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The Asiatic people, like the African, want more of the good things of this world. They want it more than they want spirituality. So more and more most of their spiritual guides denounce what they call the growing "materialistic tendencies." Thus these guides reap the harvest they have sown. Since most of them have taken monkish vows, they teach the laity similar ideals--to renounce the world is regarded as the highest way and the only way to God! But the masses have had enough of a poverty-stricken existence, enough too of negative teaching. So if they turn away from the spiritual guides to materialistic ones, the blame is not all theirs. Some of it must be in the faulty emphasis of the teaching too. If the sight of a yellow-garbed holy man no longer arouses abject reverence in all hearts, if Gandhi's own disciple and heir tried to emulate the West in raising the standard of material living, perhaps the pendulum-like activity of the world-movement is countering the upset balance of things.

-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 2 : India Part 1 > # 230