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Daily Observations of the Baha’i Faith in the Holy Land by Charles Mason Remey Second Baha’i Guardia

THE FIRST VOLUME OF

THESE FOUR VOLUMES OF

DAILY OBSERVATIONS OF THE BAHA’I FAITH,

MADE TO THE THEN HANDS OF THE FAITH

IN THE HOLY LAND,

WAS SENT TO THEM AS A SECRET DOCUMENT

BY MASON REMEY, WRITTEN BY HIM AS A HAND OF THE CAUSE AND

THE PRESIDENT OF THE BAHA’I INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL,

BUT BEFORE HE ISSUED TO ALL THE BAHA’I WORLD

THE PROCLAMATION OF

HIS GUARDIANSHIP OF THE FAITH

AND BEFORE HE, AS GUARDIAN OF THE CAUSE,

BROKE WITH THE HANDS THE PACT OF

SECRECY THAT HAD EXISTED BETWEEN

THE CUSTODIAN HANDS SINCE THE

FIRST BEHJE CONCLAVE

THESE SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH VOLUMES OF THESE OBSERVATIONS

WERE NEVER SENT TO THE

CUSTODIANS IN THE HOLY LAND AND ARE HERE GIVEN

FOR THE FIRST TIME TO THE BAHA’I WORLD

IN THE YEAR 117 OF THE BAHA’I ERA

1960 A.D.

DAILY OBSERVATIONS

THE BAHA’I FAITH

MADE TO

THE HANDS OF THE FAITH

THE HOLY LAND

MASON REMEY

VOLUME I

IN THE YEARS

114-117

OF THE BAHA’I ERA

DAILY OBSERVATIONS

THINGS AND CONDITIONS

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH

MADE TO

THE HANDS OF THE FAITH

THE HOLY LAND

VOLUME I

MASON REMEY

PRESIDENT OF THE BAHA’I INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL

AND

A HAND OF THE FAITH

114 – 117

OF THE BAHA’I ERA

1960

INTRODUCTION TO THE HANDS OF THE FAITH

IN THE HOLY LAND

These observations were jotted down in my notebook from day to day, without any idea of ever sharing them as I am now doing with you. This writing was as personal escape from all but intolerable conditions that I was living under while in Haifa of having to sit quietly day by day and behold the workings of the violation of the Administration of the Faith going on about me and going out from you in Haifa to all parts of the Baha’i world poisoning the spirit of the friends through the propagation of your falacious plans for 1963.

This Volume I, the first of these four volumes of my notes, I send you hoping that you will loose no time in studying these observations, the substance of which is practically the same that I have been sending in my appeals to you, the Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land.

Needless to mention all of these volumes of arguments that I am sending to you in Haifa you should study and restudy in order to straighten out and rectify, if possible, your violations of the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha, all of which I make to you in private and in secret between the Hands of the Faith in The Holy Land.

I am observing this secrecy most carefully and I wish you to do the same. This is for your own protection and the dignity that the Hands of the Faith of God should have maintained before the Baha’i world, therefore let each and every Hand of the Faith remain silent about these exhortations that I give you thus in private for by thus guarding these matters, as the Hands of the Faith themselves in conclave voted to do (keeping in strict confidence all of your deliberations) you will thus be making your own paths free from any reproach that may came to you in the future, for you see that I, even at this eleventh hour am still striving to awaken you to the enormity of your violation of the Baha’i Administration in this my last hope that you will renounce your violations and save your faces from the disgrace that will be yours that will extend on throughout the ages to come of the Baha’i Dispensation unless you now make exceeding haste to follow this my urgent demand.

MASON REMEY

NOTES IN NO CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

BADAH

The Persians use the word “BADAH” to signify the Failure of the Promise or Word of God as given by the Manifestation or Prophet of God sent to the world. They say that even God changes His plan and intent at times and that under such a condition we creatures upon earth must accept this change upon His part and change our ideas to meet the circumstances.

The great danger in the propagation of this theory of BADAH is lest we creatures ourselves desire to do something that is not in accord with the command of God and then in order to carry out our own ideas (we) say that God’s plan has gone bad all thus to excuse and give credence to our own desires by thus maintaining that God has changed his plan which theory when accepted deceives us and many others too that God was wrong and we are right.

BADAH is a very dangerous stand for those to take who wish something other than God’s plan – thus BADAH is their last refuge.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

In the teachings of the Baha’i Faith we are told that the Holy Spirit proceeds to us from its source that in this day is the Manifestation of God to the world through Baha’u’llah.

Baha’u’llah is the only source in this day of our spiritual life and strength and that we receive through the Holy Spirit. It is only through the Holy Spirit can the Faith become rooted in the heart of humanity. All that the believers can do is to arise to serve in this cause of God. This voluntary act upon the part of the individual believer in Bahá’u’lláh makes him a channel for the Holy Spirit to flow to those with whom we seek to share this divine bounty of faith that God has bestowed upon us.

Also, the Holy Spirit works through us collectively as the Baha’i body in the world. When the body of believers is united in the truth of the cause this Holy Spirit actuates this collective body spiritual and that body is led onward to spiritual victory over spiritual victory and onwards!

This is the working of the way of the Holy Spirit.

Christ gave his disciples some startling and profound teachings about the Holy Ghost. According to the creed of Saint Athanasius, the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit “Proceeds from Thy Father and the Son” and is “The Giver and Bestower of Life” and in Christ’s own words, denial or the rejection of the Holy Ghost – the sin against the Holy Ghost – is the one unforgiveable sin. One may sin against The Son (Christ) and against the word of God now in these latter days manifested to this world in Baha’u’llah and be forgiven even for these sins, but the sin against the Holy Ghost is not forgiven in this world nor in the worlds to come. The soul who rejects or cuts himself off from or denies the Holy Ghost is therefore lost.

This teaching of Our Lord given over 1900 years ago has for centuries been a more or less clouded and hidden mystery in Christian thought and doctrinal teaching and like many others of the Spiritual Truths of the Kingdom of God has until now been shrouded in mystery. For according to Christ, He had many truths to tell the people but they could not hear them then at the time of His ministry. However, He promised with the next coming – The Coming of the Lord of the Vineyard – The Coming of The Father – that then the mysteries of the Kingdom would be revealed and explained to the world.

The Manifestation of the Word of God came to this world of humanity in Baha’u’llah and He then for his Dispensation was the center and the unique source of divine enlightenment for this world and the people therein. Through the elucidation of his teachings as directed by him by the center of his covenant, Abdu’l-Baha, we have explained these spiritual mysteries that the world is now ready to receive as foretold by Christ, and amongst those mysteries He explained to us in a series of talks now published in the well know Baha’i work, “Answered Questions”, the workings of the Holy Spirit – the flow of the spiritual life of the soul of mankind – that descends upon the believers – that Divine Bounty of God that flows to us who turn to the Manifestation of God and comes to us upon earth from this point of Divine Revelation. The Holy Spirit descends alike upon all souls giving the life of the spirit to them. It is the only source of this spirit of life and when we deny this source of life and cut ourselves off from this unique source of life, we are indeed consigned to spiritual darkness and this is the unforgivable condition of spiritual darkness and death that confronts those in this world and in the next who curse and deny the Holy Ghost.

How often do we hear men curse God – curse Christ – curse this one and that one but fortunately it is a very rare thing to hear anyone curse the Holy Ghost.

In all of my years of life, I have only heard one person curse the Holy Ghost. It was a terrible moment that I never will forget. That man died not long after that. This was all many years ago!

In Abdu’l-Baha’s teachings including of course those divine teachings contained in His Last Will and Spiritual Testament to the Baha’is, He demonstrates to us that in this day and the time of this Divine Baha’i Dispensation upon earth that the unique source of the Holy Spirit is Baha’u’llah – that from Baha’u’llah (the Manifestation) that this spirit of divine life descends through the center of his covenant upon the Guardian of the cause after Abdu’l-Baha is the center of the divine confirmation of the kingdom. Therefore after Abdu’l-Baha, the Guardian of the Faith is the only and the unique source of divine guidance for the believers – the Guardianship being this institution and not the personality of the human Guardian. The Will and Testament provides for a continued line of many succeeding Guardians on through the age to come. This divine guidance coming through the Institution of the Guardianship and this is the only continued source of confirmation of the Holy Spirit to the world in this Dispensation of Baha’u’llah!

It was not by virtue of his personality nor personal human attainments that the Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi led the Faith out of the confusion that the cause found itself in after the death of Abdu’l-Baha – led the cause on to one after another victory. This progress was due to the fact that Shoghi Effendi was the Guardian of the Faith and that it was through the fact that he was the Guardian of the Faith that he accomplished his spiritual victories! This power of divine guidance was vested in the institution of the Guardianship and not because of any human perfections he had nor was it hindered by any human imperfections that Shoghi Effendi himself as a human man may have had. He was the Guardian and because of this fact, his office of Guardianship, he was the link in the chain coming from Baha’u’llah through Abdu’l-Baha to him, the Guardian, and from him the Guardian to the Faith here upon earth – the only channel through which the Holy Spirit of God flowed to this world while he was the Guardian in the flesh.

Now: What is the condition of the Faith since the death of Shoghi Effendi. There is no acknowledged Guardian. This channel of the Holy Spirit is therefore broken and we are not receiving this spiritual guidance, power and force and we will not be receiving it until the Institution of the Guardianship is reestablished in our midst. That is until we have a Guardian here with us in the flesh acknowledged by all.

Up until now since we have lost our Guardian and God alone knows how much longer this interregnum may be, the cause will be deprived of the flow of the Holy Spirit and consequently the believers will be floundering about in confusion without divine guidance and now for the past year and more to add to the apparent hopelessness of the condition of the Faith is the fact that apparently the majority of the Hands of the Faith in their hearts want to abolish the institution of the Guardianship of the Faith!!! They started out on the wrong basis entirely at the initial Behje conclave of the Hands of the Faith when a group of our numbers formed a pact among themselves to put over the BADAH theory with the object of definitely ending the Guardianship. For as they expressed it, “Until a New Manifestation come after one thousand years who might then resurrect it if he so decreed”. Therefore the Hands of the Faith are in this muddled state of mind rejecting the channel necessary for the Holy Sprit to reach them, so thus deprived of that spirit, the Hands are simply floundering about trying to plan to teach the Baha’i message the world around but not knowing what they are going to teach. In other words not knowing what that message is because this body of Hands of God refuses to uphold this Institution of the Guardianship of the Faith.

The first or initial Conclave of the Hands of the Baha’i Faith held in the mansion of Behje in The Holy Land in November 1957.

RUHIYYIH KHANUM

The fact that Ruhiyyih Khanum was so completely absorded in and at one with the personality of Shoghi Effendi and was the way of approach – in fact the only contact that we of the rank and file of the Faith had with our Guardian – this fact in itself or this relation that she once held is now her stumbling block. For accepting the fact that Shoghi Effendi is no longer the Guardian of the Cause – in other words he was the Guardian up until his death and now we have no acknowledged Guardian. This is our dilemma and it is also her dilemma for she maintains that He is the Guardian of the Faith directing us from the Abha Realm, therefore no successor is needed or is ever to be. She holds that the Guardianship is closed!

Such is Ruhiyyih Khanum’s attitude. She therefore still sets herself up as the contact, as it were, between the Guardian and the Hands. She has taken over the command as it were and the Persian Hands who are a majority amongst the Hands here in The Holy Land have supported her in her stand. They have been sitting by with bowed heads saying “Bally, Bally”. (Yes, Yes).

But there is a limit even to the patience of the Persians. This I have noticed of late. Ruhiyyih Khanum has complained repeatedly on the cost of the food eaten by the Baha’i community at both the oriental and the occidental pilgrim houses and she has taken steps toward reducing this food both in quality and quantity. In the days of Shoghi Effendi, Ruhiyyih Khanum had her meals with the western pilgrims but now she has her meals served in the Guardian’s House where one or two of the friends occasionally eat with her so now she never eats at the Pilgrim House with any of the rest of us. It is known also that she indulges in finer and more expensive foods than she allows the pilgrims and the rest of us. Now this is bothering the Persian Hands very much and they are getting out of patience with her and they are starting to balk at it.

I have noticed this selfishness upon her part but it hasn’t bothered me because I felt that when the people awake to this situation they would surely create a crisis and there would be an explosion and then something would be done about it.

Milly Collins who is mild and innured to long suffering exploded to me today (24 December). It seems that from the Baha’i Administration treasury, Ruhiyyih Khanum receives $500.00 a month for her personal expenses. Her meals and lodging etc. all are apart from this. These expenses come out of the common living fund. This $500.00 per month is for her personal things. She likes to go shopping to buy presents for her friends and she is fond of dress and jewelry and pretty things that she pays for out of her monthly stipend from the Baha’i treasury.

Now this is exasperating to Milly who is a very provident and economical spender, even though she is a wealthy person of the cause and gives large sums toward Baha’i projects, she is economical with her own expenses – always well dressed but never extravagantly so. In the Guardian’s House, she has a small and not a comfortable room without running water. She has to run to the other end of the house from her room for the toilets, bath, running water and kitchen where she has to prepare her own food (she is on a diet) and taking it all in all her lot is not agreeable, nevertheless she takes it all because she thinks she must serve the cause in this way. But today she blew up to me at Ruhiyyih Khanum’s extravagances at the expense of the Administrative Baha’i Fund contributed to by the Baha’is in various lands. Of cource Milly is right in her righteous indignation. I don’t know how long I am going to be able to countenance these conditions all just to keep up appearances for the Hands all tell me if I were to leave Haifa now that the people in America would think it strange and would know that there was something wrong here at the center of the Faith and that this must not get out in this way – that I must stick it out here for the sake of the unity of the cause. It is all Hell and damned nonsense that this cause of God should be treated and handled in this manner!!! I’m not settled myself in my room, my bags are still unpacked.

The Hands of the Faith are faced with an impasse. The eleventh hour approaches when a decision must be made that will either be for the preservation of the cause or for its destruction.

The Hands try to maintain the pattern of the Administration of the Faith as set up by Abdu’l-Baha and as established in its workings by the Beloved Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, which revolves about the Guardianship. Or are the Hands going to declare the Administration BADAH and scrap forever this Guardianship established by the Will and Testament and place something else of their own concoction in its place?????

The responsibility of this choice rests with the Hands. As things are now going after the disappearance of the present Hands, there will be no one authorized in our Holy Write to propogate and to protect the cause. At present we have no definitive message to propogate for without an acknowledged Guardian, the pattern given us by the Master and established by The Beloved Shoghi Effendi no longer is the message of the Baha’i Faith.

But when the Hands make the one step to protect the Faith by finding a Guardian to continue on the office of the Guardianship – then by this one step they will protect the Faith, will have set the entire Administrative again into working order and life – then we will have a living message to give to the world. If we do not do this we have nothing of a divine sanction to give, all we have will be a human Guardianshipless organization that can amount to nothing more than another one of the many human religious societies and communion of mankind.

Let the Hands not try to side step the responsibility of making the decision at our next conclave to adhere right away to the pattern established by Abdu’l-Baha and set in running order by Shoghi Effendi. By side steppping and delaying and trying to silence everybody by the hope that a House of Justice that they will establish in 1963 that will decide all our controversial problems, for there can never be a House of Justice unless there be first a Guardian as the initial column of the two columns (the second elected by the assemblies) that will sustain and carry on the Universal House of Justice.

The basic trouble in our midst dates back to our First Conclave at Behje when a group of our members got together before hand and made an understanding or a covenant between themselves to end for all time the Guardianship of the Faith.

Never in their communications to the Baha’i world at large, the Hands have very carefully tried to conceal the facts of all this business of trying to suit everybody. So far they have not even mentioned the word “Guardianship”. They have attempted to fix the attention and the hopes of the people upon a House of Justice that will in some way solve all problems. The while playing each groupe (those for and those against Guardianship) enough hope of in the end having their way to get their support to this plan for 1963.

The communications of the Hands to the Baha’i world have not been clear and straight. They have withheld and camaflouged their intentions and in other words really used the world’s political methods of propaganda all of which is at variance with the clear and clean way in which this afair of the cause should be treated.

I want to see our Administration back again under the Guardianship according to the pattern of the Will and Testament as set up by The Beloved Shoghi Effendi. If we cling to that, many who hold personal and other aspirations will be rebellious and in all probability will sever or be severed from the Faith but if such needs be so much the better for the cause and the Faith. For by this it will be saved.

The reason that I have for thus holding up the mirror thus before Hands of the Cause including myself that all may see as I see so clearly that the presence of a Guardian amongst us means such great obligation and sacrafice to all of us is because I am convinced that the Hands are not seeing this matter as I do and I want to show them why so many of them find the thought of a Second Guardian of the Faith so utennable to them – Yes obnoxious to the freedom of the individual that the compliance with the obedience to one individual (the Guardian) will entail when we again have a Guardian!

We live in a human world of the ideals of which freedom and all of that which democracy holds dear for the enticement and the pleasures of this world – a world that in these recent years has scrapped and cast aside most of the hereditary rulers, the Kings of the earth and now the Baha’i world is to be ruled by a greater, stronger, and more absolute ruler, the Guardian of the Baha’i world, one more powerful and more absolute in his power than any King of the earth has ever been. All this is the very anthesis of the now popular American ideals of government of the day which ideals have found their greatest field of acceptance in our United States of America. But despite our democracy our Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi has called America the Cradle of the Administration of the Baha’i Faith.

Thus do the American believers overcome and arise above their national ideal of LIBERTY AND LICENSE and welcome the ideal of the Kingship of the Guardian of the Faith!

It is fortunate for the Faith and for humanity that the American Baha’is as a group stood fast in support of the First Guardian of the Faith and I believe that in America the friends will continue this allegiance to the Guardianship under the present and all the future conditions of the Faith.

I firmly believe that were these matters placed at this present time before the believers in the western world that they would see the necessity of the Guardianship over and above the heads of the Hands of the Faith because the faith of these believers has been founded upon the Administration with the Guardian at its head – thus the American pioneers were first in the Baha’i world to go out as teachers throughout the Americas and Europe – disabuse the people of their human and popular ideals of liberty of self government and no more Kingship and confirm them in their allegiance to and support of the government of the Baha’i Faith under one ruler, the Guardian of the Faith.

However, I trust that before such a spiritual insurrection comes to pass that the Hands of the Faith will realize the peril in which the Faith now stands and of their own volition sacrafice each their own freedom from the rule of a Guardian and for the honor and surity of the cause place the Second Guardian of the Faith in command of the cause – all of this for the cause itself at the sacrafice of their present respective liberties.

Some of the friends who held the opinion that the Guardianship is ended are very out of patience with those who question their stand. This in itself to me is a sign that in their innermost consciences they themselves are doubtful and now need to take an aggressive attitude against these whom they consider enemies of the Faith. They are in conflict with their own better selves.

Jimmie and Yvonne Barrett and Tony Fillen, in Latin America, have I understand been deprived of their Baha’i community membership because of questioning. Tony’s stand that there must be a will somewhere of Shoghi Effendi and he is awaiting this document. Letters have been received questioning the abolition of the Guardianship from several friends as well as a letter from the National Assembly of Germany and also a cablegram from them broaching this question. To none of these letters have the Custodians replied directly wishing to avoid open troubles.

While I was in America I had a long personal letter on this subject from Tony Fillon. This letter I sent to the Hands in Haifa. I don’t know what, if anything, they have done about this. I wrote to Tony that I had referred his letter to the nine Custodians in Haifa without making any further comment.

At about this same time, the Barretts called me up at Pohick (where I was living) by long distance telephone from Panama asking my advice in their dilemma – they feeling that the Institution of the Guardianship should be maintained. All I could do was to refer them to the nine Custodians which I understand they did and under this pressure they are now accepting the present interregnum ruling and and they have back their Baha’i voting rights and are not suffering as outcasts. What will develop in Germany only God knows. My own opinion is that their stand is the only stand for a well balanced person to take now at this juncture – that is the stand that I myself have taken and that I intend to maintain. Had I not had that vision, ten years ago more or less, I may not have had the conviction to take this stand. I am the only one individual out of the 27 who feels thus, although it is difficult to know exactly what these Hands, other than myself, do actually feel for they either do not want a Second Guardian or if they do they afraid to say so.

In Ruhiyyih Khanum’s case she is definitely opposed to a continuation of the Guardianship. She stood and told at the Kampala Conference that the plan of Administration of the Faith as given in the Master’s Will and Testament had gone BADAH – then seeing her indescretion she explained to the Hands here in Haifa that she spoke without thinking. I find that those who speak without thinking invariably say what they think.

One day in one of our recent meetings of the Hands in the Holy Land I made some reference to the Guardian’s House whereupon Ruhiyyih Khanum turned and said to me, “That house will never again be lived in by one but me”, thus showing by this remark her intention of maintaining herself in command of the nine Custodians of the Faith by eliminating the possibility of a series of Guardians to follow Shoghi Effendi. Of course she insists that the Guardianship is BADAH because when the cause has the Second Guardian installed (the one I saw in my vision) she will then no longer be in the supreme position that she now has taken and this she is not yet ready to accept.

In the meanwhile however this cause of God – the only hope of the Kingdom of God upon earth testified to by Christ and the Prophets since the beginning of the world – this cause has to be in the hands of this ambitious woman and those who seek her power standing with her maintaining this “no more Guardians”.

To be sure they do not say openly that the Guardianship is ended. They say let us have the House of Justice to decide all these matters, all the time hoping that should by hook or by crook there ever be a House of Justice that this institution would support them in their last refuge that is “BADAH”.

