The Nobel Peace Prize normally honors one individual—but shouldn’t it recognize the efforts of groups more often?

Many people have begun to ask that question, especially when the Nobel Committee decides to single out one person who has worked with and among many others in the cause of peace.

Since its beginning in 1901, the world’s most prestigious honor, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to 104 individuals and 23 organizations—which leads to the strange conclusion that individuals have done four times more for world peace than groups of people have. Most historians and sociologists reject that old notion, sometimes called “the great man theory of history,” which holds that individuals drive human progress, not groups and organizations.

Jody Williams

Here’s an example: a dedicated activist named Jody Williams and I worked together with an NGO called Medical Aid for El Salvador during the war in El Salvador in the 1980s, and the devastation we witnessed there impelled her to work for the global elimination of landmines. In 1997, Jody and the anti-landmine organization she helped establish won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jody shared the Peace Prize with a coalition of organizations she and others put together in the early 1990s. Called The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), it created a loose assemblage of six NGOs and social justice organizations who wanted to find a way to free the world from the horrible effects of anti-personnel mines. The six organizations: the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; Human Rights Watch; Physicians for Human Rights; Germany’s Medico International; Handicap International; and the Mines Advisory Group, all agreed to work together in a unified effort to ban landmines, which target soldiers but most often kill and maim civilians, sometimes long after wars are over.

That broad coalition of people and organizations, initially spearheaded by the efforts of Bobby Muller, the head of Vietnam Veterans of America, had one brilliant question: what would happen if we came up with an ad hoc international treaty to ban landmines—ourselves?

No one had ever done that before. In the past, international treaties were the sole province of nations and their leaders, or perhaps the United Nations. The ICBL coalition was the first group of activists and NGOs who ever tried to create a grassroots treaty among nations, and their one bold, brilliant, unprecedented idea worked. The power of all those advocacy groups, together, made a difference.

After a great deal of effort, most of the countries in the world—162 of them to date—signed the treaty. (Sadly, the three major manufacturers and military users of landmines—China, Russia and the United States—have not yet signed.) Called The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, or just The Ottawa Treaty, the unique international agreement attracted the support of individuals like Princess Diana and Canadian Cabinet Minister Lloyd Axworthy, but it also galvanized thousands of regular people—world citizens who marched, wrote letters, got their churches and faith groups involved, and generated intense, concerted political pressure on their countries to sign the Treaty.

So when Jody Williams was named as the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize along with ICBL, it created some controversy. Many people believed the entire prize should have gone to the whole coalition of organizations instead. I don’t have a personal opinion on this particular issue, since I wasn’t there in all the meetings, but it does raise a much larger issue—why do we honor one person when many people did the work? Sure, most organizations have leaders, but should the leaders get all the credit, or should the organization share the recognition?

Our societies tend to single out individuals for this kind of recognition, as we all know. But what do you think? Should group efforts be recognized, or should we continue honoring individuals?

The Baha’i teachings, I suspect, might recommend that we turn our attention more towards the unifying effects of the group:

Today is the day of union and this age is the age of harmony in the world of existence. “Verily, God loveth those who are working in his path in groups, for they are a solid foundation.” Consider ye that he says “in groups”, united and bound together, supporting one another. “To work”, mentioned in this holy verse, does not mean, in this greatest age, to perform it with swords, spears, shafts and arrows, but rather with sincere intentions, good designs, useful advices, divine moralities, beautiful actions, spiritual qualities, educating the public, guiding the souls of mankind, diffusing spiritual fragrances, explaining divine illustrations, showing convincing proofs and doing charitable deeds. When the holy souls, through the angelic power, will arise to show forth these celestial characteristics, establishing a band of harmony, each of these souls shall be regarded as one thousand persons and the waves of this greatest ocean shall be considered as the army of the hosts of the Supreme Concourse.

What a great blessing it is that when the torrents, streams, currents, tides and drops are all gathered in one place, they will form a great ocean and the real harmony shall overcome and reign in such a manner that all the rules, laws, distinctions and differences of the imaginations of these souls shall disappear and vanish like little drops and shall be submerged in the ocean of spiritual unity. – Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 4, p. 36.

Hardly anyone does anything alone, without the help of others.

That brings us, though, to the question of individualism—the idea that the highest moral worth can only exist at an individual level—which we’ll examine in the next essay in this series.

When we understand the spiritual and psychological maps of human development as seeker’s paths, the directions they give us begin to look remarkably similar.

If you compare the seeker’s paths from the mystical traditions to the various modern roadmaps of moral and psychological development, guess what? They all work in much the same way as Maslow’s and Kohlberg’s and Baha’u’llah’s Seven Valleys and Four Valleys do: in stages of development that encourage and guide our inner growth from the specific to the universal, from the fragmented to the unified, from the child to the adult, from inner-directed to other-directed, from the limited to the unlimited, from self-absorption to self-transcendence, from search to knowledge to love.

