 First of all, I wanna thank the organizers of the conference for inviting me here today. To begin with, if you don't know yet, you'll soon realize I am not a Persian Baha'i. That means I can hardly pronounce the word tariff properly, let alone practice it. So when I say I really am indebted and I consider it a blessing, I mean it. And the reason I mean it is besides the tremendous bounty we all have by being together, every time I have been invited to give a presentation, I have experienced actually some amazing, unexpected blessing. And that happened this time as well. The reason I'm wearing, this is a barang from the Philippines. The reason I'm wearing this is not the, because there's some sort of conscious costume strategy behind it. I just came back from a month in Europe while my clothes were dirty in my suitcase. The only thing I had was a blue blazer. I, four months ago I came to California, I got out of the plane, and I was the only person in the airport with a blue blazer. And all these people with Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts were looking at me and I said, I'm never wearing a blue blazer again to California. Now of course that was Southern California, but to a New Yorker, South, North, you know. So I grabbed this. I like Barak. This more, but I had my, grabbed this and I grabbed the presentation I had, which I have worked on while I was in Europe. But I didn't really have an introduction to the presentation that I felt satisfied with. And I didn't know what I was going to do. This morning I ordered room service and I opened it up. And there a young man was there with my breakfast and he handed me my breakfast and he said, what is this word, Baha'i? He says, in my country, it sounds like Baha'i, which means home. He was from the Philippines. And I said, you're from the Philippines. I said, that's fabulous. And I said, you know, I lived in the Philippines. I said, my Barang is right here. He said, let me see your Barang. Showed him my Barang. We ended, now I don't work well early in the morning, but I ended up giving a bit of a talk and he walked out with some information on the faith. And God willing, we might see him here. And if anybody meets a Philippine staffer named Jose and be very nice to him, please. But what it did to me, this is why it was the blessing as well. It reminded me of something in the Philippines that I really think is important. As we gather, I think it's very interesting that we had this wonderful kind words from the NSA of Alaska. The indigenous people of the world have a tremendous amount to tell us. And this young man brought back to my mind, my experiences with a group of indigenous people in the Philippines. They're called the Bajau. The popular name is the Sea Gypsies. And this is a picture of them. They live, they travel the waters between the southern archipelagos of the Philippines, Sulu and Borneo. The amazing thing about the Bajau is how they navigate through the oceans of the southern archipelago. They do it by tasting the water. If you're in a canoe with them, they will have someone in the canoe who literally will sweep his hands back and forth tasting the water. And from tasting the water, they are capable of guiding themselves and navigating between the islands from Borneo to Philippines to Indonesia. I think that represents to us an amazing example, both of the challenge we all face in navigating the oceans of the world, which are not only material oceans, but spiritual oceans. And the amazing abilities we have, which many of us don't recognize. So much of this talk is really about the whole question of guiding ourselves. How do we guide ourselves? How do we guide ourselves between what our awareness is and what we hope to achieve? And to do this, I just wanna begin a little bit back in history. Some of you, those of you who are my age or older and I won't get more specific than that, probably remember something named Verne van Brom. Those of you who are younger probably don't. He was among the fathers of the V2 rocket that the Germans used to bombard England. Something that we would say was a bad thing, probably. After the war, he came to the United States and he helped the United States build rockets which luckily we didn't have to use but were meant in case we did have to use and in our parochial fashion would probably say it was a good thing. But as only can occur in America, he ended up as a Hollywood star because Walt Disney decided if he wanted to do a whole production on space and Verne van Brom became sort of the master of ceremonies and became a Disney star. This provoked someone else who those who are my age may remember, somebody named Tom Leera. He's a professor. He's actually still a professor emeritus as I understand at Harvard who had a bitter sense of humor but a very funny one and he used to play the piano and he was so inspired by Verne van Brom's ability to change and adapt to circumstances that he wrote a song. The name of the song was I aimed for the stars but hit London instead. And the words that I remember from the song and I really encourage you to think about them tonight so you don't go to sleep though, keep going through your heads. He had, the words I remember that I liked the most was once the rockets are up, who cares? There they come down. That's not by department says Verne van Brom. The question I have there is why did Verne van Brom not think it's his department? Verne van Brom was a intellect. He was, I don't know him personally but actually I don't think he was an evil man. He knew how to build guidance for missiles. He didn't seem to know how to build guidance for himself. Where is that guidance for herself? Cicero, who was a famous Roman philosopher said that that guidance exists within us and this is how he described it. It is the impulse which directs to right condom and deters from crime is not only older than the ages of nations and cities but co-avowed with that divine being who sees and rules both heaven and earth. That impulse which Cicero identified is what I am talking about and wish to discuss our human conscience and I wish to discuss it in a way because I think we as Baha'is haven't quite recognized how important a role not only does it play but how important a role we have to play in reigniting that in not only our own minds but in the daily lives of this world and all we do within it. Now