Here is something about Dr. Jagdis Chandra Bose whom I know from my Presidency College days of 1955-57. There were many stories about his scientific researches and how Marconi got the credit of radio that was first discovered by Sir Jagdis Chandra Bose. However, the following story I could know while going through the commentary of Gita by Yogi Yogananda few days ago. I wonder why do not we teach about the great scientists , philosophers, poets of India till date from ancient days instead of the teaching about useless kings and their tiny empires and then how we became slaves for almost 1000 years or more.
“In his famous ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, Paramahansa Yoganand tells of his meeting with Sir Jagdis Chandra Bose, the famous scientist. Bose was a pioneer in demonstrating that the boundary between living and non living matter cannot be definitely fixed.
“A universal reaction seemed to bring metal, plant and animal under a common law. They all exhibited essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, as well as the permanent irresponsiveness associated with death. Filled with awe at this stupendous generalization, it was with great hope that I announced my results before the Royal Society, results demonstrated by experiments. But the physiologists present advised me to confine myself to physical investigations, in which my success had been assured, rather than encroach on their preserves. I had unwittingly strayed into the domain of an unfamiliar caste system and so offended its etiquette.”
(from Footnote of ‘God Talks With Arjuna, The Bhagawd Gita of Paramahansa Yogananda, in commentary of the Verse 13 of Chapter XV).
‘The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird( New York: Harper and Row, 1973) recounts the story of Sir Bose further, on the contribution of Sir Bose.
https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=relig_faculty
Sir Michael Foster, secretary of the Royal Society, who had once talked with Sir Bose in his laboratory had written an article in Asia magazine(March 1923)where Foster writes on his meeting , “..Boldly Bose voiced his conclusion:’….If metals seem to live, what may not be expected of plants? This Indian who synthesises the teachings of his forefathers with the revelations of modern scientific research finds that every fibr in a green, apparently sluggish mass of foliage is infused with sensibility….They are man’s organic kin. Thus this scientist’s researches confirm not only Vedantic teachings, but the deep, worldwide philosophic conviction that beneath the chaotic, bewildering diversity of nature there is an underlying unity….At one of his Royal Society addresses, he had shown the complete similarity between the response of apparently dead metals, plants, and muscles and concluded, “It was when I came upon the mute witness of these self-made records and perceived in them one phase of a pervading unity that bears within it all things the mote that quivers in ripples of light, the teeming life upon our earth, and the radiant suns that shine above us- it was then that I understood for the first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors on the bank of the Ganges thirty centuries ago: “ They who see in all changing manifestations of this universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth- unto noneelse.””
दृष्टिकोण - Indra's Viewpoint 