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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Parliament of [the] World Religions
by David Livingstone
Tue, 12/24/2013 - 20:18

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Displaying the degree of penetration of Theosophy's goal of creating a one-world religion into the mission of the UN, the Parliament of World Religions of 1893, as mentioned in the article, was reestablished by the UN in 1983. Here's is an excerpt from my book on the subject:

According to [Robert] Muller [who served as Assistant Secretary-General of the UN for forty years], "We must move as quickly as possible to one-world government, a one-world religion, under a one-world leader."[1] Muller’s ideas about world government, world peace and spirituality led to the increased representation of religions in the UN, especially of New Age Movement. He was known by some as “the philosopher of the United Nations.”[2] Muller, who won the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1989 for his World Core Curriculum, said, "The underlying philosophy upon which The Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teaching set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul."[3]

In the 1980’s, numerous projects were sponsored by the United Nations to promote notions of a universal religion
and global citizenship, such as World Healing Day, World Instant of Cooperation, World Peace Day, Annual Global Mind Link, Human Unity Conference, World Conference on Religion and Peace, Provisional World Parliament. In 1995, the UN asked the Temple of Understanding, founded by Bailey’s Lucis Trust, to host the 50th Anniversary of its founding, and to organize two inter-faith services. The Temple of Understanding is located in Manhattan’s historic Cathedral of St. John the Divine, dedicated to St. John, traditionally revered by Freemasons according to the Johannite creed. The completion of the cathedral was such a prized accomplishment for the Freemasons that it was featured on the front page of Masonic World of March 1925. The Cathedral is replete with occult symbolism and often features unusual performances.

The presiding bishop of the cathedral was the bisexual Bishop Paul Moore, whose family were heirs to the Nabisco company fortune, and as a priest in Indianapolis he gave Jim Jones’s People’s Temple cult its start. Having been dormant for several years, the Temple of Understanding was revived at the cathedral in 1984 at a ceremony presided over by Moore and the Dalai Lama. While the chairman of the Temple was Judith Dickerson Hollister, those involved with its founding included: Dame Margaret Mead, Robert Muller, who had been involved as well with the Lucis Trust, and Winifred McCulloch, leader of the New York-based Teilhard de Chardin Society.

The Cathedral also houses the Lindisfarne Center, founded in 1972 with funding from Laurance Rockefeller, brother to David Rockefeller, by cultural historian William Irwin Thompson, a former professor of humanities from MIT and Syracuse University. Lindisfarne functioned as a sponsor of New Age events and lectures, as well as a think tank and retreat, similar to the Esalen Institute, with which it shared several members, like Gregory Bateson and Michael Murphy. Their aim is participate in the emerging planetary consciousness, or Noosphere. In addition to Teilhard de Chardin, Thompson is influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo and Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher of communication theory, who is also celebrated in [url=Parliament of [the]World Religions
by David Livingstone]Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy[/url]. Lindisfarne has also been supported by the Lilly Endowment, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Rockefeller Foundation, and lists among its faculty members Amory Lovins, Gaia theory biologist James Lovelock, and Luciferian adept and New Age author David Spangler. Lindisfarne was founded in 1972 by New Age philosopher William Irwin Thompson, a former professor of humanities from MIT and Syracuse University. Thompson said: “We have now a new spirituality, what has been called the New Age movement. The planetization of the esoteric has been going on for some time… This is now beginning to influence concepts of politics and community in ecology… This is the Gaia [Mother Earth] politique… planetary culture.” Thompson further stated that, the age of “the independent sovereign state, with the sovereign individual in his private property, [is] over, just as the Christian fundamentalist days are about to be over.”[4]

Held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Temple called together leaders of the world’s religions to offer prayers, and invited the world’s leading artists to perform music, poetry and dance. In 1997 and 1998, with the Interfaith Center of New York, the Temple of Understanding held an Interfaith Prayer Service at St. Bartholomew Church to pray for the work of the General Assembly and the Secretary General of the UN [United Nations].
It was also at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the controversial “Islamic feminist” preacher named Amina Wadud led a Muslim Friday prayer in 2005, breaking with the tradition of having only male Imams, and conducted without the traditional separation between male and female sections.

The Temple of Understanding promotes the “Interfaith Movement” with its centennial celebration of the World’s Parliament of Religions. The first Parliament of World Religions Conference, as a successor to the first Parliament of World Religions Conference, in effect the Theosophical Congress, gathered in Chicago in 1883. It had been founded by Reverend Dr. John Henry Barrows, according to whom, “The best religion must come to the front, and the best religion will ultimately survive, because it will contain all that is true in all the faiths.”[5] The Parliament was dominated by Theosophists, such as Annie Besant, Dharmapala and the Hindu universalist Vivekananda who, in his famous speech, called for an end to religious conversions, and instead for each to "assimilate the spirit of the other," and said, "The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each religion must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve its own individuality and grow according to its own law of growth."[6] Commenting on the Parliament, Max Müller told an audience at Oxford University:

Such a gathering of representatives of the principal religions of the world has never before taken place; it is unique, it is unprecedented; nay, we may truly add, it could hardly have been conceived before our own time… It established a fact of the greatest significance, namely, that there exists an ancient and universal religion, and the highest dignitaries and representatives of all the religions in the world can meet as members of one common brotherhood, can listen respectfully to what each religion had to say for itself, nay, can join in a common prayer and accept a common blessing, one day from the hands of a Christian archbishop another day from a Jewish Rabbi, and again another day from a Buddhist priest.[7]


The recent one-world-religion agenda has been pushed with the re-establishment of the Parliament of World Religions Conference, the United Religions Initiative (URI) and United Religions Charter. The URI was founded in 1995 by Episcopalian bishop William Swing and dedicated to promoting inter-faith cooperation. The URI, which aspires to have the stature of the United Nations, was established to, “promote enduring, daily inter-faith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings.”

The Parliament of the World’s Religions was reconvened again in the city of Chicago in 1993. The Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was one of the co-sponsors of the Parliament, along with the Muslim World League, which was originally founded by Said Ramadan and Mufti al Husseini with the assistance of the CIA. Prince Muhammad al-Faisal bin Turki, former director of Saudi intelligence, who had worked closely with bin Laden and the CIA during the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was one of its speakers. The first address was delivered by Robert Müller, titled “Inter-faith Understanding,” who said:

There is one sign after the other, wherever you look, that we are on the eve of a New Age which will be a spiritual age… We are entering an age of universalism. Wherever you turn, one speaks about global education, global information, global communications—every profession on Earth now is acquiring a global dimension. The whole humanity is becoming interdependent, is becoming one… this Parliament and what is happening now in the world… is a renaissance, a turning point in human history. So even the astrologers begin to tell us that there will be a fundamental change.[8]


_______________

Notes:

[1] Dwight L. Kinman, The World’s Last Dictator (Woodburn, Oregon: Solid Rock Books, 1995), p. 81.

[2] “Schweitzer - Robert Muller.” Star-News (March 17, 1993).

[3] Terry Melanson, “Lucis Trust, Alice Bailey, World Goodwill and the False Light of the World" (Last Update: May 8th, 2005) Conspiracy Archive [http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NewAge/Lucis_Trust.htm]

[4] William F. Jasper, “A New World Religion,” The New American Magazine (October 19, 1992).

[5] “World Parliament of Religions (1893)” Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology.

[6] quoted in Celia and David Storey, eds., Visions of an Interfaith Future (International Interfaith Centre, 1994) p. 39.

[7] quoted in Gomes, The Dawning of the Theosophical Movement, p. 17; cited in Lee Penn, False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, And The Quest For A One-World Religion (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004) p. 41.

[8] Carl Teichrib, “Global Citizenship 2000: Educating for the New Age,” Hope For The World Update, 1997, p. 10.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 3:50 am
by admin
Terrorism and the Illuminati: A Three Thousand Year History [EXCERPT]
by David Livingston

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Chapter Twenty-Two: One-World-Religion

The Aspen Institute and the Club of Rome


Part of the indoctrination process sought for through the Aquarian conspiracy was not only to degrade morals and immerse the public in numerous diversions, but also to inculcate the basic principles of the New Age cult, towards establishing a one-world-religion. The means of achieving this objective has been the Environmental movement. This movement was spearheaded by the Aspen Institute, who, together with the United Nations, the Club of Rome, the Tavistock, and other such organizations originating from the Round Table, began propagandizing around the issue of nuclear energy. [1] The reason being that proliferation of nuclear energy as an alternative posed a threat to the oil interests that were dominated by the Rockefellers and the Saudis. However, they claimed deceptively that it was the environment that was being destroyed, and therefore instead rallied against “industrialization” and for “limits to growth”.

The American oilman, Robert O. Anderson, was a central figure in this agenda. Anderson and his Atlantic Richfield Oil Co. funneled millions of dollars, through their Atlantic Richfield Foundation, into select organizations to confront nuclear energy. Robert O. Anderson’s major vehicle to spread his propaganda strategy among American and European establishment circles, was his Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The Aspen Institute was founded in 1949, by Aldous Huxley, and John Maynard Hutchins, in commemoration of the 200th birthday of German philosopher and author of Faust, and a member of the Illuminati, Goethe.


Robert O. Anderson also contributed significant funds to a project initiated by the Rockefeller family, together with Aurelio Peccei and Alexander King, at the Rockefeller’s estate at Bellagio, Italy, called the Club of Rome. In 1972, this Club of Rome, and the U.S. Association of the Club of Rome, gave widespread publicity to their publication of the notorious “Limits to Growth.”. Supported by research done at MIT, this report concluded that industrialization had to be halted to save the planet from ecological catastrophe.

These organizations were exploiting the panic induced when Paul Ehrlich, a biologist at Stanford, and admirer of Bertrand Russell, in 1968, wrote his Malthusian projections in a best-selling book called The Population Bomb. In it, Ehrlich suggested, “a cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people.... We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.” [2] Ehrlich also advocated placing birth control chemicals into the world’s food supplies.

The chief individual in this agenda is director of the Aspen Institute, Canadian multi-millionaire Maurice Strong. Strong is being heralded as the “indispensable man” at the center of the U.N.’s global power.
He has served as director of the World Future Society, trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and Aspen Institute, and is a member of the Club of Rome. Strong is now Senior Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Senior Advisor to World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Chairman of the Earth Council, Chairman of the World Resources Institute, Co-Chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum, and member of Toyota’s International Advisory Board.

However, Strong also now heads the Golden Dawn, operates an international drug ring, and is a top operative for British Intelligence. [3] He was a founding member of both the Planetary Citizens. Strong and other luminaries, like Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, Sir Edmund Hillary, Peter Ustinov, Linus Pauling, Kurt Vonnegut, Leonard Bernstein, John Updike, Isaac Asimov, Pete Seeger, are listed as original endorsers of Planetary Citizens. Founded by Donald Keys, a disciple of Alice Bailey and former UN consultant, and presided over for many years by the late Norman Cousins (CFR), the Planetary Citizens organization supports the expansion of UN power and institutions. In Earth At Omega, Keys maintains:

We have meditations at the United Nations a couple of times a week. The meditation leader is Sri Chinmoy, and this is what he said about this situation: “The United Nations is the chosen instrument of God; to be a chosen instrument means to be a divine messenger carrying the banner of God’s inner vision and outer manifestation. One day the world will ... treasure and cherish the soul of the United Nations as its very own with enormous pride, for this soul is all-loving, all-nourishing, and all-fulfilling”. [4]


Maurice Strong also sits on the board of directors, and serves as director of finance, for the Lindisfarne Center. Lindisfarne was founded by New Age philosopher William Irwin Thompson, a former professor of humanities from MIT and Syracuse University. Thompson said:

We have now a new spirituality, what has been called the New Age movement. The planetization of the esoteric has been going on for some time... This is now beginning to influence concepts of politics and community in ecology... This is the Gaia [Mother Earth] politique... planetary culture.” Thompson further stated that, the age of “the independent sovereign state, with the sovereign individual in his private property, [is] over, just as the Christian fundamentalist days are about to be over. [5]


The Lindisfarne Center is located in Manhattan’s historic Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, dedicated to St. John, traditionally revered by Freemasons of the Johannite creed. Maurice Strong is the Finance Director. The center is supported by the Lilly Endowment, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and lists among its faculty members Amory Lovins, Gaia theory biologist James Lovelock, and Luciferian adept and New Age author David Spangler. According to Spangler, in Reflections on the Christ:

Lucifer, like Christ, stands at the door of man’s consciousness and knocks. If man says, “Go away because I do not like what you represent, I am afraid of you,” Lucifer will play tricks on that fellow. If man says, “Come in, and I will give to you the treat of my love and understanding and I will uplift you in the light and presence of the Christ, my outflow,” then Lucifer becomes something else again. He becomes the being who carries that great treat, the ultimate treat, the light of wisdom.... [6]


Located at the same Cathedral of St. John the Divine that houses the Lindisfarne Luciferians is the Temple of Understanding. It was founded by Lucis Trust, and is the controlling authority for World Goodwill of Alice Bailey. Launched in the early 1960s as the “spiritual counterpart of the United Nations,” its founding sponsors included: John D. Rockefeller IV; then-Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, IBM president Thomas J. Watson, Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas, Eleanor Roosevelt, Time-Life president James A. Linen, author Christopher Isherwood, columnist Max Lerner; and entertainer Jack Benny. The Temple organization, which works closely with the UN Secretariat, the World Council of Churches, and the World Conference on Religion and Peace, promotes the “Interfaith Movement” with its centennial celebration of the World’s Parliament of Religions.

Maurice Strong is also a member of the Bahai World Faith. With Haifa, in Israel, as the site of its international headquarters, the Bahai movement now exercises a strong presence in the United Nations and its One-World Religion agenda. Its involvement in the UN dates back to its founding in 1945. In 1948, the Bahai community was recognized as an international non-governmental organization. In May 1970, they were granted consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and later with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The Bahai organization has a working relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO), is associated with the UN Environment Programme, as well as many other religious, environmental and social programs.

In 1978, Strong bought the Colorado Land & Cattle Company, which owned 200,000 acres of San Luis Valley in Colorado, from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. [7] A mystic had informed Maurice and his wife Hanne, that the ranch, which they call “the Baca”, “would become the center for a new planetary order which would evolve from the economic collapse and environmental catastrophes that would sweep the globe in the years to come.” The Strongs say they regard the Baca, which they also refer to as “The Valley Of the Refuge Of World Truths”, as the paradigm for the entire planet.

The first groups to join the Strongs in setting up operations at the desert site were the Aspen Institute and the Lindisfarne Association. The Baca is replete with monasteries, and Ashram, Vedic temple, Native American shamans, Hindu temple, ziggurat, and subterranean Zen Buddhist center. Shirley MacLaine’s astrologer told her to move to the Baca, and she did. She is building a New Age study center there where people can take short weeklong courses on the occult. Another of Strong’s friends, Najeeb Halaby, a CFR member, former chairman of Pan American, and father of the Queen of Jordan, wife to Freemason King Hussein, has built an Islamic ziggurat at the Baca. Apparently, the Kissingers, the Rockefellers, the McNamaras, the Rothschilds also make their pilgrimage to the Baca. [8]

Few areas in the US are as rife in paranormal activity as Baca. The modern history of unexplained occurrences began in the 1950s when green fireballs were reportedly seen by thousands, and even before that were rashes of “UFOs” that sound like what the Natives called “spirit lights.” So frequent are such reports in the valley that a UFO “watchtower” was erected. “From the fall of 1966 through the spring of 1970 there were hundreds of unidentified flying object sightings and many of the first documented cases of unusual animal deaths ever reported,” notes Christopher Obrien, in The Mysterious Valley, a website dedicated to a study of the strange occurrences and sightings in the region. “During peak “UFO” sighting waves in the late 1960s dozens of cars would literally “line the roads” watching the amazing aerial displays of unknown lights as they cavorted around the sky above the Great Sand Dunes/Dry Lakes area.” [9]

In an interview, titled The Wizard Of the Baca Grande, which Maurice Strong conducted with West magazine of Alberta, Canada, in May 1990, he provides details which elucidate the reasons behind the Illuminati’s support of the environmental movement. Strong concluded with a disturbing apocalyptic scenario he would include in a novel he says he would like to write:

Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead.

What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?

The group’s conclusion is “no.” The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?

