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| 457.1 | | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Wed Aug 19 1987 22:55 | 154 |
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{From "Christianity and the World Religions - Paths To Dialogue with
Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism", by Hans Kung with Josef van Ess,
Heinrich von Stietencron and Heinz Bechert, pp.440-443}
Hans Kung: NO WORLD PEACE WITHOUT RELIGIOUS PEACE
--------------------------------------
Concluding word:
This dialogue was not supposed to be anything more than an interim
report. It was, as explained, an attempt, a risky experiment, and it
is not for me to say whether it succeeded.
In its course, certain convergences and divergences between religions
have become clear. And if we have managed to clarify the one
question of what religious dialogue no longer has to argue over and
what it does, we will have achieved a great deal.
The Christian Responses in particular will be criticized - presumably
from both sides. For some they will be too "Christian"; for others,
not "Christian" enough; for some, too open, too yielding, too
pluralistic; for others, too narrow, too limiting, too self-conscious.
......
Why must this dialogue go on? First of all, in order to get an
increasingly better understanding of our contemporaries, the men and
women with whom our lives are becoming ever more closely linked. But
also to understand ourselves better, which we can do only through
comparison and encounter. ... And thirdly, because interreligious
dialogue is anything but a private, personal, local or regional
matter. Its global dimensions are obvious, and so are its
repercussions on the communal life of the nation and the world. These
days, nobody would seriously dispute the fact that peace in the world
very much depends on the peace among the various religions. And in an
age when the technology for an atomic holocaust is already in place,
this aspect of religious dialogue is more important than all the
meticulous academic precision, theological subtlety, and intellectual
sophistry.
There is, then, a significant connection between ecumenism and world
peace. Anyone who feels a sense of obligation toward world community
and who takes seriously the fragility of all human arrangements, who
has glimpsed all the possibilities of technical and human error, must
know what is at stake here. He must know that threats to peace and
the need to regulate it have long sense burst through the dimension of
specific, regional conflict, and have become global political
problems, on which the survival of us all depends. The ALTERNATIVE
TODAY IS PEACE IN THE ECUMENE (INHABITED WORLD) OR THE DESTRUCTION OF
THE ECUMENE ITSELF.
What can an edumenical theology contribute to the pacification of our
warlike world? Surely no direct solutions for all the complex
questions of strategy, military-industrial technology, and
disarmament. That is not its original and primary responsibility,
anyway.
Its very own domain of reflection and action - and even scientists and
politicians are beginning once again to pay more attention to this
ethical-religious dimension - is behavior, morality, religion. And
here ecumenical theology can help to discover and work the conflicts
caused by the religions, confessions and denominations themselves.
And there are a great many structures of conflict that will have to be
dismantled.
Everyone knows how much disaster has been occasioned in politics by
RELIGIOUS STRIFE AMONG CHRISTIANS. One need only recall Northern
Ireland to realize what I mean. And Catholic-Protestant antagonism
was likely a contributing factor, at least subliminally, to the insane
war over the Falkland Islands; just as the feelings of superiority and
the efforts to win hegemony by Protestant Yankees in Catholic Central
and South America - and the reactions to them - have always borne the
stamp of culture and religion.
What have churches done to oppose this? True, they have SPOKEN for
peace and not war, at least in recent days, and that is a good deal.
Generally they have done this speaking, to be sure, only where they
could do so without any risk. But have they DONE enough for peace: in
Vietnam, in Lebanon, in Argentina, in Great Britain, in Germany, in
Europe and America, Africa and Asia? Let me say once more,
unmistakably: Religions, Christianity, the Church, cannot solve or
prevent the world's conflicts, but they can lessen the amount of
hostility, hatred, and intransigence. They can, first, intervene
concretely for the sake of understanding and reconciliation between
estranged peoples. And second, they can begin to do away with at
least the conflicts of which they themselves are the cause and for
whose explosiveness they are partly to blame: They can settle the
doctrinal (and ensuing practical) differences that have divided the
Church.
This is not demanding the impossible of religions and the churches, it
is merely asking them to live up to their own programs and basic
intentions, asking them to direct their appeals for peace not only
toward the outside (important as that is), but to the inside as well,
and thus to do deeds of reconciliation and set up signs of peace in
their own backyards. We can be sure that these deeds of
reconciliation, that these sighs of peace, will not fail to radiate
powerful signals onto the fields of conflict "out there".
Furthermore, there is no denying that the great world RELIGIONS
THEMSELVES (and not just Christian denominations or ideologies that
have swollen into quasi religions) share the responsibility for some
of the most NOTORIOUS POWDER KEGS IN THE WORLD. Looking from the Far
East to the Near East, no one could fail to see that in the Vietnam
War there were religious factors at war (antagonism between Buddhist
monks and the Catholic regime); that the conflict between India and
Pakistan, the territorial split that occurred against the will of
Mahatma Gandhi, has to this day fed on the irreconcilable hostility
between Hindus and Muslims, continually leading to new massacres (not
to mention the blood shed by Indians and Sikhs); that the war between
Iraq and Iran has roots in centuries-old inner-Muslim rivalry and
enmity between Sunnites and Shiites?
This is to pass over the Middle Eastern conflict, where, as everyone
knows, Muslims, Jews, and Christians confront each other, armed to the
teeth, and where they have already lacerated on another in the fifth
war within the past few decades.
The most fanatical, cruelest political struggles are those that have
been colored, inspired, and legitimized by religion. To say this is
not to reduce all the political conflicts to religious ones, but to
take seriously the fact that religions SHARE the responsibility for
bringing peace to our torn and warring world. Christians, Jews, and
Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, are facing the same challenge. The
peoples in question and the rest of the world would have been spared
tremendous grief if the world religions had recognized sooner their
responsibility for peace, love of neighbor, and nonviolence, for
reconciliation and forgiveness - as exemplified by the Hindu Mahatma
Ghandhi, the Christian Dag Hammarskjold, the Muslim Anwar el-Sadat,
and the Buddhist U Thant, all of whom promoted the politics of peace
out of religious conviction.
To sum up, ecumenical dialogue is today anything but the speciality of
a few starry-eyed religious peacenicks. For the first time in
history, it has now taken on the character of an urgent desideratum
for world politics. It can help to make our earth more livable, by
making it more peaceful and more reconciled.
There will be no peace among the peoples of this world without peace
among the world religions.
There will be no peace among the world religions without peace among
the Christian churches.
The community of the Church is an integral part of the world
community.
Ecumenism 'ad intra', concentrated on the Christian world, and
ecumenism 'ad extra', oriented toward the whole inhabited earth, are
INTERDEPENDENT.
PEACE IS INDIVISIBLE: IT BEGINS WITH US.
|
| 457.2 | Stages of Spiritual Development | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Wed Aug 19 1987 22:56 | 343 |
|
Excerpts from "The Different Drum", by M.Scott Peck, M.D.
=========================================================
From the beginning of the book:
"To the people of all nations, in the hopes that within a
century there will no longer be a Veterans Day Parade
but that there will be lots of living people left to march
to a different drum, because all the world loves a parade."
From Chapter IX - Patterns of Transformation, pp.186-200
--------------------------------------------------------
The key to community is the acceptance - in fact, the celebration - of
our individual and cultural differences. Such acceptance and
celebration - which resolves the problem of pluralism and which can
occur only after we learn to become empty (of intolerances) - is also
the key to world peace.
This does not mean, however that as we struggle toward world community
we need to consider all individuals or all cultures and societies
equally good or mature. To do so would be to fall prey once again to
a complex variation of the "illusion of human nature" a variation that
says "We are all different but all the same or equal in our
differences. This is simply not true. The reality is that just as
some individuals have become more mature than others, some cultures
are more or less flawed than others.
Thus we need labor under no compulsion to feel the same degree of
attraction to each and everyone - or the same degree of taste for
every culture. So Gale Webbe wrote in his classic work on the deeper
aspects of spiritual growth that the further one grows spiritually,
the more and more people one loves and the fewer and fewer people one
likes. (* Gale Webbe, 'The Night and Nothing, p.60) This is because
when we have become sufficiently adept at recognizing our own flaws so
as to cure them, we naturally become adept at recognizing the flaws in
others. We may not like people because of these flaws or
immaturities, but the further we ourselves grow, the more we become
able to accept - to love - them, flaws and all. Christ's commandment
is not to like one another; it is to 'love' one another.
Like community itself, that love is not easy to muster. It is a part
of the journey of the spirit. If that journey is not understood it
can be a major factor in driving us human beings even further apart.
The knowledge of its principles, however, can do much to bring us
together in peace.
THE STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH
...Over the course of a decade of practicing psychotherapy a strange
pattern began to emerge. If people who were religious came to me in
pain and trouble, and if they became engaged in the therapeutic
process so as to go the whole route, they frequently left therapy as
atheists, agnostics, or at least skeptics. On the other hand, if
atheists, agnostics, or skeptics came to me in pain or difficulty and
became fully engaged, they frequently left therapy as deeply religious
people.
"Same therapy, same therapist, successful but utterly different
outcomes from a religious point of view. ...It didn't compute until I
realized that 'we are not all in the same place spiritually'.
