I COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU
I really have to thank all the Baha'is that turned on their own religion in their effort to turn me out of it. It all boils down to things the Baha'is are afraid to read about, afraid to examine in the writings of their own faith. I was never afraid of religion. I always knew life went on. Life comes with eternal life; there's no difference. I knew the Baha'i religion was something very, very alien to Baha'i organization. Many passages in the Writings declare unequivocally that the Faith cannot be "organized," and that the most obvious symptom of schism is the ever-increasing demand of administration that Baha'is subordinate their consciences to an Institution of the Faith or a representative thereof. Submission of one's will is an ordinary element of religion, but submission of one's mind and heart to elected and appointed representatives is the ideal of the tyrant.
And how is this submission accomplished? By fragmenting the Teachings, as in the lauded Ruhi program; by entrusting "Assistants" of no proven ability, maturity, or knowledge, to officiate in complex matters of administration that even their "Auxiliary Board" refuses to study, and destroying the reputations of good Baha'is in the process. The Baha'i Faith is no longer in the hearts or hands of the Baha'is but in the living sacrifices of men and women of all faiths and no faiths who are doing the work Baha'u'llah told His followers to do. The heart of the Faith is in people who have never heard of the name Baha'i. It is in lovers of the Word of God who have seen it delivered into the hands of men bent only on money and power. Those friends of God have put their fate in God's hands, because it is not safe in the hands of Baha'i Administration.
Most Baha'is will have been trained by their Administration to ridicule my position, because they cannot bear to employ their own conscience. The slurs and images of a Baha'i no longer having rights or membership are so scathingly humiliating it is a brave heart that dares to think for himself and risk the consequences. Baha'is have been told for so many years that conscience, questioning, rational thought, are dangerous. Any thinking that needs to be done will be done by Administration. All the Baha'is have to do is keep making money and sending it up the line. The House of Worship in Wilmette was recently given a work-over because it would not have lasted a full hundred years without it. The Terraces on Mt Carmel, opened just a few years ago, are already requiring repairs. Baha'i Administrators keep hopping from meeting to conference. The flood of intellectualizations of God's Word keep pouring into the Baha'i Bookstore, and these are books that decry the human spirit and the divine one, and continue to drum into the mind of every reader that he cannot trust himself; he must turn to his Institutions for only they can give him the guidance he needs. All others he might turn to, his Administration has branded Antichrists of Baha'u'llah's revelation. It is not hard to imagine that if Baha'u'llah were to appear on earth today, the House of Justice itself would reject Him and declare Him and outlaw.
As long as the only face Baha'i Administration presents to the upper class and politically influential people it wishes to impress are its own wealthy and influential administrators, while the rank and file embrace servitude to their masters, so their administrators have a flock to show their friends. Baha'i Administration might be likened to a kind of Vatican City of papal servants minus a Pope. It is every man for himself. Since the people cannot read, not because they are illiterate but because they are afraid to, the administrators enjoy unchallenged freedom to accumulate as much power and wealth as their satanic skills allow.
There is hope . A far-stretching sky of hope awaits anyone who can trust his God and step out into Reality. Ultimately man hates to be dominated, he hates playing the slave. He must be free. One taste of freedom and the bugbears and threats of the Auxiliary Board, the Local and National Spiritual Assemblies, the Baha'i intelligentsia, and yes, the Universal House of Justice, will disappear like fog under a rising sun. There is life after Baha'i membership. Good. Clean. Happy. Free. Life. You can see the sun again.
So for any Baha'is who are ready to think for themselves - and Baha'u'llah said thinking for yourself was just fine! - you are welcome to meet me for ice cream at Friendly's. You might get expelled if you're seen with me. God doesn't care. Trust in God, I say. He'll never let you down.
Monday, December 17, 2007
THANK YOU ALL!
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10 comments:
I suggest you research what the Faith says about true liberty and freedom because your perspective is way off.
For example if you leave the Faith and can have sex again outside of marriage, drink, and follow your own desires have you truly gained any freedom? Or have you just become a slave to the desires of your self?
True freedom lies outside the bounds of the material world, but I bet that nobody is going to restrain you right? Not even God.