before I go into it, I just want, the one thing I do want to do is I just want to go through definitions. Another great ancient philosopher, Socrates said the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms and I just wanted to define the term so we are discussing. These terms can all be defined differently. What's important is we know what we mean by them when we're using them. By consciousness I mean the mental awareness of experience. I have it, you have it, my dog has it, my congolese parrot has it, plants may have it but it is not only human beings who have it. A mental awareness of experience. By science what I talk about and I'm talking about the systematic investigation, explanation and verification of experience. I'm not talking only about what we call the scientific method because in fact many scientists don't use the scientific method like Albert Einstein. By religion, and this is the definition that I'm just using, I'm talking about the organized and disciplined alignment of our spiritual consciousness with the social needs of society through an institution that is really composed of structured networks of relationship. Religion is where we structure ourselves, our relationships, our networks so that our social consciousness and the needs of society can come together and express themselves. We had a wonderful session today actually on this very question. And by conscience I mean when we subjugate and we take responsibility for taking that awareness of cause and effect and using it to determine our individual and social behavior. That is what conscience is. Now, consciousness is what we have been discussing in much of this conference and much will be discussed. But you know, to be conscious of things is sort of from my perspective still to be somewhat external to ourselves. It's in our organ, it's in our brain but many of us believe and probably it might be true probably we could take our brains and put them in a box and that brain might still be conscious. Religion in a sense is external to us as well. It's an institution, it's an alignment as I said of networks of relationships. So it's also external to us. Conscience is different. Immanuel Kant who is known as a great philosopher who tried to make moral standards through human reason alone. Actually in the end, acknowledge that religion was the only basis on which you could really finally justify right and wrong. One of his statements which I think is so powerful is as follows. He said, two things awe me most. The starry sky above me and the moral law within me. Now why I find that such a powerful statement is most of us it's easy to know why the starry sky cause us. It's the a-ha reaction you get from the starry sky, from the birth of a newborn child, from the beauty of a sunset. But what Kant said, what also awed him was the fact that there was something in him, something in all of us as human beings that gave us a moral compass. He didn't know where it came from and it awed him that it existed. That moral country has long been the anchor of morality in human society. In terms of navigation, we often think of Gulliver's Travels. Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels which most people today think of as a child's book but really is a much deeper book of the travels of man through many of the choices we have to make socially as well as morally. And Jonathan Swift spoke of conscience as follows. Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because if a man judges fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him. This knowledge or conscience may both be an accuser and a judge. And I put it there because basically it's another example of where conscience has been the moral compass of human beings since time immemorial. Now, why do I think it's so important for us as Baha'is to particular focus in to this phenomenon? This is what Abdul Baha has said. Each of the divine religions embodies two kinds of ordinances. The first is those which concerns spiritual susceptibilities, the development of moral principles and the quickening of the conscience of man. The second has to do with the material side of ordinances. But the reason I think this quote is so important is Abdul Baha is telling us that one of the reasons for the renewal of divine religions is the quickening of the conscience of man. Not just the consciousness of man, but the conscience of man. Conscience is really two words, with science, con, science, with science. And for that reason, what I wanted to do is I wanted to get a little bit beyond the theoretic and actually look at what would that mean? Among the discussions we had that was very interesting today in some of our sessions was how do we as Baha'is really respond to what we are being asked to do and to reach out to more, to non-Baha'is, both to bring them more in, to understand the Baha'i thought and to begin to play our, the role we have to more dynamically in the society beyond the Baha'i community. And science is actually where I think that opportunity exists as much if not more than almost anywhere else. And so what I'm going to try to do is actually show how I feel we as Baha'is, if we grab hold of our understanding of conscience, can play a vital role in doing what Abdul Baha really tells us to do in terms of renewing it and speeding it's understanding in new society. Science is so important to us because on one hand, as Abdul Baha points out, it allows us to achieve much of what we have to. It allows us to modify change and control nature. It is the breaker of the laws of nature. But it not only is important pragmatically, it is important spiritually. Science is the first emanation from God toward man. All created beings embody the potentiality of material perfection. But the power of intellectual investigation and scientific acquisition is a higher virtue specialized to man alone. Now, when we look at that, that should raise us tremendous expectations in what we can get if we put science and religion together again. Louis Pasteur, who will discuss some more, said a little science estranges man from God, but much science leads him back to him. Is that's what's happening today? Unfortunately, it's not what's happening today from my perspective. What's happening today is our scientific society is captured by the very forces of material gain and power that is propelling much of our society. And the