A Conversation between Tagore and Einstein

The Nobel Laureates Prof Albert Einstein (1921) and Sri Rabindranath Tagore (1913) met at Einstein’s residence in Berlin, Germany, on 14th July 1930, as photographed. The recorded conversation elegantly demonstrates how the two utilised the language of music, as a metaphor, to forge common ground between science & spirituality.

TAGORE: I was discussing with Dr Mendel [mutual friend] today the new mathematical discoveries which tell us that in the realm of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character.

EINSTEIN: The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say good-bye to causality.

TAGORE: Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organised universe.

EINSTEIN: One tries to understand in the higher plane how the order is. The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence, but in the minute elements this order is not perceptible.

TAGORE: Thus duality is in the depths of existence, the contradiction of free impulse and the directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly scheme of things.

EINSTEIN: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds look as one from a distance, but if you see them nearby, they show themselves as disorderly drops of water.

TAGORE: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organisation?

EINSTEIN: Even the elements are not without statistical order; elements of radium will always maintain their specific order, now and ever onward, just as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the elements.

TAGORE: Otherwise, the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living.

EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.

EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition in music to guide the people’s mind. In Europe, music has come too far away from popular art and popular feeling and has become something like a secret art with conventions and traditions of its own.

TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated music. In India, the measure of a singer’s freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer’s song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret.

EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it — which gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.

EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?

TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is fixed. In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but not with melody.

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?

TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the imposition of harmony?

EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony swallows up the melody altogether.

TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colours in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of colour may make it vague and insignificant. Yet colour may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than colour. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours. Japanese music also seems to be so.

TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that it is great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its composition. Our own music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical appeal. European music is epic in character; it has a broad background and is Gothic in its structure.

EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer, we are so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance and dissonance is natural, or a convention which we accept.

TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.

EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.

TAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some classical music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the piece.

EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.

Mental Health: Then and Now

The treatment options for those suffering from mental illness have evolved significantly over time.  Those struggling with various disorders now have several non-invasive and humane choices available to them for managing troubling symptoms.  But sadly, this has not always been the case. Not so long ago, the stigma associated with mental illness, coupled with the barbaric ways in which many were treated, could be fairly classified as criminal.

In the 19th century, one of the most widely used treatments for mental illness involved a process called “blood letting.”  Doctors believed patients could be cured by relieving their “poisoned blood,” and by altering blood pressure rates which were contributing to their condition.

Many believe the famous Salem Witch Trials were actually a movement targeting the mentally ill.  Ill people were labeled demons and animals, and were regularly executed and excluded.  For years to come the mentally ill would be chained, placed in straightjackets  and warehoused in asylums which had the sole purpose of removing them from society altogether.  Once there, they became guinea pigs for a wide range of deplorable, experimental treatments.

Things did not get much better with the dawning of the 20th century.  At the time, “hydrotherapy” was the preferred treatment by psychiatrists working in these so-called hospitals.  Patients were subjected to both icy and hot water submersion, externally and internally, as doctors believed they could alter brain activity by changing the patient’s body temperature.  Some of the other treatments in this era were not much better.  Here are a few that were employed.

· Henry Cotton of Trentwood State Hospital thought bacteria from tooth rot contributed to insanity and began pulling the teeth of his patients.  Almost half of them died as a result.

· Jacob Klaesi began inducing a deep sleep in his patients by combining barbiturates with their other medications, hoping to alter brain patterns at a subconscious level.

· Two Harvard doctors, Jonathan Talbot and Kenneth Tillotson thought it would be therapeutic to bind patients in icy cold blankets and drop their body temperatures by as much as 15 degrees.

· The Viennese doctor Manfred Sakel introduced a process called insulin-induced coma, also thought to be therapeutic.

Towards the middle of the 20th century, as the population grew, so did the number of people identified as mentally ill or unstable.  To be mentally ill meant to carry an unfathomable stigma and be subjected to a slew of harmful stereotypes.  It was also during this era that the two most notorious forms of mental health treatments—treatments we have all come to know too well—were introduced.

Electroshock therapy was widely accepted as the most effective treatment for the mentally ill.  Later discredited, this therapy was applied to thousands of patients.  Doctors believed that seizures and mental illness were opposite entities, and that by inducing seizures in patients with the use of electric shock, they could somehow reverse the effects of the illness.

Lobotomy also surfaced around this time.  Introduced by Portuguese doctor Egas Moniz, a lobotomy is a procedure in which a patient’s frontal lobes are surgically altered, usually with some type of drill.  Moniz believed that mental illness was a product of static patterns and that “to cure these patients we must destroy the more or less fixed arrangements of cellular connections that exist in their brain.”  Moniz won the Nobel Prize based on his work.

Thankfully treatment for the mentally ill has come a long way, and while a stigma still remains to some degree, more people are beginning to seek the proper attention for what ails them.  There are some experts, though, that believe we still have a long way to go.  While doctors have certainly come far from the days of submersion and bloodletting, the treatments currently being offered may still have room for improvement.

Medication therapy is the primary strategy employed by the majority of doctors today.  In fact, antidepressants have replaced all other categories of drugs as the most prescribed drugs in North America.  Initially, drugs called dopamine blockers, which included Thorazine, were the medications most often prescribed.  They succeeded only in placing patients in “vegetable-like” states, making them difficult to treat.  Currently, a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, have taken over the lead.  The drugs Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil are included in this category, and according to some experts, their usage has reached epidemic proportions.

The SSRIs have helped many people deal effectively with their symptoms, but the drugs do nothing to address the actual causes of depression.  As a result, millions of people are becoming dependent on drugs that they may never be free of.  To make matters more complicated, the usage of SSRIs has been known to cause many troubling side effects.  Insomnia, digestive problems, tremors and sexual difficulties are regularly endured.  Many believe these medications are responsible for a host of dangerous conditions, and are creating more problems than they are addressing.

In the wake of these record prescriptions, some mental health professionals are beginning to employ some alternate techniques.  Talk therapy, cognitive therapy and behavior modification strategies are often combined with medications to try and unearth the root of the illness.  Some wonderful reports are beginning to come in, boasting the effectiveness of these treatments, and it has prompted doctors to employ a more comprehensive approach for these conditions.

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is a strategy involving a combination of eastern meditation techniques and cognitive therapy.  Patients are taught to meditate and are instructed just to “accept what is,” and “live in the moment.”  The theory behind MBCT is that meditation, coupled with cognitive therapy will help people recognize and interrupt harmful patterns, such as dreading the past and anxiously awaiting the future, and replace them with “right now” thinking and a feeling of peace and empowerment.

Other techniques such as Subconscious Restructuring and Magnetic Stimulation therapy are quickly gaining popularity in the medical community.  The former seeks to treat the causes of depression, and other disorders, at the subconscious level.  It helps patients become aware of harmful stimuli, and provides them with techniques to identify these triggers and actively alter or eliminate them.  Magnetic Stimulation is a technique in which charged or static magnets are applied to an affected area, in this case the brain, to alter its activity.

Collectively, all of these alternate therapies represent a positive shift in the arena of mental health.  As the stigma, inherent in mental illness, gradually begins to ebb, doctors are embracing the challenge of tackling mental health at its root.  Times have changed, but its important to remember that mental illness is still avery serious dilemma—a dilemma without a cure.  With continued research and a complete commitment to finding a cure, a commitment which is embraced both medically and sociologically, the options available to those suffering will continue to evolve, offering a ray of hope for treating this global plague.