The Worlds of God Index: An Introduction
by J. Michael Kafes
"The Master Index of the Worlds of
God", more informally known as "The Worlds of God Index"
(hereafter abbreviated "WOGI"), is the property of the National
Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States. It has given its assent to certain
individuals who petitioned the National Spiritual Assembly for custody of it,
to preserve and computerize it.
The following is a description and a
brief history of the Index.
History of "The Worlds of God
Index"
In May 1951, the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States appointed The National Reference
Library Committee (NRLC). One of the
NRLC's assigned responsibilities was the creation of a Master Index to the
Bahá'í Writings, for the National Spiritual Assembly's use. One of the members appointed to the NRLC was
Mrs. Marian Crist Lippitt. Several
years went by, and most members of the NRLC resigned, without proposing a way
to index the Bahá'í Writings. In 1954,
Mrs. Lippitt wrote to the National Spiritual Assembly, asking if the
classification system outlined by Mrs. Henrietta Emogene Martin Hoagg could be
used in compiling a master index to the Bahá’í Writings. Mrs. Lippitt had learned of this
classification system from Mrs. Hoagg one decade earlier, in the summer of
1943, when Mrs. Lippitt was a newly declared Bahá'í.
Mrs. Henrietta Emogene Martin Hoagg,
known to her friends as Emogene, was a Bahá'í pioneer and arguably the foremost
Western hemisphere Bahá'í scholar of the first forty-five years of the
twentieth century, up to her death in 1945.
She studied directly with Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl-i-Gulpáygání (in
response to 'Abdu'l-Bahá's telling her to do so) and with 'Abdu'l-Bahá for
extended lengths of time, and directly served Shoghi Effendi. In her last years she occupied herself with
developing an indexing method to the Bahá'í Writings, and taught this approach
of categorizing the Bahá'í Writings in various locations, including Green Acre
and Louhelen Bahá'í Schools. In 1943,
Mrs. Hoagg, frail with age after a long life of service, spent about five weeks
in an adjacent room to Mrs. Marian Crist Lippitt in a private hospital owned by
a Bahá'í doctor. During this time,
Mrs. Lippitt learned Mrs. Hoagg's indexing system.
In response to Mrs. Lippitt's
recommendation to the National Spiritual Assembly, the National Spiritual
Assembly asked Mrs. Lippitt to submit a more detailed proposal. She did, and in 1956, the National
Spiritual Assembly officially approved the categories for the new index. The National Spiritual Assembly also
appointed new members for the NRLC, and made Mrs. Lippitt the convener.
Due to the circumstances which transpired
over the next twenty-eight years, up until Mrs. Lippitt's death in 1984, Mrs.
Lippitt did most of the indexing. The
NRLC's activity lapsed after her death.
Several years later, a group of
interested Bahá'ís located the Index and related materials in the basement of
Fellowship House, at Green Acre Bahá'í School in Eliot, Maine, U.S.A. They felt the information and research done
by Mrs. Lippitt were extremely valuable, and that something needed to be done
to preserve and computerize the Index.
They petitioned the National Spiritual Assembly for its custody.
The National Spiritual Assembly wrote a
response, dated January 27, 1992, in which it stated:
"The National Assembly feels that
the information compiled in the Worlds of God Index is valuable and agrees that
the data should be stored permanently in computer files. In addition, the cards
themselves are important archival materials that need to be preserved
properly... We commend your desire to continue working on the index, thereby
rendering a distinctive service to the Cause of God."
This group of Bahá'ís formed a non-profit
foundation to facilitate the carrying forward of this task as well as carrying
on the personal research of Mrs. Lippitt, which was inspired by her
indexing. The current name of this
foundation is "The Foundation for the Investigation of Reality".
Description of "The Worlds of God
Index"
Scientists have long argued whether
photons of light are particles or waves.
Light has characteristics of both particles and waves, yet light is not
exclusively one or the other. The same can
be said of The Worlds of God Index. In
one sense it is an index of the Bahá'í Writings. In another it is a compilation of the Bahá'í Writings.
