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<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><B>
<font size="4">The
Message of the Atomic Bomb</font></B></p>
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<FONT SIZE=3>THE moralist – the Christian moralist particularly –
has dubbed the atomic bomb as the Devil's engine; while the practical
politician retorts that the accursed machine has cut short the war,
saved more lives on the whole and reduced the extent and duration of
suffering and agony. In any case the new weapon is so radical and
devastating in its effectiveness that even politicians do not seem to
be without a qualm and heartburning, not in the moral but in the
physical and nervous sense. The atom bomb is a bombshell not upon
your enemies alone, but it is a boomerang likely to turn back upon
yourself, upon the whole of humanity and human civilisation.
Archimedes asked for a fulcrum outside the earth to be able to move
it out of its orbit; we have found out something with which one hopes
and fears one would do much more.</FONT></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Man's invention of death-dealing weapons has an
interesting history. It is, curious to say, the history of his
progress and growing civilisation. The primitive man fought with the
strength of his God-given limbs – tooth and nail – to which he
subsequently added the crudest of weapons, clubs, of wood or flint. A
revolution was brought about when iron was discovered and archery
invented. Next revolution came with the appearance of gunpowder on
the stage. And then the age of gun-cotton and T.N.T. which held sway
till the other day. An interim period of poison gas and chemical
warfare was threatened, but everything now has gone overboard with
the advent of the atomic bomb and the threatened advent of the Cosmic
Death-Ray.</FONT></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>In one sense certainly there has been a progress. This
march of machinery, this evolution of tools means man's increasing
mastery over Nature, even though physical nature. The primitive </FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 77</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>man like the animal is a slave, a puppet driven helplessly by
Nature's forces. Both lead more or less a life of reflex action:
there is here no free, original initiation of action or movement. The
slow discovery of Nature's secrets, the gradual application and
utilisation of these secrets in actual life meant, first, a
liberation of man's conscious being originally imbedded in Nature's
inertial movements, and then, a growing power to react upon Nature
and mould and change it according to the will of the conscious being.
The result at the outset was a release and organisation on the mental
level, in the domain of reason and intelligence. Of course, man found
at once that this in&shy;creasing self-consciousness and self-power
meant immense possibilities for good, but, unfortunately, for evil
also. And so to guard against the latter contingency, rules and
regulations were framed to control and canalise the new-found
capacities. The Dharma of the Kshatriya, the honour of the Samurai,
the code of Chivalry, all meant that. The power to kill was sought to
be checked and restrained by such injunctions as, for example, not to
hit below the belt, not to fight a disarmed or less armed opponent
and so on. The same principle of morals and manners was maintained
and continued through the centuries with necessary changes and
modifications in application and finds enshrined today in
International Covenants and Conventions.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But a new situation has arisen for some time past. The
last Great War (World War No. I) was crucial in many ways in the life
of humanity. It opened a new direction of man's growth, opened and
then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the
League of Nations. That was an attempt on the part of man (and
Nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the
outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the
height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically
more devastating and shattering; it has given the go-by to all
ethical standards and codes of honour. The poison gas was not used
not because of any moral restraint or disinclination, but because of
practical and utilitarian considerations. The Atom Bomb, however, has
spoken the word.</FONT></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>That word is a warning that unless man changes, becomes
master of himself, he cannot be truly master of the world. He</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 78</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>cannot
command the forces he has unleashed unless he has command over his
own nature. The external immensity, the bloated mass that his
physical attainments are, unless armoured and animated by an inner
growth, will crash by its own weight. The mammoth, the mastodon, the
huge pachyderms, in spite of, rather because of their inordinately
one-sided growth could not stand the demand of life and perished.
Likewise man will not possess the world but the world will engulf and
devour him in its aboriginal hunger of unconsciousness, if he does
not take a right-about turn and declare his conversion. The
Frankenstein that man has raised can no longer be met by merely human
devices – reason and morals – but by a higher discovery and
initiation.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The Bomb has shaken the physical atmosphere of the earth
as no other engine has done. It has shaken the moral atmos&shy;phere
too not in a lesser degree. Reason and moral sense could not move
man, so Fear has been sent by the Divine Grace. Dante said that God
created Hell in his mood of infinite love and justice-that seems to
be the inevitable gate through which one has to pass to arrive at the
Divine. We are indeed in hell today upon earth, a worse can hardly be
tolerated.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Indeed this is the bleak winter of human consciousness –
yet can spring be far behind?</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>Page – 79</FONT></P>
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