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CHAPTER-III

MYSTICISM IN RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Tagore was a Bengali poet, Brahmo Samaj philosopher, visual artist,

playwright, novelist, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature

and music in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He became Asia's first

Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.

A Pirali Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta, Tagore first wrote poems at the

age of eight. At the age of sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry

under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion") and wrote his first short

stories and dramas in 1877. His home schooling, life in Shilaidaha, and travels

made Tagore a nonconformist and pragmatist. Tagore strongly protested

against the British Raj and gave his support to the Indian Independence

Movement and Mahatma Gandhi. Tagore's life was tragic—he lost virtually his

entire family and was devastated to witness Bengal's decline—but his life's

work endured, in the form of his poetry and the institution he founded, Visva-

Bharati University.

Tagore's works included numerous novels, short stories, collection of

songs, dance-drama, political and personal essays. Some prominent examples

are Gitanjali (Song Offerings), The Religion of Man. His verse, short stories,

and novels, which often exhibited rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language,

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meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation, received worldwide

acclaim. Tagore was also a cultural reformer who modernized Bengali art by

rejecting strictures binding it to classical Indian forms. Two songs from his

rabindrasangeet canon are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India:

the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana.

Tagore's literary reputation is disproportionately influenced by regard for

his poetry, however, he also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues,

dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are

perhaps most highly regarded; indeed, he is credited with originating the

Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their

rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow from

deceptively simple subject matter. Tagore comments:

I could not bear the artisan to occupy the throne that was for the

artist who concealed the machinery and revealed the creation in its

ineffable unity. God does not care to keep exposed the record of

his power written in geological inscriptions, but he is proudly glad of

the expression of beauty, which he spreads on the green grass, in

the flowers, in the play of the colors on the clouds, in the murmuring

music of running water (ROM 63).

Rabindranath Tagore's creative output tells a lot about this Renaissance

man. The variety, quality and quantity are unbelievable. As a writer, Tagore

primarily worked in Bengali, but after his success with Gitanjali, he translated

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many of his other works into English. He wrote over one thousand poems; eight

volumes of short stories; almost two dozen plays and play-lets; eight novels;

and many books and essays on philosophy, religion, education and social

topics. Apart from his love for literature, his other great love was music, Bengali

style. He composed more than two thousand songs, both the music and lyrics.

Two of them became the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. In 1929,

he even began painting. Many of his paintings can be found in museums today,

especially in India, where he is considered the greatest literary figure of India of

all times. Tagore was not only a creative genius he was a great man and friend

to many. Rabindranath is one of the most seminal thinkers of the modern age.

His traditional roots are in the Upanishads and this is amply testified in his

works Gitanjali, Religion of Man and Sadhana. His poetry stems out of the deep

and abiding inspiration that the Upanishads had on him. Unlike the Vedantins

who had endeavoured to reach the Ultimate through Jnana (textual and

scriptural knowledge) which has been the dogma of the Advaitins of the

Mayavada school mainly, his approach has been from the Vaishnava view as

he has himself stated of Rasa or bliss. This is not the ordinary poetic view

which seeks to discover tastes (rasa) either in Nature or in Man or in technique

or in expression. His notable aim was to make rasa a means to realization, bliss

as a pramana towards infinite accomplishment and attainment. “This truth of

realization is not in space, it can only be realized in one’s own inner spirit, the

infinite and eternal has to be known as One. This birthless spirit is beyond

space. For it is Purushah, it is the Person” (ROM 41). The intuitive realization

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goes beyond the intellectual institution itself and it is the most important

discovery of Rabindranath.

It did not come to him all at once but it did gather up because of the

growing intensity of aesthetic enjoyment in Nature and Man which was

stimulated along with the profound contemplation of the wisdom of the

Upanishads. It is revealed in the poems. S.B. Mukherji states:

Tagore’s moods, attitudes and imaginative approaches in respect

of the Divine are richly diverse, woven round, I repeat, three

strands of thought mentioned earlier- the Upanishads, Vaisnavism,

aesthetic naturalism. The hard, austere contours of the first are

softened and humanized by the rich emotionalism of the second;

while the last- Tagore’s own poetic accent- acts often as a catalytic

agent uniting the first two, deepening, even sublimating the thought

at times (96).

One of the Upanishads indeed had revealed that the highest is Ananda-

Bliss, and that it was a status of reality higher than vijnana and manas and

prana and annam. In other words, the ultimate reality was of the Order of Bliss,

a term that was the Ultimate of Saccidananda and synonymous with the

anantam (infinity). The means to realize this ultimate nature of Reality is not

something to be sought outside of itself; not through reasoning but by means of

bliss itself should this be known. How to make bliss and the means to Bliss is

the problem of problems. Tagore says:

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all that I feel about it is through vision and not from knowledge …. I

am sure that there have come moments when my soul has touched

the infinite and has become intensely conscious of it through the

illumination of Joy (Qtd. in Bhupendra Nath 26).

Bliss as a means to Bliss as the end is through the realization of beauty, a

growing perception of the beautiful in nature and all. Philosophers of science

may use perception as the sensory means to know the nature of a thing

outside. Bhupendra Nath opines:

Nature’s splendour aids in the realization of the inner

enlightenment. In the beauties of nature the poet-mystic reads a

message to realise the truth of his own inner being (44).

This sensory perception is invaluable for science.The beauty is what

penetrates underneath the superficial form and grasps the symbolic or the

suggestion of the Infinite in each percept. This requires a moulding of oneself in

the intuitive change towards perception or of perception so as to release the

symbolic and the Ultimate out of the sensory. In Sadhana Tagore says:

man’s cry is to reach his fullest expression… It is the inner light

that reveals him…when this light is lighted, then in a moment he

knows that Man’s highest revelation is God’s own revelation in him

(Qtd. in Bhupendra Nath 45).

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Once this dynamic nature of the bliss-governed perceptual activity was

seized upon for interpreting Reality the whole world became a changed or

transformed world or transfigured world. The meaningless world of philosophic

intellectuals (maya) became a bliss world of meaningfulness (Lila). The world-

negational philosophy found its refusal in the world affirmation of Rabindranath.

It is not the negational aesthesis of the bhakti schools of certain kinds but the

affirmative aesthesis of the New World of mystics. The world regained its own

meaningfulness as the field of Godly activity.

Rabindranath applying the method of aesthetic intuition, amply supported

by the Upanishadic, in his Hibbert Lectures, entitled ‘Religion of Man’, projected

a poetic speculation of the creative process. It is highly suggestive though it

cannot be considered to be a real account of the creative process; indeed it is

neither a creative evolution nor an emergent one. It is, however, a most

suggestive methodology of approach towards a constructive appraisal of the

evolutionary or creative process. “Creation has been made possible through

the continual self-surrender of the unit to the universe. And the spiritual

universe of Man is also ever claiming self-renunciation from the individual units”

(ROM 14). The ordinary Vedantin hardly realizes that by his theory of

deterministic or rather planned and formulated creativity all that happens is but

the manifestation of the already prefigured. A true creative act would rather

bring into being novelties and every instant of creativity will be a miracle of self

and thus give meaning to infinity. Tagore says:

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The Isha of our Upanishad, the Super Soul, which permeates all

moving things, is the God of this human universe whose mind we

share in all our true knowledge, love and service, and whom to

reveal in ourselves through renunciation of self is the highest end of

life (ROM 15).

Rabindranath rather considers the creator to be a great experimentalist,

first experimenting with quantitative extensities of infinity, and thus having

produced the gigantic monsters and creatures of the early epochs of evolution

in Nature and then having found that quantity cannot be truly representative of

Infinity, experimented with and is perhaps experimenting with quality. The

qualitative infinity that has resulted in the discovery of evolution of man has led

to the freer manifestation of delight that is the secret of all existence, sustaining

both. Matter and mind thus have evolved when these two were organized into

being one being and for One being. This is the secret evolution of the Organic

Man who has not merely the characteristics of the creature but also the more

significant nature of creator as well. Tagore says:

Our union with this spirit is not to be attained through the mind. For

our mind belongs to the department of economy in the human

organism. It carefully husbands our consciousness for its own

range of reason, within which to permit our relationship with the

phenomenal world. But it is the object of Yoga to help us to

transcend the limits built up by Mind. On the occasions when these

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are overcome, our inner self is filled with joy, which indicates that

through such freedom we come into touch with the Reality that is

an end in itself and therefore is bliss (ROM 41).

