Book Two. The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Canto V
Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII
Canto IX
Canto X Canto XI Canto XII
Canto XIII Canto XIV
Canto XV
Book Two
The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
|
Book Two: Canto X The Kingdom and Godheads of the Little Mind
First, Aswapathy finds a silver-grey expanse parting the flow of Life from the poise of Thought, a meeting ground of Knowledge and Ignorance. At the lower end there is a dim, small-range mind ever turned outward—the material mind. This mind sees everything in terms of Matter and lives from moment to moment in its search for Knowledge. Above this belt he steps into the realm of an early Sun out of whose rays the mind has come to be formed. Here an Intelligence is at work mediating between the Supermind above and the Nescience below, linking up gross Matter and its forms with the Consciousness looming from above. It enables Matter to think. Its field is still Ignorance; Knowledge is not yet in its grasp. This reasoning Intelligence with its instrument of logic cuts up Truth into bits and erects a wholly artificial pattern of the universe. However, invasion of Light from above in the form of intuitions, inspirations, myths, effect a breakthrough and living Knowledge begins to take shape and lead the earth onward. Here are the first forward movements of the mind, searching for Knowledge, looking for fresh discoveries. Her first task is to teach Ignorance to awake to the Knowledge within. But mind itself must first learn to recognise the truth beyond the many transient truths glimpsed by it. The mind has indeed worked, though cautiously, for the growth of the Light of Knowledge and has cut a passage from the Night of Inconscience towards the Light of Omniscience. There are three gradations of this Mind-Power: the physical mind, the life or desire-mind, the reasoning mind. Of these the first is the mechanical mind ever exposed to its habitual grooves of movement, inert, unchanging, repetitive, limited to physical forms and senses. This has its role in creation: to fix things in type. All movement, all new influx, is arrested and reduced by this power to its own established pattern. Next comes the desire-mind, ever on the move, claiming everything as food for its hunger. Imaginative, adventurous, impulsive, it is never satisfied, never content with what is gained. It darts forth in force and often catches what calm intelligence would miss. Instinct and intuition play a good part in its action. The last and the greatest of these powers is Reason. She looks upon the universe as an object to be studied and analysed piece by piece and seeks to impose a logical order and system on everything. She finds out the process of Nature and tries to remove Ignorance and harmonise all by thought. Much that is not on the surface escapes Reason. She conceptualises what she sees and weaves webs of abstract thought in her attempt to explain things. Indeed she releases herself from the trap of the senses but she cannot break out of the walls of the limited mind. Her constructed knowledge is shadowed by doubt and at some time or other is questioned and breaks down. There is no finality to her knowledge, she cannot perceive the whole Truth at the same time. Her labours are inconclusive. She can support with care and with equal care demolish the same. Her first reading of the material universe is that it is the working of a huge self-operating machinery, unconscious and mechanical. Life and Consciousness—such as they are—are products of this action; spirit, mystic feelings, etc. are all fancies; Matter is the sole reality. But this Thought breaks down at the first touch of the Unseen. Flashes from the Unknown startle this mind and open her eyes to glimpses of other realities. The ground beneath her is pulled out. All reveals itself to be the movement of a Force, a clash and strife, a dance of Kali. Reason wonders if Force is the final certitude and she seeks to grasp this Power and organise all life into an order, to cut out all things into a standardised perfection. But the elaborate constructions of Reason are upset by fresh heavings of Knowledge from within and new prospects open up of linking up Earth and Heaven, Life and Spirit, the finite and the Infinite. Awakened Reason is aware of the greater reality behind the surfaces of things, beyond her stretchings of conceptual logic. She is aware that her best is only a half-knowledge. Reason is not the creator, nor is Reason capable of seeing the whole Truth. What Reason is occupied with is only the outer robe, form, not the real body of Truth. She cuts up the Indivisible. Her knowings are only the husks of the grains of Knowledge that wait within. Announcers of the greater Truth, agents of the completer Knowledge arrive time and again—inspirations and intuitions that are the harbingers of the vaster Gnosis. Above these three spheres stand two more Powers of the Mind: the Life-Thought which breaks down the little walls built by the three smaller powers and soars wide and far mapping vistas beyond the normal ranges of the labouring mind and the pure Thought-Mind, luminous in its transcendent status, impassively surveying the cosmic act.
This
too must now be overpassed and left, Many are the stations reached by man in the course of his evolutionary journey. Each station is but a halting place and however attractive and satisfying it may be, the traveller cannot tarry there for long; he is obliged to move on to the next and thence to the further next, till he arrives at the terminal, the highest where the full truth of all is gained, where the unity of oneself, the world and God is realised. The journey cannot cease at any intermediate stage which can give only a partial truth. Aswapath7 has been in the satisfying paradise of the Life-Gods. But he cannot stay there for ever. He sees that that too is a stage which he has to leave behind and move further on in his journey upward till he reaches the supreme Plane of the highest all-reconciling Truth.
Always
a nameless goal beckons beyond, The path does not stop at any of the points on the route to the Destination, which remains unknown to the traveller still in the belt of Ignorance. Each station points to the next and however tortuous the way laid by the gods presiding over the course of the evolution, it always ascends from plane to plane. So too burns upwards the flame of Godward aspiration in the heart of every created being.
This
breath of hundred-hued felicity The being is indeed delighted beyond limits while in this world of uninterrupted joy and felicity. However small it may be compared to the infinity of the Supreme, it is permitted to taste the concentrated bliss of the Eternal and the boundless Vast. AR this, however, is only a fraction of the immensity of God's Delight.
The
moments stretched towards the eternal Now, Time appears to stand still and immortality is unveiled. However, Life reaches its zenith half-way to the divine heavens and climbs no further. It is content with its glory. The peaks attained point to still higher altitudes but life cannot climb to them and yet live.
Inviting
to their high and exquisite sphere, These heights of the life-world attract with their endless joys and intensities and beckon the being who is loth to come out of his narrow confines of the physical and smaller life-limits in which alone he feels secure. But they themselves are reluctant to respond to the call of still greater heights. They refuse to move out of their own grooves.
A
glory and sweetness of satisfied desire
It
could not house the wideness of a soul The splendour and happiness of satisfaction that prevail in this great life-world keep the spirit chained to the posts of bliss which, however glittering and attractive they may be, are still agents of confinement. The soul that is infinite in its intrinsic nature cannot get here the necessary scope and freedom to live in its native wideness. It is a golden cage.
