APPENDIX II
NOTE ON THE NATURE OF REALITY

(A conversation between Rabindranath Tagore and Professor
Albert Einstein, in the afternoon of July 14, 1930, at the
Professor's residence in Kaputh.)

E. : Do you believe in the Divine as isolated
from the world?

T. : Not isolated. The infinite personality of
Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be
anything that cannot be subsumed by the human
personality, and this proves that the truth of the
Universe is human truth. I have taken a scientific
fact to illustrate this Matter is composed of pro-
tons and electrons, with gaps between them; but
matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity
is composed of individuals, yet they have their
inter-connection of human relationship, which
gives living solidarity to man's world. The entire
universe is linked up with us in a similar manner,
it is a human universe. I have pursued this
thought through art, literature and the religious
consciousness of man.

E. : There are two different conceptions about
the nature of the universe: (i) The world as a
unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as
a reality independent of the human factor.

T. : When our universe is in harmony with Man,
the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as
beauty.

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THE RELIGION OF MAN

E,: This is a purely human conception of the
universe.

T.: There can be no other conception. This
world is a human world the scientific view of it
is also that of the scientific man. There is some
standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it
truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose ex-
periences are through our experiences.

E.: This is a realization of the human entity.

T. : Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize
it through our emotions and activities. We realize
the Supreme Man who has no individual limita-
tions through our limitations. Science is concerned
with that which is not confined to individuals; it
is the impersonal human world of truths. Religion
realizes these truths and links them up with our
deeper needs; our individual consciousness of
truth gains universal significance. Religion ap-
plies values to truth, and we know truth as good
through our own harmony with it.

E. : Truth, then, or Beauty, is not independent
of man?

T.:No.

E.: If there would be no human beings any
more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be
beautiful.

T.:No.

E.: I agree with regard to this conception of
Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.

T,: Why not? Truth is realized through man.

E. : I cannot prove that my conception is right,
but that is my religion.

T.: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony
which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect

222



APPE NDI CES

comprehension of the Universal Mind. We indi-
viduals approach it through our own mistakes and
blunders, through our accumulated experience,
through our illumined consciousness *how, other-
wise, can we know Truth?

E. : I cannot prove scientifically that truth must
be conceived as a truth that is valid independent
of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for
instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geom-
etry states something that is approximately true,
independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if
there is a reality independent of man there is also
a truth relative to this reality; and in the same
way the negation of the first engenders a negation
of the existence of the latter.

T\: Truth, which is one with the Universal
Being, must essentially be human, otherwise what-
ever we individuals realize as true can never be
called truth at least the truth which is described
as scientific and can only be reached through the
process of logic, in other words, by an organ of
thoughts which is human. According to Indian
Philosophy there is Brahman the absolute Truth,
which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the
individual mind or described by words, but can
only be realised by completely merging the indi-
vidual in its infinity. But such a truth cannot be-
long to Science* The nature of truth which we are
discussing is an appearance that is to say what
appears to be true to the human mind and there-
fore is human, and may be called maya, or illusion,

E. : So according to your conception, which may
be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of
the individual, but of humanity as a whole.

223



THE RELIGION OF MAN

T. : In science we go through the discipline of
eliminating the personal limitations of our indi-
vidual minds and thus reach that comprehension
of truth which is in the mind of the Universal
Man.

E. : The problem begins whether Truth is inde-
pendent of our consciousness.

T. : What we call truth lies in the rational har-
mony between the subjective and objective aspects
of reality, both of which belong to the super-
personal man.

E. : Even in our everyday life we feel compelled
to ascribe a reality independent of man to the ob-
jects we use. We do this to connect the experiences
of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if
nobody is in this house, yet that table remains
where it is.

T. : Yes, it remains outside the individual mind,
but not outside the universal mind. The table
which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind
of consciousness which I possess.

E. : Our natural point of view in regard to the
existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be
explained or proved, but it is a belief which no-
body can lack no primitive beings even. We
attribute to Truth a. super-human objectivity; it is
indispensable for us, this reality which is inde-
pendent of our existence and our experience and
our mind though we cannot say what it means.

T. : Science has proved that the table as a solid
object is an appearance, and therefore that which
the human mind perceives as a table would not
exist if that mind were naught. At the same time
it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate

224



APPENDICES

physical reality of the table is nothing but a mul-
titude of separate revolving centres of electric
forces, also belongs to the human mind.

In the apprehension of truth there is an eternal
conflict between the universal human mind and the
same mind confined in the individual. The per-
petual process of reconciliation is being carried on
in our science and philosophy, and in our ethics.
In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unre-
lated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-
existing.

It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the
sequence of things happens not in space, but only
in time like the sequence of notes in music. For
such a mind its conception of reality is akin to the
musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry
can have no meaning. There is the reality of
paper, infinitely different from the reality of lit-
erature. For the kind of mind possessed by the
moth, which eats that paper, literature is abso-
lutely non-existent, yet for Man's mind literature
has a greater value of truth than the paper itself,
In a similar manner, if there be some truth which
has no sensuous or rational relation to the human
mind it will ever remain as nothing so long as we
remain human beings.

E,: Then I am more religious than you arel

T. : My religion is in the reconciliation of ^thc
Super-personal Man, the Universal human spirit
in my own individual being* This has been the
subject of my Hibbert Lectures, which I have
called "The Religion of Man".

وقد حصلت على الكتاب من موقع أركايف دوت أورج، ولكني حرصت فيما قبل أن أشتري نسختي من الكتاب من محل للكتب المستعملة على النت.
http://www.archive.org/details/religiono...i027987mbp