You come across as a smart, thoughtful, and experienced person. This was a good and thoughtful “traditional” Baha’i post you wrote. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. What you say is insightful. But after 36 years I do not agree with your analysis for a very simple reason: the way I see it now is that the real “Baha’is” of the world carrying forth and implementing the STATE OF PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS that Baha’u'llah opened up by going through that spiritual portal in the 19th Century are NOT the people walking around with formal “Baha’i membership cards” in their largely empty wallets.

The Spirit of the Maid of Heaven - the Spirit of the World Age - has far outpaced and outdistanced the largely self defeating FORMAL “Baha’i organization” created by Shoghi Effendi.

For me that is not no longer a cause for sadness, but a cause for rejoicing although it took several years of grieving to come to this insight. The Teachings have gone on to OTHER hearts in OTHER spiritual communities across the world. It is all now “DEEDS NOT WORDS”. This separates the wheat from the chaff as it always has. This is the Divine Standard as a new spiritual World Age unfolds.

The Baha’i Faith is probably right now one of the most materialistic “religions” on Earth. It is being run like a very immature and poorly run American or British business corporation that makes soap rather than a spiritual movement.

The amazing constant “efforting” in the Faith started by Shoghi Effendi’s personal psychological needs has run us into the ground from the very beginning. Only a massively materialistic organization needs CONSTANT EFFORTING. This has been our sorry, sorry history Five Year Plan after Five Year Plan. The Baha’i Faith is probably one of the most exhausted organizations currently on Earth. The people running this religion could not coach a high school football team to a first down let alone a victory.

You don’t need “constant efforting” to succeed in life if you are SPIRITUAL! The Spirit of God tells you what to do. DUH! You don’t have to take a $5 workbook course in the “Spirit of God” to know what to do at all times and be guided in life if you are smart and you are spiritual.

As a mercy to me please don’t ever quote to me anything Glenford Mitchell ever said anywhere at any time. This is a man of absolutely zero spiritual insight. All he can do is parrot what Shoghi Effendi said on every known topic. There is some very curious and toxic depth psychology going on there.

The Spirt of God teaches the Faith. Not individuals AT ALL. Every single day of your life the Spirit will tell you what to do.

I was a very quiet and long serving dedicated Baha’i for 33 years until 3 years ago. The Spirit of God is telling me to get off the Titanic at South Hampton. All the Baha’is are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I believe things will eventually change for the better but not in the lifetime of anyone here. Not until there are Term Limits ruthlessly established at every level of the Faith and the rise of the Internet brings heart and mind numbing ruthless accountability to every position in the Faith. That day will come sometime over the next 1,000 years. But our present time will only see massive catastrophic ruin and loss. The people leading this are clueless and are not held accountable for anything.

But there WILL be a turn around in the fortunes of the Faith at some point in the far, far future after the terrible Divine Judgment Baha’u'llah has clearly foretold in the Tablet of the Holy Mariner takes it’s Divine course.

Most people have traditionally thought Baha’u'llah was speaking about events at the end of the World Age. But now it appears he was talking about events at the very beginning.

It is not that terrible Divine Judgment is going to come. For the current version of the Baha’i Faith TERRIBLE Divine Judgment HAS COME.

The Faith is in very big trouble. And no one will do a thing. Nothing from here on out will be done to address anything. To their credit, the current US NSA DID TRY to inject reason into the equation in their astoundingly frank Ridvan 2007 Convention Report but to no avail. It was IMMEDIATELY dismissed completely out-of-hand by the ITC Faith Apparatus that now completely owns the Faith.

The fate of the Baha’i Faith in the present Era is sealed. it will only now go to ever more accelerating spectacular failure and ultimately financial catastrophe.

It is an incredible tragedy because the Faith could have succeeded brilliantly if it would have remained a free wheeling BOTTOM UP fully democratic spiritual movement that went by the Teachings of Baha’u'llah and not man made highly inaccurate and unfortunate dogmas and doctrines made up by the very tiny professional lifetime incumbent cadre currently running the Faith at the highest levels.

Best regards to you,

Craig

However, I have NO doubt about the direction the UHJ points us in.

I feel that with further, intense study of the Guardian’s writings concerning America and the Double Crusade the Baha’is will have a far clearer understanding of WHY we have been essentially stagnant in growth for over 30 years…

The problem too isn’t with the “Administrative Order” but rather with the caliber of people that are in it… And this in turn is a reflection of the amazing immaturity of the Baha’is in this country.

Look how the Guardian warns us repeatedly in ADVENT OF DIVINE JUSTICE and CITADEL OF FAITH that we will be our worst enemies. Indeed, the desire to cling to the status quo will be nearly overwhelming…

And that, indeed, if the Faith is to EVER rise about obscurity it must, among other critical actions - ATTACK “political corruption, materialism, racism, etc.”

