Esoteric Buddhism

material progress quite unimportant, but spirit-
ual aspirations have been not merely kept up
as an underlying sentiment in people’s minds,
— they have operated to produce the greatest
manifestations of activity with which the race
has been concerned. I do not mean that the
Indian or any other Asiatic race has been as
active in writing books and publishing discov-
eries in spiritual science as we in the West
have been with the literature and research of
physics. That kind of activity is itself a mani-
festation of material civilization. But the Asi-
atic races have fermented with capacities for
great spiritual development, and the conse-
quence has been that many Eastern people
have devoted their lives to spiritual study and
research, always, of course, pursuing the meth-
ods of research and the modes of life appro-
priate to a cycle of spiritual progress, — meth-
ods which lead the student of — and still more
the adept in — such science into seclusion and
secrecy.
Probably it may be due in some way to an
opposite fermentation of causes in the East and
the West now that a certain interchange of
methods begins to be possible. I do not mean
that the West is turning away yet from ma-
terial civilization, nor the East slackening its
devotion to spirituality, but we here are cer-