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World order

FALL 1968

HUMAN RIGHTS AND EMPLOYMENT

Hugh Jackson

REFLECTIONS ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN

Nelly Marans

BLACK-WHITE IN WOLFRAM’S PARZIVAL

Marianne Manasse

BECOMING YOUR TRUE SELF

Daniel C. Jordan

VIEWS ON EDUCATION IN A NEW WORLD

F. Kazemzadeh

[Page 0]

World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 3 NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER is intended to stimulate, inspire and serve thinking people in their search to find relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and philosophy

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

ROBERT HAYDEN

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

Art Consultants:

GEORGE NEUZIL

LORI NEUZIL

Subscriber Service:

PRISCILLA CHUNOWITZ

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 112 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts and suggestions for articles and subjects to be treated editorially will be welcomed and acknowledged by the editors.

Subscription: Regular mail USA, $3.50; Foreign, $4.00. Single copy, $1.00.

Copyright © 1968, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

IN THIS ISSUE

1 Again, the Student Question

Editorial

2 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

4 Human Rights and Employment

by Hugh Jackson

15 Views on Education in a New World

by Firuz Kazemzadeh

21 The 9th Saviour

A poem by Richard W. Thomas

23 Reflection on the Status of Women

by Nelly Marans

28 Black-White in Wolfram’s Parzival

by Marianne Manasse

37 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's Garden

A Poem by Lois Nochman

38 Some Thoughts of a Quaker “Bahá’í”

by Rachel Fort Weller

43 Becoming Your True Self

by Daniel C. Jordan

52 Concerning God and Being-Itself

A Book Review by James C. Haden

55 Authors and Artists of This Issue

[Page 1]

Again, the Student Question

EDITORIAL

AUTUMN is here and the “student question” is once again being widely and hotly debated. What seemed several years ago a local outburst at Berkeley, has turned out to be a preview of events in hundreds of colleges and universities here and abroad.

Even superficial observers can see similarities of attitude, demands, aspirations, and “style” among students at Stanford, Wisconsin, Columbia, and even at the universities of Paris, Rome, and Prague. Perhaps the most striking feature of student protest is the rejection of the status quo, “alienation” from society and its traditional norms.

The term alienation, first used in the modern sense over a century ago, provides a key to the problem. Though the youth may not be aware of it, they do not hold a monopoly on alienation. The artists and the intellectuals share the same malaise. Ethnic minorities, the uneducated, the poor live on the fringes of a society they cannot call their own. But alienation exists even at society’s core. The “ins” no less than the “outs” feel homeless and lonely and seek escape from unbearable reality in alcohol, pornography, vicarious enjoyment of violence, and the use of drugs.

The difference between the generations amounts only to this: the old feel trapped forever, while the young still hope. Yet neither seeks new solutions to the problems of modern man. The radical and the conservative, the left and the right, turn for guidance to the same old, tired sources.

It is time to realize that neither Rousseau nor Burke, neither Hegel nor Marx, neither Blanqui nor Bakunin can solve the complex problems of today’s world. The issues we face are new, and the tools and attitudes appropriate to their solution will not be found in the rusty ideological arsenal of the nineteenth century. So long as those over thirty dare not seek, and so long as the youth derive inspiration from a discredited past, both will continue to perpetuate old errors.

The student movement will become truly forward looking, truly radical only when the youth look beyond appearances, slogans, and outworn doctrines, beyond the spiritual void at the heart of the crisis of our age, and discover in the distance the glimmering of a new dawn.

[Page 2]

Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

THIS BEING International Year for Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations, the North American Bahá’í Office for Human Rights last June held regional conferences in Memphis, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, El Paso, and several other cities. Each conference dealt with an aspect of human rights and their application to youth, housing, employment, education, and the interests of particular minority groups. Two of the speeches, one from the Atlanta conference on education and the other from the Wichita confetence on employment, appear in this issue.

•

Mrs. Nelly Marans, a French correspondent at the U.N., has written her “Reflections on the Status of Women” in such a light-hearted manner that the unwary reader might miss the underlying seriousness of its theme. Mrs. Marans’ essay definitely belongs in the same issue with the two other articles on human rights.

•

Professor Daniel Jordan is a steady contributor. We feel that his latest piece, “Becoming Your True Self,” is a remarkable exploration of personality, full of insights and exemplifying the principle of harmony of science and religion. Professor Jordan, by the way, has moved from Indiana State University to the University of Massachusetts. In addition to the performance of his academic duties, he is engaged in organizing and promoting the American National Institute for Social Advancement, whose purpose is “to acquire or build facilities and implement programs designed to foster the expression of human potential in persons of all ages, but with particular emphasis on infants and children in those areas of the nation where no other agency is working successfully to counteract the effects of deprivation.” WORLD ORDER greets ANISA and hopes to see this sapling grow into a mighty tree.

•

To see one’s faith as others see it is always a healthy experience. Mrs. Rachel Weller, a Quaker, is a good friend of the Bahá’ís and has written about the Bahá’í Faith for Quaker publications. Her article is brief, gentle, and full of the kind of feeling that makes one certain of the ultimate triumph of tolerance, kindness, and goodwill. Our insights may not be identical; our interpretations of experience may differ; yet we share many basic attitudes. It is a pleasure to welcome Mrs. Weller to our pages.

[Page 3]

The spring issue of WORLD ORDER was greeted with a chorus of praise for the artists who made it so satisfying visually. We only wish the praise could be conveyed to the Australian tribesman whose work graces the back cover of the spring issue. Quite a few took it for a fine example of modern art, while some said that no Western modern artist could have produced anything so beautiful. The editors refuse to commit themselves one way or anorher but confess that they too loved the bark painting.

To the Editor

TOWARD THE NEW EDEN

I have just finished reading . . . “Toward the New Eden” in the spring issue of WORLD ORDER and want to express something of the delight, excitement, and exaltation it . . . has aroused in me. The richness of the world . . . with all its wonderful facets, known and unknown, is all implicit in the article. It is, of course, the Divine Wholeness imparted to us through all the Manifestations and none of us can claim personal credit for that of which we are humble instruments, but this glimpse of the “New Eden” comes from [Dr. Ruhe’s] pen and I am most grateful.

RACHEL F. WELLER

Urbana, Ill.

CHALLENGE TO THE UNEDUCATED

I feel . . . privileged to receive this Bahá’í' magazine and I would like to respond to other letters to the editor. WORLD ORDER has an exhilarating effect on me . . Being uneducated myself, I find this the most challenging exercise. It seems urgent to elevate man to new ideas and thinking beyond . . . the visible, so that a purpose and a place can be found in this abundant life. By doing so the scope of the individual will gradually be enlarged. As long as there is heart and soul, reason and truth in the written word, it is destined to enlighten and to further humanity in its diverse and constant search....

FRIEDA PICK

Norristown, Pa.

GARVIN’S HARLEM

. . . I thought Garvin’s article excellent. He goes at a particular problem (with perception and understanding) about which there has been a lot of rather grim romancing (if that is a possible term) ... I was particularly interested in Garvin’s article because my partner of 25 years was an early president of the New York Urban League. So Harlem was in and out of our office for years.

ROBERT W. McLAUGHLIN

F.A.I.A., Architect

York, Maine

[Page 4]

[Page 5]

HUMAN RIGHTS AND EMPLOYMENT

Speech made on June 22, 1968, at the Bahá’í-sponsored five-state Human Rights Conference in Wichita, Kansas

By HUGH JACKSON

IN THE LIGHT OF SUMMER 1967, the brutal assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1968, the days immediately following his death, the battle of guns, more killings, the burning, looting, the hardening of negative attitudes between blacks and whites, June 5, 1968—call it what you may, but hatred of one for another struck down Sen. Robert Kennedy—the question which the people of the U.S. must answer today is, “Is there still time?” “Is there still time to unite a dangerously divided nation?”

Employment as it relates to human rights is, indeed, at the heart of the crisis. There is no more ugly and urgent crisis facing this nation today than the economic insecurity of black Americans. An unending cycle of human devastation and national loss is at the core of this crucial problem.

The concept of equality of employment opportunity is fully recognized as a basic civil right by the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Robert MacIver, of Columbia University, pointed this out in his work, A More Perfect Union, in which he states:

. . . Economic opportunity is held to be one of the great bulwarks of the established order, one of the essentials of the “American Way of Life”. Moreover, the denial of economic opportunity is not only contrary to the tenor of the Bill of Rights, but has been specifically, and on several occasions declared unconstitutional by The Supreme Court of the United States. Thus, in Traux v. Raich, it was laid down: “The right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community is of the essence of that personal freedom and opportunity which it was the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment to secure.” And again in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Company: “Race discrimination by an employer may reasonably be deemed more unfair and less excusable than discrimination against workers on the ground of union affiliation.”

The Bahá’í Statement on Human Rights issued at the Bahá’í Intercontinental Conference, Chicago, Illinois, October 5-8, 1967, in part said:

Discrimination or unjust restriction against persons under any pretext poisons our relationships and thereby creates conflicts which threaten to destroy our civilization. This is undoubtedly the gravest sickness infecting our age. The dynamic accomplishments which could result from a truly organic and unified society, freed from all prejudicial attitudes, are thus denied us. Social repression and enforced degradation have created masses of people unable to exercise the functions of citizenship, making it impossible for them to contribute to the advancement of civilization and to enjoy its benefits.

More specifically. the effects of employment discrimination on blacks are to concentrate employment of blacks in certain [Page 6] industries; to limit them to the lowest occupational levels of these industries; to completely exclude them from many industries; to limit their income; and to reduce their opportunities for promotion.

The problem is rooted in the problems of transition created by three decades of change during which the historical pattern of urban and rural life in America, which for decades before existed side by side, each complementing and supporting the other, has been violently and irreversibly altered. Modern methods and mechanization of the farm have dramatically, and, in some regards, sadly reduced the need for the farm hand. With this, a drift to the city was the inevitable and necessary result. With respect to black folks, the drift was first to the urban centers of the South and then, because scanty means of livelihood existed there, on northward and westward to the larger metropolitan centers.

The Drift from South to North

WORLD WAR II, and, to a lesser extent, the Korean War of the early ’50’s, tended to accelerate the movement, particularly the drift of blacks from the south to the north. Because job opportunities existed in the war plants located in our cities, the deep and provocative problem created by the movement was not at first appreciated by society. Since then, caught up in almost a decade of struggle with civil rights and its related problems, most of America focused its attention upon the problem of the South, and only a few turned their attention and thoughts to the explosive situation of our cities.

But the conditions of life in the urban north and west were sadly disappointing to the black man. Totally untrained, he was qualified only for jobs calling for the lesser skills and these he secured and held on to with great difficulty. Even the jobs he found in the city soon began to disappear as the mechanization of industry took over and wiped out one task after another—the only tasks the untrained black was equipped to fill.

Hence, equality of opportunity, a privilege he sought and expected, proved more of an illusion than a fact. The Negro found that he entered the competitive life of the city with very real handicaps: he lacked education, training, and experience, and his handicaps were aggravated by discrimination and racial barriers which were more traditional than legal. He found himself, for reasons for which he had no responsibility and over which he had no control, in a situation in which providing a livelihood for himself and his family was most difficult and at times desperate. Thus, with the passage of time, altogether too often the black man who has come to the city sinks into despair. And many of the younger generation, coming on in great numbers, inherit this feeling but seek release, not in apathy, but in ways which, if allowed to run unchecked, offer nothing but tragedy to America. Speaking of this black poverty, New York Representative Joseph Resnick’s diagnosis included this thought:

“Outside agitators” have not been causing the riots in our cities. It has been the “inside agitators” that are to blame—the growl of a man’s stomach telling him he is hungry, the emptiness of a man’s pocket telling him he has no money for clothes and a livable house.

The various dimensions of the problems of the Negro job seeker and worker are best described by the National Urban League and the experiences of its 87 affiliates around the country. For 58 years, the National Urban League has pioneered in opening up new avenues of employment for black Americans—getting jobs, consulting with employers, labor, government, school and university officials, and counseling with black youth on job preparation and careers. Whitney [Page 7] M. Young Jr., National Urban league Executive Director, said, “The Urban League’s across-the-board approach addresses itself to the whole range of socio-economic problems confronting black America. However, the most important thing we do is still to get jobs for people. It is ‘Green Power’ that is important for the black man now. Pride and dignity come when the brother reaches in his pocket and finds money, not a hole.” Last year the National Urban League placed 40,000 black workers in jobs worth a total of $200 million. Our on-the-job training program and other training programs equipped more than 5,000 Others with skills and jobs.

That the black worker faces problems in employment is a gross understatement. As is borne out by Urban League experiences, he is beset by the following problems:

DISCRIMINATION. The most serious issue still underlying the problems of the black worker is discrimination at the hiring gate. In spite of fair employment legislation, equal employment opportunity commissions, contract compliance officers, etc., the black worker is still being barred from thousands of job opportunities for no other reason than that he is black. The ugly head of discrimination appears all around the world of work. One does not need to do depth research to learn that there are segments of the work force in which either no or relatively few blacks have ever been employed, for example in communications media, financial institutions, airlines industry, junior management and supervisory positions almost across the board. While there may be no discrimination at the hiring gate, once he is on the job, the black worker’s difficulties in securing advancement often stem directly from discrimination. It may be the prejudicial supervision, it may be the result of housing discrimination which restricted him to an inadequate education in inferior ghetto schools, or it may have been job discrimination which fixed his parents’ income at a substandard level, which deprived him of financial support for a better education. Discrimination will be seen to reside at the core of each of the specific problems of the black worker.

UNREALISTIC TESTING. Many companies have an Iron Testing Curtain which keeps black workers from productive jobs they could fill. Recently, a local personnel director called the Wichita Urban League and requested that we make some referrals to a position he wanted filled. No less than a half dozen applicants were referred. A check with the personnel director found none was hired. Of one he said, “I know deep down in my heart that Mary Jones is qualified to do what the job calls for, but the company says she must pass the test.” Mary Jones did not pass the test. Mary Jones was not hired—yet by the personnel director’s own admission she was qualified. Outmoded tests still being used by employers is another form of discrimination against the black job seeker.

LACK OF SKILLS. Blacks have historically been denied equal opportunities for vocational and technical training. There was a feeling that they should not be trained for jobs unless there were job possibilities. Consequently, today, thousands of blacks who are unskilled and relatively unemployable are victims of a system that deliberately deprived them of equal opportunity to obtain vocational and technical skills. Technical educational opportunities for blacks were almost non-existent until the second World War.

LACK OF APPRENTLCESHIP OPPORTUNITIES. Of all training barriers those in apprenticeships have been most unyielding to the efforts of blacks to upgrade their skills. The minimization of black participation in apprenticeship programs, traditionally and currently, results in both the misdirection and mal-preparation of Negroes for skilled-craft [Page 8] occupations. Blacks, as a rule, must seek skilled training opportunities outside of formal apprenticeship programs. These, in turn, do not usually provide the recipient with the qualitative preparation requisites for truly skilled standing in today’s economy. This holds true when the training was just “picked up” or whether it involved more formal but equally inferior instruction in de facto segregated school systems. Continuing in full circle, apprenticeship opportunities are denied to blacks on the basis that they, “somehow,” do not make good craftsmen. Although the Federal Government has intervened to help break the pattern of exclusion of black apprentices; racial discrimination at management and union levels continue to pose difficult barriers to be hurdled by young blacks interested in apprenticeships.

