Gita and the Atom Bomb.

[P.K.Ramakrishnan]

A Cultivated Scholar

A brilliant nuclear physicist, with a comprehensive grasp of his field, Dr. Oppenheimer was also a cultivated scholar, a humanist, a linguist of eight tongues and a brooding searcher for ultimate spiritual values. And, from the moment that the test bomb exploded at Alamogordo, N.M., he was haunted by the implications for man in the unleashing of the basic forces of the universe.

As he clung to one of the uprights in the desert control room that July morning and saw the mushroom clouds rising in the explosion, a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Hindu sacred epic, flashed through his mind. He related it later as:

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One."

Bhagavadgita Chapter 11 Sloka 12

 

दिवि सूर्यसहस्रस्य भवेद्युगपदुत्थिता /

यदि भा: ताद्रुशी सा स्यात् भासस्तस्य महात्मन: //

And as the black, then gray, atomic cloud pushed higher above Point Zero, another line--"I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds"--came to him from the same scripture.

Bhagavadgita Chapter 11 Sloka 32  1^st half

 

कालोयस्मि लोकक्षयकृत् प्रवृद्धो लोकान् समाहर्तुमिह प्रवृत्त्त: /

The end of this posting.

 

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P.K.Ramakrishnan
http://peekayar.blogspot.com

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

Please see the attached study entitled 'The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer' by Prof.James A.Hijiya.

Arvind Kolhatkar, Toronto, August 02, 2012.

[Hnbhat B.R.]

Thanks for both for presenting the topic. Earlier this topic was posted by Sri Arvindji himself, for the first time:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/samskrita/bic3jpICq8o/discussion

Thanks anyway. Hope Ramakrishnan missed the discussion at that time.

--
Dr. Hari Narayana Bhat B.R. M.A., Ph.D.,
Research Scholar,

Ecole française d'Extrême-OrientCentre de Pondichéry

16 & 19, Rue Dumas

Pondichéry - 605 001