Gita Satsangh : Quotes from Mathematician Andre Weil

[Guest guest]

Namaste

 

I recently bumped into a book review by Prof. V.S. Varadarajan

(Prof. of Maths. UCLA) of ‘The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician

– Autobiography of Andre Weil’. Prof. Andre Weil (1906 – 1998)

was a ‘luminous figure in the twentieth century mathematics. …

In his mind everything fitted perfectly – mathematics,

philosophy and politics’. During the Second world war he spent

three months in a French prison, having been arrested by Finnish

police on the charge that he was a spy for the Russians. The

real fact was he was in correspondence with Russian

mathematicians on Mathematics. He was working on Mathematics

even from his prison. When he was not doing mathematics, he was

reading the Gita or the Upanishads. Weil had been so profoundly

influenced by Indian culture and thought, that, in the greatest

crisis of his life, he fell back on the Gita and the teachings

of Gandhi to show him the light in the darkness. Here are some

extracts from a few touching letters to his wife, that he wrote

from the prison.

 

‘I am reading the Gita, in small doses as one ought to read this

book. The more detail one absorbs, the more one admires it’.

 

‘Here are some lines from the Gita that I like very much: <<A

leaf, a flower, a fruit, some water, whoever dedicates it with

love, this love offering I accept with the devotion of his

soul.>>’.

 

‘I can hardly amuse you by describing the walls of my cell,

which are the only landscape before my eyes now; and of

everything in the Gita, all I have to offer Krishna is watger,

or now and then a fruit – an orange or banana that they give me

for dessert; sometimes, these last few days, a young leaf, all

crinkled up still, that the wind has blown onto the walk – but

no flowers’.

 

‘I would much rather be sitting on that bench surrounded by ivy,

near the yellow flowers smelling of honey, where I would speak

to you of Krishna … “Of all the seasons,” says Krishna, “I am

the season of flowers.” But he does not tell us which flowers.’

 

One can read the full review in

http://www.ams.org/notices/199904/rev-varadarajan.pdf

 

praNAms to all advaitins

profvk

 

 

 

=====

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

My website on Science and Spirituality is http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

You can access my book on Gems from the Ocean of Hindu Thought Vision and

Practice, and my father R. Visvanatha Sastri's manuscripts from the site.

 

 

 

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