“We pass now from the texts that are centered on the mystery of light to the inner light which is the main subject of this group of Upanishadic texts but which we should not interpret in an exaggeratedly acosmic way. The process of interiorization which goes on in the Upanishads is not disconnected from the cosmological setting. Inner light it certainly is, but the Sun is still its best and living symbol. Even when all the cosmological lights are transcended, as in the passages of the Brihadaranyaka and the Mundaka Upanishads, explicit reference is made to all five cosmic sources of light: sun, moon, stars, lightning, and earthly fire. This Light of lights is none other than the Light that illumines all those other lights: it is the source of all the lights in the universe. It is the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which, having said that God is "the Lord of what was and what shall be," adds that "Him the Gods revere as Light of lights."

Within the cosmological representations of the time, the five cosmic lights present no underlying physical unity; Vedic Man does not imagine that all these lights can be seen as the same physicochemical process. But he imagines, in a similar way, that there is a supreme light, transcendent and immanent, which is the source of all these other lights. The discoverer of the atman, he who realizes the core of all things and the ultimate dimension of everything, must also discover this inner light. Even more, one could say that there is here a criterion for the authenticity of spiritual realization. The truly realized Man is a light to himself and is himself radiant for others. God is Light, the atman is Light, and so the Man who has realized the atman is self-luminous and radiant. In many traditions we can readily find examples of the luminosity of the saints, of the aura of the jivan-muktas.”
                                       

“It is certainly true that the atman-brahman intuition represents the discovery of the equivalence between the macrocosm and the microcosm, but this mahavakya intends to do more than simply enunciate a speculative homology; it intends to convey a saving message. The atman must be realized and its identity with brahman discovered, an injunction that is repeated again and again. It means that it is not a self-evident truth placarded before our eyes; it is not given as an immediate datum within the range of our common experience. It is not a question of finding an objectified atman. The atman that has to be realized is something that emerges in the very process of discovery, in the very process of unveiling the veil of maya by recognizing it to be a veil. Indeed, once the intuition dawns upon us, we will be inclined to say that it was already there, only we did not know it. In other words, the atman is definitely not our creation. Yet even this should not be interpreted in a static way, as if we were simply to discover something that was already there, for it is precisely by this very discovery that we have come to be. We have realized ourselves by the realization of the atman. We have become the revealed reality. . . .

The atman is that which holds the human person together in unity and guides the individual selves as their Lord (v).

The Katha Upanishad reveals the paradoxical nature of the atman (vi) which cannot be grasped by an intellectual approach, but only by an act of grace, by a choice on the part of the atman. But to receive this grace requires purity of life and mind, concentration and internal peace (v. 24). Only with this grace can the seers perceive the invisible (vii).

The Shvetashvatara Upanishad (viii) adds that the atman is not discovered without effort but that it is the product of effort. For just as butter is not produced automatically by milk or cream, but by a definite effort on the part of someone, so also the atman has to be gained from the individual self by effort, truthfulness, and fervor. The overarching nature of atman, its cosmic character and spiritual reality, are again stressed in the Mundaka Upanishad (ix).

Atman SB X, 6, 3, 1-2

1. One should meditate on Brahman, the truth. Now, man possesses insight and, on departing from this world, he will attain the world beyond in accordance with his degree of insight.

2. One should meditate on the atman which consists of spirit, whose embodiment is life, whose form is light, whose essence is space, which changes its form at will, swift as thought, of true resolve and true stability; which contains all odors, all tastes, pervades all regions and encompasses the whole world, speechless and indifferent.

Like a grain of rice or barley or millet, like a tiny grain of millet, so is the golden Person within the atman. Like smokeless flame, greater than heaven, greater than the atmosphere, greater than the earth, greater than all beings, he is the atman of life, my own atman. On departing [from this world] I shall become that atman. He who has this confidence, he shall not waver.”
                                       

“The vibratory energy pervading the entire universe is designated by the Sanskrit word Paramchaitanya. At a human level, it is stored in a latent state in the sacrum bone in the form of Kundalini. When the human embryo has reached two or three months, a pencil of vibratory energy penetrates through the fontanelle zone. The prism-like shape of the brain determines the pencil to be divided into four rays: one of them penetrates the parasympathetic system and is placed as residual energy in the sacrum bone, while others are directed towards the left sympathetic system, the right sympathetic and the central nervous system. Peter Russel reached the conclusion that the genetic programme of the universe is reflected at a human scale. The evolution of the foetal brain takes place during the interval between the 8^th and the 13^th week of pregnancy. The genetic programme controls the 14 thousand million nervous cells (the number is supposed to be much higher after others) resulting in the creation of the brain as an organ. The quantitative generating process is suddenly interrupted during the 12^th week when the cells start making an increasing number of connections. At the moment of birth each and every cerebral neuron is connected to other cells through approximately one thousand connections, to be later increased to about one quarter of a million connections with other cells in the period of maturity.”
                                       

“Luke and Matthew alone tell us that Jesus was born of a virgin . . . If we probe further, however, and see this as part of the myth of the human Self, or of every man and woman born into this world, what this says at the most profound level is that each human being’s birth is a miraculous happening. We have a physical-psychical nature from our mother’s womb but we are also begotten of God. We have a divine origin or a latent divinity within ourselves as a result of divine intervention. This higher or more spiritual meaning is directly expressed in the prologue of John’s Gospel where he says: "That was the true light which gives light to every human being as he or she comes into this world." ”
                                       

“The extreme psychophysiological exercises of this highly sophisticated and effective, spiritual transformative degree have been practiced in India for at least four thousand years, we know from the evidence of a number of engraved stamp seals from the period of the Indus Valley Civilization, c. 2000 BC, featuring figures seated in a classic yoga posture known as mulabandhasana, which is still in practice." Similar kundalini or "Serpent Power" evidence is evident in ancient civilizations: an ornamental Sumerian ritual vessel, the Libition Vase of King Gudeau of Lagash, c. 2000 BC; a Egyptian judgement scene from Theban copy of the Book of the Dead of Kenna c. 1405-1376 BC (nineteenth dynasty); a Chou Dynasty three and one-half coiled bronze serpent in the Musee Guimet, Paris c. 1027-256 BC; the magnificent serpent-deity, the Feathered Serpent of the Mayans; the Navaho sand painting of the Great Corn Plant and the mystic Pollen Path.”