beyond wishful thinking 47A fi ft h common characteristic of these religious revolutions lay in
their ambiguous relation to the real world of power and of states in his-
tory. Each of these orientations to life exemplifi ed by the religions orig-
inating from these spiritual upheavals has been a two- sided ticket.
One side of the ticket admitted the individual to join a triumphal
pro cession: a culture or a collectivity, embraced by a civilization and by
a state, of which it formed a guiding or even established doctrine. By
using the ticket, the individual joined the winners, even when the doc-
trine was one that claimed to exalt the losers. Participation in a commu-
nity of belief, supported by worldly power and accredited by cultural
authority, established a union among the believers that transcended
both kinship and social station.
Th e other side of the ticket authorized the individual to escape from
the nightmare of history and the savagery of society into a realm of in-
ner experience in which other standards held. Even the humanization
of the world (as in Confucianism), with the central value that it placed
on the moral logic of our engagement in society, off ered the individual
refuge from the verdict of history: an inner life that would be proof against
the seductions of worldly power and the demons of worldly failure.
Th e two- sided ticket, of admission and escape, is essential to under-
standing the im mense eff ect exerted by the spiritual approaches arising
from these religious revolutions. To understand these religions in the
spirit of this two- sided ticket meant, however, to diminish the transfor-
mative signifi cance of their teaching. At every point, there was another
option: to tear up the two- sided ticket, of admission and escape, in fa-
vor of a progressive attempt to change both self and society and to
widen our part in the attributes of divinity. It is at once the most gen-
eral and the most explicit form of the same ambiguity touching all the
other shared characteristics of these spiritual orientations, the most
infl uential in the history of mankind.
We can best understand the specifi c character of the religious revolu-
tions of this long historical period as the combination of changes of at-
titude with a series of narratives and worldviews. Th e worldviews and
narratives diff ered starkly. In one direction they devalued the phenom-
enal world of time and distinction, and asserted the higher reality of
unifi ed and timeless reality. In another direction, they off ered progress