Creative critique and anthropo-philosophy

or from great teachers or genius or those revelations which have come up within the human soul.

We can no longer look to any authority beyond what our own mind and spirit tell us in full awareness of self. Henceforward we are responsible for our own lives, for Man’s development and for the whole evolution of life on our planet Earth.

We have reached a wholly new stage in the guidance of Man’s life when we are responsible to, and can be dependent on, no one but ourselves. We must no longer expect crusades and great emotions to move us and make life great and exciting for us. There will be no greatness, no value, no significance which we cannot out of our own spirit put into life. We ourselves must create our new world from our own actual conscious selves.

In this situation a wholly new attitude is necessary to culture and the meaning of life. Such a new attitude and approach Mitrinovié gave to the New Atlantis School and this will be carried on as the method of our researches in the New Atlantis Foundation.

The signs of the present time indicate that Mankind is reaching that critical stage past the meridian of life, when all primary impulses, all urgent desire for new achievements and new experiences start to fade away and the individual has to face that his end is nearer to him than his beginning. At this time, as Dr C. G. Jung has pointed out, a complete reorientation is necessary in the life of the individual if he is to find real meaning in his later years. And it may be that the crisis and unrest which face the world now are symptoms that mankind as a whole has reached this stage in his development.

At this time a man has to stop seeking new adventures and conquests and turn round and consider his life as a whole. How have all his endeavours and life experiences fitted into a whole pattern? And what is or can be its meaning and purpose? And if there is to be any meaning at the end of his life, man has then to turn from a life of ceaseless struggle and action in the world to a life of inner activity and wisdom, from spinning the threads of his life to weaving a pattern from the ones he has already spun.