Creative Unity is a collection of essays by Rabindranath Tagore, published in 1922. In lyrical prose, Tagore reflects on the unity that underlies diversity, the nature of creativity, art, knowledge, and spiritual life. It is worth listening to for its thoughtful, poetic meditations on how human beings make meaning.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
CREATIVE UNITY BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1922 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO COPYRIGHT PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
TO Dr. EDWIN H. LEWIS INTRODUCTION 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."
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