This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about a world collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists – they’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodity and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock exchanges, and computers, and gold supplies, a panic. Then they prevent the markets from closing. They jam the gears. They have mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davos as hostage. The markets can’t close. The rich countries...?” and Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out of the window. [10]


The Earth Summit

One of the more important achievements of the Aspen Institute was a conference on Technology: Social Goals and Cultural Options, held in 1970, that paved the way for the UN’s Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972, chaired by Aspen board member, Maurice Strong. As remarked Engdahl, the Stockholm conference created the necessary international organizational and publicity infrastructure, so that by the time of the Kissinger orchestrated oil crisis, an intensive antinuclear propaganda offensive could be launched, aided through the millions of dollars made available from oil-linked channels of the Atlantic Richfield Company, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and other such elites.

Among the groups that were funded were organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, then chaired by Prince Bernard, and later by Royal Dutch Shell’s John Loudon. As Engdahl noted:

It is indicative of this financial establishment’s overwhelming influence in the American and British media that, during this period, no public outcry was launched to investigate the probable conflict of interest involved in Robert O. Anderson’s well-financed anti-nuclear offensive, and the fact that his Atlantic Richfield Oil Co. was one of the major beneficiaries from the 1974 price increase for oil. Anderson’s ARCO had invested tens of millions of dollars in high-risk oil infrastructure in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and Britain’s North Sea, together with Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell and the other Seven Sisters. [11]


Strong was Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held at the June 1992 UN Earth Summit in Brazil. It was hoped that an Earth Charter would be the result of the Earth Summit, but it was not the case. Nevertheless, an international agreement was adopted, named Agenda 21, which laid down the international “sustainable development” necessary to form a future Earth Charter agreement. Maurice Strong hinted at the overtly pagan agenda proposed for a future Earth Charter, when in his opening address to the Rio Conference delegates he said, “It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light.” And, he said, “We must therefore transform our attitudes and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of divine nature”. According to Strong, “The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments.” [12]

The summit was described by Time magazine as a “New Age carnival.” On the eve of the UNCED, a midnight-to-dawn homage to the “Female Planet” was held on Leme Beach. After dancing all night, the worshipers followed a Brazilian high priestess to the water’s edge, where they offered flowers and fruits to the Voodoo mother goddess, “Iemanje, mae orixa, mother of the powers, queen of the seas,” known in Western mythology as Aphrodite or Venus, and then invoked the blessings of the sea goddess upon the summit’s deliberations. At the culmination of the program, a group calling itself the “Sacred Drums of the Earth”, performed a ceremony by which they would “maintain a continuous heartbeat near the official site of the Earth Summit, as part of a ritual for the healing of our Earth to be felt by those who are deciding Earth’s fate.” [13]

Thus, the environmental movement, while helping to advance the cause of the oil industry, is an extension of the Aquarian conspiracy, incepted by Alice Bailey, designed ultimately to foster the acceptance a one-world-religion, based on the occult, or the New Age, as it is called. The Union for Natural Environment Protection, an environmental group based in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil, declared the following about the work of the summit:

A world-wide citizens’ movement is born around the UN system and will be in the years ahead a central focal point for the New World Order which Alice Bailey wrote about many decades ago and which is going to be politically free, socially fair, economically efficient and environmentally sustainable. [14]


The environmental movement is being used as a cover to promote return to the creed of the Ancient Mysteries, in the form of the worship of mother-nature, a pagan notion that equates the goddess with earth, known among the ancient Greeks as Gaia. Originally, she is the Babylonian Ishtar, known to the Bible as Astarte, or the Egyptian Isis. This pantheistic idea has its origins in ancient paganism, and is central to the Kabbalah and all Western occult tradition, including Freemasons and the Illuminati. Plato wrote: “We shall affirm that the cosmos, more than anything else, resembles most closely that living Creature of which all other living creatures, severally or genetically, are portion; a living creature which is fairest of all and in ways most perfect.” [15] Known as Anima Mundi, the “Soul of the World”, it is related to the concept of the Neoplatonists, the Logos, or the Word, also known as the “Son of God”, or the ancient dying-god.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 4:32 am
by admin
Mrs. Carlo Robins
Excerpt from Both Sides of the Circle: The Autobiography of Christmas Humphreys
by Christmas Humphreys

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March 28, 1977, the day of her death, was an interesting one....

Throughout the day many people spontaneously turned up to visit Freda, many of them from the Tibetan Friendship Group that Freda had founded. She greeted them all warmly and told them about her new project to sponsor Tibetan children in top Indian public schools, especially girls, who had less chance of receiving a good education than boys....

At six p.m. Freda and Pema Zangmo went for a walk, after which Freda settled down to some letter writing. She then took out some of her own childhood photographs and those of her children, taken in Lahore, before Partition. At ten p.m. Freda woke Pema Zangmo to give her instructions about certain gifts and money she wanted her to pass on to specific people. She brought out some yellow fabric as a gift for her faithful attendant to make into a nun's blouse, and told her to practice Dharma faithfully. Freda then dressed herself in her finest robes, telling the curious Pema Zangmo, "I will need them tomorrow." She then put on a tape recording of H.H. Karmapa, which he had sent her from New York, and sat down to meditate.

Pema Zangmo, who had gone back to sleep a few feet away from Freda, was awakened by the sound of "louder breathing." She got up and went over to Freda, who was still sitting bolt upright in the meditation position, and tapped her on the shoulder. Freda did not move, nor open her eyes. Peering closer, Pema Zangmo could detect no sign of outer life at all. In total panic she ran out into the hotel corridor screaming for help. A doctor was quickly summoned, who officially pronounced Freda dead. The cause: cardiac arrest....

Tributes began to pour in acknowledging her many achievements....

Christmas Humphreys, founder of the Buddhist Society in London, wrote a glowing tribute in their magazine, The Middle Way:

Freda Bedi showed what a Buddhist life should be. For twenty-five years she gave her life with immense and ceaseless energy to all in need of help, whatever their creed or caste or color. She never relaxed or hesitated. If the job was there to do she began it and relied, never in vain, on the needed support to appear. I saw much of the results of her labor when I was myself in India for the Dalai Lama in 1962, and endorse a remark by Mrs. Carlo Robins: "Freda Bedi is an example to all those adherents to any religion who readily regard their religion as being their life and not merely a department of it." Freda Bedi was a great woman, a great Buddhist and an inspiration to all Buddhists East and West to work unceasingly in the service of mankind.


-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie


Image
The visit of their Majesties the King and Queen of Thailand to the Society on September 14, 1966. L. to R. standing: The Librarian, Miss Pat Wilkinson; the Editor of The Middle Way, Miss Muriel Daw; the vice-President, Mr. Tom Harris; Mrs. Humphreys; the General Secretary, Mrs. K. Phelps; myself; the Treasurer, Miss Florence Stacey and Mrs. Carlo Robins.

Image
The Visit of H.H. the Dalai Lama to the Society in November 1973. Standing L. to R: The General Secretary, Mr. Burt Taylor; Mrs. Carlo Robins; Dr. Edward Conze; myself; the Vice-President, Col. Roger Gunter Jones.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 5:55 am
by admin
Abdul-Bahá
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/10/19

Maurice Strong is also a member of the Bahai World Faith. With Haifa, in Israel, as the site of its international headquarters, the Bahai movement now exercises a strong presence in the United Nations and its One-World Religion agenda. Its involvement in the UN dates back to its founding in 1945. In 1948, the Bahai community was recognized as an international non-governmental organization. In May 1970, they were granted consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and later with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The Bahai organization has a working relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO), is associated with the UN Environment Programme, as well as many other religious, environmental and social programs.

-- Chapter Twenty-Two: One-World-Religion, Terrorism and the Illuminati: A Three Thousand Year History, by David Livingston


Image
`Abdu'l-Bahá
Personal
Born `Abbás
23 May 1844
Tehran, Persia
Died 28 November 1921 (aged 77)
Haifa, Palestine
Resting place Shrine of `Abdu'l-Bahá
32°48′52.59″N 34°59′14.17″ECoordinates: 32°48′52.59″N 34°59′14.17″E
Religion Bahá'í Faith
Nationality Persian
Spouse Munírih Khánum (m. 1873)
Children 4 (incl. Ḍíyá'íyyih Khánum)
Parents Bahá'u'lláh (father)
Ásíyih Khánum (mother)
Relatives Shoghi Effendi (grandson)

`Abdu’l-Bahá' (/əbˈdʊl bəˈhɑː/; Persian: عبد البهاء‎, 23 May 1844 – 28 November 1921), born `Abbás (Persian: عباس‎), was the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh and served as head of the Bahá'í Faith from 1892 until 1921.[1] `Abdu’l-Bahá was later canonized as the last of three "central figures" of the religion, along with Bahá'u'lláh and the Báb, and his writings and authenticated talks are regarded as a source of Bahá'í sacred literature.[2]

He was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family. At the age of eight his father was imprisoned during a government crackdown on the Bábí Faith and the family's possessions were looted, leaving them in virtual poverty. His father was exiled from their native Iran, and the family went to live in Baghdad, where they stayed for nine years. They were later called by the Ottoman state to Istanbul before going into another period of confinement in Edirne and finally the prison-city of `Akká (Acre). `Abdu’l-Bahá remained a political prisoner there until the Young Turk Revolution freed him in 1908 at the age of 64. He then made several journeys to the West to spread the Bahá'í message beyond its middle-eastern roots, but the onset of World War I left him largely confined to Haifa from 1914–1918. The war replaced the openly hostile Ottoman authorities with the British Mandate, who knighted him for his help in averting famine following the war.

In 1892 `Abdu'l-Bahá was appointed in his father's will to be his successor and head of the Bahá'í Faith. He faced opposition from virtually all his family members, but held the loyalty of the great majority of Bahá'ís around the world. His Tablets of the Divine Plan helped galvanize Bahá'ís in North America into spreading the Bahá'í teachings to new territories, and his Will and Testament laid the foundation for the current Bahá'í administrative order. Many of his writings, prayers and letters are extant, and his discourses with the Western Bahá'ís emphasize the growth of the faith by the late 1890s.

`Abdu'l-Bahá's given name was `Abbás. Depending on context, he would have gone by either Mírzá `Abbás (Persian) or `Abbás Effendi (Turkish), both of which are equivalent to the English Sir `Abbás. He preferred the title of `Abdu'l-Bahá ("servant of Bahá", a reference to his father). He is commonly referred to in Bahá'í texts as "The Master".

Early life

`Abdu'l-Bahá was born in Tehran, Iran on 23 May 1844 (5th of Jamadiyu'l-Avval, 1260 AH),[3] the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh and Navváb. He was born on the very same night on which the Báb declared his mission.[4] Born with the given name of `Abbás,[2] he was named after his grandfather Mírzá `Abbás Núrí, a prominent and powerful nobleman.[5] As a child, `Abdu'l-Bahá was shaped by his father's position as a prominent Bábí. He recalled how he met the Bábí Táhirih and how she would take "me on to her knee, caress me, and talk to me. I admired her most deeply".[6] `Abdu’l-Bahá had a happy and carefree childhood. The family’s Tehran home and country houses were comfortable and beautifully decorated. `Abdu'l-Bahá enjoyed playing in the gardens with his younger sister with whom he was very close.[7] Along with his younger siblings – a sister, Bahíyyih, and a brother, Mihdí – the three lived in an environment of privilege, happiness and comfort.[5] With his father declining a position as minister of the royal court; during his young boyhood `Abdu’l-Bahá witnessed his parents' various charitable endeavours,[8] which included converting part of the home to a hospital ward for women and children.[7]

`Abdu'l-Bahá received a haphazard education during his childhood. It was customary not to send children of nobility to schools. Most noblemen were educated at home briefly in scripture, rhetoric, calligraphy and basic mathematics. Many were educated to prepare themselves for life in the royal court. Despite a brief spell at a traditional preparatory school at the age of seven for one year,[9] `Abdu'l-Bahá received no formal education. As he grew he was educated by his mother, and uncle.[10] Most of his education however, came from his father.[11] Years later in 1890 Edward Granville Browne described how `Abdu'l-Bahá was "one more eloquent of speech, more ready of argument, more apt of illustration, more intimately acquainted with the sacred books of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muhammadans...scarcely be found even amongst the eloquent."[12]

When `Abdu'l-Bahá was seven, he contracted tuberculosis and was expected to die.[13] Though the malady faded away,[14] he would be plagued with bouts of illness for the rest of his life.[15]

One event that affected `Abdu'l-Bahá greatly during his childhood was the imprisonment of his father when `Abdu'l-Bahá was eight years old; the imprisonment led to his family being reduced to poverty and being attacked in the streets by other children.[4] `Abdu'l-Bahá accompanied his mother to visit Bahá'u'lláh who was then imprisoned in the infamous subterranean dungeon the Síyáh-Chál.[5] He described how "I saw a dark, steep place. We entered a small, narrow doorway, and went down two steps, but beyond those one could see nothing. In the middle of the stairway, all of a sudden we heard His [Bahá’u’lláh's]…voice: 'Do not bring him in here', and so they took me back".[14]

Baghdad

Bahá'u'lláh was eventually released from prison but ordered into exile, and `Abdu'l-Bahá then eight joined his father on the journey to Baghdad in the winter (January to April)[16] of 1853.[14] During the journey `Abdu'l-Bahá suffered from frost-bite. After a year of difficulties Bahá'u'lláh absented himself rather than continue to face the conflict with Mirza Yahya and secretly secluded himself in the mountains of Sulaymaniyah in April 1854 a month before `Abdu'l-Bahá's tenth birthday.[16] Mutual sorrow resulted in him, his mother and sister becoming constant companions.[17] `Abdu'l-Bahá was particularly close to both, and his mother took active participation in his education and upbringing.[18] During the two-year absence of his father `Abdu'l-Bahá took up the duty of managing the affairs of the family,[19] before his age of maturity (14 in middle-eastern society)[20] and was known to be occupied with reading and, at a time of hand-copied scriptures being the primary means of publishing, was also engaged in copying the writings of the Báb.[21] `Abdu’l-Bahá also took an interest in the art of horse riding and, as he grew, became a renowned rider.[22]

In 1856, news of an ascetic carrying on discourses with local Súfí leaders that seemed to possibly be Bahá'u'lláh reached the family and friends. Immediately, family members and friends went to search for the elusive dervish – and in March[16] brought Bahá'u'lláh back to Baghdad.[23] On seeing his father, `Abdu'l-Bahá fell to his knees and wept loudly "Why did you leave us?", and this followed with his mother and sister doing the same.[22][24] `Abdu'l-Bahá soon became his father's secretary and shield.[4] During the sojourn in the city `Abdu’l-Bahá grew from a boy into a young man. He was noted as a "remarkably fine looking youth",[22] and remembered for his charity and amiableness.[4] Having passed the age of maturity `Abdu'l-Bahá was regularly seen in the mosques of Baghdad discussing religious topics and the scripture as a young man. Whilst in Baghdad, `Abdu'l-Bahá composed a commentary at the request of his father on the Muslim tradition of "I was a Hidden Treasure" for a Súfí leader named `Alí Shawkat Páshá.[4][25] `Abdu'l-Bahá was fifteen or sixteen at the time and `Alí Shawkat Páshá regarded the more than 11000 word essay as a remarkable feat for somebody of his age.[4] In 1863 in what became known as the Garden of Ridván Bahá'u'lláh announced to a few that he was the manifestation of God and He whom God shall make manifest whose coming had been foretold by the Báb. On day eight of the twelve days, it is believed `Abdu'l-Baha was the first person Baha'u'llah revealed his claim to.[26][27]

Constantinople/Adrianople

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`Abdu'l-Bahá (right) with his brother Mírzá Mihdí

In 1863 Bahá'u'lláh was summoned to Constantinople (Istanbul), and thus his whole family including `Abdu'l-Bahá, then nineteen, accompanied him on his 110-day journey.[28] The journey to Constantinople was another wearisome journey,[22] and `Abdu'l-Bahá helped feed the exiles.[29] It was here that his position became more prominent amongst the Bahá’ís.[2] This was further solidified by Bahá’u’lláh’s tablet of the Branch in which he constantly exalts his son's virtues and station.[30] The family were soon exiled to Adrianople and `Abdu'l-Bahá went with the family.[2] `Abdu’l-Bahá again suffered from frostbite.[22]

