 Thank you, please. Friends, it's a great privilege for me to be presenting the Balouzi lecture at this year's ABS conference. The presence of Douglas Martin is, of course, a source of great joy for me at this gathering. I hope I'm not mistaken in thinking that on such an occasion like tonight, I might take advantage of the kind and forgiving mood of the audience and allow myself the luxury of disorder. What you're about to hear is not a well-organized lecture, but it says of scattered thoughts, my own musings on the nature and challenges of the intellectual life of the Baha'i community. To begin, I should say that a part of me tends to dismiss my concern with the intellectual community as unnecessary. Why belabor an obvious and straightforward matter insists a voice within me? It is in the very nature of the Baha'i community for its members to pursue education. Look at our history. After one or two generations, Baha'is everywhere in the world came to enjoy a notably high level of educational achievement. Baha'i families give the highest priority to the education of their children. And as the community grows in size, Baha'is will move to the forefront of every imaginable field of human endeavor. The clarity of mind, they have acquired from a profound knowledge of the writings, their own upright characters, their love for truth will enable them to gain unprecedented insights into reality. And gradually, more and more talented Baha'is in each field will begin to collaborate with one another. And together will advance the frontiers of knowledge in their areas of expertise. Now, I should hasten to say that I have actually no problem with this narrative. I am certain that the process as described has been unfolding for some time and will continue to gain momentum. But the question I feel I'm built to ask is this. Shouldn't there be more to the intellectual life of the Baha'i community than the simple narrative depicts? Are we not supposed to do something more? And the long road from obscurity to the establishment of the order of Baha'u'llah, we have reached a point where we are being accepted as a world religion alongside other major religions. What is more, in country after country, a growing number of people have formed a high opinion of us. As good people with admirable ideals and much of the credit of the approach we are taking to community building, they are even beginning to appreciate our contributions to the life of society. This is a truly great accomplishment, one of which we should all be proud. Looking at the small and rather obscure community, which we were not long time ago, and then at what we are today, we cannot but bow our heads in gratitude before Baha'u'llah and praise his handiwork. But we know that this is not the end. The faith of Baha'u'llah is not intended to culminate in some kind of friendly competition with other religious movements, and to reach a prestigious place alongside them. And as far as our intellectual accomplishments are concerned, we cannot ignore the fact that if we were to follow the ways of the world, for the longest time, we will be far behind everyone else. We will certainly be justified in celebrating the accomplishments of any Baha'u'llah who reaches prominence in a given field. But we'll have to remember that for each such one individual, many Christian denominations and the Muslims, the Hindus, and other religious communities, as well as diagnostics. And the atheists will have hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the same or higher level of prominence. So it really does not make sense for us to engage in a game of numbers and prestige. We need to look deeper into the dynamics of the Baha'i community's intellectual pursuits. For me, the real issues have to do with the content of our thoughts, with the nature of our questions, with the validity and relevance of our answers to the profound challenges facing humanity as it emerges from adolescence. Prominent or not, what do those of us engaged in intellectual pursuits have to say that deserve to be heard? Clearly, we have a great deal to say when we present the faith to various publics. But what I'm asking is not about our presentation of the faith and its ideals. My concern is with our contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the many fields of human endeavor. And finally, to the advancement of civilization itself. I would like to suggest that such a fundamental question can only receive reasonable answers when examined in the light of the mission of the faith and the nature of the transformation that humanity is to undergo as envisioned by Baha'u'llah. The statements in the writing that vividly describe the magnitude of this change cannot be set aside. No matter how uncomfortable they might make those who occupy the intellectual circles with which we associate. And sometimes, perhaps, ourselves. No doubt, we need to be wise in the way we discuss with others the kind of change we predict both for the individual and society as humanity passes from childhood to maturity. But we cannot be forgetful of what our writings have to say about the transformation that is bound to occur when we are reflecting on ourselves, on our own pursuits, and on the characteristics of our own communities. The direction of our thoughts has to be set by an ever-growing appreciation of his stupendous vision of human civilization and a clear understanding of the forces operating in the present deficient and maribund order. There is no need to quote extensively from the many passages relevant to this theme, not to this audience, for you know them well. The world's equilibrium has been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new world order, Bahá'u'lláh states in the Catawiyah verse. 