Transcription
With much pleasure and gratitude, I'd like to introduce to you the keynote speaker of this conference, a much beloved Baha'i amongst the Baha'is and a very distinguished scholar and author, Mrs. Ruhiyyih Rabbani.
Madame, upon Ruhiyyih Rabbani.
[Applause]
And get that thing out of the way.
[Applause]
The Chairman, in his kind opening remarks, said I had been traveling a lot, but what he didn't make quite clear is that some kind of a microbe has been traveling with me, and I had, what in the British used to call years ago, a "gippy tummy." Through the last, I don't know, what, twelve countries, with sort of crises and getting better and more crises. And it, um, it's completely thrown me out of gear. I hate talking sitting down, and, um, I haven't had a chance to, um, get myself together because I've left the meetings and gone to bed, and then got up again and come back to the meeting. So, in advance, I apologize.
I'd like to read three of the Hidden Words of Baha'u'llah. He says, these are his first. The first two of these are the first Hidden Words of the Arabic and the first Hidden Words in the Persian. He said, "The first call of the Beloved is this: O mystic nightingale, abide not but in the rose garden of the spirit. O messenger of the Solomon of love, seek thou no shelter except in the Sheba of the Well-Beloved. And O immortal phoenix, dwell not save on the Mount of Faithfulness. Therein is thy habitation."
"If on the wings of thy soul thou soarest to the realm of the infinite and seekest to attain thy goal, O son of spirit, My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly, and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable, and everlasting. The candle of thine heart is lighted by the hand of My power; quench it not with the contrary winds of self and passion. The healer of all thine ills is remembrance of Me; forget it not. Make My love thy treasure, and cherish it even as thy very sight and life."
As I looked over the program for these meetings, I realized that you have the advantage of people speaking on this subject who are both professionals and Baha'is. In other words, you have Baha'i, I don't know whether they're psychologists or psychiatrists, but whatever they are, they specialize in helping the human mind and human psychology to function better. Now, as their views are illumined by the teachings of Baha'u'llah, and their hearts are oriented to Baha'u'llah, I think that we are very, very lucky that at last, in the Baha'i Faith, we have people of this caliber. And I'm sure that you're going to hear some very wonderful talks during this course, and I hope to God that I'm strong enough to come and hear them myself, that I don't have to spend the rest of the time in Ottawa in bed, which is where I've been so far.
But I think that any thoughts that I have to offer are just deeply felt personal opinions based on my observations. That thing is breaking my neck because it's in the wrong position. You know, the situation in the world today concerning divorce is of tremendous concern to the Universal House of Justice, the Hands of the Cause, the International Teaching Centre, members, and I'm sure, two counselors and National Assembly members and traveling teachers and teachers and the rank and file of the Baha'is, because it is a very, very acute thing.
We live in an age that is rapidly disintegrating, and we should not be surprised that this is so, because this is prophesied in all the holy books of the world, and it's prophesied in our own teachings. We've come to what, in theory, you might call the end of the world. As Baha'u'llah said, "Old world order is being rolled up, and a new world order spread out in its stead." Well, if you visualize it as a carpet, and you've ever rolled up an old carpet, an awful lot of dust and bugs and lint and God knows what comes out of it in the process of rolling it up, and the holes appear and so on, before you can lay down the new one. So that it's not surprising that Baha'is living in the present society should be affected by it to some extent, because we are all conditioned by our environment.
Man is the most adaptable creature that the world has ever seen. He's able to live in the desert, he's able to live in the Arctic northlands, under extraordinarily difficult conditions. He has been able to develop culture and thought and personality, wonderful characteristics, racially, in these different environments. You put a man down in the desert from the north, and he suffers for some time because his blood hasn't thinned out yet to deal with the intense heat. And you take a man from the desert, you put him in the north, and it takes a little while before his blood actually begins to thicken, so that he can withstand better the tremendous cold. So that we are a very, very adaptable creature, and naturally, we are automatically affected by our environment.
But I do think that there's not very much excuse for Baha'is being more conditioned by the world in which they live than by the teachings of Baha'u'llah, because God gave us minds, obviously, to use them. Surely not just some kind of an intellectual hijinks above the shoulders. And we have these marvelous writings of Baha'u'llah, and we have the power of Baha'u'llah behind his writings, because what Baha'u'llah has given us is the word of God. You know, the word of God is different from any other word. It's the bread of life. You can read all the tablets of the Master, the writings of the Guardian, the communications of the House of Justice for a thousand years, would not have the same effect on you as reading one of those Hidden Words, because the power of life is in the word of the Manifestation of God, because he comes from God.
Now, other thoughts, interpretations, reflections, like 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the Guardian, and the House of Justice can direct that light, explain it to us, amplify it, enable us to perhaps use it better, because we could certainly never do without the writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the Guardian, and the House of Justice. But the fact remains that the power is in the word of God, and the power comes from Baha'u'llah. So it seems to me that we Baha'is should realize that whatever the forces of the world today are, they are absolutely nothing compared to the power inside the teachings of Baha'u'llah himself.
And I don't think, personally, perhaps this isn't the right audience to say it to, but I believe it. I don't think personally it matters how much you know or how much you read. We know that we should study the writings, we know that we should read the writings, but if you can't attain a sort of professorship level in your knowledge of the Baha'i Faith, well, don't feel badly about it. Do you think anybody in the world knows the whole Baha'i teachings? Nobody. Show him to me. No member of the House of Justice, no Hand, no Baha'i scholar knows all the writings and teachings of Baha'u'llah. He may know piecemeal. He may know more than I do or less than I do. Be very easy to know more, but the point is that he doesn't have it all in his mind. There was only one person that really knew the Cause of God in one brain, one understanding, and that was the Guardian, and he died. So if you little fellows, relatively speaking, don't grasp the whole thing, don't feel badly about it. Just go on with what you have in hand. It's extraordinary if you have even a small thing, what you can do with that one small instrument. The main thing is to use it and to use the power in the teachings to help you get through life.
And I think that whatever explanations you hear here on the subject of marriage, divorce, and children are relative to the power in the Faith that you have to draw from, because it is there. As I started to say, the House of Justice is extremely concerned over the increase of divorce amongst the Western Baha'is. We often talk about it in Haifa, and, uh, it's, um, a source of great worry to the members of the House. The House is the body, highs in Haifa for the ITC and so on. But in addition to being a source of worry, it's a downright scandal. How on earth can we Baha'is lift up our heads and talk about marriage to the people of the world with the extraordinary attitude towards sex and marriage and divorce in the world today? If we can't be, say, 10 percent better in our Western countries than the ordinary population, the Baha'i rate of divorce, I understand, I don't know about Canada, but I know in the United States it's as high as the national rate of divorce. We should hang our heads in shame. What kind of Baha'is are we? Are we being affected by that world out there, corrupt to the bone and falling apart, or are we reflecting the power and light of the teachings of Baha'u'llah, which we have access to in our personal lives?
