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.