If the task were not so distasteful to my peace-loving temperament, it would be a necessary duty to write a sequel to that immature book, A Search in Secret India, about my later experiences in a country so elusive to a foreigner. The more I penetrated beneath the surface of men and institutions, the more my early enthusiasm evaporated. The better I came to understand the thoughts and deeds of "Secret India," the better I realized how deceptively rose-coloured were the spectacles with which I first viewed them. A truly scientific estimate of such matters would have uncovered the whole picture, the dark side no less than the bright one. The existence of this side is well-known to thoughtful and educated Indians themselves. But the years have passed and I shall certainly never attempt to do work of this unpleasant and unappealing character. Nevertheless it is most needful to the few earnest seekers after truth, as distinguished from the many uncritical seekers after personalistic emotional satisfactions, to know that I have revised most of my former estimates and come to modified conclusions and that, in short, my realization that the West must work out its own salvation is based upon mature experience and profounder reflection. Not by turning solely eastwards, as superficial enthusiasts would have us do, nor by turning solely westwards, as the white-race superiority complex would suggest, but by taking what both have to offer as the starting point only for our own new twentieth-century quest, shall we work out this vast problem of giving a spiritual significance to modern man's life in the most effective and satisfying sense of the term.
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections > Chapter 6 : The Profane and The Profound > # 246
