The philosopher who has opened his mouth too freely and frankly, told what he has foreseen in the belief that preparation for the worst offers some protection against the worst, soon learns to shut it tight again. For he learns that if it is unpleasant such truth is unwanted, and also that he is dangerously misunderstood as regarding as desirable what he merely regards as inevitable. During the First World War a few illumined seers, both Oriental and Occidental, knew how it would develop and how it would end. Before the peace treaty was signed they knew that a second war would break out about twenty years later. As early as 1942 they knew both the outcome of that conflict as well as the course to be taken by the peace to succeed it. They knew then the general direction of world events, for the following years confirmed their understanding, which did not come to them by reasoning or by calculation but by revelation. Where it could serve a worthier cause, they passed on fragments of this knowledge to responsible leaders during both wars, to sustain and inspire them. So long as the seers could give a message of hope, their words were welcome. So soon as, with the first years of peace, they gave a message of warning in both cases, their words were unwelcome. Because man is inwardly free however outwardly bound, free in his spirit but not in his ego, their prophecies were always conditional upon his rising to fulfil his spiritual possibilities, when they would necessarily have to be entirely changed. This was the unknown factor which made and makes perfect prediction quite impossible. But the likelihood of its fulfilment has become thinner with each year; the most crucial and fateful period was the eighteen months following the second war's end. Its failures point the way to the realization of forebodings, to the fulfilment of doom.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 4 : World Crisis > # 313
