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Creative Unity
"Creative Unity" is a collection of essays from Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, who in 1913 became Asia's first recipient of the Nobel Prize. Tagore was an accomplished poet, artist, playwright, novelist, composer, social reformer and businessman. The essays in this book are:
"The Poet's Religion""The Creative Ideal""The Religion of the Forest""An Indian Folk Religion""East and West""The Modern Age""The Spirit of Freedom""The Nation""Woman and Home""An Eastern University"
"The Poet's Religion""The Creative Ideal""The Religion of the Forest""An Indian Folk Religion""East and West""The Modern Age""The Spirit of Freedom""The Nation""Woman and Home""An Eastern University"
96 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1922
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About the author
Rabindranath Tagore
2,599 books4,274 followersAwarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 24, 2009
saya langsung menyukai buku ini sejak halaman pertamanya. memberi saya begitu banyak pandangan untuk kembali mengingat proporsi dalam segala sesuatu. keselarasan. dan inti utama buku ini adalah mengenai hal tersebut.
tagore bicara mengenai satu yang tak-terbatas. yang ada pada setiap diri kita. kebahagiaan, kebenaran, kesempurnaan, cinta dan simpati yang melintasi semua halangan kasta dan warna, kemerdekaan sejati dari pikiran dan jiwa yang tidak dapat datang dari luar diri kita. ekspresi akan pencarian kebenaran ini menjadi sesuatu yang kreatif, sedangkan hasrat untuk pemenuhan kebutuhan-kebutuhan itu konstruktif. dia membawa proporsi ini dari tiap individu lalu ke tingkatan rakyat, bangsa, pemerintahan, hingga hubungannya dengan bangsa-bangsa lain. seperti barat yang menyumbangkan sains. dunia lalu dipandang sebagai suatu konstruksi, seperti tata bahasa memiliki tugas absahnya dalam menganalisis sintaksis dari suatu puisi. tapi dunia adalah sebuah puisi. lebih dari sekedar suatu sintaksis. puisi yang cenderung kita lupakan ketika tata bahasa memonopoli pikiran kita. disitu tagore mengemukakan gagasannya mengenai kesatuan yang kreatif.creative unity.
kesatuan yang kreatif ini tidak menegasikan hal-hal yang buruk. sama seperti kebaikan sejati yang tidak menegasikan keburukan, tapi menguasainya. tidak juga berupaya menjadikan semua perbedaan menjadi satu yang seragam, namun menyelaraskannya. sama halnya seperti anggota-anggota tubuh yang memiliki fungsi terpisah namun juga tak dapat dipisahkan sendiri. dan tidak ada satu pun yang dapat melebihi yang lain. kita dapat memutar kepala ke bawah dan kaki di atas, namun tidak dapat membuat kepala tersebut menggantikan fungsi kaki. kita dapat mengakui bangsa yang kuat dan lemah, namun keduanya sama berbahayanya. yang lemah akan jadi berbahaya bagi yang kuat seperti pasir apung untuk gajah. ...kekuasaan yang besar bisa melukai dari luar, tetapi bisakah ia memperkaya jiwa kita? ia bisa menandatangani perjanjian-perjanjian perdamaian, bisakah ia memberi kedamaian?
untuk tidak melulu memperhatikan apa yang terpapar di depan kita; yang terus-menerus ada, menyita perhatian kita; untuk tidak melihat makanannya saja tapi lihat 'dapurnya'; bukan anatomi dunia, melainkan wajahnya; untuk bebas dan berani berpikir, mengekspresikan layaknya seorang penyair yang mengusung satu kebenaran tak-terbatas, bukan dalam kerangka agama dogmatik atau sektarian--adalah sebagian dari yang kita temukan di buku ini.
tagore memang banyak menyorot india sebagai contoh disini, namun banyak kondisi yang saya rasa tidak jauh berbeda dengan apa yang juga kita alami di indonesia. ada 1 penutup yang saya sukai. "bahwa seorang guru tidak akan pernah bisa benar-benar mengajar kecuali dia sendiri masih belajar; sebuah lampu tidak akan menyalakan lampu lain kecuali ia terus menyala dengan apinya sendiri". kumpulan informasi dan pengetahuan yang berulang hanya akan membebani otak para murid dan tidak bisa 'menghidupkan' mereka, demikian pula informasi tanpa inspirasi.
...dan saya rasa buku ini telah berhasil jadi salah satu guru 'pengajar' yang menginspirasi saya.
tagore bicara mengenai satu yang tak-terbatas. yang ada pada setiap diri kita. kebahagiaan, kebenaran, kesempurnaan, cinta dan simpati yang melintasi semua halangan kasta dan warna, kemerdekaan sejati dari pikiran dan jiwa yang tidak dapat datang dari luar diri kita. ekspresi akan pencarian kebenaran ini menjadi sesuatu yang kreatif, sedangkan hasrat untuk pemenuhan kebutuhan-kebutuhan itu konstruktif. dia membawa proporsi ini dari tiap individu lalu ke tingkatan rakyat, bangsa, pemerintahan, hingga hubungannya dengan bangsa-bangsa lain. seperti barat yang menyumbangkan sains. dunia lalu dipandang sebagai suatu konstruksi, seperti tata bahasa memiliki tugas absahnya dalam menganalisis sintaksis dari suatu puisi. tapi dunia adalah sebuah puisi. lebih dari sekedar suatu sintaksis. puisi yang cenderung kita lupakan ketika tata bahasa memonopoli pikiran kita. disitu tagore mengemukakan gagasannya mengenai kesatuan yang kreatif.creative unity.
