An Imperfect Light, p. 250

Opening remarks
Reason is an imperfect light even though right now it is thought to be the highest. Until greater ways of knowledge open their doors this imperfect light illumines the field of human experience.

A ray upon the obscure Vast
In dark inconscient realms once void of thought,
Missioned by a supreme Intelligence
To throw its ray upon the obscure Vast,
An imperfect light leading an erring mass
By the power of sense and the idea and word,
She ferrets out Nature’s process, substance, cause.

Though prone to error, yet this light is the first instrument used by the supreme Intelligence in the present stage of human evolution. It illumines the obscure mass of humanity and helps us understand to whatever extent and degree the processes of Nature and the cause of things.

Thought’s control
All life to harmonise by thought’s control,
She with the huge imbroglio struggles still;
Ignorant of all but her own seeking mind
To save the world from Ignorance she came.

Reason brings with it the ability to govern our life rationally and bring our unruly impulses under some kind of control and order. She does not have the perfect remedy yet she helps thin the iron grip of ignorance to some extent.

A sovereign worker
A sovereign worker through the centuries
Observing and remoulding all that is,
Confident she took up her stupendous charge.

She labours through the centuries thus far the master of human thought. She observes through the senses and arranges information to remould life into better and more harmonious patterns.

Low bent mighty figure
There the low bent and mighty figure sits
Bowed under the arc-lamps of her factory home
Amid the clatter and ringing of her tools.

She sits with her gaze turned downwards upon her field of matter and life. There she pores and observes, tries to hold and grasp the appearances of life to know their composition and movements.

The great codifier
A rigorous stare in her creative eyes
Coercing the plastic stuff of cosmic Mind,
She sets the hard inventions of her brain
In a pattern of eternal fixity:
Indifferent to the cosmic dumb demand,
Unconscious of too close realities,
Of the unspoken thought, the voiceless heart,
She leans to forge her credos and iron codes
And metal structures to imprison life
And mechanic models of all things that are.

This mind is the great codifier. It observes closely and carefully and then puts things in slots and patterns as if they were unalterable laws. She creates fixed dogmas and rigid rules of life thus putting the free flow and unbridled flux of life into systematic movements and ordered rhythms. Much however escapes its field of observation for there are things that are unexpressed and cannot be measured. Reason can only scan the surfaces of life and, observing these, it builds mechanical rules and codes for all to follow. But the cosmic Mind that has gone into creation is much more diverse and plastic than what our reason would think it to be.

Closing Remarks
This imperfection of Reason is felt in every sphere of life where it plays the role of organising things. Yet in the absence of higher powers it is still the best so far.