^1. In discussing this second stage of development of the International Council as the International Court at the dinner table during the writer's pilgrimage (28 November to 7 December 1952), in the presence of Rúhíyyih Khánum and the members of the International Bahá'í Council then residing in Haifa, Shoghi Effendi remarked that "the present President of the International Bahá'í Council will then become the[Chief] Judge. (the Guardian in an aside to Mason and with a smile asked 'Mason are you ready to become a Judge?)'" This statement, recorded in my Haifa Notes, clearly confirmed the fact that Mason Remey was the irremovable Head of this embryonic Institution and would remain so in the successive evolutionary stages outlined by Shoghi Effendi as long as Mason Remey should live. It should now be clear that, as the Council in its second stage would be performing the function of a Supreme Court in relation to the six National Spiritual Assemblies identified by Shoghi Effendi that would have likewise developed into national Courts, this would undeniably constitute an active stage in the development of the International Council over which only the Guardian of the Faith could preside. This being the case, would not Shoghi Effendi then have to depose Mason Remey as its head (i.e. when this stage was reached or, in any case, not later than 1963 if the Court had been established by then) and assume the Presidency, himself, or, more descriptively, become, in effect, the Chief Judge of this International Bahá'í Court exercising jurisdiction over these six National Bahá'í Courts? As Shoghi Effendi obvioiusly had no intention of deposing Mason Remey as the President of the Council, it would have been discerned, had the believers been more perceptive, that, in Shoghi Effendi¹s setting of a goal for the establishment of this International Court and its six subordinate Courts by 1963, he had informed us, in an indirect way, that his own passing was destined to take place prior to that date (as it did, with his passing actually taking place in 1957)? In fact, he had alluded to the imminence of his passing so clearly that same evening at the dinner table in other remarks that he made that Rúhíyyih Khánum jumped up from the dinner table and in tears rushed out of the room. (An incident about which this writer reminded Rúhíyyih Khánum in one of his letters to her that has subsequently been posted on his Home Page.)