Theos-Talk Archives (August 1997 Message tt00001)

This is a new book by J.J. Clarke, published by Routledge. He
is Head of History of Ideas at Kingston U. in the UK.

I have only dipped into it. HPB & the Adyar TS are mentioned
fairly positively.

Here are a few lines from Clarke's Introduction:

"... there is still a reluctance in the academic world to take
traditional Asian thought seriously... Many academics continue
to feel a certain embarassment about the whole subject of the
East... My aim in this book is to try to alter such perceptions
and show that... from the time of the Renaissance onwards, the
East has exercised a strong fascination over Western minds, and
has entered into Western cultural and intellectual life... I
shall seek to recover and re-examine the serious intellectual
involvement -- with all its incongruities an contrarieties -- of
the West with Eastern ideas."