 Thank you so much, friends. This is the first Baha'i event I've attended since leaving Haifa and the House of Justice, the work of the House of Justice, and it is a thrill to me to see you all. So many of you, we've crossed paths at some moment in the development of the World Center or in travels prior to that, and it's a great joy to see you here. It's much greater joy to see you than to address you, but we'll see if we can match the joys together. I'm so glad that the opening remarks covered a bit of the overview of the conference and where it's going because I felt I should probably have to address some of that, but it's been done. And now we come to the question of the dual character of human reality, which is the theme that we're taking up this evening. As mentioned in the program, we're considering various aspects of, related to the understanding of the essential nature of humankind, something about the dual character, again, of human nature versus the higher human nature versus the lower animal realm, and some of the implications of a revelation itself with respect to human transformation. And then a bit about how this true nature will lead to the development of a new race of men. Friends, I think we've all seen in the writings that God has created man in his image and likeness. And when asked about this, the Baha'i writings reflect on the fact that it's the image of the qualities and attributes of God rather than any form. We know we think of God in entirely transcendent of any physical image or form. So the image and likeness of God in man is a question of the reflection of the qualities that we associate with God. And those in the case of the Baha'i faith are those that we see mirrored in the manifestation of God. He becomes the model for understanding the image and likeness of God. And we're told in the Baha'i writings that the knowledge of the manifestation of God is the knowledge of God accessible to human creatures. The soul, mind and spirit are referred to in a number of passages in the Baha'i writings and sometimes lead to some ambiguities or apparent contradictions. But by examining them carefully, I think you'll see that everything is resolved. In a letter Shoghi Effendi says there are not two realities in man. There's only one. But that reality either addresses itself to its lower nature or to its higher nature. In that sense, Abduba talks about two aspects in human character. That which relates to the animal side of our being and that which relates to the potentially relates to the spiritual side of our lives. And coming to become that reflection of the names and attributes of God. Abduba and the centenary of his travels to the West is coming up now for a three-year period. Abduba, I think you'll find if you look at his talks and examine the words that he addressed, particularly to gatherings of the believers, of the friends, of those close to the faith, continually dwelt on this theme of the dual aspect of human nature. And any rethinking of it at this time particularly, I think Abduba looking down on us from his retreats on high would be pleased that we're rehearsing his words and thinking about the impressions that he wanted to leave on us and how much he appealed to the friends to strive in their efforts to awaken their spiritual nature and to become what God has willed that they become. This was mentioned in the beginning here that we want to attain to that vision, to that state that God has intended for human creatures and that Bahá'u'lláh calls us to. Among in his talks, among his talks, I wanted to quote a few short passages here to give us again a feeling for how much Abduba addressed this. He didn't address this so much to the general public in his talk to the public. He talked about the principles of the faith. He talked about progressive revelation, the concept of unity. But when he was alone with the Bahá'u'lláhs, he went right to our own individual realities and what God wanted of us and how he expected us to strive and make efforts. And it's all related to this attempt to constantly focus ourselves on what it is that Bahá'u'lláh wants of us. The quotes that I'm reading are from talks and also from some answered questions and one of the tablets of Abduba, I said, man is endowed with two natures. One tenders toward moral sublimity and intellectual perfection while the other turneth to bestial degradation and carnal imperfections. Know that there are two natures in man, the physical nature and the spiritual nature. The spiritual nature is born from the bounty of the Holy Spirit. The first is the source of all imperfection. The second is the source of all perfection. And again, man has two aspects, the physical which is subject to nature and the merciful or divine which is connected with God. If the physical or natural disposition in him should overcome the heavenly and merciful, he is then most degraded, the most degraded of animal beings. And if the divine and spiritual should triumph over the human and natural, he is verily an angel. And again in the same sense, man possesses two kinds of susceptibilities, the natural emotions which are like dust upon the mirror and spiritual susceptibilities which are merciful and heavenly characteristics. The natural emotions are blameworthy and are like rust which deprives the heart of the boundaries of God. But sincerity, justice, humility, severance, and love for the believers of God will purify the mirror and make it radiant with reflected rays from the Son of Truth. There's one thing we have to dwell much on the lower nature. What can we say about that? We're all quite familiar with the lower nature of man and with the problems that it presents to us, the challenges that it constantly addresses to us. It's very subtle. It oftentimes employs the power of reason. We find we're living our lives and we're trying to enjoy ourselves. And these natural emotions of the animal nature that attract us and