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. Abdul Bahá'u'lláh tells us that we must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities, new bounties, perfect bestowals are awaiting and already descending upon us. The gifts and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient, during the adolescence of humankind, of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the requirements of its maturity. And as to the present world, Shoghi Effendi has written, many passages, here is one, a world dimmed by the steady dying out, dying out light of religion, heaving with the explosive force of a blind and triumphant nationalism, scorched with the fires of pitiless persecution with the racial or religious, diluted by the false theories and doctrines that threaten to supplant the worship of God and the sanctification of his laws, innervated by a rampant and brutal materialism, disintegrating through the corrosive influence of moral and spiritual decadence, and enmeshed in the coils of economic anarchy and strife. Such is the spectacle presented to men's eyes as a result of the sweeping changes which this revolutionizing force, as yet in the initial stage of its operation, is now producing in the life of the entire planet. It seems to me that one of the first set of questions we need to ask, when we contemplate the way the intellectual life of the Baha'i community will evolve, is this, Baha'u'llah refers to the present order as lamentably defective. How defective do we think defective really is? Which constituents of the present order are and are not defective? Which parts are we to keep? And which are we to reject completely? How deep do we have to go into the foundations of the present order to find the real causes of its defective ways? I would like to explore a little this last question first. That there is much wrong with this world is something that today a vast number of people confess. And it's not difficult to reach agreement, particularly in progressive circles, on a list of problems that face humanity and have to be overcome if a better world is to emerge. Large numbers have no access to education, unemployment is rampard, dictatorships oppress people, and so on. Therefore, education for all, employment for all, freedom to live in democratic cultures for all are the kinds of objectives to be pursued. So long is the list of all the ills of present day society. And so visible they are near the surface that we are certainly justified to reach the conclusion that a sizable portion of the growing intellectual resources of the Bahá'í community should be directed towards seeking effective remedies for them. In other words, it seems reasonable to think that we should engage alongside other like-minded people in endeavors that seek solutions to the problems of humanity. And in the process seek knowledge and develop and exercise our intellectual capacity. We would of course go further than many progressive movements in both thought and action and assert that solutions cannot be found merely on the plane of the material. The human heart has to change and any effort to overcome the huge problems facing humanity will have to rely on spiritual as well as material forces. We know that the Universal House of Justice has stated behind so much of the turbulence and commotion of contemporary life are the fits and stars of the humanity struggling to come to age. Widely accepted practices and conventions, cherished attitudes and habits are one by one being rendered obsolete as the imperative of maturity begin to assert themselves. What we need to accept then is to dedicate a great deal of our intellectual resources to look into these practices and conventions, attitudes and habits and help replace them with the spiritually sound equivalents. But such an intention, if it is to be more than the expression of pious belief, creates formidable challenges for the intellectual life of the Bahá'í community. The intellectuality that allows one to bring to bear spiritual and material forces in a coherent way on the life of humanity is not easy to come by. I honestly don't know if it has been invented yet. Much is to be done to develop it through the exertions of the Bahá'í community and other like-minded people. But this is certainly something we can and we should do. Yet this aspect of the development of our intellectual capacity only addresses the defective character of the present order at the level of visible problems. As Bahá'ís we know that we have to go deeper. We cannot, for example, adhere to a view that the basic structures of today's society are essentially sound. The problem being that control of them has fallen into the hands of the wrong people. Only if spiritualized people the kind we are trying to become. Where in charge peace and prosperity would emerge. Clearly, as we look into the writings we see that this cannot be the case. The challenges facing humanity as it moves from collective childhood to collective maturity cannot be explained away so easily. The moment we remember that the principle of the oneness of humankind implies organic change in the structure of society we are obliged to go deeper and face the challenge of identifying defective structures and figuring out what has to take their place. And we cannot just look at structures close to the surface. We must examine all the structures that hold the present order together. It can be just arrangements that make education for all possible. The entire worldwide system of education has to be transformed. It can be just more jobs or credit to create employment for all. It has to be the restructuring of economic life according to a delicate interplay between the principle of the oneness of humanity and the exigencies of justice. It cannot be just democratic culture as it is defined today. It has to be a culture that deals with such concepts as freedom, authority and governance in a different way than humanity has ever done before. Now what is clear is that when we move from engagement in social action by looking at the problems of humanity to thinking about the structure of society the demands and the intellectual life of our community grow enormous. So this is the second level of challenges that come to us. To establish some kind of educational program for a given population in some part of the world to offer good quality healthcare to another or to help improve