Excerpt #122 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
We advance technologically with relative ease but not so socially, politically or intellectually.
There continues to be enormous inequities and extraordinary amounts of violence in our world.
We war with each other in every way conceivable.
We destroy our environment.
Why?
We don’t drive around in vehicles that are thousands of years old.
We don’t see chariots driven down our streets.
Yet, we cling to belief systems that are literally thousands of years old.
These beliefs, again, are products of the infancy of our intelligence.
As a consequence, billions of people exist in a world of fiction and fantasy.
We do not understand our reality and the behavioral demands of our reality.
Instead of seeing the security found in the oneness in which we exist—the unity in our diversity—we create divisions . . . personal tribes.
We have nation-state tribes, political party tribes, religious tribes, corporate tribes, ad infinitum.
The nation-state can no longer be the principle focus of thought and action for intelligent humans. All major national problems now interlock with conditions elsewhere in the world . . . The major problems confronting humanity are not the problems and responsibilities of single nations . . . but of the entire independent world. – James Hector, former Rector of the United Nations
We exist not more secure but less secure.
We have created a destructive and unsustainable momentum that must be arrested and reversed if we are going to sustain humanity and advance our civilization.
We need a new understanding of the way our world works and the architecture of life.
WHERE TWO OR MORE GATHER, THERE WILL BE DISAGREEMENT.
Within the one, undivided and indivisible ocean of life, you have, through ignorance, created pernicious divisions based upon sex, race, nationality, religion and community. And you allow these self-created divisions to poison your hearts and pervert your relationships. You are already parts of one life, and therefore brotherhood is not something to be brought into existence through laborious efforts. It is the supreme fact which will claim your whole-hearted allegiance as soon as you have the candor and courage to face the truth. Slowly and surely, you will shed prejudices and get disentangled from the superficial distinctions created by identifications with forms and names. – Meher Baba