Aswapati had to overpass the higher vital world as he had to reach the very Highest "in whom the world arid self grow true and one". The human journey upward cannot cease till that is reached. So long as the human being remains satisfied within the limits of its vital desires and their satisfaction, so long as "this creature hugs his limits to feel safe", till then he cannot aspire to realise the spiritual Self,

 

It could not house the wideness of a soul

Which needed all infinity for its home.

 

Aswapati saw before him a road stretching to timelessness, disappearing into a sky, lighted with an unseen light. These higher realms were realms of lucent mind which were quite different from the realms of the vital. The rays of these realms "parting Life's sentient flow from Thought's self-poise" created a world—a new world—"on a ground reserved for doubt and reasoned guess". It was a meeting-ground of knowledge and ignorance. This mind "only sensed itself and outward things". From the realm of the half conscient animal existence in which the being could not understand nor change either itself or its surroundings "this was the first means of our slow ascent". It is this mind which devises

 

...the forms of an ignorant life,

That sees the empiric fact as settled law,

Labours for the hour and not for eternity.

 

It is the faculty of ordinary reasoning practical mind which man uses in the very beginning of his spiritual awakening; "it reasons from the half-known to the unknown" and creates its constructions of thought which it, again, abrogates. This mind is like a sage "whose shadow seems to him Self". It moves from detail to detail, depending upon proofs for its knowledge,

 

This powerful bondslave of his instruments

Thinks his low station Nature's highest top.

 

Thus in the very beginning of human awakening, "our mortal frailty cradles an immortal force".

 

Above this first awakening of mind was the realm of intelligence which worked behind the outer appearance of Inconscience, half-consciousness and mental consciousness. It seemed to be

 

A prototypal deft Intelligence

Half-poised on equal wings of thought and doubt

 

working ceaselessly between two hidden ends of existence—the Inconscient and the Superconscient. It is the operation of this intelligence which acts in the instinctive workings of life and dictates the exact behaviour which we find in matter. Not only does it work separately in matter and life but it also joins the physical with the vital and even goes further to the creation of thought and links human consciousness "to the effulgence of a Ray above". In the human mind also it is this intelligence present everywhere that helps man to become conscious not only of himself but also of the workings of this intelligence. As the fundamental and the original truth of Existence is infinite, this intelligence had to divide itself into small parts so that each part could be contained in a thought. But this could not last for ever and could not satisfy the deepest hunger of the being. After some time, powers of the higher realms of consciousness swept down like a wave and brought in their trail ' the operations of certain faculties which  

 

...looked above and saw the dazzling peaks,

 It looked within and woke the sleeping god.

  

It was imagination with her shining army, "lifting her beautiful and miraculous head" and freeing the human consciousness from the limitations of sense and reason. Myth was created by this faculty to feed the growing human soul's childhood with a food

 

Far richer in their sweet and nectarous sap;

Nourishing its immature divinity—

Than the staple or dry straw of Reason's tilth,

Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts,

Plebeian fare on which today we thrive.

 

It was under the action of these faculties that "The Golden Child" born within the heart of man began to think and see.

 

A mind eager to know everything takes this cosmos like a playhouse and works in it like an infant.

 

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.

 

The knowledge that man has to acquire is not to be acquired from outside. It is already there within us "hid behind our minds". It has in fact fallen asleep and "to evoke, to give it form is Nature's task". This cannot be done hastily because the whole world-ignorance is to be liquidated and "only a slow advance the earth can bear". At the beginning, this mind considers its ignorance as the measuring rod of all her knowledge and consequently breaks up the unity of all into small fractions. Evidently this mind was not intended to reach the Highest because "a passage she cut through from Night to Light". It was intended to be a search for an ungrasped omniscience.

 

This search of the human spirit for the highest knowledge was helped by "a dwarf three-bodied trinity". These three dwarf's were the physical mind, the mind of desire and the reasoning mind. The first of them was

 

A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds...

Absorbed and cabined in external sight.

 

Everything to it appears to be a habit,—a habit of life, a habit of the world, a habit of the mind. This mind is content with the commonplace

 

Abhorring change as an audacious sin,

Distrustful of each new discovery.

 

It does not want to take up any risks for greater attainment or enjoyment. To it, external fact is the only truth and "only what sense can grasp seems absolute". It is the conventional mind fixed in its groove that wants to conserve and guard everything that is old; it is like a watch-dog that barks at every unfamiliar light. This mind makes safe the first step of evolution by strengthening the physical and the material basis, so that "Even in change is treasured changelessness". Thus in the cosmos

 

The Energy acts, the stable is its seal:

On Shiva's breast is stayed the enormous dance.

