[1.1.1] This book was begun when the menace of an unheard-of calamity was already hanging over humankind; when a generation, scarcely recovering from the shocks of the Second World War, realized with horror that a strange haze was already gathering and thickening on the horizon — a foreboding of a catastrophe still more dreadful, of a war still more devastating.

[1.1.2] I began this book in the most stifling years of a tyranny that weighed upon two hundred million souls. I began it in a prison that bore the name of a political isolation ward. I wrote it in secret. I hid the manuscript, and good forces — human and not — concealed it during searches. Each day I expected it to be taken and destroyed, as my previous work had been destroyed — a work that had consumed ten years of my life and had brought me to that political prison.

[1.1.3] I am completing The Rose of the World some years later, when the danger of a third world war no longer rises like mist-laden clouds from beyond the horizon, but has already spread above our heads, veiling the zenith and swiftly descending from it downward, across every quarter of the sky.

[1.1.4] “Maybe it will blow over?” — Such hope stirs in every soul, and without it life would hardly be endurable. Some try to support it with logical arguments and with active deeds. Others contrive to persuade themselves that the danger is exaggerated. Still others resolve not to think of it at all, plunging into the cares of their small worlds and deciding once and for all: let it be as it will be. And there are those in whose hearts hope glimmers like a dying spark, who go on living, moving, and working only out of inertia.

[1.1.5] I am completing The Rose of the World in freedom, in a golden autumn garden. The one under whose yoke the country languished has long since been reaping in other worlds what he had sown in this one. Yet I still hide the last pages of the manuscript as I once hid the first, and I dare not entrust its contents to a single living soul. Even now I cannot be sure that the book will not be destroyed, that the spiritual experience with which it is imbued will be passed on to anyone at all.

[1.1.6] But perhaps it will blow over — and tyranny will never return? Perhaps humanity will forever keep the memory of Russia’s dreadful historical ordeal?” — Such hope stirs in every soul, and without it life would be bitter to endure.

[1.1.7] But I belong to those who have been mortally stricken by two great calamities: the world wars and the one-man tyranny. Such people cannot believe that the roots of war and tyranny have already been eradicated from humanity, or that they will be in the near future. The danger of a given tyranny or war may be averted, but after a time the threat of new ones will arise. Both calamities were for us a kind of apocalypse — revelations of the might of world Evil and of its eternal struggle with the forces of Light. People of other ages would likely not understand us; our anxiety would have seemed to them exaggerated, our sense of the world — morbid. Yet there is no exaggeration in that conception of historical lawfulness which has been seared into human existence by half a century of contemplation and participation in events and processes of unprecedented scope. Nor can there be anything morbid in that conclusion which has taken shape in the human soul as the fruit of its brightest and deepest powers.

[1.1.8] I am gravely ill — my years are numbered. If the manuscript is destroyed or lost, I will not have time to restore it. But if, someday, it should reach even a few whose spiritual thirst compels them to read it to the end, overcoming all its difficulties, then the ideas it contains cannot fail to become seeds, bringing forth shoots in other hearts.

[1.1.9] Whether this happens before a third world war or after it, or even if no third war is unleashed in the coming years, the book will not die so long as even a single pair of friendly eyes goes, chapter by chapter, through its pages. For the questions it seeks to answer will go on stirring human hearts far into the future.
[1.1.10] These questions are not limited to the problems of war and the state order. Yet nothing can shake my conviction that the gravest dangers threatening humanity now and for centuries to come are a great self-destructive war and an absolute worldwide tyranny. Perhaps in our own age humanity will overcome a third world war, or at least survive it, as it survived the first and the second. Perhaps it will endure a tyranny even broader and more merciless than the one we endured. It may also happen that in a hundred or two hundred years there will arise new perils for nations, no less fatal than tyranny and great war, though of another kind. It is possible. It is likely. But no effort of reason, no imagination, no intuition can conceive of dangers to come that are not linked, one way or another, with these two fundamental ones: the danger of humanity’s physical annihilation through war, and of its spiritual ruin through an absolute worldwide tyranny.

[1.1.11] This book is directed, first and foremost, against these two evils. Against the two fundamental, primordial evils. It is directed against them — not as a pamphlet, nor as unmasking satire, nor as a sermon. The fiercest satire and the most fiery sermon are barren if they only lash at evil and prove that the good is good and the bad is bad. They are barren if they are not founded on knowledge of the foundations of that worldview, that universal teaching, and that effective program which, spreading from mind to mind and from will to will, could turn humanity aside from these two fundamental dangers. To share my experience with others, to lift the veil on the panorama of historical and metahistorical perspectives, the branching chain of dilemmas standing before us or bound to arise, the vision of multi-material worlds closely bound with us in good and in evil — this is the task of my life. I have sought, and still seek, to fulfill it through the forms of verbal art, through prose and poetry, but the nature of that art did not allow me to disclose the whole conception with proper fullness, to set it forth comprehensively, clearly, and accessibly. To unfold this conception in just this way, to make plain how in it — though speaking of the otherworldly — there yet lies a key both to the processes of history and to the destiny of each one of us, this is the task of the present book. A book which, if the Lord preserves it from destruction, is destined to be laid, as one of many bricks, in the foundation of the Rose of the World, in the base of the all-human Brotherhood.

[1.1.12] There exists an institution that for many centuries has claimed to be the sole, unwavering unifier of humankind, shielding it from the danger of war of all against all, from the danger of falling into chaos. That institution is the state. Since the end of the tribal order, the state has been an essential necessity at every stage of history. Even hierocracies, which sought to replace it with religious power, turned into varieties of that same state. The state cemented society upon the principle of violence, for the level of moral development required to cement society upon any other principle had not yet been attained. Indeed, it has not been attained even to this day. The state still remains the only tried means against social chaos. Yet it is becoming clear that within humanity there exist ethical principles of a higher order, capable not only of sustaining but of perfecting social harmony; and what is more, there are already discernible paths for the accelerated growth of these principles.

[1.1.13] In the political history of recent times two tendencies of mankind are easily discerned, polar to one another.

