Baha'i Horizons in the 21st Century
Exported from Holy-Writings.com on 2026-06-19 - 1 clipping

Coming home to America, and of course we've never really left, just had
 another home for a few years, coming home I look and figure the American
 Bahá'í Community should be 2 or 3 times the size it is...

        I want to talk a bit about our Prophetic Horizon, our Visible Horizon
 and what is shaping the broad scale obligations of the U.S. to the Bahá'í
 World...

        Abdu'l Baha talked about the coming of the Lesser Peace before the
 end of the century, that is, before December 31, 2000. There will be
 surprising events in the next 7 years, many to rival the collapse of
 communism and the Soviet Union in the last few. I can suggest a few
 scenarios. But when people wonder about the Lesser Peace, we wonder, Is it
 going to be in a big conference with 175 countries all represented, and a big
 parchment all are signing? Will it happen that way? It probably won't be
 that way, in the form of a great conclave as the House of Justice suggested.
 Will it be by a cataclysmic event? Probably not. My own presumption is that
 there will be great crises we cannot anticipate. I suspect there will be no
 official declaration, but something will happen that in the future will be
 seen as the historical turning point, the start of the Great Peace for
 mankind. As we look at the visible horizons, great forces are at work. Dark
 forces are visible, but underneath are great forces of unity, energized by
 great energy systems such as are energized by the Bahá'ís...

        You know, world-scale, world-encompassing science and ideology came
 into being the second half of the last century. Some will say we had in
 Bahá'u'lláh the spiritual Darwin, the Darwin of religious evolution, coming
 at the same time as they did, but I think it will be more the reverse, in
 how people will view Darwin's role with Bahá'u'lláh as the model. You know,
 every breakthrough since that point has been an instrument to pull the world
 together...

        Someday we'll be able to get on a rocket in Miami, and blooey, in less than
 an hour we will land in Teheran for the first part of the Real Pilgrimage...
 Transportation and energy systems are always changing, knitting us together
 tighter and tighter...

        There's a word that's used alot by some theorists lately. They call it the
 Noosphere, that is, the Mind of Man. You know, there is the lithosphere, and
 the atmosphere, and now we have the Noosphere, which is not an envelope of
 air but the envelope of the ideas, the Mind of Man that surrounds us and
 interpenetrates all of us. These advances in information exchange, computer
 networking, communication, all helps to bring us into a world science Mind,
 a world business mind, all over.

        In current chaos theory - there's also complexity theory which is bigger
 now, in chaos theory there is this idea of all these collisions, the
 collisions of people and ideas, all help to fuse together to rise us into a
 higher energy level. The systems guys talk alot about that, like Ervin
 Lazlo, who has talked alot to us, I think he really is a crypto-Bahá'í you
 know, he just doesn't want to sign anything or join anything, but he comes
 to us and he says: The Bahá'ís have it. They are pushing society to a higher
 level. We are with all this computer stuff (I want to get us a computer I
 think but Meg is a little wary of them, and I understand that, because you
 know, you can be aiming for Beijing one day with the computer and you hit
 the wrong button, and bang you land in Timbuktu, so I understand her
 concerns...But you know, with all of this we are building a Common Brain for
 society, it is as if with all the computers connecting in networks, all
 over, we are making the neurons and the axons, building the media of unity
 for the Mind of Man...

        So what are the specific Bahá'í horizons we observe:
 Friends, we are in for surprises, all of us in the mind sphere, the
 noosphere. Lazlo says that when the Crash occurs, you will be able to pull
 the whole system into your order of thinking. So just a few Bahá'ís can
 really make the difference on society at large. Our numbers are deceiving.
 Still I look at the Bahá'í community, and I see erratic and minimal growth
 in the U.S. Erratic and minimal growth during these years. We really should
 be doubling our numbers every 3 to 5 years. We must grow - monumentally.
 Monumentally. And growth warnings are in the air. There are some recent
 surprises.

