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World Order

WINTER 1971-72

RELIGION AND WORLD ORDER

Horace Halley

‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ: SPEAKING IN AMERICA

Allan L. Ward

LETTER FROM HAIFA IN THE MOURNING TIME

Emogene Hoagg

BUDDHISM AND THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH

Daniel Conner

THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT

Janez Stanovnik

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World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

ROBERT HAYDEN

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

GAYLE MORRISON

Subscriber Service:

MEG LUCKINBILL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription: Regular mail USA, $4.50; Domestic student rate, $3.50; Foreign, $5.00. Single copy, $1.25.

Copyright © 1972, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

IN THIS ISSUE

1 The Ecology Within

Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

7 Religion and World Order

by Horace Holley

16 The Human Environment—International Dimensions of the Problem

by Janez Stanovnik

25 Buddhism and the Bahá’í Faith

by Daniel Conner

34 Letter from Haifa in the Mourning Time

by Emogene Hoagg

38 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Speaking in America

by Allan L. Ward

49 Remembrances

a book review by Firuz Kazemzadeh

Inside Back Cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue

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The Ecology Within

THE DEGRADATION OF OUR AIR, our water, and our land through pollution has become acceptable copy for eye-catching headlines and feature articles. Any new information about the interrelatedness of our various life-support systems and each new bone-chilling infraction of the balance of those systems is greeted with serious—if often short-lived—attention.

There is another sort of degradation which does not usually evoke the same serious consideration. That is the degradation of the quality of our inner and collective lives. We have launched ourselves into space, but we have scarcely caught the echo of the meaning in Bahá’u’lláh’s admonition that “Wings besmirched with mire can never soar.”

We lament the plight of birds caught in oil slicks, and we spend time and emotion trying to extricate them and nurture the spark of life. Our own plight we perceive differently. We may sense that something has gone wrong, that our lives have been diminished, our expectations truncated, our sensitivities dulled—that, in short, a way of life has crumbled and its code of values vanished. But caught in the polluted backwash of a dying civilization, we do not find it easy to extricate ourselves. Unlike the oil-trapped birds who fight for life, we often do not see that we need to extricate ourselves. And so we go along. We buy fads in food and hair and thought and theater, giving little attention to whether they debase or affirm our worth as spiritual beings. In our desire to preserve something of the quality of a disappearing mode of life we respond to campaigns to save the wilderness, the lakes, the oceans, the forests, even landmark buildings. But we do not remember to preserve the quality of our lives.

Thus we fail to understand the manifest signs of our inner and collective pollution—the very signs which Shoghi Effendi describes as the harbingers of the moral downfall of man and of his society, “a society that must either be reborn or perish.”

This pollution, Shoghi Effendi writes, stems from “the decline of religion as a social force” and from the quenching of “the light of religion” in men’s hearts. The results, he continues, are none other than “The perversion of human nature, the degradation of human conduct, the corruption and dissolution of human institutions,” the debasing of “human character,” the shaking of “confidence,” the relaxing of “the nerves of discipline,” the stilling of “the voice of human conscience,” the obscuring of “the sense of decency and shame,” the distortion of “conceptions of duty, of solidarity, of reciprocity and loyalty,” the gradual extinguishing of “the very feeling of peacefulness, of joy and of hope . . . ”

Elaborating, Shoghi Effendi also includes “The recrudescence of religious intolerance, of racial animosity, and of patriotic arrogance; the increasing [Page 2] evidences of selfishness, of suspicion, of fear and of fraud; the spread of terrorism, of lawlessness, of drunkenness and of crime; the unquenchable thirst for, and the pursuit after, earthly vanities, riches and pleasures; the weakening of family solidarity; the laxity in parental control; the lapse into luxurious indulgence; the irresponsible attitude towards marriage and the consequent rising tide of divorce; the degeneracy of art and music, the infection of literature, and the corruption of the press; the extension of the influence and activities of those ‘prophets of decadence’ who advocate companionate marriage, who preach the philosophy of nudism, who call modesty an intellectual fiction, who refuse to regard the procreation of children as the sacred and primary purpose of marriage, who denounce religion as an opiate of the people, who would, if given free rein, lead back the human race to barbarism, chaos, and ultimate extinction . . . ”

By refusing in the name of objectivity to make value judgments, we have indeed obscured our “sense of decency and shame.” Yet Bahá’u’lláh tells us “that man should know his own self, and know those things which lead to loftiness or to baseness, to shame or to honor, to affluence or to poverty.” Thus it is clear that the victory over the degradation of the planet and over our collective lives must begin with our victory over ourselves. Bahá’u’lláh further writes “The right path is a path which leads man to the dayspring of perception and dawning-place of knowledge and directs him to that which is the cause of honor and glory and greatness. We hope that, by the providence of the wise Physician, the dust will be removed from his eyes and the clearness of his sight will increase, so that he may discover that for which he has been created. . . . ”

The future which Bahá’u’lláh envisions for mankind is unspeakably glorious—none other than the Kingdom of God on earth—and the processes for bringing about its attainment have been set in motion. But the distance between the vision and the reality depends, in large measure, on the perceptions we choose to develop. We can sink into the mire, or we can soar into the realms of the spirit and by so doing transmute both ourselves and our society.

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

THE STRUGGLE for existence has dominated human consciousness from the beginning of the race. Prehistoric man, armed with a few simple tools and an inventive mind, waged battle constantly for food, shelter, and security. Though the tools and the scope of man’s inventiveness have changed during thousands of years of advancing civilization, the struggle for existence has continued. Man has transformed the world only to find our social organization incapable of insuring the necessities of life for all.

Paradoxically, the very civilization which promises to ennoble human life has begun to turn upon us. A century ago, when the West dominated the world through its technological supremacy, Bahá’u’lláh wrote:

The civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences, will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men. . . . If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the bounds of moderation.

Today the excesses of civilization are discernible in all parts of the world and in all aspects of life. Our present institutions, based on nationalism, exploitative economic systems, and racism, are failing to exercise restraint or moderation. Instead of improving the quality of life, they lead us into militarization, commercialization, pollution, and, ultimately, dehumanization. Such concepts as “progress” and “the national interest” can yield only slightly to moderation. International institutions are needed to deal with humanity’s problems, and only such institutions can have the perspective required to restrain civilization in order to assure its benefits to mankind as a whole.

WORLD ORDER is pleased to present in this issue two articles which bear upon these themes. In “The Human Environment —International Dimensions of the Problem” Janez Stanovnik looks at ecology from a world viewpoint and suggests new ways of thinking about our role in the physical environment. He would, for example, have us revise the measurement of gross national product to reflect the ecological impact of an economy.

The second article is “Religion and World Order” by Horace Holley. First published nearly forty years ago, this essay clearly indicates how little has changed during these eventful decades. Horace Holley examines the present civilization and concludes that “Our social institutions are more powerful to destroy than to create; no matter how conscientiously administered, without transformation they are vessels not built to outride this time of worldwide storm.” The key to the transformation of our institutions is a renewal of religion as “the entire human life, its conscious and unconscious elements, its [Page 5] personal and social relationships, its affirmations and denials, its triumphs and defeats”—that is, religion as that sense of the wholeness of man and of mankind which can alone free us from the struggle for survival.

To the Editor

TREES, INSECTS, AND ECOLOGY

Conservationists and ecology-minded citizens sometimes are not aware of the total ecological picture in regard to the destruction of the environment through defoliation of trees by insects. Defoliation is a serious and destructive change in the ecosystem of an area with far greater ramifications than aesthetics or the loss of timber value.

If we do not control destructive insects, they can greatly speed up the cycle of pollution. In our cities we deplore the loss of clean air. Years ago there were many thousands of large trees with more than 50,000 leaves on each tree. We destroyed these trees in our cities and now have fewer trees with far fewer leaves on each tree. It is a simple matter to relate this reduction in green growth to the amount of carbon dioxide in our cities today. But still the expenditure for the care of city trees that clean the air is infinitesimal.

The problem of destructive insects has worsened because of the transplantation of insects to new areas where there are no natural controls to keep them in check. However, agricultural history has records of insect-caused famines and defoliation from early times to this century. Technological advances in agriculture, horticulture, and arboriculture can, when they are properly used with consideration of the ecosystem, solve the problem of insect-caused famine or the destruction of the environment by defoliation of green growth. Many people say we should let natural controls do this without polluting the environment with chemicals. Present experience has shown in many cases this will not happen, mainly because we have already destroyed these natural controls. We were told that the gypsy moth infestation would cease if we stopped spraying with DDT. Instead the gypsy moth has increased and is spreading to new areas and with greater speed, despite the use of some biological controls. Sawfly damage in Sweden increased so fast that the first country to ban DDT has reinstated its use in silviculture to prevent the loss of its forests.

A great deal of scientific research is needed to improve control methods and insecticides so the necessary control of insects can be accomplished with as little damage to the ecosystem as possible. Today we have a great number of relatively safe insecticides to choose from. Some are very selective and are dissipated rapidly into the surroundings. Some even increase the number of bacteria in the soil. The decision to use a certain insecticide must be based on the knowledge of what it will do in the ecosystem.

Ecologists should, in their studies, consider man’s ability to improve the conditions he lives in and not simply say we must live in conformity with nature. By using proper and more advanced agricultural methods we can feed more of the millions who now starve. We must learn to control population growth, diseases, and undesirable plants and insects in order to improve conditions for our children. Man is in reality a steward, and planning for the future environment and the continuing existence of life on earth is the basis of our life and happiness. If man does not accept this responsibility, no other creature can.

OSCAR P. STONE

Secretary

Connecticut Tree Protective Association

New Haven, Connecticut

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Religion and World Order

BY HORACE HOLLEY

Reprinted by permission of the Bahá’í Publishing Trust from The Bahá’í World (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1937), VI, 571-79.

IT was only a few generations ago when the people ceased thinking that man, with the animals and plants, inhabited a world composed of “dead” matter. Life was conceived to be that which could think, feel, move or at least which could grow and reproduce.

As the notion of “life” has become extended until it includes all matter, all substance, and every ingredient and constituent of substance, so has the notion of religion developed until it applies to the whole of man. No longer is religion confined, like a small island in a great sea, to that little area of belief and practice specialized under the influence of a formal creed. It is the entire human life, its conscious and unconscious elements, its personal and social relationships, its affirmations and denials, its triumphs and defeats, its hidden as well as its revealed awareness and action, its unrealized possibility along with its recognized, admitted frustration and impotence.

The real aim of the physical sciences is fulfilled in knowledge of man. The physical and chemical principles discovered in the world have meaning only as they are principles of human life. Man himself is the universe in miniature. Physical science thus becomes part of a larger science of biology, and biological science in turn becomes a chapter in the greater volume of the human science, psychology.

A man’s whole life, and not merely his conscious creedal practice, is his religion. His highest love is conditioned by his profoundest hate; his supreme sacrifice is limited by his unconscious selfishness; his ideals and his daily life are a single reality, one and inseparable.

The social sciences likewise are dependent for their validity on human psychology. When a science calling itself “economics” gives official sanction for cruel indifferences, when a science calling itself “politics” finds imperatives for armed frontiers, this lack of agreement between these social sciences and the sanctions of the separate department of human life called “religion” does not mean that men live in three separate worlds, obeying three mutually exclusive “laws”—it means simply that a general failure in the realm of motive and understanding has projected itself outward into society, and this failure men try to conceal from themselves and each other by labeling the anti-religious actions one or another “science.”

But just as these evasions and attempts at concealment in personal life sooner or later come to a balance of accounts with every other element of the personality, so the elaborate myth called “civilization” has now become rent to fragments as the social “sciences” and the formal creeds alike eventuate in a society which as a whole does not know how to survive. It matters not which element of the whole result is made the scapegoat —whether formal “religion” or “economics” or “politics”—the truth is that man himself has failed in his social relationships, and this failure in turn rests upon failure in his relationship to himself. The fictitious separation of life into formal departments, each with an exclusive label, has been unconscious evasion of reality the final result of which was inevitable from the beginning.

On no Other basis [than the integration of the personality and the further integration of [Page 8] that personality with society] can we meet a spiritual knowledge preserving the responsibility on which integrity depends.

AT SOME DEFINITE POINT of experience, the conscious person comes to realize the oneness of the universe and the wholeness of human personality. His formal religious beliefs undergo profound adjustment as he perceives their artificial separateness from the rest of his existence. Able no longer to isolate “Sunday” from the remaining days of the week, his new sense of cause and effect compels him to fit his religious values into experience as a whole. This adjustment in some cases enhances the whole of life with new spiritual possibility; in other cases what had been a mere artificial belief or practise is destroyed, and life as a whole becomes secular and without spiritual content.

The philosophic projection of this awareness is pantheism or atheism—both are based upon an effort to realize the universe as homogeneous, as one. The only difference between pantheism and atheism is that the former raises everything to the “high” level of God, or Spirit, or Providence while the latter reduces everything to the “low” level of matter and natural law.

The similarity between pantheism and atheism is more vital than the difference. Both philosophies establish one single level; both maintain a view of the universe which interprets experience in terms of cause and effect operating on one plane. There is little real distinction between realizing all substance as “God” and realizing all experience as subject to natural law; for both views deprive one of the necessity of making any truly vital choice.

The realization of oneness, in fact, is but a starting point in the search for religion. Religion is distinctiveness as well as universality.

Historically, religion has a definite point of origin. No religion has come into existence without a Founder, a Prophet, or Messiah.

Whether one considers Christianity, Judaism, Muḥammadanism or any Other organic religion historically, what appears is the phenomenon of religion as an experience suddenly interposed into the current stream of human life. This interposition compels the most vital choice or decision which life can offer. It creates a new standard of reality rising like a mountain from the plain of daily intercourse. Its influence sets the individual against his own past, and historically has always made a definite cleavage in the course of civilization. The prophet becomes identified with a higher possibility in the present, which necessarily divides the future from the past. Life tends to become dynamic and assert new directions, while the past exists in the present as inertia.

RELIGIOUS HISTORY is meaningless when conceived merely as a time sequence without reference to the fundamental law of cycles.

We take for granted the existence of this law whenever dealing with natural phenomena: the cycle of life operating for the tree from seed to fruit, for the human being from birth to death, even for the stars of immensest magnitude. But societies and social institutions seldom or never admit that for their own existence there is also an allotted period, the beginning of which is their birth, the end of which is their destruction, during the course of which they rise to a climax of maturity and power, receding thereafter until eventually they are no more.

Tracing this development in Judaism we come to the civilization of Solomon, a glory that could not be retained. In Christianity we have the feudal age, when religion could be completely identified with civilization, after which the Reformation destroyed the unity not only of the church but of the civilization as well. Here stands the origin of “modern” times, which actually have been the autumn and winter of faith. On one side has existed an alliance between national state, natural science, industry, and militarism; on the other side the tradition of feudal aristocracy, the [Page 9] memory of a living unifying faith, the organization of the church.

Both phases in reality proceeded from the same prior condition. One cannot be termed “Christian” and the other “pagan” or “non-Christian” with the slightest historical accuracy. For modern militarism, justified as the necessary virtue of the national state, derives immediately from the Crusades, justified as the necessary virtue of the church. The profit motive, justified as the necessary virtue of industry, derives immediately from the practice of the sale of indulgences, justified as the necessary virtue of the church. If modern science is condemned as “pagan,” a vast power delivered over to the secular realm, it must be recalled that the first faint beginnings of natural science were so resisted by the church that the scientists were compelled to develop their knowledge outside the religious community.

