellow men. And that is what most of the education so highly vaunted and admired in the world of the west is doing today. I'm sorry to say that it's true.

[13:30] It seems to me that one of the infinite, infinite bounties of God is that all of these children of men, different colors, different cultural backgrounds are going to be permitted to come into the community of man and create the new world. We all know that our race, obviously I'm white, there's nothing I can do about it at this late hour, but our race have great gifts to give to mankind. I spoke very strongly on this subject one day to a Baháʼí pilgrim, and she looked at me with eyes as big as saucers and she said, "Rúhíyyih Khánum, you're prejudiced against your own people." And I said, "No, I don't think I am prejudiced against my own people because I'm not supposed to have any prejudice. But I'm also not prejudiced for them." We have wonderful qualities, but we have not got all the qualities. Someone said to me recently, I asked why a certain person had left the pioneer field of Africa and gone home, it wasn't this person it was some third party that we both knew. Well she said, she got tired of the irresponsibility of the Africans. I'm sure that my African brothers and sisters will excuse me for saying this. We all have our weaknesses. I personally don't even know if this is an African weakness. I'm repeating a story. And I said, "Well, you know, we all get tired of the weaknesses of other people. And I'm so tired of the back-biting and the inharmony amongst my people that I want to go and change that set of faults for another set because I'm worn out with this one. I think I'd like to try the other for a change."

[15:44] There is a disease in the world today. Now you may not think that has very much to do with the life of Shoghi Effendi but in my own mind, it has. There is a disease in the world today, perhaps due to the fact that there's so many human beings in the world, and that modern science has not yet caught up with how to manage our facilities, how to manage the new knowledge that has come to us as a result of the appearance of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. And therefore we are in this rather messy, confused state of transition in human society. But this disease is regimentation, uniformity, this strange idea that everybody has to do something the same way and be as alike as somebody else as possible. Now perhaps the things I'm going to say may irritate some people, and I'm very sorry. I don't want to irritate anybody. But when I had my 40th birthday, I didn't like it at all. I thought that I was really old now. And I was disgusted. Everything under 40 seemed to me possible, but when I reached 40 I felt absolutely miserable. So I decided to give myself a present. And the present I gave myself was that I was going to be myself from then on and say within certain limits what I thought because I'd been treading very softly and been afraid of other people's opinions up till that age. Now I said, "The heck with it, I'm old enough to be what I want to be and I'm gonna be myself." [Applause]

[17:49] When I say that regimentation is a disease, I think we see it in our societies of the west, where we want everybody to be as like everybody else as possible. It's the machine age, the age of standardization. And as the most powerful and wealthy people, and mistakenly considered the most successful in the world, happened to be the great materialistic civilizations of the west, I think that we who belong to those civilizations have to be exceedingly careful not to be colored as Baháʼís by the environment in which we live. Please friends, if you don't applaud, it will save time because the time that you are applauding not only distract my thoughts, which are very feeble at the moment and almost anything blows them away, but it also takes time. So I suggest that if you don't mind, you don't applaud. What I'm trying to say is this, that this extraordinary desire to impose standardization and uniformity on people is one of the characteristics and one of the evils of this present, materialistic civilization of the west. And it is not strictly in accordance with the Baháʼí teachings. So I hope that the Baháʼís from countries that haven't this passion for uniformity will weigh this and not seek unduly to imitate us. There is great danger to me in the world that we will find that these people that have this great spiritual vitality, this purity of heart and vision are seeking to imitate us because, for some reason or other, we seem to be the top dog and the handsomest dog. And they think that if they are like us, that is undoubtedly the best thing. But that's not according to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. And it is not according to many points of guidance that Shoghi Effendi himself has given us.

[20:40] Unity in diversity is the watchword of the Faith. We are not supposed to all be alike, we are supposed to all be different. But within a certain great framework that enables the human race to go forward together, to work, to cooperate, to keep the whole of society which we know in the end is going to be one society functioning healthily and rhythmically. But that does not mean that all the parts have to become alike. As I understand the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, if they all become alike, it will be a weakness, not a strength. Now, I'm not talking about the end of a 500,000 year Baháʼí cycle. I'm talking about something in the world at the present time. As this order of Bahá’u’lláh penetrates to new countries and is accepted by new people, don't let us consider that the Persian pattern is the perfect pattern. The American pattern, the perfect pattern. The British or Australian or so on pattern, the right way of doing things. There is no such thing. There is the guidance given in the teachings and so marvelously elaborated and interpreted by Shoghi Effendi. And then there is the way all of us grow into it and help it to become more beautiful and perfect during the coming centuries. Don't let's bother about 500 years from now. Let us just think about what the next steps are and try to conform as closely as possible as we advance to those principles and points of guidance that Shoghi Effendi himself gave us.

[22:56] It is of interest to know that although the Guardian laid down very clearly the principles of the administrative order, which I think are not half as complicated as sometimes we make it, that he encouraged in writing, thank God we have his words, on different occasions, different assemblies to have diversity in secondary matters, even in the administration itself. I don't think that the friends are familiar with this. You see, our beloved Guardian wrote thousands and thousands of letters to different National Assemblies, Local Assemblies and individuals in Persian and in English. Now these have not been compiled. They have not been taken together and the wisdom in them distilled. One has to dig for these nuggets in the teachings. And I hope that one of the tasks of the coming years will be that more and more of the light that Shoghi Effendi shed upon this order of Bahá’u’lláh through his letters will be made available to the Baháʼís. But there is no doubt that he himself gave this principle to the friends. He encouraged them to have diversity in secondary administrative matters. He used to write them and say this is a matter that your Assembly is free to adapt the principle in its own way. So it's very good to know that.

[24:38] Another thing that Shoghi Effendi did, and I don't think that the Baháʼís are aware of the fact. But it is perhaps one of the greatest testimonials to his wisdom and his vision. He gave different parts of the Baháʼí world a burden to bear commensurate with their maturity and strength. Now if an intelligent person sat down and asked what would be the best and safest way of running a worldwide community that has Spiritual Assemblies in the bush in Africa and Spiritual Assemblies in Tehran, in London, and Paris, and New York and so on, they could never find a better way than that. They would say, well how could he have asked of mature complex communities living in one part of the world, of one kind of a background the same things that he asked of the Dayak tribes that are just coming into the Faith by the thousands. This is not reasonable, and Shoghi Effendi did not ask it. And the sooner we realize this, the sooner we will be able to help the development of the Faith, I think, to go forward more quickly and on a sounder foundation.

[26:14] When I was... Of course you know I've had this great bounty in a way, but also great sorrow and burden of being one of the Hands in the Holy Land during the last six years. And we used to get letters from all over the world and all kinds of problems. And we would hear, for instance, that they weren't holding any spiritual feasts in certain parts, this place or that place, any 19 day feasts. So, when I went to Africa and visited these shambas, this is true of some parts of Africa, not all of Africa but it's true of a lot of places in the world. It's true of the Andes. I suppose it's true of the jungle communities out in Southeast Asia. And I thought now oh dear the Baháʼís of this district don't get together for their 19 day feast. And then the sun went over the horizon at half past six, as it always does. Twelve hours of light, twelve hours of darkness on the equator. And everybody is living in their own little hut miles apart. And there's grass up to here. I suppose there's snakes in the grass. I never asked, but I think there must be all kinds of things in the grass, particularly at night. And they have no lights and no electricity and no telephones. And they have to work all day long while the light lasts in order to make a living, go on with their families, and educate their children. And how on earth at the end of the day would they get together in one place for the 19-day feast? How? Would you like to walk through a snake-infested black wilderness? With grass up to the end of your nose to the 19-day feast after working about 10 or 11 hours in the tropical sun? I don't think you would go to the feast. You don't even go when there's a bus stop in front of your door. [Applause] My point is not that we shouldn't hold 19-day feasts. My point is that this is a great living, moving, evolving Baháʼí world, and we have to understand that it is moving at different paces, that it adapts itself to some extent to the local needs, that everybody cannot live like everybody else, and that we had better look after the beam in our own eyes before we get busy with the motes in other people's eyes.

