The Light That Never Fades

In a darkened room,
you see nothing.
You switch on the light,
and everything comes into view.

Come, let us begin here.

Close your eyes.
You know they are closed.
But who knows?

Is it the mind?

Then turn your gaze
towards the mind itself.
You know when thoughts arise,
when they linger,
when they dissolve.

But what is it
that knows the mind?

Consider the clothes you wear,
the food you eat,
the house you call your own.
You know them all,
yet none of them is you.

Now look within.

You know your body
when it is healthy,
when it aches,
when age inscribes its passage
upon your face.

You know your mind
when it rejoices,
when it grieves,
when it wanders through
the labyrinths of thought.

The body changes.
The mind changes.
You witness their changing.

Then who are you,
if neither tells the whole of you?

You are not merely Supratik,
the name you answer to,
the face the mirror remembers,
the story you tell yourself.

Remember the infant Supratik?
That little body is gone.
The child gave way to the youth,
the youth to the man.

And one day,
this ageing body, too,
will return to the earth.

Names fade.
Forms change.
The chapters close.

But must the knower
of all these changes
change with them?

Now consider the three states
through which you travel.

In waking,
a world unfolds before you.

In dreaming,
another world arises,
only to disappear
when you awaken.

And in deep sleep,
where neither world appears,
you wake to say,
“I slept well,”
or “I knew nothing.”

Pause here.

What can you truly claim
about that silence?
What was absent,
and what, if anything,
remained beyond your knowing?

Do not rush to an answer.
Let the question do its work.

For the Self, as the sages teach,
is not merely the waking person,
the dreamer lost in dreams,
or the sleeper sunk in darkness.

It is not another object
waiting to be discovered,
nor a little person hidden
somewhere inside the body.

It is that by which
every state is known,
while it cannot itself
be reduced to any state.

The mind may seek it
as though it were a distant star.
The intellect may name it,
argue over it,
and build philosophies around it.

But no name can contain it,
no thought can make it an object.

In the stillness of inquiry,
the ancient question returns:

Who am I?

Not the body alone.
Not the restless mind.
Not the passing name
or the life that bears it.

Tat tvam asi—
Thou art That.

The deepest truth of Advaita
is not that Supratik
will live for ever as Supratik,
but that the Self, in its true nature,
was never born
and can never die.

The light does not come and go
with the scenes it illuminates.

And what you seek
beyond the changing world
is not somewhere else.

It is the very truth
by which you know
that you are here.