THREE
The Blind Emperor: The Invisible Dark Night of the Soul
–1–
The stone steps of the temple monastery had just been washed, and glistened in the afternoon sun. They carried the worn and polished indentation of thousands of pilgrims.
I made my way past a large, powerful bull, who lingered in the street. It reminded me of the bull Nandi, the carrier of Shiva, god of destruction. Seemingly impregnable, it moved slowly, taking its own time, aloof to the continuous, futile motion of life. If only I could be like that. I watched for a few moments in awe.
I had travelled to the ancient town of Mathura in India to see my teacher, Shrila B. V. Narayan Goswami, an elderly master-practitioner in the Bhakti tradition. Born in 1921, he joined the monastery in 1946, and was initiated into an unbroken line of Bhakti masters going back thousands of years. These spiritual lineages transfer deep knowledge on overcoming the dark night of the soul from master to student. By “master”, I don’t mean someone who commands others; I mean someone who has mastered the mind and senses, someone who has mastery over fear, lamentation and confusion, the three types of suffering related to time. Deeply learned in the Bhagavad Gita and other sacred texts of the Bhakti tradition, he embodied their teachings in his everyday life.
That day, I decided to ask my teacher about the dark night of the soul. I wanted to know where these experiences spring from.
The ancient texts of India speak extensively about crisis and despair. Great sages and yogis describe their journey through such experiences. But the sacred texts also speak about a permanent dark night of the soul that is invisible to us. All crisis in our life emerges from and falls back into this underlying, invisible dark night of the soul, our conditioned state of being.
I asked my teacher where crisis and suffering come from. And what is the invisible dark night that the sacred texts refer to?
“The darkness that covers spiritual knowledge and causes suffering is called avidya, ignorance,” my teacher explained. “It’s our inability to see things as they are. Our primary duty is to develop spiritual perception and overcome this darkness. When it is dispelled, nothing in this world can trouble us. Suffering cannot touch us. Fear, lamentation and confusion cannot affect us.
“Our physical body is just a vehicle—one that changes shape, grows old, and dies. It’s not who we truly are. Our false ego also is not who we are. These are like dark clouds that cover our perception. When these clouds disappear, we can see who we are, the soul, just as the sun becomes visible in a clear sky.”
The nights are darkest when the sky is filled with clouds, I remembered. At that time, the moon and stars are no longer visible. But when the clouds of confusion and false perception are dispersed, we can see the full beauty of the night sky, as it is.
My teacher explained that the purpose of crisis is to set us on our spiritual journey. The soul longs for freedom. Difficulties in our life can propel us on our spiritual journey, our path of yoga. For this reason, despair is sometimes referred to as a form of yoga.
I was shocked. Life itself can be an ongoing state of darkness. If I could overcome this underlying dark night of the soul, I could eradicate crisis in my life altogether. I may face difficulties externally, but these events would no longer affect me in the same way. No more fear, lamentation and confusion. Imagine that.
The yoga teachings of the Bhagavad Gita are designed to forge warriors capable of surmounting any earthly challenge, yoga warriors who exist in this world, but are not of it, not affected by it. Like Arjuna, we’re all on the field of life, but we’re not necessarily warriors yet. A warrior is skilled. A warrior is wise. A warrior is self-controlled. Our battles are always first and foremost within us. A true warrior, one who has conquered the inner world through yoga, has nothing to fear from the outer world.14
My teacher directed me to study the Bhagavad Gita. Among all the texts from ancient India, this, he said, is the classic text on the dark night of the soul.
“Look carefully at how the Bhagavad Gita begins,” he advised.
–2–
Look carefully at how the Bhagavad Gita begins.
It begins with Emperor Dhritarashtra amid the lavish comforts of his palace in Hastinapura, a hundred miles from the field of engagement. The sightless Dhritarashtra, now powerless to affect the outcome of events, anxiously asks his minister Sanjaya how his own sons and the sons of Pandu acted on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.15 His fear is palpable.
Until now, I had focused only on Arjuna’s overt crisis on the battlefield. But it seems there is an altogether different type of dark night, one we may experience throughout the full duration of our life without our even being aware of it. This dark night is entirely invisible to us. It’s the dark night of Dhritarashtra.