To be sure all of the 25 active Hands of the Faith may in their inner thoughts not take the stand that the Guardianship should forever be ended, nevertheless, they do not come out and take any stand save to put off the question to be solved sometime, somehow by a House of Justice.

The situation looks to be all but hopeless, yet the vision that was given me those years back before I was called here to Haifa by Shoghi Effendi tells me to take this stand that I have made against the united opinion of all the Hands but I myself. As I have reiterated these many times, I consider myself to be the very last person in the world to urge this matter, yet because there seems to me to be no one else to do it, therefore I must do so myself, alone. So far as I know, I Mason Remey, am the only person upon this earth who knows who the Second Guardian of the Faith is to be – but as yet I have no idea at all as to how this is to be brought about?

The sensitivity of the people of the Faith to be diverted from the straight and narrow path thereof is a very strange phenomina that has appeared in times past as well as present in the growth and development that is the spread of the cause such as the diversion away from the Will and Testament as we now witness in the attitude of the Hands of the Faith. But they do not tell this to the Baha’i world in so many plain English words, nevertheless it has a way of leaking out through their attitudes.

To be sure the Hands of the Faith now realize that while that Baha’i Manifesto “A New Baha’i Era” born from a meeting of the American Hands and the N.S.A. of the U.S.A. in Chicago gave the exact picture of their attitude against the continuation of the Guardianship notwithstanding this they were not ready to declare their intention openly to the Baha’i world – not at that time nor even as yet. For in all communiques since the statement sent forth from the First Behje Conclave there has been no allusion whatsoever to Guardianship or any of these documents pertaining to this subject. That “New Baha’i Era” Manifesto written in the literary style of Horace Holley was without a doubt conceived and put over by him, over the Hands and the N.S.A. of the U.S.A. who endorsed it.

Thus at this present time and moment with but the very few exceptions that I now of that I allude to in these writings, practically the entire Baha’i world stands with and behind the Hands of the Faith in their support of the Hands in that which I, as one of the number of Hands, am endeavoring to show to my fellow Hands to be a Baha’i fallacy that for their own good in particular and for the good of the cause in general should forthwith be abandoned and the direction of the Faith again be placed in the hands of a Guardian as provided for in the Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha.

As I have observed this is not the first time that a mass multitude of Baha’is have diverted from the teaching and gone off on a tangent, a minor instance of this I will relate to you here as follows:

For months before the model or design was chosen for the Baha’i Temple at Wilmette, its architect, Bourgeois, together with and greatly aided by Mrs. Ford organized and carried on a propoganda amongst the friends in America putting forth Bourgeois’ idea for this temple, outstanding amongst which was the plan that these two concocted that there should be nine chapels surrounding the central chamber of the temple, each of these chapels to be provided for to give shelter for the worship of the people of each of the nine great religions of the world other than the Baha’i Faith. These nine separate places for worship to be provided and maintained by the Baha’is where each of these great nine religions might worship – the people of each group entering through one of the nine doors of the temple with the Baha’is worshipping in the great central chamber under the dome where it was planned that these people of the other religions could enter and worship with them. There was made no mention as to how those that were Baha’is would be able to get from the outside into their temple directly from the outside.

It reminded me of the theory held for some years by many of the Baha’is congregating in the early days at Green Acre that the Baha’i Faith was to be considered as adjunct or an auxiliary religion to those religions of the past and that in the future the people of the many religions would each keep and practice his former faith but that in the Baha’i Faith they would have a common ground as it were all could fraternize and be happy without giving up any of their religious practices of the past.

From the Green Acre platform our Faith was often spoken of as “The Esperanto of Religions” which phrase explained exactly their interpretation of the Baha’i Faith.

This Ford-Bourgeois propaganda was started at Green Acre. It was indeed a new idea (yet an unBaha’i idea) for a Baha’i temple, nevertheless it so appealed to the imagination of the Baha’is in America that for the most part these believers actually thought that the nine chapels were the orthodox Baha’i requisite for Baha’i temples so that when the annual convention convened to select the design for the temple, the Bourgeois design model being the only one of a number exhibited that had the nine chapels, this requirement automatically eliminated all the other designs and models.

Thus in a great wave of misguided enthusiasm this the only design with the nine chapels was accepted by the convention.

With no results did I try to tell the people that the theory of these nine chapels had no part in the Baha’i teaching or temple program – to find my argument smilingly and kindly rejected by the people, some of whom for years to come were still believing and teaching about the nine chapels all much to my consternation and amazement that these Baha’is were so easily deceived.

This all transpired in 1920 and it was in years to come after the exterior of the temple was built that the Beloved Guardian then told the people in Chicago that there should be no nine chapels for the old religious observances of the past – that all the interior space should be for Baha’i only.

Now the reason that I relate this episode that is out of the past in this writing is to illustrate how a false idea can take root in the Baha’i collective mind and cause trouble just as now I see that the collective mind of the Hands of the Faith is far afield and actually in opposition to the continued Guardianship of the Faith. This should not be allowed to run along any longer. We should make every sacrafice of our ownselves in order to save the Faith from the troubles that our present course has in store for the Faith.

The question is for each one of us to answer for herself and for himself. Is she or is he willing or not willing to forego our present personally happy freedom from the orders and commands of a Guardian by welcoming a Second Guardian of the Faith or are our own selfish desires for this pleasant happy life we now lead going to cause us to reject the sacrifice of this freedom that we can never have and enjoy when we have a Guardian. But which when sacraficed by us will create for the Faith that guidance of the Faith that only the Guardianship can give.

THE CHARITY BAZAR FIRE (PARIS 1897)

During the first year as a student in France occurred the Charity Bazar Fire in the new Jean Gougon in Paris where over two hundred and more lives were lost, many of which victims were people of prominence engaged in this charity benefit, assembled in a temporary bulding constructed of light and inflammable materials.

It was currently reported at the time that a passerby attempted from the street to break through the sidewalls of the light framework enclosed with canvas and paper by which quick action on his part a number of those entrapped within would have been saved but before he could accomplish anything he was set upon by the police who held him under arrest protesting that the law required that only the fire department had the right to lay hands upon a burning building. The fire department was delayed on reaching the scene where they found a cordon of police in command still holding back this man whose quick action could have saved many lives.

Not long after this terrible tragedy a very beautiful though small church was built in the Louis XVI style of architecture upon the site of this catastrophe as a memorial to those who perished here, the construction of which being largely subscribed to by the families and friends of the victims of this tragedy. In one entrance to the cloister of this church is a recumbant figure of Christ as he lay taken down from the cross, that was placed there by Mme. James Jackson of Paris as a votive thank offering on her part for herself and niece who barely escaped death in this confligeration. These ladies were delayed for some reason in reaching this bazar but for a few minutes when their carriage entered the street to which they were going, this building was ablaze!

Shortly after these happenings in the year 1900, Mme Jackson embraced the Baha’i Faith and in 1901 with a group of believers made her pilgrimage to the presence of the Master who was then in Haifa. I was one of this group. She died shortly after the Master’s trek to Europe and America in 1912.

I insert this story to illustrate the principle of protection that I feel the Hands of the Faith should consider now at this time (A.D. 1959) when our Holy Cause is in such immediate peril and when drastic action I feel should be taken in order to save the Faith.

There are times and emergencies when it is necessary to take the law into ones own hands and act quickly to save a situation, such as in time of war or in a case as the Charity Bazar Fire in Paris where the emergency and the exigencies of the moment demand that immediate action be taken in order to save the situation which if not taken in hand immediately spells irreparable disaster.

Such a situation faces the Hands of the Cause now and at this moment.

To be perfectly frank, even though it may sound brutal, the decisions and the policies of the Hands of the Faith have been off upon the wrong track from the first conclave at Behje. Already in shallow waters our ship of the Covenant is now bumping upon the rocks and unless we alter our course we will surely awake to find the arc of the Baha’i Faith high and dry upon the rocks.

This perfectly human organization of nine Hands to head the Faith has no authority whatever in Baha’i sacred writ to exist and now the Hands of the Faith are trying to instert it in place of the Guardianship.

Oh Dear God! What can be done to awaken them to their great danger?

Every statement spoken or written by The Beloved Guardian assures us that the Guardianship that is the very heart of the Administration of the Faith is to endure otherwise the Administration of the Faith cannot endure and without the Administration there cannot be a Baha’i Faith because the message of the Faith comprises the covenant together with the Administration is the cause aside from which there can be no Baha’i Cause. Then therefore we at present are actually floundering about upon the sea of uncertainty all because of this attitude of the Hands that there should be no Second Guardian to continue the living direction amongst us of the Faith which direction the Heart of the Faith in this world was no longer vested in the Beloved Guardian after the death of Shoghi Effendi and the Second Guardian is not yet revealed to the world. The tragic part of it all is that such a majority of the Hands of the Faith actually don’t want a Second Guardian.

This is why we are not able to have the confirmation that we enjoyed in the day of the First Guardian of the Faith. Now that we have no Guardian, the Holy Spirit can no longer guide the Faith as it did under the direction of the First Guardian of the Cause because now we are without this channel of the Holy Spirit to lead the cause on to continued programmes of spiritual victory in this world. The Hands now deceive themselves indeed when they do as they are now doing, trying to set up for the Faith this present system of a Guardianshipless form of Baha’i government for which there is no authority whatsoever in sacred Baha’i writ.

The Hands of the Faith have indeed gotten themselves and the cause into a condition of bewilderment in this critical epoch and the only way to remedy this condition is to use the authority of the Hands of the Faith to protect the Faith from thus violating the Administration, for when a Second Guardian of the Faith is in office then the Holy Spirit eminating from the Manifestation will then come into action and through the Second Guardian who will be our guiding light and the source of infallible leadership. This is not a virtue of the personality of whomsoever may be in the line of Guardians ahead who will lead this Faith, but it is the distinguished confirmation of the office of the Guardianship as given us in the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha.

There is a question in my mind about the Baha’i community life in Haifa that I would like to have answered, not so much to solve the question for myself but to solve it for the best welfare of the Baha’i community.

Why is it that during this past year or more old servants who with their forebears have been serving the Baha’i community there since the days of Baha’u’llah should now be becoming uneasy, leaving and wanting to leave the Baha’i community?

I have put this question to those whom I thought should know the human reaction of these old and tried servant friends and I was told that they had become so sad at the death of Shoghi Effendi to whom they were so personally attached that they were discouraged over life there so wanted to go away from Haifa.

I don’t believe that this is the real reason at all why they now wish to leave I believe there is a cause other than this explanation that causes this exodus from Haifa and their Baha’i service there. They are not being treated and made to feel themselves wanted as human friends. They are discouraged over their state. They see that their services are not appreciated and thus discouraged over their lot they are leaving, hoping to find conditions elsewhere more conducive to their happiness and well being.

It is a responsibility that one undertakes when he employs a servant, as it is a responsibility that a servant undertakes when entering into the service of a householder, each have their respective responsibilities one toward the other and unless this balance of responsibilities is reciprocal things just don’t work out happily and harmoniously. Even though there be no visible trouble between master and servant such may exist though unspoken thus destroying the harmonious working of the organized household.

The old servants in the Baha’i community in Haifa, those who have been there for years, are ground down and their lot is not a happy one; therefore with one accord they are seeking to leave for other fields other than where they and their forebears have been serving for years.

This condition is due, as I see it, to the lack of “Nobless Oblige” among those who are managing the Baha’i household in Haifa. It has been said that it is a simple matter to get Arab and Jewish women to come in by the day to do the household work. Without wishing to argue this point with anyone, I as an observer of these conditions, note here and now that such procedure is just not going to take the place of these old and faithful servants who are now making their get aways from us and escaping from serving us. An entirely new spirit of organization is needed in the Baha’i community in Haifa to right this matter and the sooner that the Hands of the Faith has a Second Guardian of the Baha’i Faith who will reorganize and take command of this confused Baha’i household arranging a regime of service in which those who serve will not be oppressed and will be happy to serve in the household of the Guardian of the Faith.

This is just another of the Baha’i questions of the day that nothing but the Guardianship can solve and make right.

Another problem of major importance to be met is the condition of neglect of the welfare of the young Baha’is of Acre whom as I hear are running wild in that city and already have a bad name in the community.

From various Baha’i sources I hear these young people, their condition and their wicked ways severely condemned but as yet I’ve not heard of anything having been done to help them get out and away from their evil associates and bad ways. It is up to a Guardian of the Faith to solve this question. The Baha’is should not be like Mrs. Jelliby, the Dickens character, donating time and effort among the Hottentots to save their souls while this lady’s family of children were ill fed, ill clothed and running wild.

The problem of the Baha’i Faith are many and are acute, more than any human institution can handle and minister to; therefore it will require the divine institution of the Guardianship to cope with these situations in the cause. Nothing but this Divine Institution can accomplish this.

I trust any Baha’i who may chance to read these notes will understand that I am writing these personal observations in the hope thereby of getting some relief from my distress at the mental torment I am enduring in these days of confusion that has seized this body of the Hands who are the nobles of the Faith. They are indeed bewildered, poisoned and sick due to this violation of the Administration.

Some very few of the believers such as I, a few in North America, in Germany and at least one if not more in India and a very few in Latin America question this Guardianless form of Baha’i Administration that the majority of the Hands have established. Because of this some have had their Baha’i voting rights taken from them – others rather than face such disgrace may be holding their silence, but in their hearts still questioning?

Of one thing I am quite sure. If the Baha’is the world around know the things that I am relating in this writing there would indeed be a veritable rebellion in the cause against the falaciousness of this present situation of our Faith. Therefore I am not in any way letting any Baha’is, other than the Hands themselves, know of my argument with them and that I am in my inner thoughts not in accord with the majority of the Hands, all because I don’t want the body of the Hands to loose face before the Baha’i world as the Hands surely will lose face before the commoners of the cause they to know as much as I know of the way in which some of the affairs of the Faith are at present being conducted.

I certainly and surely don’t want the shake up in the cause that there will inevitably be when the people realize the what and they why of this present situation all of which I am endeavoring to register in this writ.

I am therefore talking to the Hands in the most strict confidence, assuring them that before the commoners of the Faith, I support them the nobles of the Faith in whatever the majority stand for, thus I am supporting the face they make before the people while in my inner thoughts I know that they are on the wrong track entirely and are leading the Faith to destruction. My one thought and desire is to show this to the Hands of the Faith that they at this not too late date may reverse their decisions and desires and reestablish the Guardianship that the ark of the covenant under the command of the Second Guardian of the Faith may continue the triumphant course upon which it was launched by the Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi.

Please read that Statement of the Guardianship in six paragraphs (attached to this manuscript, that has been turned down by the Custodian Hands as being a falacious document. Read it again I pray you and see if the person who wrote those paragraphs didn’t have a very clear view of what the Guardianship of the cause really is!). His name is Gupta.

I have told the Hands of the Cause here in The Holy Land with frankness that I don’t see anythnig but ruin ahead for the Baha’i Faith as we are now operating without a Guardian and beyond this I see no future for the cause if this present Guardianless arrangement continues as the majority of the Hands have made up their minds that they don’t want a reestablishment and a continuation of the Guardianship.

As I see into the minds and motives of some of the Hands about me I perceive a condition that I don’t believe any of them realize – namely that they in reality are being put to the test of accepting and of adapting of their own volition and accord the Master’s Will and Testament wherein the Guardianship is the pivotal axis about which the entire collective life of the Faith revolves. This Administration of the Faith is that which now hangs in the balance and if these Hands who are so opposed to the institution of Guardianship were to use their intellects and not be moved by their feelings of dislike of the idea of Shoghi Effendi’s tenure of that position passing onto another, that is, were they to study out the principles of this government of the Faith so clearly explained in the Will and Testament they would be able to see that this organization of the believers as given in the Administration cannot live without the Guardianship.

I firmly believe that the Hands are sincere in their devotion to the cause of Baha’u’llah but that they are now at this time simply off the track in their present contravention of the central principal of the Administration – that is the Guardianship of our Faith.

Therefore, the object of this writ of mine to the Hands of the Faith is to call their attention to this mass mistake that they are making the rest of which I trace back to our First Behje Conclave when it was very evident that a few of our friends talked between themselves and came to an understanding that they all upheld so strongly in that conference that it has carried on through and dominated the thought of our body ever since. I seem to be the only one of the Hands to force their attention upon this problem. If there are others let them come forward at our next convening conclave and speak to this point.

Daily we Custodian Hands here in Haifa are receiving testimonials from the assemblies and from individual believers in support of the present Guardianshipless organization that we have erected and that the Hands promise them will bring infallibility to the Faith in 1963 all of which has been built up upon a human falacy of imaginings that have not only no divine authority but that actually is against the divine teachings that are contained in our sacred texts.

Almost every day here in Haifa one or others of the Custodian Hands will quietly call my attention to the all enthusiastic support that this present order of our Guardianless Administration is being endorsed and upheld by the people of the cause. This they constantly hold up to me as a proof that they are in the right and that I am in the wrong not to add my endorsement to all these others that are coming in from on all sides.

To me however, this general acceptance of non-Guardianship does not show me that it be right. I base my objections to it upon my experiences of the past thirty eight years, the latter thirty six of which we were directly under the protection of the Guardianship during which years we believers all suffered and the Beloved Guardian Himself, also suffered and the cause grew and spread the world around, but now since we no longer have him to command and direct us and we are no longer making the sacrafices that Shoghi Effendi imposed on us of obedience to the Guardian, we are free from control and are enjoying this life far more than we did in Shoghi Effendi’s day but what is happening to the cause?

I see the danger not in any rebellion of the people against the authority of the nine of us here in The Holy Land, but I see trouble ahead because they, the people of the Faith, are following the Hands in their falacies that are daily lending them farther astray from the Baha’i way of the Kingdom of God upon earth!

One great and significant virtue in the Guardianship of the Baha’i Faith as the central feature of the Administration as given us in the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha is that therein is not only found the infallible guide of the people of the Faith but that the Guardian is the visible, living and tangible representative of the Faith upon earth – the standard on flag upon whom all attention is concentrated. He in his capacity of guard of the Faith being the one center or symbol of representing the unity of the Faith.

Human kind need this emblem to hold them in the unity of the Faith.

What concentration of power would the Roman Catholic Church have were there not the Pope at its head? One could not imagine a Kingdom without a tangible King at its head nor could there be a Kingdom of God upon earth without a sovereign Guardian at its head.

I understand from reports of travelers among the Baha’is in the United States and in Central America as well as the minds of many of the Baha’i pioneers in Central America as well as in the minds of many of the Baha’is of some years in the Faith in these central American countries and in the United States as to what is going to become of the Guardianship and of the future of the Faith if the Administration of the Faith is to be changed or given up, for it seems that that Manifesto gotten up by the Hands of the Faith in America, Horace Holley, Mrs. True and Paul Haney in collaboration with the N.S.A. of the U.S.A. stated definitely that the Guardianship was forever ended and closed.

In the statements issued by the Hands of the Faith there is silence upon the subject of the Guardianship so these people who question still have their questions unanswered and this uncertainty upon their parts is still more bewildering to them when they hear it reported about that the Manifesto from Chicago definitely states that the Guardianship is closed forever – all of these conflicting thoughts with the silence of the Hands of the Faith who avoid the question by neither saying yes or no centers much concern to these people.

NOTE

I find that the very mention of the word “Guardianship” is as an alarm to the Hands of the Faith. It was reported that some one in South America had asked Hermann Grossmann and that he had replied “not yet” from which it could be inferred that there might possibly yet be a Guardian of the Faith?

This upset the Custodian Hands of the Faith greatly for it had been decided in conclave that no mention at all of Guardianship was to be made, it being understood that this hope for the continuation of the Guardianship was to be TABU. No Hand should go beyond the proclamation and as this did not appear in the proclamation it should be TABU.

Any psychologist would understand from this very “touchiness” upon the part of these Hands at the mention of this word that it indicates that in their innermost consciousness they feel themselves to be insecure upon this ground that they have taken for themselves and feeling this insecurity, the very word Guardianship is to them as call to arms to defend their position that is falacious.

I have explained how much more difficult would be the life of abridgation imposed upon the individual believers under the Guardianship of the Faith than it is today with no Guardian to command our comings and goings and in fact almost every or anything that we do. Such is not an easy life upon the human plane for the individual Baha’i as compared with this present regime under which we are living where under each one is more or less a law unto him or herself as he may choose to interpret his Baha’i duty to suit his own case. This present freedom is indeed happy and pleasant from our human viewpoint of our individual liberties but as I have pointed out, what about the progress and the welfare of the cause in the world? Of this we must think and I beg of each individual Hand of the Faith who does not want that the Guardianship be continued, that he or she look at themselves with close inner scrutiny weighing their own personal volitions on one side of the scale as against that which is best for the cause upon the other side of the scale and then make their decision for the best of the cause, sacrificing their own human case, pleasure and desires for the welfare of the Faith.

The Beloved Guardian conferred great spiritual blessings upon the Hands of the Faith when he elevated them to this state of “Handship of the Faith” but at the same time this calling makes it imperative that we make greater and greater personal sacrifices in the service of the cause than any other people of the Faith. We must each sacrafice more than any other that we the aristocracy of the Faith live up to the high standards of “Noblesse Oblige”.

Let each one of us face and see his own problem, a problem that rests between himself and God whether or not he or she wants a Guardian or not, for if the Hands of the Faith unitedly want a Guardian they will have no difficulty but if they in their hearts don’t want the Guardianship, God help the cause and God help them too.

We know that in the end of the cause will prevail. The administration of the cause cannot live without its heart that is the Guardianship, therefore those who in their hearts oppose the Guardianship will in the end fall short of that to which they were called to perform.

