From time immemorial it has been the obsessive dream of rulers of different nationalities, races and beliefs to acquire weapons of immense destructive power that could annihilate enemies in a split second. Destruction has always fascinated mankind and there has been a relentless quest to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Hindu religious scriptures are replete with descriptions of weapons that caused unfathomable destruction when unleashed. Since all Hindu holy scriptures were in the esoteric Sanskrit language, which was accessible only to a miniscule community, the global community was in the dark, about the amazing weapons that once existed, and caused utter ruination of many civilizations. However, when translations of Hindu epics and philosophical texts started in the 18th and 19th centuries, German scientists engaged in several military projects got fascinated by the array of destructive weapons mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Study of Sanskrit picked momentum among Germans and Jews, and the military perspective, engaged the attention of several scientists who were tasked by Adolph Hitler to invent diabolical weapons. The alarmed British sought to utilize the service of Christian missionaries to suppress the interests of the German scientists in Hinduism. To keep people away from Hinduism, the missionaries started using the prefix ‘mythology’ with Hindu beliefs and scriptures. This ploy was used successfully to denigrate and destroy many European beliefs and religions, and substitute them with Christianity. Thus, there came into being Roman mythology, Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Egyptian mythology, American-Indian mythology, Buddhist mythology, and even Islamic mythology. Except for Christianity, every other belief system was given the compulsory label “mythology”. This tag convinced many people that most belief systems were just a compilation of cock and bull stories. Fortunately, the German scientific community did not fall victim to this stupid ploy. Heidelberg in Germany became the Sanskrit knowledge hub of the West. Scientists and philosophers were enamoured by the wisdom and knowledge encapsulated in Sanskrit language in Hindu scriptures. Einstein, Max Planck, Max Born, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Weizaecker, and Von Braun, were the famous Vedanta inspired German scientists.
Germany and Japan were poised to become formidable global military powers. In August 1939, Einstein wrote to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to warn him that the Nazis were working on a new and powerful weapon: an atomic bomb.
The Americans also began a quest for a Vedanta inspired scientist. The search zeroed in on a Jewish scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Harvard educated Oppenheimer was teaching theoretical physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he got associated with Professor of Sanskrit Arthur W. Ryder. Soon he became spellbound by the Bhagavad Gita, the philosophical song celestial of Lord Sri Krishna. If German scientists went into raptures studying Vedanta, Oppenheimer went into ecstasy studying Bhagavad Gita. Chapter 11, Verse 12, held an abiding fascination for him –
“If hundreds of thousands of suns rose up at once into the sky, they might resemble the effulgence of the Supreme Person in that universal form“. The radiance of hundreds of thousands of suns converging at a single spot was a haunting dream that he would translate one day into reality. A step in that direction was initiated when in June 1942 General Leslie Groves appointed Oppenheimer as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. Under Oppenheimer’s guidance, the laboratories at Los Alamos were constructed. The next step was his appointment as Head of the secretive “Project Y”, the mission to create an atomic bomb.
Fuelled by innumerable pegs of martinis and cigarettes a dedicated team of workaholic scientists were burning the midnight oil to assemble the dreaded atom bomb. Throughout the project work Oppenheimer kept quoting the Bhagavad Gita, named the atom bomb test site “Trinity” after the Hindu Trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. Finally at 0530 hours on 16 July 1945, the Alamogordo bombing range about 35 miles from the city of New Mexico, Oppenheimer witnessed his creation breaking into a tremendous burst of multi-coloured flash of light outshining the sun and expanding over 20 miles before rising to over 10,000 feet in a fraction of a second. Shortly thereafter a 40,000 feet high mushroom cloud, sprang up with a strange roar, and a shockwave that was felt even 100 miles away. Oppenheimer did not forget to term the explosion as “Trinity Bomb”, and recalled the famous Bhagavad Gita verse “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Surprisingly when the assembled journalists congratulated him on the first ever atomic bomb explosion by mankind, he gave a curious reply that it was the first in the modern world, implying that civilizations in the past were also familiar with atomic technology. This view is today shared by many scientists who believe that human civilizations in the past were familiar with atomic technology and got destroyed due to misusing the technology.