[28:54] Shoghi Effendi said over and over again, this is a religion of the golden mean. In other words this is a religion that goes in the middle of the way. It does not go to extremes. He gave us the fundamental things that we had to live by according to the stage of our development. As the Persian Baháʼí community had come out of the background of Islam, just the way the Faith itself has sprung from the soil of Islam, he knew, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Bahá’u’lláh before him had known, that these people were privileged... let us put it that way because that is the correct term, they were privileged to bear more of the burden of the laws of Bahá’u’lláh, and they were required to toe the chalk line much more carefully and closely than people in other countries. Why? Because their background was different and their capacity was greater. A great many things were asked of the Persian community that have never been asked of us. That was their privilege. That was their responsibility. That was their heritage. Gradually, Shoghi Effendi began to give more of these things to the Baháʼís of the west. He began to educate us in obeying the laws of Bahá’u’lláh and of learning to live according to very simple procedures, if you would like to call them that, of the Baháʼí administrative order.

[30:47] My mother used to tell me that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, when he was in America, used to complain that the American believers didn't like the first thing He told them, and they always wanted it changed, to such an extent that He said, "The first thing that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells you is the best thing for you." But it was often very hard. They just didn't like it. They were like children. It was uncomfortable. And they just begged and begged to be let off, and not asked to do anything so uncomfortable. Now we had grown up. And Shoghi Effendi gave us so many more of the laws and ordinances of Bahá’u’lláh as the years went by. He wrote to the regional assemblies of Africa and told them what things it was essential that they should tell the Baháʼís who were newly enrolled, such as only having one wife and not drinking and keeping the fast if they felt they were able to do it because it is not a law, it's an ordinance, no one can force you to fast, it is your privilege if you want to. But certain things he gave to the African assemblies to teach the new believers. And they are doing that in Africa. And all of this picture that I'm trying to paint of the different stages of development of the Faith in different parts of the world is the evidence of how perfect it is. These are the signs of its life, of its vitality. These are the signs of the wisdom and the guidance of Shoghi Effendi. He brought us all to where we are today. He gave each one of us the measure that we could take. He told us how to go ahead and build the Cause in the days to come. That of course now is the great job facing us, to carry his instructions onward when we leave this hall.

[33:03] The reason I'm telling you this friends... I will talk about the Guardian in just a moment in detail, I hope. But the reason I'm telling you this is that I may be right and I may be wrong, but these are the thoughts that have been shaped in my mind through long association with Shoghi Effendi and observance of his methods and writing of his letters and so on. We must beware in this world lest we use the Baháʼí administration as a means of enforcing our will on other people. The desire to dominate, you know, is a very strong animal characteristic. It is bound up with the desire to survive, the instinct of survival which we know is one of the greatest instincts in the animal kingdom. With it goes the desire to express oneself and the desire to dominate. Now I believe very strongly that those people who are elected to Spiritual Assemblies, which we know are the servants of the community, not the masters of the community but the servants of the community, that those of us who serves on assemblies or administrative bodies must always be very, very careful that we are not dominating. We must see that the Cause is protected, that those things that the Guardian gave us to do as functions of Spiritual Assemblies are carried out. But we must never use these administrative bodies as a means of stifling the believers or dominating them unduly. Implicit obedience to our administrative institutions is the law of God. It gives us the great spiritual strength and cohesion that the Baháʼí Faith has, which makes it unassailable, locally, nationally, internationally. But nevertheless, this very system enshrines the freedom of the individual, the protection of his or her rights, to cherish the individual, to assist them, to express themselves and not to feel stifled. You see again, you have the religion of the golden mean. You have the middle of the way. You don't have dominance by an institution and you do not have a revolution and defiance by individuals. You have the thing in a very wonderful state of balance. And this too is something I think that the Baháʼís should meditate on.

[35:57] I can remember how at the beginning of the Crusade Shoghi Effendi encouraged everybody to go out and pioneer. Many, many people in this room remember those days vividly. Many, many people are new Baháʼís and they don't remember the beginning of this Crusade. But Shoghi Effendi, anybody who wanted to go, he said, "Yes, go." The maimed, the [?] and the blind. The are a number of members of the American National Assembly here and they will remember an incident which always impressed me very much, in fact the young man in question is now a middle-aged man, he's sitting in this room. Well he's not middle aged, I take that back. Anyway, he's older than he was. [Laughter] But a long, long time ago he was 17 and he asked the American National Spiritual Assembly to let him go as a pioneer to Latin America. The first plan, I think it was. And they felt that he was too young. And the Guardian intervened, and he asked the National Assembly to reconsider it. And he went out, and I remember how immensely proud Shoghi Effendi was that a 17 year old boy who was too young to vote, too young to be on a Spiritual Assembly, had arisen and gone out as a pioneer in this great first Seven Year Plan, used to mention it very often. The people who went out, I'm talking now in this particular moment about people who could pay their own way as pioneers. The people who went out were many of them not imminently fitted to do so. They had, oh I don't know, all kinds of complications. Sometimes at home, sometimes wives left husbands and husbands left wives. And old people went out who were in poor health. And people who really, it was almost, you might say, foolish thing for them to do. But they went out and they pioneered. And I can remember those letters that Shoghi Effendi wrote them. When they asked if they could go, he said, "Go!" Now, administrative bodies that pay for pioneers are I think in a little different position because they are the trustees of the moneys that the Baháʼís through usually great sacrifice have contributed. And consequently they have to morally sift out the people who will accomplish the most if they are going to go out as paid pioneers. I'm sure that is what the people who contribute the money wish them to do. That is only just and fair. But my point is that we would not have won this Crusade, we wouldn't have had all these countries opened, we would not be sitting in this hall today so radiantly happy, with such a wide representation from the Baháʼí world if the Guardian had not encouraged everybody to go forth and serve. That is another thing we must remember.

[39:27] Shoghi Effendi was Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith for 36 years. It has gradually been occurring to me during the last few years that obviously as he only had 36 years to do it in, he was in a great hurry to give us the necessary light on the things that had been revealed before he passed away. Thirty-six years is not very long to make the picture of what Bahá’u’lláh's administrative order and world order is, as clear as Shoghi Effendi has done it. I sometimes have felt during the last five years, and I know my dear fellow Hands with whom I have been working in Haifa felt the same way, that really there seems to be almost nothing he hasn't said. Almost nothing that he has not given us to go on with. We have an infinite wealth in this Faith. This is the true Baháʼí education. If we can study these teachings, we can learn what we really have been given by God in our hands. But he gave us the perfection, or rather he perfected the administrative order during 36 years. But I want to ask you: what is the administrative order? As I understand it, it is the Baháʼí part of the World Order. The World Order, when it is established, will be the whole political and cultural system of the human race. But that presupposes Baháʼí societies. But while the Baháʼí Faith is still contained within itself, while we are not the majority of the people of a nation and consequently cannot function according to the World Order in all its fullness, we have the Baháʼí administration. And that is going to go on for a long time to come, longer in some countries than other countries. And it was illumination on the Baháʼí administration that Shoghi Effendi gave us during 36 years.

[41:58] But why do we feel that everything that is going to carry us forward during centuries of development and evolution can be applied in the first six months or 10 years in some place in the world? This is highly unreasonable. And I think that we misread the teachings and we do not understand them correctly when this is our attitude. When I was a girl in Montreal, I remember some of the young people were very excited about having the first Baháʼí community. And we wanted to have the tithes and the taxes and the this and the that. And we wanted to live according to what we thought. God knows what resemblance it bore to the teachings, I don't. But we thought we knew. We wanted to start a nice little pattern of Baháʼí society somewhere out in the country, a Baháʼí village and live entirely according to the teachings. And Shoghi Effendi wrote back, very lovingly, and said this was entirely premature. He must have written dozens of letters like that during his ministry, holding back the Baháʼís from trying to put a beard on a six-month-old baby. Shoghi Effendi told us after we had labored, I think it was for 16 years or so, to create the instruments of the administrative order in the west, and now we had the instrument we must go ahead and use it. And he said that the purpose of all our labors and the reason we had created this wonderful thing was to teach the Cause of God. There is no other call in the world for Baháʼís to raise other than the teaching call, friends.

