The Unity of Civilization
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Robley Edward Whitson, The Unity of Civilization, New York: Newman Press, 1971, bahai-library.com.
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The Unity of Civilization

Robley Edward Whitson
published in The Coming Convergence of World Religions pp. 17-34

New York: Newman Press, 1971

1. Text

[page 17]

I

The unity of mankind, although still in large part a dream, is
beginning more and more to evoke a sense of reality. Both the
dream and the reality express the unique character of the Twentieth
Century.

Without parallel in the past, contemporary civilization is coming
to be centered upon the consciousness of man as community:
the significance of man in personal relationship — not the isolated
individual nor the subordinating society. Yet, paradoxically, the
historic situation of contemporary civilization bears sad witness
to both human isolation and subordination. Perhaps this is the
most impressive element in the development of the first half of
the century: materialist individualism, exalting the pragmatic
good in the isolated value of possession, pleasure, security — the
individual opposed to others, morally unrelated; and subordinating
totalitarianism, identifying all reality in the will of one as
leader, as consensus, as collective dictatorship — the individual
absorbed in anti-relational conformism.

[page 18]

In the latter half of the century we find that our choice does
not rest between these two. It seems, rather, that opposition to
both is stimulating an awareness of a positive correspondence between
man as individual and as social community. And an immediate
consequent of even the most rudimentary recognition of
human community is the further recognition of human unity, not
simply in terms of external pressures and circumstances pragmatically
forcing man to come together, but as an emerging consciousness
of what man really is, and hence the consciousness that
these "external" factors are not determinative causes, but dynamic
reflections of the human condition.

Yet human unity has not attained more than a sense of reality
for us. It is still clearly at its beginnings, still mostly dream. But
perhaps now we can see it as a dream in the psychological sense — a sign from within the hidden inward side of our process of
consciousness revealing our fuller life history — rather than a
dream in the sense of theoretical ideal. The thrust toward unity
in contemporary civilization is unique precisely because it has
emerged in our consciousness from our real, experiential history,
not from an abstract social theory. We can see this best in terms
of problems. The sense of reality we have about human unity
does not rest upon what has been achieved, but upon the appalling
problems experienced (and only partly resolved) in the first
half of the century and upon the problems now arising as we seek
unity.

While stressing the uniqueness of our present situation and
thus implying truly new issues calling — for truly new modes of confrontation,
unity as a dream reflecting the inner process of
human history requires us to seek to understand that history as a
continuity. The uniqueness of the present cannot be an unrelated
or discontinuous uniqueness, unless we would be willing to proclaim
the discovery of an absolutely new human species and history,
not evolved, not a process, but some sort of spontaneous
creation ex nihilo. The uniqueness of the present is to be located in
the emergence into our consciousness of the drive toward a real
and realizable unity, a consciousness of present experience

[page 19]

pointed into the future but grown from the past with all its nonconscious
implications.

Placed in such a context, the dream of unity has a very real
history and reflects truly the process of existence. Whatever we
observe in our world — the greatest thing, the smallest — we discover
the same problem of meaning: how is it itself, and how is it
that it does not exist by itself? This question must be asked when
we look into the inner constitution of things, observing the variety
of elements and yet the greater identity achieved somehow together.
This holds true, even more impressively, when we consider
things in terms of their process of existence rather than as if
they exist statically as at a moment isolated from other moments.
While they are real at each instant, their significance is known
only insofar as we see what they do, what happens among them,
the effect they have on one another — that they are not static, but
"flow."

The inner meaning of the dream of unity becomes more evident
when we consider living reality. Our most secure understanding
of the basis of living things rests upon the recognition of
their degree of organization. In a manner of speaking, the living
are more unified, quantitatively and qualitatively, than "other"
things. Their constituting elements are less able to preserve their
identity apart from each other, and the effect of the unity of elements
is dramatically beyond the individual elements themselves.
Yet the reality of the living whole depends upon the unity of the
individuals, both factors, and it is not possible to theorize a supposed
ultimacy or priority for one or the other. In fact, the observation
of assimilation of new elements and procreation of new
wholes insists that we approach our understanding in terms of coordination.
When we think of human history we tend to see the great diversity
in mankind: the long evolutionary sequence with its
many kinds of men; the widely scattered peoples and tribes with
all their differing ways of life; the separate races, languages and
traditions embodied in more recent millennia in great cities and
civilizations. Yet, if we look closely we see this vast diversity in

