A ‘complete’ model of personal development

Occasionally one comes across passages in the Baha’i writings that look like ‘complete’ models or sub-models. For example in my PhD thesis and elsewhere I have suggested that the following passage comes close to constituting a ‘complete’ model of Baha’i-inspired education.

Among these children many blessed souls will arise, if they be trained according to the Bahá’í Teachings. If a plant is carefully nurtured by a gardener, it will become good, and produce better fruit. These children must be given a good training from their earliest childhood. They must be given a systematic training which will further their development from day to day, in order that they may receive greater insight, so that their spiritual receptivity be broadened. Beginning in childhood they must receive instruction. They cannot be taught through books. Many elementary sciences must be made clear to them in the nursery; they must learn them in play, in amusement. Most ideas must be taught them through speech, not by book learning. One child must question the other concerning these things, and the other child must give the answer. In this way, they will make great progress. For example, mathematical problems must also be taught in the form of questions and answers. One of the children asks a question and the other must give the answer. Later on, the children will of their own accord speak with each other concerning these same subjects. The children who are at the head of the class must receive premiums. They must be encouraged and when any one of them shows good advancement, for the further development they must be praised and encouraged therein. Even so in Godlike affairs. Oral questions must be asked and the answers must be given orally. They must discuss with each other in this manner.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “The Bahá’í World”, Vol. 9 (1940-1944)(Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1945), p. 543)

Recently I discovered another passage – which might constitute a ‘complete’ model of personal development?

Sense-perception gives rise to desire, desire to will, will to action, and action again to sense-perception. This chain ever repeats itself, and so the powers of thought, memory, reason, and the emotional capacities are evolved in spirit. These power and capacities of spirit, expressed in individual human beings, constitute human characters.

Through these successive evolutionary steps, spirit develops characters having Divine attributes. The positive, creative aspect of God is reflect in the them. Individuality is derived from expression in individual form. Self-consciousness accompanies individualised character, and the being thus endowed has the potentiality of rising to the knowledge of God.

Characters inspired by the universal human spirit continue in lines of specific developing types, as did species in the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

(Compilations, Baha’i Scriptures, p. 301)

 

At least the passage provides an insight into the dynamics of the haert0-mind i.e. to consciousness and our interior life.