[44:10] The Báb said, "Go and teach the people." Every breath of Bahá’u’lláh's teachings is go and teach the people. Take my message to the human race, to mankind. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said he wished that he could go on foot himself and teach the people. If he had had the strength, he would have been the one on foot in the Andes and on foot in the jungles and going up the rivers in these dugout canoes and going from village to village in India in an ox cart. To teach the Faith is the primary obligation of every single Baháʼí in the world. It has been enjoined by the Manifestation of God. The Master said if each individual would bring one Baháʼí every year into the Faith, think of what the world would become. We must not be afraid of teaching. We must teach where there is the capacity. We must teach also, of course, where there is not the capacity. But above all we must go on teaching and spreading the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. We cannot rest. We cannot ever dare to say that now we are getting too many numbers and they don't know as much as they should. "We are going to stop teaching." That does not exist in the Baháʼí religion. And if anyone can show me a text where it says stop teaching until these people know what somebody thinks they ought to know, and then go on and do more teaching, I would like to see it. I don't believe it has ever been written by the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, or Shoghi Effendi. Our primary obligation is to teach this Faith of God to all the peoples of the world, as quickly as possible, as best as we can. And God will bring His confirmations behind. We go ahead and his unseen cohorts come and help us, and we raise up souls such as the people we have heard speaking from this platform in this hall.

[46:35] You remember with what joy Shoghi Effendi used to announce the increase in numbers? He couldn't wait to send out the news. He used to cable the National Spiritual Assembly of Central and East Africa and ask them, "How many have you now?" So that he could put it in his next message. He used to come with a shining face to the pilgrims, Persian and Western, and couldn't wait to tell them, that: do you know there are now 6,000 or 10,000 or whatever it was Baháʼís in Central and East Africa? And there are so and so many more Baháʼís in this country and that country and the other country? Do you suppose that he did not know that these people were not consolidated and they didn't need deepening? Of course he knew it. But deepening comes in many ways. Believing in Bahá’u’lláh also is a deepening for the soul of man. If we teach fearlessly and welcome these people into the Cause of God, God will raise up from amongst them teachers and ways and means of deepening them in the Cause. Shoghi Effendi used to say, over and over again to the Baháʼís, "The Baháʼís do not study the teachings enough." That is certainly true of all of us. There is no excuse when we have the books and when we have had the bounty of literacy and an education for us not studying and reading the Writings more. I know many of us don't. I myself don't read the Writing as much as I should.

[48:30] The Guardian said something wonderful. Of course he said so many wonderful things. He said, "We are orthodox but not fanatical." In other words, where it comes to the teachings of the Faith that are essential, or the laws, or the ordinances, we are orthodox Baháʼís. We believe in them. We are not ashamed of them. We don't have to hide anything. We don't have to pretend that we don't drink because we've got stomach trouble, we just say "Thank you. I don't drink." You know? Many, many things that we can hold up our heads proudly and say, "No, I am a Baháʼí. I'm sorry, that is not my way." But we must not be fanatics. And I have never in my life met a more liberal man than Shoghi Effendi. I don't know how anybody could convey the sweetness and the lovableness of the Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith. Many, many people here had the privilege of meeting him, but of course, so many of them were denied that bounty. And now I would like to talk to you a little bit about the person, Shoghi Effendi, the personality of Shoghi Effendi.

[49:59] Shoghi Effendi was short in stature. He resembled physically, not so much in his face but very strongly in his body and in his hands, Bahá’u’lláh. The Master was taller. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had blue eyes but Shoghi Effendi had hazel eyes. I've never seen such expressive eyes in my whole life, I've never seen eyes that could change so much. Sometimes they were almost golden brown. And other times they were absolutely grey. And when he was enthusiastic about something, he would get so excited that he would open his eyes very wide and you would see the top of the iris. And I always thought that these beautiful, beautiful eyes looking at you with so much enthusiasm were like two suns rising over the horizon. He had dark, blackish brown hair. It was of course lighter I believe when he was a child, but in the end it was quite dark. And he had a olive skin complexion. He wasn't very dark. He wasn't very fair. He had exceedingly beautiful hands and the Greatest Holy Leaf used to, he told me this himself, take his hand in hers and say, "These are like the hands of my father." Bahá’u’lláh in other words. They were what people who study palmistry say are the hands of an intellectual. They were sensitive and highly-developed. Our dear Milly Collins said that she never saw hands that seemed to her to convey so much suffering as Shoghi Effendi's hands. When she looked at his hands, she felt almost broken-hearted. That was where she sensed the picture of the great sorrows and afflictions of his life. He was what in Persian is called maẓlūm.

[52:19] He was the humblest person that I have ever met in my whole life. And I'm not just speaking words, and I've met a great many people in this world, and some of them were very humble. But I have never in my life met a heart as humble as Shoghi Effendi's. He hadn't one speck of personal pride or conceit in his entire makeup. But when it came to the Cause of God, he was just like a lion. Insult the Cause, threaten the Cause, offend him in his kingly majesty as head of Bahá’u’lláh's Faith and the Sign of God on Earth and then believe me, you knew another aspect of Shoghi Effendi. When he was angry, which he was sometimes, justifiably, his voice was just like the crack of a whip. Nobody could withstand his anger. It terrified you. It was the wrath of God.

[53:36] Shoghi Effendi lived an exceedingly simple life. By the time that he did me the great honor of telling me he had chosen me to be his wife, some of the most difficult days that he had passed through had already gone. He became Guardian in 1921 and he was married in 1937. He told me that when he first became Guardian, he didn't think that he should indulge himself in any way. So for a great many years, he didn't have any coffee. He thought that that was perhaps a luxury. When he went away in the summertime, he used to set aside practically up to the very last years of his life a budget for himself. And whoever was with him had to live on that budget also. He always of course was accompanied by somebody, one of his cousins or his brother, who was his secretary. Then other people would come and meet him, of his relatives who were perhaps in Europe. And whether it was two people or seven people, the budget had to suffice.

[54:58] When I was first married and went away with the beloved Guardian, he took me to places, that although Mary Maxwell's family hadn't been very wealthy I had never stayed in in my life, such modest places. I remember many times we stayed in the mountains in peasants' home. If we happen to be quite far out in Switzerland and we paid one frank a night for our room, and that was 25 cents. He himself had been living on that scale for a great many years. He told me that when he was in Interlaken in Switzerland, where he used to go because it was the center of mountain climbing and wonderful walks in the mountains that he loved so much, that he had had a little room in a house that was owned by an old retired mountain guide, and he said that he had the attic room at the top and that when his uncle Ahmad Yazdi came to visit him, who was a tall man, he couldn't stand up in the room. His head banged on the ceiling and he complained because he found it so uncomfortable he couldn't even stand upright in the room. And you know, Shoghi Effendi had such a faithful heart for people that he loved, that when he went back with me once and he found this old man had died, he went to visit his grave in the cemetery. Blessed be that man. He used to travel, in fact we both did third class. And third class seats have progressed nowadays, but before the war they were usually wood and they were very hard. And if he had any traveling to do overnight, he used to put his rucksack or his bag whatever it was, roll up his coat, put it under his head, and go to sleep. And although those who were accompanying him were also young, in fact, younger than the Guardian and fairly tough young men, they couldn't stand it. They would get absolutely worn out, and they didn't understand how Shoghi Effendi could sleep all night long with his head just on something he rolled up on a wooden bench.

[57:32] He loved, as you know, mountaineering. And he used to go for these long, long walks after he first became Guardian in the mountains. He climbed some high mountains in Switzerland, but mostly he used to go on the walks, not the actual Alpine climbs, although as I say he did do some of those. He went with guides and in parties and was roped and so on. He loved it. He seemed to find a great comfort from the mountains. Even up to the end of his life, he had this great love for the mountains. And, you know, friends it's a great source of happiness to me that that last summer of Shoghi Effendi's life he went back to all places he loved most. [A lengthy pause while Ruhiyyih Khanum composes herself.] He took such joy in it, all the places that were particularly dear to his heart. He went back to that last summer. [Another lengthy pause.]

