In 1950, Shoghi Effendi, first Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, invited Charles Mason Remey, an American Bahá’í, who had entered the Faith during the Ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and distinguished himself for his meritorious services to the Faith since the turn of the century to come to Haifa, the World Administrative Center of the Faith, and to henceforth make it his home. Not long afterwards, Shoghi Effendi issued the one and only Proclamation of his ministry on 9 January, 1951 in which he informed the Bahá’í world that "at long last" he had established the first International Bahá’í Council (the embryonic Universal House of Justice) – the supreme legislative organ of the Bahá’í Administrative Order. Shoghi Effendi hailed the establishment of this Institution in superlative terms that he had not heretofore employed acclaiming "the constitution of the International Council" as an event "potentially unsurpassed by any enterprise undertaken since the inception of the Administrative Order of the Faith . . . ranking second only to glorious immortal events associated with the ministries, of the Three Central Figures of the Faith" (the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh. and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá). As the distinguished head or President of the embryonic Universal House of Justice he appointed Mason Remey, an appointment that had tremendous implications which the Bahá’í world as a whole failed to grasp, undoubtedly, due to the fact that during the seven years that remained of Shoghi Effendi’s ministry, the International Bahá’í Council remained in an inactive state never functioning as a collective body.

Some eleven months later Shoghi Effendi completed the formation of the international institutions of the Faith when he announced the appointment of the first contingent of the Hands of the Cause twelve in number, (increased to a total of twenty-seven in successive subsequent appointments) who would, in accordance with the provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – "The Charter of the New World Order of Baha’u’llah" as the chief spiritual stewards or servants of the Faith, serve under the direction of the Guardian of the Faith. It was no surprise to anyone that the President of the International Council, Mason Remey, who had been such an outstanding servant of the Faith and an undeviating champion of the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh should be named in this first contingent of the Hands of the Cause and thus receive this double honor.

With the establishment of these two Institutions – the Council and the Hands – Shoghi Effendi realized the culmination of his long and arduous labors over a 30-year period to erect the framework of the Bahá’í Administrative Order in accordance with the sacred mandate given him by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will and Testament. All of the administrative institutions were finally in place and Shoghi Effendi turned his attention to the execution of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s second divine Charter, namely: the "Tablets of the Divine Plan." The Ten-Year Global Crusade launched by Shoghi Effendi in 1953 and terminating at Ridván 1963 – the one-hundredth Anniversary of the Declaration of Bahá’u’lláh – was designed to take the Faith to the remaining countries and territories of the globe.

It was at the mid-point of this Crusade whose success had been truly remarkable that Shoghi Effendi’s 36-year ministry was brought to a sudden and completely unexpected close as a result of his passing on 4 November, 1957 while on a visit to London, England. The Bahá’í world and especially those who had been most closely associated with Shoghi Effendi such as his widow, Rúhíyyih Khánum and the Hands of the Cause were ill-prepared to sustain the shock of his sudden passing. They had looked to him as the source of authority and point of guidance for so long that it was difficult for them to imagine the Faith without him. It was not surprising, therefore, in the midst of their sorrow, their consternation, their disorientation, and their confusion that the Hands of the Faith who had been in the forefront of the victories registered for the Faith during the Ten-Year Global Crusade should have considered the affairs of the Faith in their hands until Shoghi Effendi’s successor could be identified and that they should have made errors which were destined to have fateful consequences for the future of the Faith and lead to the greatest violation of the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh that the Faith has ever known.

Laboring under the illusion that Shoghi Effendi would leave a testamentary document naming his successor and not taking the time to re-examine the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and study Its language concerning the manner in which the Guardian appoints his successor, they completely failed to realize that under the terms of that Document there could be no interregnum in the functioning of the Guardianship for that Document penned by the Infallible Pen of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and extolled by Shoghi Effendi as "the Child of the Covenant" – being the fruit of the mystic intercourse between the Minds of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – made it incumbent upon the Guardian to appoint his successor "in his own lifetime." Having made this fundamental error and therefore having made no effort to discover the second Guardian in their midst, they compounded this error by usurping leadership of the Faith by seizing upon the title Shoghi Effendi had but recently employed in referring to the Hands of the Cause as the Chief Stewards of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic World Commonwealth as the basis for their authority. They then forthwith convened a conclave of the Hands in the Holy Land (a procedure, incidentally, not called for in the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá) where they imagined they would find amongst Shoghi Effendi’s papers a testamentary document appointing a successor, although there must have been some among them even at this time who were already convinced that there would be no successor because of their preconceived idea that only a son of the Guardian could succeed to the Guardianship and their knowledge that Shoghi Effendi had no offspring. Still failing to grasp the fact that had Shoghi Effendi resorted to a testamentary document as the instrumentality of appointing his successor, he would have been acting contrary to the explicit instructions of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Testament, they evinced surprise when a search of Shoghi Effendi’s papers turned up no such document. This was now a great moment of test to these Hands. Would they forget all that Shoghi Effendi had written concerning the immutability and immortality of the provisions of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's Will and Testament and the fact that he had described this sacred Document as complementary to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, itself, the Most Holy Book revealed by Bahá’u’lláh and had cited these two Documents as being two parts of one complete unit – the explicit Holy Text? Would they fail to realize that the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh could not survive without the Guardianship and remain assured in their hearts that Shoghi Effendi could not have failed to carry out faithfully and to the last letter the provisions of this divine Charter? Would they then search out the writings and acts of Shoghi Effendi to discover in what manner he had appointed his successor in his lifetime.

We learn from the writings of Mason Remey found in this compilation that all of the Hands with the exception of himself, failed to meet this great test and became guilty of the complete subversion of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and a shameful repudiation of the writings of Shoghi Effendi while claiming undying devotion to his memory. Instigated by the Persian Hands of the Cause and seconded by Rúhíyyih Khánum, the widow of the Guardian, these Hands pushed through a decision at the first conclave that the Guardianship be ended forever using as their pernicious argument that God had changed His mind (known to those who came from an Islamic background under the term of "BADAH"). Having kept their deliberations secret and unrecorded the Hands decided to conceal this decision from their fellow-believers for the time being, fearing that those who had come to believe strongly in the inviolability of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would not readily accept their decision. Only gradually then would they condition the believers to a Sans-Guardian Faith.

Realizing that under this Sans-Guardian organization they would have to create a substitute head for the Guardianship, they made two decisions. They decided to create an organization of nine Hands of the Faith who would be known as "The Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land" or "Custodians of the Faith" and who would have their seat in Haifa. This body would act as a collective head of the Faith and would perpetuate the myth that because they were sitting in Haifa, the World Administrative Seat of the Faith, that somehow they would continue to receive the guidance that Shoghi Effendi had received. In any case, the believers would continue to look to Haifa as the center of guidance which would assuage the feeling of loss that the believers felt in no longer having Shoghi Effendi to turn to. The second decision taken by the Hands was to announce to the Bahá’í world that the Universal House of Justice would be established in 1963 even pretending that this body was the Institution described in the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, notwithstanding the fact that it would not have as its "sacred head" the Guardian of the Faith. In making this decision they ignored the fact that Shoghi Effendi had already brought the embryonic Universal House of Justice into being in 1951 and had outlined the four successive stages through which it had to develop before becoming the full-fledged House of Justice (i.e., the Council, the International Court, the International elected body and finally the House of Justice). Furthermore and most significantly, Shoghi Effendi had appointed the irremovable head or President of this embryonic body – the International Bahá’í Council. It was Mason Remey, therefore, who had been appointed by express act of Shoghi Effendi to a position of supreme authority in the Faith – a position which, oddly enough, neither his fellow-Hands nor the believers-at-large recognized.

