Luminousness – In Gita Verse 14.8 O son of Bharata, know that the mode of darkness, born of ignorance, is the delusion of all embodied living entities. The results of this mode are madness, indolence and sleep, which bind the conditioned soul.
Krishna says as we have not understood our darkness and born of ignorance, because of this we bind the conditioned soul.
Darkness Has Its Own Joy: Many times in our life we have this feeling – Sometimes running here and there, talking, laughing, working, reading, writing and cleaning – The fact is: When the door closes behind and the eyes are shut – it is dark.
Thoughts or no thoughts, feelings or no feelings it is dark. Morning or night any time inside it is dark. Looking inside for the looker it is dark. Is ‘I’ darkness?
Yes, ‘I’ is darkness, the ego is darkness, and if you look within and the looker is there, it will remain dark. Morning or evening won’t make any difference, thoughts or no thoughts won’t make any difference, because the ‘I’ itself is the essential thought, the fundamental thought – the looker.
It contains all thoughts and all feelings. You can look, but you have already divided yourself in two: the looker and the looked-upon. And this division is darkness, this duality is darkness, this split is darkness.
Oneness is luminous, oneness is light; twoness is darkness.
So, whenever a meditator goes in, first he always encounters darkness, and that darkness is frightening – who wants to go into that darkness? One becomes afraid, one wants to escape from it. In the beginning it is always so, but if you go on and go on and go on, and you stop even asking for light… Why should you ask? If it is dark, it is dark. And darkness is perfectly right – and when darkness is perfectly right, darkness is absolutely bright.
Accept it. Love it. Embrace it. Feel one with it. And the moment the split disappears, when there is no looker and the looked-upon, no observer and the observed, then suddenly there will be light – and a light which needs no fuel, a light which is eternal.
But if you are divided, then that light won’t happen to you.
So, what is to be done? You have to love this darkness, you have to fall into this darkness and disappear. Don’t search for the light. The search for the light will keep you distant, unloving, unavailable to the darkness, and that will be a barrier to light. Don’t search for light. If it is dark, it is dark. This is what Buddha calls tathata. If it is dark, it is dark; don’t ask for something else, let it be dark, enjoy it. What is wrong with darkness?
But we are conditioned in such a way that we cannot enjoy a few things. We have been brought up in such a way that we can enjoy only light, not darkness. Now this is missing something tremendously beautiful and something tremendously alive.
Darkness has its own joy, light has its own joy, and the person who understands will enjoy both. And he will not create any conflict and he will not choose. Darkness has silence in it, which no light can ever have. Darkness has a stillness in it, utter stillness, which no light can ever have. And darkness has infinity: unbounded it is, it knows no boundaries. Light has always boundaries to it: it is never infinite, it is finite. Light comes and goes; darkness abides, darkness is eternal.
It is because of this experience that in India we have painted Krishna as dark – his other name, shyam, means dark, ‘the black one’.
Darkness has depth. Whiteness is shallow, whiteness always looks superficial. Start enjoying darkness. Feel its infinity, feel its spaciousness, feel its eternity. Be touched by it and be moved by it – it is so velvety, it has a beauty of its own. And unless you are capable of loving darkness, you have not earned the right to know light.
The light that you know is the outside light; it is against darkness. And the light that you will know when you transcend inner darkness will not be against darkness, it will contain all that darkness has – and something more, and plus. Remember it: the light outside is not the true light; the true light will have all the qualities of this light and all the qualities of this darkness and still will be more than the sum total of both of them. It is a great splendour where dualities meet and merge into each other, where dualities pour all their beauties into each other and a new beauty arises: the beauty of unity, integration.
So, remember it: whatsoever you know about light and darkness – both have to be left behind. When you close your eyes, you have left the light outside; now you enter darkness. Love it. Sing a song with it. Have a dance with it. Don’t fight with it, don’t be afraid of it, don’t keep a distance from it. And don’t go on looking for light. Forget about light. This darkness is there – it has to be enjoyed; one has to be grateful to God for this darkness, this silence, this stillness, this velvety expanse. And then, one day, the observer and the observed are no more two.
When you love something, the duality disappears. If you love darkness, you become darkness. And when there is no duality, there comes a luminousness of a totally different quality. It is not the light that comes from the sun, and it is not the light that comes from electricity, and it is not the light that comes from the moon; then you have come to the very source of all light and all darkness, then you have come to the very root, the very ground, of being.
Krishna says love the darkness: it is a gift. All is a gift from God. Feel grateful to God that he has given you such a beautiful darkness of your own – so virgin, so pure, uncontaminated. Relax into it, and as you relax, it disappears. When you have relaxed totally, it is no more found. Then you have arrived at the very source of all darkness and all light, but that source has a totally different quality of light. It is not this light – it has something of it. It is not this darkness – it has something of it, but it is immensely vast.
Once you have loved the darkness you will experience your soul which is the mystics have always felt it difficult to say what it is. – Ineffable it is, inexpressible it is, and indefinable it is.
Tags: Luminousness