[page 20]

human expression in a process of convergence: slowly and at
times in almost chaotic disorder more and more interrelation
takes place — separate kinds of men become fewer, hardly any
men are now scattered out of contact with each other, the races
move together, common languages are sought and heretofore isolate
traditions are cross-fertilizing one another, and all set in new
cities and civilizations becoming so vast and hence moving so
close to one another that the boundaries are becoming lost. And
now we can see man's world from beyond it in space, and that
world is clearly round with all parts leading to all others.1

It is one whole world, but man is not now whole, not yet significantly
one. And the interpretation of the process of existence
and history as convergent does not guarantee man's ultimate
unity. Man can fail. We have lived with the terror of that possibility
for a full generation. For the first time we actually have in
our hands the tools to forge our unity or our self-destruction. To
know that the dream of unity is a reflection of what we really are
and are to be does not mean that the dream must come true. The
reality which the dream symbolizes can be suppressed, kept from
consciousness and fulfillment by our suicide.

Putting aside any attempt to estimate the chances of survival,
highly subjective at best, is the direction of human development
actually toward unity, and if so toward what kind of unity? The
evaluation of the ultimate effect of man's present direction of development
is not self-evident. The same data can be interpreted
in quite opposite ways. Yet there is an interesting point of departure
all would seem to agree upon with little hesitation: the data
show us man is evolving, either toward a greater unity or toward a
more and more irreconcilable state of division. (Hardly anyone
seems to think man is not evolving in any direction!) The opposition
of the two evaluations is certainly reflective of a prior optimism
or pessimism — which sooner or later leads again to the
question of future survival since both would agree that man's dividedness
contains within it the threat of self-destruction, a threat
increasing or decreasing proportionately with the actual presence
or absence of the elements of division.

[page 21]

In one very real sense the interpretation of our development as
unitive (or divisive) is not simply an objective judgment, it is an
option. The data of human experience are not "outside" the historic
process, and the process in its human dimension is directly
what men do within the range of possibilities open at any one point
in the full context of the historic situation. The observer is also
and primarily, a participant, a doer. Thus the real meaning of
the question of our possible unity is: will we do it? But as the option
is not absolute, being contained within the boundaries set
both by non-human factors and the cumulative effect of all previous
options, the answer will not be found except in the con text in
which the option can be made: the range of possibilities as these
possibilities actually exist at the moment of choosing and hence
as they limit, condition and motivate the choosing.

II

If we follow a positive interpretation the questions of the development
toward increasing unity and of the type of unity being
formed become a single question embodying our understanding
of the context through which the development is taking place.
We have already characterized the unitive process as convergent,
and it is this notion which will be used as the norm of the present
attempted analysis. In an evolving process in which a variety of
heretofore separate factors come to be formed into a new whole — a
qualitatively and organizationally new entity beyond the additive
effect of the no longer separate component elements — the
new whole is not something discontinuous from the previous moment
of the process. Though it may be radically different from
any of the entities of that previous moment, it is continuous with
the process in that it takes origin through the interrelation that occurs
at one moment among elements previously unrelated in this
manner. Our most forceful specification of convergence in process
is probably that of biological generation, in which the offspring
is clearly a new reality not identifiable singly with the

[page 22]

parents. It is not simply an addition of their characteristics, but
something quite different; yet in origin of individual existence it
is in complete continuity with them: it embodies them in the
greater effect of their convergence.

Conditioned by the primitive mechanical vision of existence of
pre-contemporary science and philosophy, we tend to see ourselves
and our universe as an accumulation of separate entities,
basically static in themselves but moving deterministically in
relation to one another only because each has been "set going."
Everything will eventually "run down" and the haphazard relations
of one to the other will again be resolved and cease. In
terms of human history we tend to see separate individuals, gathered
only conveniently into groups, and acting upon one another
in a long series of essentially external cause and effect relationships.
There is nothing but a linear succession of this producing
that, and that replacing this. In such a mechanistic vision of the
process of development if unity were to be produced it would be a
"new thing" which would replace the previous situation of nonunity,
and such replacement would be necessarily destructive of
what had gone before. It is important here to see the effect of
linking the two questions: will there be unity? and what type will it be?
A mechanistic unity inevitably is a uniformity: many individual
elements are made into something not diverse, and hence not a
unity of things but one new thing made out of its predecessors in such
a way that it displaces them — they are in themselves destroyed.
A mechanistic unity is actually no unity at all, but is simply the
elimination of diversity. A new thing now exists, and the "old
things" have been absorbed into it, reduced from what they were
in themselves to being mere parts in the machine, without their
own authenticity, and subject to replacement if it suits the well-being
of the machine.

