Lol! Yes....but that was ok in the 19th century. The British lived and ruled India for so long but did no pick up anything.
In today's globalized environment, the East and West cannot ignore each other. Just as India has to pick up Science and Technology from the West...so also the West has to pick up Philosophy and mysticism from India.
The supposed gap between Science and Spirituality/mysticism is artificial and is perpetuated by the West because of scientific and general snobbery. I expect that in coming generations, mainly due to Indian efforts and perhaps German and American, the gap might close significantly.
Cheers.
Sriram
There is actually a close affinity between the religious and philosophical traditions of Greece and India because both are derived from a common Proto-Indo-European source. One shared cultural inheritance is dualistic thinking, a subject that has been frequently visited on this forum. I think a lot of the disagreement with you is not because of any objection to your Indian cultural heritage but rather because of your commitment to supernatural theories and explanations. Christians who make similar claims come in for just as much stick here, possibly even more so. Another point perhaps worth making is that 'the east' is not a uniform entity. You've made little secret of your dislike of Zen, for instance. Western philosophy is similarly varied, even though it is true that mainstream philosophy in the west has been very slow to embrace eastern philosophical ideas. People are inherently tribal and tend to resist new and alternative ways of seeing the world. Westerners do not have a monopoly on this shortcoming. So called 'western' ways of thinking don't suit all westerners, either. Hence the increasing interest in western countries in oriental and other approaches to spirituality, since at least the time of Blavatski.
Your two decades of posting on forums like this one have clearly jaundiced you somewhat, and perhaps with good reason. One problem is that this kind of forum encourages a confrontational kind of debate where people tend to lose patience with each other after a short while, when it becomes obvious that other folk are too stupid or stubborn to change their minds. Another problem is that discussion of religion and spirituality tends to be reduced to a contest of ideas, which is carried on at a purely intellectual level, thus draining whatever life there might have been in the subject from it at the outset. For me these discussions become interesting when people are prepared to share experiences, but for understandable reasons many posters seldom if ever do this, which is a shame. The subject matter of this forum is one that operates, if at all, at an emotional level, not an intellectual one. It is hardly surprising that so little mutual understanding is ever achieved by bludgeoning each other with ideas.
