Century of Light Part 2

No objective review of 'Abdu'l-Baha's mission to the West can fail to take into account the sobering fact that only a small number of those who had accepted the Faith-and infinitely fewer among the public audiences who had thronged to hear His words-derived from these priceless opportunities more than a relatively dim understanding of the implications of His message.

Appreciating these limitations on the part of His hearers, 'Abdu'l-Baha did not hesitate to introduce into His relations with Western believers actions that summoned them to a level of consciousness far above mere social liberalism and tolerance. One example that must stand for a range of such interventions was His gentle but dramatic act in encouraging the marriage of Louis Gregory and Louise Mathew-the one black, the other white. The initiative set a standard for the American Baha'i community as to the real meaning of racial integration, however timid and slow its members were in responding to the core implications of the challenge.

Even without a deep understanding of the Master's goals, those who embraced His message set out, often at great personal cost, to give practical expression to the principles He taught. Commitment to the cause of international peace; the abolition of extremes of wealth and poverty that were undermining the unity of society; the overcoming of national, racial and other prejudices; the encouragement of equality in the education of boys and girls; the need to shake off the shackles of ancient dogmas that were inhibiting investigation of reality-these principles for the advancement of civilization had made a powerful impression. What few, if any, of the Master's hearers grasped-perhaps could have grasped-was the revolutionary change in the very structure of society and the willing submission of human nature to Divine Law that, in the final a.n.a.lysis, can alone produce the necessary changes in att.i.tude and behaviour.

The key to this vision of the coming transformation of the individual and social life of humankind was 'Abdu'l-Baha's proclamation, shortly after His arrival in North America, of Baha'u'llah's Covenant and of the central part He Himself had been called on to play in it. In the Master's own words:

As to the most great characteristic of the revelation of Baha'u'llah, a specific teaching not given by any of the Prophets of the past: It is the ordination and appointment of the Center of the Covenant. By this appointment and provision He has safeguarded and protected the religion of G.o.d against differences and schisms, making it impossible for anyone to create a new sect or faction of belief.(29)

Choosing New York City for His purpose-and designating it "the City of the Covenant"-'Abdu'l-Baha unveiled for Western believers the devolution of authority made by the Founder of their Faith for the definitive interpretation of His Revelation. A highly regarded believer, Lua Getsinger, had been called on by the Master to prepare the group of Baha'is who had gathered in the house where He was temporarily residing for this historic announcement, following which He Himself went downstairs and spoke in general terms about some of the implications of the Covenant.

Juliet Thompson, who, with one of the Persian translators, had been in the upstairs room at the time this mission had been given to her friend, has left an account of the circ.u.mstances. She quotes 'Abdu'l-Baha as saying:

..._I am the Covenant_, appointed by Baha'u'llah. And no one can refute His Word. This is the Testament of Baha'u'llah. You will find it in the Holy Book of Aqdas. Go forth and proclaim, "This is _the Covenant of G.o.d_ in your midst."(30)

Conceived by Baha'u'llah as the Instrument which, in the words of Shoghi Effendi, was "to perpetuate the influence of [the] Faith, insure its integrity, safeguard it from schism, and stimulate its world-wide expansion,"(31) the Covenant had been violated by members of Baha'u'llah's own family almost immediately after His ascension. Recognizing that the authority invested in the Master by the Kitab-i-'Ahd, the Tablet of the Branch and related doc.u.ments frustrated their private hopes to turn the Cause to their personal advantage, these persons began a persistent campaign to undermine His position, first in the Holy Land and then in Persia, where the bulk of the Baha'i community was concentrated. When these schemes failed, they next sought to manipulate the fears of the Ottoman government and the avarice of its representatives in Palestine.

This hope too collapsed when the "Young Turk Revolution" overthrew the regime in Constantinople, hanging some thirty-one of its leading officials, including several who had been implicated in the plans of the Covenant-breakers.

