Sadhana, the Realisation of Life

Rabindranath Tagore, who lived from 1861 to 1941, was a Bengali poet, philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer and novelist whose work reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He became the first Asian Nobel laureate when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, and that same year saw the publication of the book recorded here.

Sadhana, The Realisation of Life, is a collection of essays, most of which he gave before Harvard University, describing Indian beliefs, philosophy and culture from different viewpoints. The chapters deal with the relation of the individual to the universe, with soul consciousness, with the problem of evil, with the problem of self and with realisation in love. Tagore writes as a poet as much as a philosopher: he prefers images from nature and daily life to technical terms, and he invites the reader to feel an idea before analysing it.

The recording consists of eight sections and lasts about four and a half hours. The first section combines the preface with the opening chapter, and the others follow the order of the book. The pace is unhurried, so the text is best enjoyed in small portions, perhaps one chapter at a time, with time to reflect between them.

A group of LibriVox volunteers lent their voices to this reading. For listeners new to Indian thought, it is an accessible introduction by one of its greatest literary figures. For readers who already know his poems, it shows the thinker behind them. More than a century later, its questions about harmony, selfhood and compassion remain strikingly alive.