Through the nurturing and unfolding of man's
transcendental potential, cultural diversity can begin to be viewed as the
expression of this universal and basic truth….In this regard, education is of
paramount importance.
(Bahá’í International Community, 1990 Jan 26,
Combating Racism)
‘Abdu’l-Bahá stated that “through divine education the masses of mankind generally
will take great steps forward in all degrees of life”. (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: 191) Beyond developments in the institutional structure of the
Administrative Order, and those special projects and social initiatives noted
before, there is today a global spiritual education effort the Bahá’í community
is undertaking, an initiative that in the
last few decades has created the first approach in education through which
great numbers of individuals may be engaged in that “divine education” which
will cure the disease of materialism that is corrupting humanity’s spiritual
life.
The spiritual origins of this endeavor are
found in such statements as these two from Bahá’u’lláh: “From the heaven of
God's Will, and for the purpose of ennobling the world of being and of
elevating the minds and souls of men, hath been sent down that which is the
most effective instrument for the education of the whole human race.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh:
94) And: “Bend
your minds and wills to the education of the peoples and kindreds of the earth,
that haply the dissensions that divide it may, through the power of the Most
Great Name, be blotted out from its face, and all mankind become the upholders
of one Order, and the inhabitants of one City." (Gleanings: 333-334)
Learning is central to the unfoldment of the
divine Plan for humankind. I mean that, while I have used a phrase “spiritual template” and
said that this coded intelligent energy for building human thought and society
anew is taking organic form as the divine order revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, we
should be careful not to assume that the path of growth is clearly marked out
and strictly and solely determined by God. Spiritual templates which become
unfolding patterns of growth do not simply descend fully intact like a cookie
cutter slicing into a lump of dough called humanity. Neither is the new order like a machine
merely to be assembled from a detailed blueprint.
Though the divine teachings
impel humankind toward a world civilization, human beings evolve by learning,
and though to achieve the intended evolutionary goal of the world civilization is human destiny, humanity has free
will to partially decide and creative power to determine to some extent the
shape of its destiny. Learning is the
discovery of spiritual context, and to use what one has learned of these
spiritual principles to build a surrounding social context called culture and
civilization that will reinforce the inner change. This is not a paint by number exercise.
The House of Justice
summarized of the steps of individual and social transformation 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) The actual path to be followed, then, must,
to some degree, be the result of human trial-and-error experimentation in new
patterns of social life. Shoghi Effendi wrote to a young believer, for
example: “The Bahá'í community life provides you with an indispensable
laboratory, where you can translate into living and constructive action the
principles which you imbibe from the Teachings.” (The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 424) Bahá’u’lláh, Himself, admonished humanity:
“It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to
translate that which hath been written into reality and action.” (Gleaning: 249) To
transfer thought from one language to another is rarely via an exact word-for-word
translation, but, rather, the finding of equivalent pattern and meaning between
contexts. But
neither can understanding of humanity’s spiritual evolution leave out divine
Will and Purpose, as the materialist paradigm believes.
I don’t believe that Divine Will and human action are
mutually exclusive. Creative trial and
error experimentation to attain new models of life can be guided and regulated
by a higher power if it goes on within an unfolding framework of organic
possibility toward a commonly accepted goal. This world can mirror, within the
limitations imposed upon it, the glories of that heavenly realm, if that world
acts as a template of general directions guiding how to rebuild itself in the
world below. But the template of
that new global order must be perceptible so that humanity can transition step
by step into a unified global order. As
we know, Bahá’ís believe that their Administrative Order is the unfolding
pattern and nucleus of that world Order.
However exhilarating this prospect may
seem to some, Alfred North Whitehead soberly warned: “It is the first step in
sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are
processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” (Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect: 88
Revelation shapes human mental and social
reality. While the laws governing the
spiritual and physical levels of reality are either fixed or beyond our
control, social and mental reality is not. If, as the Master stated, “The
reality of man is his thought”, then we have the capacity to change our social
reality by changing our thought. Social
reality, then, is a result, in part, of human agreements about objective
reality. This does not leave out the objective natural and divine worlds, but
rather incorporates them, as they do the human one, as we learn about
them. We shape the natural environment
by turning weeds into flowers, grasses into grains, jungles into gardens, to
make nature part of the human social reality.
From the other and higher side, to incorporate spiritual law into human
society is to agree to make it a regulative part of human social reality. When agreements alter, social reality changes
and this, in turn, changes acquired human nature. The materialist order leans toward the
objective natural world for its assumptions, principles and paradigms, so a “natural”
person emerges. When human will aligns
with the Divine Will a spiritualized social reality can be created, because a
spiritual nature emerges and is brought forth.
The starting point of change for each is different.
Paul Lample explains: “Rather than merely
attempting to reform the social order from the outer layers of custom and
common practice, the Word of God provides statements of truth that, once
accepted by individuals, overturn old conceptions and form new agreements at the
deepest layers of fundamental belief.
Unity of thought on principle greatly reinforces the movement toward
changes in behavior, social relations, and institutional arrangements. If, for example, we agree that humanity is
one, then we must work out the far-reaching patterns of life and institutional
arrangements that will manifest it.” (Revelation
and Social Reality: 19)
Perhaps, in the current context of social
transformation, the instrument specifically intended in Bahá’u’lláh’s statement
above is what Bahá’ís’ call “the institute process”. This is a pedagogy of learning for people of
all ages, backgrounds, and abilities, consisting of group study of the Word of
God, discussion of its meaning, expressing one’s learning in specific social
practices that develop personal spiritual and social capacities and that
further refine and elaborate the learned meaning, then personal and group
reflection upon the whole process, and, finally, determining how to proceed
from there along agreed upon lines of action. In this way, an organic cycle or
spiral of learning and action is created and carried out in ever more complex
and elaborate ways to spiritually influence and morally uplift the larger human
society. In my opinion, of all the attempts to conceptualize and implement this
pedagogy, the best conceived, the most developed and far-reaching, and the most
effective is the Ruhi Institute, born and tested originally in Colombia, but
since carried to every part of the world.
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