New-Age author Marianne Will- iamson has written that when religious adherents believe they are facing a world-ending catastrophe, they come together in groups to seek salvation or redemption.

Williamson writes that the members of her group were drawn together by their spiritual compatibility in spite of their different backgrounds. She argues that the electrical currents of the universe and of change course through our veins and we can therefore change the world by the force of our will.

No matter how varied our interests and personalities, she writes, we agree on one very important point: Humanity is at a crossroads. If it is to survive, it must take a spiritual path. She and her followers hope to remake the world by filling it with love and kindness.

This issue's cover story, "New Religions-Building Paradises on Earth," reports on the new religious sects that have proliferated in recent years. Followers of these new orders, who have no formal religious training and have taken no monastic vows, are now drifting back and forth between a life of seclusion and a worldly life. In some cases, adherents have even completely set aside worldly matters and gone to live in religious communes.

Some may feel that these people's efforts are meaningless. But religion is one of those things that must be experienced to be understood; it really cannot be judged from the outside. In the West, many of the new sects consist of doomsdayers and millennialists. When the world and humanity continued to plod along in spite of the passing of the millennium, such groups had to rethink their scheduling of the world's end and Jesus' second coming. Those of us observing these groups from the outside could only marvel that they managed to keep most of their flock in the fold nonetheless.

It may be that people today are searching for higher meaning because they feel down in spirit in spite of the material bounty amidst which they live. Participating in a collective religious quest provides them with a prophet or teacher on whom they can depend, comrades on whom they can lean, and, through these things, a means of rising above their dissatisfaction with the world.

Which of history's many "prophets" have been divinely inspired? Whose teachings are truly profound? Such questions are impossible to answer and also miss the point.

Spiritual cultivation is a matter for the individual, but religions belong to all of the faithful. They do not stand the test of time on the backs of charismatic founders and dynamic doctrines alone. Instead, it is their adherents, the faithful, that truly hold them together. Believers manifest the "divine power" of their support and their spiritual energy by keeping their sect going after its founder dies or its doctrine changes radically.

Religious communities also come in several spiritual flavors. Sects founded on fears of the end of the world or another round on the wheel of life are likely to disappoint followers seeking salvation. On the other hand, those who join an order seeking to develop spiritually and overcome their worldly failings, and who are able to focus on their journey rather than on the achievement of perfection, may well find happiness. I find it sad that some flee to religious communes seeking a safe haven from the stormy seas of life. Then again, mine is an outsider's perspective. Perhaps living in seclusion makes sense to those engaged in spiritual practice.

Religion is pervasive. Shumei, a large, new Japanese faith, inspired the subjects of this month's article on natural farming, "Taiwan's Shumei Farmers Live Out Their Back-to-the-Land Dreams." Perhaps what we call God, morality, and nature are one and the same with truth, kindness, and beauty. Persons touched by the divine experience a sense of harmony with all beings and an intuitive understanding of natural law. This enables them to disseminate teachings that touch on many fields.

In other words, utopias are simply our ideas about truth, kindness, beauty projected out into the physical world. We may never have the chance to experience a religious paradise on Earth, but there's no reason we can't begin building our own perfect spiritual retreat in our mind.