kesatuan yang kreatif ini tidak menegasikan hal-hal yang buruk. sama seperti kebaikan sejati yang tidak menegasikan keburukan, tapi menguasainya. tidak juga berupaya menjadikan semua perbedaan menjadi satu yang seragam, namun menyelaraskannya. sama halnya seperti anggota-anggota tubuh yang memiliki fungsi terpisah namun juga tak dapat dipisahkan sendiri. dan tidak ada satu pun yang dapat melebihi yang lain. kita dapat memutar kepala ke bawah dan kaki di atas, namun tidak dapat membuat kepala tersebut menggantikan fungsi kaki. kita dapat mengakui bangsa yang kuat dan lemah, namun keduanya sama berbahayanya. yang lemah akan jadi berbahaya bagi yang kuat seperti pasir apung untuk gajah. ...kekuasaan yang besar bisa melukai dari luar, tetapi bisakah ia memperkaya jiwa kita? ia bisa menandatangani perjanjian-perjanjian perdamaian, bisakah ia memberi kedamaian?
untuk tidak melulu memperhatikan apa yang terpapar di depan kita; yang terus-menerus ada, menyita perhatian kita; untuk tidak melihat makanannya saja tapi lihat 'dapurnya'; bukan anatomi dunia, melainkan wajahnya; untuk bebas dan berani berpikir, mengekspresikan layaknya seorang penyair yang mengusung satu kebenaran tak-terbatas, bukan dalam kerangka agama dogmatik atau sektarian--adalah sebagian dari yang kita temukan di buku ini.
tagore memang banyak menyorot india sebagai contoh disini, namun banyak kondisi yang saya rasa tidak jauh berbeda dengan apa yang juga kita alami di indonesia. ada 1 penutup yang saya sukai. "bahwa seorang guru tidak akan pernah bisa benar-benar mengajar kecuali dia sendiri masih belajar; sebuah lampu tidak akan menyalakan lampu lain kecuali ia terus menyala dengan apinya sendiri". kumpulan informasi dan pengetahuan yang berulang hanya akan membebani otak para murid dan tidak bisa 'menghidupkan' mereka, demikian pula informasi tanpa inspirasi.
...dan saya rasa buku ini telah berhasil jadi salah satu guru 'pengajar' yang menginspirasi saya.
May 12, 2023
Published 101 years ago, this book is a remarkable display of tact and erudition. Tagore shows by example how cultures can constructively criticize one another. Unfortunately, it feels like this sense of brotherhood and assuming the best of others has been totally lost on us today. The main thrust of Tagore's argument is that the West, through a utilitarian effort to divide and make distinctions, has both achieved massive scientific advancement, but at a massive spiritual cost. By contrast, the East generally seeks less competition and more unity. It is extremely important to note that by unity, Tagore does NOT mean a destruction of all distinctions, as he makes explicit in the penultimate chapter about women. Instead, unity implies bringing together what is different so that all parts can be in harmony. Whereas contemporary feminism finds equality in neutering and otherwise blunting and rendering unusable, Tagore points out a more mature (and less reality-denying) alternative, an alternative which never had to be called an alternative until more recently (because previously it was just The Way Things Worked).
One way that Tagore illustrates how western utilitarianism has blighted his country is in the use of "empty kerosene cans for carrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curt and abrupt, they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness, they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful." In essence, he is pointing out that a lot more is lost than mere decorum; all of life becomes cheapened, if we look at things from such a perspective. This is especially relevant in the US, where such ugly yet useful contraptions threaten to drown us. It's this very fragmentary and ADHD approach to life which Tagore rightfully attacks as symptom of spiritual sickness:
We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth complained of when he said:
But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity, because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the fragmentary.
Modern art claims that it is trying to capture the "fragmentary" way we experience life, but this doesn't actually help us. Really, it just emphasizes the problem. Sometimes, it is cathartic to see such fragmentary art, but ultimately it threatens to establish that as the new normal, and it betrays our fear of sincerity, our making of jokes to negate every serious emotion (see the above about distinctions and women). Instead, Tagore sees in art the opportunity to strive toward the unity of all existence, an amelioratory act:
Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know through it what creation around us means.
Tagore is even so honest as to call this "the poet's religion," acknowledging that aesthetics must ultimately be described at the level of theology:
In this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty. For if beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things, then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts. Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material obstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering and loss. This is the poet's religion. Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to emancipate itself from materialism.
In writing this, Tagore makes the most convincing argument I've seen for art as salvation, because it doesn't supplant religion, it merely elucidates an Eastern conception of religion (thank God it's not just universalism). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tagore's "poet's religion" is that it both denies dogmatism YET still strives for perfection, for an absolute (which is just unity, instead of one particular). I do see something that Tagore never mentions, namely that such striving for unity does have pitfalls like an egotism impossible in western religion (if man believes he has god inside of himself/is god, he may fall into that same utilitarian mindset and give in to selfishness). Ultimately, I think it comes down to individual virtue, as Tagore so eloquently points out later in the context of nationalism:
I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with this evil [nationalism], which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions. In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, and offering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particular system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck. We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later, when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong. The system which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international to-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of primitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will only become a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained to confound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruined system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law.
Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in the individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act rightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral ideals do not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread their roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consulting any architect for their plans.
Tagore vindicates my argument that even if you have the most perfect system imaginable, if you have evil people running it, it will be corrupt. But if you have a so-so system but great individuals running it, it will actually function. Also, Tagore stresses especially how nationalism becomes its own sort of religion, which supplants traditional virtues with a particular kind of group selfishness which can become very dangerous. One way it corrupts is through unbridled greed:
The one question before all others that has to be answered by our civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness...Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained machinery.
The first part of that quote is so important, because Tagore here emphasizes the various worldviews inherent in different civilizations, not even their artistic achievements. Every language is in itself an artistic achievement, because by what shades of meaning it contains (and excludes), you can see the world through a brand new lens. So it's not a matter of "which lens" is best (or accumulating the most), but a synthesis of those lenses, acknowledging the worth of each in the context of all of them. In essence, both art and spirituality are deeply interconnected, and the loss of one threatens the loss of the other to materialism:
Our faith in the infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then our faith in money, in material power, takes its place
Unfortunately, both spirituality and art are under attack by the "pragmatic" (scientists, politicians, communists, radicals of all stripes): "Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said that these did not belong to reality." Tagore roundly rejects Foucault's very utilitarian approach to life, instead correcting the leftist project as such:
...the ultimate truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine presence.