Translated into the sphere of human relationships, this vision
is the basis of the horrors of nearly four centuries: the political
and religious absolutism of crown and later nationalistic state,
economic absolutism of the industrial revolution, the totalitarian

[page 23]

ideologies. Each claims to produce unity, but actually produces a
"new thing" conformity, in which the individual human as such
is a mere part. In man's sacred relationships this vision has produced
religious and ideological imperialism, in which the experience
of Absolute has been twisted into an absolute experience
calling for destruction of sacred relationships which have made
the present moment possible but which do not conform.

Is this kind of unity unity at all? Not if unity means somehow
bringing the diverse into significant interrelationship without destroying
them — the opposite to uniformity. Mechanistic unity
must be something external, determined from without and not
reflective of any supposed inward thrust of things themselves. It
is not convergence but conformity. Can such a "unity" be
achieved? We are in the midst of that issue, still unresolved. Our
century stands in sad witness to the emergence of effective social
totalitarianism with its ideological imperialism. And three paths
are still open to us: conformism, separate coexistence or convergence.

Perhaps it is significant that when we attempt to articulate a
world view liberated from and opposed to the mechanistic we
can describe it only negatively as non-mechanistic. We have not
yet succeeded in settling upon a designation which would positively
and adequately identify what we are catching sight of as
we move away from the closed vision of the machine. We should
be reminded by this of the newness of the vision, the still primitive
condition of our experience of openness and the fact that for
most of mankind it is only the practical effects of the new vision
which have been experienced, not the vision itself. As a consequence
we have not yet been able to develop a non-mechanistic
language and hence it is very difficult to communicate the new
experience — which for the most part must be achieved directly in
one way or another, rather than be initiated through communicational
sharing. The child is still drawn into Western society
with a conditioning into a vision of things as separate elements in
basically external relationships. He sees his parents acting first

[page 24]

and foremost as individuals who concede areas of life and action to
others in society. He learns to speak of "them": society, government,
church, fellow citizens, the human race.

The difficulty in correlating in life the old vision of things with
the already felt implications of the new (especially where there is
no conscious suspicion that there is a new vision) can be seen in
the contradictory symptoms of the total tension of the contemporary
situation. Thus, coupled with widespread revolt against the
patterns of conformity is the deep need very forcefully expressed
for group acceptance (and a powerful social sanction of excommunication
for all who fail to conform to the revolt). With great
devotion to causes of idealism there is the all too common failure
to focus commitment upon actual human beings, preferring, for
example, the liberation of "peoples" and "races," and outright
rejection of "classes" and "generations."

For those caught in the transition from the mechanistic to the
non-mechanistic, the goal of the developmental process is not
seen as unity but as coexistence. Individuality is strongly asserted
and minimal social interrelation is conceded, with a positive confidence
in direct personal experience as the means of resolving
the tension. This is still a mechanistic vision — the elements are
essentially individual and not internally constituted in interrelationship,
but only passing into (and out of) relationships according
to external circumstances. It is the mechanistic which is
adapted to the already experienced practical consequences of the
non-mechanistic, through the emphasis on direct experience.
And this both fulfills the beginnings of the truly contemporary
situation and also thwarts it.

Direct experience demands that we see things from the "inside,"
that we not be content with description or external effects.
It calls upon us to take seriously the present moment, what we
are and what we are doing, and to extend this seriousness to all persons
and things — who are together with us in this moment. It
does not allow us to prefer the security of retreat to the risk of involvement.
Ironically, at the same time the emphasis on direct
experience can make it impossible for us to enter the reality of

[page 25]

the contemporary situation, if direct experience is approached
through the unconscious acceptance of the mechanistic vision of
the universe. For in that case our experience is divisive: the present
moment and its importance are seen as standing against others,
past and future, since all are discontinuous; all value must be
concentrated exclusively in the present experience, with other dimensions
of experience — our own or others' — denied as value-charged,
lest a comparison of differing values undercut our commitment
to the narrowed present. Fundamentally, mechanistically
formed direct experience must so emphasize the individual
experiencer that significant communication of experience from
one to another becomes impossible, even though, tragically, this
is the very thing sought!

Hence, the further significance of the diversity of people and
things cannot be seen in terms of unity, for in the response to direct
personal experience where the authenticity of both person
and experience cannot be maintained except by evading integral
relationships any unity must mean uniformity. In a mechanistic
world coexistence must be the optimistic option.

