The Transition Years

134:5.1[While the Mas­ter’s teach­ing con­cern­ing the sov­er­eignty of God is a truth—only com­pli­cated by the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of the re­li­gion about him among the world’s re­li­gions—his pre­sen­ta­tions con­cern­ing po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty are vastly com­pli­cated by the po­lit­i­cal evo­lu­tion of na­tion life dur­ing the last nine­teen hun­dred years and more. In the times of Je­sus there were only two great world pow­ers—the Ro­man Em­pire in the West and the Han Em­pire in the East—and these were widely sep­a­rated by the Parthian king­dom and other in­ter­ven­ing lands of the Caspian and Tur­kes­tan re­gions. We have, there­fore, in the fol­low­ing pre­sen­ta­tion de­parted more widely from the sub­stance of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings at Ur­mia con­cern­ing po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty, at the same time at­tempt­ing to de­pict the im­port of such teach­ings as they are ap­pli­ca­ble to the pe­cu­liarly crit­i­cal stage of the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ.]

134:5.2War on Uran­tia will never end so long as na­tions cling to the il­lu­sive no­tions of un­lim­ited na­tional sov­er­eignty. There are only two lev­els of rel­a­tive sov­er­eignty on an in­hab­ited world: the spir­i­tual free will of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal and the col­lec­tive sov­er­eignty of man­kind as a whole. Be­tween the level of the in­di­vid­ual hu­man be­ing and the level of the to­tal of man­kind, all group­ings and as­so­ci­a­tions are rel­a­tive, tran­si­tory, and of value only in so far as they en­hance the wel­fare, well-be­ing, and prog­ress of the in­di­vid­ual and the plan­e­tary grand to­tal—man and man­kind.

134:5.3Re­li­gious teach­ers must al­ways re­mem­ber that the spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty of God over­rides all in­ter­ven­ing and in­ter­me­di­ate spir­i­tual loy­al­ties. Some­day civil rulers will learn that the Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men.

134:5.4This rule of the Most Highs in the king­doms of men is not for the es­pe­cial ben­e­fit of any es­pe­cially fa­vored group of mor­tals. There is no such thing as a “cho­sen peo­ple.” The rule of the Most Highs, the over­con­trollers of po­lit­i­cal evo­lu­tion, is a rule de­signed to fos­ter the great­est good to the great­est num­ber of all men and for the great­est length of time.

134:5.5Sov­er­eignty is power and it grows by or­ga­ni­za­tion. This growth of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of po­lit­i­cal power is good and proper, for it tends to en­com­pass ever-widen­ing seg­ments of the to­tal of man­kind. But this same growth of po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions cre­ates a prob­lem at ev­ery in­ter­ven­ing stage be­tween the ini­tial and nat­u­ral or­ga­ni­za­tion of po­lit­i­cal power—the fam­ily—and the fi­nal con­sum­ma­tion of po­lit­i­cal growth—the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind, by all man­kind, and for all man­kind.

134:5.6Start­ing out with pa­ren­tal power in the fam­ily group, po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty evolves by or­ga­ni­za­tion as fam­i­lies over­lap into con­san­guineous clans which be­come united, for var­i­ous rea­sons, into tribal units—super­con­san­guineous po­lit­i­cal group­ings. And then, by trade, com­merce, and con­quest, tribes be­come uni­fied as a na­tion, while na­tions them­selves some­times be­come uni­fied by em­pire.

134:5.7As sov­er­eignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are less­ened. That is, mi­nor wars be­tween smaller na­tions are less­ened, but the po­ten­tial for greater wars is in­creased as the na­tions wield­ing sov­er­eignty be­come larger and larger. Pres­ently, when all the world has been ex­plored and oc­cu­pied, when na­tions are few, strong, and pow­er­ful, when these great and sup­pos­edly sov­er­eign na­tions come to touch bor­ders, when only oceans sep­a­rate them, then will the stage be set for ma­jor wars, world-wide con­flicts. So-called sov­er­eign na­tions can­not rub el­bows with­out gen­er­at­ing con­flicts and even­tu­at­ing wars.

134:5.8The dif­fi­culty in the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty from the fam­ily to all man­kind, lies in the in­er­tia-re­sis­tance ex­hib­ited on all in­ter­ven­ing lev­els. Fam­i­lies have, on oc­ca­sion, de­fied their clan, while clans and tribes have of­ten been sub­ver­sive of the sov­er­eignty of the ter­ri­to­rial state. Each new and for­ward evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is (and has al­ways been) em­bar­rassed and ham­pered by the “scaf­fold­ing stages” of the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ments in po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion. And this is true be­cause hu­man loy­al­ties, once mo­bi­lized, are hard to change. The same loy­alty which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the tribe, makes dif­fi­cult the evo­lu­tion of the super­tribe—the ter­ri­to­rial state. And the same loy­alty (pa­tri­o­tism) which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the ter­ri­to­rial state, vastly com­pli­cates the evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind.

134:5.9Po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is cre­ated out of the sur­ren­der of self-de­ter­min­ism, first by the in­di­vid­ual within the fam­ily and then by the fam­i­lies and clans in re­la­tion to the tribe and larger group­ings. This pro­gres­sive trans­fer of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion from the smaller to ever larger po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions has gen­er­ally pro­ceeded un­abated in the East since the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ming and the Mogul dy­nas­ties. In the West it ob­tained for more than a thou­sand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an un­for­tu­nate ret­ro­grade move­ment tem­porar­ily re­versed this nor­mal trend by re-es­tab­lish­ing the sub­merged po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty of nu­mer­ous small groups in Eu­rope.