INADEQUATE COUNSELING. Many of the persons who have been counseling black youth have not known or cared about doing a genuine job for these youth. They have gone about their jobs with little or no information about these youth, their ambitions, their aspirations, or their problems. While this situation has prevailed in so-called integrated educational settings, the problems of black youth in segregated schools with a full complement of black teaching personnel have been no less frustrating. Here, there has been an almost complete absence of any semblance of guidance and counseling services. What little there was became the responsibility of teachers whose orientations to the world of work consisted of what they had read, seen, or heard. Their own lack of experience with business, industry, government, and labor made it impossible for them to do anything that resembled a realistic job.

UNREALISTIC RECRUITING PROGRAMS. The number of black youth in colleges continues to rise. The quality of their educational experiences continues to improve. Recruiting on college campuses can become a more fruitful medium for expanding job opportunities.

Recruiters need to consider the effects of their recruiting activities on black students who fail to see evidence that the visit to the campus is genuine and not merely a token effort to comply with verbal policy. The use of interracial teams for visits to all campuses would show black and white youth alike that the present world of work can and does make use of the skills of all qualified workers.

Black youth need to see examples of progress. They do not readily accept mere statements that changes are taking place. They still see too little evidence that: 1) They will not be required to be superhuman beings with skills in excess of those required of others; 2) They will not need unrealistic amounts of patience and fortitude in the face of discriminatory practices that limit promotional opportunities; 3) It will not always be necessary to institute complaints no matter what policy statements are made that guarantee equal treatment; 4) They need not fear that their work performance will determine future job prospects for all other black youth. These fears of black college youth are the direct outgrowth of the recruiting practices of businesses and firms that continue to overlook the black student or graduate as a prospective job applicant. In this regard, considerable work needs to be done, both by the recruiters and by the school officials themselves.

UNDEREMPLOYMENT. Discriminatory employment practices have resulted in developing a very large group of underemployed black workers. Of 192 job placements by the Wichita Urban League in 1967, 40 or 20 per cent of these placements were in underemployed categories—college graduates in junior clerk, clerk typist, salesclerk positions, receiving clerks’ positions; high school graduates in maintenance and messenger positions.

[Page 9] A 1966 Department of Labor Study of 10 slum areas, and a survey of 20 disorder areas by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, indicated that underemployment may be an even more serious problem for ghetto residents than unemployment. The Department estimated that underemployment in these areas was 2½ times greater than the number of unemployed.

According to the Report of the Commission on Civil Disorders,

Unemployment and underemployment were found to be grievances in all 20 cities and also frequently appeared to be one of the most serious complaints. These were expressed in terms of joblessness or inadequate jobs and discriminatory practices by labor unions, local and state governments, state employment services and private employment agencies.

TRAINING AND RETRAINING. The key to jobs is training. A key to the black worker’s improved economic status is his ability to get into job training and retraining opportunities. Many companies have begun or expanded programs to train the unskilled, hard-core unemployed, and to help their current unskilled workers qualify for promotion. Urban League on-the-job training programs have helped. More recently the Department of Labor MDTA Training Program has made the hard-core unemployed a chief source of concern. While there have been encouraging results, the number of workers reached represents a mere beginning in terms of the total needs of the disadvantaged population of our cities.

LOCATION OF JOBS. The movement of business and industry away from the central city and toward the suburbs during the past decade has created major obstacles to employment of slum residents—barriers much greater than these people themselves perceive. Without automobiles or money for public transportation, and living mostly within the confines of their slum neighborhood, many have little if any knowledge of the new plants which are springing up in the outskirts of their cities.

POLICE AND BAD DEBT RECORDS. For the black job seeker, a police record, whether for arrest or conviction, or a record of bad debts or of garnishment, represents a serious barrier to employment. “Records of arrests, garnishments, or troubles in previous jobs were the major barrier to employment for about 1 out of every 10 unemployed job applicants in slum areas, according to a special analysis made by the Employment Service in seven slum areas in late 1966.”

Many employers refuse to consider hiring anyone with such a record. Once convicted of any offense or even arrested and subsequently released, the black job seeker has greatly increased difficulty in getting a job.

HEALTH PROBLEMS. Health problems are a main reason also for unemployment among blacks. Blacks not only suffer the most from inadequate health care, poor nutrition, and poor living conditions, but can less often qualify for white-collar and other jobs suitable for workers with limited physical disabilities. The incidence of tuberculosis and venereal disease is higher among blacks than whites. Undoubtedly the overcrowded housing and poor physical environment of the slums, the presence of refuse and rats, contribute to these and other differences in disease [Page 10] rates. The poverty of the black man also limits his diet and makes him unable to pay for adequate health services.

ARRANGEMENTS FOR CHILD CARE. The availability of good child care facilities is extremely important to the slum family whose income is, in whole or part, dependent on the earnings of the mother. Many a black woman with small children needs to work to supplement the inadequate earnings of her husband; many more are themselves family heads who must work to support themselves and their children. The President in his 1967 message to Congress on America’s children and youth pointed out that, while the Federal Government and the States support a wide range of services for needy children and their parents, these efforts have fallen short in many ways. He listed day care for children under three years old as among the services needed.

The employment and income problems of the black population are therefore complex, longstanding, and rooted deeply in economic, social, and political disabilities. More than anything else, they are the consequence of cumulative disadvantages imposed by racial discrimination in employment, education, training, and housing.

Consequently, in the midst of today’s booming economy an unemployment crisis exists for blacks. The unemployment rate for blacks is about seven percent—more than twice the average for whites. According to the White House Conference, “To Fulfill These Rights,” June, 1966,

Average annual unemployment among Negroes has not fallen below eight percent since 1953. Negroes only comprise eleven percent of the nation’s labor force, but make up more than twenty percent of the nation’s unemployed. Not only is unemployment higher among Negroes, but they tend to be out-of-work for longer periods than whites. The most serious unemployment problem is the shocking incidence of joblessness among Negro youths. Although this problem has been decreasing in recent months, fully 19 percent of out-of-school Negro youths aged 16 to 21 were unemployed in April, 1966. This is twice the rate for white youths and it means that thousands of young Negro people who are actively looking for jobs cannot find a productive place in our society. The unemployment statistics do not tell the full story of wasted human resources. Many Negroes who are counted among the employed are actually involuntarily working only part-time, and lack a full measure of economic security. Another problem is that even under conditions of relatively full employment a significant proportion of teenagers and adults in the Negro working population leave the labor force because they have given up hope of locating decent jobs. Given these dimensions alone—the statistically defined unemployment rate, involuntary part time employment, and idle members of the working age population—indications are that the actual total unemployment rate among Negroes approximates 12 percent of the working age population. This rate of unemployment is of crisis proportions, particularly in the urban centers.

The economic loss to the entire nation, although a secondary consideration, is of great proportion. The White House Conference of 1966 also said,

If Negro unemployment were lowered to the current unemployment level of whites, the resulting gain in the Gross National Product would be $5 billion. If the average productivity of the Negro labor force equaled that of whites, the resulting gain in the GNP would be $22 billion. These gains, totaling $27 billion, do not include the further increment that would result if Negroes obtained jobs commensurate with their abilities and training.

The problem is indeed urgent—as the exploding cities and the incendiary rhetoric make inescapably plain. “I’ve got hope, but not a hell of a lot of faith,” says a black militant in Detroit. He speaks for more blacks than he imagines.

[Page 11] What Must Be Done

WHAT MUST BE DONE? An immediate action agenda is called for and demanded now. A specific longer range program concerning employment, housing, and other levers of social change will be needed over the long haul.

The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders recommends that the area of employment include: expanded economic growth, intensive recruiting and training, follow-up and services for trainees, more on-the-job training programs, opening up existing job structures to provide upward job mobility, development of new jobs in both private and public sectors with goal for private sector in three years—one million jobs. The Report also calls for greater investment in depressed areas, and new kinds of assistance to the poor and encouraging business development and ownership in the ghetto—an expensive program to say the least in terms not only of money but of the requirements of leadership and participation of all elements in American society, public and private.

It is to the latter and what can be done now that this paper wishes to address itself most, for neither the immediate nor the long range action programs needed will be forthcoming unless locally and nationally there is vigorously committed and unflinching leadership now, white and black, to meet the challenging job.

Business leadership for human rights must lead the way. In a recent speech before the American Iron and Steel Institute, Whitney M. Young, Jr., said, “The time has come for business and industry to support equal employment with the same fervor and dedication as you now support, say, cost control or new product development. If you ignore the crisis, the slums and ghettos of this land will siphon off more and more of your profits. The eroding tax base of the American city places a larger and larger burden on the business community.”

Business leadership needs to make a reality of equal opportunity and to put it into practice in new ways and with a new sense of urgency. No longer can the leaders of business discharge their responsibility by merely approving a broadly worded executive order establishing a policy of equality of opportunity as a basic directive to their managers and personnel departments. They must insist that these policies are carried out and they keep records to see that they are. Also, they must authorize the necessary facilities for employment and training, properly designed to encourage the employment of black workers, rather than follow a course which all too often appears to place almost insurmountable hurdles in the path of the black job seeker. Employers can make sure that their requirements for hiring, training, and promotion do not exclude able people for irrelevant reasons. A new sense of responsibility on the part of businessmen and industrialists is called for in finding solutions to serious problems.

The Urban League recommends to employers: Hire black folks. If a firm does not have substantial numbers of black workers at all levels of operations, then it isn’t doing enough. Be vigorous in your recruiting. Business’ “credibility gap” because of past discrimination keeps many blacks from applying for jobs “downtown”. Don't just run after the black person with a Harvard Ph.D.; everyone else wants him too. Hire dumb Negroes just as you hire dumb whites. Especially recruit blacks for your white collar force. Make sure blacks are in executive and supervisory positions. Blacks in line jobs won’t believe your sincerity unless they see other blacks in important positions. Become involved in the community. Back self-help projects in the ghetto. Make your company visible to the man in the street through sponsorship of training and special programs. Support [Page 12] responsible leadership through close support of Urban League, NAACP chapters, and other agencies. Publicize your efforts and your hiring of blacks through company publications, which should emphasize stories which will help change attitudes among prejudiced whites.

Employers can revise their testing procedures and hiring standards now. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has released a special study, “Employment Testing,” which indicates that present testing procedures screen out promising workers. A brief capsule of the study’s recommendations are:

1. State specifically the ability necessary for the job. Indicate the equipment the employee will use; the level of arithmetic he must know; and other items. But make sure that the specific stated job requirements are essential to job performance.

2. Choose tests on the basis of specific job-related criteria. Make sure they are valid tests of the worker’s potential to do the job, not his social acceptability.

3. Screening and interviewing should be done by personnel committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity. They should be aware that minority applicants are often apprehensive in the testing and interviewing situation and that many feel your tests are designed to exclude them. Interviewers have to know how to put people at ease, and how not to let appearances deceive them. Always look for potential.

4. Don’t set unrealistic standards leading to overqualified employees. This just works against the less educated worker, while resulting in low morale by overqualified workers later.

5. Use testing as only one indicator among others. Motivation should count at least as much as test scores which are based on middle-class verbal culture. Look at the whole individual.

Labor unions have their very vital role. Union leaders must be resolute in their determination to eliminate discrimination and provide equality of opportunity for all within spheres of their jurisdiction and influence. In labor, as in business, pronouncements of policy, however well intended, are not enough. Unless a union conducts its affairs on a basis of absolute equality of opportunity and nondiscrimination, I believe there is reason to question its eligibility to represent employees at the bargaining table.

In summary, affirmative action by both private and government employers, labor organizations, churches, and community groups is essential and urgent to generate more and better jobs for blacks, assure access to existing jobs by black men and women, and to eliminate discrimination in employment and occupational advancement.

Discrimination, high rates of unemployment and underemployment, relegation no low-skill jobs, and poverty have left their mark on the black labor force. There is a crucial need to make available occupational training and related basic and remedial education to help prepare jobless blacks for employment. There is also a need for training to upgrade employed blacks who are working below their skill potentials. In many cases, existing training programs are of inadequate size, inconveniently located, and act geared to the needs of the disadvantaged. Formal training is not enough. A variety of supportive services such as child care centers for working mothers and specialized help involving health, family, and housing are also needed.

The failures of our economy and society in providing equal employment opportunities, adequate education and training, and a decent standard of living for all Americans converge in city slums. The people entrapped in the slums bear the brunt of these failures, but through them the community and the Nation reap the consequences—in wasted human resources, in the smoldering and sometimes explosive bitterness or despair of many slum residents, and in the problems of dependency, crime, and juvenile delinquency to which these conditions inevitably contribute. Furthermore, social and economic conditions [Page 13] are getting worse, net better, in slum areas. And they will certainly continue to do so unless strong action is taken to change the face of the slums and provide opportunities for reasonably satisfying, decently paid employment for slum residents who include a rising proportion of blacks.

Caught up in this crisis today, after a hundred years, black citizens in various ways are now demonstrating their determination to change their condition. They will be free. This national ferment gives evidence that the black man must be given his complete freedom or he must be reenslaved. There is no middle ground.

America has long been two nations—one rich, one poor; one white, one black. Now, in spite of all the efforts by well-meaning, decent people to bridge the gap which separates these two groups and make America whole again, the split is widening. It is widening because in every area of life, Negroes have been kept from participating in programs, and their condition relative to that of the white population has declined. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the ghettos of our cities where despair and bitterness flourish. America first put up the walls of the ghettos, and then ignored their problems. To make this easier, it constructed superhighways and expressways, so that peeple could avoid seeing the slum, and avoid looking into the eyes of the victims of racism—eyes in which the hopelessness, despair, and even hate, have grown as conditions worsen.

But now an indifferent and apathetic America has been forced to confront the problems it has created. The ghetto just won’t go away; it gets bigger and its problems have blown up the hypocrisy which pervades the national life. We can’t talk away these problems. We will have to do something about them. Words won’t have any effect, because they have all been said before —and nobody believes them.

Hypocrisy breeds disbelief, and has created a “credibility gap” of tremendous dimensions. Young people, especially—black and white— are coming to the conclusion that America, which wraps itself in pious ideals, is a racist and hypocritical state.

White youngsters, for example, are increasingly restless and frustrated. Some of them show their rebellion in vandalism or in senseless rioting at vacation resorts. The alienation of black youth runs deeper, for they have a cause. They are the victims of America’s hypocrisy. They are losing faith in promises. They have been lied to over and over again. First they were told to get an education and that would make them successful. So they went to wretched ghetto schools and got a diploma, at least those who could stick out the years of inferior slum schools. Then they found that the diploma didn’t insure equality after all.