Art, however, still sometimes suffers from such utilitarianism, as Tagore rightfully points out in many hymns and other media which values dogmatism over artistry:
For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject, assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most patriotic poems have the same deficiency.
The antidote to this is a sort of "disinterested freedom of the eternal," as he explains below:
To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal Pain.
Next, Tagore further explains the East/West distinction by arguing that both approach life and our surroundings in radically different ways: Union vs. Conquest, cultivation of sympathy vs. cultivation of power, the principle of unity vs the principle of dualism. Tagore somewhat tenuously ties these disparate worldviews to geography, arguing that the flatlands/forests of india created a unifying perception, while the more islanded and seafaring northern europeans saw in nature something to contend with and overcome. Tagore goes on to more convincingly complain that Shakespeare's plays either entirely exclude nature (such as Romeo and Juliet) or view them combatively (such as The Tempest, wherein it's something to be controlled).
Remaining true to his worldview of unity over combativeness, Tagore concludes the following:
These two civilisations represented two fundamental divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have their truth and purpose in human existence.
Tagore's tact here is telling, as is the fact that he has learned a lot from those he disagrees with, all without projecting his own biases on them:
There are men who become impatient and angry at the least discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home comforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life, which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in their rounded completeness.
Continuing this thread, contemporary partisans would do well to understand how to actually travel, how to interact with those who are different or who you disagree with:
We go to strange lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and overlook individuals.
When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding that comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign people grows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel in its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in its application
We threaten to do the same thing if we read only secondary sources which agree with us, instead of primary sources. Tagore argues that the reason we ever got into this situation is because of how utilitarianism (and its offspring, capitalism, colonialism, etc.) has instilled short-sighted greed as the highest virtue:
It has not only science for its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance of religion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised selfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws of a tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its massacres are invisible, because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Its plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which have the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries.
This relates back to the loss of "the ideal of wholeness," by which evil can, in his opinion, be best overcome: "The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty." Though we think that, through meaningless catchwords such as "freedom" and "democracy" that we're better than everyone who came before, we really suffer from the same problems (but in a more dangerous fashion, because inexplicit):
In the present age intrigue plays a wider part, and affects the whole country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anæsthetics of flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and unscrupulous diplomacy....The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They are flattered into believing that they are free, and they have the sovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts of self-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of his gift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of an apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on every side. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised interest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation of untruths; it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnotic phrases.
Stopping just short of sounding conspiratorial (but sounding thoroughly Orwellian, in the best sense), Tagore rightfully points out how dangerous media is today:
My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of money and of organised propaganda,—working everywhere behind screens of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, and antipathy,—has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of physical and moral servility.
[ REVIEW CONTINUED IN COMMENTS ]
One way that Tagore illustrates how western utilitarianism has blighted his country is in the use of "empty kerosene cans for carrying water. These cans are emblems of discourtesy; they are curt and abrupt, they have not the least shame for their unmannerliness, they do not care to be ever so slightly more than useful." In essence, he is pointing out that a lot more is lost than mere decorum; all of life becomes cheapened, if we look at things from such a perspective. This is especially relevant in the US, where such ugly yet useful contraptions threaten to drown us. It's this very fragmentary and ADHD approach to life which Tagore rightfully attacks as symptom of spiritual sickness:
We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth complained of when he said:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours.
But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity, because we are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the fragmentary.
Modern art claims that it is trying to capture the "fragmentary" way we experience life, but this doesn't actually help us. Really, it just emphasizes the problem. Sometimes, it is cathartic to see such fragmentary art, but ultimately it threatens to establish that as the new normal, and it betrays our fear of sincerity, our making of jokes to negate every serious emotion (see the above about distinctions and women). Instead, Tagore sees in art the opportunity to strive toward the unity of all existence, an amelioratory act:
Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know through it what creation around us means.
Tagore is even so honest as to call this "the poet's religion," acknowledging that aesthetics must ultimately be described at the level of theology:
In this there is a suggestion that truth reveals itself in beauty. For if beauty were mere accident, a rent in the eternal fabric of things, then it would hurt, would be defeated by the antagonism of facts. Beauty is no phantasy, it has the everlasting meaning of reality. The facts that cause despondence and gloom are mere mist, and when through the mist beauty breaks out in momentary gleams, we realise that Peace is true and not conflict, Love is true and not hatred; and Truth is the One, not the disjointed multitude. We realise that Creation is the perpetual harmony between the infinite ideal of perfection and the eternal continuity of its realisation; that so long as there is no absolute separation between the positive ideal and the material obstacle to its attainment, we need not be afraid of suffering and loss. This is the poet's religion. Those who are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to emancipate itself from materialism.
In writing this, Tagore makes the most convincing argument I've seen for art as salvation, because it doesn't supplant religion, it merely elucidates an Eastern conception of religion (thank God it's not just universalism). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tagore's "poet's religion" is that it both denies dogmatism YET still strives for perfection, for an absolute (which is just unity, instead of one particular). I do see something that Tagore never mentions, namely that such striving for unity does have pitfalls like an egotism impossible in western religion (if man believes he has god inside of himself/is god, he may fall into that same utilitarian mindset and give in to selfishness). Ultimately, I think it comes down to individual virtue, as Tagore so eloquently points out later in the context of nationalism:
I have often been asked by my Western friends how to cope with this evil [nationalism], which has attained such sinister strength and vast dimensions. In fact, I have often been blamed for merely giving warning, and offering no alternative. When we suffer as a result of a particular system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck. We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later, when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong. The system which is national to-day may assume the shape of the international to-morrow; but so long as men have not forsaken their idolatry of primitive instincts and collective passions, the new system will only become a new instrument of suffering. And because we are trained to confound efficient system with moral goodness itself, every ruined system makes us more and more distrustful of moral law.
Therefore I do not put my faith in any new institution, but in the individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act rightly, thus becoming the channels of moral truth. Our moral ideals do not work with chisels and hammers. Like trees, they spread their roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without consulting any architect for their plans.
