Transcript:Peter Khan/Speaking on Spiritual Survival in Global Choas
| Transcript of: Speaking on Spiritual Survival in Global Chaos (circa/1981) by |
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[0:00] Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen, today being Saturday, it's some four days ago that I had the opportunity to visit the Old City of Jerusalem in the Holy Land. And while I was walking in that city just a few days ago, I remember being very struck by the effect of warfare on mankind because there are probably few cities in the world that have experienced as much destruction, as much turmoil, as much horror as the city of Jerusalem. If you consider in history the times when it has been destroyed, when the Temple of Solomon was demolished, the time when Titus came through in 70 AD and smashed and destroyed every building in that city, and yet again it has survived.
[1:01] As I walked in that city and looked at its environs and saw the bullet marked buildings, the ruins of great stone structures around the walls of the Old City, I was struck yet again by the catastrophe that warfare is, and by the fact that in the world today, in every continent we see signs of chaos, signs of warfare, of disorder, of social breakdown in every part of the world: in the the major power centers of the world, in the remote areas in the islands of the Pacific, of the Indian Ocean, of the Atlantic, in the regions around Antarctica and up around the Arctic Circle. No area of the Earth is immune from the chaos which is increasingly invading our society, and beyond that physical chaos, beyond that prospect of warfare and destruction, there lie even more ominously, the loss of optimism about the future, the loss of confidence in the possibility of future happiness, which is so much part of the thinking of men and women in every country of the world.
[2:23] It has been my privilege to live in the United States for some thirteen years in the state of Michigan prior to returning to Australia in 1976, and since that time, I've had several visits to the United States. I came to the U.S. this time on July 3rd, and I've been traveling in U.S. ever since, except for a short visit to Israel last week, and I have spent my time on this visit, meeting with people in the engineering profession and people who teach engineering at various universities, and in this contact with my professional colleagues in the United States, it has become very apparent to me that the United States people, like the people of Australia in my home country and the people of other lands that I have visited, that here in the United States, there is a major crisis of optimism, a crisis of a loss of confidence in the future, and uncertainty, a searching and even indeed a fear about the prospects the future might offer.
[3:35] More and more, I find in speaking to my friends in Australia and the United States that there is a general feeling current that a great historical process which has bean in motion for several centuries is now at this time coming to an end. If you go back to the 15th and 16th centuries, a period of the exploration and colonization of the various areas of the planet, the development of the printing press, the forces released by the Industrial Revolution, the mixing of people through travel and communication in the 19th and 20th century, the developments from the 19th century onwards of the concept of a citizen with certain basic rights, the rise of democracy, the spread of mass education, all of these things over the last five or six centuries were part of a great process. And increasingly, people with whom I come in contact are feeling and saying that this great process is reaching a milestone and a turning point in its development. And in the last year or two, I have more and more come in contact with people who, at first tentatively, later fearfully, and more recently with a more definite sense, are asking the question whether we now are witnessing what perhaps all of us fear most of all: the collapse of our civilization.
[5:25] Gibbon, in his historical work on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, carried out a very careful and very close analysis of what were the signs off the fall of the Roman Empire. Writing with the perspective of over a thousand years of hindsight, he was able to look back, and examine the Roman Empire in decline, and see the signs of its disintegration far more clearly than could the Roman citizens of that period. And in his book, he indicates certain features, which as he looks back, he says, these things were part and parcel of the Roman civilization and the resulted empire, the Roman civilization falling into decline. He lists, for example, economic dislocation in the far flung areas of the Roman Empire; the rise of mass unemployment in that region of the world; the increase of racial tensions among what was previously a unified segment of mankind, unified under Roman law and Roman rule; the breakdown of disciplining and order, the collapse of the institution of marriage, the rise of greed and violence. Writing in his scholarly manner a thousand years later, he looked back, and he said, these were the signs of the fall of the Roman Empire. And more and more in our society today, we see the same kinds of things as Gibbon saw in the Roman Empire's fall.
