Seeds of Destruction

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. Thus warneth you He Who is the All-Knowing. If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation. Meditate on this, O people, and be not of them that wander distraught in the wilderness of error. The day is approaching when its flame will devour the cities…

(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 342-343)

With the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh humanity is given both the greatest spiritual energy and the fullest organic, social pattern: the actual Kingdom of God on earth; the fulfillment of the Christ promised “on earth as it is in heaven”; the real and eternal form of community.   The pattern laid up in heaven has now appeared on earth, the new Jerusalem has descended from out the invisible world to be made manifest in this earthly one.  The heavenly pattern, as I am referring to it here, acts as a template—i.e. coded information for building thought and action—through which is built its earthly social counterpart.  Shoghi Effendi remarks, for example, on “those things of the spirit on which alone a sure and stable foundation can be laid for human society.” (Citadel of Faith, p. 124) 

Energy and pattern in religious symbology are, I believe, fire and light, consummation as burning to ashes and consummation as full development, the fire of heat and the light of guidance, love and knowledge.  The fiery energy of Revelation sets the human world aflame with a desire for change of all kinds.  It inspires idealism in receptive hearts, and this ignites, in turn a burning, reactionary movement from entrenched and threatened powers.  The energy of Revelation also arouses a general spirit of experiment with new models of life and thought, and while these may not know the Source of their uplift, they are tuning in to the idealistic spirit of the age.  Such experiments are all those progressive movements that act to overthrow tyranny, to redress injustice, and, also, to build new social structures, find new discoveries, and the whole company of things going on of a positive nature in the world.  But they are not coordinated into a unified scheme, because they lack knowledge of the divine Source and Message and do not know the pattern to be guided into.  They do not act from the divine template, but toward it.  Revelation as pattern gives the spiritual light of guidance to progress toward a new social form. 

The modern Revelation is not one but two, or better, a single Revelation in two parts: the Bab’s and Bahá’u’lláh’s.  I believe that these are, taken respectively in their primary effects, the fire and light, energy and pattern, disintegrating and integrating, I just spoke of.  The Bab’s revelation is a consuming one that, metaphorically, burns the world to ashes.  Shoghi Effendi remarks on the Bab’s Message: “The creative energies released at the hour of the birth of His Revelation, endowing mankind with the potentialities of the attainment of maturity are deranging, during the present transitional age, the equilibrium of the entire planet as the inevitable prelude to the consummation in world unity of the coming of age of the human race. The portentous but unheeded warnings addressed to kings, princes, ecclesiastics are responsible for the successive overthrow of fourteen monarchies of East and West, the collapse of the institution of the Caliphate, the virtual extinction of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, the progressive decline in the fortunes of the ecclesiastical hierarchies of the Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Hindu Faiths.” (Citadel of Faith, p. 80) 

On the other hand, of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation, which is not a consuming of the world but a consummation of the processes of civilization-building and spiritual evolution in history, he writes: “The Order eulogized and announced in His (The Bab’s) writings, whose laws Bahá'u'lláh subsequently revealed in the Most Holy Book, whose features 'Abdu'l-Bahá delineated in His Testament, is now passing through its embryonic stage through the emergence of the initial institutions of the world Administrative Order in the five continents of the globe….The embryonic Faith, maturing three years after His martyrdom, traversing the period of infancy in the course of the Heroic Age of the Faith is now steadily progressing towards maturity in the present Formative Age, destined to attain full stature in the Golden Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation.” (Citadel of Faith, p. 81-82)

Bahá’u’lláh said that the order He perceived in the world of His time was “lamentably defective.”  But it was not totally so.  He also remarked on “the signs of His dominion” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 13) appearing in the west.  The spread of democracy, the abolition of slavery, the formation of republican governments, the political franchise for traditionally excluded groups, various movements for the rights of people, may all be part of those signs, among others in, for example, science and technology. 

Thus, some good was in that order.  But it was not good enough for the requirements of the new day.  Rather, being lamentably defective, what was good within it could not be saved and also have that order remain. Neither could the good be separated out and saved. The old order was systemically infected and moving ineluctably toward death, though some of the organs of the body politic were still working well.  Humanity had to transform to save what was good. 

            The mortal defect of the materialist order always was, in my opinion, the lack of a transcendent, spiritual dimension to its life and thought, the only foundation upon which a strong morality can be built.   This defect was from its beginning, but it was hidden behind the heady early successes of physical science and material development.  Our opening quote from Baha’u’llah states that if civilization oversteps the bounds of moderation it will bring great evil upon people.  True religion alone provides the regulating moral principle of moderation for human behavior.  Without religion, civilization, no matter how vaunted its arts and sciences, will inevitably slide into immoderation and burn itself up in its excesses.

The lack of real religion characterizes western civilization, the world’s first materialist civilization, one born originally in Europe, carried to excess in North America, and now the dominant ideology of the world.  This materialist civilization carried within it the seeds of its own destruction.  These have reached fruition and the season of spiritual harvest has arrived; the wheat and tares having matured together.  What are those seeds?   We’ll discuss this topic in the next post.