Transcript for:
Baha'i Faith Overview

all right this is our last world religion we're going to cover we're going to talk today about the religion of baha'i and i know this is a religion that not many people have heard about but it is becoming more and more popular it is one of the fastest growing religions in the middle east right now and it is having a huge impact on world affairs in uh in a variety of ways that i think you'll see as relevant today so i think we can cover this religion in just one lecture now the word baha'i actually means follower of baha'u'llah and that is the name of the founder of this religion since he comes from the middle east he comes from what we would now call iran or what used to be the persian empire you may notice that his name is arabic and you can probably pick out some of the arabic words in his name his name means glory to god and therefore he is the one who brings glory to god in the baha'i faith he is the founder of this religion so baha'i just means a follower of their founder baha'u'llah and this also has its roots in shiite islam if you remember the last section of the last lecture of islam we talked a lot about the two different branches the sunnis and the shiites and we talked about the 12 imams that sort of follow in a hereditary successor of muhammad then you may remember that there were 12 imams according to the 12 or version of shia do you guys remember what happened to that person his name was muhammad al-makti and it was prophesied that he would return to bring in the messianic age and he was the target of assassination like many of other leaders throughout the middle east at that time and so he decided to phase into the spiritual realm where he would continue to guide the shiite scholars to help them in their in working through some of the sharia law in the years that followed so that way no one could kill him we could continue to have this influence as the 12th imam in the 12 version of shia islam well they prophesied that he would return one day to bring about the messianic age and for the baha'i they believe that that has already happened so this is piggybacking right off of what we left off on in the last lecture on islam in 1844 a man by the name of saeed ali muhammad also known as the bob claimed to be the incarnate al-makhdi the last imam of shia islam and said i've returned and i've come to bring about the next prophecy the next revelation and so they believe that that messianic age started around 1844 this guy is starting to say hey there's going to be another messenger coming who's going to bring in the next revelation from god so he starts prophesying that there would be another messenger and that there would be another revelation coming from god but he's of course saying this in what is predominantly a muslim territory that is most of the people of the persian empire at that time were muslim and muslims didn't take well to this you can probably figure out why now that we've already been through the chapter on islam muslims didn't like the fact that he was saying there was going to be another messenger given that muhammad is supposed to be the seal of the prophets you may remember us talking about that in that chapter 13 that he used muhammad was supposed to be the last prophet to come and yet the bob is saying there's going to be this next messenger who's coming and then he also says that there's going to be another revelation coming from god which also conflicted with some of the muslim theology because they believe that the quran is the final revelation of god we'll talk about that in just a minute so for that reason the bob was put on trial for blasphemy he was teaching something that was antithetical to some of the muslim faith of that time period and so they put him on trial they found him to be guilty because he did not recant his beliefs he said no i do believe there will be be this messenger who's coming to to bring in the next era the next message from god and so they had him put to death through a firing squad and therefore many people kind of saw him as a martyr because he was put to death in their mind unjustly he was just simply teaching another religion the next prophecy he considered to be the next stage in the western traditions at least and therefore many of his followers actually developed quite sympathy i think the idea was that if they take out the bob then that would disperse the whole movement but again we've seen time and time again now that just doesn't seem to work now though the name bob is actually an arabic word that means the gateway and so the bob kind of serves as like the gateway to baha'u'llah in the same way that john the baptist kind of serves the precursor to jesus so notice that john the baptist was sort of prophesying that there was coming a messiah who is going to teach then the next revelation from god or the new testament if you will and therefore jesus once john the baptist dies starts teaching that religion well the same thing happens here in the baha'i faith where almost two thousand years later the bob is prophesying that there will come this next messenger and sure enough baha'u'llah comes forward and claims to be that very messenger and then starts teaching the religion of baha'i so the bob is not really the founder of this religion he actually does have followers to this day they're known as bobby lovers and uh i don't know much about that religion i actually just recently got a book of scriptures from the bob that would indicate what that religion teaches but i haven't read it yet so i guess stay tuned for that if you want to watch a future video but the uh the bob is simply the precursor to baha'u'llah who is the founder of baha'i and so that sort of sets up the relationship here and notice that baha'u'llah does not start preaching until after the bob has been uh executed so who is the founder well his name was not baha'u'llah that's his title his name was mirza hussein ali nuri that's his birth name but he is known by his followers as baha'u'llah which means the glory to god he lived from 1817 to 1892 and we are very confident that those are his dates because this is so recent that we actually have physical documentation of the guy we actually have a photograph of him which is unusual especially given that the baha'i believe that you shouldn't look at pictures of baha'u'llah lest you be tempted to worship the man rather than the god that he represents so there's sort of a similar trend here in islam where the people don't want pictures of muhammad lest you be tempted to worship him as god instead the same thing with the baha'i they say we don't want to look at pictures so here's here's a photograph of the guy but please please don't worship him say the baha'i so we actually do have documentation during his lifetime flash photography was invented so you can think of what's kind of going on in america the wild west is kind of happening technology's starting to happen the industrial revolution is starting to take place and so we actually know a lot about this guy he comes from a very rich aristocratic family in which he was actually expected to become a great politician that you know they thought he was going to become one of the rulers of persia at that time but he decides to give all of that that riches and fame up instead to start teaching a religion that leads to a lot of controversy and persecution now what does that remind you of does that sound a little bit like the buddha and you can see some parallels here with buddhism as well whereas the buddha gave up his career as a warrior noble in order to become a religious teacher giving up his wealth and prestige in order to become a poor and lowly priest if you will a founder religious founder so baola then starts teaching in persia which is where he's from and like i said he was identified by the bob as the next messenger of god and as soon as the bob is executed in the prison yard uh he then he baha'u'llah starts teaching the baha'i faith and for the same reasons that the bob was executed so baha'u'llah is placed under a lot of pressure too for the same reasons he's claiming to be another messenger when most muslims believe that muhammad was supposed to be the last prophet of messenger from god and he also claims that another revelation is coming his revelation he is about to teach and that contradicts a lot of the muslim faith as well so they try to come up with the worst punishment for this right blasphemy should be something that is severely punished in islam because it's considered to be the unforgivable sin just like it is in judaism and christianity as well so he's placed in what's called the black pit this is a prison yard that's actually in iran to this day it's at now more of a museum than it is a prison yard people consider this to be cruel and unusual punishment but but what they would do is simply drop people into this black pit and then you just sort of wait to starve to death actually if any of you've watched the was it the dark knight rises or whatever batman film that was where they had a pit like this as a prison yard that was actually modeled after the black pit in iran for this reason the idea was that they would just drop people into these pits and then you would either starve to death or you would die of disease because there's all these corpses down there they didn't clean out the black pit so you just leave them down there to die so you're standing amidst all the other bodies that die or you die of asphyxiation because all of that feces and urine that's piling up all the people who have been imprisoned there as well stuck in this they don't have like you know plumbing down there and therefore you know you might die of some of the ammonia that's sort of rising up off of the feces that you give off so therefore you're either going to die of disease you're going to die of starvation or you're going to die of asphyxiation no matter how this works out it's not pleasant well the problem is is baha'u'llah was down there for like some 49 days and he didn't die and so many of the guards were kind of looking around at each other like you know how does he survive without food water fresh air and sunlight for 49 days they began to worry that maybe there was something to the sky and that they didn't want to be responsible for killing the prophet of god if he was in fact being held alive supernaturally so they actually took him out of the black pit and sent him to a high security prison in palestine what we would now call parts of israel but this prison again still exists to this day and it's out in a peninsula near the mediterranean uh sea where they would stick prisoners and it was a high security prisoner but as as they they take him across the middle east uh to go to this high security person many of his followers baha'u'llah