The World Of Quantum Physics: EVERYTHING Is Energy

The Mysterious Process of Worldwide Change

You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, folks! – Al Jolson, in The Jazz Singer, the first feature film with synchronized dialogue.

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution. – Goethe

The central fact is that we live at one of those points in history when one way of living is in its death throes, and another is being born. – Rollo May

If anyone still thinks that humanity evolves and progresses in a fairly plodding, linear way, the past hundred years, which saw a tremendous explosion of knowledge, should challenge that notion.

In fact, enormous and relatively sudden changes in human knowledge and development have happened periodically throughout history. The flowering of great cultures–the Egyptian or the Greek or the Persian or the European Renaissance or the Iroquois Nation–seems to occur intermittently, when inspired peoples throw off centuries of oppressive sameness and suddenly make fundamental and even revolutionary changes in the way they live and interact. These cultures, driven by powerful spiritual and intellectual forces and scientific discoveries, break patterns and then rapidly shift humanity’s paradigms. Massive social change ensues, establishing new modes of thought and action. Contemporary historians and scholars agree that our world culture today rides the crest of just such a history-making breakthrough on a massive global level.

This process of inductive maturational leaps, the Baha’i teachings explain, begins with the arrival of a messenger or prophet of God, the founder of a Faith. Usually appearing in corrupt, degraded societies, these messengers proclaim a new and yet ancient system of wisdom and action, which destabilizes and then upends the old order and begins to spiritually recreate the world. Humanity invariably treats these messengers cruelly, torturing or imprisoning or killing them for their challenge to the status quo.

Their teachings influence a few pure, searching souls, and those people influence others. The message spreads. At first unnoticed and almost invisible, then persecuted and suppressed, the prophet’s followers create new ways of life for more and more people. Societies start to spring up around the new message. Whole cultures decline and fall at these points in human history, because spring always sweeps away the detritus of winter. A renaissance and a re-awakening occurs; fresh infusions of spirit, energy and creativity surge through humanity; and we gradually remake ourselves and our civilization.

A massive, global cycle of growth gets underway, supplanting the decay of the old cycle, engendering light and life. The arts, the sciences and the sum of human knowledge all blossom in a seemingly sudden and exponential way. Individuals respond to the light of the new revelation, but so do families, villages, tribes, cities, nations, and soon entire civilizations, and the reverberations sound down through successive centuries. The prime movers of humanity, these messengers of God awaken and enlighten the world. The founder of systems theory, scientist Ervin Laszlo, explains:

Today, the average person has a linear concept of progress. The concept of historical progress now emerging in the sciences is less naive and more realistic than the linear progress (or regress) concept dominant in public consciousness. Although the scientific concept has been discovered only recently, remarkably enough, its main outlines have been anticipated in the nineteenth century by a Persian prophet whose influence is only now beginning to be felt in the modern world. Over one hundred years ago, Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i Faith, proclaimed that the oneness of mankind will be achieved in evolutionary stages replete with strife, chaos and confusion. The different stages in mankind’s development are regarded as similar to the stages in the life of an individual:  the present chaotic times are compared to the stage of turbulent adolescence which precedes full maturity. Writing in lifelong confinement in the Ottoman prison colony of Acre (Akka) towards the end of the nineteenth century, Baha’u’llah noted that ‘winds of despair’ are blowing from every direction. The strife that divides and afflicts the human race is increasing; the signs of impending convulsions can be discerned. A hundred years later his followers, members of the now rapidly growing Baha’i world community, recognize this non-linear evolutionary trend and are committed to acting in accordance with it. – Ervin Laszlo, The Inner Limits of Mankind, pp. 120-122.

This period of profound tumult and disorder always accompanies the emerging new breakthrough, much as it did when the Roman Empire collapsed, and the societal safety net that Christianity had quietly woven beneath it stood ready to pick up the pieces and begin anew.

When one social order dies, and another develops in its place, a two-fold process goes to work in the world. Historians call it an age of transition, frustration, chaos or tribulation, and it brings disruption and change to every area of human life. The Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, Shoghi Effendi, described it:

As we view the world around us, we are compelled to observe the manifold evidences of that universal fermentation which, in every continent of the globe and in every department of human life, be it religious, social, economic or political, is purging and reshaping humanity in anticipation of the Day when the wholeness of the human race will have been recognized and its unity established. A two-fold process, however, can be distinguished, each tending, in its own way and with an accelerated momentum, to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the face of our planet. The first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive. The former, as it steadily evolves, unfolds a System which may well serve as a pattern for that world polity towards which a strangely-disordered world is continually advancing; while the latter, as its disintegrating influence deepens, tends to tear down, with increasing violence, the antiquated barriers that seek to block humanity’s progress towards its destined goal. The constructive process stands associated with the nascent Faith of Baha’u’llah, and is the harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong establish. The destructive forces that characterize the other should be identified with a civilization that has refused to answer to the expectations of a new age, and is consequently falling into chaos and decline. – The World Order of Baha’u’llah, p. 170.

