SpiritWeb

The Limitations of Intellect - Excerpt

The priceless teaching of enlightened seers,
More so of ancient India, oft appears
Fantastic to skeptic intellects:
Some e’en ascribe it to the ill-effects
Of self-denial, carried to the extreme,
Excessive penance, lack of sleep and dream,
To solitude, diminished drink and food,
All working to cause a delusive mood.

Hence their alleged experience not a few
Ascribe to neuroses, of which they knew
Nothing, to fantasy, hypnotic trance,
To drugs, suggestion, mania, e’en to chance.
And thus rejected as false visionaries
Their influence on the crowd could not but cease.

But few of us imagine e’en in dream
That some among these seers have been the cream
Of earth, the guiding stars and beacon lights,
The first to soar to transcendental heights,
And gathering rare, intuitive knowledge there
Instructed mankind how to step with care
Upon the winding pathway, full of snares,
And pitfalls which can catch one unawares
To break a bone or but to feel a smart,
To take the lesson taught more to the heart.

The crisis facing all the race today
Is but a snare, encountered on the way,
To which conceited knowledge did not pay
Sufficient heed, because he turned too gay
And proud with his new skills in moulding clay
And ore or having something new to say.
And so the actor who alone can play
This role in him, his soul, the Immortal ray
Of life Divine, he pushed off far away.
The outcome: murdrous tempests brewing, nay
E’en cyclones threatening to destroy and slay.

The problem of pollution of the air,
Of earth and water which now causes a scare,
Among discerning intellects who see,
In it, a threat to all humanity,
All split up, in such an impossible way
And, at the moment, under such a sway
Of national rivalry, mistrust and hate,
That it should cause an outburst, soon or late.

To fight the evil on a global scale
Seems out of count—an effort that must fail.
For torn with hate, dissension, feud and spite,
Is there a grain of chance all would unite
To fight combinedly with mistrustless hearts
This all-corrupting hell before it starts?
The other threat: the ceaseless, wanton waste
Of earth’s resources, done in foolish haste,
Is no less serious, for the lot of man
In future, for the still enormous span
Of time he is decreed to thrive on earth,
Cannot be happy if there is a dearth
Of ores and fossil products he now spends
Extravagantly e’en for frivolous ends.

Hence e’en if nature does not take in hand
Reform of what is now a robber band,
Depletion of essential ores will breed
Discord in those who have less than they need,
Adding another factor to invite
Hostility, contention, bloody fight,
All heading soon towards a global war,
Which to the visionless yet seems too far.

The recent short supply from oil-rich states
Has shown the world how such reduction grates,
The false assurances that science can find
Replacements for the products no more mined,
Trumpeted so loudly by some scholar teams,
Are vain, impracticable, deceptive dreams.
But can it help to impeach them one by one
When time is lost and all the damage done?

The gaudy raiment which now mankind wears
Does not conceal the poverty she bears,
The mind-distracting, soul-oppressing want
Of higher knowledge which alone can grant
That harmony and peace the world now lacks
And soon may make it stop dead in its tracks.

Alas, the erudite have no more clue
To what the present world-unrest is due
Than masses, and so flounder in the dark
Like others and, like them too, fail to mark
That grave disasters, threatening all the race,
Are omens she is now denied the Grace;
That Guardian Forces that protect her path
Towards her destination are in wrath.

Can e’en now knowledge make a timely guess
What makes its front-rank hasten to the Press,
And with loud cries and warnings cause alarm
Against pollution and the nuclear arm,
When it itself has given birth to both,
And proudly, after birth, sped up their growth?

All this in vain, the rot has spread so far
That naught, save Grace Divine or global war,
Can hold in check the galloping disease,
And wash out poisons the sick race to ease.

The danger which is now before their ken
Ought to have been anticipated when
They with stentorian voices loud proclaimed:
God is a myth and they have nature tamed;
When they made reason their unfailing guide
And final judge to settle and decide.

What is the end now of this loud acclaim?
Has nature been subdued or, oft with shame,
Some wise successors of the older team,
Who sense the threat and, like a shattered dream,
See all their world about to fall apart,
Because of gross mistakes done from the start?
In but a short span of a hundred years
Wrong proved the bombast that had first won cheers.

Because of this grave fault in intellect,
Which after centuries shows its effect,
Nature has planted another sense in man
The still hid distant future to scan.
But this prophetic eye can only adorn
Those who to a new dimension are reborn,
And through them Sovereign Life, in acts of Grace,
By means of Revelation guides the race;
A rare phenomenon in every age,
Which to the fore-front brought an illumined sage.

But still with these debacles well in sight,
Pollution on one side and nuclear fright
On another, birth-explosion on the third,
How many savants yet admit by word
Or deed that human intellect alone,
Howe’er in know1edge rich, at times, is prone
To grievous error, fatal at this stage
When, with man’s climb into the nuclear age,
Explosive problems which ne’er met before
Can, with their urgency, now press him sore?

Among our Suns of knowledge is there one
Who knows that, with a little probing done,
It would be shortly proved beyond dispute
That there already is a charted route
Aligned for mankind, which it follow must
For all its span of life upon the crust
Of earth, and that to guide it on this Path
Comes Revelation to save it from scath?

But e’en those savants who, now wide awake
To these mistakes, ask one and all to take
Effective measures, in time, do not seem
To have themselves awakened from the dream,
Dear to the erudite, which makes them rate
Too highly their own scholarly estate;
And fallen victims to deceptive pride
What still they cannot judge in haste decide.

Oceans of learning nor a million books,
Nor all the teeming scholars of the earth,
Nor all technologists, whose future looks
So bright with their achievements of high worth,
Can e’er discover the mysterious cause
Of this distemper if, without a pause,
They toil and sweat for many years to unearth
The secret: which is spiritual dearth.

Knowledge has come to mend, among the learned
Of our day, grades, degrees, diplomas earned,
As means to wealth, position, power and fame
Which not unoft fetch it a tarnished name;
Or seas of learning with minute detail
Of any branch of study, head to tail;
Or worlds of information more and more
Extended with additions to the store,
Till it grows to encyclopaedian size,
So that all there is on earth or the skies
Is always bursting from one’s finger tips,
Ready for prompt expression on his lips;
Confined to what we round us hear and see
With not a word to our own mystery!

And e’en the towering giants of this class
Show not the slightest merit to surpass
The unlettered masses in what is most near,
Most precious, most essential and most dear
To man, the wisdom leading to his soul;
His one immortal asset whole and sole.