TAGORE’S
VIEWS ABOUT MAN
Today is 7th
day of May. It was on this day that Rabindranath Tagore was born in Kolkata in
1861. He passed away in the same city on 7th August 1941.
Besides being
a great poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for his collection of poems
called Gitanjali, he was a world famous story writer, novelist,
dramatist, social reformer and
philosopher. His interest in almost all the fine arts was highly remarkable.
Tagore is
known to have reshaped Bengali literature, art and music. His literary works carrying
philosophic and spiritual thoughts are
quite large in number and have by now become a significant part of world
literature.
Given below are
his partial views about man and his
universe expressed in one of the HIBBERT
LECTURES FOR 1930. They were later published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd,
London, under the title The Religion of Man.
The most perfect
inward expression, says Tagore, has been attained by man in his own body. But what is most important of all is the fact
that man has also attained its realization in a more subtle body outside
his physical system. He misses himself when isolated; he finds his own larger
and truer self in his wide human relationship . His multicellular body is born
and it dies; his multi-personal humanity is immortal. In this ideal of unity,
he realizes the eternal in his life and the boundless in his love.
Whereas man’s
eyes relate him to the vision of the
physical universe, he has also an inner faculty
of his own which helps him to find his relationship with the supreme
self of man, the universe of personality. This faculty is his luminous
imagination which in its higher stage is special to him. It offers him that vision of wholeness which for the
biological necessity of physical survival is superfluous; its purpose is to
arouse in him the sense of perfection which
is his true sense of immortality. Perfection dwells ideally in Man the Eternal,
which inspires in him love for this
ideal and urges him more and more to
realize it.
According to
Tagore the individual man must exist for Man
the great, and must express him in disinterested works, in science,
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 provides his fulfilment.
The
ideal truth, says Tagore, does not depend upon the individual mind of man, but
on the universal mind which comprehends the individual. He adds: there are thinkers
who advocate the doctrine of the plurality of worlds, which can only mean that
there are worlds that are absolutely unrelated to each other. Even if this were
true it could never be proved. For our universe is the sum total of what Man feels, knows,
imagines, reasons to be, and of whatever is knowable to him now or in another time.
Tagore defines progress as an ideal
perfection which the individual man seeks to reach by extending his limits in
knowledge, power, love and enjoyment to approach the universal.
Finally,
Tagore emphasizes that man must realize not
only the reasoning mind, but also the creative imagination, the love and wisdom
that belong to the Supreme Person, whose spirit is over us all, love for whom comprehends
love for all creatures and exceeds in depth and strength all other loves, leading
to difficult endeavours and martyrdoms that
have no other gain than the fulfilment of this love itself.
*********
7th May 2021 G.R.Kanwal
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