The first question is about the great suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust preceding and during the course of World War II. Exactly put, Naosherwan says, 'justification for the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust...', and puts in parentheses, 'group sanskaras.' I am rather smitten by a number of words used in posing this question. And first of all is the word 'justification.' I can't help but feel that that entire, horrible, tragic story is inevitably a matter of the working out of certain natural laws and balances in creation, and I personally would simply have to put aside the word ÒjustificationÓ as having no relevance to the matter. Justified or unjustified, it would be a bit like trying to justify the law of gravity; or the rising and the setting of the sun; the expansion of gases when they're heated and their contraction when they're cooled. There are simply certain matters of natural principle which, we must say from our own standpoint for better or for worse, have to grind out. All that we as human beings apparently can do is to try to minimize the accumulation of the circumstances in the first place which precipitate some of the more horrendous, painful of the balancing and working out processes according to the natural law. I believe this we do have some capability of doing; but as the gross total of the actions of humanity sum up, then certain compensating balances inevitably have to come about as well. But we can certainly put our shoulder to the wheel as best as we can, as lucidly and helpfully as we can to try to minimize, to slow down, the gradual accumulation, accretion of those residues which finally inevitably one day have to be worked out by processes which, from our standpoint, we regard as being explosive, violently destructive, inhumane, incomprehensible and the cause of enormous pain and lamentation, of course.

But, to get back to the beginning of this story, another of the words is 'Jews'.. There's absolutely no question that the Jews, Jewishness, Jewish heritage were an immediate physical focal point for the Holocaust, but I'm not at all sure in my own mind that in the functioning of the laws of creation and the laws of karma and the matter in which sanskaras work out, I'm not at all certain that Jewishness and the racial fact of Jewish heritage were even necessarily one of the most important factors. I wish that one day I might achieve illumination, and know the total history, or have at my call at any rate, the total history . . . that which preceded the Holocaust and that which followed on the Holocaust. I would be curious, at least in my own present state, to know statistically how many of the individuals caught up in the thirties and the forties in the Holocaust had been Jews, and I would be extraordinarily curious to know in succeeding incarnations how many of those people who went through intense suffering and death.. a form of martyrdom in death .. how many of those people in succeeding incarnations were Jews. This is where I question fundamentally the question of Jewishness in relation to the Holocaust. Certainly, in the physical situation, it was concentrated on something that we call Jews and Jewishness. But within the total concept of creation, the balancing out of the pluses and the minuses in creation, how much of it had to do with Jewishness and the Jewish blood. I have my doubts there. So often, something acts as a precipitating point, but the forces, the real significance is enormously broader and a much wider context.

Also, the word itself, 'Holocaust', seems to imply that this was a unique event in suffering. I know that even in stating that phrase I risk immediate condemnation of myself by implying that it wasn't horrible. I think it was. I know it was because I remember so much of the reporting. It was a horror on earth. And as we became more and more aware of what was going on and of what had gone on, we couldn't believe it. At the same time, I must also admit that in certain other situations .. a number of the more impersonal, granted .. there has been a similar sort of great human tragedy, great suffering. I think for instance nowadays, in our present time, of the thousands and the hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan (more recently in the Balkans .. Ed.), who, in trying to protect their own sense of their rights, their dignity go through almost unparalleled .. at least for decades .. suffering, agony, discrimination, being trampled upon. Perhaps numerically that is not as great as the Jews in WW II, but to me it is a horrible and an indigestible fact.

I think also of a more impersonal tragedy, that each time I touch upon it through one source or another, horrifies me, and that was the scourge of the plague twice in the Middle Ages, which decimated the civilization of Europe. I read the accounts of what went on: whole towns, cities virtually wiped out. The horror at the disease itself, the unpredictability of where it would strike, and not striking just particular classes or particular races within cities, but anywhere. And it went on, of course, for years, and then died out for a bit and then repeated itself. What sort of a holocaust was that? Is there any justification for it? Again, we would say, well it followed certain inevitable processes of hygiene, contamination, infection, susceptibility, communication. In a certain sense, perhaps, it was more impersonal, but again it was a holocaust of another type, and even more widely striking than that of the holocaust of the Jews.