[1.1.14] One of them seeks the overdevelopment of the state principle as such, the strengthening of the individual’s all-encompassing dependence upon the state — or, more precisely, upon that institution in whose hands the state apparatus lies: the Party, the Army, the Leader. States of the fascist or national-socialist type are the most striking examples of such phenomena.

[1.1.15] The other current of phenomena, arising as early as the eighteenth century if not before, is the humanistic current. Its origins and chief stages are English parliamentarianism, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, German social democracy, and, in our own day, the struggle for liberation from colonialism. The distant goal of this current is the weakening of coercive cement in the life of nations and the transformation of the state — from being above all a police apparatus defending national or class domination, into an apparatus of universal economic equilibrium and the safeguarding of individual rights. In historical reality there also appear original formations that may seem to be hybrids. In essence remaining phenomena of the first type, they alter their outward form insofar as expedient for the achievement of their aim. This is mere tactic, camouflage, nothing more.

[1.1.16] And yet, despite the polarity of these currents, they are united by one feature most characteristic of the twentieth century: the striving toward the universal. The outward pathos of the various movements of our age lies in their constructive programs of social order; but the inner pathos of modern history lies in its elemental striving toward the universal.

[1.1.17] The most powerful movement of the first half of our century was marked by the internationalism of its doctrine and the planetary scope of its reach. The Achilles’ heel of the movements opposed to it — racism and national socialism — lay in their narrow nationalism, or more precisely, in the racially or nationally bounded “blessed zones,” the chimera of which they used to entice and bewitch. Yet they too strove for world dominion, and with colossal energy. Now cosmopolitan Americanism is concerned with avoiding the mistakes of its predecessors.

[1.1.18] What does this sign of the times point to? Does it not show that universality, ceasing to be an abstract idea, has become a universal need? Does it not show that the world has become indivisible and close as never before? Does it not show, finally, that the solution of all urgent problems can be radical and enduring only on a universal scale?

[1.1.19] Despotic formations systematically put into practice the principle of extreme violence, or else veil it with a cunning blend of methods. The tempo quickens. Vast state colossi arise, whose construction once would have required centuries. Each is predatory in its nature, each seeks to impose upon humanity its own rule. Their military and technological power has become dizzying. They have already cast the world more than once into the abyss of wars and tyrannies — where is the guarantee they will not cast it there again and again? And at last the strongest will prevail on a worldwide scale, though at the cost of turning a third of the planet into a lunar landscape. Then the cycle will close, only to give way to the greatest of evils: a single dictatorship over the surviving two-thirds of the earth — at first perhaps an oligarchic one, but later, as so often happens in the second stage of dictatorships, a one-man tyranny. This is the threat, the most terrible of all that has ever hung over humanity: the threat of an all-human tyranny.

[1.1.20] Consciously or unconsciously sensing this danger, the movements of humanistic tendency attempt to consolidate their efforts. They murmur of cultural cooperation, brandish slogans of pacifism and democratic freedoms, seek illusory salvation in neutrality, or, frightened by the aggressiveness of their adversary, themselves set upon his path. Not one of them has advanced the indisputable aim capable of inspiring universal trust: the idea that ethical control over the actions of states is an urgent necessity. Certain societies, traumatized by the horrors of the world wars, attempt to unite so that political unification may one day encompass the whole globe. But to what would this lead now? The danger of wars would, indeed, be removed — at least for a time. But where is the guarantee that such a superstate, leaning upon vast morally backward strata — of which there are still far more in the world than one would wish — and stirring up the instincts of domination and cruelty not yet outlived in humanity, would not again grow into dictatorship and at last into tyranny, before which all former tyrannies would seem but a plaything?

[1.1.21] It is significant that the very religious confessions which were the first to proclaim the international ideals of brotherhood now find themselves in the rearguard of the universal striving toward the worldwide. Perhaps this is explained by their characteristic focus on the inner man and their neglect of everything external — among which they include the problem of humanity’s social order. But if one looks deeper, if one dares to say openly what is usually spoken only in narrow circles of those living an intense religious life, something comes to light that not all take into account. It is the mystical dread, arising already in the age of the Roman Empire, of the coming unification of the world — an unappeasable anxiety for mankind, for in a single all-human state is foreseen a snare, from which the only exit would be toward absolute one-man rule, toward the reign of the “prince of this world,” toward the last cataclysms of history and its catastrophic break.

[1.1.22] In truth, what guarantee is there that a great ambitious man will not rise to the head of the superstate, and that science will not serve him loyally and devotedly as the very tool for turning this superstate into that monstrous machine of torment and spiritual crippling of which I speak? Can one doubt that even now the prerequisites are being laid for the invention of perfect control over human conduct and the very patterns of thought? Where are the limits of those nightmarish prospects that loom before our imagination from the crossing of two forces: the terror of absolute power and the techniques of the twenty-first century? Tyranny will then be all the more complete, for even the last tragic path of deliverance will be closed—the overthrow of tyranny from without through military defeat: there will be no one left to wage war, all will be subdued. And the world unity, dreamed of by so many generations and bought at such cost in sacrifice, will reveal its demonic face: its hopelessness, if the leadership of that unity should fall into the hands of the servants of dark powers.

[1.1.23] From bitter experience humanity learns that neither those social and economic movements governed by bare reason, nor the achievements of science by themselves, are able to steer mankind between the Charybdis and Scylla—tyrannies and world wars. Worse still: new social and economic systems, once in power, clothe themselves in the very mechanisms of political despotism and become sowers and kindlers of world wars. Science turns into their compliant handmaid, far more obedient and dependable than ever the Church was to the feudal lords. The tragedy lies in this: from the very beginning, scientific activity was not bound up with a deeply considered moral education. Into this activity all were admitted, regardless of their level of moral development. Small wonder, then, that each triumph of science and technology now turns one of its faces against the true interests of humanity. The internal combustion engine, radio, aviation, atomic energy—all strike with one edge at the living flesh of the nations. And the development of communications and those technical means which allow a police regime to control the intimate life and innermost thoughts of each person lay down an iron foundation for the vampiric colossi of dictatorships.

