VBT – Meditation 77.1
Inner Darkness
In the cold season Mahavir would find a cool place to meditate, and in the hot season he would find the hottest place to meditate. People thought that he was mad, and his followers think he was just doing austerities. It is not so. He was really trying some inner techniques like this.
When it was hot he was trying to bring his inner cold – and it can be felt only in a contrast. When it was cold outside he was bringing his inner heat – and it can be felt only when there is a contrast.
He was not a body enemy, he was not against his body, as Jains think. They think that he was killing his body, because if you can kill your body, you can kill your desire. This is sheer nonsense. He was doing nothing of the sort. He was bringing the inner out, and he was protected by the inner. Just as Tibetan lamas can create heat and they can perspire while snow is falling, Mahavir would stand under a hot burning sun and he would not perspire. He was bringing his inner cold, and that inner cold would come out and protect his body.
Similarly you can bring your inner darkness, and that feeling is very cool. If you can bring it, you are protected by it: no excitement, no passion will disturb you. Try it. These three things: stare in darkness with open eyes and allow the darkness to enter within. Secondly: feel darkness as a mother’s womb all around; live with it; forget yourself more and more in it. And thirdly: carry a patch of darkness in your heart wherever you go.
If you can do this, the darkness will become the light. You will be enlightened through darkness.
WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT, CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU. OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS.
That’s the method. First feel it inside, feel it deeply so you can perceive it out. Then open the eyes suddenly and feel it out. It will take time.
SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER.
And if you can bring the inner darkness outside, faults disappear forever, because if the inner darkness is felt, you have become so cool, so silent, so unexcitable, that faults cannot remain with you.
Remember this: faults can exist only if you are prone to be excited, if you tend to be excited. They don’t exist in themselves; they exist in your capacity to get excited. Someone insults you, and you have no darkness within to absorb the insult; you become inflamed, you get angry, you get fiery, and then everything is possible. You can be violent, you can kill, you can do what only a madman can do. Anything is possible – you are now mad. Someone praises you: you again go mad to the other extreme.
Tags: Inner Darkness