The Baha’i teachings put it poetically:

… until the wayfarer taketh leave of self, and traverseth these stages, he shall never reach to the ocean of nearness and union, nor drink of the peerless wine. – Baha’u’llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 4.

This eternal idea of transcending the self and the ego, summarized in many places, isn’t new—it’s ancient. Best expressed in the perennial philosophy, it identifies a ladder of expanding levels of consciousness at each distinct phase of human development. The philosopher Ken Wilber defines it like this:

There is a much more sophisticated view of the relation of humanity and Divinity, a view held by the great majority of the truly gifted theologians, philosophers, sages, and even scientists of various times. Known in general as the “perennial philosophy”… it forms the esoteric core of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, and Christian mysticism, as well as being embraced, in whole or part, by individual intellects ranging from Spinoza to Albert Einstein, Schopenhauer to Jung, William James to Plato. According to the perennial philosophy, this path of transcendence follows what is called the ‘Great Chain of Being,’ which is said to be a universal sequence of hierarchic levels of increasing consciousness. – Up From Eden, pp. 3, 7.

Wilber accurately describes the perennial philosophy as “… a universal sequence of hierarchic levels of increasing consciousness.” The perennial philosophy’s powerful unifying idea expresses the transcendent, underlying foundation of all mystical knowledge, common to every great Faith and to the great chain of being formed by all the world’s major religions.

How does it work? The perennial philosophy basically says that all religions share a single, universal truth; and that all faith aims to reveal the ultimate purpose of life to humanity. This unifying view, which the Baha’i teachings have long proclaimed, sees the divine origin of the world’s great Faiths as different stages in the history of one, single, progressively-revealed Faith, what Baha’is call progressive revelation:

Contemplate with thine inward eye the chain of successive Revelations …. I testify before God that each one of these Manifestations hath been sent down through the operation of the Divine Will and Purpose, that each hath been the bearer of a specific Message, that each hath been entrusted with a divinely-revealed Book and been commissioned to unravel the mysteries of a mighty Tablet. The measure of the Revelation with which every one of them hath been identified had been definitely fore-ordained. This, verily, is a token of Our favor unto them, if ye be of those that comprehend this truth…. – Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 74.

Just as they proclaim the oneness of all Faiths, the Baha’i teachings and the perennial philosophy merge many of the seeker’s paths that originate in our psychological theories, myths and belief systems.

Each person who takes a path toward inner maturity can probably locate themselves somewhere on one of these maps. Following a path of spiritual development means gaining inner knowledge with the goal of transcending ourselves and expanding our moral consciousness. Every one of these paths urge us to leave the smaller, more constricting, more temporal levels of psychological development in favor of the wider, the higher, the more unified.

The scientist/philosopher Guy Murchie described this universal law of the progress of the spirit in his book The Seven Mysteries of Life:

To be sure, the self is elementary and down-to-earth, as any beginning tool must be if it is to be grasped and used. But this doesn’t mean it is fixed and unchangeable. For, as with time and space, your spheres of awareness inevitably increase and in imperceptible but progressive stages you find and lose yourself as part of a family, a nation, a world … And, without forgetting your name or who you are, if you are growing spiritually, you begin to care less what happens to you and increasingly think and feel and act in causes beyond your individual self—at the same time letting that self diffuse and re-condense into a bigger, more universal consciousness. – p. 518.

The genius of this big idea–a scientific, stage-development model of human spiritual maturity—lies in the immutable, universal natural law of higher-order structures emerging and evolving from the lower.

The Baha’i writings, especially the mystical books of Baha’u’llah, address this concept in beautiful, lyrical and powerful ways. Baha’u’llah offers the world two maps of spiritual growth, one of them with the traditional seven stages the Sufis typically utilized, called The Seven Valleys. The other model, The Four Valleys, features a mystical description of the four stages of the human heart on its spiritual journey.

Interestingly, the religious scholar and historian Huston Smith also drew a four-stage map, which closely parallels the spiritual path Baha’u’llah described. In our next installments in this series of essays, we’ll explore and compare those profound approaches to spiritual growth and development.

We all evolve. No complex organism enters this world fully developed. Science has proven that all life evolves and matures one stage at a time.

This seemingly simple idea, called developmental stage theory in psychology, recognizes the fact that like all beings in nature, every person has a life cycle, and each of the stages in that cycle build on the former stage. In other words, we all evolve. Individual growth, scientists say, simply reflects a stepped-down version of the larger evolutionary process.

