Eastern Influences

Yogananda said that the West has not had saints of the magnitude that India has had, and he attributed that in large part to the yogic techniques of India. Many Western saints have had great devotion, but without techniques, they could not focus that devotion as effectively as Indian saints could.

It is unlikely that God withheld those techniques from the West; rather, it was Indian culture’s intense interest in inner science that led to the discovery of those techniques. Plus, India has long honored the guru/disciple tradition.

In consequence, the techniques and teachings of India have been handed down through the generations, through millennia. In the West, there has been such inner, scientific focus and continuity only in relatively short-lived, isolated pockets of humanity, not widespread and enduring as in India.