A Life of Ignorance, pp. 337-338

Giant ignorance
Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,
But never has he seen the face behind:
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore.

Though attracted by Wisdom through its luminous masks he has never really seen the face of Truth. Therefore, all his life is surrounded by a giant ignorance since nothing is truly known until all is seen and known.

Compelled to be what he is not
Assigned to meet the cosmic mystery
In the dumb figure of a material world,
His passport of entry false and his personage,
He is compelled to be what he is not;
He obeys the Inconscience he had come to rule
And sinks in Matter to fulfil his soul.

It is the purpose of man’s life to find the Truth hidden behind all appearances of creation. The facade of the material world is only an entry gate to many mysteries that are hidden carefully between the folds of creation. Yet man is denied the entry since he fully identifies himself with the facade and the appearance. He knows not who he really is. Though divine in his secret truth he believes himself to be a transient creation of dust, a material body is all he knows for his identity. This is due to the stark bondage to the Inconscience though he is destined to master it. Yet is he pulled down into abysses that lurk below matter to fulfil his soul’s deepest need to master these gulfs.

Lost torch-bearers
Awakened from her lower driven forms
The Earth-Mother gave her forces to his hands
And painfully he guards the heavy trust;
His mind is a lost torch-bearer on her roads.

As consciousness climbs further beyond lower forms towards the human form, man is given the forces of earth nature to play with. And yet he knows not how to safeguard this treasure. His mind labouring under the spell of ignorance is like a torch-bearer who knows not the way.

Slow and sceptic brain
Illumining breath to think and plasm to feel,
He labours with his slow and sceptic brain
Helped by the reason’s vacillating fires,
To make his thought and will a magic door
For knowledge to enter the darkness of the world
And love to rule a realm of strife and hate.

His mind has brought in the ability to think and feel in matter, built living cells yet his slow and sceptic brain labours slowly with reason’s doubting fires to make a door through his thought and will for knowledge to enter the darkness of the world and for love to rule here instead of strife and hate.

Mind impotent to reconcile
A mind impotent to reconcile heaven and earth
And tied to Matter with a thousand bonds,
He lifts himself to be a conscious god.

His mind is impotent to reconcile heaven and earth, Spirit and matter. His being tied to matter with a thousand bonds he tries to lift himself to be a god. Man is precisely that bridge thrown between heaven and earth, between the animality of the past and the divinity of the future.

Closing Remarks
This is the irony of man that he believes himself to be what he is not and misses to be what he is meant to be.