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Rúḥíyyih Khánum Shares Teaching Observations
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada
Dearly loved Friends:
This is certainly a very late date at which to write the letters to you I assured you I would be sending you after my wonderful trip last Spring, through the U.S.A. and Canada! I had planned to write you properly, separately, and touching on points connected with the two different countries—but fatigue and the work at the World Center engulfed me before I got around to it. I think this is all to the good for the ideas I wanted to express then are very much clearer now, after my trip through East Africa, and as they are applicable to both Canada and the U.S.A. I am sure you will not mind my sending you a joint letter.
Whatever my trips amongst the friends have produced of good, they could not possibly have had as great an effect on anyone as on me. I have learned so much, had such new thoughts come to me, that I feel as if I was living in a different mental world from before. My perspective has changed very radically and I feel the best way I can be of help to your two Assemblies —shouldering such great responsibility as the primary promotors of the Divine Plan—is to just share my new thoughts with you. I have not got time for composition so will just think out loud.
It seems to me if we Bahá’ís, and especially the teachers and assembly members, do not ponder more deeply what lies ahead in the next stages of our development we are not going to be properly oriented towards the work we are carrying on.
Bahá’u’lláh warned us against the evils of civilization when carried to extremes, the Master and particularly the Guardian, elaborated on this theme until at the end of his life Shoghi Effendi fairly thundered against our civilization—particularly the American variety of it. The future Bahá’í culture and civilization is therefore scarcely likely to be patterned on it! It occurs to me (speaking for myself) that we have confused the things so highly praised in our teachings, such as freedom of speech, the democratic method of election, the ideal of justice for all and integrity in administrating affairs, with our materialistic civilization which the Guardian stigmatized as corrosive and corrupt in western civilization and against the dangers of which he constantly
warned us. It is these inherent weaknesses that may lead to the greatest catastrophe in history. These thoughts have formed the background in my mind against which other thoughts are beginning to stand out more and more clearly.
I remember when we had the first Japanese pilgrim here, Shoghi Effendi said to him that the majority of the human race was not white and that the majority of Bahá’ís would not be white in the future. As up until very recently the Bahá’ís of the world were almost exclusively white it is only natural that their virtues and their faults should have colored the Faith and its community life. It is illogical to suppose that what we have now is either mature or right; it is a phase in the development of the Cause; when peoples of different races are incorporated in the world-wide community (and in local communities) who can doubt that it will possess far greater power and perfection and be something quite different from what we have now‘? And yet let us ask ourselves frankly if we do not believe that what we North American Bahá’ís, what we Western white Bahá’ís have, is the real thing, practically a finished product, and it is up to the rest of the world to accept it? I think this is our mentality; it was mine up until a few years ago. It seems to me we are confusing the fact that North America is the cradle of the Administrative Order with the old order that already exists there. Perhaps we forget sometimes that just as Bahá’u’lláh appeared in Persia because it was the worst country in the world the Administrative Order was given to America to develop because she was politically the most corrupt. I remember when the Guardian was writing “The Advent of Divine Justice” and elaborated on this theme how astonished I was. I thought we had been given the Administrative Order because we already had the best democratic system in the world and were therefore best qualified to elaborate it!
We all know what great emphasis the beloved Guardian put on 'mass conversion during the last five years of the Crusade and how urgently he appealed to the Bahá’ís to press forward in teaching the people of Africa and the Pacific region. He likewise repeatedly stressed teaching the American Negro and the Indian people. It has been borne in on me, at least to a limited degree, during my trips in America and Africa, the vast significance of two statements in our Writings. Bahá’u’lláh said the black people are like the pupil of
JUNE 1961
the eye and sight is in the pupil; the Master said when we converted the American Indians to the Faith they would be like the original inhabitants of Arabia. The Words of these Divine Beings, we know, are the very essence of Truth. When Bahá’u’lláh likens the Negro race to the faculty of sight in the human body —the act of perception with all it implies—it is a pretty terrific statement. He never said this of anyone else. I thought the American Negro’s humility, his kindness, friendliness, courtesy and hospitableness were something to do with his oppression and the background of slavery. But after spending weeks, day after day in the villages of Africa, seeing literally thousands of Bahá’ís and non-Bahá’ís, I have wakened up -to the fact that the American Negro has these beautiful qualities not because he was enslaved but because he has the characteristics of his race. I learned why the Guardian so constantly spoke of the “pure-hearted” Africans. The emphasis on the “heart” in our teachings is overwhelming. “My first counsel is this; possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart.” “Thy heart is my ‘habitation.”—“All in heaven and on earth have I ordained for thee except the human heart which I have made the habitation of My Beauty and Glory—" etc. It is this spiritual quality defined as “heart” in our teachings which I think is one of the priceless gifts the Negro race is going to share with others in the community of the Most Great Name. I can truthfully say my association with the Africans humiliated me deeply, I felt unworthy, I felt my race unworthy, I have not said anything about intelligence because I firmly believe it is a common characteristic of all human beings, the more primitive they a're the sharper their wits!