Tagore’s genuine discovery of the twofold nature of man reveals a new

dimension in ontology viz., the concept of personality, as a twofold character

creator-creature, the universal-particular tensions operating towards a dynamic

creative synthesis known as beauty or Ananda. Tagore says:

The positive aspect of the infinite is in advaitam, in an absolute

unity, in which comprehension of the multitude is not as in an outer

receptacle but as in an inner perfection that permeates and

exceeds its contents, like the beauty in a lotus which is ineffably

more than all the constituents of the flower. It is not the magnitude

of extension but an intense quality of harmony which evokes in us

the positive sense of the infinite in our joy, in our love. For

advaitam is anandam; The infinite One is infinite Love (ROM 40).

Tagore’s discovery of this magnitude was hardly developed purely in the

religious or in the philosophic fields. George Nordgulen opines:

Religion is deeper than a name: a person may know that she/he is

a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian. But beneath the name comes

the experience and in the depths comes that deep-abiding creative

force which one can call their religion (149).

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Indeed it is strange that it rather found expression in the usual idealistic

and aesthetic jargon quite prevalent about the period, that is to say, the first

thirties of the twentieth century. In the modes of poetic expression and sadhana

preparatory to this aesthetic valuation and creativity, we find Rabindranath

experimenting with all that makes this distillation and expression of Ultimate

beauty possible.

when he has the power to see things detached from self-interest

and from the insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone

can he have the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. Then

only can he see that what is unpleasant to us is not necessarily

unbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth (SA 140).

Undoubtedly, the chief strength and genius of Rabindranath did not take

up the epic mode of expression which demands a universal vision and an

altogether universal creativity, this grand epic mode of expression was not his

natural ground. His is a more spontaneous homeliness in the lyrical moment

and the fragment in which was revealed the symbol and meaning and message

of the eternal. His operative vision was circumscribed to behold eternity in an

hour and infinity in a flower. The Isavasyopanisad, which Rabindranath so

much loved, had suggested beholding the Divine in every thing and everything

in the Divine; it had also insisted that one should behold the Divine as having

become each and every single thing in the Universe. To this truth Rabindranath

dedicated himself, and every little thing was verily the womb of infinity.

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According to Bhupendra Nath, “Man recognises his kinship not only with the

conscious existence, but also to the unconscious creation”(39). With this

extraordinary perception and subtle refinement in his consciousness, he could

behold the beauty, secret and occult in everything.

That this Supreme Infinity is a personality is the doctrine of the Mystical

Vaishnavas all over. The All-pervading divinity in so far as he could discover

and enjoy in each and everything reveals a personality-nature that is of course

different from the concept of person in western thought. The aesthetic approach

of creative personality is unlike the theological and the dogmatic. It is learnt that

Rabindranath did not so much relish the cast-iron rigidity of the dogmatic and

speculative intellectual monists and dualists and so on. Bhupendra Nath

opines:

Tagore does not claim to be a preacher, but he is always anxious to

convey his inner message for the benefit of the humanity (149).

Describing the mysticism of Kabir, Evelyn Underhill writes:

it is the special vocation of the mystical consciousness to mediate

between two orders, going out in loving adoration towards God and

coming home to tell the secrets of Eternity to others (Qtd. in

Bhupendra Nath 149).

The dynamic reactivity of the personality (of the Divine as the human)

demands an organic conception which will reveal the dynamic unity of the

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supreme Divine (Universal) working through the individual or particular infinity

of Beauty granting the undiminishing experience of Ananda. This is the

auspicious, Shivam, and harmonious, sundaram. Rabindranath was more and

more inclined to the Visistadvaita conception of the relation between the Divine

Personality or God and the individual. According to George Nordgulen,

Tagore argues that ‘reality is the expression of personality’, that the

Supreme Being is the Supreme Person. We struggle to become

persons and in this struggle for realization we must look beyond

ourselves to the Supreme: Therefore, The one cry of the personal

man has been to know the ‘Supreme Person’. There is the subject-

object relation between the individual and God (151).

Indeed the philosophical system of Visistadvaita garnered upon the

bhakti-mysticism of the Alvars was truer to the bliss-conception of

Reality than the intellectual mysticism of Advaita that exalted the

impersonal. Personality is focal to reality in Aesthetic mysticism. George

Nordgulen noted that Tagore;s conception of Supreme Personality is

dominant not only in his writings but also his personal experience.

According to George Nordgulen,

‘We touch the reality within us only when we receive love or

goodness’ and ‘God does not care to expose His power written in

geological inscriptions, but He is proud of the beauty in green

grass, in flowers, the play of the colours on the clouds, in the music

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of the running water’. This personal relationship to reality in all of its

varied beauty is a ‘world of Personality’. ‘Because this world is the

world of Infinite Personality it is the object of our life to establish a

perfect and personal relationship with it’ (153).

The Supreme Purusha is the ever-present presence in everything which

sustains everything by bliss Ananda, and this is the highest truth which can

liberate all that is best in each and everything, subjective or objective. It is a

known fact that everything is sustained by the Bliss, Ananda that is higher than

intelligence and higher than truth. By this double emphasis the unity of the

Ultimate is realized as the one that has to be attained-the parama purushartha.

Dr. Anupam Ratan Shankar Nagar states:

Atma or divinity represents the unity of Sat-Chit-Ananda. The term

‘daiva’or divinity itself means wholeness or immanence. Therefore

Prakriti or creation cannot exist in the absence of Purusa or God.

In modern parlence, this may be stated as:

Matter +Being =God (8).

Rabindranath’s liberation is not through renunciation of the

anandanubhava but by acceptance that all these verily are Brahman. Freedom

or moksa is not restricted to the liberation from the cycle of births and deaths

which is more of the order of escape; it is the creative activity that releases the

Divine in the Nature and in man and manifests the unique union of the eternal

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and the immortal in the mortal and the fragment. It is not to see the whole

steadily and as whole: it is rather the freeing of the ignorance that blinds us to

the actual manifestation of the infinity in each and every thing in the manifested

world. This freedom for creative being in each individual is verily moksa for it

grants bliss, refined pleasure and happiness.

Tagore’s conception is that it is more easily through art that one releases

one’s identity with the Divine: for it is at the basis, creativity, that is common to

the Divine and the human artist. To utilize this granted freedom, ultimately in

every other area of life, is one of the profoundest techniques discovered by

man. Freedom cannot suffer abridgment in the process of true creativity. To

suffer any abridgment in this regard is to annihilate the very nucleus of being of

the individual. Thus artists are in a true sense liberators. According to Mr.K.

Kripalani, for Tagore,

ask us not to confuse joy with pleasures and beauty with mere

prettiness. Pleasure is finite in nature, but joy is divine and infinite.

It is “…the outcome of detachment from self and lies in freedom of

spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of Reality which satisfies

our hearts without any other allurements but its own ultimate value

(Qtd. in Kakoli Basak 120).

Rabindranath was thus a strenuous worker for liberation of man from the

thraldom of life to all unliberating influences; to expand the area of freedom for

true creative advance had been on of his great aspirations. But, as in every

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thing, it demands the education towards creativity. Men must have faith in their

inward creative freedom in all sectors of human activity.

Moksha which has been the aim of all religious thought was surely to be

attained by practising this liberty of expression in art, not in the sense that one

could create as one likes but one who could create the infinite in each one of

his works. This may not strictly take on to that freedom from the samsara and

cycle of rebirths and ignorance. However it gave a new meaning to moksha:

what it should do and could do.

Rabindranath’s philosophy thus centres round the basic discovery of man

not only as the bearer of value but as the creative-creature of the Universe in

and through whom the Ultimate Creator or Man realises the continuous

revelation of free freedom through Art. Illusionism is neither the meaning of the

universe nor bare freedom: the universe is the Lila, play of bliss, which is the

one essence or Rasa of Existence. Realisation of the artistic life is the fulfilment

of the philosophic life as well. In this creativity of Art there is detachment from

the purely physical perspective and apprehension and awareness of an integral

organic enjoyment of the Divine and the human. In The Religion of Man,

Tagore writes:

The idea of the humanity of our God or the divinity of Man the

Eternal is the main subject of his book. This thought of God has not

grown in my mind through any process of philosophical reasoning.

On the contrary it has followed the current of my temperament from

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early days until it suddenly flashed into my consciousness with a

direct vision (Qtd. in Basak 117).

Though it is not humanism yet in Rabindranath there is the incorporation

of the human in the Divine Man, which makes man attain the sense of

perfection as well as freedom and bliss.

In India, philosophy and religion have commingled even as theory and

practice; one sustains the other. The philosophical thought of Rabindranath

proceeding as it did from the aesthetic Ultimate and aesthetic intuition,

developed a religion of beauty, of creative worship of the One Divine at the

back of all creation-that exclaims in Tagore’s words:

Let me assert my faith by saying that this world, consisting of what

we call animate and inanimate things, has found its culmination in

man, its best expression, Man, as a creation, representing the

Creator, and this is why of all creatures it has been possible for him

to comprehend this world in his knowledge and in his feeling and in

his imagination, to realize in his individual spirit a union with a spirit

that is every where (ROM 64).