134:5.10Uran­tia will not en­joy last­ing peace un­til the so-called sov­er­eign na­tions in­tel­li­gently and fully sur­ren­der their sov­er­eign pow­ers into the hands of the broth­er­hood of men—man­kind gov­ern­ment. In­ter­na­tion­al­ism—Leagues of Na­tions—can never bring per­ma­nent peace to man­kind. World-wide con­fed­er­a­tions of na­tions will ef­fec­tively pre­vent mi­nor wars and ac­cept­ably con­trol the smaller na­tions, but they will not pre­vent world wars nor con­trol the three, four, or five most pow­er­ful gov­ern­ments. In the face of real con­flicts, one of these world pow­ers will with­draw from the League and de­clare war. You can­not pre­vent na­tions go­ing to war as long as they re­main in­fected with the delu­sional virus of na­tional sov­er­eignty. In­ter­na­tion­al­ism is a step in the right di­rec­tion. An in­ter­na­tional po­lice force will pre­vent many mi­nor wars, but it will not be ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing ma­jor wars, con­flicts be­tween the great mil­i­tary gov­ern­ments of earth.

134:5.11As the num­ber of truly sov­er­eign na­tions (great pow­ers) de­creases, so do both op­por­tu­nity and need for man­kind gov­ern­ment in­crease. When there are only a few re­ally sov­er­eign (great) pow­ers, ei­ther they must em­bark on the life and death strug­gle for na­tional (im­pe­rial) su­prem­acy, or else, by vol­un­tary sur­ren­der of cer­tain pre­rog­a­tives of sov­er­eignty, they must cre­ate the es­sen­tial nu­cleus of super­na­tional power which will serve as the be­gin­ning of the real sov­er­eignty of all man­kind.

134:5.12Peace will not come to Uran­tia un­til ev­ery so-called sov­er­eign na­tion sur­ren­ders its power to make war into the hands of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment of all man­kind. Po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is in­nate with the peo­ples of the world. When all the peo­ples of Uran­tia cre­ate a world gov­ern­ment, they have the right and the power to make such a gov­ern­ment SOV­ER­EIGN; and when such a rep­re­sen­ta­tive or demo­cratic world power con­trols the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can pre­vail—but not un­til then.

134:5.13To use an im­por­tant nine­teenth- and twen­ti­eth-cen­tury il­lus­tra­tion: The forty-eight states of the Amer­i­can Fed­eral Union have long en­joyed peace. They have no more wars among them­selves. They have sur­ren­dered their sov­er­eignty to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, and through the ar­bitra­ment of war, they have aban­doned all claims to the delu­sions of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. While each state reg­u­lates its in­ter­nal af­fairs, it is not con­cerned with for­eign re­la­tions, tar­iffs, im­mi­gra­tion, mil­i­tary af­fairs, or in­ter­state com­merce. Nei­ther do the in­di­vid­ual states con­cern them­selves with mat­ters of cit­i­zen­ship. The forty-eight states suf­fer the rav­ages of war only when the fed­eral gov­ern­ment’s sov­er­eignty is in some way jeop­ar­dized.

134:5.14These forty-eight states, hav­ing aban­doned the twin soph­ist­ries of sov­er­eignty and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, en­joy in­ter­state peace and tran­quil­lity. So will the na­tions of Uran­tia be­gin to en­joy peace when they freely sur­ren­der their re­spec­tive sovereign­ties into the hands of a global gov­ern­ment—the sov­er­eignty of the broth­er­hood of men. In this world state the small na­tions will be as pow­er­ful as the great, even as the small state of Rhode Is­land has its two sen­a­tors in the Amer­i­can Congress just the same as the pop­u­lous state of New York or the large state of Texas.

134:5.15The lim­ited (state) sov­er­eignty of these forty-eight states was cre­ated by men and for men. The super­state (na­tional) sov­er­eignty of the Amer­i­can Fed­eral Union was cre­ated by the orig­i­nal thir­teen of these states for their own ben­e­fit and for the ben­e­fit of men. Some­time the super­na­tional sov­er­eignty of the plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment of man­kind will be sim­i­larly cre­ated by na­tions for their own ben­e­fit and for the ben­e­fit of all men.

134:5.16Cit­i­zens are not born for the ben­e­fit of gov­ern­ments; gov­ern­ments are or­ga­ni­za­tions cre­ated and de­vised for the ben­e­fit of men. There can be no end to the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty short of the ap­pear­ance of the gov­ern­ment of the sov­er­eignty of all men. All other sovereign­ties are rel­a­tive in value, in­ter­me­di­ate in mean­ing, and sub­or­di­nate in sta­tus.

134:5.17With sci­en­tific prog­ress, wars are go­ing to be­come more and more dev­as­tat­ing un­til they be­come al­most racially sui­ci­dal. How many world wars must be fought and how many leagues of na­tions must fail be­fore men will be will­ing to es­tab­lish the gov­ern­ment of man­kind and be­gin to en­joy the bless­ings of per­ma­nent peace and thrive on the tran­quil­lity of good will—world-wide good will—among men?