'It is an age of universal reformation' 'Abdu'l-Baha

'The history of humanity as one people is now beginning...endowed with the wealth of all the genetic and cultural diversity that has evolved through past ages, the earth's inhabitants are now challenged to draw on their collective inheritance to take up...the responsibility for the design of their future.' The Prosperity of Humankind

Across our planet and across the lives of its people, stretches a yearning search for purpose. A search that must lead inevitably to the realization of the innate nobility and excellence of the human spirit. Such a purpose must be sought through motivations that transcend constantly changing panorama of underling materialistic assumptions that artificially impose division on human societies.

The purpose of human life is to know and to love God, and to carry forward an ever advancing civilization. The function of the arts in human life need be nothing less than to facilitate this very purpose for which we were created. Mankind, created by God in the image of God, has the magnificent capacity to reflect the divine attributes of God, and thus to create.

The real substance of all art is compassion. The process of art is essentially a communication of compassion that operates through the reality of our oneness. Because we are human we have humanity in common. We are in nature and nature is in us. By a common natural kinship in our sense of beauty, of truth, and humanity, our unity is revealed.

Knowledge is the result of investigation, consultation, detachment and time. Scientific knowledge carries forward civilization through a process whereby investigations are made and the results subjected to a wide consultation of concerned and experienced individuals through which errors are dispassionately filtered out leaving that distilled essence which is knowledge.

The arts create and invigorate civilization through much the same process. Investigations and experiments are pursued by individuals and then placed before the audience of posterity. Through a consultation of the heart, that may take generations, that which is mundane or destructive id filtered out, leaving a result that illuminates, inspires and glorifies the true nobility in human beings. By constructing civilization from the results of this process, humanity moves as a species along a path of discovery ever more deeply revealing the spiritual reality of our own inner essence.

As science reaches outward to discover the structure of the universe, so art reaches inward to discover the spiritual fragrance of our hearts. Both these journeys reflect that great journey which is the return to God.