A Study of the “Secret of Divine Civilization”

Dear all,

Once again, welcome to the course on Secret of Divine Civilization. The first week's assignment is noted in the course syllabus, pages 6 -7. Please send your introduction, it will be circulated to everyone. Gradually, we will get to know each other - we hope that by the end of the course, many new friendships will be formed and we will have benefitted by all the rich comments and discussions.

Our basic form of communication will be email. For those who have ready access to the Internet, the OLS website is ready for use as an additional resource. It contains all the course documentation, a chat room and a discussion forum. Not everyone has access to the website, so we will make a copy of all the website forum discussions once a week. All students are free to make use of the chat room or begin discussions through the forum.

To login to the OLS website, go to http://OLS.ukzn.ac.za . At the login prompt, enter your email address as the user id. For the first time, you will be asked to identify a password. Follow the instructions; you then should be ready to log in. Please do let me know if you have any problems logging in. You may either receive documentation from the website or by email. Please let me know if you would like any of the documents emailed, or if you have difficulty downloading them from the website. The documents mentioned to read for this week are available either way (Coe's Expanded Outline; Message to the Iranian Believers, Barbara Casterline's review, Nader Saiedi's Introduction). Additional documents of interest are: "Global Dilemmas, Local Responses: Creating Patterns of Action that make the World Different", by Holly Hanson, and a book excerpt: History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, by John William Draper, 1811-1882. It is referred to in SDC as The Progress of Peoples.

As a final note, can everyone please acknowledge receipt of this email - we would like to verify that the website is 'sending' emails ok.

Warmest greetings to all,

Sylvia Kaye

kayes@ukzn.ac.za