What is the fundamental nature of darkness in existence?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT DARKNESS? I realized his situation and I told him, "Now, you have listened to my first advice which has created the trouble for you; but it has not created the trouble -- the trouble was already there. Your businesses were just keeping you occupied so you were not aware of it -- now you are aware of it. Now take my other advice: go deeper into it rather than escaping. It is your reality -- there is no way to escape from it. "It is just like your shadow -- the faster you run, the faster your shadow runs. Wherever you go, the shadow goes. It is simply stupid to fight with the shadow. Rather, sit silently and let the whole feel of being alone envelop you. In the beginning it may be fearsome.

Sometimes running here and there, talking, laughing, working, reading, writing and cleaning -- the fact is: when the door closes behind and the eyes are shut -- it is dark. Thoughts or no thoughts feelings or no feelings it is dark. Morning or night any time inside it is dark. Looking inside for the looker it is dark. Is 'I' darkness who is is writing this question?

So, remember it: whatsoever you know about light and darkness -- both have to be left behind. When you close your eyes, you have left the light outside; now you enter darkness. Love it. Sing? a song with it. Have a dance with it. Don't fight with it, don't be afraid of it, don't keep a distance from it. And don't go on looking for light. Forget about light. This darkness is there -- it has to be enjoyed; one has to be grateful to God for this darkness, this silence, this stillness, this velvety expanse. And then, one day, the observer and the observed are no more two. When you love something, the duality disappears. If you love darkness, you become darkness. And when there is no duality, there comes a luminousness of a totally different quality. It is not the light that comes from the sun, and it…

The song continues:

THE DARKNESS OF AGES CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN; THE LONG KALPAS OF SAMSARA NE'ER CAN HIDE -- THE MIND'S BRILLIANT LIGHT. THOUGH WORDS ARE SPOKEN TO EXPLAIN THE VOID, -- THE VOID AS SUCH CAN NEVER BE EXPRESSED. THOUGH WE SAY "THE MIND IS BRIGHT AS LIGHT," IT IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS. ALTHOUGH THE MIND IS VOID IN ESSENCE, ALL THINGS IT EMBRACES AND CONTAINS. Look at the beauty of this truth: only the dreamer is not a dream, because the dreamer cannot be a dream; otherwise the dream cannot exist. At least somebody, the dreamer, has to be a real phenomenon. In the day you are awake; you do many things: you go to the shop, you go to the market, you work in a farm, or in a factory, and you do millions of things. By the night when you are asleep, you forget everything…

Osho, you speak so much about the inner light, but my experience is different. Whenever my thoughts fall silent in meditation, a dense darkness descends within me, which feels cool and pleasant. Kindly explain what this is.

Psychologists say that in every human being’s unconscious that caveman’s experience is still there; it has not gone. It has become embedded in the body’s memory. Hence we fear the dark. Now there is no reason—one sits at home, electricity is at hand; press a button and there is light; there is no such hassle. In the country a “festival of discipline” is going on—no disturbances, no cause for fear. You are sitting in your room, and still you are panicking at the dark. That experience from twenty thousand years ago is in your every vein. You too are born from that same man; the chain is linked to him. It has not been forgotten; it is lodged very deep. So darkness seems frightening. Man becomes afraid of the dark. But the one who is afraid of the dark will never be able to go within. His inner journey will…

The other day you said that darkness is more fundamental to existence, while most religions hold the contrary view. Will you kindly shed some more light on this question, particularly in view of what modern science has to say about it? Does it not say that the last divisible components of matter are just electric energy?

Again the same division -- light and darkness. They are two if you look at them through the mind. They are one if you meditate upon them. Whether you meditate on light or on darkness, it makes no difference. If you meditate, the other is dissolved into it. Then light is nothing but less darkness and darkness is nothing but less light; the difference is of degree. They are not two things opposed to each other; rather, two degrees of one phenomenon. And that one phenomenon is neither light nor darkness. That one of which these two are degrees is neither light nor darkness; or, it is both. You can enter into it from light, you can enter into it from darkness. Many religions have used light because it is more comfortable, easier. Darkness is difficult, more uncomfortable, and if you try to enter through darkness, you have chosen a…