please us to some degree are reinforced by the power of reason. We look at the situation we're in. We see the temptations around us. And because reason acts in accordance with the will of the individual, with the will which is so intimately connected with one's affections that then reason supports those affections. And it says, well, I mean, I've done some of these things before. I haven't seen any punishment. I don't know. I mean, we're are human after all, aren't we? And I mean, we have to have some pleasure out of life too, don't we? And this reasoning goes on in our head and distracts us from the commands of God, if you will, from the admonitions that are so central to the faith about our human nature. This theme is a very challenging one that we have here in this conference, rethinking human nature. You can see in the light of what Abdu'l-Bahá says that it depends on the rust being removed from the face of the heart. And that rust is in natural emotions, some of which are quite acceptable, but have to be balanced with the spiritual. And when the sincerity and efforts to cleanse the heart, to turn to the nature of the light that comes to us, that inner light which comes to us in prayer and meditation and service, when that assists in cleansing, he says cleanse the mirror of the heart with the burnish of the spirit, Bahá'u'lláh says. When that takes place, then this effulgence of the divine world begins to manifest itself. And he has promised us what joys, what confirmations, what insights, what divine discoveries, how the soul with that vision will penetrate the realities of all created things. In one passage, most interesting passage from the Bob which I'll read you shortly, he seems to imply that our life is lived, when we live it just at this animal level, is lived without motion of the kind that he describes in this tablet. So that we are a bit oftentimes bored by our circumstances or by our surroundings. We look for distractions in the world. We tend towards the glamour and tinsel of the fabrication around us that is trying to substitute the glories and splendors of the spiritual realm that should come and reside in the heart. It's trying to replace that with something that can pacify us, so to speak. Get us through this life and who knows into what life after death is that's the way we live our lives. The Bob says to elevate, that we should elevate phenomena to this station of the heart, that is to say uncover the signs of divine revelation that are enshrined within the reality of those phenomena. And to connect that which is motionless to its true inner reality of vibrant spiritual motion. Its transformation is accomplished within the consciousness of the interpreter. That's quite a challenging statement in the sense that as we look at life, as we rehearse the verses of God, as we draw power and inspiration from those verses, as they charge us with the gifts of the kingdom, enable us to steady our vision, to gradually cut ourselves off from these other distractions, make ourselves a new people, make ourselves, Baha'i is in the sense as it's defined by Abdul Baha'i in the teachings. As we do that, what has seemed motionless around us comes alive with a new vitality. This penetrating the realities, he talks about penetrating the realities of all things. Though the beauty that God has placed in it, he has created everything he says Abdul Baha says in the tablet as words and letters. All the material existence is also a creation of God. It's a divine creation. It is meant to educate us. It is meant to constantly fill us with the wonders that God is filled it with. But we have to awaken to those. This is the great challenge of Baha'i life and it's a lifelong challenge. It's focusing, it is orienting the mirror of our inner being to the reality of the manifestation of God, to Baha'u'llah. Turning to him in such a way that those lights diffuse the dust, the distraction that we have in this life and our daily existence becomes endowed with that special gift that he gives. Now that gives us great joy and that joy attracts the people we want to teach the faith to who say, oh, how many of us have heard that from time to time when we do get in a good attracted mode that people ask us, you're so different. You're always so happy. What is it that makes you happy? That's a wonderful introduction to by teaching, to teaching the faith. It gives you an opportunity to say why. So life takes on a new vitality. This is described in the faith and the writings as the spirit of faith. You know when Abdu'l-Baha talks about the different conditions of creation, the vegetable and the animal and the mineral, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, the human, uninspired human and then the human inspired with the spirit of faith. He says that we have this objective knowledge by observing the world of creation as science shows us. We can observe and we can register and we can experience and we are able to understand things about the objective world about us. But he says with regard to the spiritual world, it requires the bounty of the kingdom. And in one passage, he says it is the breath of the Holy Spirit breathed into the soul of man, into the spirit of man, which gives him this spirit of faith. That's a definition of the spirit of faith. How do we attain to an ever greater degree of the spirit? And how will that affect our lives? And what are the implications of that? A conference like this may have moments where we will investigate that. How will it impact our family situation? How will we find time to recite the verses of God morning and evening and also fulfill the requirements of study that the writings call upon us? It seems to me is no easy struggle. I have had the benefit of living in Haifa and serving the faith full time. But even then the administrative tasks of the House of Justice are such that finally you have to fight and struggle for time to meditate and