ABSTRACT
Humanism and the political religions apart, Christianity’s only rivals for the spiritual allegiance of Western man are the religions of India. There are four possible attitudes that require to be considered. The first is neutrality , the attitude of the observer for whom both types of religion are valid and who, if choice is required of him, opts for the one that claims his attention at the moment. In Ceylon the description of the world as maya becomes the only possible one amid such a riot of vegetation as surrounds him. That nothing is permanent, that life passes over into death and death into renewal of life—this is everyday experience in the tropics. One reaction to the discovery of India’s rich spiritual heritage was an unwillingness to admit that it might be basically different from people's own tradition. The conflict of truths is not easy to accept, and people prefer to take refuge in something like the ‘perennial philosophy’.
