These moments of darkness come to all seekers on the pathways of Light, for ‘winding through hell turns the heavenward path’! Why should it be so? Well the only satisfactory explanation though never completely satisfactory is that Night is a tunnel that takes us through some hidden door in our being, opening some long-closed rooms to the freshness and light of the sun that has not yet reached in these corners. It is like a cleansing process when we look back a little to see all that has been dumped carelessly in our subconscient terrains and lighting a candle of hope and the fire of aspiration start setting our hose in order. It is a stock taking time when we look back and see what is still to be kept, what can be reused, what can be recycled and what is to be discarded since its utility is over.
On the path of our Godward seeking too there are things to discard, foremost among them being our conceptions formed by our mind while it was still in the dense of ignorance. These conceptions include our ideas of what is good and what is bad, the ideas of guilt and redemption, reward and punishment, and many other such things. These ideas and concepts do have their place, temporarily as we transit through ignorance. They prevent us from certain extreme experiences that may bring much pain and complications and confusions. But their real purpose is something else. It is about the road we have taken, the number of obstacles and difficulties we have piled up along the way and the difficulties and challenges we must encounter in our journey. But here too there are no rights and wrongs for each journey is unique. The soul choosing a longer and difficult path has as a recompense a completer and more complex realisation, a wider embrace of our Divine Lover. On the other hand, the shorter route is for those who want to run into the arms of Eternal Peace through a narrower intenser route. But the realisation is also narrower and limited. To each his own journey. what should matter really is the Goal we have set before us and the road we intend to take.
These moments of crisis come to reorient and realign us to these two things. Thus far we have walked through life in a certain way along a certain road towards a certain goal. We have the experience now to tell us where we have reached, how far we have come and whether the road was worth it. These are the only three questions to be asked at each bend of the road. Then depending upon our answers we take the next step forward. Also we can use this moment to clean up the clutter, remove all that is unwanted and keep only that which will be useful for the next step of our journey that is soon going to open before us. This opening to a New Dawn, its arrival is inevitable after each such Night. But sometimes we have to wait, may be it is a long wait yet if we keep patience and courage, if we hold on to our faith and keep the flame of aspiration alive by feeding into it everything that is happening within and around then the Night will pass away sooner and even turn into a yagna, hastening our journey. But if instead we go the way of depression and guilt goaded by the forces of darkness that have been allowed to test and retest us then we only prolong the despair.
During such moments one should cling to any little ray of Light that one may find, whether in books or talks or mechanical remembrance or even work which at least diverts our mind from the surrounding darkness, acts of charity and benevolence that help purify our nature, then sooner or later we shall see the outbreak of light and the arrival of a New dawn. Personally I find nothing more beautiful and powerful than words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They help us hold on and hold out until the darkness vanishes and light returns a victor and conqueror. At the end of the tunnel there always is Light.
This is what I would suggest for the moment. Let me close with these wonderful uplifting passages from Savitri which is the most effective antidote against all depression and gloom. The Mother has said this and it has been my persistent experience. Just a passage is enough to chase away all gloom and anxiety.
Loving regards
alok
“Was then the sun a dream because there is night?
Hidden in the mortal’s heart the Eternal lives:
He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,
A Light shines there nor pain nor grief can cross.
A darkness stands between thyself and him,
Thou canst not hear or feel the marvellous Guest,
Thou canst not see the beatific sun….
“O Aswapati, random seem the ways
Along whose banks your footsteps stray or run
In casual hours or moments of the gods,
Yet your least stumblings are foreseen above.
Infallibly the curves of life are drawn
Following the stream of Time through the unknown;
They are led by a clue the calm immortals keep.
This blazoned hieroglyph of prophet morns
A meaning more sublime in symbols writes
Than sealed Thought wakes to, but of this high script
Whether it seem good or evil to men’s eyes,
Only for good the secret Will can work.
Our destiny is written in double terms:
Through Nature’s contraries we draw nearer God;
Out of the darkness we still grow to light….
Our early approaches to the Infinite
Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge
While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.
What now we see is a shadow of what must come.
The earth’s uplook to a remote Unknown
Is a preface only of the epic climb
Of human soul from its flat earthly state
To the discovery of a greater self
And the far gleam of an eternal Light.
This world is a beginning and a base
Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn Power must build reality.
A deathbound littleness is not all we are:
Immortal our forgotten vastnesses
Await discovery in our summit selves;
Unmeasured breadths and depths of being are ours.
Akin to the ineffable Secrecy,
Mystic, eternal in unrealised Time,
Neighbours of Heaven are Nature’s altitudes.
To these high-peaked dominions sealed to our search,
Too far from surface Nature’s postal routes,
Too lofty for our mortal lives to breathe,
Deep in us a forgotten kinship points
And a faint voice of ecstasy and prayer
Calls to those lucent lost immensities.
Even when we fail to look into our souls
Or lie embedded in earthly consciousness,
Still have we parts that grow towards the light,..
Night is not our beginning nor our end;
She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid
Safe from too swift a waking to world-pain.
We came to her from a supernal Light,
By Light we live and to the Light we go.
