the religion of man

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a world renowned Indian poet, writer, philosopher, and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. "The Religion of Man" is a compilation of his lectures given at Oxford University in May 1930 that deals with the universal themes of divine experience, illumination, God and spirituality. The following are highlights and notes (in blue Italic) I take from the book.

Man and Nature are one

What we call nature is not a philosophical abstraction, not cosmos, but what is revealed to man as nature. In fact it is included in himself and therefore there is a commingling of his mind with it, and in that he finds his own being.

The elementary unit of things, or the "innocent" state of consciousness, does not necessarily stand higher grounds than their subsequent, more complex formations

A certain condition of vacuum is needed for studying the state of things in its original purity, and the same may be said of the human spirit; but the original state is not necessarily the perfect state. The concrete form (flower, tree, animals, for example) is a more perfect manifestation than the atom, and man is more perfect as a man than where he vanishes in an original indefiniteness (such as in the thoughtless, "blank" state of transcendental meditation).

The dynamic nature of Truth

"Truth is both finite and infinite at the same time, it moves and yet moves not, it is in the distant, also in the near, it is within all objects and without them." This means that perfection as the ideal is immovable, but in its aspect of the real it constantly grows towards completion, it moves.

Humanity fills an otherwise dull, vacuous universe with creativity

The difference between the (musical) notes as mere facts of sound and music, as a truth of expression is immense. For music, though it comprehends a limited number of notes, yet represents the infinite. It is for man to produce the music of the spirit with all the notes which he has in his psychology and which, through inattention or perversity, can easily be translated into a frightful noise. In music man is revealed, and not in a noise.

For man by nature is an artist; he never receives passively and accurately in his mind a physical representation of things around him. There goes on a continual adaptation, a transformation of facts into human imagery, through constant touches of his sentiments and imagination... It is what we are conscious of, by which we are affected, that which we express. When we are intensely aware of it, we are aware of ourselves and it gives us delight. We live in it, we always widen its limits. Our arts and literature represent this creative activity which is fundamental in man.

"What is Art?" It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Inspired, not contrived; "god-sent", not "man-made"

The vision of the Supreme Man is realized by our imagination, but not created by our mind.

Man is more than just a social animal

Man has not been moulded on the model of the bee and therefore he becomes recklessly anti-social when his freedom to be more than social is ignored.

What constitutes true freedom and true knowing

Freedom in the mere sense of independence has no content, and therefore no meaning. Perfect freedom lies in a perfect harmony of relationship, which we realize in this world not through our response to it in knowing, but in being. Objects of knowledge maintain an infinite distance from us who are the knowers. For knowledge is not union (if we keep our objects of knowledge at a distance)... We reach truth, not through feeling it by our senses or knowing it by our reason, but through the union of perfect sympathy.

The truly wise and the busy-body can make a good team

I refuse to think that the twin spirits of the East and the West, the Mary and Martha, can never meet to make perfect the realization of truth.

We have to keep in mind the fact that love and action are the only intermediaries through which perfect knowledge can be obtained; for the object of knowledge is not pedantry but wisdom.

Don't automatically equate poverty with virtue

I refuse to imagine any special value in poverty when it is a mere negation. Only when the mind has the sensitiveness to be able to respond to the deeper call of reality is it naturally weaned away from the lure of the fictitious value of things... The callousness of asceticism pitted against the callousness of luxury is merely fighting one evil with the help of another, inviting the pitiless demon of the desert in place of the indiscriminate demon of the jungle.

Hang on for the real thing

When, groping in the dark, we stumble against objects, we cling to them believing them to be our only hope. When light comes, we slacken our hold, finding them to be mere parts of the All to which we are related.

All broken truths are evil. They hurt because they suggest something they do not offer. Death does not hurt us, but disease does, because disease constantly reminds us of health and yet withholds it from us.

Ultimately, it's about God and human reunion

For all the abundance of His inherent joy, God is in want of my joy of Him; and Reality in its perfection only blossoms where we meet.