III

There is a profound difference between the older classic
mechanistic vision and the contemporary emphasis on experience.
The quest for the experiential marks the decisive movement
away from the mechanistic, although as long as it remains
a negative response — moving away from — the tension of the
transition cannot be resolved, nor can a unitive pattern be envisioned
genuinely alien to a conformity. A positive response in
which the transition can move to completion will involve the
achievement of personal experience but beyond the context of
the individual basically alone — the mechanistic heritage — and thus
neither conformity nor coexistence will be within the range of
possibilities open to the fulfillment of the historic process. A non-mechanistic
world excludes the static, the isolate and the closed,

[page 26]

insisting on a dynamic process of existence open to all that can
happen from "inside." And thus the absolutizing of neither the
one nor the many is possible.

The experience of individuation involves both the assertion of
the authenticity of each element in itself and the assertion that
no element exists simply in itself but in essential interrelation
with others, ultimately each interrelated to all others. The interrelation
is essential, deriving its significance from the constitution
of the individual, from "within." Since individuals are constantly
in change both in themselves and in their relationships, their interrelatedness
is necessarily dynamic, and this dynamism is also
essential, from "within." Fundamentally, the experience of reality
evaluated in a non-mechanistic framework is that of process:
the vast multitude of individuals, wholly themselves and totally
interrelated in a dynamic unity of many — many individuals and
many relationships. From one vantage point the process is singular,
the ultimate unity of all things; from another the process is
unimaginably complex, involving all the processes of every possible
individual and group in all their relationships. Whatever the
level of our observation, this is our experience of reality, not one or
many, but one and many, a basic paradox in which the authenticity
of every individual as such must be maintained and yet
never as if unrelated.

Within a processual understanding of reality, any unity must
be seen as one of convergence: unity formed out of actual individuals
which somehow do not cease to be themselves within the
unity. Convergence excludes the isolation of individuals — there
simply are none existing alone; convergence also excludes a unity
in the sense of uniformity — any interrelation must be an interrelation
of individuals or groups of individuals.

When we translate this in terms of man's way of life it is quite
clear that we are witnessing the formation of dramatic new relationships
arising from and involving many kinds of ways of life
heretofore basically separate in both their development and their
effects. We speak of the emergence of a world civilization but if
this is within the context of convergence such a civilization will

[page 27]

have to be both singular — a way of life for a unified mankind — and
plural — derived from the world of many traditions and
meaningful for a world of many kinds of individuals. A realistic
world civilization must be fundamentally pluralistic; for men,
real historic men, have been formed in great diversity and have
achieved genuinely fulfilling values in ways simply not the same.
Nor are the values in their entirety the same, but have an all important
internal variety which can be grasped the moment we
cease thinking of human value as an abstraction and begin recognizing
it as it is actually lived out integrally within a way of
life.

The emergence of a singularity in civilization, dependent upon
the development of radically new elements in human life and
hence of new relationships whereby they can be shared, strangely
enough makes more significant all that has developed separately.
Brought together through the new relationships of sharing, the
now mutually available varieties create a complex of choices for
men, and different needs can be filled from a more open range of
possibilities. In convergence, the singularity in civilization rests
upon the degree of sharing open to the participants in which
common achievement is made possible, especially the achievement
of the communication of experience. Many come to share
experience in important and broad areas of life. Yet this singularity
in no way excludes a true variety. The two are brought into a
dynamic relationship. Individuals who are not the same come to
share experience together, and from this come to understand the
basis of their individuality and finally to see that valuable differences
are complementary rather than divisive. Convergence,
then, presumes that the unresolved and unresolvable paradox of
the one and the many is the positive key to the understanding of
what is taking place in man's way of life: unitive pluralism — men
are becoming truly one insofar as all that they are can be brought
into dynamic interrelationship.

Regardless of the logic in the attempt to analyze the basic pattern
of a unitive pluralism, one way or another we must always
return to the practical question: is convergence taking place? This is

[page 28]

not to ask: will unitive pluralism actually be the pattern of the future? We
are not required to predict a future fulfillment of the present direction
of development, but to assess that direction as it now appears.
At this stage we need not become involved in the optimistic
or pessimistic options discussed earlier. With regard to its final
result (dependent upon countless factors still unrecognized or still
to come to bear) we recognize the hazard of predicting, yet we
can inquire into the type of pattern now evolving in terms of objectively
observed factors now present which must be accounted
for and which certainly will form at least part of our future.

