Indian wisdom indirectly trickled to the West through the Arabs.

Greece was lured by Indian wisdom with the advent of Alexander in the western region of India in the fourth century B.C. Modern scholars---France's Dr. Jean Filliozat, and England's Prof. E. J. Urwick in his book, The Message of Plato---have found, the influence of the Upanishads on Plato. In Eastern Religions and Western Thought, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan makes an especially brilliant observation about the influence of Indian wisdom in Palestine and Greece; it is found in his seventh chapter on Greece, Palestine, and India.

The ancient Indian wisdom has not remained a mere matter of history. It has had a living and growing, influence on the thoughts and lives of people outside India. Indian wisdom has a strange vitality, a strong and sound instinct for life. This has made it attractive for all, through all the ages. Because, it is ageless and eternal.

Down through the ages, India has been the eternal source of spiritual inspiration for humanity. Evidently...India has the birthplace of the fundamental imaginings, the cradle of contemplative religion and the nobler philosophy. (H. Stutfield, Mysticism and Catholicism, 31.) This source has been authenticated, amplified, elucidated and rejuvenated by eminent mystics throughout the ages. The Indian mind, despite depressed situations in external life, kept this life-giving and sustaining philosophy and religion in its culture. In all nations there are minds which incline to dwell on the conception of the fundamental Unity.... This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writing of the East, and chiefly in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Vishnu Purana,. declared Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Vedantic mystics in ancient India were not committed to any dogma; they were committed to Truth only and firmly believed in the power of Truth to overcome half-truths and untruths. They have left for posterity an imperishable legacy in their fearless search for Truth. On this aspect of Vedanta, Professor Max Muller wrote in his Six Systems Indian Philosophy:

It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedanta should have slowly elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy, as in mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of an ancient Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel, ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone in regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman. (Max Muller, Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, pp. 182-183.)

Prof. Muller further wrote of the passion for Truth that motivated the bold Indian thinkers:

I believe much of the excellency of the ancient Sanskrit philosophers is due to their having been undisturbed by the thought of there being a public to please or critics to appease. They thought of nothing but the work they had determined to do; their one idea was to make it as perfect as it could be made. There was no applause they valued unless it came from their equals or their betters; publishers, editors, and log rollers did not yet exist. Need we wonder then that their work was done as well as it could be done, and that it has lasted for thousands of years? (Max Muller, Three Lectures on Vedanta Philosophy, pp. 39-40.)

Prof. Muller, who drank profusely the divine nectar gathered from Vedanta throughout his long life, remarked, '[Vedanta] is the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains, so simple and so true, if once understood.' He also said, 'Philosophy in India is what it ought to be, not the denial, but the fulfilment of religion; it is the highest religion; and the oldest name of the oldest system of philosophy in India is Vedanta, that is, the end, the goal, the highest object of the Vedas.' In his Sacred Books of the East, Muller wrote, 'There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, soul-stirring, and inspiring as the Upanishads.'

This view has been endorsed by a Christian missionary, Robert Earnest Hume. He says in his book, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads: 'The earnestness of the search for truth in one of the delightful and commendable features of the Upanishads' (R. E. Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, p. 36.)

The essential concepts of Hinduism regarding God, nature and the soul have been traced to the days of the Rig-Veda, the earliest of the four Vedas, the basic Hindu Scripture. 'What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like light of a higher and purer luminary. . . simple, universal,' wrote Henry David Thoreau.

The timeless Reality in man and nature was discovered in the Vedic Age. Absolute faith based on verification with regard to the fundamental, and an amazing flexibility in readjusting the external, has been a fact of the life style through which the Hindu faith has survived and flourished throughout the ages. That is why it is said to be 'ever aging but never old.' It may be remembered that Hinduism is older than any other religion of the world, dating back to about 5,000 B.C. Hinduism regards as its supreme authority the religious experience of the ancient Vedic sages. The ancient seers acted as various channels for transmitting to humanity the spiritual truths they experienced. Swami Vivekananda, the modern incarnation of the spirit of Vedanta, said, 'Like the gentle dew that falls unseen and unheard, yet brings into blossom the fairest or roses, has been the contribution of India to the thought of the world.' (Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, III, p. 274.)

Hinduism is not founded in a single historical event or by a prophet. It has been called the 'cradle of spirituality' and 'the mother of all religions'. It has influenced virtually every major religion. The Spanish lover of Vedanta, J. Mascaro, described it as the Himalayas of the Soul: 'Just as that great mountain determines the climate, the rainfall and the physical features of the peninsula, so do these heights of wisdom determine the quality of the spiritual wisdom of the race that inhabits it.'

Upon reading the Latin translation of the Upanishads when it first appeared in the West, the German philosopher Schopenhauer made the significant remark that the Upanishads would be a great source of inspiration and enlightenment to the generations to come. It is reported that Schopenhauer kept the Latin text of the Upanishads on his table and was in the habit, before going to bed, of performing his devotion by reading from its pages. He named his dog, Atma. He wrote, 'From every sentence [of the Upanishads] ideas original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high, holy and earnest spirit.' He further said, 'In the whole world there is no study except that of the original [of the Upanishads] so beneficial, so elevating ... it has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.' About the Vedas, he said that they 'are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world.' (Schopenhauer, Works, VI, 427). Schopenhauer stated that the West's acquaintance with the Vedas, 'the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones,' and made the prophecy that, 'They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people.' Schopenhauer predicted in the preface of his book, The World as Will and Idea: 'I believe that the influence of the Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century.' (Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea [London: 1957], I, xii-xiii.)

In Paul Deussen'swords, 'the Upanishads have tackled every fundamental problem of life. They have given us an intimate account of reality.' In a talk given in Bombay in 1893, Deussen said, 'On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy,' and he added, 'The system of Vedanta, as founded on the Upanishads and Vedanta Sutras and accompanied by Shankara's commentary on them---equal in rank to Plato and Kant---is one of the most valuable products of the genius of mankind in his researches of the eternal truth.' (Paul Deussen's address before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society on February 25, 1893).

In his Philosophy of the Upanishads, Deussen wrote of the significance upon human thought of the Upanishadic discovery of the identity between the subject and the object:

If we strip this [Upanishadic] thought of the various forms, figurative to the highest degree and not seldom extravagant, under which it appears in the Vedanta texts, and fix our attention upon it solely in its philosophical simplicity as the identity of God and the Soul, the Brahman and the Atman, it will be found to possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upanishads, their time and country, nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for the whole race of mankind. We are unable to look into the future, we do not know what revelations and discoveries are in store for the restlessly inquiring human spirit; but one thing we may assert with confidence---whatever new and unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may strike out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken, and from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a general solution is reached of the great riddle, which presents itself to the philosopher in the nature of things, all the more clearly the further our knowledge extends, the key can only be found where alone the secret of nature lies open to us from within, that is to say, in our innermost self. It was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the Upanishads , to their immortal honour, found it when they recognized our Atman, our innermost individual being as the Brahman, the inmost being of universal nature and of all her phenomenon. [Italics not the author's](Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, [1906: Edinburgh], Translated by Geden, pp. 39-40)