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Understanding Creative Unity through the ArtsBy Lubna Marium

IntroductionIn July 1936 Tagore writes,

It is not just through sports that the students of our Asrama getthe proximity of this pulsating Nature, it is also through music thatI have directed their hearts towards its stage1.

Why was the realization of Nature essential to Tagores philosophy ofeducation, and that too through the arts?

Time and time again, Tagore has written about Unity within Naturewhich is achieved through the faculty of creativity which is Naturesmost essential trait. Unity for him is a harmony between parts and aharmony with surroundings. This is achieved by natures innatecreative ability to establish relationships.

Rabindranath writes:When the science of meteorology knows the earths atmosphere ascontinuously one, affecting the different parts of the worlddifferently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attainstruth. And so too, we must know that the great mind of man is one,working through the many differences which are needed to ensurethe full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand thistruth in a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all thedifferences in man that are real, yet remains conscious of ouroneness; and to know that perfection of unity is not in uniformity,but in harmony.2

The operative words here are a harmony of adjustments achievedthrough the faculty of creativity.

Tagore often speaks of this same creative nature of man bhetorkarsrijon shokti which enables him to wreathe a garland of unity from hisdisparate experiences.

Experiencing Unity through creativityIn the introduction to Creative Unity Tagore elaborates

It is some untold mystery of unity in me that has the simplicity of

the Infinite and reduces the immense mass of multitude to a singlepoint. This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, inwhatever it knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knowsthis room only because this room is One to it, in spite of theseeming contradiction of the endless facts contained in the singlefact of the room. Its knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a

1 Asramer Shikkha, Tagore, Probashi, Ashar, 1343.2 An Eastern University; Creative Unity, Rabindranath Tagore.

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unity, which appears in the aspect of a tree. This One in me iscreative. Its creations are a pastime, through which it givesexpression to an ideal of unity in its endless show of variety.3

He goes on to say,

The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomescreative; whereas our desire for the fulfillment of our needs isconstructive.4

He explains that the Nature of man is such that he is constructivewhen he needs to fulfill his bodily needs. Then there is mansintellectual need to not only find facts, but also some laws which willlighten the burden of mere number and quantity.5 However, it is thepersonal man with whom Tagore is most concerned because it is thispersonal man in whom creativity finds expression. Tagore explainsthat the personal man is found in the region where we are free from

all necessity, - above the needs, both of body and mind, above theexpedient and useful. It is the highest in man.This personality of man needs to be expressive and this is where hereveals himself through his faculty of creativity. It is the creativeman, who can look beyond fragmentary events, and experience theUnity of Nature.

Indian aesthetics corroborates Tagores beliefs.

Rasa as a mode of cognizing UnityIndian aesthetics firmly believes that the Experience of Art is neither

subjective nor objective. In fact, it is an extra-empirical experience.Worldly emotions need to be acted upon, while theatrical emotions, orRasa, have no purpose but to inspire reflexivity, or self-awareness.Instead of responding behaviorally to the transposed psychologicalcasuses, inspired by works of art, the focus, instead, is inunderstanding these emotions by supplying relevant emotionalmotivations from our own store of latent memories. Rasa is, therefore,not simply an emotional response to artistic stimuli but the innerorganizing principle of a distinct mode of apperception(anuvyavasaya). One may go further and state that Rasa is a specificnon-mundane (alaukika) mode of cognition. This causes a

generalization or universalization of emotions, which allows agreater understanding of the other.

Creativity and creation, thus, take men a step closer to understandingdifferences and working towards a consciousness of oneness.

3 Introduction, Creative Unity, Rabindranath Tagore; 19224 The Poets Religion; Creative Unity, Rabindranath Tagore, 19225 What is art?; Tagore, Lectures delivered in America, 1916.

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Modern day Behavioral Neuroscience, too, now distinguishes betweeninstinct, emotion and sentiment6. Instinct would refer to the biologicalreflexes (aggression, sex, fear, disgust) rooted in the geneticallyprogrammed propensity of an animate being to preserve and

perpetuate itself. Emotion would refer to the various corporeal(chemical, nervous) changes engendered by the operation of suchinstincts in response to an immediate context and to maintain aninternal equilibrium. Sentiment is distinguished, in this evolutionistperspective, by the integrated mapping of the experience of suchemotions in relation to their external causes emoting the memory ofpast patterns and future projections onto the general psycho-somaticstate as a whole. Sentiment is hence characterized by self-awarenessand implies an increasing degree of freedom from the automatism ofthe body, finding its culmination in the subjective humanconsciousness, where such cognitive autonomy is mirrored in

language. Therfore, neuroscience, supports the fact that men havethe faculty to reflect on their own emotion, and look beyond a self-seeking response to emotional stimuli.

