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This heartening account has its counterpart in numerous advanced clusters where the implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings are being brought to bear on the conditions of life in neighbourhoods and villages. In each, a people, increasingly aware of the Person of Bahá’u’lláh, is learning, through reflection on experience, consultation, and study, how to act on the truths enshrined in His Revelation, such that the widening circle of spiritual kindred is ever more closely bound together by ties of collective worship and service.

Does it mean understanding ? Does it mean result ?

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  • Religions often use words to have very specific meanings that are not exactly the same as how they are used in everyday speech. To people not knowledgeable about that religion, these usages can appear to be nonsense. So, for questions like this you would probably be better off asking a Bahá’u’lláh teacher what they intend these words to mean.
    – The Photon
    Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 17:21

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One meaning of "imply" is that one idea to logically follow from another. Like you might say, "The fact that 20 is an even number IMPLIES that it can be divided by 2."

An "implication" is the idea that follows. In my example above, "20 can be divided by 2" is an IMPLICATION of the fact that 20 is an even number.

This may not be the best example, because you could say that the definition of "even" is that a number can be divided by 2, while the idea of "implication" is that it is not just a restatement of the same idea in different words, but an idea that follows naturally, but is a different idea. (I was trying to come up with a very simple example.)

If you've ever said, Well if X is true, then it logically follows that Y must be true because ..., then you're talking about an implication.

So in this case, the writer is saying that if Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings were really followed, that logically and inevitably certain things would happen. I don't quite follow what he is saying will follow, some sort of positive effect on conditions in the villages anyway. Like you might say, "If you really believe that that person over there is your (spiritual) brother, that IMPLIES that you will deal with him fairly and honestly."

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    A logical implication I was going to use was the statements "My hat is either in the closet or on the table," and "My hat is not on the table," imply that my hat is in the closet. Still, that might not be clearest example.
    – apsillers
    Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 17:09
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    Another point is that the ideas that follow logically are not always obvious and they are stated implicitly rather than explicitly. An example in the same vein as the OP's post: "The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees citizens the right to freedom of speech. Though this guarantees the average citizen's right to speak his or her mind freely, one implication of it is that unpopular and unpleasant ideas will be freely presented in public." Nowhere in the 1st Amend. does it say that unpopular ideas are legal; it is implied by the law and legal precedents.
    – Jason Patterson
    Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 18:27
  • apsillers and JasonPatterson: Both true. Maybe those are better examples. I was trying to come up with the simplest example I could think of so I could explain the word and not the example.
    – Jay
    Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 20:51
  • Oh, here's, perhaps, a better example. There's a common example of a biased question: A lawyer says to the judge, "Please direct the witness to answer my questions with a simple 'yes' or 'no'." The judge agrees, and then the lawyer asks the witness, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" The problem, of course, is that either answer is an admission of guilt: Even if he says that yes, he has stopped beating his wife, that IMPLIES that be used to beat his wife.
    – Jay
    Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 18:15

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