Like Dhritarashtra, we are all kings and queens. Our life is our kingdom. That kingdom can flourish or flounder depending upon how we rule, depending upon the choices we make. We guide the direction of our “kingdom”, and this makes us rulers. Like Dhritarashtra, we may not have the vision of wisdom. When the mind is blind, what use are the eyes? Like a blind king, we may not be fit to rule.
Dhritarashtra was blind from birth, both literally and figuratively. His blindness represents folly, or “ignorance”: an unwillingness to see. The opposite of wisdom. Largely responsible for the great civil war at Kurukshetra, Dhritarashtra is caught up in his story and paralyzed by attachment to his ambitious son Duryodhana. While Dhritarashtra represents attachment to the story we create in our mind, his son Duryodhana embodies greed, the offspring of attachment.16
Dhritarashtra is the most powerful Kuru alive, and yet there is something lifeless and impotent about him. When we take our human story so seriously, we become a prisoner to it, confined within its narrative walls and governed by it. We trade away our inner freedom. We may end up passing an entire lifetime never truly having started living. As Oscar Wilde observed, following his own dark night of the soul, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”17
The name Dhritarashtra signifies both “powerful ruler” and one who has seized the lands of another.18 Having usurped the Kuru throne and taken the lands of his nephews, the Pandavas, Dhritarashtra is a blind emperor in a false empire.
The blind emperor seeks his power by what he can control around him, instead of within him. Paradoxically, the more we need to control what is happening around us, the less in control we feel.
Listening to my teacher speak, I realized that I am like Dhritarashtra. I’m a blind emperor clinging to a false kingdom. I came into this world with nothing and I’ll leave this world with nothing. But while I’m here, I cling fiercely to my ideas of ownership. I try to accumulate for my own enjoyment and to further my own interests. I’m a false king in a false kingdom.
The aim of my life is to possess, to accumulate. It is this insatiable desire that led Dhritarashtra and his sons to battle. All our problems in life stem from this delirious pursuit to make the acquisition of material goods the aim of our life and the determinant of our own worth. We think that without accumulating things, such as money, status and achievements, we are nothing. As such, we’re pulled into a world of enemies and friends, a world of exploitation and conflict.19
I am so caught up in my story, which I believe blindly and unquestioningly, that I’m prepared to fight for it till the end. Like Dhritarashtra, I’ve created my own battlefield. I’ve turned my life, the sacred field of the present moment, into an arena of competition and struggle. Rather than a field of love and affection, a field of giving and serving, it has become an arena for taking, for grasping.
Our fictitious sense of self in our narrative, and our deep attachment to that identity, gives rise to the obsession of “I” and “mine”. We become deeply attached to outcomes and events, fixed on the idea that our story must unfold in a specific way.
The deliberate failure to see, the deliberate avoidance of truth, is represented in the Bhagavad Gita by the blind emperor Dhritarashtra. His are the first words of the Bhagavad Gita, spoken in fear, lamentation and confusion, the three types of suffering associated with time.
The type of dark night that Dhritarashtra experiences is so pervasive and affects our lives so deeply that the Bhagavad Gita begins with it. Any other inner crisis we may have during our life emerges from this deeper and darker night of the soul.
Dhritarashtra was born into a lineage of the wisest sages and philosopher-kings.20 Wisdom ought to run in his blood. He has received counsel from the wisest of advisers, and as such, the blind emperor is not short of knowledge.21 His deficiency is his incapacity to act on what he knows. This is the great tragedy of Dhritarashtra’s life.22
The sages of ancient India called such folly avidya, often translated as “ignorance”. In using this word, they meant something far more profound than a simple lack of knowledge. Many of us know a great deal, but in our everyday life we choose to ignore it. Ignorance is to wilfully shut our eyes to what we don’t wish to recognize.
A few years ago, my brother was diagnosed with stage-four cancer. He underwent intensive chemotherapy at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, in a fight for his life. I would visit him at the hospital and when I walked in through the side entrance, I regularly encountered one or two patients with lung cancer, pale and deathly from their chemotherapy, puffing away at cigarettes in the bitter cold. It was a startling sight.
Our ability to ignore is astonishing. It is itself a form of disengagement, or retreat, from life.
–3–
Every year, monks and pilgrims from all over India travel on pilgrimage to the old town of Navadwip. Situated on the bank of the Ganges, Navadwip was once the flourishing capital of Bengal’s great Sena kings and one of the leading centres of learning in all India.
