Mind’s First Steps

In those bright realms are Mind’s first forward steps.

Ignorant of all but eager to know all,
Its curious slow enquiry there begins;
Ever its searching grasps at shapes around,
Ever it hopes to find out greater things….

All was a chaos of the true and false,
Mind sought amid deep mists of Nescience;
It looked within itself but saw not God.

A material interim diplomacy
Denied the Truth that transient truths might live
And hid the Deity in creed and guess
That the World-Ignorance might grow slowly wise….

Earth all perceives through doubtful images,
All she conceives in hazardous jets of sight,
Small lights kindled by touches of groping thought.

Incapable of the soul’s direct inlook
She sees by spasms and solders knowledge-scrap,
Makes Truth the slave-girl of her indigence,
Expelling Nature’s mystic unity
Cuts into quantum and mass the moving All;
She takes for measuring-rod her ignorance.

[Savitri: Book Two Canto 10]