Vivekananda's philosophy was one of pride in the past. " Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after that, look forward, much forward, march forward and make India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was... We must go to the root of this disease and cleanse the blood of all impurities.”  

He had put immense faith in Hinduism:

"To my mind', our religion is truer than any other religion, because it never conquered. Because it never shed blood, because its mouth always shed on all, words of blessing, of peace, words of love and sympathy. It is here and here alone that the ideals of toleration were first preached. And it is here and here alone that toleration and sympathy become practical; it is theoretical in every other country; it is here and here alone, that the Hindu builds mosques for the Mohammedans and churches for the Christians.”

(source: Secularization of India…? - By S. Balasundar - Hindu voice). 

Religion is the main theme of India. Swami Vivekananda wrote:

"Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in life, which is its center, the principal note round which every note comes to form harmony....if one nation attempts to throw off its vitality, the direction which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, the nation dies....if one nation's political power is its vitality, as in England, artistic life is another and so on. In India religious life forms the center, the keynote of the whole music of life."

(source: Glimpses of Indian Culture - By Dr. Giriraj Shah p. 27). 

He proclaimed the non-dualistic "spirituality" of Vedanta as the metaphysical root and basis of universal tolerance and brotherhood, as well as of India's national identity.  

He said: 

“India alone was to be, of all lands, the land of toleration and of spirituality…in that distant time the sage arose and declared, ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti (He who exists is one; the sages call him variously). This is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been the very backbone of our national existence…our country has become the glorious land of religious toleration…The world is waiting for this grand idea of universal toleration….The other great idea that the world wants from us today….is that eternal ideal of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe…This is the dictate of Indian philosophy. This oneness is the rationale of all ethics and all spirituality.”

(source: Vivekanada's Complete Works III, 186ff).

Lord Vishnu as Varaha avatar incarnation.

“India alone was to be, of all lands, the land of toleration and of spirituality. "I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance."

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

***

"I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.  

"We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a country which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all countries of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I remember having repeated a hymn from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee." .... 

(source: Swami Vivekananda's speeches - The World Parliament of Religions. Chicago Sept 11 1893).

22. Adi Shakaracharya (5th century BC) was undoubtedly an immortal spiritual leader who, by his matchless speculative daring, grand practical idealism, remorseless logic and stern intellectualism gave an interpretation of the mysteries of life whose influence is still great. 

Shankaracharya is a colossus of India's cultural history.  

He re-established the Swami order and, along with propounding Advaita (non-dual Brahman), his unequalled contribution to life in the country lies in providing a geographical as well as metaphysical definition to Hinduism. Adi Shankaracharya established mathas across the length and breadth of the country: Sringeri in the south, Dwarka in the west, Badrinarayan in the north, Govardhan, Puri, in the East. It is to his journeys that the Indic civilisation owes both its metaphysical continuity as well as its physical unity.

American historian Will Durant has written about him: 

"In his short life of thirty-two years Sankara achieved that union of sage and saint, of wisdom and kindliness, which characterizes the loftiest type of man produced in India. "

"Shanakara establishes the source of his philosophy at a remote and subtle point never quite clearly visioned again until, a thousand years later, Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason."

(source: Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant MJF Books. 1935. p 546 - 547). 

Sankara's philosophy is called Kevaladvaita or absolute monism which can be summed up thus. The Supreme Spirit or the Brahman is alone real and the individual self is only the Supreme Self and no other. Brahman is supreme intelligence, devoid of attributes, form, changes or limitations. It is self-luminous and all pervading and is without a second. The empirical world is unreal, an illusion born of ignorance. The jiva continues in Samsara only as long as it retains attachment due to ignorance or Maya. If it casts off the veil of Maya through knowledge or Jnana it will realize its identity with the Brahman and get merged into it.

(source: Main Currents in Indian Culture - By S. Natarajan p. 35 - 37).

Refer to documentary on Adi Shankaracharya (2003).

Shankaracharya is a colossus of India's cultural history. 

