Such being the actuality of present conditions, the opening of a new channel between finite man and his infinite source has become essential. This means that a new religion must be born. The war and its aftermath have created conditions suitable to the establishment of a new faith. Therefore, if it be true that a sudden and widespread revival of the old conventional dogmatic beliefs after the war is unlikely, because orthodox religion in its present familiar forms has lost the inspiration and purity necessary to make it effective, it is equally true that with the coming of peace there will be more people ready for a new religious revelation than there have been at any time during the past hundred years.
The intellectual and spiritual requirements of one epoch are historically different from those of others. Human society changes, evolves or degenerates: it cannot stand still for long. Hence, it finds for itself in every epoch either a modification, alteration, and adaptation of traditional systems, or--if it is sufficiently creative at the time--gives birth to entirely new systems altogether. The truth of this statement has been attested to by every age of mankind and on every continent from ill-fated Atlantis to thriving America. To hold, as the representatives of vested interests and orthodox institutions usually hold, that a particular system is suited to all the needs of all humanity for all time and therefore cannot be replaced or should not be replaced by another system, is to write a full stop to human evolution. It is a senseless view, as historically unjustified as it is philosophically untenable. No revelation is or can be the last one, nor the exhaustive one. Now that we live in a time when so many of the old systems have exhausted their best possibilities and fail to meet our newer needs, those who have turned aside from them yet are unwilling to remain spiritually unnourished should not be blamed if they are willing to enlist as followers of a more vital, more timely, and more satisfying faith.
A divine man, born to fulfil a large and special religious mission, a man like the founders of the world-famed religions, not only has this educational task but he also reveals the Karmic will and expounds the evolutionary standards set for the coming age.
All civilized societies and all cultural forms of the past have shown that they are inexorably subject to a rhythm of birth, growth, and decay. They have their ardent springtime, their luxuriant summer, their cold autumn, their withered winter. Today, we witness the same storms of destructive events and the snows of miserable failure. Those who are not too timid to face the unpalatable truth know that this has only one meaning. We are at the end of an epoch. The old world is dying before our eyes. But death is only a transition--the joyous springtime of vital renewal always follows the freezing wintertime of outlived forms. A new epoch is indeed at hand, with fresh ideas to lead us and fresh ideals to sustain us. Only the mentally blind now fail to anticipate it.
It was a new comet which came to warn mankind that the old era was about to be liquidated and it was another comet which came to notify them that the new era had begun. This was no more a coincidence to those who understand the hidden workings of Nature than was the fact that all the three leading Axis powers--Germany, Italy, and Japan--started their nationalistic careers in the same year: 1871. The first harbinger appeared in the skies in the autumn of 1929. When the great economic blizzard hit America and thence spread to the whole world, it forced millions to realize that the old order was exhausted. Every country was affected by economic troubles with all their political, social, and cultural consequences. None escaped. Each reacted in its own way. Japan's reaction was shortly to plunge desperately into international robbery by invading Manchuria. If with the facts now at our command we think back, we shall realize that the Second World War really started in 1931 with this invasion. For the line of continuous fighting against Japan in China down to the time of America's involvement after Pearl Harbor was paralleled for three years on the other side of the world by the civil war in Spain, where not only the Spaniards themselves but also Nazi Germans and Fascist Italians battled against Red Russians.
Thus, the earlier comet indeed prognosticated the coming world war, and the second comet, which showed itself towards the end of 1942, heralded its closing. The military turning point of the world war was coincident with its appearance. For the great series of democratic nations' military victories began about this time. But the second comet's special association was to act as the harbinger of a new age. These victories not only brought about the external liberation of millions of people from militaristic oppression, but were the prelude to the entire liberation of all mankind from every form of social and cultural oppression by the past. The new age could not fail, therefore, to be a new religious age also. Thus the new universal spiritual enlightenment was dated by the second comet. Whoever perceives this cannot but believe that when the need is so great, the yearning so widespread, the urgency so sharp, the divine wisdom which holds this earth within its grasp will not fail to inspire the most evolved human being available with a universal Messianic mission of uplift, instruction, healing, and awakening. And nobody less than such an august being could undertake the responsibility of so tremendous a task, which will specifically be directed towards the masses, towards millions of people. Nothing truly great can be done without great men.
There must be a visible focus among us, even for the boldest of ideas. There must be a great leader. The spectacle confronting us today is the spectacle of a planet that is spiritually leaderless. We are told, "The hour produces the man." The hour is here, we believe, but we look around and see no Man. Spirituality is waiting to find its voice. Its reality is here, but its spokesman is not. Every half-baked cult and worn-out creed possesses its ambassador, but the ineffable divinity remains unvoiced. Nevertheless, we wait patiently for that one to come who shall utter anew the Christ-message to mankind. And his voice will not be as yours and mine, but will be a regenerative force which will startle the sleeping world. The world is in upheaval for a deeper reason than it suspects. For at a time of religious chaos and popular bewilderment, of world agony and human distress, such as the present, his coming is in perfect consonance with the fact that supreme intelligence rules the cosmos, that truth shall be uncovered once more for the sake of those who need it. However, it is not through any one prophet alone that the new dawn will be ushered in but through a planetary outpouring, which flows through every useful channel it can find. In this complex epoch, its manifestations are as complex and varied as are the needs of mankind. There will be different prophets bearing different messages to differently-delivered groups of people, but all will be inspired by one and the same timely power.
The human race has long been preparing for manhood. The end of war marks its crossing of the threshold. Now it must exercise manhood.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 4 : World Crisis > # 133
