# A Half Million Years

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Dana Paxson, A Half Million Years, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> A HALF MILLION YEARS
> Dana Paxson
> 20211
> 
> From sums to products, a few thousand years;
> From products to exponentials, a few hundred years;
> What now?
> 
> The trace of our journey so far has grazed the realms of language, of metaphor, of mathematics,
> of cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics, of biology, and more. Now we can bring this trace’s
> elements together to investigate an extreme example of the dance of religion and science.
> The scales of our earth’s history, change, and destiny reaches far outside the scales of our
> everyday lives, but we work to reconcile it all in our minds and hearts. We do not usually think
> of religion as having the reach of geological or astronomical eras. We think of religion as
> interpenetrating and shaping our daily lives.
> But we can think on many scales. Why not extend our understanding of religion’s true grandeur,
> even as we let its intimacies reassure us?
> First, we look at this deeply-challenging passage from The Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh, by
> Shoghi Effendi:
> As a further testimony to the greatness of the Revelation identified with Bahá’u’lláh may be
> cited the following extracts from a Tablet addressed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to an eminent
> Zoroastrian follower of the Faith: ‘Thou hadst written that in the sacred books of the followers
> of Zoroaster it is written that in the latter days, in three separate Dispensations, the sun must
> needs be brought to a standstill. In the first Dispensation, it is predicted, the sun will remain
> motionless for ten days; in the second for twice that time; in the third for no less than one
> whole month. The interpretation of this prophecy is this: the first Dispensation to which it
> refers is the Muhammadan Dispensation during which the Sun of Truth stood still for ten
> days. Each day is reckoned as one century. The Muhammadan Dispensation must have,
> therefore, lasted no less than one thousand years, which is precisely the period that has
> elapsed from the setting of the Star of the Imamate to the advent of the Dispensation
> proclaimed by the Báb. The second Dispensation referred to in this prophecy is the one
> inaugurated by the Báb Himself, which began in the year 1260 A.H. and was brought to a
> close in the year 1280 A.H. As to the third Dispensation—the Revelation proclaimed by
> Bahá’u’lláh—inasmuch as the Sun of Truth when attaining that station shineth in the
> 
> See more about this document, including an alternate version, at bahai-library.com/paxson_half_million_years
> plenitude of its meridian splendor its duration hath been fixed for a period of one whole
> month, which is the maximum time taken by the sun to pass through a sign of the Zodiac.
> From this thou canst imagine the magnitude of the Bahá’í cycle—a cycle that must extend
> over a period of at least five hundred thousand years.’2
> 
> Compare this half-million-year time interval with that reaching back to the era of Zoroaster
> roughly three thousand years in our past. Such a bold comparison, such a drastic contrast of
> orders of magnitude of time!
> 
> Background
> Readers often find the final statement of the duration of the Bahá’í cycle baffling in this passage,
> especially concerning how it might be reckoned, but more especially concerning how staggering
> is its claim. Responding to a query via his secretary, Shoghi Effendi’s response to a query
> clarifies the above statement:
> Concerning your question relative to the duration of the Bahá’í Dispensation: There is no
> contradiction between Bahá’u’lláh’s statement in the Íqán3 about the renewal of the City of
> God once every 1000 years, and that of the Guardian [Shoghi Effendi] in the “Dispensation”
> to the effect that the Bahá’í cycle will extend over a period of at least 500,000 years. The
> apparent contradiction is due to the confusion of the terms “cycle” and “dispensation”. For
> while the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh will last for at least one thousand years, His cycle will
> extend still farther to at least 500,000.
> 
> A clear reaffirmation, but following it comes an even-greater claim:
> The Bahá’í cycle is, indeed, incomparable in its greatness. It includes not only the Prophets
> that will appear after Bahá’u’lláh, but all those Who have preceded Him ever since Adam.
> These should, indeed, be viewed as constituting but preliminary stages leading gradually to
> the appearance of this supreme Manifestation of God.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi goes on to explain the key idea illuminating these points: the coming of age of
> our species in the universe.
> After Bahá’u’lláh many Prophets will, no doubt, appear, but they will be all under His
> shadow. Although they may abrogate the laws of this Dispensation, in accordance with the
> needs and requirements of the age in which they appear, they nevertheless draw their spiritual
> force from this mighty Revelation. The Faith of Bahá’u’lláh constitutes, indeed, the stage of
> maturity in the development of mankind. His appearance has released such spiritual forces
> which will continue to animate, for many long years to come, the world in its development.
> Whatever progress may be achieved in later ages—after the unification of the whole human
> race is achieved—will be but improvements in the machinery of the world. For the machinery
> 
> From Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, in the section titled “The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh”, in
> the first subsection titled “Bahá’u’lláh”, pp. 101-102.
> In the Kitáb-i-Íqán Bahá’u’lláh sets forth the proofs of the truth of the periodic, progressive revelations from God,
> including especially His own.
> 
> itself has been already created by Bahá’u’lláh. The task of continually improving and
> perfecting this machinery is one which later Prophets will be called upon to achieve. They
> will thus move and work within the orbit of the Bahá’í cycle.4
> 
> In every way that is humanly conceivable, we stand on the threshold of the entire cosmos.
> The reckoning of time in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s exposition of the Zoroastrian prophecy is not a
> physically-defined process in any strict, symmetric, arithmetic sense. According to Him, the
> physical duration of the Dispensation of Muhammad treats each day in the Zoroastrian prophecy
> as a century; the physical duration of the Dispensation of the Báb treats each day as a year; and
> the physical duration of the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh apparently treats each day of the sun’s
> transit of a Zodiacal sign (a 30-day month, approximately) as lasting about 16,700 years, when
> seen as the entire overarching Bahá’í cycle. The inquiring reader is left with bewilderment both
> at the shifting base on which these intervals are interpreted and at the distinct difference between
> the simple treatments of the first two Dispensations and the more-complex treatment of the
> Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh.
> To treat the half-million-year interval as a merely-physical measure is to overlook its richness
> and inner potency. To gain a fuller appreciation of its living meaning we will attempt to explore
> its interconnections of the physical, the metaphorical, the calendric, and the spiritual. We’ll close
> our introduction of the theme with one more view.
> Setting the stage, an essay by Y. A. Ioannesyan, Reflections on Some Messianic Prophecies in
> Shaykhi Works5, provides an excellent starting point and much clarifying insight. Ioannesyan
> offers a quote from the following letter, in which the differentiated method of interpreting time
> periods employed for this prophecy is explained as follows:
> Concerning the passage in the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh in which the Guardian [Shoghi
> Effendi] quotes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's interpretation of the prophecy referring to the times when the
> sun would stand still in the heavens, he wishes me to explain that the days referred to in this
> prophecy have to be reckoned differently. In the Scripture of various religions there are to be
> found frequent references to days, but these have been considered as indicating different
> period of time, as for instance in the Qur’án a day is reckoned as one thousand years. The first
> ten days in the above mentioned prophecy represent each a century, making thus a total of one
> thousand lunar years. As to the twenty days referring to the Bábí Dispensation each of them
> represents only one lunar year, the total of twenty years marking the duration of the
> Revelation of the Báb. The thirty days in the last dispensation should not be reckoned
> numerically, but should be considered as symbolizing the incomparable greatness of the
> Bahá’í Revelation which, though not final is none-the-less thus far the fullest revelation of
> God to man. From a physical point of view, the thirty days represent the maximum time takes
> by the sun to pass through a sign of the zodiac. They thus represent a culminating point in the
> 
> Shoghi Effendi, from a letter dated 14 November 1935 written on his behalf to an individual believer.