"In his short life of thirty-two years Sankara achieved that union of sage and saint, of wisdom and kindliness, which characterizes the loftiest type of man produced in India."

(image source: Sri Adi Sankara - kamakoti.org).

***

He is considered one of the foremost of India's mystic philosophers and religious thinker who developed Advaita Vedanta, a system of philosophical thought within Hinduism. Adi Shankaracharya was born during the time when Buddhism held somewhat of a sway in India, and the philosophy of Buddhism had come to be interpreted as a denial of God. Buddhism was Puritanical. And by banning drinking, dancing, singing and theatre, Buddhism sowed the seeds of opposition. Moreover, Hinduism was divided into various sects and the ritualistic practice had taken a predominance over actual philosophical practice. 

Adi Shankaracharya revived Sanatana Dharma. He effectively turned back the wave of Buddhism and Jainism and established Hinduism firmly in Bharat. His works on religion and philosophy pointed out the unique features of our ancient religion. Shankara, in his indisputable style, set out on a difficult mission and changed the outlook of the country and its people by revamping the vast hindu literature into simple easy to understand language.

The great genius of Adi-Shankaracharya led him to establish in the four corners of India, four principal seats of learning for propagating his teaching; at a time when he had revived the understanding of the people and established the true and eternal fundamentals of Vedic wisdom. 

(source: Introduction to Shankara - About.com).

The great genius of Adi-Shankaracharya led him to establish in the four corners of India, and established the true and eternal fundamentals of Vedic wisdom. 

Advaita Vedanta has been and continues to be the most widely known system of Indian philosophy, both in the East and the West. 

(image source: Sri Adi Sankara - kamakoti.org).

Refer to Bhaja Govindam - kamakoti.org.

***

Shri Shankara composed a number of hymns to foster the sense of devotion in the hearts of men and this is His greatest service. Bhaja Govindam is one among His many works and in this short garland of poems in praise of Lord Govinda (Krishna). 

Refer to Bhaja Govindam - kamakoti.org.

Advaita Vedanta has been and continues to be the most widely known system of Indian philosophy, both in the East and the West. 

The entire philosophy of Shankara can be summed up in the following statement: Brahma satyam, pagan mithya, jivo brahmaiva naparah (Brahman is real, the world is false, the self is not-different from Brahman). 

(source: Great Thinkers of the Eastern World - By Ian Philip McGreal Editor p. 214 - 215).

This is what he thought of the Bhagavad Gita:

" From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-Gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures." 

Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) the famous Austrian existentialist philosopher Regarding Shankara's commentary, once told Professor K. Satchidananda Murthy that, 'there is no metaphysics superior to that of Shankara.'

(source: Vedanta influence - vedanta.org). 

23. Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) most original philosopher of modern India. Education in England gave him a wide introduction to the culture of ancient, or mediaeval and of modern Europe. He was described by Romain Rolland as ' the completest synthesis of the East and the West.'

He was a brilliant scholar in Greek and Latin. He had learned French from his childhood in Manchester and studied for himself German and Italian sufficiently to study Goethe and Dante in the original tongues. He passed the Tripos in Cambridge in the first class and obtained record marks in Greek and Latin in the examination for the Indian Civil Service. 

This is what Aurobindo said in his book, India's Rebirth (ISBN 2-902776-32-2)  p 139-140.

"Hinduism.....gave itself no name, because it set itself no sectarian limits; it claimed no universal adhesion, asserted no sole infallible dogma, set up no single narrow path or gate of salvation; it was less a creed or cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit. An immense many-sided and many staged provision for a spiritual self-building and self-finding, it had some right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the eternal religion, Santana Dharma...." 

" The people of India, even the "ignorant masses" are by centuries of training are nearer to the inner realities, than even the cultured elite anywhere else" 

“The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race." 