With that realization came another: there is a pattern of progression
through identifiable stages in human spiritual life. .....But here I will
talk about those stages only in general, for individuals are unique and do
not always fit neatly into any psychological or spiritual pigeonhole.
With that caveat, let me list my own understanding of these stages and the
names I have chosen to give them:
STAGE I - Chaotic, antisocial
STAGE II - Formal, institutional
STAGE III - Skeptic, individual
STAGE IV - Mystic, communal"
Most all young children and perhaps one in five adults fall into Stage
I. It is essentially a stage of undeveloped spirituality. I call it
antisocial because those adults who are in it (People Of The Lie -
book by same name) seem generally incapable of loving others.
Although they may pretend to be loving (and think of themselves that
way), their relationships with their fellow human beings are all
essentially manipulative and self-serving. ...Being unprincipled,
there is nothing that governs them except their own will. And since
that will from moment to moment can go this way or that, there is a
lack of integrity in their being.
From time to time people in Stage I get in touch with the chaos of
their own being, and when they do, I think it is the most painful
experience a human can have. A few, I suspect, may kill themselves,
unable to envision change. And some, occasionally, convert to Stage
II. Such conversions are usually sudden and dramatic and, I believe,
God-given. It is as if God had reached down and grabbed their soul
and yanked it up a quantum leap. The process also seems to be an
unconscious one It just seems to happen.
There are several things that characterize the behavior of men and
women in Stage II of their spiritual development, which is the stage
of the majority of churchgoers and believers (as well as that of most
emotionally healthy "latency"-period children). One is their
attachment to the forms (as opposed to the essence) of their religion,
which is why I call this stage "formal" as well as "institutional".
They are in fact sometimes so attached to the canons and the liturgy
that they become very upset if changes are made in the words or the
music or in the traditional order of things. ...Since it is precisely
these forms that are responsible for their liberation from chaos, it
is no wonder that people at this stage become so threatened when
someone seems to be playing footloose and fancy-free with the rules.
Another thing characterizing the religious behavior of Stage II people
is that their vision of God is almost entirely that of an external.,
transcendent Being. They have very little understanding of the
immanent, indwelling God - the God of the Holy Spirit, or what Quakers
call the Inner Light. and although they often consider Him loving,
they also generally feel He possesses - and will use - punitive power.
But once again, it is no accident that their vision of God is that of
a giant benevolent Cop in the Sky, because that is precisely the kind
of God they need - just as they need a legalistic religion for their
governance.
What happens to children when they are raised in a Stage II home
environment? They are treated with importance and dignity (and taken
to Sunday school as well) and that they absorb the principles of
Christianity as if with their mother's milk - or the principles of
Buddhism if raised in a Buddhist home, or of Islam if raised in a
Muslim home, and so on. The principles of their parents' religion are
literally engraved on their hearts, or come to be what
psychotherapists call "internalized".
But once these principles become internalized, such children, now
usually late-adolescents, have become self-governing human beings. As
such they are no longer dependent on an institution for their
governance. Consequently they begin to say to themselves, "Who needs
this fuddy-duddy old Church with its silly superstitions?" At this
point they begin to convert to Stage III - skeptic, individual. And
to their parents' great but unnecessary chagrin, they often become
atheists or agnostics.
Although frequently "nonbelievers," people in Stage III are generally
more spiritually developed than many content to remain in Stage II.
Although individualistic, they are not the least bit antisocial. To
the contrary, they are often deeply involved in and committed to
social causes. They make up their own minds and are no more likely to
believe everything they read in the papers than to believe it
necessary to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior (as opposed to
Buddha or Mao or Socrates) in order to be saved. They make loving,
intensely dedicated parents. As skeptics they are often scientists,
and as such they are again highly submitted to principle. Indeed,
what we call the scientific method is a collection of conventions and
procedures that have been designed to combat our extraordinary
capacity to deceive ourselves in the interest of submission to
something higher than our own immediate emotional or intellectual
comfort - namely, truth. Advanced Stage III men and women are active
truth seekers.
"Seek and you shall find," it has been said. If people in Stage III
seek the truth deeply and widely enough, they find what they are
looking for - enough pieces to begin to fit them together but never
enough to complete the whole puzzle. In fact, the more pieces they
find, the larger and more magnificent the puzzle becomes. Yet they
are able to get glimpses of the "big picture" and to see that it is
very beautiful indeed - and that it strangely resembles those
"primitive myths and superstitions" their Stage II parents and
grandparents believe in . At this point they begin conversion to
Stage IV, which is the mystic communal stage of spiritual development.
...Mysticism also obviously has to do with mystery. Mystics
acknowledge the enormity of the unknown, but rather than being
frightened by it, they seek to penetrate even deeper into it that they
may understand more - even with the realization that the more they
understand, the greater the mystery will become. They love mystery,
in dramatic contrast to those in Stage II, who need simple, clear-cut
dogmatic structures and have little taste for the unknown and the
unknowable. While Stage IV men and women will enter religion in order
to approach mystery, people in Stage II, to a considerable extent,
enter religion in order to escape from it.
"Finally, mystics throughout the ages have not only spoken of emptiness
but extolled its virtues. I have labeled STAGE IV communal as well as
mystical not because all mystic or even a majority of them live in communes
but because among human beings they are the ones most aware that the whole
world is a community and realize what divides us into warring camps is
precisely the 'lack' of this awareness. Having become practiced at
emptying themselves of preconceived notions and prejudices and able to
perceive the invisible underlying fabric that connects everything, they do
not think in terms of factions or blocs or even national boundaries; they
'know' this to be one world.
...Perhaps, predictably, there exists a sense of threat among people
in the different stages of religious development. Mostly we are
threatened by people in the stages above us.
...STAGE I people are threatened by just about everything and everybody.
STAGE II people are not threatened by STAGE I people, the "sinners". They
are commanded to love sinners. But they are very threatened by the
individuals and skeptics of STAGE III and even more by the mystics of STAGE
IV, who seem to believe in the same sorts of things they do but believe in
them with a freedom they find absolutely terrifying. STAGE III people, on
the other hand, are neither threatened by STAGE I people nor by STAGE II
people (whom they simply regard as superstitious) but are cowed by STAGE IV
people, who seem to be scientific-minded like themselves and know how to
write good footnotes, yet somehow believe in this crazy God business."
...Much of the art of being a good teacher, healer, or minister
consists largely in staying just one step ahead of your patients,
clients, or pupils. If you are not ahead, it is unlikely that you
will be able to lead them anywhere. But if you are two steps ahead, it
is likely that you will lose them. If people are one step ahead, we
usually admire them. If they are two steps ahead of us, we usually
think they are evil. That's why Socrates and Jesus were killed; they
were thought to be evil.
...An understanding of the stages of spiritual development is
important for community building. A group of only Stage IV people or
only Stage II people is, of course, not so much a community as a
clique. A true community will likely include people of all stages.
With this understanding, it is possible for people in different stages
to transcend the sense of threat that divides them and to become a
true community.
In my experience the most dramatic example of this possibility
occurred in a relatively small community-building group I led several
years ago. To this two-day group of twenty-five, there came ten
fundamentalist Stage II Christians, five Stage III atheists with their
own guru - a brilliant, highly rationalized trial lawyer - and ten
Stage IV mystical Christians. There were moments I despaired that we
would ever make it into community. The fundamentalists were furious
that I, their supposed leader, smoked and drank and vigorously
attempted to heal me of my hypocrisy and addiction. The mystics
equally vigorously challenged the fundamentalists' sexism,
intolerance, and other forms of rigidity. Both of course were utterly
dedicated to converting the atheists. The atheists in turn sneered at
the arrogance of us Christians in even daring to think that we had
gotten hold of some kind of truth. Nonetheless, after approximately
twelve hours of the most intense struggle together to empty ourselves
of our intolerances, we became able to let one another be, each in his
or her own stage. And we became a community. But we could not have
done so without the cognitive awareness of the different stages of
spiritual development and the realization that we were not all "in the
same place,", and that that was literally all right.
My experience suggests that this progression of spiritual development
holds true in all cultures and for all religions. Indeed, one of the
things that seems to characterize all the great religions -
Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism - is their
capacity to speak to people in both Stage II and Stage IV. In fact, I
suspect this is why they are great religions. It is as if the words
of each had two different translations. Let us take a Christian
example: "Jesus is my savior." At Stage II this is often translated
into a Jesus who is a kind of fairy godmother who will rescue me
whenever I get in trouble as long as I remember to call upon his name.
And that's true. He will do just that. At Stage IV "Jesus is my
savior" is translated as "Jesus, through his life and death, taught me
the way I must follow for my salvation." Which is also true. Two
totally different translations, two totally different meanings, but
both of them true.
"It is also important to remember that no matter how far we develop
spiritually, we retain in ourselves vestiges of the previous stages
through which we have come... I don't suppose I could be writing
this were I not basically a kind of STAGE IV person.
But I can assure you that there exists a STAGE I Scott Peck, who at
the first sign of any significant stress is quite tempted to lie and
cheat and steal. I keep him well encaged, I hope, in a rather
comfortable cell, so that he won't be let loose upon the world. (And
I am able to do this only because I acknowledge his existence, which
is what Jungian psychologists mean by the 'integration of the Shadow'.