Indeed, the Guardian in 1938 tells us (as a part of the Double Crusade that our FIRST action is “to regenerate the inward life of [their] own community, and NEXT to assail the long standing evils that have entrenched themselves in the life of their nation.”

1938… “regenerate the inward life…” of our own very young community… Think of all that this says!?

And yet we have chosen to ignore the Double Crusade, either innocently or (as I believe) actively by those desperate to cling to the status quo…

It was Mr. Mitchell himself Craig, that to a room of 1200 utterly silent Americans asked, back in October of ‘96 “WHERE IS THE DOUBLE CRUSADE? YOU HAVE HAD IT FOR 70 YEARS AND YET YOU’VE DONE NOTHING WITH IT? WHY??!”

I’ve been through it all Craig… The vicious cycle of anger only makes one sick… I was there in the days of Talisman…

In the end it is up to us. And we have to have faith… Not in fallible humans but in God and His vast plan…

I for one will not give up on the Double Crusade… If we do THAT and in the very end it seems we’ve failed… THEN perhaps, there will be a reason to question… Not until then…

Marlowe

I thought I was the only one….

Glenford Mitchell
Atlanta Baha’i Unity Center
October 11, 2001

http://bahai-library.com/talks/mitchell.watson.html

All speeches by members of the UHJ in recent times are raw and naked completely public psychotherapy sessions. In this sense they are truly astounding if you have read any books in profound depth psychology. So get out your C.G. Jung and be prepared to have your jaw drop on this link.

You are very perceptive P. Marlowe. His strange out of time statement WAS oddly anachronistic for 2001. But NOT in a psychological sense! In that sense his turn of phrase is very telling.

I do not know how old you are, but if you were around in the 1970’s the Baha’i Faith was electric. It was full of former anti-war protesters, anti-war veterans, and social activists of every stripe. Many had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights Movement. Over a thousand - mostly young people - joined the Faith A MONTH! It WAS Entry-By-Troops! It has ALREADY happened once.

Many young people who had ACTUALLY SERVED in the Armed Forces of the United States in the Vietnam War had faced senseless battlefield death at the age of 19 were looking for hope. And unlike today, people facing the draft had to ACTUALLY THINK about the state of the world. many found the Faith as the answer they were looking for.

The statement from the UHJ now in recent years is that we have the “Ruhi” Courses now to “deepen” (some would say indoctrinate) people in the”teachings” of the Faith so they will not “drift away” like people supposedly did back then. I am here to tell you this is a BLATANT NAKED LIE and is PURE BALONEY. People WERE deepened, VERY deepened, and tried with everything they had. People lasted a good 7 to 10 years before they started to drift away! They EVENTUALLY left in total disgust not because they weren’t deepened but because the Administrative Order of the Baha’i Faith DID NOT DO JACK SQUAT to try to solve ANY real problem in the world whatsoever! People began to see through the hapless inept facade of the AO. When people saw this was a hack organization of completely incompetent people they took their energies elsewhere in life.

So read the GMAN’s statement very closely. Somebody was apparently pretty darn upset back then at former untidy anti-war protesters and actual military veterans in the ranks of the Faith, eh? This must have been a threat to his personal self identity addiction in the Baha’i organization in the need to keep his position. It is now a fact of history that the “AO” eventually DID take TOTAL CONTROL OF EVERYTHING in the Faith back under it’’s thumb. It too about 10-15 years and it is now total and has been for a good 20 years. The result is the present free fall of the Faith.

Now it’s 2001 right after the catastrophe of 9/11. Every person on Earth with any IQ (even at the highest levels of the Administrative Order of the Baha’i faith) knew this meant WAR.

So this now out of sync time warped quote comes out repressed in his seething psyche for (count them!) THIRTY YEARS!

“So when you see the U.S. in Cambodia or in Vietnam — or when you see America’s young men in Lebanon, or knocking around in the Balkans — ‘please, will you be quiet and let God do His work!’”

Yep. Somebody deep down in their mind REALLY did not like all those un-tidy Baha’is back then hanging around the old boys club. Hanging out by the pool with all their passion.

So now was the time to nip it all in the bud in the prelude to THIS WAR.

This was the message from the GMAN “Be quiet!”

Never mind that 20 million people ended up in the streets world wide in many nations and the Baha’is were prevented from trying to reach even ONE of them by this hapless mindset!

What a waste and what a loss in the now completely muzzled once wide open Faith. The UHJ tells you WHO you MUST teach. The UHJ tells you HOW you MUST teach. Everything is now all in a top down straight jacket. All for THEIR own petty grasping psychological self definition needs. So that is why people are now leaving in droves.

So it goes.

Many people I know psychoanalyzed that link six years ago with the same odd perception you, yourself, noted in your comment. You are not alone.

Can you please provide a specific citation for this “comment”?