CHAPTER FIVE
From Christ to Buddha - 1

The Great Turning Point in Human Evolution
It is well to re-state at this point the main purpose of this book. Humanity is evidently in a period of world-wide crisis brought about — if one looks at the chain of social, political, economic and cultural-religious events during the last two to five centuries — by the development of a new type of mind in the Western world. The development of an experimental, analytical and rigorously exact type of intellectual thinking led, under the special circumstances of European culture during the Renaissance, to tremendous advances in technology. These in turn altered the ways of life of Western man, the relationship between social classes, the conditions of labor, the life of the family, the cultural and religious beliefs of any country in which the white man came to exert a dominant and transforming influence. Today the whole of mankind has been caught up into this whirlpool of intense, accelerating change. The Electronic Revolution and the use of nuclear energy, the fast accumulating effect of ever-spreading industry upon the air, water and soil of our planet, and the psychological as well as social consequences of modern medicine, of automation and of globe-encircling means of communication have brought us to a relatively imminent point of crisis — a crisis which could have the most radical and perhaps catastrophic effect on human evolution.
      The question of questions today is: Whither mankind?