example I use, and it's an example, but it is a powerful example, is the pharmaceutical companies and how they operate today. Science is the investigation of truth. Pharmaceutical companies today spend twice as much on advertising as they do on research and development. Science is being used for profit and power and not necessarily for the mediment of people. This is not only my observation, of course. It's an observation of many others in our society. And among the people who observed it was something named Donald Stokes. And the reason I'm focusing on this is this book by Donald Stokes called Pastors Quadrant. And it's a book that had quite a bit of influence in the science policy community in the United States. And it represents for me an example where if we as Baha'is begin to engage non-Baha'is in ways that they already somewhat understand what is happening and in which we can bring enriched understandings, we will begin to build those sort of bonds that we have to between our understandings and the understandings of those who have not yet found what we believe is the revelation of the faith. Pastors Quadrant, Donald Stokes was at Princeton University and he was very troubled by what he saw as science. What he saw as science, he basically is this is American science post World War II. Vannevar Bush was not related to President Bush or the Bush family, but was a great influence on American science, created an understanding of science that basically said there's basic research, there's applied research, there's the development and then there's productions and operations. Now there are several reasons he did that but one of the reasons is the fact is that science in our society has largely been directed to either profit or military purposes. And what this model allows you to do is two things. He created this model because he wanted those who produced military and had the money for military equipment to invest in basic research and he wanted to create a model of basic research that basically allowed people to work without having to consider the final consequences of their research. This is a model of science where the elements are totally disconnected. Stokes perceive that the result of this is we have reached a point where now our science has become runaway technology. In fact, most people can't tell the difference between science and technology. This is a cartoon, this is a real old cartoon, Rube Goldberg. He was a famous cartoonist. He used to like to make all sorts of inventions but the point is if you look at what we do with our science we do gadgets. The vast majority of the problems of the world remain unsolved but the amount of science that goes into producing gadgets is beyond description and beyond imagination. None of us today can imagine what the iPod of next year is going to be but it's going to be something beyond anything we can imagine. So Stokes put out a proposition in this book, Pasteur's Quadrant, that tried to say there's a better way of doing science. And he did this by creating a matrix. He said, look, from his perspective you either do science because you want to understand things or you want to do science because you have the use for it. And he said, depending upon where you are you do it differently. Some people do pure basic research. And his example was Niels Bohr, famous physicist who basically did theoretical physics. And he says, that's called pure basic research. Then he said there are other people who only use science for the final product. And his example was Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison turned out an enormous number of practical uses of technology. He never made really a contribution to scientific understanding at all. He wasn't interested in that. What Stokes argues and which became a rather dynamic debate and still is a debate within the American science community is that there was a third and better example. The example he wanted to use was Louis Pasteur. Louis Pasteur always approached things by identifying a real world problem. It could be anything from the fact that the sheep were dying from a disease called anthrax to the wine was going sour to that rabies was killing people but he took a real problem. But then he attacked it by going to the most fundamental of understandings. He basically invented the field of microbiology in order to solve the problem of the fact that French wine was going sour. So for Stokes, this is the model he sees that we should use. User inspired basic research that if we can say that science should be aligned with actual use, we will overcome what Stokes himself sees as the problem of only doing science for understanding or only doing science for some purpose regardless of what it is. And if that happens, Stokes believes, we will not only be following Louis Pasteur's example, we'll be following what Louis Pasteur believed in. And this is a quote from Louis Pasteur. Science knows no country because knowledge belongs to humanity and is the torch which illuminates the world. Unfortunately, that's not where science is leading us. Now, to some extent, this picture, I have to explain to you, I come from a family of medical people. Medical people after a while become very immune. These are actually medical photos and medical people after a while don't get upset by very much. But most people, I suspect most of you in the audience have quickly seen that, had a little bit of a jolt. There are some people that would only say this is obscene. These are two pictures about liposuction, okay? From my perspective, they are obscene. But they're obscene because they're an obscene misappropriation of resources. For this to occur, somebody has invested five to $7,000 and a scientist has invested years of training, effort and knowledge in order to remove several pounds of fat. Those resources could directly be applied to put flesh on those children. That is a direct misappropriation of resources from what I consider a moral perspective. It also is in a case, I think, of why we have to begin to worry about where our conscious is as a society. Because I really do think most people would find that top picture more obscene than that bottom picture. They would find that bottom picture upsetting and sad, but not obscene. That's a misappropriation of resources where, if we put them somewhere else, there's another phenomenon that's happening. Science