Art and imaginationIn an attempt to look at other studies which link creativity to thehuman ability to unify experiences, we find a recent study by Mark Johnson: Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science forEthics. Johnson writes that Cognitive science recognizes the fact thatart and ethics are both imaginative experiences. It recognizes, too, thefact that imagination is fundamental to moral reasoning. It is, though,

an idea with a heritage. Percy Shelley says in his Essay on the Defenceof Poetry:

"A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensively andcomprehensively....Poetry strengthens the faculty which is theorgan of the moral nature of man, in the same manner asexercise strengthens a limb."

How we make sense of things is cognitive science. It holds that westructure our world not deductively, but through means such asprototype recognition, metaphor, and narrative. Prototype theoryholds that we recognize objects around us by comparing them to

mental constructions derived from experience. Recognition has to dowith resemblance.

Our conceptual system is, for the most part, structured by systematicmetaphorical mappings. So, we understand more abstract and lessstructured domains (such as our concepts of reason, knowledge, belief)via mappings from more concrete and highly structured domains of

6 Antnio Damsio's Lecture, "Emotion, Feeling, and Social Behavior: The Brain Perspective", 2003

http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20022003/antonio_damasio.htmlhttp://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20022003/antonio_damasio.htmlhttp://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20022003/antonio_damasio.htmlhttp://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20022003/antonio_damasio.html

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experience (such as our bodily experience of vision, movement, eating,or manipulating objects). Language, and the conceptual system thatunderlies it, does not give us a literal core of terms capable of mappingdirectly onto experience. Instead, we map the world, including moralobligation, through imagination. The central claim is that "human

moral understanding is fundamentally imaginative [and that] metaphoris one of the principal mechanisms of imaginative cognition."7

Based on these concepts, John Rethorst, in his book Philosophy ofEducation, states that moral imagination is stimulated by aestheticexperience.

John Dewey, the American philosopher and psychologist, says inArt asExperience:

The imagination is the great instrument of moral good...the idealfactors in every moral outlook and human loyalty are

imaginative....Were art an acknowledged power in humanassociation and not treated as the pleasuring of an idle moment oras a means of ostentatious display, and were morals understood tobe identical with every aspect of value that is shared inexperience, the 'problem' of the relation of art and morals wouldnot exist.

Rethorst's defense of the imagination echoes Martha Nussbaum whowrites:

Moral knowledge...is not simply intellectual grasp of propositions; itis not even simply intellectual grasp of particular facts...It is seeing

a complex, concrete reality in a highly lucid and richly responsiveway; it is taking in what is there, with imagination and feeling.8

It is, therefore, evident that the pursuit of the arts enhances thecapacity to imagine. The faculty of imagination, in turn, empowersmoral reasoning, which includes concepts such as the Unity ofCreation.

ConclusionGoing back to Tagore, we can understand his personal apathy towardsmodern day education by his own comparison of learning as a natural

faculty of living creatures and learning as it had become in his days -One example is education of children. There is no greatertragedy than that for the children of men. A bird learns to fly and

7Art and Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Moral Education, John Rethorst, Yearbook1997, Philosophy of Education Society, Illinois, USA

8,Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Martha Nussbaum, New York: Oxford

University Press, 1990.

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to sing by imitating and practicing the ways of its parents. It ispart of lifes play there is no tussle between learning and joy.This way of learning is entirely through play; it is learningdisguised as play. Just imagine how this contrasts with thepreceptors and teaching institutes of today. It seems as if the

mere act of being born in the household of men is a crime forwhich one must serve twenty years of penance. Instead ofarguing on this point, I say through poetry, this is a great wrong.In the halls of the Creator, His band of workers sing aloud O Brother! Dont you know, just as we play, so we work,So, of work never are we fearful.9

Given Tagores heartfelt belief in the fact that creativity and creationcan take men a step closer to understanding differences and workingtowards a consciousness of oneness, it is easy to understand theemphasis he places in the teaching of the arts in the educational

institutions that he established. I conclude by quoting a letter datedDecember 19, 1940 wherein Tagore writes,

Wisdom, you will agree, is the pursuit of completeness; it is inblending life's diverse work with the joy of living. We must neverallow our enjoyment to gather wrong associations bydetachment from educational life; in Santiniketan, therefore, weprovide our own entertainment, and we consider it a part ofeducation to collaborate in perfecting beauty.10

Thank you.

9 Kobir Koifiyot, Shahityer Pothe; Tagore, VisvaBharati, Ashwin, 1343.10 Personal letter to H.E.President Tai Chi-Tao, Rabindranath Tagore; The Modern Review; January 1941.