Cherie Blair Article in the Times

Cherie Blair has written a strong piece today drawing attention to the situation of the  Bahá’ís in Iran. She states:

The campaign against the Baha’i community reached a new intensity last spring when its seven-strong national leadership was arrested in dawn raids. More than a year after detention without charge or access to a lawyer, the prisoners’ families have finally been told a court date has been set for this Saturday.

We don’t yet know the charges. But Iranian news reports have suggested that the national committee stands accused of everything from “espionage for Israel” to “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”. Such charges carry very serious penalties in Iran, including the death penalty.

What is also very worrying are reports that the case will be heard by the same Revolutionary Court that recently tried, in secret, the US journalist Roxana Saberi. After proceedings lasting only one day, she was sentenced to eight years in jail.

The campaign against the Baha’i community reached a new intensity last spring when its seven-strong national leadership was arrested in dawn raids. More than a year after detention without charge or access to a lawyer, the prisoners’ families have finally been told a court date has been set for this Saturday.

We don’t yet know the charges. But Iranian news reports have suggested that the national committee stands accused of everything from “espionage for Israel” to “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”. Such charges carry very serious penalties in Iran, including the death penalty.

What is also very worrying are reports that the case will be heard by the same Revolutionary Court that recently tried, in secret, the US journalist Roxana Saberi. After proceedings lasting only one day, she was sentenced to eight years in jail.

It was only after the international outcry at this parody of justice and the severity of the sentence that she received another trial. This reduced her sentence to a two-year term that was suspended on appeal.

We need the same international pressure now, before the court case, to ensure the seven men and women receive a fair trial and a chance of justice. They must be given full access to their lawyers, who must have time to prepare their defence. The court proceedings must be open to independent observation.

For the full article follow the link at the top of this post. For more UK related background see bahainews-uk.

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Working for a Divine Arkitect

Yes, I can spell better than that. I know the title is a silly joke but it captures my mood of the moment very well.

Currently circumstances are pushing me to think hard about what I would describe myself as doing as a Bahá’í, about what I think is the core purpose of the Bahá’í community, and most of all about what I think the work of all human beings is most concerned with. In the end, I have concluded,  all those three descriptions come down to the same thing.

And what is that exactly?

Responsibility for the Welfare of the Entire Human Family

I can’t do better than use the words of the central governing body of the Bahá’í community:

. . . the time has come when each human being on earth must learn to accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human family. Commitment to this revolutionising principle will increasingly empower individuals and Bahá’í institutions alike in awakening others to . . . the latent spiritual and moral capacities that can change this world into another world.

(Universal House of Justice: 24 May 2001 in Turning Point page 164)

 For ‘individuals’ I think it’s fair to read ‘everyone’ whether Bahá’í or not. 

 This passage was written when a major building project  at the Bahá’í World Centre had been completed. The project was of great spiritual significance to the Bahá’í community world-wide. The buildings form an arc around Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, a place already of symbolic importance within Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

In mainstream Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, it is Elijah that is indelibly associated with the mountain, and he is regarded as having sometimes resided in a grotto on the mountain. In the Books of Kings, Elijah is described as challenging 450 prophets of a particular Baal to a contest at the altar on Mount Carmel to determine whose deity was genuinely in control of the Kingdom of Israel; since the narrative is set during the rule of Ahab and his association with the Phoenicians, biblical scholars suspect that the Baal in question was probably Melqart.