The figures tell the story. Black high school graduates earn less money than white dropouts. Even if they go on to college, it makes no difference. Black college men earn $1,500 per year less than white high school graduates. Reaching the young blacks in the ghetto must have top priority in any meaningful attempt to resolve our urban crisis. No program which excludes him, or which ignores the basic problems of jobs, housing, and education, can succeed in closing the racial gap which divides us.

What Bahá’ís Can Do

WHAT CAN BAHÁ’ÍS DO? If you are an employer, enough said. Otherwise, you have the responsibility as never before in your daily lives, no matter what your station in life may be, to make a reality of “Human Rights are God-Given Rights”—The Bahá’í Statement on Human Rights:

THE GREATEST CHALLENGE to this age is the recognition of the oneness of mankind. The painful but inevitable broadening of each man’s allegiance from his own ethnic, racial, religious, national, cultural and economic group to the wider embrace of all mankind constitutes the central revolution of our time. Every person is affected by this revolution, [Page 14] which calls for changes in the provincial attitudes and behavior of all the people in the world. The recognition that mankind belongs to one family under one God brings with it the responsibility to respect and to help one another in every way.

THE PROPHETS OF GOD have stressed the unique character of man’s individuality and of his right to live a fruitful life. Human rights, then, are not the exclusive prerogative of the few, to be parcelled out at the legislative discretion of human institutions. We believe rather that human rights are God- given and hence inviolable.

ALL PERSONS of whatever sex, race, nationality, ethnic group, religion or economic class are creations of God and all are equal in their spiritual essence and human dignity. Any act which discriminates against or otherwise restricts the human rights of any person demeans the dignity of the individuals involved and is contrary to the Teachings of God.

DISCRIMINATION OR UNJUST RESTRICTION against persons under any pretext poisons our relationships and thereby creates conflicts which threaten to destroy our civilization. This is undoubtedly the gravest sickness infecting our age. The dynamic accomplishments which could result from a truly organic and unified society, freed from all prejudicial attitudes, are thus denied us. Social repression and enforced degradation have created masses of people unable to exercise the functions of citizenship, making it impossible for them to contribute to the advancement of civilization and to enjoy its benefits.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES for developing their unique capacities are the right of all individuals. Variety, not conformity, is a basic characteristic of a progressive society. Therefore, an equal standard of human rights must be upheld throughout the world.

[Page 15]15

VIEWS ON EDUCATION IN A NEW WORLD

Speech made on June 7, 1968, at the Bahá’í-sponsored Regional Human Rights Conference in Atlanta, Georgia

By F. KAZEMZADEH

Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

About three weeks ago I was asked by the North American Bahá’í Office for Human Rights to address this distinguished audience. I accepted the honor with misgivings since I am an historian and not a specialist in the highly complex field of education. I put on paper some thoughts which might have been relevant to the task of this Conference. However, the tragic events of the last few days have compelled me to discard my original notes.

Tonight, with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I should like to ask some fundamental questions, questions which can no longer be avoided by thinking men and women.

At tomorrow’s Conference in several workshops we will deal with such important topics as “Teaching the Disadvantaged”, “Segregation: De Facto and De Jure”, “Community- School Relations”, “The Ghetto Environment”. We will consider the multiplicity of problems that must be solved if the ideal of equal human rights is to be achieved in education.

Education is undoubtedly one of the most important of human attivities. Animals are not educated. They inherit their instincts and, at best, can be trained to perform certain limited tasks. Man relies on education to survive, to govern his society, to transmit values, and preserve civilization. Education permeates all human activity almost from birth to death. Formal schooling is only a small part of education.

The educational process is so all encompassing that it is often taken for granted. It is accepted as a part of our environment, as the air we breathe. Only when the air fills up with noxious fumes do we realize that something is amiss. Only when education becomes inadequate to the needs of society do we stop to examine its nature, function, and purpose.

Here purpose is a key concept. All education is teleological. It is governed by the goals that are set by society. This, of course, has always been known to educators and to those who thought about education. Plato and Aristotle had certain notions as to what was required of a Greek citizen; therefore they could hold more or less clear ideas on how to prepare young men for the roles they would play in adult life.

The Christian ideal of man was very different from the classical, and Christian education was correspondingly different. Another great change occurred during the Renaissance when the best minds applied themselves to the task of devising new methods and curricula that would result in the upbringing of a new kind of man.

Throughout history the process was repeated [Page 16] again and again. Dozens of educational systems and philosophies sprang up: the Confucian, the Brahman, the classical Islamic, and finally the modern system of mass education in which America was the pioneer. However, in every instance it was the ultimate purpose, the ultimate view of man, that governed the means society used to educate its members. There were perfectly good reasons to teach free-born children of ancient Athens the art of oratory; the children of medieval Paris, Latin; the white children of old America, the three R’s; and the black children, nothing. Good or bad, it all made sense in terms of the ideals and the needs of a given society.

An Uncharted Wilderness

TODAY, WHEN WE SPEAK of education, or of education and human rights, we clearly imply that education is desirable and that it should be available to all, regardless of race, nationality, religion, sex, or economic status. But what kind of education? Education for what?

At this point we enter an uncharted wilderness. The easiest thing to do is retreat behind tradition. We all know what the schools taught our grandparents, our parents and ourselves. Let us teach our children the same things in the same fashion. Another way out is to abdicate the task of education, hiding behind pseudo-scientific theories of permissive upbringing, life-adjustment, and what not. But what of purpose, what of the goals? What is a child of the third quarter of the twentieth century to do with an education that is a replica of his grandfather’s? What is the purpose of teaching black children from textbooks on whose pages they never see a black face? What will be the role in society of those who have never been taught responsibility, discipline, and self-restraint? Whose purposes and what goals are served when all children are taught to admire generals, captains of industry, inventors of gadgets, television stars, and shady politicians? What does society expect and what purposes is it seeking when it teaches children hatred and violence?

A society which has no soul will teach its children that they are animals. A society which is sick and does not know it will teach its children that sickness is health. A society which is poisoned with racism will teach its children prejudice.

Education does not create ideals and fundamental attitudes. Education transmits them from generation to generation. It is naïve to expect schools and teachers to solve the problems of the world, but it is indispensable that teachers be aware of the world’s problems, that they be concerned, that they seek answers.

Today few would deny that the world is undergoing a deep crisis. Disciples of all religions, adherents of all political systems, followers of all philosophies sense that the very ground on which we stand is no longer firm.

Symptoms of disease are everywhere. Within two months of each other two national figures have been assassinated. After the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King I watched a television newscaster gulp down tears. But commercials kept interrupting and millions of viewers were entertained with frivolous jingles promising sex appeal, one beautiful beer, and a variety of dog food. Not even respect for the dead could stop the bilge from flowing.

What Disease?

AT A GREAT UNIVERSITY students protested against a heartless and impersonal system, then went on to burn their professors’ manuscripts, rifle through files, and throw bricks at the police.

Foreign war, political manipulation, business dishonesty, educational sclerosis . . . and hanging over the entire land, a cloud of hatred and fear.

Yet there is no agreement on what the sickness is and what remedy to apply. Some advocate a return to an idealized past, unaware that today’s miseries grew out of yesterday’s errors. Some prescribe technological solutions, oblivious of the fact that a technology [Page 17]

[Page 18] is no better and no worse than the purpose to which it is put. Some believe in political panaceas, as if an institution, or a ballot box can of itself create the good society, though we know that democracy itself is compatible with injustice, exploitation, and even slavery. And some are entranced with revolution and destruction for their own sake, or for the sake of licence, which they mistake for liberty.

In the writings of the leading figures of the Bahá’í Faith one finds a remarkable analysis of the conditions of modern society:

God Himself has indeed been dethroned from the hearts of men, and an idolatrous world passionately and clamorously hails and worships the false gods which its own idle fancies have famously created, and its misguided hands so impiously exalted. The chief idols in the desecrated temple of mankind are none other than the triple gods of Nationalism, Racialism and Communism, at whose altars governments and peoples, whether democratic or totalitarian, at peace or at war, of the East or of the West, Christian or Islamic, are, in various forms and in different degrees, now worshiping. Their high priests are the politicians and the worldly-wise, the so-called sages of the age; their sacrifice, the flesh and blood of the slaughtered multitudes; their incantations outworn shibboleths and insidious and irreverent formulas; their incense, the smoke of anguish that ascends from the lacerated hearts of the bereaved, the maimed, and the homeless.

The theories and policies, so unsound, so pernicious, which deify the state and exalt the nation above mankind, which seek to subordinate the sister races of the world to one single race, which discriminate between the black and the white, and which tolerate the dominance of one privileged class over all others—these are the dark, the false, and crooked doctrines for which any man or people who believes in them, or acts upon them, must, sooner or later, incur the wrath and chastisement of God.

In a work dealing specifically with America, we read that one can clearly perceive the decline in the fortunes of the nation if one but look at the deterioration in the standards of morality as exemplified by the growth of crime, political corruption, “the inordinate craving for pleasure,” the marked slackening of parental control, and other alarming symptoms:

Parallel with this, and pervading all departments of life . . . is the crass materialism. which lays excessive and ever-increasing emphasis on material well-being, forgetful of those things of the spirit on which alone a sure and stable foundation can be laid for human society. It is this same cancerous materialism, born originally in Europe, carried to excess in the North American continent, contaminating the Asiatic peoples and nations, spreading its ominous tentacles to the borders of Africa, and now invading its very heart, which Bahá’u’lláh in unequivocal and emphatic language denounced in His Writings, comparing it to a devouring flame and regarding it as the chief factor in precipitating the dire ordeals and world-shaking crises that must necessarily involve the burning of cities and the spread of terror and consternation in the hearts of men.

The multiplication, the diversity and the increasing destructive power of armaments to which both sides, in this world contest, caught in a whirlpool of fear, suspicion and hatred, are rapidly contributing; the outbreak of two successive bloody conflicts, entangling still further the American nation in the affairs of a distracted world, entailing a considerable loss in blood and treasure, swelling the national budget and progressively depreciating the currency of the state; the [Page 19] confusion, the vacillation, the suspicions besetting the European and Asiatic nations in their attitude to the American nation; . . . these have, moreover, contributed their share, in recent years, to the deterioration of a situation which, if not remedied, is bound to involve the American nation in a catastrophe of undreamed-of-dimensions and of untold consequences to the social structure, the standard and conception of the American people and government.

No less serious is the stress and strain imposed on the fabric of American society through the fundamental and persistent neglect, by the governed and governors alike, of the supreme, the inescapable and urgent duty . . . of remedying, while there is yet time, through a revolutionary change in the concept and attitude of the average white American toward his Negro fellow citizen, a situation which, if allowed to drift, will, in the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, cause the streets of American cities to run with blood . . . .

These, then, are some of the problems American society faces today. How are they to be solved? What is the ideal to which the people of America must give their hearts?

America and the World

THE BAHÁ’ÍS FEEL that the destiny of America is inseparable from the destiny of the world. As the richest, most powerful, best educated nation in history, America must assume the burden of moral and spiritual leadership of all nations. She will not fulfill this destiny unless her people commit themselves at home to the principle of the unity of races, and abroad to the principle of the unity of mankind.

Over fifty years ago Bahá’ís recited this prayer: “May this American democracy be the first nation to establish the foundations of international agreement. May it be the first nation to proclaim the unity of mankind. May it be the first to unfurl the Standard of the Most Great Peace.”

America has not achieved her purpose as a nation either at home or abroad. The longer she resists het God-given role of standard- bearer of universal peace, the greater will be her suffering:

Many and divers are the setbacks and reverses which this nation, . . . must, alas, suffer. The road leading to its destiny is long, thorny and tortuous. The impact of various forces upon the structure and polity of that nation will be tremendous. Tribulations, on a scale unprecedented in its history, and calculated to purge its institutions, to purify the hearts of its people, to fuse its constituent elements, and to weld it into one entity with its sister nations in both hemispheres, are inevitable.

The American nation . . . stands, indeed, from whichever angle one observes its immediate fortunes, in grave peril. The woes and tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable, but mostly inevitable and God-sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity, will find itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to play a preponderating role . . . in the hoisting of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in the establishment of a world federal government on this planet. These same fiery tribulations will not only firmly weld the American nation to its sister nations in both hemispheres, but will through their cleansing effect, purge it thoroughly of the accumulated dross which ingrained racial prejudice, rampant materialism, widespread ungodliness and [Page 20] moral laxity have combined, in the course of successive generations, to produce, and which have prevented her thus far from assuming the role of world spiritual leadership . . . a role which she is bound to fulfill through travail and sorrow.

Vision of a World without Racism

THE BAHÁ’ÍS HAVE A VISION of a new world rising from the ashes of the old. It is a vision of a world in which “National rivalries, hatreds, and intrigues will cease, and racial animosity and prejudice will be replaced by racial amity, understanding and cooperation.” It is a vision of a world where “Destitution on the one hand and gross accumulation of ownership on the other, will disappear.” It is a vision of a world dedicated to the advancement of a truly human civilization based on the deepest and most universal religious principles. It is the old vision of Isaiah and John restated for modern man.

This vision gives life to hope and hope to life. It sets the ideal and inspires man with the will to make it come true. It is a generous and inclusive ideal that all, black and white, Christian and Jewish and Muslim, young and old, rich and poor, can share.

This vision of unity and peace, of internationalism and brotherhood offers the guiding principles of which education stands in need today. It is such an ideal that can serve as the end, the ultimate goal of education. It is this vision that carries with it spiritual guarantees of human rights.

[Page 21]

The 9th Saviour

TO RON MILNER

God,

my people.

Light?

Stampeding feet crushes the Light.

And i don’t dare

Explain The Prophet’s Law

jazz symbols

on the wall.

In this hour of revolution

How do you talk to a scream? Blame shall

Ride me down

Through graves (ink loud upon the page) to

Pull my hand

Back out the

Bleeding side of Light! Saying:

Why didn’t you tell.

Them. The house would fall.

And I would play their Solo

And others’ If they would only

read My music on

the crumbling wall?

RICHARD W. THOMAS

[Page 22]

[Page 23]23

Reflections On the Status of Women

By NELLY MARANS

IF HONEST thinkers are, at times, willing to admit that very little is known about human nature, they should go a little further, and confess that still less is understood about the nature of women. And if the world is today entangled in a great confusion, it can ill afford the additional misunderstandings expressed in its laws, traditions, and attitudes towards womankind. However, the confusion goes on, and the misunderstandings are further aggravated by the very people who wish to dispel them.

At the outcome of the United Nations 22nd Commission on the Status of Women, and on the eve of the Conference on Human Rights, it seems appropriate to indulge in a few reflections on the subject of women’s rights, and above all, to guard oneself from the now established procedure of solving first, and understanding later.

A Man’s World

ACCORDING TO BOTH the militant defenders of women’s rights, and the happily-unhappily satisfied “traditional women”, this is a man’s world. The former find in this state of affairs an endless source of recrimination, frustration, and envy, while the latter accept the balance of powers and seduce their way in instead of battling their way out.

One bitter and edgy lady assured me recently that women should coin their own values instead of meekly accepting those that had been defined by men, inasmuch as the latter, having developed their ideas and ethics for themselves —thus “against” women—would never bother to do anything for women.

