First of all I am perplexed about my own thought;
What is that which they call thinking?

You say, “Tell me what is ‘thinking,’
“Since I am perplexed as to its meaning.”
Thinking is passing from the false to the truth,
And seeing the Absolute Whole in the part.
Philosophers who have written books on it,
Say as follows when they are defining it,
75 That when a conception* is formed in the mind,
It is first of all named reminiscence.*
And when you pass on from this in thinking,*
It is called by the learned interpretation.*
When conceptions are properly arranged in the mind,
The result with logicians is known as thinking.
From proper arrangement of known conceptions
The unknown proposition* becomes known.
The major premiss is a father, the minor a mother,
And the conclusion a son, O brother!
80 But to learn of what kind this arrangement is,
Reference must be made to books of logic.
Moreover, unless divine guidance aids it,
Verily logic is mere bondage of forms.*
That road is long and hard, leave it,
Like Moses for a season cast away that staff.*
Come for a season into the “Valley of Peace,”*
Hear with faith the call, “Verily I am God.”
He that knows “The Truth,”* and to whom Unity is revealed,
Sees at the first glance the light of very Being.
85 Nay more, as he sees by illumination that pure Light,
He sees God first in everything that he sees;
Abstraction* is a condition of good thinking,
For then the lightning of divine guidance illumines us.
To him, whom God guides not into the road,
It will not be disclosed by use of logic.
Forasmuch as the philosopher is bewildered,
He sees in things nothing but the contingent;
From the contingent he seeks to prove the necessary,
Therefore is he bewildered at the essence of the necessary.
90 Sometimes he travels backwards in a circle,*
Sometimes he is imprisoned in the chain of proofs.
While his reason goes deep into phenomenal existence,
His feet are caught in the chain of proofs.
All things are manifested through their likes,
But “The Truth” has neither rival nor like,
Since “The Truth” has neither rival nor peer,
I know not how you can know Him.*
Necessary matter has no sample in contingent:*
How can man know it, tell me how?*
95 Fool that he is! for he seeks the blazing sun
By the dim light of a torch in the desert.

If the sun tarried always in one position,
And if his shining were all after one manner,
None would know that these beams are from him,
There would be no distinction between kernel and husk.
Know the whole world is a beam of the light of “The Truth,”
Yet “The Truth” within it is concealed from manifestation;*
And since the light of “The Truth” alters not nor varies,
And is void of change and transitoriness,
100 So you fancy that this world of itself is permanent
And enduring always of its own nature.
A man who relies on far-sighted reason*
Has much bewilderment before him,
From far-sightedness of overweening reason
One derives philosophy, another the Incarnation.*
Reason cannot endure the light of that face,
Go! That you may behold it, seek another eye.
Since the two eyes of the philosopher see double,*
He is impotent to behold the unity of “The Truth.”
105 From blindness arose the doctrine of ‘Assimilation,’*
From one-eyedness that of God's remoteness.*
From the same cause arose false and vain Metempsychosis,*
Since it had its origin from defective sight.
He is like one born blind, cut off from perfection,
The man who follows the road of schism,*
Men of externals have ophthalmia in both eyes,*
For they see in external objects naught but the external.
The theologian* who has no perception of Unitarianism*
Is in utter darkness in clouds and bondage of dogmas;*
110 Whatever each says about Unity, more or less,
Affords a specimen of his own power of insight.
The Divine Essence is freed from where, how, and why.*
Let His glory be exalted above what men say of Him.*