Tagore vindicates my argument that even if you have the most perfect system imaginable, if you have evil people running it, it will be corrupt. But if you have a so-so system but great individuals running it, it will actually function. Also, Tagore stresses especially how nationalism becomes its own sort of religion, which supplants traditional virtues with a particular kind of group selfishness which can become very dangerous. One way it corrupts is through unbridled greed:
The one question before all others that has to be answered by our civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness...Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained machinery.
The first part of that quote is so important, because Tagore here emphasizes the various worldviews inherent in different civilizations, not even their artistic achievements. Every language is in itself an artistic achievement, because by what shades of meaning it contains (and excludes), you can see the world through a brand new lens. So it's not a matter of "which lens" is best (or accumulating the most), but a synthesis of those lenses, acknowledging the worth of each in the context of all of them. In essence, both art and spirituality are deeply interconnected, and the loss of one threatens the loss of the other to materialism:
Our faith in the infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then our faith in money, in material power, takes its place
Unfortunately, both spirituality and art are under attack by the "pragmatic" (scientists, politicians, communists, radicals of all stripes): "Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said that these did not belong to reality." Tagore roundly rejects Foucault's very utilitarian approach to life, instead correcting the leftist project as such:
...the ultimate truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine presence.
Art, however, still sometimes suffers from such utilitarianism, as Tagore rightfully points out in many hymns and other media which values dogmatism over artistry:
For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject, assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most patriotic poems have the same deficiency.
The antidote to this is a sort of "disinterested freedom of the eternal," as he explains below:
To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal Pain.
Next, Tagore further explains the East/West distinction by arguing that both approach life and our surroundings in radically different ways: Union vs. Conquest, cultivation of sympathy vs. cultivation of power, the principle of unity vs the principle of dualism. Tagore somewhat tenuously ties these disparate worldviews to geography, arguing that the flatlands/forests of india created a unifying perception, while the more islanded and seafaring northern europeans saw in nature something to contend with and overcome. Tagore goes on to more convincingly complain that Shakespeare's plays either entirely exclude nature (such as Romeo and Juliet) or view them combatively (such as The Tempest, wherein it's something to be controlled).
Remaining true to his worldview of unity over combativeness, Tagore concludes the following:
These two civilisations represented two fundamental divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have their truth and purpose in human existence.
Tagore's tact here is telling, as is the fact that he has learned a lot from those he disagrees with, all without projecting his own biases on them:
There are men who become impatient and angry at the least discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home comforts, which are of local make, more than the realities of life, which, like earth itself, are full of ups and downs, yet are one in their rounded completeness.
Continuing this thread, contemporary partisans would do well to understand how to actually travel, how to interact with those who are different or who you disagree with:
We go to strange lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men: but only specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general types and overlook individuals.
When we fall into the habit of neglecting to use the understanding that comes of sympathy in our travels, our knowledge of foreign people grows insensitive, and therefore easily becomes both unjust and cruel in its character, and also selfish and contemptuous in its application
We threaten to do the same thing if we read only secondary sources which agree with us, instead of primary sources. Tagore argues that the reason we ever got into this situation is because of how utilitarianism (and its offspring, capitalism, colonialism, etc.) has instilled short-sighted greed as the highest virtue:
It has not only science for its ally, but other forces also that have some semblance of religion, such as nation-worship and the idealising of organised selfishness. Its methods are far-reaching and sure. Like the claws of a tiger's paw, they are softly sheathed. Its massacres are invisible, because they are fundamental, attacking the very roots of life. Its plunder is ruthless behind a scientific system of screens, which have the formal appearance of being open and responsible to inquiries.
This relates back to the loss of "the ideal of wholeness," by which evil can, in his opinion, be best overcome: "The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty." Though we think that, through meaningless catchwords such as "freedom" and "democracy" that we're better than everyone who came before, we really suffer from the same problems (but in a more dangerous fashion, because inexplicit):
In the present age intrigue plays a wider part, and affects the whole country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anæsthetics of flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy of money and unscrupulous diplomacy....The same thing is happening now with the people of the West. They are flattered into believing that they are free, and they have the sovereign power in their hands. But this power is robbed by hosts of self-seekers, and the horse is captured and stabled because of his gift of freedom over space. The mob-mind is allowed the enjoyment of an apparent liberty, while its true freedom is curtailed on every side. Its thoughts are fashioned according to the plans of organised interest; in its choosing of ideas and forming of opinions it is hindered either by some punitive force or by the constant insinuation of untruths; it is made to dwell in an artificial world of hypnotic phrases.
Stopping just short of sounding conspiratorial (but sounding thoroughly Orwellian, in the best sense), Tagore rightfully points out how dangerous media is today:
My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of money and of organised propaganda,—working everywhere behind screens of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity, and antipathy,—has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them; he who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom; he who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it. Sooner or later he is lured into the meshes of physical and moral servility.
[ REVIEW CONTINUED IN COMMENTS ]
March 17, 2009
berpikir kreatif mengijinkan analogi bebas, sekalipun nampak tidak berhubungan. kesamaannya berada pada makna simbolisnya. maka ada istilah "terinspirasi", yang bekerja di wilayah yang tak tampak. aku menyebutnya, rububiyah.
pada titik ini, tagore adalah seorang yang menginspirasi sekaligus sebagai yang terinspirasi dari yang Satu, yang Tak Terhingga. golak pemikiran tagore berangkat dari kemanusiaan yang paling dasar. ya. tagore, saya kira, adalah seorang humanis. yang menempatkan keseimbangan di atas carut marut dunia fana. tengok ini:
kebenaran dari kehidupan kita tergantung sikap pikiran kita kepadanya -suatu sikap yang dibentuk oleh kebiasaan kita berhubungan dengannya menurut keadaan khas lingkungan-lingkungan kita dan perangai-perangai kita.
lihat. betapa tagore sungguh santun menempatkan kebenaran menjadi sebuah sintesis dari tesis. entah. keseimbangan apa yang diharapkan tagore dalam hidup ini. apakah tagore juga penganut paham wahdatul wujud. karena dalam kumpulan esai ini, tagore sering sekali merujuk pada Yang Tak Terbatas. bahkan tagore ingin menyatukan Yang Tak Terbatas ini dengan diri. dengan demikian sebuah kesatuan menjadi kreatif.