Tagore also feels that he gives importance for vision rather than

knowledge: ‘My religion is a poet’s religion. All that I feel about it is from vision

and not from knowledge’ (ROM 58). He stresses the greatness of innervision

which could bring in spiritual unity:

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The man whose inner vision is bathed in illumination of his

consciousness at once realizes the spiritual unity reigning supreme

over all differences. His mind no longer awkwardly stumbles over

individual facts of separateness in the human world, accepting

them as final. He realizes that peace is in the inner harmony while

dwells in truth and not in any outer adjustments. He knows that

beauty carries an eternal assurance of our spiritual relationship of

reality, which waits for its perfection in the response of our love

(ROM 67)

Thus the religion of the poet-artist achieves a union with reality that

profoundly makes reality near to man-a man’s reality so to speak. It is to the

nearness of Man that the religion of Rabindranath leads and to harmony that is

dear to the heart of man. What a religion of the intellect achieves as a deistic

Creator, the religion of the poet brings into the heart of man for adoration and

love, service and worship. George Nordgulen states:

The spiritual life is the whole life and this can only be satisfied in the

Absolute. Here is the final home of the spirit. Throughout the world

process God is seeking realization of the spiritual life: when the

kingdom comes God recedes into the background of the Absolute.

The Absolute is all in all. Thus, spiritual religion finds its ultimate

terminus in the Absolute (152).

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It is clear from his songs and teachings that he was a very observant and

thoughtful person, who questioned everything that was taught or presented to

him. It is likely that he spent considerable time observing nature, as his

teachings also draw inspiration and learning from the trees, animals, birds and

the ocean. What distinguished Tagore from other “gurus” were his inner

conviction and an undying trust in his own self and experience. He seems to

have questioned and challenged all scriptural teachings, traditions and rituals,

until he himself was able to validate their truth. It is said in the words of Tagore:

the West takes pride in subduing nature ‘wrestling everything from

an unwilling and alien arrangement of things’. This creates an

artificial dissociation, a kind of separateness, between man and the

universal nature (Qtd. in Naik 10).

What is clear is that Tagore was courageous enough to speak his truth

even in face of societal pressures and coercion. From his work, we know that

he was quite critical of hypocrisy especially among religious leaders. Even

though we cannot ascertain whether he was tolerant of genuine devotees who

worshipped physical forms of God, we can be reasonably confident that his

own spiritual path was focused more on an internal form of devotion to God and

Guru – terms that he often used interchangeably to convey the cosmic force.

Prof. Bhupendra Nath states:

The entire religious outlook of Tagore is conditioned by this ‘direct

vision’ and this provides him with an illumination, which forms the

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basis of his religious philosophy. Though the actual visions were

very short-lived, they left in his memory a lasting message (26).

In essence, the core of Tagore’s life and teachings are based on honesty,

truth, conviction and simplicity, renewed continuously by inner experience and

propelled by an unceasing detachment from the web of physical and mental

realities.

Tagore is often considered a social or religious reformer who tried to

bridge the gap among various castes and religious sects. Even though Tagore

showed a healthy disregard for conventional boundaries of society and

organized religion, his intrinsic pursuit was rooted in spirituality alone. In the

process of conveying the innate spirituality of all creation, Tagore, in all

likelihood, had to deal with and overcome prevalent parochial barriers.

However, this ought not to be misconstrued to imply that his intent was to

reform society or religion. He goes on to say:

The individual man must exist for Man the great, and must express

him in disinterested works, in science and philosophy in literature

and arts, in service and worship. This is his religion, which is

working in the heart of all his religions in various names and forms.

He knows and uses this world where it is endless and thus attains

greatness, but he realizes his own truth where it is perfect and thus

finds his fulfillment (ROM 11).

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Another prevalent myth is that Tagore was primarily a literary figure, a

poet and an orator. However, Tagore’s life was deeply ingrained in spirituality,

and in the process of conveying his teachings, he probably used poetry and

metaphors. Tagore says:

We realize it through admiration and love, through hope that soars

beyond the actual, beyond our own span of life into an endless time

wherein we live the life of all men (ROM 71).

The mystic, when he tries to describe his inner experience of reality,

gropes for metaphors and symbols. The metaphor of light is often used to

describe the principle of reality, of infinity, of which a glimpse is got through

mystical intuition:

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light,

Heart-sweetening light (EWRT 32).

Tagore’s true mysticism becomes apparent only when one starts living the

words. The authenticity of Tagore’s words is rooted in the depth of his own

experience that has a seed-like latent quality to it. That is, through one’s care

and nurturing, Tagore’s words have the potential to flower into a variety of

experiences that are not immediately obvious in the first engagement. Besides

his more obvious teachings, Tagore sometimes poses (seemingly) illogical

riddles to his audience:

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The mere finite is like a dead wall obtruding the beyond. The

knowledge of the mere finite accumulates but does not illuminate.

It is like a lamp without a light, a violin without its music (Qtd. in

Naik11).

These riddles are challenging us to find a solution. In our opinion, these

riddles do not necessarily have any solutions or meaning per se, but, perhaps,

are intended to draw us into a deepened state of introspection. They may make

one question the direction of flow of time. They may enable us to experience

the ability of the human mind to create any reality. Alternatively, they may make

one realize suddenly that the flow-based creativity within us.

Like the Vaishnava theist, he accepts God ’Who is near to us’, who is

interested in what we do and feel. For God is essentially personal and can be

understood only in terms of humanity. The God of love and joy and not one

stare at us with frozen eyes regardless of our selfless devotion and silent

suffering

Elements of mysticism can be discovered in Tagore’s philosophy in two

clear ways. He has almost invariable stressed the importance of mystic vision

and has made this almost the basis of the knowledge of reality. Therefore, an

account of his conception of the mystic vision’ will clearly reveal the mystical

tends of his thought. That is only one way of doing this. In his description of

Nature or of man, he tends to emphasize and highlight such characters that are

not comprehensible or even intelligible in purely sensuous or intellectual terms.

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That would require a realization of a bond- a kinship with Nature and of the

potentialities contained in man. The insistence on such a realization also

becomes an evidence of his love for mysticism

Tagore’s true mysticism is in his personalized instruction for each one of

us – which is likely to reveal in its fullness when we abandon ourselves to the

search for the ultimate truth that Tagore so completely personified.

In The Religion of Man, Tagore says: ‘Suddenly I became

conscious of a stirring of soul within me. My world of experience in

a moment seemed to become lighted and facts that were detached

and dim found a great unity of meaning. The feeling which I had

was like that which a man groping through a fog without knowing

his destination, might feel when he suddenly discovers that he

stands before his own house’ (Qtd. in Sinha 113).

Tagore’s view of art is “idealistic” because he does not limit the aesthetic

experience to the realm of objectively varifiable reality. It is “realistic” to the

extent that art is supposed to bring us closer to actuality. Art for art’s sake had

no meaning or relevance for Tagore.

Tagore regards Art as a divine gift. “My art is Your gift. It is you who

makes songs blossom in my heart like flowers in a garden.”(Qtd. in Basak 123)

Though God bestows this power of creation, what he will create depends upon

the creator, and here lies man’s greatness. In addition, what more, the poet is

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confident that his God has loved his poetry. The Divine takes delight in our

music, poetries. The poet always has sought God in his songs:

Even in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who

led me from door to door and with them have I felt about me,

searching and touching my world (EWRT 49).

Music is Tagore’s main form of worship. Mr. Kakoli Basak

comments:

In ‘chitra’, in the poetry ‘Neerav Tantri’ the poet says that he

worships God by his music which comes out from him

spontaneously. The golden string of his heart from which the best

music has come out has been offered by the poet to God. The duty

has been fallen upon him for pleasing god by his offering of songs

(124).

Of course, at the outset one must remember, whatever mantle we put on

this ‘myriad-minded’ man, he was, as per his own declaration, primarily a poet.

His insights in philosophy and religion were the result of his very subjective

experiences. These experiences can truly be termed poetic experiences. May

be even mystic. He writes:

I Had so long viewed the world with external vision only…When of

a sudden, from some innermost depth of my being, ray of light

found its way out, it spread over and illuminated for me the whole

universe…. This experience seemed to tell me of the stream of

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melody issuing from the very heart of the universe spreading over

space and time, re-echoing thence as waves of joy which flow right

back to the source (Qtd, in Bhupendra Nath 28).