already had a huge following of thousands of people would actually travel across the middle east to go to palestine to listen to his teachings from his prison cell and so you know he continues to have influences as he's trying to tell people from the prison himself they had a small window in his uh his cell that he would try to preach to but they can't quite hear him because it's a very small window and therefore you know they're they're frustrated so they start protesting outside you like you gotta let this guy go because he hasn't done anything wrong he hasn't committed any crimes all he's doing is teaching a different religion and there's nothing wrong with that it's just different religion than what you guys think it is so they were like begging the prison people to just let them out well it was eventually agreed upon that they would place him under house arrest so that at least he could have people visit him so there is a house that's actually in haifa israel and that also is a tourist site it's actually the place where baha'u'llah was buried and he spent the remaining years of his life under house arrest so at least he could have visitors come to him and people would go inside the house but you know think about it there's thousands of people trying to get into the house and the living room can only hold maybe maybe a hundred right you know so there's 100 people crowded in the living room and everyone outside is like we can't hear or like what's going on so they asked the guards that were keeping them under house arrest could you just you know let him sit on the front porch at least that way we can all hear him better and so the guard said okay you can go out the front door but don't leave the porch area so he did that he continued to teach week after week year after year on the front porch and eventually the people were like hey could we he could be on the you know front yard where we can hear him more and the guards were like well all right he's he's been pretty good he's never disobeyed us we trust him in the front yard they said you could go in the front yard just don't leave the gated area if you see the pictures of this house it's got this huge gate around the yard that he wasn't allowed to go outside of and so they allowed him to go in the front yard where at least people could crowd all around him and hear him kind of 360. and therefore he continued to teach people from the front yard well eventually the guards realized that no matter what they tell this guy he's going to do whatever they say because he wasn't he was compliant with whatever their orders were so they just said to him okay don't leave the gated area and then they left him and and so you know a year a couple years later pablo dies in house arrest with no guards guarding him and dies peacefully in his bed in 1892 it's kind of the weirdest ending to a religious founder that you see here right there's no assassination there's no crucifixion there's no you know major coup or something like that he just dies peacefully under house arrest with no guards there and continues to teach the baha'i faith it's during those last 30 years of his life or so he's writing all of these books he's written more than 90 books of scripture and so i'm going to list all 90 of those scriptures for you and then quiz you on that for the quiz on baha'i no i'm just joking but i will tell you about a couple books that you probably should know the kitabi aktas is the book that kind of contains the basic teachings of baha'i and these books are relatively small and easy reads but each book kind of contains a certain theme a certain message and so if you want to know any one scripture it's the one book that i encourage you to read if you're going to read something from baha'i but it also captures a lot of the basic messages so i'll just give you that for the quiz and say if you want to know what their scriptures are then know the katabhi akhtas what did he teach then well one of the first things he starts saying is that there are nine prophets that have come in the past to bring revelations from god and you can probably guess who some of these guys are because many of them we've already met well in fact all of them we've met so far and so he names people like krishna and you might be wondering wait a minute how is krishna one of the founders isn't he like an incarnation of the god vishnu and like why is he listed as a founder well the baha'i reason to themselves that somebody had to start the religion of hinduism and since the hindus today trace a lot of their teachings back to krishna from the bhagavad-gita that the baha'i just say yeah whether he was an incarnation of god or just some dude that taught hinduism whoever that person was that is the founder of hinduism so they trace this back about 5 000 years to krishna who they considered to be the first prophet from god and then about a thousand years later you see zoester coming and talking about the zohasrian religion the religion of horror mazda and anger monu and then about that same time period abraham starts teaching the covenant with god making a covenant of the ethnicity of judaism and then about 500 years after that moses comes and starts bringing in the scriptures of god the the torah and the 613 commandments the rituals and holidays and the rules about how to create a just state and then about 500 years after that you get the buddha who teaches people about loving compassion and helping others in need and showing giving people a second chance because they're always changing and then about 500 years after that comes jesus of nazareth who then teaches people about forgiveness and grace and how you should turn the other cheek and love one another and then about 500 years after that comes muhammad with this teaching about equality and how we should all recognize each other as equals among others regardless of your race or nationality or or perhaps even your religion and then we fast forward about a thousand years till we get to the bob who then starts teaching the coming of another era another messianic age and that is the era of baha'u'llah and so the ninth prophet then is baha'u'llah himself claiming to be the ninth prophet so the symbol for baha'i is the nine-pointed star to try to illustrate this point that there are nine prophets each one of whom have brought a different revelation from god and sometimes they show the symbol with having all of the different religions that they represent around that nine-pointed star and so you might be able to recognize some of these the symbols you can see at the top of the symbol there's the baha'i symbol there the nine-pointed star the same symbol that's in the center of that that picture right there and then if we're going clockwise around it you see a symbol of the crescent moon and star which represents islam the cross which represents christianity the star of david which represents judaism then the outstretched palm which is the jain symbol it means ahimsa stop causing suffering you may remember that from chapter six and then as we move down to the other side of the star you get the tory gates of shinto you may remember that from one of the earlier chapters it's chapter nine but we covered it at the very beginning of the semester that's the symbol for entering into a place of nature where the kami spirits lived and then we move further up the star and you see the sikh seek symbol for the kanda that the two swords to the side represent body and soul the one sword in the middle represents the oneness of god and then moving further up you get to the hindu symbol that is the om symbol the sound of creation hindus believe that that is the sound that the gods made when they created the world and then near the top there you see the symbol of the eight spoke wheel which represents buddhism as well so you see that the nine major religions of the world are all represented in this one symbol for baha'i and some of my students frequently ask this question like well wait a minute why is sikhism represented in the symbols but guru nanak is not listed as one of the nine prophets and the best answer that i've gotten from the baha'i is this that the guru nanak didn't actually teach a new revelation the nine prophets represent somebody who's brought in a new message so notice the difference between a prophet and a messenger a prophet is just someone who refers to a message from the past but a messenger is someone who brings in something new and so what the baha'i are saying is that these are the guys that bring a new message to god and so a sikhism doesn't do that sikhism simply blends together old messages islam and hinduism and puts them together in a new way but there's not a new revelation with that and i guess you could say the same thing with shinto shinto is represented on the symbol of faiths but there is no founder for shinto so therefore it doesn't count as uh a founder or a messenger from god but it does represent one of the nine major religions of the world today same thing with jainism jainism is represented as on this symbol graph but mahavira is not listed as one of the nine prophets perhaps because of the reasons that i said in chapter six right jainism is simply hinduism on crack and so it's not like mahavira said anything new he was saying things that the hindus were saying he was just taking the hindu teachings and ramping them up a bunch so therefore he's not represented as one of the nine prophets but i think in every other case you see that the major religions are represented and many of the religious founders are however there is a dispute here about lao tza with taoism taoism is not represented on the symbols and laozi is not listed as one of the nine prophets and the question is why is that is he just to be wrapped up in the shinto religion and are they confusing these two religions for each other because they're not really the same it's not really clear even some baha'i might even say that taoism is not a religion it's a more of a philosophy so we get into a lot of speculation there and baha'i have updated their symbol to include other religions like unitarianism or taoism or religions that aren't on this graph but they say that these are the nine prophets so they do hold to this teachings because they claim that these nine people bring in a new revelation from god each one of them teaching humanity a new lesson so what are those lessons well this is going to be a nice review for the whole semester because we've already been through a lot of this throughout you know the whole course this this far krishna brings in the message about maya so you may remember me talking about how the third eye of enlightenment represents your ability to see religious truths and you have to pull back the veil of maya that which prevents us from seeing reality for what it