[7:16] Arnold Toynbee, the contemporary historian, carried out a monumental study of history, devoted his entire life, his professional and academic life, to an intensive examination of the whole scope of human history, analyzed the large number of civilizations occurring in every part of the world, and wrote his conclusions in an encyclopedic twelve volume work titled A Study of History. And in that work, in those volumes, Toynbee came to the conclusion that civilizations rose and fell, and that their animating force was in every case to his interpretation, a religion. And he indicated in his study what he felt were five signs of a breakdown of a civilization. Essentially, he said that he had looked at I think nineteen or twenty three civilizations, and in every case, when each of those civilizations was in a process of decline and breakdown, these five signs were apparent, and I read these to you because it seems to me that more and more, people are identifying those signs in the civilization of every part of the world today.
[8:44] They were, firstly, the collapse of harmonious relations between the governing minority and the governed majority in any country. In other words, during the golden period of a civilization, there was harmony between the small group who were the governors in the wider sense and the mass of the people who were governed, and as disharmony and tension arose between those two segments in the society, so the resultant disunity contributed to the downfall of the civilization.
[9:17] The second sign he identified in every civilization he studied in downfall was, the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes maintained by force and terror. And certainly we see in the studies carried out by the United Nations and by centers for the study of democratic institutions and other such bodies, that more and more democracy is becoming an increasingly rare commodity in our present day world. Depending upon one's definition of democracy, I saw a recent study that said there were either 18 or 21 recognizable democracies in the entire world. And since that time there have been some political changes which have probably diminished that number yet more so.
[10:13] The third sign that Toynbee identified was the rise in the number of displaced persons: people who were either displaced physically, forced to move from one place to another in fear of their lives, or displaced psychologically, alienated, the people who felt they did not belong anyplace, and certainly it takes no great insight to see that this is one of the characteristics of our society today.
[10:46] He said that the fourth sign was a morbid sense of drift. Whenever a civilization was going into decline, people had a morbid sense that their life was drifting in a negative direction, that the future had very little to offer, they had a sense of foreboding, they were infected by pessimism.
[11:12] And the fifth sign, to which he called attention, was that of promiscuity, promiscuity in behavior, and promiscuity in culture, the debasement of taste, the perversion of culture and all of these things we see as signs not just in the Western society with which we are most familiar, but in every part of the world, in every culture, in every society of the planet.
[11:40] And it is for these reasons that tonight we want to spend a few minutes examining the question of where is it leading to? Where is it all going? We raise this question because more and more people, people of discernment, people of insight, people who are thinking, concerned about the future, wondering what kind of world their children or grandchildren will grow up into. More and more, people are worried, are frightened, are uncertain about the future. More and more people are experiencing a sense of stress, a breakdown in their thinking, in their sense of psychological help, by virtue of what they see in the world and the conditions in which they see the world drifting toward.
[12:37] Some ten or fifteen years ago, the solution to the problems of the world seemed to lie in a greater disposition of material resources: a greater use of the fruits of science, greater efficiency in production, in economic distribution, in negotiation of international treaties, in bringing about of disarmament and the like. But I think in the last few years it has become apparent that the greatest needs are those of transformation of attitudes, of regeneration of values, of changing individual thinking, that unless this is accomplished then the technology, the science, the economics, the international relations will be meaningless, and the world will continue to drift into the kind of breakdown that Gibbon spoke about with the Roman Empire, that Toynbee identified with the great civilizations, which he studied in decline.
[13:37] So it is for this reason that more and more people are turning to a reexamination of religion and the possible role it might play in the resolution of the difficulties facing mankind today. For this reason, I want to take the remaining fifteen or twenty minutes this evening to call your attention to the Bahá’í Faith and its relevance to the needs I have identified. Why, you might ask, should one consider the Bahá’í Faith because it is, after all, numerically a relatively small religious community in the United States or in most any country of the world. For what reason should one examine the possible relevance of the Bahá’í Faith rather than any of the multitude of religious movements which are increasing and proliferating in our society.