David, I have read it, because I know that your "quotation" is nowhere to be found in the Writings. I never referred to any freedom but the freedom of conscience. It is a freedom you do not seem to recognize as your right. If I were your mother I would throw you out of the house for suggesting that I left the Faith so I could screw and drink to my heart's content and indulge my "desires." My only desire, and the desire of milllions of non-Baha'is, is His desire.
True freedom lies outside the bounds of the material world? I do not recall that quote, but I do recall the one that goes "true freedom is obedience to My commands." You and I must obey those commands in THIS world. The next world removes our will, so obedience there is moot.
I find it interesting that you believe I am in need of "restraint" and that "not even God" is going to restrain me. If I didn't know any better I'd say that there's still a little porn on your laptop.
You believe all non-Baha'is must be restrained! That God abandons them! Please, David, stop following the horse manure the older Baha'is are passing around and go to the Writings. It's your right to read them and your duty to employ them. Before they have you restraining your grandmother.
Thanks for the comment; it took guts.
It is funny you should refer to passages from the Writings saying "passages in the Writings declare unequivocally that the Faith cannot be "organized."
That's not from the Writings, it is from a pilgrim's note which purportedly as Abdu'l-Baha saying the following:
"The Bahai Movement is not an organization. You cannot
organize the Bahai Movement. The Bahai Movement is the
spirit of the age. It is the essence of all the highest ideals of this century."
Ruth White, a Covenant breaker who rejected the Will and Testament, made a big deal out of that quote and used it as her excuse for opposing Shoghi Effendi's attempts to establish the administrative order. The Guardian wrote in regards to this pilgrim's note and the way it was being used:
"I am at a loss to explain that strange mentality that inclines to uphold as the sole criterion of the truth of the Bahá'í Teachings what is admittedly only an obscure and unauthenticated translation of an oral statement made by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, in defiance and total disregard of the available text of all of His universally recognized writings. I truly deplore the unfortunate distortions that have resulted 5 in days past from the incapacity of the interpreter to grasp the meaning of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and from his incompetence to render adequately such truths as have been revealed to him by the Master's statements. Much of the confusion that has obscured the understanding of the believers should be attributed to this double error involved in the inexact rendering of an only partially understood statement. Not infrequently has the interpreter even failed to convey the exact purport of the inquirer's specific questions, and, by his deficiency of understanding and expression in conveying the answer of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, has been responsible for reports wholly at variance with the true spirit and purpose of the Cause. It was chiefly in view of the misleading nature of the reports of the informal conversations of 'Abdu'l-Bahá with visiting pilgrims, that I have insistently urged the believers of the West to regard such statements as merely personal impressions of the sayings of their Master, and to quote and consider as authentic only such translations as are based upon the authenticated text of His recorded utterances in the original tongue."
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 4)
Since the Guardian did not regard this pilgrim's note as authentic it is not reproduced in any current Baha'i text. It is only the Covenant breakers and those associated with 'internal opposition' who have continued to disseminate it. You presumably got it from one of these sources.
I note that your conflict with the administrative institutions apparently began because you accused a Baha'i of having the 'odor of violation' because he apparently read some Covenant breaking material and you believed he was invected. It is possible that you, yourself have been invected without even knowing it?
Otherwise, where did you get this impression that the Writings say the Baha'i Faith cannot be 'organized'?
I once asked the Universal House of Justice about freedom of conscience. This is what they wrote me:
"As you well understand, not only the right but also the responsibility of each believer to explore truth for himself or herself are fundamental to the Baha'i teachings. This principle is an integral feature of the coming of age of humankind, inseparable from the social transformation to which Baha'u'llah is calling the peoples of the world. It is as relevant to specifically scholarly activity as it is to the rest of spiritual and intellectual life. Every human being is ultimately responsible to God for the use which he or she makes of these possibilities; conscience is never to be coerced, whether by other individuals or institutions.
Conscience, however, is not an unchangeable absolute. One dictionary definition, although not covering all the usages of the term, presents the common understanding of the word "conscience" as "the sense of right and wrong as regards things for which one is responsible; the faculty or principle which pronounces upon the moral quality of one's actions or motives, approving the right and condemning the wrong".