is blossoming. Biotechnology, information technology. One of the most interesting areas of science is actually what's called new material sciences. The difference from the misappropriation of resources is the misapplication of resources. First of all, the good news is somebody is doing something about global warming. This is Dubai. This is an indoor ski resort in Dubai. Now, the problem with science that's used this way, it's not only that resources are going into it, it's that research, investigation, the very line of development of scientific understanding and results is being directed towards a production that really is at best a luxury, and in many cases may actually be for the larger social good, a detriment. In the entire field of new material sciences, almost nobody is doing things about housing for the poor in the world. When you talk about housing for the poor in the world, people tell you, oh, we produced a new material out of Coca-Cola cans and old plastic bottles. That's not going to solve the world's problems. The world's problems could receive a substantial input from the new material sciences in terms of housing, but it's misapplied at the moment. Why? The proposition I'm putting forward and the proposition I'm putting forward that we as Baha'is may well be able to put forward to the scientific world and to our world is that there is something in that other box. It's very interesting that those three boxes are filled in and that other box is missing because that other box says no, no. And we live in a society that has great difficulty saying no to things. And people literally don't know how to deal with it, but if you bring in conscience, no, no begins to have a meaning. When the atomic bomb went off for the first time, these were the words of Robin Oppenheimer who worked on the bomb. We knew the world could not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remember the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that one way or another. The reason I use that is because Robin Oppenheimer actually believed that science had to begin to say no as well as yes. That science could no longer operate only in those boxes of knowledge, generation, knowledge application. That science had to begin to play a moral role. He tried to actually argue that scientists should take on that role. And the bulletin of the atomic scientists, it still exists, was an effort for scientists to play a moral role. But in fact, it never was accepted. What would be, as Bahá'ís suggests, goes into that box that might make a difference? Let me give this other quote from Abdu'l-Bahá. Praise be to God. The medieval ages of darkness have passed away and this century of radiance has dawned. This century wherein the reality of things is becoming evident, wherein science is penetrating the mystery of the universes, the oneness of the world of humanity is being established and service to mankind is the paramount motive of all existence. It's that last phrase that I think is the one we have to focus on. Service to mankind is the paramount motive of all existence. And what I think we have to say as Bahá'ís in dialogue with science is that there is a fourth box. And that fourth box is service. And it's not just any service, it's service based upon conscience. Service that we render when we are connecting the best of our understandings of higher purposes with the best of our understandings of what we can achieve for the benefit of others. So that, I call that Oppenheimer's box because Robin Oppenheimer believed in that. We could call it Abdu'l-Bahá's box but if we wanna really dialogue with non-Baháís we have to be willing to use examples that are non-Baháí. The irony is if we do introduce morality into science I think we'll actually get what Pasteur would have identified as his quadrant. This is just as a coincidence. I was in Paris, I went to visit Pasteur's, there's a little museum in his old apartment and his grave is at the bottom and it's very interesting. On the walls of his grave, on each corner, there's a word and the word is, one is faith, hope, charity and science. So the minute I saw that I said, Pasteur didn't just believe in science to solve problems. He believed in science within a spiritual context of faith, hope and charity. How do we get there? What do we have to do? Well the first thing I think we have to do is we have to get to the motivations. We have to realize that at present our motivations which is materialistic and profit oriented has to be replaced by the motivation to service. This actually comes from a US government website that is used as an argument for why we have to support intellectual property rights. And the reasons are so we can have Barbie dolls, Coca-Cola and the California Institute of Technology can profit from licensing things to the Legos toy maker. And what's sad about this is it represents not that people are making profit from intellectual property rights, but that this is seen as why we need intellectual property rights. In order to produce profit from toys and soft drinks. So the motivation is one of the things we have to change and it has to become service. There's something else we have to deal with. We have to deal with ego. Most of science, most of our intellectual activities have always been based very much in the personalities of people, even the greatest of people. Pastore, Einstein, that is no longer, that is no longer how the world has to operate. This is a statement that I particularly find of immense important from the century of light. At present, universal peace is a matter of great importance but unity of conscience is essential so that the foundation of this matter may become secure, it's establishment firm and it's edit this straw. I think very often as we navigate ourselves through those ocean of words like the Bajaus, one of the things we have to do is you have to select that and say what comes first. That when I find so powerful about this statement is it's telling us that universal peace is of great importance but unity of conscience is essential. So we're no longer talking only of conscience but we're talking about unity of conscience and this reflects itself in science. This is the accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The thing about science today is it can no longer be done. That other picture was a picture of it, it's called the alchemist and you