The Reformation, then, merely marks the point at which the historical religion had reaped its harvest, produced its richest fruit, and consequently could no longer maintain its internal unity nor its balance between religion and civilization.

The law of cycles operates in the case of religions and nations no less imperatively than in the case of trees, animals, planets, and human beings. This law may for a time appear inoperative where the larger social bodies are concerned, but this is merely for the reason that man has yet attained no adequate sense of historical process, and also because even after a great social institution has died spiritually it can still survive physically for a relatively long period. But when a religion ceases to be the motive and inspiration of civilization, its date of death is recorded in the annals of destiny. And once this spiritual death has taken place, the religion can never be artificially revived.

The “modern” world, striving to transform nationalism into world order, overcome the antagonism of economic classes and reconcile peoples and creeds, is nothing else than a larger example of ancient Rome striving to maintain order, justice, and law after its original impulse had ebbed and the creative power had passed from the imperial government to the weak, despised, and minority body of Christians, reborn by the mystery of superhuman faith. Our social institutions are more powerful to destroy than to create; no matter how conscientiously administered, without transformation they are vessels not built to outride this time of worldwide storm.

WHEN the creative power of spirit is withdrawn from the community as a whole, and the parts of the community engage in mutual struggle for predominance or survival, the life cycle of that social order has run its course.

Such is the nature of the present crisis. The old order was based historically upon Christianity in the West, upon Muḥammadanism and other Faiths in the East. Each Faith had, in accordance with the principle underlying human society, developed a characteristic civilization representing a balance between legal, cultural, economic, and social factors. All these regional civilizations had arrived at that stage in the cyclic process marked by the weakening of the original religious impulse, which bound the civilization together in one organism, and by the assertion of the superiority of the constituent parts over the whole.

As in Christianity a few centuries ago, so in Muḥammadanism today, law, government, education, and industry have thrown off the control of the religious tradition and undergone separate development, each seeking a fulfilment in terms of its own independent need and without reference to the general need of the community in its spiritual as well as material integrity. This development is more complete in the West, but the history of Europe since the Reformation has been paralleled in all essentials by the more recent experience of Turkey, Egypt, and Írán.

The crucial point in this development is the transfer of social authority from a religious organization, by which it has been [Page 10] fatally abused, to a secular organization explicitly claiming to be unmoral. At the stage of religious decay where this transfer of authority takes place, the secular government cannot control the entire area previously controlled by the religious influence. The transfer is characterized by the rise of several independent secular governments which divide the body of believers into separate, and potentially competitive nations. Western nationality arose from the spiritual death of Christendom, and the nations of Islám are similarly independent and exclusive.

The next step in the process, which in reality is disintegration and not “progress” except in a local and temporary degree, consists in the reinforcement of the secular (unmoral) authority by such laws and instruments as it deems necessary to protect itself in the rapidly augmenting struggle for national existence. Religion is replaced by patriotism of an exclusive nature, and the social duty of man becomes defense of his national state. Militarism inevitably develops. Compulsory military duty, found necessary as economic rivalry follows the original territorial competition of the states, sets mankind upon the path of death.

In the modern world this complete divorce between spiritual and material values, enmeshing human life in a fatal net as economic and social existence come to depend upon struggle and competition rather than upon unity and cooperation, establishes a point of crisis imperiling the race. Authority, power, and initiative throughout society are identified with unmoral institutions whose fiat controls a system of destruction well-nigh universal in capacity. On the Other hand, the spiritual tradition of each race has become sterile, for ecclesiasticism is the negation of faith.

Such a jungle of competitive nationalism seems to reproduce, in terms of social organizations, the era of the pre-historic monsters marking an early stage in the biological evolution of the world of nature. Forms of life organized almost entirely for offense and defense had little available energy for the kind of response required in a changing world. Evolution left them behind. Their towering strength was their fatal weakness, and in their enormous aggressiveness they had no capacity to survive.

In the same way, the present stage of armed, competitive nationalism is essentially transitory and fugitive. The more aggressive it becomes, the less its capacity to meet social problems the only solution of which is nonaggression —cooperation. The states have waxed powerful upon the poverty of the people; their might is an illusion. They can destroy themselves by one final outburst of general war; or a series of revolutions, each perhaps small and almost unnoted, will evolve from them a type of government intelligent enough to deal with social relationships and moral enough to summon the highest and not the lowest impulses of an evolving race.

The key to future social evolution lies in the capacity for transformation rather than in mere progress and extension along the lines fixed by our prior history. For progress is the law of the cycle, but transformation is the sign that a cycle has run its term and a new age has dawned.

It is evolutionary progress when a form of life becomes larger, or fleeter by adaptation to its environment. This type of progress marks the biological world, where the natural environment is fundamentally constant. Likewise, when the social environment remains fundamentally constant, an institution progresses by growth in ways determined by its original character and aim.

Unlike nature, the social environment is subject to profound alteration. The development of machine production was more than progress from a small tool to a larger tool; it brought about an entirely different kind of society. Action and reaction in an industrialized society are not simply enlargement of the action and reaction of an agricultural, handcraft society—they respond in quality to a different law. The plane has been raised [Page 11] from physical effort to intelligence.

As long as the simple law of progress applies to human society, the evil will be multiplied along with the good, the destruction will augment by the same ratio as the construction.

The symbol of transformation in the natural world is the organism like the butterfly, which at one stage is an egg, at the next stage is a caterpillar, becomes then a chrysalis in its cocoon, thence emerging as imago, the perfect insect with beautifully colored wings. Applying the law of simple progress to this organism at any preliminary stage, we would have merely a larger egg, or a greater caterpillar, or a larger and stronger cocoon. Metamorphosis is the scientific equivalent of that organic change which takes place in human society at those critical stages marked by the cycles of religion.

It is by no means necessary to contemplate a simple extension into the future of the social agencies dominating this transitional era. The progress of national government into empire is strictly limited by interstate competition, and the progress of religion into the condition of world empire by any one creed is no less impossible.

THE IMPERMANENCE of the several civilizations now existing becomes clear when we give attention to the nonsocial character of the religions from which they separately sprang.

In the saying, “Give unto Caesar” we are compelled to note that the Founder of Christianity limited His spiritual teaching to persons, to individuals, and refrained from extending that teaching to establish a principle for society. The character and scope of the Christian teaching, at its source, clearly contemplated an era during which individuals were to cultivate a spiritual life, purifying their inner motives and assuming responsibility for their deeds, in contrast to and complete disregard of their social institutions. They were to seek a Kingdom in the realm of the awakened and conscious soul, but the world was Caesar’s and the successors’ of Caesar.

Moreover, that doctrine, at its source, does not fail to include a social principle alone: it is in essence a doctrine of the “heart” and makes no provision for the life of the mind. It justifies no particular social form, creates a basis for no particular type of social institution, and in nowise explains those aspects of life and the universe which constitute the ends of psychology and philosophy. It renewed man’s inner life, it revealed more fully than ever before the nature of God and the spiritual capacity of human beings; it released a quality of personal relationships on the high plane required to maintain the new vision of the sanctity of life; but Christianity, at its source and in its reality, supports no political principle, sustains no economic theory, outlines no cosmogony, throws no light upon man’s relation to the physical universe, and sanctions no conception of the function of mind.

These organic limitations, imposed not by absence of power at the Source but by lack of capacity in the environment and age, mark a cycle whose term was set at its beginning. It signalizes one necessary stage in the evolution of religion, or rather in the upward march of conscious human life, but finality is entirely absent, because the requisite foundation in revealed truth for the wholeness of life was not spiritually established.

Unlike a scientific formula, religious truth does not continue indefinitely and independent of the way it is applied. While a chemical action can be employed for good or evil ends with equal efficiency, a spiritual truth, to possess validity, must include the vital element represented by the believer’s quality of response. When the quality of [Page 12] response has fallen below the level of the aim implied in the truth, the truth becomes void of influence. The living impulse sent forth from its Source has been expended; what remains is a form of words, a lifeless symbol, a ceremony possessing psychic but not spiritual effect.

Civilization is the outworking of spiritual faith. That faith inspires fresh courage, removes the barriers of personality and groups, stimulates the mind to solve necessary problems from the point of view of the society as a whole, establishes a foundation of human reality raised above the bestial struggle for existence, and enables mankind to take one more forward step in its progress upon the eternal path.

There is, however, no historical permanence for any civilization equivalent to the universality of revelation upon the plane of soul. Until mankind is united within one true faith and within one order of justice and knowledge, the need of the renewal and enlargement of spiritual truth is manifest to all.

THE EXTERNAL SURFACE of human life, as recorded by sympathetic observers in every country, has become marked by appalling personal misery. Its innumerable details constitute a catalog which oppresses the heart like a Book of Doom. By war, by influenza, by poverty, and by revolution a vast number of people have been reduced to a narrow margin of existence we thought had been left behind with the memories of the stone age before history began.

But this external surface does not reflect the entire content of modern life. The observer who concentrates all his attention upon the evidences of misfortune and suffering must be balanced by those who look with equal clarity beneath physical evidence to the inner surface and the foundations upon which human life is established. The world of the mind is rich with infinite possibilities, in tragic contrast to the poverty of the world of the body.

From the world of truth, as from an inexhaustible mine, we have derived truly miraculous reinforcement for the feeble body in its eternal struggle against the environment of nature. No longer need human aspiration and will be limited in fulfillment by the inadequate tool of hand and arm, directed by the inaccurate and incomplete guidance of the five physical senses. Mechanisms as sensitive as thought itself, as powerful as human ambition requires, stand as servants ready to carry out any material command. However far imagination may fly ahead, it can reach no ultimate limit beyond which the creative thought of the race dare not go.

But these two worlds, the world of body and the world of mind, though man lives native in both, appear to coexist independently, in a relationship which is a separation no less than it is a context. The scientist’s achievement in the form of truth has no human equivalent in the form of social security. The inventor’s technique has complicated existence but multiplied poverty. The world of truth is the modern Tantalus cup, offering what life cannot receive, even while it is likened to the slave of the lamp, fulfilling every command.

Social systems and programs devised during the last hundred years have one and all been efforts to confirm the contact and overcome the separation between the world of truth and the world of human experience. They have sought to mediate between the possibility of mind and the actuality of social need. What thought has accomplished in efficiency of mechanism it has endeavored to duplicate in efficiency of human relations. But every system and program combining the possibility of scientific truth with the social ingredient of human nature has produced not order but an increase of conflict. What appears perfectly fused in the crucible of abstract speculation reasserts its duality when put to the test of life. Socialism, communism, capitalism fundamentalist or reformed—all these systems alike—are unmistakably incapable [Page 13] of reconciling and blending the worlds of body and mind, the truths of science and society. The more that arbitrary power is applied to compel their acceptance as programs, the more explosive becomes the reaction of the human nature coerced in the name of efficiency and truth. Ours is not the first civilization to be brought to an end by mental capacity devoid of spiritual truth.

The unescapable historic fact is that the mediator between universe and humanity, the link between the world of truth and the world of social experience, has never been the speculative mind but the Prophet. The mind discovers only that which it seeks; its voyages of exploration bring back only that reality which can be confined in the small cage of material reason. The universe is not such captive truth, such mastered knowledge. The universe is the Will above and beyond man’s physical will; that Will by which man must become and not merely possess, by which man must serve and not merely enslave to himself. The life and words of a Moses, a Jesus, a Muḥammad, by the spirit inspiring them are truth. Within that truth, since it contains man and is not merely man’s exploitation of what he contains, the life of the race is secure and progressive. Outside that truth, human existence moves ever toward destruction; for the Prophet is truth in that form in which it applies to the life of mankind.

By each Prophet is established a new civilization, because each Prophet establishes a spiritual world for the soul not less real than the nature which is the world of the body; The modern age, in all its social relationships, lies outside the spiritual world. Hence its agony, its frustration physical and mental, the degradation of an unrepentant Prodigal Son.

NEVER has there been such a time of sincere, wholehearted searching for a foundation grounded not upon secondary, temporary historical events and developments but upon the nature of the universe itself. This age, in its spirit, feels nearer to the ancient Prophets than has any generation since the first generation of believers laid down their lives that the divine Cause might prevail. Not in Christendom alone, but in the other existing civilizations, the appeal to the pure manifestation of love and wisdom, the racial Prophet, has become for many the last refuge of hope that human life can endure, can be meaningful and blessed upon this troubled earth.

Between themselves and that radiant Source of hope they feel the long centuries of strife and ignorance fading to the unreality of a frantic dream. Let mankind, they cry from the depths of their souls, let mankind make a new beginning; let life rest upon the sure foundation of the Divine will; let us become transformed, renewed with a new spirit, and in that spirit proceed to transform all things which are in denial of or in conflict with that eternal will. The nations hurry to destruction, they lament, when vision perishes. From this undying flame let our hearts and minds be kindled with the fire of love.

As the crisis persists, this call, feeble at first, becomes louder and more assured. First a personal attitude, then a social movement, gathering force and momentum, the going back to the Prophet now represents a mighty psychological crusade paralleling the physical crusades of medieval times.

To what degree can this movement be fulfilled?

The Prophet himself made a fundamental condition, that those who sought to follow him should abandon their goods, their wealth, and walk in his path. This was said to a rich man’s son, but does it not apply likewise to those who have inherited goods and wealth in the realm of mind? Does it not mean that those who seek to return today must abandon their acquired culture, their traditional philosophy, their ecclesiastical inStitutions, their rites and ceremonies, their pomp of church and churchly power? Either it means this, or it means nothing at all, for the Prophet was not slain by the materially [Page 14] rich of his day; he was slain by order of the established church.

For Christendom, surely, the sincerity of all effort to establish life upon Divine rather than upon human will must be tested by conformity to the conditions its own Prophet laid down. When the churches voluntarily disband, and people of all denominations and sects seek the Prophet upon absolutely equal terms, then, and then alone, will this psychological crusade reach the Holy Land. As long as certain individual believers alone fulfil this test, the movement will not affect the vital problems of civilization but remain in the limited realm of personal experience. It may produce a beautiful literature; it will not carry civilization outside its captivity to the lords of war.

There is also, it would appear, another essential condition to be met in this poignant appeal from the world to God: the recognition that other races likewise had their Prophets, their revelations of the Divine will. For without such recognition, the crusade goes hostile and armed, a challenge to battle and not a conquest of universal peace. These two conditions—at root one condition seen in two different aspects—may fairly be said to be so difficult of realization as to be highly improbable, if not impossible, at least without one single precedent in human history. Rivers flow downhill; and the water once descended from its spring does not return.

A CONTEMPORARY HISTORIAN remarks that the old world has died, but a new world has not yet been born. This view is no doubt the expression of an attitude which has come to prevail among many thoughtful people over a wide social area. It perceives that the foundation of the civilization existing prior to the European War cannot be rebuilt; it realizes to the full the present instability of conditions and the lack of agreement among aims and programs; it frankly admits that the future, both in general trend and in outline, is concealed from the rational mind. Its clarity of analysis of the past is matched by its incapacity for synthesis directed toward the future.

