Craig, I have never heard of anything like that. There is no pre-approved and pre-vetted candidates list for potential members of the House of Justice and delegates are still free to vote for whoever they like.

It is true that service on the ITC seems to be a preparation for service on the UHJ, but that is certainly not the intent of the House of Justice. In fact I hear that the World Centre tries to keep ITC members in Haifa during a year when the House of Justice is to be re-elected, precisely to avoid giving them an unfair risk for them to be designed as volunteers to serve on the UHJ, but in a system without nominations, ITC members with global exposure are bound to have it anyhow. It is no doubt for this obvious reason that the Hands of God withdrew from being elected in 1963.

Craig, I have never heard of anything like that. There is no pre-approved and pre-vetted candidates list for potential members of the House of Justice and delegates are still free to vote for whoever they like.

It is true that service on the ITC seems to be a preparation for service on the UHJ, but that is certainly not the intent of the House of Justice. In fact I hear that the World Centre tries to keep ITC members in Haifa during a year when the House of Justice is to be re-elected, precisely to avoid giving them an unfair risk for them to be designed as volunteers to serve on the UHJ, but in a system without nominations, ITC members with global exposure are bound to have it anyhow. It is no doubt for this obvious reason that the Hands of God withdrew from being elected in 1963.

I am referring to the official UHJ pre-approved and pre-vetted UHJ candidates list change made in 1983. Before that the NSA delegates could vote for any Baha'i on Earth to be elected to the Universal House of justice. Before this change people elected often came from the actual grass roots globally and culturally dispersed elected branches of the Faith like NSA Secretaries. These were people with real hands on grass roots experience in the Faith. These were people of operational deeds and not theorist pipe smoking words sitting around in ascots holding court on their intellectual clap trap and their parroted school teacher theories of breathless “education” experiments.

In 1983 the UHJ stopped this free and open practice where people elected could come from across the entire free and open Baha'i World to a closed insider candidates list put forth by the sitting UHJ itself. These officially “organizationally” approved candidates have so far all come from the appointed branches of the Faith. Amazingly, worse still, they have all come from the International Teaching Center since this mechanism actually kicked in in 1988 . This means all officially approved candidates are essentially all vetted and pre-screened to be ideologically pure with the current sitting UHJ.

It is, therefore, a completely top down closed system of nice buddy-buddy cronyism. Look at what “crony capitalism” just did to the financial markets of the United States! In any system of buddy-buddy cronyism there is never any accountability. It all becomes a nirvana of insider groupthink where no one ever feels personally responsible to anyone outside the bubble for any group decision that is made. Such a mechanism is the entire human history of organizations. Doesn'y anyone realize that all the world's religions were founded by INDIVIDUAL REFORMERS who told the hapless groupthink leaders of the “religious organizations” of Their Day that they were full of recently created human biological material! This mechanism of organizational derangement is well known to anyone who has studied systems of clergy, business monopoly trusts, monarchy, and Communist Party and Nazi Dictatorship States over the ages. Duh. Everything becomes a groupthink cult bubble because it all is a nice tidy closed system of intellectual butt buddies. Look at the clergy of Islam! Throw in no women allowed and you have got very real problems of a group of male “executive” souls being completely cut off from half of the energies of life on a daily basis in their closed thought Universe. Everything becomes a locker room of guys snapping towels at each other after essentially playing rounds of intellectual golf with each other day in and day out. Throw in that the electorate of lazy and cowardly automaton NSA member sheep in the closed candidate list system who never hold anyone personally accountable for their performance EVER and it only gets worse. Then throw in that the players at the top of this closed “executive” elite system think that they are the Infallible Voice of God on Earth accountable to no one for ANYTHING they decide EVER and it is like throwing matches around in a room standing in a foot of fresh gasoline. Then top it off with the cherry that the only skill in life these people seem to have is being able to do a string search on a CD in the writings of a man who died in 1957 and then make a decision to parrot his words in any situation coming up in 2009 and counting and you have put the entire administrative governance mechanism in the Baha'i faith in chains. Everything stagnates. No insightful analysis and decisions can be made in real time, every issue becomes a huge blocking force, the spiritual cutting edge advances in the world itself passes the whole system by, and everything falls further and further behind.

