Perhaps it is well for me to explain that the subject-matter of the papers published in this book has not been philosophically treated, nor has it been approached from the scholar's point of view. The writer has been brought up in a family where texts of the Upanishads are used in daily worship; and he has had before him the example of his father, who lived his long life in the closest communion with God, while not neglecting his duties to the world, or allowing his keen interest in all human affairs to suffer any abatement. So in these papers, it may be hoped, western readers will have an opportunity of coming into touch with the ancient spirit of India as revealed in our sacred texts and manifested in the life of to-day. (Author's Preface)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, a poet, musician and artist from the Indian subcontinent. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his elegant prose and magical poetry remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" of Gitanjali, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.