What emerges from consideration of this frank and sincere assertion is awareness of the artificial limitation assumed by the rational intelligence in dealing with the process of human history. By the phrase “old world” and “new world” it means civilization as formal institutions and established habits, and thereby overlooks the significant fact that civilization is an effect and not primarily a cause.

For civilization, long before it emerges in formal institutions, exists as an aspiration of the heart, as an ideal to be pursued and fulfilled by every faculty of mind and soul. It is only when human aspiration and ideal, shared by a considerable group or community, has gathered force and thrust through to the plane of social action, that civilization actually begins. Without this preliminary period of spiritual action, no civilization has ever become manifest. That period is to the later formal institutions and habits and doctrines as the root to the visible tree. Though the entire tree is potentially present in the seed, the great trunk and the widespread branches are contingent upon a period of prior and invisible growth within the soil.

To complete the thoughtful statement uttered by the historian, it is necessary to seek for the future “world” not in different programs and expedients adopted by the institutions of the dead “world” but in evidences of a spiritual life intense enough, universal enough, to establish within humanity that inner power required to raise the trunk and spread forth the branches of a tree whose fruit shall be universal peace.

World order, it is clear, represents a goal which includes the reconciliation of two values or ideals: the spiritual value of human brotherhood, and the social value of a united, an organic civilization.

Without a firm and enduring basis in moral unity, the institutions of society, no matter how far extended, cannot alone produce peace but will remain as centers of [Page 15] disunity and strife. On the other hand, those instinctive anarchists who preach a “brotherhood” conceived as absence of governmental institutions are naïve and immature. Society without institutions would be a body without vital organs capable of expressing its various capacities and maintaining its existence.

These two values—humanity and civilization —have never been reconciled and united within the brief historic period known to the present age. We have had races but not mankind, cultures but not spiritual knowledge, nations but not civilization, and religions but not a brotherhood embracing the earth. We therefore approach the vital problem of world peace without experience of what world peace really is. World order—the goal of human evolution—cannot rightly be conceived as a mere truce or treaty between groups or institutions each born of past strife and discord, each cherishing a secret or avowed superiority and each committed to an ideal of sovereignty incompatible with the needs of permanent peace. Nor can world order be effectively upheld on terms of “noncooperation” with existing agencies responsible for the little public order which now remains. Peace does not consist in abhorrence of war but in maintaining a steadfast conviction that the end of faith is human unity and the fulfilment of intelligence is a new social form, worldwide in scope and superior to the local forms which can no longer protect mankind and serve its highest interests.

In addition to a political world order, the attainment of universal peace involves:

1. The harmony and cooperation of races.

2. The unity of religions in a world faith.

3. An economic world order in which capital and labor are conjoined in a relationship of partners and not competitors.

4. Compulsory education throughout the world, and an education grounded in universal ethics and adapted so as to prepare every child for a useful trade, art, or profession.

5. A universal secondary language.

Compared to these organic aims, the peace efforts aimed at occasional details such as reduction of armaments or the signing of new treaties are insignificant. The character of this age is wholly new. It is charged with a spirit of transformation superficially violent but in reality constructive. The whole problem of world order consists in attaining an attitude of reverence and humility to that creative spirit.

The principles briefly stated here were promulgated more than twenty years ago by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in whom the spirit of the age found its most faithful interpreter and its noblest exemplar. He declared that humanity is entering upon its period of maturity, when powers will be given the world to achieve an organic unity never possible in any previous age. But ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made the enjoyment of these powers conditional upon purity of motive and acceptance of the oneness of mankind. Not for the people of prejudice and division, not for the organized selfishness of the rich nor the organized envy of the poor, but for those who have become truly human the day of universal peace has dawned. The way backward has become a door that is forever closed. Revolutions and wars bring no lasting fruit; arbitrary social laws, divorced from human values, bring no true security nor repose. The world needs a central point of inspiration raised above the clamors of history, a divine element, to supply a foundation for the latent unity within all people of good will.

“The foundations of all the divine religions are peace and agreement, but misunderstanding and ignorance have developed. If these are caused to disappear you will see that all the religious agencies will work for peace and promulgate the oneness of humankind. For the foundation of all is reality, and reality it not multiple or divisible. His Holiness Moses founded it, His Holiness Jesus raised its tent, and its brilliant light has shone forth in all the regions. His Holiness Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed this one reality and spread the message of the ‘Most Great Peace.’”

[Page 16]

The Human Environment—International Dimensions of the Problem

BY JANEZ STANOVNIK

* Text of an address by the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe, at the Annual Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations at United Nations Headquarters, on 25 May 1971, on the theme of “The United Nations and the Human Environment.” Reprinted with slight editorial modifications, with the kind permission of the U.N. Office of Public Information, External Relations Division.

I should like to start from one of the thoughts that the Secretary-General [U Thant] has left with us: the lesson and the notion that peace is indivisible, that we came out of the Second World War recognizing this fact, and that it has been the cornerstone of this Organization. As the French philosopher Renan once said, it is human suffering which unites people and the joys which disunite them. So in common suffering we became more united during the Second World War and out of that war we came with a clear recognition that peace is indivisible. As a matter of fact, it was also during the war, in 1945, that the International Labor Organization met in Philadelphia and proclaimed the slogan that poverty anywhere represents a danger for prosperity everywhere —which was the basic philosophy of the United Nations in the economic and social field.

Unfortunately, it took some additional time before we finally learned what we should have learned in elementary school: that nature is indivisible also. It was the late Adlai Stevenson—I had the great privilege of listening to him in Geneva just a few days before he passed away— who stated that we are all the same crew in the spaceship Earth and that we have a common obligation towards this spaceship Earth. I think that this notion, the indivisibility of nature, encompasses also the other two indivisibilities: the indivisibility of prosperity and the indivisibility of peace. We finally came to recognize that we are soil of the soil, that we belong to nature also, that we cannot be governed by other laws but by those which govern nature as well, and that accordingly our social and economic laws must take into account the unavoidable laws of nature.

And this is what brings us today into the midst of the problems of the environment. The environment is actually not a new problem. It has been living with us ever since the beginning of civilization— scientists today say for hundreds of thousands and maybe even for millions of years. However, it is true that it has come to our attention only lately as a consequence of an extremely intensive technological development. But it is not science or technology by themselves which violated nature and environmental harmony; it has been rather the biased and one-sided application of science and technology by man.

One Million Scientists at Work

IT has been said that today there are more scientists alive than the total produced before our time since the beginning of [Page 17] history. Within the territory served by the organization whose Executive Secretary I have the privilege of being—the Economic Commission for Europe, of which the United States is also a member—are almost all the countries of the developed world. Today, in these countries, not fewer than one million scientists are at work. The member countries of this Commission spend annually $50 billion for scientific research. Just to give you an idea of what this means, $50 billion represents more than the total national income of India. And that $50 billion, if divided on a per capita basis among all peoples living within the area of the Economic Commission for Europe, would represent half of the average per capita income of people in the developing countries—that is, half of what the citizens of the developing countries have to live on annually is spent by us in the developed world for scientific research only.

This research, of course, accelerates our knowledge tremendously. Not only do we know more and more from day to day, but the speed of application of this knowledge becomes greater and greater. It took almost a whole century from the time the principle of the steam power machine was known to the time when it was applied in industry. It took about half a century from the time the telephone was scientifically discovered until the time when it was applied. But it took only ten years for radar to be discovered and to be applied in the Second World War. It took five years only from the time that the transistor was discovered until it was manufactured. Today, the integrated circuit is discovered and almost literally tomorrow it is manufactured.

Science today has come into full production, and this marriage between science or knowledge and production is called technology. The momentum of technological development is tremendous. But when we apply knowledge for the satisfaction of what we think are our needs—not that they necessarily are, but hidden persuaders succeed in convincing us that we have further needs, and technology is always ready to satisfy the needs we feel we have—this application of technology is often accompanied by deficient knowledge; we know just a little bit, but not the whole.

Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice

WE behave like the sorcerer’s apprentice who did not know the whole trick but learned just a little from his master. And with this little he then unleashed a tremendous chain reaction whose end he did not see. Similarly, we one-sidedly apply technologies which break the natural cycles without knowing really where is the [Page 18] end of the avalanche which we have started—and this goes on and on.

The moment has come when we start feeling this boomerang effect on our welfare. We go on thinking that the laws of nature permit us to interfere with nature, and we forget that we are also a part of this very nature and not the lords of the world. What we do is done for good, I would say maybe even for humanitarian, purposes. We discover new laws of biology, we discover a new chemistry; and as there is a vitality in our race, so we want to defeat death. We interfere with nature, and we increase human life expectancy by eliminating communicable diseases by the use of DDT and other means. We interfere with nature, and we have no guilty conscience because of that.

But what we forget is that there are other laws of nature also and that there are laws which work on the other side of the fence—the fertility laws. We have unleashed here a chain reaction of population growth for which there is no end. But if we want to have a solution to the population problem—and everybody is speaking about the population problem —then my answer to the population problem is the social and economic development of the world and not the pill.

Interference with Nature

WE must know that we cannot act on the biological side only, leaving the social and economic side completely untouched. We break the cycle on the one side, and then we say that we do not want to break the cycle on the other. Yet, the forces on the other side will overcompensate for what we have done on this side. And then we have what is called the population explosion. Since we have this population explosion, of course, we argue that we must do something about it. There are many hungry peoples. We must feed them. We bring to agriculture the “green revolution,” that is, the use of new seed varieties which can increase output and the “green revolution” again interferes with nature —everything interferes with nature. We start developing a so-called capital-intensive agriculture. We pour plenty of fertilizers and pesticides onto the land. But these fertilizers and pesticides get washed away by water from the land into the lakes and eutrophication starts in the lakes and all the waters become rotten—this has already started in Europe, and exists on a large scale in America—and this is what will happen to the developing world shortly unless we become wiser.

For the “green revolution,” fertilizer is not enough. We must have mechanization also; and mechanization takes the place of people. People move from the land into the cities. Here we have the urban problem. There is no point in crying about favellas, shanty towns, and beds on wheels. It is a natural consequence of the fact that we have broken the cycle on the one hand, but we do not want to cope with the consequences of the broken cycle on the other hand. We have a tremendous problem of urbanization in almost all countries. We have polluted the waters on the one side, and we have the urbanization problem on the other. When we have this urbanization problem, we say we must develop industries. And here we start again. We develop industries, and developing industries means using a lot of energy. For the last half century we have burned more coal and other fuels than in the entire period of human history. What will be waiting for us when we use energy every year at the rate of a ten percent increase?

Scientists Will Predict Consequences

WE translate that energy into heat, and so we increase the amount of carbon dioxide, [Page 19] as well as particulate matter, in the air. Scientists tell us they do not know—but they suspect—that this will increase the air’s temperature to the extent that the polar ice cap may finally start melting and that this beautiful city of New York will be entirely flooded by the sea. Or, they say, another thing could happen: the particulate matter in the air will prevent solar energy from reaching the earth, bringing on another ice age.

Now, it is not science fiction when scientists tell us that within five or ten years they will be able to predict with absolute precision what will happen unless we put a stop to our present madness. I used the word “madness,” and I think some of you, if not all, may have been shocked by that. I think there is, of course, nothing wrong with the fact that man produces. Man must produce. The earth was given to him not only to be tilled but also to be taken good care of—not to be spoiled and disrupted. We cannot and must not leave this “spaceship Earth” to the younger generation in worse shape than we got it from our ancestors. It is the common heritage of the human race.

I come now to the problem of what to do when we see that, one by one, natural cycles are broken by what we refer to as “economic growth.” This, I believe you will understand, is my “cup of tea” as Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe.

What is this “economic growth” about which we speak so much? I think our civilization, unfortunately, has become too materialistic. We measure everything statistically, and we appreciate only tangible matters. Whatever is measurable or tangible counts; everything else is nothing. Thus we developed the concept of economic growth, which is statistically the growth of material, marketable products, and services. Whatever we can sell counts and increases what we consider to be our welfare and economic growth. We become so proud of this economic growth that we behave like children watching a football game in which the one with the high score is the victor and the one with the lower score the defeated. So what counts among nations is the rate of growth: they classify each other by the rapidity of their rates of growth in material products: if your rate is high you are good; if your rate is low you are no good.

Pollution Problems in Paper Production

NOW, I think it takes some reflection to understand what is actually behind this “growthmanship” on which we have been leaning now for almost two decades. Let me give you an example. Suppose you produce paper. In order to produce paper, first, of course, you must cut a few hectares of timber, somewhere in Canada perhaps, spoiling the landscape in doing so; and you bring it here to New York. I have been told that it takes five acres of forest to produce the Sunday edition of The New York Times—which I always have trouble carrying because it is too heavy—and I must confess what I think is an open secret: I never read more than a maximum of five percent of it, but I throw away the whole thing; it then litters the New York Streets. There is the problem of garbage, but that is not the major problem; the problem is that the paper industry which produces that paper pollutes the rivers, and all that pollution then goes into the lakes and seas and spoils an important part of the “spaceship Earth.” We count, in calculating our national income, the work involved in cutting down the trees, the work done in the factory to produce the paper, the work done in the printing-house, the work of all [Page 20] the people who then distribute the newspaper, and of the garbage-men who clean away the discarded product—all this is counted. But what the paper factory does to the river or lake or sea is not counted.

That, however, is not as difficult a problem as the one caused by a company which shall remain nameless but which has its chimneys here in our neighborhood —a company which decides to build, instead of those huge chimneys, a nuclear power station. And it is spending a lot of money to build that nuclear power station somewhere in the central United States, resulting in an increase in the national income of the United States. This is included in the trillion-dollar figure for your gross national product. Once that plant is built, however, and it starts to emit radiation waste products and heat the river water which is used to cool the reactors, then it will take even more money to eliminate these undesirable by-products. All that money goes into the national income figure also.

Now, here it becomes a question of how relevant is this increase in the material product, irrespective of asking to what use that product is actually put. Only after becoming aware of all these imperfections and deficiencies do we—when I say “we” I also include the members of the economic profession—realize that the traditional instrument of measurement of the so-called gross national product is far from being perfect and that we must change it.

Outmoded Methods of Accounting

WE are beginning to realize that in the process of production there are not only so-called external economies and economies of scale. We wisely developed these concepts to indicate that if you rightly combine several activities or produce in large quantities then you get something which is a net addition, a saving in costs. Because transport is cheaper per unit you obtain economies of scale. We have been speaking a lot about external economies and economies of scale. But it is only lately that we have begun to speak of the diseconomies of our production. We now begin to recognize that these economies result in harm which we are doing to nature, and they must also be counted. We cannot live any longer with an economic analysis which counts only the consumption for which we pay directly.

The other day at Prague at the ECE Symposium on Environment I told the participants the following story: when you take nice clean water and put into it a little bit of sugar and color, you call it Coca-Cola and you increase production. But when you clean a dirty river and you clean it thoroughly so you can drink from it, you call that a net loss for the national income because nobody pays for the river even though people are drinking from it. It is not considered as consumption and therefore it is a loss for the national economy. We have come to realize that our traditional methods of accounting are imperfect and that the impelling needs of the times require that we change our traditional concepts which do not correspond any longer to our purposes.

