transition

99:4.9Tran­si­tion is al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by con­fu­sion, and there will be lit­tle tran­quil­lity in the re­li­gious world un­til the great strug­gle be­tween the three con­tend­ing philoso­phies of re­li­gion is ended:

99:4.1Gen­uine re­li­gion ren­ders the re­li­gion­ist so­cially fra­grant and cre­ates in­sights into hu­man fel­low­ship. But the for­mal­iza­tion of re­li­gious groups many times de­stroys the very val­ues for the pro­mo­tion of which the group was or­ga­nized. Hu­man friend­ship and di­vine re­li­gion are mu­tu­ally help­ful and sig­nif­i­cantly il­lu­mi­nat­ing if the growth in each is equal­ized and har­mo­nized. Re­li­gion puts new mean­ing into all group as­so­ci­a­tions—fam­i­lies, schools, and clubs. It im­parts new val­ues to play and ex­alts all true hu­mor.

99:4.2So­cial lead­er­ship is trans­formed by spir­i­tual in­sight; re­li­gion pre­vents all col­lec­tive move­ments from los­ing sight of their true ob­jec­tives. To­gether with chil­dren, re­li­gion is the great uni­fier of fam­ily life, pro­vided it is a liv­ing and grow­ing faith. Fam­ily life can­not be had with­out chil­dren; it can be lived with­out re­li­gion, but such a hand­i­cap enor­mously mul­ti­plies the dif­fi­cul­ties of this in­ti­mate hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion. Dur­ing the early decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, fam­ily life, next to per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, suf­fers most from the deca­dence con­se­quent upon the tran­si­tion from old re­li­gious loy­al­ties to the emerg­ing new mean­ings and val­ues.

99:4.3True re­li­gion is a mean­ing­ful way of liv­ing dy­nam­i­cally face to face with the com­mon­place re­al­i­ties of ev­ery­day life. But if re­li­gion is to stim­u­late in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter and aug­ment in­te­gra­tion of per­son­al­ity, it must not be stan­dard­ized. If it is to stim­u­late eval­u­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence and serve as a value-lure, it must not be stereo­typed. If re­li­gion is to pro­mote su­preme loy­al­ties, it must not be for­mal­ized.

99:4.4No mat­ter what up­heavals may at­tend the so­cial and eco­nomic growth of civ­i­liza­tion, re­li­gion is gen­uine and worth while if it fos­ters in the in­di­vid­ual an ex­pe­ri­ence in which the sov­er­eignty of truth, beauty, and good­ness pre­vails, for such is the true spir­i­tual con­cept of su­preme re­al­ity. And through love and wor­ship this be­comes mean­ing­ful as fel­low­ship with man and son­ship with God.

99:4.5Af­ter all, it is what one be­lieves rather than what one knows that de­ter­mines con­duct and dom­i­nates per­sonal per­for­mances. Purely fac­tual knowl­edge ex­erts very lit­tle in­flu­ence upon the av­er­age man un­less it be­comes emo­tion­ally ac­ti­vated. But the ac­ti­va­tion of re­li­gion is super­emo­tional, uni­fy­ing the en­tire hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence on tran­scen­dent lev­els through con­tact with, and re­lease of, spir­i­tual en­er­gies in the mor­tal life.

99:4.6Dur­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cally un­set­tled times of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, amid the eco­nomic up­heavals, the moral cross­cur­rents, and the so­ci­o­logic rip tides of the cy­clonic tran­si­tions of a sci­en­tific era, thou­sands upon thou­sands of men and women have be­come hu­manly dis­lo­cated; they are anx­ious, rest­less, fear­ful, un­cer­tain, and un­set­tled; as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory they need the con­so­la­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion of sound re­li­gion. In the face of un­prece­dented sci­en­tific achieve­ment and me­chan­i­cal de­vel­op­ment there is spir­i­tual stag­na­tion and philo­sophic chaos.

99:4.7There is no dan­ger in re­li­gion’s be­com­ing more and more of a pri­vate mat­ter—a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—pro­vided it does not lose its mo­ti­va­tion for un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice. Re­li­gion has suf­fered from many sec­ondary in­flu­ences: sud­den mix­ing of cul­tures, in­ter­min­gling of creeds, diminu­tion of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, chang­ing of fam­ily life, to­gether with ur­ban­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion.

99:4.8Man’s great­est spir­i­tual jeop­ardy con­sists in par­tial prog­ress, the predica­ment of un­fin­ished growth: for­sak­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions of fear with­out im­me­di­ately grasp­ing the rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion of love. Mod­ern sci­ence, par­tic­u­larly psy­chol­ogy, has weak­ened only those re­li­gions which are so largely de­pen­dent upon fear, su­per­sti­tion, and emo­tion.

99:4.101. The spiri­tis­tic be­lief (in a prov­i­den­tial De­ity) of many re­li­gions.

99:4.112. The hu­man­is­tic and ide­al­is­tic be­lief of many philoso­phies.