As one reads the excerpts found in this compilation, it becomes clear that Mason Remey never sanctioned the decision of his fellow Hands to abandon the Guardianship. Those who knew Mason Remey will recall that he was a humble and unassertive person by nature. He explains that he felt that someone other than himself should stand up to defend the continuity of the Guardianship and the immutability of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. When they quickly pushed through their decision to end the Guardianship, he resolved that in the second conclave he would attempt to obtain a reconsideration by the Hands of their decision and its reversal. In the second conclave, he appealed to them to make such a reconsideration but they all opposed him and ruled him out of order. Nevertheless, we can perceive that he consistently clung to the hope that something would happen to awaken the Hands to their violation of the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh.

As mentioned at the outset of this Foreword, Mason Remey had been told by Shoghi Effendi to make Haifa his home henceforth. Additionally, his Presidency of the International Bahá’í Council demanded his presence there. Quite naturally, therefore, Mason Remey was asked by the Hands to be one of the nine Custodian Hands serving at Haifa. It was in this capacity that he came into daily contact with the other eight Hands of the Faith serving there, and it is to them that he made almost daily appeals over a period of some two-and-a-half years not to abandon the Guardianship. It was during this period that the "Daily Observations" were written and it is from these observations that the extracts that make up this work were drawn. As one peruses these writings, they will inevitably sense the intense mental anguish and pain that Mason Remey suffered during the period involved as he ran into an impenetrable wall of opposition to any consideration whatsoever of the continuity of the Guardianship. He gives us a glimpse of what transpired at the conclaves of the Hands in the Holy Land and explains the pact of secrecy that the Hands had imposed concerning any discussion of their secret decision to end the Guardianship. He further explains why he was finally forced to break this pact of silence, leave Haifa, and make a final written appeal (actually three appeals) to his fellow Hands, not to abandon the Guardianship and nullify the provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

It was not until the end of His two-and-a-half year Period in Haifa and actually after his departure from Haifa when he was composing his appeals to the Hands of the Faith that for the first time, he began to consider the real significance of his appointment as the President of the International Bahá’í Council, a subject that never came up in any of the conclaves. It was only then that he, himself, realized that by virtue of his appointment he had become the second Guardian of the Faith, coincident with the passing of Shoghi Effendi, and that the office of the Guardian had not been vacant for a single moment. It was then that he penned his Proclamation and released it to the Bahá’í world at Ridván 1960 (a Proclamation which remains unread by the vast majority of the Bahá’ís to this day).

It was the great privilege of the undersigned to receive from Mason Remey in 1961, a set of four of the original volumes from which these excerpts are drawn, and which had been typed for him in Washington, D.C., by a non-Bahá’í, who obviously had experienced some difficulty in reading his script. These were in addition to copies of his three appeals to the Hands of the Faith and other documents. Two of the four volumes titled: "DAILY OBSERVATIONS OF THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH MADE TO THE HANDS OF THE FAITH IN THE HOLY LAND,"and the three "APPEALS TO THE HANDS OF THE FAITH" were, through the invaluable assistance of John and Madeline Byers, then living in France, retyped on stencils and reproduced for distribution to all of the faithful believers who had accepted the second Guardian. Written as these original observations were in diary format, they contain much repetitive material. Accordingly, an abridged version was felt desirable, and it is with this in view that this compilation has been made. The material has been taken out of chronological sequence and has been rearranged under topical headings (although dates have been indicated where necessary). For purposes of greater clarity, words or phrases have been added and are shown in brackets within the text. Also, for the benefit of future readers who may be uninformed on certain points, footnotes have been inserted where they are considered helpful.

Only future generations will be able to adequately appreciate the courage, the steadfastness, and the fidelity to the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh that Mason Remey displayed in his lonely defense of the Covenant, the "Child" of that Covenant, and the Guardianship against the united opposition of the Hands of the Faith, the Administrative Institutions of the Faith, and the great mass of his fellow-believers. It is in homage to the glory of his achievement that this compilation has been made.

Joel Bray Marangella

First Conclave of the Hands of the Faith Following the Passing of Shoghi Effendi [November, 1957] (1) 

Twenty-six of the twenty-seven Hands of the Faith assembled in conclave in the great pillared hall of the Mansion of Bahjí at ‘Akká in the early afternoon. After the reading of prayers, [they] read the report of those of us who had searched in the Guardian’s rooms and found no will and testament among his papers. (2) Such in a few words was our report. Upon Rúhíyyih Khánum’s the widow of Shoghi Effendi insistence, no minutes or written records were kept of the proceedings of the conclave. To me this seemed to be unwise; I felt that a record should be kept of this most important meeting of the Hands of the Faith, but as no one made any objection to this procedure and as I myself was quite conditioned through my years of residence in Haifa to accept and to follow without question everything that Rúhíyyih Khánum told us to do – I therefore refrained from saying anything about this subject. No one objected to her insistence in this matter so no records were taken. There followed, as I remember, some talk upon the parts of a number of our members about inconsequential things and then the meeting was adjourned until the following morning.

Several of us, including myself, returned to Haifa for the night while the rest, consisting of all of the Persian Hands, remained the night at Bahjí where we who had gone to Haifa for the night met with them on the following morning.

Following prayers and some mention of the Guardianship to the effect that no will or testament had been found in the safe or in the desk of Shoghi Effendi, Dr. Muhájir, the youngest of the Persian Hands, sprang to his feet proposing that the Will and Testament of the Master ‘Abdu’l-Bahá be pronounced BADAH (3) and that the Guardianship be ended forever and closed forever. This was immediately seconded and carried enthusiastically and supported by all the Persian Hands who spoke to the point supporting this putting aside for a thousand years (until the coming of the next Manifestation) the Institution of the Guardianship – allowing that this next coming Manifestation might then possibly see fit to reestablish the Guardianship if he thought best in a thousand years from this present date – but as far as this Dispensation was concerned that there should be no more Guardianship.

Each of the Persian Hands spoke supporting this motion – each repeating practically verbatim the same argument so one could understand at first thought that they had talked it up and decided it all beforehand. This entire matter was so quickly done and its passage pressed and accomplished so quickly, that it was very apparent that at some time during those night hours these Persian Hands at Bahjí had consulted together and made a covenant amongst themselves and had made this arrangement to pronounce the Guardianship BADAH and thus railroad the matter through and carry the day. Furthermore, Rúhíyyih Khánum concurred with this majority so their point was carried by the majority.

Subsequently in this conclave (4) without abandoning their intention of no more Guardianship, these Hands decided that it would not do at that time to announce to the world their abandonment of the Guardianship since there would be many believers to whom this would be a great shock and disappointment; therefore, it was decided in their Proclamation to the world that no mention was to be made of the word "Guardianship" but that their program of these Hands to elect by a popular democratic vote of the proletariat of the Faith a Universal House of Justice in 1963 that the majority agreed would be infallible and therefore being infallible, the House would then have infallibility Sans-Guardian – thus they reasoned – the vast majority – and still do they reason thus now declaring this to the world.

During all these proceedings I sat quietly remembering the vision I had had a few years before in which I had seen myself to be the second Guardian of the Faith – this I had been thinking of a great deal since Shoghi Effendi’s death, but I felt that of all the hundreds of millions of people upon the face of the earth that I was the very last one who should put forward or stand up for such. In fact, I sat there in the conclave praying silently to myself that there be nothing of the kind for me in that vision; nevertheless, I had a feeling that there was something in it, thus my feelings were in the balance, as it were.