        1) The Peace Message: there was a marvelous effort by many NSAs to deliver
 the book to Presidents, leaders of thought, etc, that really took us out of
 obscurity in ways we still don't understand. For many NSAs it was a very
 brave thing, and the first time they tried to meet with their President or
 Prime Minister. You know, only one President wrote back to the Bahá'í World
 Center - the President of the Marshall Islands. He said: when the great
 conclave assembles, we will be there. We will sign the parchment. He
 followed through you know on those contacts. He really is another
 crypto-Bahá'í. He saw: the Americans pulled out, leavng that atomic waste,
 and the schools declined, and Kabua, the President, wrote asking the Bahá'ís
 to take over the educational system. And we have, starting with 5 schools,
 and the teacher training school. Expect much more like that. Such as in
 Kiribati. It is only a matter of time until the majority of the population
 is Bahá'í, and the same thing starts, the Catholics and the protestants,
 will pull out, and the Bahá'ís will have to fill in the gap.

        2) The Centenary at Bahji: You know in Brazil our community there had just
 finished changes suggested for the Brazilian constitution. In the Chamber of
 Deputies, a leftist leader, of the communists in the chamber, called for a
 solemn session in honor of the centenary of Bahá'u'lláh's passing. Bahá'ís
 helped a number of the deputies with their speeches, but the leftist leader
 wrote his own. How did it happen? Well, he had a secretary in his office who
 was a Bahá'í, a young girl, an aide really. This deputy was the granson of
 Okinawan slave labor in Brazil. He told us, because when we were in
 Brasilia he asked to meet with us, he said Communism as a religion is dead.
 Well the Bahá'í was an influence, but he himself saw that the Left had lost
 its great paradigm, and indeed Communism - as a religion- was now dead. And
 we have a great chance to swing these people over to us. What we will do
 with them I don't know, but they will be very important...

        We have a great opportunity to co-opt the left. In Chile, at the Universidad
 Bolivariana, which can perhaps be our 4th or 5th Bahá'í university,
 Allende's old gang, the leftists and the ideologues are suddenly interested
 in what the Bahá'ís are doing...

        3) The World Congress - well it left repercussions all over New York.
 Somehow it seemed to calm even that tumultous city for a time. All the taxi
 cab drivers remember the Bahá'ís, event though we were a drop in the big
 ocean of New York...

        4) Legal changes: We have been influencing important legal changes. Many
 governments are changing their constitution. Our national treasurer, Bill
 Davis, is working with the Government of the Argentine to change their
 constitution. In Germany, you know, the constitution was designed only for
 a Christian framework, and we led a legal challenge to certain parts of the
 German law which blocked our legal registration there, and the court found
 in our favor, to the opposition of the Catholics and the Protestants, and
 this is leading to a revision of the German constitution and our recognition
 in Germany as a valid primary world religion. We are having a hand in
 rewriting constitutions all over, the Argentine, the Cameroon. Many
 governments will re-write theirs in the next ten years, and we have the
 chance to write in Bahá'í elements and write out many negative things...

        5) The World Parliament of Religions. The centenary of it really was a
 Bahá'í initiative, and even if many others were there, and we seemed to be
 downplaying it, well, it came about because of Bahá'ís, and this is a
 triumph of the power of the individual taking the initiative, even if the
 authority is in the institutions.

        You know, the NSA is not going to do all the thinking for you. Use your
 individual brains. However much you feel you must consult with the
 administrative bodies, individuals must be the actioneers, and take the
 initiative.

        It is important to incorporate character education and weave a moral society
 into the curriculum. We are knee deep in trying to reach the leaders of
 tomorrow through the schools...

        We have, oh, maybe 17 Bahá'í schools that are really of a calibre to take
 off. There is also the College of Human Services, which we are trying to
 help develop at the Rabbani school in Panchgani. All they need is $2.5
 million, and we think it is sustainable because we have studied their
 business plan, and agree that if they can just ratchet themselves up then
 they can maintain it. There is the Universidad Rural in Colombia, Nur
 University in Bolivia, and Universidad Bolivariana in Chile, which I
 mentioned, named after the great Liberator, Simon Bolivar. Notice that none
 of the schools I mention are here in North America.

        Oh we have the Maxwell school yes, but look where the action is.

        We have to make a challenge to the youth, excellence is our drive. Well my
 time is up - Above all expect surprises in every field of endeavor...

        We have to be the complete and integral peace people, the peace experts to
 all...
-- Baha'i Horizons in the 21st Century (Used by permission of the curator)