Universal life

“ The universal then which I am to realize is the system which penetrates and subordinates to itself the particulars of all lives, and here and now in my life has this and that function in this and that case, in exercising which through my will it realizes itself as a whole, and me in it. ”

“ Crowning these and transcending them in importance are the supreme sentiments and ideals of life, which cannot properly be regarded as habits; they are sympathy, love, faith, reverence for religious convictions, and the ideal of freedom or liberty.
Society itself could not endure but for the stability which habits afford. ”

“ This form of Reason,—this standard of conceptions,—the results, present in the general consciousness of the Time, of the art of Being and Well-Being, is what the third Age encounters at its advent;—this is the universal and natural Common Sense, which it receives without labour or toil of its own, as its hereditary patrimony; which is born with it like its hunger and its thirst, and which it now applies as the undoubted measure of all existence and all worth. ”

“ May we be taught to know and feel, and rejoice in the knowledge and the feeling, that of Thee is our true freedom, from Thee is bur true happiness, unto Thee is our true progress! Thus may our lives ever tend and grow toward Thee, and in Thee alone may we find our home, station, place, position—the only success and reward of life! ”

“ So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the “meaning” of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the common welfare, and try to serve it?... ”

“ Each day of your life will prove that you have decided, and are acting upon the decision you make on this momentous point. Your conduct in society proves it, your behaviour in your family, every thought which occupies your mind, every wish you breathe, every plan you form, every pleasure you enjoy, every pain you suffer—all prove whether it is your object to live for yourself, or for others.
Again, is it your aim to live for this world only, or for eternity? ”

“ But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life for all men as for yourselves—if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;—then, and so sanctifying wealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. ”

“ Nor did it conside- man primarily as a social being or the fullness of his social existence as the highest ideal, but rather as a spiritual being in process of formation and development and his social life, ethical law, play of temperament and exercise of function as means and stages of spiritual formation. ”

“ By this perpetually-renewed casting down of the hard barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the compelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary individual or even of the human group--by this perpetual widening, deepening, and unselfing of your attentiveness--you are to enlarge your boundaries and become the citizen of a greater, more joyous, more poignant world, the partaker of a more abundant life. ”

“ In what state are mankind considered? Do you mean a society constituted as a nation, or mankind, properly so called; one generation or many; their destiny on earth or hereafter in another life? Are you speaking of their well-being, or of their development and perfection abstracted from their greater or less well-being? If the morality of actions is to be placed in their conduciveness, so to speak, to the general good of mankind, in what does this supreme good consist? Is it the development of the understanding, of the imagination, or of the heart ”

“ Third, To comply with that eternal and indubitable law of humanity,—the labor of my whole being, feeling no shame at any sort of work; to contend with nature for the maintenance of my own life and the lives of others. ”

“ WHEN one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and complicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which is this: the confusion of the secondary with the essential. Material comfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization—these things constitute the frame of the picture ”

“ And I shall hope, by and by, to show that you cannot be social without also being ornamental; it is the beginning of that connecting link which shall presently make men realise that life is one, and that all life is good. ”

“ These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart, the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the very universal powers to which we have referred. ”

“ Each life, it seems to me, in that intelligent, conscious, social state to which the world is coming, must square itself to these things in its own way, and fill in the details of its individual moral code according to its needs. ”

“ But if we give a comprehensive glance to the moral progress of society, we shall see that little by little, the yoke is being made easier, in other words, we shall see that nature, or life, moves gradually toward triumph. ”

“ Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld [259] again.
4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.
Society never advances. ”

“ Around thee are the institutions, the ideals, the knowledge and beliefs, ethical or intellectual, in which that work, that life, have been so far fragmentarily and partially realised. Submit thyself and press forward. Thou knowest well what it means to be better: more pure, more loving, more self-denying. ”

“ Here, too, from the purely material point of view, the ideal, as in the animal organism, is complete loss of independent life—the complete merging of the individual independence into the common life of society—the identification of individual life with social function. ”

“ From the point of view of the world-condition this self-revelation of particular individuals appears as the passing of its universality into the distinct embodiments of living individuality, an aggregate over which universal forces still assert the mastery. ”

“ Consider the possibilities of a state of society that gave that opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out the picture; its colors grow too bright for words to paint. Consider the moral elevation, the intellectual activity, the social life. ”