I come now to technology. We have worshiped technology. Everything that was new was immediately admired and had to be bought because it was new. Nobody really looked into the matter of whether all that technology, from the point of view of civilization, was really necessary. We have applied technology using the criterion of private or individual profitability, without really looking into what the technology when applied does to our common social good. Social benefit was not taken into account when technology was applied. The sorcerer’s apprentice was introducing new devices without really [Page 21] knowing what the final consequences would be. In the last days of the old Roman civilization the slogan was: “Just swallow, use the day, don’t think of tomorrow.” That civilization was destroyed. And when the French King said, “Après moi, le déluge,” his régime was ended.

A New Concept of Economic Growth

NOW we are acting in the same way with respect to our technology. We say, “I don’t care what comes tomorrow.” If we do so, we cannot complain about the youngsters who say, “You had your time, and you left all the garbage for us to clean.” I consider, therefore, that the very concept of economic growth must be changed. We must understand that economic growth is not and cannot be just quantitative growth of output in material products. It must be an organic development.

Now what can organic development possibly mean? It could and should mean that we develop not only material products but simultaneously social benefits as well—that we calculate social welfare as well as tangible goods. We must depart from the notion that what counts is only what one swallows or what one wears. What counts is also that I can breathe the air; what counts is also that I can drink the water, that I can satisfy my human esthetic needs.

Not so long ago our Commission had a very interesting scientific seminar in Warsaw. It was a seminar on scientific forecasting. I was shocked by one of the papers which was produced by leading biological and medical scientists from the United Kingdom. They calculated, on the basis of very thorough insight and analysis, that medical costs in the United Kingdom would increase until the end of this century by a factor of twenty from today, and that seven percent of the total earnings in the United Kingdom by the year 2000 would go into hospitals. I must ask myself: Should the hospital become so important in our total expenditures? If we continue to act as we are acting, that will definitely be the unavoidable consequence.

Vigorous Environmental Policy Needed

WHAT is the action to be taken? My answer is that we must develop in each country and internationally a vigorous environmental policy. Up to now we have had no environmental policy anywhere. We have had fiscal policies; we have had monetary policies. We talk about incomes policy, about agricultural policy, industrial policy, science policy, educational policy, and other policies. However, there is no environmental policy. Environment is a big untouchable. Why? Because we obviously felt it would take care of itself. This is how people have actually behaved. You may ask me how and why it is that we dump all the garbage in the river or in the air. Is it because there is no property value given to the air or the water? We think that we can dump our refuse into the sea because we feel that the sea is so tremendously big that there will be no damage if we put it there. I still remember my days as a young diplomat when I came to Geneva for the conferences there some fifteen years ago. The lake there was so clean that I felt like drinking it when I was bathing in the lake. Today it is forbidden to bathe in that lake because it is so heavily polluted; yet the lake of Geneva is tremendously big, almost 100 miles long.

This all happened in fifteen years. How are the big oceans different from the lake? Pollution from the lakes and rivers drains into the sea; the sea is a big reservoir which interacts with the air and therefore makes our life sustainable. We still do not understand fully the life-giving and life-restoring [Page 22] value of the sea, but it is now clear that we are dumping into it more than it can absorb.

We need an international policy. The Secretary-General said this morning that the environment is an international problem; most environmental issues are international in nature. The winds blow in all directions and the waters wash many shores. Therefore, you cannot pollute the waters at home without finally, through several reverberations, having it end up in the waters or atmosphere of your neighbor and finally in all human communities.

Issues of Global Concern

WE can dump wastes into the seas because there is no sovereignty over the seas. We are very careful about doing harm to our national territory because it is ours. When we say, “What is not mine I do not care about,” harm is done to all of us—to the human race. Therefore I say that we need a vigorous international policy at several levels: on the regional level, the continental level, and of course on the global level because such things as the weather, for instance, cannot be commanded by single nations. There is the need for harmonization and synchronization of national policy certainly, but there are things which could and should be dealt with only on the global level, and again, as the Secretary-General said this morning, by the machinery provided by the Charter, by the global Organization of the United Nations.

But this is not enough. We are not and cannot be preaching a new, omnipotent government or a new, omnipotent supranational organization. That would be totally unrealistic. In preserving “spaceship Earth” we need to act through our Governments.

Again this morning the Secretary-General spoke about a fact of great importance when he reminded us all that the Charter starts with the words, “We the peoples of the United Nations . . . ” and not like the League of Nations Covenant which said, “We the high contracting parties . . . ” and so on. It is the peoples of the United Nations who are represented in this Organization. We must have the people and the scientific community fully behind us. That is the experience which I am very glad to convey to you from the work which we started in this field in the framework of the Economic Commission for Europe. Unless there is a change in popular attitude and behavior, unless and until there is full participation of the people together with the Governments, we will fail in all our endeavors in the field of the environment.

Tools for an Environment Policy

IN ECE we have organized a number of meetings on individual problems in the field of the environment. All these have as participants governmental representatives, as well as representatives of business, of nongovernmental organizations, and experts from the field of science. Unless and until we unleash the scientific community, which is profoundly humanistic in its outlook, unless we enlist them in this great action, we cannot succeed. I said a few days ago when we started another meeting in this very room that the problem of the environment ploughs deeply into the very structure of modern government and authority. We must think of the governmental structure in the light of the new requirements and tasks which the technological society places before us. The old inherited forms and institutions just do not satisfy our needs any longer.

You may ask me when I preach a vigorous environment policy: what then are the tools, the instruments of such a policy? Generally, they will fall into three [Page 23] broad categories: legislation or regulation; charges; and subsidies. I think that the three are not mutually exclusive, and even now the experience in Europe has shown that whoever relies on only one of these three is bound to fail. I believe that a great deal could still be done through setting up some internationally agreed standards, but please do not take agreed standards as a sine qua non condition for action in the field of environment. As I am an economist, I am very often approached by people who say, “If there is no unification of standards there will be great harm done to the international competitive position of our industries.” But I always say, “How curious it is that nobody today speaks of the international effects and repercussions of the exportation of pollution.” Four decades ago during the [Page 24] big depression many countries operated under the slogan “Beggar my neighbor.” Unless we completely give up this kind of approach, we will not be able to solve this problem.

It is not necessary to wait for everybody to act before one may act. If everybody would start acting, international synchronization would be so much easier. It is our experience that it is always easier to get results if you have something to stand on and something to build on. But if you organize conferences only to talk about something that is coming, then it is very difficult to come to any sensible kind of agreement.

Who Should Act First?

NOW, finally, the question of who should start acting—developed or developing countries? I think that you could never have expected me to answer differently: it is those who are polluting who should start first. Since the developed world today commands eighty percent of technology, uses eighty percent of the world’s resources, and produces also eighty percent of the world’s wastes and pollution, it is only normal that it should be the task of the developed world to suppress pollution and wastes at their origin. It is the developed world that is creating an environment which is unacceptable to human society, and it is therefore the task first of the developed world to do something about it. That is why in our Commission we consider that we cannot possibly make a better contribution to the global Stockholm Conference than by starting an action to suppress pollution and to improve the environment within our own area.

Now, what about the developing countries? There are some in these countries who say: “Well, we should like to have some pollution because the pollution would be an indication that we are developing industrially.” May I say that this is rather a one-sided view. And I should also like to add that we from the developed world should not just say, “Well, you have at hand all our lessons—all the experience of the developed world—and this is how we shall provide you again with technical assistance in combatting pollution.” This is an entirely wrong approach. What we need to do is to work out a new concept of social and economic progress, which will no longer be progress concentrated in the developed world but really worldwide progress.

Acting in the Interests of the People

THERE IS PLENTY the developing countries could gain from such an approach. I was not impressed recently when I learned that both the Soviet and the American satellites indicated three days ahead that a disaster was approaching the shores of Pakistan, but there was no possibility on the spot to evacuate people and to translate that knowledge into action which could have saved human life. I consider that if we develop that global knowledge —weather watch and all those nice things —it must be for the people. We must provide for action in the interests of the peoples concerned and not start again with technological innovation on a large scale while not providing the bridges and the channels needed to make it really of human use.

I believe that if we approach environmental policies in just such a way—in a really global way and for the benefit of people—then we shall see that our efforts in dealing with environmental problems will also lead us closer to one world. And in the final analysis, that is the foundation on which this Organization rests.

[Page 25]

Buddhism and the Bahá’í Faith

BY DANIEL CONNER

ALMOST 2500 years ago a gentle man walked with his disciples and taught in a small state named Magadha in what is now Nepal. The story of the enlightenment of the young prince Siddhārtha Gautama is well-known throughout the Western world, but few outside Asia have a passable knowledge, much less an understanding, of the religion founded by the Buddha.

The sixth and fifth centuries B.C. witnessed intellectual and spiritual activity unprecedented in the history of the world. During this time the ethical systems that influence Chinese thought today were systematized by the strangely diverse personalities of Confucius and the half-mythical Lao-tze. In India Mahāvīra (Great Spirit) preached nonviolence and a novel conception of the soul and founded the Jain religion. Stirred by the teachings of Zoroaster, the Persian empire attained its greatest extent and challenged the Greek world. Greek philosophy was flowering with the thought of Pythagoras and Plato. The Hebrew prophets were laying the foundations of a nation based on strict monotheism. In this world the Buddha lived.

Although miraculous tales and legends abound, little is known about the historical Buddha, and many of the texts attributed to him are undoubtedly of more recent origin. Some current scholarship maintains that Buddhism was initially little more than a reaction against Brāhmanism (out of which [Page 26] Hinduism evolved). It appears that early Buddhists were more egalitarian in their beliefs than most of their countrymen:

No brāhman is such by birth.

No outcaste is such by birth.

An outcaste is such by his deeds.

A brāhman is such by his deeds.

(Sutta Nipāta, 136)

They welcomed men and women of all classes as disciples, a practice which aroused the ire of orthodox brahmins. Like his contemporary Mahāvīra, the Buddha stressed the doctrine of ahiṃsā (nonviolence: doing harm to no living thing), while animal sacrifice still lingered on from the Vedic age of Brāhmanism.

Due in part to a popular reaction against the social rigidity of Brāhmanism, Buddhism rapidly gained a wide following, spreading throughout India and the Central Asian steppes. The great emperor Aśoka (c. 268-233 B.C.) was dramatically converted to Buddhism after witnessing the carnage in an aggressive war of his own instigation. The Faith frequently enjoyed royal patronage and continued to grow until the fifth century A.D., when it still flourished among the educated and noble classes. Eight hundred years later, however, following the Muslim conquest of northern India, Buddhism had virtually disappeared from the land of its birth. Now Buddhists number only a tiny fraction of the population of India.

The reasons for the virtual disappearance of Buddhism from India are several. One is the ferocity of the Muslim conquest. By and large, the invading Muslims of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries left the indigenous population to itself, but they were unrestrained in their destruction of priests, temples, and monasteries. The Buddhists were most susceptible because they were organized. The monks tended to congregate in centralized monasteries, while the Hindu chaplains were scattered throughout the countryside.

A more important reason is the remarkable assimilative power of Hinduism. Historically, Hinduism has been the most absorptive of the world’s religions; with time it has successfully assimilated extremely heterodox elements. Even the ethnocentric Muslim conquerors found themselves in danger of being assimilated during the time of the Mughal empire (1526-c. 1800). When the Muslims invaded, Buddhism and Hinduism had almost merged, and the Buddha was relegated to a place in the Hindu pantheon as the ninth incarnation of Viṣṇu.

Still more important is the fact that Buddhism suffered the fate of almost every other religion and split into numerous sects. Early in its career Buddhism had split in two: Theravāda (the way of the elders) or Hīnayāna (the lesser vehicle), and Mahāyāna (the greater vehicle). Theravāda retained to a greater extent the original teachings of the Buddha, while Mahāyāna claimed to have access to esoteric teachings of the Buddha that were denied to any but his closest disciples. In their cultural function Mahāyāna compares to Theravāda much as medieval Catholicism compares to early Christianity. The Mahāyāna school regards the individual search for enlightenment as a selfish ideal and replaces it with the concept of the bodhisattva—the savior who achieves enlightenment but rejects nirvāṇa so that he might help the less fortunate on the path to salvation. The development of Mahāyāna has been greatly influenced by local animistic cults, and it has incorporated foreign deities into its pantheon, while Theravāda has survived relatively less changed in Ceylon and Southeast Asia. Until recently Mahāyāna flourished chiefly in Tibet, Central and Eastern Asia, and Vietnam, and also in China and Japan in the form of Ch’an (or Zen), a synthesis of Mahāyāna and Taoism.

The sacred scriptures of Buddhism are more numerous than those of any other religion—so extensive that no single scholar could hope to encompass them in a lifetime. [Page 27] Among the most important Theravāda texts are the Dhammapada and The Questions of King Menander. The latter is in the form of a Platonic dialogue between a Buddhist disciple and a Greek satrap left behind in Bactria by Alexander the Great. The most important Mahāyāna text is the Saddharma-Puṇḍarīka or The Lotus of the True Law.

Mahāyāna is the form more familiar to Westerners, since it has had the more successful publicists, and it offers a great variety of wondrous tales. This form has recently enjoyed adoption by certain segments of American society, especially in its Tibetan or Japanese (Zen) forms. Anyone who has read a little about Buddhism will recognize the names of its foremost exponents and explainers to the West: D. T. Suzuki, the late Zen patriarch, and Alan Watts, the American philosopher and student of comparative religion.

EASTERN RELIGIONS, particularly Buddhism, have long held a spell of fascination for the Western world. From Voltaire through Schopenhauer and Hermann Hesse, European literature is full of speculation about the nature of Eastern thought. American poets such as Emerson and Thoreau have dabbled in Oriental mysticism, and the Western world has produced a number of first-class Oriental scholars. But it is only recently that popular interest, especially among young people, has been aroused. The trend has yet to gain the proportions of a mass movement, but it is evident that Oriental philosophy is being adopted uncritically by certain segments of our society.

Why? Partly because Oriental philosophy has a great deal to teach us. But some psychologists see other reasons in the lure of the East, not only among so-called hippies or beatniks, but also among serious scholars and theologians. The phenomenal popularity during the late Sixties of transcendental meditation and mysticism—and of individuals such as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Ravi Shankar —is symptomatic of a rejection of the Judeo-Christian values upon which much of our culture is based, yet which have notably failed to achieve their goals. Eastern religions, so the rationale goes, offer individual salvation through self-improvement and lack the emphasis on social values that is found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The failure of the Judeo-Christian ethical system to bring about its ideal of lasting social justice and peace is regarded as being inherent in the system itself, whereas if the Oriental fails to achieve the goal of enlightenment, it is his fault alone.

Doubtless many young people are embracing Oriental religions because these represent to them the opposite end of the spectrum from the ethical system in which they were raised. Is this polarity real or only apparent? If real, then are Western and Eastern religions reconcilable? In what ways does a new religion, the Bahá’í Faith, reconcile them?

