Unnamed Tablet

Inner meaning of the principle of Oneness of God;
Notes on an Unnamed Tablet of the Bab

By John Taylor; 2006 June 24

Today let us go through an unnamed tablet of the Bab from the section "Excerpts from Various Writings" in the compilation "Selections from the Writings of the Bab."

First off, have you ever wondered why the Hidden Words are almost all addressed, "O Son of..."? Yes, it is a common literary convention -- used in the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, for instance -- for a sage in wisdom literature to offer advice as if he were a father giving advice to his eldest son, the one according to ancient laws of primogeniture would take over proprietorship of the family farm, business or other enterprise. Historically, this was the most important type of advice possible. Upon it hung the family name and the fate of all its possessions. If a daughter or younger son messed up it was a personal tragedy, but an unwise heir could sink the entire family fortune and everybody's link to family tradition. But this is getting it backwards, for the model of filial relationships, the greatest, the primal father-son tie is that of God to His Manifestation. Upon this relation we all depend for our spiritual purity and vitality. Consider God's words here addressed to the Bab in His role as the eldest son, inheritor of a new name, the gate to a time when God's Messenger is no longer called prophet but "manifestation":

"I have called Thee into being, have nurtured Thee, protected Thee, loved Thee, raised Thee up and have graciously chosen Thee to be the manifestation of Mine Own Self, that Thou mayest recite My verses as ordained by Me, and may summon whomsoever I have created unto My Religion which is none other than this glorious and exalted Path." (The Bab, Selections, 158)

The parable of the vineyard explains this distinction. The master's heir from now on will no longer be sent as a messenger to stewards of an usurped estate telling them to get ready to hand it over, as prophets did in the past. Now He is inheritor coming into direct sovereign proprietorship. He writes the message down for all to read themselves, thus "manifesting" the Will of God in authentic, verifiable text. For what does He inherit? Verses. He recites them and calls those created "unto My Religion which is none other than this glorious and exalted Path." What does Path imply? For one thing, ownership is ultimately of God, so this heir does not hold onto land passively. He builds a Path through a garden. The verses given to Him explain how; they are an "owner's manual," so to speak.

In every meaningful sense before the Bab came ownership did not exist. Only a tiny percentage of the population owned anything. The vast majority of the human race were dispossessed. They did not own land, land owned them. Slaves were property, bought and sold. The "free" peasantry were legally required to stay on the land they worked and were bought and sold along with the estate. Those few who did gradually liberate themselves from material serfdom remained slaves to their own ignorance and animal drives. As Rousseau put it, "...man acquires with civil society, moral freedom, which alone makes man master of himself; for to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom." (Social Contract, 65) The Manifestation is, from the spiritual point of view, the first morally free Owner ever. His followers take God's will upon themselves as their own rule, their own intimate master. Thus He takes possession of all hearts, and by extension all things, by means of God's love. But again, this is getting it backwards, All things were created for Him in the first place. Consider the next, truly astonishing statement that God addresses to the Bab:

"I have fashioned all created things for Thy sake, and I have, by virtue of My Will, set Thee sovereign Ruler over all mankind." (Id.)

One essential transition is missed by those of us not born into Jewish home, the coming of age ceremony known as a Bar Mitzvah, or for girls, a Bat Mitzvah. Kurt Vonnegut in his memoir, "Timequake," fervently suggests that such a ceremony be made a fundamental human right for every child, written into the constitution. But he adds that this would be impossible without a strong extended family to implement it. Myself, I think there should be such a thing as a "family constitution," backed by civil law. Until that happens we will never understand the value of monarchy, which is a national coming of age ceremony, much less the Supreme ceremony of the Manifestation depicted here.

In any case, these words addressed to the Bab seem to my ears to be a divine Paterfamilias conferring maturity upon the new "Manifestation" in a primordial Bar Mitzvah ceremony. We are all to pay attention as if we were friends and extended family members attending a Bar Mitzvah. Again, Christ prefigured it.

"A multitude was sitting around him, and they told him, "Behold, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are outside looking for you." He answered them, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Looking around at those who sat around him, he said, "Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever may do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." (Mark 3:32-5, WEB)

The prophets of old spoke of God's Will as something coming in the future, but now it is manifest, here and now. The Will of the Bab's and God's Will are one, for He is a true Son in a profound way beyond our comprehension. God loves this firstborn son and the Bab loves Him back. This love and this only is a love worthy of the Supreme Being. We can never fathom such total love to and from God. It confers virtual possession of all things on the manifestation, the clarifying One. God's Will, and what identifies with it, directly pulls the strings of every atom and quark, every law, every throw of the quantum dice, in the universe.

The tenth month of the Bab's Badi' Calendar is Mashiyyat, Will. Its central position in the year (nine months before, nine after it) demonstrates the pivotal role that will and ownership play in all things. The Bab inherited it first, but inherit when we love and sacrifice for Him. Identify with God's will through His religion and verses, and moral freedom is our inheritance. We become a mature son or daughter of God. Everything in the universe, the whole family fortune, is destined for you. Jalalu'Din Rumi, a minor prophet himself, expressed it poetically:

"For he that is beside himself is annihilated and safe;
Yea, he dwells in security forever.
His form is vanished, he is a mere mirror;
Nothing is seen in him but the reflection of another.
If you spit at it, you spit at your own face,
And if you hit that mirror, you hit yourself;
And if you see an ugly face in it, 'tis your own,
And if you see an 'Isa there, you are its mother Mary.
He is neither this nor that he is void of form;
'Tis your own form which is reflected back to you."
(Mathnavi of Rumi, Vol. 4, E.H. Whinfield tr)

This reflexivity of spirit had been understood on a personal level before. What is new in our age of manifestation is that the mirror can be reflected in many, in group action. Spiritual enlightenment and evolution is no longer just about you, or just me, it is the reflection in us of our unity together. We combine in love with our brothers and sisters, we separate and recombine like letters of the alphabet expressing the Bab's supreme will. Not dead letters but living, breathing, loving letters, which is why the Bab's 19 leading followers were entitled "Letters of the Living." The Creator lays this out with perfect clarity to the Bab in the following:

"Moreover, I have decreed that whoso embraceth My religion shall believe in My unity, and I have linked this belief with remembrance of Thee, and after Thee the remembrance of such as Thou hast, by My leave, caused to be the 'Letters of the Living', and of whatever hath been revealed from My religion in the Bayan. This, indeed, is what will enable the sincere among My servants to gain admittance into the celestial Paradise." (Selections, 158-159)

To embrace this extended family requires only one belief above all: they "shall believe in My unity..." The Bab has been laying out the principle of principles, the Oneness of God. This is why I so strongly believe that all Baha'i principles are nothing but derivations of this one central conviction, the belief that God is One, that from one comes many, and that the love of the Manifestation demonstrates unity. As the Bab puts it, "I have linked this belief with remembrance of Thee..." Talk God and you talk the Bab, talk the Bab and you talk his followers... their immolation spelled out His meaning in flaming letters.

And remember, who was always there behind the scenes, the puppet master pulling the strings of Vahid, Tahirih, Hujjat, and all the other Babi' heroes? Baha'u'llah Himself. He taught them that theirs was a path to supreme sacrifice and He fortified them in that. Together they spelled out, as perfect mirrors, the meaning of the martyrdom of the Bab. This was how the Heir came of age, by taking on the crown of martyrdom. The Bab, the heir, is next informed that the very structure of the universe reflects His identity with God.

"Verily, the sun is but a token from My presence so that the true believers among My servants may discern in its rising the dawning of every Dispensation." (Selections, 159)

Intellectually, the inheritor of this was `Abdu'l-Baha. He read and memorized the Bab's Writings in youth instead of formal schooling. His assiduous study in youth of the Bab's verses came into full flower in old age when He traversed the West with a simple, penetrating and original analogy in hand: sun and earth explain understandably what had been called the trinity, the threefold levels of God, Manifestation, and creation that we see on the ring stone symbol, also designed by `Abdu'l-Baha as a teaching device. Hundreds of times the Master repeated this clarifying, manifesting metaphor. God, to the Bab, then explains the direct act of will that brought about creation, first through the Bab's Word, then all things proceeding from that.

"In truth I have created Thee through Thyself, then at My Own behest I have fashioned all things through the creative power of Thy Word. We are All-Powerful. I have appointed Thee to be the Beginning and the End, the Seen and the Hidden. Verily We are the All-Knowing."

Here the Mystery is laid out in positive terms. We know now that creativity an act of direct will and that the Manifestation is on a higher level because God created Him directly, "through Thyself," and other created things came about "through the creative power of Thy Word." He is his own substance, in technical terms, self-subsisting. Other created beings are removed from the grounds of their existence, as the word "substance," "standing under," signifies. The manifestation speaks the words and creation is the letters, syllables and phonemes that make up His speech. So much for what He is; next we are directed to what is not Him.

"No one hath been or will ever be invested with prophethood other than Thee, nor hath any sacred Book been or will be revealed unto any one except Thee. Such is the decree ordained by Him Who is the All-Encompassing, the Best Beloved.