In the West, during the early years of the Master's ministry, representatives sent by Him had already successfully countered the machinations of Ibrahim _Kh_ayru'llah-ironically, the individual who had introduced many of the American believers to the Cause-who had aimed at securing a position of leaders.h.i.+p through a.s.sociation with the Covenant-breakers in the Holy Family. Such experiences had doubtless prepared the Western believers for the Master's formal proclamation of His station and for the firmness with which He enjoined on believers avoidance of any involvement with such agents of division: "Certain weak, capricious, malicious and ignorant souls ... have striven to efface the Divine Covenant and Testament, and render the clear water muddy so that in it they might fish.(32) It would be only gradually, however, as the new communities struggled to overcome differences of opinion and resist the perennial human temptation to factionalism, that the implications of this great organizing law of the new Dispensation would emerge.

While laying out in both public addresses and private discussions the vision of a world of unity and peace that the Revelation of G.o.d for our day will bring into being, the Master warned emphatically of the dangers that lay on the immediate horizon-both for the Faith and for the world.

For both, 'Abdu'l-Baha foresaw, in the words of Shoghi Effendi, a "winter of unprecedented severity".

For the Cause of G.o.d, that winter would entail heartbreaking betrayals of the Covenant. In North America, the inconstancy of a small number of individuals, frustrated in their aspirations for personal leaders.h.i.+p, remained an ongoing source of difficulty for the community, undermining the faith of some and causing others simply to drift away from partic.i.p.ation in the Faith. In Persia, too, the faith of the friends was repeatedly tested by the schemes of ambitious individuals suddenly awakened to the possibilities for self-aggrandizement they believed they saw in the successes attending the Master's work in the West. In both cases, the consequences of such defections were ultimately to deepen the devotion of the firm believers.

As for humanity in general, 'Abdu'l-Baha warned in ominous terms of the catastrophe that He saw approaching. While emphasizing the urgency of efforts at reconciliation that might alleviate in some measure the suffering of the world's people, He left His hearers in no doubt of the magnitude of the danger. In one of the major newspapers in Montreal, where press coverage of the trip was particularly comprehensive, it was reported:

"All Europe is an armed camp. These warlike preparations will necessarily culminate in a great war. The very armaments themselves are productive of war. This great a.r.s.enal must go ablaze. There is nothing of the nature of prophecy about such a view", said 'Abdu'l-Baha; "it is based on reasoning solely."(33)

On 5 December 1912, the Figure who had been hailed across North America as "the Apostle of Peace" sailed from New York for Liverpool. After relatively brief stays in London and other British centres, He visited several continental cities, again devoting several weeks to Paris, where He had available the services of Hippolyte Dreyfus, whose written Arabic and Persian met the Master's requirements. As the recognized cultural capital of continental Europe, Paris was a focal centre for visitors from many parts of the world, including the Orient. While the talks delivered during His two extended visits to the city make frequent reference to the great social issues discussed elsewhere, they seem particularly distinguished by an intimate spirituality that must have profoundly touched the hearts of those privileged to meet Him:

Lift up your hearts above the present and look with eyes of faith into the future! Today the seed is sown, the grain falls upon the earth, but behold the day will come when it shall rise a glorious tree and the branches thereof shall be laden with fruit. Rejoice and be glad that this day has dawned, try to realize its power, for it is indeed wonderful!(34)

On the morning of 13 June 1913, 'Abdu'l-Baha embarked at Ma.r.s.eilles on the steamer _S. S. Himalaya, _arriving at Port Said in Egypt four days later.

What Shoghi Effendi has called "His historic journeys" ended with His return to Haifa on 5 December 1913.

Two years, almost to the day, after 'Abdu'l-Baha's statement to the editor of the _Montreal Daily Star_, the world that had enjoyed so intoxicating a sense of self-confidence and whose foundations had appeared impregnable, collapsed abruptly. The catastrophe is popularly a.s.sociated with the murder in Sarajevo of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and certainly the train of blunders, reckless threats and mindless appeals to "honour" that led directly to World War I was ignited by this relatively minor event. In reality, however, as the Master had pointed out, preliminary "rumblings" during the entire first decade of the century should have alerted European leaders to the fragility of the existing order.

