We are like the king in the Brhad-aranyaka Upanishad, who once asked a sage, "What serves as the light for man?" and who bristled when the sage replied, "The light of the sun, Your Majesty."
"But what about when the sun sets?" the king asked, still feeling anxious. The sage invoked the moon to reassure the sovereign. The king listened, but he shook his head. "No, no, the moon also sets, and what light does man have when it's gone?" The sage shrugged and pointed to the fire, but it also failed to satisfy the king, who lamented that no flame burns forever.
"Speech, then," said the sage.
"But what about when speech stops?" The king quibbled.
The sage smiled, for at last they had arrived at the heart of the matter: When the sun and moon have set, the fire is gone, and speech is silenced, what light does a person have then?
"The self, indeed, is his light," said the sage. "With the self as the light, one sits, moves about, does one's work and returns."
As the sage in the story revealed, the light to cultivate and live by shines within. Powered by the network of energy flowing through us, it is our constant comfort in the darkness—the light that never goes out. The more we can learn to trust our light and identify with the energy behind it, the less we will fret about the shadows cast by fear, pain, lack, and death.
Psychology, self-help books, and spiritual guides have made much of the distinctions between the body, the mind, the ego, the consciousness, the spirit, and the soul. Definitions abound for each concept and semantics spur endless confusion and debate. To make it simple, I focus on the light that shines in all of us, which is a byproduct of the common network of energy that flows through all creation. I think of our lights as being bulbs on a strand—each of us glowing individually but together, like a series of Christmas lights on an infinite string.
In my metaphor, the bulb is the body and consciousness is the power that flows through it. This power is infinite, impersonal, eternal, and shared. The light in the bulb comes from the power of consciousness energizing our ego, which channels the energy but radiates some of it in the process of acting out our will in the world.
The current would exist without the bulbs. The light would move through the universe in a different form. But our lives give us the chance to engage the energy that flows through us. Our physicality, our agency, and our individuality enable us to give that energy expression. No matter how trivial or transient, our thoughts and actions radiate. In effect, they glow.
The resulting light show is enlightening. Next time you find yourself in a crowd of people, pick out the string of lights and feel the current flowing through it. When the darkness closes in at dusk, feel your own light shining steady and look around to trace the energetic strand. The shadows recede when we see ourselves connected to this illuminated web.
The Upanishads use the metaphor of the string that runs through all creation to explain the interdependence of our being and its timeless connection to the universe. The writers assert that “Man is a bead strung on the thread of the conscious self, and just as puppets are worked by strings, so the world is operated by the thread spirit.” Imagine that the thread is spun from energy and the bead is a bulb strung on its infinite strand.
The Upanishads describe the thread spirit as the undifferentiated, abstract energy that powers everything and runs through all of us. It is the unconditioned, undifferentiated self—a self so pure and abstract that it is more easily described by enumerating what it’s not. This unconditioned self, the energy, the thread spirit, the current of consciousness that we all share is beyond speech and mind. It channels eternal knowledge and power. In the Upanishads, it is called the inner controller, the Imperishable Supreme Self, that which is free to flow everywhere and appear in different forms.
Identifying with this energy and fully inhabiting this dimension of our self frees us from fear, pain, lack, and death. Urging us to identify with the strand instead of the bulb, the Brhad-aranyaka Upanishad remarks that this supreme self “is indestructible for it cannot be destroyed. It is unattached for it does not attach itself. It is unfettered. It does not suffer. It is not injured. It has reached the state of fearlessness." The bulb may break or burn out, but the strand of energy is fluid and eternal.
It does not know darkness; it is the origin of universal light.
Through these darker days, may we all remember to connect to our consciousness, to draw on its boundless energy, and to take comfort in its constant illumination.