http://www.atributetohinduism.com/quotes21_40.htm
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Scientist, philosopher,
bohemian, and radical. A theoretical physicist and the Supervising
Scientist for the Manhattan Project, the developer of the atomic
bomb. Graduating from Harvard University, he traveled to Cambridge
University to study at the Cavendish Laboratory.
Oppenheimer acquired a deeper knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita in
1933 when, as a young professor of physics, he studied Sanskrit
with Professor Arthur W Ryder (1877-193
at Berkeley.
The Gita, Oppenheimer excitedly wrote to his brother Frank
Oppenheimer, was “very easy and quite marvelous”.
(source: Robert Oppenheimer Letters and Recollections - By Alice K
Smith and Charles Weiner p. 165).
Later he called the Gita “the most beautiful philosophical song
existing in any known tongue.” He kept a well worn copy of it
conveniently on hand on the bookshelf closest to his desk and often
gave the book to friends as a present.
(source: The Story of J Robert Oppenheimer - By Denise Royal St.
Martin's Press New York 1969 p. 54).
He continued to browse in it while directing the bomb laboratory.
After President Franklin Roosevelt’s death in 1945, Oppenheimer
spoke at a memorial service at Los Alamos and he quoted a passage
from the Gita. In later years, too, he would look back on the
Bhagavad Gita as one of the most important influences in his
life.
In 1963, Christian Century magazine (May 15, 1963 p. 647) asked
Oppenheimer to list the ten books that “did most to shape your
vocational attitude and your philosophy of life” It is significant
that two of the ten works that Oppenheimer claimed as most
influential were Indian (The Bhagavad Gita and Bhartrihari's
Satakatrayam) and a third, The Waste Land by T S Eliot, alluded to
the Hindu Scriptures, The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita and
concluded with a Sanskrit incantation: Shantih, Shantih,
Shantih.”
He said:
"Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may
claim over all previous centuries."
He wrote:
"The general notions about human understanding… which are
illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature
of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of or new. Even in our
own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought
a more considerable and central place. What we shall find [in
modern physics] is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a
refinement of old wisdom."
In this context it is worth emphasizing that India’s contribution
of Buddhism to China (and other countries of the region) is by no
means insubstantial. These civilizations would hardly exist without
the Indian contribution in all aspects of culture— from science and
technology, the arts, philosophy and spirituality.
(source: India as a Creative Civilization - By N. S.
Rajaram).
Oppenheimer described the thoughts that passed through his mind
when he witnessed the first atomic test explosion.
" If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds."
As the gigantic nuclear cloud mushroomed up to the stratosphere
followed by a doomsday roar, Oppenheimer continued with the verses
in which the Mighty One reveals Himself:
"Death am I, cause of destruction of the worlds, matured and set
out to gather in the worlds there" - (Bhagavad Gita XI
12-32).
(source: A Survey of Hinduism - By Klaus K. Klostermaier. State
University of New York Press. 1994. pg 109-110. The Eye of Shiva:
Eastern Mysticism And Science - By Amaury de Riencourt p. 14). For
more refer to chapter on GlimpsesX).
Then and there, Oppenheimer symbolized a most extraordinary
conjunction - the juxtaposition of Western civilization's most
terrifying scientific achievement with the most dazzling
description of the mystical experience given to us by the Bhagavad
Gita, India's greatest literary monument.
Oppenheimer's spontaneous conjunction of a Hindu mystical poem with
a nuclear explosion was of great symbolic significance. Nowhere in
Western literature could he have found an almost clinical
description of mystical rapture that also fits the description of a
nuclear explosion in the outer world.
(source: The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism And Science - By
Amaury de Riencourt p. 14). For more refer to chapter on
GlimpsesX).
"The general notions about human understanding...which are
illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature
of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our
own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought
a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an
exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old
wisdom."
