 From the hesitant painter to the internationally renowned artist whose solo exhibits have graced art galleries in Vancouver, New York, Barcelona and Paris, and are part of the permanent collections of great museums and galleries like the National Gallery of Canada. From the young university lecturer to the respected professor and department head inspiring scores of students, from the new Baha'i introduced to the faith by his wife Barbara, to the fiery teacher of the faith, making his house in Saskatoon into a Baha'i center of learning and helping the Baha'i community of Saskatoon blossom from less than thirty to three hundred in just three years. To the distinguished servant of the Baha'i Ministry of Order, first serving as an assembly member, a member of the Exury Board, then as an appointee of the Universalist of Justice, serving first as a continental counsellor, then for two terms as an international counsellor in Haifa, before coming back to Canada and being elected for several years to the National Spital Assembly of the Brides of Canada after a short respite. Maybe the secret of Otto Rogers' uncanny ability to balance his career, his art, his service and his commitment to the faith and Baha'u'llah, and being each to ever higher levels of accomplishment lies in this deceptively simple affirmation that, and I quote, within the creative act lies the anticipation of assistance. Please welcome this year Hassan Balusi Memorial Lecturer, Otto Donald Rogers. I don't remember doing any of that. Well, I gave a lot of thought to what I might say on this occasion, and I really appreciate the opportunity given to me by the Association for Baha'i Studies. I decided to really make a commentary rather than what you might call a thesis, and I thought about two things that have really concerned me, and that is the mystic wayfarer and the grammarian, because I think that in each of us we have aspects of both of those conditions. On the one hand we want to enthusiastically and with great zeal embrace the unknown, wander in a kind of invisible path in the hopes of being confirmed in that service, and on the other hand we sometimes over calculate or hesitate and are afraid of going over the edge. So that's why I gave the presentation that title. I want to first of all make mention of my parents, Otto Victor and Mary Jane Rogers, because they were quite simple people by today's standards, and yet they made it possible for me to have an education in art and ultimately to embrace the teachings of Baha'u'llah. My father was a prairie wheat farmer in Western Canada, and he really related to the land as a poet would. He placed a loving hand on nature, and he longed for a beautiful return. My mother on the other hand labored to achieve order in the unpredictable environment of dry land farming. They had a good marriage, and so as a youth I came to understand that if you married poetry and order, you would be in very good hands. And so when I embraced my gift as an artist, it seemed quite logical because it consisted of striving for order and being poetically intoxicated. So that was my beginning, and naturally when I discovered the Baha'i teachings, again there was a confirmation of the majesty and beauty, the artistry along with everything else of Baha'u'llah's writings. His entire revelation and all of the teachings were so beautiful and of such aesthetic merit. And then of course there is the whole idea of order which appealed so much to my mind and my soul. So I came to understand that art was really necessary for the development of higher consciousness, and I'm not sure that it is as fully appreciated as it might be. We think of it as a decorative thing, but not necessarily as a means of education, as a means of making consciousness higher. So I am going to be, as I speak, I'm having a backdrop of eight of my most recent works. I don't intend to speak about them directly, but I thought it was very interesting to do it in this manner, and each set there will be altogether four sets, and they will remain on the screen before you for 15 minutes. Now this, if you don't like the works, may seem like a bit of a torture. However, for the artist we often lament the fact that people go to the gallery and look at the title of a work, and then glance at the work and walk on. And we may be losing our ability to appreciate the static form, the form that is still. And I'm very much moved by some of the statements in the writings of the Bob where he speaks about motion as one condition of the divine creative act, and stillness as another condition of the divine creative act. And then he says that in reality motion and stillness are one. And this is one of the great beauties of pictorial art, of static art, because it symbolizes and actually presents you with motion and stillness simultaneously. But you have to spend some time with it and take it in, and allow that motion to begin to enter your consciousness and to begin to appreciate the stillness that it has. I sometimes think in terms of the statement of Christ, the kind of peace that passes beyond all understanding. But the whole nature of pictorial art has to do with this creation of motion and stillness, and the peace and inner peace that elevates the soul and goes beyond all understanding. I am constantly amazed, and perhaps this is true of every discipline. I know it's certainly true of my discipline of painting, that the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh simply surrounds it and elevates it and pushes it forward into the future. It's full of the very same things that the revelation is full of. And this is what's so confirming, perhaps all professions are that way. So I had four thoughts or four elements that I wanted to just briefly touch on. These four elements I hope to develop into an essay that the Association may want to publish in its journal. Because I think it would be very good for people to understand that the artistic process is running parallel or is encompassed by Bahá'u'lláh's revelation. And indeed our plans are artistic in nature as conceived by the Universal House of Justice. They are really an attempt to raise consciousness to the level of activity which will produce an objectification of that consciousness, which is our core activities. So you could really say that we have a plan at work in the world to raise consciousness and objectify it, really to create what in the art world we call high art. It goes beyond that of course because this is the plan of God. But it's interesting to reflect on the similarities. So these four ideas or realities that I want to touch on, the first one is the tremendous gift that we have, that of the intellect. I don't know if we contemplate often enough how amazing. We couldn't be appreciative enough if we got down on our knees every day and thanked our loving Creator for providing us with the intellect. And the second thing is the opening or you could think of it in many ways an invitation. Really we're given an intellect but immediately after having received it we find that embedded in that intellect is a desire to move into