Third principle: Humanity is undergoing transcendence

Universal beings resemble and can be compared to particular beings, for both are subjected to one natural system, one universal law and divine organization. So you will find the smallest atoms in the universal system are similar to the greatest beings of the universe.

(Some Answered Questions:182)

            I have been discussing some of the first or root principles of a new education, a new bringing forth of powers and capabilities from the human reality.  The first principle concerned the nature of Reality; the second principle was a discussion of human progress through stages of transformation and into transcendence.  The third principle is the relation between the individual’s spiritual transformation and humanity’s transformation, and that we are at a critical juncture in our collective evolution, called maturity, when all humanity must make a great leap forward, transcend all previous conditions, be lifted into a new condition.  Baha’u’llah wrote: “The end of all beginnings is to be found in this Day.” (The Tabernacle of Unity: 66-67)  But so, too, is the beginning of all ends to be found in today's world.

            The document Who is Writing the Future starts out with this ringing declaration: “The mainspring of Bahá'u'lláh's message is an exposition of reality as fundamentally spiritual in nature, and of the laws that govern that reality's operation. It not only sees the individual as a spiritual being, a "rational soul", but also insists that the entire enterprise that we call civilization is itself a spiritual process, one in which the human mind and heart have created progressively more complex and efficient means to express their inherent moral and intellectual capacities.”(Who is Writing the Future:1)

            What are some of the historical stages of the spiritual process called civilization building?  If we are to see this as a process and not simply as different, unconnected civilizations that have been built and run through cycles of growth and decline, then we need some framework.  One framework is provided by comparison to the individual’s growth.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha writes: “Praise be to God, throughout succeeding centuries and ages the call of civilization hath been raised, the world of humanity hath been advancing and progressing day by day, various countries have been developing by leaps and bounds, and material improvements have increased, until the world of existence obtained universal capacity to receive the spiritual teachings and to hearken to the Divine Call. The suckling babe passeth through various physical stages, growing and developing at every stage, until its body reacheth the age of maturity. Having arrived at this stage it acquireth the capacity to manifest spiritual and intellectual perfections. The lights of comprehension, intelligence and knowledge become perceptible in it and the powers of its soul unfold. Similarly, in the contingent world, the human species hath undergone progressive physical changes and, by a slow process, hath scaled the ladder of civilization, realizing in itself the wonders, excellencies and gifts of humanity in their most glorious form, until it gained the capacity to express the splendours of spiritual perfections and divine ideals and became capable of hearkening to the call of God. Then at last the call of the Kingdom was raised, the spiritual virtues and perfections were revealed, the Sun of Reality dawned, and the teachings of the Most Great Peace, of the oneness of the world of humanity and of the universality of men, were promoted.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha:285)

            But another example of such a universal progression is religion.  But, like the human being, the laws of religion operate on two planes, the material, whose law of development is growth and decline, and the spiritual, which “is in itself progressive.” 

            Collectively there are several progressions and transformations of spirit on this plane.  First there is evolution through a cultural or religious cycle until the potentials of the entire condition are fulfilled.  We call such progression in religion a dispensation (Jewish, Christian, etc.) of one of the great Prophets.  This is easy to see and accept.

            A second progression of spirit is to transcend a cultural or religious context once its internal transformations are ended by entering into a larger cycle.  Thus, for many there is Judaism and Christianity as separate religions, but there is also a Judeo-Christian tradition, which can be traced back to Adam; or a Semitic peoples religious tradition which would link Judaism, Christianity and Islam; or, even wider, the tradition of Abrahamic religions which would include, along with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism, and the Babi and Bahá’í faiths.  We can also speak of an “Indian” tradition composed of Hindu-Buddhist linkages.  In each case, each religion can be seen, from a wider perspective, as a stage in a larger tradition of shared religious experience.  Each dispensation is its own cycle of development.  One religious dispensation ends with a new revelation. But this change of consciousness is not a smooth incremental step into a new reality.  Indeed, while this transformation in religion is spiritually expansive, culturally it is cataclysmic for the people who have that new Revelation erupt upon them.  Their social reality is pretty well wiped away.  Spiritually, Jesus said to the Jews: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)  But, socially, fulfillment of the Law of God felt a good deal like the abrogation of their law, for while fulfilling the law does not destroy the spiritual law, it does destroy life run according to it up until that time.

            Thus, the cultural cycles are not comparable, so new social laws and principles are established by a new prophet while old ones are abrogated.   ‘Abdu’l-Baha speaks, for example, of “the impossibility of comparing the time of Christ with that of Moses. The conditions and requirements in the later period were entirely changed and altered.  The former laws were therefore abrogated.” (Some Answered Questions:94)  

            But all these cycles and traditions brought together and having reached maturity of possible consciousness, compose a universal cycle, and to get free of it is real transcendence.  Transcendence is the third progression of spirit and religion, one seen by the prophet Ezekiel in his vision of wheels within wheels. 

            Again, while the expansion of consciousness is unprecedented at the end of one universal cycle and the beginning of another, the destruction that accompanies this third progression is tremendous.  The Master says: “Briefly, there were many universal cycles preceding this one in which we are living. They were consummated, completed and their traces obliterated.”(Promulgation of Universal Peace:220) 

            A universal perception sees that: "The religion of God is one religion, but it must ever be renewed.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: 52)  It is both "the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future,"(Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh:136) and expresses the transformational principle: “That which hath been in existence had existed before but not in the form thou seest today.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 140) Spirit, then, is both the energy and intelligence to evolve within and to transcend any cycle, including at its ultimate stage all previous cycles together. 

            The new universal spiritual law links all past cycles together—absorbs them really--as it gets a new universal cycle up and running.  A new universal cycle has commenced for the entire planet.  That is what makes the convulsions so omnipresent and destructive, that wholly destroy the conditions of the former, including its mental conditions of understanding, yet which also provides the principles that connect all history, peoples and their religions together.  Today these cataclysmic forces of change are propelling humanity through what Shoghi Effendi described as “an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced.” (The World Order of Baha’u’llah: 43) 

            Now, if education does not take account of these new conditions of human possibility and consciousness, it is not an adequate bringing forth of the human spirit, but an inadequate bringing forth, much like forcing an adolescent to subsist on a diet of milk.  It will never suffice for his energy needs.

            I have constructed this post as a short exercise in a kind of history called Heilgeschiste or sacred history, as an example of how the study of any subject can be unifying and relevant to today’s demands of consciousness.  What do you think?