Tagore

Tagore was a brilliant Indian mystic and poet, and he was a friend of Einstein. Mysticism and Science met and became friends. I want to share just a few lines of his poetry.

I feel this pang inside - 

Is it my soul trying to break out, 

Or the world's soul trying to break in?

My mind trembles with the shimmering leaves.

My heart sings with the touch of sunlight.

My life is glad to be floating with all things.

Into the blue of space and the dark of time.

As with so many mystics, Tagore intuitively knew the oneness of creation and humanity as part of all that is. He also taught the importance of communion with nature, and the difficulty of Westerners to have the experience of Oneness being walled off from nature. The Indians went into the forests and meditated. The Westerners took down the forests to build walls against nature.

The "pang" he poetically addresses presents some interesting questions. Is my soul trying to break out of the prison of my paradigm or is something greater trying to break through the paradigm to my soul? Or maybe both? Can I even reach that Oneness while staying within the cozy walls of my carefully built paradigm?

My paradigm is built primarily with the bricks of the Western Mind, touched from time to time with darts of ideas from elsewhere. Jesus, for example, is outside of the Greek, outside of the Western Mind, but the popular version of him has been Westernized and bears slight resemblance to the Middle Eastern understanding of 2,000 years ago which informed his original message. His original genius and overarching shine of Oneness does not do well within the walls. I try over and over again to go there, yet today travels with me.

Perhaps I need to listen to Tagore and marvel in the sunlight shimmering upon the leaves, feel the sunlight fall upon me and float into meditation beyond space and time. Perhaps the pang leads to nature, out of the concrete jungle. Maybe that is why I feel such intense something in the redwoods. Maybe what I need is a vacation from "civilization."

Thank you, Tagore, for sparking such ideas. .