Page 74 - Journey to Infinity

The ignorant man counts the leaves, flowers etc., and eats, or may not even eat, the fruit, whereas the wise man is interested in eating the fruit without paying any attention to these details. The ignorant man is literate and learned and if, by chance, he comes across the Gita (Bhagavadgita), he begins to examine it and find out its author and so on.
Really speaking there are three conditions of the mind: Stupefied condition, Fickle condition and Ignor¬ant condition. These are due to three coverings, which are the three bodies. First, there is the gross body with its senses and organs which is outwardly motionless and dark. Second, the soul is another body which is called the causal body. This is full of light but there is no movement in this also. This is the root cause of ignorance. The third body is the subtle body or the mind which lies in between these two. There is movement in this which, by its own movement, gives movement to stupefied state (stupor) and ignorance.
There are three rings. The first is the ring of ignorance, or of the soul, which is full of light. The condition of grossness is also there. The second ring is very dark and this is called stupor. The third is both luminous and dark. There is light above and darkness below. It carries the shadow, influence and impressions of both of them i.e. light and darkness, because they are necessarily reflected in the intermediate condition.
The first portion is light; the second is darkness; and the middle has the combination of both light and darkness. This creation or universe of the three attri¬butes is exactly of the same form, and all the creatures, men, animals, angels, the sky and the earth — all are made of unequal proportion. This will be known on seeing even an ant or white-ant. All the three rings are distinctly found in it.
Although the word ‘creation’ is wrong, yet it adequately expresses our idea. The wordBrahmanda or Macrocosm is used for it. These three states are found in it and whatever beings or creatures are in it are its miniature copies. Their bodies, or the sum total of their bodies, are called Pind or microcosm. This microcosm is the copy of the macrocosm, all the qualities of which are found in it in miniature, as is shown in the example of the ant and white-ant. The first luminous ring is the North Pole or the Arctic region. The second dark ring is the South Pole or the Antarctic region. The Hindus never sleep stretching their legs towards the South Pole except at death.
The luminous ring belongs to the ignorant and the spiritual; the dark ring belongs to the stupid and the materialistic; and the ring of the combined states, which is in the middle, belongs to the fickle minded and the intermediary. At the top is the spirit, at the bottom is matter. In the middle is the state of combination of matter and spirit.