You know, a few years ago, I had an interesting experience. There was a young couple that were having a lot of trouble. He drank very heavily, and they had three children, but he was a good father, although he was drunk most of the time, and he loved his wife. And it had been a love marriage. She loved him, but the whole thing had reached the blowing-up point. And then the teachings of Baha'u'llah entered their life, and she became a Baha'i and so on. Well, about this period, a traveling Baha'i teacher, who I gathered was in her 40s at least, went and met this couple, saw the situation, and wrote me a letter. And in the letter, she said that, "I don't see why anybody should suffer as much as so-and-so. I have advised her to get a divorce." Traveling Baha'i teachers, evidently, one of their missions now. So I was furious. It took me a good month or so to cool down enough to write a polite letter back. And I wrote back and said that I considered that, in view of Baha'u'llah's attitude towards divorce, it's permitted in the Baha'i Faith, but it is very, very highly frowned upon. That I considered that this advice was absolutely wrong, and that nobody had a right to give it to anybody else, least of all in this case. And anyway, the whole thing blew over, and the man gave up drinking and became a Baha'i, and the whole family became Baha'is and very active and very devoted and united as a family.
So when I next saw this young woman, I told her that I had written this letter to that woman. "Oh yes," she said, "you know, it was very interesting. She was in the year of patience, but after reading your letter, she decided not to get a divorce." That was the traveling teacher.
Marriage, as I understand it in the Baha'i Faith, is something that is the place to express your sex life and a lot of other things in life. Now, I know that sounds very strange, but I have heard Baha'is actually in meetings get up and say that one of the commandments of Baha'u'llah is that you should marry. That's true. But in what context? He says, "Marry all people, and don't forget what He says, for He says, 'Marry, O people, that ye may raise up one to mention God in your stead.'" But he says, "Marry, O people," but it's not a law. If you, as a human being, with all this tremendous hereditary biological surge of sex, which is the way God created this world for everything, if you want to express that power normally, fruitfully, in your life, the place for it is marriage. Marriage and children, the fruit of marriage, the blessing of marriage. But you don't still have to get married. But if you want sex, along with a lot of other things, the place that you express it, as I understand, is in the teachings of Baha'u'llah.
You see, it's not a derogatory thing to not be married. And I'm only saying this because I hear such extraordinary statements made by the Baha'is, so way out, so fanatical, fanatical in this direction, fanatical in that direction. And I don't believe there's any fanaticism in the Baha'i Faith. As Shoghi Effendi said, "We're orthodox, but not fanatical." Anyway, it's a beautiful distinction: orthodox, but not fanatical. Anyway, the point is that if marriage was the commandment of God that everybody on the earth had to marry, then why wasn't the Greatest Holy Leaf, the beloved sister of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the daughter of Baha'u'llah, the greatest figure in the Baha'i Dispensation, greatest feminine figure in the Baha'i Dispensation, why wasn't she married? It's very strange, you know. If this is the command of God, why didn't Baha'u'llah apply it to his own beloved daughter? Why was Martha Root raised so high? She broke all the laws of God. She didn't marry. And you can go over the list of Baha'is who have served this Faith with such distinction, and Hands of the Cause, Agnes Alexander, for instance, she never married. Knights of Baha'u'llah, outstanding pioneers, Baha'i teachers, and whatnot, or bachelors, if you like, they haven't married. But then, did they do something wrong? No. They just lived a different kind of life, which evidently was possible for them, and nobody has any right to condemn them or felicitate them on unless they're very unhappily married. Maybe they say, "Well, you were lucky you had enough sense not to marry."
But the point is that you cannot interfere in the life of another person. Say, "Marriage is the law of God in this day. Why aren't you married?" You see. Or, "You're married and you don't have children. You're supposed to have children." We Baha'is have a passion for telling each other what to do, absolute passion. And I think that the more we mind our own business, the better off we're going to be, and the better off the Cause is going to be.
But we, we have to see society in the round. The place for sex is in a normal marital relationship, in which, if you want to, and God blesses you, you have children. I don't think you're going to be shot at dawn if you don't have any. But I think that obviously the blessing of marriage, as it says in the teachings, is children. And the purpose of children, as Baha'u'llah clearly says, is to bring them up to mention God, to commemorate their Creator. Otherwise, he doesn't say anything. He doesn't say, "Have the dear little things because you should reproduce like guinea pigs." He says, "Raise them up to worship God in your stead." But that's quite a different orientation.
On the subject of marriage, if I had any advice to give young people when they are going to get married, I would say that perhaps the first thing to remember, and it's taken me 70 years to get this clear in my own mind, you see. You have to remember that, like all the members of the human race, once I was young too, and once I wasn't married, and once I was very headstrong, almost a suffragette, and didn't see why. I can remember when this law percolated down in the Western Hemisphere, because we didn't have any access to the teachings the way you have now, you see. But suddenly I found out when I was in my late teens that if I wanted to get married, which I didn't at that point, but if I wanted to get married, I had to have the consent of my parents. And I was furious. I was fit to be tied. And it was one of the great tests of my life. "What's it got to do with you? You're not getting married. You already got married. But when I get married, that's my personal business. What have you got to do with it?" You see. And I felt this very, very strongly.
But like a lot of our battles as Baha'is, I came to a bump, so to speak, in the teachings, which I didn't understand, particularly didn't like, and I had to make up my mind: am I going to go off the road, or am I going to go over the bump and continue? So I decided, of course, that I loved the Faith and Baha'u'llah enough, and believed in Him enough, you see, there's where faith comes into it, to say, "Well, if He said so, He must have known what He was talking about. It must be right." And so mentally, I accepted this law. Now, that was what, about 50 years ago, half a century ago. And every single year of my life, I see how great this law of Baha'u'llah is, and it means more to me than it ever meant before. It is an instrument designed to protect marriage. It's not understood yet at all. I think many Baha'is consider it an inconvenient formality. They can't understand why the devil, the way I couldn't either, once they had to get their parents' consent. They can't understand, for instance, why they should get the consent of their natural parents instead of say, their adoptive parents, who are in every sense of the word, the, the, the innermost heart of their hearts, they've brought them up, they love them, they're their mother and their father. But still, they don't have to get their consent. They have to get the consent of their natural parents and so on. So these things often arouse a great deal of speculation in the minds of young people.
