The more prosperous people are, the less they believe in God. It is true with education too. Prof. S. Chandrasekaran who won the Nobel Prize could not see any reality in the concept of God. His education weaned his mind away from God. God was not even a permissible concept for him. Confronted with a problem of life, the Westerner will rarely think of God. Instead, he will try harder each time. When his best efforts fail, he will grow stoical and masculine to muster courage to silently suffer it without sharing his woes with another. Resort to God is the ready impulse of an Indian. These are the responses of lesser mortals.
In India the most respected man is the one who seeks God. In the West that high pedestal goes to the scientist and the intellectual, not the God-lover. The West developed Mind. Mind developed individuality. The growing success of individuality alienated him from God. By a strange turn of events, the Westerner chose not to take bath. Toynbee speaks of the stench on the Westerner which gives a faint to those who do not eat meat. To us, bath is called daily bath. Often it is more than once. Any ritual is preceded by a bath. God does not descend on dirty surroundings. The Jews in all cold countries are meticulously clean. Of course, when you are freezing, bath is not inviting. Biographers speak of leading intellectuals like Karl Marx of Hemingway rarely taking bath.
Any capacity of man increasing makes man forget God. To lose faith in the Divine and shift that faith to oneself is in essence Westernisation of the Mind. All the values that issue from that mind-set are values that can make the human personality dry, even rotten. Man is man because God dwells in him. Man cut off from those springs of Spirit is a bundle of flesh and a basket of skills worth throwing away. The Mother said the Britisher stayed here too long and those who have accepted the British values in mind - 30 % -- have become rotten. The light of the Rishis is there in the bodies of the others. A Westernised mind, a Westernized life prides in its Western values in every facet of life. Such a man is lost. He is a statue not consecrated. When Sri Aurobindo visited a Kali temple, Kali came out of the statue and gave him Darshan. No Kali will emerge from an unconsecrated statue, however exquisite it is. Education is good. Technology is good, but beware of Westernisation, especially Westernisation of mental values.