Eugene Taylor (psychologist)

"'Indeed there is an unbroken tradition of mysticism which can be said to embody forms of meditative practice in the West – from the Neo Platonists such as Plotinus, through the medieval mystics both early and late – Johannes Erigena, St. Bonaventure, John of the Cross, St. Teresa, St. Bernard of Clairvaux – followed by such personalities as Robert Parsons, Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Emanuel Swedenborg, to modern Christian contemplatives such as Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton, and now Shlomo Carlbach, Bede Griffiths, and David Steindl-Rast.'"

"'Meditation per se should be taken as a uniquely Asian phenomenon which, wholesale, has only recently come to the attention of the West. In its new Western context, particularly in the United States, however, it has undergone significant reformulation. In the U.S. it has become indigenized, so that now one can say that Asian forms of meditation have become thoroughly Americanized."