If you stop fighting your inner darkness and simply be with it, the fear and split fade, and a deeper, natural light appears by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
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.
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…
A second friend has asked: Osho, in the practice of awakening, of awareness, fear arises, and there is a constant worry that the routine of life may fall into disorder. It also seems that when anger, sex, etc., arise, if one acts on them, they are finished in five to seven minutes—one feels free of them. If you don’t act, their after-echo, their waves, keep resounding within for days. Then it feels as if it would have been better to have done it and been done with it. So what should one do? Is such awakening not repression?
Two things. First, if through “awakening” your anger—which would otherwise be over in five minutes—goes on for two days, understand it is not awakening; it is repression. Repression makes things spread. It creates even more disturbance than indulgence. If sexual desire arises and is over in a moment, but with your so-called awakening it drags on for days, grows dense, and becomes a burden on the mind, know that it is not awakening, it is repression. Many of us don’t rightly understand the difference between awakening and repression. Understand it. Repression means: what has arisen inside, you press it down inside; you don’t allow it to come out. Indulgence means: you let it out on someone. Get the difference clear. Repression means: you force it down upon yourself; indulgence means: you unload it onto the other. Awakening is a third thing—letting it out into the void: neither pressing it down…
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…