What about ‘Abu’l-Baha’s words concerning the American Indians? When I had the experience of being with them I kept asking myself what did the Master mean? Then I reviewed in my mind what had been the effect of the conversion of the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula to Islam; the spread of the Faith from China to the gates of Vienna, the rise of Islamic culture and civilization which was responsible for the ‘renaissance in Europe which in turn became the cradle of Western Civilization which has given rise to so many good things that Bahá’u’lláh Himself praised. This is what the conversion of the early Arabs meant. And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says the conversion of the American Indians will be like that other conversion. It certainly gives one food for thought!
The non—white world is stirring. Africa is awakening, our civilization is beginning to crumble. I believe the responsibility we Bahá’ís (most of us still white) have at this time is tremendous. We must make haste to obey the instructions of the Master and the Guardian and teach in active, determined campaigns, by every means in our power, the American Negroes and Indians. In the first place it is a duty placed upon us in writing, in the second place we need them in our communities for their characteristics of mind and heart can greatly enrich our Bahá’í community life, and in the third place we cannot estimate at this time how far-flung will be the repercussions of bringing these two races in North America into the Faith. I am convinced that if we start mass conversion of the Indians and Negroes, mass conversion of the whites will follow. The people of the world are tired of words,
words, words. They don’t really pay any attention to what we say about “oneness, unity, world brotherhood” although many of them agree with this. What they need is to see deeds, to see Bahá’í communities, local and national, full of people of different races working together, in love, for their common belief. Then the spiritual force such a reality will release (as opposed to words) will bring an inwardly hungry, sad and disillusioned white race into the Faith in larger numbers. It is all there in the Writings of Shoghi Effendi; we just don’t think about it enough.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned. God forbid we Bahá’ís should ever be like that! A terrible sense of urgency has come over me. Take Africa alone: her nations are coming into independence rapidly—which surely is the plan of God—but they are in danger internally and externally from immature, calculating political forces. What a difference it would make if there were at least ballast in their new ships launching on the world’s turbulent sea, if there were a strong Bahá’í minority with their good will and vision of the future world, and the non-political quality of a Bahá’í community! And if these new and often turbulent African nations, being taught racial tensions in a world filled with hatred and ambition, could look across the seas and see that in America and Canada there is a community truly representative of the different races, where the Indian and the Negro Bahá’ís march abreast with those of European descent in serving mankind and promulgating Bahá’u’lláh’s redeeming Faith; think what a force for stability in the whole world this might be! Are we Bahá’ís thinking about those things? Or are we for the most part absorbed in playing with the Administrative Order, criticizing,
judging and disputing with each other? Do we con- _
stantly bear in mind that as early as the start of the first Seven Year Plan the Guardian told us that now that we had built up the Administrative machinery we must put it into operation, for teaching the Cause? That Bahá’u’lláh has commanded all His followers to teach the Faith? That the Guardian made it clear in communications to National Assemblies both East and West, that the monies of the Faith must be spent on winning the specific goals of the Crusade and not dissipated on other things of secondary importance at this time? Forgive me if I seem impassioned on this subject, but I am very distressed because I feel we are in a race and not conscious of it. What answer are we all going to give in the next world if Bahá’u’lláh, the Master and the Guardian say to us: “but We told you all about it, we told you what to do, why didn’t you do it?”
I would like to make an observation about teaching the Indians and the Negroes. It is the result of as much analysis as I am capable of. When we Bahá’ís go to teach these people, our first act, I firmly believe, should be to try and give them back their self-respect’. Probably the greatest crime of the w-hite man is that in his folly and conceit in the great power of his money —civilization, he has made other men feel inferior; 2nd, 3rd and 4th class passengers on the boat of life. How deep this acid has bitten into the souls ‘of other men I suppose we white people can never know. But I was startled and moved by something I saw during my African trip. Invariably, whenever I mentioned this injustice of ours, and denounced it as such, there was
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a spontaneous burst of applause from my listeners whether at the Teaching Conference in Kampala where the cream of the African Bahá’í teachers was present, or an illiterate audience way out in the Bush seated under a tree! The arrow is far deeper in the hearts than we dream and we Bahá’ís should draw this arrow, in the name of Bahá’u’lláh, and pour the healing salve of His Praises and love into the wound.’