the agricultural practice of a group of farmers do constitute fields of action in which we develop and exercise the kind of intellectuality we are seeking. But to have something to say about the system of education or healthcare in a region or the organization of the market or the structure in place for the diffusion of technological knowledge is intellectually far more demanding. So the intellectual life of our community has to develop in such a way that the reasonable number of us are able to identify the structural defects of the present order and to participate in those discourses of society that permit deep deliberation on alternatives. I hope it is clear that what I am proposing here is serious and meticulous work. It's not an endorsement of the habit of repeating the problem is structural. Whenever we face the many ills of humanity and then going on to do business as usual that things will be better when the structure of society has changed for the better is an obvious truth as is the statement that things will be better when people are more spiritual. The question is what are the structures of the future society like and how do we build them? Now let me mention that the Bahá'í community has taken decisive steps towards the development of the kind of intellectual capacity I'm trying to describe here. For example, through the programs of the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity with which many of you are familiar. The enthusiasm with which the community has responded to these programs is heartwarming indeed. Although these are only initial advances an endeavor that is helping a growing number of young people engaged in university studies reflect deeply on the nature of their studies complemented by efforts to promote inquiry in certain areas is without a doubt contributing to the intellectual life of the community and is helping to shape its future. So my remarks on the intellectual challenges before us are made here in a spirit of optimism. And hopefulness. In fact, with a good deal of heartfelt joy. But what I hope you will agree with me is that concern with the development of the intellectual life of the Bahá'í community is not unreasonable. The simple narrative I presented at the beginning describes only the obvious. Much has to be said and done if a community that claims to be establishing the pattern of the future society is to fulfill its mission. And as I hope you share with me the sense of optimism I would like to go further and present you with a challenge a little bit more difficult than the previous ones. So what if we go deeper than the question of the structures of society and ask ourselves questions about the knowledge systems that have given shape to the present order? Is it possible that the intellectual foundations of the present civilization, the ideas, the assumptions, the methods and the assertions that underpin individual and collective thought are entirely sound but somehow they give rise to such a defective order? Could it be that just the wrong people have got hold of sound knowledge and are applying it to create inadequate structures, processes and behavior? Should we not look for fundamental defects in some pieces of knowledge, of the knowledge system that defined today's world as well? If civilization is the fruit of a tree and we accept that the fruit is far from what it should be, doesn't it make sense for us to look at the roots of the tree and find out if something is also wrong there? I realize that the kind of question I'm asking can be somewhat dangerous. Over the decades, I have heard extreme answer to these questions. The kind of emotional responses that amount to saying all of it should be thrown away or the opposite. It is anti-intellectual to pose these questions but the question I'm asking is not meant to elicit an emotional response. It is an appeal for careful and rational analysis in the light of Bahá'u'lláh's revelation of today's reality and the historical forces at work. All that is being suggested is that such a careful examination should go beyond behavior and sociopolitical structure and also include the intellectual foundations of the present order. At least the intellectual foundations of social, economic and political thought. And let me be bold enough and say the intellectual foundations of culture. I believe this is something that has to be done and if it is done with scientific and philosophical rigor, by mind's shape, by an intellectuality that is endowed with a spiritual perception, the intellectual foundation of a new civilization will gradually emerge. This new foundation will not be built on thin air. The intellectuals, the intellectual accomplishments of humanity during its long journey through childhood will not be ignored and thrown away. The child learns a great deal that is essential for the life of the adult. As individuals, we do not throw away our ability to read and write or our mastery of arithmetic and basic geometry or the moral code we have been taught when we leave childhood behind. Yet it is difficult to see how we can ever be adults if we insist on carrying with us our fascination with fairy tales that stimulated our imagination and brought us so much joy when we were children. The playthings of childhood and infancy, Abdul Baha says, no longer satisfy or interest the adult mind. That a decision to acquire the capacity to engage in a rigorous examination of the intellectual foundations of our civilization places formidable demands on the way the intellectual life of the community has to develop seems evident. Sifting through the habits of thought, the principles, the methods and the conceptions that underlie civilization today and deciding which can be retained and expanded upon and which need to be cast away is not a trivial pursuit. Which one of our society's cherished conceptions are human psyche? Which elements of today's elaborate theories of social progress? Which methods of education? Which conceptions of work, wealth, love, justice, freedom and authority are playthings of childhood and infancy? And what