Therefore, it can assuredly be said that Tagore’s world vision was not a

cut-and-dried, rationally acquired view; rather his vision was a compelling belief

that he had earned from a Poet’s point of view. Just as melodies were born

within his soul, his thoughts on God, the world and on humanity were arrived at

like inspirations.

The enigma of the relationship between the infinite and the finite occupies

a central place in Tagore’s ideology. Man is a finite-infinite being. He is finite if

we view him as a body or mind, but he is infinite, as a soul. Man combines in

him spirit and nature. To Tagore, the relationship between the Finite and the

Infinite is one of codependence. The Infinite manifests itself through the Finite

and the Finite its realization in the Infinite. Tagore says:

The Infinite for its self-expression, comes down into the

manifoldness of the finite; and the finite, for its self-realization must

rise into the unity of the Infinite. Than only is the Cycle of Truth

complete (Qtd. in Pandya 113).

The Finite and Infinite are whole in their union. Without the finite, the

eternal love drama comes to a standstill. Tagore believes it to be a game of

hide and seek. The most remarkable point to be observed here is that in this

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game, the finite realizes the infinite through separation and union. Tagore

sings: “the child finds its mother when it leaves her womb” (Qtd. in Pandya

113).

This concept of the Infinite in the finite goes back a thousand years in

ancient Indian thought, which maintains that the soul is pervaded by

Brahmananda or Supreme Bliss, which is the consciousness of man’s unity

with the Infinite within him. Tagore’s lifelong quest was for an integrated

harmony of all aspects of life with this consciousness of the Infinite, which he

variously refers to as Beauty, Unity, Harmony, Balance, Totality – all

highlighting the positive and the affirmative. V. S. Narvane, writing about

Tagore’s aesthetics, says:

Hence in Gitanjali, there is a constant feeling not only of the

presence of God but also of his coming, his eager journey towards

the finite centres of his own manifestation (40).

One of the most frequently quoted poems in the version of ‘Gitanjali’

begins with the lines:

Have you not heard his silent steps?

He comes, he comes, he ever comes. (EWRT 25)

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In his religious expression, the way of devotion and love is lauded, but a

note of warning is sounded against motional excess. Tagore’s lifelong quest

was a quest for creative consciousness.

Common experience takes for granted that variety is the ultimate truth. It

is this variety, which leads to the fragmentation of knowledge and leads to an

‘ego-centric predicament’, which gives birth to desire and strife. However, the

final truth lies in the unification of this variety through a proper synthesis. This

unification is what takes place in perfect knowledge and it is then that we

realize our intrinsic nature, which is ananda or bliss. Aesthetic experience is

just such an instance of synthesis of our multiple experiences through

disinterested contemplation (of art) leading to an emotional unity, thus

becoming a harbinger of enlightenment and self-realization. Tagore says:

The infinite joy is manifesting itself in manifold forms, taking upon

itself the bondage of law, and we fulfill our destiny when we go

back from forms to joy, from law to the love, when we unite the knot

of the finite and hark back to the infinite (Qtd. in Bhupendra Nath

72).

Tagore further expounds the essence of beauty and truth as found in the

permeating principle of unity.

The dark night of ignorance then comes to an end and the

enlightened souls no more stumble over separateness of things.

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The man whose inner vision is bathed in an illumination of his

consciousness, at once realizes the spiritual unity reigning supreme

over all differences (Qtd. in Bhupendra Nath 60).

This is the philosophy, which explains our joy in all arts, the arts that in

their creation intensify the sense of unity that is the unity of truth we carry within

ourselves. The principle of unity, which it contains, is more or less perfectly

satisfied in a beautiful face or a picture, a poem, a song, a character or a

harmony of interrelated ideas or facts and then these things become intensely

real, and therefore joyful. The poetry of mysticism – the poetry that is inspired

by, and seeks to express, the soul’s direct vision of reality – is, or should be,

the crown of literature, since it claims to fulfill the secret purpose of all art. It is

seldom met in its perfection; for it demands in its creator a rare balance of

qualities – a disciplined artisanship, an ardor, fearless and vivid intuition of

truth. The mystic poet, in fact, if he would fulfill his high office as revealer of

reality, must be at once- and in a supreme degree- an artist, a lover, and a

seer.

God envelops all this, whatever moves in this world. Therefore, one could

find enjoyment in renunciation; one should not covet what belongs to others.

The fundamental dilemma in art is that of the articulation of cardinal truth-

expression of the formless with the form. His song offering is the sacrament of

his ineffable communion with the Divine Nature; and it is from this personal and

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impassioned intercourse – so characteristics of the mystical consciousness –

that his loveliest melodies are born.

The truth of creation, be it creation of this universe or creation of art is that

- one must accept the form while knowing it for the illusion that it is; one must

give shape to it, while concealing its shape. Poems of Gitanjali were in fact an

experiment of Tagore’s which may be marked as a watershed of modern poetry

– a confluence of the age-old Indian heritage of lyrics and modern poetry giving

rise to a new genre of poetry. Here poetry has shed all its ornamentations and

is a beacon of a new ideal.

In all his writings on art and literature, Music has seemed to many of the

great contemplatives the least inadequate of all symbols of reality, eluding the

snares, which lurk in images that are more concrete. Because they discern in

creation a harmony that is beyond the span of other minds, they have heard, as

this last of their descendants, “the harp of the road break out in sweet music of

pain” and have felt a special obligation lay upon the poet to add his song to the

melodies, which fill the universe. So here, the creation of fresh beauty is

presented –as man’s best approach to Perfect Beauty

His song offering is the sacrament of his ineffable communion with the

Divine Nature: and it is from this personal and impassioned intercourse – so

characteristic of the mystical consciousness- that his loveliest melodies are

born. Yet this personal and secret ecstasy is but one side of the mystic’s

complete experience: It is balanced by the wide, impersonal consciousness of

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the eternal Divine immanence in creation, of the incessant and infinitely various

self-revelation of God.

This mystic conceives God is pre-eminently the Creator of life and of

beauty: he is the Divine Minstrel, and all creation is His song. In his ‘Gitanjali’,

he had written:

My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and

decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come

between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers

(EWRT 12).

Tagore says Beauty gives rise to the concept of Unity in our minds.

Restless vigour has no bearing within this Unity for there is repose in Unity. The

quiet dignity of restrained adornment does not excite us from minute to minute

– it mingles with Beauty and draws an image of Unity before us. In the context it

is said, ‘modesty is the adornment of women’. Modesty means restraint,

equilibrium, equanimity. Whatever destroys this balance in the image of beauty,

be it fitfulness or a discordantly high pitch, is immodesty. In the same note,

excessive adornment and bright color too is immodesty. The impression or

overt effort therefore takes away from the picture of Harmony and Unity All of

Tagore’s writings and his works of art prove not only that his art and his religion

are entwined inseparably, but also that both are the creations of his

consciousness of harmony, unity and restraint. Tagore’s world is suffused with

this consciousness of the unity of creation and his art is a modest offering at its

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altar – where it comes not between him and his consciousness of Truth and

Beauty.

This beautiful prayer is basic to the teachings of Jesus'. A Hindu wrote it.

Rabinranath Tagore's lyrics are loved and sung wherever Bengali is spoken.

Their charm can be imagined - dimly imagined - from the great beauty still left

in a mere translation. Thirty years earlier, he had founded the famous

Shantiniketan, near Calcutta. He began with five pupils and five teacher’s three

of whom were Christian. Here he tried to promote simplicity of living, and the

simple joys of life. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, for

the "Gitanjali" or "Song offering" - his offering to the God he loved and sought:

I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come. The words have not been rightly set; only

there is the agony of wishing in my heart. . . . . I have not seen his

face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle

footsteps from the road before my house. . . . . . . . I live in the hope

of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet (EWRT 15).

It has been said that while Western mind expresses itself through reason

and logic, the Eastern mind uses image, metaphor and symbol. For this reason,

Tagore has a special attraction to Asian Christians. He uses familiar images to

express his intuitions of deep truths - the dusty village roads, the monsoon

downpours, the weary traveler, flowers, rivers, boats - that are so much a part

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of our landscape. Through them, he draws us to the brink of the great mystery.

S.B. Mukherji opines:

Eliot’s words point towards the singular greatness of the Gitanjali

trio. They bring ‘strange consolation’, they express ‘in particular

language, some permanent human impulse’. But perhaps these

words are inadequate, for the poems bring something more.

Springing from intuitive experience, suffered with vision, they

appeal irresistibly to the depths of the spirit (113).