A
memory soft as grass and faint as sleep, Above was an ardent white tranquillity.
A
musing spirit looked out on the worlds However, the spell and pull of this paradisal world recede as a sweet memory sinking past like the notes of an enchanting music fading away from the ears of one on the way to where Time is not. Above presses a pure tranquillity. A brooding spirit looks out on all creation. The air is one of utter clarity with a lustrous glow on the heights. Wide and bright realms of Mind set in profound stillness come into view.
But
first he met a silver-grey expanse The first tracts of this new realm are somewhat dimly lighted and grey. Here meet and commingle light and darkness. Here also is the demarcation between the ceaseless flow of restless life and the sustained firm poise of the Thought-mind which stands above and aloof from the eddies and currents of the sea of life.
Here nothing is certain and definite. All is an accommodation of uncertainties; doubts and logic-led guesses, characteristic of the lower belts of Mind, hold full sway. It is the meeting-ground between Knowledge flowing from the heights and Ignorance reigning below.
At
its low extremity held difficult sway At the lower end of this region is a mind that somehow manages to exist, but can hardly see or find what it seeks. It is a physical mind partaking the character of physical nature. It is of the same kind as the limited human thought which is confined to the ranges of its physical senses and hence unable to grasp what is outside them—either above or below. It is aware only of itself and of what is external to it.
This
was the first means of our slow ascent This mind has been the first step of the ladder of ascent for the evolving soul from the stage of half-consciousness of the animal living amidst a rush of movements and forms in a domain that it can neither understand nor alter to its advantage. It can only see and react to things as they present themselves, feel their impact and experience joy or sorrow as long as they last, but nothing more.
The
ideas that drive the obscure embodied spirit The earth-world is in the throes of the quest for Truth. The emerging spirit encased in a living body is the focal centre of this movement and the ideas that impel and goad that spirit on the tortuous ways of Ignorance towards Knowledge derive their strength and force from this realm of mind.
Here
are devised the forms of an ignorant life Here originate the movements and forms of life in ignorance which mistakes phenomenal experience for the established truth of things, concentrates upon the immediate moment losing sight of the eternity that stretches beyond. Here also, in this glittering obscurity, begins the movement of the physical mind which follows and serves the body it is intended to lead and use, the mind that depends upon the misleading senses for its data.
Advancing
tardily from a limping start, This mind is unsure of its starting point and moves hesitantly. Nevertheless, using the support of argued hypothesis, it erects its own theories and asserts them as absolute truth. It proceeds, not from confirmed full Knowledge but from its half-knowledge, to grasp what is not yet known. It goes on weaving filmy webs of thought only to discard them in favour of further constructions equally shaky.
A
twilight sage whose shadow seems to him Self, This half-lit mind mistakes its own penumbra for reality and in its limited vision it hops from moment to moment. Utterly dependent upon the workings of the sense-faculties, it acts upon their misleading reports. It judges on insufficient data, argues from unsure premises. It is not in possession of knowledge but attempts to confront it.
This
powerful bondslave of his instruments This material mind subjects itself to the rule of the senses which ought to serve it as its instruments. It imagines its status, which is in fact the lowest in the ranges of the Mind, to be the highest possible for Nature to attain. It is not aware of the part it has played in Nature's evolution and thinks itself to be a creature of physical Matter, whereas in truth, it is it that moulds and rules Matter in the measure of its force. But it sticks to this ignorant conception of itself in aggressive humility.
To
eternal light and knowledge meant to rise, Man is not the summit of Nature's evolution. His is but a bare beginning of an ascent which is to lead to the peaks of eternal Light and Knowledge. We must not stay content with our small lot. We have to break out of our small earthly confines, explore our nature with the torch of the soul. The precarious pace of the crawling insect is only the beginning of a movement that leads to a soaring flight; man is the embryo of a god to be delivered; even the weakness of mortal man holds in potential a force that is immortal.
At
the glow-worm top of these pale glimmer-realms Out of its rays our mind’s full orb was born. Aswapathy pushes across these regions of twilight, traverses their summits where light begins to gain over obscurity and emerges into a realm of a half-risen sun. From the rays of this incomplete sun is fashioned the full figure of the Mind.
Appointed
by the Spirit of the Worlds Here at work is the original skilful Intelligence missioned by the Creative Spirit to act as a mediator between the summits of superconscience above and the depths of inconscience below. This Mind functions through an equal operation of thought and doubt, its constituent elements vying with each other.
A
Secrecy breathed in life’s moving act; There is an air of secrecy over this realm where the patterns of life-creation out of obscure Matter are planned and cut out by the Intelligence at work behind the veil. It creates room for the Mind to enter and function—however tentatively in the immense territories of Ignorance.
A
master Magician of measure and device This Power of Intelligence has shown extraordinary skill in weaving a pattern of eternity from the forms that appear and reappear in the flow of life. And to thought, ever on the go, it has provided a place to station itself on the grounds of inconscience from where to witness the spectacle of life.
On
earth by the will of this Arch-Intelligence It is by the impelling Will of this original creative Intelligence that formless energy is driven to gather itself in the form of Matter. The minutest elements constituting the subtle energies combine under the directing gaze to produce the physical world and thus what was unseen comes to be seen, what was unfelt comes to be palpable, felt.
Magic
of percept joined with concept’s art Perception of the, ensouling truth and conception of its formulation together make it possible to name each form according to the power it embodies. The originating idea is concealed in the attractive form of its result—body. An apparatus is erected in which the senses pour in a representational report of the universe.
Even a greater miracle was done.
The
mediating light linked body’s power, And there is something more, equally or still more miraculous. The intervening light of the dynamic Intelligence links up the force in the material body, the movements of the dormant and partial awareness in the plant, the sensational consciousness in the animal and the thinking activity of the mind in man with the Splendour of the creative Spirit above.
Its
skill endorsing Matter’s right to think
Offering
its little squares and cubes of word
A
buried consciousness arose in her Matter too is enabled to think. The physical mind is provided with the doors of the senses for its functioning. Even Nescience is given a way of knowing. With the help of representation by words and aid of set letters the toiling force is taught to see and follow her workings_ A consciousness that was latent hitherto emerges and a kind of dreamy awareness ensues.
