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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
36 stories on this theme.
200 years ago in Persia, there were many with the same expectation, that the Qa’im, the promised one, would soon appear. Amongst them lived Siyyid Kazim, wise man, teacher, spiritual divine, who studied the texts of the Holy books and…
‘Abdu’l-Bahá told a story about a Persian believer’s journeys and how he could not sleep at night while in the wilderness for fear of someone stealing his new shirt, a new gift from a prominent person. After several sleepless nights he…
As an example of the methods of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s teaching: My father was having difficulty understanding this matter of Detachment. Just what were we supposed to become detached from? We were taught not to become isolated and detached as…
As a boy, Bahá'u'lláh watched an entire royal court — king, army, and all — paraded in splendour, then folded away into a single small box. He never forgot the lesson.
He then related a story about detachment: the Persian friends travel mostly on foot. They sleep whenever they get tired. They rest whenever they see a shady tree. Once a person came to the Amir. The Amir wished to present him with a…
The thirty-second Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's image of the soul's freedom: that no journey through space and no traversal of the heavens can substitute for inner detachment from all save God.
The seventh Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's call to the son of man to forsake all but Him, that he may attain to His presence and abide in His company.
The forty-fourth Persian Hidden Word — Bahá'u'lláh's praise of the soul who has chosen a single true companion in the Beloved over the world's many fair-weather companions.
Jinab-i-Haji Amin was a shining star who served the Cause as the Trustee of Huququ'lláh for forty-seven years with eagerness and zeal, showing magnanimity, courage and incredible steadfastness. During the Ministry of Bahá’u’lláh he was…
Many a night, no less than ten persons subsisted on no more than a pennyworth of dates. No one knew to whom actually belonged the shoes, the cloaks, or the robes that were to be found in their houses. Whoever went to the bazaar could claim…
The nineteenth and final month of the Bahá'í year, 'Alá' — Loftiness — is the month of the Fast. From sunrise to sunset for nineteen days the believer abstains from food and drink, but the heart of the Fast lies elsewhere: in abstinence from the desires of self, and in severance from all save God. This is what gives the month its name.
In the flower of his youth Nabíl-i-Zarandí bade farewell to his family in Zarand and set out to find the One his soul was seeking. From that day he never turned back. Poet, traveller, herald, recluse — he spent his whole life pouring himself out in service to Bahá'u'lláh, holding nothing of the world in reserve, until at the end he could endure separation no longer.
In a tender letter preserved among His Writings, 'Abdu'l-Bahá set the fading things of this world beside the one Beauty that never fades. Mortal charm passes, He wrote, roses give way to thorns, youth lives its day and is no more — but the Beauty of the True One endureth for ever. His counsel is the very lesson the month of the Fast was given to teach: where to fix the heart.
Pidar-Ján of Qazvín was a poor old man who emigrated to Baghdád to be near Bahá'u'lláh, and there gave his days and nights to prayer. So absorbed was he in the remembrance of God that thieves once lifted the goods from his open hands while he chanted, and he did not notice. 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembered him as a soul who walked the earth but travelled the heights of Heaven.
Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, was a small child when soldiers seized her Father and stripped her home. From that day she shared every exile and every imprisonment of the Holy Family, set aside the ordinary hopes of a woman of her time, and gave her whole long life to service. Lady Blomfield's *The Chosen Highway* preserves the memory of that quiet, unbroken renunciation.
Mírzá Asadu'lláh of Khúy stood high in the world — a learned man, master of several tongues, a trusted official of the Persian state. When he recognized the Báb, he laid all of it down. The Báb gave him a title that bound him to the future of the Faith — "the Third Letter to believe in Him Whom God shall make manifest" — and Dayyán kept that covenant to the end, journeying to recognize Bahá'u'lláh and dying for Him.
In the shrine-city of Karbilá, the Báb gave one of His devoted followers a promise that asked everything of him: that he would live to behold "Him Whom God shall make manifest," but must tell no one, and must wait. Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Zunúzí let the years pass in patient detachment, holding fast to that word — until the day in Karbilá when he beheld Bahá'u'lláh and the promise came true.
Mishkín-Qalam was the most celebrated calligrapher of Persia, honoured at the royal court and famed across Asia — a man whose art alone could have brought him every comfort. He left all of it to follow Bahá'u'lláh, was imprisoned for years on the island of Cyprus, and remained, in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words, "detached from the world," joyous and steadfast in the Covenant to the end.
Ḥájí Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Afnán, was a kinsman of the Báb and a prosperous merchant of Yazd. After Bahá'u'lláh's ascension he gave up his comfort, his business, and his estates and went to 'Ishqábád, where he poured out his entire fortune to raise the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár — the first Bahá'í House of Worship ever built. "This," 'Abdu'l-Bahá said, "is the way to make a sacrifice."
For most of His life 'Abdu'l-Bahá had been a prisoner of the state. When He passed in Haifa in 1921, the very governments that had once exiled and confined Him hastened to do Him honour — telegrams of condolence from Winston Churchill and the British Crown, from Viscount Allenby, from the ministers of 'Iráq, and the High Commissioner himself standing among the mourners.
