Osho on RabindraNath Tagore
Osho - Rabindranath Tagore, although he belongs to this
century, echoes thousands-of-years -old longings and dreams of the East.
He belongs to the seers of the UPANISHADS. He is the only man this
century has produced whose words can be compared to the
five-thousand-year-old UPANISHADS.
Those UPANISHADS were songs of the first seers of humanity, but it is a
strange fact that truth remains the same. Everything changes, but the
truth is eternal. Five thousand years of distance, but whatever
Rabindranath sings, appears to be coming from the days of the
UPANISHADS, of those days of humanity's childhood -- so innocent and so
pure.
Man was not yet corrupted by religions, organized faiths; man was not
yet under the slavery of the priests; man was not yet divided into
Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Jews. Humanity was still one.
The seers of the UPANISHADS were as innocent as every child is -- it was
easy for them to sing those beautiful songs of tremendous meaning. But
for Rabindranath, being a twentieth-century man, it was certainly a
miracle that he dropped five thousand years of knowledgeability and
became a child again. Every mystic has to become a child again.
These few lines are from "Gitanjali," Rabindranath's book for which he
was awarded the Nobel Prize. Gitanjali means "offering of songs."
Somebody asked Rabindranath, "Why have you chosen this title?" He said,
"I don't have anything else to offer to God except my imperfect songs."
On his death bed, an old friend had come to console Rabindranath, and he
told him, "You should be dying with absolute contentment, because you
are perhaps the greatest poet in the whole world." In the West, Shelley
has two thousand songs which can be put to music. Rabindranath has six
thousand songs, and of far greater significance than any of the songs
that Shelley has. That old friend was saying to Rabindranath, "You
should die absolutely contented. You have achieved something -- a peak
no one has ever been able to achieve."
Rabindranath opened his eyes and said, "Keep quiet! -- because I know I
have not been able to sing the song I had come to sing. I am an utter
failure. I am dying with tears in my eyes." And he did die with tears in
his eyes.
He said to his friend, "I am praying to God! `Give me a little time
more, because in this whole life that you have given to me, I have been
simply arranging my instruments. Now that the instruments are ready, you
are taking me away -- and the song that I have come to sing remains
unsung.'"
The friend could not believe what Rabindranath was saying. He said,
"Then what about your six thousand songs?"
Rabindranath said, "Those are all failures. Six thousand efforts to sing
the song that I have come to sing, but each time I failed. I was trying
hard to sing the song that was just on my tongue, but the moment I
expressed it, it was something else. It was not the same quality, the
same depth, the same beauty. When it was within me it was a living
reality, and when it was spoken it was something dead. People have
appreciated my songs, and I have been crying in my nights, `Will I be
able to sing it? Or I will always be a failure.'"
This is one of the fundamental qualities of greatness, because the
longing and the dream are so high, and the human reach is so small. The
longing is for the moon, and the human reach is so small that only small
people can be contented about their creativity. The greater the man, the
more he will feel he has failed.
Although Rabindranath has given such beautiful songs that there is no
comparison, he had a comparison which nobody from the outside had any
idea about. He had a song deep in his soul, very alive, ready to burst
forth, and he always compared his songs with his inner feeling. He found
that what he wanted to express had remained behind. Although he had been
able to put together beautiful words, the life was no longer in them,
the heart was no longer beating in them. They are faraway echoes of the
song he wanted to sing.
Source - Osho Book "The Razor's Edge" |