really is and therefore we pull back the veil so that our third eye enlightenment can see these religious truths that's what hinduism is all about therefore krishna is teaching this idea of trying to open your third eye so that you can understand these religious truths well notice that that's the first step in understanding religion if you don't open your third eye of enlightenment how are you going to understand anything like good versus evil which is what zoaster does about a thousand years later zoester then comes and starts making a distinction between good versus evil and saying you have to dedicate yourself to the good in other words once you've opened your third eye of enlightenment now you can understand with your third eye the concepts of good versus evil and therefore that eye-opening experience helps you then to distinguish between right and wrong and then you can therefore dedicate yourself to the right path so that's zoester's religion of dualism then about that same time abraham is making a covenant with god to say i promise to keep with you a covenant a contract if you will between humans and god that we will obey what you tell us to do and so therefore once you can distinguish between good and evil you can make a covenant with god and say i'm always going to do the good and follow god's path well then moses comes 500 years later and he brings in with him the 613 commandments of god and therefore now that you've made this covenant you say i'm going to choose the good now you can start dedicating yourself to a list of things that help to establish justice in the world or you know all the things that moses tries to teach with the commandments so therefore how to create a just state and judicial affairs due process and what and what not so moses brings all of those things in then about 500 years later comes the buddha who's trying to teach people that we are always changing that we we never stay the same and not means that you are not a permanent thing but you are always developing so therefore we need to show compassion on people as they go through these changes because sometimes it's the very fact that we have changed that we need to give them a second chance and say okay can you do better now from from here on out so that's the buddha's message and then from there you see 500 years later comes jesus of nazareth who teaches people about forgiveness once you've established the law of moses and you say here's what is right and wrong then jesus can teach people about forgiveness notice you can't teach forgiveness without first teaching people the law because if you taught forgiveness first imagine if jesus came before moses he'd be like and forgive one another and they're all like did we do something wrong i don't get it like you have to first teach them the law then you can teach them forgiveness and then you can see it sort of step wise progression moving on here and then after jesus teaches people forgiveness then muhammad teaches people about equality and that we should all sort of recognize each other as equals no matter what your race or religion and therefore muhammad's message i don't know what the bob's message is per se and so i'll have to read this teachings of the bob book that i just received this spring and maybe i'll get back to you but what the baha'i say is that the bob's message is basically that something major is about to shift that there there's going to be a radical shift in the way things turn at this point and think about that right that was a time period in which the 1800s things were radically shifting right there's a rep republican democracies are being created all over america and both north and south america and europe and those have a huge influence on other cultures of the world that are also kind of following in this sort of democratic process and a lot of the industrial revolution is taking place the scientific revolution is happening during that time period so the bob's prophecy that there's there's something shifting it's indicating that the world is now taking on a new form that there's new problems that are going to have to develop and that the coming of a new messenger who's going to start that cycle so the i believe that the bob is sort of like a turning point where there will be another nine prophets after him who's going to start the next circle of messages from god starting with baha'u'llah so baha'u'llah then comes in and he starts prophesying the next step in in this progression so you can kind of see baha'i as like a staircase right think of like each step in in the religion is like another step up closer to god or at least understanding of god so you have to kind of start a stair one first open your third eye of enlightenment and then you can take step number two see the difference between good and evil if you skip step one you're probably not going to get to step two because your eyes still closed so therefore once you've opened your third enlightenment then you can start to see good and evil and therefore you can start making covenants with god and say now that i can see good and evil i dedicate myself to the good then you can start following a list of commandments that moses provides on mount sinai and then you can start teaching people compassion realizing that even though we have these commandments people are changing and therefore you need to give them the second chance because maybe that that learning opportunity will help them to grow as an individual and then you can teach people forgiveness on top of that so that when they do stumble when they do break the law that you show them forgiveness and let god deal with them because maybe god is helping those people to grow in the process then you can start to show people as equals as the religions start to become more unified you start seeing religions spread across the globe not just in these tribal polytheistic ancient societies they're now starting to spread across the globe right where you know christianity islam buddhism are pretty well known around the world today and then comes the bob who says you know here comes this other guy and then baha'u'llah's message is the one that's the next step and so the question is well what would be the message of baha'u'llah in this time period well think about the time period in which he lived right his message is basically how to get along in a one world society because during his lifetime we saw the invention of steam ships we could actually sail what will sailing across the ocean became much easier whereas in the 1500s and 1600s it was treacherous to get across the ocean many people died but by the 1700s and 1800s this sea travel was becoming the norm so we've got um sailing ships that are moving across the ocean we've got the invention of trains to transport people across countries before that it would take weeks to go from just one country to the next now you can go across countries in a matter of days and then he also sees the invention of the telegraph he sees the invention of the radio during his lifetime automobiles were invented and then airplanes shortly thereafter and then after that the the television set and then the computer and then the world wide web he's kind of indicating that we are all interconnected now that these country boundaries are really not they're not really um separate anymore people are now traveling across the world and all living in places well like america powell was very aware of what was happening in america as people from around the world were moving to a country that offered people liberty and justice for all and so he knows that there's countries like that that are mixed races mixed religions mixed ethnicities and he says this is starting to happen all over europe is starting to happen in the middle east and he sees these things and he says we're entering into a new era so we've got new problems to deal with before the 1800s people really didn't know what was going on in the world in fact if you look at american history religious history particularly we didn't even know what hinduism was we didn't even know what jainism or buddhism or or taoism was we had these vague notions that all of those religions were the same religion we couldn't even tell them apart it wasn't until the 1800s that people traveled to india or people traveled to china and actually learned more about the religion that we start seeing the religious studies programs start to blossom with people like max mueller who started to accurately depict what these other religions taught as opposed to what was happening previously and people were just sort of imposing what they thought say native americans believed or what they thought the chinese believed or what they thought hindus believed and they were simply just confused about them you start seeing this investigation where now people are starting to understand how the world works how technology works and the scientific revolution is leading to the industrial revolution where now you've got factories and trade that's happening where people are you know shipping food across the ocean and and you know spreading the the cotton mill or the cotton gin is being uh produced and the you know the trains are moving stuff all over the world and he says we have got to learn how to get together as a one-world society and so that's what he's trying to get at here is that there's this next step in human history that we've got to arrive at and and we've got to solve this problem because in the midst of that comes this kind of discrimination there's a problem with people living of mixed races and mixed religions and mis mixed ethnicities that the problem is that now especially like in america for example the civil war was going on during his lifetime he knew that people didn't get along with with each other's races that white people black people didn't get along and there's discrimination against asians and uh hispanics and middle eastern people white people uh all of these these forms of discrimination as they're now living next to each other uh is starting to affect them whereas previous to this like think about europe french people tend to live in france german people tend to live in germany english people tend to live in britain and it wasn't until the 1800s especially with these mass transit forms of of transportation that they actually could go to other countries now you've got germans living in spain you've got spaniards living in america you've got you know english people living in france and and um the the races are starting to mix and it's it's it's becoming a new problem there's there's new forms of racism that are starting to emerge and so he says this is the next age that we're having to deal with so that's what baha'u'llah's message is so he sees each one of these nine prophets is like kind of stacking