Revelation as Pattern: Building a New Order

Regard ye the world as a man’s body, which is afflicted with divers ailments, and the recovery of which dependeth upon the harmonizing of all of its component elements. Gather ye around that which We have prescribed unto you, and walk not in the ways of such as create dissension. Meditate on the world and the state of its people.

(Bahá’u’lláh. Epistle to the Son of the Wolf: 55-56)

While Spirit is transformative, in this world, at least, It needs a body through which to act effectively. The spiritual must also be substantial.  Without appearing in organic, social form, human understanding of Spirit is as some disembodied spectre the nature of which is subject to a host of conflicting imaginative interpretations, so that, eventually, Spirit means anything and nothing at all.  Though Bahá’u’lláh breathed the Spirit of His Revelation upon the whole of creation, still, for human community, Spirit must have a focus and a locus, a form identifiable as only Itself, and a pattern of  growth that follows organic laws fed by spiritual light.  This is the evolving Bahá’í community.  

Shoghi Effendi wrote: “Few will fail to recognize that the Spirit breathed by Bahá’u’lláh upon the world, and which is manifesting itself with varying degrees of intensity through the efforts consciously displayed by His avowed supporters and indirectly through certain humanitarian organizations, can never permeate and exercise an abiding influence upon mankind unless and until it incarnates itself in a visible Order, which would bear His name, wholly identify itself with His principles, and function in conformity with His laws.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 19)

The Bahá’i Community is rebuilding civilization from the ground up.  The call of God is both to the soul of the individual and to the spirit of humanity, and answering this call sets off a spiritual transformation that appears in the transformation of organic form.  Spiritualization of the individual begins with a fundamental change in self-consciousness from a center within himself to a center within divinity. Out from this new center flow different and new attitudes and behaviors demonstrating that a spiritual transformation is underway. 

However, transformed individuals are not sufficient by themselves, even in the aggregate, to effect the scale and speed of change needed for social advance to occur. Inner individual changes not outwardly supported by new patterns of collective behavior and through mediating institutions will eventually become as water in the sand.  If only a few are spiritually transformed, there is no appreciable seismic activity set off in the social landscape, though the dynamic force of example does have powerful effect.  But if larger numbers of people undergo transformation, and are united by institutions also operating on spiritual principles, then the larger society feels this impact and can undergo a transformation both in its nature and in its structure, which means one form disintegrates as another is built in its stead. 

In fact, until a new collective consciousness takes root and a new society is erected, the actions of such individuals actually ramp up the confusion in a system that is “lamentably defective”, because that system cannot assimilate the energy and patterns of behavior that flow from spiritual principles.  Rather, reactionary forces will attempt to crush these for the insurrection that they perceive them to be.  Consider this statement from Bahá’u’lláh on the integrative and disintegrative effects of a righteous act: “One righteous act is endowed with a potency that can so elevate the dust as to cause it to pass beyond the heaven of heavens. It can tear every bond asunder, and hath the power to restore the force that hath spent itself and vanished...” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 286)

Since its inception, setting in motion and coordinating processes of individual and social transformation has been at the heart of the Bahá’í counter-thrust to materialism, moving through a series of enlarging and interconnecting contexts that we can call: personal, institutional, and, now, moving into effective community action. 

The three enlarging social contexts capture the process of social transformation by spiritual means, each context linked to the others, creating a widening and upwardly evolving social force.  The House of Justice succinctly puts the process internal to the Bahá’i Community as: “Souls must be transformed, communities thereby consolidated, new models of life thus attained.” (The Universal House of Justice, A Wider Horizon, Selected Letters 1983-1992: 64-65.)   In another place they discussed the effects of the interaction of these three contexts of spiritual transformation on the broader community: “A Bahá'í community which is consistent in its fundamental life-giving, life sustaining activities will at its heart be serene and confident; it will resonate with spiritual dynamism, will exert irresistible influence, will set a new course in social evolution, enabling it to win the respect and eventually the allegiance of admirers and critics alike.” (Letter from the Universal House of Justice. Riḍván, 1984)

