Spiritual Era : the coming

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1946_June-p 0001
Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, On board the U. S. S. Missouri in Tokvo Bay the surrender documents bringing to a formal end the greatest war of all time were about to be signed. Only a few days before, the birth of atomic power had been revealed by the dropping of two bombsof incredible destructive power. And now, with the miracle of radio carrying his solemn words to all the world, Gen. Douglas MacArthur made a brief speech: "We have had our last chance," he said slowly. "If we do not now devise some greater and more equitablesystem, Armageddon will be at our door." There was a brief silence broken only by the flapping of the flags in a light breeze. The men crowded around, tense, listening. Beneath the silent guns of the flagship, Gen. MacArthur continued: "The problem basically istheological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advance in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past 2 poo years. It must be of the spirit, ifwe are to save the flesh." If we are to save the flesh, there must be a spiritual awakening, an advance in our human character, a change in our values and ideals. It is not atomic power that we truly fear; it is man himself. We are paying an appalling price for our materialistic, mechanical age. The flow of blood and tears in the past few years has become a tidal-wave heralding our destruction. And how wehold in our hands the basic power of the universe: the ultimate energy that creates—and destroys—the stars. What is wrong with our culture, our civilization? Why have we reached this crisis that threatens our end? How can we save ourselves? Are there actuallyindications of a change, a spiritual revolution? What can we do, as individuals, to swing the tide of culture and prevent a third World War?The nature of cultures - That civilizations rise and fall in cycles is not a new theory in historical philosophy. In various forms it hasbeen expressed by Schiller, McDougall, Petrie and Spengler. But it has remained for Prof. Pitirim A. Sorokin, chairman of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University, to define
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Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, the basic causes for changes in cultures and throw a great light upon our problems of today and our outlook for tomorrow. His startling discoveries are outlined in his works, Social and Cultural Dynamics and The Crisis of Our Age* Based on a study of 2,500 years of history, a survey of 900 wars and 1,600 revolutions, and an analysis of thousands of books in all fields of human advancement, Prof. Sorokin has developed his philosophy of history based on three super-systems of cultures. Violent upheavals have occurred as the cycles of culture changed. Each form of culture has its good fruits and its seeds of decay. Moreover, in eachculture, the elements of other types of cultures ejrist, but it is the dominant pattern that determines its nature*.The first form of culture is ideational. Its methods of searching for truth and knowledge are by revelationfrom, the realm of spirit through the medium of exceptional persons, inspiration, cosmic consciousness, anddivine intuition—the truth of faith. It held sway during the Greco-Roman period from the eighth to the sixth centuries, B. C, and from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, A. D., in Europe. The second form is the sensate. It is materialistic and maintains the knowledge and truth of the senses through the medium of the organs of sense perception—the truth of reason. From the fourth century, B. C, to the fourth century, A. D., it guided the Greco-Roman civilization, and for four centuries it has controlled our presentwestern world in Europe and America. We are now in the midst of its decay. We are facing the crisis of a change in, eras.The third form, idealistic, is a synthesis of the first two cultures, a combination of faith and reason that istruly ideal. But it exists for short periods only between the rise and fall of the first two. Both the individual man and his cultures have the tendency to go to extremes. In the dim, distant future this form will doubtless be the final, ultimate culture of Utopian man.Just as the individual man is an extrovert, seeking his happiness in his surroundings, or an introvert, seeking his happiness within himself, so it is with our cultures. The sensate culture of today has conquered and explored the environment of man, but the studyof man himself has been neglected. On the other hand, the introvert or ideational culture digs deeply into man's inner nature and collapses because the external environment finally overcomes it. Man's progress has not been a steady rise. It has varied as his types of cultures succeeded one another in the eternal circle of cycles. Each culture opened with great advancement In its specific realm, but its very nature, as an extreme, meant a fatal narrowing of its search for truth, the learning of more and more about less and less, until it decayed and was followed by another type. The ending of the ideationalMiddle Ages found theological discussion centered on how many angels canstand on the head of a pin, and our
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Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, present culture now ends in an over-"spedalization that results in mediocrity. The very fact that these various types of cultures exist and change reveals that no one culture has a monopoly on truth. No system is all trueor all false. But each dominant system, at its height, denies the true reality andvalue of the other system's methods of advancement. Modern sensate psychology, for example, denies the realityof intuition, but we have the testimony of Newton, Galileo, Robert Mayer,Henri Poincare, and others that scientific discoveries can be made by inspiration as well as by sensate observation and experiment. The Crisis Today -For four centuries we have been under the sway of a sensate era of culture. This era has produced great material progress with its fruits of invention, discovery, improved health and early political and economic advancement. It reached its highest level in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. The nineteenthcentury alone produced more scientific discoveries than all the other centuries of history