In Adrianople `Abdu’l-Bahá was regarded as the sole comforter of his family – in particular to his mother.[22] At this point `Abdu'l-Bahá was known by the Bahá'ís as "the Master", and by non-Bahá'ís as `Abbás Effendi ("Effendi" signifies "Sir"). It was in Adrianople that Bahá’u’lláh referred to his son as "the Mystery of God".[22] The title of "Mystery of God" symbolises, according to Bahá'ís, that `Abdu'l-Bahá is not a manifestation of God but how a "person of `Abdu'l-Bahá the incompatible characteristics of a human nature and superhuman knowledge and perfection have been blended and are completely harmonized".[31][32] `Abdu'l-Bahá was at this point noted for having black hair which flowed to his shoulders, large blue eyes, rose-through-alabaster coloured skin and a fine nose.[33] Bahá'u'lláh gave his son many other titles such as Ghusn-i-A'zam (meaning "Mightiest Branch" or "Mightier Branch"),[a] the "Branch of Holiness", "the Center of the Covenant" and the apple of his eye.[2] `Abdu'l-Bahá ("the Master") was devastated when hearing the news that he and his family were to be exiled separately from Bahá'u'lláh. It was, according to Bahá'ís, through his intercession that the idea was reverted and the family were allowed to be exiled together.[22]

`Akká

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Prison in `Akká where Bahá’u’lláh and his family were housed

At the age of 24, `Abdu'l-Bahá was clearly chief-steward to his father and an outstanding member of the Bahá’í community.[28] Bahá’u’lláh and his family were – in 1868 – exiled to the penal colony of Acre, Palestine where it was expected that the family would perish.[34] Arrival in `Akká was distressing for the family and exiles.[2] They were greeted in a hostile manner by the surrounding population and his sister and father fell dangerously ill.[4] When told that the women were to sit on the shoulders of the men to reach the shore, `Abdu'l-Bahá took a chair and carried the women to the bay of `Akká.[22] `Abdu'l-Bahá was able to procure some anesthetic and nursed the sick.[22] The Bahá’ís were imprisoned under horrendous conditions in a cluster of cells covered in excrement and dirt.[4] `Abdu'l-Bahá himself fell dangerously ill with dysentery,[4] however a sympathetic soldier permitted a physician to help cure him.[22] The population shunned them, the soldiers treated them the same, and the behaviour of Siyyid Muhammad-i-Isfahani (an Azali) did not help matters.[5][35] Morale was further destroyed with the accidental death of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s youngest brother Mírzá Mihdí at the age of 22.[22] His death devastated the family – particularly his mother and father – and the grieving `Abdu'l-Bahá kept a night-long vigil beside his brother’s body.[5][22]

Later in `Akká

Over time, he gradually took over responsibility for the relationships between the small Bahá'i exile community and the outside world. It was through his interaction with the people of `Akká (Acre) that, according to the Bahá'ís, they recognized the innocence of the Bahá'ís, and thus the conditions of imprisonment were eased.[36] Four months after the death of Mihdí the family moved from the prison to the House of `Abbúd.[37] The people of `Akká started to respect the Bahá'ís and in particular, `Abdu'l-Bahá. `Abdu'l-Bahá was able to arrange for houses to be rented for the family, the family later moved to the Mansion of Bahjí around 1879 when an epidemic caused the inhabitants to flee.

`Abdu'l-Bahá soon became very popular in the penal colony and Myron Henry Phelps a wealthy New York lawyer described how "a crowd of human beings...Syrians, Arabs, Ethiopians, and many others",[38] all waited to talk and receive `Abdu'l-Bahá.[39] He undertook a history of the Bábí religion through publication of A Traveller's Narrative (Makála-i-Shakhsí Sayyáh) in 1886,[40] later translated and published in translation in 1891 through Cambridge University by the agency of Edward Granville Browne who described `Abdu'l-Bahá as:

Seldom have I seen one whose appearance impressed me more. A tall strongly built man holding himself straight as an arrow, with white turban and raiment, long black locks reaching almost to the shoulder, broad powerful forehead indicating a strong intellect combined with an unswerving will, eyes keen as a hawk's, and strongly marked but pleasing features – such was my first impression of 'Abbás Efendí, "the master".[41]


Marriage and family life

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`Abdu'l-Bahá at age 24

When `Abdu'l-Bahá was a young man, speculation was rife amongst the Bahá’ís to whom he would marry.[4][42] Several young girls were seen as marriage prospects but `Abdu’l-Bahá seemed disinclined to marriage.[4] On 8 March 1873, at the urging of his father,[5][43] the twenty-eight-year-old `Abdu’l-Bahá married Fátimih Nahrí of Isfahán (1847–1938) a twenty-five-year-old from an upper-class family of the city.[44] Her father was Mírzá Muḥammad `Alí Nahrí of Isfahan an eminent Bahá’í with prominent connections.[ b][4][42] Fátimih was brought from Persia to `Akká after both Bahá’u’lláh and his wife Navváb expressed an interest in her to marry `Abdu’l-Bahá.[4][44][45] After a wearisome journey from Isfahán to Akka she finally arrived accompanied by her brother in 1872.[4][45] The young couple were betrothed for about five months before the marriage itself commenced. In the meantime, Fátimih lived in the home of `Abdu'l-Bahá’s uncle Mírzá Músá. According to her later memoirs, Fátimih fell in love with `Abdu'l-Bahá on seeing him. `Abdu'l-Bahá himself had showed little inkling to marriage until meeting Fátimih;[45] who was entitled Munírih by Bahá’u’lláh.[5] Munírih is a title meaning "Luminous".[46]

The marriage resulted in nine children. The first born was a son Mihdí Effendi who died aged about 3. He was followed by Ḍiyá'iyyih Khánum, Fu’ádíyyih Khánum (d. few years old), Rúhangíz Khánum (d. 1893), Túbá Khánum, Husayn Effendi (d.1887 aged 5), Túbá Khánum, Rúhá Khánum and Munnavar Khánum. The death of his children caused `Abdu’l-Bahá immense grief – in particular the death of his son Husayn Effendi came at a difficult time following the death of his mother and uncle.[47] The surviving children (all daughters) were; Ḍiyá'iyyih Khánum (mother of Shoghi Effendi) (d. 1951) Túbá Khánum (1880–1959) Rúḥá Khánum and Munavvar Khánum (d. 1971).[4] Bahá'u'lláh wished that the Bahá'ís follow the example of `Abdu'l-Bahá and gradually move away from polygamy.[45][46][48] The marriage of `Abdu’l-Bahá to one woman and his choice to remain monogamous,[45] from advice of his father and his own wish,[45][46] legitimised the practice of monogamy[46] to a people who hitherto had regarded polygamy as a righteous way of life.[45][46]

Early years of his ministry

After Bahá'u'lláh died on 29 May 1892, the Will and Testament of Bahá'u'lláh named `Abdu'l-Bahá as Centre of the Covenant, successor and interpreter of Bahá'u'lláh's writings.[c][49][1]

Bahá'u'lláh designates his successor with the following verses:

The Will of the divine Testator is this: It is incumbent upon the Aghsán, the Afnán and My Kindred to turn, one and all, their faces towards the Most Mighty Branch. Consider that which We have revealed in Our Most Holy Book: ‘When the ocean of My presence hath ebbed and the Book of My Revelation is ended, turn your faces toward Him Whom God hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root.’ The object of this sacred verse is none other except the Most Mighty Branch [‘Abdu’l-Bahá]. Thus have We graciously revealed unto you Our potent Will, and I am verily the Gracious, the All-Powerful. Verily God hath ordained the station of the Greater Branch [Muḥammad ‘Alí] to be beneath that of the Most Great Branch [‘Abdu’l-Bahá]. He is in truth the Ordainer, the All-Wise. We have chosen ‘the Greater’ after ‘the Most Great’, as decreed by Him Who is the All-Knowing, the All-Informed.

— Bahá'u'lláh (1994) [1873-92]. "Kitáb-i-`Ahd". Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust. ISBN 0-87743-174-4.


This translation of the Kitáb-i-'Ahd is based on a solecism, however, as the terms Akbar and A'zam do not mean, respectively, 'Greater' and 'Most Great'. Not only do the two words derive from entirely separate triconsonantal roots (Akbar from k-b-r and A'zam from ʿ-z-m), but the Arabic language possesses the elative, a stage of gradation, with no clear distinction between the comparative and superlative.[50] In the Will and Testament `Abdu'l-Bahá's half-brother, Muhammad `Alí, was mentioned by name as being subordinate to `Abdu'l-Bahá. Muhammad `Alí became jealous of his half-brother and set out to establish authority for himself as an alternative leader with the support of his brothers Badi'u'llah and Diya'u'llah.[3] He began correspondence with Bahá'ís in Iran, initially in secret, casting doubts in others' minds about `Abdu'l-Bahá.[51] While most Bahá'ís followed `Abdu'l-Bahá, a handful followed Muhammad `Alí including such leaders as Mirza Javad and Ibrahim George Kheiralla, an early Bahá'í missionary to America.[52]

Muhammad `Alí and Mirza Javad began to openly accuse `Abdu'l-Bahá of taking on too much authority, suggesting that he believed himself to be a Manifestation of God, equal in status to Bahá'u'lláh.[53] It was at this time that `Abdu'l-Bahá, in order to provide proof of the falsity of the accusations leveled against him, in tablets to the West, stated that he was to be known as "`Abdu'l-Bahá" an Arabic phrase meaning the Servant of Bahá to make it clear that he was not a Manifestation of God, and that his station was only servitude.[54][55] `Abdu'l-Bahá left a Will and Testament that set up the framework of administration. The two highest institutions were the Universal House of Justice, and the Guardianship, for which he appointed Shoghi Effendi as the Guardian.[1] With the exception of `Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi, Muhammad `Alí was supported by all of the remaining male relatives of Bahá'u'lláh, including Shoghi Effendi's father, Mírzá Hádí Shírází.[56] However Muhammad `Alí's and his families statements had very little effect on the Bahá'ís in general - in the `Akká area, the followers of Muhammad `Alí represented six families at most, they had no common religious activities,[57] and were almost wholly assimilated into Muslim society.[58]

First Western pilgrims

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Early Western Bahá'í pilgrims. Standing left to right: Charles Mason Remey, Sigurd Russell, Edward Getsinger and Laura Clifford Barney; Seated left to right: Ethel Jenner Rosenberg, Madam Jackson, Shoghi Effendi, Helen Ellis Cole, Lua Getsinger, Emogene Hoagg

By the end of 1898, Western pilgrims started coming to Akka on pilgrimage to visit `Abdu'l-Bahá; this group of pilgrims, including Phoebe Hearst, was the first time that Bahá'ís raised up in the West had met `Abdu'l-Bahá.[59] The first group arrived in 1898 and throughout late 1898 to early 1899 Western Bahá’ís sporadically visited `Abdu'l-Bahá. The group was relatively young containing mainly women from high American society in their 20s.[60] The group of Westerners aroused suspicion for the authorities, and consequently `Abdu'l-Bahá’s confinement was tightened.[61] During the next decade `Abdu'l-Bahá would be in constant communication with Bahá'ís around the world, helping them to teach the religion; the group included May Ellis Bolles in Paris, Englishman Thomas Breakwell, American Herbert Hopper, French Hippolyte Dreyfus [fr], Susan Moody, Lua Getsinger, and American Laura Clifford Barney.[62] It was Laura Clifford Barney who, by asking questions of `Abdu'l-Bahá over many years and many visits to Haifa, compiled what later became the book Some Answered Questions.[63]

Ministry, 1901–1912

During the final years of the 19th century, while `Abdu'l-Bahá was still officially a prisoner and confined to `Akka, he organized the transfer of the remains of the Báb from Iran to Palestine. He then organized the purchase of land on Mount Carmel that Bahá'u'lláh had instructed should be used to lay the remains of the Báb, and organized for the construction of the Shrine of the Báb. This process took another 10 years.[64] With the increase of pilgrims visiting `Abdu'l-Bahá, Muhammad `Alí worked with the Ottoman authorities to re-introduce stricter terms on `Abdu'l-Bahá's imprisonment in August 1901.[1][65] By 1902, however, due to the Governor of `Akka being supportive of `Abdu'l-Bahá, the situation was greatly eased; while pilgrims were able to once again visit `Abdu'l-Bahá, he was confined to the city.[65] In February 1903, two followers of Muhammad `Alí, including Badi'u'llah and Siyyid `Aliy-i-Afnan, broke with Muhammad `Ali and wrote books and letters giving details of Muhammad `Ali's plots and noting that what was circulating about `Abdu'l-Bahá was fabrication.[66][67]

From 1902 to 1904, in addition to the building of the Shrine of the Báb that `Abdu'l-Bahá was directing, he started to put into execution two different projects; the restoration of the House of the Báb in Shiraz, Iran and the construction of the first Bahá'í House of Worship in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.[68] `Abdu'l-Bahá asked Aqa Mirza Aqa to coordinate the work so that the house of the Báb would be restored to the state that it was at the time of the Báb's declaration to Mulla Husayn in 1844;[68] he also entrusted the work on the House of Worship to Vakil-u'd-Dawlih.[69]

During this period, `Abdu'l-Bahá communicated with a number Young Turks, opposed to the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, including Namık Kemal, Ziya Pasha and Midhat Pasha, in an attempt to disseminate Bahá'í thought into their political ideology.[70] He emphasized Bahá'ís "seek freedom and love liberty, hope for equality, are well-wishers of humanity and ready to sacrifice their lives to unite humanity" but on a more broad approach than the Young Turks. Abdullah Cevdet, one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress who considered the Bahá'í Faith an intermediary step between Islam and the ultimate abandonment of religious belief, would go on trial for defense of Bahá'ís in a periodical he founded.[71][72]

‛Abdu'l-Bahá also had contact with military leaders as well, including such individuals as Bursalı Mehmet Tahir Bey and Hasan Bedreddin. The latter, who was involved in the overthrow of Sultan Abdülaziz, is commonly known as Bedri Paşa or Bedri Pasha and is referred to in Persian Bahá'í sources as Bedri Bey (Badri Beg). He was a Bahá'í who translated ‛Abdu’l-Baha's works into French.[73]

`Abdu'l-Bahá also met Muhammad Abduh, one of the key figures of Islamic Modernism and the Salafi movement, in Beirut, at a time when the two men were both opposed to the Ottoman ulama and shared similar goals of religious reform.[74][75] Rashid Rida asserts that during his visits to Beirut, `Abdu'l-Bahá would attend Abduh's study sessions.[76] Regarding the meetings of `Abdu'l-Bahá and Muhammad 'Abduh, Shoghi Effendi asserts that "His several interviews with the well-known Shaykh Muhammad ‘Abdu served to enhance immensely the growing prestige of the community and spread abroad the fame of its most distinguished member."[77]

Due to `Abdu'l-Bahá's political activities and alleged accusation against him by Muhammad `Ali, a Commission of Inquiry interviewed `Abdu'l-Bahá in 1905, with the result that he was almost exiled to Fezzan.[78][79][80] In response, `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote the sultan a letter protesting that his followers refrain from involvement in partisan politics and that his tariqa had guided many Americans to Islam.[81] The next few years in `Akka were relatively free of pressures and pilgrims were able to come and visit `Abdu'l-Bahá. By 1909 the mausoleum of the Shrine of the Báb was completed.[69]

Journeys to the West

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`Abdu'l-Bahá, during his trip to the United States

The 1908 Young Turks revolution freed all political prisoners in the Ottoman Empire, and `Abdu'l-Bahá was freed from imprisonment. His first action after his freedom was to visit the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh in Bahji.[82] While `Abdu'l-Bahá continued to live in `Akka immediately following the revolution, he soon moved to live in Haifa near the Shrine of the Báb.[82] In 1910, with the freedom to leave the country, he embarked on a three-year journey to Egypt, Europe, and North America, spreading the Bahá'í message.[1]

From August to December 1911, `Abdu'l-Bahá visited cities in Europe, including London, Bristol, and Paris. The purpose of these trips was to support the Bahá'í communities in the west and to further spread his father's teachings.[83]

In the following year, he undertook a much more extensive journey to the United States and Canada to once again spread his father's teachings. He arrived in New York City on 11 April 1912, after declining an offer of passage on the RMS Titanic, telling the Bahá'í believers, instead, to "Donate this to charity."[84] He instead travelled on a slower craft, the RMS Cedric, and cited preference of a longer sea journey as the reason.[85] After hearing of the Titanic's sinking on 16 April he was quoted as saying "I was asked to sail upon the Titanic, but my heart did not prompt me to do so."[84] While he spent most of his time in New York, he visited Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Boston and Philadelphia. In August of the same year he started a more extensive journey to places including New Hampshire, the Green Acre school in Maine, and Montreal (his only visit to Canada). He then travelled west to Minneapolis, San Francisco, Stanford, and Los Angeles before starting to return east at the end of October. On 5 December 1912 he set sail back to Europe.[86]