The hope extended to the Baha’is of the world of a Universal House of Justice in 1963 that is promised by the Hands of the Baha’i Faith, I cannot help but consider to be a violation of the Master Abdu’l-Baha’is Will and Testament as well as a violation of all that The Beloved Guardian’s mission accomplished to establish this Administration.

This action of the Hands of the Faith is to abrogate the Will and Testament and all that the Beloved Guardian accomplished and this clearly means that the Guardianship as well as other provisions of the Administration so laboriously built up by the Beloved Guardian upon the foundation of the Will and Testament is abolished, including even the existence of the body of the Hands of the Faith for according to the present program the common people of the Faith will eventually have all in their own hands for with the abolition of the Will and Testament and all that this document stands for in favor of the Universal World Spiritual Assembly (elected by the people), the Hands of the Faith – who are the Nobility of the Kingdom – are stepping aside and relinquishing this Noble Estate to which they were elevated to by the Beloved Guardian – they are casting all this into the discard, a suicidal procedure upon their part – and throwing the future of the Faith into the hands of the commoners of the cause to do with as they may see fit. Just a republican form of political government that has nothing in common with Kingship that is the keynote and the foundation of the Kingdom of God upon earth – thus leaving all to the human wishes and desires of the mass of the people, all of which is indeed popular in the democratic confused world of today but which has not only no foundation in Holy writ but is actually contrary to the entire Baha’i teaching as given to us by Baha’u’llah and interpreted to us by the center of his covenant and established in our midst by the Beloved Guardian whom Abdu’l-Baha commanded us to obey and follow in the establishment of the Kingdom of God in this world of today!

What do you, my fellow Hands of the Faith think you are doing to thus abrogate the Administration of the Faith in this manner? How dare you disestablish and cast aside the principle of the Guardianship of the Faith that is the very heart of the Faith and the only source of our guidance. Why do you do this? What evil spirit thus moves you?

To be sure you have not come out clearly in the proclamation avowedly and openly repudiating the Guardianship. This you did not dare do, yet in your hearts and in your attitudes this was your intention. This entire procedure is lacking in confidence – are lithargic in their Baha’i activities and the cause is on the downward grade.

But I have one great hope. As stupid as is the mistake made by the Hands when they decided by majority to do away with the Guardianship, nevertheless at that time they were sincere in the lethargic handling of the matter that was indeed bungled and confused that has produced this present state of affairs that now must be rectified. Therefore I am hoping that with our next conclave that we will not be hurried as we have been in the two conclaves that we have held at Behje. Let us come together and sit for a month or months or even a year if necessary to thoroughly consider the problem in hand in order that we can save this Baha’i Faith from this condition of disruption and disintegration that is now forced upon us to consider and to minister to in order to save the Faith of Baha’u’llah.

I don’t want to point out the indescretions of any Baha’i much less if he or she be a Hand of the Faith nor of the Hands as a body but in order to present this argument to the conclave of the Hands I must indicate where I feel grave and fundamental mistakes have been made. The final triumph of our Faith will be the result of our rectifying the mistakes of the past which mistakes can and should be rectified. The triumph of the Faith can only be delayed by mistakes providing these mistakes be righted. But if we insist on continuing to make and to uphold a mistake made and refuse to do anything about it, then our cause is indeed lost.

There are many reasons why the Second Guardian of the Baha’i Faith is needed now at this time, particularly at Haifa, the center of the cause.

His control is needed to direct the economy of the Faith, as I have pointed out in other parts of this writ and his control is also needed at times to keep peace between the members of the Custodian Hands not to mention the complications that arise between the wives of the Hands of the Faith.

On the whole the wives of the Custodians comport themselves better than do the Custodians themselves at times in their conferences when anger arises and voices mount to a pitch that lets people passing in the street hear the wrangling and the windows have to be closed tight even though the day be a hot one.

But such scenes as this when confined between the four walls of our council chambers and kept secret between us will not have the bad effect on the outside Baha’i world that would be produced were the friends abroad to know of this condition. Thus the Custodian Hands have to be ever on the alert lest the people find out these actual conditions that exist between them.

So much for our personal clashes! These can after a fashion be hidden from the Baha’i world but these visiting pilgrim friends from all over the world are not stupid people and they not only see and when they go away back to their homes they talk and they tell of things that they have perceived while in Haifa, the knowledge of which will surely have a very bad effect on the Faith the world around.

I know of certain misappropriations of Baha’i funds that have enriched certain people (now all in the past) in America that have seriously retarded the growth and the well being of the Faith and I am sure that were the friends of the world in general to know of the ways in which the Custodian Hands are handling the money of the cause, that the people would be dismayed and after suffering this dismay might, in fact most probably would, reason with themselves to the effect, “Why should I deny myself and give to the Baha’i fund?”

When these offerings of the believers cease to come in to the International Baha’i Fund, the Custodian Hands will be the very first ones to perceive this. They they will better understand why we need a Second Guardian right now not at some time in the future, to hold down expenses.

We, these servant Hands of the Faith, should be the very first ones of the Faith to vigorously economize. We should ourselves choose to do this for the sake of the cause. We ought not ourselves be obliged to have to have a Guardian to control us in this respect of economics. We should instinctively want to economize in using money from the Baha’i fund. We indeed need a Guardian to hold us down and into line – unpleasant as this would be for us it would indeed be the best thing for the Faith and this should be our first consideration – the Faith – and nothing else. Life under the Beloved Guardian was not an easy life. It was difficult.

This is not a pleasant nor a happy matter that I have undertaken to tell my fellow Hands exactly what I see going on around me in Haifa, but I feel that the exigencies of the moment require that someone should hold the mirror up to the Hands for each and everyone of us to see these matters as they are.

Had I not a very deep love in my heart for each of the Hands of the Faith, I could not talk to you nor write to you so frankly about these conditions that are so bad for the Baha’i Faith. God knows that I would far rather have someone else take this stand than I but as I see no indications of anyone other than I to bring up these disagreeable things, I feel that I must do so.

In other words I see a bad condition of the Faith centered in Haifa – a condition that only a Second Guardian of the Faith can handle and cure.

The Movement of the Baha’i Faith should ever be forward – forward and forward. Baha’u’llah was the root and the source of all power and spiritual life of the Faith. Abdu’l-Baha, the Center of His Covenant, was the tree growing out from that root that was Baha’u’llah and the Guardians of the Faith are branched forth from the Center of the Covenant and will this continue to function and be the source of strength and guidance of the believers on down through the spiritual Baha’i age to come. Therefore the believers are to follow this line of divinely inspired Guardianship – on to victory after spiritual victory.

But now there have arisen those in the Faith who claim that we must discard all which our Beloved Guardian has done – discard the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant and revert to the Book of Abha there to find guidance that they claim is for every and anyone to find for himself without the divine source of inallible interpretation as provided by the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant in the Guardianship of the Faith.

The basis of our troubled condition is that the Persian believers as a whole have never liked the Administration of which the Beloved Guardian said the Cradle of which was in America and now that the restraint imposed upon them by a Guardian of the Faith is lifted they are unitedly arising to oppose any resumption of the powers of Guardianship. These friends of the East have not liked this. They accepted it from the Guardian but superficially and now they have taken the opportunity that this emergency of the death of the Guardian without Will or Testament gives them to discard all the work and effort of the Beloved Guardian and say that it is BADAH and that all Baha’is should abandon the Administration and go back to the Akdas of Baha’u’llah and build there upon our own interpretation of all which is contrary to the teaching of the interpretations of the Center of the Covenant and the Beloved Guardian.

The Persian students in Geneva, Switzerland even in the days of the Beloved Guardian stood unitedly against the American believers in Europe in their carrying out the plan of the Guardian for the teaching campaign and the establishment of the Administration in the countries of Europe. They openly said Americans Go Home – we don’t want you here. We are Baha’is of several generations in Persia living according to the laws of the Book of Akdas and we don’t accept all these American notions of Administration that you are bringing into the cause. Go Home! Go Home! And they actually bawled out Edna True and others whom the Beloved Guardian had sent to Europe there to inaugurate and to establish the Administration.

Shoghi Effendi was indignanat at this and in order to stop this pro-Persian Baha’i influence in Europe he deprived this student body of Persian believers of their voting rights in Geneva, Switzerland.

Now in those days there was no revolt against the Administration as given in the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha amongst the older generation in Persia as there is now amongst these Persian Hands of the Faith, nevertheless the Persian manner of thought and prejudice against the Administration came out with force from these unrestrained Persian youths. It was a case of “out of the mouths of babes comes the indescretions of their elders”.

Now with the Guardianship put aside practically the Persians unitedly refuse the continuation of the Guardianship.

All that I, Mason Remey, urge the Hands of the Faith to do is to take up the working of the Baha’i Faith at the point where the Beloved Guardian was so suddenly called away from this world to that of the Abha Kingdom and to continue the policies and conducting of the affairs of the Faith according to the way of the Administration as directed by the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant. It is clearly evident from all that Ruhiyyih Khanum has told the Baha’i world of the Beloved Guardian’s last days of activity that Shoghi Effendi’s sudden death upon that November morn was not anticipated by him. Had it been foreseen by him he in all probability would have given us instructions to guide us through and over this calamatous period of the Faith. But as things were left by him because of his infallibility He gave us all which was necessary, if we but knew it!

Being taken from our midst as was our Beloved Guardian, the only logical, reasonable and righteous thing for us, the Hands of the Faith, to do now in this present emergency and under these extenuating circumstances is to seek for the one destined to hold the office of Guardianship at the very trying and critical points in the history of the Faith – we and all others who understand the Administration of our Faith knowing that whomsoever may be the Second Guardian of the Faith, that He will be confirmed and divinely directed in this capacity of Guardianship and from then on led and directed by the Second Guardian of the Faith, we will be passing through this difficult problem before us. In fact this is the only solution of our present dilemma, for without the Guardianship the body of the Faith on earth will have no heart and will die. In fact, it is clear to see the signs of approaching death in the cause the world around as we see it today. Something must be done to save the Faith from this lithargy not only in the Americans but in other parts of the world as well. Therefore, let us lose no more precious time and effort in trying to invent and to put into execution any human ways or means to take the place of that which the Beloved Guardian built up upon the foundation of the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant.

Later on after a generation or so some of the Agsan will we trust come back into the fold of the Faith and then the line of Guardianship will be arranged to be back again in the line of the direct descendants of Baha’u’llah as prescribed by Abdu’l-Baha.

The fabric or structure of the Adinistration as given in the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha and as established and put into a working order by the Beloved Guardian is such that an equilibrium is established between the Guardianship and the Hands of the Faith upon one side and the International Assembly of the common believers upon the other. This equilibrium is destroyed when the Guardianship is eliminated, for shortly there will be no more Hands of the Faith and after that, what will happen?

I contend that the International Assembly chosen by the prolitariat of the Faith can only function as the Universal House of Justice when there is a Guardian to call together the International Assembly as its President in perpituity. None but the Guardian has the right to form the Universal House of Justice for it is upon these two pillars – the Guardianship and the International Assembly – these two together form the Universal House of Justice.

There is no authority whatsoever in the teachings for our present organization directed or not directed by the nine Custodian Hands of the Faith. They have no divine authority to protect the cause save under the Guardian and since the only protection that will save the cause lies in the continuation of the Guardianship it is clearly the right and the duty of the Hands of the Faith to protect, led by a Guardian – them with a Guardian to head and lead them the way will be clear to follow.

Having by Shoghi Effendi been trained and conditioned to follow the divine authority as clearly explained and given to us in the Administration of the Faith of the Will and Testament, is it right indeed that the mass of the believers should without question follow and obey the decisions of the Hands of the Faith whether we be right or whether we be wrong?

The believers are following the Hands, but when we Hands of the Faith see the effect that this violation of the Will and Testament is having upon the Faith of the Baha’is the world around, I am hoping that they will change from this order that they have set up in place of that of Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi and go back to the Administration of the Faith, for only by so doing will we be able to save the cause from the disintegration that is now apparent and daily becoming more so.

Until now this matter of the Guardianship has not been met fairly and squarely face to face by the Hands of the Faith in their official communication to the Baha’i world wherein they have ignored completely the problems of Guardianship and by trying to draw attention away from this most vital issue evading the matter evasively by stating that a Universal House of Justice to be formed in 1963 would then give infallible direction to the people of the Baha’i Faith, the while they, the vast majority of the friends both individually and collectively in the assemblies have apparently accepted this state of affairs, only a very few individual believers and but two assemblies have questioned matters as they now stand.

But such tactics and maneuvers as the Hands have so far resorted to cannot for any length of time satisfy the Baha’is at large around the world. The living cause of God simply cannot be thus administered by this man made substitute formed by the Hands at Behje and foisted upon the Baha’i world by them to replace the divinely given infallible will of the Guardianship.

Now at this time this present organization of the Faith faces the inevitable shift that they must make back to the foundation of the Guardianship. If we are wise we will reconsider and seek to find the Second Guardian of the Faith and the work of carrying out the ten year crusade as established by the First Guardian of the Faith will continue on to victory following victory. On the other hand if we do not do this but go along doggedly as we are now going there will perforce be more and more of these rebellious individual believers and groups of individual believers (assemblies) who will increasingly make such trouble in the cause that in the end the body of the Hands of the Faith will become so harrassed, perplexed and tormented that they will be obliged to give in, humbly acknowledging their present mistake and then suffer with humiliation and will want to have the Guardianship of the Baha’i Faith for in the end this must come because this cause is going to prevail in the world and it can only prevail as we follow on with the organization of the Administration of the Faith as carried on by the Beloved Guardian upon the foundation of the Administration as given the world in the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha.

Why not make this change in attitude now, before all these troubles accumulate and we are obliged to make the shift? We face this alternative – now or later. The sooner the change is accomplished the better it will be for the cause in general the world around and for us Hands of the Faith as individuals for those individuals who resist this will themselves perforce meet with dire tragedy here in this world.

But when Milly Collins (sensible woman as she seems to be upon most subjects) comes to me and says that the Will and Testament with its Administration plans for the Baha’i Faith is BADAH and that the Guardianship is to be abandoned I ask myself what has struck these Hands of the Faith? What power is this that has so dominated the thought of all of the Hands save I, myself? They seem normally sensible about most other subjects, but upon this one subject entirely off the beam.

Repeatedly I have asked Milly what is going to lead the Faith if the Will and Testament is discarded and she says she doesn’t know but feels sure that God will guide us if we (and this is pointed at me) just stick together and do the best we can that in the end we will be led what to do when we get a Universal House of Justice in 1963. For such is the date that the Hands have decided to establish this supreme tribunal.

And all this to be done without a Guardian to function as the head of this House of Justice and they have abandoned the Guardianship forever! It just does not make any sense at all and when I tell Milly this she calmly quotes from the Holy writings that “God doeth what He chooseth” and no one should question his wisdom inferring that I am the only one of the Hands who in my stand question God’s action in these affairs of His cause. But I know where my salvation lies, or I should put it where the salvation of all of the Hands lies. It lies in the fact that although I differ so radically from the others that in our affections each one for the other we really all love one another very much.

As I explained to the Hands at the last Behje Conclave for reasons known only to myself I did not wish to be the one to speak out so vehemently against the discontinuance of the Guardianship. I felt that I was the last person on earth to take this stand but feeling that it should, in fact, must for the sake and the very salvation of the Faith that it should be taken. As no one was taking it, I myself had to arise to this defense of the Guardianship.

This I could do alone and unsupported by any other Hand, taking a stand opposed by all the other Hands because it is the bond and duty of each Hand to speak out from the depths of his heart and soul before the other Hands and before the Hands only each separately and collectvely as a body in conclave. Be assured however, that I speak out my heart only to the Hands. To every other person, believer or non-believer, my lips are sealed. I speak only to you and should you still persist along the path we have as a body taken, that I know will lead to great disaster, no one but the Hads of the Faith shall ever hear from me any criticism of this action of ours thus taken in secret conference of the conclave. You should rest assured however that there will be an increasing plenty of criticism among the Baha’is. Yes, until the cause splits in two factions, one for and one against the Guardianship caused by a stand of the Hands to do away with the Guardianship of our Faith, nevertheless be assured that no one but you fellow Hands of the Faith shall ever know from me personally how I feel about this matter and the stand I am taking.

The reason that I am writing this very epistle and sending a sealed copy of it to the Hands is that you may each have the opportunity of thinking over and considering with meditative thought each in his own closet these questions rather than have this thought and argument to be sprung upon you in our next conclave in the heat of which arguments animated by deep emotions may make correct and mature decisions difficult if not again impossible.

Such is my reason for thus addressing my fellow Hands of the Faith in this long letter to you in strictest confidence which if broken and the letter’s contents become known in the cause will cause the Hands and the cause much trouble. However sometimes these troubles must needs come to pass and for the moment create still more confusion before the root of the cause of the trouble be found, dug out and cast away. Such for instance is the treatment of a bad form of malignant cancer in the body the parallel to which in the spiritual body of man is the treatment recommended in the Baha’i teaching of the only way of treatment of violation – the casting out from all Baha’i associations and contact this poison.

What do the Hands of the Faith think they are doing by coming together and by vast majority abrogating not only the Will and Testament but the entire mission of the Center of the Covenant together with that of the Beloved First Guardian of the Faith and saying to the confused Baha’i world that independently of Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi’s mission that they – the Hands – will turn over everything to the prolitariat of the Faith in 1963 thus relinquishing to the mass of the Baha’is throughout the world the power given them by the Beloved Guardian – thus repudiating not only him and Abdu’l-Baha but thus refusing themselves to take any further responsibility in Baha’i affairs thus forcing the mass of the believers the world around to form some kind of a Baha’i government by the people to take the place of this divinely revealed and sanctioned Baha’i Administration upon which they are turning their backs and rejecting.

What evil spirit of violation has gotten into this body of Hands of the Faith that they should do this thing????

How can the cruisade succeed? There is no definite message to give nor anything definite to present to the people to ask them to accept. Therefore there can be no confirmation.

The pioneers and teachers who are going out to make converts to the Faith have questions in their own minds about the cause that they are attempting to teach to others. It is a case of the blind and confused attempting to lead those who are blind and confused – both are doomed to fall into the ditch!

This the Custodian Hands evidently do not see or understand. They hold that all we need now is money and means to send out a sufficient number of pioneers to form the required number of assemblies that the crusade calls for. But no amount of money can combat this confusion of thought and faith all due to the fact that the Guardianship is cast aside and visably no longer exists. They are urging the people to confirm others when they are not confirmed themselves – nay they themselves doubt therefore the best they can do is to propagate the doubts that are theirs and thus the cause is made weaker by these misguided souls who are trying to propagate the doubts that are theirs and thus the cause is made weaker by these misguided souls who are trying to propagate a Faith that they have not got themselves. In the sorrow of the friends at their loss of the presence upon earth of the Master Abdu’l-Baha they were assured and held together in unity by the Beloved Guardian to whom they turned to as their leader endowed with infallibility, moral and spiritual, to keep them in the Faith and united. This power was his by virtue of this station as Guardian of the Faith.

Now according to the Will and Testament of the Master, this infallible power of guidance is vested in the Guardianship. This is not a personal function of the personality of the Guardian but a quality that is his by virtue of the Guardianship. Therefore when the Hands of the Faith decide that they don’t want any more Guardian after Shoghi Effendi, they are taking the first step toward killing the cause. One may well ask why don’t the Hands of the Faith want the continuation of the Guardianship? The reason is very clear to me as I have seen it developing among the Hands of the Faith for the past year and some months. These Hands who want no more Guardianship want to enjoy life and their present liberty, prestige and ease of life that no Guardian gives to them. They are fattening themselves upon the luxuries of the position and prestige that their elevation to this state of Handship entitles them. They like this status quo and like the established clergy of the old religions that they on all occasions condemn, they themselves for the same reasons as these Benighted Clergy, don’t want any change in their prestige. The very name “Guardianship” is as an alarm that calls them to arise to defend their position thus made supreme by themselves when they abolished forever the Guardianship. For this reason the word “Guardianship” is tabu with them. It was steadily omitted in the First Behje Conclave Proclamation and does not appear in any other statement issued by the Hands of the Faith.

Because those Hands of the Faith know very well that were they subject to a Second Guardian to fill this vacant Guardianship that they would then be subject to him and his orders and that this would in all probability disturb them very much in their present ways of life. Were this Second Guardian to have a wife and family things would indeed take a very different turn from the present state of affairs at the Baha’i world center upon Mount Carmel! His wife would then be the first lady of the Baha’i Faith!

When the Beloved Guardian elevated the Hands to their present state of their Handship, he conferred upon them a very great responsibility as well as a blessing. This responsibility demands of them the greatest sacrifices of any of those in the cause at this time. The greater ones blessings the greater must be ones sacrifices. If they refuse to meet these sacrificial requirements they are indeed in the greatest danger of falling and forfeiting their great blessing of being a Hand of the Faith.

Let each Hand look into his and her own heart and see and understand what they are up against now at this time. The Hands of the Faith themselves should be the very first ones of all people of the Faith to want a Second Guardian of the Faith to take over the command of the cause for the sake and the welfare of the Faith, but so far and up until the present they have not only been the ones to oppose the Guardianship but they have regarded with complacency the mental and emotional sufferings of those of the friends who for the sake of the Faith are longing and hoping for another Guardian and who in certain cases have been cast out of the Faith – deprived of this blessing – because they have dared to hope for a Second Guardian of the cause.

