Collapse of the World Built by Reason, pp. 254-255

Opening Remarks
Reason was needed to rescue the world from its infra-rational animal stage. But now its hour is getting over. It must be replaced by a greater Light and hence we see a collapse of values established by Reason and its daughter modern Science.

Wonder-web
Once more the world was made a wonder-web,
A magic’s process in a magical space,
An unintelligible miracle’s depths
Whose source is lost in the Ineffable.

The discovery of the quantum world lurking below this solid scheme of things turned this seemingly well-understood machine once more into a thing of wonder. The world seemed like an impossible miracle, a wonder-web whose origin remained unfathomable.

Blank Unknowable
Once more we face the blank Unknowable.

With this shift all the accumulated knowledge so far needed a reorientation. Once again man faces the sense of the Unknowable.

Crash of values
In a crash of values, in a huge doom-crack,
In the sputter and scatter of her breaking work
She lost her clear conserved constructed world.

The clear world-view and the values built upon this began to break apart. The ‘perfect’ machine began to show its fault-lines.

Quantum dance
A quantum dance remained, a sprawl of chance
In Energy’s stupendous tripping whirl:
A ceaseless motion in the unbounded Void
Invented forms without a thought or aim:
Necessity and Cause were shapeless ghosts;
Matter was an incident in being’s flow,
Law but a clock-work habit of blind force.

The quantum mechanics became the new gospel explaining the dancing and whirling motion of energy pushed by chance and necessity creating meaningless forms. Matter became a temporary construct like everything else and law simply a repetitive and habitual motion of a blind force.

All grew a chaos
Ideals, ethics, systems had no base
And soon collapsed or without sanction lived;
All grew a chaos, a heave and clash and strife.

The solid support of the world was taken away. With this collapsed all rationally built system of ethics and ideals. Below the surfaces of matter there appeared a chaotic dance, a clash and heave of forces.

Kali’s dance
Ideas warring and fierce leaped upon life;
A hard compression held down anarchy
And liberty was only a phantom’s name:
Creation and destruction waltzed inarmed
On the bosom of a torn and quaking earth;
All reeled into a world of Kali’s dance.

An infra-rational world appeared and raised its head before man. A state of primal anarchy began to take hold of life. Liberty became just a word in a world caught up and torn with the clash of forces and ideas. Destruction outpaced creation dancing hand in hand as if the great Mother Kali was dancing over earth’s breast.

Closing Remarks
Thus the rational world began to break apart and collapse groping for props to keep it intact and erect for a while. But the dance of Kali and the inevitable collapse of the neat and clear old world order built upon Reason and Science was beginning to give way.