Without doubt the most important single factor in contemporary
development is that of communication, in the most extensive
sense of all that makes possible and/or inevitable the sharing of
experience. The fundamental issue in the unitive side of convergence
is the degree in which experience is shared — not simply
newly forming areas of experience but experience already formed
in the past separateness of the pluralist variety, the other side of
convergence.

We recognize in the sharing of experience, whatever the scale,
another basic paradox which must be dealt with if we are to approach
any human situation realistically. Experience as such
takes place within individual consciousness and partakes of the
uniqueness of the individual. Yet experience always has the possibility
of extending beyond the individual because whatever the
object of experience might be it is independent of the subject, and
because among individuals the biological-psychological means of
experiencing are common. Since each individual is a distinct entity
in terms of "equipment" and since there can be no exact reduplication
of the total formative process whereby each is exactly
himself at the moment of any experience, what occurs must be
genuinely unique to the individual. And yet at the same time
something proper to the experience can be communicated to others
(at least communication is attempted) so that they can share
the original experience by the evocation of a related experience
in themselves. (Perhaps the paradoxical character of the situation

[page 29]

becomes most evident in those instances in which communication
of the most intimate experience is attempted, where, in
effect, the individual seeks to make available to another that
which is directly reflective of his self-identification, his uniqueness.)

The success of the communication of experience is the basis of
human culture, civilization and tradition. What is learned in immediate
experience by one individual can enter the experience of
another by communication rather than by an independent reduplication
of the experience. There thus takes place a cumulative
effect of experience in which one level is "inherited" through
communication rather than rediscovered. And hence the starting
point of the new level of experience is the end point of the previous,
which alone makes possible the development of complex
ways of life — civilizations.

There is something more to this sharing of experience, however,
another dimension beyond what might be thought of as a
horizontal and vertical system of transferal. The experience of
sharing experience (either by one communicating his individual
experience to another, or by the cumulative communication of
one level of development as the basis for another) shapes our way
of experiencing, so that in the very process as it takes place
within the individual consciousness our experience tends to be
formed in a manner easily allowing for or even demanding communication.
All of our conscious reflections of experience are psychologically
conscious through symbols, mostly language symbols.
These are themselves the devices of communication, the
commonly developed indicators derived from previous attempts
at sharing. Thus, something significant in all of our conscious
thought is, in a manner of speaking, already "packaged" for
transfer to another. And we observe that in normal circumstances
we find ourselves not merely capable of communication
but urged to it. A value is seen in having others share in our own
experience. Further, there is a special value in sharing experience
as a community by placing ourselves in situations where we each

[page 30]

experience some common factor simultaneously and then bring
our communicable evaluation together immediately into a common
pattern.

Quite obviously, a radical extension of these dimensions of
communication increases proportionately any process toward
unity. The more that is shared experientially, and the more effectively
this is extended (both in terms of the numbers of people involved
and the degree of intensity of the involvement), the
greater will be the development of singularity in the pattern of
interrelationships. As the Twentieth Century progresses isolated
individuals and societies are becoming less and less possible. We
have already moved rapidly from a welter of closed human systems
to a few — with the drive toward openness as yet unresolved
but a principal element in the evolving pattern. There is one certainty
at present: the radical extension of the dimensions of communication
is continuing in so extraordinary a fashion that only
an unknown intervening factor of the future could make possible
the continuance of past human isolation.

IV

But communication by itself cannot be the basis of a convergent
unity. Effective extension of the sharing of experience could
issue in a rigid uniformity, a possibility rightly feared at present.
The elimination of a number of closed systems could result in the
emergence or survival of a single closed system (at least for as
long as a non-processual world view could be maintained). Convergence
requires both the movement of a variety toward significant
unity, and also significant variety within that unity.
"Significant" in both instances, while not allowing for actual
definition except insofar as the unfolding process of development
actually takes place, indicates the recognition of the need for actual
interrelationship of real individuals. Unity to be significant
must embrace relationships allowing individuals to experience a

[page 31]

true common identity in complement to their self-identity. Variety
to be significant must provide real options in the range of
human possibilities and insure that the unitive shape of life will
remain open to all that it can be in a future development.