is to replace them? One thing is for sure, we cannot stand to the side and say everything will be made new. And then take pride in moving to the forefront of processes that belong to a world that we believe is collapsing. Yet it is also true, at least in my case, that I really have no answers to the kind of questions I am now asking as to how we should do. And I'm only expressing hope that if we create the right kind of conditions we will be able to identify and describe rigorously some of the elements, both old and new, of the intellectual foundations of a new civilization. So what I would like to do then is to mention a few of the conditions we should seek to establish. But before that, allow me to state some of my own prejudices. I think the advances humanity has made and is making at a remarkable pace in the natural sciences are far more like reading and writing in the life of the individual than the fantasies of childhood. We may say, of course, that the science that we see today is in its infancy. We may be confident that it will advance a great deal. That new discoveries will revolutionize many fields of scientific inquiry. That existing insights will be refined and refined again. We can also readily accept that minds illumined by the light of Bahá'u'lláh's teachings working with its systems of research not corrupted by competitiveness and desire for personal prestige and a culture that venerates knowledge rather than creating, rather than treating it like a commodity to be churned out like bars of soap. That all of this will open new horizons towards which science can move and stake then its contribution to the advancement of spiritual and material civilization. But it is my conviction that this thing we call science will not be thrown away and replaced by something else called Bahá'u'llh's science. Grand theories like Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, relativity and evolution are here to stay. They are valid within the parameters of the physical phenomena for the explanation of which they were constructed. And it is this science that will advance and lead to extraordinary new discoveries and elegant theories to explain them. What will happen though? I believe is that physicalism, the effort to explain everything, life, consciousness, reason and morality using the contents and methods set forth by these grand theories will fall in dispute. And as breakthroughs in the understanding of the interactions between the subjective and the objective will occur. When I move away from the modern natural sciences into other components of the intellectual basis of say Western civilization, the civilization that appears to have had the most vitality in modern times, I cannot help but become more skeptical. I still hold in great respect the social sciences and philosophy that uphold the civilization. But keep seeing too many of the fantasies of childhood in them. Something much better has to emerge, albeit well informed by say the cart and lock and the synthesis of their ideas and the questioning of foundationism and so on and so on. But something new upon which social, political and economic thought appropriate for the age of maturity of the human race can be built. The light of enlightenment appears too dim to me when I compare it with the light shining from the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh. If the few things I have said about what awaits us have convinced you even momentarily that the development of the intellectual life of the Bahá'u'lláh committee is an enormously challenging task and that that narrative, initial narrative I have gave was just too simplistic. It may be helpful if I could say a few words about some of the conditions that enable us to meet this challenge. I will mention three without any claim that they are the most important. The first condition I believe is courage. Those who began the thought processes that led to the enlightenment were courageous people. They lived and worked within a religious orthodoxy that had a total grip on the intellectual life of the West. They had the courage to question that orthodoxy and propose alternatives. And they were able to present enough evidence and to argue with sufficient clarity to change the tide of history. Is there not yet another orthodoxy we may ask with a similar grip on the mind of, on the human mind, which for the lack of a better word, we usually call materialistic? Does it not have its priests, some of whom actually pretend to be religious? Does it not have immense power? Does it not have access to enormous economic resources all to advance its views of the human being and society? It will also take courage to question the assumptions and the theories of this orthodoxy, not just by labeling whatever one doesn't like materialistic, but through painstaking, spiritually, illumined, scientific, and philosophical inquiry. Mustering up courage, of course, has to be accompanied by the elaboration of sound methodology. Criticism for the sake of criticism is wasteful, to say the least. And maybe it is necessary to change our very conception of criticism, by which I don't mean just to make sure it is constructive, that we have to do, obviously. But one of the features of the present orthodoxy and the power structures on which it relies is that they incorporate criticism into their schemes. Yet too often it is criticism of the kind that achieves little. By politely or impolitely listening to the voices of opposition and accommodating them superficially, power perpetuates itself. Western democracy has understood, has understood well, the role of criticism as an escape path. Meanwhile, power and money keep accumulating in the hands of the few who relentlessly pursue their aims. It seems to me that if we develop and learn something else as a community, probably the ways of Baha'i consultation as the collective investigation of reality, we will do much better than just voicing criticism of the world as it is. A second condition I would like to mention that is conducive to the flourishing of the kind of intellectual