“A new life”, Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í Faith, prophetically stated, “is, in this
age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth; and yet none hath discovered its
cause or perceived its motive.” Today, more than one-and-half century later the
implications of what He foretold has since taken place. Doomsday protagonists looking
only at the dark side of world events and the physical aspects of human nature are
inducing fear and panic, painting gruesome pictures of destruction, devastation, and
divine chastisement.
For the spiritually minded the transformation brought about by the period of history now
ending is not to deny the accompanying darkness that throws the achievements of
present-day civilization into sharp relief: the deliberate extermination of millions of
helpless human beings, the invention and use of new weapons of destruction capable of
annihilating whole populations, the rise of ideologies that continue to suffocate the
spiritual and intellectual life of entire nations, the damage to the physical environment of
the planet on a scale so massive that it may take centuries to heal, and the incalculably
greater damage done to generations of children taught to believe that violence,
indecency, and selfishness are triumphs of personal liberty. Darkness, the followers of
Baha’u’llah believe, is not phenomenon endowed with some form of existence, much
less autonomy. It does not extinguish light nor diminish it, but marks out those areas
that light has not reached or adequately illumined.
For, “mahapralaya” or “eschatology” has a positive flip side -- messianic hope, a new
beginning; far-reaching transformation never-ever experienced before. Because it is
concerned with the ennobling of character and the harmonizing of relationships, religion
or dharma has served throughout history as the ultimate authority in giving meaning to
life. Every unprejudiced observer will agree that in every age, it has cultivated the good,
reproved the wrong and held up, to the gaze of all those willing to see, a vision of
potentialities as yet unrealized. From its counsels the rational soul has derived
encouragement in overcoming limits imposed by the world and in fulfilling itself. As the
name implies, religion or dharma has simultaneously been the chief force binding
diverse peoples together in ever larger and more complex societies through which the
individual capacities thus released can find expression. The great advantage of the
present age is the perspective that makes it possible for the entire human race to see
this civilizing process as a single phenomenon, the ever-recurring encounters of our
world with the world of the Divine. Thus, I believe, through spirituality as derived from
the mystical experience provided by each one of the world’s extant religions we are all
called upon to render the greatest service--a service that can meaningfully contribute to
healing the ills that afflict a desperate humanity. For, we who are gathered at this
historic First World Parliament on Spirituality believe in the Oneness of the Divine
Reality, the Oneness of Humankind, and beyond all diversity of cultural expression and
human interpretation in the Oneness of Religion / Dharma. “The well-being of
humankind, its peace and security, are unattainable”, Baha’u’llah urges, “unless
and until its unity is firmly established.”