saya jadi ingat al hallaj yang lantang berkata, ana 'l hakk. akulah kenyataan tertinggi. bedanya, tagore ingin mengupayakan Ketunggalan yang mawujud dalam dunia nyata. dia mencoba menegasikan sebuah ayat misterius, surat 28:28: kullu sai'in halikun illa waghahu" (segala sesuatu sirna kecuali wajahNya). keanekaan dunia, bagi tagore, nampak hanya semu saja. bila kita menyelami dan menerobos kulit itu, maka selebung semu itu menjadi kabur lalu tampaklah dasar hakiki yang menopang segala sesuatu yang ada. tampaklah bahwa Yang Tak Terhingga dan manusia itu identik sama. dengan kata lain, tagore ingin menjadikan yang mistis itu menjadi rasional. menjadi kreatif. kesatuan kreatif.
dalam buku ini, kita akan menemukan bahwa dalam Yang Tak Terhingga, kehidupan menjangkau dan melebur segala pertentangan. itulah arti siang menjadi malam dan sebagainya. siang dapat menjadi malam karena ada dasar yang sama. sedangkan siang dan malam hanya merupakan penampakan pada kulit. tagore menegaskan, barangsiapa mengetahu itu, dia sudah menemukan hidup yang tunggal dan Ada yang tunggal di bawah segala keanekaan. konsep ini dalam budaya jawa, dikenal dengan sebutan "jalma luwih", manusia sempurna, ubermensch.
jalma luwih sajati ning manungsweki / kang ampun tumekeng urip / urip ing Allah tangala / uripe datullah yekti / uripe jeneng ing suksma.
ia telah mencapai kehidupan, yaitu kehidupan Tuhan sendiri. yang hidupnya adalah dzat Tuhan sendiri. yang hidupnya ialah suksma lepas dari unsur kebendaan.
jadi, apa yang ingin disampaikan tagore dalam buku ini adalah yang ada bukan badan jasmani yang dihidupi oleh jiwa sebagai prinsip kehidupan otonom. melainkan suatu badan rohani yang dihidupi oleh kehidupan ilahi yang meresapi jiwa-jiwa seluruhnya. orang barat menyebutnya spiritualism. tagore menyebutnya kesatuan kreatif. saya menyebutnya rububiyah.
selamat menikmati kebijaksanaan tertinggi ala tagore.
gieb.
ps: terimakasih buat mel atas pinjaman bukunya. kapan bisa dikembalikan?
pada titik ini, tagore adalah seorang yang menginspirasi sekaligus sebagai yang terinspirasi dari yang Satu, yang Tak Terhingga. golak pemikiran tagore berangkat dari kemanusiaan yang paling dasar. ya. tagore, saya kira, adalah seorang humanis. yang menempatkan keseimbangan di atas carut marut dunia fana. tengok ini:
kebenaran dari kehidupan kita tergantung sikap pikiran kita kepadanya -suatu sikap yang dibentuk oleh kebiasaan kita berhubungan dengannya menurut keadaan khas lingkungan-lingkungan kita dan perangai-perangai kita.
lihat. betapa tagore sungguh santun menempatkan kebenaran menjadi sebuah sintesis dari tesis. entah. keseimbangan apa yang diharapkan tagore dalam hidup ini. apakah tagore juga penganut paham wahdatul wujud. karena dalam kumpulan esai ini, tagore sering sekali merujuk pada Yang Tak Terbatas. bahkan tagore ingin menyatukan Yang Tak Terbatas ini dengan diri. dengan demikian sebuah kesatuan menjadi kreatif.
saya jadi ingat al hallaj yang lantang berkata, ana 'l hakk. akulah kenyataan tertinggi. bedanya, tagore ingin mengupayakan Ketunggalan yang mawujud dalam dunia nyata. dia mencoba menegasikan sebuah ayat misterius, surat 28:28: kullu sai'in halikun illa waghahu" (segala sesuatu sirna kecuali wajahNya). keanekaan dunia, bagi tagore, nampak hanya semu saja. bila kita menyelami dan menerobos kulit itu, maka selebung semu itu menjadi kabur lalu tampaklah dasar hakiki yang menopang segala sesuatu yang ada. tampaklah bahwa Yang Tak Terhingga dan manusia itu identik sama. dengan kata lain, tagore ingin menjadikan yang mistis itu menjadi rasional. menjadi kreatif. kesatuan kreatif.
dalam buku ini, kita akan menemukan bahwa dalam Yang Tak Terhingga, kehidupan menjangkau dan melebur segala pertentangan. itulah arti siang menjadi malam dan sebagainya. siang dapat menjadi malam karena ada dasar yang sama. sedangkan siang dan malam hanya merupakan penampakan pada kulit. tagore menegaskan, barangsiapa mengetahu itu, dia sudah menemukan hidup yang tunggal dan Ada yang tunggal di bawah segala keanekaan. konsep ini dalam budaya jawa, dikenal dengan sebutan "jalma luwih", manusia sempurna, ubermensch.
jalma luwih sajati ning manungsweki / kang ampun tumekeng urip / urip ing Allah tangala / uripe datullah yekti / uripe jeneng ing suksma.
ia telah mencapai kehidupan, yaitu kehidupan Tuhan sendiri. yang hidupnya adalah dzat Tuhan sendiri. yang hidupnya ialah suksma lepas dari unsur kebendaan.
jadi, apa yang ingin disampaikan tagore dalam buku ini adalah yang ada bukan badan jasmani yang dihidupi oleh jiwa sebagai prinsip kehidupan otonom. melainkan suatu badan rohani yang dihidupi oleh kehidupan ilahi yang meresapi jiwa-jiwa seluruhnya. orang barat menyebutnya spiritualism. tagore menyebutnya kesatuan kreatif. saya menyebutnya rububiyah.
selamat menikmati kebijaksanaan tertinggi ala tagore.
gieb.
ps: terimakasih buat mel atas pinjaman bukunya. kapan bisa dikembalikan?
