This fundamentalist reaction does have a justifiable cause. Western popular culture with its lack of spiritual values is limited and can lead to a spiritual and moral wasteland. The criticism of immorality against it leveled by the fundamentalists is, to a great extent, correct, even when their dogmatic and violent reactions are wrong. We do need to reconsider our relationship with the Divine, which we have sadly ignored. But the correct force to counter modern materialism is a new spirituality, not a retreat into old religious prejudices.

Religious fundamentalism only succeeds in making people backward and isolated from the progressive movement of evolution and communication, which renders their cultures regressive and sterile. It only serves to make materialism look more humane by countering it with a force of superstition. One can foresee the collapse of religious fundamentalism all over the world in the coming decades, perhaps sooner than we think, just as communism has quickly and unexpectedly recently collapsed. It will not be long before fundamentalist regimes will fall either internally owing to the oppression they bring on their own people, or externally for the warlike actions they bring on the world as a whole.

We must soon pass out of this duality of dogmatic religion (which itself is a form of materialism or belief in institutions) or scientific materialism (which is invested with a religious aura of truth and universality). One can foresee a future age of world peace and harmony wherein what is valuable in each religion is honored, and serious individuals will seek Self-realization through meditational paths beyond the bounds of organized beliefs.

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