Who is writing the future

In its covering letter to National Spiritual Assemblies the Universal House of Justice indicated what it wanted done with the document. It can be distributed widely in its own right if that is felt appropriate, and this reviewer certainly hopes it will be. It should not be abridged, which is understandable, cuts would cause it to lose impact and important points, and it is not a long or heavy statement to start with.

The National Spiritual Assembly has said that while all Believers will respond to it in their own way, those who generate responses in written, or some other easily disseminated, form are asked to share them with the Assembly.

Suitable ones will be made available to the community as a whole. In this way resources to serve the Faith will be distributed and ideas and inspiration will flow through the community. Author search. The Spiritual Nature of Reality. This section is approximately the same length 3 paras. Thus true history is to be viewed, not primarily as a manifestation of purely secular or materialistic philosophies or motivations, which has been the case heretofore, but rather as an increasingly pacific, organic, staged growth working-model which leads from birth to adulthood.

These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal. Part II. Where Secular and Spiritual Forces Converge. The allusions here are wide-ranging. The guidance of men hath, at all times, been and is dependent upon these blessed souls. In this monograph, secular and sacred history merge in the belief that Divine Reason works cunningly within and through both the temporal and spiritual orders to its stated end of achieving world unity.

Our great task is to become fully conscious of the process, and by collaborating, to bring it about. But this is not a historical determinism that supports a failure of commitment in a passive fatalism. While the outcome of world unity is assured because it is the Will of God, the author would maintain that the all-important pace of events is still very much in human hands. The awesome responsibility of the full exercise of free will remains key. Historical time is to be distinguished from natural time by the unique freedom which enables man to transcend the flux of time, holding past moments in present memory and envisaging future ends of action which are not dictated by natural necessity.

To a large degree, the dire sufferings of an unrepentant humanity will be mitigated by the active pursuit of its mission. Certain enlightened authors have also been aware of the depth of the present catastrophe afflicting humanity.

The first step in this direction consists in as wide, as deep, and as prompt a realization as possible of the extraordinary character of the contemporary crisis of our culture and society. It is high time to realize that this is not one of the ordinary crises which happen [sic] almost every decade, but one of the greatest transitions in human history from one culture to another. An adequate realization of the immense magnitude of the change now upon us is a necessary condition for determining the adequacy of measures and means to alleviate the magnitude of the pending catastrophe.

He is a poor doctor who treats dangerous pneumonia as a slight cold. Similarly, nothing but harm can ensue from the prevalent treatment of the present crisis as a light and ordinary maladjustment. Such a blunderous diagnosis must be forgotten as soon as possible, together with all the surface rubbing medicines abundantly prescribed by shortsighted socio-cultural physicians. The All Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind.

He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. Overnight, in the historical scheme of things, this prevailing perception was suddenly everywhere in retreat. With a swiftness that is breathtaking in the perspective of history, the twentieth century saw the unity of the human race establish itself as a guiding principle of international order.

Today, the ethnic conflicts that continue to wreak havoc in many parts of the world are seen not as natural features of the relations among diverse peoples, but as willful aberrations that must be brought under effective international control. Now, however, this mind-set, an assumption that had shaped the priorities of every economic system the world had ever known, has been universally rejected. Particularly significant—because of its intimate relationship with the roots of human motivation—was the loosening of the grip of religious prejudice.

In the face of the transformation in religious conceptions that the past hundred years witnessed, even the current outburst of fundamentalist reaction may come, in retrospect, to be seen as little more than desperate rear-guard actions against an inevitable dissolution of sectarian control.

During these critical decades the human mind was also experiencing fundamental changes in the way that it understood the physical universe. The first half of the century saw the new theories of relativity and quantum mechanics—both of them intimately related to the nature and operation of light—revolutionize the field of physics and alter the entire course of scientific development.

It became apparent that classical physics could explain phenomena within only a limited range. A new door had suddenly opened into the study of both the minute constituents of the universe and its large cosmological systems, a change whose effects went far beyond physics, shaking the very foundations of a world view that had dominated scientific thinking for centuries. Gone forever were the images of a mechanical universe run like a clock and a presumed separation between observer and observed, between mind and matter.

Against the background of the far-reaching studies thus made possible, theoretical science now begins to address the possibility that purpose and intelligence are indeed intrinsic to the nature and operation of the universe. In the wake of these conceptual changes, humanity entered an era in which interaction among physical sciences—physics, chemistry, and biology, along with the nascent science of ecology—opened breathtaking possibilities for the enhancement of life. The benefits in such vital areas of concern as agriculture and medicine became dramatically apparent as did those brought about by success in tapping new sources of energy.

Simultaneously, the new field of materials science began providing a wealth of specialized resources unknown when the century opened—plastics, optical fibers, carbon fibers. Such advances in science and technology were reciprocal in their effects. Grains of sand—the most humble and ostensibly worthless of materials—metamorphosed into silicon wafers and optically pure glass, making possible the creation of worldwide communications networks.

This, together with the deployment of ever more sophisticated satellite systems, has begun providing access to the accumulated knowledge of the entire human race for people everywhere, without distinction. It is apparent that the decades immediately ahead will see the integration of telephone, television, and computer technologies into a single, unified system of communication and information, whose inexpensive appliances will be available on a mass scale.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the psychological and social impact of the anticipated replacement of the jumble of existing monetary systems—for many, the ultimate fortress of nationalist pride—by a single world currency operating largely through electronic impulses.

Indeed, the unifying effect of the twentieth century revolution is nowhere more readily apparent than in the implications of the changes that took place in scientific and technological life. At the most obvious level, the human race is now endowed with the means needed to realize the visionary goals summoned up by a steadily maturing consciousness.

To appreciate the transformations brought about by the period of history now ending is not to deny the accompanying darkness that throws the achievements into sharp relief: the deliberate extermination of millions of helpless human beings, the invention and use of new weapons of destruction capable of annihilating whole populations, the rise of ideologies that suffocated the spiritual and intellectual life of entire nations, damage to the physical environment of the planet on a scale so massive that it may take centuries to heal, and the incalculably greater damage done to generations of children taught to believe that violence, indecency, and selfishness are triumphs of personal liberty.

Such are only the more obvious of a catalogue of evils, unmatched in history, whose lessons our era will leave for the education of the chastened generations who will follow us. Whether in the life of the individual or that of society, profound change occurs more often than not in response to intense suffering and to unendurable difficulties that can be overcome in no other way.

About this document click for more. See original document at bahai-library. Who Is Writing the Future? They were animated by a "a profound shift of consciousness" - Realisation of need to change "ingrained habits of mind that breed conflict" - Advance of women - Realisation that ethnic conflicts are "wilful aberrations that must be brought under effective international control.

The human race "without regard to race, culture, or nation" now has the means needed to realise the visionary goal of world unity Part three provides perspective on the terrible problems that are facing the world, and the terrible acts that have taken place in history. Darkness cannot extinguish light. The cult of individualism has been nurtured by such cultural forces as political ideology, academic elitism, and a consumer economy 2 The resulting "pursuit of happiness" has produced an aggressive and almost boundless sense of personal entitlement.

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