It was a few days after the close of the conclave that Ugo Giachery Hand of the Faith asked me why I had not stood out against the abolition of the Guardianship when the matter was under discussion in the conclave? I couldn’t remember why. I don’t remember what reply I made to him or what excuse I had made to him for doing as I did – confused as was my conception of the entire problem, but I do remember quite well that at that moment after the conclave, Ugo was not in favor of denying all hope of eventual Guardianship. It was Ugo Giachery who then called my attention to the fact that the Persian Hands of the Faith who had, between the first two days of the first conclave, evidently come together in their own secret meeting that night at Bahjí and had made a covenant between themselves to pronounce the entire Guardianship BADAH and thus end for this dispensation all hopes of any Guardianship.

The plot on the part of the Persian Hands of the Faith, Ugo saw and explained it all to me – thus giving me my first picture of what really took place behind the scenes of the first Bahjí Conclave.

It was one year after that Ugo told me of these things that I took my first step before the Hands against the violation of the Hands of the Faith. ln their stand against the continuation of the Guardianship. Up until that stand, my mind had been more or less confused over the entire situation. I had thought nothing out to any conclusion of mine own, least of all I wanted to in any way push myself into any prominence in the discussion.

Such was my stand taken at that time and in this matter I have never departed from that stand then taken for beginning with that time whenever I had the opportunity I told the Hands of the Faith that they were violating the Blessed Master’s Will and Testament and all that they were doing was wrong and against all that the beloved Guardian stood for and followed in the building up of the Administration of the Faith the world around.

As I have stated, this stand of mine to which I have never departed was first suggested to me by Ugo Giachery’s remarks to me about this violation that was started by the Persian Hands of the Faith and has now finally attained the united support without question as attested to by the Hands of the Faith in their letter to the Bahá’í world following their last Bahjí Conclave of November, 1959.

This Guardianless Bahá’í message that at present is being foisted onto the people by the action of the Hands of the Faith is not the Bahá’í message at all. The Covenant alone was indeed the message to the world during the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, but when the Will and Testament was given us – this Will and Testament with the Guardianship as its very heart and soul – then became together with the Covenant the teaching of our Faith and from then on it is the message of the Bahá’í Cause and the only message for us to give.

Again I tell the Hands that which they are teaching now – without hope of ever having another Guardian – is a most pernicious fallacy that ere long will completely destroy our Faith. We are now at the eleventh hour. Let us arise before it be too late to save the Faith, the guidance of which has been entrusted to the Guardianship that is not wanted by the Hands.

Surely the Administration of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá can never function without a Guardian. The fact is that the Hands of the Faith have voluntarily discarded the Will and Testament upon which the beloved Guardian built and carried on his entire mission as the first Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith.

I, as a Hand of the Faith, see that we should arise and as a united body attempt to get the Cause back again, if possible, into the working of the Administration where the beloved Guardian left it. Let us look the matter fairly and squarely in the face and understand the condition of the Cause. If the Guardianship is not continued, the Bahá’í Faith will surely die!

Shortly after the reading of the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Mountfort Mills, one of the very important, if not the most prominent Bahá’ís at that moment in America, said to me, "Why? The set-up of the Guardianship is like that of the infallibility of the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church.." Replied I, "Well, the papacy has so far held the church of Rome together in unity better than that of any of the other Christian communions. Had the Roman Church not had a pope, their unity would never have held – by now they would be as divided up as is Protestantism today." Since then, now nearing thirty-nine years ago (this incident that I mention took place here in Haifa in 1921), the Bahá’í world has had time and ample opportunity to observe so far the admirable working out of this principle of the Guardianship of our Faith. We all now realize that without the beloved Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, whom we all to a soul had to obey because so commanded by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will there would have been no unity at all or co-ordination so necessary for the carrying on of our Cause. For without the Guardianship, by now we would surely have broken up into many divisions, sects, and cults. So far until now we face the Sans-Guardian stand of the Hands, the Sohrab heresy is the only deflection of any consequence from the Guardianship of the Faith due to the fact that we have this Institution of infallibility which to some may look something like the papacy, but which differs fundamentally from it in that the Roman Papacy is a human institution by election, while the Bahá’í Guardianship is by divine appointment and has divine authority for its being, and promises spiritual victory to our Faith that is the establishment of God’s Kingdom upon Earth.

Often people decry the failure of the church to establish Christ’s Kingdom upon Earth.. All Christians are thus failing in this endeavor because it was never the plan of God that the Revelation of Christ should win this victory over the world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the Son of God, rejected by the world, but he taught very definitely that He – the Christ – The Word of God would come again in the Glory of the Father, manifesting Himself as the triumphant Lord of the Vineyard and that at that time He, the Father, the Prince of Peace would then set up His Kingdom upon earth and that He would rule in His own right in His Kingdom upon earth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore, the elimination of the Guardianship of the Faith precludes our ever being able to have a House of Justice even though without a Guardian [to preside over this body as its President] some sort of an International Assembly may be possible, but never a House of Justice [as delineated in the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá].

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

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

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

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

(24 January 1959) Our late Guardian left no son to inherit the Guardianship and neither had he any relatives who qualified to inherit the Guardianship; the Hands of the Faith wish to abolish the entire framework of the system of Bahá’í government that the beloved Guardian has worked for so many years to establish and has pointed out to us the way in which he was establishing it, and now because death called him from us before he had completed this establishment, the Hands then decide to scrap all that he had done preparing the continuation of the Guardianship to follow on. Now the Hands would deprive the Bahá’í world of the government as established by our First Guardian by replacing the Master’s plan with a plan of their own, thus destroying the very structure and function of the government left by our dear first Guardian to carry on.

The majority of the Hands not only wish to eliminate the Guardianship, but they think that they can get a Universal House of Justice by their own method which puts aside the procedure worked upon by Shoghi Effendi for the formation of that House of Justice. He shows us in his texts that the House of Justice has to be set up and formed by the Guardian. In other words, they would do away with this system given in the Will and Testament and replace it by something of their own concoction. What could be a greater violation of the Master’s Will than this?

The beloved Guardian must have completed the necessary work that he was told to do in the Will and Testament. (5) lt is now the duty of the Hands to ascertain that which the Guardian accomplished toward appointing a second Guardian of the Cause to succeed and carry on the work of the Faith. Why don’t the Hands of the Faith study the Master’s Testament and the writings and notes of Shoghi Effendi as our German friends and others are doing? People are questioning the Hands, asking why. The Hands cannot answer their queries because they have not gotten at the root of this matter – their thoughts are not clear. God gave us brains to use, why not use them?

Every living organism has a heart. Upon the healthy action of which these organisms are dependent for their proper functioning, so does the Bahá’í Faith have a heart upon which its life depends and this heart is the Guardianship of the Faith. But the Hands of the Faith in their dilemma at the death of our beloved Guardian were so confused and upset that they thought the Cause must get along without any more Guardianship – thus setting up a substitute for this Guardianship in their present-intending leadership of the nine Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land, for which body there is no authority whatsoever in the administrative plan of Bahá’í government as given us in the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

The beloved Guardian labored for thirty-six years to establish the Administration. The Guardianship is the heart of the Cause and now, in less than two years after his death, the Hands of the Faith are doing what they can to destroy any hopes that believers may entertain of our ever having another Guardian. Until this present time this destruction seems to be having results that please the Hands of the Holy Land, all but with the exception of myself. The Hands are constantly calling my attention to the success of their program.

Let each one of us face and see his own problem, a problem that rests between himself and God, whether or not he or she wants a Guardian or not, for if the Hands of the Faith unitedly want a Guardian, they will have no difficulty, but if they, in their hearts don’t want the Guardianship, God help the Cause and God help them too. We know that in the end, the Cause will prevail. The Administration of the Cause cannot live without its heart that is the Guardianship, therefore those who in their hearts oppose the Guardianship will in the end fall short of that to which they were called to perform.