Another one, of a softer variety, declared herself tired from all the useless fighting, and wishing to gain some happiness in this world, confessed that she would rather compromise with what was than lose everything by fighting for what should be.

Their attitudes, far from being diametrically opposed, were in fact closely related. All women today, as yesterday, in any type of society or class, at any level of education, with any opinion borrowed or original, have this in common that they never define themselves in relation to the world at large. Their measure of things, and of themselves, is and has always been: man.

Men, however, do not measure anything of importance against their conception, true or false, of womanhood. As far as men are concerned, women are just part of what is, or has been, or should be, and though they might seem at times very important, they are never at the center of men’s preoccupations.

[Page 24]

As sad as it may seem to many a romantic soul, one must today explode the age-old and cherished fallacy of men fighting and dying for women. They fight and they die for many obscure causes to be sure, but history has proven repeatedly that they are more likely to spill blood for a piece of land than for the beautiful eyes of a distraught lady. While we are exploding fallacies, why not destroy another one: that of men building a world for themselves, and so to speak “against” women.

Women, when they speak of a man’s world, are simply indulging in a minority attitude. Every minority under the sun, whether it be the Jews, the Negroes in America, or many others elsewhere, falls easily into the mistaken idea that the “others” have conceived and enforced their laws and moral regulations for the simple purpose of oppressing it. Chances are that the “others” never gave a thought to the minorities except when they had to deal with them. However good or bad this world may seem to my sisters, it is not a man’s world; it is very simply a human world, made by people for people, though sometimes it may seem to have been made against them.

Women Are People

MAN AS A SPECIES knows little about himself and is afraid to learn more. He would rather bask in the glory of extravagant delusions, and be ready to pay the bloody price of his foolishness than accept the truth about himself and draw modest conclusions. At least, the male of the species is able to see himself as something else than a male animal; he is a male animal plus.

So far, in spite of some progress recently registered in several evolving societies, women have a hard-to-shake tendency to consider themselves as nothing else but female animals. Whether the fault lies in man’s conception of womanhood or in some mysterious trait of the feminine psyche, the fact remains that women rarely think of themselves as people. They consider themselves first and foremost as women, while men—in spite of a confusing vocabulary—are first people, then males.

As Simone de Beauvoir put it, “Women see themselves through the eyes of men and not through their own eyes.” Such an attitude, practiced throughout the ages and reinforced by a wealth of rationalizations to which each generation adds its own touch, is quite understandably hard to change. It is the attitude of a minority whose conception of itself has been lost under the impact of a powerful majority, and has been replaced by a distorted view borrowed from the “others”.

Women would benefit more, I believe, from the very simple process of seeing themselves as people, and then demand and obtain the rights and responsibilities due to all people, than from a half-hearted struggle (often futile) against a supposedly man’s world.

One World Only

MUCH HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE to correct what we consider today as injustices and what the old societies took for granted as part of the general scheme of things. Women vote in all but seven countries of the world, they [Page 25] have more to say, more to do, and often they may have reached levels of education and responsibility that would have been dismissed as utopian not so long ago. Still, it is not enough. Women are still, in many societies, second- class citizens, very much defined by their biological functions, and very little accepted as thinking, active, autonomous individuals.

It would serve no purpose whatsoever, though many of my sisters delight in this attitude, to blame men as a group for this state of affairs. It would only add one more antagonism to all the many others that split an already torn world.

As prosaic as it may sound, the fact that women are still second-class citizens happens to be a fact, and has to be accepted before it can be changed. The reasons for this state of affairs have lost their importance now that it has been decided that the situation is no longer bearable. What matters much more than foggy theories, bitter denunciations, or nostalgic rationalization is the simple understanding that whatever solution is found for the problem, it will be found only within the general framework of society—the society of people —and not in a ridiculous battle between the sexes.

It is interesting to note that nowhere have women been so quickly and so fully emancipated as they have been recently in the societies changed by social and political revolutions. Soviet Russia and China are excellent examples. Women have gained from the total transformation of the world in which they live.

This is also true, with a difference of degree rather than of nature, in the developing countries of Asia and Africa. The Western women might stop to think and marvel at the disturbing fact that Ceylon and India, for instance, have accepted easily woman prime ministers, while in their own countries they can barely boast about a handful of senators. The reason for this bizarre situation is probably to be found in a persistent and sad Western delusion. The Western world is sleeping on its laurels, and is smugly confident that its way of life is good and here to stay. The new nations of the East and South are dynamic, the Western countries are desperately static. And unfortunately, the Western women are also falling asleep on the laurels that had been reaped by the late suffragettes.

Whether the militant ladies of women’s rights like it or not, their evolution as free individuals depends on the general evolution of the world. They cannot pit themselves against men. They have to cooperate with them for the simple, down-to-earth reason that the world is one.

The Right to Participate

IT IS ALWAYS A SAD SIGHT for the honest female observer to behold, but it must be said that any meeting of “professional women’s righters” is composed in its overwhelming majority by bitter battle-axes, overripe ladies who have abandoned all pretension to physical charm.

Some ladies pretend that their reasonably young and pretty sisters are too busy either looking for a man, keeping him, or taking care of his offspring, to bother about the battle for women’s rights.

Some men find in this an argument against women’s participation in public [Page 26] affairs: their “natural role in society” does not leave room for such meetings or campaigns. It amounts to saying that when women are no longer “useful” as women, and only then, they can be permitted to indulge in political games.

I suggest in this case that young men be excused from participation in serious affairs so as to permit them to fulfill their “natural role”. Once a man has grown tired of being a male, he may apply for the status of person.

Such a suggestion would of course be deemed ridiculous. But so far, very serious people have failed to see the absurdity of the present state of affairs that can be summed up as follows: men are people at all times, women are people at certain times only.

What women want, and deserve as people, is not to be granted this privilege or that right, this improvement or that pat on the head; they want and they deserve a right to participate in human affairs. Their fate—as persons and as women—is determined by the general course of human affairs, and not only by childbearing, their proficiency in the arts of cooking and housekeeping, or man’s likes or dislikes.

Thus they should have more to say and more to do about human affairs as a whole. The voicing of grievances and the meetings of women’s righters are only a step towards a participation in more general matters.

Woman’s Nature?

AN INCREDIBLE NUMBER OF “learned” books have been written—especially in the West, and mostly by men—about woman’s nature and its loopholes. Such empty words as “security”, “happiness”, “instincts”, “sacred motherhood”, and the like, have been bandied about with the perfect confidence of those who have no shred of evidence to back their utterances.

It is quite true that women have a very specific instinctual equipment since the beginning of evolution. But so have men. And while men have never let their own instincts prevent them from trying to become larger than themselves —and what else is civilization?—they seem to have always taken for granted that women should be satisfied with the fulfillment of their feminine instincts. Quite an unflattering proposition for the whole of mankind!

Instincts cannot be ignored, but they should not be glorified to the extent that they take over the great human faculty of taming them. If men are capable of taming and sublimating their instincts, so are women. If men fail, so do women.

There can be no civilization if part of mankind is refused active participation on the worn-out excuse of its “biological functions”. Woman’s nature—whatever it is, and we do not really know—can bring a highly valuable contribution to civilization as a whole, precisely because of its specific traits. The feminine love of order and abhorrence of war and bloodshed, the female realism and clear-cut thinking might come in very handy in a world torn by violent and rather foggy ideologies.

Only a woman can give birth to a new life; men have so far been busy taking lives away. One could think that they might at least give women a chance to participate in the birth of a new and better world.

[Page 27]

[Page 28]

Black-White In Wolfram’s Parzival

By MARIANNE MANASSE

A SHORT WHILE ago, I listened to a group of American Negroes discussing how it is possible that a Christian nation such as theirs denies them equal rights. The fact that Christian ministers seemed again and again able to reconcile their resistance against equality with their professed beliefs seemed incomprehensible to them. The message of Christianity they understood differently; and when they attempted free of fanaticism to solve this riddle, they appeared as true representatives of Christianity. The black madonna then who was adored in the Middle Ages in Europe, in Spain, France, and Poland, wins new significance as a symbol.

We ask whether the meaning is really new or whether we may be able to show that the desire to build a bridge between the white people of the earth and their dark colored brothers has always been present.

The figure of the Negro king in paintings depicting the Adoration is well known. We remember the 87th Psalm in which God’s City of Zion is praised above all the dwellings of Jacob because all men were born there:

Behold Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia: this man was born there. And of Zion it shall be said this and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count when he writeth up the people, that his man was born there. As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee.

As we try to imagine the dancing and singing of black and white inhabitants of Zion, we might recall the strange painting by Hieronimus Bosch, formerly called “Painting of the world’s abundance,” but now known under the misleading name “Garden of Lust.” Of course, we also think of Solomon’s Song:

I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun has looked upon me.

Ovid in his Metamorphoses reports how he imagines the origin of the Negro races: when Phaeton, the weak boy, manages his father’s wagon, the world begins to burn when Phoebus’ carriage comes too close to the earth:

It was then, as men think, that the peoples of Aethiopia became black-skinned, [Page 29] since the blood was drawn to the surface of their bodies by the heat. Then also Libya became a desert, for the heat dried up her moisture.

According to legend then they were blackened by the world set on fire. The poet finds a way to eliminate the difference between those who are of color because of their work in the hot fields and those who were born black.

In a learned Arabian book of the fourteenth century which attempts to depict the population of the earth, we read:

Genealogists who had no knowledge of the true nature of things imagined that Negroes are the children of Ham, the son of Noah, and that they were singled out to be black as the result of Noah’s curse, which produced Ham’s color and the slavery God inflicted upon his descendants. It is mentioned in the Torah that Noah cursed his son, Ham. No reference is made there to blackness. The curse included no more then that Ham’s descendants should be the slaves of his brother’s descendants.

To attribute the blackness of the Negroes to Ham, reveals disregard of the true nature of heat and cold and of the influence they exercise upon the air and upon the creatures that come into being in it. The black color common to the inhabitants of the first and second zones is the result of the composition of the air in which they live and which comes about under the influence of the greatly increased heat in the South. The sun is at the zenith there twice a year in short intervals. In (almost) all seasons the sun is in culmination for a long time. The light of the sun therefore is plentiful. People there have (to undergo) a very severe summer and their skins turn black because of the excessive heat. Something similar happens in the two corresponding zones to the North, the seventh and sixth zones. There, a white color (of skin) is common among the inhabitants, likewise a result of the composition of the air in which they live and which comes about under the influence of the excessive cold in the North. The sun is always on the horizon within the visual field (of the human observer) or close to it. The heat therefore is weak in this region, and the cold severe in (almost) all seasons. In consequence the color of the inhabitants is white and they tend to have little body hair. Further consequences of the excessive cold are blue eyes, freckled skin, and blonde hair.

The fifth, fourth and third zones occupy an intermediate position. They have an abundant share of temperance which is the golden mean. The fourth zone being the one most nearly in the center, is as temperate as can be.

. . . The first and second zones are excessively hot and black, and the sixth and seventh zones cold and white. The inhabitants of the first and second zones in the South are called the Abyssinians, the Zanj and the Sudanese (Negroes). These are synonyms used to designate the (particular) nation that has turned black. . . . Negroes from the South who settle in the temperate fourth zone or in the seventh zone that tend toward whiteness, are found to produce descendants whose color gradually turns white in the course of time. Vice versa, inhabitants from the North or from the fourth zone who settle in the South produce descendants whose color gradually turns black. This shows that color is conditioned by the composition of the air.

Here also then the author finds the explanation for the different colors of mankind in the different climates. The idea of race in the sense of modern man is less frequently found. Hermann von Sachsenheim in his epic, The Negress, [Page 30] which has been preserved for us in a Strassburg manuscript (1512), says of the heroine, Brunhilt: “She is one of the darkest women, who ever was seen in the land of the Negroes.” And of her hair: “Brunhilt she has bent hair” and concludes from that, that she also has a bent mind. In addition, she works magic. “Necromanty,” her art is called, but already in the beginning of the thirteenth century the word is being distorted and misunderstood and is spoken and written as “nigramanczey.” A contemporary explanation of the art goes as follows: “One says that this is the art that whoever has that power, works with magic and does whatever he likes.” The change of the word from “necro” to “nigr” and in consequence the description of “black art” makes it comprehensible that one attributed magic power to dark-skinned people. Another strike against these powerful dark-skinned people is the idea that they are, of course, not baptized and therefore condemned to hell-fire. In the Gudrun-Epic we hear about the king of the Moors, Siegfried: “His father and his mother were not of the same color,” but the hero himself is described as having the “Christian” color and hair like spun gold. This identification of “Christian” with “white” we will not find in Ibn Khaldun of course.

In another Ovid story, we hear how the raven as punishment for his blabbering gets his black color:

At the same time that thy plumage, talking raven, though white before had been suddenly changed to black. For he had once been a bird of silvery-white plumage, so that he rivalled the spotless doves, nor yielded to the geese which one day were to save the Capitol with their watchful cries, nor to the river-loving swan. But his tongue was his undoing. Through his tongue’s fault the talking bird, which once was white, was now the opposite of white.

The reverse of the event we find described in a manuscript which tells of a Danish peace delegation in the year 845. There, we are told, the black garments of the delegates through the miracle of the holy baptism changed to white so that the ravens turned into doves.

Wolfram begins his story with the following words:

If inconstancy [zwivel] is the heart’s neighbor, the soul will not fail to find it bitter. Blame and praise alike befall when a dauntless man’s spirit is black-and-white-mixed like the magpie’s plumage.

Our investigation takes these mystic introductory remarks as the guide through the long and involved tale. The coloring of the black- white magpie is compared to the human being in whom heaven and hell have equal part. Black stands for hell, white for heaven. The play with the colors, black and white, is continued throughout the epic.

In the first book, Gahmuret of Anjou (Anschevin), the future white father of Parzival, marries Queen Belacane, a woman of dark color. According to description: “Black as night were all the people of Zazamanc....” [Page 31] Gahmuret does not like it at first: with them he feels ill at ease. This feeling, however, does not last long. Later we are told: “To right and left he saw many a dusky lady with complexions of the raven’s hue.” When the dark queen wants to get attention from the beautiful brave Gahmuret, she complains:

... the hero can ride up here to see me—or should I go down there? He is of a different color from us. O, I do hope he won’t be offended by that!

She wonders whether the different skin color can be a hindrance to their union. When the two meet, she is described as follows:

If there is anything brighter than daylight, the queen in no way resembled it. A woman’s manner she did have, and was on other counts worthy of a knight, but she was unlike the dewy rose: her complexion was black of hue.

The black queen does not resemble daylight, nor the dewy rose. But she has attitudes which make her lovable. In this case, obviously the color of her skin, which is not forgotten for one instant by the storyteller, is no indication of the character of the queen. After the loss of her husband, Gahmuret, Wolfram describes her sadness: “Grief brought warfare to her heart. Her joy sought the withered bough as the turtledove still does....” The turtledove supposedly dies when she loses the beloved partner. Belacane then, in the opinion of the author, has this “constancy” which our author requires. He distinguishes between the outside and the inside. Her skin, to be sure, is black; but her soul is white. She is heathen and not baptized: “Gahmuret reflected how she was a heathen, and yet never did more womanly loyalty glide into a woman’s heart. Her innocence was a pure baptism, as was also the rain that wet her, that flood which flowed from her eyes . . . .”