the unknown, to embrace the unknown, to be attracted to the invisible, to the spiritual world. It's almost as if we are given the means and the capacity whereby to move through that space which is an unknown kind of space and takes a tremendous amount of courage just to go through the very first veil let alone all the other veils that intervene over the course of our life. So I want to speak a little bit about the spatial element which is of course again another primary concern of the pictorial artist because without space you have nothing. And the third concern is that of process. And I'm very much moved. I haven't in any way been able to digest it but I have read the new book by Nader Seid, understanding the writings of the Bob, The Gate of the Heart. And this is so moving because he has one entire section explaining the writings of the Bob that have to do with divine creative action and I want to make mention of that. So there's a wonderful process. Much of what the artist does has to do with the outcome of a particular process that the artist initiates in a given set of paintings. The fourth concern is that of form. In the art world they speak about significant form or high art. Significant form is the kind of form. It's kind of like an archetype. It has the capacity to generate all kinds of other works of art and it raises consciousness. It elevates the human soul and it is timeless. You look at it and you think this was done yesterday. You blink and you look and you think no this is something ancient. It's something that has always been. So those are my four concerns. I want to first touch on mind. I know that we all as Baha'is know these things but it doesn't hurt to come together on different occasions like this one and remind ourselves and experience it again together. Baha'u'llah says that this supreme emblem of God stands first in order of creation and first in rank. Taking precedence over all created things. Witness to it is the holy tradition before all else God created the mind. From the dawn of creation it was made to be revealed in the temple of man. Mind is what is essential in the human spirit but it's very interesting that even with this tremendous gift it does not accomplish very much unless it is married to the spirit of faith. Then it can move mountains but this tremendous gift of God can remain static without too much result or perhaps maybe some material result but in the end it doesn't fulfill its potential unless it is combined with the spirit of faith. Abdu'l-Baha said the first attribute of perfection is learning and the cultural attainments of the mind. This is why I really want to stress not that I necessarily need to prove it to you but the importance of aesthetics in the development of the mind. The study of what is beautiful we know this of course from the revelation itself because it is pure beauty from the dawn of creation it was made to be revealed in the temple of man. That is an amazing statement because it would appear from that a statement unless I'm misunderstanding it that mind was something created by God and then associated or deposited in the human temple so it has a reality as a creation of God apart from the human temple but it was created for the human temple and then associated with that human temple and then of course physically the brain was given to us as an instrument of that mind so long as we are existing on this plane and we know that this mind without the spirit of faith as I said cannot move mountains but with the spirit of faith it can and that is why the power of the creative word is so great because the creative word fires the imagination and quickens the mind I really think it restructures the mind I think that this wonderful prayer the tablet of that we heard so beautifully sung and recited before our session began it was so moving I really felt as if the very fiber of my being had been taken apart and reconstituted and of course that is what the creative word of God does it restructures the mind and that is why I think we are encouraged to commit it to memory because the mind is not a static thing I want to touch on that later it is evolving and changing its very architecture is capable they believe now of changing over time over our lifespan so we know that the house of justice in 1989 said to us the holy word has been extolled by the prophets of God as the medium of celestial power just think of that the medium of celestial power think of all of the things that humanity does to gain power when in our very hands we have the medium not just a physical power but we have the medium of celestial power the holy word of God and they went on in this letter to explain that it was vital of course to personal transformation and to the emergence of divine civilization a few years ago a couple of decades ago there was some experiments made on bird brains and it was very interesting because the first researcher that got involved did his research with the birds locked up in cages and he was trying to discover whether or not brain cells could be regenerated whether there was neurogenesis because it was thought that you were when you were born or when a creature was born there were a certain number of brain cells and that was it that you had to make do with those for the rest of your life that brain cells didn't regenerate and his research actually proved that brain cells didn't regenerate until another researcher came along and did his research with birds in a supportive environment a natural environment and discovered that not only did the the neurons regenerate that the rate at which they regenerated was quite amazing something like three percent of the total every day and that this made it possible for the birds to sing after a certain period of time the birds in the cages lose their capacity to sing because the brain cells are not being regenerated I think that this is a kind of an interesting metaphor if you like or an analogy a lot of the things I want to mention tonight are really kind of a in a in the sense of a metaphor they're not necessarily a complete dissertation or necessarily I don't have all of the scientific evidence but they stand as quite convincing metaphors so I was thinking of this in relationship to the creative word of God how that creates an environment in an atmosphere within which I would imagine they'll get around to proving actually that that environment has a profound effect on the brain mind you the brain is only an instrument for the mind but it's a very important one so long as we are on this plane of existence so we should be so appreciative and careful of this trust of the intellect in fact Bahá'u'lláh says oh ye that have minds to know raise up your supple in hands to the heaven of the one god and humble yourselves and be lowly before him and thank him for this supreme endowment and implore him to succor us until in this present age godlike impulses may radiate from the conscious of mankind conscience of mankind and this divinely kindled fire which has been entrusted to the human heart may never die away so beautiful that he connects the