The occasion presents a special opportunity each year to listen to some of the wisest monks share their deepest insights. With a small group from my temple monastery, I crossed the breadth of India and arrived in Navadwip, wondering what treasures I might take into my heart.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a banyan tree. They’re magnificent. They drop adventitious roots from their branches, which tumble to the earth, like the matted locks of a rishi, or sage. I have read about entire forests in times past made up of a single enormous tree.
Hundreds of monks had assembled under two large banyan trees on the bank of the Ganges. In the distance, Ganges dolphins leapt periodically out of the water. The sun and moon were visible in the same sky, which was daubed in vivid pinks and streaks of red.
One elderly monk, dressed in cotton garb the colour of the rising sun, stood up to speak. He began telling a story.23
“Once, there was a young prince, the future ruler of a prosperous land. Carrying a bow and quiver of deadly arrows, he entered deep into the jungle on a solitary hunting expedition, on the back of a beautiful, swift steed. Deep in the forest, he spotted a deer.
“As the prince fixed an arrow to his bow and took aim, a tiger suddenly roared loudly, piercing the silence. The prince’s horse rose on its hind legs in a panic, hurling the prince to the ground, and bolted. As the prince picked himself up, he saw a Bengal tiger approaching slowly, its eyes locked on him like golden embers.
“His heart pounding, the prince fled for his life. The jungle had many trees with long, fearsome thorns, which extended like knives. As the prince crashed through the jungle, he slashed his arms and legs. Repeatedly, he fell to the ground; but he picked himself up and kept running. In the distance, he saw what looked like a clearing. Perhaps he would find a settlement or house there.
“But there was no shelter to be found. If anyone had lived here, they had long since left. As the prince ran into the open clearing, he found himself falling into a dark abyss.
“In his rush, the prince had failed to spot a disused well, now covered by long grass. He plummeted into the darkness. Somehow, as he fell, the prince caught hold of two overhanging roots of a banyan tree. These roots broke his fall.
“The prince found himself dangling half way down this abandoned well. He peered down, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. The well was deep and held no water. At its base was a nest of slithering serpents and quivering scorpions. He could hear their anxious hissing. The prince looked up: the tiger was circling the mouth of the well.
“‘That’s really no problem at all,’ the valiant prince thought to himself. ‘I’ll simply hang on tight and wait. Sooner or later, the tiger will lose patience and leave. I’ll then climb out of this hazardous hole and retrace my steps back to my kingdom.’ He began imagining the relieved reception he would receive. What a tale this will make for the young princesses at the palace!
“The prince’s brief reverie was disrupted by a scratching, grating sound. He looked up. A white rat was gnawing away at one of the two branch-like roots that supported him; and a black rat was eating away at the other hanging root. The prince tried to shake them off, but they seemed unperturbed.
“‘Now I’m in real trouble,’ the prince thought.
“But just then, something moist dripped on to the prince’s face. It rolled down his cheek to the corner of his lips. It tasted, unexpectedly, so very sweet. The prince stuck out his tongue. Another drop fell squarely into his mouth. Honey! He opened his mouth for more.
“When the prince fell into the well and caught hold of two overhanging banyan roots, his fall had disturbed a bees’ nest high in the tree. Drops of honey were now falling from the ruptured hive. The prince looked up. ‘When will the next drop fall?’ he thought expectantly.
“In that moment, the prince forgot all his troubles. He became oblivious to the very real and dangerous predicament he was in. As he searched intently for his next drop of honey, it was as if a spell, a type of sightlessness, had overcome him.”
And with that, the monk fell silent and sat back down.
What did this story mean? I looked around me. Pilgrims were glancing at each other, puzzled and curious. I saw one elderly monk who was smiling. Clearly, he understood the deeper meaning of this story. He now stood up and began to speak.
“We are each the prince,” he said. “You and I have a kingdom—the territory of our life. Like a prince or a princess, we are of royal descent. We have the potential for greatness. But we’ve not yet taken guardianship of our kingdom, because we’ve not yet mastered our perceptual world, the kingdom of our life.
“The prince goes out hunting in the jungle, where he injures and kills defenceless animals for sport. Similarly, our world spins on exploitation. With great ease, we’re ready to inflict pain on others, or at least remain oblivious to the suffering of others, in the pursuit of our own trivial ends.
