[KALKI]

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932), the son of portrait painter Cato Lowes Dickinson. He was brought up in a Christian Socialist environment and though he later rejected Christianity he saw his work in the context of its social utility. He was a pacifist during World War I, and he was later instrumental in the conception of the League of Nations.

He is the author of An Essay on the Civilizations of India, China & Japan, in an essay which seeks with justice to define the character of Indian civilization, profoundly remarks, that it is so unique that the contrast is not so much between East and West as between India and the rest of the world. Thus India stands for something which distinguishes it from all other peoples, and so she calls Herself a Karma-bhumi as opposed to the Bhoga-bhumi of all other peoples. For this She has been wonderfully preserved until today. Even now we can see the life of thousands of years ago. Standing on the Ghats at Benares or by any village well we are transported into the beautiful antique world.

(source: Is India Civilized - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John Woodroffe p.136 -137).

Dickinson, who was a friend of E. M. Forster, wrote in his "Essay on the Civilizations" thesis, wrote:

"The real antithesis is not between East and West, but between India and the rest of the world." Only India is different; only India un spools some other possibility fantastically. India is the odd man out of the global citizenry." Dickinson held, because religion, religion, religion everywhere had transported the land to somewhere nearly extraterrestrial. All other countries were located on planet Earth, in present time, in specific material conditions- which were so much "maya" or secondary reality in India, where what was important had migrated over the mountaintops into the clouds.

"Indian religion has never been a system of dogma, and is not entangled in questionable history. Indian philosophy and religion have always affirmed that there is; that by meditation and discipline an internal perception is opened which is perception of truth."

"In the first place, India has never put Man in the center of the universe. In India, and wherever Indian influence has penetrated, it is, on the one hand, the tremendous forces of nature, and what lies behind them that is the object of worship and of speculation; and, on the other hand, Mind and Spirit; not the mind or spirit of the individual person, but the universal Mind or Spirit, which is in him, but which he can only have access by philosophic mediation and discipline....It is very much in harmony with the spirit of western science than with that of western religion. And this fact is exemplified not only by the religious and philosophic literature of India, but by its art."

(source: An Essay on the Civilizations of India, China and Japan - By G. Lowes Dickinson p.11-31).