Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (May 7, 1861 - August 7, 1941) the bard of Bengal immaculately
brought out the essence of Eastern spirituality in his poetry like no other
poet. His spiritual vision, as he himself said, is imbued "with the ancient
spirit of India as revealed in our sacred texts and manifested in the life of
today."
Tagore's Mystical Quest
Swami Adiswarananda of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, in his
preface to 'Tagore: The Mystic Poets' writes, "The inner-seeking spirituality
of India infused all of Tagore's writing. He wrote in many genres of the deep
religious milieu of Hinduism. The values and core beliefs of the Hindu scriptures
permeated his work." Says the Swami: "Rabindranath Tagore's philosophical
and spiritual thoughts transcend all limits of language, culture, and nationality.
In his writings, the poet and mystic takes us on a spiritual quest and gives
us a glimpse of the infinite in the midst of the finite, unity at the heart
of all diversity, and the Divine in all beings and things of the universe."
Tagore's Spiritual Beliefs
Tagore believed that "True knowledge is that which perceives the unity
of all things in God." Tagore through his vast body of immortal literary
works taught us that the universe is a manifestation of God, and that there
is no unbridgeable gulf between our world and God's, and that God is the one
who can provide the greatest love and joy.
Tagore's Poetry Teaches Us How to Love God
Tagore's 'Gitanjali' or 'Song Offerings' that contains his own English prose translations of Bengali poetry was published in 1913 with an introduction
by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats. This book won Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature
that year. Here's an excerpt from his introduction that helps us realize that
"We had not known that we loved God, hardly it may be that we believed
in Him…"
The Ubiquity of God in Tagore's Works
Yeats writes: "These verses … as the generations pass, travellers
will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon the rivers. Lovers, while they
await one another, shall find, in murmuring them, this love of God a magic gulf
wherein their own more bitter passion may bathe and renew its youth… The
traveller in the read-brown clothes that he wears that dust may not show upon
him, the girl searching in her bed for the petals fallen from the wreath of
her royal lover, the servant or the bride awaiting the master's home-coming
in the empty house, are images of the heart turning to God. Flowers and rivers,
the blowing of conch shells, the heavy rain of the Indian July, or the moods
of that heart in union or in separation; and a man sitting in a boat upon a
river playing lute, like one of those figures full of mysterious meaning in
a Chinese picture, is God Himself…"
Select Poems from Tagore's Song Offerings
The following pages contain a selection of his best poems that are steeped in
Indian mysticism and the omnipresence of the Almighty as someone so close to
our heart.