gift of intellect to the human heart and makes it one thing so I want to just mention briefly then the relationship of mind to art because sometimes people have felt that art is sometimes called self-expression even artists are sometimes excused for not thinking very clearly and because they are poets and they don't have to think it's not really a thing of the mind it's self-expression so one philosopher Hegel said to be truly beautiful a thing must be a product of the mind and the mind is spiritual therefore the art that is produced is spiritual and then he relates it to nature he says the beauty of nature becomes an aspect of mind a reflection of the beauty of mind and even goes so far as to say which I think we can understand that nature by itself is incomplete and imperfect in itself and the real substance of nature is contained in the mind and that's not too surprising for we who are Baha'is because Baha'u'llah said do you do you think that you are a puniform when within you the universe is unfolded so the the way in which our mind is actually constructed it would appear is along similar lines to the principles of nature itself and that's why we find nature so appealing it really it's the mind that is so attracted to nature because the mind is constituted in a manner of nature and in for art it's always very interesting because there's always this dilemma on the part of the public they expect the artist to mimic nature and one thinker put it very interestingly he said that art is man's nature and nature is God's art it's an interesting way of thinking about it the the nature of man is really expressed in other words the mind the intellect and in the Bob's writings apparently from this wonderful new book understanding the writings of the Bob the the Bob has made it very clear that the entire universe it seems was brought into existence to delight the human heart we talk a lot about the world order of Baha'u'llah but maybe we haven't understood the the effect that will occur in the future of the twin revelations because the Bob's revelation has to do with the heart being intoxicated and you can't have a world order unless the hearts of its citizens are intoxicated at least not a world order as envisioned by Baha'u'llah the hearts have to have zeal and they have to be intoxicated and the entire world of nature has been brought into existence apparently to delight the human heart also of course to inform the mind because as we investigate the natural phenomena that exists we also advance civilization and and the mind becomes more and more developed greater levels of consciousness are reached the other really interesting relationship is to prove that if you need proof that art is a spiritual enterprise of course everything we do is a spiritual enterprise of it's done in the right spirit but Abdu'l-Baha says that no phenomenal organism can be possessed of two forms at one time in other words if a tree is it being a tree it can only be a tree while it's being a tree but he says the reality of man the human spirit is simultaneously possessed of all forms and figures without being bereft of any of them it does not require transformation from one concept to another this is the the spiritual nature of ourselves and this is really interesting in relationship to painting because in a painting I will I will give the example of Mark Toby since some of you may know Mark Toby's paintings and on the other evening we saw some images projected when you look at a Mark Toby painting maybe the first thing you see is the texture of the painting and then you blink your eyes and you see light and then you look again and you see form thus the texture of a Mark Toby painting is not only composition but it is also a means of holding the light an effect in one part of the composition can appear as light while in another it may appear as a shape we perceive in the white writing form an illumination a tactical presence we experience pattern movement and space all at the same time executed with material convincingly rational but essentially spiritual this is the process of art and also by the way I think not to bring down what we're doing and try to say it's it's nothing but art but the activity that the Bahá'í world community is engaged in one could say the very same thing it's it's essentially spiritual in nature so it's multiple in its effect simultaneously a person can be embracing the faith and learning of its history and and acquiring zest for service in an instant because it's spiritual it's not just one thing you're not just acquiring history so these parts function in multiple ways they become signs spiritual discoveries every painting of Mark Toby is a kind of spiritual discovery as Bahá'u'lláh says we will surely show them signs in the world and within themselves and I love what Abdu'l-Muha speaks about the singer because this speaks of the mysterious connection between things the invisible connection because he says that really nothing leaves the singer and enters another person that is listening to the singer there is no actual transfer of anything material nothing comes forth from the singer which enters into the listener nevertheless a great spiritual effect is produced therefore surely so great a connection between beings must have spiritual effect and influence and then he says although by existing rules and actual science these connections cannot be discovered nevertheless their existence between all beings is certain and absolute all beings great or small are connected with one another by the perfect wisdom of God and effect and influence one another so there's this relationship relationships are something that fascinate me because a painting is simply a set of relationships and the amount of understanding or knowledge that comes about in fact the way the way in which we became conscious in the first place was because we started comparing things we saw that one thing looked this way or we experienced night and we experienced day and we took note of the difference between night and day and this raised our consciousness so comparisons relationships are very important to developing consciousness so the artist is constantly in within the pictorial space working out relationships in the hope that the space between these relationships will somehow become filled with meaning this is a fascinating thing the whole idea of space and what space actually is and they don't know yet the scientists don't know they used to call it ether and now sometimes they call it the dark force and many others there's all kinds of investigations going on perhaps one day they'll actually prove what Bahá'u'lláh said that it is an actual fact the love of God which is so fantastic an idea and so well so fantastic that it would be hard hard to believe it but he did say that if the love of God were to be withdrawn the physical universe would collapse and I think although Bahá'u'lláh's writings of course are tremendously aesthetically beautiful they are poetic they're also accurate they're not just metaphors they have accuracy and so this whole idea of space is to