In the years 1904-1905, the j.a.panese and Russian empires had gone to war with a violence that led to the destruction of virtually the entire naval forces of the latter power and its surrender of territories it regarded as vital to its interests, a humiliation that was to have long-lasting domestic and international repercussions. On two occasions during these opening years of the century, war between France and Germany over imperialist designs in North Africa was narrowly averted only through the self-interested intervention of other powers. In 1911 Italian ambitions similarly provoked a dangerous threat to international peace by the seizure from the Ottoman empire of what is now Libya. International instability had been further deepened- as the Master had also warned-when Germany, feeling constrained by a growing web of hostile alliances, embarked on a ma.s.sive naval building programme aimed at eliminating the previously accepted British lead.

Exacerbating these conflicts were tensions among the subject peoples of the Romanov, Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. Waiting only for some turn of events that would break the grip of the ramshackle systems that suppressed them, Balts, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgars, Romanians, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and a host of other nationalities looked forward eagerly to their day of liberation. Tirelessly exploiting this network of fissures in the existing order were a mult.i.tude of conspiracies, resistance groups and separatist organizations. Inspired by ideologies ranging from an almost incoherent anarchism at one extreme to sharply honed racist and nationalist obsessions at the other, these underground forces shared one nave conviction: if the particular part of the prevailing order that had become their target could somehow be brought down, the inherent n.o.bility of the segment of humankind that supported their aims-or the a.s.sumed n.o.bility of humankind in general-would by itself ensure a new era of freedom and justice.

Alone among these would-be agents of violent change one broadly based movement was proceeding systematically and with ruthless clarity of purpose towards the goal of world revolution. The Communist Party, deriving both its intellectual thrust and an unshakeable confidence in its ultimate triumph from the writings of the nineteenth century ideologue Karl Marx, had succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng groups of committed supporters throughout Europe and various other countries. Convinced that the genius of its master had demonstrated beyond question the essentially material nature of the forces that had given rise to both human consciousness and social organization, the Communist movement dismissed the validity of both religion and "bourgeois" moral standards. In its view, faith in G.o.d was a neurotic weakness indulged in by the human race, a weakness that had merely permitted successive ruling cla.s.ses to manipulate superst.i.tion as an instrument for enslaving the ma.s.ses.

To the leaders of the world, blindly edging their way towards the universal conflagration which pride and folly had prepared, the great strides being made by science and technology represented chiefly a means of gaining military advantage over their rivals. The European opponents of the nations concerned, however, were not the poverty-stricken and largely uneducated colonial populations whom they had been able to subject. The false confidence that military hardware thus inspired led inexorably to a race to equip armies and navies with the most advanced of modern weaponry, and to do so on as ma.s.sive a scale as possible. Machine guns, long-range cannon, "dreadnoughts", submarines, landmines, poison gas and the possibility of equipping airplanes for bombing attacks emerged as features of what one commentator has termed the "technology of death".(35) All of these instruments of annihilation would, as 'Abdu'l-Baha had warned, be deployed and refined during the course of the coming conflict.

Science and technology were also exerting other, more subtle pressures on the prevailing order. Large-scale industrial production, fuelled by the arms race, had accelerated the movement of populations into urban centres.

By the end of the preceding century, this process was already undermining inherited standards and loyalties, exposing growing numbers of people to novel ideas for the bringing about of social change, and exciting ma.s.s appet.i.tes for material benefits previously available only to elite segments of society. Even under relatively autocratic systems, the public was beginning to perceive the extent to which civil authority was dependent for its effectiveness on its ability to win broad popular support. These social developments would have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences. As war would drag endlessly on and unthinking faith in its simplicities come into question, millions of men in conscript armies on both sides would begin to see their sufferings as meaningless in themselves and fruitless in terms of their own and their families'

well-being.