IN WHAT WAYS IS THE WOGI A COMPILATION?
Whereas compilations of the Bahá'í
Writings normally delve deeply into one specialized concept or subject, such as
marriage, tests of the soul, etc., the subject of the WOGI is reality.
Reality is, basically, everything! To make a compilation from the Bahá'í
Writings about reality, the compiler must compile the entire Bahá'í
canon, because everything Bahá'u'lláh set forth by His pen is "truth and
reality." Reality encompasses all
the worlds of God. Reality is inclusive
of all specialized concepts and subjects, a compilation of compilations so to
speak, from which smaller compilations, such as the aforementioned ones, can be
made.
Therefore, a compilation about reality is
a comprehensive compilation of all the Bahá'í Writings.
In the process of assembling a
compilation, the compilers must decide how to organize the information so that
its users can readily find what they need.
A "reality" compilation is easily thousands of times larger
than any other existing Bahá'í Writings compilation. Therefore it must be extremely well-organized for anyone to be
able to find what he is looking for!
Facilitating the job of creating a
"reality" compilation of the Bahá'í Writings is that the Writings
themselves reveal to the compiler how reality is structured. There are categories which make up reality,
and these categories can be broken down into sub-categories. The sub-categories in turn possess
characteristics which describe them. We
can imagine the structure of this huge compilation of reality as a metaphor for
a tree of all reality, with its innumerable branches, twigs, and leaves.
Exploring this metaphor further, the
roots of this tree represent the essence of God. Human souls can never comprehend God's essence, because it is
impossible for the created to fully comprehend their Creator. The compilation cannot convey this
information to us, therefore the roots of this tree remain hidden. Nevertheless, the roots are all-important,
because were it not for God's essence, this tree would never have sprouted.
Next is the base or trunk of the
tree. Here the blueprint or instructions
are stored, about the types of branches, twigs and leaves which emerge from the
trunk of the tree, and the positional relationships between these branches,
twigs and leaves. The trunk contains
the information about how to organize them.
These are the indexing instructions.
If, heaven forbid, the branches, twigs and leaves were destroyed, they
could be recreated from the instructions and blueprint in the trunk.
From the trunk of the tree emerges three huge branches. The first branch is the World of God. The second branch is the World of the Manifestation of God. The third branch is the World of Creation. Reality is entirely made up of these three worlds. Let us pause here to examine the Bahá'í basis for this assertion.
In Lawḥ-i-Ism-i-A‘ẓam (Tablet
of the Greatest Name), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá described the Bahá'í ringstone symbol of
the Greatest Name. In it He stated that
the three horizontal lines represent (1) the World of God, (2) the World of Command,
and (3) the World of Creation.
These are the three “worlds” which make
up all of reality or existence.
In Explanation of the Symbol of the
Greatest Name, by Hand of the Cause of God Abu’l-Qásim Faizí, Mr. Faizí refers
to the horizontal lines as follows:
(1) “The World of God — The Creator”
(2) “The World of the Prophets or Manifestation — Cause, or Command”
(3) “The World of Man — Creation”
Excerpts from the following two letters
written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi state:
“The inscription upon the Bahá’í
ringstone is the Symbol of the Greatest Name, Bahá, Who is the Manifestation of
the essence of God. It is also symbolic
of the three planes, representing the World of God, the World of Revelation and
the World of Creation.”
28 February 1938, #909, p. 269, Lights
of Guidance
“
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that the main difference between the Gnostics and the
religionists is that the Gnostics maintain the existence of only two worlds,
the world of God and the world of the creature. The prophets, however, maintain the existence of three worlds,
the world of God, the world of the Will or the Word, and the world of created
things.”
29 November 1929, #1724, p. 510, Lights
of Guidance
The Bahá’í Writings are replete with
references describing these three worlds or planes which make up reality or
existence. In another reference to
them, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said:
“Know that the conditions of existence are limited to the conditions of servitude, of prophethood and of Deity,....”
Some Answered Questions, p. 230
In this quote the condition of Deity is synonymous with the World of God, and the condition of servitude is synonymous with the World of Creation.