on top of each other right you're not going to understand paul's message if you don't first understand that we are all equals and you're not going to understand that we are all equals unless you're able to show forgiveness on people when they do wrong and you can't show people forgiveness unless you understand that people change and you can't show that people change unless you first know that there's something wrong that they need to change too and therefore you can't tell them what's wrong until you first have a covenant and distinguish between good and evil and you can't distinguish between good and evil until you first identify the opening of your third eye of enlightenment so therefore they see these as a progressive religion very much like mathematics think about this like you know you have to learn arithmetic before you can learn algebra you have to learn algebra before you can learn geometry you have to learn geometry before you can learn trig and then you have to learn trigonometry before you can learn calculus if you just start a bunch of kidney gardeners with calculus they aren't going to have any clue what you're talking about so you have to kind of take each step on the stairway to get to the next lesson and so what the baha'is say is that each one of these religions is providing you with another tool in the toolbox to deal with these different problems each one of them is trying to address a different problem for a different era in a different time so this is one of the most pluralistic religions that we're going to see in this class each one of the religions is trying to solve all of these problems and it's kind of like have you ever played trivial pursuit you know in terms of pursuit you get this little pie piece with holes in it for the pieces of the pie and every question you get right in trivial pursuit you put another piece into your pie and so the baha'i kind of seed religion is that way for every religion that you learn you stick in another piece of the pie and the more religions that you start to adopt the more tools you have in your toolbox to deal with some of the problems that we deal with on a daily basis so they say yeah each religion is necessary in kind of learning the next lesson kind of like in in calculus class right you have to first learn your trick before you can get to the next step and he says i'm not the last step you know there's a there's another science after calculus and so he says i'm not the last prophet to come he says there will be a prophet after me and that will create the tenth major religion whatever that is he says that'll be like 500 years from now he's kind of spacing it out and saying it's about 500 years between the different prophets roughly that's not not meant to be taking a literal number but he just said that you know there will come someone 500 years from now who that person is and what they're gonna teach i have no idea right um how to get along with the space aliens like what are we gonna be dealing with in 500 years we can't even fathom that just like people 500 years ago would not be able to fathom the world wide web can you imagine trying to explain to christopher columbus what the internet was you know try to explain to him what wi-fi means like he's you know you'd be like you take your phone and he's like what's a phone well it's it's a piece of glass it's like what's glass you know you know what a you know internet is you know no i have no idea what these are right you you press buttons on a phone and you can call contact people from around the world right so behold is saying this is the next year that we live in where we're now connected with the world wide web that's why it's called that is because we can talk to people in china we can talk to people in australia we can talk to people in the middle east or africa or north korea okay or maybe not north korea but we could talk to people around the globe in real time and that's that's something that has never happened before and so he says this is a new thing that we have to deal with it's a new era that we're launching into now uh who that 10th person is going to be he doesn't he doesn't it's not important he says because first we've gotta master this deal so notice that does sort of create this question about can you add to other people's religion because baha'i are adding to what you know judaism and christianity and islam all built on and judaism uh says no you can't add to other people's religion baha'i says of course you can but the two religions that are in the middle are the two largest religions of the world who ironically both say you can't add to our religions but both of them say they can add to other people's religions and you see that conflict here if you can't add to other people's religions then you should say that either judaism or hinduism is is the primal religion because they're the first religions to start teaching the the faith but if you say yeah well you can add to that new revelations then it should be baha'i is a logical conclusion because the baha'i is the last religion to bring a revelation in the series but notice that the two religions in the middle are saying yes we can do it to other people but no you can't do it to us and the buyer like no you're making a mistake here you're just saying that you don't think that anyone should add to yours but you're doing it to other people so here are some of the examples from the jewish torah the torah contains five books of moses and the last book is called deuteronomy and in the in that book chapter 4 verse 2 moses says you shall not add to the word which i am commanding to you nor take away from it you may keep the commandments of the lord your god which i command to you meaning the torah is the commandment the complete set of commandments of god and there's not another commandment coming there's no new word there's no new revelation coming after that so the jews believe that that's the complete revelation of god well a thousand years later comes jesus and he teaches the what becomes the new testament teachings and the last book in the new testament is the book of revelation in chapter 22 verse 18 it says this i testify to everyone who hears the word of the prophecy of this book if anyone adds to them god will add to him the plagues which are written about in this book and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy god will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written about in this book and therefore the new testament is the final revelation sort or the capping stone of the judeo-christian faith but then 500 years later comes muhammad and in his farewell sermon muhammad said these words o people no prophet or apostle will come after me and no new faith will be born meaning this is the last revelation there's not going to come another faith there will not be another messenger or apostle to come after me but then a thousand years later comes baha'u'llah with the next message now how did the baha'i explain this right because if they're saying that all these other religions came from god then how do you explain what these passages are saying and here's how the baha'i interpret that they say these scriptures are true temporarily in other words when the jews say that the torah is the complete revelation it was the complete revelation to date that was the fullest revelation from god up until that point but then later on when christianity adds that the new testament that becomes the complete revelation of god to that date but then later on when muhammad comes he starts teaching the next revelation that becomes the final revelation to that date and baha'i saying see every time you add when god offers another message to people then there's another step that people have to go through so they say that there's a continuation of progression in religion where as we continue to develop and and evolve our humanity we're becoming more and more like god we are becoming more and more like that messianic kingdom that age that time of peace that's talked about in judaism christianity islam and hinduism for that matter that this this golden age is coming where people are becoming more and more at peace so he says we have we first have to learn these these messages so that's what the baha'i are trying to say that these prophets are not incorrect they were just true from a certain point of view they were only true temporarily and then there there's more to come and when that more comes that becomes the last and final revelation to date and then he says there will be one who comes after me okay so uh what are the teachings of baha'i we can summarize this in 10 basic principles think of them as like the ten pillars of baha'i if you will and the first pillar is simply that there is but one god uh like most of the other religions that we've seen so far sikhism islam christianity and judaism and and hinduism if you take it from a certain point of view they say there is only one god and the buyer's saying yeah that's that's no different than what we're saying it's it's the same god in each religion so they believe that all of the religions of the world come from that one god why do they believe this because they believe god has the power to take any form he wants so if he wants to appear as a buddha or as lao tza or as jesus or as muhammad or as krishna he can appear to those people or if those are just human beings then he says then the baha'is say then god can speak to those people he can reveal himself he can speak through them through his his spiritual powers so they believe that all of these religions come from the same god which is what makes baha'i one of the most pluralistic religions this semester they believe that all religions are equally valid and have something to contribute to that puzzle piece that we were just describing so baha'u'llah said these words although we may have different concepts of god's nature although we may pray in different languages and call god by different names we are speaking about the same transcendent being so he's saying that all of these representations of god this is very similar to sikhism you may remember where all these different representations of god are different aspects of the one god but that god may be just too mysterious for people to fully comprehend and therefore god can take any form he wishes so if he wishes to appear as a middle eastern guy he can do that if he wishes to appear as a hindu guy or as a chinese fellow then he can do that too so some of the baha'i actually believed that the next prophet that to come might even be a female and that'll be the 10th religion of the world why because all the prophets so far have been males and so maybe we're arriving in that state nowadays 1800s was when the women's rights movement started to take effect and now women can