VBT – Meditation 76.4

Real Darkness

This entering of darkness will empty you of all negative darkness. This is a very deep phenomenon. The darkness that you have within is a negative thing; it is against the light. It is not the absence of light; it is against the light. It is not the darkness that Shiva is speaking of as the form of all forms – the real darkness that’s there. We are so afraid of it that we have created many sources of light just as protection, and we live in a lighted world. Then we close our eyes and the lighted world reflects negatively inside. We have lost contact with the real darkness that is there – the darkness of the Essenes, or the darkness of Shiva. We have no contact with it. We have become so much afraid of it that we have turned ourselves completely away. We are standing with our backs to it.

So this will be difficult, but if you can do it, it is miraculous, it is magical. You will have a different being altogether. When darkness enters you, you enter into it. It is always reciprocal, mutual. You cannot enter into any cosmic phenomenon without the cosmic phenomenon entering in you. You cannot rape it, you cannot force any entry. If you are available, open, vulnerable, and if you give way for any cosmic realm to enter in you, then only will you enter into it. It is always mutual. You cannot force; you can only allow it.

It is difficult to find real darkness in cities now; difficult in our houses to find real darkness. With the unreal light we have made everything unreal. Even our darkness is polluted, it is not pure. So it is good to move to some remote place only to feel darkness. Just go to a very remote village where there is no electricity, or move to a mountain peak. Just be there for one week to experience pure darkness.

You will come back a different man, because in those seven days of absolute darkness, all the fears, all the primitive fears, will come up. You will have to face monsters, you will have to face your own unconscious. The whole of humanity will… it will be as if you are passing through the whole passage that has passed, and deep from your unconscious many things will arise. They will look real. You may get afraid, scared, because they will be so real – and they are just your mental creations.

Many madmen in our mad asylums are suffering not from anything else but just from the primitive fears inside them which have erupted. The fears are there; the madmen are afraid, scared every moment of their lives. And we don’t yet know how to allow those primitive fears to evaporate. If madmen can be helped to meditate on darkness, madness will disappear.

But only in Japan do they work a little towards this. With their madmen they behave absolutely differently. If someone goes mad, psychotic or neurotic, the Japanese method is to allow him to live in isolation for three weeks or for six weeks, as the case may need. They just allow him to live in isolation. No doctor, no psychoanalyst goes to him. Food is supplied, his needs are taken care of, and he is left alone.

In the night there is no light; in darkness he is alone – suffering of course, passing through many phases. Every care is taken, but no companionship is given to him. He has to face his own madness immediately and directly. And within three to six weeks, the madness starts disappearing. Nothing has been done really; he has simply been left alone. This is the only measure that has been taken.

Western psychiatrists have become amazed. They can’t really understand how it can happen, because they work for years. They psychoanalyze, they treat, they do everything, but they never leave the man alone. They never leave him to face his inner unconscious totally on his own. Because the more help you give, the more you make him helpless, because the more he depends on you.

And the question is of an inner encounter; no one can help really. So those who know, they will leave you to face yourself.

Tags: Real Darkness