During his visit to North America he visited many missions, churches, and groups, as well as having scores of meetings in Bahá'ís' homes, and offering innumerable personal meetings with hundreds of people.[87] During his talks he proclaimed Bahá'í principles such as the unity of God, unity of the religions, oneness of humanity, equality of women and men, world peace and economic justice.[87] He also insisted that all his meetings be open to all races.[87]

His visit and talks were the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles.[87] In Boston newspaper reporters asked `Abdu'l-Bahá why he had come to America, and he stated that he had come to participate in conferences on peace and that just giving warning messages is not enough.[88] `Abdu'l-Bahá's visit to Montreal provided notable newspaper coverage; on the night of his arrival the editor of the Montreal Daily Star met with him and that newspaper along with The Montreal Gazette, Montreal Standard, Le Devoir and La Presse among others reported on `Abdu'l-Bahá's activities.[89][90] The headlines in those papers included "Persian Teacher to Preach Peace", "Racialism Wrong, Says Eastern Sage, Strife and War Caused by Religious and National Prejudices", and "Apostle of Peace Meets Socialists, Abdul Baha's Novel Scheme for Distribution of Surplus Wealth."[90] The Montreal Standard, which was distributed across Canada, took so much interest that it republished the articles a week later; the Gazette published six articles and Montreal's largest French language newspaper published two articles about him.[89] His 1912 visit to Montreal also inspired humourist Stephen Leacock to parody him in his bestselling 1914 book Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich.[91] In Chicago one newspaper headline included "His Holiness Visits Us, Not Pius X but A. Baha,"[90] and `Abdu'l-Bahá's visit to California was reported in the Palo Altan.[92]

Back in Europe, he visited London, Paris (where he stayed for two months), Stuttgart, Budapest, and Vienna. Finally, on 12 June 1913, he returned to Egypt, where he stayed for six months before returning to Haifa.[86]

On 23 February 1914, at the eve of World War I, `Abdu'l-Bahá hosted Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family who was a leading advocate and financier of the Zionist movement, during one of his early trips to Palestine.[93]

Final years (1914–1921)

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`Abdu'l-Bahá on Mount Carmel with pilgrims in 1919

During World War I (1914–1918) `Abdu'l-Bahá stayed in Palestine and was unable to travel. He carried on a limited correspondence, which included the Tablets of the Divine Plan, a collection of 14 letters addressed to the Bahá'ís of North America, later described as one of three "charters" of the Bahá'í Faith. The letters assign a leadership role for the North American Bahá'ís in spreading the religion around the planet.

Haifa was under real threat of Allied bombardment, enough that `Abdu'l-Bahá and other Bahá'ís temporarily retreated to the hills east of `Akka.[94]

`Abdu'l-Bahá was also under threats from Cemal Paşa, the Ottoman military chief who at one point expressed his desire to crucify him and destroy Bahá'í properties in Palestine.[95] The surprisingly swift Megiddo offensive of the British General Allenby swept away the Turkish forces in Palestine before harm was done to the Bahá'ís, and the war was over less than two months later.

Post-war period

Image
The elderly `Abdu'l-Bahá

The conclusion of World War I led to the openly hostile Ottoman authorities being replaced by the more friendly British Mandate, allowing for a renewal of correspondence, pilgrims, and development of the Bahá'í World Centre properties.[96] It was during this revival of activity that the Bahá'í Faith saw an expansion and consolidation in places like Egypt, the Caucasus, Iran, Turkmenistan, North America and South Asia under the leadership of `Abdu'l-Bahá.

The end of the war brought about several political developments that `Abdu'l-Bahá commented on. The League of Nations formed in January 1920, representing the first instance of collective security through a worldwide organization. `Abdu'l-Bahá had written in 1875 for the need to establish a "Union of the nations of the world", and he praised the attempt through the League of Nations as an important step towards the goal. He also said that it was "incapable of establishing Universal Peace" because it did not represent all nations and had only trivial power over its member states.[97][98] Around the same time, the British Mandate supported the ongoing immigration of Jews to Palestine. `Abdu'l-Bahá mentioned the immigration as a fulfillment of prophecy, and encouraged the Zionists to develop the land and "elevate the country for all its inhabitants... They must not work to separate the Jews from the other Palestinians."[99]

Image
`Abdu'l-Bahá at his knighting ceremony, April 1920

The war also left the region in famine. In 1901, `Abdu'l-Bahá had purchased about 1704 acres of scrubland near the Jordan river and by 1907 many Bahá'ís from Iran had begun sharecropping on the land. `Abdu'l-Bahá received between 20-33% of their harvest (or cash equivalent), which was shipped to Haifa. With the war still raging in 1917, `Abdu'l-Bahá received a large amount of wheat from the crops, and also bought other available wheat and shipped it all back to Haifa. The wheat arrived just after the British seized control, and the wheat was widely distributed to allay the famine.[100][101] For this service in averting a famine in Northern Palestine he received a knighthood at a ceremony held in his honor at the home of the British Governor on 27 April 1920.[102][103] He was later visited by General Allenby, King Faisal (later king of Iraq), Herbert Samuel (High Commissioner for Palestine), and Ronald Storrs (Military Governor of Jerusalem).[104]

Death and funeral

Image
Funeral of `Abdu'l-Bahá in Haifa, British Mandate-Palestine

`Abdu'l-Bahá died on Monday, 28 November 1921, sometime after 1:15 a.m. (27th of Rabi' al-awwal, 1340 AH).[105]

Winston Churchill telegraphed the High Commissioner for Palestine, "convey to the Bahá'í Community, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, their sympathy and condolescence." Similar messages came from Viscount Allenby, the Council of Ministers of Iraq, and others.[106]

On his funeral, which was held the next day, Esslemont notes:

... a funeral the like of which Haifa, nay Palestine itself, had surely never seen... so deep was the feeling that brought so many thousands of mourners together, representative of so many religions, races and tongues.[107]


Among the talks delivered at the funeral, Shoghi Effendi records Stewart Symes giving the following tribute:

Most of us here have, I think, a clear picture of Sir ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá ‘Abbás, of His dignified figure walking thoughtfully in our streets, of His courteous and gracious manner, of His kindness, of His love for little children and flowers, of His generosity and care for the poor and suffering. So gentle was He, and so simple, that in His presence one almost forgot that He was also a great teacher, and that His writings and His conversations have been a solace and an inspiration to hundreds and thousands of people in the East and in the West.[108]


He was buried in the front room of the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel. His interment there is meant to be temporary, until his own mausoleum can be built.

Legacy

`Abdu'l-Bahá left a Will and Testament that was originally written between 1901-1908 and addressed to Shoghi Effendi, who at that time was only 4-11 years old. The will appoints Shoghi Effendi as the first in a line of Guardians of the religion, a hereditary executive role that may provide authoritative interpretations of scripture. `Abdu'l-Bahá directed all Bahá'ís to turn to him and obey him, and assured him of divine protection and guidance. The will also provided a formal reiteration of his teachings, such as the instructions to teach, manifest spiritual qualities, associate with all people, and shun Covenant-breakers. Many obligations of the Universal House of Justice and the Hands of the Cause were also elaborated.[109][1] Shoghi Effendi later described the document as one of three "charters" of the Bahá'í Faith.

The authenticity and provisions of the will were almost universally accepted by Bahá'ís around the world, with the exception of Ruth White and a few other Americans who tried to protest Shoghi Effendi's leadership.

During his lifetime there was some ambiguity among Bahá'ís as to his station relative to Bahá'u'lláh, and later to Shoghi Effendi. Some American newspapers reported him to be a Bahá'í prophet or the return of Christ. Shoghi Effendi later formalized his legacy as the last of three "Central Figures" of the Bahá'í Faith and the "Perfect exemplar" of the teachings, also claiming that holding him on an equal status to Bahá'u'lláh or Jesus was heretical. Shoghi Effendi also wrote that during the anticipated Bahá'í dispensation of 1000 years there will be no equal to `Abdu'l-Bahá.[110]

Works

The total estimated number of tablets that `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote are over 27,000, of which only a fraction have been translated into English.[111] His works fall into two groups including first his direct writings and second his lectures and speeches as noted by others.[1] The first group includes The Secret of Divine Civilization written before 1875, A Traveller's Narrative written around 1886, the Resāla-ye sīāsīya or Sermon on the Art of Governance written in 1893, the Memorials of the Faithful, and a large number of tablets written to various people;[1] including various Western intellectuals such as August Forel which has been translated and published as the Tablet to Auguste-Henri Forel. The Secret of Divine Civilization and the Sermon on the Art of Governance were widely circulated anonymously.

The second group includes Some Answered Questions, which is an English translation of a series of table talks with Laura Barney, and Paris Talks, `Abdu'l-Baha in London and Promulgation of Universal Peace which are respectively addresses given by `Abdu'l-Bahá in Paris, London and the United States.[1]

The following is a list of some of `Abdu'l-Bahá's many books, tablets, and talks:

• Foundations of World Unity
• Memorials of the Faithful
• Paris Talks
• Secret of Divine Civilization
• Some Answered Questions
• Tablets of the Divine Plan
• Tablet to Auguste-Henri Forel
• Tablet to The Hague
• Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá
• Promulgation of Universal Peace
• Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá
• Divine Philosophy
• Treatise on Politics / Sermon on the Art of Governance[112]

See also

• Bahá'u'lláh's family
• Mírzá Mihdí
• Ásíyih Khánum
• Bahiyyih Khánum
• Munirih Khánum
• Shoghi Effendi
• House of `Abdu'l-Bahá

Explanatory notes

1. The elative is a stage of gradation in Arabic that can be used both for a superlative or a comparative. Ghusn-i-A'zam could mean "Mightiest Branch" or "Mightier Branch"
2. The Nahrí family had earned their fortune from a successful trading business. They won the favor of the leading ecclesiastics and nobility of Isfahan and had business transactions with royalty.
3. In the Kitáb-i-`Ahd Bahá'u'lláh refers to his eldest son `Abdu'l-Bahá as Ghusn-i-A'zam (meaning "Mightiest Branch" or "Mightier Branch") and his second eldest son Mírzá Muhammad `Alí as Ghusn-i-Akbar (meaning "Greatest Branch" or "Greater Branch").

Notes

1. Iranica 1989.
2. Smith 2000, pp. 14-20.
3. Muhammad Qazvini (1949). "`Abdu'l-Bahá Meeting with Two Prominent Iranians". Retrieved 5 September 2007.
4. Esslemont 1980.
5. Kazemzadeh 2009
6. Blomfield 1975, p. 21
7. Blomfield 1975, p. 40
8. Blomfield 1975, p. 39
9. Taherzadeh 2000, p. 105
10. Blomfield, p.68
11. Hogenson 2010, p. 40
12. Browne 1891, p. xxxvi.
13. Hogenson, p.81
14. Balyuzi 2001, p. 12.
15. Hogenson, p.82
16. Chronology of persecutions of Babis and Baha'iscompiled by Jonah Winters
17. Blomfield 1975, p. 54
18. Blomfield 1975, p. 69
19. The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, volume two, page 391
20. Can women act as agents of a democratization of theocracy in Iran? by Homa Hoodfar, Shadi Sadr, page 9
21. Balyuzi 2001, p. 14.
22. Phelps 1912, pp. 27–55
23. Smith 2008, p. 17
24. Balyuzi 2001, p. 15.
25. 'Abdu'l-Bahá. "'Abdu'l-Baha's Commentary on The Islamic Tradition: "I Was a Hidden Treasure ..."". Baha'i Studies Bulletin 3:4 (Dec. 1985), 4–35. Retrieved 20 December 2009.
26. Declaration of Baha'u'llah
27. The history and significance of the Bahá'í festival of Ridván BBC
28. Balyuzi 2001, p. 17.
29. Kazemzadeh 2009.
30. "Tablet of the Branch". Wilmette: Baha'i Publishing Trust. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
31. "The Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh". US Bahá’í Publishing Trust. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
32. "The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh". Baha'i Studies Bulletin 3:4 (Dec. 1985), 4–35. Retrieved 20 December 2009.
33. Gail & Khan 1987, pp. 225, 281
34. Foltz 2013, pp. 238
35. Balyuzi 2001, p. 22.
36. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 33–43.
37. Balyuzi 2001, p. 33.
38. Phelps 1912, pp. 3
39. Smith 2000, pp. 4
40. A Traveller's Narrative, (Makála-i-Shakhsí Sayyáh)
41. `Abdu'l-Bahá (1891), Browne, E.G. (Tr.), ed., A Traveller's Narrative: Written to illustrate the episode of the Bab, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. (See Browne's "Introduction" and "Notes", esp. "Note W".)
42. Hogenson, p.87
43. Ma'ani 2008, p. 112
44. Smith 2000, p. 255
45. Phelps 1912, pp. 85–94
46. Smith 2008, p. 35
47. Ma'ani 2008, p. 323
48. Ma'ani 2008, p. 360
49. Taherzadeh 2000, p. 256.
50. MacEoin, Denis (June 2001). "Making the Crooked Straight, by Udo Schaefer, Nicola Towfigh, and Ulrich Gollmer: Review". Bahá'í Library Online. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
51. Balyuzi 2001, p. 53.
52. Browne 1918, p. 145
53. Browne 1918, p. 77
54. Balyuzi 2001, p. 60.
55. Abdul-Baha. "Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas".
56. Smith, Peter (2000). A concise encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. pp. 169–170. ISBN 1-85168-184-1.
57. Warburg, Margit. Bahá'í: Studies in Contemporary Religion. Signature Books. p. 64. ISBN 1-56085-169-4. Archived from the original on 2 February 2013.
58. MacEoin, Denis. "Bahai and Babi Schisms". Iranica. In Palestine, the followers of Moḥammad-ʿAlī continued as a small group of families opposed to the Bahai leadership in Haifa; they have now been almost wholly re-assimilated into Muslim society.
59. Balyuzi 2001, p. 69.
60. Hogenson, p.x
61. Hogenson, p.308
62. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 72–96.
63. Balyuzi 2001, p. 82.
64. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 90–93.
65. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 94–95.
66. Balyuzi 2001, p. 102.
67. Afroukhteh 2003, p. 166
68. Balyuzi 2001, p. 107.
69. Balyuzi 2001, p. 109.
70. Alkan, Necati (2011). "The Young Turks and the Bahá'ís in Palestine". In Ben-Bassat, Yuval; Ginio, Eyal. Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule. I.B.Tauris. p. 262. ISBN 978-1848856318.
71. Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü (1995). The Young Turks in Opposition. Oxford University Press. p. 202. ISBN 978-0195091151.
72. Polat, Ayşe (2015). "A Conflict on Baha'ism and Islam in 1922: Abdullah Cevdet and State Religious Agencies"(PDF). Insan & Toplum. 5 (10). Archived from the original(PDF) on 1 October 2016. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
73. Alkan, Necati (2011). "The Young Turks and the Bahá'ís in Palestine". In Ben-Bassat, Yuval; Ginio, Eyal. Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule. I.B.Tauris. p. 266. ISBN 978-1848856318.
74. Scharbrodt, Oliver (2008). Islam and the Bahá'í Faith: A Comparative Study of Muhammad 'Abduh and 'Abdul-Baha 'Abbas. Routledge. ISBN 9780203928578.
75. Cole, Juan R.I. (1983). "Rashid Rida on the Bahai Faith: A Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religions". Arab Studies Quarterly. 5 (2): 278.
76. Cole, Juan R.I. (1981). "Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Rida: A Dialogue on the Baha'i Faith". World Order. 15 (3): 11.
77. Effendi, Shoghi (1944). God Passes By. Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust. p. 193. ISBN 0-87743-020-9.
78. Alkan, Necati (2011). "The Young Turks and the Bahá'ís in Palestine". In Ben-Bassat, Yuval; Ginio, Eyal. Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule. I.B.Tauris. p. 263. ISBN 978-1848856318.
79. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 111–113.
80. Momen 1981, pp. 320–323
81. Alkan, Necati (2011). "The Young Turks and the Bahá'ís in Palestine". In Ben-Bassat, Yuval; Ginio, Eyal. Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule. I.B.Tauris. p. 264. ISBN 978-1848856318.
82. Balyuzi 2001, p. 131.
83. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 159–397.
84. Lacroix-Hopson, Eliane; `Abdu'l-Bahá (1987). `Abdu'l-Bahá in New York- The City of the Covenant. NewVistaDesign. Archived from the original on 16 December 2013.
85. Balyuzi 2001, p. 171.
86. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 159-397.
87. Gallagher & Ashcraft 2006, p. 196
88. Balyuzi 2001, p. 232.
89. Van den Hoonaard 1996, pp. 56–58
90. Balyuzi 2001, p. 256.
91. Wagner, Ralph D. Yahi-Bahi Society of Mrs. Resselyer-Brown, The. Accessed on: 19 May 2008
92. Balyuzi 2001, p. 313.
93. "February 23, 1914". Star of the West. 9 (10). 8 September 1918. p. 107. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
94. Effendi 1944, p. 304.
95. Smith 2000, p. 18.
96. Balyuzi 2001, pp. 400–431.
97. Esslemont 1980, pp. 166-168.
98. Smith 2000, p. 345.
99. "Declares Zionists Must Work with Other Races". Star of the West. 10 (10). 8 September 1919. p. 196.
100. McGlinn 2011.
101. Poostchi 2010.
102. Luke, Harry Charles (23 August 1922). The Handbook of Palestine. London: Macmillan and Company. p. 59.
103. Religious Contentions in Modern Iran, 1881-1941, by Mina Yazdani, PhD, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto, 2011, pp. 190-191, 199–202.
104. Effendi 1944, p. 306-307.
105. Effendi 1944, p. 311.
106. Effendi 1944, p. 312.
107. Esslemont 1980, p. 77, quoting 'The Passing of `Abdu'l-Bahá", by Lady Blomfield and Shoghi Effendi, pp 11, 12.
108. Effendi 1944, pp. 313-314.
109. Smith 2000, p. 356-357.
110. Effendi 1938.
111. Universal House of Justice (September 2002). "Numbers and Classifications of Sacred Writings texts". Retrieved 20 March 2007.
112. Translations of Shaykhi, Babi and Baha'i Texts Vol. 7, no. 1 (March 2003)