know alchemist used to go from a material perspective was turning lead to goal from a spiritual it had other meanings but basically we can turn lead into goal today. They can do it at CERN, it just costs more than the goal is worth but you can't do it as one person. Science today, any work in physics today requires hundreds of people and actually dozens of nations. So ego also has to be set aside. How do we do that? How do we reconcile ourselves as individual and the need to put away ego? I find it interesting that the century of light, the title century of light, the Impressionist painters discovered their contribution, the power of light and they discovered in their paintings what the physicists developed in their in their theoretics which is that light acts sometimes as a particle and sometimes as a wave. What the Impressionist found out is basically here is light as particles, here is light as waves. That little square is the one we just saw before. Each of us and each of our conscience from I would argue are like a particle of light. But what we are being told in that quote from the century of light is we now have to have the unity of conscience because unless those particles come together, what we will not emerge with the new vision, the new world and the new understanding that is necessary. And what is that emergence that comes when we come together? It is religion. Religion, and let me go back to the definition that I offered, the organized discipline alignment of our spiritual consciousness with the social needs of society through structured networks of relationship. The reason we must have religion, it is unless we have the organized structured relationships appropriate to our times, we cannot take the insights of our conscience and even the understandings of divine revelation and put them into use. Now I think all of us as Baha'is believe that in fact we do have those new structured relations. And this picture to me in a way sums it up. What's so powerful about this picture is I showed it to several Baha'is and their first reaction is, oh, that's the universal house of justice. That's not, that's the counts that is there. That's a hand of the cause. That is a example of the amazing organic merging of humanity, of thought, of conscience, of dedication that represents the structure of the Baha'i faith. Those are the particles that have become a wave. That still means that we as particles have to do something to make that happen. What is it that we have to do to make that happen? The reason I brought this, again, I think one of the things I think we have to do is we have to think how to reach out not only to non-Baha'is, but we have to reach out to past thoughts that have been, in many cases, submerged or even diverted that in fact are commensurate with Baha'i understandings. And if they were rediscovered, it would help I think people feel more comfortable with the acceptance of the Baha'i faith. Gia Battista Vico is a fascinating person. He lived during the Renaissance. He's something called a new science. He is often seen as one of the first, if not the father of the social sciences. What made him such an interesting person? He was a professor of philosophy and rhetoric. When we think of the times he lived in, we think of the church and religion suppressing science. And he was against that. He was, in that sense, a scientist. But he took a position that was different from most other scientists of that time. His position was that science carries in separately with it the study of piety. And he that is not pious cannot be truly wise. He argued that as bad as it was that religion tried to suppress science. If science separated itself from religion, it would lose the true essence of wisdom. And his plea was that religion and science remain one. And in fact, what he said are obligations. And when I say are, I mean any of us that see ourselves as teachers, as transmitters' knowledge, as students even, he said, let the masters of wisdom teach the young how to descend from the world of God and of minds into the world of nature in order to leave a decent and just humanity in the world of nations. In short, teach people how to use their conscience in their application of knowledge. Now, what I believe is, Vernevon Brown was not that different than many of us. Many of us, and I think we have to recognize that. Probably the majority of us here are tilted towards intellectual understandings as well as spiritual understandings. That's why we're a Baha'i association for studies. It is easy to be trapped by intellectualization, to go from looking at discovery knowledge, to looking at using knowledge, looking at... And never deal with the problem of the actual moral consequences of those knowledge. What made Robert Oppenheimer different from Vernevon Brown is when that bomb went off, this is also what he said. In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and it is a knowledge which they cannot lose. He was saying, and this is my paraphrase or my understanding from my perspective, that when that bomb went off, it was the analogous equivalent of eating from the tree of good and evil, from acquiring the knowledge that beyond human beings only belongs to the divine, and that mankind, by not taking on the responsibility of dealing with that, was committing a sin. And I think we as Baha'is have to see that the practice of science begins to acknowledge exactly what Oppenheimer was trying to tell us and what Abdel Baha is trying to tell us. But we can do it and it's easy. And the reason it's easy is God has given us the gyroscope and that gyroscope is what Lord Byron expresses in this poem. Yet still there whispers the small voice within, heard through gain silence and or glories din. Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, man's conscience is the oracle of God. So what I'm asking us all is that both in this conference, as we discuss things and after this conference as we go out and we can engage the world, let us begin to recognize that speeding the development of a unity of conscience is one of the most vital things we can do, one of the most promising arenas in which we can engage others and possibly the most necessary thing that has to be done, the essential next step before we can really begin to make consciousness and religion come together for the benefit of the bird of humanity. Thank you very much.