We can now undertake a discussion at the broadest level of analysis, namely, the entire globe. In a work of macro-social analysis, this is a natural enough direction to take, but we have this added reason:  “The principle of the Oneness of Mankind—the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve—is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations. Its implications are deeper, its claims greater than any which the Prophets of old were allowed to advance. Its message is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 42-43)

Linking the individual and the collective, i.e. humanity, to see how they are similarly affected and similarly respond to the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh is another example of spiritual causality which generates change everywhere at once.  Too, if the Bahá’i Administrative Order is the “pattern and nucleus” of a new order, then, to get some idea of how the Bahá’í community works internally is also to understand how the world can work, and to better grasp the interrelation that all-important dynamic between personal and social transformation.

Before we embark on this examination, it should be understood by all that this new world order, this new social form of governance that humanity will adapt itself to and which is the manifestation of spiritual forces, is not to be imposed upon the world, but, instead, demonstrated as one possible model of social organization and collective functioning.  That is, the Bahá’i Order is presented to the world as something that populations, their leaders and those serving on institutions, can observe, evaluate, incorporate, and build upon.  It is the wide-embrace, the strength and efficiency of that Order, the clarity of its principles and the nobility of its aims, and its ability to harmonize and advance human aspirations, which alone will win converts to its principles and processes from among the fair-minded among humankind.

Having said that, I should not fail to state that it is a remarkable social Order, possessing challenging features, exalted ethical ideals, and new principles of interaction, all expressive of a new conception of human nature and purpose that contrasts sharply with current notions of human nature, purpose and governance.   It is a Divine Economy.

Manifesting the Spiritual Form

I believe that the spiritual form of the emerging new World Order pre-exists its own manifest organic form and that the spiritual form is complete in the Revelation, while the organic form is moving toward completion.  Recall, too, that the Master stated that humanity will “adapt itself to a new social form” which is “the manifestation of spiritual forces”.  Let us examine more closely the early half-hidden stages of this manifestation.

First, Shoghi Effendi perceived that “the structure of His New World Order, now stirring in the womb of the administrative institutions He Himself has created, will serve both as a pattern and a nucleus of that world commonwealth which is the sure, the inevitable destiny of the peoples and nations of the earth.” (The Promised Day is Come: 118.) 

It is of great interest to me that the complete structure of Bahá’u’lláh’s World Order—the heavenly pattern—is stirring within the womb of the organic institutions of the Bahá’í Administrative Order.  Thus, the Guardian, called the Bahá’í Administrative Order “a system which is at once the harbinger, the nucleus and pattern of His World Order.” (God Passes By, p. xv.)  This means to me that His World Order already exists completely in some spiritual form, and is—indeed always has been—growing in this one.  Similarly, at the moment of human conception, the entire DNA, the whole biological code, of the individual exists complete in that first fertilized cell, but it unfolds in stages we call organic, physical development.  “This Administrative Order,” wrote Shoghi Effendi, “as it expands and consolidates itself…will, as its component parts, its organic institutions, begin to function with efficiency and vigor, assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 152) 

Every developmental organic expansion of the divine order is, then, a fuller unfoldment of the spiritual structure that provokes a fresh set of tribulations for the existing human order, bringing more stress to bear upon its already overstressed edifice, crumbling that order further and faster, as the new order is both fed by celestial springs of energy, and takes over the free radicals of energy that a cancerous order gives off in its demise. 

For me, the most striking image describing the spiritual and organic shaking apart of the bonds holding the old order together by the development of the new is “vibrating influence.”  Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 136)

The image of a vibrating influence is a powerful one, for it accurately describes the effect of the Word, Itself a vibration of sound and meaning.  But Bahá’u’lláh here uses this metaphor to describe the radiant influence of the institutions He fashioned, each a structure vibrating at a divine frequency—a suggestive idea if one accepts the basic postulates of String Theory with its infinitesimally small vibrating strings of energy undergoing continual oscillations between equilibrium and disequilibrium.  

