Over the holiday season, I had chance to talk to my Chinese friends about the individual spiritual development and the influence of the social environment on this development. I feel it’s a good topic to discuss here about the reciprocal relationship between the development of individual and of society from Baha’i point view.
We have talked about in previous post that the development of spiritual capacities of human beings is, from Baha’i perspective, the ultimate and fundamental purpose of existence. But the process of this development is not strictly the business of an individual as some may tend to believe. Rather it is closely related and profoundly influenced by the social environment in which an individual lived. For one thing, the capacities (to learn, to love and to will) that we are called to develop itself are strongly socially oriented, and at least partially socially imposed. For example, during our first 18 years of elementary learning period, we as individual, for the most part, really don’t have much to say what to learn. We are forced to learn whatever the society and our parents want us to learn. And after we grew up to be an independent learner, we will have to spend many more painful hours to clean up and sort out “the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge”. In talking about the process of spiritual development, Dr William Hatcher stated in his paper “Human Nature and Human Society” that “the influence of society on the individual is far too pervasive and far too strong not to have a significant effect on such a process”, and “Baha’is consider that society is the God-intended matrix in which this eternal process of spiritual development begins. We hold that it is impossible for an individual to develop his or her spiritual capacities in abstraction from the process by which others are developing their spiritual capacities. In other words, it is through the creation of a just, unified, and progressive social order that spiritual capacities can best be developed."
I guess this statement has destroyed our last hope that we could go straight up to heaven all by ourselves and leave our fellow human brothers/sisters to hell to themselves. We are in this sinking boat together. We either all sink or all be saved. We don’t have another option but to help building a society that is most suitable for the spiritual development of all its members. The era of “独善其身” (to perfect oneself in solitude) is gone for ever.
Shoghi Effendi has made this point very clear in the following quotes:
“The whole object of our lives is bound up with the lives of all human beings; not a personal salvation we are seeking, but a universal one … Our aim is to produce a world civilization which will in turn react on the character of the individual. It is, in a way, the inverse of Christianity, which started with individual unit and through it reached out to the conglomerate life of man.”
And again:
“The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, whose supreme mission is none other but the achievement of this organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of nations, should, if we be faithful to its implications, be regarded as signalizing through its advent the coming of age of the entire human race. It should be viewed … as marking the last and highest stage in the stupendous evolution of man's collective life on this planet. The emergence of a world community, the consciousness of world citizenship, the founding of a world civilization and culture … should, by their very nature, be regarded, as far as this planetary life is concerned, as the furthermost limits in the organization of human society, though man, as an individual, will, nay must indeed as a result of such a consummation, continue indefinitely to progress and develop.”
We have talked about in previous post that the development of spiritual capacities of human beings is, from Baha’i perspective, the ultimate and fundamental purpose of existence. But the process of this development is not strictly the business of an individual as some may tend to believe. Rather it is closely related and profoundly influenced by the social environment in which an individual lived. For one thing, the capacities (to learn, to love and to will) that we are called to develop itself are strongly socially oriented, and at least partially socially imposed. For example, during our first 18 years of elementary learning period, we as individual, for the most part, really don’t have much to say what to learn. We are forced to learn whatever the society and our parents want us to learn. And after we grew up to be an independent learner, we will have to spend many more painful hours to clean up and sort out “the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge”. In talking about the process of spiritual development, Dr William Hatcher stated in his paper “Human Nature and Human Society” that “the influence of society on the individual is far too pervasive and far too strong not to have a significant effect on such a process”, and “Baha’is consider that society is the God-intended matrix in which this eternal process of spiritual development begins. We hold that it is impossible for an individual to develop his or her spiritual capacities in abstraction from the process by which others are developing their spiritual capacities. In other words, it is through the creation of a just, unified, and progressive social order that spiritual capacities can best be developed."
I guess this statement has destroyed our last hope that we could go straight up to heaven all by ourselves and leave our fellow human brothers/sisters to hell to themselves. We are in this sinking boat together. We either all sink or all be saved. We don’t have another option but to help building a society that is most suitable for the spiritual development of all its members. The era of “独善其身” (to perfect oneself in solitude) is gone for ever.
Shoghi Effendi has made this point very clear in the following quotes:
“The whole object of our lives is bound up with the lives of all human beings; not a personal salvation we are seeking, but a universal one … Our aim is to produce a world civilization which will in turn react on the character of the individual. It is, in a way, the inverse of Christianity, which started with individual unit and through it reached out to the conglomerate life of man.”
And again:
“The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, whose supreme mission is none other but the achievement of this organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of nations, should, if we be faithful to its implications, be regarded as signalizing through its advent the coming of age of the entire human race. It should be viewed … as marking the last and highest stage in the stupendous evolution of man's collective life on this planet. The emergence of a world community, the consciousness of world citizenship, the founding of a world civilization and culture … should, by their very nature, be regarded, as far as this planetary life is concerned, as the furthermost limits in the organization of human society, though man, as an individual, will, nay must indeed as a result of such a consummation, continue indefinitely to progress and develop.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Dear Readers,
Thank you for spending time to read my post.
Please share your thoughts here if your heart is touched.
Have a good day,
Le