vote and now women can work and now women can drive etc we dealt with that in the previous couple lectures so therefore he says you know this is a change that's occurring and speaking of which right he says that all humanity is one big family now that's not a religious belief that's just a fact no matter what your world view is you have to simply acknowledge that this is true whether you believe in evolution or creationism or or anything in between that he's saying that we all descend from a common ancestor and so he says why don't we act like a family why are we killing each other why are we attacking one another when those are your distant cousins those are your brothers and sisters and so we're like one big incestuous pool of people all having sex with sexual relations it kind of ruins sex when you think about it that way my wife and i stopped having sex when we realized this but the point is is that we should act like a family instead of like you know saying oh i hate you you know you're a different race or you're a different religion or you're a different ethnicity than i am right we should say hey you're my brother or you're my cousin you're a family member so let's act like a family he says this in one of the scriptures ye are the fruit of one tree and the leaves of one branch picture a tree with the trunk is like our common ancestors and all the branches are the different ethnic groups so you know if your family lives closer to the equator then maybe you'll have darker skin if you live closer to the poles then you might have more lighter skin but we all come from a common ancestor and that's kind of the teaching that paul is saying here this isn't just a made up religious belief he's saying it's a fact so we have to live like a family what good would it do for a branch of the tree to chop off another branch of the same tree that's your tree you're cutting off a branch from your own family and so you know why would you want to you know cut off a branch that would kill the life of your own family your own tree and because of that then men and women are also to be treated as equals and we've seen that time and time again where you know the buddha and mahavira and jesus and sikhs and muslims all try to say that women should be equal but there's always something that women can't do right so for example in judaism women were not even allowed inside the temple they weren't allowed to go into the temple for worship in christianity the new testament says that women are not allowed to speak in church in islam women are not allowed to eat with the males they're not allowed to pray in front of the males they have to pray behind them and so there's always this separation there's always this thing that women can't do in most of those religions women can't become clergy although that is changing for some of them but that that's a slow change that only happened recently this the baha'i are like yeah anything a guy can do is something a girl can do so yeah let them have jobs let them have positions of authority let them work as clerics let them become you know priests or whatnot and in fact they insist on it whenever they start one of their house of worships that that's where their temples are whenever they meet together on sunday morning they have a house of worship instead of having a priest or a mom or rabbi teach them they have a council of nine who are kind of like a board of of elders if you will and they often that nine represents the sacred number in baha'i and they have to have both men and women on that board so that council of nine needs to include both men and women and they will not start a baha'i house of worship unless there are both men and women represented so that they can have both voices otherwise there's a chance that it might become either sexist or racist and and therefore they want to make sure that there's diversity represented in that case so women can have any position that a guy can have in baha'i they also believe that all prejudice is destructive and must be overcome and i'm going to argue that this is the religious problem in baha'i they are saying that this is the new issue because we now live in a world where people are living next door to each other that transportation is helping people to cross these bridges that have not normally been crossed before think about how tribal societies used to be in the ancient era you know when you lived in a and let's say you lived in saudi arabia you lived in saudi arabia it would be very rare for you to go to africa or to go to europe or to go to india or something like that therefore you probably didn't interact with people outside of your own ethnicity and therefore it's a new thing now that people can go transit atlantic travel or or trans intercon intercontinental travel all of that disbursement and diversity is they're saying is the new obstacle we have to overcome we have to learn how to live in a country together we've got to learn how to make peace with one another because if we don't we're going to kill ourselves i think about this right racism is tearing our country apart the hatred that people have you know between different countries uh we've we've actually seen world wars appear in our own lifetime think about that shortly after baha'u'llah died the the world war one escalated as all of these countries of the world were now interconnected we were all concerned about what's going on japan was going on in germany what was going on in china what was going on in the middle east that finally all of the all of the nations went to war in world war one and then since we couldn't get enough of that we did it again in world war ii and so he's saying this is destructive there's something and here's the deal in at least one of those wars three of the countries the uh the evil empire the what we call them the access i guess uh the access powers were believed that they were the supreme race the japanese thought that they had the supreme race and they were going to conquer everyone the german nazis thought that they had the supreme race and the italians thought that they had the supreme race i think the russians could be thrown into that uh but they they eventually joined the allies and and reneged on that belief i don't know if they still hold this belief but you see there is this long-standing history of people saying no we are the mightiest race and that just creates more and more destruction for other people because with that superiority inferiority relationship you get discrimination so they're saying this is the problem this is what we need to overcome so when the baha'is start a house of worship they want to make sure that different races are represented on that panel of nine and their their marriages reflect this as well one of my students pointed this out she said i know a lot of baha'i families here in rockford and she said it's odd because everything you're saying makes sense now she said all of those families are mixed races either the husband and wife are mixed race or their children because baha'i like to adopt a lot or their children are of mixed races and so they have all these different nationalities of children because they're trying to say look we're all one big family we need to learn how to live as one big family and that prejudice is the problem that we're trying to overcome so as i just indicated that they do believe that the family and its unity are important and that's one of the ten pillars of baha'i they're saying it's not just a good idea to have a good and healthy family but they're saying this is how you're going to bring about world peace if we're ever going to make the world better we've got to make sure that our children are well fed well clothed well educated given proper training and things like morality science and understanding uh critical thinking skills to solve their worldly problems and therefore the ability to be good citizens we if we don't do that if we deny them food then they'll simply be you know starving maniacs looking for for food wherever they can find it they might resort to stealing or they might resort to killing and therefore we've got to teach kids good religion whatever faith it comes from we've got to teach them good religion for how to get along with each other because if we don't then the next generation will be even worse than this one and this one's pretty bad right so baha'i are saying this is part of the the movement toward world peace toward this messianic age toward the golden age that many religions sort of prophesy about so the family is very important now does that mean that they don't allow for divorce they do they just discourage it like in many other religions they say that you shouldn't get divorced because think about it divorce is like one of those problems where uh you know you don't really you get into a fight with your spouse and then you don't resolve it and so what a lot of people do in america right our divorce rate went well over 50 percent i think we peaked out just three years ago at 60 percent 60 of marriages fail that means that 6 out of 10 of you are going to end up in divorce at some point in your life and and i think the baha'i would say what is wrong with america that this is happening you don't see this in other countries that much but is it is it laziness is it just a lack of conflict resolution that we don't know how to work through our problems and so as soon as a problem comes up with your spouse you're like oh well we must not be in love anymore let's end this real strength comes from working on those relationships and the buyers saying that's what you need to do is to work on that relationship and make me amends if you just run away from every relationship but there's conflict you're never going to be satisfied because if you think if you even think for one minute that you're going to find somebody whom you're never going to have a fight with you are kidding yourself you've got to understand that relationships come with conflict because you're different people and of course you're different people everyone's unique and you've got to learn to work with that person so the buyer is saying you've got to work on your relationships and that is what will teach the next generation how to work through those problems whereas if you just get a divorce and the kids are like well apparently i don't know what the solution is to this so i'll just get divorced too and the cycle of divorces continues you've got to teach the kids how to work through those problems they will be watching you because every kid watches their parents and they'll be watching you and learn from your mistakes and then maybe they will be better at conflict resolution in the future so you see what i mean by the family unity is important to them they're saying this is part of the character