an artist fascinating but it's frightening also because we have to be courageous in order to enter into that relationship with space and I think that this is what was being talked about in the seven valleys uh when the mystic wayfarer when they arrived at this great sea which I envision as a vast space on almost undefined the mystic knower knew immediately that this space contained what it was that he desired and so he immediately entered into it without hesitation whereas the grammarian hesitated and of course we do that all the time I don't think it's an either or I think you know some of the time we're hesitating some of the time we are going over the edge and of course every time that we do go over the edge we're astounded at the results but nevertheless it always requires a great degree of courage and I think in order to move into that space we have to clear the deck so to speak and often we are so preoccupied so filled with concerns and anxieties and maybe even duties or plans maybe we can over plan at times that we are so filled up that we have used up all the space we can't enter the space because we have blocked we have blocked it out and yet on the other side of that veil tremendous victories are waiting for us whether they be a painting or whatever achievement within the faith that we want to carry out they exist I walk into the studio and I see an empty canvas recently I had some large canvases constructed for me five by seven feet which is 35 square feet of surface to keep alive and because the surface of a painting has to be sustained in time and in space and believe me it's not easy to keep it vibrating on the surface and to hold it together so that it doesn't fly off the edges like a good piece of music from an instrument that is well tuned it's absolutely precise it sings it vibrates just in the right fashion because all of the parts are connected and that tension they call it a significant form that tension is is held so the space and how we use it is very important but it's not easy to enter it because it a big blank canvas is rather frightening so this is why the mystic knower said the death of self is needed here not rhetoric be nothing then and walk upon the waves so you see it's possible and I think about this every time I go into the studio because I the way I work I have absolutely no idea what the painting is going to look like how it's going to evolve it isn't that I'm mindless because I bring my mind to that edge and then I allow the process to move me forward I run very hard to stay behind the process to keep up with it I don't try to control it because the process has a almost a mind of its own or it has a motion of its own which we intelligently have to follow and and enhance say then the great painter modern sometimes referred to as the father of modern painting at least in the western sense said that if I think I'm lost and he didn't mean to say that that we should abandon our rational intellect no but our rational intellect brings us to the point at which we can intelligently in a sense abandon it or at least set ourselves free from its limitations and allow the process to educate us and it does every time this is the amazing thing this is the brilliance not that anybody needs any proof the infallible brilliance of the universal house of justice because they have presented us with a plan that from every standpoint is totally amazing and if you were a very educated and experienced artist and you investigated the plan of the house of justice you would be completely satisfied that it meets all of the criteria of great works of art this is what's so amazing and confirming as to me as an artist now Cezanne I don't think anybody's paintings are more rational or more intellectual than Cezanne's but nevertheless he said if I think I'm lost and it's interesting because in Cezanne's paintings of mountains he was one of the first people to start leaving white gaps or blank spaces in between the various brushstrokes and clusters there was a lot of empty canvas and writers have said that it made it possible for the mind to move into those empty spaces and occupy them and at the same time as Cezanne was making these paintings the physicists were beginning to discover that space wasn't simply a curtain that hung behind everything that that everything was in space and space was in everything and their whole new concept of space that a physicist could could explain to you better than I but I was interested in this whole idea in relationship to some recent research on brain functions because again getting back to the neurons it was thought that neurons and by the way in case you don't know you have something like two billion of them in your brain imagine two billion neurons in every human brain and they used to think that they were all connected together in one string like an electrical wire and and then connected into a central location somewhere and then with the development of high-powered microscopes they were able to discover that each neuron was bounded by its own membrane every one of these two billion neurons are a separate entity bound by a membrane and so then they were really perplexed because they said to themselves well and how do they communicate because every memory takes place because of a chain because of a connection a changed because of a changed connection between two neurons or a cluster one cluster of neurons and another cluster of neurons every memory every thought requires a connection between the two so if they are if they're bound by a membrane how do they how do they connect so if neurons do not touch each other how do they form memories and exchange information there's fascinating stuff about memories by the way you don't really remember anything because by the time you get around to remembering it your brain has so completely changed it that it's not exactly what actually happened because your brain has changed in the meantime apparently that's why husbands and wives can never agree on on what certain experience happened and when it happened and who was there anyway what they what the scientists have come the conclusion is this is very nice for myself as an artist the conclusion is that that the vacant gaps between the cells is where the information the real information is taking place and they even put a word on it like scientists have a tendency to do synaptic clefs they call it and they say and this is wonderful these spaces are the secret sites of communication the space between things look at my paintings it's all the space between things the painting is about the space between things it's not about a landscape it's not about a tree it's about the space between things the way the dark on the one over on my right the black bar that's floating in the top the the little white island that's down on the bottom right hand corner the gray bar that's floating in the pink the green bar that's floating in the pink the relationship of the white to the black the gray to the pink the black to the brown the close to the opening the fast to the slow the stillness to the motion it's all of