The Light Within: A Look at Consciousness

Have you ever had an amazing, enlightening experience, then noticed your eyes in a mirror? How they sparkled with fresh clarity? Cried until there were no more tears, then saw a new brightness to their color? Looked into your partner’s eyes after orgasm and their eyes were practically glowing?

The eyes as window to the soul are a visible portal to Consciousness. It seems the more we release the mental clutter, the more present we are, the more sparkly (as my 5 year old niece likes to say) our eyes become.

What we’re seeing is the brightness or fire of the light of Consciousness within.

Seeing In The Dark

The sanskrit word for Consciousness is Chit. Chit translates as —to observe, to know, to understand. According to Swami Shantananda, it is “that which is endowed with the power to know and to perceive.”

This is not so much the light we can see with our eyes but the light by which our eyes see.

One of the easiest ways to connect with our inner light, ironically, is by closing our eyes. When we seal out external light, it helps us look within, to our own Consciousness. With closed eyes we practice observing from the perspective of an unbiased, compassionate witness and we make connection with the fire, or tejas, that is within.

The Two Of Us

The presence of the witness that we uncover during meditation implies another. Have you ever stopped to wonder who this witness intelligence is? And, when your mind becomes still, yet you’re aware of its stillness, who was it that was aware in the first place?

The answer is Chit, our Consciousness.

It is the witness of all our experiences and feelings. It is the part of us that has always been there and has never changed. It is both the light we see in each other’s eyes and the light by which we see.