The Light That is Darkness

By Brad Scott

Imagine yourself adrift at sea in a dense fog. From afar, faintly, you hear voices chattering and laughing. But you can't make them out. Desperately you paddle your dingy toward them yet make little headway against the currents. You are alone, you realize, and nothing about your plight makes sense.  

Such was my state of mind when I was a young man. I felt stranded, as though my life had no purpose.  Searching for meaning, I threw myself into one passion after another: rock 'n' roll, poetry, romance. All ended in disillusionment. All were empty.

Still searching, I discovered the occultic musings of Edgar Cayce, Jess Stearn, Alice Bailey, and others. They taught that life does have meaning: It may be found, they insisted, within ONESELF. They explained that I could experience this Inner Truth-directly. From then on, I was exhilarated by the prospect of discovering the Secrets of the Ages and using my Powers of Mind to overcome my insecurities. At last, I felt, I had found the light I had been seeking.

Buoyed by these teachings, I was then drawn to the enchanted isles of Eastern mysticism. For seven years, I studied under a swami of the Ramakrishna Order, who initiated me with a mantra and named me Yogiraj ("king of the yogis"). In my quest for meaning, I became under his tutelage fiercely intent on achieving union with the Divine by whatever means: austerities, meditation, renunciation. Having lost interest in the illusory world of pain and pleasure, I began to look indifferently on the vain pageant of human history and "the endless rounds of births and deaths."  Restless and ardent, I grew unflinchingly otherworldly. Although I "practiced" humility, certain that I must give everything and lose everything to possess the Truth, I secretly reveled in the elitism and exclusivity of my "macho spirituality." I was convinced that I had found the "accelerated" route to God.

My journey carried me so far, in fact, that one day I found myself asking my guru in private if I might become a monk, a sannyasin. As usual, he was sitting behind his oak desk with his lips pursed and brows knitted. When I dropped the question, he burst out laughing and gleefully declared, "Why, of course! You will be my successor!" He asked only that I wait a few more months so that certain arrangements could be made. So there I sat, at age 27, prepared to abandon everything-career, family, identity-for "Self-realization."

Or so I thought.  Within days, I began to experience searing doubts about my spiritual fitness. Was I really "advanced" and "pure" enough to devote my life to yogic austerities? Would I ever really be "worthy" enough to be my guru's successor? For 18 months, I wrestled with doubts until, wearied by the effort, I could wrestle no more. During meditation hours, I could only weep, rock, and pray; yet I received no response from Ramakrishna, the Absolute, or any "master." Even my guru ignored me. After all my spiritual straining, I realized, I had achieved nothing. 

I felt stranded again.       

My torment finally ended a few days before Christmas in 1978. As eclectic yogis do in that holiest of seasons, I was reading the New Testament. In anguish, conscious of my own sinfulness (Rom. 3:23; 1 John 1:8-9), I paused over the story of the sinful woman who bathes Jesus' feet in her tears (Luke 7:36-50). As I contemplated the beauty of Jesus' unconditional response, I was suddenly struck by my own overwhelming need for forgiveness. In faith, utterly broken, I opened my heart to receive his love, trusting him to save me from the confusion in which I found myself and from the condemnation I surely deserved (Rom. 6:23; John 3:18). In response, as though I were the sinful woman, he poured into me a Love that surpassed all the loves I had ever known. Not even the thundering power of the "kundalini" could match the brilliance and power of Christ's presence in my soul.  As his Spirit filled me, he seemed to be whispering, "I am a Person, and I shall love you personally forever."

Because I had striven so long to take heaven by storm, I realized that this experience had taken place by grace through faith, not by my works (Eph. 2:8-9). Jesus had accomplished for me on the cross all the work that I could never do by myself-even in a million years of striving. He had led a perfect life and given himself as a perfect sacrifice in my place (Rom. 3:25-26; Heb. 9:11-15). Yes, I was unworthy of Perfection; I always would be. At that moment I abandoned myself to Christ, asking him to lead me into his truth. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened . . . ," he says. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matt. 11:28-29). Because I longed for that rest as a marooned seafarer longs for rescue, I yielded everything that I was, and might ever be, to him in trust.

This change of heart required that I repent of-and turn away from-all that I had been to myself, to become what he wanted me to be. To know him and his way, I found, I had to search the Scriptures (John 5:39), for they speak truly of him, and he is their fulfillment (Luke 4:21). Where else could I find a historical record of his life and words? To be set free from my disillusionment, I had to keep my gaze fixed on him alone. "I am the way and the truth and the life," says he. "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). In this way, guided moment by moment, I allowed Christ to renew my mind and make me a new person (Rom. 12:2), not by my power but by his.

The incarnate Christ, I came to discover, is the secret of the ages, the alpha and the omega: "the mystery of God . . . in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" resides (Col. 2:2-3). The risen Christ is the hidden power of all our strivings, the power of life and love that will, if we believe, remain always "at work within us" (Eph. 4:20). I no longer had to look elsewhere for meaning. I had found an abundant, endless supply of all the wisdom and love I would ever need. I stopped looking for light in all the wrong places.

Since then I have faced my fair share of the storms and stresses of life-and I have made my share of mistakes, too. But I have also known that Christ is ever with me and within me-and not because I must discipline myself to remember him, by some ascetic act of will, but because, by his choice, he never forgets me. He is always present to dispel the fog and steer my course.

Now, 20 years later, I know that I have found certain purpose and knowledge in life-in the only Lord whose Light always shines like a beacon on a clear night. He who is that light, Jesus Christ, beckons to the lost to arise and follow. Yet should they be too weak, as I was, to make the longed-for journey, he will stride across the wide waters and carry them home.