Continuing with the tree metaphor, the
World of God branch is different from the other two branches in that the leaves
sprout directly on the branch; there are no twigs on the World of God branch.
The branches of the Manifestations and of
Creation, on the other hand, have twigs, and it is on the twigs that the leaves
sprout.
The twigs represent subjects or concepts
(nouns), and each leaf on a given twig is a characteristic of that twig by
which we can come to a more complete understanding of that twig.
The following are the twigs, organized by
the branch they are found on:
|
World
(Branch) |
Subject's
Abbreviation |
Subject
(Twigs)
|
File Drawers
|
|
1st
World – Deity |
|
|
DP 1-21 |
|
|
D |
Deity |
DP 1-21 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2nd
World – Prophethood |
|
|
|
|
|
KG |
Kingdom of
Manifestation |
DP 25-27 |
|
|
CS |
Cause of God |
DP 28 |
|
|
HS |
Holy Spirit |
DP 28 |
|
|
MF |
Manifestation of
God (never on Earth) |
DP 29 |
|
|
WL |
Will of God |
DP 30 |
|
|
WO |
Word of God |
DP 31 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
3rd
World – Servitude |
|
|
|
|
|
CRE |
Creation |
45-48 |
|
|
CRE-all |
All created
things |
48 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
HUM |
Humanness |
49-55 |
|
|
HUM-man |
Human Beings |
|
|
|
RAT-man |
Rational being
or part of man |
|
|
|
SOUL |
Souls (after
death) |
51-52 |
|
|
SO'L |
Souls (before
death) |
S 1-36 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
KGM |
Kingdom of
departed souls |
49-50 |
|
|
KRV |
Kingdom
Revealed |
DP 53-78 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MAT |
Materiality or
matter |
C 64-71 |
|
|
MAT-anm |
Animal Kingdom |
|
|
|
MAT-man |
Material being
or part of man |
|
|
|
MAT-mfd |
Man-made or
manufactured things |
|
|
|
MAT-min |
Mineral
Kingdom |
|
|
|
MAT-nat |
Nature |
|
|
|
MAT-veg |
Vegetable
Kingdom |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MFN |
Manifestation
(on Earth now or ever) |
79-84 |
|
|
ABR |
Abraham |
|
|
|
ADAM |
Adam |
|
|
|
BAB |
The Báb |
DP 32 |
|
|
BAHA |
Bahá’u’lláh |
DP 33-44 |
|
|
BUD |
Buddha |
|
|
|
JES |
Jesus |
|
|
|
KRI |
Krishna |
|
|
|
MOS |
Moses |
|
|
|
MUH |
Muhammad |
|
|
|
ZOR |
Zoroaster |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
AbBa |
‘Abdu’l-Bahá |
51 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MNK |
Mankind |
C 15 - 46 |
|
|
PROPNAME |
Proper Names |
C 47 |
|
|
NUMB |
Numbers |
C 63 |
|
|
RAT |
Rationality
(or Human Thought World) |
C 57-59 |
|
|
TIME |
Time |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RLgn |
Religion,
Revealed |
C 10 |
|
|
rlgn |
Religion in
human condition |
C 10 |
|
|
RLN |
Revelation |
C 1-2 |
|
|
RLN-BAB |
Revelation of
the Báb |
C 3 |
|
|
RLN-BAHA |
Revelation of
Bahá’u’lláh |
C 4-8 |
|
|
RLN-other |
Revelations of
other Manifestations of God |
C 9 |
|
|
SCR |
Scriptures,
human records of Revelation |
C 48 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WLD |
World |
|
|
|
WLDS |
Worlds |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WOB |
World Order of
Bahá’u’lláh |
C 11-14 |
The reason the World of God has no twigs
is because the World of God is indivisible, unique, single. Having a subject to represent God would be superfluous. God is the only subject possible in the
World of God. Conversely, looking at
the World of the Manifestations of God, we find six subjects (twigs): Kingdom of Manifestation, Cause of God,
Holy Spirit, Manifestation of God while not on Earth, Will of God, and Word of
God. As you can see, the World of
Creation has by far the most twigs (subjects).