together. Europe and America have been united in this era with urbanization and industrialization proceeding similarly on both continents.But decay followed this material progress, and it has advanced until finally the twentieth century is the bloodiest in the history of our planet. And beyond all the political and economic factors that have resulted in this increase of war and violence lies the basicsensate system with its degenerate ideals ideals of material wealth and power. Withonly one world, the world of the senses, in view, and with man himself reduced to a mechanical, chemical machine, soul-less and the toy of the state-god, it is perfectly natural that the struggle for gold and nationalistic control should result.Let's take a look at the world today, for the sensate decay has finally touched every field of human endeavor.In the fine arts—music, art, literature and drama—we now feature pathological and debasing subject matter.Characters are no longer ideal heroes, but criminals and freaks offering a degrading sensual entertainment. A merecommodity for the market and the handmaiden of advertising, art has become superficial even in its picture ofthe sensory world itself. It is now quantity instead of quality. Debunking is termed realism. Surveys reveal thateighty percent of current movies deal with criminal and unconventional love themes. In ethics and law we now see a risingtide of dishonesty, a breakdown of con-tractualism or agreements between individuals and nations. With riches,pleasure, power and fame our goals, might has become right and ethics are devalued. Treaties between nationsreadily become scraps of paper. The devaluation of the norms of our lawreached a climax in the failure of the League of Nations. Morals have becomemore and more relative until they stand oa the verge of vanishing altogether.Totalitarianism and brute force have come into being; individualism hasgiven way to state-gods. Desire now
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Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, determines liberty, with wishes and the ability to satisfy them resulting in a vicious circle. We are rushed, hurried, competitive. Our government constantly battles not only dishonest advertising, but the sale of harmful products that are thrown on the marketwith total disregard of public welfare. "Business is business'1 is the constant excuse for sharp dealings. In human relations the breakdown of the family unit is the most startling result of our sensate ideals. The family's economic, religious and recreational functions have largely disappeared. Now we witness a breaking-up of relationships between man and wife, parents and children, family and relatives. The divorce rate steadily increases. Despite the temporary current increases due to war, the birth rate isdeclining and forty-three percent of all marriages are either childless or produce one child. The home's educationalfunction has deteriorated because of its unstable nature, and juvenile delinquency follows.Modern philosophy is stagnant, offering only inferior rewrites of earlier ideas. It is the handmaiden of materialism and is often dishonest in its treat ments. God is defined as cosmic force, the sublimated unconscious, blind will, the interaction that promotes good, the will to live, and energy. If something means everything, it means nothing. Theology and metaphysics are at aStandstill. Broken into some 250 divisions, sects and "isms," the church today offers little more than a socialgospel and entertainment. Science, the very soul of sensate culture, is now in a creative decline. Degraded to serving the forces of wealth and power, it has turned to destructivepursuits which in turn destroy its own avenues of progress. The Harvard charts of invention show a definite decline since the middle of the last century, and its work today is produced by a host of inferior minds. No genius appears. It offers a massive array of "facts," but no real values. It depends on the senses alone, and Pavlov's experiments proved that man's sense perceptions are less acute than those of a dog. The social sciences are in the worst condition. Man's study of himself is at a standstill. Anthropology is practically a dead science. But it has remained for psychology, divided into a dozen ofconflicting schools that cannot even agree on basic definitions, actually to degrade man to the level of a machine. It declares consciousness to be an inaccurate term for mere physiological reflexes and stimulus-response actions. Instead of a study of the human soul and mind, psychology has closed its eyes to the thousands of cases collected by the psychic research societies, and has proceeded to study the physiology and anatomy of the nervous system. As a result, books on psychology end where they should begin. Invading thefield of biology, where it has no right to be, psychology has attempted tihe advance itself with a series of fads—behaviorism, gestaltism, field theory, etc.—which come and go like the seasons. Advancing by retreating, tins hybrid science looks behind for a world that is far ahead as it Ignores vast
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Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, libraries of material that he in Its true domain. The Tragic Results - What are the results of this devotion to the sensate goals of wealth and power? It has meant, first of all, a steady increase in the number of wars ending in the bloodiest war of thebloodiest century: a war that disregarded age, sex, international law and treaties; a struggle of brutal punishment, refugees, concentration camps, and torture. Life was without value. Man was a mere animal. Other products of sensate decay include the increase of suicide (from 3.1 in t86o, per roo.ooo of the population, to 11.9 in 1922 and steadily rising); mental disease (from 81.6 in 1880, to220.1 in 1920, and steadily rising) and crime. In fourteen key cities, arrests doubled between 1910 and 1930. J. Edgar Hoover has just announced an increase in every type of crime except involuntary manslaughter. Moreover, the criminal age has gone down as thecrime rate has gone up—a direct reflection of juvenile delinquency. Since 1914, the standard of living has declined in almost every European country. Throughout most of the world, the direst poverty and misery exist. In our hurried mercantile civilization, inthe midst of our crowded industrial cities, it is easy to overlook