I suppose that at a Bar Mitzvah for the eldest son the father can stipulate that this son and nobody else will run the family business. So it is with the divine heritage. All previous prophets and prophesies are wrapped up into one Revelation, that of the Bab. All loyalty goes to Him, and anybody who enters or works on the family farm answers to His leadership. This is the heart of the principle of the Oneness of God. Here is the concluding paragraph of the Bab's Tablet. If "Bab" means gate, here is the hinge to the gate, the center around which it and all things move. The words of the Bab, as this attests, "inherit" the meanings behind all previous scriptures. That is what ownership truly is, for words are the most powerful tool known to humankind.

"The Bayan is in truth Our conclusive proof for all created things, and all the peoples of the world are powerless before the revelation of its verses. It enshrineth the sum total of all the Scriptures, whether of the past or of the future, even as Thou art the Repository of all Our proofs in this Day. We cause whomsoever We desire to be admitted into the gardens of our most holy, most sublime Paradise. Thus is divine revelation inaugurated in each Dispensation at Our behest. We are truly the supreme Ruler. Indeed no religion shall We ever inaugurate unless it be renewed in the days to come. This is a promise We solemnly have made. Verily We are supreme over all things..."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Inventing Friendship

Inventing Friendship

By John Taylor; 2006 June 23

A computer scientist and entrepreneur by the name of John Koza -- I am told that koza means "goat" in Czech -- has strung together a thousand networked computers to solve problems using a specially designed genetic algorithm. He calls it an "invention machine" and he believes that it successfully automates the creative process. ("John Koza has built an Invention Machine," By Jonathon Keats, Popular Science, May 2006, p. 66) A year or two ago his networked electronic brain won the first patent for a non-human inventor, a milestone in computer science as great as the Turing Test. Like Thomas Edison, the machine is rapidly innovating in a dozen fields at once. Its inventor is taking it to the next step, coming up with a patent that becomes a commercial success. This would be another non-human first.

Koza's electronic inventor has come up with a new wide-field telescopic lens, a crooked wire antenna for space probes, and so forth. The program combines artificial intelligence with genetic programming by breaking down both the parameters of a problem and the program elements that solve it into small bits and "breeding" them with each other over many generations, just as evolution fiddles with the genetic code. After a day or a month, the perfect solution rises to the top.

Most interesting for me is how the invention machine is being directed to solve tangled political problems. It found a way around the world's worst democratic structure, the "electoral college" that directly elects the American president. Without this ridiculous institution the current president, already considered by a broad consensus to be the worst in history, would never have made it into the Oval Office. The invention machine discovered that if a critical mass of eleven states were to pledge to vote for the winner of the popular vote, the electoral college would be nullified. Surprisingly, so desperate have Americans become that this suggestion is actually being taken up, Illinois being the first state to take the pledge.

As a person with a passionate interest in things creative, I think this is a tremendously important development. It will change the role humans play in creativity, a role that is already a partnership rather than a master-slave relationship. For a long time I have thought that as machines catch up in raw intellectual capacity we will have to change our values around completely. Instead of brute calculating ability, something we are not good at anyway, we will learn to admire and promote the mushy virtues that humans exclusively are good at, like compassion, humility, indeed all the virtues that Baha'u'llah listed in His tablet to Mirza Mihdi, being "a friend to the stranger, a balm to the suffering," and so forth. But there is more to it than that. Let me quote a passage from the article in question,

"As genetic programming becomes pervasive over the next decade, the process of finding good solutions to difficult engineering problems will become efficient in the way that once-arduous tasks such as 3-D rendering have become routine. But, as with 3-D rendering, the real challenge will lie in deciding what to create. This is no trivial matter -- to invent a car, even with an invention machine, you must be able to conceive of wanting a horseless carriage in the first place. In the future, as solutions become plentiful and cheap, the real test of creativity will come in the search for problems." ("Invention Machine," p. 82)

Sticking to this example of the automobile, certainly if such an invention machine had been available at the turn of the last century, electric automobiles would have won out over gas burners, and personalized mass transit would have beaten both in most areas. What was needed then, as now, was not so much better choice of problems as the wisdom to be critical and say, "No, let us not invent anything at all here." The invention machine will really prove its usefulness when it is designed to be critical, to take in the environmental effects, the unexpected pitfalls of local solutions. For example, nanotechnology, new and exiting as it seems, can easily create toxic waste to dwarf present pollution problems, severe as they already are. So for every nanotech invention let the invention machine loose with one million dollar preventive cleanup question: "Will this cause more recycling difficulties than the narrowly defined solution itself merits?"

Koza is right to turn the invention machine to political problems. I think that this is the ripest area to apply its innovation skills. Work an automated inventor into the whole consultative process.

Here is an idea: Use the inventor as a lawyer-on-the-spot to draw up dynamic contracts with every person you meet. As things are if a person breaks a promise, they are impervious. If they do not turn up for an appointment, they do not pay for it. If it is not illegal, who cares? We have no sanctions or incentives on either side to do what it takes to be a good friend. If one party does not give due and timely notice, that is, if they stand you up, they should pay. The injured party should be able to put a bad mark on some virtual escutcheon between them, lower their stock, drop their emotional intelligence quotient a little bit. Brownie points and black marks should be struck up automatically, to avoid further ill-will. And they should outlast the relationship; that is, if somebody has been a lousy friend before the danger should be clear from the beginning to all who start new contracts with them.

At the same time, if a friend is putting you lower on their list of priorities than you are them, let it be clear and written, searchable and analyzable by your automated lawyer. Let the machine interview both sides and come up with adjustments to the contract, as needed. The creative digital assistant would never let an acquaintance dare call you a friend until they have earned the title, until they have given up something to be with you. Clearly, without real-time assistants, teachers and mentors drawing up and maintaining such elaborate contracts would be extremely time-consuming. Lovers already spend far too much time talking about "the relationship" with one another; think how hard it would be to do the same with long term friends, much less casual acquaintances. But there is a great need nonetheless. In our society friendships are in great need of contractual bolstering. Especially with men, the center of relationships fall apart and in old age they are left alone, friendless and embittered. Suicide rates for senior men are frighteningly high. Men especially are in need of contracts to survive, or we naturally revert to what was once called the "state of nature," complete isolation without a covenant to civilize us.

We are talking here about the automation what could be called creative covenantal relationships. These are increasingly the mark of everything we do in this age. The first thinker to turn to this kind of relationship was J-J Rousseau in his Social Contract. It is not a coincidence that those in a state of nature find it a difficult book to understand. Here is what one professor wrote about it on the internet:

"Rousseau's Social Contract is infamous for the difficulties which it imposes on its readers. Some see it as an application of social contract theory to the problem of legitimating majority rule; others see it as romantic collectivism, in which the individual is somehow swept up in the collectivity and thereby made free; still others see it as a blueprint for totalitarianism."

The social contract is none of these things, it is a precursor to the divine covenant set up by Baha'u'llah. We will talk more of this later. Meantime, consider this amazing prayer and prophesy. Imagine a day when kings and queens seek after and value good friends, rich or poor, before power and influence. Yet it must come about if God says it will.

"Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! Thou hast, in Thine all highest Paradise, assigned unto Thy servants such stations that if any one of them were to be unveiled to men's eyes all who are in heaven and all who are on earth would be dumbfounded. By Thy might! Were kings to witness so great a glory they would, assuredly, rid themselves of their dominions and cleave to such of their subjects as have entered beneath the shadow of Thine immeasurable mercy and sought the shelter of Thine all-glorious name." (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, 208)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Oblomov Sees the Light

Oblomov Sees the Light; More Health and Diet Notes

By John Taylor; 2006 June 22

Stu introduced to me two major dietary innovations. First was a recipe for bean salad made of canned beans, quick, easy and healthful. I have a bowlful for lunch daily, flatulence be blown, so to speak. Decades of chronic illness have put health way before social acceptability on my priority list. I have improved upon his recipe by adding a handful of curry to every batch; since that Indian spice has been proven to prevent Alzheimer's and that runs in my family (50 percent of seniors get Alzy or dementia anyway these days, so it probably does not matter much if it is in your genes or not). Just to make sure, I put heaps of curry in my thrice daily gazpacho soup too.

Stu also introduced me to the idea of eating omega fortified eggs, that is, eggs laid by chickens fed exclusively on flax seed meal. Here was his story: somebody noticed that patients in some heart clinic somewhere liked their eggs in the morning, but as we all know, eggs raise cholesterol levels. So this person tried out flax fed chicken eggs on the patients and discovered that eating these eggs regularly actually lowered their cholesterol. Thus was born the omega fortified egg. So it was that for a few months I shelled out the extra dollar per dozen for these elite eggs and got into the habit of having two microwaved omega eggs, nuked in a special plastic explosion container, along with my normal breakfast every morning.