I could see the American Indians straighten their shoulders when I asked their forgiveness for the injustices my race had done them and when I praised their great past. The Africans in their wilderness have not, thank God, suffered this humiliation of soul the Indian has because they have been too far away, for the most part, from white people. But they look wistfully at our world and wonder why they have no part. This touched me deeply and I tried to tell them as much as I could about the history of Africa. Again the need to reestablish self-respect. Both the Africans and the Indians should be encouraged to retain their tribal characteristics, their language, their music, their folklore, their crafts. What a people is has grown up in its setting of tribal customs and qualities. If you destroy this through criticism you also, I believe, weaken and destroy all the fine qualities of the race too. It’s a large subject and this is not the place to go into it, but all one has to do is to study primitive people in their own lives—and in our cities or after close contact with us — to see the truth.
There is one other subject I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on, and that is education. One of the products of our Western Civilization is a worship of education. From the Bahá’í standpoint what is the purpose of education? To enable man to acquire a deeper knowledge of God, His ways and His plan for His creatures; to enable him to better carry forward an ever-advancing civilization whose aim is to realize the Kingdom of God on earth. In other words, education should bring man closer to God and help him serve his fellow-man. Our education does not do this nowadays. It seems often to do the very opposite. It fills men’s hearts with a learning that far from bringing people closer to God, seems to take them further and further away from Him! I hate to say it, and it is not invariably true, but my observation is the more the Bahá’ís educate their children the less they seem to serve the Faith. Present-day education seems to destroy the spiritual qualities. It is not what is taught so much as that the emphasis is all wrong, placed on the wrong values. If the purpose of human existence is to know God and to acquire those characteristics which, after a short life in this world are needed for an everlasting existence in another world, how are we accomplishing this‘? I have heard a lot of gossip about the fact that these new, illiteratefor-the-most-part, African Bahá’ís are not well grounded in the Faith. If to be a Bahá’í is to know all the teachings, I don’t suppose there is a single Bahá’í alive, since the Guardian passed away, because none of us know all the teachings and few of us grasp the ones we do know.
The foundation of all religions is to accept the Manifestation of God and believe what He taught is God's truth. Ifone believes this, then the moment one comes across a teaching one has not heard about before, one accepts it because Bahá’u’lláh is the Mounthpiece of God and God is always right. It is this quality of faith
the African believers are being taught and are capable of. The doctrine of salvation through accepting the Manifestation of God exists in our Faith just as much as in Christianity. But are we teaching the Cause this way in the West? I am afraid not. I remember talks I h.ave given (and listened to) which were a sort of intellectual jargon that went on and on elaborating on the working of a society which does not yet exist, giving supposedly full details of a system a little over a hundred years old but which must evolve during at least a thousand years!
We must guard ourselves against the dry and dead intellectualism of the world in which we live! Over and over again the Guardian told the Bahá’ís to study the talks of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and teach by His methods, simple language, parables, stories, examples. It is teaching through this method that is bringing about mass conversion in Africa and Indonesia, and can do the same, I believe, not only amongst the red Indians and the Negroes, but amongst the white people as well.
Another thing I found in Africa was love. Considering it is the reason God created us and His first law to us is to love Him and one another, to find not just talk about it but the feeling of it was too wonderful
"for words! If we will bring into the Faith more of
these people—these black people and brown people —who have the spiritual qualities so greatly needed in our communities, I think we will infuse a new life into the Cause in North America and this will directly assist us in accomplishing our great destiny as outlined by the Master and the Guardian.
Both the Indians and Africans are very devout and prayerful people. Far more so than we. In the meetings held for me in the villages in Kenya and Uganda, organized and conducted by the African teachers, I was surprised at the number of prayers said. One day when our party was about to get in the car and drive off, the African teacher with us called me back into our host’s house because he said firmly we were going to say some prayers before we left! The Indians pray and commune far more than we dream of!
I would like to share with you just a few glimpses into what Africa—and the new African Bahá’ís—is like. In one of the day-long meetings where people had come long distances, mostly on foot, one of the African teachers had a parcel. He said he wanted to give me a present, though it was a very humble one. He unwrapped a clay cooking pot and said there is a story about this pot which I want to tell you. When I was a boy, I was very naughty once and my father beat me badly so I decided to run away from home into the Bush. My mother called after me, “You may run away but my pot will bring you home again.” That night, out in the Bush, I got very hungry and I remembered my mother’s cooking pot on the fire and I went home and she was right, her pot brought me back. Now, he said, in this pot are the laws of Bahá’u’lláh. The people of the world are going to get hungry and they will be forced to come and eat from this pot.