But
all was still a mobile Ignorance; With all this, however, true knowledge is not yet. There is no definite grasp in knowledge of the huge universe that has appeared. The reality of things is not known, only its representations are played with.
A
specialist of logic’s hard machine intellect which is ever active fashioning patterns on its own plane and it fragments the integral Truth into so many little bits and erects each as a self-existent truth. It then proceeds to build the picture of the Whole by bringing together these several parts in some kind of unifying design. Thus is the true living vision of the spirit displaced by the utilitarian but false, artificial and mechanical construction of the reason. A glittering mental mechanism takes the place of the divine artisan.
None
the true body found, its soul seemed dead: Naturally none finds the true knowledge this way. The soul of knowledge appears to have died. The natural inner vision which sees truth in its totality is absent; what acts its part is a construction of the mind simulating a whole view.
Then
from the secret heights a wave swept down, At this stage when the reasoning mind has erected its own picture of truth and true knowledge is displaced by an artificial put-together of the logical intellect, a wave of consciousness pours down and a rebel light that refuses to be schooled by the teacher intellect breaks out. It casts its eyes upwards and sees luminous heights; it turns its flash inwards and wakes up the God that is dormant within.
Imagination
called her shining squads Imagination has entered the scene with her bright hosts who run in all directions and discover marvels that are lying unknown to the mind of reason. She moves into action and along with her companion hosts of Inspiration, disturbs the placid skies of settled thought and fills them with new, bright impressions of light. Imagination widens the field and creates openings for the entry of Inspiration.
A
bright Error fringed the mystery-altar’s frieze; The prevailing Ignorance is slowly yielding ground. Error is lighted up and pushed away to the fringe; out of darkness the light of wisdom is slowly emerging. Imagination draws inspiration from a radiant knowledge and grows from obscurity to light.
Thus
worked the Power upon the growing world; This is the way the Wisdom-Power works. The full knowledge is not yet. The soul grows from stage to stage in its transition from ignorance to Knowledge. Imagination and its allied faculties help it with rich fare—not all of which is fact but nonetheless more entertaining and in the long run more productive than the dry matter-of-fact data supplied by reason.
Thus
streamed down from the realm of early Light, This is the way in which movements of thought pour down from the first beginnings of the realms of Light into the material world. This is how thoughts not originated in the material base come to form in this world. The Vedic herds of the Sun troop into the hidden obscurities of the Earth.
Its
morning rays illume our twilight’s eyes, By means of these emanations from the realms of Light the mind of earth is slowly lit up and induced to think, to dream and to create anew. It is cultured to respond to beauty and helped to grasp the inner and the outer world in its understanding. The soul is enabled to perceive and to conceive.
In those bright realms are Mind’s first forward steps.
Ignorant
of all but eager to know all, These are the regions where the mind begins to step out of its native ignorance and emerge into the first belt of the light of Knowledge. Slowly it presses forward with its steps of enquiry, catches hold of the forms it comes across, scrutinises, and moves further in quest of greater discoveries.
Ardent
and golden gleamed with sunrise fires,
Yet
all it does is on an infant’s scale, Lit by the glow of this early dawn, the mind is constantly on the move and is alert on the watch for new possible openings around. With all that, however, what it succeeds in doing is something trifling, little. It is as if the whole universe were a nursery game for a Titan's infant with life and mind for its toys.
As
one it works who builds a mimic fort The constructions of this mind are as fragile as little sand-forts erected in play on the shores of the sea. They last somehow for a while but fire washed away by the first wave that slashes across. The edifices of the limited reason are destroyed in the same way by the first touch of a larger Knowledge.
A
small keen instrument the great Puissance chose, The mind is, after all, a small though a sharp instrument fashioned by the creative Spirit for a definite purpose in evolution. It is meant to act upon the Ignorance that settles thick over this lower creation. The thought faculty of the mind grows from the soil of nescience at its roots; slowly awareness develops into thought and as this faculty gets organised by mind-culture, the Knowledge that is latent in the being is awakened.
For
knowledge comes not to us as a guest Knowledge arises from within. It does not come from outside. It is there latent in the depths of the being, lying untapped behind the veil of the mind's activity. As life grows and evolves in consciousness, this knowledge wakes up. To awake this slumbering deity and to set it into movement is the task of Nature.
All
was a chaos of the true and false, When the mind began to enquire for truth, for knowledge of the truth of things, everything was mixed up. It was a medley of the true and the false. The searching mind was stumbling in the obscurites of the basal Nescience. When it looked into itself it was unable to discover there the truth of God. Neither within nor without could it come upon this truth.
A
material interim diplomacy Indeed the mind concocted truths galore, but the real truth was not found. The creative Intelligence permitted this reign of short-lived truths and the denial of the lasting truth with a purpose. It let the deity of true knowledge be covered with outgrowths of mind-made creeds and conjectures so that the prevailing Ignorance might of itself slowly learn its error and grow towards Knowledge. Knowledge imposed from outside lacks roots and does not last. What is realised from within and naturally becomes part of the Consciousness is effective and permanent.
This
was the imbroglio made by sovereign Mind It was perhaps inevitable that the mind should land in such a confusion in its first and tentative dealings with the obscurities of Inconscience. Her quick movements had to be sustained and tempered with caution.In this world emerging from Inconscience and pervaded by Ignorance, progress has necessarily to be slow; a too rapid advance ends in failure and setback; each forward step needs to be integrated with the rest before the next can be safely ventured.
Yet
was her strength unlike the unseeing earth’s
Earth
all perceives through doubtful images, The mind, however, was not allowed by the governing Intelligence to follow the blind and mechanical motion of the earth. She was obliged to use the provisional instruments fashioned by the Life-force acting in the body and play an active role. Unlike her the earth is passive in her perception of the uncertain images and unsure conceptions that flash across in sporadic gleams of light thrown by the groping mind.
Incapable
of the soul’s direct inlook and what she gathers is only fragments of Knowledge. Truth has to submit to the poverty of the mind and shape herself accordingly. The mind rules out the spiritual oneness in Nature, fragments everything and studies and evaluates all in terms of her own ignorance.
In
her own domain a pontiff and a seer, Though endowed with only a half-light, this Mind-Power—greater than earth and life-power—was supreme in her own mental domain, worked masterfully within the boundaries of her field. Her special faculty of thought was her means to know and she claimed the beginnings of authority to see aright.