Then on my second visit to my doctor's in-house nutritionist I asked about the omega eggs. She said, "Save your money, buy ordinary eggs and eat the flax directly. Grind up the seeds in the blender, put them in the fridge and have two to three teaspoons full each day. If that does not give you diarrhea, work it up to two or three tablespoons of flax seed daily." I have followed that advice and it seems to help. By then I had gotten into the habit of two morning eggs. She did not recommend so many eggs but for me it is a choice: either every day or never. I cannot do things on a weekly basis, I can only remember every day not several times a week. Besides, a recent study -- admittedly funded by the egg industry -- found that as many as four eggs per day are safe; the same study also found that although eggs raise "bad cholesterol" levels, the type of bad that it raises is not so bad as once was thought. Call it good bad cholesterol. The study also suggested that that many eggs might be a good alternative to suggest to the poor, since eggs are relatively cheap. Low cost, in my book, always clinches it.

But the egg story is not over. In this month's New Scientist a gardener wrote in and asked the resident expert why it was that when he had two eggs in the morning he did not have to have a mid-morning snack, whereas when he had a cereal breakfast his hard labor induced enough hunger to force him to stop for a refill halfway through the morning. As soon as I read the question, I noticed that this had been true for me too, sedentary writer that I am, at least in the morning. I realized that since I had started on my two egg a day habit I had felt no desire for my usual morning snack. Instead of eating, for my break now I grab a bottle of water and pace around and stretch my legs for several minutes. It does not occur to me anymore to sit down and eat.

Anyway, the scientist answered the gardener's question by pointing out that eggs are a type of protein that predates the addition only 10,000 years ago of grains to the human diet. For that reason the body absorbs egg proteins quicker and more thoroughly than whatever the nutrients are that are in grains. At the same time they seem to hold off hunger pangs longer... Okay, I admit, I did not pay much attention to the answer, to me the observation in the question is the important thing. You go past shelf after shelf in the library about diets and how to lose weight -- you could spend the rest of your life just reading these elaborate schemes -- and yet studies found that none of them lasts more than a year before dieters regain the weight again. Yet here is a simple and easy change, two eggs in the morning, that will really work, as long as you keep it permanent.

This is the big obstacle to overcome for just about anything, how to keep good changes permanent. The only thing that for me keeps an improvement going permanently is knowing exactly why I should be doing it. For example, for many years I kept paying for distilled bottle water because of a vague sense that I "felt better" when I drank more; since distilled water tastes better than tap water I tend to drink more of it when it is easily available. Eventually last fall (or was it the autumn before that? Remember what I said about Alzies.) I stopped buying water completely. It seemed a needless expense for a possibly imagined benefit.

At around that time my migraines became much more frequent and severe. I was being blinded, the mark of a crippling condition. But only when I happened to come across it in a Migraines for Dummies book did I realize that avoiding dehydration, or to be more accurate, drinking water until you are about to burst, actually both alleviates and prevents migraines. Migraine, in my opinion, is caused by a defective sense of thirst; you do not feel the need for the amount of water that your brain actually needs to function. Now, knowing that, I gladly shell out for water, I force myself to drink it all day long, and I no longer am subject to being raked over the coals by migraine attacks. Knowing why I am doing it means that I will never revert or backslide.

I remember one doctor I went to in Ottawa (which places it around 1980) who listened to my list of symptoms, read the test results showing nothing abnormal, and then offered this speculation: "Maybe you just have a weak physiology." Yet thanks to the reasonable planners at OHIP (Ontario's medical plan), now dieticians are considered to pay for themselves, and I am a case in point. At that last visit a blood test the dietician had ordered turned up a vitamin B12 deficiency, resulting in the languor of anemia. This is something that has dogged me all my life. I had said to that Ottawa doctor,

"How could I have a weak physiology? I was among the top five Judoka in Canada in my weight class a few years ago. I was training for the Olympics. Judo matches are three minutes long, which requires only short bursts of energy, but what kills me is lasting through a whole day. Once I get through the morning all I want to do from then on is lie around. I cannot hold down a job, I get so sleepy and apathetic all of the time and afternoons are absolute torture. I cannot believe this is normal."

Yet this and many other doctors put me through every imaginable test and nothing ever turned up. Even my closest friends thought I was imagining it, or was simply lazy. Now I get a dietician and at last an adequate explanation turns up. When she asked me if I had been feeling anemic lately I had to say no, I have always felt anemic, all my life. My favorite novel for many years was "Oblomov," the story of a fellow so languid and bed bound that he falls in love and loses her simply because he is too tired to roll out of his couch. Long, long ago I gave up all hope of changing that.

Just think of the millions of dollars the government could have saved -- not to mention my own career tossed to the wolves -- if only there were closer monitoring of bodily functions. Since I started taking the 1000 mmg. of vitamin B12 daily I have been trying to be as active as I possibly can, even though I must say I still feel excruciating tired most of the time. But seeing light at the end of the tunnel, I am willing to fight it again. The dietician said that there may be an absorption problem and I am to check back with her again in August. Maybe vitamin shots will be necessary.

Be that as it may, I am determined to fight to get what I have never had, a healthy, vigorous constitution. Which is why when all the other soccer moms and dads are sitting by the sidelines I am the only adult over at an empty goal area fending off the shots of a group of ankle nippers. When Silvie is playing or practicing I kick the soccer ball around with Thomas and friends, and when he plays, I practice with Silvie and her bigger friends. I may barely be able to run like a turtle or kick like a flounder, but better be thought a clumsy fool than lose the only worldly thing that matters, your health.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Can you organize the Baha'i Faith?

Can you organize the Baha'i Faith?

By John Taylor; 2006 June 21

"If an individual has an opportunity to plant a tree, even if he knows the Day of Judgment is imminent, let him plant the tree." (Muhammad)

A while back I stumbled across the following quote in an early Baha'i book:

"The Baha'i revelation is not an organization. The Baha'i Cause can never be confined to an organization. The Baha'i revelation is the spirit of this age. It is the essence of all the highest ideals of this century. The Baha'i Cause is an inclusive movement; the teachings of all religions and societies are found here. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Zoroastrians, Theosophists, Freemasons, Spiritualists, et al., find their theories fully developed in this revelation." (Baha'i Year Book, Vol. 1, 1925-1926, p. 146)

I liked these sentiments and hoped that it was authentic scripture. This was cited without attribution in an article called "The Unity of Civilization" by a non-Baha'i scholar, Y. S. Tsao. Did it come from the Master? Ocean turned up dry, so I tried Sifter, Star of the West. That search engine found its earliest occurrence in the following, which I quote again in full, since there is at least one slight difference:

"The Baha'i Movement is not an organization. You can never organize the Baha'i Cause. The Baha'i movement is the spirit of the age. It is the essence of all the highest ideals of this century. The Baha'i Cause is an INCLUSIVE MOVEMENT: The teachings of all the religions and societies are found here; the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Zoroastrians, Theosophists, Freemasons, Spiritualists, et. al. find their highest aims in this Cause. Even the Socialists and philosophers find their theories fully developed in this Movement." (Abdu'l-Baha, quoted in "The Baha'i Temple at Wilmette To Be Built with Money from Every Race, Clime and Religion under the Sun," By Isabel Fraser, The North Shore Review, May 16, 1914, in Star of the West, Vol. 25, p. 67)

This evidently was originally cited at the start of an article in a local newspaper announcing to neighborhood residents some details about what would soon be built on the then empty Wilmette temple grounds, written a year or two after the Master had dedicated it. How authentic the quote is, I still do not know.

Then along came Ruth White, an admirer of the Master who hardly became what we today would call a Baha'i. She challenged the Will of the Master. Also, she latched onto the first sentence of this statement and held it above all other Baha'i teachings. She said in effect: "The spirit bloweth where it listeth," so do not dare try to tell the wind where it should go. She told this to everybody who would listen. Her vehemence caused a ruckus for decades, both within the Faith and later from outside. She resisted every attempt to organize the Cause, a position contradictory and impracticable and hard to believe today. Attempts were made early on to counter that ridiculous position. Here is a sort of note about a pilgrim's note from August of 1921, from a talk by Mason Remey.

"Some of the friends of the Baha'i Cause have been a little confused regarding the organization of the holy Cause because of the wide circulation of some words, to the effect that this Cause should never be organized thus some have imagined that no form of Baha'i organization should exist. Now of late we are informed by pilgrims returning to their homes from Palestine that Abdu'l-Baha has explained that these words circulated to the effect that the Cause should never be organized, give an impression very different found that of the reality of his teachings.

"Experience in the Baha'i Cause shows us that when special questions arise, it is always well to gather together all of the holy Words treating of the subject, for when studying all of the divine teachings treating of any one subject we obtain an all around and a comprehensive conception of the truth of the matter. From one short excerpt from the holy Words, separated from its context, erroneous meanings may be obtained. This danger does not exist when we study the particular statement in its rightful relation with the entire teaching. (SW, Vol. 12, p. 154)

This kind of comparative textual analysis can of course be done much more quickly and easily today, what with database search technology. Even a lazy lump like me can juxtapose and compare scriptural nuances along with the best of them. What I have collected together this morning would have taken years to do before, not to mention requiring a fluency in several languages that I do not have. Let us be grateful for what we are given.