(See Wikipedia entry for a full background)

The word ‘arc’ becomes a pun when this semi-circle of buildings is seen as a symbol of our strivings as Bahá’ís to work alongside others to build a social system that will become a point of refuge for a beleaguered humanity in crisis rather in the same way as the Ark Noah built did physically in the Biblical story of a flooded world.  Bahá’u'lláh Himself points this out:

Call out to Zion, O Carmel, and announce the joyful tidings: He that was hidden from mortal eyes is come! . . . . . Oh, how I long to announce unto every spot on the surface of the earth, and to carry to each one of its cities, the glad-tidings of this Revelation—a Revelation to which the heart of Sinai hath been attracted, and in whose name the Burning Bush is calling: “Unto God, the Lord of Lords, belong the kingdoms of earth and heaven.” Verily this is the Day in which both land and sea rejoice at this announcement, the Day for which have been laid up those things which God, through a bounty beyond the ken of mortal mind or heart, hath destined for revelation. Ere long will God sail His Ark upon thee, and will manifest the people of Bahá who have been mentioned in the Book of Names.

(Tablet of Carmel) 

There are two points perhaps worth making here.

Are We Utopians?

The first relates to what what some may feel is the utopianism of these ideas. The very word utopia, which means ‘nowhere’, contains the seeds of some of this contempt. John Gray in his anti-utopian book Black Mass is keen to remind us of this as is Chris Hedges in his intriguing book I don’t believe in atheists. They are also both deeply suspicious of the tendency towards self-righteous violence that seems inseparable from the behaviour of all those who feel they know what’s best for us in the long run, no matter what the cost.

[After the Enlightenment] [t]error in the name of utopian ideals would rise again and again in the coming centuries.

(Hedges: page 19)

And Hedges, who is attacking a secular utopianism that does not accept humanity’s proness to sin, goes on to say (pages 57-58):

Those who believe human beings can be morally reformed are . . . . suicidal. . . . [The delusions of a utopian vision] seem to elevate the deluded, especially those who are deemed to be favoured by race or nature, above other forms of life. This lack of reverence, this refusal to see that we exist as an integrated whole, blinds humankind to its vulnerability, the fragility of life and human weakness. These delusions are part of a worldview that places itself and its selfish desires and dreams before the protection of life itself.

A main charge is also that, for all utopians, the ends will come to justify all means no matter how horrific.

It is important to emphasise here that, while Bahá’ís yearn to help create a more just society, we also recognise that this is an evolutionary process that will take many generations and requires love and patience as well as the passage of a vast amount of time. We also recognise that we, as imperfect human beings, contain the seeds of the very problems  in society we are hoping to help solve with this empowering vision of humanity’s potential and that it would be very easy for us to betray the blueprint of the Divine Arkitect by, for example, the same kind of self-righteous impatience as has bedevilled such utopian projects as the English, French, Russian and Chinese Revolutions (not all them religious, it is worth noting). 

Empowerment

The second relates to the difference between patronising or exploitative rescue and empathic empowerment. We are not saying we already know exactly how to fix a broken world at the level of practical action. Nor are we saying that there are not multitudes of other compassionate and self-sacrificing people with decades of experience in tackling aspects of the challenges that face us all. That would be arrogant and self-deluded.

There are two things though that mean we can  contribute something special, we would say unique. We have a concept of unity expressed in a body of spiritual, organisational and practical teachings and we are learning to apply this systematically and world-wide in our daily lives (for a fuller explanation of this see Baha’i Epistolary). However, what makes up this special contribution is not just the concepts, though they evince a high level of originality and coherence,  nor simply the experience of applying them, though to some degree this makes up in rich diversity for what it  lacks in duration and size given the newness of the Faith on the world scene.

There is a third key ingredient, not unique to us but rare in the world,  which hopefully will militate against utopian self-righteousness and the destructive arrogance that goes with it. We are striving, with a keen sense of our own frailty, to empower ourselves to respond more effectively to the needs of all humanity to be empowered. We are striving to become capable of enabling others to respond to their particular challenges in their own way.  We feel we can  bring extremely useful tools to that process while having a huge amount to learn from others at the same time. 