Tagore experienced a period of personal grief, which can lead to places

beyond our little world. It is reflected in his words:

In desperate hope I go and search for her in all the corners of my

room; I find her not. My house is small and what once has gone

from it can never be regained. But infinite is thy mansion, my lord,

and seeking her I have to come to thy door. . . . . . . ... I have come

to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish - no hope, no

happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears (EWRT 44).

According to S.B. Mukherji,

The unique distinction of the Gitanjali trio is that it reveals up again

and again with astonishing case that wordless world of the spirit,

that sky of infinitude and its stainless white radiance (115).

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Hinduism differs from Christianity in some fundamental doctrines.

However, there is a strand of that religion which has a glimpsed a monotheistic

God, a loving Creator, whom Tagore sought in his long daily meditations. God's

ways of drawing us to him are as countless as the individuals he has created.

Even primitive heathens were given some intuitions of a Divine being behind

the material world, though they worshipped him mistakenly in clay images and

in the forces of nature. S.B. Mukherji opines:

Four words upon before us as we approach these poems: (1) God

and the human soul. (2) God and Nature (3) Nature and the soul (4)

the soul and humanity. The four worlds, we need hardly add, often

run over into one another, and we shall not keep them strictly

separate (115).

Gitanjali, in Bengali, literally "song-offerings", is a book of poems by

Rabindranath Tagore. This term has come to signify a type of serenade to god.

Geetanjali is an offering. Be it a prayer or a song. It is a salutation- of respect,

and of affection. Geetanjali is the longest running radio program in the USA

featuring music from India that is both lyrical and exciting in composition. It

offers a new dimension in musical appreciation for the Indian fan and Western

listener as well -- including classical, contemporary, devotional and Bollywood

music. It has been serving the needs of Indian listeners for providing

wholesome entertainment for more than twenty-seven years. Jawaharlal Nehru

once said that wherever Indians go they take a little piece of India with them.

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Geetanjali is such an effort to maintain our cultural identity through music. S.B.

Mukherji comments:

A recurrent thought is: God’s love and joy ever stream through

Nature’s rapturous forms to entice the soul; to realize the mystery

of that revelation is to be united with Him. Here are the opening

lines of poem 6 of the original Gitanjali:

Lo! there streams your nectar so pure,

Flooding all heaven and earth in love, with life.

It bursts into song and fragrance, into light and

rapture.

My life, drunk with that nectar,

in full to the brim.

It blossoms like the lotus in ravishing joy,

Here is your love, O beguiler of souls.

Here it dances on the sun-kissed leaves, golden-

hued. (118).

S.B. Mukherji opines that one could see God in nature:

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Nature in many of these poems is, one recalls Carlyle’s words. ‘the

veil and mysterious garment of the Unseen’ Tagore’s one

endeavour is to pierce that ‘veil’ and enter the inner sanctuary of

the ‘mysterious.’ (122).

Tagore attains the summit of his art, of his mystical vision. It is a mysticism

of limpid clarity, a vision made concrete, even sensuous. Nature’s mystery, the

mystery of the primordial unison of the soul with her, the joy and the wonder of

it-all are woven into the texture of the poems and vivified with an imagination

that can externalize an intuitive vision with symbols and images startlingly new.

Again, S.B. Mukherji says:

As Years roll on, that imagination, wedded to ‘a vision free, vast

and serene’, to recall Romain Rolland’s utterance on the Poet,

would scour the immensities of time and space, the eternal and the

temporal, and probe into the imponderable mysteries of Life, of

Man, of Nature (127).

Translating inner self-interactions into space time-charged dance

movement is never easy. This is precisely the problem while dealing with the

mysticism of Tagore’s Gitanjali poems, which are hard to pin down through

bodily images. Yet these immortal verses have provoked many a dancer’s

experimental urges in Bengal. This is evident in manifold patterns of mystic

subtleties almost everywhere in Tagore’s Song Offerings.

As W.B.Yeats observes, A whole people, a whole civilization,

immeasurably strange to us, seems to have been taken up into this

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imagination: and yet are not moved because of its strangeness, but

because we have met our own image, as though we had walked in

Rosseti’s willow wood, or heard, perhaps for the first time in

literature, our voice as in a dream (Qtd. in Mohit Chakrabarti 23).

Mohit Chakrabarti says, for Tagore, to wait for the blossoming of life is to

wait for the message to be brought forth by the ‘sighing wind’. The poet has

this agony of the soul to welcome the Ever Beautiful. The preparation with the

muse eternal goes on for the long awaited welcome: a well spread out floor

sans the bright lamp to great the All Endearing poses before him a sense of

uncertainty. From all imperfection and inabilities, the Poet is fired with the spirit

of the mystic promise- ‘the premise of a golden harvest’ because he believes

that the mystic light that illumines his inner vision will bring forth the fruits of his

lost world of consciousness, his lost kingdom of being.

Perhaps, the Poet has already prepared himself with the truth that not

salvation but the very spirit of renunciation through purity of perfection will show

him the gateway to the Heaven of the great illuminator. Mohit Chakrabarti

comments:

A saner, simpler pattern of mysticism synchronized with the day to

day affairs of life makes the Poet our very own. The mingling of

light in diverse moments of life is the very mingling of the vision of a

great mystic visionary playing with life and the different ways and

experiences of life with great contentment (28).

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The blessings of defeat that ‘come in the life of the Poet in the form of

darkness make the Poet a great mystic in the muse of self-submission. That

the defeat he meets is the preparation for reunion with the Lord forms the

foundation of the modest language of his muse. The poet believes in the

mystic truth that the Light of the Lord encompasses the mind; the light of His

music illumines the world. The light leads the mind from the darkness of

ignorance to the light of heavenly music. The Poet has a mystic faith on idle

days in submitting himself to the Lord of creation. A sense of desolation

engulfs his whole imagination. Being tired and exhausted, he seeks

consolation in the inward vision of the Lord and the mystic ‘wonder of flowers’

adorns the garden of his life and mind:

I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased. In

the morning I woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers

(EWRT 42)

In Diverse Dimension, Mohit Chakrabarti says, the components of the

mystic muse in Song Offerings are, indeed, legion. Trees, birds, sea-waves,

stars, the sun, the moon, the child, the flute, the boat, the light, the flowering

grove, joy, pleasure, sorrow, pain and death-all are echoes with a mystic

panorama of life. The matured vision of the Poet smiles in poignance and

experience. He drinks the insatiable cup of joy from the infinite wonderland of

Nature and shares his moments of diverse feelings with the Lord of silence.

Tagore’s poetry turns out to be a genuine representation of the mystical

values. It is with the discovery of “thou” that the poet finds his own identity:

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My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, “Here art

thou!”

The question and the cry: “Oh, where?” melt into tears of a

thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the

assurance, ‘I am !’ (EWRT 14).

Tagore attains self-realization through his insight:

As Dr. Manorama B. Trikha observes, When God’s mystery unfolds

itself even in the handful of dust, the message enlightens his inner

faculties and turns “my thoughts into songs”. His newly developed

self realizes that the riches of the world are “chains’ and the body is

‘the person of clay’, which make him impatient (Qtd. in Sharma

102).

This insight gives him a sense of ubiquity, of existing outside time and

space, which adds all-inclusiveness to his vision, to his emotional realizations.

A large number of Tagore’s songs imbibe the ecstasy of illumination. The

poet feels a great desolation; believing that the Divine has abandoned the soul,

he experiences a strange, fleeting emptiness in himself. His soul plunges into

the dark night and he grows desperately aware of his sinfulness. His agonized

self finds a poetic outlet in Gitanjali.

Misery knocks at thy door, and her message is that thy lord is

wakeful, and he calls thee to the love-tryst through the darkness of

night (EWRT 19)

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Rabindranath Tagore was one of India’s leading spiritual saints who lived

in the northern part of India. He is widely renowned for his pithy couplets and

songs that connect life and spirituality in a simple yet powerful way. His words

were in a universal language that, literally and figuratively, broke down barriers

to experiencing the divine. He was quite unimpressed and even irreverent to

the dogmas of organized religion and society. His essence was far more subtle,

pervasive, unconstrained and universal – in short, beyond the boundaries laid

down by religious, sectarian and social traditions.

Being introduced to Tagore is like entering in a world that was blurred in

the subconscious and is suddenly brought forth vividly with gust of tenderness

and purity of gurudev’s mystic touch. Tagore was a versatile genius who as a

literary artist excelled in various forms of art such as poetry, drama, novel,

criticism, music and painting. He was a philosopher and occasionally ventured

in national politics too. Tagore was born with a silver spoon in his mouth but did

not have formal education in a school or college. Tagore cemented the way for

a style of writing that reconciles poetry with prose, art with morality and religion

with science. ‘Gitanjali’ took the world by storm. He is one of those rare authors

who have produced fine literature in two languages. Gitanjali is a proof of

Tagore’s towering genius and marvelous artistic predilection.

