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As the inward sense of being dedicated followers of a Way, a Truth and Life, fades away with the efflux of time, so religious vision narrows, moral aspiration slackens, declarations of rigid dogma are insisted on, the abidance by a group of outward customs and rules is enforced, individuality is crushed as heresy, the zeal for self-improvement is replaced by the zeal for meddling with the affairs of others, petty differences are exaggerated, and pure creative spirituality is killed. Every established religion seems historically to pass down through such a degenerative process to a dry sterile condition. It seems not possible to keep the movement on the high level at which the prophet started it.

-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 4 : Problems of Organized Religion > # 36