Wednesday, May 15, 2019

The Light

The Light part 2
This self-originated Clear Light, which from the very beginning was never born, is without any parents. This Clear Light has not been created by anyone, has never experienced birth and has nothing in it that could cause it to die. Although it is evidently visible, yet there be few who see it. Although it exists in everyone everywhere, it has gone unrecognized. And yet you go on hoping to attain some other fruit than this Clear Light elsewhere. Even though it is the thing that is most essentially yours, you seek for it elsewhere – how amazing! (Tibetan Buddhism)

What is the nature of this mysterious mystic illumination? Apart from the certitude it imparts, what is the form which it most usually assumes in the consciousness of the self? The mystics seem to assure us that its apparently symbolic name is really descriptive; that they do experience a kind of radiance, a flooding of the personality with new light. A new sun rises above the horizon, and transfigures their twilit world. Over and over again they return to light-imagery in this connection. Frequently, as in their first conversion, they report an actual and overpowering consciousness of radiant Light, ineffable in its splendor, as an accompaniment of their inward adjustment. “Light rare, untellable!

Said Whitman. “The flowing Light of the Godhead,” said Mechthild of Magdeburg. Saint Hildegarde described her revelations as appearing in a special Light, more brilliant than the brightness round the sun. It is an “infused brightness,” says Saint Teresa, “a Light which knows no night; but rather, as it is always light, nothing ever disturbs it.” It really seems as though the mystics’ attainment of new levels of consciousness did bring with it the power of perceiving a splendor always there, but beyond the narrow range of our poor sight… The cumulative testimony on this point is such as would be held to prove, in any other department of knowledge, that there is indeed an actual Light, “lighting the very light” and awaiting the recognition of men. (Evelyn Underhill)
If you were able to go inward right now and waken your sleeping Buddha, what would you find? Tibetan Buddhism says that at the heart of you, me, every single person, and all other creatures great and small, is an Inner Radiance that reflects our essential nature, which is always utterly positive. Tibetans refer to this Inner Light as Pure Radiance or Innate Luminosity; in fact, they call it Ground Luminosity because it is the “bottom line.” There is nothing after this, nothing before this. This luminosity is birthless and deathless. It is a luminescent emptiness, called “Clear Light,” and it is endowed with the heart of unconditional compassion and love. (Lama Surya Das)

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