In a well-trained army, docility is the basis of the success of the action of the army under command. All depends upon the faithful and prompt carrying out of the orders of the commander and this can only be obtained when the army is so drilled and equipped that orders are immediately obeyed by the troops. This complete docility is needed by the individual soldier that he should follow without question his commander. But when an army finds itself without a commander, this very docility that under a commander gives it strength without a commander is immediately its undoing and destruction, when the command is usurped by a usurper. The mass of the Bahá’ís throughout the world are well-adjusted to receiving and carrying out the commands of the beloved [first] Guardian. This command is now taken over by violators, chiefest amongst whom is Rúhíyyih Khánum. When the Hands of the Faith usurped the command [the believers] being docile and in good training, there was little or no objection to this – the people had been taught to obey without question and they have obeyed with but a question coming from here or there from people who saw that without a Guardian-commander, the Cause could not live.

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

Bahá’u’lláh was the root and the source of all power and spiritual life of the Faith. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of his Covenant, was the tree growing out from that root that was Bahá’u’lláh and the Guardians of the Faith are branched forth from the Center of the Covenant and will thus continue to function and be the source of strength and guidance of the believers on down through the spiritual Bahá’í Ages to come. Therefore the believers are to follow this line of divinely inspired Guardianship – on to victory after spiritual victory. But now there have arisen those in the Faith who claim that we must discard all which our beloved Guardian has done – discard the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant and revert to the Book of Aqdas there to find guidance that they claim is for every and anyone to find for himself without the divine source of infallible interpretation as provided by the Will and Testament of the Center of the Covenant in the Guardianship of the Faith.

To me, the Hands seem blind to the reality of the principle of the Guardianship, and until this be rectified there is but little hope. The Holy Spirit from on high that flowed to us so plenteously through a living beloved Guardian in our midst is now no more with us as before, but these benighted Hands do not see this!

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

When the Hands of the Faith are all thus united in the spirit that they really want a second Guardian to direct them, we will then be on the way to accept a second Guardian, but until we, by acknowledgement, supported by our attitudes, really want a Guardian to command the Cause, the Holy Spirit cannot guide us and we can expect no confirmations. Before we can be guided by the Holy Spirit we must put aside and sacrifice our all. Then we will have the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

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

Thus it is that suffering and sacrifice benefits the Faith as a whole or collectively the world around. It advances in direct proportion to the sacrifices of the friends as they follow the commands of the Guardian and the Faith. But now in these present days without Guardianship commands of the Guardian and the Faith is held back in the proportion that the Guardian’s commands are not accepted or acted upon.

But now in these present days without Guardianship, the Faith is yet living on and advancing because of the momentum it received from the days of the first Guardian of the Faith upon earth. We are now in need of a renewed and a continuation of this momentum in order to keep the Cause on the move and growing, and this continuation of the outpourings of the Holy Spirit can only come with the continuation of the Guardianship as an Institution as a series of different personalities of the succeeding Guardians – thus the supply of the spiritual forces of the Abhá Kingdom will be continued on throughout the Bahá’í Dispensation – the power coming through the Guardianship.

Such in principle is the functioning of the organic fabric of our Faith as given to us in the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. A break or a cessation of this flow of the Holy Spirit flowing to us through the Guardianship of the Faith is bad for the Faith and if cut out altogether, as the many Hands of the Faith now favor – it will surely be the death and disruption of our Faith.

In ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s teachings including, of course, those divine teachings contained in his last Will and Spiritual Testament to the Bahá’ís, He demonstrates to us that in this day and the time of this divine Bahá’í Dispensation upon earth that the unique source of the Holy Spirit is Bahá’u’lláh – that from Bahá’u’lláh (the Manifestation) this spirit of divine life descends through the Center of His Covenant upon the Guardian of the Cause [who] after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is the Center of the divine confirmations of the kingdom. Therefore, after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Guardian of the Faith is the only and the unique source of divine guidance for the believers – the Guardianship being this institution and not the personality of the human Guardian. The Will and Testament provides for a continued line of many succeeding Guardians on through the ages to come, this divine guidance coming through the Institution of the Guardianship and this is the only continued source of confirmation of the Holy Spirit to the world in this Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh!

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

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

Today [8 January] I have been considering The Holy Spirit as it flows from Bahá’u’lláh through the Center of His Covenant, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, on down through the Guardianship and the promise given by the Master and Shoghi Effendi, that this spirit of guidance and protection would continue to sustain the Cause on through the many successive Guardians of the centuries to come and now???

It is a mystery to me that now that the hereditary line of descent is ended, are the Hands of the Faith whose duty it is to protect the Faith, to sit discouraged and confused saying BADAH and allow all of this magnificent spiritual structure of the Administration of the Faith built by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the beloved Guardian, Shoghi Effendi [to] be discarded and cast aside? If the Guardianship of the Faith be eliminated thus without a functioning heart, the body of the Faith in the world will surely die?

The intent of the communications issued to the Bahá’í world from the Hands of the Faith has been that of rejection of the divinely conceived Guardianship of our Faith as directed in the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and elaborated upon and upheld at all times in the life and teachings of Shoghi Effendi. In the letter that was sent out after our second Bahjí Conclave, no mention was made of the Guardianship. [Mention was made] of the beloved Guardian yes, but not about the continuance of the Guardianship. By what this letter did not say, one may read between the lines to the effect that the majority of the Hands of the Faith are against there ever being another Guardian and that after all that Manifesto composed in Chicago by the Hands of the Faith in America with the American N.S.A. declaring the Guardianship definitely ended, with the circulation of which was stopped at the eleventh hour by order of the Custodian Hands in the Holy Land, is after all the real hidden and unspoken opinion of the Hands. But this condition can be allayed and it will be wiped out completely when the Hands arise to seek the second Guardian of the Faith that they surely should do sooner or later lest the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh die.

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

This confused state of the Hands of the Faith is to my mind due to their looking at the personality of Shoghi Effendi, the beloved [first] Guardian, instead of looking at his office and station of Guardianship, the person occupying that station will become the channel through whom will flow the Holy Spirit from Bahá’u’lláh and that this spiritual flow according to the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, will guide the Faith – the guiding power not coming from the person who is Guardian but through his station of Guardianship.

We all know the Ten-Year Plan of the beloved Shoghi Effendi and the advance it made under his Guardianship of the Faith, but the spiritual vitality of the believers in the days of Shoghi Effendi was being activated continuously by the living Guardian then with us, but now without this living Guardian’s presence we, the believers, have lost that contact through which the Holy Spirit of God which is the very life force of the Kingdom of God, no longer is coming to us because we have no Guardian . It is the same principle of the continual Guardianship of the Faith that I have been talking about to the Hands, first at the second Bahjí Conclave and ever since then to the Custodian Hands and so far as I can see and understand them, not one of the Hands but I myself alone sees this. They take the ground just as did Agnes Alexander [Hand of the Cause] in conversation with me at Sidney, "We have all the necessary things to teach in the recorded words of the beloved Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, and we have no need whatsoever of another Guardian. Shoghi Effendi has told us exactly what we should teach and if we stick to his teachings, he from the Abhá Realms beyond this world will lead us on to victory!"

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

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

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

The first pillar, the infallible divinely instituted and appointed Guardians, the second pillar of the Universal House of Justice to be of the people of the Faith and chosen by them from their ranks representing them who are the proletariat of the Kingdom of God upon Earth – thus the Faith will eventually be ruled by the Institution resting upon those two pillars representing the Guardian of the Faith upon one side and upon the other side, the members of the House chosen by the people from amongst their own members.