to pray and to think about the writings. Service attracts teaching the faith, attracts the images of the kingdom to the mirror of the heart. The manifestation of God, we're told, is a spirit in one of his identifications, is the universal mind. And it shines out upon all of us. And we all can benefit from this. But if the mirror of our inner being is not turned towards it, we don't benefit. We don't reflect it. And then also you have the question of what's ever on the surface of the mirror. That's another thing we're all learning about. Bahá'u'lláh and some of the tablets related to the situation in Adrianople, the Babis were saying that Mirza Yahya was the mirror of eternity. And how is it possible that the mirror of eternity would not be the mirror of eternity anymore? Bahá'u'lláh says it's very easy. It's a mirror. If you turn it away from the light, there's nothing left. In fact, all of the grace which is ever attributed to any of us, the qualities and the high nature of our being, if the mirror of our being turns away from that slightly, the light is gone. And it's the whole nature of our spiritual being, so to speak, that requires returning, steadfastness, firmness. And in fact, ultimately, I think, friends, that firmness in the covenant relates very closely to this. There's that greater covenant to obey God's teachings. All of it's for our benefit. The whole purpose of this life, he tells us, is a womb experience so that we can enter the next world with those qualities that we need in order to function with full joy and the good pleasure of God when we go there. In one passage, the Master says that the soul is the son of the human body. We have the physical being and we have this other entity's spiritual reality in us, which is called the soul. And he said, the soul maintains the body. And we need, I think, from the point of view of what were the sciences that are around us, certain things that we're told, we tend to think of the world as something separate from spiritual reality. Whereas the creation itself, the material creation itself, we're told in the writings, is a form of spiritual energy. It is the world also. It is maintained by God. It's part of the emanation that includes human realities and the higher spiritual realms as well. All of it is maintained. So when we look into the world, we see that the soul is the son of the human body. That is, it maintains its functions. There's so many things that we don't do. How do we salivate? Why do we have tears? How does our blood circulate? All these things that are done for us. One of the miracles of how can you believe, do you believe in God? How can you not believe in God when you're really not responsible for your own physical well-being? It's, you have certain tasks that you have to perform in relation to it. But there's so much of a maintenance program that's simply coming because your soul is there sustaining your body. Now in so many cases, Abdu'l-Baha will take one example and pass it to a higher realm. He says then that the divine spirit is the son of the soul. The soul maintains and illuminates the body and the divine spirit of the manifestation of God is needed for the soul itself to be illumined and maintained. This is what we're talking about, turning constantly to the Kingdom, asking the confirmations of God. There is one message we're looking at this morning, studying some of it. I noticed there's a passage in there where we've included a phrase, sorry I say we, I was involved in the drafting of it at some stage, but of course it goes completely independent of its members after it's finished, about soaring in the heaven of his knowledge. And this is a very suggestive phrase, what is soaring in his knowledge, if not this awareness of the bounty in the soul? And you recall that Bahá'u'lláh in the Yogan says, he's quoting past traditions, he says, knowledge is a light that God casts in the heart of whomever he wills. We're talking here about a very different kind of knowledge, what he calls divine knowledge, an endowment that comes through the revelation. It doesn't come through anything else. It doesn't come through observation of nature, but the observation of nature in the case of a believer in God reinforces it. You recall a passage where Abdu'l-Bahá talks about the two books, the book of creation and the book of revelation. Now God is the author of both these books, each of them have letters and words and verses, and Abdu'l-Bahá says the two correspond with each other exactly. We may not perceive that, we should arise to a level of comprehension where we begin to see the interaction of those. But the more he said, you study the book of revelation, the more you will penetrate the book of creation. And the more you study the book of creation, the more you will understand the meaning of the verses as well. So there's this interaction. God has not given us a physical body with full of temptations and difficulties to torment us or to make life difficult. I think it comes back to a very profound physical symbolic meaning where Abdu'l-Bahá tells us that if there were no illness, we would not be able to conceive of health. If there were no darkness, we couldn't comprehend the meaning of light. So he's allowed for this first stage of our existence, this womb existence, if you will, preparing us for the other world to have this dichotomy and for us to observe and for us to strive above those forces, those lower forces of life and come into a vision that will enable us to be inspired in all the things that the House of Justice and the Divine Plan call us to. I think you'll recall from the tablets of the Divine Plan, Abdu'l-Bahá asks us to become incarnate light. He doesn't ask us to go and pass out pamphlets. He says become incarnate light. It's such a challenge. And he talks about some of the teachers who were luminous from head to foot. He also said in one place that if one tree in a forest is a blaze, how