A judgement that will indeed be painful to them awaits the Hands of the Faith who do not want and who opress the reestablishment of the Guardianship. This is due them because of their action. This violation of the Administration of the Master Abdu’l-Baha’s Testament and the establishment of this Administration that was set up by the Beloved Guardian is due to destroy itself because the Guardianship is not to be put aside. There is to be a Second Guardian of the Faith and the reestablishment of the Guardianship to follow him because we have every assurance that the cause of Baha’u’llah is going to live and conquer the world. This can only be accomplished under the infallible command and guidance of the Guardianship, therefore I, Mason Remey, know there is to be a reestablishment of the Guardianship.

P.S. While I know that the Faith with the Guardianship is to succeed and the cause by this means triumph, I don’t see definitely how and by what means this change for law and order from this present confusion and falacious period in which we now find the Faith is to be accomplished.

However, at present it looks to me that when all the Hands meet in conclave and realize the growing confusion, disintegration and the lessening of the financial offerings coming into carry on the work – that when the Hands face such questions as these added to which will probably be other greater and more staggering problem yet to come before us – that then the Hands of the Faith will be forced by such conditions to abandon their present policy of self government and be obliged to revert to the Administration of Faith as given in the Testament of Abdu’l-Baha and formed and upheld by the Beloved Guardian during the thirty six and more years of his ministry.

Today I am asking myself why it is that all of this extreme secrecy must be maintained upon the part of the Hands of the Faith – secrecy of what is done and what is said in our conclaves and the same in the meetings of the Custodian Hands in Haifa!

I’ve been thinking of what would happen to me were I to divulge some of the things that are done and said as well as some of the things that transpire in our meetings that are not done but are hushed up. What would happen in the cause today were it known that a majority of us Hands in their inner hearts consciousness have made up their minds that there shall never be another Guardian of the Faith, for such is actually the case. For in the Behje Conclaves our Persian members with Ruhiyyih Khanum and several others of the Hands stood firmly for this – the abolishment of the Guardianship.

In the Second Behje Conclave this subject of the abolishment was seriously avoided and not brought up as a subject to be discussed until I forced this matter upon the conclave, any discussion of this subject then to be turned down with the entire conclave against my stand.

What would happen in Germany, I am asking myself, were the German National Assemly to be told that their suspicions that the abolishment of the Guardianship was already a fixed thing in the mind of the majority of the Hands and that their switching the attention of the Baha’i world off from this subject and centering it on the hope of a Universal House of Justice in 1963 is but a subterfuge behind which they are hiding their intention to abolish the Guardianship in the hope that somehow in the end they will be able to work matters so that there will be no Guardian, hereby by this subterfuge stand a better chance of gaining their point by delay than by springing it upon the Baha’i world now at this time for now they fear that the Baha’i world now at this time for now they fear that the Baha’i world in general might not or would not accept their decision that the Baha’is the world around accept the abolition. Thus are the Hands deceiving the believers.

In other words, the Hands appear to the German Friends to be trying to slip something over upon the Baha’i world. This the Hands had in mind was revealed in that Chicago Manifesto of “A New Baha’i Era” which because it revealed too suddenly and too strongly the Custodian Hands recognising the danger of letting the people know too much and this so suddenly that it might create too great a reaction in the mind of the Baha’i public, they – the Hands – made great haste to hush up the matter and to suppress as best they could at that late date the further circulation of that revealing document.

Now were all these things and maneuvers generally known abroad amongst the Baha’is there would surely be a great connection raised. The only way that this matter of the abolition can be furthered and come to a successful issue for those who uphold it is to keep this matter seduously under cover at this present time and this the Hands have endeavored to do in both their two Behje Conclave and in all of the meetings of the Custodian Hands here in Haifa as testified to when one understandingly reads their messages to the Baha’i world.

To put it very vehemently I consider this abolition of the Guardianship to be a very direct and tangible violation of both the Will and Testament of the Master and of the life mission and work of the Beloved Guardian because it is directed against both of these testimonies. The first testimony was the Writ of Administration of the Faith and the second was the testimony of Shoghi Effendi both by His written words and the attestation of his many years of ministry, building up the Administration of the cause the very heart and soul of which was the Guardianate.

The virulance of such violation is seen in the way in which this condition has so attacked the Hands of the Faith as a body. So quickly has this all happened to us that now our body is decidedly sick. This sickness is indeed manifesting itself in the meetings of the Hands in the Holy Land. These gatherings are so heated and argumentative with our members flying off their heads and exploding in their emotions that I fear that some great personal tragedies will result from this state of affairs.

What if such were to be known abroad in the Baha’i world? I am sure that it would create such a stirrup that it would doubtless bring the Hands of the Faith to their senses in the end bringing about the reestablishment of the Guardianship. But by order of the Hands I dare not open my mouth about all this. This shaking up of the Hands will in all probability have to be brought about by some believers outside from the body of Hands. It occurs to me that the German N.S.A. may be the ones who will start such a revolt against the Hands as to bring the Hands to their senses – that is reestablish the Guardianship which act will be the only salvation that can possibly save the Faith from dissolution.

I’ve been a part of several spiritual battles fought by the Baha’is. I’ve suffered as I’m doing now. I’ve been beaten up and beaten down more than once, but in the end I’ve always come out on the top side, victorious and I’ve not a shadow of a doubt that this present affair will come out all right just as I saw it in my flash vision over ten years ago.

Oh Hands of the Faith! Let us not allow our personal desires influence us against that which is for the best good of the Baha’i Cause.

Let us not oppose the restitution of the Guardianship of the cause for the Guardianship is most needed for the protection of our Faith. Our individual lives and liberties may well be more acceptable to us in this present interregnum of the Faith without where there is no one to be obeyed and we are each free to do as we wish. Pleasant and agreeable as is this present condition of Baha’i affairs to each of us individually such is not good for the solidarity and best welfare of our Faith.

The Faith, the cause, in the world will progress indeed under the continued Guardianship of the Faith but this will mean that each of us will be obliged to submit ourselves to the commands of our Guardianship. For us this will mean the end of this present period of “Laisse Faire” and each doing as he pleases for under a Guardian each will be obliged to obey him. Thus unity and solidarity will again be firmly established in the Baha’i Cause. This can only be obtained through the personal sacrifices of first of all the Hands of the Cause of God – these Nobles of His Kingdom – must first make this sacrifice before the people in general of the Faith can make it. This we are called upon to do now at this time. It is the most important of all matters now before the Baha’i world. Upon it depends the success of our present evangelistic movement – the ten year plan – to conquer the entire religious world, therefore let us make haste to make this sacrifice of our present freedom and liberty from the spiritual control that we need to conquer the religious world.

I am addressing this plan and arguement in particular to those of the Hands of the Faith from whose attitude it is clear to see that they don’t want another Guardian. Their loyalty to the personality of the Beloved Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, may cause them to resent that anyone other should ever occupy this position of supreme command in the Faith. Such sentiments as these may cause them to wish that the Guardianship be ended forever, however, whatever it is by whatever mutual process they arrive at this continuation of this heart of the cause – the Guardian of the Faith – they apparently do not realize that the Guardian leader of the Baha’i Faith is not a matter of personality but one of the organic spiritual function of the Administrative order of the Faith as given to us by Baha’u’llah through Abdu’l-Baha. For their enlightenment I urge them to read the communication here attached to this argument of mine, the letters from Paris, Frankfurt, Lucknow wherein this divine principle of Guardianship is better shown and expressed than I feel myself capable of propounding.

I urge these Hands to make this great sacrifice of their personal thoughts to the contrary in order that the Faith be led onward to victory, for as I have already explained it will indeed be a sacrifice on the parts of the individual Hands to elect a Guardian to supply the vacancy of this command because by so doing these Hands will indeed be relinquishing their present freedom and liberty from the directions and the orders that a Second Guardian of the Faith might impose upon them. Let them not wish a continuation of this present interregnum where there is no constitutional divine direction, law or order in the Faith. Let them wish to sacrifice their present liberties for the welfare of the Faith collectively speaking throughout the world that can only be accomplished by the continuation of the Guardianship.

What would an army in the field of battle do without a Commander? What and how can the administrative orders of the Baha’i Faith ever live and function without a Guardian?

Since in the words of the Beloved Guardian, America is the Cradle of the Administration of the Baha’i Faith it will surprise me if the continuation of the Guardianship be not upheld by the American Hands of the Faith if it comes to a conflict of opinion between the Persian and the American Hands.

Should this subject of Guardianship not be settled by the Hands and be put by them to be decided by the international assembly, the Universal House of Justice chosen by the believers as the Hands now tell the people that it will be done in 1963, then the Hands of the Faith will indeed have evaded and avoided their noble calling by the Beloved Guardian by their thus refusing to handle this problem themselves. They, the Hands who are the Nobles of the Cause, why are they thus refusing their responsibility and throwing the responsibility that was placed upon them, throwing this responsibility upon the prolitariat of the Faith who create by election the mbembers of the Universal House of Justice for them to decide what shall be done with the cause???

Such a House of Justice as the Hands of the Faith now envision being set up by them in 1963 can never be a House of Justice unless they first have a Guardian to be its President for there can be no House of Justice without first a Guardian to form it and be its President. Therefore see what a mess the Faith is in at this moment without any hope of a House of Justice and with the attitude of the Hands that there be no continuation of the Guardianship.

The things that we Hands are doing just doesn’t make any sense.

It looks to me that this present state of affairs will continue for some time to please the Baha’is of Persia and possibly some other oriental believers, but inasmuch as America is the Cradle of the Administration of the Faith that in this final struggle between East and West, as it were, that Administration as established and taught by the Beloved Guardian will eventually with American support win out over this present state that will surely and in chaos and again put the cause on its feet with the Guardianship in command of the situation.

It is the institution of Guardianship that will solve this problem and not the personality of any one Guardian as the individual leader of the Faith.

Constantly, almost daily, the Hands of the Faith whom I am seeing daily tell me and call my attention to the very many warm and commending letters coming in from all parts of the Baha’i world assuring the Custodian Hands of whole hearted and unquestioned allegiance and support of the Custodians in their direction of the Faith, saying to me that these letters in themselves should convince me that my stand singly and alone against their united judgment was wrong. In other words, that they are in the right and that I am in the wrong! Thus things are at a stalemate between us.

It has seemed to me that it would be by a revolt such as was started in that Lucknow letter that would so develop in the Baha’i world as to force them (the Hands) to reconsider their stand against the continued Guardianship, but the way that things seem to be running now around the Baha’i world I may be wrong in my thought that a revolt would accomplish this. But now I am wondering if the Hands will not be brought to the point of reconsideration of the position by the failure of their present methods when they see the cause dividing up and going to pieces under this present programme?

However as things now are I can’t see how the Hands will change their course of present action convinced as I am that they needs must in order to safeguard the cause. I feel that this change must come, otherwise the Baha’i Faith will fail and be lost and in the end I know that the Faith cannot fail but will triumph over all.

In matters of thought it has often been observed that Europeans are wiser than they seem to be while Americans seem to be wiser than they really are.

It is curious phenominon that we Americans as a people are the most easily duped and decieved of people. In no other country of the world are the people so easily deceived as in America by all kinds of propaganda, political and religious. In these matters we stand supreme among the nations. But as the Beloved Guardian has so often said we are of good intention and kind in heart, kind and good in our purpose and aims, and it was upon us American Baha’is that he first gave the big responsibility of going out from our country in numbers of pioneers taking the Baha’i Faith abroad first to Latin American then to the ten countries in Europe where there were then but few believers, thus it was first placed upon the shoulders of the American believers this task of taking the true Faith of God – the Baha’i Faith – to other parts of the world – we Americans who ourselves have been deceived by as many false Christs and anti-Christ causes – we whose land is the mecca of almost every cult and heresy imaginable – to us our Beloved Guardian gave the mission of the starting abroad of this present world crusade upon which the entire Baha’i world is now launched.

But while Americans are in these respects the most gullible of all people we as a people cannot be deceived for very long a time. The fact that we are of youth but requiring type of mind is our safeguard as well as our danger – we can not be led astray indefinitely in the end we evaluate the truth of things even though we may have to have many false notions literally knocked out of us – many examples of which the older American Baha’is of my generation will attest to as they look back over the history of the Faith in America. How many times have violations, heresies and schisms appeared amongst us, threatened the very life of the Baha’i Cause in our midst but in each case of the many eventually were met and overcome and the Faith marched on upon its victorious way.

Therefore I am quite sure that this present deviation from the Will and Testament in which the entire cause throughout the world is not only facing but actually in the clutches of becoming clearly seen by the American Believers and also by all other believers, then when this is out and talked about among the believers then, if not before then, we Hands of the Faith will have to get ourselves busy and reestablish the Guardianship in order to serve the cause of our Faith.

But I trust we will soon realize our present danger and make restitution before things get in such a bad way that such will be too difficult an operation for some to stand up under.

Up until the present time the action of the Hands of the Faith has been to abrogate and to put to naught the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha and all that the Beloved Guardian did toward this establishment of the Administration. Thus does the up-until-now-attitude of the majority of the Hands favor the putting aside of the Administration and in place of it setting up a purely democratic form of Baha’i regime that will have none of the elements of the Administration of the Will and Testament – no divine authority in the teachings, no Hands of the Faith, and no Guardianship.

Hands of the Faith! Why are you doing this???? What evil spirit prompted you thus to attempt to thus destroy all that the Beloved Guardian so laboriously has built up upon the foundation of the Will and Testament of the Master????

If there is to be a split in the opinions of the Hands with respect to the continuation or the abolishment of the Guardianship it must be kept in confidence between us and such poisonous views of disruption kept from the people of the Faith until the same be eradicated from within our body of the Hands of the Faith. This is the only way that the unity of the Faith can be maintained. We Hands must meet this problem by clearing out from our collective thinking any suggestion of violating or putting aside the structure and the functioning of the Administration given to us through the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha.

This great mistake made by some of our group before the business of the First Behje Conference was fairly started – the problem that they talked over apparently entered into a covenant between themselves to sustain – that the Guardianship be ended. This problem should now be faced by us in our next conclave and this infection cleaned out from our midst. This is the only solution of this problem between the Hands. When this is accomplished and we are again back upon the right road of the Will and Testament then we will be able to lead the Baha’i world in the true path of our late Beloved Guardian.

KINGSHIP, ARISTOCRACY, DEMOCRACY

I have already written something about the above so in part at least I will be repeating myself here but this may not be amiss because of the importance of the subject.

Divine law, order and government works from the top down.

Human or man made law, order and government builds from the bottom up.

God established the law and the order of His Kingdom before the beginning of time surpassed this upon His creation and has gradually through the religious life of man upon earth has through His Prophets and Manifestations planted the spiritual life and the law and order of His Kingdom in the soul of humanity the world around. His Divine Laws of His Spiritual Kingdom have always been and will ever be the same. He has revealed is thus to us mortals from time to time according to our capacity to receive and to apply them.

Man made governments of the people, for the people, and by the people have been built up by man from the bottom upward by a system of trial and error thus working for a time to collapse and be followed by some other human system of regulations that may work for a time but eventually give away to some other similar systems and so on and on.

But now in these latter days, Almighty God has established His Kingdom upon earth in the Covenant and the Administration of His Holy Cause of the Baha’i Faith, the rule of which has been destined from the beginning to supercede all human governments and of this spiritual kingdom his earthly emblem of Kingship is the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, his nobles the peers of this Kingdom being the Hands of the Faith.

The King of the Kingdom of God upon earth, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith rules in his own right the right that was established and bestowed upon him by the Center of the Covenant whose rule of the Kingdom was bestowed upon Him by appointment by Baha’u’llah the Manifestation of God to man whose coming in these days has been heralded by Christ and all of the Prophets. Now the Guardianship thus established in the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant is not to be peculiar to but one soul only, the Beloved Shoghi Effendi, but to of a series of souls extending on for centuries ahead Guardians of the Faith, the power vested in them being that of Guardianship by virtue of which impersonal power the Cause of God will be led on and on to spiritual victory over spiritual victory until this Kingdom will be triumphant upon earth all in fulfillment of the provisions of Christ and the Prophets as well as that of Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha. All this is to be accomplished not by the personal power or attainments of these Guardians as men, but by virtue of their Guardianship which office or function in itself, speaking through the person of the Guardian is endowed with the power of the rulership of the Kingdom. Such (inadequate as is my wording) is the power of Guardianship.

With the confirmations and the power of Baha’u’llah behind him our Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi appointed the Hands of the Faith as the peers of the Kingdom when once established and in running order under the laws of Baha’u’llah, He the Guardian’s next move would be to give the mass of the people their voice in this Divine Government – such was to be given to the mass – the proletariat of the cause – given or bestowed upon them – not taken or demanded by them as their inherant right but bestowed upon them according to the written word of Baha’u’llah for such was to be the relation of the people, the Kingship, and nobility of the Faith – the people to whom these rights were given on one side with the Guardian and his nobility directed by him upon the other side. Such were to be the twin pillars upon which the Universal House of Justice should rest, a most solid and divine formation!

Such was the divine foundation of the workings of the Kingdom upon earth and now do the Hands of the Faith wish to cast their responsibilites aside, forsake the calling of their noble position and give the government over into the Hands of the Proletariat of the Faith to be handled by them sans-Guardian? What will become of the cause if such action is allowed to decide the affairs of the Kingdom? In such case we will indeed have a spiritual government for the people, of the people, by the people quite independent of this divine guidance of the Guardian, the King of the Kingdom, attended by his nobility , the appointed Hands of the Faith who have been and can only be elevated to that position of nobility by the Guardian who is the King!

In these modern proletarian days when earthly kings are in the discard in many countries where they formerly were established, the very thought of Kingship is most unpopular in the world about us. Let us not be swayed by such popular world thought and allow the Kingly Center of Guidance of our Administration that is the Guardianship disappear from the earth as advocated by our friends who would abolish the Guardianship and thus destroy the majesty and the dignity of the Faith and bring it down to the level of the human organization that they advocate when they let the mass of the believers decide these matters by votes of the representatives, local and national, in a world election of their own chosen delegates, for such would be the only kind of a House of Justice that could be had without we first have the divine guidance of the Guardianship to direct the forming of the Universal House of Justice with its twin supporting pillars.

HAIFA, 17 JANUARY 1959

At the meeting yesterday of the Custodian Hands, Ruhiyyih Khanum was with us to give a general report of the Faith in America all of which was presented as being favorable to the teaching campaign as being carried on, yet there appeared here and there in this report an undertone, as it were, that revealed a lack of spiritual vitality in the Faith that was felt but not mentioned in many words – the same thing that I myself noticed last summer while in America, a condition that others have spoken of but one that is as intangible as the slow but sure advance of senescence in old age in which the life forces are waning. This condition has alarmed me for some months past. It is a very slight lessening of energy, yet it is noticeable. We all know the ten year plan of the Beloved Shoghi Effendi and the advance it made under his Guardianship of the Faith, but the spiritual vitality of the believers in the days of Shoghi Effendi was being activated continuously by the living Guardian then with us, but now without this living presence we, the believers, have lost that contact through which the Holy Spirit of God which is the very life force of the Kingdom of God, no longer is coming to us because we have no Guardian. It is the same principal of the continual Guardianship of the Faith that I have been talking about to the Hands, first at the Second Behje Conclave and ever since then to the Custodian Hands and so far as I can see and understand them not one of the Hands but I myself alone sees this. They take the ground just as did Agnes Alexander in conversation with me at Sidney, “We have all the necessary things to teach in the recorded words of the Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi and we have no need whatsoever of another Guardian. Shoghi Effendi has told us exactly what we should teach and if we stick to his teachings, He from the Abha Realms beyond this world will lead us on to victory!”

These Hands of the Cause do not realize that it is only through the living Guardianship that our spiritual vitality comes to us – The Holy Spirit! They voluntarily have closed the channel and although they have the written words and teachings, without this mystical spiritual flow of force to them from the Institution of Guardianship their works are without life.

To me, the Hands of the Faith are under the spell of violation of the Master’s Will and Testament. This is the cause of all of this spiritual apathy among the believers. Those who don’t want a continuation of the Guardianship and who have up until now so injected this idea into the minds of so many others that now this present state of affairs has come about and I can see it will mean the finish of the Faith if it is not stopped and stopped soon before things become worse than they now are.

Violation of the Divine Manifestation causes the spiritual death of the Faith because it shuts off the believers from the source of the spiritual life forces upon which that life depends. This is the condition that the Baha’i Faith faces now in this day!

Much of the meeting was devoted to the arrangements and mechanics of this teaching campaign and the definite aim of the Hands to elect the Universal House of Justice in 1963 which the Hands in conclave committed themselves to accomplish by following up and making the goals set by the Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi.

I myself do not know of any direct positive statement by Shoghi Effendi or commitment that 1963 would be the date of the establishment of the Universal House of Justice. So this is really an open question although without a Guardian to form one of the two columnar supports of this Universal Institution I don’t see how it is ever to be innaugurated without our first reestablishing the Guardianship. However in time such will have to be knocked into the heads in some manner of the Hands of the Faith and in all probability it will come through calamitous conditions that will come before this body of Hands.

Another important matter came up before us in conversation with Ruhiyyih Khanum – the finances of the cause. In a few words there is not enough money coming into the Baha’i treasury to meet the necessary expenses of this great teaching campaign in hand. The discussion of this problem causes me to go over in my mind things that have troubled me much in times past in America and in recent times here in the Holy Land – the extravagances and waste of the Baha’i money contributed often at the great sacrifice by the friends donating to this fund.

For instance in America I know of cases where those serving upon Baha’i affairs traveled and lived supported by Baha’i funds in a most extravagant manner and upon a scale that those supporting this fund did not indulge. Such doings when found out by the contributors to the fund must naturally make them indignant.