[Allah-u-Abha being chanted in the background by the audience].

[59:45] One of the strongest characteristics of the Guardian was absolutely iron principle. Nothing could interfere with what he considered right. Nothing swayed him at all, neither love nor hate nor danger. Absolutely nothing. It had no effect on him whatsoever. I remember after I was in Haifa a short time, the municipality put up on the little street in front of the house the name of Baha. They called it Baha Street as I remember, and the Guardian was furious. And he sent his brother to the municipality right away and he said, "Tell him to take that down. Immediately. That this is an insult to the Baháʼí Faith to put the name of its prophet on a street. And if they don't I will tear down with my own hands. And if they want to put me in jail, let them." And then I was very upset because I thought, "What shall I do to get into jail too? They'll take him to jail and I'll have to stay here." [Laughter].

[1:01:10] I'm going to tell you another example of this principle in Shoghi Effendi. It will make his dear son who is sitting here, the Hand of the Cause Varqá very happy. Although it affects his father, it's such a wonderful example. It's so wonderful that his father was such a marvelous Baháʼí, could be the example of this thing in the Guardian that were so marvelous. You know Varqá was the one who went with the Master amongst his party to America. And he was the keeper of the Huqúq. And he was the most distinguished person amongst the friends in Persia because of this exalted position that he had. And he'd been made a Hand of the Cause, and he asked permission to come to Haifa. And I was very excited, I thought, "Isn't this marvelous?" Because I knew the Guardian loved him. He will be coming to Haifa and that would be so nice for Shoghi Effendi. So I said, "When will he be coming?" And Shoghi Effendi said, "Well, he'll be coming when his turn comes." And I said, "Shoghi Effendi, you mean that the Amin-i-Huqúq[?], Varqá, the Hand of the Cause is going to take his turn?" And he said, "Why shouldn't he?"

[1:02:36] You see, it's these things that made him worthy to be our Guardian. It is these things that we must learn from. It made no difference to him in the whole world who anybody was. If there was a matter of principle involved, the principle applied to them just exactly and precisely as if they were the littlest Baháʼí on the whole planet. And it was these examples of Shoghi Effendi's diamond-like integrity that strengthens and sustained me during so many tests in Haifa when many, many people as you know, his relatives, were turning against him and leaving the Faith. Every time I heard this kind of thing from the Guardian, it was just as if chills went up and down my spine and I said, "This Cause is safe." Nothing can happen to it because look what man we have at the head of it. Nothing affects him. He goes on his way absolutely impervious to praise, to condemnation, to love, to hate, to anything. Man of principle and of character.

[1:03:59] When the day came when he had to announce to America that his brother had been put out of the Cause because of his conduct, he was very, very distressed. It was a terrible thing for him because this particular brother had been closest to him and had served him faithfully, and he loved him very much. And it was a very great tragedy. And he said, "I will have to announce it and I don't know what will happen. I don't know whether the American Baháʼís will withstand this test or not, whether they will leave the Faith or not. But whether they do or whether they don't, I will announce it." And of course, as an American Baháʼí or a northern hemisphere Baháʼí, Western Hemisphere, northern part of it Baháʼí, I was able to assure him that nobody would leave the Faith. That was one thing I was sure of and I was right, nobody did. But it shows you what Shoghi Effendi was like. Nothing turned him aside from his purpose or from his principle.

[1:05:08] One summer, there was nobody left to take care of the affairs in Haifa, and the Guardian was obliged to go away. And he had to leave my old father who didn't speak any Persian or Arabic, who was over 74 in charge of all of his affairs. And he gave him instructions of what to do, and daddy stayed there and he did them, everything was all right. But when the Guardian came back and then he asked my father to hand back to him you know, the account of what this that and the other thing was the different funds and the different things he always kept in his own hands. He said, my father said very proudly that he had £57,000 in the bank, Barclays Bank. And Shoghi Effendi said, "What? Where did he get that from?" And then he mentioned a Baháʼí whom the Guardian was not pleased with and said that this Baháʼí had contributed this sum to the Cause. And the Guardian said, "Go down tomorrow to the bank and transfer it back to his account. I will have nothing to do with it." £57,000 in those days must have been about $150,000. And he just, like that he made his decision and then he told me afterwards, he said "How can I take money from a man with whom I am displeased?" He said, "Am I to take his money and then go on being displaced with him and shunning him and disgracing him? And as I'm certainly not going to take his money and forgive him because I've taken his money, then I can't take his money." And he sent it back and that was the end of the whole thing. This was Shoghi Effendi. This kind of integrity, friends, will keep this Cause spotless for a thousand years. It is the integrity that all the Baháʼís must follow and the integrity that all the assemblies must follow because it is standard of God.

[1:07:13] Would you like to have a little break? I'm afraid I'm going on very long.

[Applause]

[1:07:40] Faizi... [continues in Persian]. [Applause]

[1:07:53] Faizi said I was fishing, but I said I wasn't. Friends, I'm not going to waste time on photography.

[1:08:49] Shoghi Effendi, you all know of course, so many of you, what he was like as Guardian when you met him. But there's certain stories that I would like to tell you because I think that they are all indicative of how we should be. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was our Perfect Exemplar. Shoghi Effendi has told us so and we should study everything about the Master, His kindness, His love, the way He talked, the Guardian said over and over again, study the talks of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá because this is the best method of teaching. Teach the way ‘Abdu’l-Bahá did. And really friends we don't do it at all, you know. We study the talks. I sometimes think of Albert Einstein and try and teach the Cause as if it were abstruse mathematics. Once we had in Haifa a Baháʼí come whose husband was a Catholic. They were touring the world and they asked permission, she was a devoted Baháʼí and she asked permission if she could come and if her husband could come with her. And much to my surprise, because I had a little limited mind, not a great mind like Shoghi Effendi, much to my surprise Shoghi Effendi said yes. So we had this Baháʼí and her Catholic husband, who, of course, had been in contact with the Faith for years but not become a Baháʼí at all, at the Pilgrim House table. The Guardian was so kind to that man. He was such a perfect host to him. And he subjugated all the purely sort of family Baháʼí conversation to what topics might have been of interest to this non-Baháʼí. You see, that perfect courtesy and consideration, that desire to make the non-Baháʼí feel at home and attracted and happy was so wonderfully exemplified by him.

[1:11:00] On another occasion, and I understand her daughter is here in the room, the widow of a very old American Baháʼí said she wanted to come and visit Shoghi Effendi because she knew her husband would have wanted her to. She never became a Baháʼí, I don't think she has since. If she has, I haven't heard. But she was not a Baháʼí then. And to my astonishment Shoghi Effendi said, "Yes, come." And for nine days she was his guest in the Pilgrim House and there were other Baháʼí pilgrims present at the time. And he keyed all of his conversation to this woman so that she would not feel that there was anything you know, fanatical and in our talking about the Baháʼí work so much so that it wouldn't be subjects with which she was not familiar, that it would not be a test to her and make her visit unpleasant. These are insights into the life and the character of our beloved Shoghi Effendi, and very precious ones. You know my father was very, very ill. In the end he died after about two years of ups and downs. But when he first got sick, he was desperately, desperately ill. And he was in such a terrible state, I won't go into the medical details, but he didn't know who he was. He didn't recognize anybody. He had no control over any of his functions. His eyes didn't focus. It was just like a shell from which the spirit has entirely flown. And this of course broke my heart, and I wished that he would die. And Shoghi Effendi wouldn't let him die, he wouldn't give him up. So finally we got him, only through the courage and determination of Shoghi Effendi, to Switzerland and in the hands of our own doctor, and he recovered and lived another two years.