But one of the things in connection with this law that we have to remember is, law is aimed at the greatest good for the greatest number. If there are any lawyers in this room, I think they'll back me up. There's a legal phrase, I wish I'd written it down when I heard it, which is even better phrase than that. But obviously, this is the meaning of the law. Law is designed for the greatest good of the greatest number. The laws of Baha'u'llah are not just for us in this room, not for the people living in the Dominion of Canada. They are for the human race. They are for the people living in the villages, which I think we consider is the sort of an inconvenient appendage to the human race. They are for the illiterate, they are for the poor, they are for everybody on the planet. And therefore, the greatest good of the greatest number. Naturally, around the fringe, like all laws, there are always fringe cases that work hardship. But which would you prefer? Would you prefer to have what seems to you a hardship in your personal life, or are you more interested in humanity? You see, in theory, because you're a Baha'i, fundamentally, you're a do-gooder, you're a humanitarian. So you really believe that this is going to do good to the human race. That's why you're a Baha'i. I think that that's true of all of us. We have accepted it because we think it is the remedy that is good for the whole planet, for the human race, for the future of mankind. Then aren't you willing, in some strange circumstance of your personal life, to be sacrificed to the law, if the law is good for the whole world? Well, I am. And I think this is one of the attitudes that the young Baha'is have to learn. They have to learn to accept certain laws of Baha'u'llah, even when it pinches them, so to speak, because the law is for the human race, not just for me or for you, but for the whole of humanity.
I have so often heard cases where parents gave their consent to marriage because they were afraid that the children would disobey, particularly amongst the Persians, and they have suffered greatly from it, and the children have been unhappily married. And the parents sincerely thought, even in the very beginning, that the marriage was unsuitable, that it would not turn out well. But they didn't dare say anything to the young people for fear they would go ahead, marry, disobey the Baha'i law, and forfeit their voting rights, and then get into a whole mess and a long process of straightening the whole thing out. Well, if we educated the Baha'is properly in an understanding of what this great protective law of Baha'u'llah means, then I don't think we'd have these inconveniences and these calamities that come upon families.
That marriage is to create harmony in the world. Purpose of marriage: create harmony in the world, harmony amongst families. And I'm sure all of us know cases of a violent and bitter disruption in families because the child has gone ahead and married somebody that the parent couldn't possibly approve of. They were violently, violently against it. I have had, in my experience, which of course covers a long time and a wide range, I've had so many examples of how non-Baha'i parents capitulate to the Baha'is, to their Baha'i children, in this respect of obtaining their consent. I remember a young man who married a very beautiful black girl. And, um, when they came to Haifa's pilgrims, I said, "How did you get your parents' consent?" "To your parents?" "Baha'is?" He said, "Oh no, they were very much against it." Well, I said, "What did you do?" Well, he said, "I took her home for the weekend, and they couldn't very well throw her out on the street, so they had to be polite, and she spent the weekend as our guest. And when they saw what a beautiful character she was, what a wonderful woman, they were won over, and they gave their consent." It's been a very, very happy marriage. And this often happens that the parent will hold out for a long period, and often in the end, capitulate.
One of the most extraordinary things is the parents that won't give their consent because they don't think that the child should ask for it. That happens too, you know. Nowadays, the parents are very emancipated. So when the child goes and says, "Please, can I get married to so-and-so? I can't get married without your consent because I'm a Baha'i." They say, "Nonsense, that's all poppycock. I'm not getting married. You're getting married. Do as you please. I won't have anything to do with it." You see. Then the child is just as much in difficulty as if the parents are against it and won't give consent.
But we have to orient ourselves to these great laws of Baha'u'llah. We have to realize that to be a Baha'i isn't just a question of a world peace and an international court of justice and an international language and, you know, abolition of war and federated states of the world. All these things that are no effort on our part because we can't personally bring about any of those things. Society, the governments of the world have to bring about these big things. We can't. But when I'm asked to apply a law about how a lot of my personal desires in life, that is the real pinch. And I think it's this kind of Baha'i that we should learn to be: a Baha'i that is willing to look at the teachings of Baha'u'llah and look at the laws of Baha'u'llah and say, "Because they come from God, they are just, they are merciful, they are for the good of the human race, and I'm going to bow my head and accept it, whether I like it or whether I don't." And I think when we have that attitude towards marriage, perhaps many young people will be a little happier in their marriages.
When I am occasionally present at weddings, I always give the young people one piece of advice: Don't start fighting. Don't begin to assert yourself. You see, um, there is a very belligerent attitude on the part of women today. I remember once, years ago, a journalist asking me what I thought about women's lib. I think this was 1970. I said, "What's that?" I'd been traveling in jungles and things, I hadn't seen any newspapers, I didn't even know what women's lib was. He said, "What's that?" "Oh," he said, "it's this and that," and he explained the women's liberation movement. I said, "I don't approve of it. But if you want to start a men's lib society in the United States, I would be glad to join it." And he was delighted. Came out in two-inch headlines.
[Music]
Although women should have equal opportunity and equal rights and social justice with men, I don't believe in any attitude on the part of either men or women that leads to disputation and assertion of rights at the expense of harmony and so on. And I think that this is often what happens in marriage. The, the woman or the man, conditioned by the psychology of the society in which we are living nowadays, enters it with a "me first" attitude. You know, people have called this the "me first" period of this century. And this is really what's one of the fundamental things that's wrong with the whole century: is that it's "me first," "me first" to a degree that even affects mothers in relationship to children.
I heard about a case in California. I was staying with very old friends, and I asked them about their children. And so they said, "The eldest son had been married and had three children, and one fine day, with a lot of little children, the wife just ups and says, 'I have to express myself. I have been denied my personal expression in life, and I am going to find myself and express myself.' And off she goes and walks out, leaves the husband, leaves the three children." Well, I don't know what it comes from. Intense selfishness? Mental aberration? "Me first"? You, you characterize it. The factor means that this is the sort of thing that we are increasingly seeing in society and hearing in society. And if you can show me anywhere in the teachings of any prophet, I don't care whether it's Buddha or Moses or Muhammad or Baha'u'llah or Jesus Christ or anybody, where they tell you that "me first" is the principle of life, I would like to see it, because I don't think anybody ever taught the human race anything as pernicious and opposite to spiritual doctrines as that. And yet, it's this attitude that I think, to a great extent, is damaging to a marriage in the society in which we live here, say, North America and Europe. It's "me first." "I have my rights." "I have to express myself." Baha'u'llah says, "Forget thyself." 'Abdu'l-Bahá, my mother used to say, she had heard the Master say, "The secret of self-mastery is self-forgetfulness." And I think that the, the psychologists in this room will bear me out. A lot of psychological therapy is based on getting the person to stop thinking about themselves and dwelling on their own personality and problems, and get their mind focused on something outside themselves. This is the whole teaching of Baha'u'llah: serve humanity, serve others, do something for the human race, for your partners in life, for the members of the community in which you live, whatever it is. It's all an outgoing thing. We're extroverts in the Baha'i Faith, not introverts, you see.
