Dear Bill,

I am just back from pilgrimage and the talks by Gustavo Correa and Paul Lample brought us crystal clear insight into the institute Process of which Ruhi books are only one instrument. Following the example of the UHJ, I would be very patient with with all the learning mistakes that are being made in our transition from a top-down procedure to a down-up procedure of community life.

The efforts of the UHJ since perhaps 1993, very obviously aim at reversing the ubiquity of the top-down structure of human societies into an empowerment at grass roots by developping human ressources.

This is so new, that those already engaged in Baha’i activities sometimes felt disempowered by seeing inexperienced new comers taking over activities they had been efficiently performing, and those newly engaged in activities through the Ruhi courses sometimes made mistakes by adopting attitudes of superiority.

The talks we listened to at the BWC confirmed my understanding of the Institute Process posted here, and in addition, I found it very touching to see how lovingly patient the UHJ is in accepting all our mistakes. This is an extract of my Pilgrim’s notes from Paul Lample’s talk :

“Schools teach you that learning is about getting the answer correct first time. You take exams and if you get the answer correct, you have passed, and otherwise you have failed in your learning. Scientists don’t make mistakes: they make experiments, and they learn from their experiments, and then they make more experiments and so on and so forth. This should be our attitude towards learning.

The Guardian used to point to areas of activity, which had proved to be successful and would then tell other believers to do the same. For example, He wrote to the friends in India that they should follow the example of the friends in the USA who had pioneered since this type of activity had proven to be effective. In some parts of the world Baha’is invited their friends to their homes and spoke about the Faith. This proved to be successful and so elsewhere He pointed out that Firesides which had been tried in some parts of the world and which proved to be successful, should be tried.

The Universal House of Justice is following in His footsteps. The UHJ tries a few activities or experiments and when it sees that it has worked, informs the Baha’i World that this type of activity has proven to be effective and that they should follow it.

When the UHJ first spoke of “Areas of Growth”, it did not know how it would work. It was tried in a few places in the world and most of them by and large failed. In some areas it was found that if the area was so small that all the people who were interested in the Faith already knew about it and the rest had already expressed their disinterest, there was not enough geographical scope to move around. In other places it was found that the area was so large that the friends could not get together due to the distances involved. So this led to areas of growth of a convenient size. When a toddler starts to walk and falls down, the parents do not say, ‘let’s throw the kid away’, they get the video recorder out and encourage the baby and upload the images on Face Book.

So it was decided to adjust this area of growth so that it was big enough so that you had enough people to talk to and engage in conversation and at the same time, small enough so that the Baha’is could get together for reflection and learning from each others’ activities.

It was also somehow found that when around 50 people had finished the Ruhi books, then a certain type of momentum took over and they started certain activities. These were put together and the UHJ informed the Baha’i world that they should follow this since it has proven to be effective. Yet still, in its messages, it only mentioned that the activities should contain expansion and consolidation, but without giving any details.

Of course, when people heard of this figure of 50, they said, well we can do this faster: let’s forget about the exercises, or even better, let’s fill in the blanks at home and save time during the study circles. And then when they reached 50, they said OK, we have 50 now, but nothing has happened, where is the entry by troops? But of course you have to do some things during and after you have done these books; you can’t just sit still and wait for things to happen by themselves.

In other parts of the world, we hear that people go to reflection meetings and somebody says I have a question, and they say, you’re not allowed to ask questions. Well then, this is not a reflection meeting at all. In other places, it was suggested to invite seekers to study circles and this proved to be a good way of teaching. So they said we don’t need fires sides any more. People would say that all you have to do is to do the core activities and forget everything else.

The UHJ never said, “Do not have firesides”; it merely said that this is the priority of the plan, which should be done as well as, and not instead of other activities. The function of an LSA is to make sure that all the talents and potentialities of the community are developed and used.”

By evoking the romanticized notion of a simple, pure, primitive culture you are engaging in a classic form of PARADIGM REGRESSION, which is a sign that tribalism and fascism are to come.