[1:12:50] But I remember once... he very seldom was familiar with anybody. The Guardian kept himself to himself. And except for his family, he was never intimate with anybody. He was at the beginning of his ministry, but he suffered so terribly over the years that he gradually withdrew more and more from other people. And this is true if you go back over the life of Bahá’u’lláh. It's very strange. The same pattern shows in some ways in Shoghi Effendi's life with the life of Bahá’u’lláh. The Master to the end of his life was with people. Shoghi Effendi withdrew from the human race increasingly towards the end of his life because he had suffered so much, not from the Baháʼís but from non-Baháʼís. Anyway, he very seldom had any opportunity to associate with my father's nurse. But one day we were having lunch together. And of course, she had seen this old man, this patient of hers, with his picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that he was so fond of. And she didn't know what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was or who or who we were or anything. But gradually she began to get ideas about something or other so she said to Shoghi Effendi, "What is this Baháʼí? Monsieur, please tell me." And I always wish that I had been able to write it down. Just in a tiny, tiny little paragraph like that, he put the whole essence of the Baháʼí Cause. So simple, so concise and he said it so, so softly and matter-of-fact-ly and so gently and then he changed the subject. But she became a Baháʼí in Canada and a very devoted Baháʼí because of her contact with the Guardian and perhaps also her love for my father. But it shows you something of what Shoghi Effendi was like. How kind and courteous and considerate he always was of other people. Do you remember somewhere he wrote that if a non-Baháʼí inadvertently came to one of our 19-day feasts, and of course we know the non-Baháʼís are not supposed to be present during the feasts, that we should not under any circumstances tell them to leave, but that we should omit the administrative discussion while they were there. This shows that same gentleness, that lack of fanaticism, that courtesy which characterized so strongly Shoghi Effendi.

[1:15:30] He used every instrument that came to hand, every physical thing and every human thing. We have all, I'm sure, marveled at the way Shoghi Effendi accepted from us the little that we could give. As Ian said yesterday, he scanned us and he saw in us what he could use and then he focused on that and drew it out for the service of the Cause. He didn't exclude people because they were not worthy or because they were frail instruments. He just tried to use every single Baháʼí to the very best of their ability in some way to serve Bahá’u’lláh and to spread His teachings. And that surely should be our attitude too. He had that same faculty in what he did. The Guardian was an exceedingly ingenious man. Entirely aside from his spiritual station and everything else, I've often thought that if one could take away from Shoghi Effendi all of his, well I don't know how you could disentangle the two anyway, but I mean if you could take aside his spiritual station and just get back to the man, the man nevertheless himself was a genius. He had the qualities of great genius. And one of the things that was so outstanding was the way he made use of everything. You know those wonderful gardens, many of you have seen them and the delegates to the convention for the Election of the Universal House of Worship just visited them. But you don't know how many of those things were improvised by this genius of Shoghi Effendi. He used to come back and he'd tell me, "I have been all over the property and you know, I found three meters of fencing behind the old archives building. And there are five or six over in Bahjí and I can take from where the bougainvillea vine has grown up another five meters and I will be able to put in that fence for my new part of the garden without buying any or spending any extra money." Now, this was not an unusual thing for Shoghi Effendi. This was a constant thing for Shoghi Effendi. The decoration of the mansion of Bahá’u’lláh and of Mazra‘ih and the House of ‘Abbúd was all carried out in very much the same way. We have in Haifa a few really valuable and beautiful antiques that you might call period pieces. But with very few exceptions, every single thing that our beloved Guardian used to beautify these holy places, including the interiors of the shrines were things that he bought very inexpensively. And it was his genius for putting them in position that enabled him to create so much beauty at a financial cost that would astonish any human being in the antique business. Really, I know. That's something I do know a little about. And I cannot tell you how much Shoghi Effendi made of how little.

[1:19:10] I'd like to tell you the story of the development of the holy places in all of this beauty that you see in them now. You know, Shoghi Effendi was born a prisoner. And he wasn't released from imprisonment, at least technical imprisonment in the city of ʻAkká until he was 12 years old. And he never had any opportunity to come in contact with art as we know it in the West. He was not brought up in a home that had any decoration in it whatsoever. Our beloved Hand of the Cause, Mr. Samandarí, who has been so many times to the Holy Land, remembers how bare and simple the home of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was and all of those places in the early days. And it was not until just before the last war that the Guardian began to beautify the premises. And the reason he did it was two things. First of all, the Cause was growing all the time and having more prestige, more fame, and also more money. I heard that Bahá’u’lláh had a little tiny chest in his room in the Mansion of Bahá’u’lláh over there in his home, in the mansion in Bahjí. And in it he had all the money of the Baháʼí Faith, and he used to open it and take out a few gold pieces or silver pieces and pay the expenses of the house and of the community. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his days, had a banking account. It has been always practically, but not practically, but I mean all practically to the present day it has been largely the contribution of this beloved Persian Baháʼí community that has financed the World Center of the Faith. And the Master had more money, Shoghi Effendi had a little bit more as the years went by to spend on the Cause. And because of that, he said that now the time has come when it is proper to make the Shrines as beautiful as possible and also embellish the other holy places. And gradually he included the pilgrim houses and the home of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

[1:21:43] Now the thing that was interesting was how he reacted to every single thing that came in his path. My father was a man of great artistic culture. That was his life and that was his work. And when I was married he sent me some Japanese kakemonos for my own home, my own little room. And with the Guardian's permission, I hung three of these in the little sitting room of our apartment upstairs. He had two rooms and when he married, he built three more so that he would have enough space. And I remember he used to go in and look at these things, and this should make the Japanese friends very happy. He said, "You know, the more I look at these, the more I think they are beautiful." And something of that wonderful beauty of the Far Eastern art, the delicacy of beauty of the Japanese art went into Shoghi Effendi's eye. He had all the receptivity in the world there, and he just drank it in. And it was that contact with Japanese art that made him furnish the International Archives building with Chinese and Japanese objects and furnishings and cabinets. So you see how with what alacrity, with what life and enthusiasm he responded to anything new that came in his path. The same thing happened with the garden ornaments. He had never had an opportunity to purchase things like this. But my father knew where they could be bought in England. And in 1940 during the darkest days of the war the beloved Guardian, my father and I were here in London. And it was at that time that he ordered some of the first vases for the shrines. He became interested in them, these Greek style marble vases and they were delivered to us later on. So you see how these contacts that he had with different things in his life, he turned to the glorification of the holy places and of the Faith.

[1:24:08] It was a very wonderful thing that at last he could have somebody who was competent in their own field to serve him. And I remember Shoghi Effendi used to design all the paths of the gardens, as you know, even to where the trees were to be planted and the flower beds. And he used to tell them so many spans. He'd tell the gardener, measure it out in spans. And the gardener would go along like this, you see. And then he would plant a Cyprus tree and he'd measure more spans. And he'd planted other Cyprus tree and so on. The whole thing came from Shoghi Effendi. But sometimes we had very difficult technical problems, such as building staircases and how high and how wide and how deep they should be, and so on. And I would try and make him little paper models, and I didn't know very much about it either. And finally my father turned up because after my mother's passing Shoghi Effendi, with that beautiful spirit of gentleness and love that he had, came to me and he said, "Now your mother is dead. Your father's place is here with us." And he sent for him and gave him the great blessing and bounty of being near him and living with him 'til the end of his life. But anyway, he was going to build a flight of stairs, and I said, "Shoghi Effendi, why do you bother about this anymore? You have very good Canadian architects sitting across the street in the Pilgrim House. Just tell him what you want and you'll have it." And I remember these beautiful eyes got so round and looked at me, you see. And he said, "Can he you do it?" Why, I said, "This is a joke for him. This is child's play." So he told him what he wanted and he built the first stairs. And then from then on it was a very, very precious association because this was something my father could do and it resulted, of course, in the end, in the construction of the Shrine of the Báb.

[1:26:11] But you know, even that building has Shoghi Effendi's touch throughout. Because he told Daddy it must have arcade at the bottom because that's what the Master said. It must have a dome. It must have the clerestory section in between. And when he built those things on the clerestory that are like minarets sticking up, Shoghi Effendi didn't like the original design. And I can't tell you how many drawings my father made and brought over for the Guardian until finally he found a design that he liked and said, "Yes. Now the proportion is right. This is the way I want it." And my father considered that the Guardian entirely aside from being the Guardian was a man of exceptional taste and exceptional sense of proportion. Everything that the Guardian did, you see that extraordinary sense of proportion. And of course proportion is beauty, and proportion is part of order.