It is then not possible to identify baptism with salvation. In Wolfram’s world there are light-skinned heathen and dark-skinned saints. After his departure Gahmuret remembers her:

Now many a misinformed man imagines that her black complexion drove me from her, and yet I looked upon her as the sun. Her womanly excellence now causes me grief, for she is the boss upon the shield of excellence.

Her blackness is named together with the sun. The symbols acquire opposite values.

After Gahmuret has left Belacane she gives birth to their son. Of this we learn: “In due time this lady was delivered of a son who was of two colors and in whom God had wrought a marvel, for he was both black and white.” And a little later: “Like a magpie was the color of his hair and of his skin.” Here the magpie symbol, known to us from the parable in the beginning of the Parzival story is taken up. It is understood literally, his skin and his hair are spotted like the feathers of the magpie. His name is Feirefiz, which means “many colored son,” and his mother kisses the white spots on his skin. He is the half-brother of Parzival and it is not his fault that we have heard so much less of him than of his famous brother.

The invention of such “magpie people” does not originate with Wolfram. Jacob Grimm mentions the word (Old Nordic), [Page 32] “Halflitimenn” (from “halflitr”—half colored), and a second such person appears in Wolfram’s epic, Willehalm, who is also the son of a white father and a dark-skinned mother.

Parallel to this beginning of the Parzival story, the marriage to black Belacane and the birth of Feirefiz, there now follows in the second book the story of the marriage of Gahmuret with the white Herzeloyde and the birth of Parzival. Both tales are of approximately equal length. White Herzeloyde, just like Belacane, gives birth to her son only after having lost the father. She does not name him but greets his arrival even in the German text with the words: “bon fiz, scher fiz, bea fiz,” which seems to underline the relation to the Feirefiz beginning. We may speak then of two beginnings: a black one and a white one.

The name, Parzival, is given to Herzeloyde’s son much later. Sigune informs him with the following words:

In truth your name is Parzival, which signifies “right through the middle.” Such a furrow did great love plow in your mother’s heart with the plow of her faithfulness. Your father bequeathed her sorrow.

Wolfram then explains the name as “right through the middle” and uses the symbol of the furrow which is inflicted upon the earth by the plow to illustrate the father’s love.

The meeting of the two half-brothers is preceded by Parzival’s combat with the “red knight Ither.” It is Ither’s sword—so Wolfram tells us emphatically—that refuses to serve Parzival in his fight with Feirefiz. Out of ignorance (tumbheit) Parzival kills Ither and robs him of his armor and his weapons. Trevrizent, the hermit who lives on herbs and roots and touches nothing that contains blood and to whom Parzival confesses his sins, answers: “You have slain your own flesh and blood.” Also, he praises the dead knight with these words: “In Ither of Gaheviez God had revealed the fruits of true nobility by which the world was purified.” The words of the hermit give Parzival’s rash deed the interpretation: You killed your own brother. So Parzival—at this moment—is black inside even if his outside is white and beautiful.

Deeper and more meaningful becomes our understanding of the symbolic play with colors when we listen to the conversation which takes place between Trevrizent and Parzival. Following the directions of the grey knight, Parzival has found his way through the snow to him. Trevrizent speaks of the origin of the human race and says that Eve destroyed our happiness by disobedience and that it is Cain who brought envy and sin into the world. “One, driven by his discontent, in greedy arrogance robbed his grandmother of her virginity.” Hereupon Parzival asks him: “Of whom was that man born who robbed his ancestress, as you say, of her virginity?” The answer to this question Trevrizent begins by reintroducing the guiding word for Parzival’s search, “inconstancy” [zwifel]: “I shall take away your doubt (zwifel: of this inconstancy),” and he continues:

The earth was Adam’s mother; from the fruits of the earth Adam lived and nourished himself. And yet the earth was a virgin. But I have not told you yet who took her virginity from her. Adam was Cain’s father. Cain slew Abel for the sake of paltry possessions. When blood then fell upon the pure earth, her virginity was forfeit, and it was Adam’s son who took it from her.

By means of a riddle—who is the man who robbed his grandmother of her virginity?— our attention is being directed toward Cain. The explanation is this: The earth is Adam’s [Page 33] mother because she nourishes him. At the same time she is a virgin and has not lost her virginity by Eve’s disobedience. Only through the fact that Cain, Adam’s son, spilled blood has she lost her virginity and has hatred sprung up among men. Plagued by black “inconstancy,” Parzival, who slew Ither for the sake of his red armor, is compared to Cain. Like him he spilled blood upon the earth, mother of mankind.

The image of the earth as a virgin mother of Adam permits us to look back to the two beginnings of the Parzival epic: the black Belacane with spotted Feirefiz and the white Herzeloyde and her black and white Parzival whose outside does not correspond to his inside. Also, the earth plays the game of colors; it is dark like Belacane and, if snow covers it, white like Herzeloyde or Condwiramurs. Trevrizent says: “Two men were born of maidens. God Himself took on human countenance like that of the first maiden’s child.” Adam and Jesus were children of virgins. God Himself became man in the image of the fruit of the first virgin. According to the story, the first virgin is Belacane, the dark mother. Her fruit is Feirefiz —the black and white Adam. This permits the conclusion that Christ’s face can be black or white.

This Parzival observes on his way to Trevrizent: A falcon strikes geese and three drops of blood fall into the snow. The sight arrests Parzival. Sitting on his horse for a long time, he falls into a kind of unconsciousness. The snow-covered earth recalls to his mind the body of Condwiramurs, the red drops recall cheeks and chin of the beloved one. The loss of virginity of the pure is symbolized by the drops of blood—still incomprehensible to the knight errant because it happens before his conversation with the hermit. Guilt and innocence —inseparable from each other—are suggested to him in this sight. His sinking into semiconsciousness becomes comprehensible to us.

HOW ABOUT FEIREFIZ, the spotted one? That he is to be taken very seriously is Wolfram’s clear intention. But about his adventures we hear hardly anything. Patzival’s counter-actor in the realm of adventure is actually Gawan, the merry one, who like Parzival is in search of the grail. His fairy-tale-like adventures, which frequently seem to be mirror images of the Parzival story or the question of the meaning of the grail we cannnot take up in this paper. Instead, we follow like a man on foot the directions as they were given to us in the introductory words. The name of Feirefiz recurs in the story only after Parzival, having been found worthy of the highest honors, has been accepted at the court of King Arthur. This event takes place before his conversation with Trevrizent. A very ugly girl appears, Cundrie, the sorceress. She calls Parzival the red knight because he slew Ither with whom he cannot bear to be compared. Turned toward Parzival, she curses his beautiful looks: “A curse on the beauty of your face [liehter schin: light shimmer] and on your manly limbs” (without honor shall be your light skin, etc.) Of her own appearance she says: “You think me an unnatural monster, yet I am more natural and pleasing than you.” Her model of the virtue which she finds lacking in Parzival is Gahmuret, his father. He is also the link to Feirefiz. Of him she says: “In him that manhood which the father of both of you also possessed has never failed. Your brother is a strange and wondrous man. He is both black and white, the son of the Queen of Zazamanc.” After that, “the one from Janfuse” who identifies herself as a relative of Belacane, that is his “mother’s sister,” adds to the praise of Feirefiz. She says of his appearance “His skin has a wonderful sheen but in color it is different from that of other men [Page 34] for it is both white and black.” (Er ist aller mannes varve ein Gast: his skin is guest to the color of all humanity.) Cundrie closes her report with the words: “You bar to all salvation, you curse of bliss, you scorn of perfect merit. You are so shy of manly honor and so sick in knightly virtue that no physician can cure you. I will swear by your head, if someone will administer the oath to me, that never was greater falsity found in any man so fair.” Feirefiz, who has been marked on the outside, is opposed to Parzival whose soul has been marked by the killing of his brother. Parzival and the remainder of the Round Table accept the judgment of Cundrie, and so Parzival must leave again in order to win the grail a second time.

Only toward the end of the epic do we meet Feirefiz in person. The brothers meet in tournament without recognizing each other. Now we have an opportunity to observe the mildness and generosity of Feirefiz who was before praised in so many words. When Ither’s sword breaks and Parzival stands opposite him without weapon, Feirefiz throws away his own sword. He refuses easy victory. In the conversation of recognition, Parzival hesitates to give his name for fear he might look like someone who gives in to force. Feirefiz volunteers to take this shame upon himself. True recognition, however, takes place when both heroes are ready to lift their helmets. Parzival knows by hearsay that his brother’s skin looks like written parchment: black and white all mixed together. When Feirefiz now lifts his helmet, we are told:

“Parzival found a precious find and the dearest one he ever found. The heathen was recognized at once, for he had the markings of the magpie.” The black and white markings then, the magpie’s coloring is proof that this knight is Feirefiz, his half-brother. From that moment there is great friendship between the two. Parzival returns to the grail accompanied by Feirefiz, whom he has chosen as a companion and guided by Cundrie, the sorceress, who asks his forgiveness for having offended him before. Feirefiz remains, as Parzival’s friend, close to him. He falls in love with the lady who is the carrier of the grail, which is depicted as a cup. Her name is Respanse de Schoye and in order to win her he has to accept baptism. The heathen wife he left behind, Sekundille, happens to die at exactly the right time, and he leaves for India with Respanse de Schoye. There they will spread Christianity. Their son is Prester John.

In contrast to this rather flippant mood in which Feirefiz finally accepts the sacrament of baptism, only in order to win the beautiful Respanse de Schoye, there are other remarks concerning baptism in this epic. We have already mentioned the concept that innocence, rain, and human tears in the opinion of Wolfram may baptize a heathen. While Herzeloyde is pregnant, she has a frightening dream. As a witch, she rides on lightning through a thunderstorm: “With a crash the thunder made its rush and burst in a gush of burning tears.” The pouring rain of the thunderstorm is compared to burning tears. In her dream, she bears a dragon which is tearing up her body. Wild are the dreams and the actions of the well-baptized Herzoloyde. But when she feels the milk in her breasts, we are told: “If I had never received baptism, I would want you to be my baptismal water. I shall anoint myself with you and with my tears....” While she speaks these words she presses milk from her breasts. It is in desperation over the loss of Gahmuret that she acts in this manner. The white milk from her breasts reminds us of snow, the colorless tears from her eyes of the rain. The shedding of milk we can compare to the shedding of red wine before the death of Ither. Accidentally he throws the cup over shortly before he is slain in battle by Parzival. “My hand picked up this goblet but the wine spilled [Page 35] in Lady Ginover’s lap.” It is the red wine spilled which announces the spilling of blood. After the death of Ither, the queen complains: “So red was your hair that your blood could not make these bright flowers any redder.”

When Herzeloyde nurses her child, special mention is made of the red tips of her breast which she herself pressed into his mouth. By this device Wolfram makes red not only the color of bloodshed but also the color of life giving. Belacane, too, amazes us when she, just after the birth of her son, Feirefiz, kisses him on the white spots of his body. From the dark spots on the body of the white queen flows life. Full of longing for the lost white father, the black queen kisses the white spots only. The mouth of Feirefiz, we are later being told, is half red. The same symbolism prevails; Feirefiz, the carrier of the colors of all mankind, cannot be fought by force. The sword refuses to serve because the repetition of the sin of killing another human being is unthinkable. But how can the spotted son, whom we saw as Adam when we solved Trevrizent’s riddle, now stand in the place of Abel? He himself answers in his conversation with Parzival:

In this hour I have both lost and found my joy. If I am to grasp the truth, my father and you and I, we were all one but this one appeared in three parts. When you see a learned man, he doesn’t reckon kinship as between father and son, if he wants to find the truth. You have fought here against yourself; against myself I rode into combat here and would gladly have killed my very self; you could not help but defend my own self in fighting me.

Father and son—indeed father and sons are one. That which seems like three is in truth but one. This is true not only for Gahmuret and his two sons but also for Adam and his sons, Cain and Abel. He who kills the brother kills himself and God in himself. The key word is zwifel (inconstancy, but better: doubt, because it contains the “double” as zweifel the zwei [two].) Parzival has to get “right through the middle,” according to the explanation of his name, in order to arrive at the understanding of “trinity.” The two-ness which we observed before in the colors of the magpie, in the partly-colored Feirefiz, in the brother motive and in the double beginning is crowned by the new concept that one equals three.

WHAT DOES WOLFRAM intend with this message? He seems to say that in all of us—because all of us come from Adam—Cain and Abel are existent. Cain is the desrroyer, Abel the preserver. It is not the skin-color which determines whether we will be destroyers or preservers. The black color can turn into the symbol of sun and light if it becomes transparent by inner purity. In Belacane this miracle occurs. The ugliness of Cundrie, the sorceress, is not Wolfram’s invention but he finds her described in similar terms in Chrétien de Troyes, his main source. Wolfram gives us a reason for her ugliness. Adam’s daughters, he says, were unable to resist temptation and ate poisonous weeds during pregnancy. He mentions that many of these daughters live in the kingdom of [Page 36] the queen, Secundille, that is of Feirefiz’s first wife. They give birth to people with verkertem (wrong) face. The biblical Adam, as we know, had no daughters. Here Wolfram speaks of men and women whose outer appearance is totally unacceptable. He wishes us to understand that they also are children of God. Cundrie, the girl with lips as blue as a violet, yellow eyes, giant teeth, and hands like claws, finally leads the brothers to the grail. Her coat then shows the symbol of the dove.

Feirefiz’s outer appearance, which to us was so important in order to follow the thread to the revealing conversation between the brothers, is seldom mentioned in the tale. God performed a miracle by giving him two colors in order to let us know about his double origin. In this unbaptized heathen of royal blood pure humanity is symbolized. He speaks the words of mysticism and wisdom. The comparison of his skin with parchment covered by writing, permits us also to see in him that lost part of holy scripture which Muhammad laments in the Koran.

From master Kyot, who found the manuscript in Toledo, Wolfram says he got his tale. Kyot had to learn Arabic and needed baptism before he understood it. The writer of the story, so we are told, is Flegetanis, who comes on his father’s side from heaven, on his mother’s side from Israelite stock. Kyot, the finder of the discarded tale, then had to read many Latin books and many chronicles before he found a people worthy of preserving the grail. Finally the house of Anjou (Anschouve) seemed to be the one.

Since many attempts have been made to solve the riddle of Wolfram’s remark, it might be helpful toward a solution to add that Dante in his Divine Comedy takes up the names that occur in this message.

An icy stream in hell is called Cocito, occasionally Kozyt. It is to be found in the deepest hell. Flegetonte (Flegetonta) is the stream of blood which crosses hell. Flegias is the boatsman who crosses the Styx. He is also, according to legend, the destroyer of the temple of Deli. We will refrain from any interpretation of this fact—only conclude that the road to the solution—be it to the grail with Parzival or to paradise with Dante —leads through hell. Both—Wolfram as well as Dante—have to make use of mystification because of the dangers which threaten the free spirit at all times. Wolfram’s ethical standpoint—that of the free man who praises noble humanity unafraid wherever he finds it—we must try to regain, if we want to find our way in a world of similar confusion.

