The Human psyche contains two hemispheres - the right and the left; the former is of belief and the latter is of reason; they represent conception and perception respectively. It is said the right hemisphere contains the metaphysical aspect and the left one the physical aspect (or respectively the mental and the elemental). It is said the right one is of synthesis. One belongs to the Occident and the other to the Orient. The left part belongs to logic whilethe right part to aesthetics.

Reason is light whereas belief is the warmth. Light shows the way and the warmth protects life. Belief sees while reason shows. Seeing and showing have got their own distinctions in their own spheres.

Not absolute terms:

No doubt, reason and belief are not a absolute but relative; but less relative and more absolute is reason while more relative and less absolute is belief. Reason is spatial, belief temporal. Like all other aspects of life, reason and belief too are guided by space and time. The nature of reason changes by the influence of spatio-temporal factors.Some changes are ephemeral while others are less ephemeral; but no change is eternal, for eternity and change could never co-exist. each object, each place and each person is subject to change with no exception.But some changes are so subtle that they are beyond the scope of our

Belief changes and reason simultaneously changes along with it. There is no permanent belief. The negative belief of yesterday may turn into a positive one today and vice versa.

We may believe in the pros-pective plory of our lives mainly owing to the observ-ation of today's facts but our future may not be so glorious as we expected it to be. Here our belief is a failure in spiteof the fact that our rationalist observations were brilliant.

Instinct, Intellect and intuition:

The three mentations-instinct intellect and intuition-function in their own intrinsic ways. The first and the third would influence the second, the intellect. The sub-intelligent intellect is what is known by the term instinct while the super-intelligent intellefct is known as intuition Instinct does entirely depend upon the senses, intellect does entirely depend upon the intellectua- lised instinct.Feeling conducts instinct,thought leads intellect;direct apperception conducts intuition.Great philosophers like Bertrand Russell had derided the concept of intuition,saying that even birds and animals possessed intuition. in Russel's view there were only two mentations known as the instinct and the intllect.Man is differenct from all other living beings because he is the only living being in whom the light of reason shines,

Absence of reason:

In his everyday life the common man often suffers from a number of blind beliefs which prevents the unfold-ment of his reason on the path of both enlightenment and refinement, freedom and peace.In the absence of reason the vision of life itself turns inactive,compassion into passion, the transparent into the opaque, the stream into stagnation and the kinesis into stasis.Rational man ceases to exist and in his place flourishes the national man, the racial man and man full of egoism and egotism,influencing his fellow men with every possible dark means. Here both the means and the ends are equally annihilative. Cognition can be divided into thinkingknowing, perceiving, conceiving, discriminating etc. Inquisitiveness which shows an appetite for knowing that which has not yet been known is the veritable source of reason. Reason is realism; belief is surrealism. Surrealism is the dreamland; the dreamland is an illusion and that which is not a dreamland is an illumination.Reason is the light of life in action.

( Published in Rationalist Essays 1992 Hyderabad Edited by G.R.R.Babu, N.K.Acharya )