[1:27:20] When the Guardian used to go out, sometimes he would find me very impatiently waiting for him to get in his car and go up to the Shrine. And he'd say, "I know you want to clean the room, don't you?" And I said, "Yes." So when he went, I would immediately get busy with the girls and we would clean his room thoroughly because, of course, we couldn't do it when he was there. And he had a great many things on his desk. He had a picture of the interior of the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh. And then over here he had a box with stationery and letters in it. And he had two pen holders here, one on either side and he had blotting pad and so on, all kinds of things. And quite a lot of things, not anything like a big American executive's desk. Just like the archives, beautiful. So when he came back, quite unconsciously he would come around behind his desk and he'd just go like that. Just touching with his fingertips. One little twist until he had every single thing within a millimeter of where it had been when he went out. The most extraordinary thing. And of course, we worked so hard to get everything back where it had been in the first place. But this was so typical of him, this marvelous sense of order.

[1:28:44] And now I'm going to tell you something about myself. It's probably a scandal, but as it reflects glory on him I don't mind. Shoghi Effendi, I always considered one of these signs, in a small scale, of the greatness of his character was that he never reproached me for being untidy. I am, without any doubt, one of the untidiest people I have ever met. As great as his genius is for getting things tidy, mine is for getting my room untidy. And I always thought, and I appreciated it very, very deeply that he never once in 20 years, rebuked me for being untidy or asked me to become tidy. You know, that's a very extraordinary thing. Most of you out there are married and that is an extraordinary thing. [Applause].

[1:29:52] I remember one day he gave me a room, it was a little tiny room next to his bedroom which was also his working room. He had his bed and his desk side by side because he used to work until he was so exhausted that he just fell into his bed, and then he would go on working in his bed. And nothing I did could get Shoghi Effendi to separate his bedroom from his office. He just wouldn't. He said, I can't help it. It's all in one place and I can get into bed and get out of bed and do my work. And it's impossible. And he went right on 'til the end of his life, his bed and his desk were side by side. Get into one and work on the other and so on. And I remember I had a table, also a present from my father that had spool legs. And it was very nice spiral carved legs. And I was sitting there writing his letters one day and it was just covered with things. And Shoghi Effendi came through, passed by and he looked at the table. He looked down at it like that. He said, "Poor table." He said, "It's saying, 'Look what a beautiful table I am. Look what lovely legs I have and see how I'm being treated.'"

[1:31:25] Shoghi Effendi told us what to do and what not to do. And he knew how to say yes, but he also knew how to say no. And you know that one word "no" is a very valuable thing in life. We shouldn't go around negatively saying no all the time, but when we mean "no", we should say no and not be afraid to say it. And he was like that. Nothing swayed him. If he believed that something was wrong or not permissible, he would just say no and that ended the whole subject. Whether it was no to an NSA, or no to an individual, or a member of his family, it was there. He didn't care whether he was loved or hated. He cared that the work of the Cause should go forward. He was swayed by nobody. The only consideration he had was for the Faith. Now that doesn't mean that he wasn't patient. I often thought that it was his exceeding patience and kindness towards his family that emboldened them to such a point that in the end they raised their heads in rebellion and finally disobeyed him and had to be put out of the Faith. For those friends who do not know any of the background of these great sorrows in Shoghi Effendi's life, I would like to say that there is always this principle of light and darkness. There is always jealousy. There is always mischief making in the world. We have to open our eyes to the fact. We are not Christian scientists, we are Baháʼís. There's a very big difference. These things exist and we must not pretend that they do not exist. We must just understand them and treat them naturally.

[1:33:25] I can remember an example of a girl in Haifa who I was very fond of. She was a child of a local person and she wanted to marry a non-Baháʼí, and the Guardian had had a great deal of difficulty with marrying non-Baháʼís and finally said no one in Israel can marry a non-Baháʼí because it never works out, all it does is to bring infinite headaches to the World Center of the Faith. So she came and she said she wanted to marry this non-Baháʼí and I went and asked the Guardian. And he said, "No. That is absolutely impossible." If she wants to marry him, she must go away from Israel. She must migrate. It was Palestine in those days. And I went and conveyed this message and she promised that she would do it. But when I told Shoghi Effendi, he said she will not, she will disobey. Oh, I said, "Shoghi Effendi, she's such a good girl and I know her, I see her all the time in the feasts. And she chants so beautifully. And she has such a nice spirit and I assure you, believe me, she will obey. It will be alright. I'm sure it'll be alright." He said, "Alright, I accept. Let her go away from this country and marry him abroad. But you will see in the end she will disobey. She will come back and she will have to be put out of the Cause." Well, I was distressed but I thought, "I'm sure that she will be alright." So I went downstairs and I told her this. And she went away and she married. And she stayed away for some months, I don't remember how long. And then one fine day the maid came and told me so and so is sitting downstairs in the tea room and my heart just turned over and I thought, "Now, you see? God help you. There she is and what Shoghi Effendi said is just coming true." So I went downstairs and saw her and I said, "You know, you can't stay here. You promised that you would go and stay away. And now you're back again." Well, of course, to make a long story short, there was more assurances and promises and she said, "No, we're only here for a visit" and so on and they were there for good and they became covenant breakers and that took care of that.

[1:35:35] But it shows how patient he was with people, how he always warned them, how he put up with so much, much more than the average person would put up with, my dear friends. None of you would have gone through with any members of your family what Shoghi Effendi went through with the people surrounding him, and had the power of excommunication and not excommunicated them years and years and years ago. He waited and waited and waited and forgave and put up with and did everything in the world to keep these people in the Cause until in the end there was nothing left to save and they went out of the Cause. And it's these kind of sufferings that shortened Shoghi Effendi's life. It is not the poor Baháʼís who say, "I failed. I wasn't a good Baháʼí. I didn't bring in enough people. I should have gone pioneering." My dear friends, that's between you and God. But don't think any of you, through your shortcomings, shortened his life because I can truly assure you, by God, you didn't. It was the people around him that shortened his life.

[1:36:45] He reached the point where he was all alone. And I remember once one of Druze sheikhs came to see him and, you know, in the east, perhaps in other countries, too but not so much I don't think as in the East, people sting you. Nísh mízanand [نیش می‌زنند]. And Shoghi Effendi went down to see this man who had known the Master and was old friends, these very Druze as you remember that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá went to their villages during the war and so on, and he asked him, "How is so and so?" Of course so and so was a member of the family that was out of the Faith. Well, the Guardian just bowed. "And where is so and so?" "Well, he's in Beirut." And where is this person? And where is that person? And where is the other person? Knowing full well that they had all abandoned Shoghi Effendi, that they were no longer in the family or the community, no longer serving him and no longer loyal. Just sting after sting after sting. And finally this man said, "Then who is doing your work?" He had the temerity to say this to the Guardian's face, and please excuse my Arabic. I may not quote it exactly right, but I think it's what he answered. He said, "Aná bishakhṣin [أنا بشخصٍ]. I am doing my work." And then he dismissed this man and got up, but he never saw any of them again. The next time any of these people called the servant went and received them, not Shoghi Effendi. But these were the things that he was constantly subjected to. These are the things that wore him out.

