Prof.em. Dr. Ir. Gerrit Broekstra (author), Milady A. Cardamone (translator)
Like all traditional festivals, the Diwali ‘festival of lights’ takes place once each year, lasts a very short period of time, and is celebrated through rituals and traditions in the joyful environment of family and friends. In this year 2020 of the pandemic the Diwali celebration will be significantly impacted. However, the real Festival of Lights is within us, is always there, lasts for eternity and is not affected by anything whatsoever. We are, of course, referring to the ‘Light of all lights’, jyotiṣām jyotiḥ, of which it is said that it is beyond darkness: tamasaḥ param ucyate; and that it exists in the hearts of all: hṛdi sarvasya viṣṭhitam (Bhagavad-gītā, 13.17).
Why is it called ‘Light of all lights’? The light of the sun, the moon, the stars and also of the fire of the diyas of Diwali ‘shine because they are enkindled by the Light of Consciousness of the Self,’ as Sri Sankaracarya thoughtfully comments on verse 13.17. Verse 15.12 of the Gītā reinforces this: ‘That Light that is Consciousness, which is in the sun which illumines the whole world, that which is in the moon, and that which is in fire – know that Light to be Mine [Brahman or the Self].’ Desiring a long life, even the gods meditate through its attribute of longevity upon the amṛtam jyotiṣām jyotis, ‘that immortal Light of all lights, which is the revealer of even such luminaries as the sun,’ as is confirmed by one of the oldest and principal Upaniṣads, the Brihadaranyaka in verse IV.iv.16. Many examples may be found in the ancient Indian scriptures of the Light of all lights that abides in us as our true nature.
For example, in the Ashtavakra-gita, which for the first time has been recently translated directly from Sanskrit into Dutch under the title Know yourself: the end of the fake I, the experience of the Light of the Self is discussed several times. After Ashtavakra had told his disciple King Janaka that he – meaning his own Self or ātman – is Pure Consciousness (verse 1.3) and self-effulgent, sva-prakāśaḥ (1.15), the awakened Janaka exclaimed: ‘Light, prakāśaḥ, is my true nature; I am not different from That
When the universe manifests itself, then it is indeed I alone that shines’ (verse 2.8). That is to say, it is essentially the Self alone that manifests itself, like waves on the ocean, and that is conscious of itself.
The Light here is, of course, not the light that we know from physics that has a certain wavelength, but is a metaphor for Pure Consciousness which illumines or reveals the knower, the process of knowing and the known. This implies that Consciousness somehow makes our thoughts and experiences ‘visible’ (in the mind) without being affected by them, just as objects are made visible by the light of the sun without the sun being affected by them. As said, we can find many more examples in the ancient scriptures about the blissful Light of our true Self that is always shining within us, indeed that we are.
A more contemporary and worldwide respected jnani, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (1879-1950) also once said (and quite appropriate for the Diwali celebration): ‘You yourself are the illumination. The usual illustration of this is the following. You make all kinds of sweets of various ingredients and in various shapes and they all taste sweet because there is sugar in all of them and sweetness is the nature of sugar. And in the same way all experiences and the absence of them contain the illumination which is the nature of the Self. Without the Self they cannot be experienced, just as without sugar not one of the articles you make can taste sweet.’ (Osborne, p. 134.)
Let us now focus on the question of why we notice so little of the ‘sweetness’ of our own Self and how we can then realize that Light as our permanent reality. Knowledge of your Self, ātma-vidyā, is in fact easy, says Ramana Maharshi. You are That already; you just have to remove the biggest obstacle, the illusion of your fake ‘I’. By identifying with what you are not, the body, your mind has created a fantasy-‘I’ or false self which gives you the illusion of individuality, of being a person. In other words, that unreal ‘I’ obscures the Light of the real ‘I’, just as clouds obscure the light of the sun. And just as in twilight a piece of rope can be taken for the illusion of a snake, so through ignorance the substratum of your true Self is taken for the illusion of a false self.
An illuminating example of this confusion is given in Sri Sankaracharya’s Aparokshānubhūti (or Self-Realization). In verse 20 it is said: ‘The Self, ātmā, is the pure Illuminator, svacchaḥ prakāśakaḥ; the body is said to be of the nature of darkness, tāmasaḥ; and yet the people see (confound) these two as one! What else can be called ignorance but this?’
In verse 22 Sri Sankaracharya summarized in one sentence what is meant by the notion of ‘Illuminator’: ‘The luminosity of the Self, ātmanaḥ prakāśatvam, consists in the manifestation of all objects, padārtha-avabhāsanam.’ Objects are both things and people, in short the universe. Sri Sankara’s comment is equally enlightening: ‘The light of the Self is unlike any other light… Even the light of the sun is unable to dispel darkness at some place. But the light of the Self is ever present at all places. It illumines everything and is opposed to nothing, not even to darkness; for it is in and through the light of Atman, which is present in everybody as Consciousness, that one comprehends darkness as well as light and all other things.’ When asked whether that Light of Consciousness is like sunlight, Sri Ramana answered: ‘The sunlight is jada (insentient). You are aware of it. It makes objects perceptible and chases away darkness, whereas Consciousness is that Light which makes not only light but also darkness perceptible. Darkness cannot exist before sunlight, but it can remain in the Light of Consciousness. Similarly, this consciousness is pure Knowledge, jñānam, in which both knowledge and ignorance shine.’ (Talks, 2001, p. 317.)