When His father the Vazír died, the young Bahá'u'lláh was offered the ministerial post the family had long held — an honour the court pressed upon Him. He declined it. God Passes By preserves the moment, and the words of the Prime Minister who, baffled and impressed, sensed that this young Nobleman was destined for something the world could not yet name.
For two years Bahá'u'lláh withdrew alone into the wilderness of Kurdistan, asking nothing, claiming nothing, known to no one but as a wandering dervish. Yet the sheer beauty of His character and wisdom could not stay hidden — the shaykhs and divines of Sulaymáníyyih were drawn to Him in wonder and love, until His fame at last revealed where He was.
Darvísh Ṣidq-'Alí was a wandering Sufi, free and detached, who roamed the path of the mystics in search of God. When he found Him in Baghdád in the person of Bahá'u'lláh, he laid down his old independent life at once and begged only to walk beside the caravan of exile as a humble groom — tending the horses by night, singing his Lord's praises by day, and counting that lowly service the highest sovereignty.
In 1844, while Bahá'u'lláh was still veiled from the eyes of men, a wandering dervish cooking his food by a brook in the district of Núr was, in a single brief conversation, "changed completely" — and recognised the Light that no one else yet saw. Leaving his cooking-pots behind, he rose and followed on foot, chanting a love-song whose refrain has outlived his name: "Thou art the Light of Truth."
In a city famous for the learning of its clergy, the first to recognise the Báb was an unlettered man who sifted wheat for his bread. In a single moment the Call remade him — and he took up his sieve and ran toward martyrdom, declaring he would sift whole cities for souls. A story of the power of God to raise the humblest heart to greatness.
Ustád Ismá'íl was a master builder of high standing in Ṭihrán, prosperous and well regarded by all. For the love of Bahá'u'lláh he lost his work, his wealth, and even his bride, and ended his days peddling trinkets from a cave outside Haifa — counting himself, in that poverty, more honoured than he had ever been in his prosperity.
From His exile in Adrianople and 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the most powerful monarch in Europe — Napoleon III of France — twice. The first message the Emperor is said to have cast aside with a contemptuous word; in the second Tablet Bahá'u'lláh warned him plainly that for what he had done his kingdom would be thrown into confusion and his empire pass from his hands. Within a few short years the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter, while the Cause the exile proclaimed continued to spread.
From the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the supreme spiritual sovereign of the West — Pope Pius IX, who reigned over the Catholic world from Rome. In the Lawḥ-i-Páp He called the Pontiff to leave his palace, sell the jewelled ornaments of his office for the sake of God, and arise to recognize the Day of God. It was a summons from a Prisoner with nothing to a prelate with everything — and within a few years the Pope's own temporal kingdom had vanished from the earth.
Two empires shut Bahá'u'lláh inside the prison-city of 'Akká, meaning to bury His Cause behind stone. Yet within those very walls a sovereignty shone that no decree could touch: governors and generals came humbly to His door, pilgrims crossed the world to reach Him, and from His captivity He addressed the emperors who held Him as a King addresses His subjects. Esslemont's account shows that the Captive of 'Akká was, in reality, no prisoner at all, but a King of Kings.
In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book revealed in the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh turned to the assembled monarchs of the earth and addressed them in words of staggering majesty. He told them that the sovereign Lord of all had come, that they were but vassals, and that the King of Kings had appeared and was summoning them unto Himself. A reflection on the verses in which the sovereignty of God is proclaimed over every throne on earth.
Brought as an exile to Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Sultan, Bahá'u'lláh did the one thing that astonished the whole capital — He sought no favour. Contrary to the universal custom of the city, He refused to call upon its ministers or beg the help of the powerful, choosing instead a dignity that rested on God alone rather than on the patronage of any throne.
As the day of His banishment approached, Bahá'u'lláh showed neither sorrow nor fear. In the Garden, on the eve of His departure for Constantinople, He showed the greatest joy, dignity, and power; His followers grew happy and enthusiastic; and all the notables of Baghdád, even the Governor himself, came to honor the departing prisoner. The Twelfth Day of Riḍván seals that strange reversal in which an exile looked like a triumph.
From Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, a Tablet on the spiritual practice of detachment — not the rejection of the world but the freedom of the soul from the bondage of its desires, so that the heart may be ready for the indwelling of the Beloved.
The exalted titles conferred upon Him by Bahá’u’lláh are indicative of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's lofty station. Yet ‘Abdu’l-Bahá never applied them to Himself. Instead, after the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh, He took the title of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Servant…
The master Nan-in had a visitor who came to inquire about Zen. But instead of listening he kept talking about his own ideas. After a while, Nan-in served tea. He poured tea into the visitor’s cup until it was full, then he kept on pouring.…
Whilst her beloved husband was in prison, Navvab, the wife of Bahá’u’lláh, a pearl, a flower amongst women, was pregnant and alone with their three children, most of their servants ran away, it was too dangerous to stay in their home.…