can the others resist? You see how the striving of ourselves to fulfill the higher nature in our being, challenging as it is, is not just self-rewarding. It has a contribution to the betterment of mankind. It is part of our service to mankind to develop ourselves. If you think about it, we're told that we are all the image of likeness of God. We all reflect all the names and attributes of God. One of the names and attributes of God is the One, the unique. Now, how do we reflect all the names of God and at the same time become unique? I think the solution to that is that there is a distribution of the spectrum, if you will, in that light which you, which endows you and which you reflect into the world. And there's a hint about this in one of the tablets Abdu'l-Bahar wrote when he was a teenager about the mysteries of the hidden treasure. He was asked, he was commenting there why the great wise men described the knowledge of God in different ways. And he said, it has to do with the dominant name of God in their character so that perhaps you'll remember the growing pains of the spiritual assembly that Ria Khanum gave us decades ago in which there's Mr. Justice and Mrs. Mercy and so on. Anybody that sat on an assembly knows how that dominant character in the person, in the different members comes back into play no matter what the issue is, they tend to see it from that point of view. And somehow the combination of these nine points of view in a spiritual assembly satisfied God that the basis is there for sound decisions and guidance to flow through it. Now, I recall also in a tablet of Bahá'u'lláh about the next world, he said that you will wish to witness the reality of every sanctified soul. It's one of the things that he says when we go to the next world, we will, that's one of the activities that we'll have. And why is this? And if we think of it here in our own lives, what a joy it is to see a Bahá'u'lláh that's illumined. How it attracts us, how it inspires us. That soul that's detached themselves, is engaged in the service of God, is attracted to that, reflects those names and attributes of God that are the spectrum of his own inner being in a unique way. In a way that no one has ever reflected, in a way that no one will ever reflect again, because of the maintenance of this name, the one, the unique in each of us. That means that if you don't make the effort to reflect that and to return this contribution that God has given you into the world of being, that you will deprive the world order of Bahá'u'lláh from that contribution forever. And you also deprive yourself of the kind of eternal life that you might like to have. The same tablet of Bahá'u'lláh, he says that we will be ushered into the presence of the prophets and messengers of God when we go to the next world. And they will ask us what we've suffered in the path of God. So if you haven't suffered very much, it's going to be a short interview. But if your whole life has been filled with sacrifice for the faith, you'll have a lot to talk about and enjoy the company of the messengers of God. Imagination is another instrument with which we've been endowed. It can be wonderful or it can be terribly dangerous because of the experiences that we've had. The imagination and memory stores these things and brings them up. It's natural that we have temptations as human beings because with the animal nature constantly prompts us with it. The point is to ignore those temptations when they come. Ignore those impulses that come to us. And in the process one has to guard the imagination, doesn't get carried away. You know, it looks at something attractive and it adds this and it detracts that. And you know the story, you know the history. It's quite incredible that all of this comes centers back on a tradition from Islam, which says that he has known God who has known his own self. Mba Allah repeats this and it's quoted in one of the first tablets in the Gleanings, that actually knowing ourself is the most we know of God because we see him reflected in our reality, not at his level, not at the level of the manifestation. And certainly even the manifestations tell us that they don't see into the level of the essence of God. You know how many 10,000 prophets as great as Moses stand struck by the interdiction, thou shalt never behold me, quoted in the Dispensation of Baal. So when we say that we need to know God, we need to understand that this relates to drawing closer to the manifestation of God. And the source of drawing close to the manifestation of God in our time is the revealed word as it's recorded. There was a time when beings enjoyed the living word of God, the wakeful, the speaking word of God when the manifestation was on earth and they could approach him, they could see him. Many who saw him didn't see the deeper spiritual things. Some of the prayers revealed this, you know, those who were in his presence and yet didn't attain to it. This approaching God through his verses is, that is our main means of access if you will, at the present, after the passing of the manifestation. And something that occurred to me in the Holy Land, visiting the spots where Bahá'u'lláh revealed the tablets and thinking about that, again it gives you an idea how the material world is so closely related to the spiritual. For instance, the manifestation of God is inspired with the spirit which is his own inner reality and he reveals the verses of God, he thinks of them and he chants them and that spiritual reality becomes a physical sound and that sound then becomes scratchings on a paper. All right, could be beautiful, calligraphy, but it's still, it's markings, it's physical markings on a paper and those markings are later published in a book and your precious eyes come upon those words which are scratchings on a paper and you take them into your spirit and they come alive with the energy that's inherent in those words at the time