Our earliest scientific observers of nature—Aristotle, the medieval Islamic scholar Dinawari, Carl Linnaeus—all plotted plant and animal growth with simple measurements and found that growth comes in stages. These stages, others like Lamarck and Darwin later discovered, have a striking similarity in their patterns that applies in much the same way across the spectrum of all life forms. The contemporary scientists who study those patterns understand that growth and maturity mean more than simply getting bigger—they mean adding layers of complexity at each new stage.

This layer-upon-layer building of progressive complexity lies at the heart of all growth, maturation and evolution. Universally, life progresses along a predictable, progressive course from the simple to the not-so-simple, from the single to the multiple, from elemental to complex. This means the fundamental process of growth itself, no matter where it occurs, looks the same—because it proceeds in a systemic fashion through definable phases.

For example: we now have a fascinating photographic record of how babies develop in the womb, so we know scientifically that this stage-specific pattern of growth means all people constantly have a next stage evolving within them, whether they’re aware of it or not:

The suckling babe passeth through various physical stages, growing and developing at every stage, until its body reacheth the age of maturity. Having arrived at this stage it acquireth the capacity to manifest spiritual and intellectual perfections. The lights of comprehension, intelligence and knowledge become perceptible in it and the powers of its soul unfold. – Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 285.

So, since science has proven that nature itself gradually evolves and differentiates, we can clearly understand that the simpler, more basic forms of life must appear first, becoming more complex as higher-order life-forms emerge. Nature, which organically mirrors our spiritual development, manifests itself in progressively organized grades, or steps, or levels.

Philosopher Ken Wilber and biologist Rupert Sheldrake coined the term “nested reality” for this phenomenon, saying that “in general hierarchy, the higher levels include or enfold or nest the lower.”

This happens not only in biology—it applies across every imaginable life form, discipline and activity. Even learning, whether for animals or humans, proceeds this way, from simplest to more and more complex in progressive levels. First babies learn to babble, then they start to differentiate sounds. Soon after they reach that stage, they begin making their first words, then phrases, then sentences. Why do we get excited about baby’s first word? Because it shows growth, progress and development.

The Baha’i teachings, and the teachings of every major Faith, embed this idea of progressive physical and spiritual evolution into the very core of what it means to be human:

… man must pass from degree to degree of progressive unfoldment until perfection is attained. For instance, if a man should live his entire life in one city, he cannot gain a knowledge of the whole world. To become perfectly informed he must visit other cities, see the mountains and valleys, cross the rivers and traverse the plains. In other words, without progressive and universal education perfection will not be attained.

Man must walk in many paths and be subjected to various processes in his evolution upward. Physically he is not born in full stature but passes through consecutive stages of fetus, infant, childhood, youth, maturity and old age ….

Briefly; the journey of the soul is necessary. The pathway of life is the road which leads to divine knowledge and attainment. Without training and guidance the soul could never progress beyond the conditions of its lower nature … – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 295-296.

From this spiritual perspective on physical evolution, we can view our own increasing complexity, our inner maturational process, as part of that spiritual pathway of life Abdu’l-Baha describes:

All created things have their degree or stage of maturity. The period of maturity in the life of a tree is the time of its fruit-bearing. The maturity of a plant is the time of its blossoming and flower. The animal attains a stage of full growth and completeness, and in the human kingdom man reaches his maturity when the lights of intelligence have their greatest power and development. – Ibid., p. 438.

Have you reached that point in your life yet? Do your “lights of intelligence have their greatest power and development”?

Probably not, because no one can ever say that they’ve fully developed and matured. That’s the basic human condition: we always have room for improvement. No matter how much you know or how far you’ve matured, another stage of development awaits. In the next essay in this series, let’s look at learning itself, and see if it has lessons for spiritual growth and maturation.

Mystics know mysteries. They discover secrets. Mystics disclose those secrets in code. You can read what they say. But do they say what they mean?

Decoding mystic writings is an art in itself. Mystics veil their truths in metaphors, symbols and allegories. Did you know that Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, was a mystic? Here’s an excerpt from the opening of Baha’u’llah’s most celebrated mystical work, The Seven Valleys:

By My life, O friend, wert thou to taste of these fruits, from the green garden of these blossoms which grow in the lands of knowledge, beside the orient lights of the Essence in the mirrors of names and attributes—yearning would seize the reins of patience and reserve from out thy hand, and make thy soul to shake with the flashing light, and draw thee from the earthly homeland to the first, heavenly abode in the Center of Realities, and lift thee to a plane wherein thou wouldst soar in the air even as thou walkest upon the earth, and move over the water as thou runnest on the land. – Baha’u’llah, The Seven Valleys, pp. 3-4.

Did your soul ever “shake with the flashing light”? Did you ever “soar in the air” while walking, or “move over the water” while running?

