The Holy, 'Divine Manifestations are unique and peerless, They are the archetypes of celestial and spiritual virtues in their own age and cycle. 'They stand on the summit of the Mount of Vision and they foreshadow the perfections of an evolving humanity.
(‘Abdu’l-Baha: Star of the West vol. V #5)
The special object of study of spiritual history is the process of humanity’s spiritual evolution in the material world. It is “the one eternal religion” as it progressively manifests Itself in an unfolding collective social form called civilization. The Baha'i belief that all the religions achieve some glorious consummation in a universal religion is an example of the principle that what appears in perfectly developed form at the end of a process of development is the essence or fundamental form of that process itself. Civilization follows the same trajectory.
Due to accepted Darwinian reasoning about evolution, however, the full relationship between the beginning and ending of a developmental process is a difficult one to see, but it is this: the essential form of anything is the last to appear in manifest form, though it is first in rank and the progenitor of all those partial and prior manifested forms that appear in time before it. That is, the spiritual “essence” is the archetypal form out of which all manifest forms appear and which itself becomes manifest in some form at the end—Alpha become Omega.
Each particular civilization is both a material and social expression of a spiritual (eternal) universal and a partial embodiment of the universal social form, called a world civilization, that will appear at the end of civilized development. Said another way, the essential spiritual form unfolds in time as a progressive sequence of organic models called civilizations which ultimately will enfold into a universal structure, or world civilization, at the “end of time”. Civilization, like revelation, progresses from one particular form of the universal to another, each later one a more complete and comprehensive organization of the same totality. This is the unfolding through developmental stages of “the Primal oneness" (Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá: 263) deposited at the heart of all things until development reaches a fully manifested universal form that embodies all humanity, at which time a new and different kind of cycle of development will commence.
Said another way, the spiritually first appears fully garbed in the materially last. At every level of creation the essence of that level is last to be manifested, for the material structures capable of embodying and carrying the energy of the archetype must be built first. For the individual human being ‘Abdu’l-Baha states: “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.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha:285)
In human history, the appearance of the “essence” of Revelation and Civilization in manifest form also signals the end of the material cycle and the beginning of the spiritual one. At every stage the more complete form of anything is related to but logically independent of its less complete forms. That is, they are incomparable. The kingdoms of created things moving toward man show us this by analogy. For however much we humans genetically resemble our neighboring primates, man is independent of the monkey, a new kind of creation. Man and monkey are incomparable, though both are parts of the creational world. We differ from them by less than 1% of our genetic makeup. But the organization of the genetic material of humanity is different. To connect man and monkey logically is to fruitlessly search for the missing link in a literal rather than a metaphorical great chain of being.
Due to great changes in thinking and feeling, the stages of psychological growth of an individual are also incomparable, as any parent trying to make sense of their teenager—or even their own teenage years--will tell you. Yet all these changes are held together by the fact that they are happening within one individual. Because of vast changes, the cycles of collective human development are also incomparable. As ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained: “Now this change, these alterations and this abrogation are due to 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) Yet all these Dispensations are connected by the recurring Vision of the Prophets moving toward full manifestation.
In short, the process of human development moves simultaneously along two pathways which point metaphorically in opposite directions; one, the outer and material, by a revolving upward, which is outward, of all things toward their mature or fully developed physical form. But in spiritual development and the expansion of consciousness upward or greater means, metaphorically, inward, that is toward the inner or essential form.
In the natural world the past is the prior and less developed form of the present, which is an earlier and less complete form of the future. The former precedes the latter, but finds its completion in the latter, not in itself. But spiritually the greater precedes the lesser, and the prior and greater infuses its later expressions with the forms and energy to progress. All find their fulfillment in return to the first Form when it is manifest in the last form. To be progressive, all revolution, which means return to the root, must be resurrection into a more complete form.
Regarding the sequence of Manifestations and where their Words find fulfillment the Bab wrote: “The Bayan and whosoever is therein revolve round the sayings of 'Him Whom God shall make Manifest,' even as the Alif (Gospel) and whosoever was therein revolved round the saying of Muhammad, the Apostle of God.” (Shoghi Effendi. The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh:100)
But the spiritual relation of the Most Glorious universal Revelation to all previous revelations reverses that: "There is a priority with regard to glory--that is to say, the most glorious precedes the glorious." (Some Answered Questions:116)
Thus the spiritual relation of the universal Revelation to appear at the end of time to its partial and incomplete and previous forms is one of creator to creation, though in historical time this relation appears to be the opposite—the higher appearing later seems in good Darwinian fashion to come out of the former, as is true of all natural cycles of evolution. Likewise in collective human social development the final form of human material history is a world civilization. Yet the spiritual relation of this universal form of civilization to previous civilizations, which are the cultural cycles leading up to it, is also one of creator to creation. That is, it is the formal cause of them, while they are the material cause of the universal one. The universal civilization, the one pointed to by all the Prophets and sung about by poet and seers, spiritually preceded all previous civilizations. It is their Source, and moving toward it is their purpose.
The archetypal form of civilization was metaphorically imprinted on the historical civilizations in some way, as the artist imprints his mental vision on the material canvas, slowing building it into a complete picture. It is their perfection, originating with the foundation of creation and appearing at the end of it, and they are its partial and periodic realization. Exactly the same spiritual/material, structure/sequence relationship holds for the whole universe. The Master tells us: “All beings, whether large or small, were created perfect and complete from the first, but their perfections appear in them by degrees...The organization of God is one; the evolution of existence is one; the divine system is one...” (Some Answered Questions:199)
More on this in the next post.
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