On the level of pure energy, the way that the divine order replaces the human one is by introducing a new master vibration, thereby setting all things vibrating at a higher frequency and establishing a new harmony.  This breaks down the old form, but leads to breakthrough into a more complex order.  Disequilibrium of the old is necessary before a new equilibrium can be established.  But that new equilibrium can occur most efficiently when the proper organic form, the resonant structure, to channel this energy exists, so that development is guided through its stages of growth rather than relying entirely upon trial and error.  Guidance is the design of the plan of God.    

It is a known fact that all manifest or actual states and powers, then, first exist somewhere as potential before they are manifest, or actual.  For me, things first exist as both spiritual and organic potential, and that potential is both energy and form or structure, the spiritual form being the archetype or template of the organic.  God fashions the new spiritual form which is Revelation, and Revelation, in turn, fashions the organic world, including human society, in its image.  The Revelations are linked in a process called progressive Revelation, and each unfolds seamlessly from the other, for all are unfolding from one Structure.  Organically, forms are linked and connected to unfold and this is done through internal transformations.  But when a system has reached the limit of its internal transformations of growth, the whole system must transform for growth to continue, and this means the existing form of the system must be done away with. 

The organic form that Spirit incarnates itself in, a form which holds and channels that energy, also gives the world a model to pattern itself upon.  That is, while the heavenly pattern, expressed in the revealed Word, is the template for the organic Bahá’í Order, the Bahá’í Order is the pattern of a new society that societies will use to reconstruct themselves.  The Bahá’í Order operates both as a pattern and nucleus, a template, for the new society to be built upon, the source of existence, whose essence is Revelation, for the new social creation.  As the organic pattern, it directly incarnates the divine pattern, the heavenly city come down to earth, the human society made in the image and likeness of the divine one.  As social nucleus of a new world order, a nucleus that cannot be assimilated by the old world but can build a new one, it acts as an anti-environment to that old world, bringing it to consciousness, upsetting its equilibrium and transforming its relations, processes and structures.

            Every previous Revelation provoked a crisis in the social order of humanity of its time, however geographically remote many lands and peoples may have been from the land the Revelator appeared in. But because His message was a spiritual one It instantly diffused throughout the world, gradually changing over centuries the entire environment of human thought and life.  The unparalleled power of the Revelations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, in my view, provoked a near instantaneous systems-wide upheaval, a structural crisis, in the entire world order of Their time.  In any structural crisis there flares an internal battle between the major sectors for power to lead the whole society.  Today, the entire world at every level continues to generate increasing levels of dysfunction and violence.  For the new spirit initially works to reenergize all things, including all those things opposed to its appearance and progress. 

In a structural crisis, the only certainty is that the existing system cannot survive. What is impossible to know in most such crises is what the successor system will be.  The one encouraging feature about a systemic crisis is the degree to which it increases the viability of human creativity.  But the choice is a single and final one.  Either there shall be a significantly better world-system (however that is conceived) or the result shall end with a system that is likely far worse, or with no system at all.

I said that in most cases the new system is unknown, but, for Bahá’ís at least, with the power and pattern of Baha’u’llah’s Revelation and the organic structure of His Administrative Order, which the Guardian described as the very pattern and nucleus of the coming world order, the new system is understood in advance, at least its general features, principles and values.  It is His promise, taken on faith by His followers and demonstrated in their individual and community relations, that it will not only come to pass, but is doing so with every passing hour.

Setting a New Foundation

It should be remembered by every follower of the Cause that the system of Bahá'í administration is not an innovation imposed arbitrarily upon the Bahá'ís of the world since the Master's passing, but derives its authority from the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, is specifically prescribed in unnumbered Tablets, and rests in some of its essential features upon the explicit provisions of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. It thus unifies and correlates the principles separately laid down by Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and is indissolubly bound with the essential verities of the Faith. To dissociate the administrative principles of the Cause from the purely spiritual and humanitarian teachings would be tantamount to a mutilation of the body of the Cause, a separation that can only result in the disintegration of its component parts, and the extinction of the Faith itself.

