I see it is complimentary with all past scriptures.
I know you do. So do I, in fact, but I rather think your doctrine as it is commonly expressed confuses where the sameness and where the distinctions lie, and that will inescapably lead to conflict with your neighbours.
When we say all Truth is One, we are speaking of
universals, or in more overtly religious language, of
transcendentals, and this is where the crucial distinction lies.
All religions are one, in that they address the same fundamental questions in the same fundamental way – so in a
universal sense they are the same, across all times and all peoples, for example with regard to the idea of suffering, or sacrifice, or prayer.
Where religions differ, however, is in the
particulars, in the form of the religion – its mode of manifestation, its language, its dogmas and doctrines, its rites and rituals and its means and methods of the attainment and realisation of the one end they all share in common – a final Rest and Reward.
They are different precisely because the
universal cannot manifest itself
in toto in the world, because it very being as
universal means it is prior to and so ‘transcends’ the domain of forms, to which the world belongs.
Divine Revelation is an irruption of the Timeless in the temporal, the Absolute in the relative, the Infinite in the finite. It is the Truth in the face of contingency, the Real in the face of appearances. For this reason there is that which we call esoteric, which points to the former, and that we call exoteric, which speaks of the latter.
What no individual,
particular religion can be, is
the universal religion as such, unifying and uniting all other religions into and under itself, because it stands alongside every other religion on the same plane, as it were, and is no greater nor lesser than its neighbour.
To claim so is to assert, in the exoteric domain, something which exists only in a superior realm. When applied at the level of the exoteric, in necessarily means if not the dismantling of a religion (which the Bah'i would require), and the editing and redaction of its sacred doctrine – under the excuse of correcting errors, corruptions, distortions or unfortunate interpretations –
That is overstepping the bounds – that is a claim to supremacy in the exoteric domain and leads to imperialism – an error all religions make when too much emphasis is placed on the superficial externals, is their essential truths are occluded – we made that mistake, and we learnt the lesson – the Baha’i has failed to see it, and if it pursues that course, is walking the same, terrible path.