During my residence in the Baha’i community here in Haifa, I am amazed at certain extravagances and wastes of Baha’i moneys and materials due not only to absence of care and management but often caused by an unwise appropriation of Baha’i moneys.

During the days of Shoghi Effendi he did not allow the Persian pilgrims to enter the Western Baha’i pilgrim house because here we Americans lived upon so much higher a scale than was provided for the Persians in their pilgrim house upon the mountain. Apparently he didn’t want these oriental friends to see and to note this difference. Now at this present time this regulation of no Persian pilgrims in the western pilgrim house is still maintained for this same obvious reason.

But now right here is our Baha’i Colony in Haifa there are extravagances that ought not in my estimation be indulged in. Not if we wish to demonstrate by our deeds and actions to the Baha’i world the respect that our position of Hands of the Faith the sacrifices should maintain. For unless we here at the Baha’i World Center do not ourselves sacrifice and economize right down until we feel it how can we expect to inspire the believers the world around to give and to support the cause?

This subject has to my knowledge never come up for discussion amongst us Custodian Hands. Of course we have discussed finances but such delicate matters as the expenditures of Ruhiyyih Khanum which I know nothing save that she is on an allowance of $500.00 a month from the Baha’i Fund for her personal pin money in addition to her board and shelter and other prerequisites of her position as the widow of the Guardian Shoghi Effendi and of her defense of this position of supremacy here at the Baha’i center, all of which is out of proportion to the finances of the cause and should be stopped before detected and talked of abroad. For as I have already stated if we Hands of the Faith, all of us here in Haifa, do not sacrifice right down to the bone how can we expect the believers the world around to sacrifice themselves to support the cause.

There is such a thing as NOBLESSE OUBLIGE upon which basis only can the security of the Nobility of this Cause of Baha’u’llah have a secure foundation.

GOD help this cause if the believers the world around ever saw some of the things that I see going on here at the Center of the Baha’i Faith.

The success of the campaign to spread the glad tidings of the Faith the world around depends first upon the sacrifices made by those of us here at this center in The Holy Land. We must make up and do things differently other wise God will put us aside and raise up others to do His Will; this applies to all matters, material as well as spiritual but this can never be solved until the Hands of the Faith unite in the reestablishment of the Guardianship without which step we will never be able to attain Divine Guidance upon this earth.

We, the Hands of the Faith, must step over somewhere. We are at an impasse in the History of the Baha’i Faith. The line of the succession by birth of the Guardianship is broken. Now the blank question before us is where and how shall we make the step. The Badahists say scrap the Guardianship entirely and let us get a new and a different system of Baha’i Administration from that of the Will and Testament, something without a Guardian. Such is the solution we are leaning toward now – the solution that the majority of us evidently favor. We must look at this matter just as it in reality is and begin “A New Baha’i Era”.

I think and I propose to you an entirely different solution, namely that we adhere strictly to the divine plan of the Will and Testament and its framework built up around the Guardianship as its heart and its center – then by one move that will surely be accepted by the vast major part of the believers in the world make a systematic study and research into the letters, notes, manuscripts of the Beloved Guardian and considering the appointments that he made, all in the hope that we will in some way find a Guardian of the Faith, a Guardian by virtue of our right and duty to protect the Faith in the face of this present crisis.

Thus by this one step we will get the working of the Administration back again and functioning as it should be under the Guardianship. Then in time to come let us hope that there will in time be descendants of the present AGSANS who will eventually prove to be worthy of their right by inheritance to be considered worthy of this high calling – of the Guardianship. Thus there may eventually be Guardians of the lineage of Baha’u’llah.

There is much redundance and repetition in this communication. This is due to my effort to make my thought as clearly understood as possible. The various subjects or parts of my arguments were, as will be noted, at various times covering a year and more as these thoughts came to me – not to be weighed by me as one argument against another in my own mind, but just how best to explain my thought. For this reason I have been very wordy.

When a King goes forth to war as Commander in Chief or his army in battle he lays out his campaign, gathers together his munitions of war and makes his attack upon the enemy’s stronghold. At every turn he has to meet unforeseen conditions and circumstances and consequently has to be constantly shifting and changing order to meet the enemy’s attack. His last order is always obeyed first thus cancelling his previous order – be he fighting on land or on sea – the ever shifting attack of the enemy must be met and dealt with orders that are ever changing to meet his enemy’s maneuvers of attack that he was unprepared for, new problems that have to be frequently faced and dealt with instantly during the heat of battle.

Now in the midst of battle should the King commanding be killed, another Commander in Chief must take over the command immediately and should the exigencies of the combat of the moment demand that he give orders that preceed and put aside those of his predecessor, the King in Command, he must then be obeyed as was the King obeyed by his officers and men. This and similar changes in orders must be made from time to time as the battle progresses on to victory and if such changes in orders were not thus ever being made to meet the shifting maneuvers of the enemy the war would be lost with the King’s army vanquished.

Now upon the other hand imagine a Commander in Chief falling in the heat of the battle. He had very carefully laid out his campaign of attack, made all plans, given minute instructions and orders all of which were fitted and gaged to meet the exigencies of the moment of the attack but in the attack, he – the King Commander in Chief was suddenly killed and his army in the field left without a Commander in Chief. His plan of battle attack and his officers and men had all been conditioned and trained by him to obey his commands. They had perfect confidence in him and such loyalty and devotion to him personally that his high officers decided that out of love and personal devotion for their fallen King, that they would do without, do away with appointing another Commander in Chief to take over this command of the battle but that they – the high officers of the army – should appoint a commission of a few of their own number to take over the battle command and through adhering to all of the orders and ordinances recorded and given by their now dead commander, the King, continue the battle saying amongst themselves “We have all of our munitions of war and we have a record of all of the commands of our King. We have no need whatever of another Commander in Chief. All that we have to do to win this battle is to stick to the order and commands that were given to us by our King Commander whom we loved and don’t want to have replaced by another Commander in Chief”.

Anyone can see what would be the result of such military action in waging a war – soon the battle and the campaign would be in confusion and the victory lost.

Will the Hands of the Baha’i Faith who read the above hypothetical picture of the Baha’i Faith as it is at present without a Guardian Commander in Chief of its spiritual forces not see at a glance the falacy of their present position and the fact that their battle against the forces of the world is in jeopardy without a Guardian in command of this situation for without the Guardianship continued as a permanent institution and office they will arrive at no spiritual victories.

Nothing could be more reprehensible in a Kingdom than sedition or conspiracy against the King and his government. In cases when the king dies and has no heir to inherit his throne, in such emergency the governmental regime continues, his Nobles seek another ruler to take the throne, they do not for lack of an heir turn and destroy a well established and functioning government by destroying the entire regal system in its functioning and order to replace it by a democratic form of government without a King and thus destroy their government and replacing it by another system of rule.

Such sedition upon the part of a King’s subjects even though it be in the aristocracy next to the sovereign to destroy his monarchical form of government to be replaced by some other form of rule that they hope to concoct in treason from the viewpoint of the rule of a Kingdom by a King.

I am wondering what our Beloved Shoghi Effendi would have said to us Hands had he been told that within days after his death that a group of the Hands of the Faith would arise and seek to put aside the system of Baha’i Administration founded by Baha’u’llah, carried on by the Center of this Covenant and constructed by himself as the Guardian of the Faith, and that this notion of these friends of his – Hands of the Faith – would thus for the time so jeopardize the Baha’i Cause?

This spiritual treason in our midst cannot continue. It must be rooted out before it becomes a case of open treason against the Kingship upon earth of the Kingdom of God.

I put my thought in a strong manner of expression in order to awaken the Hands to the great danger in which our Faith is now placed and placed by the direct and studied revolt against the Administration and its very heart, the Guardianship, that is here amongst us and in our midst but not seen or realized by the vast majority of our members, Hands of the Faith.

In the Baha’i Faith in the days of our Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi we had an organized and a functionally working spiritual government well established upon the divine spiritual principles of the Kingdom of God upon earth – instituted by God’s Manifestation Himself, the workings of which was planned by the Center of His Covenant which plans were executed and gotten into working order by Shoghi Effendi, the First Guardian, appointed him to be the sovereign hereditary head of the Baha’i Faith absolute ruler of the Faith upon earth, commissioning him to establish the workings of the spiritual Kingdom of Baha’u’llah upon earth and giving to him by Will and Testament the plan upon which he was to give form and function to the Administration or the Government of the Baha’i Cause that is the Kingdom of God upon this earth.

After his mission or reign of over thirty six years, the Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi accomplished this task, one of the last phases of which accomplishment was His appointment of the Hands of the Faith that was the elevation of a group of the twenty seven Hands from the ranks of the believers of the Faith that now form the peerage or the Nobility of the Cause. The Beloved Guardian had before him yet to be done, the formation of the International Assembly of his Baha’i Kingdom to be innaugurated when there was a sufficient number of National Assemblies and when these National Assemblies were sufficiently in working order and strong enough to carry the International Assembly

This system of elected assemblies, local and national, leading up to the formation of an International Assembly is the democratic element in the Baha’i Spiritual World Government. When formed and in working order it will be the voice of the Baha’i proletariat, one of the pillars on which the Universal House of Justice will be supported, a balance for the Guardianship with the institution of the Hands of the Faith that is the other, or to put it more explicitly, the first pillar of the three supports of the Universal House of Justice to be and according to the Master’s Will and Testament. The Guardian of the Faith (not necessarily Shoghi Effendi, possibly one of his successors) was delegated to direct the forming of this Universal House of Justice. Such was to be the order of the formation of this institution.

In other words, the International World Assembly of Baha’is is but one part of the Universal House of Justice. It is vested with no infallibility in itself until it functions together with the Guardianship. These two elements together being infallible in the Universal House of Justice.

Therefore, the elimination of the Guardianship of the Faith precludes our ever being able to have a House of Justice even though without a Guardian some sort of an International Assembly may be possible, but never a House of Justice.

The present predicament of the Faith is caused by the failure of the Hands of the Faith to see this divine plan of the Will and Testament and to understand the manner in which The Beloved Guardian was carrying out this divine plan. Shoghi Effendi never contemplated the cause to be without a Guardian. All of his teachings to us and all for which he stood pointed toward the Guardianship continuing. That Manifesto circulated in America, “A New Baha’i Era” was indeed a “New Era” but in reality the antethesis of a Baha’i Era. To be sure in its statements it did go a long way beyond the Proclamation and the following communication officially sent out by the Hands of the Faith but upon the other hand briefly and with exactitude it did reveal the predominate idea and thought of the majority of the Hands, that the Guardianship should be abolished.

In other words, the statements of the Hands to the Baha’i world have not been clear and clean out. They have left unsaid things that were behind and below things that were said. BADAH was the inner conviction of the Persian Hands. This was attested to by their proposing and urging this in the First Conclave of the Hands. Ever since then the dominant thought of the Hands has been no more Guardianship. Although this their dominant thought was carefully not mentioned in their communication to the Baha’i world.

This camouflaging with the intent to put over the abolition of the Guardianship is going to cause a most terrible crisis in the Baha’i world. The Baha’i proletariat are not so stupid as not to see where the Hands are departing from the Will and Testament and from all that the Beloved Guardian taught them. Because of this high prestige of the Hands, the believers will probably be slow in objecting to what the Hands are trying to do but in the end this will all come out to be settled in the open. This will be the great crisis of the Faith that the Hands will have to meet. We will have to meet it and I believe we will meet it by continuing the Guardianship as the only way of protecting the Faith from falling apart and into pieces.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD, 22 JANUARY 1959

From the earliest recorded Holy Writ throughout the forecasts of the Prophets and the promise of Christ, the Kingdom of God upon earth has been the triumphant goal of all revealed or divine religious teachings and promises as summed up in the opening words of our Lords Prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come on earth as it is in Heaven”.

That Kingdom that is in reality a spiritual Kingdom is the Baha’i Faith for it was founded upon earth by the Bab and Baha’u’llah in fulfillment of the promises of Christ and the Prophets by God manifesting His Holy Word which was in the beginning with God and in reality was God – manifesting Himself through Baha’u’llah.

Such was the origin of the Faith that we as followers of Baha’u’llah adhere to and maintain. It is in its essence and inner reality a spiritual or a mystical body in this world of humanity but manifesting its reality in the Administration as outlined in the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha which help document attested to and confirmed by The Holy Writings of Baha’u’llah and explained and developed amongst the Baha’is by Shoghi Effendi, the First Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, has resulted in the Administrative organization of the cause that was left us in an unfinished state by Shoghi Effendi who was taken so suddenly from this world before completing all the things to be accomplished under the Guardianship of the Faith.

The prophecy of Eliua was that “The Government would be upon His shoulder” that this triumphant spiritual cause of God would stand in triumph over the nations of the world, the world Kingdom of God and in the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant we have outlined for us the necessary structure and framework of that Kingdom upon earth, the Guardian King surrounded and supported by his Nobles, the Hands of the Faith, upon the one hand and upon the other hand, the people of the Faith his subjects with their organization of assemblies, local and national, and the Universal Assembly which together with the King Guardian himself as the President of this body all together form the Universal House of Justice – the Supreme Divine Government of the Kingdom upon earth!

But now in this moment of bewilderment following the departure from this world of Shoghi Effendi, sinister forces of the left have so taken ahold of the Hands and through them of the mass of people of the Faith that “A New Baha’i Era” is now being proclaimed an era in which the Guardian Kingship of the Kingship of the Kingdom is replaced by something else. God knows what they have in mind. No one knows what their present course will produce or bring forth, but upon one point they seem to be adamant – that the Guardianship of the Faith is ended.

It is to meet this most dire calamity that I am now putting down upon paper my appeal to the Hands of the Faith to halt this revolutionary movement that if it continues will surely destroy our Faith and put to naught that which Baha’u’llah and the Center of the Covenant and the First Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi, have given us and have established here amongst us.

There can be no Kingdom upon earth unless there be a King upon the throne of that Kingdom – the Guardian of the Faith in which institution of Guardianship is vested the triumphant leadership of the Faith and its triumphs over and above all human forces of this world.

Unless something be done and done without loss of too much time, the Baha’is will (unprotected as they are) be split into many divisions, branches and cults. Our only protection from such disruption lies in the Institution of the Guardianship as explained in The Will and Testament and demonstrated in the life mission of Shoghi Effendi, our First Guardian of the Faith.

Now why is it that this violation of the Administration of the Faith has suddenly become so popular and so sustained by the Hands of the Faith? God is their judge. I don’t know what can be going on in their minds but from their actions which I see clearly I know something of what is going on in their hearts. They are for some reason afraid of the continuation of the Guardianship so are actually conspiring against that institution, that divine protection and leadership that is provided for in The Will and Testament. For what other reason would they thus break covenant with Baha’u’llah, Abdu’l-Baha and The Beloved Guardian of the Faith?

It will indeed be hard for all of the Hands after this period of a year and some months without a Guardian Commander for them to relinquish their present freedom and liberty and be again under the restraint of an established Guardian. But this needs must be for the Kingdom of the Faith of God must have a Guardian King to rule and to carry on to completion and perfection the Government of His Kingdom one of the chief if not the chiefest element of which is the establishment of the Universal House of Justice which the Guardianship is the only power that can establish this supreme divine tribunal.

Those who have received the greatest spiritual blessings are even called upon to make the greatest sacrifices. No one has been greater honored and blessed than Ruhiyyih Khanum, the wife of the Beloved Shoghi Effendi.

It is indeed perfectly natural that she should resent the thought of a Second Guardian of the cause. She is very strong indeed in her wish that the Guardianship be abolished. As things are now because of her previous position as the contact liaison between Shoghi Effendi and the people about the Guardian, she was in the entire Baha’i world indeed the most important personage apart from the Guardian and now that our Guardian is dead and we have no Guardian of the Faith, Ruhiyyih Khanum still assumes and maintains herself in that supreme position and from what she says and from the tone of her voice when she speaks to the other Hands of the Faith and from her many maneuvers and ways of continuously entrenching herself in this position that she has assumed and from which she seeks to rule and to dictate the affairs of the Faith. Because of her long association with Shoghi Effendi she is able to run the affairs of the Faith in an efficient manner that is without doubt more efficient thn anyone else of whom I know – such is my opinion. Neverthless she can never rule the Faith with the wisdom necessary to protect the Faith because this protection is a function peculiar to the infallible Guardianship of the Cause.

I am much concerned about the future of Ruhiyyih Khanum’s career as a Baha’i because I know that this cause of God is going to live and to prosper and since this is to be true there must needs be the continuation of the Guardianship. In other words, the cause is I believe destined to be continued and this will mean that sooner or later Ruhiyyih Khanum like all the rest of the believers will come under His command and this will be a supreme test for her especially should the Second Guardian of the Baha’i Faith have a wife to take the position of the First Lady of the Faith!

At the present time I see no signs of actual present questions and problems that might cause the Hands to relinquish their programme for a “New Baha’i Era” with no more Guardianship. To be sure there are those rumblings coming from Frankfurt and from Panama and one or two or three from friends scattered through America, but this doesn’t mean that there will not be so many more erelong as to so scare the Hands of the Faith that they will have sudden change about and abandon this notion of discarding the Guardianship. Then they will elect a Guardian and with the Guardianship reestablished the world crusade of teaching will march on from victory to victory and all will go well.

Fortunately there is a real spirit of personal friendliness between all of the Hands of the Faith so our problems are not those of personal rancor or hatred. The mess in which we now find ourselves is caused by thoughtlessness and a lack of understanding of the Guardianship, that it is a living spiritual function of the Kingdom of God and that it is not a personality. Naturally Ruhiyyih Khanm and others are personally so devoted to the memory of Shoghi Effendi as a person that they resent that the mantle of the Guardianship of the Faith should ever be upon the shoulders of another person. Their test will be ameliorated and they will find peace of mind as they realize that the Guardian is the Guardian not because of his personality but because he is the Guardian of the Faith and that he will lead the cause on to victories after victories by virtue of the Divine Institution of the Guardianship through which and through which alone the Holy Spirit can flow from Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha to the people of the world.

Am I, Mason Remey, the only Hand of the Cause who sees this problem before us right? Are there none others of the Hands of the Faith to stand with me in these matters of carrying on the work f the Beloved Guardian as he was instructed by Abdu’l-Baha how he was to accomplish this task? Do I stand alone in this matter?

Awake Hands of the Faith and be aware of the danger in which the cause is plunged because from the time of our initial Behje Conclave, bewildered ourselves as a body, we have been leading the cause astray and away from the Guardianship that is the center and the source of guidance as clearly shown in The Will and Testament and in the mission and teachings of our Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi. How long will I have to take this stand thus alone against the united stand of all of the other active Hands of the Faith? How Long?

Tony Fillon has been deprived of his Baha’i voting rights because he has questioned some of which seem to me so far as I know to be similar to some of mine. No one knows how far this matter started by Tony may go? He is fighting openly I hear while I am not letting anyone but the Hands of the Faith know my stand alone and against that body, one against twenty six.

I know that I am right in this matter and I do not anticipate ever to alter my stand, come to me what may because of this stand. Should I speak of these matters and of my convictions to anyone other than the Hands of the Faith. I would in all probability be in Tony’s position if not in a worse one in which I might find myself definitely expelled from the Baha’i Cause. If such should happen under these present conditions when we have no Guardian I could not be readmitted into the Faith because by Baha’I law only the Guardian has the right to readmit into Baha’i Fellowship one who has been expelled therefrom.

While my position is a very ticklish and dangerous one should I ever share any of my views with Baha’is in general, nothing can be done to stop my holding opposing views to those of the other Hands and of expressing my views to the Hands so long as I unite with them as a body and sign my name with theirs to the Proclamation and other messages that we send out to the Baha’i world. But as I state, I must let no one but the Hands know of my own views upon this subject of the Guardianship.

It really is a very strange position in which I find myself – free to speak my heart out in conclave with the Hands or individually to any of the Hands but absolutely silent before all others!

Such is as I understand it my position in the Baha’i Faith or is my position as dictated by the Hands of the Faith. I am happy in my stand for my convictions as put forth in this writing for I am assured that my stand together with any others who may take this same stand will be the salvation of the Baha’i Faith in this world.

It is my present thought (12 January 1959) to send a copy of this writing to each of the other active Hands of the Faith, that each one of them can have time and opportunity to read and to study my reasons for my stand for a continuation of the Guardianship now at this time. Each of these copies to the Hands will go out from me under seal addressed to each recipient Hand. I will take care that no other copy or copies get out among the believers, nor will I, as I promised herein, speak of these matters to anyone. So if each of the other Hands observe this same secrecy that I do my stand herein presented at such length will not cause any agitation in the Baha’i world outside of the inner world of the Hands of the Cause, but should anyone of you other Hands of the Faith let your copy of this document get out and be spread amongst the Baha’i friends in general, I believe it will start a revolution in the Faith that will make it necessary for the Hands to reestablish the Guardianship forthwith to quell the troubled Baha’is and to protect the Faith of Baha’u’llah throughout the world.

Here we are in Haifa in the Baha’i Pilgrim House, visiting pilgrims along with us residents here, all sitting around talking about all sorts and kinds of Baha’i happenings at table and over our cups of coffee and tea when such a break comes in the middle of the morning or of the afternoon.

It is like the opening of an Ibsen play, when the curtain rises such a nice and apparently normal scene is presented on the stage, but as the play progresses and things below the surface begin to show what is really going on in the minds of the characters impersonated by the play actors – the audience gradually becomes aware of what is really going on amongst these characters thus impersonated. The condition is uncomfortable at the end of the first act and in the second act the tenstion reaches to the limit of human endurance until finally in the last act there is an explosion that ends in dire tragedy.