In
her eyes however darkly fringed was lit
In
her own realm she stumbles not nor fails, The mind was ringed with limitations in its functionings but acting through the mind was a greater Power with a dynamic vision and will. Beyond mind is an unfailing Power. That is why the mind, in spite of all handicaps, does not fail in her own field. She forges step by step the way towards the plenary Sun of Knowledge across the belts of subtle existence.
A
candidate for a higher suzerainty, The mind aspired for a greater supremacy than her own and worked her passage from the darkness of Inconscience and Ignorance into the domain of Light. And there she searched for the All-Knowledge which was beyond grasp.
A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.
First,
smallest of the three, but strong of limb, The instrumentation of this mind-power has three tiers: the physical mind, the vital or desire-mind, the thought or reasoning mind. The physical mind is the smallest and the most limited of the three, but it is solid in its physical mould, firmly rooted in the physical base. It is small in stature and clings to its safety in the bounds of physical form and fact. It dwells within these confines and goes on repeating its rounds in them.
Absorbed
and cabined in external sight,
A
technician admirable, a thinker crude, It always looks outward and loses itself in the external vision. It works only upon the solid data of physical Nature and its thought-movements are correspondingly primitive. It arrests the free movements of life and presses them to flow in the grooves of physical habit, subject to the laws of Matter. It forms moulds for its working but they become its prison-bars; it gets caught within its own constructions.
A
slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,
In
its realm of concrete images and events This physical mind is a slave of fixed habits which assume for it the absoluteness of laws. Habitual movements of thought are to it the sole Truth. It lives and functions in its petty circle of physical forms and movements, mechanically repeating its activities, turning round in the same thought-grooves. It is satisfied to live in the common rut of the obvious and the familiar.
It
loves the old ground that was its dwelling-place: This mind sticks to its position and is averse to any change. It does not easily move forward. Even when it has to accept a new position and move, it is extremely reluctant to do so and advances very warily. It does not welcome adventure into the unknown; it regards it as a fearful source of danger.
A
prudent treasurer of its ignorance, It guards its fund of ignorance very zealously; it shrinks from every possibility of fresh Knowledge, gets dazed by every new light. It cherishes its own narrow and low ground, preferring its accustomed safety to the dangerous thrill of expansion, outward and upward.
The
world’s slow impressions on its labouring mind, The slow but steady impacts of the world make a strong impression on this mind and acquire a firm lodgement in its layers. Their very pettiness forms an asset. They build themselves into an unfailing stock of memories for the mind to draw upon.
Only
what sense can grasp seems absolute: To this mind the only reality is what can be grasped by the senses; what is an objective fact, physically seizable, that alone is true. To it wisdom is to be found in an earth-bound vision; what transcends the earth is of doubtful value. In its journey through uncertain Time, things that are familiar and movements that are ever repeated are its sole support. It does not venture beyond them.
Heaven’s
trust to it are the established ancient ways, Old ways to which it is accustomed acquire a sanctity to this mind. It does not permit them to be altered; it clings to them as a precious heritage that shall not be interfered with. It invests them with the inviolable sanction of God, and regards them as moulds for ever fixed for the activities of Nature. It is a necessary and unchangeable part of the machinery of the universe.
A
smile from the Preserver of the Worlds This mind is a force for conservation of form, posture and movement in their changeless type, charged with its task as it were by Lord Vishnu the Preserver. It resists change and seeks to maintain all things in their status quo.
One
sees it circling faithful to its task, This mind always moves round and round but never a step forward; it revolves ceaselessly within the circle of the known tradition. It sticks to custom and does not allow it to be transgressed, however old and worn out it might be in the passage of time.
Or
in an ancient Night’s dim environs The range of this mind is very close to the obscurity of the basal Nescience. It has fenced its territory with the posts of the senses and it is obstinate in its refusal to admit fresh knowledge from beyond its domain. It confines itself to material data and to such bits of life-experience as are within its assimilative capacity. Ideas and perceptions from outside this scope are taboo.
And
yet behind it stands a cosmic might: With all its obvious limitations, however, this physical mind serves a purpose in the Great Plan of the creative Spirit. It is supported by the Greater Will in its movements of repetitive sameness which gives a kind of necessary rhythm to the steps of the life-force and imposes one dumb Law of changeless stability on the innumerable species that people this creation.
A
huge inertness is the world’s defence, This strong element of inertia, of resistance to change, is a deliberate protective construction of Nature against the imperious surge of life which seeks to sweep off everything before it. As a result even when things appear to change and move, they turn round and settle back into their old state. The energy may be always in motion, but the stability on which it bases itself is the guarantee of its continuity. The Cosmic Dance of the Creative Puissance, Shakti, is supported on the stable breast of the Immutable Shiva.
A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
A
hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass, Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire. Next in the gradation, higher than the physical mind is the vital mind or the mind of desire. This power draws from the flaming Force of Will that is active everywhere in this Creation, expressed in different forms on different levels of existence. In this mind a stunted intelligence is yoked to the all-consuming force of life; it is fired with a restless desire. This mind is shot through and through with desire. All its movements are coloured with the desire to possess everything it sees.
A
thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names: This mind of desire moves in endless forms, is never content, never sure of itself, darting in every direction. That is how it pursues the One Reality, running across innumerable roads, round and round in varied circles.
It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.
A
radiance gleaming on a murky stream, This glowing mind of desire is astir in all, burning upward and outward, opening the way, high and low, but it cannot shoot high enough, it fails and falls. The truth it is able to touch, it contaminates and perverts. It infects everything with its desire.
A
huge chameleon gold and blue and red This mind rapidly changes from joy to grief, from love to hate and fear. It is filled with the insatiable hunger of life and snatches whatever petty pleasures and joys it can spot. It sustains itself on the grosser enjoyments of material life and thrives upon them.
A
snake of flame with a dark cloud for tail, This mental power is bright at one end but full of obscurity at the other. Its thinkings have the character of the vital movements—dreamy and glowing. It shoots in many directions at the same time and its activities are colourful. In the end, however, it does not attain to Knowledge; it only touches Knowledge from the outside, here and there, briefly, with a touch which is both bright and obscure.