There are service projects in many places in the world that dwarf what we are currently doing as Baha’is. I’ve just been reading about the Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. They provide child care for thousands of children every Sunday. Their vast array of buildings is open seven days a week for dawn till dusk. They have banks, pharmacies and schools as well as counselling and guidance groups. They help people prepare for tests, fill out tax forms and buy houses, as well as offering classes in martial arts. Their marketing of what they offer is second to none. In fact, they base their operation on the ‘same principle as all successful businesses: putting the customer first.’ (For a fuller description see  God Is Back by Micklethwait and Wooldridge pages 183-187). 

That last sentence is the give away. Too many projects are driven by the desire to provide what they see people as needing and will eagerly consume, but in a predefined and often formulaic way. There is an emphasis on the passive consumption of what is on offer.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge go on to describe (page 187) how ‘many megapreachers have begun to worry that they are producing a tribe of spectators who regards religion as nothing more than spectacle.’ Some are attempting to address this problem. They have not escaped being labelled the ‘Disneyfication of religion’ and ‘Christianity Lite’ (page 189), charges which the authors feel are a touch too dismissive. However, their measured summary of what is happening highlights a major problem:

. . . . the target audience for the megachurches consists of baby boomers who left the church in adolescence, who don’t feel comfortable with overt displays of religiosity, who dread turning into their parents, and who apply the same consumerist mentality to spiritual life as they do to every other aspect of experience.

The Bahá’í model in contrast emphasises, from a non-negotiable set of spiritual principles that are seen as absolutes, that it is imperative to enable people to become active participants in change, in the process of deciding what to do and doing it. In the old adage, it is teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish — an ideal that, sadly, all too few social development projects exemplify. It is not providing something that, if you were no longer there, could not be sustainably provided by those whom you are seeking to help.

I visited Mount Carmel as the buildings referred to earlier were nearing completion. On my return to the UK I wrote the poem that features at the end of the earlier post Degrees of Conviction. It describes the beauty of the whole environment, where there were, though, still many traces of a work in progress such as you can see on any building site — sacks of concrete, exposed foundations, ladders, cranes, piles of stone, heaps of rubble. You could see plain evidence of the hard work and planning that had gone into the process. At the end of the poem, realising how similar in some ways was the work of building a new kind of society, I wrote:

But who are the masons, the carpenters of minds, who will raise

up the New Jerusalem from this dust?           “Why you, of course!” He says.Wordsworth was clear: getting and spending we lay waste our powers.

“. . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  In this brief pause/ I half-sense some hope of beauty in this building site of ours./ But who are the masons, the carpenters of minds, who will raise/ up the New Jerusalem from this dust?  “Why you, of course!” He says.”

So, anyone want a job working for the Divine Arkitect? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Don’t miss out! And the job spec says that, while being a Bahá’í may be desirable, it’s not essential. We want to work with anyone who wants to create a better world with love, patience and empowerment.

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A Bleak Future for Bahá’ís: New Statesman Article

Evin Prison

There is a piece in the New Statesman from yesterday that is well worth a look. It opens:

Earlier this week, US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was freed from prison in Iran after having her sentence for “spying” reduced. The charge, which she strongly denied, sparked international attention and calls for her release, which has now been widely welcomed.

But Ms Saberi leaves behind her many other inmates in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison whose “crimes” against the Iranian state are also open to question.

Thursday (14 May) marks the first anniversary of the arrest and detention of seven prominent members of the Baha’i faith, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority.

The five men and two women made up an informal national committee, serving the needs of the country’s 300,000 strong Baha’i community in the absence of formal Baha’i institutions, which are outlawed. Their committee – which had operated with the full knowledge of the authorities – along with all local ad hoc Baha’i administrations – was disbanded in March this year in a gesture of good will from the peaceful and law-abiding Baha’is to their government.

In the one year since their incarceration, the seven detainees have faced no charges nor have they been allowed access to their legal counsel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Shirin Ebadi. They have faced spurious accusations of “espionage for Israel”, and “insulting religious sanctities”.

Earlier this week, US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was freed from prison in Iran after having her sentence for “spying” reduced. The charge, which she strongly denied, sparked international attention and calls for her release, which has now been widely welcomed.

