We are living in times that in their unrest and calamity are threatening the values which had up to now appeared secure to us; if we take the political turmoil as an indicator of the movements in the foundations of thinking, then the catastrophe of these decades is leading us to conclude that the bulk of human thinking is shifting around and thereby dislodging the foundations. What the world will look like when this dislodging process is finished, we do not know. But one is probably interpreting the signs of the time correctly, when one assumes that those realms of reality that we ourselves are unconsciously shaping will regain importance against the realm of the objectifiable; for now, however, the sinister demons of these realms appear to be playing the leading role. Perhaps this shift will go as far as the one at the beginning of our time calendar, so that the connection to the past can only be maintained by very small and isolated groups of people. But perhaps the same thing will not repeat itself entirely, perhaps the essential element of cognition from the past will remain, and the shift will arrest at the place where the interrelatedness and the juxtaposition of the various layers of reality do not seem contradictory, but are tolerated as fruitful tension. Individuals cannot do anything in this respect but prepare themselves internally for the changes that are happening without their doing.

Earlier generations were able to build on the works of their ancestors. For our times the goal is of necessity a more modest one, since the old concepts of value have been molten down. Initially, we have no choice but to return to that which is simple: we have to conscientiously attend to the duties and tasks which life itself is demanding without much questioning the wither and hither; we have to pass on to the next generation that which we still deem beautiful, rebuild the destruction, and give our trust to other people reaching across the din of passions. And then we have to wait what happens; the new does not have to be visible right away, we will accept this as it is, reality will change by itself without any action on our part.

When we contemplate the future times, the greatest threat seems to come from the confusion between the bad and the good powers. Especially in an era where the ties to established religion are loosening, the danger that demons are taking over the reigns of the gods is greater than ever; and demons have always allied themselves with that glittering phantom that has led people astray at all times: political power.

To sharpen our vision here, we have to remind ourselves above all that political power has always been founded on criminal behavior. This is still true when political power, imposed as order onto a great human society, is lastly also capable of having beneficial effects. In the process of expanding their power, people are, however, always trying to force those who do not join the community on their own accord by brutal means to become members. The banal slogan" And if you do not want to be my brother I will bash your head in" is still today applicable for each and every one of the large political power blocks. That is why we need to be suspicious here; it is true that there will always be political power, and countless hordes of people will suffer and die in the battle for political power. But that makes no difference, nothing about the value of the cause for which people are dying is being decided by it. Perhaps the new meaning this world will receive will continue to grow for quite some time removed from and unnoticed by the political power, until, one day it joins together large communities, as if out of the blue.

We will probably also have to contend with the fact that there are and will continue to be large masses of people who - to speak in metaphor - are not able anymore to encounter the Good Lord. This cannot be improved by giving these masses material goods as compensation. We are not talking here at all about those who are externally poor or who cannot think: but the very ones who view the world as having a gray and rigid countenance. If they are within a large, orderly community and led by the smaller group or by its youth, then these people are still somehow part of the meaning that connects everybody. But in a time when this meaning has become murky and has to be newly found, they are in a hopeless situation in which even the care- taking by the others does not bring comfort. But that too does not matter. Perhaps nobody can save these masses from the fate of having to fight bitterly on whatever side for political power. But what is crucial now is that the few for whom the world is still luminescent, bond together and recognize one another across the heads of the others. For only to them the meaning will be unlocked that will be given anew to the world.

Not the powerful one is important who assumes the right to destroy the enemy and throw the resistant ones into jail, but the jail guard who can not refrain, despite the prohibition, from sneaking a piece of bread to the prisoners. We have to keep reminding ourselves that it is more important to act humanely towards another than to fulfill any professional obligations, or national obligations or political obligations. Even if the din of great ideals is at its loudest, it must not confuse us nor hinder us to hear the one quiet tone, on which everything hinges. It has been said so often that weakness will perish and only strength will be victorious in survival. This may be true. But what is strength? In music, often not those passages are the loudest where the full orchestra is filling the whole room with sounds, but the bars when the single violin is singing a melody very quietly. Therefore, those who still know the white rose, or can discern the sound of the silver string have to join together now.

Perhaps in the future shaping of the world science will play a more important role than before. Not so much because it belongs to the preconditions of political power, but because it is the place where the people of our time are stepping up to the truth. While in political life there is a constant change of values and the battle of mendacious ideals against other mendacious ideals is unavoidable, in science we enter a realm in which what we say is in the end either true or false, here there exists a higher power that makes a final decision independent from our wishes, and therefore creates validity. Most important are therefore those areas of pure science that do not lend themselves to talk about practical applications but where pure thought is searching out the hidden harmonies in the world. This inner circle in which science and art are barely distinguishable from each other may be for today's humankind the only place in which truth, totally pure and no longer masked by human ideologies or wishes, is met face to face. It is true that the great masses of people have as little access to this realm as they had in earlier times to the inner sanctum of the temple. But it is nevertheless satisfying for the masses to know that some people are proceeding to this place and that there is no deception possible there, that the Good Lord decides there and not we.

As long as this central realm in science remains untouched, the danger brought on by our control - so much greater than in earlier times - over the forces in nature may not be too great. These forces can in their effect be steered towards good as long as we are still guiding them from a center that is set not by us but by a higher power. Only when the regulating center is missing will the forces lead into chaos. The lines by Stephan George are applicable here for humankind as a whole "He who ever circled the flame…" To some extent this is a repeat on a large scale of an order that used to exist in earlier times in primitive cultures. Although against his will, the scientist has become the people's magician to whom the forces of nature are obedient. But his power can only turn to good when he is simultaneously a priest and acting only as mandated by the deity or by fate.

Thus it is probably no coincidence that it is precisely in science where the change of reality has manifested itself more clearly than in any other arena. Here fate itself is showing us the path that the world is on now; not via the detour of the experiences and the suffering of humankind throughout its history, but directly in the attempt to find the truth. That is why the search for knowledge about the limits of the objectifiable is probably more than just another new scientific experience following countless others; rather, it means that we have to deal with the aspect of reality which does not permit us to separate the cognition from the process of acquiring cognition. It is true that this concept itself is just another building block like earlier on the thought of the existence of atoms was, or of the placement of the sun in the planetary system; and it takes many hundreds of such building blocks before the foundation of an understanding of reality can begin. In the end all cognizance is based on experience, and this path of adaptation of thought throughout the centuries cannot be shortened by any means. Often it takes a century of experience to produce a single new and decisive thought. In order to answer the question what reality really is, one may therefore have to resort to the old question in the fairy tale: "How long does eternity last?" "At the edge of the world there is a mountain, all diamond, and every hundred years a little bird is flying there and sharpens his beak, and when the whole mountain is gone, then only one second of eternity will have passed."

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