those things happening simultaneously but if you if you're not educated in art you miss it and therefore you miss an opportunity I think to elevate your consciousness because aesthetics is essential for the elevation of consciousness it's not an additional thing it's not what we call culture and it would be nice to have culture therefore let's buy a painting and hang it above our couch it's not I mean it is that it is that it is there's nothing wrong with that ornament ornamentation is is fine but it's more than that understanding and experiencing the process taking it into the consciousness is vital in terms of the advancement of society well it's always been that way hasn't it every culture every civilization elevated its people and advanced its civilization and imbued its spiritual principles by means of aesthetics by by one of the means and often one of the main means so the house has asked us for a new mind so I think we have to consider aesthetics as an aspect of building that new mind and do a lot more perhaps if we can then we have been doing so the other thing that they're discovering that I don't understand but I'm fascinated nevertheless that you know this conversation that's going on between the neurons across this space that oh I'm sorry I noticed that with some of the other speakers is it happening all the time or just okay that while this conversation is going on between the neurons actually obviously some time is passing and so they're getting into investigation of how time the passage of time and the conversation of these neurons actually begins to reconstitute the architecture of the brain so it's quite possible that in the future you know through all of the means that we will develop and science will develop and the memorization of the creative word and all of that it's unbelievable where we will go so what happens in a painting is that there are all of these elements and they seem to over time as you work on the painting they seem to become uh unfolded in oh sorry now I'm not speaking into it sorry about that it's um now I lost my train of thought you see it's that giving a talk by the way is very much like making a painting you have a relationship between the speaker and the audience and you have a space between and believe me as any of you know that have tried to give a presentation it's quite a frightening thing to cross the veil and engage the audience and still hold your own ground and transmit from one set of relationships to another set of relationships cross that space and create meaning it's not an easy thing so uh I'm wavering around here in front of the microphone so for the artist it's uh it's a physical and a spiritual progress process in the words of al-baghad this is a lovely thing it is said that moses in the wilderness heard the voice of god but that wilderness that holy land was his own heart it's not interesting that he would say that about moses that that wilderness was his own heart all of us when we attain this is abdupah still speaking all of us when we attain to a true spiritual condition can hear the voice of god speaking to us in that wilderness so I think that the artist and I would say the behind seeks to so order a composition that it can reflect to us the light of spirit now there's much more to be said about space but I want to mention now process and I think that we naturally have a fear of process because we have a sense of how majestic it is and we're a little bit afraid we might lose our identity and so we hold back we don't plunge ourselves into this unknown sea because it's a fearful plunge to take and we are quite precious about our identity as we maybe should be it probably is important to maintain our identity maybe we would lose our mental faculties if we didn't you know hang on in a certain way but the interesting thing is that it seems as though it's impossible to sacrifice you only think you're sacrificing so you never really do relinquish your sanity but nevertheless the fear is real but in nature you know we everybody loves waterfalls and I think because they really are a metaphor or a symbol for us we really see ourselves in the waterfall and we envy the waterfall because when the waterfall comes to the edge it goes over it it doesn't hold back fortunately it doesn't have free will I mean fortunately for it and fortunately for us we do have free will because consciousness is choice if you stand on the edge and you don't go over that's a choice and the architecture of your mind your consciousness is going to be determined your destiny is going to be determined by rather or not you make certain choices or also by the choices you do make so the waterfall just goes over the edge and it experiences a lot of turmoil it falls over the rocks it foams up it changes its form it's quite agitated but eventually it reaches an entirely new form whether it's a lake or whatever and it realizes I am the same I'm still the water I'm still water but I have a new form I've been transformed I haven't lost my identity and if we could it's a simple analogy but if we could use it it's still going to be hard I found that every person that I tried to interest in the faith in my life as a as a behind teacher that there was always this moment of standing on the edge and helping that person to take that jump and you had to take the jump with them so we in the process are really one one of these scientists said freeman dyson said the more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming isn't that lovely must have known that we were coming so you see if you relinquish a little bit of control and fear and go through the space you'll find that the process was waiting for you you and all of the things that you will need will be there I can guarantee it on the little bit of experience that I've had I can guarantee you that everything you need is there but the trouble is it has to be conscious because god doesn't want a bunch of zombies so you have to stand on the edge make a choice hold your breath and jump on give you another example which is a nice example there was some recent research done on a certain kind of butterfly that these butterflies migrated to a new region where they hadn't existed before and promptly began to be eaten and masked by the birds now in that same region there was another species of butterfly that the birds did not eat in fact they tasted apparently very sour and so the birds had learned over time not to eat them now this new flock of butterflies that had migrated if you can believe it and they don't know how they did it they changed their coloration completely to imitate the butterflies in that region who tasted which tasted sour right down to a little speck of black on the underside of the left wing that was so small you could barely see it you would need a magnifying glass to see it they mimicked the exact coloration of that other species of butterflies and the birds stopped eating them even though they didn't taste sour I think of ourselves in that way we have to be careful that we're not eating we better change our colors and and fit in with the