Mysticism in Gitanjali

Tagore’s Gitanjali has a highly philosophical content and the broad tendency of that
philosophy is mystical. Mysticism is the spirit of communion between the soul, when he calls by
different names as the friend, the comrade, the lover and the Lord.

The songs reveal the different moods and thoughts, desires and feelings, hopes and
disappointments of the poet. Sometimes the poet feels the pangs of separation and expresses his
sense of sorrow and anguish in tunes of plaintive melody. At other times he feels the approach of
God and describes his feeling in the words,

“He comes, he comes, he ever comes”

The poet feels that god comes to him through rain and shower, through sunshine and spring and
also through his joys and sorrows.

In song 11he clearly tells us that god resides in the hearts of the people and not inside the
temple and asks us to leave the chanting and counting of beads. There is no deliverance in
renunciation. Tagore asks us to come down on the dusty soil and find the presence of the divine
among the tillers, who tills the land and the path-maker who makes the stones:

“He is with them in sun and in shower and his garment is covered with dust.. meet
him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow”

Tagore is fundamentally different from the other mystic poets who usually ignore this
earth and its people and look for salvation in the other world. Tagore’s mysticism is combined
with realism and humanism. It is not a philosophy that asks us to renounce the world and its
activities. Tagore maintains that the divine cannot be realized by renouncing the world. His
mysticism is counterbalanced and kept in check by his intense humanism.

Indian Mysticism conveys that god resides within the human heart, but man ignorant of
this fact looks for him at every other place in vain. Tagore employs the image of the lotus flower
in song 20 which gives out its fragrance deep within man, whom this fragrance fills with a strong
longing to find and possess the source of this fragrance.

“on the day when the lotus bloomed, alas,

 My mind was straying and I know it not.

I knew not then that this perfect sweetness

Has blossomed in the depth of my own heart”

A.C.Bose feels that, “the most essential thing about his mysticism is that it has been
understood as a vision and quality of being, that baffle the ordinary methods of scientific
investigations. His mysticism is the result of spiritual culture, derived from the Vedas and
Upanishads.”

Symbolism in Gitanjali

Tagore’s innumerable symbols are mostly of sublime complexion and inexhaustible.

Same symbols occur and recur in different contexts in Gitanjali. Tagore’s poetry is rich in nature
images taken from various aspects of nature. They often have symbolic implications or
significance. The cycle of the seasons symbolizes the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

Nature images also carry suggestions of joy and vitality. Tagore widely uses the image of
flower which is the obvious image of fulfillment. The transitoriness of its beauty is
counterbalanced by the promise of rebirth, which is contained in the seeds to which the flower
gives rise. The nature images emphasize the ultimate oneness of all life. These images bring in
the idea of the harmony between man and nature. Tagore also uses the typically Indian image of
flute-player which is traditionally associated with Krishna.

In Tagore the flute is sometimes the human soul and at others his poetic faculty which is
inspired by the divine force. Tagore depicts god himself as a great poet:

“My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sigh

O Master poet I have sat down at thy feet”

Tagore very symbolically speaks of human body which has been explained by the use of
the words ‘frail vessel’. It has been set in the framework of a glowing metaphor. Good fills this
frail vessel, our body, with fresh life just as we fill our buckets with fresh water again and again.
The birth and rebirth has been treated metaphysically by him.
 ‘Bondage of finery’ as a symbol explains the trammels, ‘which keep us diverted from the
thought of the divine’. The detachment of life has been explained by Tagore beautifully through
the symbol. The ornaments and decorations stand in the way of realization of God for Tagore.
‘Jewelled chains’ symbolizes their expression. The waning of glory of the life has been
symbolized by Tagore as the finishing up of ‘the market day’. The misery of human existence
has been called as ‘rainy hours’.

Tagore conveys the subtle meanings of indescribable experience through his lofty
symbols. A.C.Bose opines, “Tagore’s symbols are not only artistic but also have religious
references to both vedic and puranic rites. In addition to religious symbol, Tagore has used
nature symbolism with a metaphysical content on an extensive scale”

Hymns- the offering to God

The concept of God in Gitanjali consists of several faces of divinity. God is the giver of
the ‘infinite gifts’. He is responsible for the rebirths. He is the maker of the beauty of nature
which is truly perceived by the poets. God is the ‘friend’, the ‘Lord’ of the humans. He is
inaccessible to us. He is the giver of ‘truth’ and ‘reason’; he can be realized through our actions.
He recognizes the simple living, and he is mystical and ultimate. God can be caught with keen
intuition. He is beautiful and invisible. He has been associated with love even in death. He is
tongueless but can be felt by us. God has the nature to elude people.

This song offering has been invested with high voltage mystical qualities. The poet
anticipates the divine merger at the end of the physical existence. He feels that the supreme one
had been coming to him since long. The entire existence of the poet is saturated with the
presence of the divine. He is ‘the first of all lights and all forms’. Death would not be a loss but a
gain. “And let my return to myself immediate return to him”, sings the poet.

