The mystic must not be averse to modern culture, which he often naturally despises as materialistic or abhors as atheistic. He must draw on the resources of twentieth-century knowledge to reinforce, develop, explain, expand, and restate the dusty traditional inheritance of mysticism. He ought not to exalt the mighty illuminated past at the expense of a so-called degenerated benighted present.
To deny that our wits have been sharpened and our interpretive methods improved during the thousands of years which have disappeared into the waters that flow down the Ganges would be to libel the human mind and to turn it into a helpless stone. And when, as so often happened in the Orient, the static custodians of traditional culture were so bemused by their bookshelves that they refused to adapt their doctrines to the needs of the time, they were carrying conservatism to the point of plain silliness. On the other hand, service of the present need not be accompanied by a funeral dirge on the past. Ancient culture and modern science ought to be wedded together if we are to unlock the higher wisdom. Is not modern research unconsciously already beginning to furnish new proofs of ancient tenets? We need the old truths, not the old follies. A thought which is ten minutes old might be truer than a thought which is ten thousand years old. What has truth to do with time?
During the whole of my literary activity I have tried to develop this idea of a close collaboration between the rational and emotional sides of man's nature. This notion arose not merely because I have witnessed at first hand the tragic disasters of human lives wrecked through foolish and wholesale rejection of the claims of reason, but also because I perceive the immense importance of entering into an alliance with the trend towards science which has come to dominate modern existence.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 2 : Its Contemporary Influence > # 57