guidance of the universe host of justice because we're migrating it's a new process we're migrating but the other result of this research which which I found even more fascinating was that evolution has the power to constantly make changes adjust to whatever the requirements of the moment are the process of evolution has built right into it the capability for endless variation variety and change however this is the beautiful thing that the secret template is inalterable it cannot be changed it's sacred it can never be destroyed so the the system or the evolutionary process that produced the butterflies in the first place they radically changed their coloration but they could not change the way in which species evolve or I mean the built-in process was a divine sacred template that is inalterable and I thought this is a marvelous way to explain progressive revelation because religion is a phenomenon is a process which is can undergo constant change and adaptation to the needs of the age but the sacred template is inalterable it's still the religion of god eternal in the in the past and eternal in the future as bahá'u'lláh said so there's there's lots of evidence even in the scientific world that we can can use to understand what we are about abduhuha says that all sciences knowledge enterprises come from the exercised intelligence of the rational soul that's why I used that sentence from abduhuha in an essay that I wrote in this book that was published on my paintings because because he says that the first condition of perception into an artist the whole idea of perception is very powerful because it means to to see and to be moved by and he says the first condition of perception in the world of nature is the rational soul to exercise the intelligence of the rational soul indicates the importance of engaging aesthetic awareness the principles of beauty do not stand apart from the intellect rather they are part of the very nature of intelligence there was a very interesting thing about light that I want to go back and and share with you you know one of the great architects of America Lewis Kahn spoke about how a beautiful form a beautiful building or any beautiful form doesn't really know that it's beautiful because it has no way of seeing its own beauty but the moment it invites light to enter in and he was talking about the importance of windows in architecture that the window brings light into the inner form of the building and the light envelops the form the form becomes aware so to speak of its own beauty and the light becomes aware of its own reality because it has a form within which to relate so even in physical relationships of light in terms of an architectural work you have this idea of illumination this wonderful duality of everything illumination in terms of the creative word of God is is the equivalent of the physical light being invited entered into the form and transforming the form and telling the form how beautiful it is or demonstrating how beautiful the form is look at how beautiful this individual was that stood before us and played his music and recited the tablet of augment I mean we saw the beauty of that soul we experienced the beauty of that soul because that soul had invited the light to enter it and the light was entering it and describing it and we were experiencing it that's art we experienced art you wouldn't have needed this presentation at all however I was invited so here I am now about process obviously it's difficult it's a combination of order preparation conscious knowledge it has to be imaginative that's where we fall down the beloved hand of the cause of God amal to Baharia on him she used to tell us so often the Baha'is don't lack sincerity they lack imagination if they could only imagine more we could accomplish so much more so the poetic aspect of every endeavor is absolutely crucial to success because without poetry there's no intoxication and we seem to like to be intoxicated or are we need to be we're designed to be intoxicated that's why imagine if God brought the entire universe into existence to to delight the human heart the extent to which the all-loving Creator has gone to delight us and to intoxicate us to give us zeal enthusiasm that's a tall order the universe is is rather large two billion suns in our galaxy which is considered one of the smaller galaxies two billion suns now I was inspired by Philippi I'm mispronouncing it petit a French tightrope walker who strung a guy wire between the twin towers in New York and walked across it if you can believe it and the security people rushed up to take him off the wire and he came within three feet of the edge of one of the buildings waved at them laughed turned around and ran back to the middle of the wire and this was very beautiful he's there's a documentary on it's called man on man on the wire it won the documentary award at the academy awards last year for best documentary man on man on the wire he said you know he was doing this as a symbolic gesture he wanted to connect people's hearts and so he thought that if he strung this wire and took this risk of life and and and really he had a hard time because there were so many times during the preparation that he doubted that he could do it he prepared for six years he saw a drawing in a magazine in the dentist's office of the twin towers and he determined right right in the dentist's office that he was going to string a wire and walk between them and for six years he studied he went to the building and visited a number of times while it was under construction sorry while it was under construction and he examined every aspect of the building and he tested the wind that he could expect it was very rigorous i kind of thought of it in the same way that that that the high world community tested the whole process of teaching and consolidation for all those years and we gathered all the information that was necessary and now we can walk the tightrope because we've we've we've prepared we're prepared we can do it now and he had to suspend his disbelief it's a famous philosophic statement the suspension of disbelief and he had doubts and you know what he said this is not a stunt it's a desire to carry my life through a difficult process by the means of art i was a bit of a radical but such a heart i want to connect the hearts of these two buildings i want to make a symbol while they arrested him he said the most frightening thing of the whole thing was being arrested and pushed down the stairs and then later on they gave him the key to new york and they honored him and he moved to to united to the united states so this is a little bit about process not very much but it touches on the subject now the idea of form because consciousness has to arrive at a point where it has some kind of substance some kind of reality that you can touch it's one thing to have the intellect it's another thing to have the courage to move through space and to adopt methodologies of process but all of those three factors have to conclude by building something that is going to influence civilization or that