The functioning of one's conscience, then, depends upon one's understanding of right and wrong; the conscience of one person may be established upon a disinterested striving after truth and justice, while that of another may rest on an unthinking predisposition to act in accordance with that pattern of standards, principles and prohibitions which is a product of his social environment. Conscience, therefore, can serve either as a bulwark of an upright character or can represent an accumulation of prejudices learned from one's forebears or absorbed from a limited social code.
A Baha'i recognizes that one aspect of his spiritual and intellectual growth is to foster the development of his conscience in the light of divine Revelation -- a Revelation which, in addition to providing a wealth of spiritual and ethical principles, exhorts man "to free himself from idle fancy and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye". This process of development, therefore, involves a clear-sighted examination of the conditions of the world with both heart and mind. A Baha'i will understand that an upright life is based upon observance of certain principles which stem from Divine Revelation and which he recognizes as essential for the well-being of both the individual and society. In order to uphold such principles, he knows that, in certain cases, the voluntary submission of the promptings of his own personal conscience to the decision of the majority is a conscientious requirement, as in wholeheartedly accepting the majority decision of an Assembly at the outcome of consultation."
I just deleted my own comment.
Organization Boy: you do not even know English. I am not invected. I am not even a Baha'i. Get a girlfriend.
UHJ Boy: Pleae. You have to write to Haifa to understand "conscience?" How do you get out of bed in the morning? Write to Wilmntte? You prove my point, Jack. You have handed your brain over to the Organization.
I'm not a boy.
This is the question I wrote the Universal House of Justice. I think it is a perfectly legitimate question:
"My question is, to what extent does the House see these problems (of internal opposition) as issues of doctrinal heresy which must therefore be suppressed and to what extent are the Institutions empowered to do this? I am aware, for instance, of the verse in the Will and Testament which reads: "To none is given the right to put forth his own opinion or express his particular conviction. All must seek guidance and turn unto the Centre of the Cause and the House of Justice." I note, however that the term for opinion here is rai which is one of the principles (usul) of Islamic jurisprudence. Given the juridical language of this entire section of the Will and Testament I would assume that `Abdu'l-Baha was speaking here largely of opinions in regard to matters of Baha'i law and practice rather than doctrine.
If the Universal House of Justice does regard the imposition of orthodoxy on the Baha'i community as within the purview of the authority of the Institutions I wonder if you could explain to me how this fits in with the tolerance which `Abdu'l-Baha calls for elsewhere within the Writings. I am thinking for instance of the passage in Kitab-I Bada'i al-Athar 1:294 where `Abdu'l-Baha insists that there must be no interference in beliefs or conscience. I also note that in another Tablet `Abdu'l-Baha states that so long as courtesy is maintained that in the Faith no one can rule over a persons conscience. He goes on to say that such freedom does not extend to matters of divine law. (Ma'idih-yi Asmani 5:17-18.) I also have in mind Baha'u'llah's Tablet to Bourjerdi where even over the vital issue of the station of the Manifestation, Baha'u'llah refuses to allow the imposition of rigid dogma."
The complete correspondence can be found here: http://methodologies.susanmaneck.com/
Let me remind you that your "freedom of conscience" consisted of going around calling people Covenant breakers, a Covenant which you now reject, because you were told you shouldn't do this.
It seems your need to right takes precedence over the truth. One moment you are condemning the Baha'i community for having too many academics, the next moment you are condemning them for utilizing Ruhi, a program aimed at empowering Baha'is who don't have formal degrees and a lot of education. One moment you are at war with the institutions because they tell you you can't go around saying you smell the 'odor of violation' from your fellow Baha'is. The next moment you are reading Covenant breaking material and insisting that the Will and Testament is a forgery. Well, if you are right now, then you were wrong to go around calling someone a violator of the Covenant which is what started this whole mess to begin with. But I'm betting you still can't admit how wrong that was.
"I am not invected. I am not even a Baha'i."
It is quite clear you are not a Baha'i. As for being infected, a lot of the followers of Covenant breakers were never members of the Baha'i community. It is not a pre-requisite for being infected.
I do find it quite ironic that you have become the very thing you were so quick to condemn in others.
There is Divine Justice, after all.
If I give you my address will you come around and have your boyfriend watch while you rape me?
More monkeys coming out of the zoo. Won't somebody shut that door!
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