The Guardian was forced by such agitators as White to draw firm lines early in his ministry. For example, the above quote from the Master seems to imply that you can be a freemason or an adherent of another religion and still be a Baha'i. When he took over leadership of the Faith, most Baha'is were indeed affiliated with such groups. He quickly ended that practice; a slogan sums up the line he drew, "association, not affiliation." Similarly, although he was the consummate organizer and planner, and in spite of agitators like Ruth White, he nonetheless came down firmly on the side of the spirit -- if not necessarily the letter -- of what the Master was quoted above as saying:

"Regarding the relationship of the Cause to the Administration; the Baha'i Faith as the Guardian himself has repeatedly and emphatically stated cannot be confined to a mere system of organization, however elaborate in its features and universal in its scope it may be. Organization is only a means to the realization of its aims and ideals, and not an end in itself. To divorce the two, however, would be to mutilate the Cause itself, as they stand inseparably bound to each other, in very much the same relationship existing between the soul and body in the world of human existence." (From a letter on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer April 19, 1939, Lights of Guidance, p. 2)

I think that very good grounds for this attitude were laid in the Most Holy Law Book of Baha'u'llah: "This is not a Cause which may be made a plaything for your idle fancies, nor is it a field for the foolish and faint of heart." (Aqdas, 84) It is an organization, admittedly, but we do not organize it, God does. The Master Himself made his own position very clear on the urgent need for organization on behalf of morality, in spite of the truth that the "spirit bloweth where it listeth." He said, for example, that, "Our Party is God's party; we do not belong to any party." (Abdu'l-Baha, quoted by Shoghi Effendi, in Lights of Guidance, p. 444) Also, when he met the Mayor of Berkley, California on 7 October, 1912 he was asked about economics. This was the Master's reply:

"We must strive until mankind achieves everlasting felicity. Laws are needed which can both preserve the ranks of individuals and secure peace and stability for them because society is like an army, which needs a general, captains, lieutenants and privates. Not all can be captains nor can all be soldiers. The grades of responsibility are essential and the differences of rank a necessity. Just as a family needs old and young, master and mistress, servants and attendants, likewise society needs organization and structure. However, all must be part of an order which will ensure that each lives in complete comfort within his own station. It should not be that the master lives in comfort while the servant is in pain; that is injustice. Similarly, it is impossible that all be either servants or masters; then there would be no order."

The Mayor wondered how soon this will come about. The Master answered:

"As these laws are in conformity with the demands of the time, they will unfailingly prevail, although they will be implemented gradually. Everything can be prevented or resisted except the demands of the time. The time is ripe for the governments to remedy these ills. Relief must be brought to the toiling masses. Otherwise, if these ills are allowed to become chronic, their cure will be difficult and they will precipitate a great revolution." (Mahmud, 309)

This of course was said some three years before the Bolshevist revolution began to play out, and some ten years after a socially conservative President of the United States had been shot to death by a socialistic anarchist. The eschatological question in Christianity as to whether it is appropriate to organize for social good or just sit back and wait for the Return came and solved all our problems had been translated into a secular context with a vengeance. Wait or act? That question was vexed and unanswerable, but of course it was nothing compared to the paralysis of today. This morning Silvie, while still in bed, asked me the difference between global warming and global dimming. One cools and the other warms, I explained, like a bow and arrow aimed at the head of all life on earth. The greater the tension between them the more dire the danger and the more careful we have to be. The worst thing to do is to do nothing or to do the wrong thing. Only God, united resolve and a wholly new organization will get us out of this predicament. There is no magic involved but there is good reason both to hope and work. Mahmud records the following about the Master in Cincinnati,

"Today He spoke about the Universal House of Justice and the International Parliament of man, where representatives from all the parliaments of the world will resolve conflicts between nations, such as that in the Balkans. This organization will cure the chronic diseases of the nations." (Mahmud, 373-374)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Cosmopolitical Rights

Standing up for our Cosmopolitical Rights

By John Taylor; 2006 June 20

In yesterday's essay, "Facing Cosmopolitical Reality" we looked from several angles at "cosmopolitics," literally, "universe politics," a word Kant used to describe the political order that will come about under a permanent peace pact, as opposed to the warring, partisan politics that are the mark of a truce -- a truce is only a cessation of hostilities in order to rest and make yet more preparations for further, endless war. Only a permanent pact is worthy of the name "peace," and its cosmopolitics would be a wholly different animal from the violent struggle we call politics. Baha'is, we noted, are cosmopolitically involved but disengaged politically.

Kant was directly inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and we briefly looked over the latter's understanding of law. Law, he said, is a human attempt to implement universal justice by assuming a state of total equality among all members. Acts performed under the rule of law are of a different moral order because all are acting on all for the sake of divine justice. Kant called this jus cosmopoliticum, or cosmopolitical right; from this primal right are derived freedom, equality, and all other human rights.

The nature of law requires that a moral agent take a first step to make law universal, that is, by making peace universal. Otherwise, as Rousseau had pointed out, those who obey the law are gulled by the lawless, those who disobey. If a few can evade paying taxes, those who do pay are made into fools, unnecessarily shackling themselves by submitting to authority. It is all or none -- none, total removal from law was called at the time the "state of nature." The same moral imperative that requires taking the first step to peace reciprocally requires of others that they not rebuff such initiatives. Here is how Kant puts it, continuing where we left off yesterday in the concluding pages of Kant's Science of Right.

"... the morally practical reason utters within us its irrevocable veto: There shall be no war. So there ought to be no war, neither between me and you in the condition of nature, nor between us as members of states which, although internally in a condition of law, are still externally in their relation to each other in a condition of lawlessness; for this is not the way by which any one should prosecute his right."

The big problem, then as now, is that the Cosmopoliticum does not exist, nor is there any evidence that it can ever be practicable. Peacemakers are demoralized and Realpolitik seems much more realistic. What moral authority can a non-existent order exert over inhabitants of the real world?

"Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real. We must work for what may perhaps not be realized, and establish that constitution which yet seems best adapted to bring it about (mayhap republicanism in all states, together and separately)."

It takes faith, a leap of imagination, to start what has never existed before, but it is also our prime moral duty. For a writer, drawing up and perfecting the "constitution" Kant mentions is the most important conceivable work. Kant's later essay "Perpetual Peace" was intended, I believe, as the first draft of a constitution for any future United Nations. I went over it a few years ago, and I plan to go over it again soon. There is nothing more important to do.

Let us step back for a moment. What we are talking about here is what is prophesied in the prayer, "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." The seventh beatitude says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." A son of God may strive for justice and know that peace is the font of law, but how to raise a world foundering in violence to a high and mighty, far-off kingdom of heaven? Where God is unknown, who cares whose son you are, we are? Somehow the kingdom, the cosmopoliticum, must be modeled, portrayed, and yet God is by definition the reverse of what can be imaged, He is Spirit. We will never see Him, any more than our eyes will ever see themselves. Consider this conversation in a play of the Bard,

Brutus: "No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things."

Cassius: "Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear: and since you know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which you yet know not of."

We know and imagine peace by seeing our own son-ship of God reflected in ourselves and each other. But maintaining that vision over a lifetime is impossible without an exemplar, a Perfect Son who said, "Look at me, follow me, be as I am," and who underwent such terrible persecution over a long lifetime. In Him we see the plenitude of reason played out. That is why I think `Abdu'l-Baha, our Exemplar, is of such tremendous importance. He offers an example of how to end violence and war by taking the first steps to peace, for example with His Tablets of the Divine Plan, and by His forgiveness and longsuffering in the face of the persecution of Himself and His followers in Iran, violence that is still going on. Let me close with three quotes from Baha'u'llah on this theme.

"On their tongue the mention of God hath become an empty name; in their midst His holy Word a dead letter. Such is the sway of their desires, that the lamp of conscience and reason hath been quenched in their hearts..." (Kitab-i-Iqan, 29)

"It was against God that they unsheathed the swords of malice and hatred, and yet they perceive it not. Methinks they remain dead and buried in the tombs of their selfish desires, though the breeze of God hath blown over all regions." (Baha'u'llah, Summons, 50)

"They all lie as dead within their own shrouds, save those who have believed and repaired unto God, who rejoice in this day in His celestial paradise, and who tread the path of His good-pleasure." (Baha'u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 20)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Cosmopolitical Reality

Facing Cosmopolitical Reality

By John Taylor; 2006 June 19

Not long ago a deepened believer asked me loaded question, "Do Baha'is get involved in or discuss politics?" The answer is an emphatic yes and no. The problem, as so often happens, is rooted in language. English squeezes too many meanings into the word "politics" to make it possible give an unqualified yes or no answer. It would be "no" if by politics you mean partisan political parties, but "yes" if you consider, "The earth is but one country" to be a political statement, as it no doubt is. It is unfortunate that the word "cosmopolitics," a term given prominence by Immanuel Kant, has not come into general parlance. If it were, you could say, "Baha'is are non-political but at the same time fervently committed to cosmopolitical issues." Let us explore this further.