            (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 5)

 I have said that the divine order cannot be assimilated by the human world, and so is breaking it down.  Yet, from the divine side of transformation, what is occurring is a recreation of the human in the image of the divine.  This is a work of infinite complexity that transforms all human and social relations and processes—reinforcing some, abrogating others, instituting still others—but forming an entirely new configuration of the parts of the whole.  One order replaces another, puts itself in its stead, for there is not room in one world for two world orders.  Too, there can be no continuity, except within the progressive expansion of that spiritual context called progressive Revelation.

Another way of looking at this process was given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá when He stated: “No matter how far the material world advances, it cannot establish the happiness of mankind. Only when material and spiritual civilization are linked and coordinated will happiness be assured. Then material civilization will not contribute its energies to the forces of evil in destroying the oneness of humanity, for in material civilization good and evil advance together and maintain the same pace.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 109)

Linking and coordinating the two kinds of civilizations involves not only the political realm and the world of morality, but also linking the economic, civil, cultural and religious sectors of society with each other and coordinating their different axial principles to achieve ever greater coherence on a world scale.  But we can also ask: Where does this spiritual civilization exist with which an existing material civilization is to be linked and coordinated?  The only answer, I believe, is that this spiritual civilization exists both fully in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and embryonically in the organic Bahá’í world community, which is the social embodiment of that spiritual civilization.  The linkages and coordinations are those connections being built between the material and divine civilization by the Plans of God that turn the human order into the divine One. 

Let us look again at a statement from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “Among the results of the manifestation of spiritual forces will be that the human world will adapt itself to a new social form, the justice of God will become manifest throughout human affairs, and human equality will be universally established.”  It is noteworthy in this connection that He states that humanity “will adapt itself to a new social form”, not invent or create it unaided. Too, this new social form is “the result of the manifestation of spiritual forces” and not the result of natural or social evolution or human action.

The reciprocal interactions of the Plans form a kind of transformational logic taking humanity from one order to another, because in this twofold reciprocal process the “first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive.”  Neither process, then, is exclusively integrating nor disruptive, rather, each process is either mostly integrative or disruptive.  If they were only one or the other, by definition transformation could not occur.  While integration is occurring in the disruptive process—integration which I identify as those movements searching for a new order—the process as a whole is fundamentally disruptive.  Too, the constructive process casts its own turmoil in the world by constructing a new configuration of the different sectors and aspects of civilization upon a foundation of revealed spiritual principles.

Integration and disintegration are parallel processes operating at every level, yet they move in opposite directions, acing reciprocally, and these counter movements generate the maelstrom of destruction that humanity is now experiencing.  The Guardian stated: “Might not this process of steady deterioration which is insidiously invading so many departments of human activity and thought be regarded as a necessary accompaniment to the rise of this almighty Arm of Bahá'u'lláh? Might we not look upon the momentous happenings which, in the course of the past twenty years, have so deeply agitated every continent of the earth, as ominous signs simultaneously proclaiming the agonies of a disintegrating civilization and the birthpangs of that World Order—that Ark of human salvation—that must needs arise upon its ruins.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 155-156)

Now, the linking and coordinating of two separate civilizations, one representing a dying order and the other an emerging one, to advance the last stage of the human order and to save what is good in it, is, as I have already hinted, only one kind of linkage and coordination that is social transformation; this one laying the foundation of the Lesser Peace. The other kind is the unfolding divine civilization itself, which is the foundation, pattern, and energy of the Most Great Peace.  
          Recall that I said above that the spiritual civilization already exists in complete form in the Revelation of Baha'u'llah. The complete spiritual structure emerges in stages into the world of time and grows organically into maturity.  Through the divine administrative Structure, the new material law and spiritual law emerge together already perfectly linked and coordinated, making one unfolding structure of increasingly manifest complexity.  Shoghi Effendi stated (to repeat the quote heading this post) that the Administrative Order “unifies and correlates the principles separately laid down by Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and is indissolubly bound with the essential verities of the Faith.” So closely are they intertwined that he warned: “To dissociate the administrative principles of the Cause from the purely spiritual and humanitarian teachings would be tantamount to a mutilation of the body of the Cause, a separation that can only result in the disintegration of its component parts, and the extinction of the Faith itself.”