In his famous Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo summed up the whole problem in these words: 

We will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even defensive employment of physical violence ? Good, though until soul-force is effective, the Asuric force in men and nations tramples down, breaks, slaughters, burns, pollutes, as we see it doing today, but then at its ease and unhindered, and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your abstinence as others by resort to violence. Strength founded on the Truth and the dharmic use of force are thus the Gita’s answer to pacifism and non-violence. Rooted in the ancient Indian genius, this third way can only be practised by those who have risen above egoism, above asuric ambition or greed. The Gita certainly does not advocate war ; what it advocates is the active and selfless defence of dharma. If sincerely followed, its teaching could have altered the course of human history. It can yet alter the course of Indian history."

The Gita is, in Sri Aurobindo’s words, “our chief national heritage, our hope for the future.”

(source: The Gita in Today’s World - by Michel Danino - bharatvani.org).  Refer to Sri Aurobindo Ashram.org. 

Sri Aurobindo and Lokmanya Tilak.

(image source: sriaurobindo society).

***

Aurobindo says in his book Karmayogin: 

"Hinduism, which is the most skeptical and the most believing of all, the most skeptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced, turning in to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism, we find the basis of future world religion. This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras:......but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling."

Aurobindo in his book, Letters, Vol. II wrote:

"The Hindu religion appears....as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance - crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit."

(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 60-61).

"That which we call the Hindu religion is really the Eternal religion because it embraces all others."

(source: The Wisdom of Hindu Gurus -Timothy Freke pg 56 ).

In a brilliant speech, Aurobindo equated the Indian land with Sanatana Dharma or Hindu religion which is but another name for the yearning of the Divine or the quest of the Spirit. He also said that in India religion and nationalism are one. India rises with religion, lives by it and will perish with it and to rise in religion is to raise India.

(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 206).

"India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples." 

(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo Publisher: Mira Aditi ISBN 81-85137-27-7 p. 158). 

Aurobindo calls the commercial civilization of the West "monstrous and asuric (demonic)".

He pointed out: " ...the seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo, even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous..." 

(source: The Upanishads - By Sri Aurobindo vol. 12 p. 6).

" Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it. India saw from the beginning, - and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, - that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organize the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, - truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.

She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman."

' India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration." "Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose her great, her sovereign powers in that direction..."

(source: The Renaissance in India - Shri Aurobindo  Arya Publishing House Calcutta. p. 10 - 55).

Maharshi Aurobindo points out, 

"Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite."

(source: Hindutva is liberal - By A. B. Vajpayee - rediff.com).

He wrote this regarding Hindu culture:

"More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures. 

(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel  p. contents).

Sri Aurobindo in a series of luminous essays called A Defense of Indian Culture, published in the Arya:

"Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects. 

(source: The Vision of India - By Sisirkumar Mitra  p. 53 - 54).

Speaking of Christianity's claims to an exclusive and universal salvation, Sri Aurobindo in his book, India's Rebirth (ISBN 2-902776-32-2) page 141, says: 

"The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality."

(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo (ISBN 2-902776-32-2) p 141).

24. Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was one of the most profound philosophers of this century, author and educationalist. In 1926, he was deputed by Calcutta University as the university delegate to the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1940, first Indian to be thus honoured. After Independence, when Nehru decided to send Radhakrishnan to the Soviet Union as ambassador, many wondered how a scholar would deal with a dictator like Stalin. Not only did Radhakrishnan have a successful stint there, he also got along very well with Stalin. In December, 1964, Pope Paul VI visited India and made him Knight of the Golden Army of Angels, the Vatican’s highest honour for a Head of State. Radhakrishnan was also a professor of Eastern Religions at Oxford and later became the second President of free India.

He was widely admired as a master of the English language, a spellbinding orator, a dynamic leader, and a generous human being. Was India’s most eminent 21^st century philosopher. He was brought up and educated in colonial India where Christian missionaries proclaimed Christianity to be the only true religion and portrayed Hinduism as being seriously defective. In his first published works,  Radhakrishnan defended the Hindu theory of karma and the ethics of Vedanta. In his lectures Radhakrishnan answered the many Christian critics of Hinduism by formulating his interpretation of the essence of Hinduism. Hinduism is a way of life rather than a dogmatic creed. Its foundation is spiritual experience. Through meditative practices, one has direct experience of the Absolute Spirit (Brahman). This experience brings home the unity of the individual self and the Absolute Self. Attaining one’s deepest self by losing one’s selfish ego becomes the supreme goal.