A study of the genealogy of religions shows that the so-called Eastern and Western religions have for the most part developed independently. Just as Christianity grew out of Judaism, the Bahá’í Faith grew out of Shí‘ih Islám through the Bábí religion, and Buddhism grew out of Brāhmanism. This in no way implies that the above-mentioned faiths are not independent or revealed religions; the intent is only to point out their historical connections. The historical roots of the Bahá’í Faith lie among the Western religions, just as those of Buddhism lie among the Eastern, but this does not mean that the Bahá’í Faith in itself is Western or Eastern in outlook. Indeed, the Bahá’í Faith claims universality, spanning or even transcending the traditional division of East and West. In order to investigate this claim, let us first determine whether the differences between the Eastern and Western religions are real or apparent.

At first glance it might seem that Western and Eastern religions have little in common, other than the obvious features which are common to all religions. This is especially true in the realm of metaphysics. The Western religions are rather closely related, with [Page 28] great mutual influence. The religions born in India and China, on the other hand, are not only for the most part historically separate from the Western religions but also from each other. The distance between Confucianism and Buddhism is greater than that between Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Moreover, the Western religions are scattered through the time dimension, whereas the great Eastern religions were born mostly between 600 and 500 B.C.

Oswald Spengler wrote, “Buddhism, which only a mere dabbler in religious research would compare with Christianity, is hardly reproducible in the words of the Western Languages.” The statement contains some truth but is greatly exaggerated. There are significant similarities between Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism, however, has been judged by some scholars to be more a system of psychology than a religion. Much of this argument is based on the fact that there is no trace in the Buddha’s teachings of a “God”—at least not a personal, transcendent god in the Christian sense. This argument can be reduced to a matter of semantics: the Buddha taught the existence of dharma (divine law) which governs all creation. His teachings all point to an eternal reality, which, although it lacks the anthropomorphic aspects of Western theism, is a creative force that is easily identified with God.

BUDDHISM TEACHES that everything in the universe is in a constant state of flux. Craving and clinging to permanence is the inevitable cause of sorrow. Salvation is found by the gradual loss of self-concern, until it results in nirvāṇa (the “blowing-out” of the self). Fundamental is the doctrine of the four noble truths: 1) life is inevitably sorrowful, 2) sorrow is due to craving, 3) sorrow can be stopped only by cessation of desire, and 4) this can be accomplished only by disciplined conduct and meditation.

Not even the Soul has abiding personality; it too is transient. The station of the Soul is altered according to its karma (accumulation of good or bad deeds) and is eternally reborn in a station that befits its past lives. The cycle of rebirth can be stopped only by attaining nirvāṇa or extinction. This is done first by adopting right views about the nature of existence, then by careful moral discipline, and finally by prolonged meditation.

Nirvāṇa is the total annihilation of the Self, but it is not thought of in negative terms. Rather nirvāṇa is a transcendent state beyond comprehension in which the illusion of individuality is apparent. This state is not fundamentally different from the supreme bliss described by Hindu saints, Muslim ṣúfís, or Christian mystics. The state is inexpressible, however; it can only be experienced, never communicated—or, as Bahá’u’lláh said, there are regions into which the pen will not move.

The later Mahāyāna schools, in attempting to describe reality, postulate that śūnyatā (the Void or emptiness) is all that exists. The Void, again, is not negative in the sense of an absence of something, but rather it is the only abiding reality and being—it is one with truth, nirvāṇa, and the Buddha Himself. The qualities of the Void which are manifest in existence are called tathatā (translatable only as “suchness”). The Void is essentially identical with the emptiness that so troubles Western existentialist philosophers. The difference, of course, lies in the fact that Buddhists look on the Void with joy, the existentialists with despair.

One apparent difference between Eastern and Western religions is their relative emphasis on ethics and metaphysics. Almost without exception, Western religions place [Page 29] the primary emphasis on ethics, i.e., the individual’s relation to society, while metaphysics, the individual’s relationship to God or the Cosmos, is of secondary importance. The essence of Judaism, for example, is found in the Ten Commandments; the essence of Christianity in the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Metaphysics has little place in the original teachings of either Faith. Eastern religions, with the exception of Confucianism, tend to place a higher value on metaphysics. It may be argued that the Buddha Himself rejected metaphysical speculation; nevertheless, Buddhism—and especially Mahāyāna abounds in it.

A second difference lies in the degree of social control demanded by the religion. Western religions are notably more authoritarian than their Eastern counterparts, a fact which has usually given rise to a greater degree of tolerance among the latter. Although the Buddhist monk is subject to the discipline of his superior, the follower who has attained nirvāṇa is subject to no authority other than internal authority. He is free of concern for transgression; not even the teachings of the Buddha bind him any longer. In medieval Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, every Christian, saint or sinner, was subject to the authority of the Pope. In medieval Islám the ṣúfís, no matter how great their state of enlightenment, were still bound by the law of the Sharí‘ah. At their greatest St. Francis and al-Ghazálí were still lesser men than Christ or Muḥammad. But there is nothing to stop a Buddhist saint from equaling or even surpassing the Buddha Himself.

Let us tentatively define a Western religion as one which emphasizes ethics above metaphysics and allows no exceptions to its laws. A Western religion, moreover, usually conceives of God as remote, unapproachable, “wholly other,” while Eastern religions tend to look for the Deity within the human Soul.

According to this definition, does the Bahá’í Faith qualify as a Western or an Eastern religion, or is it a meeting ground for the two traditions? Its historical roots lie among the WeStern religions, but this, in itself, does not answer the question. Speaking of unchanging religious truth, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes:

. . . each of the divine religions is separable into two divisions. One concerns the world of morality and the ethical training of human nature. It is directed to the advancement of the world of humanity in general; it reveals and inculcates the knowledge of God and makes possible the discovery of the verities of life. This is ideal and spritual teaching, the essential quality of divine religion and not subject to change or transformation. . . The second classification or division comprises social laws and regulations applicable to human conduct. This is not the essential spiritual quality of religion. It is subject to change and transformation according to the exigencies and requirements of time and place.

It is instructive to compare ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s assertion with the following selection from a Tibetan Buddhist text:

If the empty nature of the mind be realized, no longer is it necessary to listen to or to meditate upon religious teachings. If the unsulliable nature of the intellect be realized, no longer is it necessary to seek absolution of one’s sins. Nor is absolution necessary for one who abideth in the State of Mental Quiescence.

Buddhism and Hinduism share a belief in reincarnation as part of their doctrine. This doctrine of metempsychosis is one of the major stumbling blocks to their reconciliation with Western religions. Regarding the doctrine of reincarnation, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes:

Therefore reincarnation, which is the repeated [Page 30] appearance of the same spirit with its former essence and condition in this same world of appearance, is impossible and unrealisable.

Is reincarnation a basic doctrine of the two greatest Eastern religions—one on which there can be no compromise? The Buddhist scholar, Alan Watts, thinks not:

Many Buddhists understand the Round of birth-and-death quite literally as a process of reincarnation, wherein the karma which shapes the individual does so again and again in life after life until, through insight and awakening, it is laid to rest. But in Zen, and in other schools of the Mahayana, it is often taken in a more figurative way, as that the process of rebirth is from moment to moment, so that one is being reborn so long as one identifies himself with a continuing ego which reincarnates itself afresh at each moment of time. Thus the validity and interest of the doctrine does not require acceptance of a special theory of survival.

This view is supported by the Theravāda scriptures:

“Reverend Nāgasena,” said the King, “is it true that nothing transmigrates, and yet there is rebirth?”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“How can this be? . . . Give me an illustration.”

“Suppose, your Majesty, a man lights one lamp from another—does the one lamp transmigrate to the other?”

“No, your Reverence.”

“So there is rebirth without anything transmigrating!”

(The Questions of King Menander)

The apparent differences between Eastern and Western religions can be summed up by comparing the purported last instructions of the Buddha with one of the Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh:

The Buddha:

So, Ānanda, you must be your own lamps, be your own refuges. Take refuge in nothing outside yourselves. Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for refuge to anything besides yourselves. A monk becomes his own lamp and refuge by continually looking on his body, feelings, perceptions, moods, and ideas in such a manner that he conquers the cravings and depressions of ordinary men and is always strenuous, self-possessed, and collected in mind. Whoever among my monks does this, either now or when I am dead, if he is anxious to learn, will reach the summit.

(Dīgha Nikāya)

Bahá’u’lláh:

O SON OF SPIRIT! There is no peace for thee save by renouncing thyself and turning unto Me, for it behoveth thee to glory in My name, not in thine own; to put thy trust in Me and not in thyself, since I desire to be loved alone and above all that is.

Can these be reconciled? Yes. The Buddha directs his disciples to look within for guidance, while Bahá’u’lláh counsels us to renounce ourselves and cling to the Absolute. In reality their advice is the same. Bahá’u’lláh writes:

Thou art My stronghold; enter therein that thou mayest abide in safety. My love is in thee, know it, that thou mayest find Me near unto thee. . . . Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me.

Thus we are to approach the Absolute by means of a paradox, renouncing the ego (“the cravings and depressions of ordinary [Page 31] [Page 32] men”) while obtaining our light from the lamp of Truth within us. Nirvāṇa, the extinction of self which may occur in life, is also the goal of the follower of Bahá’u’lláh: “. . . that thou mayest die in Me and I may eternally live in thee.”

Here we may dispose of one of the crucial differences—the internal versus the external Truth. The dichotomy is false; they are one. What about the difference in emphasis on ethics and metaphysics? Again, it is only a semantical difficulty. Only in theory do the Eastern religions assign ethics a lesser degree of importance. In reality, the saint or the enlightened man cannot help behaving with compassion toward his fellow creatures. His motivation is internal, but it is binding. Hence, the Buddhist scriptures stress the moral qualities that a monk must possess— moral qualities which are usually more demanding than those required by the Western religions. Although enlightenment is of primary importance, and ethics secondary, they go hand in hand and are actually inseparable. The dichotomy between ethics and metaphysics, then, is also false—they are one. We must not conclude from this that those with no interest in metaphysics cannot be ethical —atheists, for instance. All ethical systems are internally, therefore metaphysically, motivated, whether or not one chooses to call the motivation God.

One crucial difference remains—the question of social control. This is a more difficult question to resolve, and here the difference between the Eastern outlook and the Western appears to be more real than apparent. As we have seen, in Western religions every believer, without exception, is subject to the law of the prophet, but this is not true of Eastern religions. The reason lies in the Western view of the prophet as qualitatively different from the rest of mankind—a Being especially favored by God and hence unapproachable, or, in Christianity, one with God Himself. But to the Oriental the prophet is only quantitatively different from other men; hence all men are potentially divine. To the Buddhist, the Buddha is not the infallible incarnation of God’s Truth, but rather only the most illustrious of a long line of enlightened men. In Islám, Judaism, and Catholic Christianity, the individual conscience must submit to the law of the prophet or the will of the Church; in the Eastern religions the ultimate authority is internal.

The only way to resolve this difference is to consider the society in which a religion is born. The societies which gave birth to Buddhism and Hinduism were extremely heterogeneous, even more so than they are today. If a religion had arisen which demanded submission to a single religious authority, it would almost certainly have failed. Hinduism, to be sure, demanded submission to the brahmin caste, but mobility and heterodoxy were allowed to a far greater extent in ancient India than most people suppose. The ancient Jews, or the Arabs of the seventh century A.D. for that matter, were a far more homogeneous society; therefore it was possible (and indeed advantageous) for them to submit to a single religious authority—Moses or Muḥammad.

Societies were relatively isolated from each other in the ancient world; hence some could allow themselves the luxury of having no external religious authority. Today our world is so tightly knit, however, that the smallest social shock reverberates throughout the globe. The need for unity is urgent, and unity of Faith is not possible without spiritual authority. The luxury of an autonomous conscience can no longer be afforded.

AN ORIENTAL, then, can accept the Bahá’í Faith without rejecting the essential philosophy behind his own religious tradition. Bahá’u’lláh places more emphasis on social teachings than did the Buddha, but there is no evidence of any contradiction between the essential teachings of the Buddha and those of Bahá’u’lláh. Western religions have not been notably successful in the East, since they [Page 33] usually demand a rejection of tradition from the convert. The Bahá’í Faith, however, offers to the Oriental more freedom than the Western religions. Except for the few laws binding upon all Bahá’ís, the Oriental is free, even encouraged, to revere his own culture and follow his own customs. The validity of his former religion is not denied. In this sense the Bahá’í Faith is neither a Western nor an Eastern religion but rather a point of convergence.

Moreover, the Buddhist is able to turn to the Bahá’í Faith as the fulfillment of his beliefs. Buddhism, like many other religions, has an apocalyptic tradition and expects the return of its Founder, although there is evidence that this concept arose much later than the Buddha’s lifetime and is not attributable to him. The Mahāyāna scriptures abound in references to the Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, the Expected One. Some Mahāyāna sects regard this return as only of the spirit of the Buddha, not the actual physical presence of Śākyamuni, the Historical Buddha, since he attained nirvāṇa and is therefore lost to us. This makes it easier for many Buddhists to accept the appearance of the Maitreya in circumstances other than those which are traditional.

Bahá’ís are familiar with the claims of Bahá’u’lláh to be the return of the spirit of Christ and Muḥammad. But few Bahá’ís in the Western world understand in what sense Bahá’u’lláh may also be seen as the Maitreya. The Buddhist canon yields no specific predictions that might be interpreted as referring to Bahá’u’lláh, as do Biblical references or Muslim traditions. Some of the references to the Maitreya are obviously allegorical, even fantastic. Witness the following scripture in which the Maitreya is expected some thirty thousand years after the death of the historical Buddha:

His body is eighty cubits high, and twenty cubits broad. He will have a retinue of 84,000 persons, whom he will instruct in the mantras . . . For 60,000 years Maitreya, the best of men, will preach the true Dharma, which is compassionate towards all living beings. And when he has disciplined in his true Dharma hundreds and hundreds of millions of living beings, then that leader will at last enter Nirvana. And after the great sage has entered Nirvana, his true Dharma still endures for another ten thousand years.

I have, however, found one Buddhist tradition that suggests that the age in which we live will be the beginning of a regeneration of the human spirit. The Japanese Buddhist monk Nichiren (1222-1282) preached apocalyptic ideas based on historical cycles drawn from Chinese Buddhism. According to Chinese chronology, the death of the Buddha occurred in 947 B.C. His death was followed, according to Nichiren, by the millennium of the “true law.” About the time of the rise of Christianity, the second millennium of the “image” law began. Historically this corresponds with the rise of Mahāyāna, which places great emphasis on approaching Buddhahood through the Buddha’s images, the bodhisattvas. According to Nichiren the last phase, the “destruction of the law,” began about 1000 A.D. with the rise of Tantrism, the form of Buddhism concerned with magic and spells. This cycle, too, lasts a thousand years, and so a new era is at hand—an era characterized by Nichiren as a return to the “true law.” Nichiren saw this era as a time when a holy shrine will become the center of the world, and a mạṇdala (a religious symbol) will regenerate the human spirit. Nichiren’s apocalypse survives in the teachings of Soka Gokkai, a religion which is currently growing rapidly in Japan.

Bahá’u’lláh, then, may be accepted as the Maitreya awaited by the Buddhists, in that He is the “Bringer of a New Law,” “One who Brings Peace,” and “One who Enlightens and Unites the World.”