“ Knowledge is as wings to man’s life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone. The knowledge of such sciences, however, should be acquired as can profit the peoples of the earth, and not those which begin with words and end with words....
In truth, knowledge is a veritable treasure for man, and a source of glory, of bounty, of joy, of exaltation, of cheer and gladness unto him. ”

“ From this comparison of benevolence and self-love, of our public and private affections, of the courses of life they lead to, and of the principle of reflection or conscience as respecting each of them, it is as manifest that we were made for society, and to promote the happiness of it, as that we were intended to take care of our own life and health and private good. ”

“ If we desire to adopt religious life in its entirety and fullness, we must not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all nations and races; if we can take in all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings; if we are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great men of all nations and races; then certainly, but not till then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion as it exists in God. ”

“ I understood that these things might be charming pastimes, but that one need seek in them no depth, whereas the life of the hard-working populace, of that multitude of human beings who really contribute to existence, appeared to me in its true light. I understood that there veritably is life, that the meaning which life there receives is the truth ”

“ The publication of high thoughts is the dynamic power in the arteries of life; it is the very soul of the world. Thoughts are boundless sea, and the effects and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life.... ”

“ It is just because all meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment, of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the Absolute Meaning of the world. ”

“ But each of the maxims can be taken to the heart and conscience of the individual, to become a principle of each man’s own character and conduct, and then to reappear, retranslated into social action, according to the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the man or the wisdom of the Church. ”

“ What you insist on, reply'd Palamedes, may have some Foundation, when you stick to the Maxims of common Life and ordinary Conduct. Experience and the Practice of the World readily correct any great Extravagance on either Side. But what say you to artificial Lives and Manners? ”

“ The religion of God and His divine law are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men. The progress of the world, the development of nations, the tranquillity of peoples, and the peace of all who dwell on earth are among the principles and ordinances of God. Religion bestoweth upon man the most precious of all gifts, offereth the cup of prosperity, imparteth eternal life, and showereth imperishable benefits upon mankind. ”

“ World unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is striving. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life. ”

“ This principle is of very wide application.
What produces the noblest human creature now in our nineteenth century? What inspires hope? What sustains us most bravely to fight the battle of life? What makes life most worth living?
When we have ascertained these facts in the present, they will explain the past, and give the foundations of right for guidance in the future. ”

“ And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day common sense. ”

“ I might express it in this way: to make life, social life as well as natural life, a thing that can be steered, and to confide the management of it to humanity itself, a humanity that shall be free, self-conscious, and united. ”

“ A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation—such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving. ”

“ This variety gives birth to that continual series of action and reaction, which constitutes the life of the moral world: from this discordance results the harmony which at once maintains and preserves the human race. ”

“ The degree to which this mastery over our own nature is attained is the truest standard of individual or social progress, since it has the closest relation to the existence of the Great Being, and to the happiness of the elements that compose it. ”

“ Know thou that he is truly learned who hath acknowledged My Revelation, and drunk from the Ocean of My knowledge, and soared in the atmosphere of My love, and cast away all else besides Me, and taken firm hold on that which hath been sent down from the Kingdom of My wondrous utterance. He, verily, is even as an eye unto mankind, and as the spirit of life unto the body of all creation. Glorified be the All-Merciful Who hath enlightened him, and caused him to arise and serve His great and mighty Cause. ”

“ But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present. ”

“ Make ye a mighty effort till you yourselves betoken this advancement and all these confirmations, and become focal centres of God’s blessings, daysprings of the light of His unity, promoters of the gifts and graces of civilized life. Be ye in that land vanguards of the perfections of humankind; carry forward the various branches of knowledge, be active and progressive in the field of inventions and the arts. ”

“ Nay, for God, knowledge is the most glorious gift of man and the most noble of human perfections. To oppose knowledge is ignorant, and he who detests knowledge and science is not a man, but rather an animal without intelligence. For knowledge is light, life, felicity, perfection, beauty and the means of approaching the Threshold of Unity. It is the honour and glory of the world of humanity, and the greatest bounty of God. Knowledge is identical with guidance, and ignorance is real error.
(“Some Answered Questions” (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1984) , p. ”