Beyond these implications of technological and economic change, scientific advancement seemed to encourage easy a.s.sumptions about human nature, the almost unnoticed overlay that Baha'u'llah has termed "the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge".(36) These unexamined views communicated themselves to ever-widening audiences. Sensationalism in the popular press, fiery debates between scientists or scholars, on the one hand, and theologians or influential clergymen, on the other, along with the rapid spread of public education, continued to undermine the authority of accepted religious doctrines, as well as of prevailing moral standards.

These seismic forces of the new century combined to make the situation facing the Western world in 1914 intensely volatile. When the great conflagration did break out, therefore, the nightmare far surpa.s.sed the worst fears of thoughtful minds. It would serve no purpose here to review the exhaustively a.n.a.lyzed cataclysm of World War I. The statistics themselves remain almost beyond the ability of the human mind to encompa.s.s: an estimated sixty million men eventually being thrown into the most horrific inferno that history had ever known, eight million of them peris.h.i.+ng in the course of the war and an additional ten million or more being permanently disabled by crippling injuries, burned-out lungs and appalling disfigurements.(37) Historians have suggested that the total financial cost may have reached thirty billion dollars, wiping out a substantial portion of the total capital wealth of Europe.

Even such ma.s.sive losses do not begin to suggest the full scope of the ruin. One of the considerations that long held back President Woodrow Wilson from proposing to the United States Congress the declaration of war that had by then become virtually inescapable was his awareness of the moral damage that would ensue. Not the least of the distinctions that characterized this extraordinary man-a statesman whose vision both 'Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi have praised-was his understanding of the brutalization of human nature that would be the worst legacy of the tragedy that was by then engulfing Europe, a legacy beyond human capacity to reverse.(38)

Reflection on the magnitude of the suffering experienced by humankind in the war's four years-and the resulting setback to the long, painful process of the civilizing of human nature-lends tragic force to words the Master had addressed only two or three years earlier to audiences in such European cities as London, Paris, Vienna, Budapest and Stuttgart, as well as in North America. Speaking one evening in the home of Mr. and Mrs.

Sutherland Maxwell in Montreal, He had said:

Today the world of humanity is walking in darkness because it is out of touch with the world of G.o.d. That is why we do not see the signs of G.o.d in the hearts of men. The power of the Holy Spirit has no influence. When a divine spiritual illumination becomes manifest in the world of humanity, when divine instruction and guidance appear, then enlightenment follows, a new spirit is realized within, a new power descends, and a new life is given. It is like the birth from the animal kingdom into the kingdom of man.... I will pray, and you must pray, likewise, that such heavenly bounty may be realized; that strife and enmity may be banished, warfare and bloodshed taken away; that hearts may attain ideal communication and that all people may drink from the same fountain.(39)

The vindictive peace treaty, imposed by the Allied powers on their defeated enemies, succeeded only, as both 'Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi have pointed out, in planting the seeds of another, far more terrible conflict. The ruinous reparations demanded of the vanquished -and the injustice that required them to accept the full guilt for a war for which all parties had been, to one degree or another, responsible-were among the factors that would prepare demoralized peoples in Europe to embrace totalitarian promises of relief which they might not otherwise have contemplated.

Ironically, no matter how harsh were the reparations required of the defeated, the supposed victors awoke to the appalled realization that their triumph-and the demand for unconditional surrender that had driven it-had come at an equally crippling price. Staggering war debts ended forever the economic dominance which these European nations had acquired through three centuries of imperialist exploitation of the rest of the planet. The deaths of millions of young men who would have been urgently needed to meet the challenges of the coming decades was a loss that could never be recovered. Indeed, Europe itself-which only four brief years earlier had represented the apparent summit of civilization and world influence-lost at one stroke this pre-eminence, and began the inexorable slide during the following decades toward the status of an auxiliary to a rising new centre of power in North America.