Indeed, I do not attempt to kill him if for no other reason than that
I need to go down into the dungeon from time to time to consult him,
safely ensconced behind the bars, when I am in need of a particular
kind of 'street smarts').
Similarly, there is a STAGE II Scott Peck, who in moments of stress
and fatigue would very much like to have a Big Brother or Big Daddy
around who would give him some clear-cut, black-and-white answers to
life's difficult, ambiguous dilemmas and some formulas to tell him how
to behave, relieving him of the responsibility of figuring it all out
for himself.
And there is STAGE III Scott Peck, who if invited to address a
prestigious scientific assembly, under stress of such an occasion
would want to regress into thinking, Well, I better just talk to them
about carefully controlled, measurable studies and not mention any of
this God business."
"...Conversions from STAGE I and STAGE II are usually sudden and
dramatic. Conversions from STAGE III to STAGE IV are generally
gradual."
....It is during the process of conversion from STAGE III to STAGE IV
that people generally first become conscious that there is such a
thing as spiritual growth. There is a potential pitfall in this
consciousness, however, and that is the notion some have at this point
that they can they themselves 'direct' the process. ...I believe that
we cannot get to God under our own steam. We must allow God to do the
directing.
In any case, whether sudden or gradual, no matter how different in
other respects, Stages I to II and Stages III to IV conversions do
have one thing in common: a sense on the part of the persons converted
that their own conversions were not something they themselves achieved
but rather gifts from God.
As a part of the process of spiritual growth, the transition from
Stage II to Stage III is also conversion. We can be converted to
atheism or agnosticism or, at least, skepticism! Indeed I have every
reason to believe that God has a hand in this part of the conversion
process as well. One of the greatest challenges, in fact, facing the
Church is how to facility the conversion of its members from Stage II
to Stage IV without them having to spend a whole adult lifetime in
Stage III. It is a challenge that the Church has historically avoided
rather than begun to face. As far as I'm concerned, one of the
greatest sins of our sinful Christian Church has been its
discouragement, through the ages, of doubt. In so doing, it has
consistently driven growing people out of its potential community,
often fixating them thereby in a perpetual resistance to spiritual
insights. Conversely, the Church is not going to meet this challenge
until doubt is properly considered a Christian virtue - indeed, a
Christian responsibility. We neither can nor should skip over
questioning in our development.
In fact, it is only through the process of questioning that we begin
to become even dimly aware that the whole point of life is the
development of souls. As I said, the notion that we can totally
direct this development is a pitfall of such awareness. But the
beauty of the consciousness that we are all on an ongoing spiritual
journey and that there is no end to our conversion far outshines that
one pitfall. For once we become aware that we are on a journey - that
we are all pilgrims - for the first time we can actually begin to
cooperate consciously with God in the process.
That is why Paul Vitz, at a symposium with me, correctly told the audience:
"I think Scott's stages have a good deal of validity, and I suspect
that I shall be using them in my practice, but I want you to remember
that what Scotty calls STAGE IV is the beginning."
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| 457.3 | Stages of Community | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Wed Aug 19 1987 22:59 | 247 |
|
Excerpts from "The Different Drum", by M.Scott Peck, M.D.
=========================================================
From Chapter IX - Patterns of Transformation, pp.200-206
--------------------------------------------
TRANSCENDING CULTURE
The process of spiritual development I have described is highly
analogous to the development of community. Stage I people are
frequently pretenders; they pretend they are loving and pious,
covering up their lack of principles. The first, primitive stage of
group formation - pseudocommunity - is similarly characterized by
pretense. The group tries to look like a community without doing any
of the work involved.
Stage II people have begin the work of submitting themselves to the
principle - the law. But they do not yet understand the spirit of the
law. Consequently they are legalistic, parochial, and dogmatic.
They are threatened by anyone who thinks differently from them, and so
regard it as their responsibility to convert or save the other 90 or
99 percent of humanity who are not "true believers." it is this same
style of functioning that characterizes the second stage of the
community process in which the group members try vehemently to fix one
another. The chaos that results is not unlike that existing among the
various feuding denominations or sects within or between the world's
different religions.
Stage III, a phase of questioning, is analogous to the crucial stage
of emptiness in community formation. In reaching for community the
members of a group must question themselves. "Is my particular
theology so certain - so true and complete - as to justify my
conclusion that these other people are not saved?" they may ask. Or
"I wonder to what extent my feelings about homosexuals (or any other
'group') represent a prejudice bearing little relation to reality?".
Or "Could I have swallowed the party line in thinking that all
religious people are fanatics?". Indeed, such questioning is the
required beginning of the emptying process. We cannot succeed in
emptying ourselves of preconceptions, prejudices, needs to control or
convert, and so forth, without first becoming skeptical of them and
without doubting their necessity. Conversely, individuals remain
stuck in Stage III precisely because they do not doubt deeply enough.
To enter Stage IV they must begin to empty themselves of some of the
dogmas of skepticism such as Anything that can't be measured
scientifically can't be known and isn't worth studying. They must
begin to doubt even their own doubt.
Does this mean, then, that a true community is a group of all Stage IV
people? Paradoxically the answer is yes and no. It is no because the
individual members are hardly capable of growing so rapidly as to
totally discard their customary styles of thinking when they return
from the group to their usual worlds. But it is yes because in
community the members have learned how to behave in a Stage IV manner
in relation to one another. Among themselves they all practice
the kind of emptiness, acceptance, and inclusiveness that have
characterized the behavior of mystics throughout the ages. They
retain their basic identity as Stage I, II, III, or IV individuals.
Indeed, knowledge of these stages is in part so important because it
facilitates the acceptance of one another as being in different stages
- different places spiritually. Such acceptance is a prerequisite for
community. But, wonderfully, once such acceptance is achieved - and
it can be achieved only through emptiness - Stage I, II and III men
and women routinely possess the capacity to act toward one another as
if they were Stage IV people. In other words, out of love and
commitment to the whole, virtually all of us are capable of
transcending our backgrounds and limitations. So it is that genuine
community is so much more than the sum of its parts. It is, in truth,
a mystical body.
...The conversion from Stage I to Stage II is essentially a leap of
socialization or enculturation. It is at that point at which we first
adopt the values of our tribal, cultural religion and begin to make
them our own. Just as Stage II people tend to be threatened, however,
by any questioning of their religious dogma, so they are also
"culture-bound" - utterly convinced that the way things are done in
their culture is the right and only way. And just as people entering
Stage III begin to question the religious doctrines with which they
were raised, so they also begin to question all cultural values of the
society into which they were born. Finally as they (the STAGE III
skeptics) begin to reach for STAGE IV, they also begin to reach toward
the notion of world community and the possibility of either
transcending culture or - depending on which way you want to use the
words - belonging to a planetary culture."
Aldous Huxley (from 'The Perennial Philosophy) labeled mysticism "the
perennial philosophy" because the mystical way of thinking and being
has existed in all cultures and all times since the dawn of recorded
history. Although a small minority, mystics of all religions the
world over have demonstrated an amazing commonalty, unity. Unique
though they might be in their individual personhood, they have largely
escaped free from - transcended - those human differences that are
cultural.
...I continue today no longer to belong anywhere in terms of what is
usually thought of as a culture. But I am far from being alone.
Slowly I have found a person here and a person there in the same
predicament. And ours was not a miserable affair, like the poor "man
without a country" who was doomed forever to roam the seas in a narrow
sailing vessel. To the contrary, we were far more free than most to
move through the nations of the world, no longer bound by cultural
conventions. There were times when it was lonely, but in recent years
men and women without a culture have been joining me by the tens of
thousands. None of us would go back, even if we could, but we do from
time to time experience a certain poignant sadness that, as perpetual
pilgrims, we "can't go home again."
....Nowhere in all of literature is there a better description of
someone who had transcended culture than in the Gospels. Before and
since Jesus, from time to time there have been saints who have
transcended their culture and also had "no place to lay their heads."
But they were one in ten thousand, if that. Today it is different.
Because of the multiplicity of factors - most particularly instant,
mass communication that brings foreign cultures to our door, and the
availability of psychotherapy that leads us to question the programs,
cultural and otherwise, within which we were raised - the number of
people entering the mystical stage of development and transcending
ordinary culture seems to have increased a thousandfold in the course
of a mere generation or two. They remain a minority - currently no
more than one in twenty. Still one wonders if the explosion in their
numbers might represent a giant leap forward in the evolution of the
human race, a leap toward not only mystical but global consciousness
and world community.* "
* Perhaps the greatest prophet of this leap was Teilhard de Chardin.
=====================================================================
"The Different Drum", by M.Scott Peck, M.D.