A
whirlpool sucking in an empty air, It claims high but its very basis is a void, without any substance of reality. What its restless movements result in is an emptiness with no knowledge gained. But with all its apparent futility of activity, it is found to have moved in the long run—albeit without knowing it towards the concealed Reality that is All.
Ardent
to find, incapable to retain, This mind is passionate in its quest, but it can hardly retain what it finds or stumbles upon. It is scintillating but unstable. It has a natural tendency to make mistakes; both in its start and in its action it inclines to error.
At
once to an unreflecting credence prone, It is always ready to believe without reflection and welcomes all that supports its own hopes as the truth. It indulges with relish in wishful thinkings that ultimately come to little. It feeds itself on imagination which has little to do with reality.
In
darkness it discovered luminous shapes; This mind is very active with its faculties of fancy, conjecture and dream and erects quite a world of images, scenes and movements but, however, it catches at times some glimpses of subtler Forms and Powers at work in the universe and some reflections of half-veiled truths.
An
eager spring to seize and to possess It is ever eager to jump at things and possess them; it does not allow itself to be guided by reason or by the perceiving soul within, but rushes on, on impulse. It wastes a good deal of the life-force at its disposal in trying to attain what is not at all possible for it. In its flair for adventure it leaves the direct road and runs around courses that appear more interesting. It leaves its present gains for the uncertainties of the future; what is not achieved yet has for it a compelling imperative and danger fascinates and draws out its highest capabilities.
Adventure
its system in the gamble of life, It is ignorant of the truth of the being and the workings of that truth; and yet it is ever confident in its stride and mistakes do not hamper its confidence. Failures do not loosen its passionate hold on things. Even one chance success emboldens it to expect success all along.
Attempt, not victory, was the charm of life.
An
uncertain winner of uncertain stakes, For this power effort itself is the savour of life, not necessarily success. It may or may not win high stakes. Instinct is at the root of its existence and desire is its impulsion to movement. It is satisfied with its efforts, no matter the results.
Yet
were its works nor small and vain nor null; However, its activities are not all a waste or without value. It takes in something of the manifesting strength of the Infinite Reality, receives a formative nourishment at its hands and with this it is able at times to create, to give concrete shape to some of its high fancies. What the intelligence in the calmer altitudes of the mind misses is seized by the passionate rushes of this vital-mind.
Insight
of impulse laid its leaping grasp
A
half-intuition purpled in its sense;
It
saw in the dark and vaguely blinked in the light, It has sudden impulsive insights which seize some rays of light that are hidden behind the intense activity of Thought. It probes into what appears to thought to be a void and discovers there a treasure. A semi-intuitive power glistens in its workings and it touches the occult in flashes. Sometimes, strangely, in darkness, it perceives; in light, it sees dimly. Though its field of action is Ignorance, it aims at winning the unknown in its grasp.
Of all these Powers the greatest was the last.
Arriving
late from a far plane of thought Next is the thinking reasoning mind, the greatest of the three. It comes from a distant plane of Thought and is set into action in a field where reason is not yet the ruler, where all appears to be a play of Chance, gross feeling and blind action. This Reason is a puny, slow builder and her narrow station in the journey in Time is upon a precarious ridge.
Adept
of clear contrivance and design, She has perfected her little instruments of testing and judging things and is ever watchful leaving nothing to escape her scrutinising gaze. She is supremely confident of herself and the rightness of her workings and refuses to change her position. Of the three little mind-powers,—physical mind, desire-mind, reason—this thinking or reasoning mind is the strongest and the most enlightened.
Armed
with her lens and measuring-rod and probe, This mind of reason looks upon the universe, the living beings in it and upon Time and Space in Which the world-movement is set as objects of its scrutiny. With her narrow meant and standards it tries to judge and evaluate the earth and distant stars.
In
her strong purposeful laborious mind, This mind is not given to imaginative exercises like the vital mind, nor does it let itself go without check or control. It is purposeful, self-willed and labours assiduously to achieve its goal. It forms its own moulds of understanding, patterns into which it seeks to grasp the world-movement and goes on gathering its segments of Truth which are only so many half-views of the Reality.
Impatient
of enigma and the unknown, It cannot let pass a riddle or a thing that is not known; it must exert itself to solve the riddle, to know the unknown. It cannot tolerate disorder nor anything out of the way that does not fall into a system. It imposes its own deliberative order on the mechanical movement of Force. It tries to force some clarity on what cannot be plumbed by thought and strives to capture and formulate the contents even of the mystic world in terms of its own method and rule of logic.
Nothing she knew but all things hoped to know.
In
dark inconscient realms once void of thought, Though this mind of reason knows nothing, it has the ambition to know all. It is really an intermediate agent of the higher Intelligence missioned to cast its ray of light on the obscure lower realms of the inconscient bereft of thought. It is an imperfect, half-light leading the mass of ignorance towards the fuller Light of Knowledge through its instruments of sense, word and idea. By its incessant probe, analysis and study it succeeds, to a certain extent, in unveiling the secret process, the basic material and the motivating cause in Nature.
All
life to harmonise by thought’s control The mission of Reason is to impose the direction of thought, to coordinate and to bring some harmony into the pellmell of life in the universe; to that end she strives and strives. She is, indeed, ignorant of everything except her own mind; yet her work is to save the world from the domination of the prevailing Ignorance.
A
sovereign worker through the centuries,
There
the low bent and mighty figure sits Reason has been at work holding her full sway for centuries, observing things, applying herself to reshaping them according to her own lights. Hers has been a tremendous task. She is industrious, ever-engaged in her labours with the aid of her instrumental faculties.
A
rigorous stare in her creative eyes Reason observes everything, spans the supple and flexible vistas of the mind before her and formulates her own lines of systematisation into firm moulds for all movement to flow into. She cares not for the demand for free variation in the Cosmic Nature; she is not aware either of other realities besides herself e.g. unexpressed thought, mute emotion, which are so near herself. She proceeds to erect creeds and laws and dry frames in which she hopes to contain and fix the free flow of life and imposes a mechanical order on all things.
For
the world seen she weaves a world conceived: The world conceived by her is more true to this Reason than the world that actually is. She weaves endless webs of speculation and abstract thought, builds systems out of section-views of the Infinite Reality, presents philosophies of God and creation and tries to explain what is inexplicable by her canons of logic, by her means of myths.