 

The next dwarf "a hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass" who tries to eat at the being's heart,—"thence sprang the burning vision of Desire." It is a force that wears a thousand shapes and burns in every breast "and uses for muddy ends Its brilliant Force". It is a huge chameleon changing its colour every moment—

 

Hungry, it stared from a mottled bough of life,

To .snap up insect joys, its favourite food.

 

It was all the rime making claims upon the cosmos, yet, all the time it was unknowingly approaching "the hidden Something that is All". "A brilliant instability was its mark", and "it thought all true that flattered its own hopes". It was full of fancy, trying to imagine brilliant satisfaction of its impulses,—

 

An eager spring to seize and to possess

Unguided by reason or the seeing soul

Was its first natural motion and its last.

 

In this attempt, this mind wasted all the life force and never succeeded in attaining the impossible, it took to adventure and in spite of failures it could not be persuaded to give it up because, "attempt, not victory, was the charm of life". This power also served the growth of man by cultivating the power of the Infinite that was within him. It gave him free realm to exercise his creative fancy whose "passion caught what calm intelligence missed". It was a mind that was trying to see in the light but was yet blinking and "Ignorance was its field, the unknown its prize."

 

The third was the greatest of the three. It arrived from the plane of thought into this world of chance. This was reason which was "the squat godhead artisan". She was "armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe" and looked at this objective universe and tried to make something out of it. She was impatient of enigma and the unknown; she did not like lawlessness and uniqueness; "she strove to reduce to rules the mystic world". In reality, she knew nothing but hoped to know everything. She was

 

Ignorant of all but her own seeking mind

To save the world from Ignorance she came.

 

She tried to reduce man's deepest aspirations into hard and fast constructions which act rather as its steel frame prisons and very soon reduce men to the lifeless mechanic existence. "For the world seen she weaves a world conceived". Like maps hung in schools, she forces wide truth into a narrow scheme. In all her operations she retains the limitations of mind in which every act of knowledge is accompanied by a doubt. She has to go on constantly changing her knowledge and this constant change is called progress by her.

 

 This work of reason is an inconclusive play and, in fact, reason is used as a tool by every strong idea. She is like an advocate who accepts every brief and being open to all thoughts she is unable to know. In the process of argumentation on which she depends for finding the truth, she cannot arrive at the truth, because it is a fight which can go on for ever without leading to a result—"absolute her judgments seem but none is sure". Whatever temporary truth she formulates "Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal". Even though the knowledge she acquires appears to our little mind the highest light, in reality, "Its rays are a lantern's lustres in the Night". She is not a master of truth, rather, she is

 

A master and slave of stark phenomenon... 

A bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact,

She drags huge knowledge-bales through Matter's dust

To reach utility's immense bazaar.

 

She refuses to accept as true what is not perceptible by the senses and consequently her view of cosmos is materialistic, giving her no clue to the problem of the origin of the cosmos and its purpose. Its conclusion about the cosmos is that the energy which has expanded itself in the form of the universe will ultimately contract itself and,

 

Then ends this mighty and unmeaning toil,

The Void is left bare, vacant as before.

 

After this confident conclusion about the wherefore of the cosmos, it is faced suddenly with unseen things, "a lightning from the undiscovered Truth" startles her eyes and creates ''a gulf between the Real and the Known". Thus, after its self-complacent conclusion about the ultimate of the cosmos, "once more we face the blank Unknowable". It is then seen by her that all her explanations really explained nothing and that even "Matter was an incident in being's flow". What is called law was only a habit of blind force. This want of finality subjects human life to a tremendous uncertainty, and reason cannot solve man's problems because she is not allowed to impose on mankind her materialistic and mechanical view of the cosmos. If allowed, she would "in society build a just exact machine" and rule the cosmos with the help of science and logic. This can only happen if the deepest spirit in man falls asleep permanently. Then only can man remain content and in peace with this rule of reason.

But there is a higher realm of the rising Sun where greater knowledge predominates. What is mixed here and deformed is found there pure and whole. From the point of view of this higher power of knowledge, reason is only a half search and passage and the little mind of man is to it like a child, its

 

Desire is a child-heart's cry craving for bliss,

Our reason only a toys' artificer.

 

In spite of the division to which human mind is obliged to reduce the whole and the one Truth yet there persists in his consciousness an aspiration that one day the highest truth will be known and the face of the divine Reality burn through the mask. Even now great thoughts are here that walk alone

 

In an investiture of intuitive light.

 

One day, in the wake of this, higher intuitive knowledge will come

 

On lustrous seas from the still rapt Alone

To illumine the deep heart of self and things.

A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind,

Its aim to life, to Ignorance its close.

 

He saw that above this human mind there was a region of bright Light from where two demons looked down on .the whole scene, one was "huge high-winged Life-Thought" and the other "a pure Thought-Mind". These two in their combination would make it possible for man to break the limits of his humanity and arrive at a supernal Light.