“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
Dr Robert J Oppenheimer, Monday 16 July 1945, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Zero Sum Game
The words above, were spoken by Dr Robert Julius Oppenheimer, on NBC News, after the morning of Monday 16 July 1945 [1], following the completion of the Trinity Tests, which saw the first recorded detonation of a nuclear weapon, in the barren desserts of Los Alamos, New Mexico. More precisely, the passage was Oppenheimer’s contemplation over what he suspected would unfold in weeks to come. It would be hard to deny, that these events comprised of one of the most defining moments in human history, and what film director Christopher Nolan [2] believes was the most defining moment in human history; leading to the end a war that had lasted 6 years, and whilst there isn’t a consensus, took around 60 million lives; 10 times more than that which the COVID pandemic has said to have taken. Nolan, whose films have so far grossed $5bn, has called Robert Oppenheimer “the most important person who ever lived,” and goes on to say that “He was at the centre of a set of events that changed the world forever. Like it or not, we still live in his world, and we always will.”
The bombs that Oppenheimer had pioneered the development of, would kill between 129 to 226 thousand Japanese, mostly civilians. The Atomic Heritage Foundation [3] claims that after the second bomb in Nagasaki, on 10 August 1945, Oppenheimer cabled General Leslie Groves with a shipping schedule for at least two more bombs to be sent to Japan. Within a week, this triggered the unconditional surrender by the Imperial Japanese forces.
Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, who is played by Matt Damon in the recent film, describes [4] how big the Oppenheimer story would be:
In accordance with my verbal directions of July 15, it is desired that clearance be issued to Julius Robert Oppenheimer without delay irrespective of the information which you have concerning Mr Oppenheimer viz. those relating to his past Communist links. He is absolutely essential to the project.
There are countless hypothetical and moral questions that rightly exist, including whether after Allied forces already declared victory on 8 May 1945, was there really the need to take such an extreme measure in Japan months later? Was the brutality of the Japanese offensive, that is said to have killed anywhere up to 10 million people, warranting of the kind of severity in response, that would put rapid end to the situation? Could the remaining opposition forces in Japan have had access to the same technology? And whether if it were not Oppenheimer, would someone else not have invented the same? This article focusses on the background of Robert Oppenheimer, and specifically how his strong links with the texts of ancient India from a young age, influenced his thoughts until the very last stages of his life.
The Upbringing of Affluence
Robert Oppenheimer was born to Jewish parents in the American Hospital, New York in April 1904. Robert was smart; and he housed an intellect, that would leave Professors at the world’s top academic institutions, including Harvard and Cambridge, places at the time that were peppered with future Nobel prize winners, feeling nervous that Robert, who was only in his early twenties, would challenge and quiz them. Robert’s father, Julius Oppenheimer, was so proud of his son, that Robert’s friend Ruth Uehling, who he would play the flute with, reflects [5] “Julius was terribly proud of his son. He couldn’t understand how he had produced Robert.”
Robert’s mother, Ella Friedman, had long been an art enthusiast. Given her husband’s rapid rise in New York’s textile scene since arriving as an immigrant from Prussia, the household had in their Manhattan penthouse, at least three original paintings by Vincent van Gogh [5]. Robert Oppenheimer was surrounded by intellect, culture, art and opulence in his formative years, and throughout his life.
Oppenheimer had a strong devotion and commitment to academia; in 1937, when he was only 33, on the passing of his father, he and his brother Frank Oppenheimer, inherited what would be the equivalent of $8m. He immediately dedicated the sum in his will, to the University of California, leaving his estate to be used for graduate scholarships [5]. Having access to books and teachers at the world’s top institutions, Oppenheimer certainly didn’t have a shortage of choice when it came to philosophies that could shape his way of thinking.
What led the mind of Robert Oppenheimer to be so influenced, that he would reference Vishnu and the Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharata, at the most perilous moment in history as we understand it?
What Robert did not know, is that whilst studying at Göttingen University in Germany, those schoolmates he studied alongside, would be the very people he would be slated up against in a world war, that would convene in less than two decades. These included Ernst Pascual Jordan, who would within years of leaving University, join the “Sturmabteilung Division”, or the “Storm Division” of the Nazi Party. Enrico Fermi, another peer, would find himself in the cabinet, in the close circle of Benito Mussolini, the leader of the Italian National Fascist Party. Also sitting with Robert, was also none other than Edward Teller, inventor of the hydrogen bomb, which Oppenheimer would oppose the development of, and indeed Teller would go on to testify against Oppenheimer, leading to Oppenheimer’s being stripped of security clearance and relieved of his duties with the US Government.
