Creative Unity

Creative Unity, by Rabindranath
Tagore

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Title: Creative Unity
Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Release Date: October 21, 2007 [EBook #23136]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CREATIVE UNITY
BY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET,
LONDON 1922
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
COPYRIGHT
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

TO DR. EDWIN H. LEWIS

INTRODUCTION
It costs me nothing to feel that I am; it is no burden to me. And yet if
the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable facts concerning
all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could be broken
up, they would prove endless. 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.
This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it
knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only
because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction of
the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its knowledge

of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in the aspect of a
tree.
This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which it
gives expression to an ideal of unity in its endless show of variety.
Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joy only because
they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity.
This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding
and creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union in love
for its fulfilment. It seeks itself in others. This is a fact, which would be
absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give it reality. In
love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the ultimate truth.
Therefore it is said in the Upanishads that the advaitam is
anantam,--"the One is Infinite"; that the advaitam is anandam,--"the
One is Love."
To give perfect expression to the One, the Infinite, through the
harmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice of self,
is the object alike of our individual life and our society.

CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
THE POET'S RELIGION 3
THE CREATIVE IDEAL 31
THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST 45
AN INDIAN FOLK RELIGION 69
EAST AND WEST 93

THE MODERN AGE 115
THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM 133
THE NATION 143
WOMAN AND HOME 157
AN EASTERN UNIVERSITY 169

THE POET'S RELIGION
I
Civility is beauty of behaviour. It requires for its perfection patience,
self-control, and an environment of leisure. For genuine courtesy is a
creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious blending of voice,
gesture and movement, words and action, in which generosity of
conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has no ulterior
purpose.
Our needs are always in a hurry. They rush and hustle, they are rude
and unceremonious; they have no surplus of leisure, no patience for
anything else but fulfilment of purpose. We frequently see in our
country at the present day men utilising 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.
The instruments of our necessity assert that we must have food, shelter,
clothes, comforts and convenience. And yet men spend an immense
amount of their time and resources in contradicting this assertion, to
prove that they are not a mere living catalogue of endless wants; that
there is in them an ideal of perfection, a sense of unity, which is a
harmony between parts and a harmony with surroundings.
The quality of the infinite is not the magnitude of extension, it is in the

Advaitam, the mystery of Unity. Facts occupy endless time and space;
but the truth comprehending them all has no dimension; it is One.
Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it finds the
touch of the infinite.
I was speaking