A Search for Unity

I've just finished reading, Rabindranath Tagore's Atmaparichay (Of Myself), a collection of autobiographical writings by the Bengali poet. And it was with great delight that I did so.

Tagore does not venture to give us a mundane description of his life. Instead I think he tries to convey something more central: who he was, and what he lived for. At the same time he makes some piercing observations about the world that we live in, the trappings of power, fame and 'high-speed society'.

In the succession of essays there is a sense of his development as a poet and of his relationship with the Divine. The two are linked inextricably, for he considered his work through poetry to be to awaken and raise the human spirit to the Divine. His work was an attempt to convey that rapture of divine consciousness which was so much at the core of his experience.

My heart and soul have responded to the unarticulated message, the unstruck note that swirls about Creation and resonates from Time that has no beginning towards Time that has no end...

I am not a holy man, not an ascetic. I have merely tasted the imperishable essence of the cosmos and returned again and again to say how good it was.

Tagore was and still is a revered and well-known figure in India. With this came the inevitable fame and public scrutiny of his life and work. But these did not bear on his worldly purpose. It was his nature as a poet, above all else, that dominated his being. It was this that he came to do, and this that sustained him. This is in my view the rare mark of a life whose song was in perfect consonance with the cosmic melody.

Love is the greatest blessing of fate, and it is also the best reward for a poet. He who can offer nothing but work may be repaid with fame, but he whose burden it is to offer joy cannot be paid off without love as his due.