These mystical allusions, symbols and metaphors ask us to think about our spiritual experiences in a completely different way, by opening a whole world of new meanings and concepts to us. They attempt to describe the indescribable and plumb the depths of unfathomable realms. They introduce us to our own inner mysteries, while they also introduce us to the spiritual world we all long to attain.

Mysticism, wrote Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, lies at the very heart of spirituality and religious faith:

For the core of religious faith is that mystic feeling which unites Man with God. This state of spiritual communion can be brought about and maintained by means of meditation and prayer. And this is the reason why Baha’u’llah has so much stressed the importance of worship. It is not sufficient for a believer merely to accept and observe the teachings. He should, in addition, cultivate the sense of spirituality which he can acquire chiefly by means of prayer.

The Baha’i Faith, like all other Divine Religions, is thus fundamentally mystic in character. Its chief goal is the development of the individual and society, through the acquisition of spiritual virtues and powers. It is the soul of man which has first to be fed. And this spiritual nourishment prayer can best provide.

Laws and institutions, as viewed by Baha’u’llah, can become really effective only when our inner spiritual life has been perfected and transformed. … For prayer is absolutely indispensable to their inner spiritual development, and this … is the very foundation and purpose of the religion of God. – Directives from the Guardian, pp. 86–87.

Every religious tradition contains mystical writings about quests for profound experiences, and how to progress along the mystic path. In most mystical literature the goal is union with God. A mystic’s “peak experience” is typically achieved through “beatific vision”—seeing God—or “divine audition,” hearing God.

The Baha’i teachings, however, say this cannot be done directly. Union with God, in Baha’i terms, becomes possible only through our knowledge of the prophet of God, that powerful individual God sends to humanity every few centuries or millennia to reveal divine teachings and manifest divine qualities:

… man can never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the All-Glorious, can never quaff from the stream of divine knowledge and wisdom, can never enter the abode of immortality, nor partake of the cup of divine nearness and favour, unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets. – Baha’u’llah, The Book of Certitude, pp. 3-4.

Keeping this in mind, it becomes clear how and why the mystic writings of Baha’u’llah, the prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith, are a form of proclamation, with Baha’u’llah as the teacher—or Sufi master (Persian: pīr)—progressively unveiling his revelation, station and mission through symbolic allusions, hints and cryptic references in his mystical writings.

This idea is based on Baha’u’llah’s own statements. Baha’u’llah progressively proclaimed his mission to mystics, then divines, and then kings. Baha’u’llah himself wrote as a mystic, a prophet, and a lawgiver.

Baha’u’llah’s proclamation to mystics took place primarily during the early years of his ministry, from 1853 to 1863. Baha’u’llah’s total revelation is vast—some 18,000 distinct works, containing over 6 million words, composed in Arabic and Persian, less than a tenth of which has been translated into English.

Baha’u’llah’s mystical writings form the transcendent core of the Baha’i teachings, inviting insight into the beginnings of a new global Faith prior to its definitive emergence as a distinct religion. His poetic, profound passages reveal the seeker’s search for oneness with the Creator:

He looketh on all things with the eye of oneness, and seeth the brilliant rays of the divine sun shining from the dawning point of Essence alike on all created things, and the lights of singleness reflected over all creation. – Baha’u’llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 18.

Mysticism sees the ordinary as extraordinary—in other words, it understands that life is endowed with profound significance. Our actions matter. Not only to our actions affect other people, they have a formative impact on our character as well.

Service to others is part of the mystical path. Service to others not only benefits others, but develops our moral character as well. To see self-sacrifice as gain, to understand that giving to others is a gift in itself, and that efforts to bring happiness to those in our personal lives is all part of our purpose and destiny in the greater scheme of things.

Socially engaged mysticism means that loving others is loving God, and serving others is serving God:

Today the confirmations … are with those who renounce themselves, forget their own opinions, cast aside personalities and are thinking of the welfare of others. Whosoever has lost himself has found the universe and the inhabitants thereof. Whosoever is occupied with himself is wandering in the desert of heedlessness and regret. The “master-key” to self-mastery is self-forgetting. The road to the palace of life is through the path of renunciation. – Abdu’l-Baha, quoted by Shahnaz Waite, “Meditation, Supplication and Service,” Star of the West, Volume 17, p. 348.

The true mystic is a true humanitarian. Being godly is being goodly. We express the love of God when we love humanity. Solitary contemplation of the divine, standing alone, is not enough. To progress along the mystic path, we must contribute to the greater good in the best way we can. By doing so, we become greater—not in the sense of self-aggrandizement, but of intrinsic self-worth.

Mysticism is simply a heightened awareness of our purpose in life, and a greater commitment to fulfilling that purpose.