But Ms Saberi leaves behind her many other inmates in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison whose “crimes” against the Iranian state are also open to question.

Thursday (14 May) marks the first anniversary of the arrest and detention of seven prominent members of the Baha’i faith, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority.

The five men and two women made up an informal national committee, serving the needs of the country’s 300,000 strong Baha’i community in the absence of formal Baha’i institutions, which are outlawed. Their committee – which had operated with the full knowledge of the authorities – along with all local ad hoc Baha’i administrations – was disbanded in March this year in a gesture of good will from the peaceful and law-abiding Baha’is to their government.

In the one year since their incarceration, the seven detainees have faced no charges nor have they been allowed access to their legal counsel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Shirin Ebadi. They have faced spurious accusations of “espionage for Israel”, and “insulting religious sanctities”.

[For the full story follow the link. There is also an update on Baha'i Explorer. A complete overview can be found at the Human Rights link  and an excellent piece on the overall context by Bernd Kaussler at Open Democracy.]

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Bringing Down the Barricades: the Art of Consultation

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending time we find them there.

(‘Mending Wall‘, Robert Frost, Selected Poems, page 43)

In the closing decades of the last century the Berlin wall tumbled. Nor was it only in the landscape that we found this happening. Such collapses were and still are transforming our inscape as well.

The Bahá’í Revelation, Bahá’ís believe, has a crucial part to play in helping the dismantling of the barricades within and between people. We are a kind of catalyst in that it is by our transformation as Bahá’ís that this process will be accelerated and, even better, by borrowing our ideas and practices everyone, whether a Bahá’í or not, can join in the work of bringing down the barricades.

In the concluding post of the sequence on Conviction I threatened to return to some aspects of the Bahá’í prescription for living in a way that could, if given the chance by a sufficient number of people, change the direction of civilization for the better.

I’m now delivering on that threat and going to attempt to demonstrate that one exportable aspect unique to the Bahá’í life has an especially strong bearing on this problem of walls: consultation. There are others that I don’t mention here that would have the same effect. Another, meditation, which I will deal with very briefly, is not unique to the Faith.

Meditation, for an individual, seems to be equivalent to consultation for the group. It serves the same purposes and requires and creates the same personal qualities. They both grow from and result in unity and in detachment, which may in any case be one and the same process and end-state.

I apologise for this post’s being so long but it didn’t seem possible to split it without  making the theme hard to follow.

Consultation

The purpose is to emphasize the statement that consultation must have for its object the investigation of truth. He who expresses an opinion should not voice it as correct and right but set it forth as a contribution to the consensus of opinion . . .

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Promulgation of Universal Peace: page 72)

We have to remain mindful, though we often forget, that investigating the truth is a goal whose pursuit does not guarantee that we will always find it. What we can do though is be resolute in developing increasing levels of humility about the value of our opinions, so that the consensus becomes richer and an ever closer approximation to the particular truth under investigation. Developing that kind of humility in such an opinionated world is easier said than done.

Some questions might still come to mind. Why is it so difficult to treat our own opinions as simply contributions to a consensus? How can we learn to do that? Is the investigation of the truth the only purpose of consultation or are there others?

Turning to the literature of the Bahá’í Faith should assist us. For example Bahá’u'lláh writes :

Take ye counsel together in all matters, inasmuch as consultation is the lamp of guidance which leadeth the way, and is the bestower of understanding.’

(Tablets of Bahá’u'lláh, pages 168-9)

If we are in the dark, some light, however little, will help – even a match will be better than nothing. Even though the light we create will never rival the sun’s, it will often be quite good enough to help us find our way forwards. But it will work best when we combine our lights together rather than shielding them to ourselves. That is what consultation can do: polishing our own mirror in meditation helps us, as we will briefly see later, bring a brighter light to the process of consultation.

Why is letting go and sharing our light so hard? How can we learn to do it?

