Tagore's Cosmic Love

M N KUNDU





An experience of the infinite Absolute is expressed in the Rig Veda thus, “Oh, the vastness!“ In Rabindranath Tagore's mystic vision, the vastness of the Omnipresent is manifested in a colourful and rhythmic feast of sight and symphony and the Creator appeared as his cosmic beloved. But His perpetual presence constituted a profound theme of divine romance, an earnest mysticism of intense joy and realisation above any intellectual pursuit or bookish philosophy .Tagore's divine romance is grounded in the reality of life but never in any sense in the negation of life. “No, I will never shut the doors of my senses. The delights of sight, hearing and touch will bear Thy delight,“ he wrote. He felt the embrace of freedom in innumerable bonds of delight and so he did not want deliverance through renunciation of joyful engagement with life.
This world-affirming pantheism of Tagore, however, does not make him oblivious to the domain of infinitude where there is neither day nor night, form or colour, not even a single word. This realisation of the dualism of the non-dual Being made him sing, “Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well.“
Tagore's cosmic romance found a profound elevation in the firm assertion, “Thou hast taken me as Thy partner is all this wealth. In my heart is the endless play of Thy delight. In my life Thy will is ever taking shape.“ Is this not the height of mysticism, a mingling of poetry and spirituality?

Source: Economic, Times