The Guardianship was the first foundation pillar of this Universal House of Justice and it was the function of the Guardianship to choose the Hands of the Faith and also to train and prepare and to organize the mass of the believers to form their assemblies, local and international. But in the midst of the progress of this process, Shoghi Effendi was suddenly called from this world to the Abhá Kingdom beyond. Apparently he had no idea at all that his death was so near. (6)  All of his personal work was at a sudden stop, but according to the divinely revealed Will and Testament of the Master, the Guardianship of the Faith was not to be interrupted by the death of Shoghi Effendi or of any succeeding Guardian of the Faith. For the Guardianship in which infallibility rested was a continual institution to be carried on and on throughout this Bahá’í Dispensation. But Shoghi Effendi had no issue to succeed him as the second Guardian of the Faith, therefore, it became necessary that the beloved Guardian should appoint another branch and up until now we do not know who he appointed?

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

What greater deviation could there be from and against the Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá than the abolishment of the Guardianship of the Faith. To my mind this violation of the Will and Testament as I told the Hands at the second Bahjí Conclave is as an axe at the root of the Faith and as a dagger in the heart thereof! Apparently my argument means little or nothing to the Hands there assembled! This poisonous attack upon the Guardianship of our Faith had so taken ahold of the twenty-four whom I was addressing, that one and all were insensible to and unaware of the danger of their stand against the continuation of the Institution of Guardianship.I am hoping and praying that before or at the next conclave of the Hands of the Faith, that all will realize the perilous conditions that the Faith is now in without the divine guidance of the Guardianship. It is in the Institution of the Guardianship wherein lies the guidance of the Faith and not in the personality of any one Guardian himself as a man.

According to the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, one Guardian is to follow another and so on down through the history of the Faith on through the centuries. These Guardians will all be different personalities. It is in itself an institution and a function unchangeable, and in this lies the guidance of the Faith for centuries to come, for only through this channel can the Holy Spirit (that in this age emanates to the world of humanity only through Bahá’u’lláh) reach mankind coming from the Manifestation through the Center of His Covenant on through the Institution of the Guardianship to the people of the Faith.

Such the beloved Guardian explained to us at great length was the especial mission of his Guardianship and that he, the first Guardian of the Faith, was to inaugurate this system of the Administration of the Faith. Thus, after about thirty or so years of his ministry, he chose the Hands of the Faith thus elevating them from the ranks of the Faith by appointment to become the peerage of the [spiritual] aristocracy of the Faith, which Faith as we all know is the Kingdom of God upon Earth, with the Guardian as the divine potentate of that Kingdom.

The Guardian infallible, surrounded by his appointed aristocracy of Hands was to be the first pillar of the supreme Institution of the Faith, the Universal House of Justice, the other pillar of which was yet to be erected (that is when the assemblies of the people of the Cause, local and national, were sufficiently strong and functioning to form the second necessary pillar – the [elected] international organization of the people) which together functioning with the [appointed] Guardian [as its head ] surrounded by his nobles (the Hands of the Faith) would form the House of Justice, the decrees of which would be infallible and would be the center of guidance for the Cause throughout this Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh.

Rúhíyyih Khánum went down to Kampala for the 1958 conference there as planned by the Guardian and there at one of the meetings, she announced that the Guardianship was BADAH and ended. Then later in a meeting of the Hands here in Haifa, she explained herself saying that she spoke on the spur of the moment and without thought and should not have announced this. This slip of the tongue proved to me her inner conviction and thought for those who speak without thinking always say what they really think.

Through Rúhíyyih Khánum’s slip of the tongue – and possibly and even probably that of others of the Hands of the Cause – the Hands in America – Horace Holley and Paul Haney, met with the American N.S.A. in Chicago and they issued a Manifesto that was circulated to a certain extent announcing definitely that the Guardianship was ended for this Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh. A copy of this got to Germany in some way and from there a copy was sent to Haifa, together with the word that this was soon to be sent out in printed form from the N.S.A. of the U.S.A. This was not sent here to us in Haifa. This, to Rúhíyyih Khánum and others was an unwise move and was a great shock to them, and a cablegram was sent immediately to Horace saying not to circulate this document (it was already being set up in type) – thus at this eleventh hour this was thus forestalled. However, the cat was out of the bag for the believers in some places and countries were upset and protesting. In our meeting here of the Hands it was even suggested that any people in opposition in their views to those of the Hands in Haifa be expelled from the Faith without ado, but on reconsideration it was decided to ignore these voices from abroad. In one instance in Latin America, some friends who questioned this matter had their voting rights taken from them because of this stand.

When I left Haifa for Australia, Rúhíyyih Khánum instructed me [she actually had no authority to direct anyone] to avoid and to squelch any discussion of any controversial subject that might come up in the [Intercontinental] conference at Sydney. (7)  Although she did not mention the Guardianship in this connection, I know this was what she had in mind. This I did, but I kept my ears open although evading and avoiding this subject.

After one of the meetings in Sydney, Agnes Alexander [Hand of the Faith ] came to me saying, "But we no longer have need at all for a Guardian. We have the beloved Guardian now in the Abhá Realms and from there He is directing us here upon earth, so you see there is no longer any need of the Guardianship here upon earth." To this I replied nothing at all. I had already noticed traces of this pernicious doctrine in the thoughts of Rúhíyyih Khánum and some of our Persian Hands! Now, some one or ones had planted those thoughts in the mind of Agnes Alexander. She is a very dear but a very mentally-slow woman. She has little or no imagination so could never have evolved such a theory on her own.

Agnes is a most devoted soul to the Cause. She got the teaching of the Covenant from May Bolls in 1900 in Paris, and she has stuck to this all of these years through thick and thin and under all conditions has been a pillar of the Cause and now? Someone has planted this Sans-Guardian thought in her mind that is as an axe at the root of the Faith and as a dagger in the heart of the body of the Cause – the heart being the Guardianship!

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

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

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

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

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

Those who have received the greatest spiritual blessings are even called upon to make the greatest sacrifices. No one has been more greatly favored and blessed than Rúhíyyih Khánum, the wife of the beloved Shoghi Effendi.

It is indeed perfectly natural that she should resent the thought of a second Guardian of the Cause. She is very strong indeed in her wish that the Guardianship be abolished. As things are now, because of her previous position as the contact liaison between Shoghi Effendi and the people about the Guardian, she was in the entire Bahá’í world indeed the most important personage apart from the Guardian, and now that our Guardian is dead and [apparently] we have no Guardian of the Faith, (8)  Rúhíyyih Khánum still assumes and maintains herself in that supreme position and from what she says and from the tone of her voice when she speaks to the other Hands of the Faith and from her many maneuvers and ways of continuously entrenching herself in this position, it is plain to see that she intends that no one is to supplant her in this position that she has assumed, and from which she seeks to rule and to dictate the affairs of the Faith. Because of her long association with Shoghi Effendi, she is able to run the affairs of the Faith in an efficient manner that is without doubt more efficient than any one else of whom I know – such is my opinion. Nevertheless, she can never rule the Faith with the wisdom necessary to protect the Faith because this protection is a function peculiar to the infallible Guardianship of the Cause.

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

Rúhíyyih Khánum and the Persian Hands are of the fixed intention that the Guardianship is BADAH or was definitely ended for this Dispensation of one thousand years with the death of Shoghi Effendi. Of course, they do not say this openly to the world, nevertheless this conviction constantly shows itself in things they say and advocate and things they do. Leroy Ioas (9)  seems to feel at times that the Guardianship should not thus be scrapped, but he stands firmly for the 1963 program. Milly Collins and Paul Haney seem to be bewildered upon this point – they feel that it will come out somehow by the Grace of God, but which way and how they have no idea.

Yesterday morning there was such a scene that Leroy was so upset that he refused to be at the prayer meeting that after noon at the Shrine. Rúhíyyih Khánum, who was so near to Shoghi Effendi for so many years of their married life, takes command of all matters dictating to the others, assuming that she knows exactly what the Guardian would have done under circumstances such as these that confront us; therefore, she in no uncertain terms lays down the law to us shaking her finger at us and often showing at us giving emphasis to what she is saying by hammering the table before her with clenched fist (as yet she has not come to the point of shaking her fist at any of us). Leroy rebels at this – the Persians all take it. I don’t get what Paul [Haney] thinks – I laugh up my sleeve, at the same time fearful of what may happen to Rúhíyyih Khánum should a second Guardian appear upon this scene?