Table Of Contents
-----------------
Prologue
Introduction
PART I: THE FOUNDATION
Chapter 1 Stumbling into Community
Friends Seminary, 1952-1954
California, February 1967
Okinawa, 1968-69
Bethel, Maine, June 1972
Chapter 2 Individuals and the Fallacy of Rugged
Individualism
Chapter 3 The True Meaning of Community
Inclusivity, Commitment, and Consensus
Realism
Contemplation
A Safe Place
A Laboratory for Personal Disarmament
A Group That Can Fight Gracefully
A Group of All Leaders
A Spirit
Chapter 4 The Genesis of Community
Crisis and Community
Community by Accident
Community by Design
Chapter 5 Stages of Community-Making
Pseudocommunity
Chaos
Emptiness
Community
Chapter 6 Further Dynamics of Community
Patterns of Group Behavior
Interventions in Group Behavior
Community Size
Community Duration
Commitment to Community
Community Exercises
Chapter 7 Community Maintenance
The Order of St. Aloysius (OSA)
The Basement Group
Maintenance or Death?
PART II: THE BRIDGE
Chapter 8 Human Nature
The Problem of Pluralism
The Illusion of Human Nature
The Capacity for Transformation
Realism, Idealism, and Romanticism
Chapter 9 Patterns of Transformation
The Stages of Spiritual Growth
Transcending Culture
Israel
Chapter 10 Emptiness
Chapter 11 Vulnerability
Chapter 12 Integration and Integrity
What Is Missing?
Paradox and Heresy
Blasphemy and Hope
PART III: THE SOLUTION
Chapter 13 Community and Communication
Chapter 14 Dimensions of the Arms Race
The Arms Race as Institution
The Psychology of Helplessness
The Psychiatry of Force
The Obsolescence of the Nation-State System
The Arms Race as a Game
The Unspoken Payoff
Nationalism: Healthy or Sick?
Chapter 15 The Christian Church in the United States
Where Are You, Jesus?
The Maundy Thursday Revolution
Pseudodocetism: The Heresy of the Church
The Church as Battleground
Signs of Hope
Chapter 16 The United States Government
Balance of Power or Chaos?
The Unreality of the American Presidency
Toward a Community Presidency
Chapter 17 Empowerment
What to Do Now?
Postscript
|
| 457.4 | Thank you, Cindy | TOPDOC::SLOANE | Bruce is on the loose | Fri Aug 21 1987 11:59 | 4 |
| Cindy, the excerpts from Peck's book are fascinating and relevant.
Thank you so much for the effort you put out to type them here.
-bs
|
| 457.5 | Inspiration is marvelous | MTBLUE::PUSHARD_MIKE | | Fri Aug 21 1987 13:24 | 6 |
|
YES,thank you Cindy.Your timing is excellant.
PEACE
MICHAEL
|
| 457.6 | | VITAL::KEEFE | Bill Keefe MLO 21-4/E10 - 223-1837 | Fri Aug 21 1987 14:50 | 2 |
| Thanks from me also. Based on what you've entered I for one plan
on buying both books.
|
| 457.7 | | MANTIS::PARE | | Fri Aug 21 1987 15:11 | 1 |
| Those excerpts look so interesting I will buy the book also.
|
| 457.8 | | NONODE::JOLLIMORE | | Fri Aug 21 1987 15:13 | 1 |
| <==== Yep, what he said!
|
| 457.9 | So the Corp. lawyers don't visit me.... | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Fri Aug 21 1987 15:29 | 4 |
|
Guess it might be a good time to let you all know that I do not
receive any monies from the sale of either of these books! (:^)
|
| 457.10 | FLAME ON | SHEILA::PUCKETT | My karma ran over my dogma | Wed Aug 26 1987 22:20 | 17 |
| Religion and world peace? A contradiction in terms, if history is any guide.
Religions (all of them, no favouritism!) have been the single factor
contributing to global violence and bloodshed since the dawn of mankind.
Their followers have produced many things of beauty and great worth, but
I feel these are far outweighed by the mindless brutality and uncivilised
behaviour they have also produced. I simply cannot see how anyone with any
vaguely historical cast of mind can fail to reach the same conclusion.
People have twisted the original teachings of great teachers, which may or
may not have had violent import, into justifying the most hideous crimes
against humanity; and they're still doing it in Iran, Northern Ireland, etc.
World peace may be achievable without religion; with it, it certainly is not.
(asbestos suit hastily put on in anticipation of heat :-)
= Giles =
|
| 457.11 | Troubles go back a looooong way! | ELMO::STAFFON | | Thu Aug 27 1987 13:11 | 22 |
|
To get off the track, but still somewhat on it....
I haven't written in this notes file for some time now and something
popped into my head after reading the last note when looking back
in history is referenced. to clear the air, i think peace would
be wonderful. i would love to see it, but....
SUPPOSE!!!! that the book (I'm only on the first one right now)
The Clan of the Cave Bear were true. Even partly true. Poor little
Ayla was considered ugly, and one of the Others. in many ways,
such a primitive society resembles ours to this day SUPPOSING that
any of that is true. The Clan did not accept change very well at
all, especially when Ayla saved a young childs life by using the
sling to kill the wolf. She was in some deep dirt then!! I am
not that far in the book, but from what I have read, prejudgement
runs rampant along with prejudice towards other tribes and their
beliefs.
i am stepping off the soap box now.
Leigh
|
| 457.12 | Xenophobia | PBSVAX::COOPER | Topher Cooper | Thu Aug 27 1987 16:03 | 10 |
| RE: .11
Xenophobia (fear of strangers or of the strange) is a pretty basic
reaction. There is a frequently discussed experiment (which may
be appocraphyl since nobody ever seems to make a specific citation,
but is very likely true in principle) in which a monkey is dyed
blue and returned to his/her troop. He or she is torn apart by
his/her "friends."
Topher
|
| 457.13 | Why I did this I'll never know..... | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Thu Aug 27 1987 16:53 | 25 |
|
I've given serious thought to this matter before entering this
note...but felt you all might be interested in starting on some
positive dialogue with people over in the Christian notes conference.
After a few days of wearing my own asbestos suit, I believe that
some cross notes conference dialogue just might be in order. With
that, I'd like to point you over to IOSG::CHRISTIAN to note #168.
Somehow I managed to get up enough courage to enter the notes over
there on World Peace as well (zealot for peace that I am :^)).
A few interesting starts, but it might seem like an equilibrium
might be reached at some point in the future. Well, at least it's
a beginning. Don't be riled by some of their notes to begin with -
I understand where they are coming from.....because in a very small
way I was also there once upon a time. Have to start somewhere.
You know, all things considered, they're not really such a surly
bunch after all after you get to know them a little better - (:^)
(:^) (:^) (:^) (:^)
(Hey Irena - still here???) (;^)
Cindy
|
| 457.14 | Still tending the blisters | COMET::TIMPSON | Religion! Just say no. | Fri Aug 28 1987 10:27 | 9 |
| >> You know, all things considered, they're not really such a surly
>> bunch after all after you get to know them a little better - (:^)
Don't Hold your breath. I've been there and been run out like many
others in this file can attest to.
Steve
|
| 457.15 | Don't give up yet | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Fri Aug 28 1987 13:30 | 14 |
|
Oh do give it another go. They're now getting past pseudocommunity
(as in Peck's model) and are actually beginning to get down to chaos
and discussing the *real* issues instead of trying to find out if I'm
'one of them' or not (even though we are all members of the same
human race....).
I wasn't refering to ALL of them, however, but at least those who
are not willing to discuss this rationally are not participating
at this particular point in time.
(Dashing away in 1 hour.....)
Cindy
|
| 457.16 | Still a Christian | MPGS::BOYAN | | Sat Aug 29 1987 11:48 | 10 |
| Dear Cindy,
Your courage and fortitude are admirable. You are a fresh wind
that has blown across these conferences. Your entries into Christian
Notes have broken the cycle of heartless dogma and rhetoric that
has had a strangle-hold grip there for so long. For a long time
I have watched many clear-thinking and searching souls silenced
and driven out by a few medievel religious barons. I hope that trend
can be reversed and those notes become "Christian" and not
"Fundemantalist" once again.
Yours, Ron
|
| 457.17 | Word on CHRISTIAN | FDCV13::PAINTER | | Mon Sep 21 1987 16:58 | 13 |
|
Ron,
Thank you for your note - however I suspect that not much of a
difference was made. Time will tell. In the meantime, there is
one less conference in my directory now. I cannot discuss issues
when people insist that their view is the only correct view...and
everybody else is wrong. The negative tone of the conference is
too much for me.
Peace,
Cindy
|
| 457.18 | | SCOPE::PAINTER | Imagine all the *people*.... | Mon Feb 08 1988 14:18 | 45 |
|
-< A Resolution by the City Council of the City of Cambridge >-
This is the text of one of the many resolution passed on the Promise of World
Peace. This resolution was passed by the City Council of the City of Cambridge:
WHEREAS: Peace and mutual understanding are the most compelling needs
in this world of increasingly interdependent nations; and
WHEREAS: The achievement of peace is frequently assumed to be
incompatible with human nature, and this assumption leads to
despair and in general paralysis of will; and
WHEREAS: This paralysis can only be overcome by educating people, and
encouraging their involvement with a wide spectrum of social
and interpersonal issues which are the foundation of peace; and
WHEREAS: The Baha'i world community has been in the forefront of such
issues for over a century, contributing to social and economic
development, to the emancipation of women, and to the
elimination of prejudice; and
WHEREAS: The experience of the Baha'i world community is at the grass
roots level can inspire hope that international peace is
possible as well as provide an example of how to lay its
foundation; and
WHEREAS: In this International Year of Peace, the City of Cambridge
reaffirms its commitment to world peace; therefore, be it
RESOLVED: That "The Promise of World Peace", a letter to the peoples of
the world by the Universal House of Justice, the governing
Council of the Baha'is of the world, is a valuable resource
for all citizens who yearn for peace, and that study of this
document is enthusiastically encouraged.