[Page 37]

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Garden

The flowers were red, brown, gold, blue—

All colors in a fragrant order turned to the sun,

Refreshed by the rain, roots deep in the soil.

Such a sight soothed my eyes to new

Seeing, milk and honey to my heart won

From wandering with weeds, tossed in turmoil.

The bee did not prefer one flower, care

That violets were purple, roses red, seem

To mind the lily’s whiteness. Should I despair

In waking because his garden was a dream

Which I dreamed?

Lois Nocbman

[Page 38]

Some Thoughts of a Quaker “Bahá’í”

By RACHEL FORT WELLER

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, through close friendship with a Bahá’í, I have grown to love the Bahá’í Faith with increasing convincement. Yet I have not asked for formal membership. Why I have not done so has become an important question in my quest for spiritual understanding. A Quaker friend once wrote that “convincement” is not synonymous with “conversion.” It is not enough to be convinced. One must be convinced and converted.

Twenty years ago I transferred my religious affiliation from a well-known Protestant church to the Religious Society of Friends. In taking this step I felt that I was identifying with a movement which makes possible unfettered freedom in the spiritual search: a freedom to relinquish without guilt old insights for new when the old seem no longer valid. I was impressed later to discover that the freedom of every seeker to find truth for himself also is a sacred tenet of the Bahá’í Faith. Perhaps it is this very tenet which causes me to hesitate formally to embrace the Faith, although, with convincement, I have done so informally. My Bahá’í friend has said, “Do not become a Bahá’í until you cannot keep yourself from doing so.” This calls to mind George Fox’s famous reply to the convinced Friend, William Penn, who, having renounced the use of outward weapons, questioned the appropriateness of continuing to wear his sword. “Wear thy sword,” replied Fox, “as long as thou canst.” A Bahá’í might say to me. “Wear thy Quaker bonnet as long as thou canst.”

It is my understanding that the Bahá’í Faith asks its members daily to repeat certain given prayers, to take no alcohol, to fast at a specified time, to bury rather than to cremate the dead, and perhaps to adhere to other forms of behavior of which I may not be informed. I take it that the members have a moral, if not a formal obligation to comply. Friends maintain a minimum of outward formalism and impose no rules upon members of the Society. There are testimonies concerning the use of intoxicants and narcotics, nonviolence and opposition to war, the taking of oaths, and there is a testimony favoring simplicity in all facets of daily living including speech, marriage, and disposal of the mortal body. Most Friends strive to bear witness to these testimonies, but none is in any way a requirement for membership. Rather, they are suggested guides to conscience. Compulsion to comply with them outwardly presumably has been laid upon individual Friends inwardly by a divine authority. The Bahá’í injunctions for specific outward behavior should, [Page 39] perhaps, seem to me but trivial obstacles to the joy of a whole-hearted declaration of submission to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. It is not so much the injunctions themselves that stop me as the sense that they impose, however small, a set of absolutes and, at this point in my spiritual journey, I fear committing myself to absolutes which may not be always compatible with the shifting relative conditions of human life.

In the matter of the regular repetition of set prayers, I find myself equally dubious. It is not that I would reject the world’s great written prayers, for there are times when I hear or say them with genuine participation. But these times come and go and cannot automatically represent for me living prayer which may be a state of awareness transcendent of imagery and words. I cannot always pray in one way or always contemplate the cosmic mystery within a Christian, Bahá’í, or other context. There are times when I try to follow a yogic path in the Hindu way, or try to realize a state in which there is no thing as do Zen Buddhists, or to open myself to sensing God aesthetically in art forms, or intuitively in nature, and times when I am led to respond with ritual as in the Mass, or to worship without form as in the collective silence of a Quaker Meeting. Even though the Society of Friends is identified with Christianity, its lack of creed and its dependence upon direct inner experience rather than upon outward authority gives the seeker freedom to partake of many ways of meeting the divine without identifying exclusively with any one of them. All of them are ours, if we will, for all are aspects of an ineffable whole—God.

Were I to become a Bahá’í and give all of my attention to the Faith, I should miss sorely the Friends Meeting for worship. Inseparable from the freedom to seek truth according to inner leading, and supremely important for me, is the Quaker way of silent waiting for a direct experience of the divine. No teaching, no book, no theological system, no other person can confer this upon one, although one or all of these agents may play a part in helping the seeker to be open to that which already is there, concealed in his deepest consciousness. This, of course, is the age-old way of meditation or contemplation (I use the two words interchangeably). That the living reality of God can be and sometimes is encountered experientially by individuals meditating alone, and by deeply united groups of individuals meditating together, is to me the most spell-binding of possible adventures. Although surely there are many Bahá’í mystics, I have not found the way of meditation emphasized amongst Bahá’ís as a form of worship.

BOTH FRIENDS AND BAHÁ’ÍS question the value of monastic withdrawal from involvement in outward activity. In today’s world an individual who is predisposed to be meditative may be regarded as an escapist from the objective realities which press upon our scene in a confusing multitude of events, discoveries, inventions, conflicts, threats, violence, and crises, all of which cry out to be dealt with. This is an age which demands action at every turn. But is contemplation the opposite of action? On the contrary, contemplation is a very real kind of action. It is an act of inner tranquility within which doors [Page 40] can and do open upon surprising insights. Friends have always believed that exterior action should spring directly from the interior event of contact with the “Inner Light”—God. Thus contemplation should be a primary act, the basis of all other acts. Faith without works indeed may be dead, but works without faith in the Light may be disastrously unsound and misdirected in this dangerous era.

Our age demands tangible acts as the visible fruits of meditation. But visible deeds are not the only fruits of the contemplative act. If we believe in a spiritual universe, must we not acknowledge the supremacy of spiritual power and the possibility that many of the good results of men’s labor in the world may be owed to the support of invisible force released through the concentrated meditation of certain highly contemplative spirits who never act in the outside world at all? Do we belittle or ignore that there is a practical reality in the immaterial “soul-force” which flows through genuine monastics whose lives are as much lives of action (of very specialized nature) as are the lives of those who lead and follow organized movements in society?

Such spiritually gifted souls are rare and for most of us a life totally committed to contemplation cannot be our way. Yet, there is no one of us who, if he will explore periods of “silent waiting upon the Lord,” will not be rewarded by renewed strength, wider awareness, and all sorts of unexpected insights. The habit of cultivating silence privately is an important element in preparation for the kind of group meditation which characterizes the Quaker meeting for Worship, for each worshipper has a responsibility in his own way to be an instrument of God. What may happen within such a gathered meeting cannot be induced or foretold. But in the weekly hour of silence when Friends come together, quiet, untroubled waiting can bring rest and strength, mental and spiritual clarity; now and then it can produce a genuine union of souls. Oneness can be known best by going inward towards the place where all souls meet and where physical appearances and the superficial trappings of personality lose their significance. Indeed, it is doubtful that we ever can know the reality of brotherhood so long as we try only to reach from one outward shape of a person to another while telling ourselves we must love everyone! Oneness is realized by becoming one. When this happens there is no problem of loving. The greatest fruit of contemplation is the growing realization of God as indivisible wholeness. When we glimpse this truth, we find our desire beginning to be centered in the loving of the divine. To love God is to love all and to be all, for there is nothing which is not essentially God. Whenever this knowledge can be secure in our hearts, our neighbor ceases to be only our neighbor, for each knows him as his very self.

Emphasis upon this element of group mysticism is, I believe, an important contribution which the Society of Friends can make to the spiritual regeneration so needed by twentieth century humanity. Quakers, of course, have no monopoly on mysticism, and Bahá’í history and writings are rich with transcendental experience. But, in the western religious tradition (forms of Catholicism excepted) it is in the Friends’ silent meeting that expectation of the very presence of God is made the center of collective worship. The [Page 41] Presence never is not there, but all too often it is not apprehended, especially if the group has not settled into a deep, expectant quiet to be broken verbally only by “the moving of the Spirit.”

WHEN I WORSHIP with Bahá’ís I miss the unprogrammed waiting for the Spirit. Do Bahá’ís feel a need for more frequent times of gathered quiet? Can Friends say something to them about this? On the other hand, do many Friends, in this age of scientific reason, stand in danger of losing their belief in the reality of the Inner Light, so that sometimes meetings for worship are more like forums for discussion? If Friends and Bahá’ís could talk together about today’s problems and the relevance of Bahá’u’lláh’s teaching for their healing, Friends, coming to know the vibrant, fresh, urgent optimism of the Bahá’í believer’s faith, might sense anew the eternal fire which burned in George Fox and sent forth the early Christians singing for joy even to their martyrdoms. This is the faith which is ever renewed in God’s manifested cosmos. It never ignores the darkness, but never denies the Light and never ceases to express the “Joy which transcends every sweetness” glimpsed by Dante in the Empyrean.

And so, let us return to the consideration of “convincement” and “conversion.” “Convincement” is of the intellect; “conversion” is of the heart and of the whole of one’s being. Undoubtedly there is a wise necessity that an individual take the name of whatever pathway seems to point to truth from where he stands. There is support and safety in bearing a name. Perhaps I must wear my Quaker bonnet a while longer. How long, I cannot tell. Ultimately all the paths which spiritual travellers follow must lose themselves in a wide meadow which, like the sky, has no limits. Our spiritual evolution is a process of expanding consciousness from total to semi-darkness and, at last, to total light. Our final conversion will need no intermediary to effect it, for it will be a wholly conscious absorption into That to which we give the ancient name of God, but to which, in Its magnificent timelessness and infinite fulness, no name can be given, for no name or thought can describe or encompass It.

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BECOMING YOUR TRUE SELF

How the Bahá’í Faith Releases Human Potential

By DANIEL C. JORDAN

OVER A HUNDRED YEARS ago, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, Bahá’u’lláh, made the staggering claim that His Revelation would be the chief instrument by which the unification of mankind would take place and through which world order and world peace would ultimately be established.

Few will disagree that to progress from the present state of world turmoil and conflict to world peace and unity, social institutions and the human beings making them up will have to undergo a radical transformation. Whoever is truly interested in world peace will therefore have to have an interest in how that transformation can be brought about. The Bahá’í Faith having spread throughout the world in such a short time and having demonstrated its power to transform the lives of so many human beings, there has developed much interest in the nature of the actual process by which the Faith does enable a human being who embraces it to become transformed into his true self.

It would be wise to confess at the outset that it is not possible to discover or understand all of the forces latent within so vast a revelation which nurture and direct the transformation process; but there is much in the Bahá’í Writings that sheds a great deal of light on the way in which the Faith transforms the lives of its adherents by releasing the human potential.

The interest in how human potential is released is personal rather than academic, for millions everywhere are longing to become, as Bahá’u’lláh expresses it, fully noble, rather than remain imprisoned and abased.

Of course Bahá’u’lláh's teachings concerning the transformation process ate stimulating to the mind, but knowledge of them has also a practical purpose for, as we shall see, conscious knowledge of what is happening to oneself during that process helps to consolidate the gains and enables one to identify and accept, often through painful experiences that may at first appear needless or cruel, opportunities for further growth.

Personal transformation is a fundamental reason that people are attracted to the Faith, develop conviction as to its truth, and finally become Bahá’ís. The reason is simple. People who come in contact with the Faith and feel themselves being transformed by it have an experience that is self-validating. No one can take that experience away from them and no intellectual argument can make it appear insignificant or unreal. Feeling oneself becoming the best of what one can potentially be constitutes the highest joy. It promotes a sense of self-worth, obviates the need for expressing hostility, and guarantees a compassionate social conscience—all prerequisites of world unity and peace.

The Nature of Human Potential

BUT WHAT IS THE “BEST” of what one can potentially be? Bahá’u’lláh teaches that the highest expression of the self is servitude. The degree to which this highest station of servitude can be achieved is commensurate [Page 44] with the degree to which the basic powers or capacities of the human being can be released. The process of becoming one’s true self, then, is synonymous with that process of developing basic capacities and dedicating them to the service of humanity. The daily decisions and actions which reflect this “becoming” are essentially religious in nature, for Bahá’u’lláh equates work of all kinds performed in a spirit of service—in the spirit of that highest station of man—with worship. The person who begins to see the religious nature of “becoming” will not only recognize a profound new dimension in work and worship, but will also see religion in a new light. He will begin to understand that when the force which continually enables one to grow disappears from any religion, it is time for it to be renewed, for religion devoid of that force is little more than empty rituals, meaningless dogmas, and social conventions which block the expression of the human spirit and impede social progress.

Service to mankind is given quality by the depth and character of the capacities of the human being rendering it. What are these capacities? Bahá’u’lláh identifies them in His statement of the animating purpose behind man’s creation: to know and to love God. Here the two basic powers or capacities of knowing and loving are clearly specified and linked to our purpose—our reason for being. Thus, for a Bahá’í becoming one’s true self means the development of one’s knowing and loving capacities in service to mankind.

This understanding gives substance to the notion of spirituality. A spiritual person is one who knows and loves God and who is committed to the struggle of developing those knowing and loving capacities for service to humanity. By definition, then, being closed- minded about something, refusing to look at new evidence—blocking the knowing capacity, or reacting to others in unloving ways— are all signs of spiritual immaturity or spiritual sickness.

All other virtues can be understood as expressions of different combinations of these basic capacities of loving and knowing as they are applied in different situations. The loving capacity includes not only the ability to love but also the ability to be loved—to attract love. We cannot have lovers without loved ones. If we do not know how to be loved or cannot accept it, then we frustrate others who are struggling to develop their capacity to love. Not accepting someone’s love is very frequently experienced as rejection and does untold amounts of damage, particularly in young children.

The knowing capacity also includes a knowledge of how to learn and how to teach. Teaching and learning are reciprocal aspects of the knowing capacity. No teacher is a good teacher who cannot learn from his pupils, and no good pupil fails to question his teacher so that both teacher and pupil learn.

Each capacity supports and facilitates the development of the other. In order to know, for instance, we must love learning; if we are to love, we must know how to love and how to be loved.

These two capacities constitute the basic nature of human potential. From a Bahá’í point of view, true education refers to a drawing out or a development of potential to the fullest extent possible. Unfortunately, much of contemporary education is concerned only with a presentation of information rather than a drawing out of potential. For this reason, schools are primarily a place where facts and ideas are dispensed by the teacher and stored by the pupil. Consequently, diplomas and degrees do no more than certify that certain kinds and amounts of information were dispensed and that the recipient of the diploma was able to demonstrate [Page 45] at various points during the course of his formal education that he had stored the information long enough for it to be retrieved and written down on an examination. Such degrees or diplomas say nothing about the loving or feeling capacity of the student and therefore say very little about character —a word which refers to a person’s ability to apply his knowledge constructively and express his love for humanity.

Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that if the loving capacity is blocked in any way, there will be learning problems and the development of the knowing capacity will be impaired. That is why a school system based on the narrow “dispensing-of-information” view of education can never adequately serve the needs of society. True education should foster development towards the achievement of the highest station—servitude—and must therefore be concerned with the whole person and his character rather than just a small part of him.

Faith and the Release of Human Potential

IT IS ONE THING to describe the nature of human potential and another to be able to release it. The Bahá’í Faith does both. The nature of human potential has already been briefly discussed. Let us now explore the ways in which the Faith initiates and sustains the transformation process by releasing human potential.

The basic source of the power for transformation is the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh. Exposure to His Writings nurtures the development of faith—the first prerequisite for transformation. Basically, faith refers to an attitude towards the unknown or unknowable which ultimately enables one to approach it in a way that something more of it becomes known. It thus represents a special interplay of the two basic capacities of knowing and loving. In essence, faith means a loving of the unknown or unknowable—an attraction to whatever is unknown and a capacity to approach it. Since, as Bahá’u’lláh affirms, God is unknowable, it takes faith to become attracted and related to Him.

We all have a kind of cosmic hunger, a need to be related to all things including the infinitude of the Universe. This is a natural by-product of consciousness. Since we experience ourselves as beings distinct from all other things in the universe, we feel compelled to find out how we stand in relationship to every other thing, and this includes being related to those unknown or unknowable things which also exist in the universe. The ultimate unknowable mystery of the universe is called by many names: ‘Alláh, Jehovah, God, Supreme Being. Now, because man has the capacity for faith—a particular attitude toward the unknown—he has, down through history, responded to the Founders of the world’s great religions Who came to manifest the attributes of that unknowable mystery in the universe—God—and satisfy our cosmic hunger. Thus, faith is one important expression of our purpose, which is to know and to love God.

It is interesting to note that, if our basic capacities are knowing and loving, and if we are created in the image of God, then knowing and loving must be among the attributes of God. In The Hidden Words, Bahá’u’lláh indicates that this is so. He says, O Son of Man! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.

Further. if God is unknowable and if we are created in His image, then we may expect something in ourselves also to be unknown. This unknown is the as yet unexpressed potential within us—latent capacities for knowing and loving. In a very dramatic way, Bahá’u’lláh points to that vast unknown in ourselves when he quotes in the Seven Valleys the verse of a well-known Persian poet: “Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form / [Page 46] When within thee the universe is folded?” In another verse, Bahá’u’lláh says, Ye are My treasury, for in you I have treasured the pearls of My mysteries and the gems of My knowledge.

None of us knows his capacity for love or how much he can learn. Just as we had to have faith before we could learn about the attributes of God, so must we have faith before we can know something of ourselves. We must love—be attracted to, have a particular attitude towards—that unknown in our own selves if it is to become released. if we relate satisfactorily to the unknown in ourselves, we will be able to relate to the unknown in others. In other words. we have to accept others not only for what they presently are but also for what they can become; otherwise, we impede their process of transformation and keep them from becoming their own true selves.

This is why a person who has given up on himself, who has stopped becoming and has therefore betrayed his potential, will find all his relationships with other human beings disturbed, unsatisfying, and even painful. To accept and relate to another human being just as he is at a particular moment in time precludes the development of anything more than a superficial relationship. To achieve deeply meaningful relationships with other human beings, we have also to accept the unknown possibilities within them, for that acceptance constitutes one important source of their courage to become. In more personal terms, if you do not accept the unknown possibilities in yourself, you will not be able to establish anything more than superficial relationships with other human beings, and you will not be able to help them to develop their potential nor yourself to develop your own.

Since a human being's potential is an extremely important part of his reality—in fact, the basis of his future growth—it must be accepted by others and play a part in human relationships before he can feel totally accepted. Total acceptance on the part of others constitutes a special kind of trust that is very difficult to betray. It is one very important source of benevolent pressure to become and one of the most significant criteria of real love and friendship. This kind of pressure reciprocated between two human beings will spiritualize any relationship, but has particular significance for marriage. It forms the spiritual basis of Bahá’í marriage.

The necessity for reciprocity in this kind of relationship is clearly expressed by Bahá’u’lláh in The Hidden Words. He states, O Son of Being! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant. In this verse, God commands, through His Manifestation, that we love Him and accept Him in spite of the fact that He is unknowable. Being attracted to the unknowable is the essence of faith. If there is no faith, no attraction to that primary mystery—God, then we become alienated from the mystery in our own selves and cut off from the power to grow and develop. The statement quoted above starts with O Son of Being and ends with know this, O servant. Thus, in that very short verse, the two basic capacities of loving and knowing are again emphasized in the context of being and serving. It connects the process of being or becoming with that highest station of servitude.

Anxiety and the Unknown

FACING ANY UNKNOWN is not easy. The prospect of it, particularly when facing the unknown in ourselves, is always accompanied by anxiety. An extrinsic unknown is nearly always perceived as a potential threat to our security for it brings up a question that represents an intrinsic unknown—do we, or do we not have what it will take to deal successfully with that extrinsic unknown?

[Page 47] Anxiety has all of the qualities of a fear reaction, except that it usually has no clearcut object. Both fear reactions and anxiety reactions are characterized by a rapid energizing of the system which prepares it to deal with an emergency situation. One can handle the fear reaction more easily, since the threatening object is identifiable and can be removed or avoided. In the case of anxiety, the system goes into a state of preparedness for an emergency when it is not clear what the emergency is. Without any object, it is difficult to know what action to take and the system is never quite certain when to declare the emergency over. Anxiety may thus be seen as energy without a goal.

The only successful way to deal with anxiety is to treat that energy as a gift and find a concrete goal for it which will serve the more basic goal or purpose of developing capacities for loving and knowing. Determining what that goal should be in specific terms is perhaps the most universally creative act of man. It entails assuming a risk and stepping into the unknown, bearing the burden of doubt, yet always hopeful of discovering some new capacity or some new limitation (which is also part of one’s reality). Being attracted to that unknown in ourselves is faith; being able to utilize the energy from anxiety by formulating a goal and taking steps toward it is courage. Thus faith, doubt, anxiety, and courage are all basic aspects of the process of transformation— the release of potential. If there were no unknowns, there would be no doubt or anxiety; and with no doubt or anxiety there would be no need for faith and courage.

The Spiritual Matrix of Transformation

THE POWER of the Bahá’í Faith to transform human beings by releasing their potential stems directly from the fact that it keeps doubt and anxiety from reaching unmanageable proportions and provides an incentive and motivation to deal with them constructively through faith and courage. Bahá’u’lláh himself indicated that the primary source of the power for transformation comes from an acceptance of His Word—the Word of God. His Writings are often referred to as “the creative word” precisely because human beings have felt themselves being created anew as they have become more and more exposed to it. Bahá’u’lláh clearly affirms that if you want to become transformed, you must immerse yourselves in the ocean of my words.

Immersion into that ocean begins the process of transformation by creating an awareness in us of the essential nature and purpose behind our creation. Nobody can read Bahá’u’lláh without feeling his own loving and knowing capacities being awakened and developed. As we continually explore the Writings, we begin to see ourselves differently and to see the environment differently. As we begin to see ourselves and the environment differently, we begin to feel differently about things. As we begin to feel differently, we begin to behave differently. Behaving differently is the tangible manifestation of one’s having embarked upon the adventure of becoming what he potentially can become.

The Writings therefore serve as that intervening force which enables us to become free from all of those attachments and fears which keep us imprisoned and unable to take that risky but creative step into the unknown. We know that human beings are often changed by intense experiences of one kind or another. Immersion in the ocean of Bahá’u’lláh's Words is not just reading; it is an experience for the whole man which can become intense enough to free him from ties to the status quo and to set him forth on the pursuit of his destiny. As we are freed from crippling attachments to what other people think of us, we are less likely to be manipulated by them—imprisoned by them—and develop instead a source of intrinsic motivation.

[Page 48] The Writings also reduce general anxiety and doubt to manageable proportions by making sense out of human history and the world’s present state of perpetual crisis. This means that we need not pretend the crises do not exist or refuse to face them. Thus understanding something of the problems which face us not only reduces anxiety but attracts courage.

A further source of courage stems from Bahá’u’lláh’s indication, in general terms, of what kinds of goals are legitimate and in keeping with the purpose of our creation. That gives us some guidance in taking that creative step of defining a goal which can be achieved by utilizing energy from anxiety. We have an option here. We can either take that creative step of defining a goal and facilitate the transformation process or we can refuse to do that, in any conscious way, and hope that the anxiety will finally go away by itself. Obviously, persons who have a great deal of guidance in what kind of goals to establish will be more apt to make conscious decisions in regard to defining goals. In the absence of such a definition, energy from anxiety is likely to be expressed in aggressive and hostile acts towards other human beings, whose reactions to the attack will very likely further impede growth and development not only in themselves but in the persons to whom they are reacting.

Thus, the Writings stimulate our knowing and loving capacities in a unique way which we may call faith and courage. That, in turn, serves to guarantee a continued growth and development of those two basic capacities. In other words, knowing and loving used in the right way through faith and courage will increase the knowing and loving capacity—will release human potential.

The Social Matrix of Transformation

BUT THIS IS NOT ALL of the picture. Bahá’u’lláh has made provisions for the formation of communities whose institutions may safeguard and promote the transformation of humanity. The Bahá’í Community becomes, then, the social matrix of transformation.

Because of Bahá’u’lláh’s affirmation of the principle of the oneness of mankind, all Bahá’í Communities are composed of human beings from diverse linguistic, racial, national, and religious backgrounds. This diversity in the Bahá’í Community represents to every member many unknowns—or, in less euphemistic terms, the Bahá’í Community is made up of human beings many of whom one would not ordinarily be attracted to or choose to be one’s friends. It is well known that we tend to choose for our friends others who think the same as we do, who feel the same way about other things as we do, who have similar tastes, and who like doing similar things. Within such a homogeneous group, one’s transformation can easily come to a halt, for a set repertoire of responses is developed and there is no stimulus to develop new ones. That is why one of the most precious attributes of a Bahá’í Community is its diversity.

When one joins a Bahá’í Community he joins a family of extremely diverse human beings with whom he will have to work and establish meaningful relationships. The first thing he finds out, is that his old repertoire of responses is no longer adequate. So many different human beings represent a great many unknowns, and trying to relate to those unknowns creates energy (anxiety) which sets that reciprocal process of knowing and loving through faith and courage in motion. Defining a legitimate goal which will constructively utilize the energy from that anxiety will call forth a new repertoire of responses. Each new response is a bit of one’s latent capacity made manifest—a release of human potential. Another way of saying it is that the Bahá’í’ Community offers more opportunities [Page 49] for knowing and loving under growth- fostering circumstances than can be found anywhere else.

Typically, a Bahá’í moves through a pattern of spiritual evolution starting with tolerance for the diversity of his fellow community members. As knowledge is added, that tolerance grows into understanding. When love is added, understanding blossoms into appreciation. This appreciation for diversity is the spiritual and social opposite of ethnocentrism. The journey from ethnocentrism, through the stages of toleration and understanding, to a state of appreciation always entails many anxieties and doubts. We are often put in the position of not quite knowing what to do or if we do know what to do, we do not feel like doing it. These are tests which are prerequisite to our transformation. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’u’lláh’s son, states unequivocally that without tests there is no spiritual development.

Here we come to a very critical issue. Tests can many times destroy an individual. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that if we turn away from God for the solution, the test may indeed destroy us. If we turn to God for the solution and if we have the loving support of other members in the Community we can pass the test successfully. Thus the Bahá’í Community, because of its diversity, provides many of those tests which are essential to our spiritual development. At the same time, guidance from Bahá’í institutions and the commitment of the members of the community to accept each other for what they can become provides the courage to turn those tests into vehicles for spiritual development —for the release of human potential.

In brief, that is the spiritual meaning of adversity. Bahá’u’lláh states, My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it.

Thus, for a Bahá’í happiness is not a life free from anxiety or tension. That is the Bahá’í definition of boredom. Happiness for a Bahá’í is having tests and knowing how to summon the courage to pass them in such a way that his knowing and loving capacities are further developed in service to humanity. Living in the community provides the tests which become the opportunities to acquire experience in translating abstract principles into concrete realities, and this gives faith a foundation of conscious knowledge. It is this ever-expanding conscious knowledge of how to apply the principles of the Faith in real situations that consolidates the gains in spiritual development and provides the base for continued growth.

Prejudice—A Block in the Path

UNIFICATION OF ALL peoples of the earth cannot take place if individual human beings are not united within themselves. Bahá’u’lláh indicated that He could find no human being who was inwardly and outwardly united. If one’s knowing and loving capacities are in conflict, then one is nor inwardly or outwardly united. The consequence is that one’s words and deeds will not be in harmony.

The conflict of these capacities is reflected outwardly on another level. Science, for instance, may be regarded as an expression of man’s knowing capacity and religion as an expression of his loving capacity. Bahá’u’lláh taught that science and religion must go hand in hand, or the conflict will cause destruction. Today we see how knowledge of nuclear energy without love creates a constant threat to our survival.

In a very basic sense, the word prejudice refers to conflicts in the way these two capacities are expressed. A prejudice is a belief (a kind of knowing) in something that is not true coupled with an emotional confirmation (a kind of loving). In other words, a prejudice is an emotional attraction or commitment to falsehood or error. Actions based [Page 50] on that commitment are nearly always damaging to the person who is the victim of the action as well as to the one who is carrying it out.

On a personal level, prejudice represents a definite blockage in the expression of human potential because the loving capacity has been used to impede the knowing capacity. In a fundamental sense, almost all neuroses and psychoses can be understood in terms of this kind of conflict. The goal of therapy therefore always has to be a removal of the blockage towards becoming one’s true self by enabling the person’s loving capacity to support his knowing powers and vice versa.

On the social level, prejudice in action results in massive injustices ranging from discrimination and segregation to open violence and hostility organized in the form of wars. In like manner, this represents a definite blockage in the expression of society’s potential.

Every barrier to the unification of mankind is sustained by a prejudice—by widespread culturally determined emotional commitments to a falsehood. For this reason, Bahá’ís see the process of unification of mankind as being synonymous with the progressive eradication of prejudice. Before the barriers to unification can be torn down, the prejudices which support them must be abolished.

Why is prejudice so difficult to eradicate? One reason is that human beings often are unaware that they have a prejudice. Fundamentally, this is what bigotry is—being ignorant of one’s ignorance while making bold and confident assertions of the rightness and truth of one’s position. Bigoted persons are in a tragic position because they always avoid exposing themselves to any situation which would confront them with the fact that they may possibly have a prejudice. How would a person know whether or not he did have a commitment to an error in the form of a prejudice if he were never exposed to the experience which would reveal it? In concrete personal terms, how would you know that you had a prejudice against somebody who spoke another language or had a skin color different from your own, if you never had the opportunity to be with such a person—an experience which would help to reveal the error?

This is precisely why the Bahá’í Community is so essential to the progressive eradication of prejudice. It provides an opportunity at every turn for everyone to have the kinds of experiences which will let him know where his prejudices are. It is for this reason that the struggle for world unity takes place more within the Bahá’í Community than outside it. Outside the community, people can insulate themselves from those experiences which will reveal their prejudices to them while continuing to hear only those experiences which enable their perceptions to remain distorted and their commitment to falsehood strong.