Rúhíyyih Khánum frequently threatens to commit suicide if she can’t have her way. I am afraid she may do so sometime in one of her tantrums but Milly [Collins] says there is no danger of her killing herself – that this is but a tantrum – but from my own experience in my own life such tantrums can end in dire tragedy. Leroy thinks that Rúhíyyih may snap and have to be put in an asylum. I feel that it is more likely that this condition may send him and not Rúhíyyih Khánum to the asylum. The Hands of the Faith should not expect harmony in the Bahá’í World at large until they – the twenty-seven of us – are at harmony between ourselves.

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

. . . .the Persian Bahá’ís do not want a Guardian to continue to rule the Faith. Neither does Rúhíyyih Khánum want the Guardianship to continue, for she would not like at all for herself to be second to another Guardian of the Faith, particularly if he should have a wife which if he had, his wife would be the First Lady of the Bahá’í Administration with Rúhíyyih Khánum then as the Dowager Lady of the Faith.

One cannot help but feel that such problems as these would be a most powerful incentive in Rúhíyyih Khánum’s life to weigh against her wanting any continuance of the Guardianship for now she is the ruling power in the Cause. She dictates practically everything. She has no intention of allow the Guardianship to be continued and to suit her own wishes, she insists that there never shall be another Guardian and as she stated to me in a meeting of the Custodians: "That after her no one would ever live in the Guardian’s house in Haifa."

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

Rúhíyyih Khánum at all times and upon all matters dictates to us [the Custodian Hands] as if she were still the link or channel for contact between the Guardian and us, the Hands, actually shaking her finger at us and occasionally striking with her hand the table before her. Occasionally Leroy Ioas flies off the handle and there is a great flare up but then this quiets down and in the end she dominates the situation despite the fact that she is but one Hand of the several Custodian Hands. In other words, Rúhíyyih Khánum has assumed the direction of things and in a very scolding and an out-of-patience tone of voice that in itself is an indication that things are not the way they should be within her own psychology.

All [this] resolves itself down to the fact that the Cause needs the Institution of the Guardianship to carry it on and will suffer and go to pieces unless we have a Guardian and end this confused state of leadership that Rúhíyyih Khánum and the Persian Hands have thrust us into and so far have dominated the Hands with.

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

This noon the Custodian Hands of the Faith met in conference, [14 April 1959]. News very disquieting had come to us that Hermann Grossmann in South America had told Bahá’ís that the Hands of the Faith had had a change of mind and that undoubtedly there would be a second Guardian of the Cause! (10) 

It was suggested to cable Hermann to stop this talk. This suggestion was followed by such a variety of suggestions as to what to cable him that in order to avoid the possibility of making things worse, it was decided to await until tomorrow afternoon to allow more thought upon the subject before wording the cablegram. Then this was followed by much conjecture about exactly what Hermann was telling the people, how they were reacting toward this, and many other aspects of this problem.

During the discussion someone suggested that possibly Hermann thought that the Universal House of Justice might reestablish the Guardianship. Whereupon Rúhíyyih Khánum said that she was unalterably opposed to our having another Guardian and that if there were ever one appointed, that she would abandon Haifa and the Bahá’í Administration and take herself somewhere up into the wilds of Tibet, there to hide herself from all Bahá’ís!

While for some time it has been quite clear that such was Rúhíyyih Khánum’s attitude toward the Guardianship, this which understood exactly how she want the continuation of the Guardianship and threatens to walk out upon the Guardianship if it ever be re-established’ In reality, Rúhíyyih Khánum is the dictator of the Custodian Hands in the Holy Land. In one of her addresses before the Kampala Conferences, now over a year ago, she announced that the Guardianship was definitely closed and ended. In a subsequent meeting of the Custodians here, she made the definite statement that after her present tenure of the Guardian’s House (at 7 Persian Street, Haifa) that no one would ever be in residence there (after her present tenure of those premises).

When faced by someone who quoted her Kampala statement (here some weeks ago) she said that she had spoken in Kampala [at the Intercontinental Conference] without thinking and had she thought over the matter, she would not have made such an announcement. The Custodians felt this statement to have been a most untimely declaration upon her part. Thus are these Custodian Hands, who are so trusted by the Bahá’í world, playing a double game, as it were, to deceive the Bahá’ís.

Now I find that in things that the Hands actually say, that they feel as Rúhíyyih Khánum does, that they don’t want that there ever be another Guardian and that by their ATTITUDES it is clear to see that the vast ruling majority of the Hands feel as does Rúhíyyih Khánum in this matter!

Friends, Hands of the Faith, if you stand thus as a united majority, you will kill our Faith’ This stand is indeed a violation of the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. It will indeed be a great personal sacrifice upon the part of each of you to change your personal wishes and accept a second Guardian and be forced to obey his commands, but the Cause of God requires you to make this personal sacrifice and to subordinate your wills to the will of the second Guardian, just as you did to the first Guardian of the Faith, for thereby and thereby only can this Cause of God win this battle of all times past, a spiritual battle between the human forces of man as pitted against the spiritual forces of God. The latter are destined to conquer in these latter days of the past and the dawning days of God’s Kingdom on Earth!

I returned to the Holy Land for the second Bahjí Conclave [November, 1958] determined to do what I could to save this Bahá’í situation. But because of my flash vision of some years back wherein I saw I was to be the second Guardian of the Faith, thus being thoroughly convinced of the continuation of the Guardianship, I felt that I of all the more than two billions of souls upon the earth should be the very last soul to bring up this subject – such was my thought.

The sessions of this second Conclave were given over to the discussion of plans and ways and means for spreading the Faith without even a thought or a mention of WHAT WE WERE TO TEACH. The first day in session, several of the Hands of the Cause were called aside in private to consider two letters and a telegram from Germany bringing up the matter of the Guardianship. (These letters came from Dr. Ugo Schaefer and Eugene Schmidt [Chairman of N.S.A. of Germany ]. I have since then spread them throughout the Bahá’í world in a compilation, "The Questions of the Guardianship." It was decided to do nothing at all about these communications – so nothing was done. The matter of the Guardianship was avoided not even mentioned in the letter to the Bahá’ís of the world to be sent out to all National Assemblies from this conclave.

I sat there praying that someone other than I would take a stand for the continuation of the Guardianship, but no one arose. All were united in not mentioning this matter of Guardianship in Bahá’í communities of the world.

When I saw and realized that no one but I would broach this subject I arose. There were twenty-five of us Hands in all and I was in defiance – one against a united twenty-four! They didn’t want to listen to me but out of a certain respect for the oldest man present, they gave me a hearing. There was a moment of question about this, but thereupon Rúhíyyih Khánum broke in and spoke up in favor of hearing me.

I didn’t mince matters, but gave arguments for the necessity of the continuation of the Guardianship for the protection of the Faith that I will not go into again here since the various points I made are given in other parts of this present writing. I warned them surely this declaration that they were sending out [to the Bahá’í world] would create more questions in the minds of the believers than it would solve, but all to no avail. In the end I was stopped on a parliamentary technicality that they had already passed on their message to the Bahá’í world and it would be out of order for its reconsideration. Again in this session of the conclave as in that of a year ago, no recorded records were made of any of the proceedings.