Correlated with communication in the contemporary pattern
of civilization is its complementing factor of specialization. The
cumulative effect of our shared experience has been the opening
of more and more specialized areas of experience, each requiring
its own mode of approach and further extension. We have but to
observe the progressive development of the empirical sciences
over the last century to realize the openness which specialization
demands. Each specialization becomes a way to reality differing
from other ways and not reducible to them. Yet at the same time
these proliferating developments more and more demand effective
intercommunication so that specializations will not become
isolated and meaningless to the rest of life experience, but will
come into unity and thus be meaningful. Extend this basic pattern
of scientific concern to the other areas of our civilization and
it is evident that insofar as specialization — scientific, technological,
artistic, economic, political — is a rising factor, diversity becomes
proportionately characteristic of the development toward unity.

Reflecting all that contributes to the possibility of a world civilization,
unified and diverse, and speaking from the vantage
point of contemporary Asia, K. M. Panikkar draws our attention
to two sides of convergence:

Any return to a purely Asian tradition is ruled out by the growth
of social, economic and political forces which no country in Asia
had to deal with in the past .... Though the influence of Europe
and the penetration of new ideas have introduced vast
changes in Asia, and may lead to even greater changes, Asian
civilizations will continue to develop their marked individuality
and remain spiritually and intellectually separate from Christian
Europe.2

Although still in general terms, we have here the recognition of

[page 32]

the concrete process of convergence as it is occurring in the experience
of heretofore separate sections of mankind. The continuance
of "a purely Asian tradition" is no longer possible, but, implicitly,
neither is that of a purely European tradition. The
social, economic and political forces previously unknown in Asia
are not simply being imported into Asia from Europe, but are operative
in both spheres of civilization, more and more becoming
the factors of integrating shared experience and hence more and
more becoming formative agents for a unified way of life.

However, this unity is seen as convergent, embracing profound
differences with every prospect that the Asian civilizations will
develop in ways reflecting those differences. Perhaps our best
example of what this can mean is to be found in contemporary
Japan, the complex outgrowth of a century of the deep interpenetration
of two quite different kinds of civilization. Both the extraordinary
interchanges and the violent antagonisms of this remarkable
history point to the dynamic tensions set in motion by
the convergent process. Although it is still far too early to attempt
any long-term prediction concerning the final shape of Japanese
life, it is evident that the Japanese have not simply been "Westernized,"
nor have they segregated Western and older Japanese
dimensions of their civilization into controlled departments.
Even though the interfunctioning of the two forces is now at a
relatively rudimentary level of integration, it is clear that all aspects
of Japanese life are involved in both. Japan is not "Westernized,"
it has not been merely made over into a Western-style
country, and Japan cannot ever return to its pre-Western history.

For Japan and all centers of difference in culture (including
Europe and America) the question of evaluating the process of
convergence is not so much the concern with the factors here and
now tending toward the unification of experience as with those
which now and in the future will be the foundation of the pluralism
in that experience. Panikkar formulates this for Asia as a
spiritual and intellectual separation from Christian Europe. As a
contrast to the increasingly unitive experience in scientific,

[page 33]

technological, social, economic and political spheres, separation according
to spiritual and intellectual spheres can be a useful formula
to state the paradoxical balance in unitive pluralism, at
least for this moment in history. But on the positive side, what
can the Asian and Western spiritual and intellectual traditions
mean or come to mean to one another? This is an inevitable
question since those who are drawing ever closer in the sharing of
experience cannot be expected for long to segregate arbitrarily
areas of experience which they must always regard as the most
significant of all.

Although we must raise the question and come to such conclusions
as we are able concerning its implications for the future of
convergence, we must be aware of the very severe limitations we
work under in any attempt to analyze the present state of the
meeting of East and West in these dimensions. In World Cultures
and World Religions, Hendrick Kraemer provides us with a sober
evaluation:

The contemporary encounter or meeting of Orient and Occident
in cultural and religious respect, truly impressive and fascinating
as it may be in many senses, is fundamentally speaking still a superficial
matter.3

The superficiality of the encounter in this area, in contrast to
that in which our civilizations have begun the process of interpenetration,
is due to the fact that the encounter is not taking
place from the "inside," that is, experience in intellectual culture
and religion is not being communicated and shared. With rare
exceptions contact in these spheres is external, involving at most
the syncretistic borrowing of one or another item without recognition
of its significance within the full context of meanings in
which it is integrated. Generally speaking, especially in the
sphere of religion very few are struck with the fact that the alien
way they are observing is actually effective, evokes real experience,
forms people positively and hence must be taken seriously
as something which has objective significance for men.

[page 34]

But what if the encounter in religion ceases to be superficial? What if the continuing development of the convergent process begins to challenge the spiritual and intellectual separation of peoples?

2. Image scans (click image for full-size version)

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-- The Unity of Civilization (Used by permission of the curator)