From Darkness to Light

 

Photo Credit: The Spirit Affinity

From Darkness to Light

We have all heard about the famous Upanishadic chant - ‘Lead us from non-being to being, lead us from darkness to light, lead us from death to immortality’ - which precedes the special verses that teach ‘Aham Brahmasami’. When it comes to the Samarpan Meditation values, the spiritual experiences that each one of us gets is based on the extent to which we surrender ourselves to the Satguru.

With continuous meditation practice one reaches a stage where one stops seeing things – lights of various hues – golden, purple, white, blue green and so on, one also stops seeing images of deities or saints from our past lives who are deeply embedded in our subconscious. Whatever we ‘see’ in meditation is nothing but a manifestation of what we have retained in our subconscious – the churn that meditation commences deep within you causes all these to start appearing in your third eye – which makes you feel that you are ‘seeing’ the images as they appear.

After a point all these images stop coming and you find yourself in a very dark, cool tunnel, or what appears to be a tunnel. This, according to Osho is good, this is progress because now you have progressed from seeing to ‘not seeing’ – you are in a very cool, pleasant, comforting dark zone. Now, when you enter this phase, if you are afraid of the dark, then you will never progress, because that fear of darkness will always get you out of your meditative state in a jiffy.

There is nothing to be afraid of about darkness – darkness is nothing but the absence of light and our spiritual journey is from darkness to light. So, instead of being afraid of the dark, embrace it, make it a part of you, be comfortable in the darkness so that the fear itself disappears. Once the fear has gone, you will find yourself being in solitude and a completely still state in that all-comforting, cooling dark tunnel. Keep going, and one day with the grace of the Guru-energies you will see the light – the light of a thousand suns exploding within you, you will feel like the universe is expanding within you, something which is beyond description.

The ultimate goal of life is to move across the ocean of darkness or samsara to the eternal light of truth. This cannot be achieved by mere emotion or belief, or by reason or ideas, because these are part of the darkness and ignorance of the mind. The journey from darkness to light is a movement beyond the dualistic mind to a higher unitary awareness that transcends all concepts.

The Atma, our true self, is the inner light and energy that links us with the entire universe. We reach it through developing our 'buddhi' or higher intelligence, cultivating a discernment between being and non-being, light and darkness, the eternal and the transient. May each person enkindle that inner flame of awareness by looking deeply within to our original nature of boundless self-illumination and bliss!