If in ancient times it was the people of India who accumulated the most considerable knowledge of inner being and inner life and passed it on to other Asiatic lands who absorbed it, even they, today, show sadly attenuated remnants of life and practice related to this knowledge and of consciousness that could be called higher. His Holiness Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Shankaracharya, of Kamakoti Peeta in South India, has himself lamented in recent years this great and grave change which is taking place in his country. But I venture to say that these changes have been occurring everywhere, not only in India, and that they are written in the horoscope of man, so far has he failed in the past to live up to the high code set for his stage of development during each cycle of history. Humanity cannot live in its past glories alone, and the constant turning backward effects in our day a kind of nostalgia. All this is not enough. The modern consciousness, the modern circumstances are not the same as the ancient, and it is essential for man to find out how he can live in and with it and yet hold on to the best of his ancient heritage. This is his task. Even in those ancient Sanskrit texts, and even in Lao Tzu's writing, thousands of years ago, the higher minds and the holier persons were lamenting the ebbing of the glories of their past.
-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 1 : Meetings of East and West > # 164