they're revealed. I think it's in Genesis it says that God doesn't reveal anything that returns to him void. Every word that the manifestation reveals is accompanied by an energy for its accomplishment but we have to access that accomplishment, we have to access that energy in order for it to fulfill itself in us and so again we're called upon to study carefully, to ponder, to think about, to read carefully these divine verses. They are the means of transforming this latent higher nature in our reality which is our challenge to bring to life. In another place, Abdu'l-Bohad says that until love takes possession of the heart no other divine bounty can be revealed in it. This is the great religion of love, of all the things that are central. This love of God which then is transformed, the love of Bahá'u'lláh which is then transformed in our actions and service to others. It's a love for all humanity. Abdu'l-Bohad in his again in his talks in the west he said that this love has to be like the light of the sun. The light of the sun is cast upon the world, it doesn't choose to like illumine the house of the righteous and the good ones only. It illumines everything, it illumines the house of the wicked ones, it illumines the house of the poor. It doesn't judge in other words, it casts its light, its nature is to shine and he said that our love for mankind has to be like that. It transcends the shortcomings and the poverty of human nature that we may behold around us and somehow in our relationship with souls once we have the spark of the spirit in us we are able to awaken perhaps just for a moment the flash in their in their being of something we're dressing that they've never known they had and this is one of the things that starts the development of spiritual if you will spiritual in tranquility almost. This Abdu'l-Bohad describing the stages of this of the soul draws from Baha'u'llah's inspiration and also from that of the Koran he starts off with the soul the first stage is the so wedded to evil just completely happy with its evil if you will not really happy but settled on it and has no idea that it's missing something but then he talks about how from the generosity of God the bounty of God there's flashes come in the soul and this unrelieved darkness is suddenly sparked and illumined and then it goes away again and then the soul is perplexed it was so confirmed in darkness and now there's something else and then it begins to make efforts and it reaches the second stage which is this concupescent soul that you see mentioned in tablets quoted in the gleams and other places the concupescent soul the soul the self-accusing soul the soul begins to accuse itself of not being what it should be and you can see the relationship of that and the subjects that we're discussing here how the master calls us to the bounty of God to the mercy of God how he calls us to all these spiritual qualities which seem somehow beyond us in our normal existence how we need to accuse ourselves of not having them how we need to be concerned about that there's there's one talk that Ahmad Saurab took it down but he was faithful at the time he took it down it says that that the love of God depends on the hatred of self we should detest our lower nature we really have to flee from it we have to realize what a viper it is in the older traditions they said that there was a man walking in the in the wilderness it was cold and he came upon upon a snake was coiled and frozen and he felt sorry for it so he put it in the in the bag that was under his donkey's nose and then the donkey gradually breathed on it until the snake came alive and bit the donkey and killed the donkey okay so these little praises that we take into our lives you know and the little joys that we take maybe from the praise of those around us it can be very dangerous in the end we have to be constantly alert in defense of our spiritual nature it occurred to me I see you all stand up at the beginning of the talk very nice gesture towards the house of justice I mean when I can't take that personally when I was a new Baha'i Baha'i youth in Los Angeles one of the friends took me to meet an old believer from the time of Abdul Baha'u his name was Willard Hatch Willard Hatch by that time was he must have been in his late 80s or 90s he was in a wheelchair confined to a wheelchair but the man was luminous he was translucent and he told the stories of the master's visit to San Francisco and Oakland where he was present and so on and then he took he talked a little bit about those accompanying Abdul Baha'u and some of the difficulties related that and he said one day Abdul Baha'u said clearly and this has since been printed and but the way he said it was such force he used to repeat it to me each time I went there I had a special message for me he says Abdul Baha'u said if it were not for the favors of the blessed perfection no one would have given us any importance some souls in their utter haughtiness forget this fact and then they fall from their high pedestals and great is the noise thereof well I hope none of us fall and if you do I hope it's a soft fall but now this is all bringing us a bit to uh I wanted to speak a bit about the effect of the verses on the diversity of souls that all of us represent uh first of all in Nader Zahidi's book now on the gate of the heart he quotes there a passage about the the nature of the verses in this case happens to be the verses of the Quran he talks about how the verses have hidden meanings not only the verses he said but the individual words of the verses and actually the individual letters of the verses and how the manifestation of God is able to elaborate on the meaning of all these various aspects of the word of God and then he says no doubt that these hidden meanings have secret meanings behind them and know that these meanings are infinite in their range this is like oceans of oceans of water torrents