References

• Afroukhteh, Youness (2003) [1952], Memories of Nine Years in 'Akká, Oxford, UK: George Ronald, ISBN 0-85398-477-8
• Balyuzi, H.M. (2001), `Abdu'l-Bahá: The Centre of the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh (Paperback ed.), Oxford, UK: George Ronald, ISBN 0-85398-043-8
• Bausani, Alessandro (1989), "'Abd-al-Bahā' : Life and work", Encyclopædia Iranica.
• Blomfield, Lady (1975) [1956], The Chosen Highway, London, UK: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, ISBN 0-87743-015-2
• Effendi, Shoghi (1938). The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust. ISBN 0-87743-231-7.
• Effendi, Shoghi (1944), God Passes By, Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, ISBN 0-87743-020-9
• Browne, E.G. (1918), Materials for the Study of the Bábí Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Esslemont, J.E. (1980), Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era (5th ed.), Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, ISBN 0-87743-160-4
• Foltz, Richard (2013), Religions of Iran: From Prehistory to the Present, Oneworld Publications, ISBN 1-85168-336-4
• Gail, Marzieh; Khan, Ali-Kuli (31 December 1987). Summon up remembrance. G. Ronald. ISBN 978-0-85398-259-3.
• Gallagher, Eugene V.; Ashcraft, W. Michael (2006), New and Alternative Religions in America, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-275-98712-4
• Kazemzadeh, Firuz (2009), "'Abdu'l-Bahá 'Abbás (1844–1921)", Bahá’í Encyclopedia Project, Evanston, IL: National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.
• McGlinn, Sen (22 April 2011). "Abdu'l-Baha's British knighthood". Sen McGlinn's Blog.
• Momen, M. (editor) (1981), The Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 1844–1944 – Some Contemporary Western Accounts, Oxford, UK: George Ronald, ISBN 0-85398-102-7
• Momen, Moojan (2003). "The Covenant and Covenant-Breaker". bahai-library.com. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
• Phelps, Myron Henry (1912), Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, New York: Putnam, ISBN 978-1-890688-15-8
• Poostchi, Iraj (1 April 2010). "Adasiyyah: A Study in Agriculture and Rural Development". Baha'i Studies Review. 16 (1): 61–105.
• Van den Hoonaard, Willy Carl (1996), The origins of the Bahá'í community of Canada, 1898–1948, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, ISBN 0-88920-272-9
• Smith, Peter (2000), A concise encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, ISBN 1-85168-184-1
• Hogenson, Kathryn J. (2010), Lighting the Western Sky: The Hearst Pilgrimage & Establishment of the Baha'i Faith in the West, George Ronald, ISBN 978-0-85398-543-3
• Ma'ani, Baharieh Rouhani (2008), Leaves of the Twin Divine Trees, Oxford, UK: George Ronald, ISBN 0-85398-533-2
• Smith, Peter (2000). A concise encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. pp. 169–170. ISBN 1-85168-184-1.
• Taherzadeh, Adib (2000). The Child of the Covenant. Oxford, UK: George Ronald. ISBN 0-85398-439-5.

Further reading

• Smith, Peter (2008), An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-86251-6
• Zarqáni, Mírzá Mahmúd-i- (1998) [1913], Mahmúd's Diary: Chronicling `Abdu'l-Bahá's Journey to America, Oxford, UK: George Ronald, ISBN 0-85398-418-2

External links

• Works by `Abdu'l-Bahá at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about `Abdu'l-Bahá at Internet Archive
• Works by `Abdu'l-Bahá at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá
• Tablets of `Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas
• Abbas Effendi-`Abdu'l-Bahá

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:12 am
by admin
Papers of Lois Lang-Sims
Archive Collection
by archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk
Accessed: 4/11/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


For more information, email the repository
Advice on accessing these materials cite this description Bookmark:https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb106-7lls

This material is held at Women's Library Archives
Reference: GB 106 7LLS
Former Reference: GB 106 7/YY14; 7/YYY14
Dates of Creation: 1985
Language of Material: English
Physical Description: 0.5 A box (1 folder)

Scope and Content:

The archive consists of a photocopy of a typescript memoir (28 pages). In 1985 Lois Lang-Sims wrote this memoir about her aunt, Agnes Maude Royden (see also 7AMR) the suffragist and campaigner for the ordination of women.

Administrative / Biographical History:

Lois Lang-Sims (fl. 1936-1995) was a distant relation of Agnes Maude Royden and a member of her congregation at the Guildhall in 1936. Through this, the two became friends until the latter's death. Lang-Sims had a strong interest in spiritual matters, which was exhibited in a number of books which she published over a series of decades from 'One Thing Only: A Christian Guide to the Universal Quest for God', to 'The presence of Tibet' in 1963 and 'Canterbury Cathedral' in 1979. She also had a brief friendship with the writer Charles Williams whose letters to her were published as 'Letters to Lalage' in 1989.

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is available for research. Readers are advised to contact The Women's Library in advance of their first visit.

Acquisition Information

The copy of Lois Lang-Sims's memoir of Agnes Maude Royden was given to the Women's Library by her in 1995.

Other Finding Aids

Fonds Description (1 folder only)

Related Material

The papers of Agnes Maude Royden are also held by the Women's Library (ref. 7AMR).

Subjects

Biographies
Womens participation
Protestantism

Personal Names

Sims Lois Lang- fl 1936 writer
Royden Agnes Maude 1876-1956 suffragist and preacher

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:14 am
by admin
Lois Lang-Sims (1917-2014)
by Grevel Lindop
The Charles Williams Society
March 12, 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The small Delhi flat was now crammed to overflowing. Lois Lang-Sims, in The Presence of Tibet, summed up the flavor of the warm, eccentric, and chaotic Bedi household when she went to stay there while gathering information on the Tibetan refugee situation for the Tibet Society in London:

A tall, fair-haired Englishwoman with a face that was both soft and strong, looking remarkably Anglo Saxon despite the rumpled sari which she wore as if she had never known any other kind of dress, stood i n the doorway of the ground floor flat to which I had found my way. She was smiling warmly in welcome. There seemed to be a great many people in the room in which I found myself, (including young monks, another fair-skinned woman in a sari and Freda Bedi's husband). They were all seated around a low table on the floor with the exception of an elderly Tibetan monk who was sitting apart from the rest on a raised seat.

The time was half past ten in the evening, but I could see the working day had only just finished. I began to look around the room which had a dingy beauty of its own .... There were no chairs, only cushions and mats, and the hard bed-seat covered by a Tibetan rug. In one corner of the room was a Tibetan shrine glowing with lighted butter lamps. As my eyes turned to the level of the ground, I saw a large brown rat sidling along the wall on soft feet.

At last I was shown the place where I was to sleep and the tap under which I was expected to wash. After a week in an Indian household I was still defeated by the sight of a cold tap splashing water onto a stone floor, a mug by which I realised I was expected to douche myself, nowhere to lay my clothes and no inch of floor space that was either dry or clean beneath my bare feet. The bed was of wood with no mattress; but at this I had become accustomed so that I even liked it. As a concession to my foreign habits I had been given a pair of sheets. I was sharing a room with an American woman while the other members of Freda's huge household disposed themselves to sleep either on the hard bed-seats or on the floor all over the rest of the flat. I was kept awake for most of the night by lights, snores, spiritual exercises, and campaigns against the bed bugs by the American.

The room in which I slept was used for meditation classes throughout the day and for part of the night so I could not enter it even to fetch a handkerchief. In Freda I had an example of an Englishwoman who had successfully Indianized herself, but I could not get behind the barrier of her total self-dedication, her all-pervading sense of social responsibility, her blind indifference to her comfort and convenience.

Scores of refugees came straggling down from the camps and appearing on Freda's doorstep, without money, food or decent clothes, and frequently in an advanced stage of sickness. Freda, being less concerned with categories than with individuals, never turned away a single Tibetan who came to her for help.


-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie


Lois Lang-Sims, whom we know as a corespondent of Williams, and co-author of ‘Letters to Lalage‘, died recently. Below is a remembrance by Society member Grevel Lindop.

LOIS LANG-SIMS (1917-2014)

Lois Lang-Sims, who died on March 11 at the age of 97, was perhaps the last of Charles Williams’s ‘disciples’ – those who, for a time, took him as their spiritual teacher. She will be known to members of the Society as the co-author of Letters to Lalage, in which she added her own commentary and reminiscences to Williams’s letters to her, written in 1943 and 1944.

Charles Williams grew up in the time that spawned these orders, and spent a period of his life involved with one branch of what he personally termed the 'Golden Dawn,' but was technically an offshoot of that order called 'The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross' founded by A.E. Waite.

The Golden Dawn, originally initiated by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and others, attracted prominent members, including Waite, W.B. Yeats, Evelyn Underhill, and Aleister Crowley. Yet members differed on the focus of the order. When Yeats published a tract entitled 'Is the (Golden Dawn) to Remain a Magical Order?' Waite aligned himself with those whose answer was that it should not, and assumed power when Yeats and his supporters were outvoted. He later founded a subsect, the Salvator Mundi Temple of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross on July 9, 1915, patterning the order on the Rosicrucian manifesto of 1614. Charles Williams joined this order on September 21, 1917.

-- Biography of Charles Williams, by Mitch Harding


Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886-1945) is the unjustly neglected third member of the Inklings, after C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien...

According to C.S. Lewis, everyone who met Williams fell in love with him—including many young women who became his disciples and with whom he practiced semi-sexual, semi-magical rituals of transference to heighten his creativity....

He was a member of A.E. Waite’s occult secret society, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, for ten formative years. He rose high in the ranks, leading initiates in practicing alchemy, astrology, Cabalism, conjuration, divination with tarot cards, and meditation on the Sephirotic Tree...

He was fascinated by the mystical body of Christ: he believed that sex is an act of co-inherence and that every romance corresponds to Jesus’ earthly life. In his Arthurian poetry, he carried the simple doctrine of Christian unity into a multi-layered symbolism infused with occult significance....

He may have had more common theological ground with the Anthroposophist Owen Barfield, the fourth important writer in the group.


-- An Introduction to Charles Williams, by Sørina Higgins


But Lois Lang-Sims was more than simply a follower of Charles Williams. She was a writer and spiritual seeker of considerable stature. Another of her teachers was the Buddhist scholar Marco Pallis with whom, as with Williams, she eventually broke – for Lois was nothing if not independent-minded. One of the first English people to become aware of the sad plight of the Tibetan refugees who fled to Nepal and northern India after the Chinese invasion of 1959, she helped to found the Tibet Society, the first charity dedicated to helping them, becoming a friend of the Dalai Lama and other senior Tibetan lamas.

Her Tibetan adventures are depicted in a beautifully-written volume of autobiography, Flower in a Teacup
. This, and an account of her earlier life in A Time to be Born, form one of the finest British autobiographies of the twentieth century and richly deserve to be reprinted. Having worked as a guide for visitors to Canterbury Cathedral, she was also the author of Canterbury Cathedral: Mother Church of Holy Trinity, a discursive account of the Cathedral, its history and its significance, as well as of One Thing Only: A Christian Guide to the Universal Quest for God and The Christian Mystery: An Exposition of Esoteric Christianity.

I met her in 2001, when I went to record her memories of Charles Williams. She lived in a care home in Hove, where, as a devout mystical Christian, she spent much of her time in prayer and contemplation. She was surrounded by her books, and by the photographs of people from her childhood who had become, for her, archetypal figures of deep spiritual significance: her mother and father, her beloved nurse ‘Old Nan’, and an adored elder brother who had died during her infancy.

She was still beautiful; and her mind was clear and incisive, as it remained to the end. We stayed in touch, and she eagerly read every draft chapter of my biography of Charles Williams, responding with helpful comments and fascinating discussion. She continued to write essays, and to read widely. Biography was her favourite genre: she was something of an expert on Gandhi’s life, and in the last few months was carefully reading Ian Kershaw’s recent life of Hitler, developing her own theories about the psychological forces which had led Gandhi to good and Hitler to terrible evil.

Towards the end she grew too weak to write, so we talked on the telephone. (I like to think that she was able to read the chapter in which I described Charles Williams’s death, which I sent her on 13 February.) Asked about her health in those last months, she would exclaim ‘Oh, I’m crumbling away! But don’t worry, my dear, I’m looking forward to death. I really can’t wait!’

Hypersensitive, opinionated and argumentative at times, she nonetheless radiated love and intelligence. I found her a delight and an inspiration. And she has probably left much literary work greatly deserving of publication. I hope that a late essay of hers, ‘The Simplicity of Faith’, will be published in Temenos Academy Review in 2015.

**********************************

Lois Lang-Sims: Spiritual seeker, writer and founding member of the Tibet Society
by Emma Martin
liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

Lois Lang-Sims was a mystic (who studied Buddhism with Marco Pallis) and a writer. She witnessed the distress of Tibetans arriving in Nepal and northern India as they fled from Tibet in 1959. As a result she helped to found the Tibet Society, a UK society that continues to support the call for an independent Tibet. Her autobiography, Flower in a Teacup recounts her time with Tibetan communities.

She gave, what curator Elaine Tankard called, a series of 'political paintings' to the Tibet Society sometime around 1964. She hoped they would raise funds for the Tibet Society. It is noted in the museum's archives that they were given to her when she was in India in 1962. Elaine Tankard bought the series for Liverpool Museum for £2.0.0. in 1964.

**********************************

Lois Lang-Sims
by Stratford Caldecot
Sunday, 22 June 2014

Recently a friend of mine, the writer and mystic Lois Lang-Sims, who could be called the last of the Inklings, died in a nursing home on 11 March aged 97, surrounded by patients suffering from dementia. According to Grevel Lindop, the biographer of Charles Williams, asked about her health in those last months, she would exclaim "Oh, I’m crumbling away! But don’t worry, my dear, I’m looking forward to death. I really can’t wait!"

She was a friend and for a time the disciple of Williams, and the co-author of Letters to Lalage, in which she added her own commentary and reminiscences to Williams’s letters to her. For a time she was also a friend of Marco Pallis and helped to found the Tibet Society. She wrote her own mystical/ metaphysical books after breaking with Williams, including One Thing Only and The Christian Mystery, and a detailed study of Canterbury Cathedral, but many will agree that her most impressive writings were autobiographical -- including several volumes about her childhood.

