The highest essence and most perfect expression of whatsoever the peoples of old have either said or written hath, through this most potent Revelation, been sent down from the heaven of the Will of the All-Possessing, the Ever-Abiding God
(Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed After the Kitab-i-Aqdas:87)
I have discussed the principle that though the essential or archetypal form appears last in time it is also the source of all previous and partial expressions of itself. These forms or expressions of the essence unfold from the essential form and then enfold back into it. An example from the natural world of this unfolding/enfolding sequence is the life of a tree. The tree begins in seed form, grows through stages of the shoot, branches, leaves, buds, flower, and, finally, manifests as the fruit which holds another seed, another tree, within it. Spiritually the same principle holds.
For example, Bahá’u’lláh said of the relation of His own Revelation to those that came before it: “This is the Ocean out of which all seas have proceeded, and with which every one of them will ultimately be united. From Him all the Sun have been generated, and unto Him they will all return. Through His potency the Trees of Divine Revelation have yielded their fruits, every one of which hath been sent down in the form of a Prophet, bearing a Message to God's creatures.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh:104)
In another place He said that His Revelation "attracteth and embraceth all the divinely appointed Dispensations....So vast is its range that it hath encompassed all men ere their recognition of it." (Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh:200) In the brief introduction to His first book, The Hidden Words, Baha’u’llah writes: “This is that which hath descended from the realm of glory, uttered by the tongue of power and might, and revealed unto the Prophets of old. We have taken the inner essence thereof and clothed it in the garment of brevity…” And, since the essence is spiritually first and temporally last: “Whoso acknowledgeth belief in Him and in His signs and testimonies hath in truth acknowledged that which the Tongue of Grandeur uttered ere the creation of earth and heaven and the revelation of the Kingdom of Names.” (Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh:47.)
‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote in regarding the relation between the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and all previous Revelations: “(T)he rising of the Greatest Luminary was the condition of the perfection of the essence and of the qualities.” (Some Answered Questions:124) And: (T)he words of Bahá’u’lláh are the essences of the words of the Prophets of the past.” (Promulgation of Universal Peace:314)
Finally, He said of the relation between Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation and an evolving humanity: “But the Manifestation of the Most Great Name...was an expression of the coming of age, the maturing of man's inmost reality in this world of being.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:56) That is to say that: “Man from the beginning was in this perfect form and composition, and possessed capacity and aptitude for acquiring material and spiritual perfections, and was the manifestation of these words, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness.” (Some Answered Questions:194)
The same idea is mirrored in humanity’s social advance when civilization is conjoined with Revelation. Shoghi Effendi said the "supreme mission" of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh was "the achievement of this organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of nations.” (The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh:163) Through the ages of history an ever-advancing civilization means that through the influence of the Great Educators civilization expands until the whole earth itself is truly civilized. Thus over time more people are brought within the pale of civilization, the powers residing within society continuously evolve until they reach mature perfection, or fully integrated expression, and the greatest abundance of life is realized. Reaching the condition of organic perfection, named maturity, marks the end of history as a developmental process, for the “organic unity” will have reappeared in full form and, from that point like the individual, humanity will have attained the capacity to manifest its latent intellectual and spiritual powers. From then on humanity will advance as a single yet infinitely diversified organic and spiritual unity.
Further, the decline into death which has overtaken every cultural cycle to date will disappear and an undying, ever-progressive, globally-united cultural life for humanity that is continuously fueled by spiritual springs will commence. This is the real apocalypse, or revelation of hidden form, the unfolding shape of time enfolded into the fully realized shape of our collective being. When the organic archetype generating all material development itself appears within time, then civilization will follow spiritual cycles. That means that the "the highest essence and most perfect expression" of all previous civilizations will be operating, because Bahá’u’lláh's revelation holds the same relation to previous revelations. The civilization now emerging into history is the eternal form of civilization, the Kingdom of God within you is now also the Kingdom of God among you, the mirror-image in the world of time of the eternal society existing in the timeless realm, for "when imperfections reach the station of perfection, they become eternal.” (Some Answered Questions:151)
It is the eternal form also because throughout history visionaries have always imaginatively placed this civilization, this condition of universal peace and prosperity, either at the dawn or at the end of time, and this is usually a result of the visionary himself living either closer to the beginning or the end of the developmental process. But it really "exists" at both places because as the Alpha and Omega of human life it is both the origin and the end, the undifferentiated unity and the completely developed and unified one, seed and fruit, ground and pinnacle, of human concern. Such logically bewildering geographies are the best that the earthbound imagination can come up with when it attempts to grasp the non-earthly regions of eternity. Such ideal states, no matter where they occur, are a time when all religion, all civilization, all humankind, all nature, all knowledge and all time are drawn into a single eternal and universal form of infinite self-directed possibility and opportunity, Omega become the new Alpha. Of such stuff is vision made, and working toward it realization is the stuff of history.
The Prophetic Revelators of the Adamic Cycle Themselves declared, each in His own imagery, that the Christ-promised Kingdom of God was both in the future and in eternity, and in the future because in eternity. Hence whenever the prophecy is fulfilled history comes to an end, the future is now and the eternal and the temporal become perfect reflections of each other. If this is true then the cycles of recorded history, from Adam until the Bab, the six-thousand year incubation period in the womb of time, has climaxed, and the final redemption has taken place. Now the whole of history is resurrected, placed within one imaginative universe of vision as a single form, and elevated to a new station of understanding. It is the universal Sabbath which we are to remember and keep holy. Now civilization no longer moves away from the Founder into corruption and decay to be rescued and set right again by a new revelation, but, rather, evolves toward Him in greater perfection of its own powers. The primary rhythm is not now the organic progression from birth to death, but the spiritual evolution from lesser life to greater life. An alternating cycle of light and dark has come to an end, and a new kind of cycle where day shall not be followed by night is put in its stead.
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