Such is as I see it, the Baha’i drama being enacted here in Haifa. Pilgrims are coming to us from both America and Persia, apparently as is well and happy, with but now and then an overtone (very clear to me but apparently not felt by any of the other Hands) that is ominous of unseen as yet opposing forces below all this apparently blissful Baha’i relations that I feel may touch off a world explosion in the Cause at almost any time when it becomes known among the friends in America and in Europe that the majority of the Hands of the Faith in reality favor the ending of the Guardianship thus scrapping the Will and Testament and all this construction work that our Beloved Guardian built up so laboriously over his long ministry of over thirty six years.

Of course all this that I write about is secret amongst the Hands of the Faith. We must by majority of opinion keep all these things within our own groupe in order to keep up a face of hope and happiness to the Baha’i world about us.

My tongue is tied and my lips are sealed. I cannot say anything to anyone outside of the Hands of the Faith, but to the Hands I feel that I must express my thoughts fully upon all these matters and this I do whenever the opportunity offers, but being but one voice with all the other voices united against me, I have little or no chance of being listened to.

However, I can and I will always make myself heard in the gatherings of the Hands and will never divulge my thoughts to others than the Hands of the Faith. Therefore, daily I am obliged to sign my name to many letters and communications going out from Haifa to all quarters of the Baha’i world thus endorsing the majority action and thought of the Custodian Hands in The Holy Land. All of this is of course most repugnant to me personally because I know perfectly well that at present the entire direction and the working of the Baha’i Faith is on the skids and is going in the wrong direction, but such can not be helped. If there be any objection to the decisions of the Hands of the Faith as given to the Baha’i world by decree of the Hands – and if these objections be vociferous sufficiently to be heard by the Hands – then the matter will have to be dealt with by the Hand as a body, for such would be a crisis in the Cause but until then I myself can do nothing to stem this tide that endangers the Cause.

To be sure there are a very few Hands who think we would do well to have a Guardian but seeing no immediate prospect of this under the existing opinion of so many that are against a continuation of the Guardianship, those who are for it are willing to await the forming of the House of Justice hoping that that institution may reestablish the Guardianship. Those who favor no more Guardians are supporting the idea that a House of Justice will surely confirm their opinions and are willing to await the action of that house trusting that it will be in favor of their notions. So therefore the notion of the Hands as testified to in their communications to the friends in all parts has been a united one by a vast majority. In fact by all the friends save one which is I.

It is clear to me that this united action is but a compromise made in the face of a problem that required a quick and if so a drastic handling with force and determination. The Hands have straddled the fence and are on the fence as it were awaiting to see how they can please everybody and to please all is impossible – so there the matter rests now in unstable equilibrium and in the meanwhile the initial forces of the Faith are not functioning as they should because a Guardian is no more with us and we don’t know which way to turn.

The weakness of the present condition of the Baha’i Faith is that without a Guardian there is no control of the believers and of their actions, individual or collective. In other words, there is no authoritative restraint to govern. To be sure we are taught and know that in an assembly the majority is to rule and all that, but as things now are if anyone of the National Assemblies should choose to do anything or take any stand they might choose to take against another assembly or assembly action, nothing could be done about the matter that could be upheld by our Holy Writ and law because we have no Guardian to command the situation. We would then have a decided split in the Faith.

Such would be the case now for instance, were the German National Assembly to openly disagree with a decision of the Hands of the Faith and were that assembly unitedly sustained in their notion by their local assemblies. All that the Hands could do about it would be to cut them off from all Baha’i association and expel the entire German Community from all participation in the affairs of the rest of the Baha’i world. The Hands could do that according to our Holy Writ but once done and they cast out from the cause, none but the Guardian could ever reinstate them were they ever to wish to enter again into communion with the other National Assemblies of the world. Thus forever would a division exist in the Faith or until the Hands should find a Guardian who by his command could heal this division.

But with a Guardian such a rupture as I picture here could never take place because he alone could have quelled the disturbance when it started.

I have pictured this hypothetical case which I feel might easily happen now at any time, I having read and sympathized with the point of view expressed in the communication to the last conclave of Hands which we received at and before that conclave, but did nothing especial in the way of a response to them other than the general letter sent out to all the world from that conclave.

(These communications were neither read or studied in our conclave, merely alluded to as questions to be replied to in our general message to the Baha’i world that would be explained to them by the two German Hands returning to Germany after the close of the conclave.)

The cause is in a most perilous predicament in these days without the Guardianship and as time passes these perils will increase rather than decrease.

Should such a hypothetical crisis as I here picture be percipitated at any time, we Hands may be suddenly called upon to do something and do it quickly and with dispatch to save the Baha’i Cause. In that case surely the only remedy we could apply would be to reestablish the Guardianship as the only means of protecting the Faith as is clearly shown in the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha.

The Hands here in The Holy Land, being fully aware of my thoughts about subjects that come up for discussion in our meetings, for when I do talk back to them I do so with the same frankness that I now write these lines. Now of late many letters have been coming from various parts of the Baha’i world all but a negligible number of which exhalt and praise the messages and the instructions from the Hands in The Holy Land without questioning their authority when they order things to be done thus and so on in this and in that way. Now the Hands here are coming to me individually mentioning and calling my attention to this fact of the happiness and joy of the Baha’is in many parts at this present way of administering their rulings of various questions and matters arising in the Cause from time to time. Their object in so calling my attention to these missives is of course to convince me to accepting this form of Baha’i procedure without a Guardianship. Such persuasive measures do not cause me to change my opinion at all that the Guardianship should not be abolished. In fact, I know and I understand the people of the assemblies east and west. Those of the orient accustomed to accept and bear the rule of absolute monarchs dictating to them and to their forefathers for centuries past were long since conditioned to such dictation. I know that many of them did not like this even to the point of resentment under the ministry of The Beloved Guardian who was far more dictatorial in dealing with the Oriental Baha’is than with those of the west. But this Shoghi had to do in order to save the cause from destruction, particularly so here in Haifa where things so got out of hand among the followers excluding even into his own family circle that in order to save the cause, The Beloved Guardian had to sever these branches to the right and to the left – thus the cause was saved but with none of his family remaining with no one at all to continue the hereditary line of Guardianship – so bad was this condition.

Now the Baha’i world of the east were particularly observant of all those matters so when Shoghi Effendi died so suddenly and without any preparation for the carrying on of the Guardianship of the Faith, it was only natural that people here should grab a hold of this opportunity to stop in and abolish the rule of the Guardian that has been at times so unpleasing to them.

Elsewhere in my writing, I have told the story of the happenings in Geneva (where the Persian students, Baha’is of a background of several generations in the Faith) revolted against the Administration being established in Europe by some American Baha’is working directly under the Beloved Guardian’s instructions, but in their impetuosity and without thought of what they were doing showed in the actions pretty much exactly how they thought – thus often children reveal in their notions and thoughts the indiscrete thoughts and desires of their fathers and elders from whom they have inherited these thoughts and notions. Thus when declarations and confirmations of the reports and actions come from Persia and other lands of the Orient to the Hands here in The Holy Land, I wonder if these people are not really more happy than I know because we have no Guardian and they welcome this freedom from the yoke of having to obey the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith?

Such it seems to me so far as the believers in the Orient are concerned. But with the people in the west, Europe and the Americans, the working of this case is somewhat different than in the Orient. There with us we are not accustomed to arbitrary rule – we wish freedom and liberty where every one is equal to every and anyone else – such is our national ideal of freedom and our national ideal of liberty that oft times leads us into the ways of license.

However, whatever were the emotional processes through which the American believers passed practically all the Baha’is accepted the Master’s Will and Testament and arose to obey Shoghi Effendi, the First Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, and so thus proceeded the early fruits of the organized Administration of the Baha’i Faith – the American people conditioning themselves to the habit of instant obedience to whatever Shoghi Effendi told them to do and in the measure that they did this with alacrity the progress of the cause in America speeded up.

Now during this short time since we have been without a Guardian, in general the believers in the Occident thus conditioned for some years to obey the Guardian without question have just carried on and over into this day of “A New Baha’i Era” without a Guardian at all (as it was announced by the Hands of the Faith collaborating with the National Spiritual Assembly of America in a Manifesto that they framed up, the printing and broadcast publication of which was stopped by the Hands in The Holy Land but not before some copies of the same got out among the friends) and through this conditioning of obeying without questioning the commands of Shoghi Effendi, the admonitions of the Hands in the Holy Land are now likewise being obeyed and carried out without question by the friends.

Therefore the dangerous and precarious position that such unauthorized Baha’i organization places the cause! Any question regarding the authority of this body of nine Hands may pop up at any time. No one can now tell how much trouble and how far it will go by any Baha’i who studying the Will and Testament and the admonitions and commands of Shoghi Effendi whom they find out not only the absence of divine authority of this present arrangement of Baha’i control, but more than that, that the explicit admonitions of the Will and Testament definitely tell us to do very differently – to follow the course of regulations plainly stated in the Will and Testament that we have abandoned – namely the Guardianship.

Frequently I hear Hands and others of the Faith decry and condemn the system of the Administration of the Roman Church with the Pope at the head with the princes of the church, the cardinals and other grades of the clergy following, saying that this system given to us Baha’is in our religious teachings that form the Administrative order for the Government of the Faith as given in the Will of the Master Abdu’l-Baha with the Guardian at the head – the Hands as the nobles of the Faith next to and surrounding the Guardian – then upon the side of the masses of the followers of the Faith, the assemblies, local and national, and finally international – all of which reasoning is very true both of the Church of Rome and of the Baha’i Faith. The Baha’is teach that St. Peter was appointed by Christ as chief amongst his desciples but that Christ’s instructions ended there and that their system of thought is human. Efficient and enduring has been the system of the Roman Catholic Church and as they themselves claim founded upon the fact that St. Peter was the appointed head of the Church of Christ militant appointed by himself, the Church Militant to be followed by the Second Coming of Christ who would then, Himself, establish the Church Triumphant which we believe was accomplished in these latter days by Baha’u’llah, which fact and belief is attested to in the Baha’i teachings. The system that was built upon the Mission of St. Peter was wholly of human and not of divine origin for this system was not given to the world by Christ Himself (whom the Baha’i believe to be God Manifest in the flesh to the people of the world). But now is the Baha’i Faith, that we Baha’is believe to be the Church of Christ triumphant upon earth) we have the Administration of our Faith given to us as a part of the Revelation of God to man in this day – that to say is our Administration is God given to us and is of divine origin never to be changed by man in its structure and functioning until the close of this Baha’i Dispensation when another Manifestation will appear and establish his laws and ordinances for His Dispensation to follow that of Baha’u’llah!

And now in this year 1959, Anno Domini and the year 115 of the Baha’i Era so soon after the Beloved Shoghi Effendi’s death – He who started and got the Baha’i Administration system founded and in working order upon the six continents of the globe now at this early point in Baha’i History we find right among the Hands of the Faith a number who held that the Master Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament is BADAH and should be followed no longer! Such is their attitude. Only this morning, 12 January 1959, one of the Hands of the Faith here in Haifa told me that the Master’s Will and Testament with the Guardianship was BADAH. This very dear friend has told me that this was her opinion several times before. She is but one who holds to this belief and that somehow God will lead his cause to victory by some means other than this administrative system so laboriously worked out and developed the world around by our late Beloved Shoghi Effendi.

Such reasoning and such conviction as this in the face of the Will and Testament of the Beloved Master Abdu’l-Baha together with the Mission of Shoghi Effendi and all that he taught and explained to us quite depasses my comprehension.

RUHIYYIH KHANUM

Above all the women in this world, Ruhiyyih Khanum has been the most spiritually blessed by Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Baha’i Faith. Those to whom great spiritual blessings are given are called upon to make the greatest personal sacrifices so that is the end both they individually and the Faith collectively reach the greatest heights of spiritual attainment.

It is not surprising from the human point of view that Ruhiyyih Khanum should be loath to step down and out from the residence of the Head of the Faith at 7 Persian Street in Haifa. It would indeed be difficult for her to take residence in any residence elsewhere with the Second Guardian of the Faith in residence where formerly she with Shoghi Effendi held forth. Such would indeed be most difficult for her and no one would have more sympathy for her than the many Baha’is who love her the world around and this includes myself, nevertheless such is the ultimate fate of all people of great and high estate in this world, even that of the widow of the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith.

It was said in Washington that when Andrew Johnson and his wife came to move into the White House that Mrs. Lincoln refused point blank to vacate. However, public opinion was against her yet the people understood her feelings and her friends felt sorry for her.

I am sure that such would be the parallel case in the Baha’i world: Ruhiyyih Khanum is relenquishing the position that she has assumed in her efforts to dominate and to regulate the affairs of the world and in stepping aside and welcoming the Second Guardian of the Faith, would indeed be endorsing and carrying out the intention of the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha and adhering to and supporting the interpretations and the teachings of Shoghi Effendi regarding the continuation of the Guardianship.

Such cooperation of Ruhiyyih Khanum and such support from her would indeed insure her of the highest spiritual position among the believers the world around and secure for her the universal sympathy, respect and love of the believers in every part of the world.

That very few people use their heads to think out problems before they act upon them is generally conceded but that in the end most people arrive by the method of experiment or trial and error so at least the majority of even those who don’t think at first do some thinking later on.

The people of the Baha’i Faith are composed of a cross section of humanity. There are but few deep thinkers amongst us, for the most part we act motivated by our impulses, propelled by our feelings. Such has produced the muddled thinking that has brought the Cause to the state that it is now in when the Hands of the Faith as a group, bewildered as they are have allowed themselves to be carried away with the idea that the Guardianship that has just been innaugurated and gotten under way by the Beloved Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, is at an end!

To be sure this has been slipped over upon them by those of the Hands who at the opening of discussion at the First Behje Conclave came out all standing together urging that the Guardianship as instituted in the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha be pronounced BADAH. This was the conviction of those Persian Baha’i Hands. Shortly Ruhiyyih Khanum felt as they did and this block has existed since then, but under cover as it were.

In the Proclamation issued by the First Behje Conclave, this was not stated. By majority vote of the Hands a compromise was made upon which the majority could agree; namely to wait for the House of Justice to be formed and let them decide this matter, they hoping that this would give time and opportunity to in the end, end the Guardianship.

At the Kampala Conference, I understand that Ruhiyyih Khanumb announced that there would never be another Guardian. Then later she said that she had spoken without thinking which doubtless was true. People who speak out without thinking always say what they really think!

Later on when the Hands in America together with the American N.S.A. issued their Manifesto announcing that the Guardianship was BADAH the matter was out and among the friends despite the fact that this Manifesto was only circulated in typed form, the printing of it having been stopped at the last moment.

The actions of the Hands in the Holy Land – the Custodian Hands of the Faith protem are dominated by Ruhiyyih Khanum – in many ways the details of which would be too numerous to try to enumerate. Occasionally she meets with a little resistance from Leroy Ioas and there is a terrible emotional explosion that breaks up the meeting as she walks out of the room to return after a cooling off period and so this cat and dog life that we have here in Haifa goes on until the next explosion.

But in the end things like this will out, despite our announcements attempting to assure the people otherwise. We all know that announcements and explanations are frequently so worded as intentionally to conceal rather than to reveal facts and this is the constantly reinforced policy of our Administration Center here in Haifa, to keep the believers abroad and around the world from knowing how things are being done here in Haifa.

Things should be so done by the Baha’is here in The Holy Land that our life and actions here be like an open book for the believers around the world to read. Were this possible we would indeed have really solved our problems.

The people of the cause really want to be led in the paths instituted by Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha and as led by our late Beloved Guardian. This is shown by the first responses to the Proclamation of the Hands and the communication from the Custodian Hands. They were sincere in their expressions of obedience, trust, etc. They believed and without question took what they were told to take and accept.

But now, after over a year without a Guardian, they are beginning to question for it cannot always be hidden from them that a majority of the Hands do not want that there ever be another Guardian. Even though these Hands do not say this, their pronouncements and other actions confirm and bring out that which is deep in their thoughts – BADAH for the Guardianship.

The mass of the Baha’is are not so stupid upon second thought as they may have been at first. They are studying the words and teachings of the Beloved Guardian about the Guardianship, just like these two believers in Norfolk, Virginia, and they are beginning to doubt the wisdom and the integrity of the Hands of the Faith when they read their pronouncements and their communications because these do not tally up with Shoghi Effendi’s explanation of the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha.

These queries of the people at large in the Faith the world around are going to be very embarrassing to the Hands and will continue to harrass and to bother them and tend to split the Baha’i Faith into many cults until the Hands of the Faith will be so beset with the confusion of all of these conflicting thoughts that they will be forced to give the only protection to the cause that they can give which will be for them to appoint the Second Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, then from this point building upon the foundation of the Administration as laid by Shoghi Effendi, First Guardian of the Faith, their victories will continue on victory upon victory!

Such is to be the way of our present dilemma as I see it.

When people are in great sorrow, mental tension and bewilderment they are very apt to reach out emotionally and grab ahold of whatever solace is at hand – they think things out clearly by degrees. Thus it is only after the great stress of the moment that clear and cool decisions are reached.

Bewildered as was the Baha’i world by the sudden death of Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Faith, it was quite natural that there was an almost universal acceptance with but little resistance of the abandoning of the Guardianship as announced by the Proclamation of the initial Behje Conclave of the Hands of the Faith and the acceptance of the Custodianship by the nine Hands in The Holy Land as a human substitute for the divinely appointed Guardianship of the Faith. In this way this human substitute was slipped over upon them at a time when they were ill prepared to see the matter with clarity of vision.

The majority of the Hands of the Faith supported with great firmness the abandonment of the Guardianship forever so far as the Dispensation of Baha’u’llah was concerned. This was indeed too drastic to put into so many words in the Proclamation issued so the matter was announced in milder and more general terms of compromise but leaving a leeway for future interpretation they might gradually put over the abolition at some future time when the outlook might be more for its succeeding without opposition on the part of the Baha’is the world around.

In the year following the First Behje Conclave, the Hands issued a letter exhorting the believers to cease speculating about the Guardianship and to busy themselves with the teaching of the Faith but without stating what the Baha’is should teach now since this majority of the Hands had given up all idea of ever having a Second Guardian to be followed by others. This communication was further revealing of this intention of abolishment that during this first year after the initial conclave again found a fuller and more explicit explanation of their real intention of abolishment than was given with a fullness of clarity in that Manifesto that was gotten up in Chicago by the American Hands of the Faith in cohoots with the N.S.A. of the U.S.A.

When a copy of this Manifesto found its way to Haifa very casually in a letter from Germany and the Custodians read it they were amazed at the lack of “wisdom” in the sending forth of this statement. The fear of a fuss being stirred up over the matter caused the Custodians to cable to Chicago to stop the circulation of that document that was then being set up in print to go through the Baha’i world. This was stopped then at the eleventh hour but not in time to allay the trouble altogether for at least to these who read the Manifesto (which from its style had evidently been composed by Horace Holley) there was no doubt but that the majority of the Hands were determined on the abolishment of the Guardianship of the Faith. The Hands in Haifa wrote to Horace approving highly of the main substance of this statement of the abolition but they just didn’t want it sprung upon the Baha’i world in this way and at that time for fear that the people were not as yet psychologized to the point of accepting without protest.

Thus were matters when we all came together in the Second Conclave at Behje when it was decided (carried by majority) no allusion nor mention of the Guardianship be made in their report to the people of the Faith but that the infallibility of the House of Justice be centered upon in their presentation as the hope of the cause.

Now up until the date of this writing (December 29, 1958) there have been received here at Haifa in all but five or six letters from abroad questioning this action of the Hands, this pussy foot manner in which they are leading the Baha’is away and afar from the intent of the very explicit injunctions of the Master Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament regarding the Institution of the Guardianship.

It quite depasses my imagination how such a condition could possibly thus so taken possession of the very heart (the Hands) of the Baha’i Faith. I tremble as I write these lines lest what may befall our cause for so far as I can see I, Mason Remey, am the only one of the Hands to stand up singly and alone against this united majority that consists of all of the other Hands capable of taking part in these conclave proceedings. (Mrs. True and Mrs. Dunn were not there.)

These few objectors who have written to the Hands about the Guardianship, two whose names I have forgotten, the Barretts, one Sam something (I forget his last name), Tony Fillon, Eugene Schmidt and Udo Schaefer of Berlin have had practically no notice taken of their questions. These are the few who take the stand that I myself take. I am convinced that we are right but we are such an infinitesimal minority that I wonder how this matter is ever going to be straightened out, but I am sure it will come out. I am counting and banking on that for I know the why and the wherefor of this stand that I take.

Through Baha’u’llah, God imposed his law and order upon the people of the world and after Baha’u’llah by his appointment of Abdu’l-Baha gave the believers the interpretation and explained to us in his Will and Testament the application of the laws of Baha’u’llah and at the same time he, Abdu’l-Baha, placed us under the command of Shoghi Effendi, the First Guardian of the Baha’i Faith who then forced upon us by Abdu’l-Baha was our Commander in Chief by virtue of his station of the infallible Guardianship to which he was appointed. Then his reign as Guardian of the Cause was suddenly cut short and since as far as is yet been discussed by the believers he made no provision for his successor to reign over the people of the Faith, we find ourselves to be each one a free individual bound to obey no one upon earth – absolutely free and at liberty to do each one as he or she pleases. This freedom apparently pleases the Hands of the Faith – all save I are for it!

But such liberty and freedom will never hold the cause intact to function as a united body throughout the world. In order to attain the unity necessary for the life of the Faith, the Hands or at least a ruling majority of them will make the personal sacrifice of their personal liberties and freedom and for the sake of the Faith voluntarily wishing to place themselves under the command of a Guardian whom they will have to place in power over them and maintain him there at all personal inconveniences to themselves. This all is now demanded by the exigencies of the present situation for which there is no other solution of this problem.

