Reading some Tagore again, this time Sadhana. His essays written from his travels in rural Bengal were interesting vignettes but lacked life-force energy. The stories were told in a detached and dispassionate manner creating distance from the reader. Maybe I was seeking in the essays what was not meant to be in them - they were written in a different mood, for a difference purpose and a readership that valued what he was willing to share with them, and did not ask for that which he was unwilling to.
This observation about the west and the desire to subdue nature and the consequences that arise from failing to do so, felt particularly poignant in light of all the ways that nature has been in American news lately - fires that cannot be stopped in the west coast, intense Artic cold fronts in the rest of the country. Many lost electricity and were forced to come in direct contact with nature that could not be subdued. Many lost their homes - the thing that separated them from the brute force of nature.
The west seems to take a pride in thinking that it is subduing nature; as if we are living in a hostile world where we have to wrest everything we want from an unwilling and alien arrangement of things. This sentiment is the product of the city-wall habit and training of mind. For in the city life man naturally directs the concentrated light of his mental vision upon his own life and works, and this creates an artificial dissociation between himself and the Universal Nature within whose bosom he lies.
He contrasts that with the Indian view of the world. Was that his romanticized opinion of the Indian world view or the reality of his day is hard to tell. That is certainly not the truth about India today - that implicit harmony between man and nature is not there to see anymore.
But in India the point of view was different; it included the world with the man as one great truth. India put all her emphasis on the harmony that exists between the individual and the universal. She felt we could have no communication whatever with our surroundings if they were absolutely foreign to us. Man's complaint against nature is that he has to acquire most of his necessaries by his own efforts. Yes, but his efforts are not in vain; he is reaping success every day, and that shows there is a rational connection between him and nature, for we never can make anything our own except that which is truly related to us.
The world is way more connected than it was in Tagore's day. So perhaps there is a fortified, walled city view of the world and then there is the forest, woodland integrated with human life view. It is no longer about west or east but people choosing to see things one way or the other
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