If You Sit in a Pitch-Dark Space

Sunday was Amavasya, or the day when the moon disappears from our sight. On the no moon day, if you are willing not to disturb the darkness and keep it absolutely dark, if your mind is not in a primate condition where it jumps around and imagines ghosts, goblins and other nonsense coming from the darkness, darkness will be the most wonderful thing.

If you sit in a pitch-dark space, after some time you will not know the boundaries of your own body. You will not know where you are and where you are not.  If your mind is stable and meditative, sitting in a dark space will be a fantastic blessing. But for those whose minds are in a certain level of disruption, darkness is a serious problem. Most people are terrified in darkness, though darkness has never bitten anyone, anywhere, anytime. But because the mind takes so much visual content through the eyes, the moment the eyes become helpless in the darkness, the mind becomes terrified because it is so deeply enslaved to the five senses.

You have five friends who are all nitwits; they are half-brained. Whatever you see, whatever you experience, the senses only give you one part of the experience, they will never give you the whole. Because you start trusting and believing them, because you are deeply attached to them, your whole perception of existence is completely twisted.

So darkness is only a problem for those who have unstable minds. If you have a stable mind, darkness is a very beautiful thing. It is the coolest thing because nobody can disturb it. And it is the strongest thing because nobody can throw it out. It is the only thing which is eternal; it is the only thing which is all-pervading. The only thing that pervades the existence through-and-through is darkness.  The dark nothingness that is all-pervading is the very lap of creation. May you have the needed stability of mind to know the utter stillness and the eternal nature of darkness.