will be civilizing ourselves with this current plan the core activities are really blocks that build civilization when you think about it and when you think of the degree of deterioration in the present civilization and then you look at the core activities what are the elements of civilization obviously they're they're learning and we're better to learn than with the creative word of god they're learning they're with the children they're with the youth and they're with the adoration and devotion to god this is the very foundation of civilization and on upon this as we do a good job of this more and more capacities can be added to those core things but we have to do the core ones first i love neater syed his section of the book gate of the heart concerning the stages of divine creative action because he he talks about the treaties that the bob wrote on grammar and where he says that in the future children will be taught the spiritual foundation of grammar and uh he mentions the idea of verb and nouns and the preposition which is the connecting link between verb and noun and then he says that the verb is like our will and the noun is determination and the preposition is our destiny because it's the connection between will and determination without will and determination there's no connection there's no relationship so will and determination connect in that space and that space is our destiny this is the frightening thing if you don't move into that space you don't realize your destiny i remember one night in the pilgrim house hooper dunbar saying that if if you don't make your contribution to the bahay cause uh that contribution will never be made because no one else can make your particular uh contribution because your contribution is totally unique it's a result of your will your determination it's your destiny so your destiny is your contribution the faith will go on and make tremendous progress but it will forever be deprived of your contribution and that's a sobering thought for human beings true destiny is the agreement of their own will with the divine will that's the struggle it's even a struggle believe it or not at the level of an artist because you have your own struggle you have your own idea you kind of want to will the painting some of my paintings i try to force to become a good painting i think about them i work on them i try to will them into existence just with will alone it doesn't work it doesn't work because there's no harmony with the divine will i'm not suggesting that my paintings are a result of the direct intervention of the divine will i'm not so foolish to make that claim but but the writings do say that the celestial concourse that that the holy spirit works of art come into existence because of the working of the holy spirit so i'm not too far off i just don't claim direct uh connection to the divine will but the celestial concourse is there so for human beings in anything you do your profession or in the cause for human beings destiny is the agreement of your own will with the divine will the realm of the heart as the throne of god and the agreement of the individual with the divine will and as bahá'u'lláh says all that you potentially possess however is manifested only as a result of your own volition your own acts testify to this truth now just another word about objectivity of consciousness or objectifying consciousness i love what the philosopher chardon mentions because it seems to me that he was describing what the high world community has now engaged in although it's kind of fancy words i mean it's a bit complicated or seemingly so but actually it isn't and this is out of context a bit but i think you'll get the idea very easily he says from our external experimental point of view reflection is there's the word reflection reflection is as the word indicates the power acquired by the consciousness to turn in upon itself to take possession of itself as an object this is what fascinated me as an artist because really every work of art is the objectification of consciousness and the more work you do the more works of art you look at the more greatness you expose yourself to then the higher level of consciousness but that consciousness will not remain with you it it dissipates very quickly unless you make it concrete you have to do something with it that's why in our pleasant plan it's so beautifully the activities are built right into the process it's not it's not a pass of learning you have to act i could go into the studio every day and look at stare at my canvas and the results would be nil i have to act i have to take my reflection my consciousness and act it out if i don't act it out there's no object then the beautiful thing is that when the object arrives it becomes a form by which we can contemplate and even gain further consciousness i look at my own art it's not an egotistical thing but i enjoy it i learn from it because it it has taken place as part of a process that's larger than i am larger than than than i'm able to think at a given moment and so it educates me it's back and forth back and forth and this is exactly what our plan is the reflection i think of the clusters really as a unit of consciousness as a work of art as a unit of consciousness made up of all kinds of of points of relationships moving in the direction of higher consciousness of a greater work of art i don't want to compare the face to art but it's moving towards significant form let's put it that way a cluster has to become a significant form which has a consciousness which becomes like a mirror which attracts other people this is what it is people ask about paintings what why do i like a certain painting well you like it because you see yourself in it if a painting is good enough it reflects universal principles and when it reflects universal principles and you look at it because you are constituted by god with those universal principles it's like looking in a mirror and you say i really like this what are you liking you're liking your own nature and if these clusters became units of consciousness that raised to the level of art raised to the level of significant form the people would see themselves reflected in it they would love it because the universal principles that it contained are their principles that's how they're made and so they would be naturally gravitated attracted to it so he i just want to don't want to completely deviate from his statement because he goes on and he says that i think this is very interesting by this individualization of himself in the depths of himself well this is a little bit which this is the part that i want to which heretofore had been spread out and divided over a diverse circle of perceptions and activities it's kind of like we were in our stage of developing of acquiring the capacity for the present plan we were involved in a diffuse circle of perceptions and activities isn't that true for many decades and when we the house of justice allowed us to do that in order to acquire consciousness about process so we would understand it so this is what are you seeing that this