In other words, to recapitulate, we no longer have a ruler forced upon us as we have had in the past and that the cause has thrived on – an absolute ruler of the cause of God in this world that is the symbol of the absolute rule of the Almighty in the worlds to come.

Now therefore is our great opportunity to demonstrate by the personal sacrifices of our present freedom and liberty to hope for the reestablishment of the line of Guardianship under which command alone can this religion of God grow and flourish upon this earth.

Let us with one accord abandon this provisional-religious-democratic system of Baha’i government under the Custodian Hands in the Holy Land that we have set up for ourselves and that is so personally pleasing to us and apparently so also to the majority of the believers the world over. Let us give up all this democratic freedom based upon the doctrines of this political world about us and let us all unitedly and voluntarily enter into the covenant given to us by the Master Abdu’l-Baha by making those personal sacrifices so necessary to be made by us now at this time that we may soon have a Guardian Commander who surely exists in occultation, whom we and all other Baha’is will obey when he comes forth to take command of the Faith, for then and only then can or will the Baha’is of the world be able to hold together for then this present liberty and freedom of our members will be replaced by the imposed law and order of the Kingdom of God wherein we do not choose to regulate ourselves but we accept the law and order of the Kingdom as it is imposed upon us by virtue of the divinely established pinciple of the Guardianship.

I notice in the records of things transpiring in the Faith in the Latin American Assemblies of which records, we the Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land have copies, that one Tony Fillon has been deprived of his voting rights as a Baha’i because he “Questioned the Institutions of the Baha’i Faith”.

So far as I have been able to ascertain from him and also from those who have thus judged him to be unfaithful to the “Institutions of the Baha’i Faith” he has not objected to any institution of the Faith but on the contrary, has stood firmly for “The Institutions of the Baha’i Faith” in that he takes the stand that there must be a Second Guardian of the Faith following the First Guardian of the Faith. Apparently Tony’s National Assembly has conceived this present arrangement of the control of the Faith by the nine Hands in The Holy Land to be one of “The Institutions of the Baha’i Faith” and this is indeed a most serious error upon this part. For such is decidedly not at all an “Institution of the Baha’i Faith” but an institution formed by certain Baha’is (whom it happens are the Hands of the Faith) but being of their creation in no way makes it “an institution” of the Faith because the “Institution” of the Faith can only be by the divine infallible authority that after the Bab, Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha, the Guardian of the Faith alone is infallible until the Universal House of Justice be formed by him and with himself as its permanent President and then this infallibility will pass on to that August Divine Institution which functioning together with the Guardian will have the authority to create institutions of the Faith to meet exigencies that may arise and also abrogate these their own creations when the requirements for such institutions are no longer, but are never to abrogate nor change the written word and law of Baha’u’llah nor of Abdu’l-Baha as recorded in the Sacred Literature of the Baha’i Faith.

Every Baha’i should know and understand this difference between the institution of the Faith and the institutions that the Baha’is may set up.

So far as I understand the matter, Tony has objected to the present attitude of the Hands of the Faith that the Guardianship is definitely ended if not for all time at least until the appearance of the next Manifestation in a thousand or thousands of years to come. In this matter, Tony apparently takes the ground that I do that the present attitude of the Hands of the Faith that the Guardianship be ended is all wrong and is in violation of the Master Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament and is this I, myself, view this matter exactly as does Tony.

That which seems to be in reality the grounds for Tony’s present condition of disgrace is that he was so indiscrete as to tell other believers about his spiritual convictions and that this caused his expulsion as a voting Baha’i. Had he simply kept his silence and united with the majority vote of the Hands of the Faith and at least in outward appearance accepted this “New Baha’i Era” administrative change in the procedure of Baha’i affairs, he would not have been thus severely dealt with by his National Assembly.

My case is somewhat different from Tony’s because I am a Hand of the Cause and have the right in matters of consultation to tell the other Hands exactly what I think. This I have done and they all know that I differ and do not accept their united opinion that the Guardianship of the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha be from now on BADAH, etc. Thus may I express myself to the Hands of the Faith but to them only. My safety in the Cause seems to lie in keeping my thoughts to myself. Should I tell any of the Baha’is in general of my convictions then I would be subject to expulsion from the Faith, for the Hands of the Cause may think they have this right according to the Will and Testament of the Master to expel from the Faith and should this befall me I would indeed be badly off for then none save a Guardian could save me from such eternal condemnation, and at present we have no Guardian!

Therefore I am concentrating my activities upon and with the Hands in my effort as a right and as my duty as a Hand of the Faith, trying to get them to reconsider their present stand with but no apparent success so far and with practically no indication from any of the Hands of any change at all in their attitude.

I have so far kept an unbroken silence before the Baha’i world. Every day and many times daily I listen in silence to this propaganda of the other Hands that is directed toward instilling into the minds of the people their attitude of the end of all Guardianship. It is indeed Hell for me to have to listen to all this false propaganda so destructive to the Faith but what can I do other than listen and say nothing to the people. What can I do under these circumstances? Therefore I await, not patiently however but suffering from this repression and suppression, I having Faith that something is going to happen somewhere amongst the rank and file of the Faith that will awaken these Hands of the Faith to their error and their responsibility in this matter.

As I stand, my silence before the Baha’i world is my impregnible fortress of any personal trouble that can reach and incapacitate me to thus single handedly carry on this fight.

As for Tony Fillon? I think of him constantly and trust that he will remain firm in his adherance to the Guardianship. At one time he wrote me something about his condition. I sent this letter on to the Hands of the Faith here in The Holy Land for them to read and to reply to. What they did I don’t know. I wrote Tony telling him that I had thus referred his letter to the Custodian Hands and there ended our correspondence upon this particular subject. My affection for Tony has greatly increased as I have been thinking much of him and of his sufferings of late. He has had material troubles too as well as spiritual troubles. He was in Caracas, Venezuela at the time of the revolution there where he lost everything that he had except the clothes he wore as he escaped from this trouble.

Of all the words in the Baha’I vocabulary “Violation of the Covenant” is one of the most awful in its connotation. Only in my unspoken thought have I so far connected violation with this condition of the Hands of the Faith in their attitude toward ending the Guardianship of the Faith with the death of Shoghi Effendi. However, in my thinking I see this to be a very distinct violation of the Will and Testament of the Master. It started, as I have recorded, with the Persian Hands, was brought up and supported by them at the start of the First Behje Conclave of the Hands of the Faith and from this start, these few have so convinced those other Hands that they were right, that now in and since the Second Behje Conclave they all stand united therein, their firmness therein to me seems like poison. I hardly dare write this condemnation of my fellow Hands but it is in reality the way that I feel about the entire situation.

It is a strange phenominon the manner in which people when they don’t want to do a certain thing that they will blindly and in the face of facts shut their eyes to these facts and stubbornly refuse to consider these facts.

There is nothing that the Beloved Guardian taught us or that is given us in the Will and Testament that is more clear than the instructions regarding the foundation of the Universal House of Justice.

First is the Guardian of the Faith in command of the Cause. He is the first of the twin pillars of that institution – the International Assembly to be elected by the believers is to be the second of these twin pillars which second pillar with the Guardian of the Faith as the permanent President of the Universal House of Justice forming both pillars supporting this structure gives it its infallibility.

The Universal House of Justice therefore can in no wise function without it first have the Guardian at its head, without which it is fallible – not infallible and therefore the false hope that the Hands of the Faith promise to the people of the cause – for without the Guardianship continued there can be no President for this Universal House of Justice; therefore it will be impossible for the Hands to fulfill their promise to the people of the Faith. It just doesn’t make any sense at all this that is promised to the people of the Faith and then too there are the Hands who ere long will begin to die off and without the purpetation of the Guardianship, this Noble body will ere long cease to exist for the Hands of the Faith can only be elevated to that August position by appointment by the Guardian of the Faith.

From people here and there is already questions about this, but so far the Hands simply refuse to consider or discuss any question such as these.

It is very clear and evident to me the reason why some of the Hands of the Faith personally do not want a continuation of the Guardianship because of the hardship that the Guardianship entails upon all who serve him and in particular those who are so very near to him in the Administration of the Faith here in the Holy Land.

I myself have sufferend such torment to a degree that I would never have believed I could take, but somehow I managed to endure it with the annual vacations I had while the Guardian and Ruhiyyih Khanum were away from Haifa on their summers in Europe. On several of my visits to America during those years it took me weeks of inactive rest to recuperate from the emotional strain that I had been under in Haifa, but by keeping myself busy on the side with interests and things of mine own that were of no import to the cause, such as an architectural project and some personal reminiscent writings of mine own, I managed to get a certain relief from the strain here in Haifa by first attending to and completing whatever the Guardian commanded me to do, then seeking release from the tension and frustrations thereof by hastening to work upon these personal hobbies of mine from which I derived much relaxation and balance. Thus I led a life all of mine own and apart from that of the Baha’i activities about me – a life that no one about me knew anything about. This enabled me to carry on the things that the Beloved Guardian required of me, so in the end it was possible to endure the frustrations and suppressions and the general beating down not to mention the indignities and often the injustices that I had to meet with in my daily life here as a member of the Baha’i Faith.

Thus the seasons here passed until the summer of 1957 when while I was in America my Dr. Meltzman in Washington (to whom I explained my emotional difficulties here in Haifa without telling him too much) urged me to not to overburden myself by too long stays here in Haifa – not over three months at a stretch – suggesting a three month stay, a month away, then three months here followed by a five month vacation to America. This program Dr.Moltzman urged and in a letter to Shoghi Effendi through Ruhiyyih Khanum then in Europe, I proposed this schedule without going into any details nor letting Shoghi Effendi know that it was my position with him here in Haifa that was the cause of my trouble, for I really could not have gone thus into the matter – not with him for although we were so near to one another in a way, nevertheless in another way we were very far apart from one another. For while I accomplished the submission of my actions to the Guardian because he was the Guardian of the Faith, I always retained my own thoughts about many matters that I saw going on about me here in Haifa, so by doing just as I was told to do and by keeping absolute counsel with myself, I managed to get along until that summer of 1957 when it seemed to me I’d actually reached my limit when I wrote asking the relief that Dr. Holtzman advised me to take.

The result was a very kind message to me from the Guardian by letter through Ruhiyyih Khanum accepting Dr. Holtzman’s suggestion for which I was making my plans to carry out when all was suddenly changed by the death of Shoghi Effendi in London and my hurrying to England then on here to Haifa, etc. etc.

But now without a Guardian in daily command here amongst us, I no longer have these emotional problems. I am free of it all but in my Baha’i life I am suffering for the cause is not going so well as it did when I was so uncomfortable in the service of the Guardian; therefore I am now quite ready and impatiently awaiting the restitution o the Guardianship for although I know that this will mean for me far greater inconveniences and actual emotional torture with probably physical suffering more severe than anything that has previously been mine here in Haifa. I know perfectly well that I must meet all these trials and thus subject myself in order that I fulfill my spiritual destiny and that the cause prosper under the Second Guardian of the Faith. Thus do I see these matters from my human viewpoint. Yet there is another point of view that is always also in my mind – that of my vision of the future of the Faith which is my future too that is all so different from my daily observations that I dare not even think of it and of all that it means. Thus do I live in two worlds.

How many times, almost daily in fact, am I told by the Custodian Hands that the Beloved Guardian has gien us ample and sufficient instructions exactly what we should teach in carrying out the ten year crusade and that we need no more than to follow what he told us to do – that we need no other Guardian beyond that?

I stauntily stand against that and tell them that we should no longer be signing our letters “Yours etc, in the Service of the Beloved Guardian”, that this is all wrong, that we ought to reestablish in our thinking the ideal of the Guardianship and be signing ourselves “Yours etc. in ther service of the Second Guardian of the Faith”. Such frankness of opinion on my part only creates dispute if one against all could be called a dispute. There is apparently no use in trying to argue this point or for that matter any other point for when minds are made up argument only seems to intensify the situation. Surely the Second Guardian is near. I know He is, but so long as I am the only one upon earth who knows this all that I can now do about it is to await the right time to tell the world about him.

Since the leadership of the Baha’i Faith as directed in the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha can only come to us and be realized through the Guardianship. We the Hands of the Faith must make the sacrifice that the Guardianship demands of us. This is a big order. It means not only the sacrifice of our now free and liberal individual careers in the following of which we have no one to obey but for each one to do what is right in his own eyes thus giving us the liberty that we now have, all of which we must renounce when we place ourselves under the infallible guidance of the Guardianship. But it moreover means that from the moment that the Second Guardian of the Faith comes into his office being our Commander in Chief, we will then again have the accepted Baha’i infallibility to direct and to inspire the friends the world around.

The people of the Baha’i Faith are at present, even including the Hands of the Faith, are now in a state of bewilderment that is a very bad condition for us and one that can only be remedied by the restitution of the ideal of the Guardianship. We, the Hands of the Faith, must arise to accomplish this change of thought. But how can I, but one Hand against all the other Hands? How can I accomplish that? I must await my opportunity.

It looks to me as if I would have to wait until something happens, possibly some tragedy or calamity to awaken these friends!

In the meanwhile, Tony Fillon and others who question this present regime set up by the Hands with the intent of establishing a House of Justice (that can never be established lest we first have a Guardian to accomplish this). In the meanwhile those who question this procedure are, because of their stand, being deprived of their voting rights and in fact face the greater Baha’i disgrace of even being expelled from the cause.

These conditions may at any time start a series of chain explosions the world around amongst the believers. Personally I would welcome such a calamity were it to awaken the Hands to the reality of this situation.

RECAPITULATION OF MY ARGUMENT FOR THE GUARDIANSHIP OF THE BAHA’I FAITH

By the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha, the Hands of the Faith are to protect the Faith and by the appointment by the Beloved Guardian of the twenty seven Hands be placed upon them this responsibility of protection.

Though circumstances over which no one had any control the cause the world around is faced within and without with powers of disruption that will ere long cause its death unless we have an established allegiance to the Second Guardian to hold us together and through whose ministrations only can the cause live.

The Universal House of Justice will be at the right time be formed by the Second Guardian of the Faith or by one of his successors. The Guardian alone as one of the pillars of that infallible body must call and form that August body. It can not be and/or function without first the Guardian who will be its first President – not by election but by the divine decree of the Will and Testament.

The straight direct and simple road now for the success of the ten year world crusade instituted by the Beloved Guardian rests entirely upon the Hands carrying out their part of this program by first themselves making each the personal sacrifice that the Guardianship entails and demands that he make and secondly by proclaiming Shoghi Effendi’s successor whomever he be or wherever he may be, as head of the Baha’i Faith.

Thus with the Guardianship again functioning, under the ideal if not the actual leadership of the Second Guardian of our Faith the cause the world around would receive the confirmations of the Holy Spirit and the Faith will progress onward and upward from victory to victory, always in the hope that the Guardian of the Faith will make his advent as the actual leader of the Faith and never losing this hope.

Ugo Geiachery told me that when he and others of the Hands were arranging that the Custodian Hands of the Faith take over the properties and moneys of the Faith that were held in the name of Shoghi Effendi, that Weinschel the local Jewish attorney in Haifa, remarked that in his opinion the tenure of these moneys and properties would be more safe had a Guardian been appointed to succeed Shoghi Effendi, even though that Guardian be a young boy who would eventually assume the active office of the Guardianship. Such was Weinschel’s opinion for the safety of the properties of the Faith in case that the violation of the covenant or possibly others might in some way try to obtain control of these properties by setting up claims of the right of Guardianship of one of the many descendants of Baha’u’llah all of which were outcast by the Beloved Guardian because of their disobedience.

To be sure until this present date no such case has appeared against this present set up of our Faith without a Guardian as specified in the Baha’i world constitution of the Administration of the Faith, and we all trust that nothing like this will ever happen, nevertheless I myself have thought many times of Weinschel’s thought upon the subject of our Baha’i Guardianship, he of course looking at it not as we do from a religious viewpoint but merely as a problem of the law of the land of Israel.

In the event of any trouble of this nature ever appearing the cause and its holding would be much more safe had we a Guardian than without one as we are now, for the set up of the Administration as given in the Will and Testament and in which the constitutional rights of the Guardianship are clearly stated in the Administration and therein there is no authority whatsoever neither from the religious nor the legal point of view, for any such arrangement as we are now operating under with nine Custodian Hands directing Baha’i matters.

We Hands of the Baha’i Faith are now here having a fine time and greatly enjoying the high station with its prerequisites and privileges all of which were vouchsafed us by our Beloved late Guardian and added to that which He bestowed upon us is the freedom that we take now from the heavy yoke of responsibilities that he imposed upon us. For each of us well remember the burdens we bore through the personal sacrifices we had at all times to make in order to carry out the commands of Shoghi Effendi that weighed so heavily upon each of us during his ministry here amongst us, all of which is now at an end, for now is this interregnum that we have established we are free from all the restrictions and the regulations imposed upon us by him when here with us.

Here we are on this most beautiful Mount of Carmel living in the most beautiful houses in the land set in the most beautiful gardens of the land with the most Holy Shrines in the world, the decorations and embellishments of which greatly enrich our times of worship in these Holy places.

Thus we now at this present time are enjoying a combination of the beauty and comforts of this material world added to which is the high station and prestige thoughout the Baha’i world that these blessings give us. We really are now on the very top of the Faith in this world.

Two ways are open to the believer. At every point in life where decisions are to be made there are two directions one can take, to the right or to the left? Now at this present moment our individual and personal mondaine happy free existence, free from the restraints of a Second Guardian of the Faith and the great personal restraints that his presence amongst us would impose upon us, is the right hand turn that the Hands should voluntarily give up and sacrifice our happy present condition to be again under the divine guidance of the Guardianship. The questions now before us is whether we will now voluntarily make this choice and sacrifice our comforts and liberties or whether we continue this struggle against the Guardianship until in the end we will be beaten and overcome by the forces of the Kingdom and compelled by circumstances to relinquish our present state and be obliged to suffer such a chastisement. All this because the majority of the Hands of the Cause of God are at present united against the principle of the Guardianship that is the very heart of the guidance of God upon earth.

Read that letter by that man P.C. Gupta in Lucknow that has been so far refused by the Custodian Hands in The Holy Land. There you will find stated in great clarity, conciseness and brevity – in six short paragraphs – the principle of the Guardianship, the necessity of the Guardianship and the spiritual reasons of why the Guardianship alone can insure the continuance and the future of the Baha’i Faith.

I, knowing that the Baha’i Faith is destined to live and prosper and fill the world – I knowing this and also knowing that such triumph can only come under the command of the Guardianship – knowing these things I know that whether or not you other Hands of the Faith wish this to be – I know that it will be therefore I take my stand.

It is well for this to be fought out between us Hands in camera than to have it fought out in the open between parties throughout the Baha’i world. For such would be bad for the cause in the eyes of the world. Therefore let us have another conclave of all the Hands and settle this for the tranquility of the entire Baha’i world and for the success of the crusade planned and started by the Beloved Guardian in which we are now engaged.

Unless the Hands of the Faith change their attitude that is most decidedly against the Guardianship I see naught but personal tragedies befalling these individuals who thus set themselves against the institution of the Guardianship. For those individuals who in their hearts are in opposition to this divine institution of our Faith that is the very heart of the Faith and the source of our guidance are thereby committing spiritual suicide as individuals and are standing together as a block against the Guardianship are actually trying to kill the cause whether they are so doing knowingly or ignorantly the result will be the same for by the elimination of the Guardianship from the Administration they are putting a knife into the heart of the Faith.

What can I, one individual Hand, do about this? This united action of the Hands in standing against the Institutions of the Guardianship is indeed as an axe at the root of the working of our Faith! What can I, one individual, do about it?

Were I to voice my opinion among the believers abroad I would surely create a split and a spiritual panic among the friends and this must not be. Among the Hands and among the Hands alone I am free to speak and I do speak out my thought in talking with them just as clearly outspoken as I am here in writing upon paper. Thus do I wait from day to day wondering when, where, by what means and by whom relief will come to solve this problem of how the Hands are to be awakened to meet this matter of Guardianship because I know it will be solved? The cause is going to continue to spread and to grow as the Master Abdu’l-Baha planned it to develop under the Guardianship. There is to be a Second Guardian of our Faith and the line on beyond to direct the Faith through the age to come. This have I seen in my vision, but now is not the time to go further into those matters. The all important thing now as a first step is that the Hands of the Faith be now awakened to their responsibility of protecting the Faith and this can only be done now by the Hands arising and heralding the advent of the Second Guardian of the Faith who will demand much sacrifice upon their parts, for as I have stated elsewhere in writing this will mean the sacrifice to them of the liberties and freedom from the commands and orders that they will have to take and obey when the Second Guardian comes to command the Cause.

It is a terrible thing that I see and feel this wish upon the part of a considerable number of the Hands of not wishing a Second Guardian of the Faith. This is to me a decided indication of violation of the Will and Testament of the Master as well as a move to destroy the structure of the Guardianship as taught us by our Beloved Guardian so far as any one can see every move upon his part was along the line of supporting and the working out and development of the organic structure of the Administration of the Faith as given in the Will and Testament.

Let those of our members who do not want a Second Guardian turn their thoughts inward for a moment and realize the danger to the cause and to themselves that this, their attitude is causing!