The advanced countries are engaged in a perfectly legitimate process of cultural evolution that has very complex needs to integrate spirituality with capitalism, science, technology and democracy.

bahai blather criticising “intellectual acumen and influence” is an evasion that is designed to deflectr attention from the failures of the dominant paradim that operates in bahai culture.

in my experience, bahais (in contradiction to the Guardian’s clear instructions) very rarely have a clue about what the leading edge of thought is in the world. People that DO have a clue about leading though are frequently the target of ridicule and bullying by crass bahai apparatchiks seeking “influence”.

If you study the “real” history of both the american and iranian bahai communities, you will find that all sorts of attempts to bring “street activism” (social justice orientation, etc.) into the community have been “put down” by the bahai leadership elites for the last 80 years or so. The fact that abdul-naha himself was an accoplished street activist is *studiously ignored* by the bahai mainstream.

To infer that the latest attempt of the leadership “system” to “colonize the lifeworld” (of the people) is “anti-elitist” is a bizarre inversion of plain reality.

Elitists have long been running the bahai faith and viciously attacking Blessed Souls, such as Louis Gregory, who tried to keep the cause of social justice alive in the american bahai community.

The very history of how meaning was constructed by the early working-class and populist bahais who struggled in social justice causes has been erased in the collective bahai mind. Just as the early construction of meaning by “sufi” bahais in iran has been erased.

The sad reality is that “systems” collectivists/corporatists took over the bahai faith and have dehumanized it and turned it into a piece of bureaucratic machinery in some kind of horribly distorted and poorly conceived attempt at “building a better mousetrap” for social change and world peace.

The mousetrap never worked, but the “spin” about a “better future” and a rebirth of hope keeps a failed marketing alive, like a zombie is “living dead”. A soul-less machine. In reality the bahai “mousetrap” was just another failed version of the kind of dumbed-down bureaucracy building that was taking place all over the world during the last century.

So, there were huge problems in bahai communities in the USA and many other places LONG before Ruhi/Institutes existed that Ruhi DOES NOT ADDRESS. Which makes the EXPANDED Ruhi/Institutes just another recucled version of a failed attempt at a better mousetrap.

I’ve known SED people from all over the world, some of whom saw the Ruhi/Institutes idea develop in the collective bahai “mind” (such as it is). There was an early pattern of observations from those people that a conformist mindset and other dysfunctional “agendas” drove the EXPANDED IMPLEMENTATION of Ruhi/Institutes.

(That was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what was “really needed” by bahais in the usa and other similar communities who had had their spiritual blood drained by dishonest, power seeking bahai bureaucrats for decade after decade.)

Many predictions were made by the SED people that thought policing would result from the prevailing/dominant Ruhu/Institute IMPLEMENTATION, and that the tedency toward fundamentalism, literalism and theological/doctrinal conformity would be reinforced.

And of course that is exactly what happened.

Which is kinda predictable when you think about it: Ruhi/Institute EXPANDED IMPLEMENTATION is a TOP DOWN attempt to create BOTTOM UP “inititative”.

Pure silliness and a massive contradiction. - see Ivan Illich.

The bahai bureacrats have spent decades destroying grass-roots “inititative” (by “sanitizing the snakepits of human nature” as Illich says), and now blame their own appalling TOP-DOWN failures on the “lack of initiative” at the BOTTOM! Which they aren’t even HONEST enough to admit, THEY THEMSELVES CAUSED!!!

The sad reality is that one of the few semi-real SED success stories in the bahai world (the “original” Ruhi in S. America) was taken out of context and used as an instrument by people that want to stay in an insularized bubble of power, and who also want to promote more dysfunctionality, more thought policing, and more conformity.

Whatever honest and legitimate value Ruhi originally had has long since been hijacked and taken down in flames by the dehumanizing “system” of dysfunctional global bahai bureaucracy.

It is pure rot.

Adios!
Eric P.
(ex-bahai, after 30+ years)
Sacramento, Ca.

Alpha Course? You must be joking! Is this how far you have to go to find ways to criticize the plans of the Baha’i community and nourish your strange belief that the Baha’i Faith is fundamenalist? The Ruhi courses have been under development in Colombia and other parts of Latin America for more than three decades, field tested among tens of thousands of people.