Gitanjali is primarily a collection of 103 devotional songs translated by

Tagore from his various poetical works in Bengali. It has been written in lyric

tradition of Vaishnava Hinduism. The influence of study of Upanishads, which

he undertook, accompanying his father Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, is

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clearly seen in the spiritual contours of the songs. The relationship between

God and Man is the apparent core of all songs. Here this relationship has been

looked at from different angles and herein lies the beauty of these songs. In his

songs, Tagore tried to find inner calm, a bliss that comes only with the

experience of divine, and tried to explore the themes of divine and human love.

Gitanjali thrives on Hindu mysticism and presents complex of thoughts. Tagore

tries to establish an inseparable link between individual soul and greater soul.

His mediations on God, man and nature, in the Gitanjali, not only echo the

Vedantic awareness of the Absolute but also transmit the fervor of a Vaishnava

bhakta's love for God. Gitanjali is a poem of detachment and the earthly

defences crumble in it. Not earth but supernal regions temps the poet’s soul.

To touch the undying muse of Rabindranath Tagore in a short span is

impossible. Tagore was a solitary pilgrim whose quest was nothing but

ceaseless bliss, that which is beyond mundane faculties of experience. He

devoted his life in search of transnational and universal form of religious and

spiritual expression, rooted at the same time in Indian ethos. Tagore writes:

This is my prayer to thee, my lord---strike, strike at the root of

penury in my heart. …

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with

love (EWRT 22).

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As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, the energetic pulse

of modern innovation coincided with surprisingly widespread fascination with

mystical and magical experience. Something of the wonder of new

technological advances seemed to encourage speculation about the

possibilities of untapped psychic powers, telepathic communication even direct

discourse with God. V.N. Bhusan says,

The immediate consciousness or reality in its purest form,

unobserved by the shadow of self-interest, irrespective of moral or

utilitarian recommendation, gives us joy as does the self-revealing

personality of our own (228).

For art is Maya, it has no ot her explanation but it seems to be what it is. It

never tries to conceal its evasiveness; it mocks even its own definition and

plays the game of hide-and-seek through its constant flight in changes. Tagore

says:

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.

I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.

Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various

colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim (EWRT

39).

The thread that has run through all our reflections is the soul's unceasing

search for God. Our last two reflections dealt with the spirit of detachment,

which was one important step in that journey. It is the most positive aspect of

living, for in detaching ourselves from "things" we find everything in their fullest

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measure. This idea is described beautifully in the words of Tagore. For it is the

Spirit that speaks and the Spirit speaks a very simple language, being the

essence of simplicity.

Blue Lotus strikes him as having a unique quality--translucence paired

with tenacity. He finds that it starts out with a slightly pungent crisp note of

autumnal leaves, however immediately crispness melts into transparency

underscored by a subtle floral note and perhaps a touch of verdant foliage. The

visions of clear streams and waterfalls immediately come to his mind.

Spirituality may include belief in supernatural powers, as in religion, but

the emphasis is on experience. What is referred to as "religion" and what is

referred to as "spirituality" are often the same. In recent years, "spirituality" has

often carried connotations of the believer's faith being more personal, less

dogmatic, more open to new ideas and myriad influences, and more pluralistic

than the faiths of established religions. Those given to speaking of "spirituality"

rather than "religion" are apt to believe that there are many "spiritual paths" and

that there is no objective truth about which is the best path to follow. Tagore

says:

He is defined as He whose joy is in Brahma, whose play is in

Brahma, the active one. Joy without the play of joy is no joy at all -

play without activity is no play (SA 131).

Some proponents of spirituality believe that the goal of 'being spiritual' is

to simultaneously improve one's wisdom, willpower and communion with God

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and universe, which necessitates the removal of illusions at the sensory, feeling

and thinking aspects of a person. Tagore’s spiritual development process

could be summed up as follows:

Therein we begin to see that He is in the beginning and in the end

of the universe and likewise see that of our own work is he the

fount and the inspiration, and at the end thereof is he, and therefore

that all our activity is pervaded by peace and good and joy (SA

133).

Tagore believes that the vision of Paradise is to be seen in the sunlight

and the green of the earth, in the beauty of the human face and the wealth of

human life, even in objects that are seemingly insignificant and

unprepossessing. Everywhere in this earth the spirit of Paradise is awake and

sending forth its voice. However, it is evident from Tagore’s poetry that his

‘Jeevandevata’ is not God in a religious or philosophical sense although it

appears to be so when Tagore offers the image of a Helmsman or the King of

kings receiving his offerings. To substantiate this point we may quote Jayanta

Bhattacharya:

Tagore had the belief in the Pluralistic Universe, and to him the

Supreme Being is manifest in different forms and through all His

creations. He is the preserver and destroyer. He relates the finite

to the infinite, the temporal to the eternal. This view of Tagore,

according to Ajit Kumar Chakraborty, is reflective of Darwin’s theory

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of the distinctive feature of each cell in human body (Qtd. in Ray

187).

Supernatural literally means transcending the natural. Generally, it

involves the belief in conscious forces that cannot ordinarily be perceived

except through their effects. Sometimes it is used to characterize or explain

events that people consider extraordinary.

A concept of the supernatural is generally identified with religion, although

there is much debate as to whether a conception of the supernatural is

necessary for religion. Generally, people contrast the supernatural with the

natural and some believe that these two concepts are compatible or

complementary

The principle of service to or worship of, the living God is expressed by

Tagore quite frequently in his own ingenious way. Suryanarayana Murti opines:

Tagore advocates that God is there, ‘Where the tiller is tilling the

hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones’, so meet

Him in these toiling common men and ‘stand by him in toil and in

sweat of thy brow’. The service to God should hardly isolate one

from the service to man, even the poorest, and lowliest, and lost

(23).

In his ‘Introduction’ to an English version of Kalidasa’s Sakuntalam Tagore

writes:

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In truth there are two unions in Sakuntala: and the motif of the play

is the progress from the earlier union of the first Act, with its earthly

unstable beauty and romance, to the higher union in the heavenly

hermitage of eternal bliss described in the last Act…. to elevate

love from the sphere of physical beauty to the eternal heavens of

moral beauty (Qtd. in Suryanarayana Murti 25).

In the words of Radhakrishnan, Gitanjali depicts the Journey of men from

birth to death:

The Gitanjali poems are the ‘offerings of the finite to the infinite’: the

imperfect decks itself in beauty for the love of the perfect, which is

the supreme phase of love. The book conceives a life’s journey

from birth to death of a passionate devotee who rejoices in his

intense devotion at every stage of life. In fact, it is Gitanjali that has

made Tagore a devotional poet (Qtd. in Murti 26).

Although his poetic output is limited, yet it is the minute seed to the mighty

banyan of Tagore’s love literature that has lulled the world to bliss in its shade.

At the tumultuous moments of life, with all sensibilities- aesthetic and

emotional-confronted with unending jolt between reality and sentimentalism,

Tagore also wants to be rejuvenated by the grace of God Mr. Mohit Chakrabarti

opines:

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The desire for light- ‘the world-filling light, the sky kissing light,

heart-sweetening light’, as Tagore aesthetically states, brings

endearingly the dawn of a new world of joy, the most hauntingly

sought for aesthetic fulfillment (57)

Time is a sense of timelessness, which involves for Tagore a union of the

soul with reality whereby the harmony and rhythm of everything in life is truly

sensed and felt. With this aesthetic vision in view, deliverance, for Tagore, is

prized with a new concept of delight and love.

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of

freedom in a thousand bonds of delight (EWRT 39).

While making an exciting adventure into the aesthetic sensibilities of

Tagore and Eliot in the sphere of literary criticism, it is undeniable that both are

capable of awakening of inner emotional and aesthetic sensibilities. To enjoy

and experience the wonderful aroma of aesthetic sensibilities in poetry

presupposes for a poet a diffused reality mesmerized through diversions of all

sentimentalism and romantic exhibitionism. Mr. Mohit chahkrabarti opines:

To explore the unison of aesthetic sensibilities of Tagore and Eliot

is to beckon ‘the light that never was on sea or land’, to search for a

mark of our true becoming in beyonding –a search beyond search

from the most insignificant and vulgar to the most poignant and

beautiful in the modern waste land of humanity through the

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avenues of manifestation of anandarupamamritam yadvibhati-

Delight Immortal and Enkindled (66).