Anyway, this is a very, very dangerous thing. And when young people marry, they often have been conditioned, I think, in their minds to the idea that, "Well, he's not going to put me down. It's going to be on an equal basis." You see, which usually, in the mind of the person that has that idea, means 90% me and 10% the other person. And they start asserting themselves, and of course, they have squabbles. I'd like to know any human being that's been married that didn't have a fight with their partner some period in life. Now, please don't think that I'm referring to my own marriage. Shoghi Effendi was the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, and I never, never put him in the pigeonhole of a husband. So just get that idea away. That doesn't even come into the discussion.
But I think that most people who marry have this tendency to have fights, or beginning, middle, end of marriage, it doesn't matter. It's human to have a fight every now and then. But the point is not to cultivate the fight, and above all, don't cultivate the harsh words, because they, they shoot arrows. All of us are guilty of shooting arrows into the hearts of other people, whether it's a husband or wife or a friend or whatever it may be. Often our poor parents, that wound very, very deeply, and we can't get the arrow back. It's gone, and it goes into the heart of the other person, and with luck, it may heal, but sometimes it never does. So that one has to really guard one's tongue in marriage and guard against fighting.
The other day, Violet and I were in a plane, as usual, and we got in conversation in the waiting room with a young couple going on their honeymoon. And he wanted to talk, and she was reading, I don't know, a magazine or something. And she said, "Shut up, don't you see I'm reading?" Well, that's a good beginning for a honeymoon, you see. In the beginning, you can kiss and make up, and the, the force of sex and attraction is so strong, usually in the beginning of marriage, that it will smooth over for the first six months, or the first two years, or whatever it is. It's liable to smooth over the violent scenes that sometimes take place between young people. But then gradually, it no longer smooths them over, because it becomes a habit, becomes a normal expression in life, and so on, and it doesn't have that extraordinary capacity to reunite the couple that it has in the beginning.
In marriage, well, they should think about these things. They should guard their tongues. Another thing, I think, in marriage, is that don't sleep on a quarrel. This was something that I always thought was so wonderful in my, my own mother, who was really a very marvelous Baha'i teacher and very marvelous person. And we had our squabbles. I fought with my father because I was very like him, and he didn't know how to handle me psychologically the way my mother did. So we would have, you know, two little. And mother would never, never allow us to go to bed with any disharmony in the house. There had to be the goodnight kiss, and very often the goodnight prayer together. We had trouble in our family, we opened the book of prayers and had a prayer, you see. Well, these are very small things, but they help a great deal in families. They help to keep us together.
And I think that if, if the Baha'is would realize that marriage is not only give and take, but surely the one who gives more is not cursed by God for giving more to produce harmony in the home and to maintain the marriage. Isn't this what is pleasing in the sight of God? Does God want somebody to come out with a victor? Does He want some woman to go out and say, "I won that once and for all. I'm getting a divorce"? For the man, the same thing. Is this what God wants? Is this what He thinks is pleasing? Is this the way to keep the human race going in the bonds of matrimony? So that it seems to me that a great deal of the trouble in marriages is immaturity of judgment, hastily running into something that you're not sure whether it's a good thing or not. Perhaps your parents are very unhappy about it, or you go against the wishes of your parents, and then you get into it, and you reflect all the modern attitudes of society. I, I personally, I just don't get it. I wasn't brought up that way. I haven't seen it in my own past. I haven't seen it in the West that I, we used to live in here in Canada, North America. I haven't seen it in the East that I've lived in for 45 years. For 45 years, and I don't like it. And I don't think it's necessary. I think it's the wrong attitude. And I think that people should evaluate their attitudes properly. As I say, this, this pernicious "me first" attitude is going a long way to ruining everything at the end of the 20th century, you see. It's in every single field: marriage, plus the whole of society.
Then I think that there is another force at work in the world today. I, I visualize it as a centripetal force. There are two forces, really. One of them is centrifugal. I don't know whether any of this generation ever read Edgar Allan Poe, but he wrote a very marvelous essay or a short story called "The Maelstrom." And as you remember, it was this vast, vast whirlpool in the middle of the ocean somewhere, where if a ship came even hundreds of miles away in contact with this force of the whirlpool, there was no hope for it. It went down, you see. Well, there's a great deal in our society in the world today that is sucking us under, and that is the intense materialism of the society in which we live. As Shoghi Effendi said, "a cancerous materialism." But we won't go into that. We go into the other force. The other, the opposite of that, is a centripetal force, which is just throwing people out from their center. And I think that this is one of the strongest forces in, um, everything to do with society in the West, and I mean typical Western society, Europe, North America, and the big cities of the world, which are all imitating it. This is the force of disintegration, the force of getting away from a center, getting away from a nucleus. And I think this is what has such a, a tragic effect in the home and a very tragic effect on the children.
I know I have watched the society of the West as much as I could when I'm in it, which is every now and then, and I disapprove of it to the very bottom of my spine. I don't know what part of my anatomy to take as an example, but I disapprove of it wholeheartedly. In other words, everything, everything disapproves of the present society. I think that one of the things that is so wrong is that there is no, um, cohesion in the home. A home is no longer a home. I exonerate people where the wife has to work, because I think that when it's actually necessary for various reasons for a husband and a wife both to have full-time jobs, and then you have children, there's precious little time to create a family life. And everything in the present society detracts from family life. The number of things that children belong to in this part of the world stuns me, and I cannot understand it. They have to go swimming, and skating, and baseball, and football, and, and Girl Scouts, and Boy Scouts, and this club, and that club, and this school activity, and that school activity, till it's a shuttle service of getting these darlings to wherever it is they think they ought to be going. And it's usually the fault of the parents, because they look at the other children, instead of thinking as Baha'is, "What would be a good atmosphere to bring my child up in?" They get on this treadmill of our present society. No longer the Baha'is like mad, and their children with them. Then they're so astonished that the marriage goes to pieces, that the children aren't the least interested in the Baha'i Faith, that they make a face if they have to go to the Feast or the meeting, because they could be going to the Girl Scout, so they could be doing this, or they could be roller skating or swimming or something. Why the devil should they be going to that Baha'i thing? You see, even if it's only once every 19 days. Well, if you bring your children up that way, don't be surprised if they don't become Baha'is. Don't be surprised if you start fighting in your family because you're both nervous wrecks, and you get a divorce, and then that's even nicer for the children.
