All this happens spontaneously when you go deep into intense meditation. You don’t have to make strenuous efforts to kindle up your inner lamp. That lamp is already lit but you have put the iron gasket of false ego and little self and an adamantine wall of mind on it, which crumble down in deep meditation. What joy awaits discovered in silence behind the portals of your mind, no human tongue can tell. In the Upnishadas, it is stated as:-

“There the sun cannot illumine not the moon not the stars, there this flash of lightning cannot illumine, what to speak of this mortal fire. He is shining, everything doth shine. Through Him, everything shines.”

Such is your inner lamp which you don’t kindle with an outside dead and dull matter. It is actually shining thee with all its effulgence and brightness beyond description that Vedas have said “नेति नेति”  “Not this, not this.” We are to convince ourselves that Inner Jyoti is within all of us all the time. It is hidden in the veils of darkness of egoism as thick clouds overcast the blue sky. As the winds blow away the clouds, the clear sky appears unchanged.

Suppose there is a screen between us and beautiful scenery and we see the scenery through a hole in the screen. As the hole widens, we see more of it. We see all of it when there is no screen left between us and the scenery. There has been no change in the original object - change has occurred only in the obstacle.

So through intense meditation, we have to remove the hurdles that lie between us and ever-shining Jyoti. We are to understand the Meditation and then put heart and soul into it. Meditation should not be confused with ordinary concentration. Concentration consists in freeing the attention from distraction and in focusing it on any thought or object. When Thought-current is uninterrupted, it is concentration. It is meditation when the flow is uninterrupted. Meditation is an incessant flow of consciousness that has been liberated from all thoughts and is flowed towards INNER JYOTI or INNER LAMP.

Remember that the longer you practice meditation with intensity, the nearer you will be to kindle your inner lamp. Intensity consists in making every to-day’s meditation, deeper than yesterday’s and every tomorrow’s meditation deeper than today’s. Do not say “Tomorrow I will do longer.” You will see that tomorrow never comes and you will find that a year has passed without fulfillment of your good intentions. Instead say:

“This can wait and that can wait but my effort to remove the veil to kindle up my inner lamp through meditation can’t wait.”

Once you start on this path, you will find that it is not at all a Herculean task. Just by watching thoughts, thoughtlessness will be attained spontaneously sooner or later. Once you are in the state of thoughtlessness, you are staying in present – nor in Past or Future. Present is the abode of Parmatma (God). So in meditation you get the feeling that you are in the lap of Almighty, All-Powerful and All-Bliss. Your heart is filled with intense love and a longing to find Him, see Him, and meet Him.

Make your meditation more regular and intense and then you will have the realization of your Self beyond mind, where is illumined the Inner Lamp, where there is All- Bliss without any explanation. However do not lament if you see no light or image in meditation. Go deep within into the realization of your Real Self where you will find the light of All-Pervading Inner Jyoti.