[Page 34]

Letter from Haifa in the Mourning Times

THE ASCENSION OF ‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ, on November 28, 1921, marked for Bahá’ís the end of the Heroic, the Apostolic Age of their Faith. From 1892, when He was appointed by Bahá’u’lláh as the Center of His Covenant, the sole Interpreter of His Writings, and the Perfect Exemplar of His Cause, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had guided the growing Bahá’í community with his loving counsels and letters and examples. His sudden removal did, to many, make the world seem as if it had “lost its axis.” But it also galvanized the dedicated souls who had learned well the firmness in the Covenant which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had striven so earnestly to instill in the Bahá’ís. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself had departed this world, but His Writings remained and His Will and Testament provided continuing divine guidance in the Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi, whom he appointed as His successor.

The editors of WORLD ORDER are happy to present herewith excerpts from a letter from and early Bahá’í who made her way from Italy to Haifa soon after she received a cabled announcement of the ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Henrietta Emogene Martin Hoagg—known to the Bahá’ís as Emogene—learned of the Bahá’í Faith in California in 1898 from Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, and after studying with Lua Getsinger became “the first confirmed believer in California.” In 1899, in Milan, she received her first Tablet from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in acknowledgment of her acceptance of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. In 1900, she visited ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Haifa, and afterwards, at His suggestion, studied for a month with the outstanding Bahá’í scholar Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl in Port Sa’íd. In 1903, in California, Mrs. Hoagg aided Helen S. Goodall and her daughter Ella in establishing weekly meetings in Oakland. In November 1907, Mrs. Goodall being absent, she represented California at a consultation called in Chicago for the purpose of initiating the building of the first Bahá’í House of Worship in the Western world. Her dedication prompted Mrs. Corinne True to write, “‘Emogene’s flaming spirit of devotion was once of the pioneer pillars to accomplish that great step in the progress of the Faith in this country.’”

Throughout her Bahá’í life, until her health began to fail in 1944, Mrs. Hoagg was a devoted teacher of the Cause. She made a six-thousand-mile trip through Canada and Alaska with Marion Jack in 1919-1920, traveled throughout the United States, learned Spanish and taught in Havana, and, in accordance with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s instructions, returned to Rome and Florence to visit those to whom she had introduced the Faith earlier.

[Page 35] In 1928, with Shoghi Efiendi’s approval, she joined Julia Culver in Geneva, Switzerland, to serve the International Bahá’í Bureau, subsequently becoming its co-treasurer. In 1931, Shoghi Effendi summoned Mrs. Hoagg to Haifa to type the lengthy manuscript of Nabíl’s The Dawn-Breakers which he was translating from Persian into English.

When she died in 1945 at the age of seventy-seven, Shoghi Effendi cabled: “Deeply grieved passing staunch, exemplary pioneer Faith, Emogene Hoagg. Record national international services unforgettable. . . . ” Those who knew Emogene have written of her character, her abilities as a teacher, her spiritual vitality, her sense of humor. But most frequently they mention her firmness in the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh —a quality which illumines the following excerpts from a letter written in 1922 to Nellie French while she was helping with the translation of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament.

◇ ◇ ◇

Haifa, Palestine

2d January 1922

My dearest Nelly:

Your letter on December 14th has just reached me here in this blessed spot. Needless to say why I am here, for you will have realized that no other thought could have possessed me after getting the cable of the ascension of our beloved Master.

As you said you felt, I also felt. The world seemed to have lost its axis, and I seemed to be living without a support. I had planned to go to Genoa, but had no heart nor strength to continue the work at that time. I left Torino, from where I wrote you, returned to Milano and took the first steamer from Trieste which was on December 16th. The trip was a calm one and I arrived here on the 21st.

You may imagine the grief of the Holy Family. All was so sudden, so unexpected, that the shock to them as well as to all the friends was extreme. For the first week after getting here I had no head to use for anything, but since then have been very busy helping in the translation of some important Tablets. This has left no time for letter writing, which accounts for your not hearing from me before, as well as other friends whom I am sure are anxious for details. There is so much to tell it would take days to write it all, but later a full account is to be sent to all. Lady Blomfield is here and is now compiling an accurate accounts of the few days prior to the Beloved’s departure, of the cortege up the mountain to the Tomb of the Bab, and the fifth, [Page 36] ninth and fortieth days after the ascension.

When they expected the remains of the body of the Bab a resting place was made in the center of what is now the middle front room; but for some reason the Master had another place prepared in the room where the remains now rest. When it was necessary to find a place for the blessed body of the Master they thought of the place already prepared in the front room, and as the Master loved so much that position on the mountain, his remains were placed in that room. You will remember the front room of the Tomb where the believers always gathered and where the Master would speak to them when he went to the Tomb? It is in the middle front room that the Beloved body rests. It is hardly yet possible to believe that we shall not see him walking in and saying “Marhaba, Marhaba!”

The Visitation Prayer that we have in the little prayer book on page 70 is chanted at His Threshold. I have always loved this and said it much.

There is a belief among some of the oriental peoples that the soul is not entirely free from the body until the fortieth day after its ascension, so on that day a feast is always given. To carry out the custom the Holy Family gave a Feast on the Fortieth Day after the ascension of the blessed Master. They invited over two hundred guests and they were feasted in Rouha Khanum’s house. The tables were placed in every room and the food was prepared at the Big House. It was indeed a feat to do this, but it was beautifully carried out to the great astonishment of all the guests.

After the feast, as is the custom, all the guests gathered to give speeches in memory of the Master. The large central room of the Master’s House had been prepared with beautiful rugs and with draperies, even the two end rooms of glass were thrown open and chairs and couches placed there, while at the windows were persian draperies. Chairs were brought from the town so that all were seated. A small raised place was made for the speakers. About twelve speeches were given, and some were most remarkable. Mohommedan, Jew and Christian seemed to vie with each other in proclaiming the virtues and in expressions of admiration and love for the Master. Some of these speeches, if not all are to be translated and later to be sent in this account. The Bahá’ís had no chance to enlarge upon the speeches made by the others, for they expressed all there was to be said. One man proved by reference to the Koran, all the Twelve Principles as given in America, Often these men gathered would weep when one would give praises to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, or express his love and admiration. It was most touching to be present, even if one did not understand all that was said.

The day after the Feast the Will of the Master was read to a large number of the Bahá’ís who assembled in the same room where they gathered the day before. Again [Page 37] was the scene impressive. There are three parts to the Will of the Master, each written at a different time. This makes the Will very long. You will have before this reaches you, received the word sent by cable, that Shoghi Effendi, the eldest grandson of the Master, is appointed by the Master as the guardian of the Cause and the head of the House of Justice—Universal House of Justice. I have just been helping with the translation into English. It is very strong. There is no doubt left as to the position of Shoghi Effendi. The Master says: “The one who opposes him (Shoghi Effendi) and opposes them (Universal House of Justice) verily, he opposes God. The one who rebels against them, verily, he rebels against God. The one who antagonizes him, antagonizes God. The one who disputes with them, disputes with God. The one who resists him, resists God. The one who denies him, denies God. The one who turns aside and withdraws from him, turns aside and withdraws and separates himself from God. Upon him be the wrath of God! Upon him be the anger of God! Upon him be the vengeance of God!”

The Master was not ill, we may say. He did not feel well on Saturday, November 26th, but that night at midnight all fever left him and he was normal. Toward one o’clock of Monday morning he remarked to one of his daughters who was near him, that he felt difficulty breathing. Those were his last words and after a few moments his soul ascended. The parting was so calm, so without any evidence of struggle, that they could not believe he had departed. Dr. Krug confirmed the fact.

From various remarks made to the family at different times and which they now remember, but did not understand at the time, they realize that the Beloved knew he was going. A few weeks before his ascension he told them to send for Shoghi Effendi saying, that if he did not come quickly he would not arrive “for the funeral”. Yet they did not understand!

I cannot feel that his work was really finished, but that for some divine mystery he departed now. He told the ladies of a dream he had in which he was entering the Mosque. He thought he would give the “call” which he did. He found that the people were entering and crowding around him. Then he thought he would commence the prayer that follows the “call”. This he did and found that the people were following him, and continuing to gather around him. Then he went out of the Mosque. Outside he remembered that he had not finished the prayer, he considered for a moment then decided he would not return to finish it. This seems very significant. . . .

In His Name.

Affectionately

[signed] EMOGENE

[Page 38]

‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Speaking in America

BY ALLAN L. WARD

Please see footnotes at the end of the article.

THE AMERICAN speaking tour of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1912 proved to be one of the most unusual events in the history of public address. He attracted listeners by the thousands from coast to coast and was followed by an enthusiastic press and public. Such was the effect of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that a noted columnist of the day, Elbert Hubbard, later wrote (New York American, 1 Mar. 1915), “When he went to Washington and swept through the Capitol even the Supreme Court of the United States saw fit to adjourn; the House the same, and the Senate, for a while, at least, forgot matters of investigation.”

The eight-month tour is a study in diversity. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s audiences ranged from international notables in embassy settings to derelicts in the Bowery, from prominent church congregations to atheists, from university convocations to children’s meetings. He was eulogized throughout Europe and America as a great speaker; yet He had never delivered a public speech before His sixty-seventh year. Platform introductions extolled His range of knowledge in religious, social, philosophical, and scientific matters; throngs of people who sought Him out for interviews and endless streams of reporters quoted His wit and wisdom. Yet, as one of the reporters noted, “this versatility, this capacity to reason and form suggestive theories on any subject, is all the more amazing when one remembers that . . . he was wholly cut off from the world of culture, has never known a single year of schooling.” He refused large sums of money offered to Him; instead He contributed from His own meager funds to some of His audiences. Representatives of countries where He had been persecuted honored Him publicly in America.

His whole life reflected the same diversity. He had been born in Persia into an immensely wealthy family which had been reduced to poverty almost overnight. In exile at the age of eight with His family, He was at thirty-one the author of a book concerning the [Page 39] principles of establishing a world civilization, a book which is still in print and increasing in annual sales ninety years after it was written. For His journey to the United States in 1912 Americans subscribed $18,000 and suggested that He come on the maiden voyage of the Titanic; He returned all of the money, requesting that it be given to charity, and came on the Cedric. He organized medical facilities and an extensive agricultural program that fed thousands in Palestine during the First World War. The New York World (1 Dec. 1912) noted, “When Gen. Allenby swept up the coast from Egypt, he went for counsel first to Abdu’l-Bahá,” and then Allenby cabled London, “‘Have to-day taken Palestine. Notify the world that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is safe’” As a result of the [Page 40] respect and gratitude of the local population and of the British authorities, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who had been threatened with crucifixion by the Turkish Commander-in-Chief only a short time before, was made a Knight of the British Empire.

THE LIFETIME of diverse circumstances that led to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s unusual tour of America began with His birth on May 23, 1844, in Persia. All of the records of His childhood reflect extraordinary ability from His earliest years. One biographer wrote, “During these years Abbas Effendi was accustomed to frequent the mosques and argue with the doctors and learned men. They were astonished at his knowledge and acumen, and he came to be known as the youthful sage. They would ask him, ‘Who is your teacher—where do you learn the things which you say?’ His reply was that his father had taught him. Although he had never been a day in school, he was as proficient in all that was taught as well-educated young men, which was the cause of much remark among those who knew him.” His Father, acknowledged in written records as His only teacher, was Himself totally unschooled in any formal sense.

In the same year of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s birth, 1844, a man titled the “Báb,” meaning “Gate” in Persian, indicated that He had the mission of “opening the way” for another “Messenger from God” Who would imminently reveal teachings to unite the world. Through a series of involved circumstances, too lengthy to detail here, the number of the Báb’s followers grew rapidly and widely. The government and clergy responded by inciting the populace to kill them by the thousands and by maneuvering the execution of the Báb Himself in 1850.

One of the Báb’s followers, Bahá’u’lláh, Whose title means “the Glory of God,” emerged as the center of leadership of the decimated Bábí community. In 1863 He proclaimed that He was the One foretold by the Báb and the latest in a line of Messengers from God, including Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad. Persecution descended on Him and His family, and they were exiled several times. In each instance, His influence grew to such proportions, and His teachings of the unification of all religions, races, and nations drew such an enthusiastic following, that He was exiled to another place, passing in this manner from Persia through ‘Iráq and Turkey, to the city of ‘Akká, in Palestine. There, His influence grew to such a degree that Edward Granville Browne, a noted Cambridge orientalist, could write in 1891, after an interview with Bahá’u’lláh, “No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might envy and emperors sigh for in vain!” These events bear directly on the life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, for Bahá’u’lláh was His Father.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sister recalled their early childhood days in Persia: “ . . . we heard each day the cries of the mob as a new victim was tortured or executed, not knowing but that it might be my father. . . . I spent the long days . . . afraid to unlock the door lest men should rush in and kill us.” She also recalled how they had been sent out of the country in exile, over the mountains in winter without adequate provisions or clothing: “It was bitterly cold . . . My brother in particular was very thinly clad. . . . his feet, ankles, hands, and wrists were much exposed to the cold, which was so severe that they became frostbitten and swollen and caused him great pain.”

During the more peaceful periods of the exile, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá “became his father’s closest companion.” “Although a mere youth,” an early believer, J. E. Esslemont wrote, “He already showed astonishing sagacity and discrimination, and undertook the task of interviewing all the numerous visitors who came to see His Father.” In His will, His Father named ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the Center of His Covenant, indicating that He was the “perfect interpreter” of His Word. When the Young Turks revolution overthrew the existing government [Page 41] in 1908, all religious and political prisoners of the Ottoman regime were freed, including ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, after more than half a century of exile and imprisonment. Such was His background when, at the age of sixty-seven, He embarked for America.

‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ arrived in America on April 11 and departed on December 5, 1912. His average day began between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m., when He frequently dealt with a continuous worldwide correspondence, and ended well after midnight. He often presented three or more major addresses a day, both to formal audiences numbering one or two thousand and to smaller groups who sought Him out wherever He went. The greater part of His remaining time was occupied with private conferences and interviews with individuals and small groups who wanted to speak with Him personally.

An example of a day’s diverse activities is April 23, in Washington, D.C. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá addressed a gathering of parents and children at Studio Hall concerning the education of children; attended a reception in His honor and addressed government officials and international representatives at the home of the socially prominent Parsons family; spoke on the “nature of life and death” in one of the ghetto areas of the city; and proceeded about 9:00 p.m. to address an audience of scientists and friends personally invited by Alexander Graham Bell to his home, where, after speaking and answering questions until midnight, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá remained as a guest. Another example is April 30, His first full day in Chicago. He spoke to an assembly of several hundred at Jane Addams’ Hull House, addressed the Fourth Annual Convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and delivered a public address to an audience of more than two thousand at the Masonic Temple.

