ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Rabindranath Tagore conceives of nature, how he regards the harmony of nature as embracing our own being, and how he locates the spiritual kinship that he enjoins in the culture and literature of the Indian tradition. Tagore's concern for nature or environment is based on a different and non-utilitarian ground. While one may seek protection for the environment in the name of human survival with equal significance as Tagore does, on the grounds that nature and man are adapted to one another, that authentic human being is inseparably related to the flourishing of the natural world. Tagore's conviction is that a sense of beauty and worthiness in nature of its awful loveliness, in an expression of Shelley's that he quotes can free people from slavery to our circumscribed present and lead us from necessity to freedom. Tagore argues that spiritual union with nature, this appreciation of personal growth dependent on a harmony with nature.
