Creative Unity
Public-domain ebook
Creative Unity
Language: en4,103 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Essays, Letters & Speeches·Philosophy & Ethics·Religion/Spirituality
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #23136.
About this book
Creative Unity is a philosophical essay that weaves together Hindu thought, especially the Upanishadic concept of advaitam, with reflections on art, love, and social conduct. The work opens with a meditative assertion that the self, though seemingly simple, contains an endless array of facts that converge into a single point of unity. From this opening, Tagore expands the idea that all knowledge, creation, and affection are expressions of a singular, infinite source, using vivid analogies, from a water vessel to a forest of coconut trees, to illustrate how the many manifest the One. The text proceeds through a series of essays that explore civility, the poet’s religion, the creative ideal, and the relationship between East and West, each anchored in the same overarching theme of unity in diversity.
The voice is unmistakably Tagore’s: lyrical, contemplative, and steeped in the late‑19th‑century Indian renaissance. His prose blends poetic metaphor with philosophical discourse, echoing both Sanskrit scripture and Western Romanticism. Readers who relish reflective, spiritually oriented writing, particularly those interested in Hindu philosophy, the interplay of art and ethics, or the cultural dialogue between India and the West, will find this collection resonant and intellectually stimulating.
The opening · free to read
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.
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