Every twig (subject) has leaves, which
are characteristics of the subject.
These characteristics are called Subheadings. Here is a table listing the Subheadings:
|
|
|
||
|
/att |
Attributes in
relation to Subject (i.e. things attributed to others but related to Subject) |
/act |
Action in
relation to Subject (i.e. actions attributed to others but related to
Subject; Subject is recipient of action) |
|
:att |
Attributes of
Subject, i.e. qualities describing Subject |
:act |
Action of
Subject |
|
:att/KG |
Attributes of
Subject in relation to the Kingdom of God; things attributed to Subject in
that relationship [e.g. D:att/KG, KGM:att/KG] |
:act(descr) |
Action of
Subject, descriptive non-action verbs |
|
:att/CRE |
Attributes of
Subject in relation to creation; things attributed to Subject in that
relationship [e.g. D:att/CRE, MFN:att/CRE] |
:act asked |
Action prayed
for or asked of Subject |
|
:att(cond) |
Attributes or
conditions of Subject [e.g. CRE:att(cond), HUM:att(cond)] |
|
|
|
:att(ele) |
Attributes or
elements of Subject [e.g. KRV:att(ele)] |
|
|
|
:att(part) |
Attributes or part(s)
of Subject [e.g. CRE:att(part)] |
|
|
|
:att(poss) |
Attributes or
possessions of Subject |
:att of act |
Attributes or
qualities of action of Subject (adverbs) |
|
:att of att |
Attributes or
qualities of what is attributed to Subject (adjectives) |
:obj |
Objectives of
Subject, i.e. action (verb) that Subject may or will take |
|
:att(petit) :att asked |
Attributes
petitioned or asked for of Subject |
:ori |
Origin of
Subject |
|
:name |
Names of
Subject |
:pow |
Power of Subject,
i.e. action that Subject can take |
|
:obj-spec |
Objectives of
Subject, i.e. specific (nouns) objectives |
|
|
|
:real |
Reality or
entirety of Subject |
|
|
|
-spec |
Specific
one(s) of Subject [e.g.
SO'L-spec, WLDS-spec] |
|
|
|
-Day of God |
Day of God
(TIME only) |
|
|
|
-duration |
Duration (TIME
only) |
|
|
|
-measure |
Measure (TIME
only) |
|
|
|
-past |
past (TIME
only) |
|
|
|
-period |
Period (TIME
only) |
|
|
|
-future |
Future (TIME
only) |
|
|
All twigs (subjects) have leaves
(characteristics or subheadings).
Examples of leaves are actions, attributes, objectives, names, etc. What is an example of an action? What is an example of an attribute?
To answer these questions, we need to realize that all the leaves of the tree have pigments. A pigment of a given leaf is an example of what that leaf stands for. For instance, an "action" leaf contains pigments of verbs, such as "create", "bestow", etc. An attribute would contain descriptive nouns (pigments) such as "beauty", "avarice", etc. Pigments of a "names" leaf are the specific names. For instance, a "names" leaf on the World of God branch would contain pigments bearing the names of God. An "attributes" leaf on the human soul while on earth twig on the World of Creation branch would contain pigments bearing specific attributes of the human soul (pigments such as "love", "integrity", "honesty", "trustworthiness", etc.). So the leaf is the subheading of the twig (subject), and the pigments of a leaf are specific examples of that subheading of that subject.
In a compilation of encyclopedic proportions, it might seem natural that it would take a while to find what one are looking for even if that person knows its exact location. For instance, in a compiled volume with a million pages, if the researcher knows what he wants is on page 624,153, physically turning to that page would take a considerable amount of time.
For a compilation of this magnitude,
therefore, a means must be created to bookmark all the branches, twigs and
leaves of this compilation so that the user can easily turn to the page he
needs. This is why the Worlds of God is
also necessarily an index.
HOW DOES THE WORLDS OF GOD RESEMBLE AN
INDEX?
