There will come a time when humanity will look back on this time as the 'barbarian age'. So far from the possible ideal is the present dying civilization that future men will wonder how, and for so long, were we able to sustain it. 

There are many causes and factors involved in this sad situation: the long, slow, decline in man's relation to man runs parallel to, and reflects, the growing sophistication of his weaponry. His present, triumphant ability to kill from places continents apart sets the seal on his progress to self-destruction. War has been made clinical and impersonal: no longer need the warrior witness the look of terror on his victim's face.

In this situation, it is small wonder that man's institutions, political and economic, reflect, in their turn, this growing alienation of men from the wellsprings of their lives. Commercialization, that burgeoning but stealthy and often hidden menace, controls now the lives and destiny of countless millions, and reduces to a cypher the God-given individuality of man. People are now statistics without purpose or needs, pawns on the chess-board of market forces and company profits.

The arid desert which we call the modern world leaves men bereft of that which makes them human: happy, creatively fulfilled, quick to respond to each other's needs, and free. Deadly competition corrodes the human spirit and now sits in judgement on the 'battle' of life. Life, the Great Adventure, has been corrupted and replaced by an agonizing and unfair struggle for mere survival.

To be sure, these dire conditions are not everywhere and uniformly present but for vast numbers they represent the reality of their lives, and, unless men change direction, they can only worsen.

Sacred ties

When Maitreya enters, openly, the world arena, He will show men that such a life of pain and struggle is not inevitable, is not their only option; that another way is theirs by right if it is their will.

He will show that already, amid the chaos and mounting greed, men are reacting against such weakening of the sacred ties of life; that great new forces are generating a new beginning, and that out of the present turmoil is gradually emerging a higher, truer demonstration of the inborn capacity of man to meet the challenges of his time and to overcome his difficulties.

Maitreya will remind men of their own high origin and destiny, and will inspire the creation of a new way of living: in harmony, in right relationship, without recourse to war or competition, in the fullest cooperation and mutual respect. Thus will it be.