By David Langness

Your Beliefs Don’t Make You a Good Person

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. – Mark Twain

Have you ever done something that violated your innermost principles?

Don’t feel alone—we’ve all acted in ways that made us ashamed later. Hypocrisy, that almost-universal human trait, afflicts just about everyone. It’s easy to believe in a high, noble principle–but quite a bit harder to always follow it.

No doubt you’ve seen the popular internet meme on this subject: “Your beliefs don’t make you a good person—your behavior does.”

Every human being faces that accident-prone intersection of inner beliefs and outer actions; the boundary layer that separates the well-intended from the well-behaved; the great gulf between words and deeds.

It’s always been this way. Many people have a tendency to believe in fine principles, to say they support the noblest and loftiest truths. But carrying them out? Actually practicing them? Well, it just so happens, that’s much, much harder to do.

The Baha’i teachings explain:

What profit is there in agreeing that universal friendship is good, and talking of the solidarity of the human race as a grand ideal? Unless these thoughts are translated into the world of action, they are useless.

The wrong in the world continues to exist just because people talk only of their ideals, and do not strive to put them into practice. If actions took the place of words, the world’s misery would very soon be changed into comfort.

A man who does great good, and talks not of it, is on the way to perfection.

The man who has accomplished a small good and magnifies it in his speech is worth very little.

If I love you, I need not continually speak of my love — you will know without any words. On the other hand if I love you not, that also will you know — and you would not believe me, were I to tell you in a thousand words, that I loved you.

People make much profession of goodness, multiplying fine words because they wish to be thought greater and better than their fellows, seeking fame in the eyes of the world. Those who do most good use fewest words concerning their actions. –Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 23.

In many important ways, this issue goes right to the heart of all religion. In fact, religion comes from the Latin word religio, which in ancient Roman times meant “the pious practice of scruples.” A scrupulous person, the Baha’i teachings say, exemplifies the primary purpose of the laws of God:

If a soul of his own accord advances toward God he will be accepted at the Threshold of Oneness, for such a one is free of personal considerations, of greed and selfish interests, and he has taken refuge within the sheltering protection of his Lord. He will become known among men as trustworthy and truthful, temperate and scrupulous, high-minded and loyal, incorruptible and God-fearing. In this way the primary purpose in revealing the Divine Law — which is to bring about happiness in the after life and civilization and the refinement of character in this — will be realized. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 46.

You don’t hear those two words much these days: scruples and scrupulous.

To be scrupulous means to have a conscience, a moral sense that distinguishes between right and wrong. We feel our scruples revolt when our deeds go against our moral values and make us remorseful; and we feel them even more strongly and positively when our deeds conform to our values and give us a sense of integrity, honesty and spiritual growth. Everybody understands these two powerful feelings.

Want to know where the word came from? A scruple, originally, was a small unit (℈) of apothecary weight–1/24 of an ounce–in the Roman system of weights and measures. Typically, you could measure a scruple as the weight of tiny pebble, one of those small stones that somehow gets stuck in your shoe. Those sandal-wearing (and slave-owning) Romans probably had to deal with lots of bothersome scruples. We’ve all had that happen, and we all know how much it can hurt, even though the stone seems so tiny. In the same way, the Romans probably figured, our small, nagging conscience won’t leave us alone when we’ve done something, or when we think about doing something, that we know is wrong.

Religion, at its very core, concerns itself with these basic concepts—with developing moral courage.

Why? Because the purpose of religion involves refining human character and actions. True religion goes far, far beyond any sermon or liturgy or prayer session or ritual or set of principles—instead, it asks us to truly change, to alter what we do, to make our actions God-like:

My friend, the aim of this life is not the acquirement of wealth, honour and glory, not the display of the animal attributes such as eating, sleeping and chasing worldly pleasures. Such aimless and insipid pursuits do not befit man who is endowed with divine effulgence and radiant longings. The object of this life is the attainment of the spirit, the manifestation of the fear of God, the attainment of the knowledge of God, the acquisition of the love of God, the attaining [of] the good pleasure of the Lord of mankind. If man characterizes himself with these God-like attributes he will become freed from all ties of this mortal world, the light of God will shine in his heart, he will hear the voice of the heavenly angels, he will be surrounded by the confirmations of the Holy Spirit, he will become an irradiating centre of the perfect names and qualities of the Merciful and a light through which the darkness of the world of humanity is dispelled! – Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 4, p. 155.

In this short series of essays on the difference between deeds and words, between principles and actions, we’ll look at the development of scruples; at the wisdom of having them; and at the risks and rewards of employing them in the real world. Please follow along as we try to understand what moral courage really means.

By David Langness