ABSTRACT
To summarize the conclusions reached so far, we can say that the West has become Easternized largely as a result of three interrelated processes. The first of these was its extensive penetration by exogenous Eastern ideas in the 1950s and 1960s. Second, the fact that a strong indigenous, if minority, Eastern cultural tradition had long existed in the West itself meant that there was an internal source of support available both to lend strength to these exogenous influences while itself being further strengthened by them. Finally the third factor, which we have now explored in some detail, was the emergence of a significant sociocultural movement-the counterculture-which had its origins in the fundamental lack of theodical satisfaction experienced by young people in the aftermath of World War II. We saw how there were at first three quite different responses to this deficiency, represented by the Beat-bohemians, the moral protesters, and the teenage delinquents, and yet how by the mid-1960s they had come together to create a coalition of forces that, in the form of the counterculture, was strong enough to significantly shift the main focus of idealistic aspirations in the West from a model that was essentially politically collectivist and reformist to one that was essentially psychospiritually individualist and conversionist in character. It is now time to turn to a consideration of the last factor crucial to an understanding of how and why the Easternization of the West occurred: the reformulation of the dominant Western worldview itself, in both its religious and secular forms, under the pressure of cultural rationalization.