The “controversy” over the Ruhi courses appears to me to be manufactured by people much too enamored of their own intellectual acumen and influence, having no concept of how the Ruhi courses can get people started on meaningful lifelong Baha’i learning. If you have not been out helping lift people from their despair through direct teaching of the Faith, then I think you have little standing to criticize. If you have not actually studied these courses, in fellowship with others, and engaged in the communal practices of Baha’i life they engender, then you have no moral standing by which to be given any credence as you speak against it.

[…] One of the readers of this blog, Farhan Yazdani, was kind enough to share these after another person requested them in a discussion. […]

The “controversy” over the Ruhi courses appears to me to be manufactured by people much too enamored of their own intellectual acumen and influence, having no concept of how the Ruhi courses can get people started on meaningful lifelong Baha’i learning. If you have not been out helping lift people from their despair through direct teaching of the Faith, then I think you have little standing to criticize. If you have not actually studied these courses, in fellowship with others, and engaged in the communal practices of Baha’i life they engender, then you have no moral standing by which to be given any credence as you speak against it.

“From my observations in life it appears to me that individuals do indeed have some kind of natural morality and natural moral reasoning if they can be left free to ponder and reflect from the strength of their own individual hearts and who they seek to spiritually consult with across time and space in the history of human thought and reflection.”

Farhan:
This is a great debate in ethics; some do indeed subscribe to your view. Abdu’l-Baha, very wisely in SDC points out that even if we admitted that an inborn sense of ethics did exist, this natural ethics could be greatly inhanced through an appropriate education; my personal understanding is that there is a “potentiality” that needs to be educated, just as the TV set potentially shows the football match, but has to be tuned to the right channel.

Craig wrote:
“ORGANIZATIONS and INSTITUTIONS create the greatest immorality possible. Top down human organizations as systems of codified and regimented belief are very, very dangerous. This was the great lesson of the 20th Century in horrendous blood and treasure.”

Farhan:
I agree entirely: Milgrain’s experience proves it. Collaboration and cooperation can enhance good acts as much as evil ones, and human behaviour is very “contagious”. When in a psychiatric ward one patient develops a maniac crisis, making jokes and laughing, the whole ward will “catch” his condition. For some mysterious reason, nuns living together will synchronise their menstrual periods.

As the French say, better be alone than in bad company, but how much more wonderful to be in a well-meaning crowd; we were 470 on our pilgrimage, we were a little concerned about being too much of a crowd, but believe you me, there is something fantastic in seeing a crowd of some 500 people moved by teh same love and devotion.

Craig:
“No human soul should ever turn their thinking over to anyone else. Especially a top down organization.”

Farhan:
Agreed, but in some instances humans will have to submit their behaviour to that of an orderly group. We are social beings, and there is no excaping from that fact. A tree can live (apparently) isolated but this is not possible for humans without regression, said Abdu’l-Baha.

Craig:
“The current system of top down leaders and completely passive led scares the living s**t out of me.”

Farhan:
What you describe has existed, i have witnessed it, but it most certainly is NOT part of Baha’i revelation, nor of the will of the UHJ who clearly wishes to empower individual enterprise, COORDINATED by the AO. However, individuals who are part of the AO can be and sometimes are influenced by whatever is currently established in our society at large.

Craig wrote:
“The codependency of good and evil. The
codependency of sanity and insanity. The codependency of the AO and the corruption of the world. Truly a troubling concept. Yes.”

Farhan:
we could also talk of the codependency of hot and cold, of wealth and poverty, of knowldge and ignorance, health and disease… two extremes of the same continum.

warmest

Farhan

I thank you for your two kind posts to me. I appreciate them.

This is the gist of the anguish for me after 32 years of total dedication in the Faith and 4 years of sitting in the road weeping. From my observations in life it appears to me that individuals do indeed have some kind of natural morality and natural moral reasoning if they can be left free to ponder and reflect from the strength of their own individual hearts and who they seek to spiritually consult with across time and space in the history of human thought and reflection.

But the recent history of the human race appears to show that human
ORGANIZATIONS and INSTITUTIONS create the greatest immorality possible. Top down human organizations as systems of codified and regimented belief are very, very dangerous. This was the great lesson of the 20th Century in horrendous blood and treasure.

