Understanding Creative Unity through the Arts By Lubna Marium Introduction In July 1936 Tagore writes, It is not just

through sports that the students of our Asrama get the proximity of this pulsating Nature, it is also through music that I have directed their hearts towards its stage1. Why was the realization of Nature essential to Tagores philosophy of education, and that too through the arts? Time and time again, Tagore has written about Unity within Nature which is achieved through the faculty of creativity which is Natures most essential trait. Unity for him is a harmony between parts and a harmony with surroundings. This is achieved by natures innate creative ability to establish relationships. Rabindranath writes: When the science of meteorology knows the earths atmosphere as continuously one, affecting the different parts of the world differently, but in a harmony of adjustments, it knows and attains truth. And so too, we must know that the great mind of man is one, working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth in a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differences in man that are real, yet remains conscious of our oneness; and to know that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony.2 The operative words here are a harmony of adjustments achieved through the faculty of creativity. Tagore often speaks of this same creative nature of man bhetorkar srijon shokti which enables him to wreathe a garland of unity from his disparate experiences. Experiencing Unity through creativity In 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 single point. This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a
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Asramer Shikkha, Tagore, Probashi, Ashar, 1343. An Eastern University; Creative Unity, Rabindranath Tagore.

unity, which appears in the aspect of a tree. This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which it gives expression 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, becomes creative; whereas our desire for the fulfillment of our needs is constructive.4 He explains that the Nature of man is such that he is constructive when he needs to fulfill his bodily needs. Then there is mans intellectual need to not only find facts, but also some laws which will lighten the burden of mere number and quantity.5 However, it is the personal man with whom Tagore is most concerned because it is this personal man in whom creativity finds expression. Tagore explains that the personal man is found in the region where we are free from all necessity, - above the needs, both of body and mind, above the expedient and useful. It is the highest in man. This personality of man needs to be expressive and this is where he reveals himself through his faculty of creativity. It is the creative man, who can look beyond fragmentary events, and experience the Unity of Nature. Indian aesthetics corroborates Tagores beliefs. Rasa as a mode of cognizing Unity Indian 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, or Rasa, have no purpose but to inspire reflexivity, or self-awareness. Instead of responding behaviorally to the transposed psychological casuses, inspired by works of art, the focus, instead, is in understanding these emotions by supplying relevant emotional motivations from our own store of latent memories. Rasa is, therefore, not simply an emotional response to artistic stimuli but the inner organizing principle of a distinct mode of apperception (anuvyavasaya). One may go further and state that Rasa is a specific non-mundane (alaukika) mode of cognition. This causes a generalization or universalization of emotions, which allows a greater understanding of the other. Creativity and creation, thus, take men a step closer to understanding differences and working towards a consciousness of oneness.
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Introduction, Creative Unity, Rabindranath Tagore; 1922 The Poets Religion; Creative Unity, Rabindranath Tagore, 1922 5 What is art?; Tagore, Lectures delivered in America, 1916.

Modern day Behavioral Neuroscience, too, now distinguishes between instinct, emotion and sentiment6. Instinct would refer to the biological reflexes (aggression, sex, fear, disgust) rooted in the genetically programmed 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 such instincts in response to an immediate context and to maintain an internal equilibrium. Sentiment is distinguished, in this evolutionist perspective, by the integrated mapping of the experience of such emotions in relation to their external causes emoting the memory of past patterns and future projections onto the general psycho-somatic state as a whole. Sentiment is hence characterized by self-awareness and implies an increasing degree of freedom from the automatism of the body, finding its culmination in the subjective human consciousness, where such cognitive autonomy is mirrored in language. Therfore, neuroscience, supports the fact that men have the faculty to reflect on their own emotion, and look beyond a selfseeking response to emotional stimuli. Art and imagination In an attempt to look at other studies which link creativity to the human ability to unify experiences, we find a recent study by Mark Johnson: Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Johnson writes that Cognitive science recognizes the fact that art and ethics are both imaginative experiences. It recognizes, too, the fact that imagination is fundamental to moral reasoning. It is, though, an idea with a heritage. Percy Shelley says in his Essay on the Defence of Poetry: "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensively and comprehensively....Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb." How we make sense of things is cognitive science. It holds that we structure our world not deductively, but through means such as prototype recognition, metaphor, and narrative. Prototype theory holds that we recognize objects around us by comparing them to mental constructions derived from experience. Recognition has to do with resemblance. Our conceptual system is, for the most part, structured by systematic metaphorical mappings. So, we understand more abstract and less structured domains (such as our concepts of reason, knowledge, belief) via mappings from more concrete and highly structured domains of
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Antnio Damsio's Lecture, "Emotion, Feeling, and Social Behavior: The Brain Perspective", 2003

experience (such as our bodily experience of vision, movement, eating, or manipulating objects). Language, and the conceptual system that underlies it, does not give us a literal core of terms capable of mapping directly onto experience. Instead, we map the world, including moral obligation, through imagination. The central claim is that "human moral understanding is fundamentally imaginative [and that] metaphor is one of the principal mechanisms of imaginative cognition."7 Based on these concepts, John Rethorst, in his book Philosophy of Education, states that moral imagination is stimulated by aesthetic experience. John Dewey, the American philosopher and psychologist, says in Art as Experience: The imagination is the great instrument of moral good...the ideal factors in every moral outlook and human loyalty are imaginative....Were art an acknowledged power in human association and not treated as the pleasuring of an idle moment or as a means of ostentatious display, and were morals understood to be identical with every aspect of value that is shared in experience, the 'problem' of the relation of art and morals would not exist. Rethorst's defense of the imagination echoes Martha Nussbaum who writes: Moral knowledge...is not simply intellectual grasp of propositions; it is not even simply intellectual grasp of particular facts...It is seeing a complex, concrete reality in a highly lucid and richly responsive way; it is taking in what is there, with imagination and feeling.8 It is, therefore, evident that the pursuit of the arts enhances the capacity to imagine. The faculty of imagination, in turn, empowers moral reasoning, which includes concepts such as the Unity of Creation. Conclusion Going back to Tagore, we can understand his personal apathy towards modern 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 greater tragedy than that for the children of men. A bird learns to fly and
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Art and Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Moral Education, John Rethorst, Yearbook 1997, Philosophy of Education Society, Illinois, USA
8

, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Martha Nussbaum, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

to sing by imitating and practicing the ways of its parents. It is part of lifes play there is no tussle between learning and joy. This way of learning is entirely through play; it is learning disguised as play. Just imagine how this contrasts with the preceptors and teaching institutes of today. It seems as if the mere act of being born in the household of men is a crime for which one must serve twenty years of penance. Instead of arguing 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 creation can take men a step closer to understanding differences and working towards a consciousness of oneness, it is easy to understand the emphasis he places in the teaching of the arts in the educational institutions that he established. I conclude by quoting a letter dated December 19, 1940 wherein Tagore writes, Wisdom, you will agree, is the pursuit of completeness; it is in blending life's diverse work with the joy of living. We must never allow our enjoyment to gather wrong associations by detachment from educational life; in Santiniketan, therefore, we provide our own entertainment, and we consider it a part of education to collaborate in perfecting beauty.10 Thank you.

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Kobir Koifiyot, Shahityer Pothe; Tagore, VisvaBharati, Ashwin, 1343. Personal letter to H.E.President Tai Chi-Tao, Rabindranath Tagore; The Modern Review; January 1941.