Before proceeding to read about how the
WOGI is like other indexes, imagine a traditional library catalog, before the
advent of computers. Each index card
contains all the information about a given book, necessary for you to locate that
book in the library. Imagine that there
are three index card catalogs. One
index card catalog is sorted alphabetically by author. There are file drawers of index cards in
this catalog, as well as in the other three.
The second catalog is sorted by book title, the third by subject content
of the book.
All three catalogs make reference to the
same set of books. The reason for three
physical catalogs is that the researcher may be looking for a book but only
know the author's name, not the title.
So he looks in the catalog sorted by author. If he only knows the book title, he would look in the catalog
sorted by book title. If he were
looking for books on a specific subject, he would look in the subject catalog.
Each of these catalogs has bookmarks to
help the researcher find what he is looking for quickly. For instance, if he knows the author of a
book, he would look in the authors catalog.
He knows that the author's last name is "Bernardo." He sees that the first file drawer of this
catalog is labelled "A-C".
All authors whose last names begin with an A, B or C are in this
drawer. He opens the drawer, and sees
three index cards (amidst all the hundreds of index cards in this drawer) which
have stubs protruding. The first one,
conspicuously also the first index card in the very front of this drawer, has
an "A" on its stub. Behind it
but before the second protuding stub index card are all the index cards of
authors with their respective book titles whose last name begins with A, sorted
alphabetically. The second protuding
stub as you probably already guessed has a "B" on it, and the third a
"C". These are bookmarks
which help the researcher find his author faster.
The categories of information (author,
book title, subject content of book or keywords, edition number, publisher name,
call number, ISBN) on an index card are known as "fields." In this example, there are three physical
library catalogs, each one organized by a different field: author, book title, and subject.
With the advent of computers, it is not
necessary to maintain three separate library catalogs. The computer can store one set of electronic
index cards, and let the user query any given field or combination of fields.
The Worlds of God Index presently is a
physical index of index cards, of which there is only one copy in
existence. Most of it was created
before the advent of computers. It is
in the process of being computerized.
In a library catalog, each index card
represents a book. In The Worlds of God
Index, each index card represents a verse from the Bahá'í Writings.
Comparing Physical Catalogs
Look more closely at one of the library
catalogs, the subject catalog. There is
a researcher looking for books about fishing.
He goes to the subject catalog and locates ten index cards, each
representing one physical book in the library about fishing. These ten index cards are adjacent to each
other, but how are these ten cards sorted?
Surely they are not in random order.
Upon closer inspection, the researcher sees that they are sorted
alphabetically by the author's name.
Looking at other subjects in the subject catalog, he notices the same
thing. So the catalog is organized
primarily by subject, then secondarily by the author's name. Going back to the ten cards, he sees that
four adjacent cards refer to books by the same author,
"Melville". Given an
identical author, he sees that these four cards are sorted thirdly by the title
of the book. Moreover, two of these
four cards have the same book title, but refer to different editions of that
book, and these two cards are sorted chronologically by the book's edition
number. So this deceptively simple
subject catalog actually has four layers of sorting embedded in it.
The physical Worlds of God Index likewise
has four layers of sorting. Whereas the
primary sort or bookmark of the subject library catalog is the subject content
(key words) of the book, the primary bookmark of the WOGI are the Three Worlds
of God (branches of the tree): God,
Prophethood, and Creation. A WOG index
card can refer to the World of God, the World of the Manifestation of God, or
the World of Creation.
The secondary bookmark of the subject
library catalog is the author's name on a given subject. In the WOGI, these are the twigs (subjects)
on a given branch.
The tertiary bookmark of the subject
library catalog are the book titles by each author on a given subject. In the WOGI, these are the leaves
(characteristics or subheadings) of each twig on a given branch.
Finally, the fourth level bookmark of the
subject library catalog are the edition numbers of the book. In the WOGI, these are the pigments
(specific individual examples of a given subheading) on a given leaf
(subheading).
How does Computerization Impact the
Ability to Query the WOGI?
With the physical WOGI, to find a leaf,
the user must first find the correct branch, second find the correct twig, and
then third, find the leaf.