April 7, 2021
“It is for faith to answer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselves opens the door and receives it with joy." The function of poetry and the arts is to remind us that the greenroom is the greyest of illusions, and the reality is the drama presented before us, all its paint and tinsel, masks and pageantry, made one in art. The ropes and wheels perish, the stage is changed; but the dream which is drama remains true, for there remains the eternal Dreamer.”
“Between the artist and his art must be that perfect detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of this love except for its own perfect expression.”
“A poet of medieval India tells us about his source of inspiration in a poem containing a question and an answer:
Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest? Was not all your pleasure stored therein? What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?
The bird answers:
I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds. When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!”
“And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world when the idea of the Avatâr found its place in religion. Western scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the nature of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile across the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy of suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. The religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual, but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have in its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul.”
“True emancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of the limited life of the self, can never be attained by fleeing from it, but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth--the truth of the higher life of love.”
“For the personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.”
“For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly, on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals, to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their whole future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense of the great personality of man.”
“The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the lights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and our consciousness of shame are hidden, and our love of freedom is killed.”
“Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professional man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front. Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent upon pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals.”
“Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of growth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our students have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Success consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which the mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of it made to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at the result. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and police inspectors, and we die young.”
“A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because, for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but no communication of life and love.”
“The Western universities have not yet truly recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,--lines and colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The great use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to know man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It is a great world of reality for man,--vast and profound,--this growing world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the messages that are beyond speech. “
“Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to fit us for the complications of our later years.”
“Between the artist and his art must be that perfect detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of this love except for its own perfect expression.”
“A poet of medieval India tells us about his source of inspiration in a poem containing a question and an answer:
Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest? Was not all your pleasure stored therein? What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?
The bird answers:
I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds. When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!”
“And I believe this was the first occasion in the history of the world when the idea of the Avatâr found its place in religion. Western scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the nature of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget that it was held to be a religion that roused in its devotees an inextinguishable fire of enthusiasm and carried them to lifelong exile across the mountain and desert barriers. To say that a philosophy of suicide can keep kindled in human hearts for centuries such fervour of self-sacrifice is to go against all the laws of sane psychology. The religious enthusiasm which cannot be bound within any daily ritual, but overflows into adventures of love and beneficence, must have in its centre that element of personality which rouses the whole soul.”
“True emancipation from suffering, which is the inalienable condition of the limited life of the self, can never be attained by fleeing from it, but rather by changing its value in the realm of truth--the truth of the higher life of love.”
“For the personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.”
“For this very reason I have realised all the more strongly, on the other hand, that the dominant collective idea in the Western countries is not creative. It is ready to enslave or kill individuals, to drug a great people with soul-killing poison, darkening their whole future with the black mist of stupefaction, and emasculating entire races of men to the utmost degree of helplessness. It is wholly wanting in spiritual power to blend and harmonise; it lacks the sense of the great personality of man.”
“The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the lights of our souls, and in that darkness our conscience and our consciousness of shame are hidden, and our love of freedom is killed.”
“Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his spirit has its freedom to express itself and to grow. The professional man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front. Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively intent upon pursuit of success at the cost of his faith in ideals.”
“Mind, when long deprived of its natural food of truth and freedom of growth, develops an unnatural craving for success; and our students have fallen victims to the mania for success in examinations. Success consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which the mind is encouraged to rob itself. But as we are by means of it made to forget the existence of mind, we are supremely happy at the result. We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and police inspectors, and we die young.”
“A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because, for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but no communication of life and love.”
“The Western universities have not yet truly recognised that fulness of expression is fulness of life. And a large part of man can never find its expression in the mere language of words. It must therefore seek for its other languages,--lines and colours, sounds and movements. Through our mastery of these we not only make our whole nature articulate, but also understand man in all his attempts to reveal his innermost being in every age and clime. The great use of Education is not merely to collect facts, but to know man and to make oneself known to man. It is the duty of every human being to master, at least to some extent, not only the language of intellect, but also that personality which is the language of Art. It is a great world of reality for man,--vast and profound,--this growing world of his own creative nature. This is the world of Art. To be brought up in ignorance of it is to be deprived of the knowledge and use of that great inheritance of humanity, which has been growing and waiting for every one of us from the beginning of our history. It is to remain deaf to the eternal voice of Man, that speaks to all men the messages that are beyond speech. “
“Life, in such a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to fit us for the complications of our later years.”
October 7, 2022
So, I found this book in a dusty corner of the school library. Apparently, it had been last borrowed in 1977 so I decided it would be a cosmic crime not to borrow it. The following review is the same one I wrote for school:
Title of the book: Creative Unity
Author of the book: Rabindranath Tagore
Genre: Indian philosophy (?)
Synopsis:
In this book, Rabindranath Tagore, through his lyrical language, attempts to demonstrate the concepts of 'Advaita Vedanta, a Hindu philosophy emphasizing nondualism ('a'- 'non'; 'dwaita'- 'duality')- the unity in multiplicity, the harmony in conflicting ideas. One of the opening lines beautifully captures the essence of Advaita philosophy. It says:
"It is some untold mystery of unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the immense mass of multitude to a single point."
The book consists of 10 essays, each of which reveals the non-dualism intrinsic in a variety of ideas.
(1) The Poet's Religion:
The Union between the One inside us and the One outside us facilitates what the poet considers an ideal expression of creativity. He writes:
"A poet must realise the unity within themselves. Then he must understand that this unity within ourselves is in harmony with the unity outside ourselves- the One is infinite"
Thus infused with harmony, when the poet brings forth a creation it will be nothing more than the reflection of the unity inside them.
(2) The Creative Unity:
Here, the poet further propagates the theme of unity in creation. He writes that art is at a disadvantage when it emphasizes a storm of feelings, and asserts the prominence of a subject. Instead, art must be "harmonious in the context of everlasting life; like the thunder-flash in the storm sky, not the laboratory wire."
