The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
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The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) by Kalyan Sen Gupta (z-lib.org)
Communion with Nature
59 According to Tagore, nature reveals an inner harmony within itself, among the countless different items that constitute it. As he puts it: There is a bond of harmony between our two eyes which makes them work in unison. Likewise there is an unbreakable continuity of relation in the physical world between heat and cold, light and darkness, motion and rest, as between the bass and treble notes of a piano. That is why opposites do not bring confusion in the universe, but harmony. 14 Any disharmony or lack of unity that we perceive in nature is, therefore, only apparent. This is the point he makes in the following analogy with waves and the sea of which they are integral parts: Waves rise each to its individual height in a seeming attitude of unrelenting competition, but only up to a certain point; and thus we know of the great repose of the sea to which they are all related, and to which they must all return in a rhythm which is marvelously beautiful. 15 It is because of this harmony that nature, in Tagore’s view, is like a perfect work of art. It might be compared to a great symphony with its different constituent parts analogous to the different instruments of the orchestra that, while playing different notes, combine to produce harmonious music. For Rabindranath, nature possesses, in Clive Bell’s phrase, ‘significant form’. The beauty of a rose, he says, lies in its size and proportion, in the harmonious arrangement or graceful combination of its elements. 16 ‘The rose,’ as he says in another place, ‘appears to me to be still, but because of its meter of composition it has a lyric of movement within that stillness, which is the same as the dynamic quality of a picture that has a perfect harmony. It produces a music in our consciousness by giving it a swing of motion synchronous with its own.’ 17 The beauty of nature, then, lies in its significant forms and hence is able to engage our aesthetic imagination. Just as the spider lying at the center spreads a web around it, similarly our soul is engaged in making relations with everything centering around it. It is constantly creating a bridge between it and the other. Beauty is that bridge between man and nature. 18 Through our sense of beauty, says Rabindranath, we realize a harmony in nature, and the more we comprehend this harmony, the more our life shares in the gladness of creation, and the more we realize our affinity with nature and experience an expansion of our consciousness. It is clear, then, a central theme of Tagore’s is the intimate kinship between human beings and nature, a kinship with moral as well aesthetic dimensions to it. 60 The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but it purifies his heart; for it touches his soul. The earth does not merely hold his body, but it gladdens his mind, for its contact is more than physical contact – it is living presence. When a man does not realize his kinship with nature, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him. 19 When, therefore, a man realizes his identity with nature, he is emancipated from his narrow individual enclosure, and the circle of his concerns and sympathies extends to everything by which he is surrounded. A person is enjoined, then, to be fully awake to the fact that he stands in the closest relation with things around him, that the warm embrace of the morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth should ‘irradiate’ his mind with the bond that holds man and nature together. For Tagore, we saw, this intimate companionship with the ‘limitless beauty’ of nature not only fills us with joy but is a relationship of love. It is worth briefly elaborating on this point. The relevant concept of love, which he inherits from the great Indian seers, figures prominently in his thought, as we saw in Chapter 1. In social relations, this love, according to him, offers the only promise of redemption in times when violence and hatred prevail. It is in love, and only in that, that men and women can hope to resist the strings that pull them, puppet like, this way and that, pitting country against country, class against class, and person against person. Similarly, Tagore also speaks of the bond of love with nature. But how, more precisely, does he conceive of love? In love, Rabindranath notes, ‘all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not in variance. Love must be one and two at the same time.’ 20 The implication of this is that there cannot be love unless, first of all, there is a genuine difference between ‘the lover’ and ‘the object of love’. But at the same time, love also involves identification between the two: the lover tends to become one with the object, when he envelops the object into his loving consciousness, and finds his own other self in his beloved. Hence, when Tagore speaks of our love of nature, his point is that this love is at once an appreciation of the differences between man and nature and a recognition, nevertheless, of a deep unity. It is in love that one is so united with nature as to find the enlargement and meaning of one’s own being. Love, therefore, whether for a beloved person or for nature, is the tie between the ego and the beyond. It is the primary mode of the extension of ego beyond itself. As Tagore succinctly puts it, ‘Without this ego, what is love? And again with only this ego, how can love be possible?’ 21 Evidently, this perception of our union with nature is not a matter of mere intellectual knowledge, for it involves our imaginative ability to feel one with nature and to open out ‘our being into a luminous consciousness’ of everything around us with ‘a radiant joy and an ever spreading love’. This point needs some clarification. Here it is helpful to consider the crucial distinction that Tagore made between ‘fact’ and ‘truth’. ‘There is fact on the Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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