At
will she spaces in thin air of mind Even without any basis in fact she erects theories and schemes, trying to capture the vast Truth into narrow conceptual moulds; each of her systems of philosophy is a segment-view and hence they do not agree with each other, they clash. She observes the phenomenon of Nature and draws rigid lines and curves with her thought and logic along which she expects the world-movement to flow. She claims infallibility for her sciences thus formulated.
Out
of Nature’s body of phenomenon Working upon the vast, varying phenomena of Nature, Reason lays out fast and rigid lines of movement and development for the World-Power in action according to her own reading and analysis. This study of the outer processes of Nature is developed by her into fine and absolute sciences.
On
the huge bare walls of human nescience Reason studies the intricate and baffling movements of Nature and tries to interpret them in terms of her own understanding; she erects laws, casts maps and charts and builds systems purporting to explain and determine the world-movement.
On
all sides runs as if in a cosmic mosque This art, this artifice are her only stock. She embroiders her laboured systems of superficial knowledge with attractive, skilfully woven designs and makes them interesting though they are not sound in themselves. This art of presentation is her only forte.
In
her high works of pure intelligence,
A
million faces wears her knowledge here Indeed, Reason disengages herself from the misleading reports of the senses and tries to function from the altitudes of the higher, purer intelligence. Still, however, she is unable to break across the limitations of the mind; her power is bounded by the deficiencies of her instruments. She is never absolutely certain of the verity of the knowledge she builds up. Her knowledge is changeful and every step is shadowed by a doubt. Absolute Knowledge is high above the domain of Reason.
All now is questioned, all reduced to nought.
Once
monumental in their massive craft
There
is no summit on which she can stand Every affirmation of Reason is followed by a questioning and a negation. Imposing edifices constructed by her are demolished in no time; new fabrications take the place of the old and this constant change is deemed progress. There is no finis to her thought-labours, no certain goal where she can stop and say she has arrived at last. There is no summit in her range from where she can get an all-embracing view of the Reality that is infinite.
An inconclusive play is Reason’s toil.
Each
strong idea can use her as its tool; Open to every thought, she cannot know.
The
eternal Advocate seated as judge There is no finality to the labours of Reason. She can champion with equal vehemence quite different ideas one after the other. Any powerful idea can use Reason. Running with every thought that comes before her, Reason cannot arrive at true, definitive Knowledge. She is a partisan who pretends to judge. But her logic and argument can serve equally every claimant to the prize of Truth; there is no final victory for any one in the field of Reason.
Assaying
thought’s values with her rigid tests
Absolute
her judgments seem but none is sure; Reason functions in an artificial vacuum of her own, weighing the soundness of every thought with the set measures devised by herself, without involving herself, without allowing any predisposition to sway her operations. Her judgments seem, to be absolute and final; but in reality not one of them is certain of its truth; none lasts the test of time.
Although
like sunbeams to our glow-worm mind It may appear to the flickering mind as if the knowledge gained by the Reason is a gift from the higher summits of Light. But in truth it is nothing of the kind; it is little more than the feeble rays of a lantern in a surrounding darkness. All that she does is to cover Ignorance with a bright glow.
But
now is lost her ancient sovereign claim Reason claimed at one time to be the undisputed ruler of the whole domain of mind; she sought to force thought to live and function within the absolute confines of her logic; she claimed to arrive atTruth in the dazzle of her abstract speculations. But now she no more stakes that claim.
A
master and slave of stark phenomenon,
A
bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact, Reason reigns on the scene of Nature's phenomenon but at the same time her range is bounded by the extent of the actual phenomenon. Her journey is along the routes chalked out by the misreporting senses, her vision is confined to the mechanical patterns constructed by the faculties of the sense, and the physical mind; she engages herself only with materially proved facts—not with verities of feeling or other types that do not admit of physical proof that can be demonstrated. Consequently her laboured knowledge is of the most material kind, and the goal of her labours is utility. The value of her knowledge is measured in terms of its practical utility and not in its intrinsic worth.
Apprentice
she has grown to her old drudge; This now she uses as the assayer’s stone.
As
if she knew not facts are husks of truth, The sense ought to be the servant of Reason, but this natural relation is as if reversed. Reason has come to give the decisive role to the sense in coming to conclusions. Unless the sense certifies and confirms, Reason does not accept. Facts by which Reason swears are really the external coverings of truth. Reason, however, treasures these husks and throws away the precious grain within.
An
ancient wisdom fades into the past, With the advent and supremacy of Reason, wisdom garnered by other means fades away. Instinctive faith that had ruled all along is dismissed as a baseless construction. God does not stand the test of reasoned thought and is dismissed as an unsubstantial relic of an ignorant past. Reason tries to find the key to everything in the operations of mechanical nature.
Interpreting
stone-laws inevitable Reason studies the phenomenon in Nature, deduces certain laws from her observation and lends to them an inviolable fixity. She probes and bores through the deceptive surfaces of Material Nature in order to discover therein the origin of all life-movements, their precise processes.
A
loaded huge self-worked machine appears Reason comes face to face, in this venture of hers, with what appears to be a huge self-charged, self-worked, mechanical machinery in Nature which operates in a fixed and determined pattern. Even chance is a part of this machinery which, though apparently bereft of consciousness, is marvellously accurate in its results and forges the right path for the universal movement to advance along. This machine in effect plans without thinking it out, acts without exercising a will thereto; it does not seem to have any set purpose before it in its workings, but all the same it serves a diversity of purposes. It has no rationalising mind and yet the world it builds is rational to the core.
It
has no mover, no maker, no idea: This machine has none to set it into movement; who at all has made it! There is no idea that impels it. It acts without any cause. It is an unconscious Energy unrolling itself inexorably. It appears to be a combination of Necessity and Death and they both together produce the phenomenon of life and consciousness. And yet why all is there and from where all is derived is a wonder in itself.
Our
thoughts are parts of the immense machine, It would appear that even our thoughts are products of this huge, mechanical machinery. Our deep deliberations look to be chance off-shoots of the processes of Matter. In this setting all the wisdom of the mystic appears to be a fancy or a deception, soul or spirit dispensable things. Only Matter is the obvious, sole, eternal Reality, all-pervading, all-determining.