Immanuel Kant said, "It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of information sufficient for action but insufficient to entirely satisfy the intellect." Often? More like always! Who ever has the slightest notion of the outcome of an enterprise when they first set out? This, to be sure, is a definition of faith, but Kant also took it as an a priori justification for activism for peace, however daunting it may seem at the outset. Kant devoted the last pages of his "Science of Right" to this question. Here he asks, in essence: "Why even try when peace seems so utterly remote and impracticable?" His answer: "Because reason dictates." The House of Justice's Peace Message covers this ground at length so I think it would be helpful to go over Kant's points in this section, which he calls "The Universal Right of Mankind, or jus cosmopoliticum." He starts off the section called "The Nature and Conditions of Cosmopolitical Right" thusly:

"The rational idea of a universal, peaceful, if not yet friendly, union of all the nations upon the earth that may come into active relations with each other, is a juridical principle, as distinguished from philanthropic or ethical principles."

You can take your own shot at fathoming his meaning here, but I take it to say that the ground of peace is justice, not love, niceness or kindness. Law is a function of peace and peace is derived from the very nature of law. A law that does not serve justice, and ultimately peace, is corrupt and self-contradictory; it will rapidly deflagrate. This has consequences for property, as Kant points out next:

"Nature has enclosed them altogether within definite boundaries, in virtue of the spherical form of their abode as a globus terraqueus; and the possession of the soil upon which an inhabitant of the earth may live can only be regarded as possession of a part of a limited whole and, consequently, as a part to which every one has originally a right."

Again, simplified: the world is round, so every square inch of the planet is a part of a single sum owned by God, or if you prefer, the whole of humanity. "Every one has originally a right" means that there is not nor can ever be wholly exclusive ownership. The more in contact the parts become, the less independent and the more shared and negotiated proprietorship will become. Shareholder number one is everyone. This is shorthand for divine right, He giveth and taketh away and to none is given the right to say why or wherefore. Kant next turns to the question, "Whence does this primal right derive?"

"Hence all nations originally hold a community of the soil... they are placed in such thoroughgoing relations of each to all the rest that they may claim to enter into intercourse with one another, and they have a right to make an attempt in this direction, while a foreign nation would not be entitled to treat them on this account as enemies."

The community of the soil implies, in a slogan, that "the farmer comes first," first among equals. This the Arabic Hidden Word brings up when it asks, do we know why we were all created from one dust? To teach equality, absolute, fundamental and visceral. Since the Hidden Words were still hidden when Kant wrote, he was probably thinking of this train of logic in Rousseau,

"But when the people as a whole makes rules for the people as a whole, it is dealing only with itself; and if any relationship emerges, it is between the entire body seen from one perspective and the same entire body seen from another, without any division whatever. Here the matter concerning which a rule is made is as general as the will which makes it. And this is the kind of act which I call a law." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Penguin Books, London, 1968, p. 81)

The very existence of laws implies equality of all in all under God. Thus it is not government or any of its agent who make up the laws, but all of humanity in service to God, the Lord of justice. "All justice comes from God, who alone is its source..." (Rousseau, 80) Every law, be it local, national or international, springs from our universal desire to implement justice.

"...we can no longer ask who is to make laws, because laws are acts of the general will; no longer ask if the prince is above the law, because he is part of the state; no longer ask if the law can be unjust, because no one is unjust to himself; and no longer ask if we can be both free and subject to the laws, for the laws are but registers of what we ourselves desire." (Ib., 82)

So Kant, having established that fundamental human oneness and equality give anyone the basic right to set out to give human unity a political expression in a permanent peace without being regarded as an enemy, continues:

"This right, in so far as it relates to a possible union of all nations, in respect of certain laws universally regulating their intercourse with each other, may be called `cosmopolitical right' (jus cosmopoliticum)."

It is this fundamental "cosmopolitical right" that Baha'is, non-political that we are, exercise when we work for world peace, for example by distributing the Master's Tablet to the Hague -- as we did after the Great War -- or, more recently, the Peace Message to the leaders and peoples of the world. Interestingly, in a similar manner, last month the UHJ in a letter addressed to Iranian Baha'is gave them limited sanction to teach the Cause there. In support they invoked an international convention establishing the human right of all believers to follow legitimate channels in promoting their own beliefs. Before, obedience to government required that Baha'is halt teaching activities at the bidding of local authorities. No more, it would seem. Such is one internal result felt by Baha'is of the gradual extension of Kant's cosmopolitics, politics of the universe.

Kant continues, bring up what could be called a tourist's right to visit any point on the planet. We can already do this virtually with the aid of Google Maps and its competitors. Certain sensitive locations are intentionally blotted out by these Internet mapping services for security reasons. Kant did not see war and terror as valid excuses for curtailing "tourist rights," but he also considered as worthy of protection the rights of local peoples.

"...evil and violence committed in one place of our globe are felt in all. Such possible abuse cannot, however, annul the right of man as a citizen of the world to attempt to enter into communion with all others, and for this purpose to visit all the regions of the earth, although this does not constitute a right of settlement upon the territory of another people (jus incolatus), for which a special contract is required."

These special contracts are especially needed now that local abuses have the power not only to be felt but to destabilize anyone anywhere on the globe. Examples often cited: substandard farm management practices on a farm in China brought the world to the brink of a bird flu pandemic; the exposure of shenanigans on a Thai stock exchange in the late 1990's brought the economy of Russia to its knees in a matter of hours. There is no such thing as a wholly internal affair any more and politics are rapidly merging into a single cosmopolitical continuum. The more that happens the sooner it will be possible to answer the question, "Do Baha'is get involved in politics?" with an emphatic, unqualified, "Yes."

More on Kant's line of thought about peace later.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Sapere Aude!

Sapere Aude! Enlightenment IV, Or, Two World Kluge

John Taylor; 2006 June 18

Last time we discussed a neologism from the world of high technology: "kluge," meaning "witty," a clever rig-up that serves during the modeling phase of the scientific advance, which in turn is a phase of the "religious method," since "how" and "why" serve each other, each feeding back to the other. The Qu'ran, we saw, advises those who understand to, "...listen to the word, then follow the best of it." (Q39:18, Shakir) The law of Baha'u'llah requires this morning and evening when we relate the experience of our day to the wisdom gained in prayer and reading Holy Writ. Baha'u'llah asked the leader simply to take this to the next level, to consciously choose advisors from among those who show justice and faith (that is, those who know how and why, who have scientific and moral qualifications), and then, "take thou counsel with them, and choose whatever is best in thy sight, and be of them that act generously." (Baha'u'llah, Summons, 209) This approach combines, we saw, the critical "hacker" spirit of Protestantism and the loyal, obedient integrating genius of Catholicism.

When the critical, protestant spirit predominates fractiousness picks love and community apart. Change comes rapidly but the center easily falls apart. Aristotle observed:

"For the law has no power to command obedience except that of habit, which can only be given by time, so that a readiness to change from old to new laws enfeebles the power of the law. Even if we admit that the laws are to be changed, are they all to be changed, and in every state? And are they to be changed by anybody who likes, or only by certain persons?" (Aristotle, Politics)

The hacker or protestant raises questions about habit that can only be answered by God Himself. Otherwise, sedition. Conflict is natural to our state of ignorance. As long as no common understanding exists, we naturally split apart, take sides and form permanent, battling factions. Soon the truth becomes a sideshow to the wrangling. The harm that political parties do was evident back in Aristotle's time; discussing the situation in Crete, he wrote,

"The nobles have a habit, too, of setting up a chief; they get together a party among the common people and their own friends and then quarrel and fight with one another. What is this but the temporary destruction of the state and dissolution of society? A city is in a dangerous condition when those who are willing are also able to attack her." (Aristotle, Politics, Book XI)

On the other hand when the holistic, conservative catholic spirit predominates there is little adaptation to change, or even acknowledgement that change is necessary. Kludges are taken as graven images, as dogma; science and faith come into conflict and an atmosphere of obscurantism dims the sun of enlightenment.

In order to marry questioning with order, with due reverence, loyalty and obedience, both justice and faith must be understood as successive stages in a single learning process. The ancient word "dialectic" describes this intellectual recycling, first a thesis, which is broken down into antithesis and finally it is replaced by a synthesis. Nothing, Shoghi Effendi said, is exempt, not our most precious ideals, institutions, assumptions, religious formulae or legal standards, nor political and economic theories. All are kludges and serve provisionally until the next, improved solution takes over. We apply the kludge and inadequacies show up, we learn, we dream, we redesign, we toss out the kludge and start anew, continually, eternally. Thus, to ask if faith contradicts evolutionary theory is to miss the point; since the Kitab-i-Iqan we know that faith is the kingpin of evolution, not only in theory but practice too. This brings us back to the words of the Bab that began our series on enlightenment:

"Through the radiance of His light God imparteth illumination to your hearts and maketh firm your steps, that perchance ye may yield praise unto Him." (The Bab, Selections, 155)

This is the Bab's answer to Kant's question, "What is Enlightenment?" The guidance of light is a loan that we invest, repay and then we are paid back in the wages of a steward, the favor of being able consciously and sincerely to praise our Lord. All things are of God, He owns everything. If He appears to give us a bounty we must know that it is a trust; we owe it to Him to repay our debt as stewards, talent for talent. Such a debt was paid on our behalf by the martyr-prophet Himself, then by His followers, and is it still being paid right now by Baha'is in Iran.

