The "existence of spirit” in mineral and vegetable

As to the existence of spirit in the mineral: it is indubitable that minerals are endowed with a spirit and life according to the requirements of that stage. This unknown secret, too, hath become known unto the materialists who now maintain that all beings are endowed with life, even as He saith in the Qur’án, ‘All things are living’.

In the vegetable world, too, there is the power of growth, and that power of growth is the spirit. In the animal world there is the sense of feeling, but in the human world there is an all-embracing power. In all the preceding stages the power of reason is absent, but the soul existeth and revealeth itself. The sense of feeling understandeth not the soul, whereas the reasoning power of the mind proveth the existence thereof.

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Tablet to August Forel)

Holding Nineteen Day Feasts on Indian reserves

We have considered your letter of March 11, 1970 concerning the difficulties you are experiencing in getting the Indian believers on reservations to hold regular Nineteen Day Feasts.

In applying instructions about Nineteen Day Feasts, as well as other matters of administration, to indigenous believers it is important that the process of weaning them away from the old forms should be accomplished gradually so as not to destroy their spirit, and your Assembly should not be too rigid in these matters.

- The Universal House of Justice  (From a letter dated 3 April 1970 to the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada; The Compilation of Compilations, vol. I, The Nineteen Day Feast)

Qazvin, Persia 1919: Baha'i class of Mirza Muhammad Labib

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