Take one case in point: with the advances in technology you don't even need a Baha'i World center in Haifa! Duh. It is now for show only. Every administrative function can be completely decentralized worldwide with everyone sipping coffee at their kitchen table sitting in their underwear being a thousand times more effective in what they do. just do some conference calls on Skype once a week and everyone can then hold a real job doing something else in the world. Like running a business that really does something useful in the real world of humanity. Like doing something that does not begin in mere words and end in mere words. Like doing something more useful than conducting witch hunts and investigating any thought crimes among the rank and file anywhere on Earth in enforcing the NEWTHINK groupthink orgy. Heck, even throwing people out of the Faith can be fully automated. People can be interrogated by e-mail on a form, it graded by a modified resume scanning system looking for un-approved word patterns and thought groupings, and hard copy First Class snail mail termination letters laser printed ready to be picked up by DHL if they remain in business. The members of the UHJ or the ITC don't even half to live on the same continent. All they have to do is live on the same planet.

So everything is passing the entire system by. Many of the powrs of the New World Age that truly once belonged to the Baha'i Faith are now being implemented by other communities of thought via the Internet. Everyone has stolen our thunder. In fact, stealing the thunder of the Baha'i faith is a major new growth industry.

All because things went into a closed ideological litmus test loop after this change in 1983. Apparently everyone is equal but some are more equal than others. We got to it in record time after the start in 1963. It took just 20 years to hijack the Faith by a system of admin-o-centric clergy. It is the same old, same old.

Now I do understand that there is some question as to the possibility of the NSA electors being able to completely ignore the pre-screened and pre-approved candidate list as being utter comedy and shredding it in person or using it for toilet paper and voting for any Baha'i on Earth instead. But i can't get a straight answer about this from anyone. But I will keep trying. Does anyone here know if that move is still an option? an elector of courage can ignore the pre-approved and pre-screened “UHJ candidates” list?

But so far lock step groupthink by the hapless NSA electors seems to be what the actual record says. Personal courage does not appear to be in very big supply.

So this is why I say the beautiful dedicated actions of your dear Mother and many other Baha'is from ALL ERAS have been completely betrayed as foretold by Baha'u'llah in the Tablet of the Holy Mariner. As Baha'u'llah taught us in the Kitab-I-Iqan, all Divine Judgment is Archetypal from World Age to World Age. And so it is very safe to say that the entire Universe is going to fall on these clueless people who have gamed the electoral processes of the Baha'i Faith with total impunity so far. Their lifetime incumbency on UHJ's and NSA's will all become a badge of complete and total dishonor in the future. The tide will turn. And that tide will turn because of the rise of the Internet from the rank and file of the Earth. Adobe Flex 3 and the AJAX system of programming cannot be stopped just to name a few. Look how Baquia has just recently improved how this site works using the new DISQUS system. This stuff is pure, raw, un-chained Divine Judgment unleashed from hearts and minds across the globe. It will effect how governments, religions, businesses, and election processes are run. It will effect every human endeavor. Everywhere. And our current leadership is completely flat footed before the deluge. they will all be deer in the headlights and they are too unaware to discern what is coming upon them.

The people of this time in the Baha'i Faith are going to look like total hacks in the future. Study the Tablet of the Holy Mariner. It is all about Divine Judgment upon the clueless self-appointed clergy archetype.

It is all there in the Mystical Sufi Writings of Lord Baha'u'llah. Everyone, everywhere on Earth can now literally send their thoughts on Tidings of Light to every other person on Earth. meanwhile, the leadership of the Baha'i Faith are pushing fill in the blanks with pre-approved thoughts Ruhi workbooks. The scale of non-comprehension as to what is happening in the world is amazing.

But nobody reads the Writings of Baha'u'llah directly anymore in the incredibly dumbed down groupthink Baha'i Faith.

So the test has come and the courtesy flush is coming upon the hapless people at the top – not the rank and file.

I hope I have answered your question about what happened in 1983.

Craig, the UHJ has always been elected every 5 years by the delegates who are the NSA members of the entire Baha'i world. What change are you referring to?

