| From The River Of Heaven |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| HINDU AND VEDIC KNOWLEDGE IN MODERN AGE | |
| East and
West Many of us in the western world tend to reject anything that originates in the East, because we see it as the imposition of a foreign and inappropriate culture upon us. We don't like to see such important cultural values as our religion, our language or way of life altered. We should note that as many people in the eastern world are struggling with the influence of western culture which they similarly feel is threatening to their cultural values. All
human beings like to preserve their own culture and find other cultures hard to
understand. In our examination of other cultures it is always easier to see their negative
side. On the other hand, we are all exporting our cultures. Much more of the influence of
western culture is still going to the East than that of the East is coming to the West.
Yet neither culture can expect it to go only one way. We cannot isolate ourselves from eastern cultural influences, any more than they can isolate themselves from ours. Whereas western culture provides the world many gifts of science, technology and humanism, eastern culture provides those of spirituality and religion. Just as science and technology can be abused and cause much damage to the world, as we are witnessing today with pollution and the destruction of the environment, so too, eastern spiritual knowledge has its negative side, with some of the false guru cults and the corruption around them which are also visible today. Just as we need not reject science because of its misapplication, so too we should not reject the spiritual sciences of the East because of their misapplication.
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