Action of the Mind, pp. 496-498

Opening Remarks
The Mind restrains life so that it does not stray into extremes. It determines the paths along which the river of life flows.

Safe level path
Life was consigned to a safe level path,
It dared not tempt the great and difficult heights
Or climb to be neighbour to a lonely star
Or skirt the danger of the precipice
Or tempt the foam-curled breakers’ perilous laugh,
Adventure’s lyrist, danger’s amateur,
Or into her chamber call some flaming god,
Or leave the world’s bounds and where no limits are
Meet with the heart’s passion the Adorable
Or set the world ablaze with the inner Fire.

The mind restricts the flow of life towards heights and greatnesses not yet won. It clips the wings of the adventurer life by its list of impossibles and dos and don’ts. It avoids the dangers of the precipice and the perils of the mighty sea. Though it sings the glory of adventurers it is an amateur at undertaking the risks of the unknown or call some flaming warrior god into its chambers. The mind is not ready to leave the safe comfortable boundaries and attempt the adventure of the boundless. It is unable to love with completeness or give itself with all its passion to the Divine. Nor is it ready to plunge into the flames of an inner sacrifice and set the world ablaze with its fire.

Cabin of the idea
A chastened epithet in the prose of life,
She must fill with colour just her sanctioned space,
Not break out of the cabin of the idea
Nor trespass into rhythms too high or vast.

It likes to give a clean look to the story of life and colour it only within the limits of its ego-interests. Refusing to break the cabin of fixed ideas it dares not the rhythms of thought that are too high and vast.

Thought’s flight
Even when it soared into ideal air,
Thought’s flight lost not itself in heaven’s blue:
It drew upon the skies a patterned flower
Of disciplined beauty and harmonic light.

Even when thought flew towards the ideal it did not lose itself into the Infinite. It drew flowery patterns in the sky of beauty within limits and harmonic light.

Temperate vigilant spirit
A temperate vigilant spirit governed life:
Its acts were tools of the considering thought,
Too cold to take fire and set the world ablaze,
Or the careful reason’s diplomatic moves
Testing the means to a prefigured end,
Or at the highest pitch some calm Will’s plan
Or a strategy of some High Command within
To conquer the secret treasures of the gods
Or win for a masked king some glorious world,
Not a reflex of the spontaneous self,
An index of the being and its moods,
A winging of conscious spirit, a sacrament
Of life’s communion with the still Supreme
Or its pure movement on the Eternal’s road.

Life was governed by a temperate vigilant spirit. The mind acts after much consideration and deliberation. It suppressed the heart’s emotions and summon up the heart’s fire to ignite the world. Reason is ever careful and tests its means to suit a particular result. At its highest pitch it seeks for the plan of some calm Will or a High Command to decipher the seats and secrets of heaven. It hoped to conquer the worlds of glory for God whom it perceived through the mask. The mind lacked the spontaneous knowledge or reflect the moods of the inner Self. It could not climb on wings of conscious spirit or make life a sacrament of communion the Supreme or turn it into a pursuit of the Eternal.

House of close-fitting bricks
Or else for the body of some high Idea
A house was built with too close-fitting bricks;
Action and thought cemented made a wall
Of small ideals limiting the soul.

The mind fixes the Idea into a rigid, narrow conception and thereby. It is thence that dogmas and rigidity of actions are born, prescribed by our narrow understanding of higher truths. The ideal is turned into a small set of rules thereby limiting the free expanse of the soul.

Narrow seat
Even meditation mused on a narrow seat;
And worship turned to an exclusive God,
To the Universal in a chapel prayed
Whose doors were shut against the universe;
Or kneeled to the bodiless Impersonal
A mind shut to the cry and fire of love:
A rational religion dried the heart.

Even meditation meant to take us to the doors of freedom and vastness contemplated of the Infinite in limited ways. It confined the Universal Divine to a chapel that was closed to the universe by creating a division between world and God. Worship was offered to an Impersonal God shutting the mind to the fire and ardour of love. A solely rational approach to the Divine dried up the human heart for want of bhakti.

Code of Ethics
It planned a smooth life’s acts with ethics’ rule
Or offered a cold and flameless sacrifice.

Reason planned actions governed by ethics and moral rules to run life in a smooth way. Or else it expected the individual to sacrifice for the common good but without the flame of love in the human heart.

The sacred Book
The sacred Book lay on its sanctified desk
Wrapped in interpretation’s silken strings:
A credo sealed up its spiritual sense.

The scriptures meant to help man open to the inner Guidance lay on a sacred platform to be believed as a credo or followed as a rule book thereby missing its true spiritual aim.

Closing Remarks
The Mind prevents us from the utter freedom of the Infinite and the free pursuit of the Eternal by binding our mental conceptions upon Him.