Peter Senge, a systems theorist, in The Fifth Discipline (pages 8-9), argues that we all operate upon ‘mental models’ or ‘mental maps’ (page 239) which are

deeply ingrained assumptions, generalisations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behaviour.

And on page 185:

all we ever have are assumptions, never truths, that we always see the world through our mental models and that the mental models are always incomplete.

He asserts (page 182) that:

. . . decision-making processes could be transformed if people became more able to surface and discuss more productively their different ways of looking at the world.

These assumptions are deeply ingrained because we have often formed them in childhood or adolescence, they have seen us through difficulties or even kept us alive, and they seem to make sense of our sometimes overwhelming experiences. We are not inclined to leave go of them too easily nor do we look charitably upon those who threaten them by argument or action. So, we protect our little candle and don’t readily let it pool its light with everyone else’s.

Blocks

Peter Koestenbaum in his book ‘New Image of the Person: theTheory and Practice of Clinical Philosophy’ states that:

‘[a]nxiety and physical pain are often our experience of the resistances against the act of reflection.’

By reflection, amongst other things, he means unhooking ourselves from our ideas.

An example he gives from the clinical context illustrates what he means:

. . . to resist in psychotherapy means to deny the possibility of dissociating consciousness from its object at one particular point . . . To overcome the resistance means success in expanding the field of consciousness and therewith to accrue increased flexibility . . .’

But overcoming this resistance is difficult. It hurts and frightens us. How are we to do it? In therapy it is the feeling of trust and safety we develop towards the therapist that helps us begin to let go of maladaptive world views, self-concepts and opinions.

Amongst the prerequisites listed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for those who take counsel together is ‘detachment from all save God.’ In the Tablets written after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas Bahá’u'lláh explains what it takes to be detached:

The essence of detachment is for man to turn his face towards the courts of the Lord, to enter His Presence, behold His Countenance, and stand witness before Him.

It’s fairly clear that such an awareness will entail a great deal of work on practising the presence of God. If we can maintain such a sense of His Presence then it is extremely unlikely that we would be inclined pig-headedly to bludgeon our friends, family, colleagues and neighbours into submission with our opinions.  It feels like a lifetime’s work to get to this point though.

Detachment as a Process

Is this becoming one of those counsels of despair which can seem so characteristic of the spiritual life? Can we only consult if we are completely detached? If not shouldn’t we bother?

Perhaps though detachment is more of a process than an end-state at least in this life.

Koestenbaum supports this view (page 73):

The history of philosophy, religion and ethics appears to show that the process of reflection can continue indefinitely . . . .  there is no attachment . . . which cannot be withdrawn, no identification which cannot be dislodged.’

By reflection he means something closely related to meditation.

We need to consider the possibility that consultation is also a process that can help us become more detached. If so, it’s goal is clearly more than simply the investigation of truth. It is a spiritual discipline in itself and leads to personal as well as group transformation. It perhaps could rightly be called a Bahá’í yoga.

Maybe now would be a good time to shift our attention from consultation to a brief consideration of meditation before looking at how the two processes work together. They may be mutually reinforcing: they may even effectively be the same thing!

Meditation

The wine of renunciation must needs be quaffed, the lofty heights of detachment must needs be attained, and the meditation referred to in the words “One hour’s reflection is preferable to seventy years of pious must needs be observed, . . .’

(Bahá’u'lláh: The Kitáb-i-Íqán, page 238)

At first sight an equivalence between meditation and consultation, of the kind I am speculating about, seems unlikely. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains in Paris Talks (page 174):

Bahá’u'lláh says there is a sign (from God) in every phenomenon: the sign of the intellect is contemplation and the sign of contemplation is silence, because it is impossible for a man to do two things it one time – he cannot both speak and meditate.

Consultation, at least in Western Europe and the United States, is not conspicuous for its silences. Have we drawn a blank?

‘It is an axiomatic fact,’ He continues,

that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed.