As a long-time friend, I corresponded with her for years right up to her death, as far as she was able. My memories of her correspond to what Grevel Lindop says. She was looking forward to death -- to her meeting with the Lord. Towards the end, through reading booklets from the Catholic Truth Society, including a biography of her beloved Pius XII, catechisms, and other books, and pastoral visits from the chaplain, she could be said to have reconverted to Catholicism. This was what she told me.

She had no interest in anything else, or in the republication of her books, although as Grevel writes Flower in a Teacup and A Time to be Born, "form one of the finest British autobiographies of the twentieth century and richly deserve to be reprinted", along with a third volume and other essays not yet published. She was sweet and intelligent to the end, and full of faith. The was no ego left. All who knew her will miss her.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:44 am
by admin
An Introduction to Charles Williams
by Sørina Higgins
Posted on 5 June 2013

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Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886-1945) is the unjustly neglected third member of the Inklings, after C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He was a British poet, novelist, literary critic, editor, lecturer, biographer, Anglican Christian, and occult master. This strange mix makes him The Oddest Inkling, and this blog exists to discuss CW’s life, works, ideas, oddities, and excellencies.

There is no other literature quite like that by Charles Williams: his writings are startling, convoluted, beautiful, unpredictable, and obscure. Their obscurity is partly due to his love of esoteric allusions, partly to his creation of a layered mythology, and partly to his sinewy syntax. Thomas Howard calls his sentence structure “agile”; I call it “labyrinthine.” Every sentence is thrilling, dangerous, sinuous, and demanding.

By all accounts, Williams himself was like his writing: charismatic, saintly, loquacious, and inspiring—but complex and confusing. He was a passionate teacher, explicating texts clearly with enthusiasm and reciting massive passages of poetry from memory. According to C.S. Lewis, everyone who met Williams fell in love with him—including many young women who became his disciples and with whom he practiced semi-sexual, semi-magical rituals of transference to heighten his creativity. Yet he also motivated many people to practice their Christianity more seriously and founded the Companions of the Co-inherence in order to carry one another’s burdens.

The strange combination of Christian and Magician in Williams’ personal life is hard to reconcile. He was a member of A.E. Waite’s occult secret society, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, for ten formative years. He rose high in the ranks, leading initiates in practicing alchemy, astrology, Cabalism, conjuration, divination with tarot cards, and meditation on the Sephirotic Tree. Yet he remained a committed Anglican all his life, writing works of lay theology. For the last six years of his life, he was a member of the Inklings, whose qualifications, according to C.S. Lewis, were “a tendency to write, and Christianity” (CSL letter to CW 11 March 1936).

This unusual combination of Christianity and the occult finds expression in a bizarre, exciting mix of the everyday and the supernatural in his writing. He pushes his fantasies further than either of the other famous Inklings by setting his metaphysical stories in ordinary, 20th-century England rather than in Narnia, Perelandra, or Middle-Earth. This makes his spiritual thriller plots feel more uncanny because they are closer to home.

His signature doctrine, co-inherence, is also an odd blend of the natural and the supernatural. Co-inherence is the idea that Christ’s risen life inhabits believers so that they share the divine interrelationship of the Trinity and live as members of one another. This is based in the Trinitarian theology of perichoresis, the mutual indwelling and love of the three members of the Godhead, from which all human love and co-operation are made possible. Williams’ own order, the Companions of the Co-inherence, voluntarily carried spiritual, emotional, or medical burdens for each other and anyone else—living, dead, or unborn—by Substitution or Exchange. He was fascinated by the mystical body of Christ: he believed that sex is an act of co-inherence and that every romance corresponds to Jesus’ earthly life. In his Arthurian poetry, he carried the simple doctrine of Christian unity into a multi-layered symbolism infused with occult significance.

Furthermore, Williams held a kind of skepticism about his own faith that also made him the odd man out in the Inklings, compared to the staunch “Mere Christian” Lewis and the solid Roman Catholic Tolkien. He may have had more common theological ground with the Anthroposophist Owen Barfield, the fourth important writer in the group.

Barfield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in 1924.[13] He studied the work and philosophy of Rudolf Steiner throughout his life and translated some of his works, and had some early essays published in anthroposophical publications. This part of Barfield's literary work includes the book The Case for Anthroposophy containing his Introduction to selected extracts from Steiner's Riddles of the Soul.[14] A study of Steiner's basic texts provides information on some of the ideas that influenced Barfield's work,[15] but Barfield's work ought not be considered derivative of Steiner's. Barfield expert G. B. Tennyson suggests the relation: "Barfield is to Steiner as Steiner was to Goethe".[16] But though Barfield's writing was profoundly original and not derivative, he would not have agreed with Tennyson's characterization. Barfield considered Steiner a much greater man and mind than Goethe. From that point of view, Tennyson's analogy implies that Barfield was much greater than Steiner. But Barfield considered himself very small beside Steiner, or Goethe. (Tennyson may have meant the analogy to suggest influence, rather than relative stature.)

-- Owen Barfield, by Wikipedia


But Williams’ brand of mysticism made for some hot debates among the group: a minor Inkling, Charles Wrenn, at one Inklings meeting “almost seriously expressed a strong wish to burn Williams, or at least maintained that conversation with Williams enabled him to understand how inquisitors had felt it right to burn people…. Williams is eminently combustible” (letter of C.S. Lewis to his brother, 5 Nov. 1939). If even his best friends occasionally wanted to burn him at the stake, it is no stretch to say that his ideas were the oddest among them.

All these factors, then, make Williams “The Oddest Inkling.”

And they make his works absolutely riveting: even before you read any further in this blog, you should start reading his writings! You can start with his most popular works: the seven “metaphysical thrillers”: War in Heaven, Many Dimensions, The Place of the Lion, The Greater Trumps, Shadows of Ecstasy, Descent into Hell, and All Hallow’s Eve. They are available online. In each novel, sacramental objects or occult adepts unleash spiritual forces that threaten destruction. Preservation is achieved by the imperial mastery of a person surrendered to divine will. Williams’ progressive narrative technique resembles stream-of-consciousness, and anticipates (but far surpasses) contemporary Christian thrillers. Then, if you are an intrepid reader, you can move on to the Arthurian poetry, then the theology or literary criticism, as your taste guides you.

In my opinion, his two greatest contributions are his Arthurian poetry—of which much, much more as we proceed in this blog—and his interpretation of Dante in The Figure of Beatrice, which brought Dante to many people for the first time and inspired Dorothy Sayers to learn Italian and translate Dante afresh. A recent resurgence of interest in Williams has led to imitative fiction, analysis of his life and work, and a wider readership. His virtuosic poetry and brilliant insights should earn him a place among the greatest literary masterpieces of the early 20th century.

It is high time to dig more deeply into the works of Charles Williams, The Oddest Inkling. Please tune in each Wednesday (and sometimes more often) for a discussion of each of the points mentioned in this post, and many more.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:55 am
by admin
Biography of Charles Williams
by Mitch Harding, mitcharf.com
Accessed: 4/11/19

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Unlike any other writer in the 20th century, Charles Williams (1886-1945) had an uncanny grasp of the sublime and the spiritual, and an unusually sharp insight into the mystical realm. Williams grew up in a particularly questioning age, an age which shook the foundations of the Christian Church. It saw the invention of the automobile and the telephone, and it hurtled toward an increasingly rationalistic and scientific approach to learning. As almost a backlash against such dry science, interest in the occult and the spiritual flourished, fueled, perhaps, by the very body of knowledge it sought to offset. Attraction to things of a mystical nature became widespread and commonplace- the public was hungry for something to fill the void left by rationalism, something other than orthodoxy. Various groups sprang up to fill the need. Thus the Theosophical Society, the Rosicrucian Order (Rose Cross), and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were formed. The works of Charles Williams can only be properly understood in the context of his association with these groups.

These orders differed in some respects, but they shared certain characteristics. All were secretive and based around a prescribed ritual. Some who participated in them held an actual belief in magic. Some solemnly practiced certain sublime rituals in order to obtain enlightenment or spiritual awareness. Such orders drew their philosophies from many sources, from the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, and the Eastern traditions, as well as from gnostic Christian traditions. Certain orders were what some would term 'occult' with no ties to Christianity; others considered themselves to be Christian but held to gnosticism or 'secret teachings' outside of Canonical and Apocryphal scripture. Some orders of this second variety claimed to have ancient roots, as did the Rosicrucian Order, which was supposedly instituted by Christian Rosenkreuz in the 1600's and which initially had ties with Freemasonry, though later broke from it. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was also associated with Rosicrucianism. Forms of Rosicrucianism still exist.

Charles Williams grew up in the time that spawned these orders, and spent a period of his life involved with one branch of what he personally termed the 'Golden Dawn,' but was technically an offshoot of that order called 'The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross' founded by A.E. Waite.

The Golden Dawn, originally initiated by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and others, attracted prominent members, including Waite, W.B. Yeats, Evelyn Underhill, and Aleister Crowley. Yet members differed on the focus of the order. When Yeats published a tract entitled 'Is the (Golden Dawn) to Remain a Magical Order?' Waite aligned himself with those whose answer was that it should not, and assumed power when Yeats and his supporters were outvoted. He later founded a subsect, the Salvator Mundi Temple of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross on July 9, 1915, patterning the order on the Rosicrucian manifesto of 1614.


Charles Williams joined this order on September 21, 1917. Accounts of Charles Williams by those who knew him indicate that he was deeply intellectual, but did not possess the financial means to pursue University education. Yet he was steeped in intellectual works by his father, who owned and ran an artists supply shop and who was moderately successful as a writer of various plays and short stories. Speculatively, Williams may have been attracted to the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross because it was one of the few avenues of study available to him, and it appealed to his interests at the time.

Waite, who was also a Master Mason, wrote on a subject which fascinated Williams -- the Holy Grail.Whether or not the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross was actually gnostic, esoteric, or simply secretive is a matter open to interpretation. However, it's probably reasonable to say that Williams' experience with A.E. Waite focused him in a unique direction. In Williams' novels, the concept of magic is portrayed as a potent force; he was likely not unaware of the existence of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the order originally founded by Mathers and continued by Yeats and Crowley, the latter who came to refer to himself as the 'The Beast,' and who became known as a 'Satanist.'

Williams attended the FRC and held office in its ranks. Yet he eventually stopped attending. His last recorded attendance was on June 29, 1927. No one knows exactly why. Speculation on his reason for leaving ranges from the simple fact that he had too many other commitments, to that he quietly rejected the FRC and its structure, and voted with his feet to discontinue his association with it. He did, however, keep in contact with A.E. Waite at least minimally after that date.

An Englishman, Williams was strongly influenced by the Church of England, and belonged to the Anglican Communion. He was a member of St. Silas' church, where he attended with his wife and child. The Anglican influence combined with his long-standing interest in holy artifacts and perhaps his involvement in the FRC brought forth his major works. That Williams was paramountly a Christian is evident in the scope of his writing, which is either directly related to the Church or has strong threads of Christianity interwoven throughout. Though his writings might be referred to as visionary, Williams saw himself as too cynical and pragmatic to label himself a mystic. He considered himself primarily a poet. He is, however, best known for his seven spiritual thriller novels, and for his detailed non-fiction works on the history of the Church.

They are unique works. His fiction reflects many of his spiritual beliefs. In Williams' skillful hands, the Holy Grail (Graal) becomes easily imaginable as a real entity in a small English parish. A pack of ancient Tarot cards unleashes vast destruction. Plato's and Dante's ideas become fresh and actual portrayed against a contemporary backdrop. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, and nothing is only as it seems. Good and evil battle within frameworks of multi-layered meaning, and no facile solutions are offered. Always thought-provoking, his works should increase in popularity as current events impel people to explore some of the same questions he posits.

Williams believed in and practiced several interesting tenets. He presented concepts like the Web of Exchange, or the inextricable interconnectedness of all persons in Creation and its attendent responsibilty. He also put forth a belief in the literal bearing of one another's burdens, that one could actually take on another's anxiety, sickness, or trial, drawn from the Biblical passage "Ye shall bear one another's burdens." This he called the Doctrine of Substituted Love. One novel, Descent Into Hell explores the abstraction of prayer working backward and forward through time. He had several other unusual ideas, which can be found detailed in his non-fiction, but also within his fictional works where they are clearly explained.

Williams the man was very ordinary in many respects. His father had been a man who loved the written word, and he passed his love of reading and writing to his son. After leaving school because of financial constraints, Williams served a brief stint in a Methodist bookshop, then became a proofreader and later an editor at Oxford University Press, where he worked until his death. He had one son.

Williams had a following of young women who attended his lectures, but was said by C.S. Lewis, his friend and contemporary, to have been decorous with them. However, he is said to have had an affair of the heart' with at least one young woman, Phyllis Jones, a young co-worker whom he renamed 'Celia.' He also had a peculiar relationship with Lois Lang-Sims, a young protege he rechristened 'Lalage,' a reference to the Welsh Bard Taliessin and his young female pupil Dindrane. Although many people enjoyed lively friendships with Williams and spoke highly of him, a series of letters exchanged between Ms. Lang-Sims and Charles Williams reveal that he may have possessed a tendency toward sadism. Lang-Sims alleges that he struck her with a ruler, but Lang-Sims's account of events is flawed in other areas, leaving room for doubt. Alice Mary Hadfield, Williams' friend and biographer, also refers to an incident when Williams passed a ceremonial sword over the buttocks of a woman, and also traced ritualistic circular designs on the forearm of a woman, but her accounts give no name of the individual or individuals involved, and lack detail and clarity. We can infer from the written accounts left to us that Williams was not a paragon, but all too human, a man who had significant flaws. However, despite his personal failings, his writing continues to have important things to say to the Christian communion.

In photographs, he seems slight of build with long, slender hands and an inwardly introspective appearance. Yet he was said to have had a lively sense of humor, was quick of speech, and smoked often. Hadfield indicates that Williams had considerable physical problems in 1933, and underwent surgery. Complications from this surgery were, years later, to be the cause of his death.

Around 1938 in an odd coincidence, Williams exchanged a correspondence with C.S. Lewis about a work Lewis had submitted to the press. Lewis had just read one of Williams's novels, and had also written. Their letters crossed in the mail. The result was a profound friendship which lasted until Williams' death, a friendship which opened Williams to the Inklings, an informal group of writers which included Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and others. C.S. Lewis was said to have been influenced' by Williams.

Charles Williams' works went out of publication partially due to economic conditions caused by World War II. Yet his works are sharp, fresh and original, and pertinent to our age. Many have since come back into print. Williams continues to stir controversy among Christians and Occultists alike, as interpretation of his motives and writings differ among individuals who enjoy his books. Some say that Williams was an orthodox Christian, based on his published body of works. Others claim he is an occultist based on interpretations of references in his personal correspondences and his association with the FRC, both of which could be construed to allude to esoteric practices. Williams, who in his published works referred to Gnosticism, Catharism, and Albigensianism as "spreading heresies of death," would most likely have enjoyed the discourse. He was a man who strove within the boundaries of language to impart unusual perspectives, to breathe life into old, stalwart ideologies, and to encourage critical thinking.

Williams' references to Christ as 'Messias' among other things, were to jolt the mind into a new way of thinking about faith. His oft-quoted parting words to his circle of friends 'Under the Mercy' and 'Under the Protection' have an unusual quality of affection and formality to them.

Williams' works are as interesting and insightful now as they were when they were written. They are truly and delightfully unpredictable, and a welcome addition to mystical literature.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 9:04 pm
by admin
Didi Contractor: A Self-Taught Architect Who Builds In Mud, Bamboo & Stone
by India Architecture News
May 11, 2018 - 02:23

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It is not known whether Freda actively wanted children. She was born before the contraceptive pill -- the great liberator -- was invented, and became pregnant very quickly after her wedding in a day when marriage automatically meant motherhood. From childhood she had been driven by her strong spiritual and social ideals. She loved BPL, but married him as much for his political fervor for Indian independence as for her passion for him. She certainly had never been attracted to domesticity.

During my travels I met one of Freda's friends, an American woman named Didi Contractor [Delia Kinzinger], who met Freda in Bombay in 1969. A film-set designer of mud brick houses, and later a leading ecologist, Didi threw an interesting light on many aspects of Freda's personality.