[14:38] There are, I think, two reasons. The first reason lies in the fact that present day conditions were precisely foreshadowed in the published writings of this religion over one hundred years ago, at a time when social philosophers and thinkers and scientists and historians were predicting a golden period for mankind in the 20th century. At that time, the published writings of this religion in precise detail foreshadowed the conditions that exist in the world today, indicated their purpose and their end. That is one of the two reasons why I'd like to suggest to you the value and importance of examining the relevance of the Bahá’í Faith to the issues I am discussing.
[15:35] The second reason lies in the fact that in its one hundred and thirty years of existence, the Bahá’í Faith has spread around the world. It is found in every nation, every state, every island area over the entire plant, with the exception of a small handful where the spread of religion is banned by governmental fiat. But apart from that, the Bahá’í Faith has spread around the world, has created a unified and harmonious community, drawing people from every race, from every culture, from every background on the entire surface of the planet. It has become, in the last few years, something which is unique, something which pertains to no other religious community in the world. And that is this: it has become a cross section of mankind, whether one takes that cross section from the perspective of racial background, of socioeconomic category, of national origin, of religious background. It is the only religious community in the world which is a fairly even cross section of mankind, allowing for a few perturbations due to government restriction. It has in that process given rise to a sense of purpose, a sense of optimism and a sense of orientation to those who have become part of its community.
[17:09] And it is for these two reasons, the precision with which its teachings predict and explain present day events and provide a logical understanding of the trends and movements in our society and the results achieved by the Bahá’í community in transforming the lives of individuals in every part of the world, in every nation of the world. It is for these two reasons that I want to suggest to you the value of examining the relevance of the Bahá’í Faith to these issues.
[17:45] Time does not permit me to go into great detail, into the origin of the Bahá’í Faith or into its teachings. But time does permit me to make a few points, to mention a few highlights. Firstly, its origin. The Bahá’í Faith, like every other religion in the world, is centered around a religious personality, who appeared in the East, and manifested a great claim which is accepted by those are followers of his religion. In this case, the personality is named Bahá’u’lláh, who declared in the east somewhat over one hundred years ago that he was a messenger of God, come with a message to mankind for this age. You may be aware of the fact that all of the great religions of the world: Christianity, the Jewish faith, the Muslim, the Zoroastrian, the Buddhist, Hindu and other religions of mankind all share in common the promise, the time of unprecedented trouble and change in the world. God would send a messenger who would bring teachings to unite mankind, to bring into being what we in Christian terms, called the Kingdom of God on earth. And it was the claim of Bahá’u’lláh that he represented the coming of that messenger foretold by the great religions of the world. As Bahá’ís we accept that there is truth and validity in all of these religion. We Bahá’ís are people who accept the claim of Bahá’u’lláh, to be a messenger of God, to bring teachings which restate the great truth of the Christian religion. We are Christians in a true sense, we accept the claims of Jesus Christ as set out in his words in the New Testament. We read, revere and study the Bible, and we see in the coming of Bahá’u’lláh the fulfillment of the wonderful promises that Jesus gave, which have animated the spirit of the Christian religion for two thousand years.
[19:59] We believe that the Bahá’í teachings have the capacity, the spiritual power, if you will, to provide the means for our spiritual survival in this time of chaos, or as the title of this talk suggests global chaos. We see within the teaching of this religion the energy, the teachings, the power to enable us not only to traverse what is a period of unprecedented turmoil in the world, but much more than that to regenerate mankind, to traverse a period of uncertainty, of fear, of pessimism, and create a new, stable, unified world community of psychologically healthy and whole individuals.
[20:51] Over recent years, with the increase in mental stress, breakdown and concern, in turmoil, the breakdown of the family, the disintegration of social institutions, psychologists and other scientists have given very close study to individual human behavior. And some eminent psychologists have derived certain characteristics which distinguish a psychologically healthy person, a person who is able to cope with a period of change in the world and much more than cope with it, is able to be an example and a guide through the life of example to other individuals in this regard. And they have identified five characteristics of such an individual.
