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<font size="4">Rabindranath
and Sri Aurobindo</font></B></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>&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 <SPAN LANG="en-GB">centring</SPAN>
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>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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 cal1led on Sri Aurobindo and read out to him his
heart's homage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines:</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>O friend, my country's friend, O voice incarnate, free,</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Of India's soul!<FONT FACE="Charter">¹</FONT></FONT></P>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>	Sri
Aurobindo retired from the outer political world to devote himself
more intensively to the discovery and conquest</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=2 style="font-size: 8pt"><FONT FACE="Charter">¹</FONT>
&quot;Salutation&quot;</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 226</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>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
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">realisations</SPAN> through his monthly review
Arya.<I> </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>
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<FONT SIZE=3><SPAN LANG="en-GB">Characterising</SPAN> 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><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 227</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>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>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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;Juga-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>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 228</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>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>
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<FONT SIZE=3>For a long time I had a strong desire to meet Aurobindo.
It has just been fulfilled... At the very first sight I could <SPAN LANG="en-GB">realise</SPAN>
that he had been seeking for the soul and had gained it, and through
this long process of <SPAN LANG="en-GB">realisation</SPAN> 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</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>to me'... Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of
his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him:</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>'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>
<P ALIGN=LEFT style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>'Aurobindo,
accept the salutation from Rabindranath.'<FONT FACE="Charter">¹</FONT></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Vibhutis, emanations and embodiments of the higher
destiny of mankind appear upon earth from time to time to 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><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Charter">¹</FONT> The Modern Review,
July 1928.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 229</FONT></P>
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