Absorbing Spiritual Light (Part 1)
Just as darkness is the absence of light, negativity which manifests as vices and weaknesses inside us is merely the absence of spiritual light. Through the influence of negativity, the sense organs waste away the light. The question of vice, or sin, has been of a lot of importance in religion. No matter how much political or religious control has been imposed, nothing has been able to block the internal wasting away of the light of the soul. Light has a source but darkness does not. Darkness is not created by any source but is rather the absence of a source. In the same way, the negative forces do not emerge from the real nature of the self, but are simply symptoms of a lack of spiritual power or light. As spiritual power declines, symptoms of negativity such as anger, greed, ego, attachment, hatred, jealousy and related vices appear. On the other hand, as the soul's power and spiritual light increases through a union (meditation) with the Supreme, the vices automatically disappear. In fact problems are not fundamentally caused by a particular vice, it is a question of the extent of one's power. If I am weak, the sanskars mostly related to vices dominate my experience. If I am strong they do not have a chance to affect me.
The negative forces have often been personified as Ravana, Maya or Satan but in fact there is no such entity. Maya describes a level of consciousness. There is no outside being whom we can blame. The vices are symptoms of individual ignorance and loss of power, which appeared only when our original creative powers subsided as we came into the process of birth and rebirth. When the soul's power fell below the level necessary to control matter and the senses; then the vices emerged inside the soul. The soul was more and more propelled by them through many births, until today when they appear to be a basic part of our real nature.
(To be continued tomorrow …)
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