[21:48] I want to mention those characteristics and briefly indicate how the Bahá’í Faith has teachings which relate to each of these characteristics and which enable the individual to find wholeness to find stability, to find security and happiness in a period such as the world is going through today. Psychologists mention these five characteristics. The first is an integrated and coherent identity. In other words, a person who knows who he is, where he's going or, as we would say in campus terminology, a person who's together. It's one of the signs. The second sign, the second characteristic, if you will of a psychologically whole or healthy individual is directionality, in other words, having a sense of purpose in life, knowing where one is going, feeling that there is meaning in life. The third characteristic: interdependence. Having a sense of relationship with other people and being concerned with the common welfare of the group, of which one is part. The fourth is trust. The ability to trust others, they have said, is part of the psychologically healthy or whole individual. And finally: perspective taking. Ability to see things from another person's point of view.
[23:21] These are the five characteristics that psychologists have regarded as being basic to survival of the individual, and examining the Bahá’í Faith, one can very readily see that the Bahá’í teachings for the individual are relevant to each of these five issues. Firstly, the sense of identity: one finds in the Bahá’í teachings wonderfully clear and illuminating statements on the nature of man, the nature of the human being, statements which emphasize the purpose of the individual, his great potential, statements of a positive nature which indicate how true happiness and purpose is found through the development of this potential, statements which illuminate the concept of the worship of God through the development of individual talents and capacity. So, in a very real sense, the Bahá’í teachings provide a flood of illumination on the question of identity, of self awareness.
[24:36] The same applies to directionality. The Bahá’í Faith is a religion. It offers prescriptions and guidance to the individual. And this guidance enables an individual to find direction in the development of the personal qualities, of his being, development of the attributes of love, of mercy, of honesty and kindness, and trustworthiness and the like, in an added development of an attitude towards mankind, an attitude of service to mankind, the Bahá’í teachings go to the length of exalting work carried out in a spirit of service to mankind as worship.
[25:22] I remember some years ago traveling in North Dakota and Montana and ultimately through Utah to Washington State, and I met in, I think it was Montana, a young man who had become a Bahá’í. He was about 18 years old, and I was very interested to meet him because he was from a very picturesque background. He had left home as a very small child and joined a circus, and fallen in with bad companions, and he'd been shot, I think at the age of fourteen and a whole lot of things like that. And at the age of 18 he had become a Bahá’í, and there seemed to be a relatively unusual background from which a member of the Bahá’í Faith might come.
[26:05] So I talked to this young man and I said, "What is it that attracted you to the Bahá’í Faith?" And he said, "I met a group of Bahá’ís," and he said, "I felt very cynical about this, I thought religion was out of date and ridiculous and full of do-gooders and sanctimonious kinds of people." But he said, "I met this group of Bahá’ís, and some of them were elderly." By elderly he meant they were in their seventies and eighties, and he said, "I looked into their eyes and they were very, very clear eyed." He said, "I thought to myself, 'These people, Bahá’ís, whatever Bahá’í is and however you spell it or whatever, these people who are Bahá’ís, they must have something. They must have some sense of purpose, some sense of direction in their lives that when they reach the age of 70 and 80 they are still clear eyed.'"
[27:00] He went on to say that so often people he saw who had reached that age of seniority, their eyes were dull and clouded because they had lost direction. They had lost purpose, they saw no hope for the world, they felt their lives were meaningless and a waste, and this affected the light in their eyes. He said, "The Bahá’ís had clear eyes, and I said to myself 'One day I'll be that age, and when I'm that age, I too I want to be clear eyed.'" And he said, "It is for this reason that I looked into the Bahá’í Faith." So directionality is one of the characteristics which we feel the Bahá’í teachings provide.
[27:38] And so on with the other characteristics, the interdependence: so much of the Bahá’í teachings are relevant to the interdependence between human beings, the concept of oneness of mankind is not just an abstract principle in the Bahá’í Faith. It is something that has a concrete reality to it. There's a multitude of Bahá’í teachings relevant to its implementation. For example, we have as fundamental to our religion a belief, as part of our religious system, a belief in the equality of men and women. We believe in universal education. We believe in the eradication of prejudice. We value and appreciate diversity. All of these things are part of a sense of interdependence which still preserves individual freedom of initiative and expression.