[1:38:30] He had, I don't know. You see, if I knew what Shoghi Effendi was like and how he worked, I would be another Guardian because you can only understand your inferiors or your equals. You cannot possibly understand your superiors. And I could never, never claim to understand Shoghi Effendi. I may have some understanding of him, but I certainly don't understand the beloved Guardian. But I observed different things in him, and it always seemed to me so remarkable the different ways he seemed to make his decisions. For instance, suddenly he would decide something, just instantly. I remember once we away way in the summer and a cable came from a National Assembly - no not from a National Assembly. A cable came from... Wait a moment. Let me get it straight. Yes, a cable came or maybe the letter. Anyway, news came complaining of a certain person on a National Spiritual Assembly. And Shoghi Effendi wrote out all of his cables all those 36 years himself by hand. He immediately sat down and wrote a cable and told me to take it down to the post office and send it. Of course I read his letters. I read his cables. I was his secretary. He spoke very frankly to those who were close to him, discussed his affairs very openly. And in this cable I noticed that he had sent a cable to another member entirely of this national body. And the cable was, "Beware, be careful or something very bad is going to happen to you." I don't remember the exact words. I haven't got them here. And I had my eyes opened as big as saucers, but I said, "Shoghi Effendi that's not the man that the NSA complained about. Ahh but he said, "That's the man that the bottom of the whole thing. He's the one that's stirring up all this trouble." So you see he instantly sensed it. Thousands of miles away, he knew that this man has caused trouble, gotten the NSA to strike at an innocent person when this mischief maker is really this root of the whole thing. And he took action instantly. He used to do that very, very often. He would have these tremendous, I don't know how to describe it except flashes of inspiration. And then other times he would suffer and suffer and burn and suffer by the hour over some problem before he would come to any decision at all. He would roll himself up in his bed clothes and he would stay there hour after hour after hour, day after day without doing anything, without eating, without practically answering a question, without drinking, just burning like a candle. And then eventually he would get up and say, Well, all right, I'm going to do this or I've made this decision or that decision. What went on in him during those periods? I have no idea. But it was heartrending to see him burn and suffer like that. And these are the things that shortened his life.

[1:42:05] It's getting very late and I don't know. I don't like to dwell too much on Shoghi Effendi's sufferings, but so much of his life was suffering. He suffered as a child in school. He told me once something that touched me very much. He said he'd never been happy in school. It seems to have been his destiny always to suffer. And I know that Bahá’u’lláh must have suffered more because he was a Supreme Manifestation. His capacity to suffer must have been greater than Shoghi Effendi's. And I'm sure the Master who the Guardian used to say was like an ocean. Surely, surely he suffered 10,000 hells during his lifetime, but I didn't see them suffer so I can't make any comparison. But it's very hard for me to visualize anybody suffering more than Shoghi Effendi suffered. I used to tell him, "Shoghi Effendi. Don't be so sufferable." I know that's not the correct way to use the word, but it describes something in him. He had such a capacity for suffering. He had such a receptivity to it. He was so sensitive. He was so loving and yet he had to be so ground down all of his life through the acts of others, the words and deeds of others, and he had to be caused so much intense suffering.

[1:43:41] I give you one example of something that happened. It wasn't caused by his family, but it was part of his suffering as Guardian. He was very ill. He wasn't often ill during the period that I was with him, but this time he had had sandfever and he had a temperature of over 104. And he was really a very sick man. And he looked so haggard, so white. And he didn't want to go to Haifa. It was at the outbreak of war. We had just arrived back in Palestine and just incidentally gotten safely out of Europe. And he said, "If I go to Haifa", and I hope the Persian friends will listen particularly to this, "and it is known that I am ill, the rumor will go back to Persia and it will distress the hearts of the Persian Baháʼís. And when it reaches the villages it may be exaggerated and it will cause them suffering. And I don't want them to know that I am ill because I don't want them to be distressed." So we went away to a small place and his mother came and joined us and his secretary, was his brother Hussein at that time, came and used to come every single day and bring the mail from Haifa. But nobody knew that he had returned to Palestine. And Hussain brought this cable saying that Martha Root had died in Honolulu. And this blessed Guardian of ours with his face so wan and so pale, and so weak, began to pull himself up in his bed like this on his pillows to sit up. And I said, "Shoghi Effendi. You mustn't sit up. It's dangerous. You have a very high fever." He said, "No, I have to. I have to answer this cable." But I said, "Shoghi Effendi. The cable will have to wait. You are very ill. You mustn't make an effort at a moment like this." He said, "Don't you understand? The greatest teacher in the Baháʼí world has died and the whole Baháʼí world is waiting to hear what I am going to say about her. It can't wait." And under those circumstances he dictated that marvelous cable of tribute to Martha Root. And then he fell back in bed, absolutely exhausted and went on being ill.

[1:46:07] He used to say, "Do you realize that I can never have a moment's respite?" He said, "A bank president, the president of a state, a king, the prime minister, anybody can go away and delegate their powers to someone else for a short time. But I can't hand this Cause over to anyone for a single instant." No matter what condition Shoghi Effendi was in, he had to go on every moment of his life until his heart stopped, being the Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith and carrying this terrible burden that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's will placed on his shoulders. He told me once, he said, "When they read me the Master's will, I ceased to be a normal human being." And truly from that time on, he was in a state of chaos. The pilgrims saw Shoghi Effendi one way, and his family saw him another. Be glad you are Pilgrims, friends. It was better that way. Nothing is more terrible and to see the most precious being in the world suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer and not be able to do anything to prevent it, not be able to shield him. I used to long to close the door to not allow anything to get at him when he was so terribly tired or so ill. And yet I didn't dare do it because I said, "This is the Cause of God." He is the Guardian of the Cause of God and I have no right whatsoever to stand between him and the work of the Faith in any way. I cannot possibly do it. And so I had to go. I remember and wake him in the middle of the night and tell him that his mother had just died of a heart attack, go into his room and whisper, "Shoghi Effendi." He was asleep. "Shoghi Effendi, dear. Shoghi Effendi." Then gradually he woke up. "What is it?" "Why I'm so sorry to disturb you but your brother has phoned that your mother is very ill." And then gradually, as best I could because after all, she had to be buried the next morning and he had to be told, tell him his mother just died of a heart attack. His mother was with his brother at that time. And the blow was not as great as it might have been a few years earlier. But the point is that this is the kind of thing that he was subjected to every moment of his life from the day the Master passed away until the day he passed away himself. He had to always, always bear this burden.

[1:48:58] I could go on for hours, but I think that that's probably too much for all the friends. And perhaps it's too much for the management of Albert Hall. I don't know what time we're supposed to be out of here, but I wanted to tell you just two or three more things. You know, I can't say how many people I know Shoghi Effendi kept in the Baháʼí religion. Kept in friends, not got out. Kept in. Not brought in, but kept in. Yesterday you heard Mr. Bloom speak of the way the Faith was introduced into the Philippines, and I wondered whether he knew that it was really largely due to Shoghi Effendi that it stayed introduced into the Philippines. Because Felix Madela, the first person who set up a Baháʼí center in one of the islands of the Philippines, was so far away from any administrative institution that nobody wanted to take any responsibility him, they didn't consider him a Baháʼí. And the whole situation was like that. And Shoghi Effendi wrote to this man over and over again, such loving letters of encouragement. He didn't say, "Well, I don't know which Spiritual Assembly has accepted your declaration card or whether you've signed this out of the other thing or know what you're doing" but he just took the spirit the man sent to him and returned it a thousand fold with his love and his kindness. Many members of National Assembly sitting in this room will remember the messages of the Guardian encouraging them to keep the Baháʼís in the Faith to use only on rare occasions and for very grave offenses, deprivation of voting rights. It is very easy to destroy friends, but it takes a very long time to build up. And we must be so careful that when we do exert our strength, which we must do sometimes, there's got to be a "no", but that we do it always in the right way and on the right occasion and never abuse it or put more burden than is possible for the people to bear at the time.

[1:51:26] One other example of Shoghi Effendi was when one of the Baháʼís died in America and left a will. And his wife wanted to contest the will. She considered it very unfair. And Shoghi Effendi told the National Assembly, "Tell her she will be put out of the Cause if she did contest the will." Because he had intervened, you see. He told her she must not contest the will, so if she'd have disobeyed the Guardian she would have been put out of the Cause. But he said the will of a Baháʼí is sacred. Bahá’u’lláh says make your will. And when a Baháʼí makes their will, which they are free to do, it is sacred and it must be obeyed and it must be upheld. These things were great illumination to me about the way this Faith protects and preserves the rights of individuals as well as the right of society, the right of the community.