building that we all need to make the world a slightly better place then we get to what is it the seventh pillar of baha'i we must investigate truth for ourselves without any preconceptions but i believe that you should search for the truth yourself independently and try to figure out what's true and what's not true by yourself don't rely on what other people tell you and don't come out with some kind of preconception like this is the way i'm going to make it be because a lot of people do that they just say well this is what i believe and i want to stick to those beliefs no matter what why don't you investigate it first why don't you start to figure out maybe you've maybe even taught something wrong maybe you came up with a belief that was incorrect shouldn't if you're searching for truth i said this on the first day of class tonight if you're searching for truth then shouldn't he be willing to change your beliefs if those beliefs don't line up with the truth that's one of the key questions i ask about religions does religion care about truth and the buyer saying yes that is the point the religions are supposed to be investigating the truth because none of us are omniscient none of us know all of the answers so we have to simply admit we don't have all the answers and there are some things that we believe that might be wrong and if we are wrong are we humble enough to make the changes to correct our own beliefs that's the key question so they say that everyone should seek the truth for themselves so that you know what is right or wrong you're not relying on what other people tell you and that should apply to me as well right don't just take my word for this when i'm teaching you these religions i'm also trying to show you information from you know the the textbook of scholars who study these religions i'm giving you interviews of people that i've talked to in your community i'm supposed to take you on a field trip where i introduce you to people where you can go and ask them you should be doing that work yourself don't just take my word for it because if i'm wrong and i might be wrong about something then correct me don't just say oh he's an idiot he has nobody's talking about maybe you don't know what you're talking about and that's the point behind saying you've got to investigate the truth because i know a lot of people who just simply read whatever they read on on facebook or on the internet and they just assume that that's true without doing the research you've got to go and talk to people from those religions you've got to interview them you've got to and if you want to learn about christianity then talk to christians about it if you want to learn about islam then talk to muslims about it don't get your information about islam from christians and don't get your information about christianity from from muslims or jews or atheists you've got to talk to those people to find out what that religion believes otherwise you might be getting skewed information so the higher saying this is what we should all be doing investigating truth for ourselves have you learned anything in the semester right have has this class been beneficial to you in any in any way that's what college is supposed to be about you're supposed to be doing the work yourself that's what labs are for right so when you're doing science you're actually seeing how the chemicals react with to one another you're actually seeing how the laws of nature work and the same thing to be true in your psychology class in your philosophy class in your math class that you're learning how things work and with that you're starting to solve the problem i'm going to go so far as to say that this seventh pillar of behind teachings is the religious solution education as i'll make this point in a minute is the solution to solving a lot of the problems because if the problem is prejudice prejudice is a form of ignorance isn't it the word prejudice literally means to prejudge to judge before you've even had time to gather the facts you just look at someone you make a judgment about them you don't know anything about that person and yet we judge them without ever having to talk to them without ever having you know looked at the the truth without ever having seen whether or not these statements are true or false and the buyer saying that's what we've got to fix we've got to do it and the way to solve that is by investigating truth for ourselves by going and doing the research and then we will know firsthand that it's true or false because we have seen it firsthand therefore religion and science are in harmony with each other in the baha'i faith because what we learn in science is also true about religion when we discovered the laws of gravity that was also true about religion when we learned the shape of the earth or you know when we learned the the laws of nature all of those things we discover are things that are still true about god maybe god created those laws of nature for us to simply uncover and therefore to learn about so baha'i believe that science and religion go hand in hand in each other as integration model do you remember us talking about that in an earlier lecture they believe that science and religion help support one another so therefore we can you know use science to understand that religious history and archaeology and all the things that happened in the past and religion can help science to understand what the maybe what the ethical limits are for some of the things that we do in our research mean we can't do human experimentation without people's permission so therefore we have to understand the moral aspects and the scientific truths and bring those together into something that then leads to a better understanding of how the world works they also believe that economic problems of the world are linked to spiritual problems and so as we go throughout the world we experience a lot of problems in the world like poverty and crime and and racism and and they're saying that the reason why we have those problems is because people aren't following their religions if people really loved one another then there wouldn't be crimes if people really uh turned the other cheek there wouldn't be murder or theft if people followed the golden rule there wouldn't be people you know sexually harassing others or raping others and therefore they're saying that our economic problems are problems of religion it's not that there isn't enough religion it's that people aren't really doing what their religions say so you know every religion teaches charity and you're supposed to give to charity but how many people actually do that ask any priest ask any rabbi ask any imam do the people in their congregations give what their religion requires i bet you anything all of them will say no not all of them that there are a lot of people who just don't give because they're stingy or they don't they don't i don't know they don't think that that's part of the religion they don't follow through with it but if everyone gave more to charity then there would be less poverty that's just a fact you know no matter how you cut that if there were if everyone gave more to charity then there would be less poverty it's as simple as that but yet i don't think that people even understand that simple truth so economic problems are linked to our spiritual problems and then the tenth principle is that world peace is the crying need of our time we need to solve these problems because if we don't we could easily destroy the planet we have the power now to blow up the earth with nuclear bombs with you know holocaust with with you know poising the atmosphere poisoning the water uh with pollution we can destroy this planet and the baha'i are saying it is a crying need of our time because now that we're all interconnected now there are new wars being developed here there are new problems being uh that are arising and therefore we've got to work through those problems in order to get to this messianic age that they keep prophesying about so that's what the pie are trying to do the goal of the religion is to reach a state of world peace here you can see a couple pictures of the baha'i household worship in mumbai india and i think this is actually one of the most beautiful temples i've ever seen in any religion all the baha'i temples have nine sides to them and so there's nine sides or nine petals to this leaf you can kind of tell it looks like a lotus flower right and that's because the lotus flower is the symbol of peace and tranquility in hinduism so they use that as the symbol for their piece of baha'i in the country of india where this is built there's actually one baha'i temple in every continent of the world and then there's i think two maybe in south america or maybe there's two in india i'm not sure but there's nine temples scattered throughout the world and these are called the houses of worship as opposed to say just a regular church or a smaller house of worship these are the big temples that they go to so each continent has its own temple and the reason why i like this one is because each one of those lotus flower petals goes up to a point and if you look at that temple from space you can actually see the nine-pointed star in the middle of the temple so it's really beautiful to look at it's it's um just sort of an amazing structure and i love to make their temples very ornate very pleasing to the eye there are pools of water outside of every door to represent peace and tranquility and the doors there are nine doors on the temple to indicate that you are welcome from any direction you can come from any faith you can come from any nationality and they will welcome you into those temples so this is their way of trying to be all-inclusive and pluralistic now nelson mandela once said something that i think captures a lot about what the i believe i'm well aware that nelson mandela is not baha'i so back off okay i'm just trying to say that what he says here represent a lot about what the baha'i belief and you've probably heard this saying before he said no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion so think about that that's true right when we come out of our mother's womb it's not like we come out going right you know f you guys right you know i'm gonna kill me some jews he says he says people must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate then they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally to to the human heart then it's opposite do you guys understand that and he's saying that somewhere down the line we are taught hatred it's not like we're born that way we are taught by our society by our family by our friends i don't know where it comes from i blame facebook but i don't know that we learn hatred through some of these forms and then he says if we can learn