I remember a few years ago, a little, a very dear little boy, who at least as a Baha'i seems to have survived the cataclysms of his life. His father and mother divorced, and then each remarried, and then the, um, let's see, the father had to hyphenate his name with the women's lib mother that he'd married. So he looked at me very, shall he said, "You know, sometimes it's a little complicated. He was 10, I think, because I find I have three names, you see. My name is Smith, but Daddy's name now is Smith-Jones, and Mother is Johnson, you see. That's a lot for a 10-year-old." And of course, the first family goes off in smoke, and each partner marries somebody else that has a batch of kids, and then these children sort of run a kind of a shuttle service around this environment. But they're so surprised if the children have hang-ups, if they're psychologically unsound, if they don't become Baha'is, if they're, if they're, um, insecure, a word that I hate, but is probably very descriptive. And why wouldn't they be? I would be too.
I think children can stand an extraordinary amount of trouble in life. I don't, you see, on one side, we're always talking about the psychological damage, the trauma, they can't stand it. "Well, he got dropped on his head, somebody shrieked at him when he was born, or something or other, and consequently, sort of has carte blanche to go off the rails." But I, I don't think that's true. I think that's all a lot of nonsense. You know, I have to go by my own experience of life. I don't live my life out of somebody else's mind, somebody else's life, or somebody else's books. I live it out of my own. I've had a life so full of sorrow that probably all of you put together in this room could not compete with it, and I'm perfectly serious. I had a mother whom I adored, whom from the age of, well, as early as I can remember, she wasn't well all of her life. She was in Italy, and then after 'Abdu'l-Bahá passed away, she had a terrible nervous breakdown, and for over a year, nobody knew whether she'd live or die. The news was broken to her very suddenly, it had a traumatic effect, and she couldn't walk, and she used to call me, and we used to have tremendous deathbed scenes, and she would weep, and she would make me promise that I would be a good Baha'i, that I would take care of my father, that my father would, was called and had to take care of me, and so on. That is not exactly what these dearly beloved psychiatrists in the Roman psychologist would recommend for bringing a child up. I can remember agonizing scenes in my life.
And then, let's go about what happened to me after I had the honor of being married to the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, with all the troubles in his life, when the whole house shook because of covenant-breaking and so on, and I was terrified for my soul and terrified for everything, and his sufferings became my sufferings because I loved him and hated to see him suffering like this. So I burned in the same fire. And then I found him dead in the morning. And you know what's happened since then, as far as work and service and whatnot is concerned. So nobody can talk to me about shocks and suffering, because I've had more, as I say, than I think most people in this room, all put together. But frankly, I don't see that it's done me all that much harm. I can still outrun any of you. I still, I, I still travel all over the world and try, to the best of my ability, to help the Baha'is and help the Faith. And I don't think that you find me a very sad or or mopey or or introverted personality.
So, never mind all of these things which we all go through in life, which are bad and hard for us. They're part of life. It's what you offset it with. I believe that it's the, the quantity of what you give children, I mean, the quality of what you give children, that is more important than the quantity. And I believe that from my own life, I always said that to be five minutes with my mother when she was dying was a lot more interesting and fruitful than hours with anybody else. For some reason or other, what she had in her of faith and courage and devotion and radiance was so marvelous that any time I was with her, and anything I got from her, under any circumstances, and I said they were often agonizing circumstances, was so much better than anything I could have gotten from other people. So it's the quality.
I never saw my father. I hear people making all this fuss about, you know, "You don't pay any attention to the children. He comes home. I have to do it all. And then he comes back from the office and he doesn't spend five minutes with the children, and he goes and works over the weekend and so on." Well, I think it'd be nice if the family, as Baha'is, had prayers together and time together for their children and created a family atmosphere. I think there ought to be maybe that much time inside of a Baha'i home. But I can't see the reason that the father should be exactly like the mother. It's not his function, not the same functions at all in the world. A father and a mother. And if the father is a wonderful person and a good Baha'i, again, it will be the quality of what he gives to his children rather than the quantity of what he gives to his children.
My father, first of all, he was an artist and an architect, and you know that Shoghi Effendi made him a Hand of the Baha'i Faith, and he called him a saint. So, beginning with that premise, we'll go back to my father. Daddy, Daddy was extremely attached to art and architecture, and he always had this, he was chairman of the local Baha'i Assembly for years, but that was about it. And, um, he always had this classic statement: "I'm not a spiritual man." And he said, "I never enter church unless I'm the architect of it. Never been to church in my life unless I was designing it." Well, he had the old-fashioned Scottish attitude towards religion, you see, that religion was something you did on Sunday, and preaching and formality, and he grew up with that and hated it. So he never got any other concept of religion through his mind. But as I said, the Guardian thought that he was one of the most spiritual men he'd ever known him. He said he was a saint. A different point of view. But the point is that all my childhood, Mother said, "Daddy never looked at me from the time I was born until I could draw." And when I, when I got so that I actually was beginning to draw things, then he got very interested because, of course, that interested him, you see. She said, "He never said anything about my education. That when she wanted to consult him about it, he said, 'Whatever you decide, dear,' put his hat on, went to the office, and that was it."
Now, I'm not saying that that was a model. I'm not holding this up as a model of fatherhood. All I'm saying is, it neither disrupted our mother's, my mother's and father's marriage, nor seems to have done me any harm. All my childhood, I remember my father in the great, you might say, productive years of his profession, working all day and coming back at night, had lunch downtown like most Canadians, and coming back at night at seven o'clock and having dinner, and almost invariably going into his library and either to his books or his magazines on art and furniture and whatnot, or working on a competition architecturally. And this was my whole recollection of my father's, uh, my life at home with my father. We didn't do me any harm. I think my father was a marvelous man. I learned, learned so much from him. He opened for me a whole world of art. He gave me something that has been such a blessing in my life. He gave me his eyes to see beauty. He taught me to appreciate it. In other words, everything he had in one field, he was able to communicate to me. And strangely enough, it was this gift of my father, his specialization, if you like, his being steeped in his profession and his whole world of art and thought, that enabled him in the end to build the Shrine of the Báb and to bring great happiness to the heart of the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, who really needed some happiness at that point, you see.