Once the index is computerized, the
researcher can search all the leaves (bypassing the branches and twigs)
directly if he so chooses, or all the twigs directly (bypassing the
branches). Any electronic index card
found in this fashion still has all the information about where in the tree
(branch, twig, etc.) it is located.
Basically, the researcher dynamically changed the sorting order. He stipulated that he wanted to make the
primary sort the leaves instead of the branches. This does not disrupt the integrity of the data. The computer knows the natural logical order
of the data, but is letting the user search the data as the user sees fit.
Why would a Researcher want to change the
order?
There are potentially many answers to
this question. One answer: some leaves (subheadings or characteristics)
on a given twig (subject) are identical to leaves on other twigs. A researcher might want to explore these
similarities, and instead of wandering down twig after twig looking for leaves,
he may want to search on type of leaf and see what twigs sprout this type of
leaf. For instance, he might search
for "action" leaves, or "attribute" leaves, or
"name" leaves, or "objective" leaves.
A researcher might also want to search on
a pigment of a leaf. For instance, one
particular pigment would be the concept of love. The pigment love in its noun form would appear on
"attribute" leaves. In its
verb form it would appear on "action" leaves. It is also stated on at least one
"objective" leaf, in the example "to know and to love God." Moreover, this pigment appears on leaves of
many different twigs, in all three branches of the tree. By searching on this pigment first, he gets to see all the places where it
occurs in the entire structure of reality (tree), for ease of comparison, and
ease of obtaining insights into how love works in relation to all the subjects
which make up existence.
With the computerized index, the
researcher has the ability to type in whatever field or combination of fields
what he is looking for, and to specify the sorting order of each field in the
resulting findings.
HOW DOES THE WORLDS OF GOD INDEX COMPARE WITH
MARS (MULTIPLE AUTHOR REFER SYSTEM) FOR THE BAHÁ'Í WRITINGS?
MARS, or Multiple Author Refer System, is
arguably the pre-eminent or most popular Bahá'í computer software program
available for researching the Bahá'í Writings.
The obvious differences are that The
Worlds of God Index is not yet fully computerized, and at the current time only
contains writings of Bahá'u'lláh. MARS
is usable in computerized form, and contains not only the writings of
Bahá'u'lláh, but also of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and others.
Aside from this, MARS is an example of a
text-retrieval software program. This
means that it contains all the texts of the Bahá'í canon (and some books which
are not Bahá'í sacred scripture), and can be searched by the user typing in the
literal, verbatim words or phrases he wants to find. After the WOGI is fully computerized, this same functionality can
exist in it too, making the WOGI a text retrieval software program in addition
to it being a compilation and an index.
(MARS is not a compilation nor is it an index.) In its physical form, however, the WOGI is
not a text-retrieval tool.
With a text-retrieval program such as
MARS, a user can type in, for example, the word "love", and get all
occurrences in the Bahá'í Writings of that word. His results will likely be sorted first by author, second by book
title, and third by page number. There
is no sort by context in which the word "love" is used.
If a researcher is using the physical
WOGI and wants to research "love," he first need to refine his
thinking about what context of "love" he wants to research. He must first recognize that
"love" is a specific example (pigment) of a subheading (leaf). Does he want to know about love as an
attribute of God? If so, then he must
work his way through the tree. He starts at the World of God branch of the WOGI
catalog; then locates the "attribute" subheading leaf of that branch,
then to the "love" pigment of that leaf. Under the "love" pigment are the index cards with
appropriate contextual citations in the Bahá'í Writings citing love as an
attribute of God. Perhaps the
researcher wants to know about "love" as an objective of the human
soul. Same process. This time he goes to the World of Creation
branch, then to the subject twig "human soul", then to the subheading
leaf "objective", then to the pigment "love", and finds the
relevant index cards there.
A drawback to using a computer program
that is purely text-retrieval, not an index or compilation, is that the
researcher is always searching using "pigments". It is impossible to search the Bahá'í
Writings for leaves, twigs and branches using text-retrieval. To demonstrate:
A researcher does not know all of God's names, but wants to find out what they are. In the physical WOGI, the user would look up the World of God branch, and find the leaf on this branch called "names". He has found the leaf, and all its pigments: "Creator", "the King", "the Wise", "the All-Knowing", etc., with all the corresponding citations from the Bahá'í Writings.
