Book Reviewed: The Hope and Vision of J Robert Oppenheimer by Michael A Day

Distilling the mind of Robert Oppenheimer (two stars) This book reconstructs what Oppenheimer wrote about his life using ideas of contemporary philosophers. The author analyzes his views using international relations theory with a special emphasis on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Oppenheimer insisted that the U.S. government practice less secrecy and more openness towards the American people about the realities of nuclear warfare. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist who led the Manhattan project to build the first atomic bomb and then found himself confronting the morality of using such a destructive weapon during a war. He was deeply influenced by the metaphysics of Bhagavadgita, the holy scripture of Hinduism. Spiritually, he found solace in the teachings of Lord Krishna to prince Arjuna: He found himself in the shoes of Arjuna who was fighting an army consisting of his teachers and his close family members. By distilling these teachings of Krishna to Arjuna, Oppenheimer found that Gita’s teaching directly applied to his situation. He came to believe that he was a physicist, and his job was to serve his country without any fruits for his work, and therefore not responsible for the devastating effects of a nuclear weapon. One of the main problems in Oppenheimer’s conception of the Hindu holy book was that he read only Bhagavadgita and did not familiarize with the vast Hindu literature or the major schools of Hindu philosophy, especially Sankhya, Yoga, and Vedanta philosophies that plays a large role in Gita’s teachings. He understood the sacred book like a Christian understanding the New Testament, like for example, John 3:16. It is plain and simple and puts one’s mind at ease thinking that becoming a new-born Christian by accepting Jesus as the savior is sure to reward a believer with a guaranteed passage to heaven! But Oppenheimer got lost, equating New Testament with Hindu scripture like Bhagavadgita is a serious mistake many Western scholars do! There is no such equivalent scripture. Hindu teachings run from Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavadgita that are sublimed in the esoteric of six Hindu philosophical systems. Erwin Schrodinger, the founding father of wave mechanics became deeply interested in Hindu teachings and studied Upanishads and the Hindu philosophy. He was lifelong Vedanta philosopher according Schrodinger’s biographer, Walter J. Moore. But Oppenheimer stayed away from Hindu philosophy. The most famous thoughts of him were when he witnessed the first testing of atomic bomb in New Mexico. The burst of lights emanating from nuclear fission was magnificent. He remembered the hymn of Bhagavadgita 11:12 in which it said, A thousand simultaneous suns Arising in the sky Might equal that great radiance, Of the Supreme Lord in the universal form He later said on television quoting Bhagavadgita 11:32 “Now I become death, destroyer of world (translated by Arthur W. Ryder). This translation is misleading, the hymn refers to time and not death per se according to many Hindu scholars, Now I am the mighty world-destroying time Here made the manifest for the purpose of infolding the world. Even without thee none of the warriors arrayed in the hostile army shall live The two major philosophical systems; Sankhya and Vedanta simplify what Hinduism believes in, in the former school, the cosmos is created by two entities, Purusha (soul) and Prakriti (matter), later this idea evolved in the Vedanta school that postulated that there is only one creating entity called Brahman (also referred to as Pure Consciousness or the Supreme Soul). The reality we see, and experience in this world originates because of Maya (illusion). So, in essence the creating entity is not only responsible for the creation but also for sustenance and the destruction of the cosmos, everything is in the hands of the divine. Pure Consciousness pervades in the universe that holds spacetime in which matter and energy play according to the laws of physics, but when spacetime unfolds, matter and energy becomes crunched creating a quantum vacuum in a sea of Pure Consciousness. Everything begins and ends in Pure Consciousness. In essence, Krishna states in Bhagavadgita that Arjuna has an obligation to understand and perform his duty (dharma), because everything is connected by the law of cause and effect. Cause produces the corresponding effect, but those who act selfishly create the cause (Karma) and are thereby bound to that effect that may produce either good or bad. Those who act selflessly and do their duty of dharma without desiring for fruits are free from the effects of karma, because the results never motivated them. Since there is no cause, and obviously there is no effect in this act. In effect nothing created or destroyed, it is all in the grand plan of the divine that everything in the cosmos is preordained as quantum physics tries to teach us. The book does not devote much to the philosophical ideas that influenced Robert Oppenheimer but choose to discuss about his political philosophy and the nuclear disarmament.