Seeking God in Pursuit of Self

- Ujjwal Bhattacharya

“To realize his cosmic manifestation and thus free our soul from its bondage of the limitedness of the immediate,” as Tagore wrote in his letter to William Rothenstein. The above statement played a central role in his works, and particularly in his three collections of devotional poems, Geetanjali, Geetimalya and Geetali. (The English collection Geetanjali is not identical with the Bengali one. 52 poems out of 103 in the English text were selected from the Bengali volume; others were taken from earlier works. For the sake of convenience, poems quoted here have been taken from his English text of Geetanjali and other collections, though they differ radically from the original poems very often.)
In a song Tagore wrote:
My heart sings at the wonder of my place
in this world of light and life;
at the feel in my pulse of the rhythm of creation
cadenced by the swing of endless time.
Let us compare it with the definition of Language in Japanese, as it was presented in a discourse between the German philosopher Heidegger and the Japanese professor Tezuka Tomio:
Heidegger: What is the Japanese word for “language”?
Tomio: (after further hesitation) It is “Koto ba.”
Heidegger: And what does that say?
Tomio: ba means leaves, including and especially the leaves of a blossom-petals. Think of cherry-blossoms or plum blossoms.
Heidegger: And what does Koto say?
Tomio: This is the question most difficult to answer. But it is easier now to attempt an answer because we have ventured to explain Iki: the pure delight of the beckoning stillness. The breath of stillness that makes this beckoning delight come into its own is the reign under which that delight is made to come. But Koto always also names that which in the event gives delight, itself, that which uniquely in each unrepeatable moment comes to radiance in the fullness of its grace.
Expression of the pure delight of the beckoning stillness - we find a similar explanation in Bhartrihari’s (450-510 A.D.) Vakyapadiya, where he distinguishes three levels of language or Shabda: Pashyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari. Vaikhari is the manifested form of the language, Madhyama is the intermediate stage, and below that is the innermost stage of Pashyanti, which is the level of direct intuition. The manifested language is in Metaphor, is in the framework of Space and Time, whereas the level of ultimate intuition is beyond all that. Prof. Ranajit Guha, in his recent treatise in Bengali Kabir Nam O Sarbanam, observes that Nietzsche has also points out that Language is the illusion of metaphors, hence, unable to express the Truth. The bondage of the limitedness of the immediate is the reason of Tagore’s yearning for the ultimate truth; poetry becomes the evidence of the dilemma of his pursuit.
In one of his last poems (27 July, 1941), Tagore writes:
The sun of the first day
Put the question
To the new manifestation of life-
Who are you?
There was no answer.
Years passed by.
The last sun of the last day
Uttered the question
on the shore of the western sea
In the hush of evening-
Who are you?
No answer came again.
The poet tries to create a framework of discourse with the god to realize and overcome this dilemma. It is a gradual process that goes through Geetanjali, over Geetimalya, and ultimately to Geetali. In the second poem of Geetanjali he says:
My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.
And two poems later:
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield but to my own strength. Let me not cave in.
The poet is not sure of him. In a letter to his son Rathindranath, he complains of severe pain, and a creeping depression. He feels that he has not been able to fulfil the promises he made, also to himself. In the poem 39 of Geetanjali he says:
The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
Already in the poems of Geetanjali, we see that the frustration starts making place for realization. Poem 18 is an example:
In the deep shadows of the rainy July,
with secret steps, thou walkest, silent as
night, eluding all watchers.
…
Oh my only friend, my best beloved,
the gates are open in my house-
do not pass by like a dream.
This was the period during which there was a Tagore-mania in countries like Germany, and yet the poet was suffering from melancholy. But the recovery came and found its expression in poems. Geetimalya was published in 1914, four years after Geetanjali. On 7 October, 1914, he wrote in a letter:
My period of darkness is over once again. It has been a time of great trial to me, and I believe it was absolutely necessary for my emancipation. I am that I am being lifted from the sphere where I was before…
(Letters to a Friend, ed. C. F. Andrews, London, 1928, pp 47)
And this new realization finds its expression in the poems of Geetimalya:
This is my delight, thus to wait and watch at the wayside where shadow chases light and the rain comes in the wake of the summer.
…
From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.
(Geetimalya 7)
The Union with Über-Ich is present here:
He it is, the innermost one, who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches.
(Geetimalya 12)
The life is a process, and there is sense of astonishment in the voice of the poet:
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
(Geetimalya 23)
In the last book of his Song-Trilogy, Geetali, we see the sublimation of this idea. The God is in his heart, but he has not found him yet. He has to be awakened:
The night is dark and your slumber is deep in the hush of my being.
Wake, O Pain of Love, for I know not how to open the door, and I stand outside.
(Geetali 50)
The poet is aware of the process, which leads to the dilution of his ego:
The Cloud said to me, “I vanish”; the Night said, “I plunge into the fiery dawn.”
The Pain said, “I remain in deep silence as his footprint.”
“I die into the fulness,” said my life to me.
(Geetali 65)
And ultimately he realizes that the source of the light is hidden in the darkness:
YOURS is the light that breaks forth from the dark, and the good that sprouts from the cleft heart of strife.
Yours is the house that opens upon the world, and the love that calls to the battlefield.
(Geetali 99)
A process that started in his early youth comes to an end. Though Tagore still wrote devotional songs, he never published a book of devotional poems again.