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.