[1.1.24] Thus, the experience of history brings humanity to the recognition of this evident fact: that dangers will not be prevented, nor social harmony attained, by the progress of science and technology taken by themselves, nor by the overgrowth of the state, nor by the dictatorship of a “strong man,” nor by the coming to power of pacifist organizations of the social-democratic type—blown by the winds of history now to the right, now to the left, from powerless sentimental idealism to revolutionary maximalism. Rather, it is the recognition of the urgent necessity of one single path: the establishment, above the World Federation of states, of an unsullied, incorruptible, and highly authoritative body—an ethical authority, beyond and above the state, for the nature of the state is in its essence non-ethical.

[1.1.25] What idea, what teaching will help to bring forth such an authority? What minds will shape it and make it acceptable to the vast majority? By what paths will such an instance—rejecting violence—come to universal recognition, to a height reigning even above a Federation of states? And if it takes as its guiding principle the gradual replacement of violence with something else, then with what precisely, and in what order? And what doctrine could resolve all the problems that arise in connection with this, with their immeasurable complexity?

[1.1.26] The present book seeks, in some measure, to give answers to these questions, though its scope is broader. Yet before approaching an answer, it is necessary first to state clearly whom this teaching regards as its most implacable enemy, and against what—or whom—it is directed.

[1.1.27] On the plane of history, it sees its enemies in all states, parties, and doctrines that strive for the violent enslavement of others and for any forms whatsoever of despotic social order. On the plane of metahistory, however, it sees but one enemy: the Antigod, the tyrannical spirit, the Great Tormentor, manifesting himself in many guises in the life of our planet. For the movement of which I speak—both now, as it scarcely begins to arise, and later, when it becomes the decisive voice of history—there will be but one foe: the striving toward tyranny and cruel violence, wherever it may appear, even within itself. Violence can be acknowledged as permissible only in cases of utmost necessity, only in tempered forms, and only until that higher authority, through a perfected education, with the aid of millions of lofty-minded wills and intellects, prepares humanity for the substitution of compulsion with voluntariness, the commands of external law with the voice of deep conscience, and the state with brotherhood. In other words, until the very essence of the state has been transformed, and the living brotherhood of all has replaced the soulless apparatus of state coercion.

[1.1.28] It is not necessary to suppose that such a process must inevitably require an immense span of time. The historical experience of the great dictatorships — which, with extraordinary energy and methodical precision, enveloped the populations of vast nations in a single, carefully conceived system of upbringing and education — has irrefutably demonstrated what a mighty lever lies in this mode of influence upon the psyche of generations. Each new generation was shaped ever more closely to what the powers that be deemed desirable. Nazi Germany, for instance, succeeded in achieving its ends almost within the span of a single generation. Needless to say, its ideals can evoke in us nothing but wrath and loathing. Not only its ideals — even its methods must be almost entirely repudiated. Yet the lever it discovered must be taken up and held firmly in our own hands. The age draws near when broad spiritual enlightenment shall triumph, and when decisive conquests will be won by a new, as yet scarcely discernible pedagogy. Were even a few dozen schools entrusted to its care, they would rear a generation capable of fulfilling its duty not under compulsion, but of its own free will; not from fear, but from the creative impulse of love. Therein lies the true meaning of the education of man in an ennobled image.

[1.1.29] I envision an international organization, political and cultural, whose goal is the transformation of the very essence of the state through the gradual and consistent realization of all-embracing reforms. The decisive step toward this aim is the creation of a World Federation of states as independent members, yet with the condition that above the Federation there be established that special authority I have already mentioned—an authority overseeing the activity of states and guiding their bloodless and painless transformation from within. Bloodless and painless—this is the whole point, this is what distinguishes it from the revolutionary doctrines of the past.

[1.1.30] As to what the structure of this organization will be, or what name it shall bear—it seems to me both premature and needless to predict. Let us call it, for the sake of convenience and to avoid lengthy descriptions, the League for the Transformation of the Essence of the State. As for its structure, those who will become its organizers will be more experienced and more practical than I; they will be public figures, not poets. I can only say that, as it appears to me, the League should have its branches in every country, each branch comprising several aspects: cultural, philanthropic, educational, and political. The political aspect of each branch will, in its structure and organization, take the form of a national party of the World Religious and Cultural Reform. In the League and through the League all these parties will be bound together and united.

[1.1.31] How, where, and among whom the formation of the League will take place I, of course, do not and cannot know. But it is clear that the span from its first appearance until the creation of the Federation of states and the ethical authority above them must be regarded as a preparatory period—a time when the League will devote all its strength to spreading its ideas, building its ranks, enlarging the organization, educating the rising generations, and shaping within itself that future authority which in due course may be entrusted with a worldwide guiding role.

[1.1.32] The Charter of the League cannot set barriers against people of differing philosophical or religious convictions. What is required is only the readiness to take active part in carrying out its program, and the resolve not to transgress its moral principles, accepted as its cornerstone.

[1.1.33] In all the vicissitudes of social life and political struggle, the successes of the League must be achieved not at the cost of departing from its moral code, but precisely through fidelity to it. Its reputation must remain unsullied, its selflessness beyond question, its authority ever growing—for into it will flow, and by it be continually strengthened, the best forces of humanity.

[1.1.34] Most likely, the path toward world unification will lie along the steps of various stages of international solidarity, through the union and merging of regional communities. The final step of such a ladder would be a worldwide referendum or plebiscite—some form of free expression of will by all. It is possible that this will bring victory to the League only in certain countries. Yet the very course of history will be on its side. The unification of even half the globe will complete a profound shift in the consciousness of nations. A second referendum will follow, perhaps a third, and a decade sooner or later the borders of the Federation will coincide with the borders of humanity itself. Then the practical possibility will open for carrying out a chain of broad measures aimed at transforming the conglomerate of states into a single monolith, gradually transfigured by two parallel processes: the external—political, social, and economic; and the internal—educational, ethical, and religious.