One reads of an earthquake in China, even hushed up, which seems to have carted off thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. Earthquakes in Iran creating enormous damage. I remember also the first time I read an account of one little episode of the Mongol Invasion of the Middle East sweeping through Iran and on into India, which at one point they built a huge, great pyramid of the skulls of just those individuals who had been beheaded at the end of one great battle.

I think also in another field of the tortures, the horrors of the scourge of cancer all over the world. Isn't this also a type of a holocaust. Again, we think of it as following certain natural principles; but we don't know, of course, even now, many of the bases of cancer, but we assume that it has certain logically, one day definable processes that are involved, and which might be handled. But again, it strikes, it creates enormous problems, pain, difficulty, sorrow. . . and it's everywhere on earth. But again, doesnÕt it follow certain natural principles. And, one day, won't we perhaps understand some of the karmic principles that are involved there as well. Isn't all of this, all of this, regardless of what the holocaust is, and what the natural or unnatural principles as we might look upon them involved . . . isn't it all in the long run part of this enormous balancing out.

I do want to address myself not just to the query as to whether all of this, even the Holocaust of the Jews in WW II, was not just a part of the functioning of total natural law within creation, but I would like to come to the specifics of the tradition of the chosen race and their fall from grace, that of the Jewish people. There is some evidence in the written record that such a type of selection and fall from grace did occur. It makes me think of what little I may know and what little I may understand of the functioning of the Avatar Himself as an immediate representation of the functioning of God. I believe that Meher Baba Himself has made it clear and has told us very simply .. and even a bit bluntly.. that the Avatar Himself has favourites, and why shouldn't He? Doesn't He have the right to favouritism..certain people, certain individuals, certain drop souls that He is more drawn to than others. Yes, He has the fate of helping not just all of humankind but all of creation, and to make certain that not one least little atom is finally left out in the march towards God Realization. But nevertheless, in taking on human form and coming here into the dream of creation to help us share the tough things that have to be gone through, doesn't He have the right to favouritism? Apparently this is true. Is it therefore inconceivable that God Himself should have favourites, or even a race of favourites who somewhere or other, early in the game, had won His favouritism or, if we put it in another fashion, His spiritual grace. To me it's not at all inconceivable from what I've seen of the functioning of the Avatar that there could be a Jewish race who were early selected for the special dispensation of the grace of God. But it was to Eruch, one day shortly after Meher Baba dropped the body, that I was saying, ..Well, at any rate, Eruch, here we are. We have been in the physical presence of the Avatar and so I guess the great, tough hurdle is already overcome. We have been taken under the Avatar's wing, under His umbrella, and we will continue until one brave day He gets us over the final hurdle of God Realization... Eruch turned around upon me as if I was a little bit addled in the head Ñ as perhaps I was and said, .Don, don't you realize that just as one can win the grace and the knowledge of the presence of the Avatar, one can fiddle about and waste that great boon, that great privilege, and fall from grace and have to win it all over again... So, it does seem to me entirely possible, and perhaps that the historical record that we have given to us about the Jewish people and God's warning them that they would fall from grace did actually occur, that they were dispersed, and that as an entity within the dream of creation they had to go through a great rebalancing as a race and great suffering in order to win back God's love and His grace. So perhaps, as a race, we sawracially one great testing and proving and trying and re-earning going on in WW II. I'm not wise enough to speculate much further than that; but it should not, however, cast into the shadow my earlier speculation that while the Holocaust focused on the Jewish race and Jewishness, I do believe, from what little I'm able to see and put together, that it was not necessarily even in major proportion individuals who were focused upon karmically because of their Jewishness, but rather that it was a great karmic and sanskaric balancing out. I do believe that we must look upon the Holocaust in a much broader range.