Bharatiya Pragna - Dr. Th Chowdary

ow. Although a man should do him injury he
holds that it must be patiently borne. His Majesty
desires for all, security, peace of mind and
joyousness. And the chiefest conquest is through
righteousness.”
So much about the man of the sword.
As regards the other man who truly dedicates
his life for quest of knowledge in our country,
any longing for personal gain or misuse of his
knowledge would be worse than sacrilege.
Poised as he is between the infinity of the past
and the infinity of the future, between universes
of worlds and universes of atoms –can anything
be worth his while for so sorry a prize? Can his
mind be satisfied with anything less sublime than
to be merged in the rhythmic sweep of the worldspirit
itself ?
Synthesis of sciences
The excessive specialization in the West
has led to the danger of our losing sight of the
fundamental truth that there are not sciences but
a single science that includes all. India is perhaps
through her habit of mind, better fitted to
realize a wider synthesis. One of the greatest
contributions in the realm of science would undoubtedly
be the establishment of a great generalization,
not merely speculative, but based on
actual demonstration of an underlying unity
amidst bewildering diversity. Shall this great glory
be for India to win ? in my investigations on the
action of forces on matter, I was amazed to find
boundary lines vanishing and to discover points
of contact emerging between the Living and
Non-Living. My first work in the region of invisible
lights made me fully realize how in the midst
of a luminous ocean we stood almost blind. But
out of the very imperfection of his senses, man
has dared in science to build for himself a raft of
9
150th Birth Year
thought by which to Tribute
make daring adventures into the great seas of
the unknown.
Unity of Life
Just as in following light from visible to
the invisible our range of investigation transcends
our physical sight, so also the problem of the
great mystery of Life and Death is brought a little
nearer solution. When in the realm of the living
we pass from the Voiced to the Unvoiced. Is
there any possible relation between our own life
and that of the plant world ? The question is not
one of dreamy speculation but of actual demonstration
by some method that is unimpeachable.
This means that we should abandon all our preconceptions,
most of which are afterwards found
to be absolutely groundless and contrary to facts.
The final appeal must be made to the plant itself
and no evidence should be accepted unless it
bears the plant’s own signature. This meant, first
the discovery of some compulsive force which
would make the plant give some answering signal
: then instrumental means had to be supplied
for the automatic conversion of these signals into
an intelligent script; and last of all we had ourselves
to learn the nature of the hieroglyphic.
The inner History of Plant Life
It was to be the discovery of inner history
of the plant hidden under a placid exxtrior,
the detection of the subte impress left on it by
storm and sunshine, by the warmth of summer
and frost of winter, by a passing breeze or a drifting
cloud. I can easily be imagined how extraordinarily
delicate the instruments must be which
detect all these and reveal the secrets of unvoiced
and hidden life. It was to measure the twitchingthrob
under a shock, the time it takes the plant
to perceive it and to measure the rate of impulse
November & December 2008 Bharatiya Pragna