A
suicidal rash expenditure It seems as if all creation is a result of a reckless out-throw of an Energy filling up an empty Space. The next and inevitable phase of this movement—the first being one of expansion—is of contraction following a disintegration of the Force that builds. This ends the whole movement of creation, all fades away leaving the original Void vacant as before.
Thus
vindicated, crowned, the grand new Thought All was precise, rigid, indubitable. This is the victorious conclusion of materialistic Thought: there is nothing else than Matter; all is built by the mighty material Enemy and when that Enemy withdraws all disappears. This Thought has indeed done valuable service in its probing into and study of the material surfaces of the universe. It has touched the mute origins of creation in the physical bases, awakened unused powers into activity and put them in service. It has erected a system, unambiguous, exact, rigid in its frame.
But
when on Matter’s rock of ages based However, when this Thought is satisfied that it has erected a sound system of a material universe, a doubt creeps in following fresh discoveries revealing the much that is still unknown. What appeared to be solid crumbles into a flux; Reason is confronted with the presence of a formless creative Power in place of the phenomena of forms with which she was preoccupied. She is compelled to see the gulf between what she knows and the Reality that she is still to know. In comparison with the extent of the Reality to be known, what she knows can only be described as ignorance.
Once
more the world was made a wonder-web, What once appeared to be a reasoned system of the universe melts again into a product of wondrous magic. Reason is unable to trace the source of this miracle that is the universe. That origin is beyond its range to comprehend or formulate.
Once more we face the blank Unknowable.
In
a crash of values, in a huge doom-crack, Thus one stands once again in the presence of a great Unknowable; all that appeared to be known is broken up. All the constructions of Reason flounder.
A
quantum dance remained, a sprawl of chance What remains after the crash of the construction is the whirling movement of a mighty Energy in a limitless Void, producing innumerable forms without any definite purpose. Necessity and Cause which played a dominant role in the scheme of Reason are nonexistent; Matter which was the sole reality then is now hardly more than a petty result in the great flow of the life-being; Law which was the fixed frame of the material scheme is now no more than a mechanical habit of a blind force in movement.
Ideals,
ethics, systems had no base cal and other kinds of systems have no solid base to stand upon. Inevitably they collapse leaving everywhere chaos, friction and strife.
Ideas
warring and fierce leaped upon life; The order imposed by mental reason is gone and ideas clash and battle with one another. Liberty for orderly growth as determined by the mind is no more and complete anarchy is prevented only by the compulsion of Nature. Creation and destruction race together. The whole creation appears to be a frenzied dance of Kali—the Cosmic Power of destruction.
Thus
tumbled, sinking, sprawling in the Void, Reason finds the ground snatched from under her feet; she is unable to hold to anything solid. She perceives a filmy vast melting into a Void. This is the impalpable background on which moves the world-force creating phenomena.
Alone
a process of events was there What remains is only the process of things for Reason to perceive and analyse. There is a constant, subtle change at every moment. A mighty Force is seen released from the microscopic atom, a Force that can create or destroy irresistibly.
One
chance remained that here might be a power
For
Reason then might grasp the original Force Could it be that here is a Power at work which can free man from his limitations of instrument and establish him as the ruler of the earth? In that case Reason can hope to get hold of the original omnipotent Force and use it to extend her empire.
All
then might serve the need of the thinking race, If that were to be, the whole world-movement could be made to serve Man the thinker, an ordered System without exceptions established, all things standardised at some level of perfection, the entire society turned into a precise and mechanical pattern of functioning.
Then
science and reason careless of the soul Then Science and the logical intellect could organise the world on a set basis of uniformity. Knowledge would grow in its contents though the latter would pertain mostly to the external surfaces of Nature and the mind conditioned to think in one determined groove. The severe logic that governs the formulations of Matter would be imposed on the expressions of the Spirit thereby limiting its manifestation. Man would be little more than a trained animal capable of reasoning and his life would be an existence of an artificial symmetry.
This
would be Nature’s peak on an obscure globe, Such obscurity would be accepted to be the summit of the edifice of Nature in this universe, the finale of her aeonic labour, the crown of the evolutionary progress of the earth.
So
might it be if the spirit fell asleep; But that cannot be. For the Spirit in the heart of the evolutionary Nature is not asleep. It is astir and will not allow man to rest in any intermediate station of his long journey, betraying the trust of Nature; it will not permit the temporary phenomena of disorder and confusion to turn into a permanent law of the world. The strong heart at the core of life rises in revolt against this prolongation of Matter's rule of limitation and death. The awakened godhead in the bosom of earth has a greater plan that emerges slowly upsetting the little patterns of the material intellect.
But
many-visaged is the cosmic Soul; The Soul that is at work in the universe is not limited to one single form, one single expression. It is multifaceted and has diverse ways of working that defy the strict rules laid down by the logical intellect. Things may appear to be fixed, determined, for all time; the operations of fate apparently rigid, inescapable, but in truth they are not so. A touch of Grace, a breath of the Spirit can change the whole set-up. Fate can be altered by the intervention of something that is beyond the level of its formations.
A
sudden turn can come, a road appear, Suddenly a new road may come into sight and open quite a new direction, changing the given set of circumstances or some higher faculty than the logical mind may glimpse a Truth greater than the one held to before and the perspective and goal undergo a complete change. Or when all the outer means for effecting a breakthrough have failed, man may discover the key to the problem within himself. For in man lie, hidden behind the veil of external nature, endless possibilities. If only he looks within himself, deep enough, he will find the resolution of his difficulties, the solution for the riddles of his life.
Ascending
from the soil where creep our days, The consciousness of the earth need not for ever stay confined to the lowly plains of material life. It can—and surely will—rise above these first grounds and join with the Light on the summits. Mortal life can take on the wings of the Spirit and soar high towards the immortal altitudes of Existence. The bounded mind of man can put itself in tune with the unbounded Infinite and be in communion with it.
In
the bright kingdoms of the rising Sun Ascent into the higher realms of increasing Light brings about a rebirth into the power of that Radiance; whatever is deformed here on earth finds its right, felicitous form there above; everything here is mixed and segmented, there all is pure and entire. All the same each condition on earth is a phase, a step leading to another step. Nothing is permanent, all is in transition.
Awake
to a greater Truth beyond her acts, Reason begins to awake to a larger and greater Truth than her own. This intermediary between the ignorance below and Knowledge above surveys her workings, feels what is admirable in them and their effective dynamism and becomes conscious of the greater Power that is acting from behind the veil of phenomena.