City Council of
the City of Cambridge Massachusetts
June 2, 1986
{Source: RELIGION notes conference, note 13.25, compliments of Kamran Hakim}
|
| 457.19 | The Promise of World Peace | BEMIS::MATTHEWS | 00 -/ -0 @ | Fri Apr 14 1989 14:24 | 13 |
| Greetings,
I have been reading DeJavu for a while but I was only recently
made aware of this note. As with all of you, the issue of World
Peace is one that concerns me greatly. I'm going to post a document
that is entitled "The Promise of World Peace". It is addressed
to the people of the world and is written by The Universal House of
Justice which is the supreme governing body of the Baha'i Faith.
I hope that it will be of interest. As it is quite long, it will
be posted in five parts in the next five replies.
Warm Regards,
Ron Matthews
|
| 457.20 | The Promise of World Peace--Intro | BEMIS::MATTHEWS | 00 -/ -0 @ | Fri Apr 14 1989 14:25 | 138 |
|
The Promise of World Peace
A Statement of the
Universal House of Justice
to the Peoples of the World
October 1985
To the Peoples of the World:
The Great Peace towards which people of goodwill throughout the
centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for
countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which
from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly
held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the
nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone
to view the entire planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples,
in one perspective. World peace is not only possible but inevitable.
It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet--in the words
of one great thinker, "the planetization of mankind."
Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors
precipitated by humanity's stubborn clinging to old patterns of
behavior, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will,
is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical
juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been
fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem
the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably
irresponsible.
Among the favorable signs are the steadily growing strength of
the steps towards world order taken initially near the beginning of
this century in the creation of the League of Nations, succeeded by
the more broadly based United Nations organization; the achievement
since the Second World War of independence by the majority of all
the nations on earth, indicating the completion of the process of
nation building, and the involvement of these fledgling nations with
older ones in matters of mutual concern; the consequent vast
increase in cooperation among hitherto isolated and antagonistic
peoples and groups in international undertakings in the scientific,
educational, legal, economic and cultural fields; the rise in recent
decades of an unprecedented number of international humanitarian
organizations; the spread of women's and youth movements calling for
an end to war; and the spontaneous spawning of widening networks of
ordinary people seeking understanding through personal
communication.
The scientific and technological advance occurring in this
unusually blessed century portend a great surge forward in the
social evolution of the planet, and indicate the means by which the
practical problems of humanity may be solved. They provide, indeed,
the very means for the administration of the complex life of a
united world. Yet barriers persist. Doubts, misconceptions,
prejudices, suspicions and narrow self-interest beset nations and
peoples in their relations one to another.
It is out of a deep sense of spiritual and moral duty that we
are impelled at this opportune moment to invite your attention to
the penetrating insights first communicated to the rulers of mankind
more than a century ago by Baha'u'llah, Founder of the Baha'i Faith,
of which we are the Trustees.
"The winds of despair," Baha'u'llah wrote, "are, alas, blowing
from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the
human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions
and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order
appears to be lamentably defective." This prophetic judgment has
been amply confirmed by the common experience of humanity. Flaws in
the prevailing order are conspicuous in the inability of sovereign
states organized as United Nations to exorcise the specter of war,
the threatened collapse of the international economic order, the
spread of anarchy and terrorism, and the intense suffering which
these and other afflictions are causing to increasing millions.
Indeed, so much have aggression and conflict come to characterize
our social, economic and religious systems, that many have succumbed
to the view that such behavior is intrinsic to human nature and
therefore ineradicable.
With the entrenchment of this view, a paralyzing contradiction
has developed in human affairs. On the one hand, people of all
nations proclaim not only their readiness but their longing for
peace and harmony, for an end to the harrowing apprehensions
tormenting their daily lives. On the other, uncritical assent is
given to the proposition that human beings are incorrigibly selfish
and aggressive and thus incapable of erecting a social system giving
free play to individual creativity and initiative but base on
cooperation and reciprocity.
As the need for peace becomes more urgent, this fundamental
contradiction, which hinders its realization, demands a reassessment
of the assumptions upon which the commonly held view of mankind's
historical predicament is based. Dispassionately examined, the
evidence reveals that such conduct, far from expressing man's true
self, represents a distortion of the human spirit. Satisfaction on
this point will enable all people to set in motion constructive
social forces which, because they are consistent with human nature,
will encourage harmony and cooperation instead of war and conflict.
To choose such a course is not to deny humanity's past but to
understand it. The Baha'i Faith regards the current world confusion
and calamitous condition in human affairs as a natural phase in an
organic process leading ultimately and irresistibly to the
unification of the human race in a single social order whose
boundaries are those of the planet. The human race, as a distinct,
organic unit, has passed through evolutionary stages analogous to
the stages of infancy and childhood in the lives of its individual
members, and is now in the culminating period of its turbulent
adolescence approaching its long-awaited coming of age.
A candid acknowledgment that prejudice, war and exploitation
have been the expression of immature stages in a vast historical
process and that the human race is today experiencing the
unavoidable tumult which marks its collective coming of age is not
a reason for despair but a prerequisite to undertaking the
stupendous enterprise of building a peaceful world. That such an
enterprise is possible, that the necessary constructive forces do
exist, that unifying social structures can be erected, is the theme
we urge you to examine.
Whatever suffering and turmoil the years immediately ahead may
hold, however dark the immediate circumstances, the Baha'i community
believes that humanity can confront this supreme trial with
confidence in its ultimate outcome. Far from signalizing the end of
civilization, the convulsive changes towards which humanity is being
ever more rapidly impelled will serve to release the "potentialities
inherent in the station of man" and reveal "the full measure of his
destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality."
|
| 457.21 | The Promise of World Peace--Part I | BEMIS::MATTHEWS | 00 -/ -0 @ | Fri Apr 14 1989 14:26 | 165 |
|
I
The endowments which distinguish the human race from all other
forms of life are summed up in what is known as the human spirit;
the mind is its essential quality. These endowments have enabled
humanity to build civilizations and to prosper materially. But such
accomplishments alone have never satisfied the human spirit, whose
mysterious nature inclines it towards transcendence, a reaching
towards an invisible realm, towards the ultimate\ reality, that
unknowable essence of essences called God. The religions brought to
mankind by a succession of spiritual luminaries have been the
primary link between humanity and that ultimate reality, and have
galvanized and refined mankind's capacity to achieve spiritual
success together with social progress.
No serious attempt to set human affairs aright, to achieve
world peace, can ignore religion. Man's perception and practice of
it are largely the stuff of history. An eminent historian described
religion as a "faculty of human nature." That the "perversion of
this faculty has contributed to much of the confusion in society
and the conflicts in and between individuals can hardly be denied.
But neither can any fair-minded observer discount the preponderating
influence exerted by religion on the vital expressions of
civilization. Furthermore, its indispensability to social order has
repeatedly been demonstrated by its direct effect on laws and
morality.
Writing of religion as a social force, Baha'u'llah said:
"Religion is the greatest of all means for the establishment of
order in the world and for the peaceful contentment of all that
dwell therein." Referring to the eclipse or corruption of religion,
he wrote: "Should the lamp of religion be obscured, chaos and
confusion will ensue, and the lights of fairness, of justice, of
tranquillity and peace cease to shine." In an enumeration of such
consequences the Baha'i writings point out that the "perversion of
human nature, the degradation of human conduct, the corruption and
dissolution of human institutions, reveal themselves, under such
circumstances, in their worst and most revolting aspects. Human
character is debased, confidence is shaken, the nerves of discipline
are relaxed, the voice of human conscience is stilled, the sense of
decency and shame is obscured, conceptions of duty of solidarity, of
reciprocity and loyalty are distorted, and the very feeling of
peacefulness, of joy and of hope is gradually extinguished."
If, therefore, humanity has come to a point of paralyzing
conflict it must look to itself, to its own negligence, to the siren
voices to which it has listened, for the source of the
misunderstandings and confusion perpetrated in the name of religion.
Those who have held blindly and selfishly to their particular
orthodoxies, who have imposed on their votaries erroneous and
conflicting interpretations of the pronouncements of the prophets of
God, bear heavy responsibility for this confusion--a confusion
compounded by the artificial barriers erected between faith and
reason, science and religion. For from a fair-minded examination of
the actual utterances of the Founders of the great religions, and of
the social milieus in which they were obliged to carry out their
missions, there is nothing to support the contentions and prejudices
deranging the religious communities of mankind and therefore all
human affairs.
The teaching that we should treat others as we ourselves would
wish to be treated, an ethic variously repeated in all the great
religions, lends force to this latter observation in two particular
respects: it sums up the moral attitude, the peace-inducing aspect,
extending through these religions irrespective of their place or
time of origin; it also signifies an aspect of unity which is their
essential virtue, a virtue mankind in its disjointed view of history
has failed to appreciate.