> From “Reflections on Some Messianic Prophecies in Shaykhi Works”, by Y. A. Ioannesyan, in the collection titled
> Lights of ‘Irfán, Book Eleven, p. 21 ff.
> 
> evolution of this star. So also from a spiritual standpoint these thirty days should be viewed as
> indicating the highest, though not the final stage in the spiritual evolution of mankind.6
> 
> In this passage, Shoghi Effendi states clearly that the ‘thirty days in the last dispensation should
> not be reckoned numerically, but should be considered as symbolizing the incomparable
> greatness of the Bahá’í Revelation’. He goes on to make an assertion, even more remarkable than
> that of the half-million-year span he asserted elsewhere, that the thirty days “represent a
> culminating point in the evolution of this star.” The word ‘star’ here appears in one sense to refer
> to the physical sun around which our earth orbits. The implications of this observation, so easy to
> overlook in reading, reinforce the understanding that the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, now
> beginning its unfolding, is paramount both in the greater worlds of God and in our familiar
> world, considered across the entire multibillion-year span of the earth’s existence.
> This point is reinforced throughout the Bahá’í Writings. In Bahá’u’lláh’s Words, ‘That which
> hath been made manifest in this préeminent, this most exalted Revelation, stands unparalleled in
> the annals of the past, nor will future ages witness its like.’7 A letter written on behalf of Shoghi
> Effendi states clearly, ‘There are no Prophets, so far, in the same category as Bahá'u'lláh, as He
> culminates a great cycle begun with Adam.’8
> That the terms ‘dispensation’ and ‘cycle’ are not used with interchangeability indicates to us that
> we must consider their relationship carefully in what follows. It should be sufficient for now to
> observe that the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh appears to refer here to the culmination of the cycle
> begun with Adam and carried through the dispensations of all of the subsequent prophets through
> Muhammad, and onward from our time until the appearance of another Manifestation of God,
> not before the passing of at least another thousand years.
> 
> Science, Religion, and Time
> Interpretation of scriptural time periods relies on seemingly-arbitrary shifting scales and
> placements of time intervals. To a reader schooled in contemporary science, such interpretations
> lack any apparent rational basis for their meaning, seemingly relying on the desires of the
> interpreters to make the scripture resonate with their own ideas of what the meanings should be.
> Given the numerous ways one can generate connections in scriptures, it seems easy to make a
> scriptural prophecy mean whatever one wants it to mean. Metaphor and physical meaning seem
> to mingle and confuse the reader.
> But if religion and science must be consistent, how can this evident inconsistency of
> understanding be resolved? Three concerns present themselves.
> 
> From the compilation Lights of Guidance, p. 472. Written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to the National Spiritual
> Assembly of the United States and Canada.
> Quoted by Shoghi Effendi in The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 103-104.
> Found in Lights of Guidance, p. 473. Written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to the National Spiritual Assembly of
> Australia and New Zealand, December 26, 1941. The “great cycle begun with Adam” embraces all the prophets and
> Manifestations of God from Adam to the time ending with the appearance of the Báb.
> 
> First, the many commonly-known religious interpretations of time and prophecy often seem
> contradictory and of little or no use. Examples illustrating the problem are superabundant in
> history, and there is no need to attempt a list of them. Wars have been fought over clashing
> beliefs concerning the times and conditions of the appearance of prophesied events.
> Second, our views into religion may be flawed. Examples abound here as well. We humans
> generate an appalling volume of ecclesiastical rubbish: traditions, textual alterations and
> perversions, tortuous exegeses, contentious diatribes and attacks, all of which obscure, even
> smother, the original revealed texts and principles of their sources. Yet certain views of time and
> its interpretation among scholars reveal consistencies of reckoning that suggest careful
> evaluation.
> Third, our science is incomplete. Many would assert that science may be incomplete but that its
> incompleteness does not significantly invalidate its received interpretations. This overlooks the
> great changes that overtook science in the 19th and 20th centuries with the advent of relativity,
> quantum mechanics, molecular biology, and advanced mathematics. By the end of the 20th
> century, much of the accepted science of the 19th century and before had been set aside except as
> a pedagogical initiation into its many deep and subtle fields of specialization.
> Some would also assert that the incompleteness of science is far removed from the same kind of
> falsehood and contention that afflict religious belief and dogma. No one has ever fought wars
> over science, except over suppression and perversion of its knowledge and power in order to
> serve the purposes of the powerful.
> 
> One must admit that there have been deeply-contentious struggles among scientists that
> prompted Thomas Kuhn's observations in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions9. As the
> religious read scriptures, the scientists read the physical realities; misreading happens to us all,
> and even though scientists can and do rely on phenomenal evidence to disprove an idea, the
> interpretation of that evidence can be a fragile process.10
> But everyone must still concede that science, properly practiced, is our very best means of
> reading and advancing our physical reality. Furthermore, the continuing flood of marvels and
> advancements in our modern age testifies conclusively to the fact that scientists are practicing
> their profession properly and with great discipline and success.
> Is there any scientific resonance with the changes of time scales in authentic religious scriptures?
> Scientists are quite comfortable moving from one scale of time or space to another, as long as the
> change of scale does not violate the generally-accepted symmetries and conservation laws of our
> physical world. Orders of magnitude are no obstacle to science; they are its commonplace tools
> of comprehension.
> Another powerful aspect of science is its ability to trace and connect distinct manifestations of
> evidence concerning a single event or an ensemble of events. To do so sometimes uses time
> 
> Thomas Kuhn, op. cit.
> Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written extensively on this point.
> 
> intervals to fix relationships between pairs of events and the evidences they leave behind. For
> example, if two pulses of light arrive in a telescope exactly 1.723 seconds apart, and hours later
> two bursts of cosmic rays arrive in a detector spaced the same, one might infer a connection
> between light rays and cosmic rays that is worth exploring.
> Such connections appear in many patterns in human history.
> 
> Dispensation and Conservations
> Three calendric time periods mentioned earlier are 1,000 years, 20 years, and in excess of
> 500,000 years, falling clearly in three distinct orders of magnitude. Each represents the duration
> of a separate and distinct religious epoch, the three falling in a time sequence unbroken from the
> first through the last. The first two are defined as ‘dispensations’. What is a religious
> dispensation? It is a period during which the laws bestowed by a single divinely-appointed
> revealer hold effect. Those laws engender advancement, order, and stability in the human world.
> The third is defined as a ‘cycle’: a greater interval embracing a series of dispensations. As quoted
> above, Shoghi Effendi makes clear the distinction: “For while the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh
> will last for at least one thousand years, His cycle will extend still farther to at least 500,000”. In
> the case of the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, we consider the duration of the entire cycle within
> which a succession of Manifestations appears, beginning with Bahá’u’lláh Himself.
> But each new religious dispensation brings change, fiercely resisted by many who occupy
> positions of power and influence. Bahá'u'lláh writes in the Kitáb-i-Íqán:
> ... had these people in the days of each of the Manifestations of the Sun of Truth sanctified
> their eyes, their ears, and their hearts from whatever they had seen, heard, and felt, they surely
> would not have been deprived of beholding the beauty of God, nor strayed far from the
> habitations of glory. But having weighed the testimony of God by the standard of their own
> knowledge, gleaned from the teachings of the leaders of their faith, and found it at variance
> with their limited understanding, they arose to perpetrate such unseemly acts.
