Light
“Lead me from darkness to Light, from the unreal to the Real,
from death to Immortality.” So runs the ancient appeal of the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad. The human yearning for light is fathomless, if sometimes misdirected.
Traditionally, darkness is associated with ignorance, while light is equated with
divinity, and it's true that the Source of light is divine. Yet, the Ageless Wisdom
teaches that light and matter are synonymous terms scientifically, while “darkness
is pure spirit.” In this realisation we get a glimpse of the enormous significance
awaiting revelation within the material realm, for light is an intrinsic part of
every atom of substance.
The past century has brought an inflow of light to earth that has in some respects
been almost blinding in its glare. Very few places on our planet are now unlighted
and the great urban areas exist in perpetual light. Added to the almost universal
availability of electricity is the light of knowledge, now rapidly expanding through
the growth of literacy and the development of communications. More information is
available to the average individual than he or she can possibly assimilate and use,
yet the hunger for the light of wisdom remains, for many, unfulfilled and the capacity
to “take the light” is not yet universally developed.
Light is sometimes experienced literally as a shock, with effects both painful
and potentially expansive to consciousness. An example of this is humanity's response
to the events of 11 September 2001, which generated an immediate and worldwide
recognition that humanity has reached a point of grave danger if ignorance and
wrong values are allowed to prevail, and, at the same time, an almost universal
revelation of human beings' capacity to respond as one in the face of great pain
and sorrow.
Humanity's destined task, to become a station of light for our planet, is surely
being subjected to a forcing process through the crises and tests of the past
hundred years or so. The fulfillment of this task is aided more than we can
possibly appreciate by the downpouring of the Forces of Enlightenment-powerful
spiritual energies which are released at the time of the Wesak Festival, to be
observed worldwide this year on 26 April. These Forces, as they make impact on
all intelligent, thinking, reasoning people, are producing an ever clearer grasp
of the Plan and of humanity's role in that Plan, but the necessary steps to be
taken are left to the choice of human free will. In this we are strengthened by
the living examples of the Buddha, the Lord of Light whose very name means
“the Enlightened One,” and by the Christ, the Light of the World.
Because these two great World Teachers are of the same substance as humanity,
their examples are the guarantee that, as they achieved, so can we all, one day.
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