Much of His packed schedule was apparently developed as He went. The Minneapolis Tribune (19 Sept. 1912) noted, “Just how long Abdu’l-Bahá will remain in the city isn’t known, even by his most intimate associates, as he never makes engagements ahead, and has no formal program on his itinerary across the continent. . . . He has about him, to the native American, a mysterious something.” With such flexibility, He visited New York, Buffalo, Montreal, Jersey City, Washington, Boston, Cambridge, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Denver, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, as well as small towns, including Eliot, Maine, and Dublin, New Hampshire.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s enormously varied speaking engagements included presentations, besides those already mentioned, in synagogues and churches; the International Peace Forum and various peace societies; Columbia, Howard, and Stanford Universities; the Reading Room for the Blind in San Francisco; the Chicago Athletic Association; theosophical societies; Esperantist groups; the Green Acre Institute in Maine; the Commercial Club in Minneapolis; the Japanese YMCA in Oakland; the Persian-American Society in Washington; the Bethel Literary and Historical Society; the Bowery Mission; and the Atheist’s Club in San Francisco. He was the featured speaker for the Unitarians’ national conference; shared the platform with Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, at the D.A.R. Continental Memorial Hall in Washington, D.C.; and addressed gatherings in the Town Hall in Fanwood, New Jersey, in the Persian Embassy and the Turkish Embassy in Washington, and in hotel assembly rooms and banquet halls across the country. He visited William Jennings Bryan’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska, to repay a visit Bryan had tried to make to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in ‘Akká, and had tea with Mrs. Bryan and her daughter. He was invited by Admiral Peary, then recently acknowledged as discoverer of the North Pole, to address the Unity Club in Brooklyn; was sought out by former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt; was honored with a farewell breakfast by the Treasurer [Page 42] of the United States, Lee McClung; and visited the home of another official who “took Him [‘Abdu’l-Bahá] in his embrace and wept for joy and happiness.”

Delegations of various religious groups expressed their deep regard for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Hindu Club of Chicago issued an invitation for Him to visit India, saying they felt His teachings of unity could join together the Hindus and Muslims. In an article headed, “Believe Abdu’l-Bahá May Be Second Dowie,” the Chicago Examiner (2 May 1912) told how the founders of Zion, Illinois, asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to visit them, because, “‘We believe that Baha may be the teacher who is appointed to lead us out of our troubles.’”

BASED on the accounts of those who heard and interviewed Him, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá might be termed, according to the classical rhetorical description, “a good man speaking well.” Scholars of classical public address have said that the greatest speaker must have altruistic attributes and ideas and the ability to communicate them clearly and interestingly. Edward Granville Browne wrote, after meeting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Seldom have I seen one whose appearance impressed me more. . . . Subsequent conversation with him served only to heighten the respect with which his appearance had from the first inspired me. One more eloquent of speech, more ready of argument, more apt of illustration . . . could, I should think, scarcely be found . . . These qualities, combined with a bearing at once majestic and genial, made me cease to wonder at the influence and esteem which he enjoyed . . . About the greatness of this man and his power no one who had seen him could entertain a doubt.”

A reporter who went from Europe to interview Him in ‘Akká before He came to America wrote, “He possesses to a positively miraculous degree the faculty of interesting himself in every human soul . . . ” and added, “above all, he possesses that subtler quality of spirituality which is felt rather than understood by those with whom he comes in contact.” Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, wife of Senator Hearst, and mother of William Randolph Hearst, after spending three days with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in ‘Akká wrote, “‘Those three days were the most memorable of my life . . . my greatest blessing in this world is that I have been privileged to be in His presence, and look upon His sanctified face . . . ’” Elsewhere she added, “‘I must say, He is the most wonderful Being I have ever met or ever expect to meet in this world . . . The spiritual atmosphere which surrounds Him and most powerfully affects all those who are blest by being near Him, is indescribable . . . ’” Louis Gregory, in Independent magazine, observed, “ . . . during his visit Americans will see one who steadily grows in popular favor and is even now regarded by some millions of people as the foremost man of the world.”

A reporter for the New York Tribune (5 May 1912) who went to interview ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at His hotel wrote, “ . . . why I should have expected to have the Baha all to myself I do not know, but I did.” She remarked that, “ . . . I looked about to find myself one of a concourse of people, all actuated by the same interest.” Yet, even among “a concourse of people,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá never lost sight of individual souls. One woman recalled that, on meeting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “He came to each one of us and took our hands in His with a loving greeting and a few words . . . I felt an electric shock that went from my head to my feet.” She was so attracted that, thereafter, she wrote, whenever He spoke “in homes or churches, halls or societies, I went almost at the cost of my position . . . ”

ABUNDANT DESCRIPTIONS of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá have been written. One observer said He was “strongly and solidly built,” weighing about “one hundred and sixty-five pounds,” adding that He was “alert and active in every movement, his head thrown back and splendidly poised upon his broad, square shoulders . . . ” Another described Him as having [Page 43] “perfect symmetry,” and being “full of dignity and grace.”

Newspapers photographed Him frequently, and many persons wrote verbal descriptions of His face. One said, “His bright, fair face, light brown in complexion, was framed in silvery white beard and moustache. . . . His nose was large, straight and strong. The mouth was rather full and very gentle. Deep under the broad forehead, and shaded by white, thick eyebrows, shone the wondrous eyes, large, prominent, brilliant, penetrating and kind. Around the dark pupil and brown iris is that wonderful blue circle which sometimes makes the eyes look a perfect blue.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s striking appearance was accentuated by His Persian garments. These included a full-length, light-colored robe, over which He wore an ‘abá, or outer cloak, and on His head, a low-crowned fez, with a fine-linen turban of white wound around the base.

His general movements were equally striking. One observer wrote, “He had the stride and freedom of a king—or shepherd. My impression of him was that of a lion, a kingly, masterful Man of the most sweet and generous disposition. . . . I found in Abdul-Baha a man, strong, powerful, without a thought as to any act, as free and unstilted as a father with his family or a boy with playmates. Yet each movement, his walk, his greeting, his sitting down and rising up were eloquent of power, full of dignity, freedom and ability.”

The records indicate that in America He always spoke without note of any kind. His addresses were in Persian, and a translator rendered the words into English, phrase by phrase. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stood, sat, or paced back and forth, depending on the location, occasion, size, and seating arrangement of the room. Usually the translator stood a step behind Him and to the side; or, when He paced, remained in a fixed position in the front of the room. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s gestures were described as being an “encouraging upward swing of hands,” with “never an upraised warning finger” nor a “downward stroke.”

There are numerous references on the part of observers to their sensing the meaning of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words even before the translation took place. Howard Colby Ives, who was a Unitarian minister when he met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, cites several examples. “One listened entranced,” he wrote, “and understood inwardly even before the interpreter opened his mouth. It was as though the English skimmed the surface . . .” About ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s chanting a prayer in Persian, Ives Stated, “In spite of the fact that the language was Persian, and so, of course, unfamiliar to me, the impression I received was that of understanding. So vivid was this that the interpreter’s translation came as a shock.” In San Francisco an uneducated miner who attended one of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s talks asked repeatedly about the translator, “‘Why does that man interrupt?’” When told he was translating from Persian to English, the man responded, “‘Was He [‘Abdu’l-Bahá] speaking in Persian? Why anyone could understand that.’”

Observers spoke of His seeming to look at each member of the audience. One found “in His eyes a living flame which seemed to ignite a smoldering spark within me.” Another added that they seemed to “look into you instead of at you,” with “an expression that is alert, intelligent, and serene.”

He was described as having great amounts of energy which were carefully controlled; yet His appearance was relaxed. Elbert Hubbard wrote in Hearst’s Magazine that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá “listens with much appreciation and sympathy” and that He speaks “slowly, distinctly, and most impressively.” Hubbard concluded, “He knows what he is saying. His heart is full and his emotions are brimming, although kept well under control.”

Reports mentioned His voice “filling the room,” however small or large the room might be, but never being overly loud. An American called ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s voice “honey-like,” [Page 44] and a Persian companion referred to it as “sweeter than honey.” It was “like a resonant bell of finest timbre . . . of such penetrating quality that the walls of the room seemed to vibrate with its music.”

A writer for Independent magazine summarized ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s appearance and physical delivery, describing Him as having “ . . . a long white beard and saintly face, worn but peaceful.” He continued, “His bearing is simple but dignified, unembarrassed by unaccustomed surroundings, giving his message . . . to a strange audience in a foreign land with the same earnestness and naturalness as though he were addressing his disciples in Acre. . . . Standing upon the floor or walking to and fro, he speaks quietly in Persian, which, sentence by sentence, is translated, though at times his expressive features and gestures make the services of an interpreter superfluous.”

THOSE WHO HEARD ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in these diverse settings sought to understand the source of His vast knowledge. Irene Earle remarked, in a Survey magazine article, that “Scientists and men of affairs who have met him marvel at his wisdom and common-sense knowledge of world conditions, questioning how he can meet them on their own level when he has been a political prisoner for forty years.” Another writer observed, “Among the most learned of men he is as much at home as among the poor and humble. This is very remarkable, as he has never attended school and studied books after the manner of men. Last spring the writer met him [before he came to America] . . . and found him as much conversant with conditions in America . . . as one who had lived here all his life.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá always stressed that His knowledge and His teachings came from Bahá’u’lláh. His addresses in America usually concerned single themes such as the establishment of universal peace, the unity of nations or races, the equality of men and women, the unity of science and religion, and the oneness of all religions. All of these principles were part of a larger system that comprised His Father’s Teachings. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá taught His Father’s message, that God had spoken to mankind through a series of Manifestations; that these Manifestations appeared from age to age and were perfect in action and word; that They each fulfilled the prophecies of Those that came before and foretold Those to come afterward; that They each brought two kinds of teachings—spiritual teachings, concerning love, justice, mercy, and the like, which did not change through the ages, and social teachings, which were adapted for the conditions of the place and age to which they were revealed; and that Bahá’u’lláh was the latest of these Messengers, that His spiritual Teachings reflected those of the past, and that His social Teachings were new and would form the basis for the unification of the entire world.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s talks reflected, as appropriate to the occasion, facets of this world-embracing system. To the federated women’s clubs of Illinois, He spoke of the equality of men and women; to the NAACP convention, He spoke of the oneness of mankind; to the New York Peace Society, He spoke of the establishment of world peace; at a synagogue, He spoke of the unity of the teachings of Moses, Jesus, Muḥammad, and Bahá’u’lláh; to those who professed belief in His Father’s Teachings, He spoke of the history of the religion, the early martyrs and their sacrifices, and the needs and methods of self-purification.

His presentations began with brief introductions, often noting something in the environment, and then moved directly into the key idea. He supported the central theme in a variety of ways with examples, illustrations, explanations, and quotations; and He used arguments based on both inductive and deductive reasoning.

THE PURPOSES of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s trip were two. To the general public, He promulgated ideas concerning world peace and the unification of religions, races, and nations. To those [Page 45] who already acknowledged His Father’s Teachings He urged the importance of living according to those Teachings and of helping others to understand them.

About the first purpose, Wendell Phillips wrote, “He comes on a mission of international peace . . . ” The New York Times (12 Apr. 1912) quoted ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as saying that He was ready to speak “wherever an audience can be found to welcome peace and promote the realization of the brotherhood of man.” According to the Washington Evening Star (20 Apr. 1912), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stated, “The great object of my life is to promote the oneness of the kingdom of humanity and international peace. . . . ” And the San Francisco Examiner reported that He said, “I have come to America to promote the ideal of Universal Peace and the solidarity of the human race.”

About the second purpose, deepening the Bahá’ís in Bahá’u’lláhs Teachings, He stressed the need for profound personal development of attributes such as justice, mercy, trustworthiness, truthfulness, honesty, and love. He urged them to channel their efforts into undertakings for human wellbeing. This emphasis is shown in His farewell address: “This is my last meeting with you . . . I have repeatedly summoned you to the cause of the unity of the world of humanity . . . Therefore you must manifest the greatest kindness and love toward the nations of the world, setting aside fanaticism, abandoning religious, national and racial prejudice. . . . You must therefore look toward each other and then toward mankind with the utmost love and kindness.”

The immediate response of the general public was one of acclaim. During presentations observers noted that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá “was followed with close attention by the large audience,” and that “The address was received with breathless attention . . . ” In public halls and universities, reports indicate prolonged applause following His talks, as when His address “was followed by a positive ovation and a recall,” and elsewhere when [Page 46] there was “a positive ovation.” In churches and synagogues, observers noted the same “deep silence which followed ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s stirring address” at Westminster Palace Hotel in London. On one occasion at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Chicago, at the morning worship service, the congregation stood and, even though in the church sanctuary, burst into prolonged cheers that stopped only when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá motioned them to silence. One writer commented, “ . . . the divine fire of this man’s [‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s] spirituality is bound to illuminate the dark corners of our imaginations and open up to us a spiritual realm which we would do well to go in and possess.”

Editorial response was overwhelmingly favorable. Often ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life and His speaking as a single entity were discussed. A Harper’s Weekly article, for example, noted that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and His Father “have this in addition, that, holding the universal truths, they have honestly and in the face of dire persecution striven to carry them out. They live their religion, as well as teach it. This is their power.” Other commentators combined their response to His life and speaking as a part of the whole religious system He represented. A writer in the Independent magazine concluded that the Bahá’í Faith “has proven its vitality, its reality, not only by inspiring its adherents to suffer martyrdom by the thousands . . . but still more by inspiring them to live together in peace and harmony. . . . ” Some reviews of His speaking described the effect on those who followed the teachings. A Survey magazine article noted: “Wherever a Bahai center has been formed, there has been a new spirit and a new impetus to progress. . . . Bahais . . . are back of or within every progressive movement. . . . Bahais by thousands, unlabelled, are pushing the various peace organizations of different countries.”

“Letters to the Editor” columns also contained references to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s addresses, including such statements as, “I enjoyed greatly hearing to-day this eloquent visitor from the Orient,” and “those who have heard Abdu’l-Bahá speak . . . must carry away in their hearts a high resolve to break down all barriers to human brorherhood.” Even the literary world responded, and Macmillan published Gertrude Atherton’s novel in which the heroine went to ‘Akká, explaining, “‘I went to see Abdul Baha Abbas and investigate the new religion. . . . ’”

A few negative voices were heard as well. A Presbyterian missionary who had been in Persia for almost forty years criticized ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s teachings, although he praised Him personally, saying that he greatly feared that the Bahá’í Faith “may find fruitful ground in the United States and I am anxious to raise my voice and urge Christians to crush it in its infancy.” But he added, “Last September I called on Abdul Baha . . . I found him a man of great affability and courtesy.” A San Francisco Monitor editorial (5 Oct. 1912) warned, “ . . . If Catholics should find themselves bitten by curiosity to look into these diabolical things [‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s teachings] . . . ” then they should “Stay at home and say the Rosary instead.”

After ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke at the Church of the Ascension in New York, the New York Herald (15 Apr. 1912) reported that some of the congregation thought He had violated Canon Nineteen of the Episcopal Church which “forbids any one not episcopally ordained from preaching in an Episcopal pulpit without the consent of the bishop. There is no provision against a non-ordained person offering prayer within the chancel, it was said, because no such contingency was anticipated.” The bishop, himself, came to apologize for these statements, and the minister invited ‘Abdu’l-Bahá back to the church.

After 1912, the public mention of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to America appeared intermittently in the press, usually related to some contemporary news story. When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá died in 1921, the New York World (1 Dec. 1921) , in a front page article, indicated, “Never before Abdul Baha did the [Page 47] leader of an Oriental religious movement visit the United States. . . . ” When, in 1943, the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, for which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had laid the foundation Stone in 1912, was completed, Time magazine (24 May 1943, p. 36) recalled how the place had been “blessed by Abdu’l-Bahá himself.”