Had humanity seen the Educators of its collective childhood in
their true character, as agents of one civilizing process, it would
no doubt have reaped incalculably greater benefits from the
cumulative effects of their successive missions. This, alas, it
failed to do.
The resurgence of fanatical religious fervor occurring in many
lands cannot be regarded as more than a dying convulsion. The very
nature of the violent and disruptive phenomena associated with it
testifies to the spiritual bankruptcy it represents. Indeed, one of
the strangest and saddest features of the current outbreak of
religious fanaticism is the extent to which, in each case, it is
undermining not only the spiritual values which are conducive to the
unity of mankind but also those unique moral victories won by the
particular religion it purports to serve.
However vital a force religion has been in the history of
mankind, and however dramatic the current resurgence of militant
religious fanaticism, religion and religious institutions have, for
many decades, been viewed by increasing numbers of people as
irrelevant to the major concerns of the modern world. In its place
they have turned either to the hedonistic pursuit of material
satisfactions or to the following of man-made ideologies designed to
rescue society from the evident evils under which it groans. All
too many of these ideologies, alas, instead of embracing the concept
of the oneness of mankind and promoting the increase of concord
among different peoples, have tended to deify the state, to
subordinate the rest of mankind to one nation, race or class, to
attempt to suppress all discussion and interchange of ideas, or to
callously abandon starving millions to the operations of a market
system that all too clearly is aggravating the plight of the
majority of mankind, while enabling small sections to live in a
condition of affluence scarcely dreamed of by our forebears.
How tragic is the record of the substitute faiths that the
worldly-wise of our age have created. In the massive disillusionment
of entire populations who have been taught to worship at their
altars can be read history's irreversible verdict on their value.
The fruits these doctrines have produced after decades of an
increasingly unrestrained exercise of power by those who owe their
ascendancy in human affairs to them, are the social and economic
ills that blight every region of our world in the closing years of
the twentieth century. Underlying all these outward afflictions is
the spiritual damage reflected in the apathy that has gripped the
mass of the peoples of all nations and by the extinction of hope in
the hearts of deprived and anguished millions.
The time has come when those who preach the dogmas of
materialism, whether of the east or the west, whether of capitalism
or socialism, must give account of the moral stewardship they have
presumed to exercise. Where is the "new world" promised by these
ideologies? Where is the international peace to whose ideals they
proclaim their devotion? Where are the breakthroughs into new
realms of cultural achievement produced by the aggrandizement of
this race, of that nation or of a particular class? Why is the vast
majority of the world's peoples sinking ever deeper into hunger and
wretchedness when wealth on a scale undreamed of by the Pharaohs,
the Caesars, or even the imperialist powers of the nineteenth
century is at the disposal of the present arbiters of human affairs?
Most particularly, it is in the glorification of material
pursuits, at once the progenitor and common feature of all such
ideologies, that we find the roots which nourish the falsehood that
human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive. It is here
that the ground must be cleared for the building of a new world fit
for our descendants.
That materialistic ideals have, in the light of experience,
failed to satisfy the needs of mankind calls for an honest
acknowledgment that a fresh effort must now be made to find the
solutions to the agonizing problems of the planet. The intolerable
conditions pervading society bespeak a common failure of all, a
circumstance which tends to incite rather than relieve the
entrenchment on every side. Clearly, a common remedial effort is
urgently required. It is primarily a matter of attitude. Will
humanity continue in its waywardness, holding to outworn concepts an
unworkable assumptions? Or will its leaders, regardless of
ideology, step forth and, with a resolute will, consult together in
a united search for appropriate solutions?
Those who care for the future of the human race may well ponder
this advice. "If long-cherished ideals and time-honored
institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulae
have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if
they no longer minister to the needs of a continually evolving
humanity, let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of
obsolescent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these, in a world
subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the
deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution? For
legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed
to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity
to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any
particular law or doctrine."
|
| 457.22 | The Promise of World Peace--Part II | BEMIS::MATTHEWS | 00 -/ -0 @ | Fri Apr 14 1989 14:28 | 176 |
|
II
Banning nuclear weapons, prohibiting the use of poison gases,
or outlawing germ warfare will not remove the root causes of war.
However important such practical measures obviously are as elements
of the peace process, they are in themselves too superficial to
exert enduring influence. Peoples are ingenious enough to invent yet
other forms of warfare, and to use food, raw materials, finance,
industrial power, ideology, and terrorism to subvert one another in
an endless quest for supremacy and dominion. Nor can the present
massive dislocation in the affairs of humanity be resolved through
the settlement of specific conflicts or disagreements among nations.
A genuine universal framework must be adopted.
Certainly, there is no lack of recognition by national leaders
of the worldwide character of the problem, which is self-evident in
the mounting issues that confront them daily. And there are the
accumulating studies and solutions proposed by many concerned and
enlightened groups as well as by agencies of the United Nations, to
remove any possibility of ignorance as to the challenging
requirements to be met. There is, however, a paralysis of will; and
it is this that must be carefully examined and resolutely dealt
with. This paralysis is rooted, as we have stated, in a deep-seated
conviction of the inevitable quarrelsomeness of mankind, which has
led to the reluctance to entertain the possibility of subordinating
national self-interest to the requirements of world order, and in an
unwillingness to face courageously the far-reaching implications of
establishing a united world authority. It is also traceable to the
incapacity of largely ignorant and subjugated masses to articulate
their desire for a new order in which they can live in peace,
harmony and prosperity with all humanity.
The tentative steps towards world order, especially since World War
II, give hopeful signs. The increasing tendency of groups of nations
to formalize relationships which enable them to cooperate in matters
of mutual interest suggests that eventually all nations could
overcome this paralysis. The Association of South East Asian
Nations, the Caribbean Community and Common Market, the Central
American Common Market, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance,
the European Communities, the League of Arab States, the
Organization of African Unity, the Organization of American States,
the South Pacific Forum--all the joint endeavors represented by such
organizations prepare the path to world order.
The increasing attention being focused on some of the most
deep-rooted problems of the planet is yet another hopeful sign.
Despite the obvious shortcomings of the United Nations, the more
than two score declarations and conventions adopted by that
organization, even where governments have not been enthusiastic in
their commitment, have given ordinary people a sense of a new lease
on life. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the
similar measures concerned with eliminating all forms of
discrimination based on race, sex, or religious belief; upholding
the rights of the child; protecting all persons against being
subjected to torture; eradicating hunger and malnutrition; using
scientific and technological progress in the interest of peace and
the benefit of mankind--all such measures, if courageously enforced
and expanded, will advance the day when the specter of war will have
lost its power to dominate international relations. There is no need
to stress the significance of the issues addressed by these
declarations and conventions. However, a few such issues, because of
their immediate relevance to establishing world peace, deserve
additional comment.
Racism, one of the most baneful and persistent evils, is a major
barrier to peace. Its practice perpetrates too outrageous a
violation of the dignity of human beings to be countenanced under
any pretext. Racism retards the unfoldment of the boundless
potentialities if its victims, corrupts its perpetrators, and
blights human progress. Recognition of the oneness of mankind,
implemented by appropriate legal measures., must be universally
upheld if this problem is to be overcome.
The inordinate disparity between rich and poor, a source of acute
suffering, keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on
the brink of war. Few societies have dealt effectively with this
situation. The solution calls for the combined application of
spiritual, moral, and practical approaches. A fresh look at the
problem is required, entailing consultation with experts from a wide
spectrum of disciplines, devoid of economic and ideological
polemics, and involving the people directly affected in the
decisions that must urgently be made. It is an issue that is bound
up not only with the necessity for eliminating the extremes of
wealth and poverty but also with those spiritual verities the
understanding of which can produce a new universal attitude.
Fostering such an attitude is itself a major part of the solution.
Unbridled nationalism, as distinguished from a sane and legitimate
patriotism, must give way to a wider loyalty, to the love of
humanity as a whole. Baha'u'llah 's statement is: ``the earth is but
one country and mankind its citizens." The concept of world
citizenship is a direct result of the contraction of the world into
a single neighborhood through scientific advances and of the
indisputable interdependence of nations. Love of all the world's
peoples does not exclude love of one's country. The advantage of the
part in a world society is best served by promoting the advantage of
the whole. Current international activities in various fields which
nurture mutual affection and a sense of solidarity among peoples
need greatly to be increased.
Religious strife, throughout history, has been the cause of
innumerable wars and conflicts, a major blight to progress, and is
increasingly abhorrent to the people of all faiths and no faith.
Followers of all religions must be willing to face the basic
questions which this strife raises, and to arrive at clear answers.
How are the differences between them to be resolved, both in theory
and in practice? The challenge facing the religious leaders of
mankind is to contemplate, with hearts filled with the spirit of
compassion and a desire for truth, the plight of humanity, and to
ask themselves whether they cannot, in humility before their
Almighty Creator, submerge their theological differences in a great
spirit of mutual forbearance that will enable them to work together
for the advancement of human understanding and peace.