[1.1.35] It is clear from all this that the members of the League and of its national parties will be able to struggle only by the word and by their own example, and only against those ideologies and doctrines that seek to clear the way for any kind of dictatorship, or to uphold such dictatorships once they are at the helm of power. Among their historical forerunners, though working on a narrower national scale, the League will recognize the great Mahatma Gandhi and the party he inspired. The first righteous statesman of modern history, he affirmed a purely political movement on the basis of lofty ethics and refuted the common opinion that politics and morality are incompatible. But the national bounds within which the Indian National Congress acted the League will extend to planetary dimensions, and its goals will be the next step—or a series of steps—in history beyond those that were set by the great party which liberated India.

[1.1.36] Oh, of course there will be no shortage of people who will insist that the methods of the League are impractical and unreal. Ah, these champions of political realism! There is no baseness, no social vileness, that has not sought to cover itself with that pitiful fig leaf. There is no burden more deadening, more earth-bound, than talk of political realism as a counterweight to all that is winged, all that is inspired, all that is spiritual. Political realists are, after all, the same who once declared—even in India—that Gandhi was a dreamer and a fantasist. They were forced to grind their teeth and bite their tongues when Gandhi and his party, precisely on the path of lofty ethics, won freedom for their country and led it further—to prosperity. And not to that outward prosperity which blinds people’s eyes with the black dust of statistics on coal output, or with the radioactive ash from experimental hydrogen bomb blasts, but to prosperity cultural, ethical, and aesthetic—to spiritual prosperity, which, slowly but firmly, draws after itself material prosperity as well.

[1.1.37] Those who cannot see the better side of man—whose psyche has coarsened and whose conscience has withered in the atmosphere of crude state arbitrariness—will also accuse the League of unrealistic methods. To them will be joined those who fail to foresee the shifts in mass consciousness awaiting us in the years already close at hand. The trauma of wars, repressions, and every kind of violence even now awakens a broad movement for coexistence and for peace. Events that shatter the sense of security, that strip away all comfort and repose, that undermine the very roots of trust in existing ideologies and the order they guard, are taking place constantly and will continue to do so. The exposure of unheard-of horrors committed behind the pompous façades of dictatorships, the clear recognition of what their temporary victories and outward successes were founded upon and paid for with—all this scorches the soul like a burning wind, until spiritual thirst becomes unbearable. The removal of the threat of great wars; the ways toward uniting the world without bloodshed; the righteous light-bearer who shall one day lead united humanity; the weakening of state coercion and the growth of the spirit of brotherhood—these are what believers pray for and unbelievers dream of in our age. And it is highly probable that a world-embracing, winged teaching—moral, political, philosophical, and religious—will transform this thirst of a generation into a universal creative enthusiasm.

[1.1.38] The fact that the last great religious movement of humanity—the Protestant Reformation—took place four hundred years ago, and that the last religion of world significance, Islam, has already existed for thirteen centuries, is sometimes advanced as an argument for the view that the religious era of mankind has come to an end. Yet the potential of religion as such, and not merely of its separate forms, must be judged not by how long ago its last great forms arose, but by whether the evolution of religion has reached a dead end; whether there is the possibility of uniting creative religious thought with the indisputable theses of science; and further, whether there dawn before such a worldview the prospects of interpreting the living material of new epochs, and whether religion can exert upon this material an effective and progressive influence.

[1.1.39] Indeed, about four hundred years have passed since the last great religious movement of international scope. Yet even before the Protestant Reformation there had been no such movements for many centuries. But is that the point? Is it not already clear that in recent centuries a certain channel of mankind’s creative endeavor has absorbed almost all its spiritual and intellectual energies? It would be difficult to expect that, while carrying through such a swift advance—scientific, technical, and social—and while creating such cultural treasures as the literature, music, philosophy, art, and science of these centuries, humanity could also have found the strength to bring forth universal religious systems.

[1.1.40] But the threshold of the twentieth century marked precisely that epoch when the flowering of great literatures and arts, of great music and philosophy, came to its end. The sphere of social and political action has drawn into itself—and with ever greater clarity as time goes on—not the most spiritual representatives of mankind, but rather the least. A gigantic vacuum of spirituality has arisen, one unknown even fifty years ago, and hypertrophied science is powerless to fill it. If one may so express it: colossal reserves of human genius are being expended nowhere. And this is the womb of creative forces in which is ripening the destined-to-be-born universal interreligion.

[1.1.41] Will religion—not its ancient forms, but that religion of culmination with which the world is now pregnant—be able to avert the gravest dangers hanging over humanity: world wars and world tyranny? To avert the next world war it will likely not have the power: should a third war flare up, that calamity would probably come sooner than the League itself could arise. But in the prevention of all wars whose danger will arise after the nucleus of the coming interreligion has formed, and in the prevention of world tyranny—there lies its immediate aim. Can this religion attain the greatest harmony between personal freedom and the interests of mankind imaginable at the given stage of history? That is but another aspect of this same immediate aim. Will it foster the full development of the creative powers implanted in man? Yes—except for those demonic powers, the powers of tyranny, torment, and self-assertion at the expense of other living beings. Will it, like other movements of world scope, demand bloody sacrifices for its triumph? No—save in those cases where its heralds may perhaps be compelled to bear witness to their fidelity with their own blood. Will its theses contradict—not the philosophical doctrine of materialism (that, of course, they will contradict at every point from A to Z), but the objective and binding theses of modern science? Not in a single letter or figure. Can one foresee the establishment, in its age of ascendancy, of a regime where dissent would be persecuted, where it would impose its dogmas upon philosophy, science, and art? Quite the opposite: from partial restrictions of freedom of thought at first, to unlimited freedom of thought thereafter—such is the path it proposes. What, then, remains of the argument that religion is incapable of responding to the urgent questions of the age, still less of resolving them in practice?