I know perfectly well how we will each and all suffer under a Second Guardian of the Faith even as we did suffer under the First Guardian of the Faith, but the cause of God demands this of us. It demands that we all sacrifice our all in the path of the Guardianship. Such sacrifices we cannot avoid. For such is the way of the working of the Kingdom of God and we must all meet it; therefore let us arise unitedly, make our sacrifices individually and collectively, pray for a Second Guardian of the Faith and following his commands as we did those of the First Guardian of the Faith, continue on to completion the present ten year world crusade upon which we were launched by the Beloved Guardian. Then we will again be under the infallible guidance of the reestablished Guardianship and receiving through the Guardianship The Holy Spirit that can only come to us through this divinely established order of the infallibility of the leader of the Faith.

We, the Hands of the Faith, have indeed a difficult problem before us to solve of directing the carrying on the Administration of the Baha’i Faith. Our function in the organic structure of the Administration is very different from that of the mass of the believers. We are the nobility of the Faith and upon us rests the responsibility of standing for the Guardianship at this crucial moment. We, the Hands of the Faith, should be the first to do this, yet we are attempting to crawl out from under our resposibilities and throw this responsibility to the commoners of the Faith, the mass of the believers who by election of local assemblies, national assemblies and finally the International Assembly to whom we plan to give the authority to establish the infallibility for us to follow. Such is not at all the procedure to be followed in the founding of the Universal House of Justice, yet the Hands claim falsely that it is – thus the Hands are misleading the mass of the Baha’is instead of leading them along the way clearly indicated in the Will and Testament and as expounded to us by the Beloved Guardian – namely by erecting the House of Justice upon the two pillars as explained to us by Shoghi Effendi, the Guardianship, and the International Assembly elected by the common people of the Faith – these two elements or supports together forming a Universal House of Justice. This we Hands cannot possibly accomplish until we first have the Second Guardianship which I contend must be at hand, yet hidden from the believers.

Every religious cause has been held together and in tact by the love and personal devotion of its followers to the person of its prophet or founder. Kingdoms are held together functioning as most complex groupes of individuals through the devotion of the people and their trust in their sovereign who is the symbol of their government, a symbol that every Kingdom must needs have in order to exist.

In the Will and Testament of the Master Abdu’l-Baha that gives us the pattern of the Administration of the Faith, the control of the Faith and its unity is assured us in the Guardianship of the Faith, not in the fact that the Master appointed the First Guardian of the Faith who at most could reign but for a few years of the long history of the Faith to be, but he so built up the leadership of the Administration about the continued Guardianship of the Faith for the ages yet to come that the unity of the Faith was assured us – a unity that would always throughout the Dispensation of Baha’u ’llah be thus held together in unity by a living Guardian here with us!

What argument can any Baha’i bring up against the perpetuation of the Guardianship and the establishment of a New Baha’i Era with no more Guardian of the Faith?

Of late much has been discussed in the consultations of the Custodian Hands about the finances of the Faith and the great need for more money with which to carry on the teaching work of the Faith. Much has been said about the economies in the running of the cuisine of the western pilgrim house and Ruhiyyih Khanum has complained repeatedly that the table here is too extravagantly run and expenses must be reduced for those expenses all come out from the Baha’i fund as well as do her expenses too and one not only doesn’t see her practice economy in her using from this Baha’i fund but on the contrary they see (if their eyes are open) that she herself is most extravagant and wasteful of the Baha’i funds for in addition to the regular running expenses of her own household that is housed in the house of the Guardian such as shelter, food, services, heat, etc, etc, in fact all running expenses, the Custodian Hands are giving her an allowance of $500 U.S.A. dollars each month as pin money for whatever she may care to spend it upon – her dress, personal adornment, etc, and what not?

Now as every one knows, Ruhiyyih Khanum is a pretty woman and likes jewelry and pretty clothes – no one likes to see her bedecked in finery more than I do. Thus so far as the effect of beauty is concerned but I do think that under the present circumstances of shortage of funds in the Baha’i treasury that it is very bad taste and form and principle that she should thus indulge herself in such expenditures from money coming from the Baha’i fund and I know that there are others who feel the same way as I do about this matter.

Furthermore Ruhiyyih Khanum is fond of pretty things, antiques, furnishings, bric-a-brac and the like, a large quantity of which she inherited from her father and has arranged with taste in her own suite of rooms in the Guardian’s house. Now she is continually adding to the decoration of these rooms buying more and more and these things are expensive too and quite unnecessary for these expenditures are made from money accorded to her from the Baha’i fund! I do not think that this is right and I am quite sure that popular Baha’i opinion would sustain me in my judgement but it, Baha’i popular opinion, will never be given an opportunity by me to back me up in this judgement. I am stating the case here to the Hands of the Faith all in the greatest confidence. If the Baha’i people in general abroad ever learn the true state of these matters it will not be told by me.

Personally I would like nothing better than to go forth and innaugurate a special crusade to clean up things right here in Haifa that ought to be cleaned up and cleared out but should I do this I would be worsted and would not accomplish anything but make a lot of trouble. When the general Baha’i consciousness of the world has grown to a point when it is a strong force in the world, then the individual Baha’is will be obliged to behave themselves in a truly Baha’i manner and until then the cause in general has just got to suffer the consequences of the indiscretion of its individual members.

Every little while it comes out in the consultations of the Custodian Hands that they feel that the believers abroad should not know of certain things and conditions lest such perturb them and reduce their support. Such reasoning may be wise in case of an emergency but for the stable welfare of the cause everywhere, here and abroad, the thing that we should concentrate upon doing is to eliminate the things and conditions that we know will make trouble if they are known for in the end in these days of quick and easy communication, all things get out sooner or later; therefore let us be alert and correct these things that ought not to be then we will have nothing to fear about things being exposed or found out.

Affairs and things here in Haifa at the Center of the Baha’i Faith should be such that were everything transpiring here known throughout the entire Baha’i world that the organization here would have naught but the full support of all the believers.

In the day of Shoghi Effendi, the Beloved Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, it was well and right that we believer Hands or no Hands sign our letters “In the Service of the Beloved Guardian” because He, Shoghi Effendi, was then the living Guardian here on earth in our midst, but now inasmuch as the Guardianship is a function of or an office according to the divinely inspired and given Administration of the Baha’i Faith, Shoghi Effendi no longer occupies the position of the living Guardian upon earth, and until we have the Second Guardian of the Faith we have no Guardian to turn to for the chair of the Guardianship of the Faith is vacant. Therefore we should not now be signing our Baha’i communications “In the Service” of any Guardian, not until we have one then when we have a living Guardian we, with reason sign ourselves “In the Service of the Guardian” with the understanding and meaning for then we will have a Guardian.

THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER

In reality the vast majority of the Hands of the Faith are fixed in their intention that there shall never be another Guardian of the Faith. This intent they have never put forth in so many words, nevertheless from their sedulous avoidance of all mention of the Guardianship and their far efforts to squelch any and all discussion by the people of the Faith about the Guardianship as well as by their other attitudes, it is very clear to understand by these attitudes that behind and below that which they tell the people first in their Proclamation and later in their messages to the Baha’i world that they have no wish for a Second Guardian and every intention of eliminating from the minds of the believers at large of any hopes they may entertain of another Guardian.

Thus has this violation of the Will and Testament so taken hold of so many of the Hands of the Faith as to completely obscure their spiritual vision for not content with their own violation they are now doing all they can do to mislead the people by deception. They don’t come out and frankly tell the people that which is their intention – they are cadjoling them along with promises of a fallacious Universal House of Justice that they promise for 1963. Thus their intention is to eventually do away with the Guardianship of the Faith.

Beware! Oh Hands of the Faith! The people of the cause will in the end find out how you are trying to deceive them – thus to this end will violation take you.

STATEMENT

MASON REMEY

GUARDIAN

OF THE BAHA’I FAITH

At the first Behje Conclave, the Hands of the Cause took over the management of the affairs of the Baha’i Faith. This was followed by their repudiation of the Administration – Guardianship of the Faith. This violation of the Guardianship, that is the heart of the Administration of the Baha’i Faith, is condemned by the Second Guardian of the Faith and all who follow this violation of the Baha’i Faith are pronounced by him to be violators of the Faith for thus by this action have they severed themselves from the Baha’i Religious Faith.

One of the first actions of these violating Hands of the Cause in this first conclave was to decree that no recorded or written records be taken of things transpiring in their conclaves. At the same time by a universally passed resolution, all were to hold in secrecy everything that transpired in those conclaves.

The Second Guardian of the Faith, then in occultation, in the capacity of a Hand of the Cause and President of the Baha’i International Council, sat with the Hands in this conclave. He knew at that time that this violation of the Guardianship was being perpetrated, but hoping to rectify this condition through friendly argument and pacific methods he agreed with the others, to keep in strict secret with them from the Baha’i world, all things that passed between the Hands of the Faith in their conclaves and conferences. For he hoped to be able to show them their errors and thus save them from their violation of the Faith.

Thus two and a half years or thereabouts of time passed, the while he was telling the Hands of their violation and begging them to reconsider their stand against the Guardianship – but all to fail in the end in this endeavor.

Through his forbearance, the Second Guardian of the Faith kept this pact of secrecy with the Hands of the Cause as long as it was possible to keep it, hoping that they would have a change of heart, cast aside their violations of the Faith and welcome the advent of the Second Guardian of the Faith. But when He, the Second Guardian of the Faith, found that the violations of the Hands were at the point of causing irreparable damage to the Baha’i Faith – then he had to break with the Hands of the Faith. It was then necessary for him to make his advent as Guardian of the Faith in order to save the Faith.

Therefore when He announced to the Baha’i World, Ridvan 117 B.E. that The Beloved First Guardian of the Faith had during his lifetime appointed him, Mason Remey, the Second Guardian of the Faith, he – for the preservation of the Faith – broke all connections with the violating Hands of the Faith and now for the safety of the Faith, he is telling and explaining to the Baha’i world the things that the Hands of the Faith have been perpetrating against the Faith; namely their attempt to do away with the Administrative-Guardianship of the Faith, the foundation of which was given to the First Guardian of the Faith, and to the Baha’i world in the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha upon which foundation Shoghi Effendi inaugurated the Administration that the Hands of the Cause are violating.

A STATEMENT BY THE SECOND GUARDIAN OF THE FAITH

In several of my writings I mention a momentary vision, that I had about the year 105 of the Baha’i Era, in which I saw myself as the Second Guardian of the Faith. At the time, this seemed to me to be an absurdity of my imagination. But after the Beloved Guardian called me to Haifa, made me President of the Baha’i International Council, and made his home in the Holy Land to be my home—these factors, together with other matters that, beyond a doubt in my mind, were preparing me at that time for service I was to do at some future date, I found myself thinking of that momentary vision I had had. However, these thoughts came and went from me. At times I would seemingly forget all about my vision; then it would come to my mind again. These thoughts were vague and fleeting.

Such was my condition of mind—even for some time after the departure of the Beloved Guardian and all during my years in his house in the Holy Land. As these years accumulated, my future in the Faith was anything but clear to me. In fact, I did not think much about it. I was busy with the then present-day matters of the Cause.

Such was my state of mind when the Hands of the Faith met in the First Behje Conclave shortly following Shoghi Effendi’s passing. While at that time I thought that I might become the Guardian of the Faith in some way or another, I did not know how. It was all more or less vague, hazy and indefinite in my thoughts, and so I succumbed, as did others, to the proposition of the Persian Hands of the Cause and a few others, who all together formed a ruling and a united majority. So I accepted the dictum of this unity and signed the Proclamation to the Baha’i world along with all of the other Hands.

In other words, while I was semi-conscious to what was going on, I was more or less asleep mentally and spiritually. There just did not seem to be any clear solution to the problem before us. All was more or less confused. Thus, the present regime of the Custodians Hands of the Faith came into working order, accepted by all of us, myself included.

But before long my mind began to work, and I saw that those Hands who did not want a renewal of Guardianship were leading us afar and away from the way of the Will and Testament; but, as I then thought to make things pleasant and happy in Haifa, I said nothing. To myself, however, I thought a great deal.

While I was thus just beginning to awaken to the radical departure that Baha’i affairs were taking in opposition to the Will and Testament, the time came for the Second Behje Conclave of the Hands. That was in November, 1958. It was at this conclave that I found myself thoroughly awakened to the violation of the Hands of the Faith in their NOT WANTING the Guardianship. In this second conclave, the very word “Guardianship” was becoming taboo. It was hinted at when letters and a telegraphic dispatch, bearing hopes for a Second Guardian, were directed to the conclave from the friends in Germany; but while a few of us read these pleas from Germany, asking that the hope for a Guardian of the Faith not be abandoned, none of these communications was read before the conclave. Nor were these communications discussed. They were merely mentioned by some, and only then on the side.

But during these sessions I, myself, was beginning to awaken from the state of Baha’i apathy that had until then quite dominated me. I began to think that someone ought to make the stand that these Hands of the Faith should at least appear to want a Guardian, even though they did not know how they were going to get one. The underlying fact (never mentioned in so many words, but then quite clear to me) was that, as shown in their attitudes, these Hands actually did not want the Guardianship to continue.

Between these first and second Baha’i conclaves, a few people in America had begun to question the Hands’ attitude of no more Guardianship wanted.

Ruhiyyih Khanum, in a large public Baha’i gathering at Kampala in Africa, had stated definitely that the friends should abandon all hope of any continuation of the Guardianship. And in America, led by Horace Holley, a Manifesto from Chicago was issed that was signed by Holley, Paul Haney, and Mrs. True, entitled “A New Baha’i Era”. It spoke of the Faith, Sans Guardian, and explained that the Guardianship was a closed subject.

This Chicago Manifesto stirred up a good deal of discussion amongst the Hands in the Holy Land, who, although thoroughly in sympathy with the substance of this Manifesto (this they specifically wrote to Holley), called him down for thus making a stand that publicly proclaimed the Sans Guardian doctrine. Thus were these Hands of the Cause in the Holy Land playing a double-faced game; for they, by avoiding the subject, were thus conditioning the believers, if it were possible, to forget about the Guardianship. Thus did they intend to reinforce themselves in their own leadership of the Faith and in their plans for creating a House of Justice in 1963 – – a House they claimed would be infallible Sans Guardian!

In order to put over onto the Baha’i world the plans of these Custodian Hands of the Faith, they had decided in the first conclave that all of their actions should be kept a secret from the proletariat of the Cause. In the Chicago Manifesto, those American Hands who signed it broke the pact of secrecy when they consulted with the N.S.A. of the United States. All nine members of this N.S.A. approved; and together with the three American Hands, they signed the Manifesto.

Thoughts on all of these matters were surging through my mind during this second conclave and stirring me greatly. But even then, because of the vague thought of myself as a possible Guardian of the Faith, I felt that if such were ever to be, then someone other than I should, in this conclave, make the stand that the hope for the continuation of the Guardianship should not be abandoned. Reluctant to make this stand myself, I felt that the Hands should at least hold this door open and not close it as they were doing. But I felt that someone other than I should do this, because, as it were, I would be considered as an interested party. Reasoning thus, I waited, hoping that some other person would take this stand. Thus, in this conflict of thoughts, I sat silent most of the time in the conclave. I remained silent up until the last session when I arose, took the floor, and told the members of the conclave that they were violating the Will and Testament of the Master ‘Abdu’l-Baha in their attitude of not wanting a continuation of the Guardianship.

My stand created a stir of indignation in the conclave. I was immediately silenced by several voices under the pretext that I was out of parliamentary order in bringing up a subject that had already been acted upon by the assemblage and was a closed issue. So that was that, and the conclave closed.

However, in this moment so charged with emotion, I was asked why I took this stand in defense of the Guardianship against the united opinion of the conclave. To this my reply was that some one of us Hands should stand for the Administration with the Guardianship; and, as there was no one other to do it, I must alone (against all others) make this stand.

At that time I was then the Guardian of the Faith, as I had so been since the death of Shoghi Effendi; but since I was still asleep spiritually, I was not conscious of my actual status of protector of the Faith as the Guardian. Yet, unconsciously, I was thus moved to stand up against this violation of the Will and Testament; and, although I was not mentally conscious of my status as Guardian of the Faith, somehow or other I felt that I must stand up alone in that conclave and protect the Faith by defending the Guardianship. It was much over a year later before I realized that at that very time I actually was standing guard over the Cause — and standing quite single and alone – – against all of the other Hands of the Faith united against me! But at that moment, I had no idea about the why of my doing as I did; I arose only to protect the Faith.

In the conference of the Custodian Hands in Haifa, following the Second Behje Conclave, I told the Hands repeatedly that they were violating the Will and Testament. Together with them I had made the agreement that strict secrecy be maintained as to all that passed between these Custodians. It had also been agreed that we could and should all speak out openly in our conferences, and this I always did, speaking most frankly. But as I stood alone, no one paid any attention to me. Thus, matters went along for a year until I refused to sign my name any longer as being “In the Service of the Beloved Guardian of the Faith” (Shoghi Effendi). My contention in refusing to sign was that the Guardianship of the Faith is a function of this world and that with Shoghi Effendi in the Abha Kingdom, he was no longer our Guardian in the flesh to be obeyed; consequently, we were no longer in his service. Rather, we should then be in the service of the Second Guardian of the Faith! But even then I did not realize that I, Mason Remey, was then the Second Guardian of the Faith.

My refusal to sign the message of the Hands from the Third Behje Conclave to the Baha’i world, in November 1959, precipitated matters and eliminated me from the nine Custodians. Therefore, shortly after this, I left Haifa for Washington, where I am now in voluntary exile from my home in Haifa—the home that, publicly and before all of the Baha’i community in the Holy Land, Shoghi Effendi ordained for me on this earth.

The Custodians did not want me to leave Haifa. They evidently feared that I might not keep their pact of secrecy and that I might let the people in America know what they were up to, for at that time there were many in America who still hoped for a Guardian to lead the Faith. But I chose to leave Haifa, and in the end this was accepted by the Hands.

I left for America via Italy, all under apparently pleasant conditions, I assuring the Hands that I could keep their secrets and not tell any of the believers what they were doing. With me to America I took all of my notes and records of the happenings amongst the Baha’is in the Holy Land during my residence there. Then, in America, away from the Custodian Hands in the Holy Land (and even before that in Italy), I started formulating a written argument to the Custodian Hands of the Faith. This argument I prepared in “An Appeal to the Hands of the Faith”, “Another Appeal to the Hands of the Faith”, and a “Last Appeal to the Hands of the Faith”.

These lengthy documents were bound in book form and sent by me to the Hands in Haifa. When I started in upon this last effort to awaken the Hands to their violation, my thoughts, that before this had been disordered, gradually began to arrange themselves in a logical sequence in my mind; and step by step, one thought opened up the way for a more comprehensive thought. Slowly, little by little, one thought led to another until I found myself considering the Beloved Guardian’s appointment of me as the President of the International Baha’i Council (a subject that had never even been mentioned in any of the conclaves or conferences of the Hands of the Faith). Finally, little by little, it was born into my consciousness that I, myself, Mason Remey, was actually then the protector of and the Guardian of the Faith and that I had been in this supreme station of protector–that is, I had been the Guardian of the Faith- -ever since the death of the First Guardian.

Thus at last, Ridvan 117 B.E., all was clear to me. The great danger to the Cause from the violating Hands of the Faith made it necessary for me to come out with the Proclamation of my Guardianship—first to the Custodian Hands in Haifa, then before the Ridvan Convention in America. This had to be done in order to save the Faith from the utter destruction that was being perpetrated by the erring violating Hands of the Faith.

I was indeed a very long time in coming to the realization of mine own command of this entire situation of the Faith. But during this time, while my mind was not at all alert to these conditions in the Cause, I was arising instinctively to defend and to uphold the Guardianship of the Faith. As people read over my notes of my thoughts and the mention of events transpiring in Haifa, they will see and understand the complexity of thought that was gradually being straightened out in my mind. At times I was away, far away, from the solution of many of the problems of the Faith, even considering at one time that the Hands of the Faith, in order to protect the Cause, might choose and install a Guardian. Other such ideas were pondered; but out from this maze of thought, I gradually realized that the Beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi had actually appointed me the Second Guardian of the Faith and had so announced this to all the world. Until that time, no one, not even I, myself, had realized this. It was thus, in this way, and little by little, that I arrived, until now – -as the acknowledged Guardian of the Faith (acknowledged by the few who faithfully follow the admonitions of the Will and Testament, as against the many who are misled by the erring Hands who have renounced the Guardianship)- -I am clear upon any and all matters as they come up for me to take action in leading the Faith on to its destined triumph over the powers of mankind and bringing victory to the Kingdom of God upon Earth.

MASON REMEY,

GUARDIAN of the Baha’i Faith

ANNOUNCEMENT

This volume is one of a series of treatises- – of nine or ten or more in all- -each of which is printed in a very small edition of but fifteen copies. These writings are not intended for general circulation at this present time (1960 A.D.), but have been prepared especially to be placed in a few important libraries at home and abroad. They consequently will be available to readers and will be preserved for future generations as a record of conditions that exist now and things that are at hand and taking place among the followers of the Baha’i World Faith- -the Universal World Religious Movement that of recent years has been spreading in many of the countries of the world but that now, at this time, is threatened by internal forces of disruption, the causes for which are shown and discussed in this series of theses. This volume contains one of these several arguments and is written, arranged, and bound in ths form personally by the present “Second Guardian” as Head of the Baha’i World Faith, and who, at present, is living in the city of Washington in America in voluntary and temporary exile from his home upon Mount Carmel in the Holy Land.

The libraries at home and abroad where these volumes can shortly be found are registered upon the accompanying listing. In order to facilitate their indexing in these several libraries, the Library catalogue cards are accompanying each volume now being sent forth by- –

Mason Remey, Guardian of the Baha’i Faith

From P.O. Box 418

Washington 4, D.C., U.S.A.

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