It is not a coincidence that deficits and national debts are exploding. The trust of wealth given all humanity is being openly shirked by nationalist leaders, the two most prominent of whom are professedly Christian. Sums owed accelerate out of control, worsened by, in the case of the United States, an illegal conflict that, as Al Gore points out, has so far cost almost a trillion dollars, the very sum that would have covered total retooling of the economy to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. The latter is an investment, as it were a loan to mother nature. She repays such investments many times over in decades to come. Worse, not a penny is spent on establishing real justice, such as ending the slow motion genocide in Darfur. Paying for military actions without justice is worse than the steward who buried his talent, it is burying it where it will never be recovered. The master lent his talents and all know how angry he was in the parable when he got back only his original talent, paid in full without interest. Imagine having no talent at all in hand! That is when we have to hope that the parable will shift to that of the prodigal son.

Indeed, an important part of the Baha'i teaching, as put forward, for example, in the Peace Message, is that the root of the problem is our collective adolescence. The age of responsibility does not come in without a stage of abject irresponsibility. Not only a few leaders but all of us are in the precarious position of the prodigal son who having blown his inheritance must return home hoping only for a job as a menial. In this light, let us cite again the first paragraph of Kant's essay, "What is Enlightenment?" I consider it the Beethoven's Ninth, the "Ode to Joy" of philosophy:

"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! `Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment."

Tutelage or immaturity is a condition, Kant proposes, of abdicating reason by allowing past and future to dominate the present. The prodigal son dissipates his inheritance in mindless pleasure. The result, Kant says, is that the mind permits a book to take the place of understanding, a spiritual director takes over one's conscience, or a doctor determine one's diet. Being immature is culpable, a violation of our divine heritage. Being mature is being one's own master. A person who roots himself in reason and is therefore free; freedom, in Kant's definition, is "self-imposed lawful behavior."

As Michel Foucault in his own essay called "What is Enlightenment?" points out, Kant's understanding of enlightenment was a "modification of the preexisting relation linking will, authority, and the use of reason." Kant was proposing to his enlightened despot Frederick an implicit contract of "private" obedience in exchange for "public" freedom. Foucault says,

"We might think that there is nothing very different here from what has been meant, since the sixteenth century, by freedom of conscience: the right to think as one pleases so long as one obeys as one must. Yet it is here that Kant brings into play another distinction, and in a rather surprising way. The distinction he introduces is between the private and public uses of reason. But he adds at once that reason must be free in its public use, and must be submissive in its private use. Which is, term for term, the opposite of what is ordinarily called freedom of conscience." ("What is Enlightenment?," in Rabinow (P.), The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 32-50, <http://foucault.info/documents/whatIsEnlightenment/foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html>)

The reversal of the contract that Kant has in mind is from "do not think but obey," from "be a mere cog in the machine," to responsible obedience on a higher level, what we have been calling a kludge of protestant and catholic and what he calls, Sapere Aude, "dare to know," a contract stipulating: "obey and you will be allowed the full use of reason." Kant was in the middle of writing his critiques of reason and was well aware at the time that reason is flawed and subject to active modeling, testing and replacement. In the essay he spends most time on the example of a pastor who obeys "publicly" in his duties as a member of the church that he has agreed to uphold, but who in his "private" writing, in the books and articles he publishes, is allowed complete freedom to say whatever he wants, even if it contradicts the doctrines of that church. In his words, under an enlightened prince,

"...venerable ecclesiastics are allowed, in the role of scholar, and without infringing on their official duties, freely to submit for public testing their judgments and views which here and there diverge from the established symbol. And an even greater freedom is enjoyed by those who are restricted by no official duties. .... Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional artifices are not made to hold them in it."

Reading this I was reminded of Douglas Martin, the only UHJ member that I have ever personally met, albeit long before he was elected onto the supreme body. Clearly, this man is a genius, and I can understand nine people like him sitting around a table acting as a confederacy of geniuses. Anyway, toward the end of his stay on that body he made some public comments that gave rise to vociferous protests among believers. The House wrote a letter -- read it yourself, keyword "Martin" -- pointing out in sum that if it had to consider the popularity of what its members say it would be obliged to muzzle all of their public statements. They were not prepared to do that. Next election, Mr. Martin was not eligible for re-election, the wording of the notice being, well, carefully worded. He was not sick unto death, as that exemption to membership was intended to allow for. I do not have any inside information on what happened, whether he quit or was fired, or indeed if he is healthy or sick. I will have to wait for his biography to come out. My point is only that here is an instance in the Cause of God Itself of tension between public and private freedom. Having had my own private opinions stir up a ruckus in the city of St. Catherines lately, I can sympathize with Mr. Martin.

We will continue with Kant's big question, "What is Enlightenment?" in future essays.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

One World Kluge

One World Kluge

By John Taylor; 2006 June 15

Today let us start with a new word, at least for me. It is "kludge," pronounced "KLOOJ." Kludge came into prominence in the high tech world around the time that the UHJ first formed, in the early 1960's. It means, according to the engineer who coined it, "an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole." I had confused it in both meaning and pronunciation with "fudge," (in the sense of cheating by mashing figures together) but kludge comes from a German word for "witty." A system that is kludged is cleverly put together from cannibalized parts and it works adequately; it may threaten to fail at any time because its components were not meant for the job they are doing, but it gets by. It acts as a demonstrator.

Last year, I bought an el cheapo digital camera that acted for us as just such a demonstrator, if not a pure kludge. It worked as advertised but using it rapidly exposed severe inadequacies. It had a back panel display but no viewfinder, so I could not take pictures outside in the sun. It had no flash so I could not take pictures in most indoor lighting situations. If you cut out the great outdoors and indoor situations too, that leaves very little! My el cheapo digicam was an instant kludge, serviceable only by demonstrating to all of us exactly what we really needed in a camera. Our next camera acquisition was closer to the high end, "prosumer" market.

In the rapidly evolving world of electronics, then, circuits and microchips are kludged together intentionally, they serve for a time while users learn its inadequacies. Since it happens that these experienced users are the designers of the next generation kludges are followed by new, integrally designed, miniaturized systems. Quilt works that they are, kludges are just the practical phase of the stochastic learning process. They are responsible for the dizzyingly rapid evolution of computers and microchips. I daresay that without kludges the spectacularly rapid expansion in chips and memory storage media would have taken centuries rather than decades.

I had just learned this new word when I read the following quote from the Guardian, which the House gave prominence by citing towards the start of the Peace Message:

"If long-cherished ideals and time-honoured institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulae have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer minister to the needs of a continually evolving humanity, let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these, in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution? For legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any particular law or doctrine." (Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Baha'u'llah, 42)

What Baha'i and modernism in general are about, then, in the areas mentioned, ideals, institutions, assumptions, religious formulae, is learning how to kludge. As Shoghi Effendi says, "legal standards, political and economic theories" exist solely to serve the "interests of humanity as a whole." Not part, the whole human race. Jesus defined it long before the invention of science: "The sabbath is for man, not man for the sabbath." The sabbath, and all sacred laws and institutions, must act as kludges, however permanent they seem to be. Why does that have to be? After all, holy and sacred imply eternal and untouchable. The Guardian tells us why, it is of the nature of this world of materiality: "...in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay." Material falls apart, only spirit holds, integrates, acting invisibly from a distance.

In order to kludge the first thing to learn is how to use the garbage can, how to detach our hearts and toss our precious treasures into the "limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines." Okay, make the garbage can a recycling bin instead, since most kludges are made up of good circuits that can be melted down and reused. (Interesting that the Guardian uses the word "limbo," since that very doctrine has come into question by the Catholic church; turns out that it was never fully a dogma, it was a sort of rumor; the new Pope Benedict is about to toss limbo itself into, well, I guess it has to be the recycling bin of obsolescent doctrines) To survive as a race, to advance quickly, to "minister to our needs," we all need to learn to judiciously use the recycle bin, to kludge everything until we design something better.

Since I mention Catholicism here, I heard lately a rather witty way of describing the difference between Apple and Windows computer users in terms of religion. Apple users are like Catholics and Windows users are Protestants. That is, an Apple computer is meant to be used as is, like an appliance. It is difficult to take them apart, whereas Wintel computers usually can be reduced to a pile of rubble in minutes with only a screwdriver. They can be hacked, upgraded and improved. The Protestants who use them usually learn at least to replace RAM memory, even if the younger ones are otherwise totally unfamiliar with how to use a screwdriver. If that is true I am a protestant bred in the bone; I bought an Apple and after a matter of weeks grew to hate it. I traded it away at my first opportunity.