hatred then we can easily be taught to love because he says that love comes more naturally to us so think about that my nephews were really cute and innocent when they were just toddlers i remember when they just learned how to speak and that was right around the time when 9 11 happened and so here they were 9 11 happened and now we're going to war with iraq and afghanistan and i remember that the kids were just asking these questions like why are we going to war they didn't understand like it didn't make sense to them they had this very innocent approach to the world they're like why would people kill one another why would they attack one another they just didn't understand that but it wasn't more than a decade later that suddenly they were watching tv and they were seeing you know um all these black people on tv and they were like why are so many freaking black people on tv and i was like what is wrong with you guys like where did you learn that i mean they went from being these innocent little children to suddenly being like why are there all these black people on tv there's too many black people on tv like what black people can't be on tv i don't understand what you're getting this i know exactly where he got it they got it from they got it from their parents and so what what the i think what nelson mandela is trying to say here is that you know people are taught hatred at some point and if we can teach them hatred then can't we teach people love it you know if that's something that comes naturally especially if you take confucius word for it that we have these these natural dispositions toward ren uh we talked about that with our mirror neurons that we are more disposed to want to love one another than we are to hate but maybe it's the contest between those two voices in our head that create this conflict within us and he's saying we need to encourage people to love to practice it to make it part of your character so that we can actually make this world a better place because hatred isn't doing much good for anybody and therefore we have to do away with that prejudice is the problem so we can summarize baha'i ethics in this simple a couple of principles number one is that a universal education needs to happen around the globe but i believe that instead of building a house of worship they will first build a school because education comes first like i indicated education is kind of the religious solution here and so if you're going to end things like discrimination if you're going to end things like you know prejudice or or hatred then you've got to teach people what other cultures believe you've got to help other people to understand the different religions so that you can then say even if you don't agree with them just say oh i see where you're coming from rather than saying screw you i'm going to kill you right so therefore i believe that education should come first and they mean this literally so you guys remember malala yousafzai right she was in pakistan when the taliban took over and they decided to shoot up girls on school buses because they didn't want girls going to school why because they're trying to subjugate women in these countries that is they're trying to deny women the right to have an education because if they become intelligent then maybe they'll start asking for their own rights maybe they would start standing up for themselves instead they want them dumb and ignorant and dependent upon the men for everything so that they can control them better and so here these these taliban guys got on a bus and shot these girls on a school bus and malala was one of them they thought she was dead but she was actually just in a coma she woke up a couple weeks later and she was lit on fire i mean she was just like i'm gonna i'm gonna deal with this right and she has been traveling around the world telling people about this problem saying that we've got to help people overcome their hatred overcome their their sexism and their their you know their conflicts between another she's been the outspoken voice for this and and the buyers saying yeah that because they recognize that there are countries where people are denied an education or they're given such a narrow education that they don't even hear other perspectives and therefore they don't even know what's true because they don't you know they don't hear the other points of view you know when you study this religion this class has taught you the 12 major religions of the world and i asked you earlier if you feel like you've been improved by that i bet many of you came into this class with knowledge of maybe one maybe two different religions at best and therefore you probably didn't even know what these other religions believed but now that we've been through it do you feel like you understand them better have i given you enough inside scoop to kind of understand what these religions are really teachings and now you can say honestly what you really believe before that if you only have one option you don't really have a free choice as to what you want to believe you just believe whatever you you are told or you just believe whatever you know but you don't even know what the options are it's like walking into baskin robbins and they say all we've got is vanilla what do you want uh vanilla like i don't know i mean if i don't know my choices then i'm stuck with this so what the baha'i is saying is by teaching people all of these different perspectives you know teach people you know philosophy and psychology and sociology and physics and biology and economics and political science you can then understand the world from multiple points of view and that collective understanding will help you to solve the world's problems so they believe that this isn't just a good idea that everyone should perceive a universal education not a narrow education where you only teach them these select things they're saying you need to teach them all of the different theories all of the different points of view so that they can then make sense and then you can look at all the religions and go you know what this is the one i think this is the one i think is right for me and that's that that's a free choice that's an informed decision whereas if you don't really know what's out there then how are you supposed to really know what you are to believe they believe that education is the solution because that's what's going to transform the world that's what's going to help people to understand other cultures other ways of life other religions and therefore with an openness toward truth because baha'i recognize that no one is omniscient and so you have to be open to the fact that maybe we're going to learn something in the future that upsets some of the beliefs that we have today that question again of whether or not religion is concerned with truth when we discover something new so notice when we first discovered that the earth was a globe there were some people who were like that doesn't fit with my theology i've been told that the earth was the center of the solar system and therefore it just didn't fit with their their idea of a heliocentric world view but it took some time for people to investigate it and once once the evidence was overwhelming they've eventually acquiesced to that belief but the baha'i saying we need to always be humble enough to recognize that we may not have all of the in fact we definitely don't have all of the answers right now so they're saying with an openness to truth to be willing to change should should the evidence point in a different direction and so they're always open to that idea of criticism and and developing ideas as we go along investigating those truths we should also show respect for all people not just people in your religion but hire not just saying yo just show show people in your sphere not just in your neighborhood people across the globe everyone you come in contact with show them respect and dignity so he says this choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou stood for thy self or something i can never quite say that the old english kind of trips me up but you know notice this is in the time when people kind of spoke that old english style and therefore he's saying choose for your neighbor without what you choose for yourself what does that remind you of the golden rule notice that most of the religions of the world all mix it for two have the golden rule within it and therefore why do people say that religions have these different ethical teachings they're all saying the same thing and the buyer is saying that is the message that god is trying to embed in every culture throughout time if we would just treat people this way do choose for what other other people what you would choose for yourself and therefore help others to take care of their needs and to to love one another and they also believe in the principle of moderation that you should never take things to the extreme of excess or deficiency kind of like the buddha so you can see some elements here of the middle path as well that you know you should get some sleep but not too much sleep but don't deny yourself sleep because that's not good for you don't eat too much because that's not good for you but don't eat too little because that's not good for you you need to find that middle path and so the baha'i aren't saying there's like a list of rules that you have to follow each person is going to be different based on where you're at and you've got to figure that out now they do take a pretty firm stance against things like drugs or alcohol so like in islam like in buddhism they do not allow any intoxications because they believe that that is unhealthy but they do believe that you can take things like over-the-counter drugs or pharmaceutical medicines and nyquil that's okay so there is a moderate principle even within that as long as it's making you a better person and so they do have this principle of moderation throughout all of their ethics but i also believe that all religions are only partially true so each one of them has a piece of the pie that i described earlier so they're saying if you combine all those pieces of the pie you get a more well-rounded understanding of what god is trying to teach humanity and so they say that you should acknowledge the truth of other religions as well as your own and they also believe that paula continues the revelations of earlier prophets right this is simply a continuation of what we've seen in the past so therefore they think that this is going to continue to build toward a higher level of spiritual understanding and so they believe that baha'u'llah is continuing in those prophecies and you might be asking well wait a minute how can they all be coming from god when sometimes their messages conflict with each other what about