<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252">
<title>-013_Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo.htm</title>
</head>
<div align="center">
	<table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
	<td>
<p class="paracenter">
<b>RABINDRANATH AND SRI AUROBINDO </b>
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> 
&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.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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 Aurobmdo and read out to him his 
heart's homage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines:
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-89</p>
<hr>
<br>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!
	</p>
	<p class="para">O friend, my country's friend, O voice incarnate, free,
	</p>
	<p class="para">Of India's soul!
	</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Sri Aurobindo retired from the outer political world to devote himself more 
intensively to the discovery and conquest 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, silendy 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 the Future Poetry 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</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-90</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subde sounds and lights of the 
truth of the spirit give new meanings to the finer subdeties of life.&quot;
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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 subde with a sub-dety 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 modem. He has 
given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of 
more delicate and complex richness voiceful of subder and more penetratingly 
spiritual shades of feeling than the deep-hearted but simple early age of Bengal 
could know.&quot;
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-91</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">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 Arya
the truths of the 
supramental infinities that were then pouring down into 
him 
and through him into the 
earth's atmosphere.</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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 darshan 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
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-92</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">not but decline since it was her destiny to be at another place and another 
work.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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 <i>
(The Modem Review, </i>July 1928):</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
&quot;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:
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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:
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath.&quot;
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
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.
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-93</p>
	</td>
</tr>
	</table>
</div>
</html>