As articles about the Bahá’í Faith have increased in number and frequency in recent years, mention of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s tour is often made in recounting its history. An article in The Negro History Bulletin in 1959 began, “In 1912 a great spiritual figure came to the shores of our American continent.” Denominational publications with increasing frequency summarize the Bahá’í Faith and mention ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s travels here. The Lutheran Youth magazine, for example, noted that, “Under his [‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s] leadership Bahá’í spread to Europe and America. In 1912 he laid the cornerstone for the temple in Wilmette. . . . ”

The preceding items indicate the reaction of the public to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s speaking tour. The effectiveness of the second, and long-range, purpose of His visit—that of urging the Bahá’ís to spread the teachings of brotherhood, peace, and justice as contained in His Father’s Teachings during the decades to come to all parts of the world in all languages —can best be measured by the response His words evoked and the degree to which the Bahá’ís fulfilled His request. In 1912, Bahá’í literature existed primarily in Persian, Arabic, and English; by 1968 it had been translated into 421 languages. It is difficult to identify the exact number of locations in America in which Bahá’ís resided in 1912, but estimates would seem to be below two hundred. By 1968, there were over 2,600 locations in the United States and Canada including each state and province. The number of centers throughout the world in 1912 was estimated at under 400, located in fewer than 20 countries and territories; by 1968 there were 31,572 locations in 314 countries and territories.

WHILE preparing this article in 1969, this writer attended the Bahá’í Institute held each Fall at Greenlake, Wisconsin, attended by several hundred people. A major portion of study concerned the life and American speaking tour of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The diversity of persons attending would have pleased Him, considering that one of His purposes was “to unite mankind,” for there were people of all ages from teen-aged youth to octogenarians; representatives of major religious backgrounds, and former atheists and agnostics, most of them now Bahá’ís; a variety of ethnic backgrounds and skin colors; some individuals with doctorates and some nearly illiterate; persons with occupations ranging from scientific to farming; and representatives of all income levels. Thus in modern day America —and similar groups in all the continents were studying the same subject—the review of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words and actions as a speaker more than half a century ago not only continues, but accelerates, and attracts not only the serious researcher, but representatives of the many strata of society to whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke, and for whom He now serves as the foremost Example not only of a “good man speaking well” but also of a whole life-style to be understood and emulated.

In the words of the reporter who spent months in personal interviews with Him and His family and associates in the prison-city of ‘Akká, “I have shown you now, as best I am able, what manner of man is this Abbas Effendi . . . That the faith which he holds and the creed which he preaches might be followed with benefit by us all, there is no gainsaying. . . . he is a sincere, courageous man, a figure whose increasing influence is already world-wide in its significance.”

[Page 48]

[Page 49]

Remembrances

A REVIEW OF ‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ’S Memorials of the Faithful

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL PERSIAN TEXT AND ANNOTATED BY MARZIEH

GAIL (WILMETTE, ILL.: BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING TRUST, 1971), 208 PAGES

AND H. M. BALYUZI’S ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Centre of the Convenant of Bahá’u’lláh

(LONDON: GEORGE RONALD, PUBLISHERS, 1971), 560 PAGES

BY FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

FOR Bahá’ís the life of no man is as significant as the life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Though he is not a Manifestation of God and “does not occupy a cognate station” with that of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, He is, like them, one of the Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith. Shoghi Effendi States that:

He is, and should for all time be regarded, first and foremost, as the Center and Pivot of Bahá’u’lláh’s peerless and all-enfolding Covenant, His most exalted handiwork, the stainless Mirror of His light, the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, the unerring Interpreter of His Word, the embodiment of every Bahá’í ideal, the incarnation of every Bahá’í virtue . . .

Every incident in His unique career, every word He uttered, every sentence He wrote, possesses a deep meaning and a power to inspire those who wish to follow Him in serving God and humanity. It is no wonder, therefore, that English-speaking Bahá’ís welcome with joy the appearance of a translation of a book by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a book of which until now they knew only the title.

Memorials of the Faithful does not lend itself to a facile summary or review. It deals not with the particular and ephemeral aspects of individual personalities but with the spiritual essence of the human beings it commemorates. In each man, in each woman, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá discovers and isolates the element of faithfulness, of that total devotion which, at its highest and most dramatic, takes the form of joyous martyrdom.

“There was, in the city of Najaf, among the disciples of the widely known mujtahid, Shaykh Murtaḍá, a man without likeness or peer. His name was Áqá Muḥammad-i-Qá’iní . . . ” Thus simply and directly ‘Abdu’l-Bahá introduces the first of the seventy-eight personae in this book. Áqá Muḥammad-i-Qá’iní, upon whom Bahá’u’lláh later bestowed the title of Nabíl-i-Akbar, rose to the rank of mujtahid: the highest in the Shiite hierarchy. Shortly thereafter, in Baghdád, he attained Bahá’u’lláh’s presence. Neither knowledge of theology nor clerical rank—often obstacles to search after truth—prevented him from embracing the Bahá’í Faith. When he returned to Qá’in to spread the Teachings, his endeavors were crowned with such success that soon the Sháh himself became aware of them and was infuriated. The local ruler, Mír ‘Alam Khán, fearful of the Sháh, attacked Áqá Muḥammad, driving him into exile. From then until the day he died, the homeless Áqá Muḥammad led a life of privation and penury, pursued by the authorities.

“He became penniless in Bukhárá and prey to many troubles, until at last, far from his homeland, he died, hastening away to the Kingdom where no poverty exists.” It was in poverty and exile that he achieved a station [Page 50] incomparably higher than any the world of men can grant: “He passed by the world and its rewards; he closed his eyes to rank and wealth; he loosed himself from all such chains and fetters, and put every worldly thought aside. . . . Praise be to God, at the end he was made the recipient of heavenly grace. Upon him be the glory of God, the All-Glorious. . . . ”

Unlike Áqá Muḥammad, Ustád Ismá‘íl was a simple man, a builder. “But he lost his heart to the Faith . . . cast caution aside, and became known throughout Ṭiḥrán as a pillar of the Bahá’ís.” Threatened with death, he left for Baghdád, where he attained Bahá’u’lláh’s presence. He lost his home, his wife, his country, and followed his Master to the prison city of ‘Akká. There his dwelling place was a cave, and he supported himself by peddling pins, needles, and thimbles. Yet he voiced thanks, saying: “‘Praise be to God that I have attained such favor and grace; that I have been separated from friend and stranger alike. . . . Now I am of those who gave their all, to buy the Divine Joseph in the market place. What bounty could be any greater than this!’”

Nabíl-i-Zarandí was a poet and an historian, Darvish Ṣidq-‘Alí a mystic, Muḥammad-Hádí a bookbinder, Áqá Muḥammad-Ibráhím a coppersmith, Mishkín-Qalam a great calligrapher, Ṭáhirih a poet and scholar, Ustad ‘Alí-Akbár a carpenter—each transcended his background, gave up his possessions, abandoned his home, and achieved the full life of the spirit. Reading these sketches and meditating on their meaning, one begins to understand and to feel the nature of the attraction Bahá’u’lláh exercised upon his disciples. One also begins to understand the sources of the indomitable spirit that animated the early heroes of the Bahá’í Faith.

As Professor Amín Banání recently pointed out in his article on “The Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” Memorials of the Faithful (Tadhkiratu’l-Vafá) echoes even in its title an ancient Persian literary tradition. However, the tradition of “remembrance” or “mentioning” (dhikr) finds here a fresh embodiment, for these are remembrances of spiritual triumphs. The memorials represent ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s spoken word, recorded in His presence and later corrected by Him. Yet the style is highly polished, the language poetic and rich. It is, of course, derived from a literature almost entirely unfamiliar to the Western reader. Thus, should the reader find it strange or difficult to absorb, he would do well to follow Professor Banání’s advice to “savor it slowly, allowing the unfamiliar language to create its own spirit and breathe life into its allusions.”

Translation is among the most difficult of arts. Not only must the translator be intimately acquainted with the language of the original, he must also be the master of the language into which he translates. Marzieh Gail is such a master. Raised in two cultures, she combines knowledge of Persian with recognized accomplishment as a writer of vivid English prose. This is not the place to conduct a detailed examination of her translation, yet even a first reading shows all the evidences of care and accuracy. Moreover, Mrs. Gail has succeeded in catching the spirit of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s graceful and sensitive style. All those who have no access to the original owe her a debt of gratitude.

Eunice Braun, who designed the book, and Conrad Heleniak, who designed the jacket, deserve praise for the visual beauty of the work. This is an unusually attractive volume. The choice of a calligraphic design from the pen of Mishkín-Qalam is especially appropriate both because of its intrinsic beauty and because he was himself one of the faithful memorialized by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

ONE CAN IMAGINE few tasks as difficult as that of writing a biography of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. His life was long, active, varied, tense, dangerous, [Page 51] full of pain and joy. No one was closer to Bahá’u’lláh, and no one paid so high a price for his devotion. Paradox was part of His daily existence. He loved all men indiscriminately, yet had to suffer hatred and ingratitude. He traveled four continents, yet spent most of His life as a prisoner and an exile. He was the incarnation of kindness and humility, but also of majesty and power. His disciples called Him the Master, yet He wanted no other title than ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Servant of Bahá) and prayed for grace to serve man, for selflessness, and for martyrdom in God’s path.

Perhaps the earliest attempt to record the impression produced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was made by Edward G. Browne, the renowned Orientalist who did so much to bring the Bábí-Bahá’í Faith to the attention of the West. Shortly after his memorable visit to ‘Akká he wrote of the Master in terms of unreserved admiration and respect: “About the greatness of this man and his power no one who had seen him could entertain a doubt.” However, the first attempt at a biography of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was made a dozen years later not by an Oriental scholar but by a New York lawyer, Myron H. Phelps. His Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, though containing some interesting material, failed to rise to the challenge posed by its subject. Now, almost seventy years later, Mr. Hasan M. Balyuzi has achieved a large measure of success.

It must be Stated at the outset that Mr. Balyuzi’s achievement is not unqualified. The writing is rather stiff and pale, with a number of stylistic infelicities that could have been eliminated by a good copy editor. The structure of the book is not fully satisfactory, for the first fifty years of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life are covered in some fifty pages, while His eight months in America are allotted 168 pages. Indeed, the book could have been subtitled “‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the West.” There is little here about the progress of the Faith in the East and the Master’s continuous involvement with Bahá’í communities in Burma, India, Persia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Of course, the author is aware of the problem. He faces it squarely at the beginning as well as at the end of his book: “No description,” he writes, “can measure up to the theme of a life which transcended every barrier to its total fulfillment. It lies beyond the range of assessment because every event in the life of the Son of Bahá’u’lláh carries a major accent.”

Having registered one’s objections, one must admit immediately that they are minor, and the merits of Mr. Balyuzi’s book far outweigh its shortcomings. Despite the neglect of the first fifty years of His life, this is the most comprehensive, the richest, the most penetrating, and the most scholarly life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá yet produced. No future biographer will be able to ignore it either as a source of factual information or of wise interpretation.

Mr. Balyuzi’s perceptions are clear, his judgments true, his love of the Master evident on every page. Shortsighted critics will cavil and accuse him of a lack of objectivity. If by objeCtivity is meant indifference, Mr. Balyuzi is guilty for he, as a Bahá’í, cannot be indifferent. If, however, objectivity is to be understood as honesty and fairness, he is scrupulously objective.

His work is not based on extensive research in archives and unpublished sources. It is rather a gathering and ordering of already available data. Mr. Balyuzi, however, deserves praise for the manner in which the data have been arranged. He uses several well known Persian sources inaccessible in the West. Those who read English will now learn many of the facts contained in the memoirs of Hájí Mírzá Ḥaydar ‘Alí, Dr. Yúnis Khán-i-Afrúkhtih, Dr. Ḥabíb-i-Mu’ayyad, and in the chronicle of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání. In addition to these, Mr. Balyuzi uses extensively the Writings of [Page 52] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, themselves a veritable mine of biographical information, as well as the writings of Shoghi Effendi whose understanding and appreciation of the Master will never be equaled. Finally, he puts to excellent use the Star of the West, the venerable predecessor of the American Bahá’í News.

The book consists of three parts, each subdivided into chapters. Part One, “Youth, Imprisonment, and Freedom,” is the most fascinating for it deals with the less known period of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life. His greatness becomes palpable to the reader who observes the Master emerging from the shadow of Bahá’u’lláh after His passing in 1892. There follow the dark years of trial, embittered by conflict and betrayal within ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s own family. Some Bahá’ís find the topic of the defection of Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, the brother of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, too painful for mention. Mr. Balyuzi does not shrink from recounting the latter’s malefactions. Painful as it may be, the existence of evil growing in the shadow of good must be exposed to view and allowed to reach its inexorable lessons.

The contents of Parts Two and Three, entitled respectively “America from Coast to Coast” and “Europe and the Closing Years,” are more familiar, though the chapters on the war years and the last years of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry contain some material unknown in the West.

It is impossible in a brief review to convey the flavor of Mr. Balyuzi’s book. Absorbing from its firSt page, it holds one’s attention to the end. It tells many old stories of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that the Bahá’ís love to hear again and again but adds several new ones. Whether familiar or not, each story provides a fresh insight into the character of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. In some instances the author tantalizes the reader by referring to “another witness” and withholding the name. In other instances he records anecdotes he heard from the witnesses themselves, thus increasing the reader’s sense of the reality of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s presence.

Mr. Balyuzi’s book will be widely read and used as a text in Bahá’í study groups and summer schools and will occupy a place of honor in the growing literature on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

[Page 53]

Authors & Artists

DANIEL CONNER teaches music and anthropology at Mission Mountain College in Montana. His interests include music and art, Oriental philosophy, astronomy, and Indian lore.

HORACE HOLLEY, who died before World Order was revived in 1966, was one of the founders of our magazine. Bahá’ís throughout the world remember him as a totally dedicated servant of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh. He was a magnificent teacher, speaker, and administrator, as well as a writer, poet, and thinker.

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH is Professor of History at Yale University and Editor of World Order.

JANEZ STANOVNIK, a native of Yugoslavia, is the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe. He was, for many years, a member of the Yugoslavian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and has served as Chairman of the Assembly’s Economic and Financia Committee. Mr. Stanovnik has published numerous articles on international finance and trade and other aspects of international economic relations.

ALLAN L. WARD has become a familiar name in the pages of World Order, articles of his having appeared in the Winter 1968, Spring 1969, and Summer 1970 issues. Mr. Ward, who holds a Ph.D. in Public Address and Oral Interpretation from Ohio University, is Director of Research and Staff Development at Arkansas Enterprises for the Blind.

ART CREDITS: P. 3, photograph by Jay Conrader; p. 6, drawing by Mark Fennessy; p. 17, drawing by Mark Fennessy; p. 23, photograph by Jay Conrader; pp. 25 and 31, photographs by Glenford E. Mitchell; pp. 38 and 45, photographs, courtesy Bahá’í National Archives; back cover, drawing by Pierre J. Spierckel.

JAY CONRADER. a regular contributor to World Order, is a freelance writer and photographer.

MARK FENNESSY, also a regular contributor to World Order, was a Scholar of the House in sculpture and drawing at Yale University.

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL is an alumnus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Managing Editor of World Order.

PIERRE J. SPIERCKEL, a painter, editor, and illustrator of textbooks, is contributing to World Order for the second time. Two of his drawings appeared in the Spring 1971 issue.