The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between
the sexes, is one of the most important, though less acknowledged
prerequisites of peace. The denial of such equality perpetrates an
injustice against one half of the world's population and promotes in
men harmful attitudes and habits that are carried from the family to
the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international
relations. There are no grounds, moral, practical, or biological,
upon which such denial can be justified. Only as women are welcomed
into full partnership in all fields of human endeavor will the moral
and psychological climate be created in which international peace
can emerge.
The cause of universal education, which has already enlisted in its
service an army of dedicated people from every faith and nation,
deserves the utmost support that the governments of the world can
lend it. For ignorance is indisputably the principal reason for the
decline and fall of peoples and the perpetration of prejudice. No
nation can achieve success unless education is accorded to all its
citizens. Lack of resources limits the ability of many nations to
fulfill this necessity, imposing a certain ordering of priorities.
The decision-making agencies involved would do well to consider
giving first priority to the education of women and girls, since it
is through educated mothers that the benefits of knowledge can be
most effectively and rapidly diffused throughout society. In keeping
with the requirements of the times, consideration should also be
given to teaching the concept of world citizenship as part of the
standard education of every child.
A fundamental lack of communication between peoples seriously
undermines efforts towards world peace. Adopting an international
auxiliary language would go far to resolving this problem and
necessitates the most urgent attention.
Two points bear emphasizing in all these issues. One is that the
abolition of war is not simply a matter of signing treaties and
protocols; it is a complex task requiring a new level of commitment
to resolving issues not customarily associated with the pursuit of
peace. Based on political agreements alone, the idea of collective
security is a chimera. The other point is that the primary challenge
in dealing with issues of peace is to raise the context to the level
of principle, as distinct from pure pragmatism. For, in essence,
peace stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual or moral
attitude, and it is chiefly in evoking this attitude that the
possibility of enduring solutions can be found.
There are spiritual principles, or what some people call human
values, by which solutions can be found for every social problem.
Any well-intentioned group can in a general sense devise practical
solutions to its problems, but good intentions and practical
knowledge are usually not enough. The essential merit of spiritual
principle is that it not only presents a perspective which
harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also
induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which
facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures.
Leaders of governments and all in authority would be well served in
their efforts to solve problems if they would first seek to identify
the principles involved and then be guided by them.
|
| 457.23 | The Promise of World Peace--Part III | BEMIS::MATTHEWS | 00 -/ -0 @ | Fri Apr 14 1989 14:29 | 175 |
|
III
The primary question to be resolved is how the present world, with
its entrenched pattern of conflict, can change to a world in which
harmony and cooperation will prevail.
World order can be founded only on an unshakable consciousness of
the oneness of mankind, a spiritual truth which all the human
sciences confirm. Anthropology, physiology, psychology, recognize
only one human species, albeit infinitely varied in the secondary
aspects of life. Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of
prejudice--prejudice of every kind--race, class, color, creed,
nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which
enables people to consider themselves superior to others.
Acceptance of the oneness of mankind is the first fundamental
prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as
one country, the home of humankind. Universal acceptance of this
spiritual principle is essential to any successful attempt to
establish world peace. It should therefore be universally
proclaimed, taught in schools, and constantly asserted in every
nation as preparation for the organic change in the structure of
society which it implies.
In the Baha'i view, recognition of the oneness of mankind ``calls
for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the
whole civilized world--a world organically unified in all the
essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its
spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and
language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national
characteristics of its federated units."
Elaborating the implications of this pivotal principle, Shoghi
Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, commented in 1931 that:
``Far from aiming at the subversion of the of the existing
foundations of society, it seeks to broaden its basis, to remold its
institutions in a manner consonant with the needs of an
ever-changing world. It can conflict with no legitimate allegiances,
nor can it undermine essential loyalties. Its purpose is neither to
stifle the flame of a sane and intelligent patriotism in men's
hearts, nor to abolish the system of national autonomy so essential
if the evils of excessive centralization are to be avoided. It does
not ignore, nor does it attempt to suppress, the diversity of
ethnical origins, of climate, of history, of language and tradition,
of thought and habit, that differentiate the peoples and nations of
the world. It calls for a wider loyalty, for a larger aspiration
then any that has animated the human race. It insists upon the
subordination of national impulses and interests to the imperative
claims of a unified world. It repudiates excessive centralization on
one hand, and disclaims all attempts at uniformity on the other.
Its watchword is unity in diversity. . . ."
The achievement of such ends requires several stages in the
adjustment of national political attitudes, which now verge on
anarchy in the absence of clearly defined laws or universally
accepted and enforceable principles regulating the relationships
between nations. The League of Nations, the United Nations, and the
many organizations and agreements produced by them have
unquestionably been helpful in attenuating some of the negative
effects of international conflicts, but they have shown themselves
incapable of preventing war. Indeed, there have been scores of wars
since the end of the Second World War; many are yet raging.
The predominant aspects of this problem had already emerged in
the nineteenth century when Baha'u'llah first advanced his proposals
for the establishment of world peace. The principle of collective
security was propounded by him in statements addressed to the rulers
of the world. Shoghi Effendi commented on his meaning: ``What else
could these weighty words signify", he wrote, ``if they did not
point to the inevitable curtailment of unfettered national
sovereignty as an indispensable preliminary to the formation of the
future Commonwealth of all the nations of the world? Some form of a
world superstate must needs be evolved, in whose favor all the
nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make
war, certain rights to impose taxation and all rights to maintain
armaments, except for purposes of maintaining internal order within
their respective dominion. Such a state will have to include
supreme and unchallengeable authority on every recalcitrant member
of the commonwealth; a World Parliament whose members shall be
elected by the people in their respective governments; and a
Supreme Tribunal whose judgment will have a binding effect even in
such cases where the parties concerned did not voluntarily agree to
submit their case to its consideration.
"A world community in which all economic barriers will have been
permanently demolished and the interdependence of capital and labor
definitely recognized; in which the clamor of religious fanaticism
and strife will have been forever stilled; in which the flame of
racial animosity will have been finally extinguished; in which a
single code of international law--the product of the considered
judgment of the world's federated representatives--shall have as
its sanction the instant and coercive intervention of the combined
forces of the federated units; and finally a world community in
which the fury of a capricious and militant nationalism will have
been transmuted into an abiding consciousness of world citizen-
ship--such indeed, appears, in its broadest outline, the Order
anticipated by Baha'u'llah, an Order that shall come to be regarded
as the fairest fruit of a slowly maturing age."
The implementation of these far-reaching measures was indicated by
Baha'u'llah: "The time must come when the imperative necessity for
the holding of a vast, an all-embracing assemblage of men will be
universally realized. The rulers and kings of the earth must needs
attend it, and, participating in its deliberations, must consider
such ways and means as will lay the foundations of the world's
Great Peace amongst men."
The courage, the resolution, the pure motive, the selfless love of
one people for another--all the spiritual and moral qualities
required for effecting this momentous step towards peace are fo-
cused on the will to act. And it is towards arousing the necessary
volition that earnest consideration must be given to the reality of
man, namely, his thought. To understand the relevance of this
potent reality is also to appreciate the social necessity of actu-
alizing its unique value through candid, dispassionate and cordial
consultation, and of acting upon the results of this process.
Baha'u'llah insistently drew attention to the virtues and indispen-
sability of consultation for ordering human affairs. He said:
"Consultation bestows greater awareness and transmutes conjecture
into certitude. It is a shining light which, in a dark world,
leads the way and guides. For everything there is and will con-
tinue to be a station of perfection and maturity. The maturity of
the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation."
The very attempt to achieve peace through the consultative action
he proposed can release such a salutary spirit among the peoples of
the earth that no power could resist the final, triumphal outcome.
Concerning the proceedings for this world gathering, 'Abdu'l-Baha,
the son of Baha'u'llah and authorized interpreter of his teachings,
offered these insights: "They must make the Cause of Peace the
object of general consultation, and seek by every means in their
power to establish a Union of the nations of the world. They must
conclude a binding treaty and establish a covenant, the provisions
of which shall be sound, inviolable and definite. They must pro-
claim it to all the world and obtain for it the sanction of all the
human race. This supreme and noble undertaking--the real source of
the peace and well-being of all the world--should be regarded as
sacred by all that dwell on earth. All the forces of humanity must
be mobilized to ensure the stability and permanence of this Most
Great Covenant. In this all-embracing Pact the limits and fron-
tiers of each and every nation should be clearly fixed, the princi-
ples underlying the relations of governments towards one another
definitely laid down, and all international agreements and obliga-
tions ascertained. In like manner, the size of the armaments of
every government should be strictly limited, for if the prepara-
tions for war and the military forces of any nation should be
allowed to increase, they will arouse the suspicion of others. The
fundamental principle underlying this solemn Pact should be so
fixed that if any government later violate any one of its provi-
sions, all the governments on earth should arise to reduce it to
utter submission, nay the human race as a whole should resolve,
with every power at its disposal, to destroy that government.
Should this greatest of all remedies be applied to the sick body of
the world, it will assuredly recover from its ills and will remain
eternally safe and secure."
The holding of this mighty convocation is long overdue.
