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The Godly Light
The
Bible is seen to be full of terms about light. Lossky
tells us that "for the mystical theology of the eastern
Church these are not metaphors, rhetorical figures but words
expressing a real aspect of godliness." "The godly
light does not have an abstract and allegorical meaning. It
is a data of the mystical experience." The author then
referred to "Gnostics", the highest level of godly
knowledge [that] is an experience (a living) of the
noncreated light, where the experience itself is the light: in
lumine tuo videbimus lumen (in Your Light we shall see
light.)"
Eternal, endless, existing beyond time and space, it
appeared in the theophanies of the Old Testament as the
Glory of God. The Glory is "the Uncreated Light, His
Eternal Kingdom." Being bestowed to the Christians by
the Holy Spirit, the energies appear no longer as external
causes but as grace, as inner light." Makarius the
Egyptian wrote: "It is . . . the enlightenment of the
holy souls, the steadiness of the heavenly powers" (Spiritual
Homilies V.8.)
"The godly light appears here, in this world, in time.
It is disclosed in the history but it is not of this world;
it is eternal, it means going out from the historical
existence: the secret of the eight day, the secret of
the true knowledge, the fulfillment of the Gnosis . . . It
is exactly the beginning of parousia in the holy souls, the
beginning of the revealing at the end of times, when God
will be disclosed to everyone in this distant Light."
Dan
Costian, Bible Enlightened, Computex
Graphics, 1995, p.415
"Lead me from darkness to light, from death to
immortality." This famed Vedic prayer proclaims
the human urge to survive, to conquer death and to
know the joys of illuminated consciousness. People
often pilgrimage to an isolated place in expectation
of a vision, be it a jungle of fauna and foliage or
cement and glass. Every person is on a vision quest.
But for all souls, at the time of the great departure,
mahaprasthana, a vision comes as a tunnel of light at
the end of which are beings of divine nature. Many
having had the near-death experience have sworn their
testimony of such transforming encounters. An American
woman who "died" during childbirth, but was
brought back to life by quick medical action,
recounted: "It was an incredible energy a
light you wouldn't believe. I almost floated in it. It
was feeding my consciousness feelings of unconditional
love, complete safety and complete, total perfection.
And then, and then, a piece of knowledge came in
it was that I was immortal, indestructible. I cannot
be hurt, cannot be lost, and that the world is
perfect." Hundreds of people report similar
experiences, affirming what Hinduism has always taught
that death is a blissful, light-filled transition
from one state to another, as simple and natural as
changing clothes, far from the morbid, even hellish
alternatives some dread. A Vedic funeral hymn intones:
"Where eternal luster glows, the realm in which
the light divine is set, place me, Purifier, in that
deathless, imperishable world. Make me immortal in
that realm where movement is accordant to wish, in the
third region, the third heaven of heavens, where the
worlds are resplendent" (Rig Veda, Aitareya
Aranyaka 6-11).
Satguru
Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Jan. 1997
(Himalayan Academy, 1998, www.hinduismtoday.)
This
universal symbol of Light is surely one of the best
symbols Man has found to express the delicate balance
that almost all cultures have tried to maintain, with
varying success, between a merely this-worldly or
atheistic attitude and a totally otherworldly or
transcendent attitude. There must be some link between
the world of Men and the world of the Gods, between
the material and the spiritual, the immanent and the
transcendent. If this link is of a substantial nature,
pantheism is unavoidable. If the link is exclusively
epistemic, as Indian and many other scholasticisms
tend to affirm, the reality of this world will
ultimately vanish. The symbol of Light avoids these
two pitfalls by allowing for a specific sharing in its
nature by both worlds or even by the "three
worlds."
This is the supreme light spoken of in the Rig Veda
and in the Brahmanas; it is mentioned also in the
Chandogya Upanishad and in the well-known prayer of
the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: "Lead me from
darkness to light!'' It is also the refulgent light of
the golden vessel stationed in the dwelling place of
the Divine: "The impregnable stronghold of the
Gods has eight circles and nine gates. It contains a
golden vessel, turned toward heaven and suffused with
light.'' This light is neither exclusively divine nor
exclusively human, neither merely material nor merely
spiritual, neither from this side only nor from the
other. It is precisely this fact that "links the
two shores." This light is cosmic as well as
transcosmic.
Professor
Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience, http://www.cybrlink.com/vedtoc.htm
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