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DISCOURSE AT ‘L’ALLIANCE SPIRITUALISTE’ |
I wish to express my gratitude for your hospitality,
and my joy that you are spiritually minded. I am
happy to be present at a gathering such as this, assembled
together to listen to a Divine Message. If you
could see with the eye of truth, great waves of spirituality
would be visible to you in this place. The power
of the Holy Spirit is here for all. Praise be to God that
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your hearts are inspired with Divine fervour! Your
souls are as waves on the sea of the spirit; although
each individual is a distinct wave, the ocean is one, all
are united in God.
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Every heart should radiate unity, so that the Light
of the one Divine Source of all may shine forth bright
and luminous. We must not consider the separate
waves alone, but the entire sea. We should rise from
the individual to the whole. The spirit is as one great
ocean and the waves thereof are the souls of men.
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This is a prophetic symbol, meaning the coming
again of the Divine Teaching to enlighten the hearts of
men. It is long since this Holy Guidance has governed
the lives of humanity. But now, at last, the Holy City
of the New Jerusalem has come again to the world, it
has appeared anew under an Eastern sky; from the
horizon of Persia has its effulgence arisen to be a light
to lighten the whole world. We see in these days the
fulfilment of the Divine Prophecy. Jerusalem had disappeared.
The heavenly city was destroyed, now it is
rebuilt; it was razed to the ground, but now its walls
and pinnacles have been restored, and are towering
aloft in their renewed and glorious beauty.
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In the Western world material prosperity has triumphed,
whilst in the East the spiritual sun has shone
forth.
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Man—the true man—is soul, not body; though
physically man belongs to the animal kingdom, yet his
soul lifts him above the rest of creation. Behold how
the light of the sun illuminates the world of matter:
even so doth the Divine Light shed its rays in the
kingdom of the soul. The soul it is which makes the
human creature a celestial entity!
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You are of the Spirit! To you who seek the truth,
the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh will come as a great joy!
This teaching is of the Spirit, in it is no precept which
is not of the Divine Spirit.
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The soul has two main faculties. (a) As outer circumstances
are communicated to the soul by the eyes,
ears, and brain of a man, so does the soul communicate
its desires and purposes through the brain to the hands
and tongue of the physical body, thereby expressing
itself. The spirit in the soul is the very essence of life.
(b) The second faculty of the soul expresses itself in the
world of vision, where the soul inhabited by the spirit
has its being, and functions without the help of the
material bodily senses. There, in the realm of vision,
the soul sees without the help of the physical eye, hears
without the aid of the physical ear, and travels without
dependence upon physical motion. It is, therefore, clear
that the spirit in the soul of man can function through
the physical body by using the organs of the ordinary
senses, and that it is able also to live and act without
their aid in the world of vision. This proves without a
doubt the superiority of the soul of man over his body,
the superiority of spirit over matter.
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The spirit does not need a body, but the body needs
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spirit, or it cannot live. The soul can live without a
body, but the body without a soul dies.
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The greatest power of the Holy Spirit exists in the
Divine Manifestations of the Truth. Through the
power of the Spirit the Heavenly Teaching has been
brought into the World of Humanity. Through the
power of the Spirit life everlasting has come to the
children of men. Through the power of the Spirit
the Divine Glory has shone from East to West, and
through the power of the same Spirit will the divine
virtues of humanity become manifest.
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Our greatest efforts must be directed towards detachment
from the things of the world; we must strive
to become more spiritual, more luminous, to follow
the counsel of the Divine Teaching, to serve the cause
of unity and true equality, to be merciful, to reflect the
love of the Highest on all men, so that the light of the
Spirit shall be apparent in all our deeds, to the end that
all humanity shall be united, the stormy sea thereof
calmed, and all rough waves disappear from off the
surface of life’s ocean henceforth unruffled and peaceful.
Then will the New Jerusalem be seen by mankind, who
will enter through its gates and receive the Divine
Bounty.
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I thank God that I have been present amongst you
this afternoon, and I thank you for your spiritual feeling.
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I pray that you may grow in Divine fervour, and
that the power of unity in the Spirit will augment, so
that the prophecies may be fulfilled, and that in this
great century of the Light of God all the glad tidings
written in the Sacred Books may come to pass. This
is the glorious time of which the Lord Jesus Christ
spoke when He told us to pray ‘Thy Kingdom come,
Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’. I hope
that this is also your expectation and great desire.
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