[1.1.42] With full right and justification, such a reproach may be directed not at religion, but, alas, at science. It is precisely that system of views which refuses to look to the right or to the left beyond the boundaries drawn by contemporary scientific knowledge that proves incapable of answering the most essential, most elementary questions. — Does there exist a First Cause, a Creator, God? Unknown. — Does the soul, or anything akin to it, exist, and is it immortal? Science does not know. — What are time, space, matter, energy? Opinions diverge sharply. — Is the world eternal and infinite, or, on the contrary, bounded in time and space? Science has no material for a firm answer. — Why must I do good rather than evil, if evil pleases me and I can escape punishment? The replies are utterly unsatisfactory. — How can science be used to forestall the possibility of wars and tyrannies? Silence. — How can social harmony be attained with the least number of victims? Mutually exclusive proposals are advanced, sharing only this in common: all are equally unrelated to strict science. Naturally, on such shaky, subjective, and in truth pseudo-scientific foundations, there have arisen only doctrines of class, racial, national, and party egoism — those very teachings whose vocation is to justify dictatorships and wars. A low level of spirituality is the distinguishing trait of such doctrines. Therefore, the sought-for moral authority can be built not upon the so-called scientific worldview — which, in essence, does not exist — but upon communion with the spiritual world, upon the reception of rays streaming thence into the heart, reason, and conscience, and upon the realization in every sphere of life of the covenant of active and creative love. The moral level fully corresponding to these signs is called righteousness.

[1.1.43] Another widespread prejudice is the view of religion as reactionary by its very nature, especially in our own age. But to speak of the reactionary character of religion as such, without regard to its concrete forms, is as senseless as to argue the reactionary character of art as such, or of philosophy as such. Whoever thinks dynamically, who perceives the evolving sequences of facts and the processes that shape them, will discern within art, within religion, and within any sphere of human endeavor both reactionary and progressive forms. Reactionary forms of religion may be found in abundance, indeed more than we might wish, yet this has no bearing on that emerging Religion of Synthesis to which the present book is devoted. For in our century there have been, and are, no aims more progressive, nor methods more progressive, than those united within it. As for the scientific method’s claim to supremacy, it is as powerless to expel from life the artistic and religious methods (in the broadest sense of the word) as once an aggressive religiosity proved powerless to expel science itself. For these methods differ not only in how they know, but also in what they know. In the last century, under the spell of the rapid progress of science and technology, the death of art was predicted. A hundred years have passed, and the constellation of the arts has not only not perished but has been enriched by a new art — the art of cinema. Thirty or forty years ago, many in Russia regarded the death of religion as inevitable in the face of scientific and social progress. And yet, despite all the means mobilized toward that end, the constellation of religions has not only not perished, but under the very influence of scientific and social progress it is being enriched by that which shall transform the world’s religiosity from a cluster of scattered petals into a single, integral spiritual blossom — the Rose of the World.

[1.1.44] From all that has been said it follows that a religious movement which shall incorporate into its worldview and practice the positive experience of humanity, and from the negative draw conclusions requiring too much courage and candor to be reached along the paths of other currents of social thought; a movement that sets as its nearest aims the transformation of the state into a brotherhood, the unification of the earth, and the education of a nobler type of human being; a movement that shall guard itself against the distortion of its ideal and its methods with the unbreakable armor of lofty morality — such a movement cannot but be acknowledged as progressive, forward-looking, and creatively young.

[1.1.45] A shield of morality! But upon what foundations can such morality be established? I have spoken of righteousness. Yet is it not a utopia to think of righteousness as belonging to whole circles of society, and not to individuals alone?

[1.1.46] It should be clarified what is meant here by moral uprightness. Moral uprightness is not necessarily the fruit of monastic asceticism. It is the highest stage of a person’s moral development; whoever has surpassed it is no longer merely upright, but a saint. The forms of such uprightness are diverse; they depend on time, place, and human character. In general terms one may say this: moral uprightness, in its negative aspect, is that condition of a human being — steady and lasting until his death — in which the will is freed from impulses of selfish desire, the mind from captivity to material interests, and the heart from the turbulence of random, murky emotions that debase the soul. In its positive aspect, moral uprightness is the permeation of all a person’s outward and inward activity with active love — toward God, toward other human beings, and toward the world.

[1.1.47] It is hardly possible that the psychological climate for the arising of a moral authority founded precisely on righteousness could be more fittingly prepared anywhere than within a society united in the expectation of its birth and seeing therein its very meaning and purpose. And such a society must be the League. Among its members there may even be atheists. But the League’s central thesis — the necessity of a worldwide ethical authority standing above the states — will be that which binds together its most inspired, creative, active, and gifted members into a nucleus. A nucleus marked by an atmosphere of ceaseless spiritual creation, of active love, and of purity. A nucleus composed of men and women enlightened enough to understand not only the danger that threatens each of them when the impulses of egoic self are loosed, but also the danger of too external an understanding of religious and moral values — an understanding that leads to ethical formalism, hypocrisy, hardness of heart, and sanctimony.

[1.1.48] None but the Lord God knows where and when the first flame of the Rose of the World will be kindled. The country — Russia — is only foreshown; tragic events may yet occur that will complicate the accomplishment of this mystical act and compel its transfer to another land. The epoch — the sixties of our century — is only indicated; ruinous cataclysms may arise that will postpone that date for many years. It is possible that the environment in which the first flame shall be kindled will not be the League for the Transformation of the State, but another circle of people as yet unforeseen. But whether here or there, in this country or another, a decade earlier or later, the interreligious, all-human church of the new age — the Rose of the World — will appear as the fruit of the spiritual labor of multitudes, as the sobornal creation of those who have placed themselves beneath the descending stream of revelation — it will appear, it will arise, it will set out upon its historical path.

[1.1.49] “Religion,” “interreligion,” “church” — with none of these words can I attain the needed precision. Its essential differences from the old religions and churches will in time compel the creation of new words to designate it. Yet even apart from that, this book must introduce so vast a store of new terms that here, at the very beginning, it is preferable not to lean on those words, but rather to give a descriptive definition of the distinguishing features of that which is to be called the Rose of the World.

[1.1.50] It is not a closed religious confession, whether true or false. Nor is it an international religious society like the Theosophists, the Anthroposophists, or the Masons, composed, like a bouquet, of separate flowers of religious truth eclectically plucked from every imaginable spiritual meadow. It is an interreligion, or pan-religion, in the sense that it should be understood as a universal teaching that affords such a point of view upon the religions that arose earlier as reveals them all to be reflections of different strata of spiritual reality, different series of variomaterial facts, different segments of the planetary cosmos*. That perspective embraces Shadanakar both as a whole and as a part of the divine cosmos of the universe. If the older religions are petals, then the Rose of the World is a flower: with root, stem, calyx, and the fellowship of all its petals.