As to the cosmic flush of tests the purpose of which is to consolidate the community by purifying the staunch from their ego and discouraging the ambitious from their personnal motives, Baha’u’llah explains in the Iqan p 3 the purpose of God in testing our belief:

“Moreover, what could have caused the nonfulfilment of the divine promise which led the seekers to reject that which they had accepted? Meditate profoundly, that the secret of things unseen may be revealed unto you, that you may inhale the sweetness of a spiritual and imperishable fragrance, and that you may acknowledge the truth that from time immemorial even unto eternity the Almighty hath tried, and will continue to try, His servants, so that light may be distinguished from darkness, truth from falsehood, right from wrong, guidance from error, happiness from misery, and roses from thorns. Even as He hath revealed: “Do men think when they say ‘We believe’ they shall be let alone and not be put to proof?” (Qur’án 29:2)

I don't think anyone here disputes any passage you reference at all. I certainly don't. This is precisely the point. What I question is WHO had the authority and on WHAT GROUNDS in 1983 to change the election process of how the UHJ is to be elected by the Baha'is of the entire world? Where is the scriptural authority for establishing a completely closed candidate list set up by the sitting UHJ themselves in a nice inner circle process ideological litmus test system? I don't buy it precisely because of the quotes you reference. With no on-going living Guardian to perform a very important function as stated in the Writings of Shoghi Effendi as the Guardian – WHO is to ask the UHJ to “reconsider” something that may very well be against the Spirit of the Teachings of Baha'u'llah? Answer this question: WHO can ask them to RECONSIDER a decision that might be WRONG as it is completely AGAINST the Divine Teachings of Baha'u'llah for this World Age? If they can NEVER make a decision that might be completely spiritually WRONG (which seems to be the current indoctrinated view) then WHY did Shoghi Effendi set forth a situation where they just might be wrong and there would be a mechanism to deal with it! Please explain? Let's hear it.

If the UHJ is NOW not duly constituted in BOTH the letter and spirit of the W&T of Abdu'l-Baha at all, then it will receive no Divine Assistance and will go to utter mind bending Divine Judgment and catastrophic ruin as foretold in the Tablet of the Holy Mariner.

So explain to me how they are duly constituted after this fundamental change to the electoral process? The UHJ is supposed to be elected by all the peoples of the world. To my mind this new mechanism violates that Spirit. Explain to me how the Faith has not been hijacked by a clique of very spiritually dangerous people who will now bring down Divine Judgment upon themselves in how the Cosmos actually works in carrying out Divine Archetypal Judgment from World Age to World Age? If my thoughts on this are wrong, explain to me why. I am a reasonable man. I will change my viewpoint if you can convince me everything is just peachy in the Administrative Order of the Baha'i Faith with it's system of “President for Life” lifetime incumbency by a tiny clique of people running the ITC on their own private personal Mt. Olympus Club.

I say a Cosmic courtesy flush is coming on the Baha'i Faith but i would be quite happy to be convinced otherwise. So let's hear what you have to say.

SECOND, Auxiliary Board Members and their Assistants were ordained by Shoghi Effendi himself, to be an extension under Hands of the Cause of God.

THIRD, the Counselors are legitimately within the provisions of the Covenant.

In the Kitab-i-'Ahd (the Book of His Covenant) Bahá'u'lláh wrote “Blessed are the rulers and the learned in Al-Baha,” and referring to this very passage the beloved Guardian wrote on 4 November 1931:

In this holy cycle the “learned” are, on the one hand, the Hands of the Cause of God, and, on the other, the teachers and diffusers of His teachings who do not rank as Hands, but who have attained an eminent position in the teaching work. As to the “rulers” they refer to the members of the Local, National and International Houses of Justice. The duties of each of these souls will be determined in the future. (Translated from the Persian).
(http://bahai-library.com/file.php?file=uhj_eluc…)

FOURTH, you cannot possibly claim to know every dynamic of the Will and Testament. Shoghi Effendi wrote, “The contents of the Will of the Master are far too much for the present generation to comprehend. It needs at least a century of actual working before the treasures of wisdom hidden in it can be revealed.”- (UHJM1963-1986, p.161) “We stand indeed too close to so monumental a document to claim for ourselves a complete understanding of all its implications, or to presume to have grasped the manifold mysteries it undoubtedly contains. Only future generations can comprehend the value and the significance attached to this Divine Masterpiece, which the hand of the Master-builder of the world has designed for the unification and the triumph of the world-wide Faith of Bahá'u'lláh.”- (WOB p.8)