Tagore recommends simple existence for one who wants to get his life crammed with
music of the divine. This world of ours is the poetic creation of God. He resides in our soul. For
a mystic like the poet the return is always, to the ‘innermost shrine’, the dwelling of the divine.
The ‘master poet’ cannot be available to us without enlightenment. The lamp has not been lit and
I cannot ask him into my house’.
 According to Tagore it is wrong for the devotee to aspire for the earthly desires. One who
aspires with ‘overmuch desire’ is a loser. He can never view the ‘Great one’. The merge of the
lover into the beloved is craved and yearned passionately by the mystic. It is the cry of blood in
him. ‘The long rainy heavens’ in the world are odious for the poet. In the world he is mute and
the devotee has no other alternative but put up with his ‘silence’.

Clearance of the earthly pleasure may make the life suitable for good to step in. the
worldly bonds are binding. The mystic poet seeks to clear away ‘the tinsel’ that fills his room.
‘The immured spirit chafes at the chains forged by the creator’, this prison being too much for
him. ‘The arrival of good is not an event but a constant process’. It keeps on coming to you, only
if you can listen to his silent footsteps. The mystic in Tagore hears it the sound coming on in his
consciousness:

“who is that follows me in the silent dark”

The visual presence of the divine has been realized by the mystic artist Tagore.

“Thy golden chariot appeared in the

Distance like a gorgeous dream”

“I wondered who was this king of all kings!” exclaims the poet. The mystically conditioned mind
of the poet is most filled for such divine images. Tagore’s God is both personal and impersonal.
He is a formless being who manifests himself through innumerable forms.

Aptness of the title- Gitanjali

Gitanjali is a sequence of 103 lyrics translated from selected lyrics in his own Bengali
works- Naivedya Kheya and Gitanjali and a few lyrics published only in periodicals. The term
Gitanjali rendered as “song offerings” by Tagore brings out the central theme of the work.

The very opening Lyric strikes the keynote of the whole symphony of the ‘Song
Offering’:

“this little flute of a reed, thou hast

Carried over hills and dales and hast

 Breathed through it melodies eternally new”

The poet is a singer, offering his songs to the Lord himself, is the supreme singer. The poet is a
flute of reed into which the Lord infuses life and music.

In several poems of Gitanjali Tagore explores the relationship between man and God.
Man is God’s handiwork or else a part of God himself. It is natural therefore that there should be
in the human soul a strong yearning to meet God. Yet the body which contains the soul has its
own gross and sensual demands. Man is covered by a shroud of dust and death, yet he hugs this
very shroud lovingly as though it were some object of great value.

A spirit of harmony breathes through Gitanjali. Tagore harmonises man and nature. Man
can worship the infinite through its infinite manifestations in nature or humanity:

“Vain is this seeking! Unbroken perfection is overall”

Gitanjali is a devotional work that expresses the poets’ aspirations to be at one with God
and itself a form of prayer. This is a sort of dialogue between the finite and the injustice. The
poet tries to harmonise creator and creation, life and death, renunciation and experience. The
result is a unique work of art and spirituality which appeals to every reader, Indian and foreign,
inspite of the fact that the background and the thematic content of the poems, imagery and
philosophy are Indian.

Style – Gitanjali

Gitanjali envices Tagore’s wonderful command of English. He has evolved a style of his
own. He has discarded thematerial patterns of English verse. With his innate sense of rhythm and
his natural talent for the music of words and the beauty of diction, he has written a form of poetic
prose, which can be matched in its beauty and loveliness with that of ‘leaves of grass’ by Walt
Whitman.

A combination of simplicity and sublimity is the characteristics of Tagore’s prose style in

Gitanjali. The extra-ordinary ease with which noble thoughts, lofty sentiments and beautiful
images have been combined into a delicate pattern of rhythmic prose reveal a command of
English that can easily rank him among the greatest English prose writers. Gitanjali is a fine
specimen of simple and elegant English prose.

Edward Thompson glorifies the style of Gitanjali. According to him “the material
achievement of Gitanjali os impeachable. The poems were written to be sung; but they sing
themselves”.

Conclusion

Thriving on Hindu mysticism Gitanjali presents a complex of thoughts, encompassing a

code of conduct for the devout yearning for the merger of the self into supreme deity. A tryst
with the divine is sought by Tagore, a consummate existence of a perfect order.

In a mood of deep meditation the imagination runs upward to capture the ineffable bliss
which can only be found in the merger with the divine. There is a sense of inadequacy which the
mystics often feel while in their devotional attitude towards God. Earth is useless, body is useless
and the spirit must soar high to settle down in a celebrated place losing himself in divine. Such is
the spirit of Gitanjali.

Tagore rightfully comes to occupy a coveted place in the gallery of the mystical poets. He
has captured and poetrized the mystical consciousness in an inimitable style which does him a
great credit. He had added a new dimension to the frontiers of mysticism.

Tagore has renovated the old scriptural thoughts into something fine in modern
mysticism. He lets the spirit pervade but knows how to embellish it without being very
ostentations. The floral embellishments of his style is undeniable. His over-conciousness suits
the highly sublimated theme which he deals with all earnestness.