For a Bahá’í, discovering a prejudice in himself is always a test, and the moment he recognizes it he knows that he must struggle to eradicate it, not only because it will make him be unjust to other people if he does not, but also because his own spiritual development absolutely depends upon it.

What happens to a person with a blocked potential—a person who for whatever reason has not been able to find out how to become his true self? If he is a passive or introverted kind of person, he will escape into a fantasy world, withdraw into a world of drugs and alcohol, and will probably eventually become so dysfunctional that he may have to be institutionalized. If the person is action-oriented and extrovetted, he will be hostile and aggressive and may eventually have to be institutionalized for committing crimes. The point here is simple: the person who is in the process of becoming, whose loving and knowing capacities are being continually developed, does not want to escape responsibility into a world of fantasy, nor does he want to fight, hurt, or kill. It is impossible for human beings who feel their human potential being released to engage in a war of any kind. Under such circumstances there is absolutely no motivation for hostile action. It is for this [Page 51] reason that Bahá’u’lláh claims that His Faith and the Bahá’í Community will be that agency through which world peace will be ultimately established.

The Image of God and the Kingdom of God on Earth

THAT UNKNOWN in ourselves which the unexpressed potential represents has been referred to as the image of God. Becoming our true self means relating to that unknown in such a way that more and more of it becomes expressed. This always involves finding a goal for the energy from the anxiety that comes from facing that unknown.

This entire process has a social counterpart. What the image of God is to the individual human being the Kingdom of God on earth is to human society. That kingdom represents what society can potentially become iust as the image of God represents what the individual can become. When there is transformation of individuals on a massive scale through the release of human potential —when the latent capacities for loving and knowing are organized and expressed on a social level as the progressive eradication of prejudice—we advance towards the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Bahá’u’lláh's Revelation did not deal only with the transformation of the individual in a vacuum, for this would be extremely difficult if not impossible. He also provided a blueprint for building a new world order. That building process is directed and guided by Bahá’í institutions in a way that will enable society to become its true self—the Kingdom of God on earth. The response to anxieties and tests on an individual basis also has a social counterpart. Social institutions have their tests too; and their development depends on whether or not they can take that creative step into the unknown and form new kinds of legislation sustained by new kinds of judicial supports.

Bahá’ís accept the Kingdom of God on earth as a reality ultimately attainable, not through a passive waiting for it to happen to us in an instant by some miracle, but through dedicated efforts over a long period of time to become what we can become in the face of many trials and tribulations. Those who make these dedicated efforts feel themselves to play an active part in the greatest miracle of all—conscious acceptance of the responsibility to become knowing and loving servants of mankind for the glorification of God.

Thus, as greater and greater numbers of human beings find a way in the Bahá’í Faith to become their own true selves—to reflect the image of God in their lives, society will also be in the process of becoming its true self—the Kingdom of God on Earth.

If the travelers seek after the goal of the Intended One, this station appertaineth to the self—hat that self which is “The Self of God standing within Him with laws.”

On this plane, the self is not rejected but beloved; it is well-pleasing and not to be shunned. Although at the beginning, this plane is the realm of conflict, yet it endeth in attainment to the throne of splendor.... This is the plane of the self which is well- pleasing unto God. Refer to the verse: “Oh, thou soul which art at rest,/Return to thy Lord, well-pleased, and pleasing Him:... Enter thou among My servants,/And enter thou My paradise.”

O My servants! Could ye apprehend with what wonders of My munificence and bounty I have willed to entrust your souls, ye would, of a truth, rid yourselves of attachment to all created things, and would gain a true knowledge of your own selves—a knowledge which is the same as the comprehension of Mine own Being. Ye would find yourselves independent of all else but Me, and would perceive, with your inner and outer eye, and as manifest as the revelation of My effulgent Name, the seat of My loving-kindness and bounty moving within you.

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Concerning God and Being-Itself

A review of Robert C. Neville’s God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1968)

By JAMES C. HADEN

IT WOULD BE A MISTAKE for anyone, on seeing the title and subtitle of this book, to pick it up supposing that it is a specimen of the ubiquitous “inspirational” category of religious book, or even one of the common popular type which, while not the mélange of sub-ideas and sentiments concocted straight from synthetic goo which fills the “inspirational” sort, still never aspires to rise above the fairly low level of reasoning and purpose characteristic of the average sermon. This is a volume written by a trained philosopher, primarily for an audience of his peers, and therefore it might put off even one who has had the standard seminary studies, which tend to be stronger on pastoral finance than on pure philosophy. Yet this would be unfortunate, for reasons which should become clear below.

In part, the difficulty is due to Neville’s choice of structure for the book. It consists of three distinct parts: one contains discussions of a wide range of specifically religious topics such as holiness, conversion, evangelism, and brotherhood; one is an extended, sternly technical philosophical argument concerning God and being-itself (which is a central term for Neville and which equates with God); the third is an attempt to show philosophically that the view of God argued for is a possible and a necessary one, not simply hypothetical speculation. Of these, the most technical—the second in the above list—is put first, so that the reader is confronted from the very outset with reasoning which takes for granted a working acquaintance with the central metaphysical tradition from Plato on. Indeed, Neville makes it plain that his work lies squarely in the tradition of Platonism and Neo-Platonism. But his philosophical method is dialectical, in the sense that he proceeds by analyzing and disposing of a series of alternative views, and to someone not reasonably conversant with those views or with similar ones, this is an approach which can produce confusion. For the ordinary intelligent reader, therefore—one who is willing to read attentively and to reread as necessary until difficult meanings come clear —the best procedure would probably be to begin with the last part, the one dealing with well recognized religious problems and concepts and utilizing the philosophical results of the first part, and then to move backwards to Part One with these more concrete pages in mind. Even the philosophically untrained reader can cope with and profit from Part Three, which confines itself to the philosophy of religion as such, without braving the deeper and swifter philosophical currents of the other parts. In Part Three Neville concentrates in a nonsectarian way (e.g., there is no discussion of trinitarianism, though Neville is an ordained Methodist Elder) on the detailed application of his view that God is being-itself, producing, unifying, and holding together the manifold of existing creation; hence, for him the central problem of religion in both its private and its public aspects is that of achieving and maintaining [Page 53] a true harmony of separate things, and his interpretations are worth attention.

It must be emphasized that Neville has intentionally constructed his book this way because his aim was to produce a work in philosophy as such, not simply in the philosophy of religion; any limitations of the general reader are hence not catered to. But it should be less necessary than it actually is to persuade the intelligent nonprofessional that it is possible for him to read a piece of technical philosophy to his profit. Still, in view of the massed volumes of pretentious pseudophilosophy that glut the shelves of every public library under the hospitable rubrics of Religion and Philosophy, it is perhaps useful for the lay reader to have at his disposal some judgments made by someone professionally trained.

It might first be noted that the three main parts are uneven in worth, philosophically speaking. The middle one is designed to support the first one against critics who argue that it is enough to work out a set of explanatory principles and concepts for the cosmos without recourse to any theory of its origin from some transcendent being. Neville says that in this part he is coping with the challenges of Kantian philosophy, which systematically denies the truth value of any assertions concerning the transcendent. Unfortunately, this part is the least satisfactory; the reason would seem to be that he has nowhere really faced up to the full challenge of any form of Kantianism, including scientific positivism. So it would be sufficient for the general reader to read only the last chapter of this part, which discusses the crucial interplay between abstract philosophical argumentation and analysis and the concreteness of religious experiences, and which is intended as a transitional chapter between both Parts One and Two and Part Three.

One reason for Neville’s failure to consider adequately a powerful view such as that of Kant seems to be the very depth of his own commitment to the Neo-Platonic tradition. To adapt one of his own arguments concerning inference from God’s creation to God’s nature, the undiluted quality of his Neo-Platonic ontology implies a mind which does not seriously entertain alternatives. Neo-Platonism, of course, is the position of saintly figures like Plotinus, saints like Augustine and Anselm, and subtle philosophers like Duns Scotus, on down to the interesting contemporary group of lay theologians that includes C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J. R. R. Tolkien. It is one of the relatively few truly basic philosophical outlooks which have been worked out in twenty-five centuries of world thought, and hence Neville need not and does not apologize for adhering to it.

PUT VERY BRIEFLY, his argument is that the very multiplicity and diversity of the contents of the universe, both physical and nonphysical, taken together with the fact that we naturally recognize this diversity in the determinateness of specific things, necessarily implies acknowledgement of a Being (being- itself, or being-as-such) which is the source and sustainer of all the interdependent diversity we find around us. This being is therefore both transcendent, since it is independent of the universe of multiplicity, and immanent in the world, since its creation is necessarily continuous with its creator and bears the marks of some aspects of the creator’s nature, in particular the mark of unity. The reasoning and its results, however, are philosophical and not poetic, and therefore this creation is not a personal, temporal fiat but rather an atemporal dependence more like the logical relation of premise to conclusion; the ultimate being is one, but it is indeterminate (else it could not account for determinacy itself), hence uncritical assertions about God [Page 54] as a person are risky. In fact, it is improper to say that being-itself, or God, is, since it lies beyond existence.

It is fair to say of the quality of his philosophical argumentation that it is competently and forcefully done, and by and large is devoid of the kind of intellectual slipperiness which characterizes vast quantities of purported reasoning about religion and about values. One almost expects to see verbal sleight-of-hand employed to bring the right rabbit out of the thinker’s hat in books on religion, and this phenomenon has alienated too many capable philosophers from these regions of thought. One of the most impressive things about Neville’s book is the sensitivity and scrupulousness which he brings to his task. While his goal all along is to bring philosophical enlightenment to crucial areas of belief, his commitment is tempered with the kind of objectivity and awareness of difficulties that comes with sound philosophical training. One thing that philosophers must perennially struggle against is their own articulateness, and Neville’s deep respect for experience and his awareness of the complexities of the relations between philosophy and religion vitally strengthen his thought.

It is true that there are some places where his philosophical rigor relaxes somewhat, as where he argues that it is proper to speak of creation in his Neo-Platonic sense being ex nihilo in such spots he gives the impression of being unwilling for philosophical reflection and reasoning to invalidate any accepted tenet of religion, although when he confronts this problem directly he only claims plausibility for the deliverances of centuries of composite human experience. (He does not hold that it is revelation which furnishes the tenets and data, but rather experience in a broad social sense. Yet surely even virtually universal experience and acceptance might err about such points as creation strictly ex nihilo.)

But these relatively few spots aside, his chief fault lies not so much in what he says as in what he does not say. Operating so strictly within a classical ontological framework, he does net cope with the radical alternatives of positivism in its many forms, ranging from Hume’s skepticism through Kant’s transcendentalism and Russell’s scientism to contemporary linguistic philosophy—which last he totally omits to mention, even though it is the predominant doctrine in England and America today. His contemporary references are most often to Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Paul Tillich, and he says that he has been most deeply and permanently influenced in his views on the philosophy of religion by John E. Smith. Its estrangement from the main contemporary philosophical currents, therefore, gives the book something of an air of aloofness.

BUT IN THE END this is a young man’s book, with all that implies as to its strengths and weakness, and it is manifestly unfair to judge it as one would a work by, say, Tillich. But it is hard to imagine that a man of Neville’s intellectual rectitude will rest content from now on in just the views he has laid out here. Since he is not just rationalizing an a priori commitment, it is inevitable that he will change through his own power of philosophical self-criticism and scrupulousness. The results will be worth seeing.

Perhaps the most important question to ask of any book on the subject of religion is whether or not one comes away from it challenged and rewarded by contact with a mind and character worth encountering. Concerning this particular book, the reply is candidly Yes. Therefore let the intelligent general reader be encouraged in coping with it.

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Authors and Artists

HUGH JACKSON, Executive Director of the Wichita, Kansas branch of the Urban League, is a sociologist who spends much of his time promoting equal employment practices in South Central Kansas. He received his Master of Arts degree from the University of Omaha, Nebraska, and teaches at the Sacred Heart College in Kansas.

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH is the Editor of World Order and Professor of Russian History at Yale University.

RICHARD W. THOMAS, a student of African history at Michigan State University at East Lansing, has written many poems and articles on the plight of the black minority in America.

NELLY MARANS is a French newspaperwoman, currently working as an accredited correspondent with the United Nations. Before her assignment in New York, she had been in the Middle East. A graduate from the University of her native Paris with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Political Science, Miss Marans also holds degrees in Hebrew and Arabic. She is now studying Chinese at the United Nations.

MARIANNE MANASSE is a native of Germany and has studied in Germany, France, and the United States. She holds the Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina and the Master of Arts degree from Duke University. She has been teaching German at North Carolina College in Durham, North Carolina, since 1940.

LOIS NOCHMAN has been teaching English at Highland Park College in Michigan for more than a decade. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English language and literature.

RACHEL FORT WELLER’S major interest has been for some time in mysticism. She has had a number of articles published in the Friends Journal, including one which Bahá’ís particularly appreciate, on the Bahá’í Faith. In fact this article, written by one who is nominally a non- Bahá’í’, has been adapted by the Bahá’í’s of the United States for use as a pamphlet. She received the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Chicago in 1927 and 1928, respectively, and has done some teaching; [Page 56] but most of her adult life has been given to home-making. She is now at work editing the notebooks of the American painter, Abraham Rattner.

DANIEL C. JORDAN is Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Readers of World Order will remember his articles, “Social Disadvantage— the Real Enemy in the War on Poverty” (Fall 1966), and “The Dilemma of the Modern Intellectual” (Spring 1967). Dr. Jordan directed one of the Upward Bound Programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity and is presently engaged in organizing the American National Institute for Social Advancement (ANISA) which will establish educational programs for disadvantaged minorities. He is also serving as Vice Chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

JAMES C. HADEN, Professor of Philosophy at Oakland University, wrote “Ethical Thought and Ethical Action” for World Order’s Spring 1968 issue. Another of his articles, “The Ignorance of Socrates” will appear in the next issue.

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ART CREDITS. P. 4, “Farmers’ Market,” photo by courtesy of the H. H. Bennett Studio; p. 17, Etching of Figures by Martha Dick; p. 20, “Pilgrimage Tablet”, photo of a painting by George Neuzil; p. 22, photo by courtesy of the H. H. Bennett Studio; p. 27, lithography by Sue Shappert; back cover, “The Celestial and Temporal Meeting”, photo of a painting by George Neuzil.

HENRY HAMILTON BENNETT, two of whose photographs appear in this issue, was a pioneer in photography. From 1865 to 1907 he recorded American history with his hand-made cameras. He was recently honored in an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

MARTHA DICK, a young painter from Roanoke, Virginia, is an experimentalist and works in many media. She contributed drawings to the Fall 1967 issue.

GEORGE NEUZIL, an art consultant to World Order, is moving back to the West Coast, the region which exerts the most influence on his work.

SUE SHAPPERT has taken up residence in Australia since the appearance of the Spring 1968 issue to which she contributed two pieces. She graduated from the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee as a printmaker.

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