To my mind everything is indeed a cult. Everything is indeed a system of psychological dynamics. The nation state in the 2oth Century was the greatest cult of all. What will be the greatest cult now? What will be the greatest system of psychological dynamics? War was the greatest crime of the cult of the nation state. What will be the greatest crime now?

So we are now into the depth psychology of the psychological “other” and the psychological “shadow” of our psychological systems of self definition to try to discern the dangers.

May everyone, therefore, choose their system of psychological dynamics wisely.

It is the “YEAR ZERO” thinking in the current version of the Baha’i Faith that has stopped me dead in my tracks. This mentality in an organization absolutely terrifies me. Farhan, “Top down books 1 through 7 IN THAT ORDER ONLY” human beings are everywhere in society. They are very, very dangerous people and must never be given power on Earth in any organization. The whole concept of an organization trying to create a “new human being” by a system of rote indoctrination has been ruthlessly tried by communist states everywhere they have existed. It was ruthlessly tried through the power of totalitarian state propaganda and the modern technology of the P.A. system, radio, and cinema in Nazism. Even with our so called free and open liberties, the current fiscal catastrophe facing the United States because of the cost or war has come from a corporate controlled financially driven media that has systematically dumbed down an entire population into an easily manipulated electorate for the last 30 years. These three instances alone are all studies in psychological dynamics.

I trust no system that is not based on the development and empowerment of individual moral human conscience and individual moral human responsibility in every aspect of life. No human soul should ever turn their thinking over to anyone else. Especially a top down organization.

After all these years, I no longer trust the Baha’i system to be based on that touch stone psychological dynamic at all. The current system of top down leaders and completely passive led scares the living s**t out of me.

I was going to go and see “The Dark Knight” today but maybe I should
wait until I am in a better mood. I hear one of the “deep structure
through lines” in the film is a study of the codependency of Bat Man
and the Joker. Hummm. The codependency of good and evil. The
codependency of sanity and insanity. The codependency of the AO and the corruption of the world. Truly a troubling concept. Yes.
Truly, truly troubling in a concept of how people feed their souls and find their psychological system of existence in the psychological exchanges of mirror opposites. I will have to get a copy of the shooting script to read at some point to study the cinematic discourse after I first see it.

Has anyone here seen it yet?

Again, thank you both for the kindness of your two thoughtful posts back to me.

Best regards to all.

Craig

“I am sure some Baha’is will eventually show up in strength after we get everything geared up by 2021, right? Do you think there will be a medical book course in the Ruhi System by then?”

Craig, my dear brother in quest of reality. Yes, I do believe that the present SED activities are moving towards health education. When and where, I do not know.

Back in 2003, my revolt against some inexperienced but well meaning apparatchiks running the teacher training institute as an “exclusive Ruhi 1 to 7 in the right sequence” took me to a deep study of whatever had been written by the UHJ on the subject. I was dazzled by the extraordinarily advanced concept of the whole project, such as no ordinary human mind might have devised.

The talks by Lample and Correro reaffirmed my understanding and brought me new horizons. I will try to find someone with pilgrim notes that I could share.

As to your warrented revolt against this world, I might add that the facts I have noticed and experienced, are as ugly as what you describe, although on a much smaller scale. My reconciliation with this world is based on the idea that God’s work requires beautiful flowers to whither and die, so that brand new ones, genetically more advanced, might arise in their place.

I understand that you are deeply hurt and that you are dwelling on the sad decomposition of old flowers; I have learnt to only take notice of the compost, but to concentrate my time and attention to admiring and tending the young shoots and buds.

Our work is no doubt complementary, and we are both doing God’s work, but after having reflected many years on the compost you are describing, I am now decided to let the compost take care of itself, as there is nothing I can do to prevent decomposition, and to focus on the growing flowers.

Yes, every time I went into the holy shrines, the questions and sufferings, the ones I have been through myself, and which I have noticed on this list came to my mind, and I know that no one is beyond the bounds of God’s love and mercy.

The World now is full of so many wars and problems and it is indeed sad to see what is going on. I feel your anger at why people do not do more. We are here living in a great country while people the World over are stacked upon each other in squaller shanty towns and refugee camps.