(source: Great Thinkers of the Eastern World - By Ian Philip McGreal,  Editor p. 279 - 280).

There were many interpretations of Hindu scriptures and philosophy, but Radhakrishnan was perhaps the first Indian philosopher to present to the world the deeper aspects of Indian philosophy. He was truly India’s cultural ambassador to the world. After listening to him, one English lady was prompted to say, "There is no need for us to send missionaries to India."

"My religious sense," he used to say, "did not allow me to speak a rash or a profane word of anything which the soul of man holds or has held sacred. The attitude of respect for all creeds, this elementary good manners in matters of spirit, is bred into the marrow of one’s bones by the Hindu tradition.’

(source: Dr S. Radhakrishnan - tribuneindia.com). 

"Hinduism is not just a faith. It is the union of reason and intuition that cannot be defined but is only to be experienced. Evil and error are not ultimate. There is no Hell, for that means there is a place where God is not, and there are sins which exceed his love. "

"In the history of the world, Hinduism is the only religion, that exhibits a complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers. Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God." 

"In the search for the supernatural, it is like traveling in space without a boundary or barrier." 

(source: Bhagavad Gita  - By S. Radhakrishan pg - 55).

" A large part of the world received its religious education from India." In spite of continuous struggle with theological baggage, India has held fast for centuries to the ideals of spirit." 

(source: Eastern Religions & Western Thought - By. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan p. 116).

"Hinduism is wholly free from the strange obsession of some faiths that the acceptance of a particular religious metaphysics is necessary for salvation, and non-acceptance thereof is a heinous sin meriting eternal punishment in hell."

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan  p. 28).

He noted that: "If the Upanishads help us to rise above the glamour of the fleshy life, it is because their authors, pure of soul, ever striving towards the divine, reveal to us their pictures of the splendors of the unseen. The Upanishads are respected not because they are a part of Sruti or revealed literature and so hold a reserved position but because they have inspired generations of Indians with vision and strength by their inexhaustible significance and spiritual power. Indian thought has constantly turned to these scriptures for fresh illumination and spiritual recovery or recommencement, and not in vain. The fire still burns bright on their altars. Their light is for the seeing eye and their message is for the seeker after truth." 

(source: The Principal Upanishads - By S. Radhakrishnan London: Allen & Unwin/ New York: Humanities Press. 1953, p. 18-19).

"Indian thought is an extraordinary mass of material which for detail and variety has hardly any equal in any other part of the world. There is hardly any height of spiritual insight or rational philosophy attained in the world that has not its parallel in the vast stretch that lies between the early Vedic seers and the modern naiyAyikas."

(source: Indian Philosophy, Volume I - By S. Radhakrishnan).

Indian religion never quite understood the idea of exclusive worship. Indian religious tradition admits all forms in which the single truth is reflected.

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

***

"Hinduism has come to be a tapestry of the most variegated tissues and almost endless diversity of hues."

" Hinduism is therefore not a definite dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex, but subtly unified mass of spiritual thought and realization. Its tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit has been continuously enlarging through the ages."

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 8-9).

"The truth suggested in the Vedas are developed in the Upanishads. We find in the seers of the Upanishads, an utter fidelity to every layer and shade of truth as they saw it. They affirm that there is a central reality, the one without a second, who is all that is and beyond all that is."

'From the time of the Rg Veda till today, India has been the home of different religions and the Indian genius adopted a policy of live and let live towards them. Indian religion never quite understood the idea of exclusive worship. Indian religious tradition admits all forms in which the single truth is reflected. Proselytism is discouraged. It is not God that is worshipped but the group or the authority that claims to speak in his name."

The attempts of the western powers to impose their culture on India through the Government and its educational institutions have stirred the huge inertia of the Indian people and ruffled the surface of Indian society, but deep down the immemorial tradition of India has not been greatly disturbed."