99:4.123. The mech­a­nis­tic and nat­u­ral­is­tic con­cep­tions of many sci­ences.

99:4.13And these three par­tial ap­proaches to the re­al­ity of the cos­mos must even­tu­ally be­come har­mo­nized by the rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tion of re­li­gion, phi­los­o­phy, and cos­mol­ogy which por­trays the tri­une ex­is­tence of spirit, mind, and en­ergy pro­ceed­ing from the Trin­ity of Par­a­dise and at­tain­ing time-space uni­fi­ca­tion within the De­ity of the Su­preme.

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.

81:6.40Man should be un­afraid to ex­per­i­ment with the mech­a­nisms of so­ci­ety. But al­ways should these ad­ven­tures in cul­tural ad­just­ment be con­trolled by those who are fully con­ver­sant with the his­tory of so­cial evo­lu­tion; and al­ways should these in­no­va­tors be coun­seled by the wis­dom of those who have had prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the do­mains of con­tem­plated so­cial or eco­nomic ex­per­i­ment. No great so­cial or eco­nomic change should be at­tempted sud­denly. Time is es­sen­tial to all types of hu­man ad­just­ment—phys­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic. Only moral and spir­i­tual ad­just­ments can be made on the spur of the mo­ment, and even these re­quire the pass­ing of time for the full out­work­ing of their ma­te­rial and so­cial reper­cus­sions. The ide­als of the race are the chief sup­port and as­sur­ance dur­ing the crit­i­cal times when civ­i­liza­tion is in tran­sit from one level to an­other.

81:6.4115. The pre­ven­tion of tran­si­tional break­down. So­ci­ety is the off­spring of age upon age of trial and er­ror; it is what sur­vived the se­lec­tive ad­just­ments and read­just­ments in the suc­ces­sive stages of man­kind’s age­long rise from an­i­mal to hu­man lev­els of plan­e­tary sta­tus. The great dan­ger to any civ­i­liza­tion—at any one mo­ment—is the threat of break­down dur­ing the time of tran­si­tion from the es­tab­lished meth­ods of the past to those new and bet­ter, but un­tried, pro­ce­dures of the fu­ture.

99:1.3Uran­tia so­ci­ety can never hope to set­tle down as in past ages. The so­cial ship has steamed out of the shel­tered bays of es­tab­lished tra­di­tion and has be­gun its cruise upon the high seas of evo­lu­tion­ary des­tiny; and the soul of man, as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory, needs care­fully to scru­ti­nize its charts of moral­ity and painstak­ingly to ob­serve the com­pass of re­li­gious guid­ance. The paramount mis­sion of re­li­gion as a so­cial in­flu­ence is to sta­bi­lize the ide­als of man­kind dur­ing these dan­ger­ous times of tran­si­tion from one phase of civ­i­liza­tion to an­other, from one level of cul­ture to an­other.

99:1.4Re­li­gion has no new du­ties to per­form, but it is ur­gently called upon to func­tion as a wise guide and ex­pe­ri­enced coun­selor in all of these new and rapidly chang­ing hu­man sit­u­a­tions. So­ci­ety is be­com­ing more me­chan­i­cal, more com­pact, more com­plex, and more crit­i­cally in­ter­de­pen­dent. Re­li­gion must func­tion to pre­vent these new and in­ti­mate in­teras­so­ci­a­tions from be­com­ing mu­tu­ally ret­ro­gres­sive or even de­struc­tive. Re­li­gion must act as the cos­mic salt which pre­vents the fer­ments of pro­gres­sion from de­stroy­ing the cul­tural sa­vor of civ­i­liza­tion. These new so­cial re­la­tions and eco­nomic up­heavals can re­sult in last­ing broth­er­hood only by the min­istry of re­li­gion.

99:2.6Mod­ern re­li­gion finds it dif­fi­cult to ad­just its at­ti­tude to­ward the rapidly shift­ing so­cial changes only be­cause it has per­mit­ted it­self to be­come so thor­oughly tra­di­tion­al­ized, dog­ma­tized, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. The re­li­gion of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence finds no dif­fi­culty in keep­ing ahead of all these so­cial de­vel­op­ments and eco­nomic up­heavals, amid which it ever func­tions as a moral sta­bi­lizer, so­cial guide, and spir­i­tual pi­lot. True re­li­gion car­ries over from one age to an­other the worth-while cul­ture and that wis­dom which is born of the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God and striv­ing to be like him.

81:6.22Sci­ence, guided by wis­dom, may be­come man’s great so­cial lib­er­a­tor. A me­chan­i­cal age can prove dis­as­trous only to a na­tion whose in­tel­lec­tual level is too low to dis­cover those wise meth­ods and sound tech­niques for suc­cess­fully ad­just­ing to the tran­si­tion dif­fi­cul­ties aris­ing from the sud­den loss of em­ploy­ment by large num­bers con­se­quent upon the too rapid in­ven­tion of new types of labor­sav­ing ma­chin­ery.