"Because she valued the big picture, I am not sure how strongly she viewed motherhood," said Didi, speaking in one of her own mud huts situated in a small village near Dharamsala. "I think Guli was rather shortchanged. I remember one occasion when she kept trying to tell her mother that she was engaged, but Freda was more interested in talking about Muktananda (my guru) and religion with me. She kept saying, 'Not now, Guli.'

"Freda was unique, a big woman in every sense of the word, imposing and very, very warm. Her voice was strong, confident, and sometimes very dramatic, especially when she was saying prayers! And she could be endearingly pompous and rather sweeping, almost ludicrously so. Because she was so big, it was easy for her to be a big target for negativities. You could see her in either of two ways -- comic absorption in her role or total commitment. I loved her, but I wasn't blind to her foibles, as you aren't when you truly love someone," she continued.

"Everything was black-and-white with her -- there were no shades of gray. That was exactly what was needed to accomplish what she did. She had a sense of humor but never about herself, and no sense of irony. Mummy always knew best. She would listen to you but not alter her opinion one jot. Whatever she believed in, she did it completely and instantly. She was immensely powerful because she believed in herself. At the same time she was extraordinarily naive -- naive in the way every creative person is. You have to be naive to complexities in order to embrace things as completely as she did."

-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie


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Profession of architecture does not necessarily need any formal education or degree. This may seem strange to many present-day architects but it is a reality. There are many architects in the world who are/were self-taught and did not have any formal education in architecture. Prominent among these are Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Buchminister Fuller, Luis Barragan, and Tadao Ando. These are the names of just a few stalwarts who dominated the profession of architecture but there are many more who are comparatively lesser known or even not known.

One such name is Didi Contractor who is down-to-earth, self-taught architect based in Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, India. Unlike the millions of formally trained architects, Didi Contractor has specialised in mud, bamboo and stone architecture. Now in her late eighties, she has been actively involved in the so called 'sustainable architecture' in its true sense for the last about three decades.

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Photos courtesy of filmfreeway.com

Didi Contractor whose real name is Delia Kinzinger, was born in 1929 in USA. Her father, Edmund Kinzinger was a German national and mother, Alice Fish Kinzinger was an American. Both of them were renowned painters belonging to the Bauhaus group in early 1920s. Delia Kinzinger had grown-up in Texas, USA, and spent some time in Europe also.

At the age of 11, she started to listen to Frank Lloyd Wright and saw an exhibition of his works along with her parents. This made a lasting impression on her mind and developed her inclination for the profession of architecture. But her parents never encouraged her to pursue architecture and resultantly she completed her graduation in art at the University of Colorado.

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Photo courtesy of filmfreeway.com

During her university days in 1951, she fell in love with Ramji Narayan, an Indian-Gujarati student of civil engineering. They got married, returned to India, and raised a family with three children. In the early years of their marriage, the couple stayed at Nashik in a joint family for a decade and thereafter shifted to Mumbai in 1960s and lived in a house on the famous Zuhu beach. But soon the circumstances changed and she had to part ways with her husband and decided to settle in a small village Sidhbari near Dharamshala.

Sidhbari is situated in the foothills of Dhauladhar mountains in Kangra district of the state of Himachal Pradesh. Since then she made Sidhbari her home and concentrated on pursuing her first love - architecture. With her artistic background she swiftly switched to architecture and interior design. For her, there was only a change of medium to clay, bamboo, slate and river stone. Once she learnt the properties of these materials, and the art of handling them, there was no going back.

During the last about three decades, she has designed and built more than 15 houses in and around Dharamshala and some institutions like Nishtha Rural Health, Education and Environment Centre at Dharamshala, Dharmalaya Centre for Compassionate Living at Bir, and Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics at Kandwari.

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Photo courtesy of Joginder Singh

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Photo courtesy of dharmalaya.in

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Photo courtesy of Joginder Singh

A deep perusal of Didi's architecture reveals that her buildings seem to grow from earth and are in perfect harmony with nature. This is quite contrary to the present day modern buildings which look to be in conflict with nature. A perfect yang-and-yin relationship between her buildings and landscape around is thus an important salient feature of her architecture.

Didi herself explains, "I am very interested in using landscape as a visual and emotional bridge between the built and the natural. Look at the old buildings, they are beautiful in the landscape, and the new ones are at war with it ­­- they say something. So, we are in conflict with nature, and nature will be in conflict with us. I imagine a building as growing, like a plant, within a landscape. Landscaping is really a key to this thing of marrying the earth to the building.”

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Photo courtesy of Joginder Singh

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Photo courtesy of Sangha Seva

Another significant aspect of Didi's architecture is the creative use of local materials such as mud, bamboo, river stone and slate. Over the years she has perfected the art of handling these materials in such a way that they create a feeling of belonging, cheerfulness and humbleness.

Didi elaborate this aspect as, "I would like to emphasize playfulness, imagination, and celebration. By celebrating materials, by noticing their qualities, and celebrating them as you put them into building, celebrating the quality or the plasticity of the mud, celebrating the inherent, innate and unavoidable qualities of each material. What the slate does to light, how the materials play within nature. I try to create something that is as quiet as possible. What works, should just look natural, as if meant to be."

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Photo courtesy of wonderlustmum.wordpress.com

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Photo courtesy of Sangha Seva

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Photo courtesy of wonderlustmum.wordpress.com

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Photo courtesy of Joginder Singh

With an aim to create an eco-friendly architecture, Didi has invented a unique approach of following the 'rhythm of universe' or the 'cycles of nature'. She always tried to synchronise the process of construction with the cycles of nature so that the end product is in harmony with environs. Explaining this approach she says, "One of the many things that’s wrong today is that people are not ready to accommodate their lives to the rhythm of the universe. We don’t see the wisdom of nature. Technology should also be consistent with a humanistic agenda of making people comfortable with themselves, with one another and nature. Eco-sensitive structures need to be built as per the season, whereas cement structures can be built quickly and at any time of the year. One of the problems with contemporary life is losing our contact with the cycles of nature. When I take something out of natural cycle, I think how it affects that cycle, and whether it can be replaced, or reused ... earth from an adobe building can be reused in a vegetable garden."

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Photo courtesy of wonderlustmum.wordpress.com

As a matter of choice, Didi is very fascinated by yet another important element of architectural design - the 'staircase'. In all her buildings one finds a very creative use of this element vis-à-vis its location, direction, and design. She says, "In stairs the architect is in control. I enjoy planning the experience of what you will pass, what you will have on both sides, and of what you are coming down or heading up towards. The staircase is often the key to organising the space in each design. In the staircases, I feel I am guiding the emotional entry of a person.”

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Photo courtesy of Joginder Singh

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Photo courtesy of Joginder Singh

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Photo courtesy of windowstovernacular.com

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Photo courtesy of Steffi Giaracuni

Being an artist originally, Didi has matured the art of handling natural light in the interiors very imaginatively and artistically. An overview her buildings reveals the emphasis she gives to this vital element of design. For her, the light is the soul of architecture. It highlights the plastic forms, shapes, geometric lines, colours and textures of materials.

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Photo courtesy of Steffi Giaracuni

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Photo courtesy of filmfreeway.com

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Photo courtesy of filmfreeway.com

Didi's life and works will always remain a source of inspiration to the present and future generations of architects, artists, environmentalists, and other professionals associated with building construction. Long live the legend.

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Photo courtesy of mithakamath.blogspot.in

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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:46 am
by admin
Maurice Strong
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/11/19

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Image
The Honourable
Maurice Frederick Strong
PC, CC, OM, FRSC, FRAIC
Maurice Frederick Strong
Maurice Strong having received the Four Freedoms Award for Freedom from Want in 2010
Personal details
Born April 29, 1929
Oak Lake, Manitoba, Canada
Died November 27, 2015 (aged 86)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Nationality Canadian
Spouse(s) Pauline Olivette (m. 1950, div. 1980)
Hanne Marstrand (m. 1981, sep. 1989)[1][2]
Parents Frederick Milton Strong, Mary Fyfe
Residence Crestone, Colorado, U.S. (1972-1989)
Lost Lake, Ontario[2]
London, United Kingdom
Beijing, China
Occupation Businessman, public administrator, UN official[3]

Maurice Frederick Strong, PC, CC, OM, FRSC, FRAIC (April 29, 1929 – November 27, 2015) was a Canadian oil and mineral businessman and a diplomat who served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.[4][5]

Strong had his start as an entrepreneur in the Alberta oil patch and was President of Power Corporation of Canada until 1966. In the early 1970s he was Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and then became the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He returned to Canada to become Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1978. He headed Ontario Hydro, one of North America's largest power utilities, was national president and chairman of the Extension Committee of the World Alliance of YMCAs, and headed American Water Development Incorporated. He served as a commissioner of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1986[6] and was recognised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a leader in the international environmental movement.[7]

He was President of the Council of the University for Peace from 1998 to 2006. More recently Strong was an active honorary professor at Peking University and honorary chairman of its Environmental Foundation. He was chairman of the advisory board for the Institute for Research on Security and Sustainability for Northeast Asia.
[8] He died at the age of 86 in 2015.[9]

Childhood and youth

Maurice Strong was a child during the Great Depression, enduring serious poverty. His father was laid off at the beginning of the Depression era and thereafter supported his family on odd jobs; his mother succumbed to mental illness and died in a mental hospital. He was born in Oak Lake, Manitoba, a town on the Canadian prairies on the mainline of the Canadian Pacific Railway.[10] He is a distant cousin of Anna Louise Strong.[11][12]

Strong later said that growing up during the Depression radicalized him and that he considered himself to be "a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology." He dropped out of high school at the age of 14 and did not go to college. Despite the lack of formal education, he was able to become CEO of many companies.[13]

Business

In 1948, when he was nineteen, Strong was hired as a trainee by a brokerage firm, James Richardson & Sons, Limited of Winnipeg where he took an interest in the oil business, being transferred as an oil specialist to Richardson's office in Calgary, Alberta. There he made the acquaintance of one of the figures in the oil industry, Jack Gallagher, who hired him as his assistant. At Gallagher's Dome Petroleum, Strong occupied several roles including vice president of finance, leaving the firm in 1956 and setting up his own firm, M.F. Strong Management, assisting investors in locating opportunities in the Alberta oil patch.[14]

In the 1950s, he took over a small natural gas company, Ajax Petroleum, and built it into one of the companies in the industry, Norcen Resources. This attracted the attention of one of Canada's principal investment corporations with interests in the energy and utility businesses, Power Corporation of Canada. It appointed him initially as its executive vice president and then president from 1961 until 1966.

In 1976, at the request of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Strong returned to Canada to head the newly created national oil company, Petro-Canada.[15]


He was slated to stand as a candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada in Scarborough Centre in the 1979 federal election, but chose to abandon the race, returning to private enterprise[16] to manage AZL Resources,[17] a Denver oil promoter that he had previously acquired,[17] where he served as chairman and was the largest shareholder. In 1981, Strong was sued for allegedly hyping the stock ahead of a merger that eventually failed. Strong settled for $4.2 million at the insistence of his insurance company.[18] AZL merged with Tosco Corporation from which Strong acquired the 160,000 acres (65,000 ha) Baca Ranch in Colorado which would house Strong's Manitou Foundation.[17]

Strong later became chairman of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, the holding company for some of Canada's principal government-owned corporations. In 1992, he became Chairman of Ontario Hydro.[17] a Denver oil promoter that he had previously acquired,[17]

Charles Lynch noted that Strong "tended to fare better than the companies and institutions that have used his talents."[3] He was said to have become a billionaire as a result of his several ventures,[17] a Denver oil promoter that he had previously acquired,[17] but in 2010 he said that he had "never been anywhere close to being [so]."

American Water Development

On December 31, 1986, Strong founded American Water Development Incorporated (AWDI) which he controlled along with his associates, William Ruckelshaus, Richard Lamm, Samuel Belzberg, and Alexander Crutchfield Jr.[19] It filed an application with the District Court for Water Division 3 in Alamosa, Colorado[20] for the right to pump underground water from the lands of the Luis Maria Baca Grant No. 4 and other lands in Saguache County, Colorado in Colorado's San Luis Valley and sell it to water districts in the Front Range Urban Corridor of Colorado. The project was opposed by neighboring water rights owners, local water conservation districts, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and the National Park Service who alleged the project would affect others' water rights and cause significant environmental damage to nearby wetland and sand dune ecosystems by reducing the flow of surface water.[19] After a lengthy trial, which ended in 1992, Colorado courts ruled against AWDI and required payment of the portion of the objectors' legal fees, $3.1 million, which were spent fighting AWDI's attempt to appropriate surface water for beneficial use.[20][21] While this was going on, Strong exited the company.

Molten Metal Technology

Maurice Strong was a director of Molten Metal Technology, Inc., an environmental technology company founded in 1989 that claimed to have innovative technology that could be used to recycle hazardous waste into reusable products. During the years 1992-1995, this innovation attracted approximately $25 million in research grants from the United States Department of Energy. Throughout the period of March 28, 1995 – October 18, 1996, (known as the "class period"), Molten Metal artificially inflated the price of their stock by materially misrepresenting the capability of its technology, namely through a series of public announcements. As of March 11, 1996 Strong owned approximately 40,000 shares of stock and another 262,000 shares were owned by a company of which Strong was Chairman.[22] The company filed for bankruptcy and the case was settled for $11.8 million, without a ruling of wrongdoing.[23]

United Nations work

Strong first met with a leading UN official in 1947 who arranged for him to have a temporary low-level appointment, to serve as a junior security officer at the UN headquarters in Lake Success, New York. He soon returned to Canada, and with the support of Lester B. Pearson, directed the founding of the Canadian International Development Agency in 1968.

Stockholm Conference

In 1971, Strong commissioned a report on the state of the planet, Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet,[24] co-authored by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos. The report summarized the findings of 152 leading experts from 58 countries in preparation for the first UN meeting on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. This was the world's first "state of the environment" report.

The Stockholm Conference established the environment as part of an international development agenda. It led to the establishment by the UN General Assembly in December 1972 of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and the election of Strong to head it.
UNEP was the first UN agency to be headquartered in the third world.[25] As head of UNEP, Strong convened the first international expert group meeting on climate change.[26]

Strong was one of the commissioners of the World Commission on Environment and Development, set up as an independent body by the United Nations in 1983.

Earth Summit

Strong's role in leading the U.N.'s famine relief program in Africa was his first in a series of U.N. advisory assignments, including reform and his appointment as Secretary General of the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, best known as the Earth Summit, and held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992.[27][28] According to Strong, participants at the Rio Conference adopted sound principles but did not make a commitment to action sufficient to prevent global environmental tragedy, committing to spend less than 5% of the $125 billion he felt appropriate for environmental projects in developing nations. He was seconded in that opinion by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali who stated to the delegates, "The current level of commitment is not comparable to the size and gravity of the problems,"[29]

After the Earth Summit, Strong continued to take a leading role in implementing the results of agreements at the Earth Summit through the establishment of the Earth Council, acting as co-chair of the Earth Charter Commission at the outset of the Earth Charter movement, his chairmanship of the World Resources Institute, membership on the board of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the Stockholm Environment Institute, The Africa-America Institute, the Institute of Ecology in Indonesia, the Beijer Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and others. Strong was a longtime Foundation Director of the World Economic Forum, a senior advisor to the president of the World Bank, a member of the International Advisory of Toyota Motor Corporation, the Advisory Council for the Center for International Development at Harvard University, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the World Wildlife Fund, Resources for the Future and the Eisenhower Fellowships. His public service activities were carried out on a pro bono basis made possible by his business activities, which included being chairman of the International Advisory Group of CH2M Hill,

CH2M HILL, also known as CH2M, was a global engineering company that provided consulting, design, construction, and operations services for corporations, and federal, state, and local governments. The firm's headquarters was in Meridian, an unincorporated area of Douglas County, Colorado, in the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area.

The postal designation of nearby Englewood was commonly listed as the company's location in corporate filings and local news accounts. As of December 2016, CH2M had approximately 20,000 employees and revenues totaled $5.24 billion.[2]

In December 2017, it was announced that CH2M had been acquired by Jacobs Engineering Group, a Dallas engineering firm, reportedly for $3.3 billion. [3]...