So what I'm trying to get at is, it's the quality of life. It's not the quantity. But you ought to be sure that the quality is there, that these wonderful spiritual values that exist for all of us, and particularly the power of the teachings, are able to come into our daily life in the home. This is more important than anything else. I think that one of the sad things to me, I don't know whether it can be helped or not, but there's a lot of the gracefulness of life disappearing in the West. And perhaps everybody has to go around in jeans. I sometimes think if I ever see another pair of blue jean pants, I'll shriek. But maybe we have to put up with it. Anyway, I won't have to put up with it at the most, another, more than another 10 years or so. But the point is that perhaps this is all right. Perhaps nobody has to have what the French call "tenue," any kind of holding yourself together, looking like a nice, polished, well-dressed, "swanier" human being. I don't know. But it.
Does seem to me that there's a lot of gracefulness in life that goes with spiritual understanding, and that this also is being continually lost in our society. And I don't know why there shouldn't be a little bit more of that introduced into Baha'i homes, if they make an effort.
So many homes nowadays seem to be a question of opening the refrigerator door on the installment plan, and then they, you know, everybody has a sandwich or whatever. There is usually ice cream, and there's no, there's no sit-down meal of the family quietly together. They don't see each other together. Why do you expect your marriage to live if you haven't got even this much family life inside the doors of your own house? Why should it? Are you creating a family? Have you got an environment that belongs to yourself, or is it all centripetal, outside, outside, outside?
And along with everything else, of course, added unto us has come television, which is probably one of the most terrible things that ever happened to the human race. So far, eventually, of course, it may be a very marvelous instrument. But the amount of time that children waste. Who was it? This, um, Nat Redstein wrote a book, "Go, Go, Look at TV," which is unfortunately out of print. A marvelous book. And he figured out, based on statistics in the United States, that the average American, this was published a number of years ago, saw television seven hours a day. Well, what do you think is going to develop any spirituality in a culture that they have their nose glued to this perfectly ridiculous things, mostly crime and sex and ads? Seven hours a day. How can this cultivate any family atmosphere?
Some families actually have the courage and the, the guts, so to speak, to say, "No, we're only going to have certain programs, and we're only going to see them together," or "The children are allowed to see certain programs, and that's it. The rest of the time they don't." But other families, they have actually, the TV is a method by which the selfishness of the mother, and perhaps the selfishness of the parents, can be manifested because they shunt the child off onto the television screen. "Oh, go look at the TV. You see? That's fine." And then she's free to do whatever she likes, usually a half or three-quarter of an hour conversation on the telephone with somebody she knows. And this is the way the children are, are again, decentralized from any force that might make the child feel that it has a home.
I think that we forget that one of the great commandments, if you like, it's just as much of a commandment, as far as I'm concerned, as many people, is to be polite. And I don't think that there's much courtesy left in the world. And yet Baha'i parents are supposed to be courteous to each other, courteous at the Baha'i feasts, courteous at the Baha'i meetings, courteous on buses to other human beings, and above all, inculcate courtesy inside the home. If you don't teach your children manners, you don't teach them consideration for other people. If you don't help the child to have good standards, whatever the nature of those standards are, then why are you surprised and disappointed at the results that you get? You're only getting, after all, what you produced yourself. It's come back to you perfectly logically through your own failure. And I think that these, to me, are the things that people in this kind of a society should consider.
There, you see, our society, and I'm sure it's based on psychology, I mean the psychology of this period in history, our society is of such a nature that people don't really want to think because they can't stand it. If they thought about the world in which they live, economically, politically, socially, and so on, they couldn't probably stand it. So everything is an escape mechanism. But we Baha'is should pull ourselves back and say, "Well, I'm not like those people because I've got the word of God. I have something else to hang on to." So why do I have to be like them? Let me try and offset this tremendous centripetal force, throwing people away from the inner center, throwing the family out from its family center, and so on, by something else.
And I think that one of the greatest instruments of doing this is prayer. I think that prayer is obviously a very powerful thing and a very wonderful thing. But I think that if we don't teach the children to pray, if we don't have prayers with the children, we are criminally neglecting our children. I remember a family that we were visiting on one of our trips, and they had a little boy about, I think he was around five or six. And, um, I said to the parents, "Does he say a prayer at night?" And they said, "Well, we tried to get him to say a prayer at night, but he doesn't like it, so we don't want him to turn against the faith, so we don't ask him to say a prayer." I said, "You're absolutely wrong. Something the matter with you. You should teach that child to pray. You should teach that Baha'i child prayers. Let him learn them and memorize them and see that he says them every night, because otherwise you're failing in your obligation as parents." They're both Baha'is and very good Baha'is. So the father took that to heart. And the next day he said, "You know, I tried that on him last night, and he liked it." Did you ever hear of anything so nonsensical that a five-year-old child is telling the father not to teach him any Baha'i prayers, and the father is listening to the child and has absolutely no sense of discipline or parenthood or any other darn thing?
I mean, you study animals if you want to know how to teach children. You study animals. I know a lot about animals and I've had lots and lots of pets all my life. You watch a cat, you watch a dog, you watch wild animals. Fine. The mother cat purrs, and she nurses the babies, and she licks them ad infinitum. And then if they don't obey her, out come the claws, and the cat kitten gets a box. That teaches it, "Don't you do that again." And if it does it again, out comes mama's claws, and the kitten gets another terrific box. Foxes do it out in the wilderness, teaching their cubs. Otherwise, the kid, the cubs wouldn't survive in the world that they're going to go out of their nest, or whatever it is, from their lair. The same thing is true of our children. If we don't train our children, if we don't insist that our children know the Faith of Baha'u'llah the way they should, and take hold of the power of prayer, why should we be surprised if the children have no anchors in life, no point of orientation, no spiritual character? And whose fault is it? Theirs or ours?
Children, I think, are angels. And very few children, I'm sure everybody would agree, are evil. Evilness is not a characteristic that is usually born in man. There are some people that perhaps because of hereditary factors are really evil, but there's such an infinitesimal proportion. Whereas children are really little angels. They're born in the world, they're beautiful, they're like white snow that falls down from heaven. Then what dirties them and what ruins them? We do. Now, they're also little devils because they have that, that animal characteristic of trying to get away with as much as they can. Therefore, they have to be trained. As 'Abdu'l-Bahá said, you have to train the children. You have to prune the trees. As it says in the Bible, "As the twig is bent, the bow will grow." It's the same old thing. You can't get it. And we're always so passionately interested in agriculture. Oh, my! You know, we, we graft things, and we, we train fruit trees, and we read all about it in, in the Reader's Digest or some magazine, and we talk about it. But we don't do it with the children. Why? They need it even more than the trees, you see. But we don't do it because of a sort of an adult approach to what you can and cannot and should and should not do with children. I'm sure the psychologists are going to give talks, we'll elaborate on this point very much better than I can.