> 
> Leaders of religion, in every age, have hindered their people from attaining the shores of
> eternal salvation, inasmuch as they held the reins of authority in their mighty grasp. Some for
> the lust of leadership, others through want of knowledge and understanding, have been the
> cause of the deprivation of the people. By their sanction and authority, every Prophet of God
> hath drunk from the chalice of sacrifice, and winged His flight unto the heights of glory. What
> unspeakable cruelties they that have occupied the seats of authority and learning have
> inflicted upon the true Monarchs of the world, those Gems of divine virtue! Content with a
> transitory dominion, they have deprived themselves of an everlasting sovereignty.11
> 
> Let us suppose for a moment that a ‘conservation law’, analogous to those proven in physics,
> applies to the energies and durations of these dispensations. If we use the 1,000-year period as a
> metrical standard, it can be seen as an order-of-magnitude approximation for the period between
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán, pp. 14-15.
> 
> renewals of divine knowledge in the human world - along the lines of a regular, global course of
> study in the process of the education of the human species.
> At the completion of such a period, humanity is presumably in condition to receive the next
> revelation of divine knowledge and teaching, but human resistance is deep and powerful. The
> arrival of a revelation roils the whole world, releasing great transformative energies that dissolve
> the old order and initiate a new one. The greater the difference between the old order and the
> new, the greater must be the energies released to bring about the transformation.
> Given the common general period of 1,000 years between changes of dispensation, one who
> predicted duration on the basis of past regularity would have expected the Báb's Dispensation to
> have a duration of a similar magnitude, and Bahá'u'lláh's Dispensation likewise. But this is not
> the case. Such an expectation is linear, without much change between durations at all, much less
> any change in order of magnitude. In the differences in the periods set forth in Shoghi Effendi's
> passage, we see that there is nothing at all linear or regular about this series of intervals.
> We might search across some of the different ways to see this nonlinear pattern in any orderly
> way. It appears at first glance almost random, arbitrary. From a consistent pulse of about a
> millennium between successive past dispensations up through that of Muhammad, suddenly we
> see the brief flash of the Báb’s twenty-year dispensation, and then comes the overwhelming light
> of Bahá’u’lláh’s dispensation and cycle of unimaginable duration. The comfort of simple,
> consistent patterns is abruptly denied us. When we open our gaze to the nonlinearities of both
> religion and nature, we can embrace the grandeur and majesty of both.
> A first observation: Major differences distinguish the revelations of the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh from
> all those of past human ages, for example, their voluminous written character expressed through
> the pens of their two Authors, via their own Hands moved directly by revelatory information.
> This difference has no known historical precedent, not even in Islam. The presence of such
> written revelatory material magnifies and preserves the pure, transformative energies it brings
> into our world.
> Such a difference links directly to the Covenant of God as expressed in each dispensation. In past
> dispensations, due in part to the lack of recorded conferral of authority by the dispensation's
> Author, and due in part as well to the lack of maturity of humanity in past times12, conflict and
> division among the followers arose and destroyed their unity and peace. But the Covenant of
> Bahá'u'lláh, written by Him in His own hand, has withstood assault after assault, disruption after
> disruption, to raise up and preserve a unified, stable, advancing, harmonious world community.
> A second observation: The Dispensation of the Báb is intimately linked with that of Bahá'u'lláh
> following close after it. The vast upheavals arising from the explosive release of transforming
> energies by the Báb in His copious writings and addresses testify to the unprecedented level of
> those energies.
> 
> Adib Taherzadeh, in his book The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh, writes (p. 159): “A careful study of the history of
> religions will enable us to realize that the Manifestations of old… did not make an unequivocal written Covenant
> with their followers because of the immaturity of the people of the age, who could not have sustained the rigours, the
> tests, and the strict discipline which the observance of such a Covenant would inevitably have required.”
> 
> A third observation: the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh are so voluminous that even after a century the
> preponderance of them have not been made generally available. Shoghi Effendi, in God Passes
> By, writes that Bahá'u'lláh produced a hundred volumes. Compare this output of revealed
> knowledge from beyond human range with the nearest comparable work from an earlier
> dispensation, the Qur’án: a single modest volume revealed to Muhammad over a lifetime. Such a
> distinction prompts the beholder to consider how vast a time scale might be needed in order to
> unravel the astonishing range of knowledge contained in what Bahá’u’lláh has revealed – a range
> that attests to the emergence of humanity into its stages of maturity.
> We return to science for some resonant parallels and illuminations.
> 
> The Process of a Supernova: Timescales
> The above observations concerning energies and volume of information suggest nonlinear
> patterns of change and advancement. Such patterns are common in physics and other branches of
> science: additive growth, polynomial growth, exponential growth, and others. An extreme
> example from astrophysics, its processes and models explored, developed, and validated in the
> 20th century, illustrates the most-nonlinear kinds of growth and change. What follows is a fairly-
> detailed account of this illustration and its outcomes. We shall see how the twin Revelations of
> the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh can evoke consideration of the collapse and explosion of a mighty star.
> For a star 25 times the weight of the Sun, its native hydrogen burns (fuses) into helium on the
> scale of ten million years, its helium on the scale of one million years becomes mainly carbon,
> the carbon burns to heavier elements in about a thousand years, and the remaining elements –
> neon, oxygen, silicon, and other of similar weight – fuse in less than three years. During all of
> these fusions, the energy released provides outward pressure to keep the star from collapsing.
> Note the tightening of the time scale from millions of years down to just a few.
> But in the end, the process leaves only nickel, cobalt, and iron. None of these can fuse under the
> normal conditions existing within the star that generated them. With no fusion taking place, there
> is no outward pressure from fusion energy to support the star’s mass against its inward
> gravitational pull. The star’s collapse follows.
> The collapse takes only milliseconds, with the outer part of the star’s core speeding inward at a
> quarter of the speed of light. So much energy is generated in the collapse that the star’s matter
> compresses tightly and rebounds, in the process fusing some of the iron, nickel, cobalt, and any
> remaining lighter nuclei further into all of the remaining heavier elements. These elements we
> find on Earth. They are the building blocks of material existence, the alphabet of nature’s
> discourse.
> For the purpose of improving our understanding of timescales, consider the orders of magnitude
> of time involved in the supernova process. They range from over ten million years at one
> extreme to a few milliseconds at the other: roughly 17 orders of magnitude (multiples of ten).
> Since a natural sequence of processes involves such staggering differences of timescale, it is
> reasonable to consider that a human, historical sequence of processes can do something much the
> same. We chart human history in the context of natural history and geological history in a similar
> 
> way: On Earth, life has existed for over four billion years, land life for half a billion years,
> human life for half a million years, and historical record for a few tens of thousands of years,
> with modern human records dating back only a few thousand, and the explosion of modern
> human knowledge only a few centuries. From a billion to a hundred spans seven orders of
> magnitude in time.
> It should be clear that timescales are far from uniform when viewed in the perspective of the
> order of the processes of existence. Some processes taking great swaths of time connect directly
> to others taking almost no time at all, yet both are inseparable parts of a great chaotic, dynamic
> flow of development and change. Once this insight is understood, the efforts by the prophets and
> the wise to lay out the order of human processes of change can be seen more clearly as using
> orders of magnitude instead of calendric time to mark the relationships of events and processes.