Initially, it seemed that the vision of the future conceived by Woodrow Wilson would now be realized. In part, this proved to be the case as subject peoples throughout Europe gained the freedom to work out their own destinies through the emergence from the ruin of the former empires of a series of new nation-states. Further, the president's "Fourteen Points"

briefly endowed his public statements with so great a moral authority in the minds of millions of Europeans that not even the most recalcitrant of his fellow leaders among the Allied powers could entirely disregard his wishes. Despite months of wrangling over colonies, borders, and clauses in the text of the peace treaty, the Versailles settlement eventually incorporated an attenuated form of the proposed League of Nations, an inst.i.tution which it was hoped could adjust future disputes between nations and harmonize international affairs.

Shoghi Effendi's commentary on the significance of this historic initiative commands reflection on the part of every Baha'i who seeks to understand the events of this turbulent century. Describing two closely interrelated developments that are a.s.sociated with the dawn of world peace, he lays emphasis on the fact that they are "destined to culminate, in the fullness of time, in a single glorious consummation".(40) The first, the Guardian describes as a.s.sociated with the mission of the Baha'i community in the North American continent; the second, with the destiny of the United States as a nation. Speaking of this latter phenomenon, which dated back to the outbreak of the first world war, Shoghi Effendi writes:

It received its initial impetus through the formulation of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, closely a.s.sociating for the first time that republic with the fortunes of the Old World. It suffered its first setback through the dissociation of that republic from the newly born League of Nations which that president had labored to create.... It must, however long and tortuous the way, lead, through a series of victories and reverses, to the political unification of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, to the emergence of a world government and the establishment of the Lesser Peace, as foretold by Baha'u'llah and foreshadowed by the Prophet Isaiah. It must, in the end, culminate in the unfurling of the banner of the Most Great Peace, in the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah.(41)

How tragic, therefore, was the fate of the conception that had inspired the efforts of the American president. As soon became apparent, the League had been stillborn. Although it included such features as a legislature, a judiciary, an executive, and a supporting bureaucracy, it had been denied the authority vital to the work it was ostensibly intended to perform.

Locked into the nineteenth century's conception of untrammelled national sovereignty, it could take decisions only with the unanimous a.s.sent of the member states, a requirement largely ruling out effective action.(42) The hollowness of the system was exposed, as well, by its failure to include some of the world's most powerful states: Germany had been rejected as a defeated nation held responsible for the war, Russia was initially denied entrance because of its Bolshevik regime, and the United States itself refused-as a result of narrow political partisans.h.i.+p in Congress-either to join the League or to ratify the treaty. Ironically, even the half-hearted efforts made to protect ethnic minorities living in the newly created nation-states proved eventually to be little more than weapons to be used in Europe's continuing fratricidal conflicts.

In sum, at precisely the moment in human history when an unprecedented outbreak of violence had undermined the inherited bulwarks of civilized behaviour, the political leaders.h.i.+p of the Western world had emasculated the one alternative system of international order to which experience of this catastrophe had given birth and which alone could have alleviated the far greater suffering that lay ahead. In the prophetic words of 'Abdu'l-Baha: "Peace, Peace ... the lips of potentates and peoples unceasingly proclaim, whereas the fire of unquenched hatreds still smoulders in their hearts." "The ills from which the world now suffers,"

He added in 1920, "will multiply; the gloom which envelops it will deepen.... The vanquished Powers will continue to agitate. They will resort to every measure that may rekindle the flame of war."(43)

As war's inferno was engulfing the world, 'Abdu'l-Baha turned His attention to the one great task remaining in His ministry, that of ensuring the proclamation to the remotest corners of the Earth of the message which had been neglected-or opposed-in Islamic and Western society alike. The instrument He devised for this purpose was the Divine Plan laid out in fourteen great Tablets, four of them addressed to the Baha'i community of North America and ten subsidiary ones addressed to five specific segments of that community. Together with Baha'u'llah's Tablet of Carmel and the Master's Will and Testament, the Tablets of the Divine Plan were described by Shoghi Effendi as three of the "Charters" of the Cause.