Through the use of the direct method for Self-inquiry, as described by Bhagavan Sri Ramana, with the questions ‘Who is this I?’ and ‘Whence is this I?’ one directly seeks the Source (= the Self that is Pure Consciousness; pure because it is free from thoughts – mindlessness) of the fake ‘I’. This is the ‘I’-thought in ‘I am this‘ and ‘I am that’ which obscures the Light of the true Self. In the process the flood of all other thoughts that constitute the mind vanishes into nothingness – an internal cleaning – and finally also the ‘I’-thought, the root of them all. In verse 20 van the Upadeśa Sāram (The essence of instruction), one of the few texts written by Ramana Maharshi himself, he said: ‘When the ego, the fake ‘I’, vanishes in its Source, the transcendental, infinite, one Being shines (sphurati) of itself as the true ‘I’.’ The experience of this mysterious Light of the Self (also called aham-sphurana: the Light of ‘I’: sphuranam = that which shines or illuminates), that is always within as your true nature, but is obscured by the fake ‘I’, is the harbinger of Self-realization. With this Self-awareness the false ‘I’-thought vanishes, this illusion of individuality, this inflated ego that is a fake ’I’, just as the illusion of a snake in a rope disappears in the full light of the sun.
Annamalai Swami was a devoted disciple of Bhagavan Sri Ramana and also the supervisor of all the building projects of the Sri Ramanasramam starting in 1928 and continuing for more than ten years. Later in his life he became a highly respected jnani himself and was known for the impressive quality of his teachings. This may be evident from a beautiful talk he gave in the last six months of his life in 1995 in discussing the ignorance of the Self, its vanishing by gaining Self-awareness, and how by not losing contact with the Self ignorance can never arise. ‘If there is darkness, you remove it by bringing light.
Darkness is not something real and substantial that you have to dig out and throw away. It is just an absence of light, nothing more. When light is let into a dark room, the darkness is suddenly no longer there. It did not vanish gradually or go away piece by piece; it simply ceased to exist when the room became filled with light. This is just an analogy because the Self is not like other lights. It is not an object that you either see or don’t see. It is there all the time, shining as your own reality. If you refuse to acknowledge its existence, if you refuse to believe that it is there, you put yourself in an imaginary darkness. It is not a real darkness. It is just your own willful refusal to acknowledge that you are light itself.
This self-inflicted ignorance is the darkness that has to be banished by the light of Self-awareness. We have repeatedly to turn to the light of the Self within until we become one with it. Bhagavan spoke about turning inwards to face the Self. That is all that is needed. If we look outwards, we become entangled with objects and we lose awareness of the Self shining within us.
But when, by repeated practice, we gain strength to keep our focus on the Self within, we become one with it and the darkness of Self-ignorance vanishes. Then, even though we continue to live in this false and unreal body, we abide in an ocean of bliss that never fades or diminishes.’ (Final Talks, 2015, p. 19.).
Joyful as it is, a celebration like the Diwali Festival of Lights paradoxically tends to carry us away, turning us outwards and ‘entangling us with objects’. The sobriety of the celebration enforced by the pandemic, however, presents us with the opportunity, more than ever, to turn inwards to experience the Eternal Festival of Light within and banish the darkness of the narcissistic fake ‘I’.
This ‘I’ like the snake in the rope does not really exist. Nonetheless it is becoming pandemically widespread itself and is the underlying cause of so much misery in this world.
Annamalai Swami (ed. by D. Godman) (2015) Final Talks (Boulder, CO: Avadhuta Foundation).
Broekstra, G. (2020) Know Yourself: The end of the fake I; first transl. in Dutch directly from the orig. Sanskrit of the Aṣṭāvakra-gītā (Leidschendam: Publ. Quist).
Osborne, A. (2018) The teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words (Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam) (14th ed.).
Sri Ramana Maharshi (1927) Upadeśa-sāram (Sanskrit version of Upadesa Undiyār (in Tamil)) (Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam).
Swami Gambhiranda (transl.) (2006) Bhagavadgītā with Śaṅkarabhāṣya (7th Impr.; Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama).
Swami Madhavananda (transl.) (2004) The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad with Śaṅkarabhāṣya (10th Impr.; Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama).
Swami Vimuktananda (transl.) (1938) Aparokṣānubhūti (Self-Realization) of Śrī Śaṅkarācārya (Himalayas: Advaita Ashrama) (via archive.org).Venkataramiah, M. (2001) Talks with Ramana Maharshi (Carlsbad, CA: InnerDir. Publ.).
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