> 
> The Process of History: Timescales
> Now to draw back and survey the timescales of the history of the three revelations as cited in
> calendric terms: 1,000 years for Islam, 20 years for the Dispensation of the Báb, and in excess of
> 500,000 years for the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh: from two decades at the short end to more
> than 50,000 decades at the long end, amounting to about five orders of magnitude of difference,
> with 1,000 years or 100 decades in the middle range about three orders of magnitude smaller
> than the long interval. We have good scientific basis and validation for our models of stellar
> evolution in nature – what insights, whether metaphorical or natural, can we find for
> understanding ’Abdu’l-Bahá’s assertion concerning the duration of the Bahá’í Dispensation?
> Two varieties of process come to mind: the cyclic and the transitional. Cyclic processes in a
> system, such as a heartbeat or a series of courses of study in a subject, imply a homeostasis or
> dynamic balance that keeps the process repeating. Transitional processes in a system, such as a
> supernova explosion or a student’s graduation from studies, imply a permanent or lasting change
> in the system from one dynamic balance to another – or to further transition.
> In a transitional process, sufficient energy is stored up from the recurring cyclic processes
> preceding it to begin the transition, overcoming the forces sustaining the dynamic balance of the
> cycles. The release of this stored energy takes place over a comparatively-brief timescale,
> disrupting the balance completely and shifting the system into an entirely-distinct state and
> process. The supernova explosion described earlier illustrates the point. Modern physics treats
> such processes as parts of the dynamics of chaos and equilibria, which we have seen briefly here
> earlier13.
> The Revelations of the past, dating from earliest recorded history to the 19th century, appear to us
> as cyclic processes each bestowing new information and transformation on the human world.
> They are punctuated by brief transitions at their beginnings leading to their rapid ascendancy and
> stable continuation. The cycles were of the order of 1,000 years, and the transitions from their
> 
> The section titled Two Misperceptions characterizes chaotic dynamical systems having both cyclic and
> transitional behavior.
> 
> predecessors shared similar patterns: revelation, obscurity, persecution, promulgation,
> acceptance, advancement, decay, and eventual replacement.
> Evidence we are seeing here shows us that this pattern has now undergone a major transition of
> far greater power than ever before, one that has replaced not only the most-recent cycle of that
> pattern but the entire pattern itself. The energies required for such a transition are staggeringly
> greater than those of the past transitions in the cyclic process of the past.
> Given this demand for energy of change, the outpouring of information from the Revelation
> driving that change is necessarily commensurate. More detail on the third observation made
> above clarifies the situation. The Holy Qur’án was one single volume of 6300 verses. By
> contrast, concerning the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, Shoghi Effendi writes:
> With this book [Epistle to the Son of the Wolf], revealed about one year prior to His
> ascension, the prodigious achievement as author of a hundred volumes, repositories of the
> priceless pearls of His Revelation, may be said to have practically terminated—volumes
> replete with unnumbered exhortations, revolutionizing principles, world-shaping laws and
> ordinances, dire warnings and portentous prophecies, with soul-uplifting prayers and
> meditations, illuminating commentaries and interpretations, impassioned discourses and
> homilies, all interspersed with either addresses or references to kings, to emperors and to
> ministers, of both the East and the West, to ecclesiastics of divers denominations, and to
> leaders in the intellectual, political, literary, mystical, commercial and humanitarian spheres
> of human activity.14
> 
> Moreover, concerning the Revelation of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh Himself writes:
> Whereas the verses which have rained from this Cloud of divine mercy have been so abundant
> that none hath yet been able to estimate their number. A score of volumes are now available.
> How many still remain beyond our reach! How many have been plundered and have fallen
> into the hands of the enemy, the fate of which none knoweth.15
> 
> The Báb Himself clarifies the scale of His own work:
> Now, following His manifestation, although He hath, up to the present, revealed no less than
> five hundred thousand verses on different subjects, behold what calumnies are uttered, so
> unseemly that the pen is stricken with shame at the mention of them. But if all men were to
> observe the ordinances of God no sadness would befall that heavenly Tree.16
> 
> When we combine the vast outpourings of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh from their stations as the
> Twin Manifestations, we can see that any timescale to be applied must be correspondingly huge.
> What does all this have to do with a star gone supernova? Some readers may have already seen
> the connection. In the collapse, the “rolling-up” of the old world order, we can see the utter
> 
> Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, XII, p. 220.
> Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán, pp. 199-200.
> The Báb, Selections from the Writings of the Báb, in the section titled “The Persian Bayan”, VI, 11.
> 
> obliteration of the former structures and dynamics of our long human past; in the moment of
> greatest collapse we can see in the Revelation of the Báb the formation of the entire ‘alphabet’ of
> the elements17 of the new world order, and in the explosion of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh we
> can see the full, radiant efflorescence of all of the elements of that new order being spread out
> before us.
> When the Báb gave His estimate of having revealed 500,000 verses, it was 1848. At that time,
> He was imprisoned in the fortress of Mákú (Mah-ku), and He still had two years to live before
> He was executed by a firing squad on July 9, 1850. His entire Dispensation had begun in 1844
> and was to end nineteen years later in 1863, when Bahá’u’lláh publicly revealed His own station,
> beginning the half-million-year cycle referred to here. The Prophet Muhammad revealed a total
> of around 6300 verses in all, and His Dispensation lasted for around 1260 years. If one were to
> consider each verse of the Báb’s Writings to be the equivalent in power and impact of one verse
> from the Prophet Muhammad, a linearly-proportionate length of time one might assign to the
> Báb’s Dispensation would be on the order of 100,000 years! Clearly the explosive,
> transformative power unleashed in the verses of the Báb alone, compressed into His all-too-brief
> 20-year ministry, beggars the imagination – no, rather, it defies all limits of human
> comprehension.
> To appreciate better what we are grappling to understand we must now turn again to the only
> comparable realm in our world: the astronomical. In doing so, we will leave for additional
> astonishment the consideration of the even-greater volume of the revealed works of Bahá’u’lláh.
> 
> The Process of Space: Timescales
> Once we leave the comfortable nest of our earth to ‘traverse the expanse of heaven’18, the very
> meaning of time becomes transformed. We count our hours as 24ths of a day – but what is a day
> on a space station that circles the earth every two hours, or on an interplanetary probe? We count
> our year as the earth’s circuit of its solar orbit, but the year on Mars is longer. We mark our
> seasons by the ridings of the sun in warming our fields and forests. We count our months by the
> phases of earth’s moon.
> We are cradled on our planet – but we are preparing, in this extraordinary age, to leave it.
> What do we call a day or a month on Titan, circling Saturn? What do we call a season or a day
> on the planet Uranus, where the planet’s axis is so tilted that the day is half of a Uranian year –
> which itself is about 84 earth years long? There, the season and the day seem to be the same.
> And when we sail at last away into interstellar space, in which our nearest stellar neighbor,
> Proxima Centauri, is over 25 trillion miles from the sun, how do we measure the passage of
> time? Indeed, can we even live in such an expanse in the same timescale as here on earth, in
> which our seconds are heartbeats? Our current space vessels seem like matchstick rafts with
> 
> There will be more on this point in the upcoming section titled The Coding of Realities.
> A phrase taken from The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Arabic no. 40: “O SON OF MAN! Wert thou to speed
> through the immensity of space and traverse the expanse of heaven, yet thou wouldst find no rest save in submission
> to Our command and humbleness before Our Face.”
> 
> toothpick oars in such immensity. To travel between stars at the maximum speeds we can even
> consider in today’s world, on the order of 1000 miles per second, would take 25 billion seconds,
> or given about 31 million seconds in an earth year, about 800 years at that speed – a bit more
> counting acceleration and deceleration19.