business of being in a diffuse circle of perceptions and activities was constituted for the first time as a center in the form of a point at which all of the impressions and experiences knit themselves together and fuse into a unity that's conscious of its own organization doesn't that ring a bell and it says now the consequences of such a transformation are immense visible as clearly in nature as in any of the facts recorded of physics or astronomy uh i replaced his word being with community the community who which is the object of its own reflection in consequence of its very doubling back upon itself becomes in a flash able to raise itself into a new sphere it's it's a very beautiful analogy of what we're engaged in now i want to conclude by uh asking you to to think about the plan as having this great beauty and and think of it as all of you being artists because we all are artists i didn't give the title to this presentation the artist and the grammarian by by making the assumption that that i as an artist was somehow superior the the artist that i was speaking about is the artist that we all are the one that is standing at the edge of that space fearful of going over the edge fearful of losing our identity and and not relying to the extent necessary on the spirit of faith because as p.r.e. read i i thought about this sentence very much and within the within the creative act lies the expectation of being inspired lies the expectation of being assisted it's guaranteed well there are countless writings that guarantee it so we don't need any further evidence of that but i wanted to just make mention one thing because i was really struck by the degree to which uh uh president obama engaged billions uh through cyberspace whether this will result to anything or not it's it's doubtful on the long run because they will get tired and maybe drop out in fact an article today in the new york times says in fact that's exactly happening unfortunately that his network of youth that were responding are not responding to the same extent but it is amazing amazing to think that millions of souls responded on the simple basis of three words hope and change and yes we can i mean that is not exactly the creative word of god think no but i mean think about the the degree to which people came on board and so what i am very concerned about and it's not my medium because i'm a hopeless the old fashion artist but i'm really hoping that the youth would take up this challenge of engaging in spiritual conversations in cyberspace but spiritual conversations that are elevated that are aesthetically meritorious they have to have excellence and they can combine words music and images and i i was reminded of a statement in uh some answered questions of ablabaha he says that every semblance every shape that perishes today in the treasure house of time is safely start away when the world revolved to its former place out of the invisible he draw forth its face and i was thinking of in the medieval times christianity was spread rapidly by means of the woodcut most people were illiterate a lot of people apparently today are illiterate but at that time the majority of people were illiterate and so the woodcut could be easily multiplied you know they had simple printing presses and they multiplied woodcut by the thousands upon thousands that had images and words from the from the bible text from the sayings of christ and this was how one of the major means by which christianity was spread later on this form evolved to a much higher form of illuminated manuscripts and i had the thought that this maybe relates to what ablabaha is saying or we could it wouldn't matter even if we made a mistake and thought of it as we applying to that and acted on it we couldn't go wrong because uh he says that out of the invisible they're stored and can come back so illuminated manuscripts can come back and be a tremendous force in spreading uh the revelation of bahá'u'lláh and i asked uh some people that are very much up in uh cyber network websites and so on and i got a quite a long list and i looked up all of these websites and i wasn't overly impressed i'm sorry to say because sometimes the artist would say here i am i'm an artist i'm sitting in my studio and these are my paintings and i i love bahá'u'lláh so i make these paintings but they weren't very good paintings and also the site itself was not elegant we had a speaker this morning who said that the necessity for elegance in everything that we do and there wasn't this beautiful combination i mean even this tablet of Ahmed that we heard today set to music um it seems to me that that countless websites could be developed by really uh in the use of the intellect that the young people have and the skills the artistic skills and uh millions of people could be reached that way now there's one young man in new zealand that he has what he calls a small man project and it's quite clever he's a lovely bahá'u'lláh very deepened and he's a trained artist and he makes little sculptures of men they're only about as high as a thimble two inches high and they're all red they're cast in plastic and he makes thousands of them and they and they're grouped in three or four uh people standing and they're holding a banner and the banner says look into the persecution of the Bahá'u'lláhs in iran and then a website is given and he places these on park benches and on restaurant stools it's not a public nuisance because they're so small they're no bigger than if you would just you know throw aside your your uh a plastic spoon or something they don't really that's not really a public nuisance and then people sit down on the park bench and they see these three little red men and they read the banner and they go and look up the website he said seven thousand hits that's a lot now that was the only one that i found that i thought was and i know there are many others i know that there is um a young woman who has who has developed um games that employ spiritual principles and she has had a lot of hits they're they're wonderful and eventually in time this would have to be monitored and looked and we would have to come together and conferences and probably and share them and uh you know people would need guidance and and there's going to be mistakes made but the house of justice said we shouldn't fear uh making mistakes and being experimental so that this is a plea that i wanted to make to take this opportunity to make especially to the young because we have been called upon by the universal host of justice to have spiritual conversations and what better way to have them when you can bring the whole force of the creative word and aesthetic excellence to bear on them so i want to conclude with this passage which is a favorite of mine however we do it bahá'u'lláh says that which he hath reserved for himself are the cities of men's hearts and of these the loved ones of him who is the sovereign truth are in this day as the keys please god they may one and all be enabled to unlock through the power of the most great name the gates of these cities thank you