If the user searches for "names of
God" in a text-retrieval program, he gets results such as these:
"This is the Day whereon He Who is
the Revealer of the names of God hath stepped out of the Tabernacle of
glory,..."
"The Concourse on high, and they
that inhabit the Cities of the Names of God, weep over thee,..."
What the researcher does not get are the
specific names of God. To get these,
the user would have to already know them, and type them in one at a time: "Creator", "the King",
etc. The point is, the researcher
doesn't know what all these names are, and if he doesn't know what they are, he
can't use a text-retrieval program to figure out what they are. "Creator" and "the King"
are examples of pigments of the leaf known as "name".
The same type of problem arises if he
wants to use a text-retrieval program to search on objectives of the human
soul. He can search on pigments such
as "love", hoping to find objectives, and he might find a small
handful of them after looking through the thousands of occurrences of the word
love. He still wouldn't find the
objective "to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization", or other
objectives of the human soul he might be unaware of which do not explicitly
include the word "love". It
would be much more efficient when searching leaves, twigs, and branches, to use
The Worlds of God Index.
After The Worlds of God Index is fully
computerized, it will let researchers search leaves independent of twigs and
branches. In the physical version, to
find quotes about the pigment "love", a researcher would need first
to go through branches and twigs. In
the future computerized version, he can go directly to the pigment, and see on
the computer screen in which leaves, twigs and branches "love" is
found. He could also type in a word
or phrase just like in MARS, for text retrieval, and whereas MARS sorts the
results by author, book title, and page number, he would have the ability to
sort the results additionally by the three worlds (branches) the searched word or
phrase falls under, the subjects (twigs) it is categorized under, the
subheadings (leaves) it is categorized under, and pigment. This way, he could at a glance get the
context of each quote found.
Some of the most popular searches done on
The Worlds of God Index involve the subject of the human soul, specifically
subheadings such as all the petitions that the human soul can make, and all the
admonitions to a soul that the soul is obligated to heed, and all the soul's
objectives (purposes) which he is obligated to strive toward.
Each one of these thousands of
subject-subheading combinations resembles a mini-compilation, easy to
find. To find all the index cards
listing objectives of the soul with the Bahá'í verse and citation they correlate
with, the researcher first goes to the branch called "World of
Creation", then to the twig "human soul", then to the leaf
"objectives". There are the
cards: "to carry forward an
ever-advancing civilization", "to know God", "to worship
God", "to love God", "to acquire virtues", etc., along
with their respective citations.
WHERE IS THE WORLDS OF GOD INDEX IN ITS
STAGE OF COMPLETION?
Indexing of the Bahá'í Writings came to
an abrupt halt with the death of Marian Crist Lippitt in 1984. There are some books
of Bahá'u'lláh which have to be indexed.
All of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi's books still need indexing. On books which have already been indexed,
the citations frequently refer to out-of-date editions of the books. These need to be updated.
Some of the index cards are not yet
filed. Some of the indexing hasn't made
it onto typed index cards, but are still on worksheets of the indexers. Of these indexing worksheets, done by other
indexers, some have been proof-read and checked by Mrs. Lippitt. Others have not. Additionally, the Foundation for the Investigation of Reality,
which has possession of the Index, knows that some index cards and indexing are
not yet in its possession.
The Foundation has in its possession
numerous indexing instructions which can be used to teach the indexing process,
to complete the Index.
The other major aspect of this project is
computerization of the Index. This is
currently happening, but is a slow process, given that there are approximately
300,000 index cards to be computerized.
For more information about this project
or the work of the Foundation for the Investigation of Reality, or to express
your interest or support, you may contact the coordinator of the
computerization process, J. Michael Kafes, at justme@writeme.com, or The Foundation for
the Investigation of Reality, 195 Main Street, Eliot, Maine 03903, U.S.A.