BAHA'I WORLD CENTRE

 

Material results of love and service on Mount Carmel

 

Impressions of Haifa

 

Whether Bahá’í or non-Bahá’í, Haifa makes pilgrims of all who visit her. The place itself makes mystics of us all, for it shuts out the world of materiality with its own characteristic atmosphere and one instantly feels one’s self in a simple and restful cloistral calm. But it is not the characteristic calm of the monastic cloister; it is not so much the shutting out of the world as an opening up of new vistas. ...

 

Every thing seems to share the custody of the Message - the place itself is a physical revelation. I shall never forget my first view of it from the terraces of the shrine [of the Báb]. ... Most shrines concentrate the view upon themselves - this one turns itself into a panorama of inspiring loveliness. It is a fine symbol for a Faith that wishes to reconcile the supernatural with the natural, beauty and joy with morality...

 

The shrine chambers of the Báb and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are both impressive, but in a unique and almost modern way: richly carpeted, but with austerely undecorated walls and ceilings, and flooded with light, the ante-chambers are simply the means of taking away the melancholy and gruesomeness of death and substituting for them the thought of memory, responsibility and reverence. Through the curtained doorways, the tomb-chambers brilliantly lighted create an illusion which defeats even the realization that one is in the presence of a sepulchre...

 

Refreshingly human after this intense experience was the relaxation of our walk and talk in the gardens. Here the evidences of love, devotion and service were as concrete and as practical and as human as inside the shrines they had been mystical and abstract and super-human. Shoghi Effendi is a master of details as well as of principle, of executive foresight as well as of projective vision. But I have never heard details so redeemed of their natural triviality as when talking to him of the plans for the beautifying and laying out of the terraces and gardens. They were important because they all were meant to dramatize the emotion of the place and quicken the soul even through the senses... It taught me with what purely simple and meagre elements a master workman works. It is after all in Himself that He finds His message and it is Himself that He gives with it to the world.

 

An extract from "Impressions of Haifa" by Alaine Locke, which appeared in the Bahá’í World, Vol II, 1926-28. (Taken from"Vineyard of the Lord - Mount Carmel Projects Update" Quadrat 156 BE / November 1999 AD)

 

 

This photo reproduced from Bahá’í World, Vol II, 1926-1928, shows the preliminary structure of the Terraces below the shrine of the Báb during this period. 

 

Aerial photography allows us to keep pace with the development of the Shrine of the Báb and the Terraces as the work nears completion. (Taken from "Vineyard of the Lord - Mount Carmel Projects Update" Quadrat 156 BE / November 1999 AD)