This is the descent of the spiritual New Jerusalem from out the spiritual world into the visible material one, manifesting by progressive stages the actual Kingdom of God on earth.  How is this done?  We'll examine that in the next post.

Complementary Plans of God

For let none suppose that the civilization towards which the divine teachings impel humankind will follow merely from adjustments to the present order.  Far from it.

(The Universal House of Justice. Riḍván 2012)

Last post discussed the point that the difference between the Bahá’i Community’s efforts to change society and those of other progressive movements is that the Bahá’i Community’s origins and purposes are not within the old human order, but outside the human order altogether in Bahá’u’lláh’s divine Revelation.  He did not come to advance the human order, but to put a divine Order in its stead.    The Bahá’i community is separate in nature and purpose from everything, positive or negative, in that dying order, and plays no part in the disputes, contentions and jockeying for influence that characterize the efforts of other groups, no matter how progressive they may be:

The divine Order, then, is built upon a different mentality and progresses by different means.  I mean that those erecting the new organic social reality are not depending, as does the rest of humanity, solely upon the trial and error of social experiment, but, rather, are building upon the actual unfolding nucleus and pattern of a new civilization.  This does not mean that any stage of advance of the new Order is strictly determined beforehand in all its particulars. Experiment within a common framework is necessary.  The Community is guided in its efforts at every step and stage by a divine Plan as given through authoritative institutions.  Though one effect of this building is to cause disruption in the existing order, this is the disruption of construction, not destruction.  I’ll come back to this point.

Nonetheless, as perceived by those from within the consciousness of the old order, the building of the Bahá’í Order seems but another social religious movement competing for status and influence.  Doubtless, the Bahá’í community’s efforts to erect a divine order look similar in some respects to those trying to advance the human order.  But the reconfiguration of relations necessary to express new, universal values is not an evolution of our current paradigm of understanding of how society comes into being and is built, nor even a radical addition to that understanding, but a revolution in understanding itself. 

The primary reason, then, why humanity cannot, unaided from Above, reason, plan, or envision its way to a new order is that the new pattern is wholly divine, and God, through His Manifestation, is in charge of erecting it.  He does so, according to the Bahá’i perspective, through the release, diffusion, and operation of spiritual forces that operate with disintegrative and integrative effects. These compose two parts of one process, for they are both products of the breaking and building generated by the twin Revelations.  They form, that is, two complementary Plans of God, which are, from another and equally true perspective, twin aspects of one divine Plan that Shoghi Effendi named the Major and Minor Plans of God.  

The Universal House of Justice explains:  “We are told by Shoghi Effendi that two great processes are at work in the world: the great Plan of God, tumultuous in its progress, working through mankind as a whole, tearing down barriers to world unity and forging humankind into a unified body in the fires of suffering and experience. This process will produce in God's due time, the Lesser Peace, the political unification of the world. Mankind at that time can be likened to a body that is unified but without life. The second process, the task of breathing life into this unified body—of creating true unity and spirituality culminating in the Most Great Peace—is that of the Bahá'ís, who are labouring consciously, with detailed instructions and continuing divine guidance, to erect the fabric of the Kingdom of God on earth….” (Universal House of Justice, Messages 1963 to 1986: 333-334)  

As the twin processes of disintegration and integration progressed, each in their own way, the House further elaborated: “Our fellow human beings everywhere are insensibly subjected at one and the same time to the conflicting emotions incited by the continuous operation of simultaneous processes of "rise and of fall, of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos". These Shoghi Effendi identified as aspects of the Major Plan and Minor Plan of God, the two known ways in which His purpose for humankind is going forward. The Major Plan is associated with turbulence and calamity and proceeds with an apparent, random disorderliness, but is, in fact, inexorably driving humanity towards unity and maturity. Its agency for the most part is the people who are ignorant of its course and even antagonistic towards its aim. As Shoghi Effendi has pointed out, God's Major Plan uses "both the mighty and the lowly as pawns in His world-shaping game, for the fulfilment of His immediate purpose and the eventual establishment of His Kingdom on earth." The acceleration of the processes it generates is lending impetus to developments which, with all the initial pain and heartache attributable to them, we Bahá'ís see as signs of the emergence of the Lesser Peace.

