An affront Remey Couldn’t Endure:
October 1959: Mason Remey left Haifa, and went into "self-banished exile" (Spataro, p. 31) to Washington, D.C. Remey had agreed with the hands that if they would follow everything Shoghi Effendi laid out in his plans for 1963, he would go along with them.
Shoghi Effendi's plan for the IBC, of which Remey was president, was that it would become a world court in 1963, and eventually it would blossom into the UHJ.
However, in 1959, the hands called for the election of a new IBC in 1961. This led Remey to leave the hands, since he believed they had no authority to put anyone out of office who had been put there by Shoghi Effendi.
A Vision Unveiled:
Joel Marangella's account sheds light on Remey's evolving understanding of his role:
“It was not until the end of His two-and-a-half year Period in Haifa and actually after his departure from Haifa when he was composing his appeals to the Hands of the Faith that for the first time, he began to consider the real significance of his appointment as the President of the International Baha'i Council, a subject that never came up in any of the conclaves. It was only then that he, himself, realized that by virtue of his appointment he had become the second Guardian of the Faith, coincident with the passing of Shoghi Effendi, and that the office of the Guardian had not been vacant for a single moment. It was then that he penned his Proclamation and released it to the Baha'i world at Ridwan 1960 (a Proclamation which remains unread by the vast majority of the Baha'is to this day). (Marangella, Foreword, "Extracts from the Daily Observations," vi)
Early Intimations of a Divine Plan:
Remey mentions on p.3 of his Daily Observations:
“During all these proceedings [in the first conclave] I sat quietly remembering the vision I had had a few years before in which I had seen myself to be the second Guardian of the Faith - this I had been thinking of a great deal since Shoghi Effendi's death, but I felt that of all the hundreds of millions of people upon the face of the earth that I was the very last one who should put forward or stand up for such. In fact, I sat there in the conclave praying silently to myself that there be nothing of the kind for me in that vision; nevertheless, I had a feeling that there was something in it, thus my feelings were in the balance, as it were.”
Of course, she [Ruhiyyih Khanum] insists that the Guardianship is BADAH because when the Cause has the second Guardian installed (the one I saw in my vision) she will then no longer be in the supreme position that she now has taken and this she is not yet ready to accept. (Ibid, p. 40)
Navigating Uncertainty & Challenges to Vision:
In his entry for January 26, 1959, he refers to his "mental flash vision" outlining future events: Had I not had that mental flash vision, now well over ten years ago, of things that were to come to pass: the death of Shoghi Effendi and the fact of there following him I would be the second Guardian, I in all probability would never have thus stood up alone against this move of the Hands of the Faith to abolish the Guardianship . . . . (Ibid, p. 80)
Remey here attributes his holding up alone against the hands to his vision of himself as the second guardian. Although seeing himself as the second guardian, he did not know how this would come about. He admits this. He writes:
While I know there is to be a continuation of the Guardianship - I have seen this in a vision and I know it is to come - I have no idea at all of how it is to be brought about. ("Extracts from the Daily Observations," p. 60)
Possibly it was the connection of these two ideas in his mind - the what: himself as second guardian, and the how: by being appointed as president of the first IBC - that opened his eyes to his claim of being the second guardian.
Stay tuned to know more…
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