> 800 years is ten times a normal human lifespan, so to keep our hearts from wearing out, they
> would need to beat once every ten seconds. On the trip to Proxima Centauri, in effect, we have
> multiplied the duration of our ‘second’, as measured by the human heart, by a factor of ten.
> The sacred scriptures of the past do not contemplate such questions, simply because there was no
> need to do so. But in this age of light, we confront the need. Now that we are thinking in terms of
> a half-million years, we are capable of contemplating our universe’s great variety and richness
> even in the details of its complex and bewildering rhythms. We are on our way outbound, but we
> have much work ahead of us. With prescience, Bahá’u’lláh writes:
> O SON OF MAN! Wert thou to speed through the immensity of space and traverse the
> expanse of heaven, yet thou wouldst find no rest save in submission to Our command and
> humbleness before Our Face.20
> 
> The Coding of Realities
> 
> Alphabets
> Put it all together and it spells,
> The mighty spell of language and of making,
> Signs, letters, and symbols can impel
> The mind to love the dawn as it is breaking.
> We scan and connect the inscriptions of our universe. Both religion and science, practiced at
> their best and most-elevated levels, offer us the pathways to decrypting, unpacking, and
> comprehending these inscriptions. We decipher a coded hotel room number on a door, a light
> burst from a dying star, an X-ray diffraction pattern from a crystal, a Babylonian multiplication
> table, an essay in Mayan glyphs on the question of the beginning and end of time, a magnetic-
> resonance-imaging (MRI) scan of a human brain, a divinatory hexagram of the I Ching, a coded
> letter from a man to his lover, a sea of data points from an astrophysical survey, a trail of a deer’s
> hoofmarks in a forest, a marching parade of numbers in hexadecimal from a computer-memory
> dump, a word-weave of a novel called Finnegans Wake. We are human. We strive to read
> reality. We make mistakes – often we misread, or we attempt to read meaning into gibberish –
> but we learn and advance past our mistakes. This is what humans do.
> 
> Many authors of science fiction, the present author included, have calculated the durations of interstellar travel
> using speeds consistent with known technologies, and the results teach us humility. Until we find ‘wormholes’ as
> theorized in the film ‘Interstellar’, or develop means of travel that transcend our current physical limitations, we are
> consigned physically to our own planetary world and our neighbors circling the sun. And as it happens, we have
> much work facing us before we pack our bags for the stars.
> Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Arabic No. 40.
> 
> We usually consider alphabets, abjads, and written sets of symbols representing human language
> as the real tools of human representation, leaving aside those representations that come to us
> from nature: a light burst, a diffraction pattern, a molecular structure, an atomic nucleus, an
> evolving weather pattern, and so much more. But human representations in our alphabets and
> natural representations in atoms, molecules, spectra, and more are themselves members of a
> greater class of expressions performed using compositions of elements. Each type of element
> comprises a letter used in the transcendent orthography of meaning: the ordered flow of
> information from the greater world to ours.
> Spell out a sugar, with the formula C12H22O11, in its molecular form. It is a word in nature’s
> organic alphabet of 92 chemical elements, written with only Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen.
> Because the placement and orientation of these three ‘letters’ is significant, many sugars can be
> spelled out that have the same formula of 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogens, and 11 oxygens. If the
> sugar to be spelled is sucrose – cane sugar – we can depict its spelling like this21 (Figure 1):
> 
> Figure 1 – Sucrose molceular model
> 
> But the arrangement of the ‘letters’, or atoms, in space is critical, just the same as for letters in a
> word on a page. Sucrose has the same constituent atoms in its makeup as does lactose, so that the
> formula C12H22O11 also applies, except that the atoms in lactose are arranged in a different
> pattern in space so that the two behave differently in the human body. That’s why some people
> can enjoy the sucrose in ice cream without discomfort, while others react strongly to the lactose
> that is in the milk used to make the ice cream.
> All the same letters appear in the words ‘live’, ‘evil’, and ‘vile’, but they all very mean different
> things.
> 
> Taken from http://igoscience.com/sucrose-sugar-molecule-ball-and-stick-vector-model-c12h22o11-v1/ .
> 
> The world of nature is spelled out for us at many tiers of meaning and scale. Particles spell out
> atomic nuclei. Atoms spell out molecules. Molecules spell out structures in tissues and minerals.
> Tissues spell out organisms. Organisms spell out social entities. And in the unique and linear
> spelling that is the passage of time, all these things evoke and evolve meaning.
> 
> Alphabets Natural and Human
> There are metaphorical bridges connecting: 1) nature’s ‘alphabet’ – the full range of chemical
> elements formed in the forge of stellar explosion; 2) the human alphabets – the various sets of
> letters and symbols we use to form words and ideas; and 3) the greatest alphabet, subsuming
> these two and all others – the unending flow of utterance of the information that orders and
> sustains all things. We begin with a passage from Bahá’u’lláh, referring to the Báb’s Revelation:
> No understanding can grasp the nature of His Revelation, nor can any knowledge comprehend
> the full measure of His Faith. All sayings are dependent upon His sanction, and all things
> stand in need of His Cause. All else save Him are created by His command, and move and
> have their being through His law. He is the Revealer of the divine mysteries, and the
> Expounder of the hidden and ancient wisdom. Thus it is related in the “Biḥáru’l-Anvár,” the
> “‘Aválim,” and the “Yanbú‘” of Ṣádiq, son of Muḥammad, that he spoke these words:
> “Knowledge is twenty and seven letters. All that the Prophets have revealed are two letters
> thereof. No man thus far hath known more than these two letters. But when the Qá’im22 shall
> arise, He will cause the remaining twenty and five letters to be made manifest.” Consider, He
> hath declared Knowledge to consist of twenty and seven letters, and regarded all the Prophets,
> from Adam even unto the “Seal,” as Expounders of only two letters thereof and of having
> been sent down with these two letters. He also saith that the Qá’im will reveal all the
> remaining twenty and five letters. Behold from this utterance how great and lofty is His
> station! His rank excelleth that of all the Prophets, and His Revelation transcendeth the
> comprehension and understanding of all their chosen ones.23
> 
> The extremely-brief duration of the Báb’s Dispensation in which the formation and explosion of
> meaning took place mirrors the extremely-brief period during which the formation of the
> majority of the natural elements happens in stellar evolution. More specifically, the two letters of
> the Dispensations preceding that of the Báb evoke in the natural world the two simplest
> elements, hydrogen and helium, that formed the stars in the first place. And during the processes
> preceding the collapse of a star, whether supernova or not, out of those two elements are formed
> naturally the next 26 elements up through iron (26), cobalt (27), and nickel (28), which, taken
> 
> ‘Qá'im’ is an Arabic title meaning “He Who arises”, and in Islamic traditions refers to a prophesied redeemer of
> Islam. The Báb writes: “He Who hath revealed the Qur’án unto Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, ordaining in the
> Faith of Islám that which was pleasing unto Him, hath likewise revealed the Bayán, in the manner ye have been
> promised, unto Him Who is your Qá’im, your Guide, your Mihdí, your Lord, Him Whom ye acclaim as the
> manifestation of God’s most excellent titles. Verily the equivalent of that which God revealed unto Muḥammad
> during twenty-three years, hath been revealed unto Me within the space of two days and two nights. However, as
> ordained by God, no distinction is to be drawn between the two. He, in truth, hath power over all things.” – from
> Selections from theWritings of the Báb, Excerpts from the Kitáb-i-‘Asmá, XVI, 18.
> Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán, pp. 224-5.