[28:35] In a very mysterious way, if you will, the Bahá’í teachings, we feel, foster a sense of trust. There is a concept of non-judgmental behavior in the Bahá’í Faith, the concept of not judging other individuals, of looking to the positive in them. Perhaps the strongest of all the Bahá’í teachings is that on the prohibition of criticism of other human individuals.
[29:06] The sensitivity that the Bahá’í teachings give rise to in which interaction with human beings of a diverse background fosters, creates a sense of perspective and ability to understand and appreciate the viewpoint of other individuals.
[29:25] So in short, and I'm summarizing this because my time is almost over, in short, one can find by examination of the Bahá’í teachings that within these teachings is the prescription to satisfy all the requirements which social scientists and psychologists have in recent years identified as being necessary to the individual who is whole, who is together, who has a sense of purpose and identity, who can cope with a period of transition such as that in which we are living.
[30:01] If this were all there were in the Bahá’í Faith, one would say, "Why is it a religion? Why isn't it just a branch of psychology or a branch of social science or a philosophy? Why is it a religion?" And the answer is this, that the Bahá’í Faith is far more than a set of principles. It is far more than the principle of the oneness of mankind, or the equality of men and women, or the need for education and eradication of prejudice and all the other principles I've mentioned. It is much more than that. It is a religion which is animated by a mysterious quality which we call the power of the Holy Spirit. And without the power of the Holy Spirit, which is the energy, the drive, the dynamism, which infuses the Bahá’í teachings, without that power of the Holy Spirit, it would be cold, dead, abstract and academic. But with that spirit, which is an integral part of this religion, it gives it life, it gives it power, it gives it energy. It enables us to implement these teachings, to internalize them and to make them part of our life.
[31:14] Let me conclude with these words. Gibbon, in his analysis of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, traced the breakdown of what was a great and seemingly invincible system. Roman law ruled from the outermost edges of the British Isles, through Europe, down through North Africa, across the Middle East and way off into Asia. Roman law produced ability, produced order, produced communication and trade and the development of civilization, and Gibbon traced how this great structure, seemingly invincible, collapsed intrinsically from within. And as this process was occurring, in one corner, in a remote corner of the Roman Empire, in the province, or the region of Palestine, a small religious movement was growing, far away from the great cities of culture and civilization such as Rome and Athens. A small group of idealistic, committed and devoted Christians were practicing their religion, were praying to their God, were reading the words of Jesus Christ, were practicing his teachings and telling others about it.
[32:47] And the urbane, cultured and civilized Roman, were he informed that this small group of Christians claimed that their religion would regenerate and revive that great empire that went into decline, would produce the great civilization which was to be Byzantium and later into Europe, he would ridicule it. He would say, "Ridiculous. This small movement, it was neither here nor there. Where is its financial power? Where is its political power? Where are the great leaders of thought who are members?" Yet the perspective of a thousand years showed to Gibbon that history was on the side of the Christians. Why? Because the power of God, manifested through Jesus Christ, received by those who believed in Christ, to identify with his message -- the power of God brought them forward, and from its humble beginnings in an obscure and remote part of the empire, that religion was to spread, was to unite Jew and Gentile, Persian and Mede, Roman and Greek, was to bring these people together and create the civilization which Christianity has given to the world, which has showered such wonderful fruits of enlightenment and culture in all parts of the world.
[34:15] And we, who are Bahá’ís today, believe that in a very real sense, history is repeating itself, that once again in an obscure part of the world, a messenger of God has appeared, and once again a small religious movement is growing, is subject to ridicule, is regarded as idealistic, as impractical, as vain and not capable of realization. And we believe, because we have faith in God, because we have faith in the the spiritual powers released to the world by Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of this faith, we believe that history is on our side, that a thousand years in the future, a historian writing as Gibbon wrote in the middle of the the last millennium, that a historian of a thousand years to come will look back and say, as the civilizations of the 19th and 20th centuries went into decline, as their turmoil and chaos appeared, so, gradually growing but increasing in spread and rapidity, the Bahá’í community had within its power, within its capacity, the ability and the power to regenerate, to revive mankind, to draw together the disparate elements of human society and to give rise to a world civilization. So in a real sense, we believe with faith and confidence that history is on our side. Thank you.