* By planetary cosmos is meant the totality of layers of differing materiality, with differing numbers of spatial and temporal coordinates, yet all necessarily bound to the sphere of the Earth as a planet. The planetary cosmos is the Earth itself, in the full complexity of the material — and not merely physical — strata of its being. Similar vast systems exist for many heavenly bodies. They are called bramfaturas. The bramfatura of the Earth bears the name Shadanakar. Concerning this and other words employed here either for the first time or invested with a new meaning, see the brief glossary appended at the end.

[1.1.51] The second distinction is this: the universality of the Rose of the World’s aspirations and their historical concreteness. No religion — with the sole exception of medieval Catholicism — set before itself the task of transforming the social body of humankind. Yet even the papacy, striving stubbornly to dam the feudal chaos with the dikes of hierocracy, was unable either to weaken the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy, or to diminish social inequality through broad reforms, or to raise the general well-being. And indeed, to blame the leading Catholic hierarchy for this would be unjust: the material means for such transformations — economic and technical — did not yet exist. It was not by chance that the evil of the world was felt from time immemorial, down to modern times, as ineliminable and eternal, and that Catholicism, essentially, addressed itself — like the other religions — only to the “inner man,” teaching personal perfection. But times have changed; material means have appeared; and it is owing to the whole historical process, and not to the Rose of the World itself, that it can now view social transformations not as something external, doomed to failure and unworthy of effort, but as inseparably linked with the perfection of the inner world of man: now these are two parallel processes that must complement one another. One often hears: “Christianity has failed.” Yes, if it all lay in the past, one could say that in the social and universal-moral sense it has failed. “Religion has failed.” Yes, if humanity’s religious creativity had been exhausted by what has already been created, then in the sense just mentioned religion truly would have failed. But as it is, one may say only this: the older religions could not bring about a substantial reduction of social evil, since they did not possess the necessary material means; and it was precisely the absence of these means that produced their negative attitude toward such attempts. In this way the irreligious stage of civilization was prepared. In the eighteenth century social conscience awoke. Social disharmony was at last felt and recognized as something intolerable, offensive, and demanding to be overcome. This, of course, was connected with the fact that the material means, previously lacking, had begun to appear. But the older religions did not grasp this, did not wish to make use of those means, did not wish to lead the process of social transformation; and it is in this rigidity, this intellectual laziness, this immobility and narrowness of vision, that their gravest guilt lies. Religion discredited itself by its centuries-long helplessness in this respect, and it is no wonder that Europe, and afterward other continents, fell into the opposite extreme: the transformation of society by purely mechanical means, accompanied by a complete rejection of the spiritual side of the process. Nor is the outcome to be wondered at: upheavals such as the world had never seen; losses of life such as had never been imagined even in delirium; and a decline of the moral level to a degree whose very possibility in the twentieth century seems to many still a grim and tragic enigma. Upon the old religions rests, in large measure, responsibility for the depth and persistence of the ensuing irreligious stage, and for the spiritual fate of millions of souls who, for the sake of the struggle for a just social order, set themselves against religion altogether, and in so doing tore the roots of their being out of the soil of world spirituality. Yet true religious activity is itself a form of social service, and true social service is at the same time religious activity. No religious deed — not even the self-denial of a monk — can be isolated from the common work, from labor on behalf of the universal enlightenment; and no social activity, except that which is demonic, can fail to increase the sum of the world’s good — that is, to have religious meaning. The beating of social conscience, active social compassion and co-rejoicing, unwearying practical efforts for the transformation of the social body of humankind — this is the second distinction of the Rose of the World from the older religions.

[1.1.52] The third distinction lies in the dynamism of its vision. Religions not unfamiliar with the notion of metahistory have already appeared — Judaism, early Christianity — yet only in remote and brief epochs of their genesis did they endeavor to impart a spiritual meaning to the historical process then unfolding. In those short, half-forgotten ages, the astounding revelations of the Apocalypse remained concealed from human sight beneath a veil of allegories and reticence; the cipher of its images admitted every manner of interpretation. A genuine comprehension of the historical process never came to pass. Historical experience was still scant and narrow, the geographical horizon negligible, and the mystical mind unprepared to discern the inner laws of metahistory and the immeasurable complexity of Shadanakar. But the advent of the Rose of the World was heralded by an era of scientific hegemony, which shook to the roots humanity’s conceptions of the universe, of nations and cultures, and of their destinies. Another era likewise preceded it: one of profound social upheavals, of revolutions, and of planetary wars. Both series of events ploughed deep into the psychological strata that for centuries had lain immobile. Into that soil, torn open by the iron teeth of historical catastrophes, fall the seeds of metahistorical revelation. And to the spiritual gaze the planetary cosmos is disclosed as a ceaselessly changing system of diverse worlds, borne along with stormy swiftness toward a dazzling goal, spiritualizing and transfiguring itself from age to age, from day to day. The ranks of coming epochs begin to gleam through, each in its unrepeatable uniqueness, in the interweaving of metahistorical forces contending within it. The striving of the Rose of the World is to become the receiver, the multiplier, and the interpreter of this knowledge. As the conciliar mystical consciousness of living humanity, it will illumine the historical process in its past, present, and future, in order to assume creative guidance of it. And if one may speak of dogmas in its teaching, they will be dogmas deeply dynamic, manifold, capable of unceasing enrichment and growth, and of long perfection.

[1.1.53] From this there follows yet another, the fourth distinction of the Rose of the World: the prospect of successive spiritual-historical tasks that lie before her, tasks wholly concrete and, in principle, realizable. Let me enumerate once more the nearest of them: the unification of the earth into a Federation of states under an ethical supervisory authority; the extension of material sufficiency and a high cultural level to the populations of all lands; the upbringing of generations of an ennobled human type; the reunification of the Christian churches and a free union with all religions of the Light; the transfiguration of the planet into a garden, and of states into a brotherhood. Yet these are but the tasks of the first order. Their fulfillment will open the way toward the resolution of tasks still higher: the spiritualization of nature.