(source: East and West: Some Reflections - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 22 -42).

Hinduism according to him is not a religion, but a commonwealth of religions. “It is more a way of life than a form of thought….The theist and the atheist, the skeptic and the agnostic may all be Hindus if they accept the Hindu system of culture and life. Hinduism insists not on religious conformity but on a spiritual and ethical outlook of life…Hinduism is not a sect but a fellowship of all who accept the law of right and earnestly seek for the truth.”

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 77).

"By what strange social alchemy has India subdued her conquerors, transforming them to her very self and substance..... ? Why is it that her conquerors have not been able to impose on her their language, their thoughts and customs, except in superficial ways?"

(source: The empire strikes back - By Suma Varghese - Free Press Journal December 5 1997).

"They (Ancient Hindus) measured the land, divided the year, mapped out the heaven, traced the course of sun and planets through the zodiacal belt, analyzed the constitution of matter, and studied the nature of birds and beasts, plants and seeds."

(source: The Story of Oriental Philosophy - By L. Adams Beck p. 10 - 13).

"The Gita appeals to us not only by its force of thought and majesty of vision, but also by its fervor of devotion and sweetness of spiritual emotion."

(source: Indian Philosophy, Volume I - By S. Radhakrishnan). 

"Hinduism represents an effort at comprehension and cooperation. It recognizes the diversity in man’s approach towards, and realization of, the one Supreme Reality. For it the essence of religion consists in man’s hold on what is eternal and immanent in all being.  

"For the Hindu, every religion is true, if only its adherents sincerely and honestly follow it. They will then get beyond the creed to the experience, beyond the formula to the vision of the truth.'

"Hinduism is not bound up with a creed or a book, a prophet or a founder, but is persistent search for truth on the basis of a continuously renewed experience. Hinduism is human thought about God in continuous evolution."

"Hinduism represents the spirit, the spirit that has such extraordinary vitality as to survive political and social changes. From the beginning of recorded history, Hinduism has borne witness to the sacred flame of spirit, which must remain for ever, even while our dynasties crash and empires tumble into ruins. It alone can give our civilization a soul, and men and women a principle to live by."

"Hinduism is an inheritance of thought and aspiration, living and moving with the movement of life itself."

"India puts spiritual values higher than others.

The Hindu realizes not only that all roads lead to the one Supreme, but that each one must choose that road which starts from the point at which he finds himself at the moment of setting out."

(source: Religion and Society - By S Radhakrishnan - p. 43 - 54). 

25. 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 (1877-1938) 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 in 1945.

" 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). 

Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary minimalist American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared. 

Oppenheimer read the Bhagavad Gita in the original Sanskrit, and in the aftermath of the blast reflected on the passage in which Krishna reveals himself as the Creator and Destroyer.

The Act II, scene iii chorus, borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita:

“At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous, 
Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,
Terrible with fangs, O master, 
All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am. 
When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent, 
Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow, 
With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring
All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.

(source: Dr. Atomic Opera - By John Adams and 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.

The Gita, Oppenheimer excitedly wrote to his brother Frank Oppenheimer, was “very easy and quite marvelous”.  

The Bhagavad Gita has influenced great Americans from Thoreau to Oppenheimer. Its message of letting go of the fruits of one’s actions is just as relevant today as it was when it was first written more than two millennia ago.

***

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."

(source: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism - By Fritjof Capra  p. 18).

Colonel James Tod with Pundit
(source: A Concise History of the Indian People - By H G Rawlinson  p. 313).

***

"Where can we look for sages like those whose systems of philosophy were prototypes of those of Greece: to whose works Plato, Thales & Pythagoras were disciples? Where do I find astronomers whose knowledge of planetary systems yet excites wonder in Europe as well as the architects and sculptors whose works claim our admiration, and the musicians who could make the mind oscillate from joy to sorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modes and varied intonation?" 

(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By James Tod p. 608- 609).