Customer Reviews

The Religion of Man

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this beautiful book, Rabindranath Tagore sets forth a new religion, which he calls the "Religion of Man." The Religion of Man differs radically from most organized religions, in the way it defines God; in its views on the origins of man and the cosmos, on revelation, and on authority; and in its commandments.

God is defined as the Universal Spirit, the Spirit of Life, the Eternal Spirit of human unity beyond our direct knowledge, the Super Soul that permeates all moving things, the Supreme Person, Man the Eternal. This God dwells not in the heavens but in the heart of every human being.

The creation myth of this religion is the story of evolution. The first stage of Life's evolution was the physiological process, which seems to have reached its finality in man. The second stage of evolution, the spiritual process, is continuing. The evolutionary process has as its ultimate goal, not the attainment of Heaven or of nirvana or satori, but the release of each individual's consciousness from the illusory bond of the separate self and the realization of the spiritual unity of all human beings.

Truth in the Religion of Man is not that which was revealed only to a chosen few in the distant past. It is not reached through the analytical process of reasoning. It does not depend for proof on some corroboration of outward facts or the prevalent faith and practice of a group of people. Rather, the truth is revealed to every person every day, if we but listen. Truth comes like an inspiration and brings with it an assurance that it has been sent from an inner source of divine wisdom. This truth comes through an illumination, almost like a communication of the universal self to the personal self.

Every human being is capable of experiencing such illumination (the mystical experience). Although some people are more successful at actualizing this potentiality than others, most people have had at one time or another at least a partial vision of the universal unity. Furthermore, we can each increase our power of realization through "disciplined striving"--through our participation in nature, literature, arts, legends, symbols, and ceremonials, and through the remembrance of heroic souls who have personified this truth in their lives.

The truth, Tagore says, is inside us, like a song which has only to be mastered and sung. It is like the morning which has only to be welcomed by raising the screens and opening the doors.

Tagore calls Zarathustra the first prophet of the Religion of Man. Zarathustra, who spiritualized the meaning of sacrifice, was the first to address his words to all humanity, regardless of distance of space or time. He emancipated religion from the exclusive narrowness of the tribal God, the God of a chosen people, and offered it the Universal Man.

The only commandment in the Religion of Man is that the individual who has realized the Divine Truth accept his or her responsibility to communicate this truth in word and deed to others.

Tagore stresses that his understanding of the Religion of Man came to him through his personal experience of the holy, not from knowledge gathered or through any process of philosophical reasoning. However, he acknowledges that certain factors enabled him to be receptive to these visions. One was the feeling of intimacy with Nature that he had from early childhood. Another formative experience was the songs he heard from wandering village singers, belonging to a popular sect of Begal, called Bauls. The Bauls, who have no images, temples, scriptures, or ceremonials, express in their songs an intense yearning of the heart for the divine which is in Man. In addition, from childhood, he was immersed in the philosophy of the Upanishad, which holds that the world is pervaded by one supreme unity and that true enjoyment can be found only through the surrender of our individual self to the Universal Self.

Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, believed that the task of the poet and artist is to direct our attention to the Infinite and to remind us that it ever dwells within each of us. He performs this task admirably in this book.

Read this book a few years ago and it still haunts me. Tagore is a poet and his writing hits you in the heart as much as the head, regardless of your religion. Just finished Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life and it reminded me of this wonderful book, which I will be re-visiting soon.

This is a great book of spirituality with a nearly musical presentation.