<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>Kabindranath Tagore</title>
</head>

<body>

<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="6" style="border-collapse: collapse">
	<tr>
		<td>
		<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<b>
<font face="Times New Roman"><i>Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo</i> </font>

		</b>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">&nbsp;</p>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&quot;TAGORE has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours
in his own way.&quot; Sri Aurobindo wrote these words in the
thirties and their full significance can be grasped only when it
is understood that the two master-souls were at one in the
central purpose of their lives. Also there is a further bond of
natural affinity between them centring round the fact that
both were poets, in a deeper sense, seer poets—Rabindranath
the Poet of the Dawn, Sri Aurobindo the Poet and Prophet of
the Eternal Day, a new Dawn and Day for the human race. </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their
Motherland and that was why both regarded her freedom as
the basic necessity for the recovery of her greatness. How the
inspired songs and speeches of Rabindranath and the flaming '
utterances of Sri Aurobindo created a psychological revolution
almost overnight in the mind and heart of the people during
the Swadeshi days forms a glorious chapter in the history of
India's freedom movement. Profoundly touched by Sri
Aurobindo's soul-stirring lead to the country, Rabindranath
wrote a memorable poem, addressing Sri Aurobindo, which is
still enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. Rabindranath
himself called on Sri Aurobindo and read out to him his heart's
homage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines: </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">Rabindranath, 0 Aurobindo, bows to thee! </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">0 friend, my country's friend, 0 voice incarnate, free, </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">Of India's soul !<sup>1</sup></font><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sri Aurobindo retired from the outer political world to
devote himself more intensively to the discovery and conquest</font><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman"><br>
<font size="2">1 &quot;Salutation&quot;</font>&nbsp; </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
<font face="Times New Roman">Page 375</font><hr>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">of a new consciousness and force, glimpses of which he was
having at the time and which alone could save mankind and recreate it. From 1910 
to 1914 he was, he said, silently developing this new power in seclusion and in 1914 he began to give
to the world the result of his realisations through his monthly
review <i>Arya.</i> In five major sequences published month after
month through several years, he envisaged, in the main, the
progressive march of man towards a divine life on earth,
towards the unity of mankind and a perfect social order. One
of these serials was called <i>The Future Poetry</i> in which he traced
the growth and development that world poetry is undergoing
towards its future form that would voice the dawn of a New
Age of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo hailed those who feel and foresee this distant 
dawn behind the horizon as the Forerunners of the new Spirit, among whom he included Rabindranath, because he saw in Tagore's the first beginnings, &quot;a glint
of the greater era of man's living&quot;, something that &quot;seems to
be in promise.&quot; &quot;The poetry of Tagore,&quot; Sri Aurobindo says,
&quot;owes its sudden and universal success to this advantage that
he gives us more of this discovery and fusion for which the
mind of our age is in quest than any other creative writer of
the time. His work is a constant music of the overpassing of
the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds
and lights of the truth of the spirit give new meanings to the
finer subtleties of life.&quot; </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Characterising Tagore's poetry, in reference to a particular
poem, Sri Aurobindo once wrote: &quot;But the poignant sweetness,
passion and spiritual depth and mystery of a poem like this,
the haunting cadences subtle with a subtlety which is not of
technique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the
expression, these are the essential Rabindranath and cannot be
imitated because they are things of the spirit and one must
have the same sweetness and depth of soul before one can hope
to catch any of these desirable qualities.&quot; Furthermore: &quot;One
of the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu's
genius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into
something essentially the same and yet new and modern. He
has given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate
religion an expression of more delicate and complex richness </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
<font face="Times New Roman">Page 376</font><hr>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">voiceful of subtler and more penetratingly spiritual shades of
feeling than the deep-hearted but simple early age of Bengal
could know.&quot; </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Certain coincidences and correspondences in their lives may
be noticed here. The year 1905 and those that immediately
followed found them together on the crest wave of India's
first nationalist resurgence. Again both saw in the year 1914 a
momentous period marked by events of epochal importance,
one of which was the First World War. For Tagore it was <i>&quot;yuga-sandhi,</i> the dying of the old age of Night to the dawning
of a new with its blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail
of death, sorrow and pain&quot;. For Sri Aurobindo it was a cataclysm intended by Nature to effect a first break in the old
order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also
the period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent
series of poems of the <i>Balaka</i> his visions and experiences of the
forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing
through the pages of the <i>Arya</i> the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him
into the earth's atmosphere. </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So it was natural and almost inevitable—written among the
stars—that both should meet once more on this physical earth.
Sri Aurobindo had been in complete retirement seeing none
except, of course, his attendants. He was coming out only four
times in the year to give silent <i>darshan</i> to his devotees and a
few others who sought for it. It was in the year 1928. Tagore
was then on a tour to the South. He expressed to Sri Aurobindo
by letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo
naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry
by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the
ship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed
him at the door of Sri Aurobindo's apartments and led him to
Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both
were together in Japan and stayed in the same house and she attended some of his 
lectures in that country. It may be interesting to mention here that Tagore requested the Mother to take
charge of the Visva Bharati, for evidently he felt that the
future of his dear institution would be in sure hands. But the
Mother could not but decline since it was her destiny to be at
another place and another work. </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
<font face="Times New Roman">Page 377</font><hr>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What transpired between them is not for me to say, the
meeting being a private one. But I may quote here what
Tagore himself wrote about it subsequently: </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For a long time I had a strong desire to meet Aurobindo.
It has just been fulfilled... At the very first sight I could
realise that he had been seeking for the soul and had gained it,
and through this long process of realisation had accumulated
within him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant
with an inner light... I felt that the utterance of the ancient
Rishi spoke from him of that equanimity which gives the
human soul its freedom of entrance into the All. I said to him,
'You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you.
India will speak through your voice to the world, 'Hearken
to me'... Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of
his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him: </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath.'
Today I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness
of wisdom and again sang to him in silence: </font>

<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath.'<sup>1
</sup> </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Vibhutis, emanations and embodiments of the higher
destiny of mankind appear upon earth from time to time<b> 
</b>to<b> 
</b>lead and guide the race on the upward way. And we are fortunate that we are born in an age that has been blessed by
two such Shining Ones. </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
<font face="Times New Roman" size="2">1 <i>The Modern Review,</i> July 1928. </font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
<font face="Times New Roman">Page 378</font><hr>

		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="right"><b><font size="2"><a href="-00_Contents">
			<span style="text-decoration: none">HOME</span></a></font></b></td>
	</tr>
	</table>

</body>

</html>