When The Student Is Ready
Oppenheimer's interest in Hindu thought is speculated to have started from his association with Danish physicist, Niels Bohr [6], who Oppenheimer described as “as a scientific father figure to the younger men” attended Cambridge University, who developed the Bohr Model relating to atomic structure, which impressed none other than Albert Einstein, and also won a Nobel Prize. Bohr and Oppenheimer had critically analysed the ancient Hindu stories, and the associated metaphysics. In a conversation with David Hawkins7, a philosopher and scientist from Stanford University that Oppenheimer was close to, before the war, Oppenheimer remarked regarding philosophies "I have read the Greeks; I find the Hindus deeper." Oppenheimer would later recruit David Hawkins to join the Manhattan Project.
Harold Cherniss was a schoolmate of Oppenheimer’s in California, and a historian and philosopher, who would later go on to support Oppenheimer when many forces accused him of being aligned with the Communists. Harold introduced Robert to a Professor of Sanskrit at Berkley University [5], Arthur William Ryder. Cherniss remarked in relation to Oppenheimer’s interest in Sanskrit and the teachings and philosophy, “Robert liked things that were difficult. And he had a taste for the mystical and cryptic.” Professor Ryder was a student of Harvard, who formerly taught Latin, as well as Sanskrit and German linguistics.
Time Magazine [8] described Ryder as the "Greatest Sanskrit Student of his day." He was best known for his translations from Sanskrit to English of the Bhagavad Gita and the Pancha-tantra, parts of the Ramayana, and had done a dissertation on the Rig Veda. He had also written commentaries on the works by Kalidas on Shakuntala; and the story of King Bharata, indeed after whom the Mahabharata and indeed the country India, are named.
Oppenheimer seemed to have had a natural synergy with Professor Ryder; he took weekly private tutorials in Sanskrit from him [5]; and so proud was Robert of Professor Ryder, that he introduced him to his father, Julius. Julius shared [5], “Professor Ryder is an astounding person, a remarkable combination of austereness through which peeps the gentlest kind of soul.” Robert Oppenheimer defined him as a scholar who “felt and thought and talked as a stoic.” He was grateful to Ryder for giving him “a renewed feeling for the place of ethics.”
Kai Bird, and Martin J Sherwin in their book on Oppenheimer entitled “American Prometheus”, Prometheus being a Greek titan that stole fire from Mount Olympus from the gods, and gave it to the humans in various forms, shares that “Like many Western intellectuals enthralled with Eastern philosophies, Oppenheimer the scientist found solace in their mysticism. He knew, moreover that he was not alone; he knew that some of the poets he admired most like W.B. Yeats, and T.S. Elliot, had themselves dipped into the Mahabharata.”
The American Prometheus also shares, that “In his late twenties, Oppenheimer already seemed to be searching for an earthly detachment. He wished in other words, to be engaged as a scientist with the physical world, and yet detached from it. He was not seeking to escape to a purely spiritual realm. He was not seeking religion. What he sought was peace of mind. The Gita seemed to provide precisely the right philosophy for an intellectual keenly attuned to the affairs of men and the pleasures of the senses.
Robert’s Dear Book
Oppenheimer told his friends that this ancient Hindu text was “the Lord’s song”, and wrote to his brother Frank, saying it was “very easy, and quite marvelous, and the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known language.” Professor Ryder had given to Oppenheimer, a pink-covered copy of the Bhagavad Gita [5], which he would keep on the bookshelf closest to his desk. He gave copies of the Gita as gifts to his friends. He also named his Chrysler car gifted by his Father, “Garuda,” the mount bird carrier of Vishnu. The impression of these texts clearly occupied a special place in his heart.
The NBC News broadcast citing Vishnu and the Gita after the Trinity Trials, was not the first time Oppenheimer had very publicly quoted the book. Thursday 12 April 1945 marked the tragic passing from a brain hemorrhage, of Franklin D Roosevelt, the then commander of the Allied Forces. His body was flown along the East side of the United States, from Warm Springs, Georgia, to Washington, D.C. A funeral service was held at the White House, and Dr Robert Oppenheimer was one of those paying a tributary speech. Overlooking the snow-filled lawns of the White House, Oppenheimer shared from the Gita [5], “Man is a creature whose substance is faith. What his faith is, he is.”
Cillian Murphy, the actor who plays Robert Oppenheimer in the recent film said [9], “I did read the Bhagavad Gita in preparation, and I thought it was an absolutely beautiful text, very inspiring. I think it was a consolation to him, he kind of needed it and it provided him a lot of consolation, all his life.”
James Hijiya, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts in his book called “The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” says “Oppenheimer was deeply affected by three tenants of Hinduism; duty, fate, and faith, and that following the dictates of Hindu thought, accepted that he had a job to do, that he should do it because it is his job, as a scientist, and he should do it without any intent of self-aggrandizement. Oppenheimer believed that following these principles would bring a measure of serenity into his tormented existence and fragmented self.”