[1.1.54] Thus: interreligiosity, the universality of its social aspirations and their concreteness, the dynamism of its vision, and the succession of its world-historical tasks — these are the traits that distinguish the Rose of the World from all religions and churches of the past. The bloodlessness of her paths, the painlessness of her reforms, the gentleness and tenderness of her relation to human beings, the waves of soulful warmth diffused around her — these are the traits that distinguish her from all socio-political movements of past and present.

[1.1.55] It is clear that the essence of the state, as well as the ethical visage of society, cannot be transformed in the twinkling of an eye. An immediate and absolute renunciation of coercion is but a utopia. Yet that element will wane with time and within the space of society. Every discipline is compounded of elements of coercion and of consciousness, and the proportion between these two determines the character of each kind of discipline. The highest degree of coercion and the near absence of consciousness mark the discipline of slave economies, prisons, and concentration camps. A somewhat greater share of consciousness appears in military drill. And further, as coercion diminishes within systems of discipline, it is supplanted by the categorical imperative of inner self-discipline. Upon the cultivation of this very impulse the whole of the new pedagogy shall be founded. Its principles and methods, as well as the methods of re-education and renewal of those who have transgressed, will be spoken of only later, in one of the final chapters. But already it should be clear that the stimulus of external coercion will vanish most swiftly within the inner concentric circles of the Rose of the World; for those circles will be filled by men and women who have bound their whole life to her tasks and to her ethic, and who no longer stand in need of any outward compulsion. Such persons shall constitute her conscience, and who, if not they, are destined to occupy the seats of the Supreme Council?

[1.1.56] Can one overestimate the educative significance of such a social order, when at the summit of society stand and act the worthiest — not those whose will has been hypertrophied at the expense of the other powers of the soul, whose strength lies in unscrupulousness with regard to means, but those in whom a harmoniously developed will, reason, love, purity of thought, and profound life-experience are united with manifest spiritual gifts: those whom we call the righteous. Quite recently we beheld such an example: we beheld the fateful hour of India and the great spirit of Gandhi. We witnessed a staggering spectacle: a man who possessed no governmental power, in whose command was not a single soldier, not even a personal servant, who had no roof above his head and went clothed in a loincloth, became the conscience, the spiritual and political leader of three hundred million people. And a single quiet word of his sufficed for those millions to unite in a common bloodless struggle for the liberation of their country; and the shedding of an enemy’s blood called forth all-Indian fasting and mourning. It is not hard to imagine how tragically the historical path of the Indian people would have been distorted had, instead of this ascetic, there arisen at that decisive hour as leader a man of the one-sidedly wilful type — a Mussolini or a Stalin — a so-called “strong personality,” a master of demagogy and political intrigue, who cloaked the essence of a despot in tirades about the people’s welfare! How brilliantly would he have played upon the baser instincts of the people, upon the natural hatred of conquerors, upon envy of the wealthy; what waves of fire and blood would have rolled over India, overwhelming the islands of lofty ethical consciousness that for thousands of years had been nurtured and cherished by the best sons of that great nation! And what tyranny would in the end have been erected over the tormented country, exploiting the habit of obedience engendered by centuries of slavery! But Gandhi directed the nation’s liberating and creative fervor along another path. Here is the first instance in modern history of that power which shall gradually supplant the sword and the lash of state authority. That power is the living trust of a people in the one who has proven his moral height; it is the authority of righteousness.

[1.1.57] I foresee many objections. One of them is this: yes, such a thing was possible in India — with her unrepeatable characteristics, with her four-thousand-year religious past, with the ethical stature of her people. Other nations bear another heritage, and the experience of India cannot be transferred to any other land.

[1.1.58] True, each nation has its own heritage. And the heritage of India brought it about that her people became pioneers upon this road. Yet almost every nation has seen within or beside itself dictatorships and tyrannies of every hue, with their manifold ideological disguises, and each has had occasion to be convinced into what abyss of catastrophe a blind power can plunge a country — a power unenlightened by righteousness, not answering even to the demands of the average moral level. For state leadership is itself a feat, and the average moral level is too little for it. Many nations have been convinced of this as well: for where, instead of dictators, political parties alternate, there succeed one another, as in a kaleidoscope, diplomats and generals, bosses and advocates, demagogues and men of business — some more self-seeking, others more principled — but not one is able to breathe into life a new, pure, ardent spirit, nor to resolve the urgent, all-national problems. None of them can be trusted more than one can trust oneself, for not one of them has ever reflected upon what righteousness and spirituality are. They are but scurrying shadows, fallen leaves carried off by the wind of history. If the Rose of the World does not come forth in time upon the all-human stage, they will be scattered by the fiery breath of willful and merciless dictatorships. But should the Rose of the World appear, they will dissolve, they will melt away beneath the rising sun of the great Idea — for the heart of the people will trust one righteous man more than a hundred politicians of today.

[1.1.59] But still more mighty and more radiant will be the influence upon the people and upon their destiny, if the three highest endowments — righteousness, the gift of religious heraldship, and artistic genius — are united in a single person.

[1.1.60] Many — oh, many manifestations of religion belong wholly to her bygone stages. One such manifestation would appear to be the power over minds of strictly defined, apodictically formulated dogmas, statuesque and incapable of growth. The experience of recent centuries, together with the growth of personality, has brought it about that the human being feels the conditionality and the narrowness of any dogmatics. Therefore, however adogmatic the theses of the Rose of the World may be, however much they may be imbued with the spirit of religious dynamism, many will nonetheless find difficulty in accepting even them. Yet multitudes upon multitudes will respond to her call, so soon as it is addressed not so much to the intellect as to the heart, resounding in the masterpieces of word, of music, of theater, of architecture. Artistic images are more capacious and multifaceted than the aphorisms of theosophemes or the reasonings of philosophy. They leave more freedom to imagination; they grant each one the possibility to interpret the teaching in the way most organic and clear to his individuality. Revelation flows through many channels, and art — if not the purest, then the widest of them. Therefore all the arts, and a beautiful cult, will clothe the Rose of the World in garments resounding and radiant. And for this same reason, it is most natural that at the head of the Rose of the World should stand he in whom are united the three greatest gifts: the gift of religious heraldship, the gift of righteousness, and the gift of artistic genius.