> 
> with all of the elements beginning with hydrogen, comprise the initial stellar ‘alphabet’ of
> elements: another nice metaphorical resonance.
> Every single letter proceeding out of the mouth of God is indeed a mother letter, and every
> word uttered by Him Who is the Wellspring of Divine Revelation is a mother word, and His
> Tablet a Mother Tablet.24.
> 
> From this alphabet of physical elements, much of the perceptible matter in the universe is
> composed. Heavier elements, formed in the supernova process, constitute extensions to this
> ‘language’ of matter– an alphabet or script from which the vast compositions of the enduring
> substances in our material world are written out. With such extensions to the capacities of the
> realm of nature, and in our metaphor to those of the greater realm as well, how incomparably
> great are the possibilities!
> There exists a similar mirroring metaphor when we examine the genetic codings of
> deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. DNA is comprised of a long pair of molecular strands holding
> nucleic acids, or nucleotides. There are only four such nucleotides: alanine, cytosine, guanine,
> and thymine. In RNA, the single-strand form transcribed from DNA, uracil replaces thymine. As
> the single strand is translated (decoded) for the construction of a living organism, the decoding
> process uses each series of three successive nucleotides, called a ‘codon’, to synthesize a specific
> ‘building block’ in the form of an amino acid. There are 64 possible codons, and since some
> codons produce the same amino acid, these generate 20 distinct amino acids, along with start and
> stop markers for the construction process. One can consider the start and stop markers as
> punctuation, so there are 22 distinct outputs from the decoding process – 22 letters in the known
> genetic ‘alphabet’.25
> We have now seen the alphabet of atoms that make up the infinite volumes of molecules and
> molecular structures, and we have also seen the alphabet of genetic codes that make up the
> infinite varieties of forms of life. These alphabets, these scripts, are uttered by the creation itself.
> They are pure information, giving form, pattern, process, and change to the existence of all
> things. They represent tiers of meaning bestowed in the eternal flow of information from the
> Creator.
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, from LXXIV, There is a fascinating connection here
> with the ways in which the Báb focused some of His learned commentaries, or tafsír, on the drawing forth of
> meanings from the individual letters of verses of the Qur’án. See Todd Lawson, “The Báb’s Commentary on the
> Súra of Wa’l-‘Asr” in his “The Dangers of Reading”, published in “Bahá’í Studies Volume III: Scripture &
> Revelation”. In the section cited, Lawson describes the rapidity and volume of the revealing of the commentary,
> presents a translation of the commentary’s unraveling of meanings from the first letter of the Súra (wáw), and
> outlines further aspects and passages from the work.
> Sources on the topic of molecular biology are many, and range from those with general appeal to the most-recent
> deep research results. General readers might try “Molecular Biology made simple and fun”, by David P. Clark, or
> “The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology”, by Masaharu Takemura and Sakura. Those readers wishing to
> investigate the field at a deeper level can read “Molecular Biology: Principles and Practice”, by Michael M. Cox,
> Jennifer Doudna, and Michael O’Donnell. Those wishing to sample the messy details of genetic engineering can
> track down a copy of “Short Protocols in Molecular Biology (2 volume set)”, by many contributors in the field.
> 
> We can view the revealed knowledge granted us in the divinely-bestowed Revelations as
> enriched and elevated tiers of meaning from the same source of information. From the potentials
> released by the profuse combinations of written and spoken letters, revealed and released in all
> their varied and glorious formulations into the world of humanity, we can begin to see the far-
> more-vast compositions of divine knowledge – pure information – being poured forth in this
> universal cycle of Bahá’u’lláh. It is important here to view a ‘letter’ not just as a single written
> symbol but rather as a token of meaning, whether expressed in a single character, in a word, in a
> phrase, in a sentence, in a verse, or in an entire document. Each of the great teachings revealed to
> humanity can be considered as such a token of meaning.
> 
> Decrypting Reality
> From past ages in which only a few people in a society understood the patterns of the world
> around them, we have come in our time almost suddenly into a global society in which everyone
> can gain great understanding of those patterns. We are decrypting our world: making plain what
> is hidden. We are discovering the subtlety and richness of this task.
> No cipher alphabet we invent seems adequate. As soon as we create a periodic table of all the
> chemical elements, hosts of questions spring up; we go on to create a table of subatomic particles
> to expand the periodic table into a table of the nuclides; then we burrow into the world of these
> particles to unfold quarks and bosons.
> Likewise with our grasp of the tetrad of bases of DNA: alanine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.
> We see these four ‘marks’ or ‘strokes’ of molecular chemistry; we see them forming triplets, or
> codons, the ‘alphabet’ for forming the 21 amino acids essential in living creatures; we witness
> the assembly of the amino acids into all the varied living tissues.
> Our alphabets proliferate. The electrons of an atom live in layers or ‘shells’ around the atom’s
> nucleus. When an electron, perhaps jarred by a passing photon of light, moves from a shell of
> greater energy to a shell with less, it emits a ‘note’: its own photon packet of electromagnetic
> energy. Each such note corresponds to a specific transit between electron shells of specific
> elements. The set of notes ranges freely up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, the way a
> player’s fingers can range freely up and down the neck of a violin to play different tones.
> These notes comprise a rich alphabet. Using it, astronomers extract from starlight an
> electromagnetic spectrum that shows for each star the notes that star is singing. Each note maps
> to a specific element and a transition between electron shells of an atom of that specific element.
> The astronomer can then determine what elements are in a star and burning to provide that star’s
> energy: stellar decryption. In this decryption process, the astronomer creates dynamic models of
> stars for predicting the evolution of stars of all kinds based on their constituency, their mass, and
> the nuclear reactions of their burning.26
> 
> Most readers can explore further with Kenneth R. Lang’s The Life and Death of Stars. Those more inclined to
> astrophysics can dig into Donald Clayton, Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis, for the juicy, explicit
> details of stellar life.
> 
> Using the same electron alphabet of energy transitions, the chemist develops and applies models
> that predict the shapes and behaviors of molecules in their interactions and reactions.
> The spectral alphabet of electrons has a counterpart in the spectral variations in nuclear
> resonances. We can look within the nucleus of an atom by studying the energies of its
> radioactive decay emissions. These energies fall into levels that inform the nuclear physicist
> concerning the structure and dynamics of the interior of that nucleus: nuclear decryption. In this
> decryption process the nuclear physicist creates models of the atomic nucleus.27
> This is the Day of which it hath been said: ‘O my son! verily God will bring everything to
> light though it were but the weight of a grain of mustard seed, and hidden in a rock, or in the
> heavens or in the earth; for God is subtile, informed of all.’28
> 
> With widening eyes, we read our reality at all scales. And as we become literate in reality, we
> learn more and more to write it.
> 
> Astronomy and the Bahá’í Dispensation: An Aside
> What natural, physical intervals suggest themselves in our search for meaning in this 500,000-
> year assertion? Periodic occurrences in astronomical and geological timescales often serve to
> mark events and projections in human history and prophecy.
> Our own calendars of history have become too limited to encompass a half million years in any
> clear and accurate way. Even the greatest of them, such as the Mayan calendar with its Long
> Count of about 7885 solar years, reflect the brevity of past human history. All of our calendars
> are in constant need of adjustments as gradual changes in the earth’s orbit, the moon’s orbit, and
> the orientation of the earth’s axis evolve through great spans of time. In a half million years,
> many such changes will take place.