of water pouring out of every one of those points of divine revelation if we had the sensitivity to receive them we would see it and then he says those secret meanings have esoteric meanings and then those esoteric meanings have mysterious meanings behind them and then he says and so on infinite range of meanings some of these meanings he said human souls have never seen you may be the first ones to tap meanings in the divine verses that because of the particular nature unique nature of your being you're attracted to and they are attracted to you then he talks about we talked about the stages of the soul the soul that's wedded to evil and then the the soul questions itself the second stage then the third stage is the inspired soul abdupah refers to this inspired soul he says is the soul that's inspired at that stage with the difference between good and evil the earlier stages there's some confusion you've seen in some of the prayers it says i know not that which benefits me or harms me but this is this soul at that stage becomes inspired by god with how to act how to proceed and he puts his hand on something it's too hot he removes his hand when he moves in this direction and he feels uncomfort he says something unsuitable and feels bad about it understands that's not correct and then from there abdupah goes on to explain you know stages way beyond our comprehension there they match the seven valleys and and more until you have the soul of the kingdom way up there after five or six other stages the stage of perfection the stages certitude the assured soul the perfect soul finally you get to the soul of the kingdom when you see this tablet unfold itself you realize how far it is you know we all say to each other well i'll see you in the kingdom yeah which kingdom we're maybe so you have the souls moving up the the spiritual ladder so to speak and at each level we have a different vision so much so that you may read the hidden word hidden word you'll read this week and then you'll read it again next week and you get new insights and understanding because of how you your position has changed it's as if also as if you were ascending vertically and at each point in this verticality of diverse spiritual achievements you see out horizontally forever and those meanings of the word of god at that level come into your being i mentioned this because i think it's important it really removes totally the possibility of us arguing with each other about the meaning of the verses because all of the different insights that we gain are related to our own position with relation to the to the faith to what what's the depth of our purity what's the depth of our our vision and that like is attracted to like so obviously we're attracted to those who are at a similar stage of development we enjoy talking with them and they share things with us and we get excited and it produces what abdupah calls light upon light now friends i think this brings us towards the last stage of this or there's one other subject that i wanted to mention to you in relation to the inspiration that comes to us this is in a letter written on behalf of shogi effendi way back in in early days of his ministry someone has asked about dreams you know i had a dream can i trust the dreams is there inspiration in dreams the truth is often imparted through dreams no one who is familiar with history especially religious history can doubt at the same time dreams and vision are always colored and influenced more or less by the mind of the dreamer and we must be aware of attaching too much importance to them the pure and more free from prejudice and desire our hearts and minds become the more likely it is that our dreams will convey reliable truth but if we have strong prejudices personal likings and aversions bad feelings or evil motives these will warp and distort any inspirational impression that comes to us then he says he won't always compare whatever you've seen in dreams with the revealed word and see whether they are in harmony or not in this same in the same letter he goes on to say that this inspiration that comes to us comes to us in waking hours as well that the light of the sun of truth never ceases that the divine bounty of god is constant to us like i remember bill sears used to ask the question he says if you don't feel close to god anymore as close as you used to who moved so the inspiration is pouring on us all the time there's no cessation of it the question of our fickleness our turning the mirror away our becoming concentrated on things we don't need to be concentrated on i remember one of the old saints said that you know you can still be inspired while you're husking peas for example you do your task do whatever your tasks are but you're still enjoying the sunlight you're sitting in the sunlight doing it you feel the sunlight you can do that while you're doing your accounts as well there is this abiding sense of the presence of god which he talks about in the writings which we see in older religious traditions a marvelous thing i mean you're never alone you're always accompanied you're always supported you're always buoyed up you're every time you look at the writing you see new meanings it's a it's a magic attraction there on the horizon for us so to speak um at least i still see it in those terms for myself because i don't see it as a steady a steady light in my own circumstances but when it comes and goes it is a terrific joy and i hope that we will all pray for each other that we can attain to such such a marvelous bounty as pours through these teachings to us the new race of men then is a is a conglomerate it's it's the locking together of the elements into a crystallized form that refracts the light of god that reflects the light of god in ways that we never could do individually we line up our souls in accordance with the divine will and this spectacle of diversity and unity in diversity reflects the