According to the poet, the Infinite can best be realized in love. Most of

the thinkers of India consider that man’s salvation becomes possible then only

when he can tear off all bonds of love. However, Tagore says, ‘It is not that we

desire freedom alone, we want thralldom as well… In love thralldom is as

glorious as freedom’ (Qtd. in Basak 126). Basak comments:

Like the Supreme Being, who created the world out of love and

without any necessity behind it, man also love God not for any

material gain. The mission of man’s life is to love in communion of

God, and so he offers his love to God. Man, who is mortal being

offers love in return of His love (127).

Here critics point out that speaking from the standpoint of the Absolute;

the finite beings in Tagore’s philosophy do not enjoy freedom of will as

Absolute. Being has infused love in nature of man. God has created finite

beings so that He can enjoy love of finites in return of his love, all love activities

become His activities ultimately. Therefore, the finites in his philosophy cannot

be self-determining agents. Nevertheless, Tagore interprets this in other way.

He tells that though God creates the finites for His own purpose of being loved

by finites, man is free to love or not to love God. Mr. Kakoli Basak opines:

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People think that work binds us, as activity is in material plane, it is

an obstruction for the freedom of the soul. As for them work is

bondage, to become completely detached from this bondage and

being inactive is termed by them as ‘liberation’, Tagore says, ‘They

call Brahman also inactive and neglect worldly affairs by calling

them maya’ (129).

Relationship between his spiritualism and his interest in man is revealed

by his faith that the best way of serving and reaching God is by serving man.

When out of his universal love man works for the welfare of the whole humanity

he realizes union with God and becomes free. Thus, Tagore’s way to salvation,

way to realization of God becomes one with way to realization of unity with the

whole world and it indicates the dominance of humanistic element in his

philosophy.

Tagore’s stories reveal a strange similarity of content and mood and

technique adopted: First, all the stories have a two-tier structure, adumbrating a

‘stories retold’ formula. Secondly, the supernatural content has its bearing only

in the parliament of night. Thirdly, what is most significant about the character

of the supernatural world created in these stories is that it is touch-and-go and

the flicker of the light of the day is enough to cause its disintegration. Lastly, it

is the natural supernaturalism of Rabindranath, which gives these stories their

distinctive character. This mix-up of the natural and the supernatural is sort of

an achievement for Rabindranath for he does not take the reader, to a far-off

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and distant region, but operates within the familiar world for creating an eerie

atmosphere.

In Nisithe nature plays a pivotal role because Dakshinacharan’s

hallucination of his dead first wife’s presence near his mosquito-

curtain on the boat in which he and his second wife Manorama are

staying at that time is the aftermath of a frightening experience out

on a sandy bed near the Padma (Qtd. in Santosh Chakrabarti 102).

Tagore has his own view regarding creation:

Tagore was also equally aware of the long procession of creation.

“In the lightning-flash of a moment I have seen the immensity of

your creation in my life-creation through many a death from world to

world” (Qtd. in Sastry 28).

The mystic experience inspired Tagore to realize the unity of spirit

manifesting itself in the diversity of the Panorama of creation. Plants, animals,

birds and all forms of life seemed to be related to the poet’s Consciousness.

C.N. Sastry comments:

According to Rabindranath, cosmic consciousness requires a

separation of the self from the spirit. ‘We must know with absolute

certainty that essentially we are spirit’. This requires a recognition

of distinction between the individual self and the all-pervading

universal soul (31).

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The realization of Tagore is a common one on the part of every poet of

genius-that his poetry reaches on many occasions such a level as does not

seem possible to him on his own limited strength and conscious effort. It

seems as if some great invisible artist is accomplishing the impossible through

his hands. This indwelling poetic genius is the poet’s jivan-devata. Tagore

says:

It is significant that all great religions have their historic origin in

persons who represented in their life a truth which was not cosmic

and unmoral, but human and good. They rescued religion from the

magic stronghold of demon force and brought it into the inner heart

of humanity, into a fulfillment not confined to some exclusive good

fortune of the individual but to the welfare of all men. This was not

for the spiritual ecstasy of lonely souls, but for the spiritual

emancipation of all races. They came as the messengers of Man

to men of all countries and spoke of the salvation that could only be

reached by the perfecting of our relationship with Man the Eternal,

Man the Divine (ROM 44).

During the discussion of his own religious experience he expresses his

belief that the first state of his realization was through his feeling of intimacy

with Nature-not that Nature which has its channel of information for our mind

and physical relationship with our living body, but that which satisfies our

personality with manifestations that make our life rich and stimulate our

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imagination in their harmony of forms, colors, sounds and movements. It is not

that world which vanished into abstract symbols behind its own testimony to

Science, but that which lavishly displays its wealth of reality to our personal

self-having its own perpetual reaction upon human nature. Tagore says:

To be dwelling in such contemplation which standing, walking,

sitting or lying down, until sleep overcomes thee, is called living in

Brahma’. This proves that Buddha’s idea of the infinite was not the

idea of a spirit of an unbounded cosmic activity, but the infinite

whose meaning is in the positive ideal of goodness and love, which

cannot be otherwise than human (ROM 43).

Mysticism thus emphasizes an immediate awareness of a relation with

God, which is direct and intimate. According to Tagore, man is essentially

divine: he is finite and partly infinite. However, one cannot identify the self with

God as the absolutists in India identified the “Atman” with the “Brahman”. The

individual soul is torn between the world and God, being attracted by both. The

self has two aspects: in one aspect it displays itself, and tries to be big,

standing upon the pedestal of its own accumulations, but in its other aspect the

self.

According to Anupam Ratan Shankar Nagar, Rabindranath Tagore apart

form being an ardent devotee and a firm believer of the Supreme Being was

above all a very humble personality and profoundly soaked in the poignance of

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humility, he takes as account of himself a sort of self-analysis-that marks the

preparation of his inward vision:

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have

spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The

time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only

there is the agony of wishing in my heart… I live in the hope of

meeting with him: but this meeting is not yet (EWRT 14).

Dr. Anupam Ratan Shankar Nagar writes, inspite of all imperfections and

inabilities, Tagore is fired with the spirit of the mystic promise-“the promise of a

golden harvest’ because he believes that the mystic light that illumines his inner

vision will bring forth the fruits of his lost world of consciousness, his lost

kingdom of being. Tagore, as such, has already prepared himself with the

truth, that not salvation but the very spirit of renunciation through the purity of

perfection, will show him the gateway to the Heaven of the Great Illuminator.

Moreover, this is how the long awaited stormy night comes at last, and the

meeting with All Beautiful is about to take place:

I have no sleep to-night. Ever and again I open my door and look

out on the darkness, my friend! (EWRT 18).

Man essentially is a part of God. They may appear to look separate and

distinct, but in reality, they are the same:

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It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in

numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of

leaves and flowers (EWRT 38).

As a mystic, Tagore’s place is very high in modern literature. He was able

to inspire the suffering humanity through his poems and was therefore called a

prophet of the universal man. Speaking for man beyond religion and politics,

Tagore keeps the following three principles in mind: The ultimateness of

spiritual values to be obtained by inward honesty and cultivation of inner life.

The futility of mere negation or renunciation and the need for a holy

development of life. The positive attitude or sympathy for all even the lowly and

the lost.

Truly, Tagore’s lyrics are universal in their appeal. They reveal emotions

and feelings that are true to all ages and climates. Dr. Radhakrishnan rightly

remarks:

When our lords and leaders pass into oblivion, Tagore will continue

to enchant us by his music and poetry: for though he is an Indian,

the value of his work lies not in any tribal or national characteristics,

but in those elements of universality which appeal to the whole

world. He has added to the sweetness of life, to the stature of

civilization (Qtd. in Sangar Nagar 104).

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The message of Tagore, that man’s destiny lies in the realization of the

Infinite within and its ultimate expression, is to be imbibed at the physical level,

at the mental level and at the spiritual level, in order to bring forth the human

values of Truth, Righteousness, Love, Peace and Non-Violence. He has seen

evil and the play of death throughout the world. Yet he thinks that in its quest

for truth, life transcends itself gradually in order to attain divinity.

Freedom is impossible of attainment without submission to law, for

Brahma is in one aspect bound by his truth, in the other free in his joy. As for

ourselves, it is only when we wholly submit to the bonds of truth that we fully

gain the joy of freedom. “The soul is to dedicate itself to Brahma through all its

activities. This dedication is the song of the soul, in this is its freedom.” (SA

128). V.N. Bhusan comments:

The man, whose inner vision is bathed in an illumination of his

consciousness, at once realizes the spiritual unity reigning supreme

over all differences of race and his mind no longer awkwardly

stumbles over individual facts of separateness in the human world,

accepting them as final: he realizes that peace is in the inner

harmony which dwells in truth, and not in any outer adjustments;

and that beauty carries an eternal assurance of our spiritual

relationship to reality, which waits for its perfection in the response

of our love (227).