Protestant Wintel owners may be more likely to know what the word "kludge" means than Catholic Apple users, but I think that a kludge takes in both as stages. The chaos of Protestantism is followed by the complete, unchangeable, miniaturized order of Catholicism; both are successive stages in a single learning process. To hack a kludge and produce a replacement involves both branches of Christianity ... so perhaps a better religious metaphor would be a Muslim, for the Qu'ran teaches believers to in effect kludge Holy Writ, to pick and choose what is useful and apply that only:

"Those who listen to the word, then follow the best of it; those are they whom Allah has guided, and those it is who are the men of understanding." (Q39:18, Shakir)

Baha'u'llah gave the same kludgy advice to the Sultan responsible for banishing Him,

"Gather around thee those ministers from whom thou canst perceive the fragrance of faith and of justice, and take thou counsel with them, and choose whatever is best in thy sight, and be of them that act generously." (Baha'u'llah, Summons, 209)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Rewiring Peace

Rewiring Peace

By John Taylor; 2006 June 13

Last night only our family came out to the Garfield Disher Room and my prepared talk on the Peace Message turned into an improvised children's class on the basics of the Baha'i Faith. I was thankful for that since there are so many distractions at home that we rarely have the chance to concentrate upon one thing at one time, much less discuss profundities like religion. We watched Silvie's narration of a comic book history of the Baha'i Faith and my little pastiche of pictures of the Master in America set to music; at one point Tomaso came over, sat on my knee and said pensively, "When I hear that music I feel relaxed and good." Others, older in years, have told me the same thing about that little six minute video; I think the pictures of the Master infuse a special spirit into that stock acoustic guitar piece, "Delta Fog." As often happens with these anarchic children, the evening broke down into play, with Silvie directing her little brother in two stage productions of her own devising. One she wrote about the Master's crossing to America when she was nine years old, changing history a little by having Him steer the Celtic out of its course and rescue the drowning passengers of the Titanic. Of course, He was already in New York when the sinking took place.

I have been listening to Kurt Vonnegut's memoir "Timequake" read aloud on a "books on cassette" tape during my one hour a day table tennis practice over the past few days. Vonnegut's big bugbear is the diffusion over past decades of our collective attention as all to prolific digital multimedia channels take over from older media. Time was, Vonnegut laments, people discussed short fiction in magazines; this was great for him, he could sell every story he wrote to magazines. People then were used to seeing and reacting together, as a single mass audience to what happened in the cinema or theatre; there were only a couple of television channels available, so if you went out the next morning you could be sure that your neighbor would have seen the really big show the evening before, and you had something to discuss. Now people do not witness or react together to the same thing. It is a thousand channel, a million website multi-verse, and it is breaking us apart, Vonnegut complains.

Myself, I would say that this is not the fault of the media it is just lack of discipline. We need to learn information chastity, as it were. We are much too promiscuous with data and we pay for it. As Vonnegut comments at one point, "People ask me why I have not been taken out by AIDS as so many others have. The answer is simple. I do not screw around." We screw around with information and then are surprised when our thoughts end up like rotten scrambled eggs, we cannot think alone or together, and finally we get sick. To avoid information AIDS we need to learn to focus on what matters most and take in only information to do with that. We must actively mold our data feed to our own ends. Families need to react together they also need to create together. Last night the kids were in rapt attention to those amateur Baha'i videos because they helped make them.

There should perhaps be a family television channel that the family can react together to, one that would include family events, news and the little plays and stories that children so love to produce, at least our children do. There could also be a community channel that you and your neighbors can share and participate in, a regional one, and so forth right up to the world level. Sunday night, for example, might be family media night, Monday neighborhood TV, Tuesday urban time, Wednesday regional, Thursday national night, Friday religious broadcasts and Saturday would be restricted world level news and performances.

I think Vonnegut's point is not just the to-be-expected complaint of an old man about changes for the worse since the good old days of his youth. It is absolutely essential that we know and feel things together, or we will fly apart. We are a body politic and a body has to feel and see and think all at once, or it will die. Consider the following, from a speech given this spring to a university audience by King Hussein of Jordan.

"Finally, I believe we must think of globalization not just as the spread of capitalism or deeper economic and political ties, but as the emergence of a universal consciousness, whereby `an injury to one is an injury to all' (to quote the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa)."

Actually, your majesty, you are quoting Plato, who was in turn invoking the oldest of all political analogies, that of the body politic. Humanity is a single organism and the media is its nervous system. It must serve the brain, which in turn serves the good of the whole. Nerves are built into its structure on a cellular level, especially in areas of contact, like the largest organ, the skin. So information technology begins in the family, it does not end there, it begins. Vonnegut laments that children no longer learn to use their imaginations, everything is fed to them. Why should they, when data is fed to them passively? There must be a feedback mechanism as sophisticated and responsive as the nerves are in our bodies, and the center of it all has to be the brain, the world government. But the king is spot on when he says that collective security, an attack on one is an attack on all, is what will be needed for the human race to survive. That will have to be the mark of any future media: a single consciousness for every single human being. And do not think of it in negative terms, a blow to one is a blow to all. Think: a pleasure for one is a pleasure for all; a thrill for one is a thrill for all. If there is unity in our diversity, we should strive for that sort of common, simultaneous experience as much as possible.

Going so closely over the peace message I noticed something that I had not seen before. The House begins and ends the message by citing the last sentence of the following section of Gleanings. I had no idea that it was so important. Consider it:

"The All-Merciful hath conferred upon man the faculty of vision, and endowed him with the power of hearing. Some have described him as the "lesser world," when, in reality, he should be regarded as the "greater world." The potentialities inherent in the station of man, the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality, must all be manifested in this promised Day of God." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, CLXII, 340)

Having said what I just did, Baha'u'llah seems to be telling us not to be passive information consumers, we must see and hear for yourselves. It is God's promise that all our potential will flower in this age. Your senses are no "lesser world" dominated and preempted by famous stars and media darlings, you must seize the day and make it the "greater world." The multiverse is within you. We undergo growing pains, but the information explosion is designed to us get us to see the "innate excellence" of our reality. Again, it is God's promise that we will bring out all our potential. Or maybe I am reading too much into it. In any case, the House repeated it twice, using it as bookends for its treatise on peace, so it is an important quote to consider.

To my readers in Ontario, TVO tonight at 10 PM is broadcasting the second and last installment of "The Corporation," an expose of the most vital but irresponsible player on the world stage. Do not miss it. There will be a quiz, or at least a review, coming up on the Badi' list. As I mentioned yesterday, the first big job of the world government will be to domesticate the multinational corporation, an institution that right now is little better than a rabble of pirates.

The film bends over backwards to show both sides of the issue, to present the case of think tankers who defend corporate capitalism and of executives who work in large corporations. In the first program last week, they documented an unforgettable moment in the history of conflict. A bunch of protesters found the home of the CEO of Shell oil and pasted a banner over the roof calling oil companies planet killers. The exec came outside and talked with them, politely explaining to them his side of the issue; his wife hospitably offered them drinks and refreshments. My Baha'i heart was warmed by this resolution of a potentially violent conflict. The protesters had not considered that the head of the corporation might be as concerned as they are about the environment, that it is the structure of the organization, not evil people that does the damage. Even the head of the company has little power to effect the kind of reforms that are required to make them into a force for good rather than evil.

I must say whenever I have made such protests the protestees do not have this fellow's guts and integrity to come out debate the complaints to my face, much less offer me refreshments. Real world, people take protests and complaints as insults, as attacks, and respond in kind. Except that it is not kind, or even sensible. It is the low way out, the coward's retaliation of evading justice by launching a gossip and backbiting campaign designed to ruin your reputation. You get no chance to have your say and hear the other side of the issue, as those Shell oil protesters did.

Instead dear friends who used to respect you and who had nothing to do with the issues of the protest suddenly refuse to look at or speak to you. It is like watching a shooting gallery with one duck going down after the next, only you turn around to see who is shooting them, and they have disappeared. They call it backbiting because it hides, it ambushes love and kills it before it can defend itself. One lost friend in particular I recall, she took bitterness and ill will sparked by backbiters to the grave... she never forgave me for making enemies of her other friends by protesting their behavior to their faces, or at least to their mailboxes (I wrote them a series of protest letters). The Writings say that the tongue is a fire that burns a century, but for me a friend made an enemy who dies, who takes her wrath to the next world, is a fire that will burn as long as I live. That is as close to eternal fire as I ever want to see.