Perhaps not. We are, in a sense, consulting, though with our higher Selves rather than with other people. Such inner speech seems to require an absence of outer speech, but it may nonetheless be a form of consultation. We are suspending our usual assumptions and opening ourselves up to other possibilities. He goes onto say:

The spirit of man is itself informed and strengthened during meditation; through it affairs of which man knew nothing are unfolded before his view. Through it he receives Divine inspiration, through it he receives heavenly food.

Do Consultation and Meditation Reinforce Each Other?

When we suspend our assumptions in this way, we receive intimations of a higher and more accurate kind. This sounds remarkably similar to the understanding achieved in consultation. It seems possible , at least in principle, to use meditation to improve our consultation skills and consultation perhaps to practise and refine our meditation. It also raises the question whether consultation, at least in the West, would benefit from more silence.

We know it requires detachment. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá continues:

This faculty of meditation frees man from the animal nature, discerns the reality of things, puts man in touch with God.

One possible way of conceptualising detachment, orr at least a result of it, is freedom from our animal nature as described here.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote:

Regarding the statement in ‘The Hidden Words’, that man must renounce his own self, the meaning, is that he must renounce his inordinate desires, his selfish purposes and the promptings of his human self, and seek out the holy breathings of the spirit . . . . ..

(Selected Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: page 207)

Meditation, then, might help us achieve the detachment necessary for consultation. Consultation will almost certainly strengthen our ability to be detached and thereby facilitate our meditation. They are clearly not unrelated disciplines sharing as they do this same outcome.

We also have to be open to the views of other people when we consult and to the Bahá’í Scriptures when we meditate upon them or to the promptings of our higher self when we commune with it in meditation. So these two skills are not all that different either: they both enhance our understanding of reality.

In the end, it’s hard to resist the conclusion that meditation will help us consult and consulting will help us meditate. It certainly seems to me that meditation and consultation used in conjunction as the Bahá’í Faith recommends would constitute a wrecking ball of sufficient power to bring even the most obdurate of our dividing walls crashing to the ground and pave the way for greater unity within and between us. Such a degree of unity is imperative if we are to become capable of solving the problems that currently confront us.

Consultation has links with justice, too complex to go into now, which add further strength to this position:

To the extent that justice becomes a guiding concern of human interaction, a consultative climate is encouraged that permits options to be examined dispassionately and appropriate courses of action selected. In such a climate the perennial tendencies toward manipulation and partisanship are far less likely to deflect the decision-making process.

(From Section II: The Prosperity of Humankind)

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Confessions Cartoon

This comes from the Censeo site, whose dark humour captures the predicament of the Bahá’ís in Iran very well.

There is also a powerful video based on ‘Persepolis’ at this link.

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Prayer in Times of Difficulty: Ya Malek Al Asma – يا-مالك-الاسماء

I know it is already posted on Bahá’í Views but this chanted prayer is so hauntingly beautiful that I feel it needs to be shared with as many people as possible.

The provisional translation into English is on Iran Press Watch who are sharing this authentic prayer of Bahá’u'lláh in Arabic for the protection and delivery of Bahá’í prisoners. This prayer is accompanied by special instructions revealed by Bahá’u'lláh pertaining to its use.

Bahá’u'lláh instructs that believers must detach themselves and recite this prayer nine times.

He is, in truth, the Omnipotent, the Unconstrained! O Lord of Names and Fashioner of the Heavens! Free Thy lovers from the prison of the enemy. Verily, Thou art the Sovereign Ordainer of Thine irrevocable decree. He who alone shineth resplendent on the horizon of creation. O Everlasting Root! By the life of the All-Glorious, deprive them not of hope, nay rather aid and assist them. Verily, Thou rulest as Thou pleasest and within Thy grasp lie the kingdoms of creation. The fangs of Thine enemies have been whetted, ready to bite into the flesh of Thy lovers. Protect these companions, O Thou Who rulest over all humankind and art the Judge on the Day of Judgement.

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