Physical Mind, p. 245

Opening Remarks
The little mind is stratified in three layers. The first of these is closely tied to earth and the body. It is what develops into the physical mind whose field is largely what the senses determine.

Three-bodied trinity
A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.

The little mind is served by a triple layer of mentality, – the physical, vital and the rational mind.

Pygmy Thought
First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
For ever stooped to hammer fact and form.

The first of these three is a low moving thought involved and engaged with outer things and objects that the physical senses can seize. It lives within the boundaries defined by its immediate environment and focuses on outer observable facts and forms of things. It is the mind found in early primitive humanity though it still exists as an evolutionary layer in us.

Stand on Nature’s solid base
Absorbed and cabined in external sight,
It takes its stand on Nature’s solid base.

Absorbed and confined to what the eyes see and ears hear it field is solid matter as perceived through the external senses. To this mind that alone is real which the senses can seize.

Prisoner of moulds
A technician admirable, a thinker crude,
A riveter of Life to habit’s grooves,
Obedient to gross Matter’s tyranny,
A prisoner of the moulds in which it works,

This mind is tied to gross matter and is admirable in its workings upon the gross physical field. It is this that ties life to groves of habit and obeys the laws of matter taking them as absolute and final. It is imprisoned within the forms devised by life and takes them as ultimate possibilities. It cannot free its gaze beyond the iron grip of matter and the physical body.

Binds itself
It binds itself by what itself creates.

The truth of the matter is however that this mind itself creates these habits by reinforcing fixed patterns and repetitive mechanical movements in matter. Having done that it ties itself to what it has itself created thinking them as real laws which it must follow rigidly and faithfully.

Habits and laws
A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,
It sees as Law the habits of the world,
It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.

In fact there are no absolute laws but only fixed groves created as imprints upon matter by the physical mind. Through a repetitive movement these become habits of the body and the typical conventional thought patterns of the mind. We think they are some kind of absolute rules and laws of nature and absolute truths but in reality they are nothing but habits and convenient devises.

Common and the known
In its realm of concrete images and events
Turning in a worn circle of ideas
And ever repeating old familiar acts,
It lives content with the common and the known.

This mind is too involved with concrete ‘facts’ to seek or think of anything higher and greater. It draws its thought from the stock ideas and lives content with the common round of ordinary life within its set limits and familiar rounds.

Closing Remarks
It is this mind that fixes patterns and thus creates a kind of temporary order. Its strength lies in the mechanical habits that conserve and preserve a way of life. Its weakness is that tied down to these conventions and habits it is unable to go further or seek a greater light of Truth.