(3) The Religion of the Forest
Here, the dualistic Western mindset is compared to the non-dualism prevalent in Indian philosophy, through examples of famous literature of both lands. In Northern India, people found no barrier between their lives and the life permeating the universe. Thus, they found harmony in the surrounding forests. This can be seen reflected in the classics of India: in both of Kalidasa's famous works, Kumar Sambhava and Shakuntala, emotions and passions are " set to the harmony of nature's symphony".
(4) An Indian Folk Religion:
In the fourth essay, and my personal favourite, Tagore extends the concept of Advaita-Vedanta to matters of faith, and exemplifies this in two religions that originated in India- 'Mahayana Buddhism' and the religion of the simple Baul people of Bengal. Mahayana Buddhism is far more organised theologically, but at their core, both emphasise the role of divine love in discerning the Infinite Being within us. Nagarjuna, a Buddhist scholar, says:
"One who understands the nature of Bodhi-hridaya sees everything with a loving heart."
And the simple Baul likens the emancipation of self to the blossoming of a bud and sings:
"The opening spirit has overtaken thee/ Canst thou remain a bud any longer?
(5) East and West:
The fifth essay ponders the question why the momentous meeting of the East and the West resulted in suffering and not happiness. It states that this was because the West denied its Oneness with the East and came not with a creative ideal but with a Passion- which is the antithesis of unity in mind- a Passion for power. The poet ends by likening Western science to nest building and Eastern spirituality to soaring through the sky and says:
(Shall) the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest...never meet?
(6) The Modern Age:
This essay furthers the theme of the importance of the union between science and spirituality. The ending lines aptly sum up its contents:
"As, though science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity of Man alone can give us peace."
(7) The Spirit of Freedom:
This essay does not seem to very directly relate to the general philosophy of the book (obviously, this may be due to my lack of understanding). It stresses the idea of inner freedom and the futility of external freedom in the absence of it.
(8) The Nation:
The eighth essay brings out an interesting viewpoint regarding the cult of nationalism that emphasises "professionalism", which Tagore considers a state entailing narrow-mindedness and selfishness. He states that nationalism in the form of an incessant self-consciousness is in fact injurious to people. A nation must have a living personality- a reflection of harmony. However, a selfish consciousness of a nation ought to come only in times of self-preservation.
(9) Woman and Home:
This essay brought to light Rabindranath Tagore's view on the role of women in life. The poet writes at the beginning of the essay:
"...life finds its truth and beauty not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony."
He then extrapolates this theme to the context of women, stating how many women seek to become psychologically similar to men, ignoring the vitality of feminity.
Although there were certain finer points of the essay I personally disagreed with, it still raises many points especially relevant to the modern era.
(10) The Eastern University:
The last essay deals with a subject close to the poet's heart: that of a University authentically Indian
in its mindset and ideals. Rabindranath Tagore stresses this point not out of resentment of Western culture, but rather because one can enjoy the fruits of a foreign culture only when they have a deep understanding of their own. He states:
"A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it can contain its due tributaries, but our relations with a flood can only prove disastrous."
According to Tagore, such a University would serve as a centre of the intellectual life of the people. Like the tapovanas of old, it would not be an isolated centre of specialised knowledge, but rather one which would make us realise, "the inner principle of unity of all knowledge and all activities of our social and spiritual being."
My opinion: This book was definitely not easy to read, and many passages required several re-reads. However, the experience was totally worth it.
Recommendation: I recommend this book to those who enjoy philosophy and wish to learn more about Indian culture. However, I think it is fair to warn that this book requires the complete attention of the reader in order to be understood properly.
Title of the book: Creative Unity
Author of the book: Rabindranath Tagore
Genre: Indian philosophy (?)
Synopsis:
In this book, Rabindranath Tagore, through his lyrical language, attempts to demonstrate the concepts of 'Advaita Vedanta, a Hindu philosophy emphasizing nondualism ('a'- 'non'; 'dwaita'- 'duality')- the unity in multiplicity, the harmony in conflicting ideas. One of the opening lines beautifully captures the essence of Advaita philosophy. It says:
"It is some untold mystery of unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the immense mass of multitude to a single point."
The book consists of 10 essays, each of which reveals the non-dualism intrinsic in a variety of ideas.
(1) The Poet's Religion:
The Union between the One inside us and the One outside us facilitates what the poet considers an ideal expression of creativity. He writes:
"A poet must realise the unity within themselves. Then he must understand that this unity within ourselves is in harmony with the unity outside ourselves- the One is infinite"
Thus infused with harmony, when the poet brings forth a creation it will be nothing more than the reflection of the unity inside them.
(2) The Creative Unity:
Here, the poet further propagates the theme of unity in creation. He writes that art is at a disadvantage when it emphasizes a storm of feelings, and asserts the prominence of a subject. Instead, art must be "harmonious in the context of everlasting life; like the thunder-flash in the storm sky, not the laboratory wire."
(3) The Religion of the Forest
Here, the dualistic Western mindset is compared to the non-dualism prevalent in Indian philosophy, through examples of famous literature of both lands. In Northern India, people found no barrier between their lives and the life permeating the universe. Thus, they found harmony in the surrounding forests. This can be seen reflected in the classics of India: in both of Kalidasa's famous works, Kumar Sambhava and Shakuntala, emotions and passions are " set to the harmony of nature's symphony".
(4) An Indian Folk Religion:
In the fourth essay, and my personal favourite, Tagore extends the concept of Advaita-Vedanta to matters of faith, and exemplifies this in two religions that originated in India- 'Mahayana Buddhism' and the religion of the simple Baul people of Bengal. Mahayana Buddhism is far more organised theologically, but at their core, both emphasise the role of divine love in discerning the Infinite Being within us. Nagarjuna, a Buddhist scholar, says:
"One who understands the nature of Bodhi-hridaya sees everything with a loving heart."
And the simple Baul likens the emancipation of self to the blossoming of a bud and sings:
"The opening spirit has overtaken thee/ Canst thou remain a bud any longer?