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According to Tagore, through our sense of truth we realize law in creation,

and through our sense of beauty, we realize harmony in the universe:

As we become conscious of the harmony in our soul, our

apprehension of the blissfulness of the spirit of the world becomes

universal and the expression of beauty in our life moves in

goodness and love towards the infinite. This is the ultimate object

of our existence, that we must ever know that ‘Beauty is truth, truth

beauty’: we must realize the whole world in love, for love gives it

birth, sustains it, and takes it back to its bosom. We must have that

perfect emancipation of heart which gives us the power to stand at

the innermost centre of things and have the taste of that fullness of

disinterested joy which belongs to Brahma (SA 141).

The concept of God occupies the central place in a religious philosophy.

Specially, in a religious philosophy of a theistic type, the concept of God

becomes the basic source from which all other religious concepts derive both

their intelligibility and Justification. Commenting on Tagore’s philosophy of

God, Prof.S.C. Sen Gupta remarks:

Some of his important works are devoted entirely to religious

discourse. Of the transcendental entities, God has been treated

more fully than any other (Qtd. in Sinha 23).

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Tagore’s conception of God tries to strike a balance between the

Absolutistic demands of the supreme, and the humanistic needs of such a

concept. In order to do this, he first deals away with the distinction between

‘Absolute’ and ‘God’. This distinction, according to him, does not have any

objective basis, but is rooted in the varying attitudes of different men. In order to

substantiate his viewpoint, he quotes from the Upanisads and the Vedas.

Tagore explicitly says:

Reality is the expression of personality, like a poem, like a work of

art. But as the physiology of our beloved is not our beloved, so this

Impersonal law is not our God (Qtd. in Sinha 26).

Harendra Prasad Sinha hints that Tagore speaks about an emotional

realization of oneness that will lead to an extension of consciousness beyond

the narrow limits of the self. His emphasis thus brings him closer to the

supporters of the Bhakti cult. Therefore, the statement ‘God is love’ means that

God is the ultimate hope and source of strength to man. Sinha opines, “If God

is love, participation in His creation is participation in His loving act” (27).

According to Tagore, the relation of identity-in-difference in the experience

of love is focused as:

In love at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the other the

impersonal. In love all the contradictions of existence merge

themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at

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variance. Love must be one and two at the same time (Qtd. in

Sinha 28).

Thus, we can say that Tagore’s conception of God can be described as a

kind of theism. It ascribes to God almost all the theistic characters, and yet this

conception of God, remains unique as far as it tries to incorporate some such

ideas that ordinary theism never thinks of.

Rabindranath Tagore believed in the unity of humankind. He disapproved

of all fragmentation and segregation in the name of religion, caste, creed,

nationality and a false sense of superiority. He dreamt a free India in which his

compatriots will be fearless and their head would be held high with self-respect.

Tagore thus prays to God (as father) to lead his country into that heaven of

freedom where spirituality, universal education, truth, righteousness, peace,

love and non-violence will reign supreme

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the mind is led forward by thee into

Ever-widening thought and action-

Into that heaven of freedom, my father,

Let my country awake (EWRT 22).

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Tagore addresses God as his beloved mother and says: “Mother, I shall

weave a chain of pearls for thy neck with my tears of sorrow” (EWRT 43).

Tagore too found a mystic quality in children. He spontaneously invested

the everyday picture of children playing on the sea-shore in a cosmic manner:

“On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.” (EWRT 33).

Tagore expresses this Vaishanava faith when he says that God permeates

the entire universe. Like all other mystic-poets, Tagore too describes God as a

lover (Madhura bhava or as the relationship between Mirabai and Sri Krishna).

Srivastava states:

This conception of Divine love is purely Vaishnava ideal. This

philosophy of Vaishnavism emphasizes an organic relation

between God and man. Its first principle is that everything is God

and all the actions of man should be dedicated to Him. To find God

in everything and to find Him in the human self are the two

inveterate habits of a Vaishnava (Qtd. in Nagar (57).

Tagore addresses God as his Beloved. (A superior variety of Madhura

bhakti or as the relationship between Ramakrishna Parmhamsa and his Lord)

Here the poet takes God for his spouse:

Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love, O beloved of my heart- this

golden light that dances upon the leaves, these idle clouds sailing

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across the sky, this passing breeze leaving its coolness upon my

forehead (EWRT 32).

Tagore adores God, the Master-poet saying:

My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet. I

have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and

straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music (EWRT 13).

Addressing God as a singer and the universe as His song, Tagore says:

I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent

amazement.

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy

music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks

through all stony obstacles and rushes on (EWRT 11).

God is further described as a friend (Saakhya bhakti or as the relationship

between Sudama and Sri Krishna): “In the early morning thou wouldst call me

from my sleep like my own comrade and lead me running from glade to glade”

(EWRT 48).

The beggar-poet invites God in the dress of a King: “When my beggarly

heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my King, and

come with the ceremony of a King”(EWRT 23). There is a variety of personal

relationship between God and man. The Gitanjali is as a ‘spiritual revelation’.

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These are not poems to be read hastily or carelessly; they demand a certain

surrender if their value is to be understood. Perhaps all really great work does.

The expression is no whit too strong and with it we entirely associate ourselves.

In Tagore, death is a poetic experience faced, conquered, sublimated,

identified with the cosmic. It is a marana-snan, an ennobling fire-bath; its

sacred flames illumine the beloved’s spirit, reveal the splendour of her soul,

fuse it with the cosmic process and flash a light through which the poet

ultimately discovers his own spiritual self. A mystical imagination is on its wing

and grasps the boundless mystery of women:

The way the Divine reveals Himself in the beauty, joy and love that

dance through universal nature, is also the way He uncovered

himself once in the grace, beauty and joy of the departed women

(Qtd. in Mukherji 100).

Tagore strikes the central thought as Death is only a gateway to another

life. For instance, ‘On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet’

catches the powerful suggestion of contrast, the contrast of two opposed

worlds: the material, grabbing world of mankind and the divinely innocent world

of the child where pebbles on the shore are more precious than the jewels of

the sea. His is a world oblivious of life and death. Mukherji defines Nature as

follows:

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A graceful imagination and an exquisite sensibility are wedded to a

mystical insight that knows no limits. The mystery and beauty of

Nature’s infinite forms are insistently caught in the elemental

mystery of the child’s soul. That mystery is everywhere defying

analysis (102).

Tagore emphasizes that nothing that moves on and changes, is

permanent in time. Life rushes along the swift current of time form one landing

place to another. The stay of life on the earth is brief. The time of parting from

this life comes as soon as man feels one with nature. Life and death form one

eternal cycle. For instance, George opines that even a great work of man

cannot check the progress of life:

As art is triumphant over life, the emperor succeeded in relating his

beloved to eternity. His messenger of love and beauty eluded the

watch of time. The emperor and his empire are no more. But the

Taj Mahal has conquered time. Untouched by death, it seems to

declare to the world the emperor’s message:

Never have I forgotten you,

Never have I forgotten you,

My beloved.

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The emperor’s agony is truer than the Taj Mahal, The eternal

journey of the soul is never confined by the walls of memory. It

moves on from one frame to another. The emperor’s agony is ever

seeking a new frame in the unknown. Even a great

accomplishment of man, like the Taj Mahal, cannot check the

progress of life ( 94).

Life is an eternal movement. It is also an ever-flowing stream. According

to George, man’s soul is free:

In the lyric “Balaka”, Tagore states that life manifests itself in

eternal movement. It is like an ever-flowing stream. Man is greater

than his deeds. So the emperor’s achievement cannot properly

reveal his greatness. The soul moves on and death takes life

beyond its bounds. Man cannot lie imprisoned within the limits of

his deeds. His soul is free. That is why the Taj Mahal seems to cry:

“I lie burdened with memory, / He is free (94).

Tagore does not want to dread death. He is always prepared for it, when

death knocks at his door, he will never let him go with empty hands. Using the

image of a bridegroom, he courts death. Like Cleopatra putting on her robes to

be bitten by an asp to die, he puts on his wedding garland and prepares to

receive death, which he decorates. Using a homely image, he says, “The child

cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away in the very next

moment to find in the left one its consolation” (Qtd. in Gowda 18).

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Generous provision is also made for the joyous celebration of life and for

the simple and charming lyric celebrating death and sorrow. There are lyrics

celebrating death, the poet woos death just as he woos Love. To him death will

come as a pilot to take the helm. Life prepares him for death. In him, Life and

Death are the union of opposites. Tagore says, “Because I love this life, I know

I shall love death as well. Thy gifts to us mortals fulfill all our needs and yet run

back to thee undiminished” (Qtd. in Gowda 18).