She
did the task, obeyed the knowledge given, Awakened Reason recognises the higher Truth and conforms to the Knowledge that comes from above. While discharging her normal functions, she seeks, in her deeper movements, for Ideals beyond herself and searches for a Light greater than her own. But her effective power is circumscribed by her constitutional limitations. Within her range she works faithfully, but all the while she is aware that her utmost accomplishments are but half-findings, only a stage which has to be left behind for the inevitable next.
For
not by Reason was creation made And that is so because Reason is not the creator of the universe; she is only an intermediate Power. She can grasp only a part of truth, not the whole truth which stands veiled by mental thinking or by the movement of the senses. The eye of the perceiving spirit is handicapped by the defects of the instrumental faculties and its vision blurs.
The
little Mind is tied to little things: The petty sense-mind is always occupied with petty things. Its sense depends upon the first inadequate touches of the emerging spirit. Semi-awake in a world of dark Inconscience, it gropes to create its innumerable forms and beings. Its movements are tentative, unsure.
In
this small mould of infant mind and sense In this small, forming mind and its sense, desire shoots forth. This desire is really the cry of the infant soul for the Bliss that is its rightful share in the Creation. Reason is little more than a craftsman of toys, a framer of rules for this little game played in the court of the small mind of sense.
But
she her dwarf aids knew whose confident sight
The
world she has made is an interim report Enlightened Reason is aware of the limited sight and range of her aides, the senses, and of the fact that they mistake the immediate and limited view to be the ultimate truth. Her account of the world based upon the reports of these instruments can only be provisional, her findings only half-truths. Reason moves from the nescience below towards the superconscience above—in either case her own awareness lapses at both ends.
For
nothing is known while aught remains concealed; Reason grasps only a partial truth of things, some aspect fronting it; the rest is outside its grasp. And as long as any part remains unknown, the Knowledge gained is never complete; it is no knowledge at all. To know the Truth one must see and know it entire.
Attracted
by the All that is the One, Reason is attracted by the multiplicity that is in truth the One Reality. To get at this Reality she seeks for a light higher than her own which is feeble. The Reality is hidden behind all the cults and creeds she has erected; what she has discovered is only a Form, not the body of the Reality. Awakened Reason knows this and always strives and hopes to see and feel the very Reality in herself.
As
yet a mask is there and not a brow, What Reason has found is only the mask covering the face of the Reality, a mask that shines. Something of the true visage unveils itself occasionally but as a rule the mask intervenes. The efforts of Reason to remove that shining mask result only in making it shine all the more.
In
packets she ties up the Indivisible; The Reality is indivisible, but Reason attempts to grasp and present it in divided bits. She finds the Truth too vast for her hands and hence breaks it up into unnatural parts for understanding it. Her crude attempts to perceive the Truth only result in the formation of clouds of speculation veiling the rays of the Truth-Sun. She sees so many finite bounded forms but does not know that through them she is face to face with the countless aspects of the Infinite Reality.
One day the Face must burn out through the mask.
Our
ignorance is Wisdom’s chrysalis, However, a day must come when the Reality has to emerge out of the mask; the ignorance of the mind is only the outer crust of the Wisdom that presses forward. All human error is a step towards the attainment of Knowledge; error is continually met and corrected by fresh bursts of Knowledge on the path. Its darkness is only a thick shadow of the involved light of Knowledge. But on this dim-lit road towards the Sun of Knowledge thought has perforce to walk arm in arm with the basic nescience out of which it has risen and hence it is constantly frustrated in its activity.
Even
while her fingers fumble at the knots Thought, indeed, attempts to release itself from these clamps of nescience and its development proceeds in the measure in which this is successfully done. In this process of friction and disentanglement, there are at times outbreaks of a revealing Knowledge.
Even
now great thoughts are here that walk alone: Even when things are in this confused and mixed up state, there are in the atmosphere great solitary Thoughts at work. They are not products of laboured thinking but Truth-Ideas that have come down as intuitive flashes with the imprimatur of the presiding Godhead. Coming from the borders of eternity, they are the harbingers of the Truth that is far off.
A
fire shall come out of the infinitudes,
A
timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind, These are only flashes of the Great Fire of the Spirit, the brilliant Knowledge-Will of the Supreme that shall one day manifest in this world. From the still Transcendent One shall flow over the earth, the Light and the Consciousness that will flood the Mind with Knowledge infallible, give Iife its fulfilment and terminate Ignorance once for all.
Above
in a high breathless stratosphere, Above the domain of the three little minds—physical mind, desire-mind and reasoning mind Aswapathy sees other powers, greater in stature aspiring still higher. Confined within the boundaries of the Mind, these powers however high some of them may be—aspire for the altitudes of the Infinite beyond; from the perpetual rounds of time in which they are involved they yearn for release into the free and straight courses of the Eternal. Aswapathy sees also two bright-eyed Deities gazing down on this world from a high station above, witnessing all.
A
power to uplift the laggard world, Of these one is Thought fully charged with Life-power, Thought supported by an intense concentration of Life-force. It has the power to uplift the world from its inertia. It is reluctant to work in the sticky and inert ground of Matter but is in its elements in the unbounded, free and bright expanses of the higher regions of Life. It shoots its glance far into the realm of the Immortal and its ear is open to the distant voices of the gods.
Iconoclast
and shatterer of Time’s forts, This Life-Thought never stays contained in the limits chalked out by the reasoning and logical mind. It breaks out of them and upsets conventional ideas and systems based upon them. It releases new thoughts that shine across the centuries and fathers movements of extraordinary force.
As
far as its self-winged airplanes could fly,
Apt
to conceive, unable to attain, It soars to its utmost range and catches glimpses of the future that is ready on the subtler planes. But though it conceives largely it is not able to realise and achieve to the full its own conceptual and visioned patterns, which are too ambitious for the earth-world as it is.
Beyond
in wideness where no footing is,
Archangel
of a white transcending realm, Higher than the realms of the Life-mind, Aswapathy sees in the vastnesses that are ever at flux, a Mind of pure Thought, above and aloof from the touch of life and the senses, occupied with Ideas that are yet to take form. It is a great Power in the pure realms transcending the domains below and, from its distant station in vacancy, this bright Thought-Mind looks at the world and surveys it.
|