> For example, each solar day lengthens slowly over time, very slowly, to the tune of 0.0017
> seconds per century, or 0.017 seconds per millennium. This makes an annual lengthening of the
> day of about 0.6 seconds per year. After 10,000 years, that’s 6,000 seconds, making the day
> about 25 hours and 40 minutes long. After 100,000 years, the day comes out to 40 hours and 40
> minutes in length. That would call for a few extra meals each day, assuming that we haven’t
> changed our needs over that length of time!
> And when finally we reach the end of the universal cycle at 500,000 years, each day is about a
> week long in contemporary terms. We need some new ways of seeing our place and passage in
> time.
> 
> The investigating reader can find much concerning nuclear exploration at the U. S. Department of Energy’s
> Berkeley Laboratory Webpages, beginning with The ABCs of Nuclear Science at http://www2.lbl.gov/abc/ . There,
> Chapter 6 of Nuclear Science – A Guide to the Nuclear Science Wall Chart explains nuclear energy levels, models,
> and measurement, at http://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/teachersguide/pdf/Chap06.pdf .
> Bahá’u’lláh, quoted by Shoghi Effendi in The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 107. Bahá’u’lláh Himself here
> quotes from the Qur’án, 31:16 (Luqman).
> 
> Moving out from our familiar solar and lunar years, months, and days, here are a few of these
> natural ‘calendar’ markers of long time.
> 
> Galactic Time
> We begin with what may be the longest interval that carries any relevance for events on our
> earth, the “galactic year”: the immense time over which the entire solar system makes one
> complete orbit around the center of the Milky Way. Our solar system is orbiting the Milky Way
> center at about 143 miles per second in speed, which means that one complete circuit of the orbit
> takes about 250 million years. Such a huge span of time reaches back from our present to the
> beginning of the Triassic Period, just following the mass extinction of biological life that marked
> the end of the Permian Period. Some authors have theorized that such sweeping extinctions on
> earth may arrive with completion of these full orbits, but work in this area is highly speculative
> at its very best. The galactic year reaches five hundred times beyond our consideration of any
> relevance it might have to religion or science in our present exploration. That’s far too long for
> us.
> 
> Glacial Time
> The next range of intervals to consider are the somewhat-irregular periods of glaciation on earth,
> in which the planet’s surface temperature range varies from one supporting glacial ice sheets
> covering much of our current temperate regions to one in which very little surface ice exists.
> These advances and retreats of glaciers take place over an approximate 100,000-year cycle, not
> considering any impacts from extinction events or human-driven heating processes. This cycle of
> intervals, five of which would span half a million years, seems closer to our area of concern, but
> it lacks a reliable fixed period of nature by which to navigate time. Glaciation is driven by many
> dynamic factors we don’t yet fully understand.
> 
> Precessional Time
> Third, we examine a steadier calendar cycle: the axial precession of Earth’s rotation, sometimes
> called the “precession of the equinoxes”. The earth’s axis changes its alignment with respect to
> the stellar background, rotating slowly, or ‘wobbling’, as the Earth spins so that the poles of our
> rotation appear to change place over a cycle of about 25,772 years in length29. This means that
> what we now call the Pole Star will drift to where its rotation around the Earth’s axis of spin will
> be more like that of other stars, and some other star will approach the still point of the axis of
> spin. After the completion of the 25-millennium cycle, the Pole Star will appear in the sky as it
> did at the beginning.
> We can work and play with this calendar. Nineteen of these steady precessional cycles almost
> span the half-million-year interval, and twenty such cycles constitute a period of about 515,000
> years – just above the lower bound of time set forth by Shoghi Effendi for the duration of the
> Bahá’í cycle. This evokes a correspondence that might offer a speculative view of the Master’s
> 
> Due to gravitational and geodynamic effects, the cycle of this ‘wobble’of the earth’s axis of rotation varies
> somewhat itself in duration over time.
> 
> words regarding the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘its duration hath been fixed for a period of one
> whole month, which is the maximum time taken by the sun to pass through a sign of the Zodiac.’
> Now we map each precessional cycle to a day, and each 500,000-year period as a month – but
> this gives us about 20 ‘days’ in our speculative ‘month’. The combination does not map to our
> customary understanding of the relationship between month and day.
> This view derives from combining the Earth’s axial cycle of precession with the 20-year duration
> of the Báb’s Dispensation.
> How is this step to be justified? Referring back to the vast outpourings of knowledge revealed by
> the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, only such a great timescale makes any sense in the context of
> progressive revelation over the course of human history. Bahá’u’lláh makes the power of the
> outpouring clear in passage after passage, for example:
> The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great,
> this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of
> this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed…
> 
> Immerse yourselves in the ocean of My words, that ye may unravel its secrets, and discover
> all the pearls of wisdom that lie hid in its depths.30
> 
> Over the course of the Earth’s axial precession, the tilt of its axis rotates in a full circle. This tilt
> affects the constellations in which the sun appears, in two distinct ways. First, it changes the
> constellation named as governing the Zodiacal period from one at a given celestial latitude to
> another at a different celestial latitude. Over the cycle, some of the northern zodiac constellations
> are replaced by southern ones at the same celestial longitude, and vice versa. This means that the
> Zodiac itself changes throughout the passage of this cycle of precession. Second, it changes the
> seasons progressively – the seasons are driven by the axial tilt, which is slowly rotating. So for
> the sun to appear in the same celestial latitude in exactly the same season (celestial longitude)
> requires a full 25,772-year cycle of axial precession.
> 
> Caution
> But from the original passage cited, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words, Shoghi Effendi’s assertion, and this
> cycle do not seem mutually consistent at this stage31. One can see that a month of 30 days or so
> seems unsuitable for any possible resolution of the problem using the cycles we have chosen
> here, even though it is consistent with contemporary views on the movement of the sun through a
> sign of the Zodiac: 30 days x 12 signs = one year, roughly speaking. Furthermore, Shoghi
> Effendi has cautioned us about looking at such possible resolutions too literally. From a passage
> of his quoted earlier:
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas, by p. 85.
> The author hopes that his seeming brashness in attempting to elicit some harmony from these distinct evidences
> may be excused! We are just at the dawn of this amazing age, and it is certain that understanding will advance well
> beyond anything presented here.
> 
> The thirty days in the last dispensation should not be reckoned numerically, but should be
> considered as symbolizing the incomparable greatness of the Bahá’í Revelation which, though
> not final is none-the-less thus far the fullest revelation of God to man.
> 
> Even so, his explicit mention of the 500,000-year interval presents itself as an opportunity to
> reflect and explore – and to marvel. In doing so we may gain a deeper appreciation of both
> religion and science.
> For the sun to return in the same season to the same place in the slowly-cycling Zodiac, the
> 25,772-year cycle is required, but the 30-day month offers no sensible pattern that approximates
> the assertion of Shoghi Effendi, ‘From a physical point of view, the thirty days represent the
> maximum time taken by the sun to pass through a sign of the zodiac.’ Note his use of the word
> ‘represent’, which appears to uncouple “thirty days” from its literal meaning.
> Note that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá lived in the time when the calendars of the human world were (as they
> still are) in a state of transition. At the moment of His writing the quoted words to a Zoroastrian
> individual, a form of the new Badí Calendar was already in effect in the Bahá’í world. In that
> calendar each month has 19 days, and the year consists of 19 months with four or five Intercalary
> Days inserted: 19 months plus a fraction.
> The Báb’s Dispensation lasted from 23 May 1844 until 29 April 1863, just under 19 years by the
> Western solar calendars, and about 20 years by the lunar calendar of Islam in use at the time of
> the Báb’s Declaration.