I have another subject that I'd like to touch upon, and that is this, that first of all, to get back to prayer before I change the subject. Um, when I was a child, I was brought up that "Alláh-u-Abhá" was a prayer. And I used to say it. I had a rosary, and I'd say it 95 times, which Baha'u'llah has given to us as a prayer. It's not obligatory, but we may do it, you see. And it was a very special thing. This word "Alláh-u-Abhá" have really carried me across Africa, most terrible difficulties with the automobile and long, long treks in the wilderness and so on. They've carried me through illness, and they've carried me through public lectures that my mind was simply blank, and I didn't know what on earth to say, and so on, you see. Well, at least we should teach this to the children. I used to tell the Africans in the villages, I said, "Look, teach that child to say 'Akbar'." In fact, I would teach the children on the spot, "Alláh-u-Abhá. Say it." And two minutes later, they were all saying "Alláh-u-Abhá" beautifully. Now, I said, "If you're in danger, you go out there in the wilderness, you see a snake, you fall and hurt yourself, you're frightened, you're going to have an exam in school. Say, inside yourself, as many times as you want to, and you will find that this is your protection, that this brings assistance to you, this helps you in your exams and so on." You see, we don't give these things, these precious, precious, extremely simple things, to the children. But we give them plenty of physical presence.
I, I was horrified a few years ago. One of your Canadian Baha'is working at the World Centre came back, and we were talking. I said, "What was it like in Canada?" Well, she'd had a good time, she'd seen her grandchildren and everything. But she said, "Really, you know, this business of this Barbie doll," which I'd never heard of before. She said, "You know how much my daughter spent the last year on buying things to do with that doll?" Two thousand dollars. I said, "What?" She said, "Yes, two thousand dollars." I said, "You must be joking." No, she said, "I'm serious. She spent two thousand dollars because the little girl sees it on the TV, all of her friends have the latest Barbie doll petticoat, and I don't know what." And it all costs money. And all in all, the mother had spent about two thousand dollars for that one doll that this child had.
I remember some time ago, I went to a birthday party of my little cousin, and about four or five neighbors came in Bermuda. And everybody brought a present. So there was one very big, handsome box of some kind of a special toy like that. And I noticed that he hadn't even opened it. He didn't open it at the party. And by the next morning, he hadn't even unwrapped it, opened it. I said, "Aren't you going to look at that?" Well, he said, "I have a lot of others like it." Now, is that the way to bring children up? It's, it's criminal. I'm not blaming the Baha'is because I don't know what I would do in this society. I've been, I lived five months, you know, editing this film on the pilgrimage in Toronto. And of course, I went, I had a car because I couldn't get to work and back without it. And we went to the supermarket and we bought things and cooked and so on. So you see, all of these parents with a little child stuck in the supermarket basket. Well, it's bad enough for adults, but it's not a very good education for children. But I don't know what the mother would do with the child if she didn't take it, whether to the supermarket. But that's not healthy because, just like the mother, the child passes down these aisles. It's one of the biggest gimmicks that's ever been invented by the human race. You pay as you go out, you see. You don't know what anything costs. You never bother to look. And you just pick it up. "I'll have this. I'll have that." And the child's little hand is always out there to grab something. And I've heard mothers arguing with the child, "No, I am not going to buy you another candy. You had a candy in the last shop, and that was the last one you're going to have. Now, you can't have another one." Whereupon the child opens its mouth wide and raises hell in the supermarket, you see. Well, it's not a very good way of bringing up children. But what the answer to that is, I wouldn't know, because it's a very complicated society. Probably the best answer is pioneer.
You know, this is a, a child-oriented society. Now, I don't think any of you are aware of it, but I am because I'm an observer. My understanding is that there is a human race that goes through different periods. It's a child, it's an adolescent, it's an adult, it's middle-aged, it's old, and then it dies. And that's the human race. And it's all meant to be together. It's all meant to be a very natural process, something we experience together, you see. Again, get back to the family, get back to the bigger family, which is something non-existent almost in our society. Thank God. All through Central America and the islands, they know what the larger family is. They have a sense of family, which is a precious thing and a great safeguard and wonderful for the children. Anyway, whatever it is, but these, these poor children in our society today are worshiped. I've never seen anything like it. We have developed into child worshipers. Not so much youth worshipers. We're afraid of youth, with good grounds, but we worship children. And because of this worship of children, the child is blown up way out of proportion. "Your slightest wish is my command" sort of attitude, you see. Well, whatever it's due to, I don't know. I think probably, uh, psychologically, it is due to, I would say. But let the bigwigs, the brain shrinkers here, get busy on it. Um, I think it is due to the fear of war, because annihilation is hanging over the planet. Whether people are ignorant and don't read the right things or hear, you know, get up into that intellectual level where they realize how great the danger is or not, psychologically, the danger of annihilation is hanging over all of us. Well, always in history, when there's a war, the reaction is more babies, even more boy babies in the past. And this creates this attitude, you see, of worship of children, people having a lot of children, and people worshiping children. It's a giant psychological thing due to perhaps the peril in which humanity stands today. I don't know. I'm just the way I explain it. But whatever it is, it means that we have child worship. And I don't think that's good for children. I think a child is just a member of the family, that's all. And he has his place that he has to fit into, just the way every other member of the family must have their place that they have to fit into.
You can do almost anything with children. As I said, they're so seldom evil. They're good. They're wonderful. And you can do almost anything with them. And they have their place in society and in the home. They can play a wonderful part. I remember two examples of Baha'i children. I was having a dinner with Mildred Mottahedi, who many of you know, and who has, you know, produces some of the most beautiful china in the world, that's her profession. She designs it and sells it. And she had very, very beautiful dinner service on her table the night that we were dining there. And one of the Baha'is was invited and had a five-year-old child. So this five-year-old child picked up an absolutely priceless plate and headed for the kitchen. And I said, "I think it'd be better if you didn't take that plate. You better let one of the older people take it." And her father turned on me in the flesh and said, "She has to learn how to do these things." And I said, "Yes, but she doesn't necessarily have to learn on Mildred's priceless china. Supposing she breaks it?" You see, the worship of the child. He didn't think of his hostess, damn the hostess, damn the china, damn everything. The child has to learn. That it's a good thing to take something out. Granted, I think that's fine. I think that's the way to, to, to teach the children to serve in the home. But you ought to have enough sense to know when you're a guest in a person's house that has marvelous china, you don't necessarily experiment with your five-year-old child on her china, you see. Sense of proportion. So that's one way of bringing up children, one aspect.