With all the ardor of our hearts, we appeal to the leaders of all
nations to seize this opportune moment and take irreversible steps
to convoke this world meeting. All the forces of history impel the
human race towards this act which will mark for all time the dawn
of its long-awaited maturity.
Will not the United Nations, with the full support of its member-
ship, rise to the high purposes of such a crowning event?
Let men and women, youth and children everywhere recognize the
eternal merit of this imperative action for all peoples and lift up
their voices in willing assent. Indeed, let it be this generation
that inaugurates this glorious stage in the evolution of social
life on the planet.
|
| 457.24 | The Promise of World Peace--Part IV | BEMIS::MATTHEWS | 00 -/ -0 @ | Fri Apr 14 1989 14:31 | 115 |
|
IV
The source of the optimism we feel is a vision transcending the
cessation of war and the creation of agencies of international
cooperation. Permanent peace among nations is an essential stage,
but not, Baha'u'llah asserts, the ultimate goal of the social
development of humanity. Beyond the initial armistice forced upon
the world by the fear of nuclear holocaust, beyond the political
peace reluctantly entered into by suspicious rival nations, beyond
pragmatic arrangements for security and coexistence, beyond even
the many experiments in cooperation which these steps will make
possible lies the crowning goal: the unification of all the peo-
ples of the world in one universal family.
Disunity is a danger that the nations and peoples of the earth can
no longer endure; the consequences are too terrible to contemplate,
too obvious to require any demonstration. "The well-being of
mankind," Baha'u'llah wrote more than a century ago, "its peace
and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly
established." In observing that "mankind is groaning, is dying to
be led to unity, and to terminate its age-long martyrdom," Shoghi
Effendi further commented that: "Unification of the whole of
mankind is the hallmark of the stage which human society is now
approaching. Unity of family, of tribe, of city-state and nation
have been successively attempted and fully established. World
unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is striving.
Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in state
sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to matu-
rity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness
of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery
that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life."
All contemporary forces of change validate this view. The proofs
can be discerned in the many examples already cited of the favora-
ble signs towards world peace in current international movements
and developments. The army of men and women, drawn from virtually
every culture, race and nation on earth, who serve the multifarious
agencies of the United Nations, represent a planetary "civil ser-
vice" whose impressive accomplishments are indicative of the degree
of cooperation that can be attained even under discouraging condi-
tions. An urge towards unity, like a spiritual springtime, strug-
gles to express itself through countless international congresses
that bring together people from a vast array of disciplines. It
motivates appeals for international projects involving children and
youth. Indeed, it is the real source of the remarkable movement
towards ecumenism by which members of historically antagonistic
religions and sects seem irresistibly drawn towards one another.
Together with the opposing tendency to warfare and self-aggrandize-
ment against which it ceaselessly struggles, the drive towards
world unity is one of the dominant, pervasive features of life on
the planet during the closing years of the twentieth century.
The experience of the Baha'i community may be seen as an example of
this enlarging unity. It is a community of some three to four
million people drawn from many nations, cultures, classes and
creeds, engaged in a wide range of activities serving the spirit-
ual, social and economic needs of the peoples of many lands. It is
a single social organism, representative of the diversity of the
human family, conducting its affairs through a system of commonly
accepted consultative principles, and cherishing equally all the
great outpourings of divine guidance in human history. Its exist-
ence is yet another convincing proof of the practicality of its
Founder's vision of a united world, another evidence that humanity
coming of age may entail. If the Baha'i experience can contribute
in whatever measure to reinforcing hope in the unity of the human
race, we are happy to offer it as a model for study.
In contemplating the supreme importance of the task now challenging
the entire world, we bow our heads in humility before the awesome
majesty of the divine Creator, Who out of His infinite love has
created all humanity from the same stock; exalted the gemlike
reality of man; honored it with intellect and wisdom, nobility and
immortality; and conferred upon man the "unique distinction and
capacity to know Him and to love Him," a capacity that "must needs
be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose
underlying the whole of creation."
We hold firmly the conviction that all human beings have been
created "to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization"; that "to
act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man"; that the
virtues that befit human dignity are trustworthiness, forbearance,
mercy, compassion and loving kindness towards all peoples. We
reaffirm the belief that the "potentialities inherent in the sta-
tion of man, the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate
excellence of his reality, must all be manifested in this promised
Day of God." These are the motivations for our unshakable faith
that unity and peace are the attainable goal towards which humanity
is striving.
At this writing, the expectant voices of Baha'is can be heard
despite the persecution they still endure in the land in which
their Faith was born. By their example of steadfast hope, they
bear witness to the belief that the imminent realization of this
age-old dream of peace is now, by virtue of the transforming ef-
fects of Baha'u'llah's revelation, invested with the force of
divine authority. Thus we convey to you not only a vision in
words: we summon the power of deeds of faith and sacrifice; we
convey the anxious plea of our coreligionists everywhere for peace
and unity. We join with all who are the victims of aggression, all
who yearn for an end to conflict and contention, all whose devotion
to principles of peace and world order promotes the ennobling
purposes for which humanity was called into being by an all-loving
Creator.
In the earnestness of our desire to impart to you the fervor of our
hope and the depth of our confidence, we cite the emphatic promise
of Baha'u'llah: "These fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall
pass away, and the 'Most Great Peace' shall come."
THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE
|
| 457.25 | New World Conference Announcement | CGVAX2::PAINTER | And on Earth, peace... | Wed Jan 24 1990 17:55 | 8 |
|
There is a new conference opened to discuss world issues, and the name
is:
LDP::WORLD_FORUM
I haven't mastered the KP7 command yet - sorry.
Cindy
|
| 457.26 | New World at the doorstep | CARTUN::BERGGREN | Believing is seeing... | Thu Jan 25 1990 09:56 | 8 |
| Cindy, (re: World_Forum)
Great! Perfect timing for such a conference!
*Many* thanks for the pointer!
Karen
|
| 457.27 | | CNTROL::HENRIKSON | Be excellent to each other | Sat Jan 27 1990 14:53 | 14 |
|
> I haven't mastered the KP7 command yet - sorry.
Hi, Cindy
I remember spending a whole afternoon trying to find out how to do this. Hope
I can save you and others the trouble by saying...
The command to put the * next to the note number and let people add the
conference to their notebooks is...
MODIFY NOTE/CONFERENCE=LDP::WORLD_FORUM
|
| 457.28 | Back to the Source | ASABET::BARRAFORD | | Thu Jul 26 1990 17:44 | 54 |
| Hi, Cindy,
I feel that religion and peace are not impossible, but my feelings
concerning how it is going to occur tend to be a little different.
I believe, somewhat like the Sufis, that all religions originate
from one "source" (the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim God, the Buddhist's
Absolute Being, etc.).
Below I have crudely drawn a graph. I feel that religions roughly
follow the same path. Let's (freely) hypothesize that at level 3
we come across the typical "messiah" (I know, a sloppy use of
terms, but I'm just chatting right now), Jesus Christ, Buddha, Lao
Tzu, Muhammad, Hassid, etc. I use level three, because Rudolf Otto
has theorized that direct access to the "source" is not possible,
so we shall non-chalantly skip a level or two. Then at level 4 comes
the church leaders to "interpret" the "messiahs" teachings and finally
at level five come the various churches, ie. 5a = Catholic Church,
5b = Greek Orthodox Church, 5c = Muslim Sunnites, 5d = Muslim Shites,
5e = Zen Buddhism, 5f = Tibetan Buddhism, etc.
The "Source" O
LEVELS |
|
1 O-------------------------O
| |
2 O-----------O O-----------O
| | | |
3 O-----O O-----O O-----O O-----O
| | | | | | | |
4 O---O O---O O---O O---O O---O O---O O---O O---O
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
5 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p
I feel that everyone is trying to make 5a agree with 5p, when they all
in essence do not agree that they originate from one source. Heck, how
many times have I heard various religions state that their followers
were the "chosen" people. If the "source" can be identified, then 5a
doesn't have to conform to 5p and it can be accepted that the people of
both 5a & 5p are the "chosen" people, not just one sect. Through a
clearer understanding of the source, these diverging paths would have
a better understanding of what the differences between an ethnic treasure
and an eccentric local twist of logic.
This is not to say that work can not go on from both directions, from
the trenches and the tree tops, so to speak, but I feel that peace
will never be truly arrived at until the "source" is understood. So,
always, the leading question is what is the "source"? Hey, I'm giving
what I think will truly lead religion and peace in the same direction,
do I have to do everything...
Have a good day Cindy...
Andrew....
|
| 457.29 | Yes, the Source | CGVAX2::PAINTER | And on Earth, peace... | Fri Jul 27 1990 12:37 | 20 |
| Re.28
Hi Andrew,
Yes, I agree for the most part. I was reading the other day and came
across a saying that "Peace will come about as a result of
understanding, not the other way around." We have our work ahead of
us. (;^)
From "The Spiritual Heritage of India" by Swami Prabhavananda, he
writes that the reason that there is very little religious fanaticism,
religious percecution and religious wars, is because of the spirit of:
"Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti" or
"That which exists is One: sages call it by various names."
(the non-English words have symbols attached to some of the letters
which I cannot reproduce with this keyboard...)
Cindy
|