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Pathways to Transformation
Appeared: 06/18/2004
Pathways to Transformation. John Davidson. Bahá'í Publications Australia.
The other day I came across a Bahá'í book which after an hour or so of perusing I realised I had a gem of usefulness in my hands. For years I had been looking for a replacement for Esselmont's Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era. Back in the 1950's and 1960's Esselmont was the book you gave people who wanted to get a comprehensive picture of the Bahá'í Faith between two covers. By the 1970's and 1980's Esselmont was still useful, but getting a little tired. There were also a host of other books appearing in the Bahá'í literary marketplace. By the 1990's there were so many books that the average Bahá'í was getting lost in a sea of new literature. I'm not saying this literature was not useful; indeed you could tailor a book for a seeker with a high degree of specificity with some good literary digging.
But with the arrival of the new millennium comes a book, as comprehensive as Esselmont but much more up-to-date; as easy to read as one of the many slim introductory works on the Bahá'í Faith that are just about flooding the market; as meaty and persuasive as, say, Huddleston's The Earth is But One Country; as full of quotations (well not quite) as the invaluable Lights of Guidance in its first or second editions; as much a practical guide as any of the many "how-to" books which have appeared in Bahá'í book shops since the beginning of the great book burgeoning in about 1980; as beautifully put together and presented, with a fresh, bright feel about it, as any of the glossier books you will find in our emerging Bahá'í library.
Am I overstating the case? Perhaps. But I feel justifiably so because for me this book is about teaching. It's about what sort of book to give to people who want to know something about the Bahá'í Faith. It's not too heavy. We've got lots of books you would not float by even the most serious student for their initial investigation. It's not too light. So many little booklets oversimplify too much, although they often have their place.
John Esselmont would be pleased. In a letter dated August 5, 1941 Esselmont wrote about the "most delicate matter" of teaching. In this delicate exercise John Davidson has put together for our use in the teaching process--and for our deepening--this invaluable resource manual for personal and community development, history, social issues, the Bahá'í administrative order, the Lesser Peace... The list is long.
Davidson writes well, although there is little of his own words in this compilation. He outlines the contents of this book in his six page introduction. He quotes Carl Jung's very helpful perspective on the transformation process, which is the Bahá'í journey and what this book is about. Jung wrote:
The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They must be so because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating mechanism. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.
This outgrowing, Jung continues, consists of a new level of consciousness, a wider horizon. Davidson presents to us some of the story of this wider horizon and the emergence of a Bahá'í consciousness in the global culture especially since 1969 when Davidson put together an earlier work entitled Bahá'í Life. With the help of several Bahá'í Institutions, friends and family Davidson presents the Bahá'í Faith centre-stage on what for me is a solid foundation, the Writings of the Central Figures of the Bahá'í Faith and those who are the trustees of the global undertaking set in motion over one hundred years ago.
John Davidson has served the Bahá'í community in many ways since he became a Bahá'í in the 1960's. He has served on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Australia for over three decades and in the University of Tasmania Department of Psychology for an equal length of time. His book Pathways to Transformation has been out of the blocks for three years now, has been found to be user-friendly. I recommend it highly to Bahá'ís the world over for its practical usefulness as a resource and in the teaching work.
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