Now, the other day, we were down in La Ceiba in Honduras. And they're a Baha'i couple. To my great chagrin, they have divorced. I don't know. I think sometimes divorce is necessary and is justified. That's why Baha'u'llah permitted it. And for reasons of their own, because it just was too explosive and didn't work, they divorced. But they're both very attached to this extremely beautiful, intelligent Baha'i child. And so they both live in the same town so that the child won't have a sense that it's lost one half of its family. And this little girl came out. Her mother went on to make arrangements for our meetings in a very distant place. She had to go ahead. Was there a week, and we were only going to fly up special plane for two or three days anyway. The mother was away. So the little girl had to be with the father, even although it meant coming back late at night from a meeting in a village, because there was no other thing to do with her. And she came to this meeting. And one of the other nights, we had been teaching the people there, Baha'i villagers, a new Baha'i song. So at the end of this meeting, in a big shed like that, in semi-darkness, this little thing comes up and starts talking to me in Spanish. And I had called her father. I said, "What is she saying?" Well, she says, "Why don't you teach them that song that you taught in the other village the other night?" Five years old. She liked that song. She thought the other villagers had enjoyed it. So at five, she said, "Why don't you teach it to these villagers?" She was right. Then, at the end of the meeting, she picks up the mic like this, and in a very clear voice, five years old, recites with great reverence a Baha'i prayer. And that closes the meeting. Well, you see, you can do anything with children. The fault is ours, not the fault of the children.
You know, um, I'm sure all the Baha'is in this room. I got to stop now at 11 o'clock. Now, what time is it? Half past 10. Uh, the, the fault is nothing to do with the children. But I think that we have to realize that nowadays, it has changed. Thank God. And this concept that you become a Baha'i at 15, which doesn't exist anywhere in the religion of Baha'u'llah, and was a misconception from the very beginning. And that your National Assembly knows that, your National Teaching Committee knows it, in the Baha'i teachers and the counselors and the board members and everybody knows that. I'm not going to waste time on it here. But this thing was a very pernicious weed. It was a mistake. It got into the minds of the Baha'is, and we spent a good 30 years trying to get the weed out, because weeds are very hardy, as you know. So you have a Baha'i child, and you bring the child up to believe in Baha'u'llah, and that is your moral obligation and privilege according to Baha'u'llah himself. Now, if you have a non-Baha'i partner, then you cannot boss him or her around and say, "No, I'm going to have the child brought up a Baha'i," because the religion of Baha'u'llah is not supposed to ever be a bone of contention. It's only a bone of contention when, in Persia, they say, "Deny it," and we say, "We won't," so we're killed. But otherwise, we don't make this a bone of contention. That's not the purpose of the teachings of Baha'u'llah. So you have to come to an amicable, peaceful arrangement inside the home with your non-Baha'i partner. But if you have a Baha'i partner, then you must bring your child up to be a Baha'i.
And I don't think that under any circumstances a child should ever be made aware. Now, this is my personal opinion, and I have been saying it everywhere, and I'm going to say it here, and I don't think anybody has ever told me I can't say it. I don't think any child should ever be told that at 15 it has to make a choice to be a Baha'i, because it's not in the Baha'i teachings. Nor do I think that we should ever have the equivalent of communion or bar mitzvah for a 15-year-old child. That's not in the Baha'i teachings. Anxiety. We haven't got these things in the Faith. Now, you can see by this latest development in the messages of the House of Justice, for the first time, praise be to God, we have been asked to keep a Baha'i census, which means that the child at birth is registered as a Baha'i, and that's it. Now, when the child is 15, what happens? According to the teachings of Baha'u'llah, it's an adult, because he says you can marry when you're 15. Maybe the state will choose to say marriage is at 16, 17, 18. That's another matter. But in the laws of the Aqdas, Baha'u'llah permits marriage at the age of 15 for boys and girls. This is the age of maturity. Ever going to be more mature than when you can get married and have children? Nothing else. And you are expected to assume your spiritual obligation. Not a law, a spiritual personal obligation. Have your obligatory prayer, whether it's the little one that long or the one that's this long, doesn't matter, just have it. And fast when the time of the fast comes, you see. That's all there is to doing the Baha'i teachings with 15.
Now, if for some reason or other you don't agree with me, let me ask you to visualize something. The whole of Ottawa is say, 60 or 75 percent Baha'i at this point, or arbitrarily, all of it's Baha'i. And the whole purpose of the teachings of Baha'u'llah is to produce a new world order, a different kind of society based on His teachings. We all agree with that. Probably most of us are Baha'is because we think that this will be a marvelous thing in the future. We want to foster it. So then comes the 15 business. You are going to ask, inside the city of Ottawa, I don't know what the population is, say a million, arbitrarily. You're going to take everybody that's 15 years old, and that would mean a birthday date, and ask them if they want to be a Baha'i or not. When the whole state, when the whole city is based on Baha'i laws and their application, you're going to create the upheaval of progressively asking tens of thousands of citizens whether they agree with what's going on. I mean, it doesn't bear thinking about. It is so stupid. If you apply it that way, that you can see it could never possibly be something that will exist in the future, and it should never have existed in the past. So that I personally believe that when children reach the age of 15, they should not be asked if they want to be registered as Baha'is or not. They should be transferred by the local assembly from the list of children from 1 to 15 to the list of young Baha'is from 15 to 21, which doesn't exist in the Baha'i Faith. It only exists as a legal voting age, so we can own property. That's why people can only be on the local assembly over 21 because that was the legal age, and then the assembly can be registered in law to hold property. Otherwise, there's no meaning. No 21 in the Baha'i Faith. It's 15 in the Baha'i Faith. But for the time being, so they are changed from child to youth on the register. And later on, they're going to be changed from youth to the legal voting age, whatever the House of Justice may accept for that period in that country, you see. And that's it. You're not going to ask them any questions. You're not going to have a whole huge thing about it, because if you have any sense, you must know that the last thing in the world to ask a 15-year-old in this society is, "Do you want to be a Baha'i or not?" It's a good way to screw you. It's a good way to make you miserable. It's a good way to hold a threat over your parents. It's a good way to get out from something that maybe the child doesn't even properly itself understand. It is the worst psychological age to ask such an important question involving the spiritual life of the child. And I don't think it's a question that should ever be asked.
I think, friends, that we've reached the point where we can have a few questions, because I don't wish to overstep my time, and I think that my time ends at what, somewhere here.