Revealed during the darkest days of the war, in 1916 and 1917, the Divine Plan summoned the small body of American and Canadian believers to a.s.sume the role of leaders.h.i.+p in establis.h.i.+ng the Cause of G.o.d throughout the planet. The implications of the trust were awe-inspiring. In the words of the Master:

The hope which 'Abdu'l-Baha cherishes for you is that the same success which has attended your efforts in America may crown your endeavors in other parts of the world, that through you the fame of the Cause of G.o.d may be diffused throughout the East and the West, and the advent of the Kingdom of the Lord of Hosts be proclaimed in all the five continents of the globe. The moment this Divine Message is carried forward by the American believers from the sh.o.r.es of America, and is propagated through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion. Then will all the peoples of the world witness that this community is spiritually illumined and divinely guided. Then will the whole earth resound with the praises of its majesty and greatness....(44)

Shoghi Effendi reminds us that this historic mission, described by him as "the birthright of the North American Baha'i Community",(45) is rooted in the words of the Twin Manifestations of G.o.d to humanity's age of maturity.

It appeared first in the words of the Bab, who called on the "peoples of the West" to "issue forth from your cities", to "aid G.o.d ere the Day when the Lord of mercy shall come down unto you in the shadow of the clouds...", and to become "as true brethren in the one and indivisible religion of G.o.d, free from distinction,... so that ye find yourselves reflected in them, and they in you".(46) In His summons to the "Rulers of America and the Presidents of the Republics therein", Baha'u'llah Himself delivered a mandate that has no parallel in any of His other addresses to world leaders: "Bind ye the broken with the hands of justice, and crush the oppressor who flourisheth with the rod of the commandments of your Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise."(47) It was Baha'u'llah, too, who enunciated one of the most profound truths about the process by which civilization has evolved: "In the East the light of His Revelation hath broken; in the West have appeared the signs of His dominion. Ponder this in your hearts, O people...."(48)

Although the Divine Plan would, as the Guardian was later to say, "be held in abeyance" until the system necessary to its execution had been brought into being, 'Abdu'l-Baha had selected, empowered and mandated a company of believers who would take the lead in launching the enterprise. His own life was now swiftly moving to its end, but the three years left to Him after the conclusion of the world war seemed, in retrospect, to provide a foretaste of the victories that the Cause itself would know as the century unfolded. The changed conditions in the Holy Land freed the Master to pursue His work unhampered and created the conditions in which the brilliance of His mind and spirit could exercise their influence on government officials, visiting dignitaries of every kind, and the various communities making up the population of the Holy Land. The Mandate Power itself sought to express its appreciation of the unifying effect of His example and the philanthropic work He did by conferring on Him a knighthood.(49) More importantly, a renewed flow of pilgrims and of Tablets to Baha'i communities of both East and West stimulated an expansion in the teaching work and a deepening of the friends'

understanding of the implications of the Faith's message.

Nothing perhaps ill.u.s.trated so dramatically the spiritual triumph the Master had won at the World Centre of the Faith than the events in Haifa that occurred immediately after His ascension in the early hours of 28 November 1921. The following day a vast concourse of thousands of people, representing the variegated races and sects of the region, followed the funeral cortege up the slopes of Mount Carmel in a state of unaffected grief such as the city had never before witnessed. It was led by representatives of the British government, members of the diplomatic community, and the heads of all of the religious bodies in the area, several of whom partic.i.p.ated in the service at the Shrine of the Bab. So unrestrained and unified an outburst of mourning reflected a sudden awareness of the loss of a Figure whose example had served as a focal centre of unity in an angry and divided land. In itself, it served for all with eyes to see as a compelling vindication of the truth of the oneness of humankind which the Master had tirelessly proclaimed.