The Mahabharata narrates the destructive Astras possessed by the warriors, over 50 types of astounding weapons that bear close resemblance to modern day nuclear weapons are mentioned. The Agneya Astra was used 14 times in the Mahabharata war, while Arjuna did not use the powerful Pashupatastra , Karna used Bhargavastra, Bhagadatta used Vaishnavastra and Ashwatthama used the destructive Narayanastra. The descriptions of the destruction caused by the Agneya Astra bears a striking resemblance to the havoc caused by the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
William L Laurence’s – Eyewitness Account of Atomic Bomb Over Nagasaki describes the event as follows:
“Observers in the tail of our ship saw a giant ball of fire rise as though from the bowels of the earth, belching forth enormous white smoke rings. Next they saw a giant pillar of purple fire, 10,000 feet high, shooting skyward with enormous speed.
By the time our ship had made another turn in the direction of the atomic explosion the pillar of purple fire had reached the level of our altitude. Only about 45 seconds had passed. Awe-struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.
At one stage of its evolution, covering missions of years in terms of seconds, the entity assumed the form of a giant square totem pole, with its base about three miles long, tapering off to about a mile at the top. Its bottom was brown, its center was amber, its top white. But it was a living totem pole, carved with many grotesque masks grimacing at the earth.
Then, just when it appeared as though the thing has settled down into a state of permanence, there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom that increased the height of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upwards and then descending earthward, a thousand old faithful geysers rolled into one.
It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in the act of breaking the bonds that held it down. In a few seconds it had freed itself from its gigantic stem and floated upward with tremendous speed, its momentum carrying into the stratosphere to a height of about 60,000 feet.
But no sooner did this happen when another mushroom, smaller in size than the first one, began emerging out of the pillar. It was as though the decapitated monster was growing a new head.
As the first mushroom floated off into the blue it changed its shape into a flower-like form, its giant petal curving downward, creamy white outside, rose-coloured inside. It still retained that shape when we last gazed at it from a distance of about 200 miles”.
The effects of the atomic bombings killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. In all human computations of destruction caused, only human lives are reckoned, there is no consideration whatsoever for the innocent animals, birds, insects, flora and fauna that got destroyed as a result of man’s wantonness. The inevitable Karmic backlash is bound to happen some day or the other.
Just 11 days after the bombing of Hiroshima, on August 17, 1945, Oppenheimer expressed in writing to the US government his desire for nuclear weapons to be banned. Two months later he would tell President Harry S. Truman that blood was on his hands.
Thus began for Oppenheimer a new career, that of apostle for nuclear disarmament, which sprang from his new post as president of the General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission. However suspicion that he was a Communist sympathiser led to revocation of his security privileges and he was condemned to political ostracism. Dr.J.Robert Oppenheimer, died on Feb. 18 1967 at 62 years, while serving as the Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, after a prolonged battle with throat cancer.
It was Oppenheimer’s life mission to build an atomic bomb, thereafter to see how it worked, a thousand suns exploded all at once, causing unfathomable destruction, it was a sorry scheme of things entire. The Karmic consequences are bound to haunt him through many life-times, and through innumerable life-forms. The Vishnu Purana estimates that there are 8, 40,000, different species of living species on this Planet. Who knows in what forms, how, why and when are Karmic accounts settled?
Nine countries today possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. In total, the global nuclear stockpile is close to 13,000 weapons, sufficient to blow up the world repeatedly! It becomes extremely necessary that in every Parliament, in every nation, this eternal Vedic prayer be taught to all Presidents, Prime Ministers, Premiers and their legislators:
“Swasti prajabhyah: pari-palayantham
nyayeana margena mahim maheesah:
go-brahmanebhya: shubamasthu nityam
lokah: samasthah: sukhino bhavanthu”
May there be well-being to the people;
may the kings rule the earth along the right path;
May the cattle and the preceptors of culture and wisdom have well-being forever;
May all the beings in all the worlds become happy;
Peace, peace and peace be everywhere!
This Vedic verse or sloka is an invocation for harmony and blessings for all of creation.
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