Unlike His Major Plan, which works mysteriously, God's Minor Plan is clearly delineated, operates according to orderly and well-known processes, and has been given to us to execute.  Its ultimate goal is the Most Great Peace.” (The Universal House of Justice, Riḍván 155, 1998)

The genius of Shoghi Effendi also perceived that these complementary plans act reciprocally: “A twofold process, however, can be distinguished, each tending, in its own way and with an accelerated momentum, to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the face of our planet. The first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive. The former, as it steadily evolves, unfolds a System which may well serve as a pattern for that world polity towards which a strangely-disordered world is continually advancing; while the latter, as its disintegrating influence deepens, tends to tear down, with increasing violence, the antiquated barriers that seek to block humanity's progress towards its destined goal. The constructive process stands associated with the nascent Faith of Bahá'u'lláh, and is the harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong establish. The destructive forces that characterize the other should be identified with a civilization that has refused to answer to the expectation of a new age, and is consequently falling into chaos and decline.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 169)

Also, as remarked upon earlier, while the organic growth of the Bahá’í Administrative Order adds to the derangement of the world’s equilibrium, this is of a different kind than that provoked by contending movements originating within the old order.  The disorder which the Bahá’í Community creates stems from setting human life, thought and society upon a new, divine foundation.  Bahá’u’lláh wrote in this regard: “The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 136)  The word, “revolutionize” does not mean to engage in such “revolutionary” activities as the toppling of governments by force and insurrection, but to revolve back to the root, the origin and source of human society itself.  This is accomplished through the agency of His unique and wondrous, divine social Order. That is, through the shaking of foundations He is revolving humanity back, through levels of disequilibrium, to the spiritual origins of its social life to set it firmly upon divine principles and revealed laws.  This will be the setting of a new foundation, the manifesting in organic social life of the eternal divine pattern called the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. 

A Necessary Distinction

No sooner had that Revelation been unveiled to men's eyes than the signs of universal discord appeared among the peoples of the world, and commotion seized the dwellers of earth and heaven, and the foundations of all things were shaken. The forces of dissension were released, the meaning of the Word was unfolded, and every several atom in all created things acquired its own distinct and separate character. Hell was made to blaze, and the delights of Paradise were uncovered to men's eyes.

(Bahá’u’lláh, Prayers and Meditations by Bahá’u’lláh: 296)

If we want to understand the difference between the efforts of the Bahá’i community to transform society and those of other progressive groups, an important distinction must be made.  The forces of dissension, the signs of universal discord and the commotion that are released with the coming of the Báb’s and Bahá’u’lláh’s  Revelations are not just all those clashes between angry protesters striving against entrenched oppressive powers that have been part of human history since the nineteenth century, such as those of the year 1848.  Dissension, discord and commotion are also generated by “positive” searches and progressive movements for a new meaningful order of human society.  Both protest and search have become global, as we read, yet they form but a disorganized conglomeration of movements. 

The reason that even positive movements for change originating within the old order become part of the forces of dissension is that taken together these movements lack any coordinating principle, supreme authority, universal value system, or comprehensive vision and plan that encompasses them.  Thus, they eventually begin competing with each other for influence and this makes them serve destructive ends.  They may be inspired by divine energy, but they lack the divine plan.  They receive the energy, but cannot effectively channel it for long or for enough people. 

Releasing the forces of dissension, then, is both the release of the anarchic forces of the lower nature and what happens when the tensions within the body politic, held together, in the absence of true religion, by a viscous bond of law, shared beliefs, common customs, and police patrols, are dissolved.  It is not Revelation that releases them from their latency; rather they release themselves from all constraint through the power—though they know not the Source—of His revelation.

From a larger and longer perspective, discord, tumult, and internal dissent are necessary to the process of social advance into a new social form.  Their role is to clear away the clotted bureaucracies, to dissolve the knots of prejudice and repression, to pry off the icy grip of entrenched power, so that new growth may happen.  Thus whatever disruptive influence they have is part of a larger process of greater integration.   