My final plea or argument for the Guardianship was upon the mystical argument that The Holy Spirit in this Dispensation proceeding from the Manifestation, Bahá’u’lláh, through the Center of the Covenant to the Guardian to the believers was cut off by the break caused by the abolition of the Institution of the Guardianship – so how could we expect spiritual strength and the growth of the Cause if this channel, the Guardianship, were severed? To which there was no response. I felt that the "Arc of the Covenant was bumping on the rocks" and warned them of the danger of its becoming stranded high and dry on the rocks, but all with no response, so I ceased speaking.

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

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

In the Proclamation and the other communications from the Hands of the Faith to the Bahá’í world, the intent of the majority of the Hands of the Faith that the Guardianship was definitely ended was very stupidly and carefully concealed – nothing at all was mentioned about this – thus the people didn’t know what was really in the minds of the Hands regarding the Administration with the Guardianship at its heart. The real attitude of the Hands was revealed to the friends in America through that Manifesto, "A New Bahá’í Era" that was formulated by three of the Hands of the Faith then in America, in collusion with whom were the members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States. At least these believers endorsed this document and sanctioned its circulation. From its style in its writing it was doubtless composed by Horace Holley [long-time Secretary of the N.S.A. and Hand of the Cause].

The believers at large are thinking and talking among themselves and some are questioning the evasiveness of the communications of the Hands of the Faith. I hope for the time when the Hands will realize the peril [in] which they are placing the Faith.

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

Moreover in their communications large, the Hands have very carefully tried to conceal the facts of all this business of trying to suit everybody. So far they have not mentioned the word "Guardianship." They have attempted to fix the attention and the hopes of the people upon a House of Justice that will in some way solve all problems. The communications of the Hands to the Bahá’í world have not been clear and straight. They have withheld and camouflaged their intentions and in other words really used the world’s political methods of propaganda, all of which is at variance with the clear and clean way in which this affair of the Cause should be treated.

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

To be sure, [the Hands] have not come out clearly in the proclamation [sent to the Bahá’í world] avowedly and openly repudiating the Guardianship. This [they] did not dare do, yet in [their] hearts and in [their] attitudes this was [their] intention.This entire procedure is lacking in truthfulness and now at this present hour, the people of the Faith are losing confidence – are lethargic in their Bahá’í activities and the Cause is on the downward grade.

But I have one great hope. As stupid as is the mistake made by the Hands when they decided by majority to do away with the Guardianship, nevertheless at that time, they were sincere in the lethargic handling of the matter that was indeed bungled and confused that has produced this present state of affairs that must be rectified. Therefore, I am hoping that with our next conclave [November, 1959] that we will not be hurried as we have been in the two conclaves that we have held at Bahjí. Let us come together and sit for a month or months or even a year, if necessary, to thoroughly consider the problems in hand in order that we can save this Bahá’í Faith from this condition of disruption and disintegration...

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

In the consultation meeting of the Custodian Hands this morning [16 March 1959], the first draft of a general communication to Bahá’ís throughout the world was presented and suggestions as to this text were asked for. This draft, written by one of the Hands, dwelt at some length and ended by promising that the Universal House of Justice, to be established by the delegates from all the National Assemblies, would convene in 1963, and then give us all the infallibility that the Cause requires.

All were asked to speak to the points made in this message, so I gave my opinion that we were holding a fallacious hope to the mass of believers now looking toward us for spiritual guidance – a hope that could not be realized because only a Guardian could establish the Universal House of Justice – we, the Hands of the Faith, had not this power. Here it was suggested that this argument was interrupting the business of the meeting and that the subject should no longer be discussed but deferred to some future date when there would be ample time for discussion – thus the subject was dismissed.

As had always been the case whenever the matter of Guardianship has come up for our consultation, I have brought it up; where-upon all the other Hands have unitedly argued against a second Guardian. I cannot help but feel that a second Guardian is not wanted by them, for if in their hearts they really wanted him, there would at least be some expression to this effect, but there is not. I am faced as if by a solid wall, so resistant that there is no way of penetrating it; therefore, the only thing that I can see for me to do is to wait as patiently as possible the inevitable appearance of such troubles in the Cause as will force upon the Hands a change in their stand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words, the statements of the Hands to the Bahá’í world have not been clear and clear-cut. They have left unsaid things that were behind and below things that were said. BADAH was the inner conviction of the Persian Hands. This was attested to by their proposing and urging this in the first Conclave of the Hands. Ever since then the dominant thought of the Hands has been no more Guardianship, although this, their dominant thought, was carefully not mentioned in their communications to the Bahá’í world.

In the days of the first Guardian of the Faith – the beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi – all who turned to him and obeyed him, according to the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, were confirmed and blessed and under his guidance the Cause was organized and spread the world around and according to the divine plan, the succeeding Guardians of the Faith were to be commanders of the Faith on through the ages to come, each in turn carrying on the works of those who preceded them. Confirmation and progress under each Guardian coming to those and to those only who were following him, the living Guardian of the Faith in their own days. Thus the Cause was to be led onward from victory to victory through the age to come – such was and is yet to be the source of guidance for mankind when the Cause is back again in working order, when it is out of this interregnum of this present substitution of "A New Bahá’í Era" as explained by that Manifesto, gotten out from Chicago by the Hands in America, in collaboration with the N.S.A. of the U.S.A. in which it was definitely stated that there would be no further Guardianship, [and therefore ] the Administration of the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was definitely ended forever.

Such was the Bahá’í ATTITUDE of these friends in Chicago and such is the present attitude of the Hands of the Faith, as testified to by the Proclamation and the communications issued by them to the Bahá’í world up until this present time.

Such is the attitude now of the Hands of the Faith, and by attitude, I mean the real inner conviction of this body of Hands of the Faith. To be sure they are not voicing this to the people of the Faith. They are simply not saying anything at all about the Guardianship – not in so many plain words, but are striking a middle course or compromise by keeping on saying nothing about their real thoughts by calling the attention of the believers throughout the world to a House of Justice to be formed by the people themselves – through the Assemblies, Local, National, and International (the International Assembly being the Universal House of Justice) that they hold will be formed by then and without a Guardian, and that this Universal House of Justice will then take over from them the Hands, the direction of all Bahá’í affairs in the place of the Guardianship.

Thus the attitude of the Hands of the Faith shows that they do not want a continuation of the Guardianship. Such pleas for the restitution of the Guardianship as are coming from Lucknow in India, and Frankfurt in Germany, and from a few individuals in North America and in Latin America, are not being listened to any more than are mine own exhortations in defiance of their actions.

Attitudes often speak louder than words and such is now the case of the Hands of the Faith. Their attitude against the Guardianship is that of denial, yet they don’t say so in so many words. Nevertheless, there is still this monumental attitude that speaks louder than words and that is now misguiding the Bahá’í world – leading it away from the Covenant established in the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. What greater violation could there be than this?

In my opinion, and my opinion is based upon the Bahá’í Administration principles of the Will and Testament of the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, without the Guardianship, the unity of the Bahá’í Faith cannot stand, despite the present contention of the Hands that up until now it is working quite well, save in the few cases such as Lucknow, the German National Spiritual Assembly, and in other isolated individuals whose questions they put aside as being the work of those who don’t understand the teachings of the Faith. The Custodian Hands feel that now the believers are accepting the present set-up of this new administration of the Faith, and the program of the moment to continue as we are now going until they will have established the Universal House of Justice.

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

All agree with me when I tell them that had we not had the Guardian Shoghi Effendi after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, we now would not have our united Faith the world around, but would be divided up into many divisions. But here our united opinion ends and we differ on the continuation of the Guardianship, for which I take the stand, and there we are at what seems to be an impasse, for the united ATTITUDE of all the other Hands is that there shall never be another Guardian of our Faith – not if they have anything to do about it. "BADAH" That Almighty God has changed His Plan and that we – the Cause Sans-Guardian – shall be directed by the Hands of the Cause.