I spent years listening to the greater and lesser frustrations that many of those types of people had with groups like MDS and Rabbani Trust. Even when the “better ideas” rise up within MDS (e.g., the “100 Top Trainers” seminars), it is not unusual for the NSA types to simply ignore the more sophisticated, better trained, more “seasoned” professionals that have “real world” experience, and starve “reform” projects of the needed resources, or the opportunity to “compete” for support by using the official “approved” methods of communication. the limited AO resources are usually only used to reinforce existing paradigms.

the reality is that the current “stasist” form of bahai administrative culture is highly risk-averse, and there are a multitude of disincentives for national assemblies to promote “innovative” projects that might not gain momentum and popular support. this is a giant “structural” quandry that exists within bahai culture. I personally think that even the best reforms actually have little chance for success because bahai culture has become so “comfortable” with familiar anti-patterns and dysfunctional memes. most bahai simply do not have the time or energy anymore to invest in “deep change”. there is no incentive for most people to invest in “change” within bahai: they are averse to the emotional trauma that they expect they will have to experience if they support a reform that “crashes”.

all of the people in power have heard all these arguments/perspectives for decades, and they do not care anymore. their “game” is all about “being in denial”:

they are just too cowardly and afraid to do anything different.

so, instead they attempt to superficially “reinvent” the failed bahai bureaucracy over and over in ways that are certain to keep going wrong.

Why the maddness?: to “save face”. the persian/shiia stuff.

(keep the illusion going that their incomptent relatives/friends, and “important people” that run the AO are doing something “right”.)

One of the more horrible examples illustrates how even the most mundane and normal attempts by people to simply do something well (bahai devotional music recordings in the “early days” of the 1960s before any such thing was attempted at even the most minimal commercial level), in spite of dictatorial administrative nepotism, can result in someone being “labeled” a CB for decades, and only “unlabeled” posthumously.

the fact is that when a relative of a bahai in power wants to be seen as an “important person” by being a “bahai recording star”, and someone else with more talent and classical music training “gets in the way”, the person in power can use all sorts of corrupt methods of networking to screw the “competitor” over.

in this example, the “method” was to lie to the NSA and convince them that only one person could “officially” be the “bahai singer” of an entire country, then charge anyone else attempting to commercially record “bahai music” with “disobeying the national assembly', and when unrepentant (for the sake of providing devotional music to inspire people to “teach”, etc.), and continuing to do something perfectly normal in the entire rest of the society – compete for best quality – then the person is accused of “breaking the covenant” for disobeying the corupt, fascist pr*cks at the USBNC.

bahai isn't any kind of solution to the problems of the world, it is the problem.

bahai has absorbed the worst of what the world has to offer, and ruthlessly rid itself of anything “good” that could lead to real solutions:

1) independent, critical thought
2) honesty
3) caring about people
4) willingness to experiment, and learn from failures
5) etc.

one interesting branch of organizational theory is the study of “pattern languages”.

“pattern languages” are similar to the “archetypes” that are found in neoplantonism, sufism, bahai and other related mystical writings, and so forth.

part of the study of “pattern languages” is the classification of “anti-patterns” – so called “intuitive” solutions that are actually non-solutions that invariably backfire and produce the opposite effect of the intended/sought “solution”.

you can google “management anti-pattern”, and find plenty of material that largely explains what is wrong with bahai culture and organizational dynamics.

in so reading, you will also find that the “anti-patterns” that plague bahai (and other backward cultures) are usually so deeply ingrained that only major, external forces can change them.

every possible manner in which “reforms” are supposed to be advanced in the bahai system have been “colonized” (blocked) by dysfunctional people, institutions, processes, methods, and “enacted regressive paradigms”. it is actually amazing how many clever people have spent so many years sealing off any possible method of change.

bahai is premised on a slave mentality (followers) and dictatorial, abusive authority (aristocracy). it is a backward, corrupt, dystopian religion.