> 
> The Precessional ‘Day’
> Physically in mundane terms, the sun moves in its position against the stellar background
> through the twelve constellations of the Zodiac in an annual cycle. We are not considering the
> situation in purely-physical terms – to gain consistency of viewpoints we must integrate our
> physical understanding with that of prophecy and metaphor. We can take a step toward
> discernment by applying the terms ‘day’ and ‘month’ on a scale and in a fashion befitting both
> the Revelations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh and the vast sweep of time we are contemplating. On
> that scale, the Zodiac itself changes in cyclic fashion.
> We can consider each 25,772-year cycle as a ‘day’ in the following manner. In such a cycle, the
> earth’s axis rotates (or wobbles) in one full circle, during which the seasons drift through the
> complete solar cycle of months. This drift of seasons takes place because the changing axis of
> the earth’s rotation also shifts the timing of the solar exposure changes – the seasons – of any
> point in the northern or southern hemisphere. This means that after a quarter of the cycle, the
> seasons will have shifted by one, after a half of the cycle, summer and winter will have been
> interchanged, and after a full cycle, the seasons will be back in their original relationships with
> the solar calendar. Only then will the first day of spring again fall on the calendar date that it did
> over 25,000 years earlier.
> 
> In the course of this cycle of axial rotation, the earth’s axis shifts so that the stars nearest to the
> unchanging point in the sky – the ‘pole stars’ – also change. From an astronomy course Web
> page:
> While the Pole Star in the northern hemisphere is now Polaris, in 3000 B.C., the north
> celestial pole coincided with Thuban, a star in the constellation of Draco. In 14,000 A.D.
> Vega, in Lyra, will be the northern pole star.32
> 
> An aside: given the long duration of this cycle, however, one finds that the stars themselves
> move individually in the sky in different directions, so that the night sky never finds the same
> exact configuration of stars when the cycle returns to its starting point.
> After the full cycle, the seasons will be back in their original timing, and the sun will have
> returned to its same position in Earth’s sky in the same season as at the start of the cycle. At that
> point, the first day of spring will occur with all the stars in the same approximate orientation they
> were in 25,772 years earlier.
> This full cycle could be considered a ‘precessional day’, in which the sun stands in the same
> position in the same exact point in the solar calendar at the start and end of the cycle, just as in
> the cycle of any ordinary day.
> 
> A ‘Month’ of ‘Days’
> Corresponding to the 20 lunar years of the Bábí Dispensation, a span which can be viewed as a
> month of days in the Badi’ calendar, we can treat or map each such lunar year as a precessional
> day. This mapping parallels many others similar to it in traditional prophetic usage. To requote
> from Shoghi Effendi:
> As to the third Dispensation—the Revelation proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh—inasmuch as the
> Sun of Truth when attaining that station shineth in the plenitude of its meridian splendor its
> duration hath been fixed for a period of one whole month, which is the maximum time taken
> by the sun to pass through a sign of the Zodiac.
> 
> Calculating time the interval for 20 such ‘days’, we finally arrive at 515,000 years, quite near
> Shoghi Effendi’s lower bound of 500,000 years, and sufficient to include the duration of all the
> Dispensations of our past.
> A reflection concerning the length of the ‘day’ signifying such a lengthy period of time comes to
> mind. In the Súriy-i-Haykal (Tablet of the Temple), Bahá’u’lláh writes:
> This is the Day that shall not be followed by night, nor shall it be bounded by any praise,
> would that ye might understand!33
> 
> From http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/earth_precess.htm. The changes in stars
> nearest the poles are listed in many places, and the current Wiki page on axial precession (as of February 2017)
> gives a good discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession .
> Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 34/para. 63.
> 
> This allusion concludes a verse of much-greater scope than any astronomical, worldly
> significance can attain:
> O Temple of Holiness! We, verily, have cleansed Thy breast from the whisperings of the
> people and sanctified it from earthly allusions, that the light of My beauty may appear therein
> and be reflected in the mirrors of all the worlds. Thus have We singled Thee out above all that
> hath been created in the heavens and the earth, and above all that hath been decreed in the
> realms of revelation and creation, and chosen Thee for Our own Self. This is but an evidence
> of the bounty which God hath vouchsafed unto Thee, a bounty which shall last until the Day
> that hath no end in this contingent world. It shall endure so long as God, the Supreme King,
> the Help in Peril, the Mighty, the Wise, shall endure. For the Day of God is none other but His
> own Self, Who hath appeared with the power of truth. This is the Day that shall not be
> followed by night, nor shall it be bounded by any praise, would that ye might understand!34
> 
> In this passage, it is clear that no earthly temple or being is referred to, just as no earthly day or
> duration is referred to. In order to develop appreciation of the duration of the Bahá’í
> Dispensation on earth, we turn to one other passage in the Writings of Bahá’ú’lláh, one which
> offers the means by which the greater world’s meaning can be discerned in the signs manifested
> in the physical realm:
> Know thou that every created thing is a sign of the revelation of God. Each, according to its
> capacity, is, and will ever remain, a token of the Almighty. Inasmuch as He, the sovereign
> Lord of all, hath willed to reveal His sovereignty in the kingdom of names and attributes, each
> and every created thing hath, through the act of the Divine Will, been made a sign of His
> glory. So pervasive and general is this revelation that nothing whatsoever in the whole
> universe can be discovered that doth not reflect His splendor. Under such conditions every
> consideration of proximity and remoteness is obliterated…. Were the Hand of Divine power
> to divest of this high endowment all created things, the entire universe would become desolate
> and void.35
> 
> Appreciation
> Thus the great duration of the 25,772-year ‘day’, treated as a sign of an unending, sustaining
> flow of divine meaning, unfolds a sense of the grandeur and infinite extent of the Revelation of
> Bahá’u’lláh. In the passage of just one such ‘day’, 25 millennium-long revelations, each of
> which is equivalent in duration to one of those in our human past, can be progressively unfolded
> to humanity.
> Add to this Shoghi Effendi’s statement about the thirty days, that they “thus represent a
> culminating point in the evolution of this star”, and in our awareness the scope of the Revelation
> is magnified even further. Also, a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi mentions not only
> the immense span of time of the Bahá’í cycle but also offers a glimpse of even-greater impacts
> and reaches it may unfold, stating this:
> 
> ibid., pp. 33-34.
> Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, XCIII.
> 
> Regarding your questions: There is no record in history, or in the teachings, of a Prophet
> similar in station to Bahá'u'lláh having lived 500,000 years ago. There will, however, be one
> similar to Him in greatness after the lapse of 500,000 years, but we cannot say definitely that
> His Revelation will be inter-planetary in scope. We can only say that such a thing may be
> possible. What Bahá'u'lláh means by His appearance in 'other worlds' He has not defined, as
> we could not visualize them in our present state, hence He was indefinite, and we cannot say
> whether He meant other planets or not.36
> 
> The speculative exploration of the original quotes offered in the present essay is internally
> consistent, although it incorporates elements from diverse contexts. It also offers a rather-
> attractive integration and harmonization of the scientific, spiritual, and human aspects of the
> Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh.
> Best of all, it offers a glimpse into a human future so vast, fertile, potent, and diverse that as we
> stand poised, on this cusp of historical time, this pinnacle ascended from our dark and turbulent
> human past, we find ourselves and our world made altogether new. Now, the whole universe
> beckons.
> `
> 
> from a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, December 24, 1941, quoted in Lights of
> Guidance, p. 473.
>
> — *A Half Million Years (Used by permission of the curator)*