419. Spiritual Light

Spiritual light seen on the face is called tejas; seen in the sky is vision, as Sundaramoorthy Nayanar saw Parvathi and Paramasivan. Light is one of the twelve expressions of the Spirit and it reveals in various ways and in various degrees. The primitive man who discovered that a stone can be used as a tool received the Spiritual light as an illumination in his physical mind that was activated by the overflowing energy of the body while it was in motion. The fear-ridden superstitious villager sees the same ‘spiritual light' as will-o-the-wisp. Edison never went to school, but he patented over a thousand inventions. He exerted his body to the utmost. His exertions released enormous energy. That energy was organised into skill. That skill needed an idea. He is considered a genius, maybe a technological genius. His body thought and received spiritual light.

Tapas, spirituality, is to stop thinking and BE the Spirit. Between the body thinking and tapas, there are twelve or thirteen levels. India has amply accomplished at the 13^th level in thousands of Rishis. Sri Aurobindo has taken Indian yoga a further step, a step where the Spirit will express in life. For that, one has to travel another six steps. Tapas is ascent. Expressing the Spirit in life is descent. Such a life is called divine life. It is God's work, not man's effort. Man's part is only surrender. Thousands of devotees do it when they pray. During prayer, they surrender themselves to Mother. Mother accomplishes for them what they cannot accomplish.

Stock accumulates for years. It is called ‘dead stock'. It is sold off for a song. Suppose you have stocks worth a crore accumulated over ten or fifteen years. There is no solution other than throwing it all away for a throwaway price. For the devotee, the rule is different. He calls Mother to sell off his stocks. Before doing so, he must reverse every refractory behaviour that made the stocks accumulate. Neglect, arrogance, dishonesty, indifference, etc. are some of them. Should he remove his own contributions to the accumulated stocks and call MOTHER, the stocks will melt away in a short time. Once, in a long detailed article, I have explained how a young boy liquidated such stocks in seven days.