MORE LIGHT
“Light, more light” – these are said to be Goethe’s last words on his deathbed. Was this because of something mundane like him wanting the curtains drawn back? Or was it more likely because he was responding to the now well-known and well-studied phenomenon of the near death experience when a dying person travels through a tunnel towards a being of the purest light? Whichever it was, it shows the central importance and hold that light has to us.
Our human life is characterised by an overpowering desire for light and simultaneously a gradual growth of the quality and intensity of the light that animates our being. In the dense physical world, we can see this instinctual reaching for the light beautifully symbolised in the plant kingdom. Seeds in the pure darkness of the earth germinate, react to the force of gravity, and send roots down into the soil; simultaneously they force their young shoots upwards through the resisting soil out into the open air where the sun’s light bestows the essential energy for the plant’s growth. The simile comes to mind of gravity representing a taut bow string releasing the upward arrow of the plant towards its source.
In the world of emotion, we can see the light of this realm dulled with the dark colours of base desire and selfishness. But as our desires are redeemed, so the light of this dimension becomes pure and radiant, reflecting evermore the splendour of the lighted buddhic nature of love-wisdom. In the world of the intellect, light is intimately connected with knowledge. When we grasp a new concept or begin to understand something, we say, ‘Oh I see!’ This is not just a commonplace figure of speech; it is a statement of a factual experience, and a signpost to the truth that all is light.
The world of the Soul is one in which light rules supreme. In the Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna asks Krishna, the embodiment of the Soul, to reveal himself as he really is, the revelation that comes evokes these wondrous words: “Ah, Brighter than a Thousand Suns!” The same reaction came from Oppenheimer at the sight of the first atomic explosion in 1945, when the released Soul of the atom momentarily eclipsed all other light and gave humanity the power of death or redemption over the physical world. It is hardly necessary to observe that this is a crisis that humanity has not yet resolved finally and irrevocably on the side of the Hierarchy of Light, whose work is so focussed on the will-to-good. Its physical plane expression, a dynamic and practical goodwill, will one day care equally for all people everywhere in the world.
In our daily triangles work, we visualise the world-wide network becoming increasingly alive with the light of the Soul, underlying and supporting all the outer service work of humanity as it struggles against enormous odds to take those firm and sure steps into a future of lighted and right human relationships.