In all practicality and wisdom what should we do? Ignore it? Pray it away? No sir. All we can do is what we can do. Each of us have talents and skills that would benifit socoiety, and if we don’t, we should obtain them. Then what? Put them to use. I see no problem is what Baha’is are doing and what the World needs. Let’s face it, it all comes down to corruption and incompetence from third world governments and manipulation and capitalistic ambition by first world governments. Its not a matter of money or volunteers. Its the idiocy practiced at the highest level of secular government.

In any case, for me, being a Baha’i is a constant reminder that in order to tackle the problems of the World, there must be a multi=pronged approach that touches on all aspects of the problem–top to bottom. If this does not happen, a million volunteers given a thousand years and billions of dollars will never make the World right.

To me its about empowerment and activism. Helping the people help themselves. Education and giving them a good compass to make good decisions. I think this is what Ruhi is about. Yes, its a bit elementary to old school Baha’is…a bit boring for people who have the service bug in them already. But, millions of people will eventually come to hear about Baha’u'llah this way and in the process know that this knowledge has a responsiblity, which is service to mankind. Any Baha’i who does not serve others is failing in thier duty. Many avenues exist to service and I would refrain from cateogorizing its forms in order of importance. Its all vital in its own way. SO, like I always say, as it is a good reminder for me too, we must be the change we wish to see. Your sister is there already.

Farhan wrote:

I have no words to describe my pilgrimage. I was impressed to realize the depts of suffering from God’s chosen ones in order to bring joy and beauty to mankind.

Farhan, like EP, I genuinely hope you had a nice Pilgrimage. When I made mine back in in 1982 I had a truly Cosmic experience from which I am still learning things. One was feeling the Earth shake in artillery shelling as the Lebanon War broke out in the incursion by the Israeli Army. I had not seen that many armed tank columns since I had gone through basic training at Ft. Knox, KY in 1966.

As regards to your above quote, you are referring to the one and a half million U.S. troops that have served repeated extended tours in Iraq and Afghanistan over seven long years of war, right? You are referring to the 40,000 veterans now formally diagnosed with PTSD who will end up unable to hold jobs and perhaps become homeless alcoholics with broken marriages and broken lives, right? You are referring to their long suffering families over the last seven years, right? You are referring to the four million moderate middle class Iraqis who have fled their country ripped to shreds by group think driven Medieval clergy led religious fanatics, right?

The suffering of the Baha’is in Iran does not hold a candle to what these people and their families have been through, right?

I will, therefore, pass on your blessing to my sister who started the journey back to Afghanistan yesterday after six weeks at home to rest and recharge and see her family. Her husband is already back. I hope he meets with Obama’s delegation to brief them. You are referring to her as one of “God’s chosen ones” since she helped get medical help to NINE MILLION Afghans, right? It wasn’t exactly “beauty and joy” but helping people not die I think does count for something, right, even though she is not a card carrying Baha’i? But she does know a lot about it. Does that count? And she is related to me and I am a Baha’i and sometimes we even breathe in the same air space so does some of her ordeal over seven years count a little bit too?

Farhan, the card carrying Baha’is are not the center of the Universe nor is their hyped up suffering the center of the Universe. THE SOULS COMPETENTLY ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK OF THE WORLD AGE ARE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. There are many, many more of them doing the work of the Prophets and Holy Manifestations and Great Thinkers of Mankind and have been since Shoghi Effendi’s tiny band of incredibly limited dysfunctional followers have failed the entire human race over and over, decade after decade, amid horrible mind bending suffering as one of the most clueless organizations in human history. You were also speaking from this perspective, right?

How many more centuries is Paul Lample and the other UHJ “theorist class” members now saying will go by before we can move to Phase XIII Sub-Paragraph B-42-F or whatever sub-plan we are on now?

It is heartwarming that you thought of all these other people and their suffering too outside of the Baha’i Faith circles while on Pilgrimage, right?

Anyway, my sister will be back in Kabul by Sunday ready to get BACK TO WORK HANDS ON actually doing something useful. Pray for her. She has to sometimes move through the same area where the truck bomb was near the Indian Embassy within the last 10 days that killed over 58 people. I am sure some Baha’is will eventually show up in strength after we get everything geared up by 2021, right? Do you think there will be a medical book course in the Ruhi System by then?