[1:52:20] Another thing that illumined my mind very much in relation to Shoghi Effendi was something that our dear friends from Central and East Africa will remember. He heard that there was a Baháʼí in Kitalya prison. He was there for murder. And he also heard that this Baháʼí was teaching other Baháʼís and some of the prisoners accepted the Cause. Do you remember how he cabled the Baháʼí world in one of his messages and mentioned the prisoners in Kitalya prison? This was such a revelation to me. Why, I thought, "My God!" I thought it was a terrible disgrace. I thought we would try and hide the fact that there's such a thing as a Baháʼí in prison. And here he is saying that the Baháʼís have been given rights to celebrate their holy days in Kitalya prison. And he wrote to them in Kitalya Prison and encouraged them. So you see all these things teach us how how big Bahá’u’lláhs arms are. There is room for practically everybody in the Baháʼí Faith. Some of them may need spanking, and some of them have got to be kept out because they are deadly poison, the lepers, the covenant breakers. But that is another thing. But really the children of men, this Faith is their home. And there is room for all of them in it.

[1:53:53] I was asked a question in a note that was sent up to me about Shoghi Effendi's grave. You have all been out and visited it, and I would like to just to tell you a little bit about it. Before I tell you about the Guardian's grave, could I tell you about the Guardian's marriage? Because it was so simple that perhaps it will show you what I was trying to say, that we are not like the society in which we live. We are the people of a new order, and we must not look into the world to find the pattern of it friends. The pattern is in the lives of its Founders and in its teachings. You know, I had no idea when I went to Haifa that the Guardian would ever bestow this bounty on me. How could I ever have such a thought? And when someone mentioned it to me as a possibility, I considered that it was heresy. To me, it was heresy to suggest that I should ever become the wife of the Guardian. So you could imagine how overwhelmed I was when the beloved Guardian told me that he had chosen me to be his wife. When the day of our marriage came, I was dressed entirely in black, because they wear black, they did in those days in the east when the ladies went out on the street. And I had a black turban on my head and black shoes and a black bag and a black suit and black gloves. I had a white blouse on, I admit. But that was my wedding dress. And I came over to the Master's house. I'd been frightfully cross to my parents all morning. I hope they forgave me because I was so terribly, terribly nervous. I mean everybody, most people only get married once, but not everybody gets married to a Guardian. And I was frightfully, frightfully nervous. And so I would alternately get cross with my parents, throw my arms around their neck, weep and beg forgiveness all morning.

[1:56:15] By the time the afternoon came I went over and the beloved Guardian came out and got into his car and I got in beside him and the heavens fell in Haifa because no one had wind of this and they were all simply astonished. The Guardian of the Cause going off in an automobile with a western Baháʼí woman. This is simply unheard of, what is going on? So we went over to the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh and prayed. And this ring that I wear was Shoghi Effendi's Baháʼí ring. It was given to him by the Greatest Holy Leaf, and he had always worn it on this finger, and he was very, of course, attached to it. So the day that he told me that he had chosen me for this great honor, he put this ring on my finger. But then he said, "Now no one must see that you are wearing it." So I took it off and I wore it around my neck on a chain until the day when we went to the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh. And then we just had prayers in the Shrine. He went in. He put the ring on my finger. That was all. Silently. No place for conversation. And he went inside the inner shrine and he gathered up all the dry flowers that were there. In those days the keeper used to take it off the threshold, put it inside, and he took those flowers back and gave them to my mother that night as a gift. And we went back and in the room of the Greatest Holy Leaf, we had this simple ceremony of Bahá’u’lláh, [Speaking Arabic], putting hand in hand. And I recited that verse which I had learned with great difficulty in Arabic, and he recited it and that was all. Then I went over to the Pilgrim House. I think we went and sat with his family for a few moments, and then I went back to the Pilgrim House and waited for him to come over for dinner the way he always did. He sat with my mother and father, and I was there and his brother, Hussain, just like every other night and dear Fujita waiting on him. And then after dinner, my luggage was carried across the street and upstairs and we went and sat and visited for some time in the room with his parents and his brothers and sisters. And that was our marriage, just as simple as that. No wedding veils, no flowers, no long tablets chanted, nothing. It seemed to me very wonderful and very precious. So you see, when one of our Baháʼís said the other day, the Baháʼí Faith is simple. I think he had the right idea.

[1:59:07] Now we come to our beloved Guardians grave and his passing. I don't want to go into detail about that because it will shatter me and I really can't bear thinking about it at this moment. But after I had gone out and visited his grave the day after his funeral, as I drove away, it was very strange because God knows I had no mind left or anything at that point, I saw before me in my mind's eye a column and a globe and an eagle and the steps underneath it, the whole thing. And when I went back to Haifa and the Hands of the Cause met in such tragic circumstances, with such broken hearts in the mansion of Bahá’u’lláh and Bahjí that first time, I showed them a little sketch and they were happy with it and approved and that is what we built over Shoghi Effendi's resting place.

[2:00:12] Shoghi Effendi always wanted a column. And well he got it, evidently. But every time we saw a beautiful column, you know, Rome has very beautiful columns. Sometimes we passed through Rome in the old days, before there were so many Baháʼís there. He was looking and he said, "You know, I think these columns are so beautiful. Where can I put a column on Mount Carmel?" Well, I said, "Shoghi Effendi. I don't think you can because you can't just stick a column up like that. You know? Where would you put it?" And well, that was that. But he didn't have a column and he wanted one. Then he liked the Corinthian style very much so I think that perhaps influenced my thought that we should have a column because he wanted always a column so much, and in the end he got one.

[2:01:09] And then came the question of the eagle over Shoghi Effendi's grave. When he began to buy those eagles as ornaments for the gardens and put them up, and we asked him why, he said it was a symbol of victory and that the Baháʼís now all over the world were beginning to have their victories. And the eagle was a symbol of victory. And that was why he wanted to have an eagle in the gardens. So I thought, what greater place to put the symbol of victory, than on top of Shoghi Effendi's column on top of the globe of the world with the continent of Africa, which at the end of his life had already begun to show such promise and which had caused him so much joy, facing out. And we thought, "What eagle shall we put?" Then I remembered that he had bought an eagle and had it in his room. And again the Japanese friends must be very happy. It was a Japanese eagle. Made in Japan, big thing like that. Very, very beautiful. And as you have seen from visiting his monument, it has one wing folded and one wing out. It's very hard to tell. Is the bird taking off or is the bird alighting? So one night I brought it down in Shoghi Effendi's home. We got someone to hold it up in the corner, and Millie and I looked at it, and we felt that this was the perfect eagle for Shoghi Effendi's grave. So that is this story of why it is built the way it is.

[2:02:51] Someone said that the wall around his grave looks so old. Friends, we tried to have something reminiscent of his beautiful gardens in Haifa here around his own resting place. The red and the white, the ornaments, the iron gates, the gilding, something that was in his taste and along the lines of what he had created around the holy shrines. And that is why it has the appearance that it has now. If it seems old to you, it is because it came from a very famous estate. It is old, and it is an unusually beautiful one. The Guardian loved beauty, and I tried hard to surround his grave with the kind of beauty that seemed to me to be his taste.

[2:03:49] Friends, at the end of this conference, all our hearts are so full that it is useless to really try and fill them with anything more or to express anything more. But I am sure that one thing is true of every single heart in this room. We now know that the oneness of humanity is more organically established since we entered Albert Hall than it ever was before. This has been the crucible in which we have poured all the spirit of the end of Shoghi Effendi's crusade. We came here, friends. But each day I am sure we have had a greater sense of family. We do feel that we are all one family, that we are Bahá’u’lláh's children, that we love each other. We belong to each other. And no matter how far apart we go in the coming days, there's going to be that tight, tight bond of nearness inside, holding us together, holding his work together, carrying his Cause forward.

[2:05:15] Friends, don't fail Shoghi Effendi. You haven't finished with him and he hasn't finished with you. He said there would be other plans. You will be hearing from the House of Justice and the Hands about other plans. How can we not go forward? We have a lot of work to do. But then think, we have each other and so many hundreds of thousands of Baháʼís that are not in this room who will now go forward with us. It is the time to put your step on new trails, to make new vows, to reorient yourself to this religion of love and of bounty and of joy, and to go out and please Shoghi Effendi, make him happier than he ever was in this world, fulfill the bountiest pledges of help from on high that we have been assured of in the teachings and carry this message to others wherever there is receptivity, wherever the need is the greatest, let us hasten their first and let us all carry on the work of our beloved Lord Bahá’u’lláh every day of our lives. Because we are his people and we are blessed far beyond our desserts.

[Applause].