Then came a time when life was brought into the arena in the tiniest little monocycle of a cell. With its gift of growth and power of adaptation it faced the ponderous enormity of things, and contradicted the unmeaningness of their bulk. It was made conscious not of the volume but of the value of existence, which it ever tried to enhance and maintain in many-branched paths of creation, overcoming the obstructive inertia of Nature by obeying Nature's law. ... But this evolution which continues on the physcial plane has its limited range. All exaggeration in that direction becomes a burden that breaks the natural rhythm of life, and those creatures that encouraged their ambitious flesh to grow in domensions have nearly all perished of their cumbrous absurdity....Man appeared and turned the course of this evolution from an indefinite march of physical aggrandizement to a freedom of a more subtle perfection. This has made possible his progress to become unlimited...The process of evolution, which after ages has reached man, must be realized in its unity with him; though in him it assumes a new value and proceeds to a different path. It is a continuous process that finds its meaning in Man...His multicellular body is born and it dies; his multi-personal humanity is immoratal. In this ideal of unity he realizes the eternal in his life and the boundless in his love. The unity becomes not a mere subjective idea, but an energizing truth. Whatever name may be given to it, and whatever form it symbolizes, the consciousness of this unity is spiritual, and our effort to be true to it is our religion. It ever wants to be revealed in our history in a more and more perfect illumination.
-- Rabindra Nath Tagore
In conversation with Einstein - If one looks it up, there are several essays that dive deep into this chat between Einstein and Tagore. An excerpt from the chat:
TAGORE: Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of truths. Religion realizes these truths and links them up with our deeper needs. Our individual consciousness of truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to truth, and we know truth as good through own harmony with it.EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or beauty, is not independent of man?TAGORE: No, I do not say so.EINSTEIN: If there were no human beings any more, the Apollo Belvedere no longer would be beautiful?TAGORE: No!EINSTEIN: I agree with this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth.TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through men.EINSTEIN: I cannot prove my conception is right, but that is my religion.TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony, which is in the universal being; truth is the perfect comprehension of the universal mind. We individuals approach it through ourown mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experience, through our illumined consciousness. How otherwise can we know truth?EINSTEIN: I cannot prove, but I believe in the Pythagorean argument, that the truth is independent of human beings. It is the problem of the logic of continuityTAGORE : Truth, which is one with the universal being, must be essentially human; otherwise, whatever we individuals realize as true, never can be called truth. At least, the truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic—in other words, by an organ of thought which is human. According to the Indian philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words, but can be realized only by merging the individual in its infinity. But such a truth cannot belong to science. The nature of truth which we are discussing is an appearance; that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind, and therefore is human, and may be called maya, or illusion.
Rest of the conversation can be found here
No comments:
Post a Comment