Mind’s Infant Steps, pp. 243-244

Opening remarks
Here was seen the first glimmerings of the Mind. These were the first steps that the Mind took towards the far off light that is its true Home.

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

These bright realms are not the last but the first in a series of steps that grow in brightness and clarity as our consciousness climbs.

Ignorant but eager
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.

With the emergence of mind there comes into play a quest and seeking for knowledge. Though ignorant to begin with, mind is born with an urge to know more and more. It is its very nature to search and having found something go on for a deeper and greater search.

Invention’s verge
Ardent and golden-gleamed with sunrise fires,
Alert it lives upon invention’s verge.

The flares of knowledge awakening in the mind are like the fires tinged with hints of sunrise. It is filled with the anticipations of discovering new things that were not visible in the darkness.

Infant’s scale
Yet all it does is on an infant’s scale,
As if the cosmos were a nursery game,
Mind, life the playthings of a Titan’s babe.

Yet all its discoveries and inventions are like playthings in the grand nursery of creation where it learns to play with the mud until it is ready to lift its eyes to the skies.

Mimic fort
As one it works who builds a mimic fort
Miraculously stable for a while,
Made of the sands upon a bank of Time
Mid an occult eternity’s shoreless sea.

What it builds is not the real thing but its imitations and lookalikes that remain for a while upon the banks of Time whose ends and depths are hidden from its sight.

Arousing knowledge
A small keen instrument the great Puissance chose,
An arduous pastime passionately pursues;
To teach the Ignorance is her difficult charge,
Her thought starts from an original nescient Void
And what she teaches she herself must learn
Arousing knowledge from its sleepy lair.

This great Puissance, Mind, starts its work with the small instrument that can work with minute things. Its purpose is to teach and train ignorance and awaken in our half animal consciousness the seeking for knowledge awakening it from its hidden chamber where it lies asleep. It must first understand itself and its own workings.

Friend and inmate of our secret self
For knowledge comes not to us as a guest
Called into our chamber from the outer world;
A friend and inmate of our secret self,
It hid behind our minds and fell asleep
And slowly wakes beneath the blows of life;
The mighty daemon lies unshaped within,
To evoke, to give it form is Nature’s task.

All knowledge lies within us in our subliminal parts that are lost to our surface vision and understanding. Slowly it wakes up as we move through the various experiences and challenges of life. Slowly it takes a shape and form. To wake up, to educe and bring out this knowledge hidden within our chambers through outer contact with the world is the task given to it.

Closing Remarks
This is the beginnings of the mental intelligence as it wakes up and begins its workings in man.