Shoghi Effendi explains: “The convulsions of this transitional and most turbulent period in the annals of humanity are the essential prerequisites, and herald the inevitable approach, of that Age of Ages, "the time of the end," in which the folly and tumult of strife that has, since the dawn of history, blackened the annals of mankind, will have been finally transmuted into the wisdom and the tranquility of an undisturbed, a universal, and lasting peace, in which the discord and separation of the children of men will have given way to the worldwide reconciliation, and the complete unification of the divers elements that constitute human society.” (The Promised Day is Come: 117)

Yet humanity cannot, unaided, fix the problems and challenges that it faces—perhaps because of a principle articulated by Einstein, namely, that problems cannot be solved using the same mentality that generated them. 

In 1931, in the darkest hours of the Great Depression, Shoghi Effendi summarized the impotence of human efforts: “Humanity, whether viewed in the light of man's individual conduct or in the existing relationships between organized communities and nations, has, alas, strayed too far and suffered too great a decline to be redeemed through the unaided efforts of the best among its recognized rulers and statesmen—however disinterested their motives, however concerted their action, however unsparing in their zeal and devotion to its cause. No scheme which the calculations of the highest statesmanship may yet devise; no doctrine which the most distinguished exponents of economic theory may hope to advance; no principle which the most ardent of moralists may strive to inculcate, can provide, in the last resort, adequate foundations upon which the future of a distracted world can be built. No appeal for mutual tolerance which the worldly-wise might raise, however compelling and insistent, can calm its passions or help restore its vigor. Nor would any general scheme of mere organized international cooperation, in whatever sphere of human activity, however ingenious in conception, or extensive in scope, succeed in removing the root cause of the evil that has so rudely upset the equilibrium of present-day society. Not even, I venture to assert, would the very act of devising the machinery required for the political and economic unification of the world—a principle that has been increasingly advocated in recent times—provide in itself the antidote against the poison that is steadily undermining the vigor of organized peoples and nations. What else, might we not confidently affirm, but the unreserved acceptance of the Divine Program enunciated, with such simplicity and force as far back as sixty years ago, by Bahá'u'lláh, embodying in its essentials God's divinely appointed scheme for the unification of mankind in this age, coupled with an indomitable conviction in the unfailing efficacy of each and all of its provisions, is eventually capable of withstanding the forces of internal disintegration which, if unchecked, must needs continue to eat into the vitals of a despairing society. It is towards this goal—the goal of a new World Order, Divine in origin, all-embracing in scope, equitable in principle, challenging in its features—that a harassed humanity must strive…. Is it not a fact—and this is the central idea I desire to emphasize—that the fundamental cause of this world unrest is attributable, not so much to the consequences of what must sooner or later come to be regarded as a transitory dislocation in the affairs of a continually changing world, but rather to the failure of those into whose   committed, to adjust their system of economic and political institutions to the imperative needs of a rapidly evolving age? Are not these intermittent crises that convulse present-day society due primarily to the lamentable inability of the world's recognized leaders to read aright the signs of the times, to rid themselves once for all of their preconceived ideas and fettering creeds, and to reshape the machinery of their respective governments according to those standards that are implicit in Bahá'u'lláh's supreme declaration of the Oneness of Mankind—the chief and distinguishing feature of the Faith He proclaimed?” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 33-34)

The revolts against materialism going on at three distinct levels within the world are generated by the spiritually energizing and socially organizing force of Revelation.  The materialist order cannot assimilate this new Power, for Revelation is not just energy but also new social and moral pattern. Under the impact.of both divine energy and pattern the established order buckles, then crumbles.   That progressive movements in thought and society contribute to the advance of human consciousness and society is certainly true. Yet, in my opinion, the best that these movements can accomplish is the building of the last stage of advance of the human order: certainly a good thing.  But they cannot build a divine order, and it is the divine order that is required today.

Hence, while what they do is good, it is not good enough to effect the necessary transformation in thought and action.  So long as they remain within the consciousness of the prevailing order and attempt to reform that order from within it, they must, to some degree, oppose and contend with other groups searching for solutions, with the established powers of the old and dying order, and with the Bahá’í community.