life being proposed has to do with the fact that our community can't afford to be elitist. Now, I'm using the word in a special sense, which I should explain. Breakthroughs clearly need brilliant minds. So the culture we are developing does and should recognize the accomplishments of the individual. It should celebrate them. Talent should be recognized and nurtured. But a culture that respects knowledge in which the voices of the knowledgeable are heard and where great ideas and great works of art are admired is not necessarily elitist. To be an elite implies a sense of entitlement, of aloofness, of superiority. It is privilege demanding more privilege. Let me assure you that not for a moment do I believe that the Baha'i Committee has been or will ever be elitist. The teachings in general and the way the administrative order is set up protect us from such a future. What I'm trying to do is to ask us to recognize the features of a culture that is not elitist, but nurtures talent and encourages intellectual and artistic accomplishments. So that we can promote it against the forces of an elite society. The most important feature I believe is that in such a culture, knowledge is not the property of a few. It is accessible to all. Large bodies of ignorant people are not created. And the oppression that results from depriving people of knowledge is never allowed to establish itself. But then what are some of the mechanisms through which such a culture is strengthened? A look at the institute process, which is playing such a crucial role in our community building efforts in recent times may lead to valuable insights into this question. A community with the kind of culture we are envisioning is in need of a worldwide intellectually and spiritually sound conversation and its grassroots. In a world so fragmented, the Baha'i community has to nurture the habit of speaking in a language that transcends parochial patterns of thought in a way that words begin to acquire the same meaning for people coming from totally different backgrounds. The conversation, it seems reasonable to say, has to be about the application of the teachings to individual and collective life. Much of it has to be about practical matters raised to proper spiritual heights and analyzed in light of spiritual truths. It has to be profound, but not pointlessly difficult as to scare away most people. It has to allow multitudes to enter the conversation at the most accessible level and then build capacity for increasing more complex thought. No one is to be left out. The institute process of folding in the Baha'i world now for about two decades, although in its initial stages is clearly making significant contributions to the establishment of such a worldwide conversation. It is organized around the path of service upon which multitudes are invited to walk. It is a path on which people learn together, how to fulfill the twofold moral purpose of attending to their own spiritual and intellectual development and to contribute to the transformation of society. Learning accumulates through a combination of study of the text and systematized experience. This is an important habit of mine that could help shape an intellectuality from certain false dichotomies, say between the spiritual and the material or between knowledge welling up in the human heart as it connects itself to the ocean of revelation and knowledge acquired through experience. It is a habit of the mind that acknowledges the importance of evidence. It uses evidence to separate knowledge from human fancy. This is not the occasion for me to analyze the present form of the institute process or its future possibilities. I'm only mentioning it in order to illustrate the nature of a conversation at the grassroots of the Baha'i community that can cultivate an intellectuality capable of addressing the challenges I have already mentioned in relation to the intellectual life of the Baha'i community. At this general level, intellectual powers are not focused on specific areas of scholarship. But as they see surges and as individuals develop the capabilities of advanced fields of knowledge, of human knowledge, individual waves and collections of waves, some powerful enough to break through formidable intellectual barriers are bound to rise. But given that the relationship created among those who walk the path of service is one of accompanying each other and not competing with each other, not managing each other, not manipulating each other, not gaining power over each other, it becomes easier to avoid the dangers of elitism. The third condition I would like to discuss a little tonight has to do with harmony between science and religion. It seems to me that an essential condition for the kind of intellectual life we are imagining for the Baha'i community is a rigorous understanding of the relation between science and religion, at least as far as their function as sources of knowledge for the advancement of civilization. This is the vast subject, which is not possible to treat in a few minutes. I would only like to point out one or two ideas relevant to the theme of this talk. In recent years, in the context of the rise of a new civil... In the context of the rise of a new civilization, we hear more and more the Baha'i community use the phrase science and religion as two complementary overlapping systems of knowledge and practice. Now, a firm materialist would reject the description outright, because it goes against his religion to talk about religious belief as knowledge. But I also realized that the idea of religion being a system of knowledge and practice makes some religious people, including some Baha'is, a little uncomfortable. This is unfortunate because the discomfort arises from a misunderstanding of the intention of the phrase. I assure you that when I think of my faith, the first thing that comes to my mind is not a system of knowledge and practice. I think of the dazzling light of Baha'u'llah's revelation. I think of the greatness of this day, the power of the covenant, the joy of turning to the most