Having this direct, personal experience with backbiters I saw politics with new eyes. Really all we need is love, yes, love, but love nurtured by consultation. Without communication love short circuits and becomes a danger. And protest is just failed, disconnected attempts at communication. If you cut an electric wire it will hit the ground and spark all over the place. That is the political scene today, a live wire flashing, sparking and threatening to shock anyone who comes close. The more protest the quicker we must act. But remember, most electrical fires start out of sight, hidden behind the walls. So, seeing sparks is a good sign, a chance to save the situation before fire burns the whole place down along with everybody there, implicated or not. It is the job of leaders safely to see that every wire is properly connected to the system so that fire cannot break out. In the case of the corporation, we are looking at a major rewiring job. In the case of religion, what can I say. A more fundamental rewiring could not be imagined than that which Baha'u'llah has blueprinted.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Peace Appraisal, Part II

The Promise of Peace, An Appraisal Twenty Years After; Part II

By John Taylor; 2006 June 13

The Peace Message is by my computer's count some 6,687 words in length. Nor is it written in a way that can easily be summarized. We are talking a succinct treatise here, highly concentrated, written in an unrelenting literary style that can only be called "high committee." The House of Justice is clearly more heavily influenced stylistically by the often Jane Austin-like eloquence of Shoghi Effendi than by the pellucid classicism of the Master. As far as content, they cite Baha'u'llah twelve times, `Abdu'l-Baha once and the Guardian seven times, all from the World Order letters. This is deceptive, though, since the citations from Baha'u'llah tend to be a sentence or two while those of Shoghi Effendi are often a paragraph or more in length.

Anyway, every time I try to summarize the contents of the Peace Message it ends up as an explication, that is, the capsulation is more drawn out in length than the original. Nor am I the only one affected, since I notice that in the ABS's booklet length re-publication of this letter, "To the Peoples of the World, A Baha'i Statement on Peace," their subheadings are largely crowded up into the first third of the letter. The last two thirds of the Message defeated their attempts at summary and got short shrift. Yesterday I spent an entire essay assessing and rephrasing the opening one-eighth of the peace letter. At that rate it will take eight more essays just to outline it, not to mention assess its influence over the past twenty years.

And I have a deadline; by this evening I have committed myself to making it into a brief PowerPoint presentation. So what to do? How to put a long and elaborate message into a palatable, easily digestible visual presentation? By the end of this essay, I hope to have an idea, or failing that a good excuse for coming to the fireside empty handed -- I was too busy writing an essay on the Peace Message.

It was to be expected, short of plunking an entire book into the hand of every person in the world, that they would have to make it terse and highly concentrated. To shorten it even further would distort it, for the whole point of the Baha'i peace program is that peace is universal. You cannot take a synoptic view or squeeze it into a sound bite. Look at it from any perspective, however all-embracing, for example as purely political or economic or even a religious concern, and you distort it, you squeeze out its meaning. Peace is the sum of all specialties, and much more. The House of Justice has to do justice to the principle the Master called "universal peace." So it has to set out to embrace every major concern of our several billion-strong human race, not to mention God's concerns.

The latter divine concern entails explaining the nature of principle, the ultimate implication and full flower of monotheism. This they do brilliantly and originally, even considering the Great Ones on whose shoulders they stand. Thus, if I had to choose the most important passage out the entire message, its distinctive contribution both to Baha'i Studies and the history of ideas, it would be this, from the end of its second section:

"...the primary challenge in dealing with issues of peace is to raise the context to the level of principle, as distinct from pure pragmatism. For, in essence, peace stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual or moral attitude, and it is chiefly in evoking this attitude that the possibility of enduring solutions can be found. There are spiritual principles, or what some call human values, by which solutions can be found for every social problem. ... The essential merit of spiritual principle is that it not only presents a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures. Leaders of governments and all in authority would be well served in their efforts to solve problems if they would first seek to identify the principles involved and then be guided by them."

This pregnant passage had a life-changing influence on me as a writer. It inspired me to write a book on the Baha'i principles, to devote my life to them. My book rapidly grew into two books, then three, and eventually the number of planned books that would be required to do the job exceeded ten to the exponent three hundred, a critical number equaling the number of atoms in the universe. At this point most writers, excepting only the very dumbest, give up and go on to easier lawns to mow. But in this respect I live up to the family motto, "A Taylor never quits." But even I realized when the number of books ran higher than the number atoms that I had hit a rut and would never in my lifetime finish even the one book that I had aimed at. But it has been a great ride, these past twenty-one years, I have learned a lot and although I am infinitely far from where I hoped to be I remain convinced that principle is, as the Peace Message implies, the successor and heir apparent to the ideologies and "isms" that afflicted the 19th and 20th Centuries. I believe that even if it defeats a thousand better minds than mine, with every passing year principle will increase in importance.

Remember what I said about the gods of public speaking being angry with me a few days ago? Well, they have intervened again. Ron Speer just called from Emerg, saying that he cannot attend due to a kidney stone attack. The evening was planned as a musical fireside featuring Ron's baritone singing Baha'i songs of peace, supplemented by a few readings by my daughter Silvie from the Peace Message, which I would illustrate with PowerPoint. Now Ron is out of it and Silvie has to play in her first soccer game of the season, so she cannot attend either. So it is all up to me. I must learn to sing, prepare the slides, do the talking and do everything else, from setting out the cookies to locking up afterwards. May these fickle gods turn a merciful eye and have it turn out that nobody turns up, or I am screwed.

Let us turn back to what the House says above about applying principle. "Leaders ... and all in authority would be well served ... if they would first seek to identify the principles involved and then be guided by them." An editorial in the New York Times a few days ago points out a perfect example of why we are utterly doomed unless and until we learn to do exactly this.

Here is the situation: The prodigious growth of China demands that they open a power plant averaging more than one new coal-fired plant every week. Their vast plume of poisonous smog is already blotting out the sun as far away as the otherwise pristine wilds of the Rocky Mountains. And China is slated in two decades to be overtaken in both production and population by India. Our planet is in deep trouble; nobody yet has come up with a refutation for headlong progress, least of all in the most advanced nations. At the same time, power plant technology exists in the hands of Western corporations that could greatly reduce the environmental footprint of these power plants. Local Chinese companies expert in obsolete, filthy coal techniques have the ear of local leaders, and modern, foreign power plants seem expensive in comparison. There is no answer to this as things stand. Nobody is going to talk these private corporations into giving away their technology, or even offering it at a reduced price. Nobody has a right to tell the Chinese to shell out more money when a cheap, local alternative is at hand, least of all the center of rampant corruption that is New York.

How would principle solve this dilemma? First of all, the existence of a constitutional world government responding to principle would give an example to everybody, from the local level on up. Principle would become De Rigueur. Also, a world governing body would be in a position for the first time to control multi-national corporations and turn them into a force for good rather than evil. Right now corporations are owned and run by a tiny minority who answer only to a faceless, amorphous body known as "the shareholders." Well, give an elected world economic body a controlling share of every company that aspires to do business internationally. Write everything into the very charter of every corporation. Give the world government power, when need be, to form or even disband international corporations. That way, if it is in the overall interest of humanity to give away or share a patent or technology, then, as Captain Picard said, "Let it be so." I am not saying that there would be no compensation, for at the heart of principle is the rule of law. In fact, the existence of principle at every level would make local companies eager to cooperate and arbitrary measures would rarely, if ever, be called for.

The closer the world unites, the ranker and more odious corruption becomes. Corruption used to be a banal evil, now it is fatal. There are now only two sides to the coin, corruption or principle. The coin falls on one side or the other, never on its edge. That poisonous plume growing ever denser above our heads is just an outer sign of a deeper, spiritual illness, the rejection of God's principles. The solution is at hand, peace and the principles of peace. It has been obvious for centuries. Kant envisioned it in the 1790's when he imagined what the constitution of a permanent world institution for peace might look like in his own peace message, which he called "Perpetual Peace." Here is part of his treatise, part of what the ABS chose to excerpt in its notes and annotations to the UHJ Peace Message:

"And thus this guarantee of nature makes it a duty that we should labour for this end, an end which is no mere chimera ... and since peace cannot be effected or guaranteed without a compact among nations, they must form an alliance of a peculiar kind, which may be called a pacific alliance (foedus pacificum), different from a treaty of peace (pactum pacis), inasmuch as it would forever terminate all wars, whereas the latter only ends one."

A great deal of the UHJ Peace Message is supportive of what Kant says here. Peace is and always will be a chimera as long as we believe it is, as long as we think cooperative consultation and sharing are unnatural, foreign to our humanity. If we think that we will be doomed only to form truces allowing more war preparations in the future. The big white boys will take most of the pie and leave only crumbs for the vast majority of humanity. But, as the UHJ Peace Message points out, the prime blame lies not in the tiny number of privileged individuals, however greedy they may be. The real chain that is around our necks, the burden forcing everybody to bend over and submit to the ravishments of corruption, that ultimate fetter is a mental one. It is not in our stars but in our selves. It is that mover of masses, that false religion of our time, ideology. The House of Justice sums it up, as ever, succinctly,

"Most particularly, it is in the glorification of material pursuits, at once the progenitor and common feature of all such ideologies, that we find the roots which nourish the falsehood that human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive. It is here that the ground must be cleared for the building of a new world fit for our descendants."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com