ABSTRACT

This chapter considers Rabindranath Tagore's understanding of human spirituality, one which concerns a mode of relationship to oneself whereby one moves away from the sphere of social responsibility towards that of one's own privacy. In Tagore's later writings self-realization in the Upanishadic sense yields to the idea of self-realization through freedom and self-creation. In a letter written to Amiya Chakraborty, Tagore said: Science gives knowledge of object. What it endeavors is to separate our personality from this knowledge. Tagore is indicating how he distinguishes between the world of science and the world of art. The former, he says, is the abstract world of force which is known impersonally and dispassionately by our intellect. In and through art, one is brought to a region where one is free from all the habits and necessities of everyday social life, and hence is released from the constraints of the expedient and the useful.