My thanks to RKN and to Santosh for responding to my request for comments on the theme. I did not really have in mind as my primary concern the crab mentality of Bose's peers! I am glad RKN took up that issue. My thanks to Santoshbab whose scientific bend of mind and clarity of expression I greatly admire. I had read Einstein's biography by Abraham Pais. I could find there most of the quotes sent to me now by Santoshbab. The conversation between Einstein and Tagore about music was very interesting and thought provoking.
As Santosh suggests "Einstein's pantheistic, or impersonal deistic, view may have some similarity with some Buddhist or Eastern notions of universal consciousness or perception of the whole". I tend to see this link in Einstein's fundamental theory of relativity as well. I feel that relativity is more commonly understood as opposed to absolute (while speaking of space-time) or dogmatism (while speaking of doctrines or orthodoxy) But its implications as "relational" or "inter-dependence" of all things in the Universe links the scientific and the metaphysical + religious spheres that distinguish so much the western and the eastern mentalities. I tend to believe that the "northern" man has faced greater hostility of the nature since pre-historic times, and hence his aggressiveness towards nature and tendency to dominate it and his fellowmen. The "southern" man (tropical / equatorial) has experienced greater bounty of the "mother" nature, and hence his "connaturality" and reverence for "mother goddess". This has its implications in the religious spheres: The religions that sprang in the desert: Judaism, Christianity and Islam needed to adopt proselytism and point to milk and honey in someone else's land. The Gospel order to go and preach till the end of the earth is an expression of such a religion from desert! Islamic jihad and Christian crusades continued this trend. Teotonio R. de Souza