There is a ridiculous notion among some mystical circles that new spiritual faculties are being unfolded in our time. The truth is that there was, proportionate to total population, a larger number of spiritually perceptive persons in ancient times and even in medieval times, than there is today. This was inevitable because external conditions were simpler and less filled with allurements and entanglements, and because intellectual development was in harmony with and not, as with us, away from the inner life. What, however, might be stated with verifiable truth about our own times is that a new kind of mentality is being evolved. We shall synthesize and harmonize the scientific, the metaphysical, the religious, the mystical, and the practical without falling back, as the ancients did, into monasticism and asceticism.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 4 : World Crisis > # 120
