The Upanishads (Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality Book 2)

by Eknath Easwaran

But the time has come to challenge them. It is curious to look back from this vantage point and observe that the similarities between the founders of Western thought and the scientist-sages of the forest are so striking that from time to time Western scholars keep trying to find out whether the latter somehow influenced these “Ionian physicists” who awakened Western philosophy and science in the generation before Socrates directly.[26] Such an influence would not be unlikely. Yet at no time has the “Upanishadic” vision of a Heraclitus or an Augustine really become our own. Here the Upanishads challenge us to put in place fundamentally different concepts of who we are, and to build a life of thoughts, of personal habits, of lifestyle, of relationships, of institutions and values, and finally even of foreign policy based on the unity of consciousness rather than on the separateness of biochemical fragments. Cultural and historical