The company developed, maintains and publishes its own method for managing projects for clients, called the CH2M Hill Project Delivery System, which may be found at popular internet book retailers.[9] As a firm specializing in project management, CH2M Hill has been associated in several large, complex projects around the world. In 2005, a CH2M Hill joint venture known as Kaiser Hill decommissioned and closed a former nuclear weapons facility at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado (former Rocky Flats Plant).

Cleanup began in the early 1990s,[6][7][8] and the site achieved regulatory closure in 2006.[9] The cleanup effort decommissioned and demolished over 800 structures; removed over 21 tons of weapons-grade material; removed over 1.3 million cubic meters of waste; and treated more than 16 million gallons of water. Four groundwater treatment systems were also constructed.[10] Today, the Rocky Flats Plant is gone. The site of the former facility consists of two distinct areas: (1) the "Central Operable Unit" (including the former industrial area), which remains off-limits to the public as a CERCLA "Superfund" site, owned and managed by the U.S. Department of Energy,[11] and (2) the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

-- Rocky Flats Plant, by Wikipedia


In Singapore, the company was part of a joint venture to replace the country's sanitary services infrastructure.[10] The new Singapore Deep Tunnel System was designed to improve reliability, ease, and economy of operation, and to help handle Singapore's increasing waterfront utilization.[11] CH2M Hill assisted in reconstruction efforts along the US Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.[12]

Its main assignments included providing temporary housing, debris removal, and other services. Other large projects include a $660 million gas fired power plant in Australia, in conjunction with General Electric,[13] and an $11.7 billion project to relocate American military bases in Korea.[14]

In August 2007, the Panama Canal Authority selected CH2M Hill to manage the $5.25 billion Panama Canal expansion project, which will add new locks to the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the canal and allow Post Panamax ships passage through the canal for the first time.[15][16] In 2009, a CH2M Hill consortium was named program partner to oversee construction of the Crossrail[17] project to expand London's transit system.

On August 30, 2006, as part of joint venture CLM, CH2M Hill was a supplier for the London 2012 Olympics.[18] The other two members of the venture are project management service provider Mace Group and Laing O'Rourke, the largest privately owned construction firm in the United Kingdom.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contracted a CH2M Hill company, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company, LLC (CHPRC), to manage deconstruction and remediation of the Central Plateau on the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington, one of the world's largest environmental cleanup projects. The project focused on shrinking the environmental footprint of the Hanford Site from a 586-square-mile (1,520 km2) area (large enough to fit the city of Los Angeles) to 75 square miles (190 km2) or less.

Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[9][10] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2]

-- Hanford Site, by Wikipedia


Acquisitions

Key acquisitions include Black, Crow & Eidsness (a southeast engineering firm in the United States) in 1977,[19], Gee & Jensen (a Ports and Harbor firm based in Florida) in August 2002,[20] DeMil International (a weapons destruction firm based in the United States) in 2002,[21] EHS Consultants Ltd (a consulting firm based in Hong Kong),[22], BBS Corporation (an environmental engineering firm based in Ohio) in October 2005.[23]

On September 7, 2007, CH2M HILL finalized the purchase of most of the components of VECO, an Alaska based firm specialising in services to the oil, gas, and energy sector that had become embroiled in the Alaska political corruption probe.[24] In December 2007, CH2M Hill acquired Trigon EPC.[25] In March 2008, CH2M Hill acquired Texas based Goldston Engineering, a company specialising in marine and coastal transportation engineering services.[26]

In 2014, CH2M HILL acquired TERA Environmental Consultants, a Canadian environmental consulting firm that has worked with pipeline and powerline clients and oil and gas companies for 30 years.[27]

-- CH2M Hill, by Wikipedia


Strovest Holdings, Technology Development Inc., Zenon Environmental, and most recently, Cosmos International and the China Carbon Corporation.

Strong lobbied to change NGO perspectives on the World Bank.[30] He is believed by some to have inspired the works of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on climate change. In 1999 Strong took on the task of trying to restore the viability of the University for Peace, headquartered in Costa Rica, established under a treaty.[31] The reputation of the University of Peace was at risk because the organization had been subjected to mismanagement, misappropriation of funds and inoperative governance. As chairman of its governing body, the Council, and initially as rector, Strong led the process of revitalizing the University for Peace and helped to rebuild its programs and leadership. He retired from the Council in the spring of 2007.

From 2003 to 2005, Strong served as the personal envoy to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead support for the international response to the humanitarian and development needs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.[32]

University for Peace

The University for Peace was established in 1980 by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Maurice Strong became director in 1999 where he was at the center of further controversy, particularly in reference to the eviction of the beloved radio station Radio for Peace International (RFPI), the fleeing of the Earth Council in 2003, and the implementation of military training programs on campus. Strong was a board member of the Earth Council, which was created as an international body to promote the environmental policies established at Earth Summit in 1992. The Costa Rican government donated more than 20 acres of land to be used by Earth Council, but when plans for building fell through, it was allegedly sold for $1.65 million. Earth Council temporarily moved to the UPEACE campus until December 2003 when it moved to Canada in the midst of government accusations and demands for $1.65 million. RFPI was served with an eviction notice in July 2002 based on claims the station was operating without proper permits, which RFPI refuted. Those close to the situation claim that UPEACE officials didn't approve of the criticism they were receiving from the station and took matters into their own hands, when power to the building was cut and a wire fence put up around the perimeter.[33]

2005 Oil-for-Food scandal

In 2005, during investigations into the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Programme, evidence procured by federal investigators and the U.N.-authorized inquiry of Paul Volcker showed that in 1997, while working for Annan, Strong had endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to "Mr. M. Strong," issued by a Jordanian bank. It was reported that the check was hand-delivered to Mr. Strong by a South Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, who in 2006 was convicted in New York federal court of conspiring to bribe U.N. officials to rig Oil-for-Food in favor of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Strong was never accused of any wrongdoing.[34] During the inquiry, Strong stepped down from his U.N. post, stating that he would "sideline himself until the cloud was removed."

The affair was said to have arisen from "the tangled nest of personal relationships, public-private partnerships, murky trust funds, unaudited funding conduits, and inter-woven enterprises that the modern U.N. has come to embody" in which Strong had a major role.[11] In reply, Strong stated that "everything I did, I checked it out carefully with the U.S."[34]

Shortly after this, Strong moved to an apartment he owned in Beijing, where he appeared to have settled.[34] He said that his departure from the U.N. was motivated not by the Oil-for-Food investigations, but by his sense at the time, as Mr. Annan's special adviser on North Korea, that the U.N. had reached an impasse. "It just happened to coincide with the publicity surrounding my so-called nefarious activities," he insists. "I had no involvement at all in Oil-for-Food ... I just stayed out of it."[34] In Volcker's September 7 report he concluded, "While there is evidence that Iraqi officials tried to establish a relationship with Mr. Strong, the Committee has found no evidence that Mr. Strong was involved in Iraqi affairs or matters relating to the Programme or took any action at the request of Iraqi officials." [35]

UN Secretary General's tribute

Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, near the end of his term, paid the following tribute to Maurice Strong:

Looking back on our time together, we have shared many trials and tribulations and I am grateful that I had the benefit of your global vision and wise counsel on many critical issues, not least the delicate question of the Korean Peninsula and China's changing role in the world. Your unwavering commitment to the environment, multilateralism and peaceful resolution of conflicts is especially appreciated.


Later involvement

In 2010, Strong described the nature of his activities at that time:

I am retired from all my official roles, but I am still very active. I have close relationships at the UN. I don't have any role at the UN, but I'm still quite cooperative with a number of UN activities, in particular to China and that region. I don't have any government responsibilities or formal role. I continue to be active, though.[36]


In 2012 for Rio+20 he contributed to a book by Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss entitled Only One Earth - the Long Road via Rio to Sustainable Development, which reviewed the last forty years and the challenges for the future. He attended the conference, for which the United Nations Development Program paid all his travel expenses.[37]

Controversy

Maurice Strong was no stranger to skepticism and criticism as a result of his lifelong involvement in the oil industry, juxtaposed with his heavy ties to the Environment. Some wonder why an "oilman" would be chosen to take on such coveted and respected environmental positions. One of Strong's companies, Desarrollos Ecologicos (Ecological Development), built a $35 million luxury hotel within the Gandoca-Manzillo Wildlife Refuge where development is restricted and must be approved by the Kekoldi Indian Association, which it was not. "He (Strong) is supporting Indians and conservation around the world and here he's doing the complete opposite," lamented Demetrio Myorga, President of the Kekoldi Indian Association.[38]

Further skepticism arose due to his continual promotions to titles of power, likely due to his political connections. Additionally, Strong was involved in several legal battles and scandals over the years where he conveniently seemed to recuse himself from the situation before being held personally responsible.[39]

Death, funeral and memorial services

Strong died at the age of 86 on November 27, 2015[40] in Ottawa, Ontario.[41] A funeral service was held there in early December 2015,[41] with a public memorial service occurring in late January 2016 across from Parliament Hill.[42][43] The service was broadcast on CPAC,[44] and among those who spoke were James Wolfensohn, Adrienne Clarkson, John Ralston Saul and Achim Steiner.[45] Written tributes from Mikhail Gorbachev, Gro Harlem Bruntland and Kofi Annan were also sent.[45]

Impact

While unremarkable in appearance,[46] Strong was said to have "an astonishing network" that connected diverse interest groups.[46] One observer described his "scarcely-concealed delight in explaining his often Machiavellian political manoeuvrings."[46]

In the environmental movement, he was instrumental in promoting government funding and entry into international meetings for environmental non-governmental organizations.[46]

Honours and awards

Maurice Strong received a number of honours, awards and medals. He received 53 honorary doctorate degrees and honorary visiting professorships at 7 universities.

Honours appearing in the Canadian order of precedence are:

Companion of the Order of Canada 1999[47]
Order of Manitoba 2005
Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal 1977
125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal 1992
Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal 2002[48]
Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal 2012[49]
Order of the Polar Star (Sweden) 1996
Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil) 1999[50]
Commander of the Order of the Golden Ark (Netherlands) 1979

Other honours and awards include:

• 1 July 1992: Sworn in as a Member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
• 2003: Public Welfare Medal from the US National Academy of Sciences: First non-US citizen to receive the medal, 2007[51]
• 2002:Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue by the Simon Fraser University Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue[52]
• 2002: Carriage House Center on Global Issues: Candlelight Award[53]
• 1995: IKEA Environmental Award[citation needed]
• 1994: Asahi Glass Foundation Award: Blue Planet Prize[54]
• 1994: Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding [55]
• 1993: International St. Francis Prize for the Environment
• 1993: Alexander Onassis Delphi Prize[56]
• 1989: Pearson Medal of Peace [57]
• 1981: Charles A. Lindbergh Award[58]
• 1977: Henri Pittier Order of Venezuela [59]
• 1975: National Audubon Society Award[60]
• 1974: Tyler Environmental Prize[61]
• 1967: Honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University.[62]
• International Saint Francis Prize, Fellow
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) [63]
• Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC) [64]
• Honorary board member, David Suzuki Foundation[65]
• Distinguished Fellow, International Institute for Sustainable Development[66]

John Ralston Saul dedicated his polemic Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason In The West to Strong.

Papers

Strong's papers are archived at the Environmental Science and Public Policy Archives in the Harvard Library.

References and notes

1. Raverty, Aaron Thomas (2014). Refuge in Crestone: A Sanctuary for Interreligious Dialogue. London: Lexington Books. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-7391-8375-5.
2. Strong Papers 2003.
3. Lynch, Charles (September 30, 1982). "Guy on the Street refinancing Dome". Montreal Gazette. p. B4. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
4. E Masood (2015) Maurice Strong, Nature 528(7583), 480.
5. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r ... 28,8434969 Article in The Vindicator June 30, 2000
6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-05-14. Retrieved 2011-01-01.
7. http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/repor ... alogue.pdf
8. "Short Biography". http://www.mauricestrong.net. Retrieved 2014-06-03.
9. "The World Mourns One of its Greats: Maurice Strong Dies, His Legacy Lives On". Archived from the original on 2016-02-20.
10. Strong, Maurice; Kofi Annan (2001). Where on Earth are We Going (Reprint ed.). New York, London: Texere. pp. 48–55. ISBN 1-58799-092-X. The Depression was one of the great shaping forces in my life ...
11. Rosett, Claudia; Russell, George (February 8, 2007). "At the United Nations, the Curious Career of Maurice Strong". Fox News.
12. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ui2OTJ ... =PA255&dq="maurice+strong"+"anna+louise"&source=bl&ots=R379TIJFnC&sig=ACfU3U0IdxlnhJw2pbRCGKARYTLyJ5tuzQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqlLfK86LgAhULy1kKHaOFBlYQ6AEwEXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q="maurice%20strong"%20"anna%20louise"&f=false
13. "WHO IS MAURICE STRONG? The adventures of Maurice Strong & Co. illustrate the fact that nowadays you don't have to be a household name to wield global power", National Review, September 1, 1997
14. Strong, Maurice; Kofi Annan (2001). Where on Earth are We Going (Reprint ed.). New York, London: Texere. pp. 75–89. ISBN 1-58799-092-X. The Depression was one of the great shaping forces in my life ...
15. "Maurice F. Strong Is First Non-U.S. Citizen To Receive Public Welfare Medal, Academy's Highest Honor". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2008-01-20.
16. Clarkson, Stephen (2005). The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics. Vancouver: UBC Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-7748-1195-8.
17. "Victim of media — Strong". The Ottawa Journal. February 13, 1979. p. 18. Retrieved December 1,2015.
18. Machan, Dyan (January 12, 1998). "Saving the Planet with Maurice Strong". Article. Retrieved April 1, 2016 – via Forbes website.
19. Stephen Gascoyne. "The Grit of a Colorado Water War Plan to Pump Water from the San Luis Valley Threatens Future of a National Monument". The Christian Science Monitor. Quetia, subscription required. Archived from the original on May 30, 2013. Retrieved September 19, 2012.
20. Colorado Supreme Court (May 9, 1994). "American Water Development Inc. v. City of Alamosa" (Court decision). Retrieved June 9, 2011.
21. "Rural area beats back water diversion plan" article by Barry Noreen, High Country News May 30, 1994
22. "District of Massachusetts Class Action Complaint No. 97". May 1, 1997. Retrieved April 1, 2016 – via University of Standford Education.
23. Leung, Shirley (January 22, 2014). "Molten Metal Revisited". Boston Globe. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
24. Ward, Barbara; Dubos, Rene. Only One Earth. May 25, 1972. Andre Deutsch ISBN 0233963081
25. http://www.unep.org Website of the United Nations Environment Programme
26. "A super agency?". Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2008-01-14.[dead link] Member account login required to access full article.
27. Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio, 1992
28. Tribute Special Supplement: On the Road to Rio. (1991). World Media Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
29. "Rio Organizer Says Summit Fell Short:" Environmental Principles Approved", article by Michael Weisskopf and Julia Preston in The Washington Post June 15, 1992, accessed September 8, 2010
30. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-12-19. Retrieved 2009-12-18.
31. "University of Peace Makes New Appointments and Agrees on Major Expansion". Science Blog. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
32. "UN urges North Korea-US talks". London: British Broadcasting Corporation. April 4, 2003. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
33. Kimitch, Rebecca (October 15, 2004). "University for Peace not Peaceful, Nor Transparent". Tico Times. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
34. Rosett, Claudia (October 11, 2008). "Maurice Strong: The U.N.'s Man of Mystery - WSJ.com". online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
35. Rosett, Claudia (January 10, 2006). "Strong Implications". National Review. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
36. Hickman, Leo (June 23, 2010). "Maurice Strong on climate 'conspiracy', Bilberberg and population control". The Guardian. London. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
37. Russell, George (June 20, 2012). "EXCLUSIVE: Godfather of Global Green Thinking Steps Out of Shadows at Rio+20". Fox News. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
38. McLeod, Judi (September 1, 2003). "On the way to Parliament: Uncle Mo in Activist Mode". Canada Free Press. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
39. Izzard, John (December 2, 2015). "Maurice Strong, Climate Crook". Quadrant. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
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External links

• "Maurice Strong". NNDB.
• "Maurice F. Strong Papers". Environmental Science and Public Policy Archives, Harvard College Library, Harvard University. 30 May 2003. Archived from the original on 2008-01-01. Retrieved 2007-12-31. - Papers, 1948-2000
• Official website of Maurice Strong
• University for Peace
• "The World Mourns One of its Greats: Maurice Strong Dies, His Legacy Lives On" UNEP news on his death[permanent dead link]