chapter-iii mysticism in rabindranath...
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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).