great beauty. But when it comes to our efforts to advance civilization, I'm reminded that according to Shoghi Effendi, the cause is scientific in its method. And that spiritual and material civilization has to be built with knowledge from both religion and science. In this context, examining the two as complementary systems of knowledge and practice proves quite useful. Just giving names to things, of course, does not take us very far. A rigorous process of inquiry is needed to understand the nature of harmony between science and religion and the ways in which they complement each other in the civilization-building process. I would like to suggest that the more attention we give to such an inquiry and the sooner we begin doing so, the greater the progress we will achieve in the development of the intellectual life of our community. Allow me to say a few words then about one of the implications of the statement that science and religion constitute complementary systems of knowledge. This innocent-sounding statement rules out certain other possible relations between science and religion. It rejects the position that religious belief is somehow speculative knowledge about reality. Waiting for real scientific knowledge to appear as science finds definitive answers to the questions that give rise to the religious impulse in the human being in the first place. It is a fact of history that the positivist project, a project that attempted to banish religious belief, considering it a feature of an underdeveloped humanity and to replace it with sound scientific knowledge based on experience, has failed. Its bravest and probably most rigorous manifestation in logical positivism fell apart from within and not only because of the blows it received from those who made advances in philosophy of science based on the analysis of real historical evidence. The statement also closes the door to expressions sincere and enticing as they may be that real science will be the result of the correct and imaginative reading of the scriptures. This apparent expression of faith, it seems to me, arises from a confusion in the usage of the word religion which sometimes refers to what God has revealed and sometimes to the state of being, doing and knowing of a specific religious community. In the Baha'i community, we try to ensure that the latter, which is our system of knowledge and practice, corresponds as closely as possible to the revealed word. That is, and that it will do. And this is a unique feature of the Baha'i faith, the feature Baha'u'llah himself incorporated into his teachings through the establishment of the covenant. Now, when we make this one distinction and look at religion in the two ways, we can think that God knows everything and all knowledge emanates from him. So it seems quite legitimate to believe that the revelation contains scientific knowledge but the jump from such a belief to the claim that real science will be discovered by our reading of the text seems unwarranted. Science is a faculty of the human soul and the powers of perception and reasoning are gifts from God that allow humanity to construct an extremely powerful system of knowledge and practice called science. To try to collapse scientific knowledge into religious knowledge takes us back to the times of Galileo. To try to collapse religious and moral knowledge into that which the methods of science are capable of producing is equally fruitless as the efforts of the positivists have already proven. But how easy it is for any of us to find ourselves in one or the other position when we try to solve one or another kind of problem. To have clarity that elements of knowledge elaborated in science and elements of knowledge elaborated in the process of reading religious text and practicing that which has been read should be used together in specific efforts to have such a clarity. It seems to me is an indispensable characteristic of the intellectual life we are trying to develop. Never in my life have I doubted that the most sacred and urgent task before the Baha'i community is teaching. The masses of humanity need to see the light of Baha'u'llah. At the same time, albeit with less feeling of urgency, I have felt that the resulting Baha'i community in the growing Baha'i community needs to increase its understanding of science. Not scientism, not those popular versions of science that cannot distinguish it from magic, not the near knowledge of technology, the grasp of scientific knowledge in all its power. Science as the first emanation from God towards man, illuminating human understanding. And enabling it to penetrate the mysteries of the universe and life on this earthly plane. And complimenting religious faith and knowledge so filled with spiritual insights that can help humanity raise this world of dust to the heaven of glory. So friends, I have tried to share with you some thoughts about the intellectual life of the Baha'i community that over the years have occupied my mind. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is not a systematic treatment of the subject. What I hope I have achieved is to show how challenging the road is ahead of us. Both for those who are engaged in scholarly activity and those who have the responsibility of promoting the intellectual life of the Baha'i community. But I hope that you are assured, and this has got through, that I have done this with extreme optimism because I really do see the prospects of this intellectual life with great optimism. And this optimism is not the result of wishful thinking. For the longest time, I have hoped for, I have longed for the appearance of an intellectuality that would integrate the spiritual and the material, theory and practice. An intellectuality that would have its roots in the civilization building efforts of the Baha'i community, but at the same time have access to the forefront of intellectual development in the world. Now, please accept it and trust if you want from someone who knows the efforts of the Baha'i community intimately, that such intellectuality is really appearing.