Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
Tagore’s Man about to leave Heaven for Earth said to the former in his valedictory jeremiad: “Now at the term of my stay in your hospitable abode I had hoped that you would shed one tear for me: but alas, you. Celestials, are heartless. You don’t seem to miss me even so much as a dry leaf is missed by the parent branch when the former falls to the ground. So... (I give you the original below) Ibid you adieu as Heaven wants no one” ... etc. Qu’en dites-vous re what the Mortal says to the Immortals (in Tagore’s “Farewell to Heaven”): ...
Very good poetry, but very bad psychology and no common sense! In the first place, because sorrow being alien to Heaven by the poet’s own statement, no one who was still there could talk in this strain: even going out of it he would still carry the atmosphere and would have to wait till he was born on earth to emit his first wail. In the second because, no one who had been strong enough to reach Heaven and be a comrade of the Gods, would separate from them in this lachrymose spirit. What he would be likely to say is this: “I depart earthwards since that is the law. One boon only I ask of you, if I merit it, that something of your Light, Strength, Joy and Peace shall be in touch with my mind and treasured in my heart in the midst of Earth’s sorrows and dangers, so that I may bear myself as one who was the companion of the Immortals and rise again to higher and higher Heavens till I touch the feet of the Divine”. As for the question whether Heaven wants Man, the answer is that if Heaven did not want him, he would not want Heaven. It is from Heaven that the longing and aspiration for Immortality have come: and it is the Godhead within him that carries it as a seed.