The Troubled Passage in Man, pp. 132-133

Opening Remarks
The impulsion and will to live and live consciously in an unconscious world driven by seemingly mechanical and inconscient energies creates a strange conflict within man. He is torn between two very different forces so to say, one that prods and pushes him to advance and progress and another which pulls him to the inertia of his base.

The troubled stream
An Influence entered mortal night and day,
A shadow overcast the time-born race;
In the troubled stream where leaps a blind heart-pulse
And the nerve-beat of feeling wakes in sense
Dividing Matter’s sleep from conscious Mind,
There strayed a call that knew not why it came.

With the advent of mind a shadowy influence has crept human life. Riddled with imperfection and limitation, impulse and ignorance, man is ever in search of something he never seems to find. A half conscious heart and sense leap at appearances driven by the unconsciousness of material existence.

A yearning and a cry
A Power beyond earth’s scope has touched the earth;
The repose that might have been can be no more;
A formless yearning passions in man’s heart,
A cry is in his blood for happier things:
Else could he roam on a free sunlit soil
With the childlike pain-forgetting mind of beasts
Or live happy, unmoved, like flowers and trees.

Life in man is complicated with the advent of mind. It has lost the simplicity of flower and trees, as well as the directness of the animal instincts. A seeking and a passionate yearning is born with man that takes from him joy and peace and rest.

Blessing or a curse
The Might that came upon the earth to bless,
Has stayed on earth to suffer and aspire.

So does it seem when we look at the way life yearns and aspires, ever restless and unhappy, never content with what is and ever seeking for what is not.

The infant laugh is hushed
The infant laugh that rang through time is hushed:
Man’s natural joy of life is overcast
And sorrow is his nurse of destiny.

The joy of life natural to the child is covered in man as he grows into adulthood and mind develops along making sorrow seemingly indispensable for his growth.

Awake to the Invisible
The animal’s thoughtless joy is left behind,
Care and reflection burden his daily walk;
He has risen to greatness and to discontent,
He is awake to the Invisible.

With the advent of mind, man becomes conscious of his ignorance and begins to seek for knowledge and mastery. Thus he rises towards greatness and yet there is always something more that beckons him leading to a perpetual discontent. Though surrounded by finite things man’s search is for the Infinite.

Insatiate seeker
Insatiate seeker, he has all to learn:
He has exhausted now life’s surface acts,
His being’s hidden realms remain to explore.

Life in man seeks for more and ever more. There is a push towards new discoveries and when all that man has known or can know about the surfaces of life and the outer world, his gaze turned towards the inner and unexplored fields of the Spirit.

Nature’s Lord
He becomes a mind, he becomes a spirit and self;
In his fragile tenement he grows Nature’s lord.

Man’s being identified with mind now goes further and identifies with the spirit and an inmost Self within. Though mortal and fragile in his body he discovers the seed of immortality and grows the Lord and Master of nature.

The Godhead drawing near
In him Matter wakes from its long obscure trance,
In him earth feels the Godhead drawing near.

This is the journey of man, starting his life with a moral body driven largely unconsciously; he yet must grow towards the conscious immortal within and the Eternal Godhead who is the Source and Origin of all things.

Closing Remarks
Thus we see here the journey of human life being mapped out. Our dwarf humanity nurtured in a fragile and perishable body may be the starting point but its end is the Glory and Greatness of God and Truth and Immortality.