(5) East and West:
The fifth essay ponders the question why the momentous meeting of the East and the West resulted in suffering and not happiness. It states that this was because the West denied its Oneness with the East and came not with a creative ideal but with a Passion- which is the antithesis of unity in mind- a Passion for power. The poet ends by likening Western science to nest building and Eastern spirituality to soaring through the sky and says:
(Shall) the messenger of the sky and the builder of the nest...never meet?
(6) The Modern Age:
This essay furthers the theme of the importance of the union between science and spirituality. The ending lines aptly sum up its contents:
"As, though science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity of Man alone can give us peace."
(7) The Spirit of Freedom:
This essay does not seem to very directly relate to the general philosophy of the book (obviously, this may be due to my lack of understanding). It stresses the idea of inner freedom and the futility of external freedom in the absence of it.
(8) The Nation:
The eighth essay brings out an interesting viewpoint regarding the cult of nationalism that emphasises "professionalism", which Tagore considers a state entailing narrow-mindedness and selfishness. He states that nationalism in the form of an incessant self-consciousness is in fact injurious to people. A nation must have a living personality- a reflection of harmony. However, a selfish consciousness of a nation ought to come only in times of self-preservation.
(9) Woman and Home:
This essay brought to light Rabindranath Tagore's view on the role of women in life. The poet writes at the beginning of the essay:
"...life finds its truth and beauty not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony."
He then extrapolates this theme to the context of women, stating how many women seek to become psychologically similar to men, ignoring the vitality of feminity.
Although there were certain finer points of the essay I personally disagreed with, it still raises many points especially relevant to the modern era.
(10) The Eastern University:
The last essay deals with a subject close to the poet's heart: that of a University authentically Indian
in its mindset and ideals. Rabindranath Tagore stresses this point not out of resentment of Western culture, but rather because one can enjoy the fruits of a foreign culture only when they have a deep understanding of their own. He states:
"A river flowing within banks is truly our own, and it can contain its due tributaries, but our relations with a flood can only prove disastrous."
According to Tagore, such a University would serve as a centre of the intellectual life of the people. Like the tapovanas of old, it would not be an isolated centre of specialised knowledge, but rather one which would make us realise, "the inner principle of unity of all knowledge and all activities of our social and spiritual being."
My opinion: This book was definitely not easy to read, and many passages required several re-reads. However, the experience was totally worth it.
Recommendation: I recommend this book to those who enjoy philosophy and wish to learn more about Indian culture. However, I think it is fair to warn that this book requires the complete attention of the reader in order to be understood properly.
October 21, 2017
What a condescending load of Indian chauvinistic shit. I’ve never felt more insulted as a Westerner, and I mean it. Trashing my Tagore books after this bilge.
May 6, 2020
Awesome read. Wise man with his wisest pen.
January 16, 2026
"Kebenaran adalah Keindahan, Keindahan adalah Kebenaran"
September 11, 2014
A literary extravaganza from Rabindranath Tagore - the one and only English literature Nobel laureate, from India. His extensive knowledge on every subject with regard to the spiritual and physical aspects of nature and man, which according to him, exist for the sole purpose of creation rather than production is the idea behind this wonderful book.
His literary meaning to some of the great poems by Keats, Wordsworth and Shelley in conjunction with God’s creative unity of nature’s own beauties, are to be well noted. His emphasis on poetry and literary art skills of our ancestors in paving the way for a harmonious existence with nature’s beauty and God’s love is well brought out by the author. The author’s rich knowledge about the importance of birth, childhood, adulthood, womanhood, and old age with respect to their inherent strengths, weaknesses and their synchronization with nature’s own creative ability is the main objective of the author. The influence of Western education on the Eastern value system and its detrimental effects on the thinking capacities of the students of the East can never be better explained. Finally, the need to create a versatile World University to receive and impart education from both the hemispheres and its ability to create learners and teachers that can constructively unify the different varieties of creative thinking into a single unified strength for the benefit of the world citizens is called upon.
A rich celebration of classic literature and the heights of English word experience, in this book. Hats off to the vision and knowledge of this great author from India, who has taken the pride of his country, to every shore of this world. One must read this book to experience the joy of English literature in context to God’s creation and the purpose of its unification with man’s learning.
Speaking about the darker part of this work, the author has very cleverly put forward his hatred towards Western culture and Christianity. Simultaneously he took care in praising its roots of becoming the basis of empowering the West with useful knowledge and creative abilities, probably to avoid the wrath of the British who were ruling India at that time.
My rating is 3.25 out of 5
His literary meaning to some of the great poems by Keats, Wordsworth and Shelley in conjunction with God’s creative unity of nature’s own beauties, are to be well noted. His emphasis on poetry and literary art skills of our ancestors in paving the way for a harmonious existence with nature’s beauty and God’s love is well brought out by the author. The author’s rich knowledge about the importance of birth, childhood, adulthood, womanhood, and old age with respect to their inherent strengths, weaknesses and their synchronization with nature’s own creative ability is the main objective of the author. The influence of Western education on the Eastern value system and its detrimental effects on the thinking capacities of the students of the East can never be better explained. Finally, the need to create a versatile World University to receive and impart education from both the hemispheres and its ability to create learners and teachers that can constructively unify the different varieties of creative thinking into a single unified strength for the benefit of the world citizens is called upon.
A rich celebration of classic literature and the heights of English word experience, in this book. Hats off to the vision and knowledge of this great author from India, who has taken the pride of his country, to every shore of this world. One must read this book to experience the joy of English literature in context to God’s creation and the purpose of its unification with man’s learning.
Speaking about the darker part of this work, the author has very cleverly put forward his hatred towards Western culture and Christianity. Simultaneously he took care in praising its roots of becoming the basis of empowering the West with useful knowledge and creative abilities, probably to avoid the wrath of the British who were ruling India at that time.
My rating is 3.25 out of 5
June 13, 2013
Satu lagi "kitab suci" yang wajib dibaca!
March 30, 2013
Kindle Ebook
February 18, 2009
seperti kata mel..
buku ini bikin untuk langsung jatuh cinta.. :D
buku ini bikin untuk langsung jatuh cinta.. :D
May 23, 2017
The two chapters, "The Nation" and "Woman and Home", are very significant and original contributions to modern thought.
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