[1.1.61] Perhaps such a man will not appear at all, or will not come for a long time. It may be that the Rose of the World will not be guided by him, but rather by a collective of the worthiest. Yet if Providence were to send such a mighty soul into our own century — as indeed It has already done — and if the demonic forces proved unable to destroy him, then it would be the greatest of blessings for the entire earth. For no one can exert a mightier and more luminous influence upon mankind than the genius of the Word who has become both a seer of the spirit and one of the righteous, and who has been raised to the height of worldwide leadership in social and cultural transformation. To such a man, and to him alone, could be entrusted an undertaking extraordinary and unheard of in history: the ethical oversight of all the states of the Federation and the guidance of nations along the path of transforming those states into an all-human brotherhood.

[1.1.62] O, we Russians have paid bitterly for the unconditional trust once placed in a strong man whom many among us mistook for a benefactor of mankind. Let us not repeat that fatal error! There are unmistakable signs by which a man worthy of such a mission may be known, and by which he may be set apart from the evil genius of a people. The latter is gloomy; the former is joyful with a joy of the spirit. One buttresses his power by executions and punishments; the other will never strive for power during any day of his life, and when at last he accepts it, he will not shed a drop of blood. One plants upon all the lands subject to him the cult of his own personality; the other finds such glorification both loathsome and absurd. One is unapproachable, the other accessible to all. One is driven by a frenzied thirst for life and for power, and hides from imagined dangers behind walls that cannot be pierced; the other is free from earthly temptations, and before danger he is serene, for his conscience is pure and his faith unshaken. These are two antipodes, the envoys of two irreconcilable principles.

[1.1.63] Of course, within the Supreme Assembly such an elect would be but the first among equals. In all things he would lean upon the cooperation of the many, and by that very multitude his own activity would be subject to their oversight. To his extraordinary post he could come only through rigorous trial. To such a dignity neither youth nor even mature age can correspond, but only old age: the temptations and the warfare of passions must long since have been overcome. As for the election itself, it seems to me that it could be accomplished only through one or another form of plebiscite. And even in the years of his rule the Assembly would watch vigilantly over his actions. His deviation from the path would draw after it the transference of power to the worthiest. In general, all questions connected with this might be carefully considered, the dangers foreseen, the decisions weighed with precision, and afterwards improved. But so long as the supreme mentor should walk unswervingly upon the appointed way, he is the mystical bond between living mankind and the higher world, the manifester of the Providential will, the perfecter of multitudes, and the guardian of souls. In the hands of such a man it is not fearful to unite the fullness of spiritual and civil power.

[1.1.64] Some will say: such men arise but once in five centuries. I will say more: a personality of such magnitude, endowed with precisely such a sum of qualities, could never before have existed. An Einstein could not have appeared among the Maoris of the nineteenth century; nor could one hope to find a Dostoevsky, such as we know him, among the subjects of Tutankhamun or Theodoric. In such times he would have borne another sum of qualities, and many of them would have had no chance to manifest themselves in life. Even in an age not far removed from our own, such a man as I speak of could not have brought to realization the gifts entrusted to him, and his contemporaries would have remained in complete ignorance of his true stature and his latent powers. The requisite conditions now appear to be foreshadowed by the epoch that is dawning; and the Rose of the World will bring them to their fulfillment, so that the social and cultural atmosphere shall secure for the supreme mentor a chain of successors worthy of that crown.

[1.1.65] Some may also object that even all the aforesaid gifts are insufficient for so extraordinary a charge; that one must further possess a broad, sober, and practical statesman’s mind. Indeed, it is so. Such a leader will have to deal with thousands of diverse problems; knowledge and experience will be required — economic, financial, juridical, even technical. But the age of Aristotles is long since past; minds of encyclopedic compass are unthinkable in our time. And the activity of the one of whom I speak is equally unthinkable apart from the conciliar reason, apart from the Supreme Council. In it will take part the profoundest minds, men seasoned by the vicissitudes of state life, and specialists from every field of knowledge. Not encyclopedic erudition, nor pedestrian managerial sense, but wisdom shall be demanded of the supreme mentor: wisdom that understands men at a glance, that in the most complex questions at once discerns their essence, and that never for a moment grows deaf to the voice of conscience. The supreme mentor must stand upon such a moral height that love and trust in him may take the place of all other methods of rule. Constraint and violence against another’s will are grievous to him; he resorts to them only in the rarest cases.

[1.1.66] And yet this is but one of the possible variants, though in my own view the most desirable. Another is also conceivable: such a leadership of the Rose of the World, such a relation of it to the legislative institutions and to the government of the Federation, wherein the principle of collectivity shall be limited by nothing and by no one. The time for drafting the constitution of the future lies in the far-off age to come; and it will not be for us, but for our fortunate descendants, to choose from among the many variants the one to be embraced.

[1.1.67] But is this not, after all, a theocracy? I do not like the word theocracy. Theocracy is God-rule; to apply it to any form of social or political order is absurd from the standpoint of the atheist, and sacrilegious from that of the believer. History has never known, nor can it ever know, any theocracy. Not theocracy, but hierocracy — the rule of the priesthood — is the proper name for the ecclesiastical states of the Popes or of the Dalai Lamas. The order of which I speak is the direct opposite of any hierocracy: it is not the Church that dissolves into the State, which has swallowed her up and rules in her name; rather, both the whole conglomerate of states and the host of churches will gradually be dissolved into the all-human brotherhood, into the interreligious Church. And it is not the high hierarchs of the Church who take their seats in the supreme bodies — legislative, executive, and supervisory — but the best representatives of all nations, all confessions, all social strata, and all callings.

[1.1.68] Not hierocracy, not monarchy, not oligarchy, not republic: but something new, something qualitatively distinct from all that has hitherto been. It is a world-order of peoples, striving toward the consecration and enlightenment of all life of the world. I know not by what name it will then be called; but the matter lies not in the name, but in the essence. And its essence is labor in the name of the spiritualizing of man, of mankind, and of nature.