By all accounts, it would seem that the Gita really was the go-to for Oppenheimer. Bird and Sherwin share accounts explaining that two days ahead of the Trinity Tests, Oppenheimer was staying at the Hilton Hotel in Albuquerque, and was joined by two S1 officials from Washington; Vannevar Bush, who headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, and James Conant, President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany, who had been flown in to observe the tests. The tests were not looking to be on track, and everyone including Oppenheimer had become increasingly anxious. To relieve the stress and tension, Oppenheimer sat everyone down and quoted a verse from the Gita that he had translated himself
“In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains, on the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, in sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, the good deeds a man has done before defend him.”
In 1963, four years before his death, the editors of Christian Century asked Oppenheimer to share on some of the books that had shaped his philosophical outlook [5]. At the top of Oppenheimer’s top ten books, was Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Then came the Bhagavad Gita, and last was Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The BBC on 13 July 2023 [10], shared in relation to the Gita, that Oppenheimer’s interest was not just intellectual, but represented a continuation of the self-prescribed bibliotherapy that had begun in his 20s. The Bhagavad Gita, a story centred on the war between two arms of an aristocratic family, gave Oppenheimer a philosophical underpinning that was directly applicable to the moral ambiguity, he confronted. It emphasised ideas of duty, fate and detachment from outcome, emphasising that fear of consequences cannot be used as justification for inaction. “Failure is, I guess, an inevitable condition of success,” Oppenheimer had also said.
The Aftermath
After the Trinity Tests of July 1945, Dr Kenneth Bainbridge had turned to Oppenheimer and said “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Oppenheimer though, was a highly ethically nuanced character. After the war, he said, “I never regretted, and do not regret now, having done my part of the job,” he told The Times. During the development of the bomb, Oppenheimer had used a similar argument to assuage his own and his colleagues' ethical hesitations. He told them that, as scientists, they were not responsible for decisions about how the weapon should be used – but only for doing their job. In private, however, he is known to have roused the wrath of President Truman at a meeting in October 1945 [5], by saying “I have blood on my hands.” The President later said: "I told him the blood was on my hands – to let me worry about that." Truman [5] is also known to have called Oppenheimer, a “cry-baby scientist,” and that “he never wanted to see him again.” To this effect, Oppenheimer said “Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.”
Oppenheimer was said not to have been liked by the very aggressive military and air force leaders due to his lacking the outwardly and unashamedly destructive attitudes that they had. Oppenheimer went on to describe nuclear weapons as instruments "of aggression, of surprise, and of terror" and the weapons industry as "the devil's work." One morning he was heard saying of the Japanese: "Those poor little people, those poor little people." As Bird and Sherwin relate, in his role at the Atomic Energy Commission during the post-war period, he argued against the development of further weapons, including the more powerful hydrogen bomb, which his work had paved the way for.
So perhaps we can say, as Nolan did, that in one sense we will always live in Oppenheimer’s world. But one thing is certain, as Oppenheimer understood well, that as the teachings he so loved said, we will definitely continue to live in a world whose natural inherent dynamics will always supersede the limited perspectives of mankind, and are explained by Vishnu, or Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata.
In the introduction to the Mahabharata [11], in the Adi Parva, Sanjaya the Royal Attendant, and the Sage Vaisampayana, share the following reflections:
“Time, whose acts are wonderful assembled the Pandavas and Kauravas on that spot, and having made the Kauravas the cause, destroyed them all.”
“There is not a story current in this world, but doth depend upon this history the Bharata, even as the body upon the foot that it taketh.”
“O bull amongst the Bharata monarchs, whatever is spoken about virtue, wealth, pleasure, and salvation may be seen elsewhere; but whatever is not contained in this book, is not to be found anywhere.”
References
1 Oppenheimer, J.R. (1965). "Now I am become death..." (video). Atomic Archive. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved November 19, 2021
2 Christopher Nolan and the Contradictions of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The New York Times, 20 July 2023 (link)
3 Timeline from 1895 to Present, Atomic Heritage Foundation (link)
4 Groves, Leslie (1962). Now it Can be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Harper & Brothers. ISBN 978-0-306-70738-4.
5 Bird, Kai; Sherwin, Martin J. (2005). American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41202-8. OCLC 56753298.
6 Pais, Abraham (1991). Niels Bohr's Times, In Physics, Philosophy and Polity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-852049-8.
7 p60, Scott, Terry; Besmann, Theodore M.; Goldberg, Stanley; Hawkins, David (1994). "Letters". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 50 (5): 3–60. doi:10.1080/00963402.1994.11456544. ISSN 0096-3402.
8 "The Eternal Apprentice", Time, p. 75, November 8, 1948, archived from the original on December 20, 2009, retrieved March 21, 2009
9 “J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted this verse from the Bhagavad Gita after the first nuclear weapon test", GQ Magazine India (link), 19 July 2023
10 Who was the real Oppenheimer, BBC Future, 13 July 2023 (link)
11 The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated into English Prose, Bharata Press, Calcutta (1883–1896), by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
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