They say God will lead us but without a Guardian in the flesh and upon this they are adamant. This may end with the Hands eliminating themselves from the Faith – as did Sohrab.(11)  My only hope of the Hands changing their opinion is that a revolution [may] start in some quarter of the world and surely if this looms up into a Bahá’í world-wide flair-up, these Hands may find themselves obliged to capitulate. But when will this show-down come?... Now in the official statements of the Hands sent forth to the Bahá’í world, the facts of this condition are most carefully avoided. In none of these statements is there any suggestion of abandoning the Guardianship. The matter is simply left hanging in mid-air, calling the attention of the Bahá’í world to a Universal House of Justice that they promise to solve all questions [when they establish this body] in 1963, disregarding completely that the House of Justice can only be created by a living Guardian in command of the Faith.(12) 

As I have already recorded that Chicago Manifesto (A New Bahá’í Era with no more Guardians) clearly stated the actual attitude of the Hands of the Faith, but as this statement of fact was about to be spread in print by these enthusiasts for this "New Baha’i Era" from Chicago, a copy reached the Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land – reached them in quite a round-about, casual way – a copy had been sent by someone to Germany, and this copy in some way was sent from them here to Haifa. Great was the consternation amongst the Custodian Hands – a cablegram from them to Chicago reached them just in time to stop the general circulation of the document.

No! The time was not then for the Bahá’í world to have the unspoken ATTITUDE of the Hands revealed to the Bahá’ís abroad. Now it is this unvoiced attitude that is directing the machinery of the Administration in these days – the machinery centered in the Holy Land.

It is quite evident that the Hands as individual personalities do not want to be under the command of a Guardian. They don’t fancy the inconvenience of life that a second Guardian might impose upon them. They are quite satisfied with their own personal state or position in the Faith as things are now, without a Guardian. There is no law or order amongst the body of Hands. They now stand supreme in command of the Faith [a command clearly usurped by them]. They enjoy their present supreme position that is indeed a most happy, free, and enviable position, and so why make a change? The temptation of the Hands is similar to that of the orthodox clergy [in other Faiths]. Any change in the present Administration of the Faith would greatly inconvenience them personally. But what about the Cause? Happy and pleasant as is this, [apparent] interregnum [of the Guardianship], it is devastating to the Bahá’í religion in all the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the Hands in Haifa know that I stand against them. I am ready to quit Haifa(13) until the next general conclave of all the Hands, but for some reason that I don’t understand, I am not able to make up my mind just when to make the break, for it will be a break in defiance of the Hands who all wish that I remain here and put my signature upon all their documents that go out from here to all parts of the Bahá’í world endorsing their actions and attitudes, all of which to me is fallacious and is leading the people astray and keeping the Cause in darkness, for in the Guardianship we have the only source of the light of guidance, and without this the Cause is lost. The Hands don’t want the Bahá’í world to know where they stand about the Guardianship. This, their ARRIERRE PENSEE, they carefully hide.

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

How many times, almost daily in fact, am I told by the Custodian Hands that the beloved Guardian has given us ample and sufficient instructions exactly what we should teach in carrying out the Ten-Year Crusade and that we need no more than to follow that which he told us to do – that we need no other Guardian beyond that!

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

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

In the day of Shoghi Effendi, the beloved Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, it was well and right that we believer Hands, or [those who were not] Hands to sign our letters "In the Service of the Beloved Guardian," because he, Shoghi Effendi, was then the living Guardian here on earth in our midst, but now inasmuch as the Guardianship is a function or an office according to the divinely inspired and given Administration of the Bahá’í Faith, Shoghi Effendi no longer occupies the position of the living Guardian upon earth, and until we have the second Guardian of the Faith, we have no Guardian to turn to for the chair of the Guardianship of the Faith is vacant.(14) Therefore, we should not now be signing our Bahá’í communications "In the Service" of any Guardian, not until we have one, then when we have a living Guardian we, with reason, sign ourselves "In the Service of the Guardian" with the understanding and meaning, for then we will have a Guardian.

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

Now in all of the arguments of those Custodian Hands of the Faith in the Holy Land, I see their efforts to reinforce their stand against the continuation of the Guardianship by thus on all occasions stating and re-stating that the source of guidance now still comes to the believers from Shoghi Effendi in the Abhá Realm and that no other guidance is needed, therefore the discontinuance of the Guardianship.

At each of the meetings of the Custodians, letters are sent out to the Bahá’í world abroad signed by all of us, "Faithfully Yours in the Service of the Beloved Guardian."

When I have objected to this statement that I am obliged because of the majority policy of the Cause to place my signature to (despite the fact that I am opposed to so doing) I am told that the beloved Guardian planned out this Ten-Year Crusade and that is that, and we know from him all that it is necessary for us ever to know in order to carry on and to accomplish the crusade without any further directions, such being in other words their contest that there is no further need of a living Guardian in the flesh with us here upon earth as given in the Master’s Will and Testament and attested to by the beloved Guardian himself in everything that he did, said and wrote during the thirty-six and more years of his ministry amongst us.

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

According to the Divine Plan of the Administration of the Faith, we should be signing ourselves "In the Service of the Living Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith" for the Guardianship is a divinely appointed office and not a personality. It would seem that the vast majority of the Hands are insisting that the power of his Guardianship dwelt in the personality of Shoghi Effendi rather than in his station of Guardianship – thus they are misleading themselves and consequently they themselves are misleading others.

I know the sincerity of the Hands in their present stand that the Will and Testament of the Master is now BADAH, and that they feel that in time they will be led to set up some way of administering the Faith, but yet they don’t know just what this will be but they still feel that the Guardianship is BADAH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The responsibility of this choice rests with the Hands. As things are now going after the disappearance of the present Hands,(15) there will be no one authorized in our Holy Writ to propagate and to protect the Cause. At present we have no definite message to propagate for without an acknowledged Guardian, the pattern given us by the Master ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and established by the beloved Shoghi Effendi no longer is the message of the Bahá’í Faith.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And all this to be done without a Guardian to function as the head of this House of Justice as they have abandoned the Guardianship forever!

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

And now in this year l959, Anno Domini and the year 115 of the Bahá’í era soon after the beloved Shoghi Effendi’s death – he who started and got the Bahá’í Administrative system founded and in working order upon the six continents of the globe – now at this early point in Bahá’í history we find right among the Hands of the Faith a number who hold that the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament is BADAH and should be followed no longer! Such is their attitude. Only this morning, 12 January 1959, one of the Hands of the Faith here in Haifa told me that the Master’s Will and Testament with the Guardianship was BADAH. A very dear friend has told me that this was her opinion several times before. She is but one who holds to this belief that somehow God will lead the Cause to victory by some means other than this Administrative System so laboriously worked out and developed the world around by our late beloved Shoghi Effendi. Such reasoning and such conviction as this in the face of the Will and Testament of the beloved Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, together with the mission of Shoghi Effendi and all that he taught and explained to us quite surpasses my comprehension.

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

To be sure this has been slipped over upon them Hands as a group by those of the Hands who at the opening of discussion at the first Bahjí Conclave came out all standing together urging that the Guardianship as instituted in the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá be pronounced BADAH. This was the conviction of these Persian Bahá’í Hands. Shortly Rúhíyyih Khánum felt as they did and this block has existed since then but under cover, as it were.

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

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

Last night 5 January 1959 I had a long talk with one of the Custodian Hands of the Faith wherein that Custodian Hand’s inner conviction that because Shoghi Effendi did not have a son and could not appoint a second Guardian of the Faith that the Guardianship as an Institution of the Faith was not only "BADAH" but that the Master’s Will and Testament with the entire plan Administrative Order outlined therein was also BADAH,(16) that the Cause was now to be led by the House of Justice that would be established at the centennial at Baghdád in 19