the fact at well over half the people of the world live on a few cents a day. All is in flux; all is temporal and subject to constant change. We rush through life. We measure a man, not by his works, but by his bank account. We are frustrated and neurotic. We are lonely in the midst of crowds, constantly searching for something wecannot define. Love has become a quasi-pornographic conception. Nothing absolute exists. There is no true orfalse; no right and wrong. All is relative, and cynicism follows. There are four definite signs of our culture's end. The first is a tragicdualism, a simultaneous glorification and degradation of man. Science gives us power, but defines us as machines.We create improved health and wipe out countless lives in war. We proclaim the equality of life and opportunity, but refuse to grant it in practice. The second sign is the formlessness of our culture. It is a chaos of undigested elements from many differentcultures of the past and present—a mass of varied elements without unity. The third is size and quantity instead of quality in all our products. Because an object is the largest, we consider it the best. There is an inner emptiness to all our vast works from cathedrals touniversities. The final fatal sign is our decline of creativeness due to the feverish tempo of passing fads and constantchange. We have no lasting values, no truly great works. Culture At The Crossroads Today we are in the hiidst of decaywatching the slow birth of a new era—an era that will turn from the sensate ideals to those of faith and inspiration. This crisis is not the death agony of our civilization, but the birth pangs of a change, a transition, from one basic set of ideals to another. Our physical
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Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, objects and gadgets will not vanish, but a new use for them will be applied. The change will not even be a total one; only the basic super-system will be affected. However, the change does mean the progressive passing of sensate meanings and values, the increasing poverty of current values, and a shift of men of intellect from materialism to idealism. As a result, society will split into twocamps—the sensate and the ideational—and the ideational will finally emerge the victor in the conflict. More mental and moral chaos can be expected until the transition is complete. In the past the change has been slow, often requiring several centuries, butthe rapid transportation and communication of our age, together with the advent of atomic power, may hastenit in the near future. The new era means a complete change in our basic mentality and system of values. It means a change in ourconduct toward other men. We must realize the nature of the crisis (it is not a mere political or economic malady),and, as individuals, we must re-examine our values, return to secure family relationships, and do our part to developworld brotherhood and put into actual practice the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. We must start as individuals—and the path will not be Already the signs of revolt against sensate values are in evidence. In the past few years, several great minds of our time have shifted from materialism to idealism. The new modernism emerging in art and literature (a reaction to so-called realism), and the indicated changes in the political and economic fields, betray the breakdown of our present super-system. The atomic age now beginning means that man must learn to live in peace in order to stay alive at all, and peace can only be assured by a shift in our values. A Spiritual Awakening In the past the end of a sensate culture has been brought about by a new religion or a regeneration of an old religion. Usually within two centuries the awakened faith turned the crisis into the new era. Outstanding examples are to be found in histories of Hindu cultures, in China in the sixth century, B. C, in Hebrew culture in the fourth century, B. C, and the crisis of the sensate Greco-Roman culture ended by the growth of Christianity. Charles Steinmetz, the famous inventor and research engineer, once wrote: "The greatest discovery of the next fifty years will be along spiritual lines. Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatestpower in the development of man and history. Some day the scientists of the world will turn to the study of thespiritual forces. When this day comes, the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has in the pastfour." Many thinkers have foreseen this coming era of spiritual advancement and the path it would take. The dimensional theory will be found in Dr. Richardi Bucke's Book, Cosmic Consciousness,* and in Terlium Organum by
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Several book reviews bound together in a red book entitled Sorokin Reviews, P. D. Ouspensky* The object of life,the development of consciousness, is evolved by our successive comprehending of universal dimensions or states of consciousness. Vegetative and lower animal life possess a simple consciousness of only one dimension. The higher animals, dogs for example, have a consciousness of two dimensions. Man of today in physical life comprehends witha self-consciousness a world of three dimensions. Cosmic consciousness is the next step in our path of spiritual evolution—a realization of the fourth dimension with its own attributes of time and space and spirit. With our minds, our spiritual bodies, we are today, at this moment, living in a four-dimensional plane. Just as a dog, usually conscious of only two dimensions, at times has a brief realization ofthree dimensions, so man, at times of inspiration, intuition, astral projection, clairvoyance and psycbometry, is brieflyconscious of the higher dimensional realm in which he exists. As the progressive path winds upward, man willbecome, in the future, more and more conscious of his true spiritual nature, and his new knowledge will react favorably in this physical world. There is lasting truth in this world. There are values that are real and eternal. Have faith in the destiny ofman; fear not the coming yearsl We face, in the approaching cultural change and the new era of atomic power, transformations that are so tremendous that our minds are dazed at the thought. The false ideals of this war-torn present will pass away. The culture of man willmove on, higher and higher, and will reach out and touch the stars.