The Bahá’ís write many songs in their own languages and sing them with beautiful voices. One of the latest is to the effect that in 1963 the Universal House of Justice is going to be established at the World Center in the Holy Land.
On my last night in a newly-opened district, where no white Bahá’ís had ever been and which adjoins a
JUNE 1961
large pagan area of Nandis, we held our meeting, as usual, under a big tree. There were a handful of the new Bahá’ís present, poor farmers living in a hilly wilderness, and some of their neighbors. Some of these were pagans. After the meeting and various speeches and questions and answers, one of these pagan men got up and said—please come and teach us more about your Faith, it seems to be a good thing and we would like to hear about it.—After hearing about it more, if we think it is true, we will accept it. We all sat up until about 11 o’clock, and yet, when I woke up about 4 in the morning I heard soft voices coming from one of the other huts and the word ‘,‘Bahá’u’lláh” every now and then. When I asked the Bahá’í teacher with us (who had opened this area) what had been going on he said the Bahá’ís and some of their friends who had stayed the night had so many questions they preferred not to sleep but to talk! One of the Bahá’ís -had bicycled 30 miles to be there with these new friends. We left him behind as he was going to make a tour and do some more teaching before going home.
Five dollars and fifty cents will keep one of these teachers in the field a month. It is rather terrifying is it not, when we see how we waste money daily on luxuries in the name of “our way of life,” both as individuals and as Bahá’í administrators—and the Guardian, our beloved Guardian, told us now was the time for mass conversion!
1 must really stop.
Thank you all for your love and your many kindnesses shown me when I was there last year. It was a joy to see you all, and all the dear faithful believers who are so sincere, so longing to be more effective in service, I am sure there is no limit to what can be done. We have the promises of the Guardian, the instructions he gave us, the loyalty and devotion. of the Bahá’ís, what more do we need but self-sacrificing and inspired leadership, and that is surely what your two Assemblies can and must provide.
With warmest love to you all,
In the service of the beloved Guardian, (Signed) RUHIYYIH Haifa, Israel March 9, 1961
Annual Souvenir of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to be Held June 24
The forty-ninth annual Souvenir of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá will be held on Saturday, June 24, 1961 at the Teaneck Bahá’í Center, 126 Evergreen Place, West Englewood, New Jersey, in commemoration of the first Unity Feast held there in June 1912 when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself served as host to about three hundred persons.
The purpose of these annual commemorative meetings is to help each Bahá’í to become more intimately aware of the station and mission of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá through hearing the words He spoke repeated again in that same spot and through viewing the display of precious articles associated with Him and His visit to this country.
Martyrdom of the Báb July 9
A Special Event for Proclaiming fhe Bahá’í Faith fo Hie Public
Sponsored by the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly
Theme: Martyr-Prophet of a World Faith
Suggested Publicity Materials:
Press Release from Bahá’í Press Service
Martyr-Prophet of a World Faith from Bahá’í Publishing Trust
Reports:
Newspaper clippings from U.S. communities are to be sent immediately to Bahá’í Press Service.
Written reports and photographs for publication in Bahá’í News are to be sent as soon as possible to the Bahá’í News Editorial Committee.
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The Chi|d's,Way Magazine Offers Guidance
to Parents, Teachers
In Bahá’í Administration, Shoghi Effendi states that the duties of the Spiritual Assemblies include promoting “by every means in their power the material as well as the spiritual enlightenment of youth, the means for the education of children,” and that they “must encourage and stimulate by every means at their command, through subscription, reports and articles, the development of the various Bahá’í magazines . . .” He particularly referred to the “Magazine of the Children of the Kingdom,” which was the child education magazine at that time in the United States. Today The Child’s Way magazine, a guide for Bahá’í parents and teachers is the only available child education magazine. It is published in the United States by a National Editorial Committee and distributed throughout the world.
Materials as well as sources available to parents and teachers are offered every other month in the publication The Child’s Way. Why don’t you subscribe‘? Subscription, $2.00 a year. Make checks payable to: The Ch1'.ld’s Way.
The Child’s Way Box 245 Wilmette, Illinois
NSA Requests Notice of Attendance
At Dedication of Australian Temple
The National Spiritual Assembly of Australia has announced the dedication of the Australia Bahá’í House of Worship in Sydney has been set for September 14-17, 1961. All American believers planning to attend this historic event are requested to notify the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly promptly.
