Rúhíyyih Khánum in Portugal 1996

Advice for Travellers

Rúhíyyih Khánum on Travel Teachers
 

etween February and October 1964, Rúhíyyih Khánum visited India. A record of the thousands of miles she travelled and the places she visited, can be found in Violette Nakhjavani's book, "Amatu'l-Bahá visits India".

In March, a month after her arrival, she visited the Indore Teaching Institute, the first to be set up in India. In one of several meetings there, she spoke to some 40 travel teachers, telling them that Bahá'í teachers should be full of love for all humanity and so dedicated to the Cause that no obstacles could dishearten them - they should be assured of Bahá'u'lláh guidance and protection.

The book records: "She spoke of two of the greatest teachers of our time in the Western world: Miss Martha Root and Mrs May Maxwell, her mother. ... She told the friends that Martha Root had a very beautiful expression; she often said: `Step aside and let Bahá'u'lláh do it'. It was this spirit of humility and absolute faith in Bahá'u'lláh that made her the instrument in teaching the Faith to Queen Marie of Roumania, the first monarch in the world to accept the Teachings of Bahá'u'lláh.

Rúhíyyih Khánum then spoke of her mother, Mrs May Maxwell, who embraced the Faith in her youth and was in the first group of pilgrims to visit `Abdu'l-Bahá in the prison city of `Akka. She said her mother, "had a tremendous capacity for love. `Abdu'l-Bahá once told her, whoever you love, it is the love of `Abdu'l-Bahá and so her heart became like a mirror which reflected the radiance of the love in the heart of the Master. ... It was this capacity to love which made her a magnet which attracted many souls to the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh."
 

Teaching is For All

"... It is no use for some able and eloquent teacher to take all the responsibility for the spread of the Cause. For such a thing is not only contrary to the spirit of the Teachings, but to the explicit text of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá , both of Whom place the obligation of teaching not on any particular class as in former ecclesiastical organizations but on every faithful and loyal follower of the Cause. ... How long, then, shall we wait to carry out this command, the full wisdom of which only future generations will be able to appreciate?"

The Protection of Pioneering

The Guardian said that the friends feel that it is difficult to leave their homes and pioneer, even to move to the goals inside their own countries. They do not see that he is not asking them to sacrifice. He is protecting them from themselves. He is protecting them not only from the calamity that is rushing toward them outwardly, but he is protecting them from the calamity that is rushing toward them inwardly."

Oh no! Not me. I couldn't go Travel Teaching on my own!