contradictions brian how do you deal with that and the baha'i would say something like this that the previous prophets have been tainted by culture that there are instances in the past where religions have adopted some pretty bad mentalities like sexism or or maybe even racism where they've been just tainted by their culture again i don't really know well i do know the origins of the kkk came out of the civil war since they couldn't win the war uh to defend slavery um in the 1860s they'd instead created a religion that discriminated against uh jews and african americans or or here's a better example the buddha himself who actually said that yes you can ordain women but it was the cultures that came after him who said no we're not going to ordain women remember the tarabata sect of buddhism said they weren't going to ordain women because that just seemed too radical for them they were worried that women would interfere with the monks desires and it would cause them to lose their path to nirvana not realizing that there are other ways to solve that problem they just decided to just forget women altogether but so you can see this happening in cultures where sometimes the religions will pick up weird stuff from uh things that that weren't part of the original message and therefore that would explain some of the contradictions between them but god's message would be the same uh to all people even though it's different for each each message each revelation now they do believe that another messenger is going to come in the future so this belief in a messiah they just say is pointing to the next messenger whoever that may be and so again they don't say who or what that is but as i indicated i asked actually the woman who i interviewed for the baha'i video what do you think is going to be the next prophet and what do you think their message is going to be and she said i have no idea what their message is going to be it's too far in the future but she said she did think that it was going to be a female so she's one of those people that thinks that that there needs to be a female prophet to come to kind of show the equality of the sexes here's actually the temple that exists in chicago so as i told you that there are only nine houses of worship scattered around the world for the baha'i faith this is the one that's located in north america and it just so happens to be in our backyard in chicago there is a baha'i temple that we oftentimes go to when on a field trip and if you ever get the chance to go here uh it's always open it's it's a it's a big tourist attraction they have weddings here and there are uh worship services and prayer services alike and so they're always doing things that allow for visitors to come and sort of just witness what's going on or participate in them if they choose and it's a beautiful temple to look at so if you ever get the chance to go there and it does have the symbols of each of the nine religions on the doors of the temple now by are monotheistic pluralists they're monotheistic and they sense that in the sense that they believe there is only one god they just believe it's the same god in every religion and they are pluralistic in the sense that they believe that all of those religions are coming from that same god that god says different things to different people at different times to address different problems and so each religion may seem different but they're all compatible with each other so you can kind of see that you know you can believe in buddhism dealing with mental suffering as well as dealing with jewish notions of justice you can combine jesus idea of forgiveness with the hindu idea of opening your third eye in order to achieve enlightenment in other words these believe these beliefs are all compatible with each other so they say that all religions are equally valid in that regard now they also believe in an immortal soul that lives within each person so when you die they do believe there is an afterlife although what the afterlife is they're a little bit more agnostic about they don't actually try to say this is how heaven is or this is what happens when you die they're open to lots of different possibilities they're open to the possibility that you may die and be reincarnated they're open to the possibility that you might die and go to heaven or go to another plane of existence actually i had one behind believed he thought that there was actually multiple dimensions throughout space and that were in the fourth dimension i guess three dimensions of space and fourth being time and he says that when we die here we go to the fifth dimension if we pass and then we can go to the sixth dimension and he thinks that god lives in the tenth dimension so that was a pretty unusual belief but that was a baha'i belief that says this is maybe one of the ways that it could be so baha'u'llah's was once asked this question like what do you think happens when we die if you are one of the messengers tell us what happens when we die what's the answer to this question and here's what his answer was it's very intriguing he said the world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of a child while still in the womb of its mother so can you picture a pregnant woman with a fetus in her belly and trying to explain to that fetus what color looks like you know they have no idea we were talking about they're like well you see it's a color it's a color well you see it's a shade of light what's light you know like they have no idea and so how do you explain to a fetus what things out here look like you have to be born into this world to see that and he's making the analogy that we are like in the womb of this universe and think about it the analogy kind of works right it's kind of dark in here kind of wet and stinky you know and so therefore you know we have to like emerge out of the womb of the universe to see what's beyond what's outside of this universe who knows like how do people normally describe it they're like oh you see there's like you know there's like a sun up here there's like roads paved with gold and trees and stuff you're talking about earth you're describing human words so baha'u'llah is saying look even if i have the words to describe this world to you uh this this uh next life he says it wouldn't make sense to you it'd be like trying to explain what you know color looks like to a fetus so you know if he had the words it would be like you know well there's like flubaroo up here and there's gangalongs and chunk chunks you'd be like what are chunk chunks i don't know like you have to see it to experience it so he he just sort of leaves that open and says whatever happens in the afterlife god is going to take care of that now he does believe that heaven and hell are seen as states of closeness and distance from god so whether or not there is a heaven or hell in the afterlife is somewhat ambiguous in the religion but they do believe that when you are living a good life you will live in heaven but when you live a bad life you will live in hell in this world and perhaps in the afterlife as well so we get closer to god the more good we live so for example um if i were to yell at my wife i'm going to be living on hell that night because i'm probably going to be sleeping on the couch at the very least right but if i like bring my wife roses and chocolates right we're going to have heaven and on earth that night so you you understand what they're saying that when you live a good life you're actually making heaven on earth like the the famous prayer to may it be on earth as it is in heaven and then when we live a bad life we create our own personal hell and we talked about that in one of the previous lectures and zostinism as well and then the baha'i have a calendar system of 19 months and 19 days and they reserve the last month for fasting just like in islam they fast for those 19 days from sunrise to sunset to remember what it's like to be hungry and therefore to take care of the poor and the needy and so this is a reminder to them to do so uh why 19 because 9 is a sacred symbol and it's the highest number you can get to before going to the next digit so 19 months doesn't follow the motions of the sun doesn't follow the motions of the moon so what is it 19 times 19 is is that 361 i guess so therefore they add for their new year celebration of inter-calendar uh week that's four or five days long depending on leap year and that four days they celebrate new year's eve can you imagine having four days off for new year's eve that would be awesome wouldn't it and when do you think they celebrate that march 21st so they call it nurus just like the zostrians do and that is their new year's holiday celebration now their hierarchy kind of stands as a a system of nines if you will they call this the international house of justice because baha'i are not beholden to a particular country or a particular piece of land so they believe that you should have for each congregation within your local organization a council of nine members to organize that congregation that way no one person has all the power so there's less corruption and the nine people can hold each other accountable and therefore there's more people than to be spursed among the congregation to help them get through whatever problems that they might be going through at that time each of those then individual local congregations are governed by a council of nine that oversee those as like district managers if you will so there's like a northern illinois regional district where all of the baha'i houses of worship in northern illinois and i think it includes places in wisconsin and iowa they are overseen by a council line that rules over that region to make sure that each congregation is doing the right thing and then when you combine those together you get the international house of justice which governs all of those districts so they can kind of keep track to say okay what's happening in china what's happening in iraq what's happening in iran or england or america and therefore the international house of justice will try to deal with those more global affairs and that's how they make their hierarchy these people are elected from within the congregation and then the congregations together vote for their district and the districts then vote for their international leaders as well so that's why they have this sort of uh scale up to the council of nine that sort of governs over the worldwide affairs in baha'i and that's baha'i faith in a nutshell so we could say more about this religion but i think i'll just stop there and say that's it if you have any questions about this please let me know by email but you can you're now ready to take the baha'i quiz and in the last lecture we'll be discussing religious cults i'll see you guys then you