light of the apoc kingdom into this world and that becomes the basis this divine love that we have for each other becomes the basis of attracting others to the cause and that's this new race of men shogye fendi said that we can all be a part of this new race of men i think that says we're not all a part of the new race of men as well but we can become a part of it and he said it centers on submitting our will to the will of god that it's those that conform more completely with the will of god that take on these characteristics this characteristic of the new race of men and that new race of men then is the basis for a new civilization so again the fruit of this is not just individual benefit but community benefit corporate benefit worldwide benefit and as we grow and we think well we're going to have peace things some people think it's going to be kind of boring because we imagine it just being like it is now only we won't have mtv and we won't have all these other things it's going to be much quieter you know and maybe it won't be it's like those that imagine going to the next world strumming on harps who probably don't have a good ear for melody anyway it sounds terrible so we don't want to envision this future in terms of the present we are the children of the half-light the generation of the half-light and we need to think in terms of where where the ultimate outcome of all of all of this is and the unification of mankind is the goal we're going to but that unification is the reflection of the unity of god the oneness of of the manifestation spirit manifested in all of its beauty in a wide contingent of the human race and that will have increasing power to attract people to us because the old world is still disintegrating and rolling up and people are very distressed seeing that they don't know what to do what to do what to make of it those who haven't heard of the faith now the responsibility of those of us who have heard of the faith you can only imagine and that's why the pressure is on with all of the works of the plan now we have so many places we can direct ourselves when when we're inspired to serve through the elements and activities of the present five-year plan of the future five-year plan so i'm the there's one quote i wanted to share with you is in this collective sense too is from the katavia act us says the world's equilibrium has been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great this new world order mankind's ordered life has been revolutionized through the agency of this unique this wondrous system the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed some years ago i had an opportunity to have a luncheon with irving laszlo and i brought this quotation to his attention he got so excited about he said baola has foreseen what the scientists are now discovering he says 50 50 years ahead of them i thought that was quite extraordinary i was so happy he thought it was extraordinary i didn't find it particularly extraordinary but then that's who are looking at the knowledge of the faith created that and he said the pre-gogine had has written on dissipative structures in fact i think he got a Nobel prize for writing about it this is a bit all beyond me but he i'll see if i can explain it in a simple way that when a system is in equilibrium it's fine it's settled it's there's a whole system is there if there's an outside influence comes into that system whether it happens to be the traffic pattern in vancouver or some some some other thing the nature of your digestive process if you have an influence that comes into it the system makes an attempt to absorb that influence and gain equilibrium again but he said there are such influences that are greater than the combined forces of that system and then the system comes apart and rejoins itself on the basis of the new force and this is he said is what baala is saying that this vibrating influence of this new world order is creating a new system in the world and in order for that to come about we have to play our individual role as well as our collective role we've had the institutions we have everything we need to move towards that we're just needing to be busy with it with the task finally there's a promise inherent in an extraordinary letter of shoghi of endy to the friends in azerbaijan not too long after assuming the headship of the faith it's translated and published in the compilation on deepening if you want to look for it there he says praise be to god that the spirit of holy writings and tablets which have been revealed in this wondrous dispensation has so permeated the world that nothing like it has ever been seen or heard indeed if an avowed follower of baala were to immerse himself in and fathom the depths of the ocean of these heavenly teachings and with the utmost care and attention deduced from each of them the subtle mysteries and consummate wisdom that lie in shrine therein such a person's life materially intellectually and spiritually will be safe from toil and trouble and unaffected by attacks and perils or any sadness or despondency how often we may have thought where can we find a formula that'll reduce my sadness or reduce my despondency or reduce my loneliness or whatever it might be and here shoghi of endy is telling us that if we can absorb and attract this spirit of the of the tablets and the blessed teachings of the faith it will calm everything it will create a new situation in our lives and friends this is the the little message that i bring is that let us rethink about this whether we have settled for too little in our lives with respect to the bounties and treasures of this most great revelation and what can we do to enliven our existence and bring it then to the conformity that baala is longing for it to have with his will and pleasure and that will and pleasure will put us in in line with the the great service to mankind that we are called upon to perform thank you