“The prince enters the jungle as a hunter, but he ends up being the hunted. The tiger symbolizes death. Throughout our life, we’re mostly oblivious to death. But every so often we hear its loud roar. Maybe a friend or family member becomes ill or dies; maybe we have a narrow brush with death.
“The prince falls into an abandoned well. This is the small human story that imprisons us, causing us to suffer in this world. The prince manages to catch hold of two overhanging branches. These represent the good and the bad in our life that we cling to.
“What do the two rats symbolize? The white rat represents daytime, and the black rat, night. We don’t know how much time we have left in this world, but two things we do know for sure. The first is that whatever time we have left is limited. It is finite. And the second is that this finite amount of time is being eaten up with every passing day and night. Suddenly, we become aware of just how precious human life is.
“What are the drops of honey? They symbolize the comforts available to us that allow us to forget the perilous situation we’re in. We each have a set of habits and preferred pleasures that create a false sense of comfort for us. This can include even our relationships, our job, our retirement plan and other false securities. They allow us to become oblivious to the passage of life, so that we stop truly living. Like the prince, we remain suspended in an abandoned well, far from the kingdom we are to inherit.
“Searching for a few drops of honey in the sky, the prince has forgotten who he is and that this dry, perilous well is not actually his home. He’s become blinded even to the fact that he’s in mortal danger. Instead, he loses himself in the search for a few drops of fleeting pleasure. This forgetfulness, or ability to ignore reality, is a type of sightlessness. The ancients called it avidya, ignorance. It’s the invisible dark night of the soul.”
This story affected me deeply. It roused me. I may have experienced crisis in my life, but I thought I’d crossed over these dark periods. Here was a deep, dark night that I was in right now, even as I imagined I was free. This was a dark night I couldn’t even see.
Sometimes when I share this story in workshops or at yoga studios, someone rightly asks, “How does the story end?”
“Nothing in the well can save the prince,” I reply. “To get out of our predicament, we’ll need help from outside the well. We’ll need something higher than the conditioned thought processes that have placed us where we are. Krishna’s yoga teachings of the Bhagavad Gita come to us from outside the dark well of our current troubled existence.”
–4–
There is a further secret teaching in the opening verse of the Bhagavad Gita. When I understood it, I became very excited about my yoga practice. It’s about the real, tangible benefits we can expect from yoga.
Dhritarashtra, brimming with both anxiety and anticipation, asks his minister Sanjaya what took place at Kurukshetra. He doesn’t know yet that Bhishma, the invincible commander-in-chief of his son’s army, has already fallen. The war is now more than halfway over, and without Bhishma, victory seems almost assured for the Pandavas. Sanjaya has rushed back to the palace in Hastinapura to convey the news. Dhritarashtra’s opening question is therefore full of irony.24
The hidden teaching here is that when we adopt a similar mindset to Dhritarashtra’s, one of blind attachment to the story we create in our mind, then defeat and loss have already occurred—even if, like Dhritarashtra, we may not be aware of it yet. Likewise, when we adopt higher principles in our life, when we live wisely, victory is already assured, even before events have begun to unfold.25
As we’ll explore further, the conflict at Kurukshetra represents a battle within each of us: a battle we’re sure to lose if, like Dhritarashtra, we remain blinded by attachment to our story. Our own victory or defeat is contained, like the DNA within a seed, in the very mindset we carry into life.
The dark night of the soul has four symptoms: suffering associated with the three phases of time, the manifesting of our dark side, disengagement or retreat from living, and helplessness. These are background conditions of life. We may not always be very aware of them, but they become especially pronounced, acute, and impossible to ignore during an overt life crisis like Arjuna’s.
The seers and sages of India drew an important conclusion from this. They recognized that despair can help us on the path to deep wisdom. It can help us become aware of, and ultimately even dispel, the underlying, imperceptible dark night of the soul that affects us all. Thus, crisis itself is an important yogic path.
If we were to experience only unabated enjoyment and success, we might spend an entire life oblivious to our underlying dark night, our spiritual sightlessness. Like Dhritarashtra, we would be at the height of our power and prosperity, but we would really be in the darkest night of all.
We each have higher and lower qualities. We each carry the divine and the destructive within us. The outcomes we experience in life reflect the potential we choose to act from. Love, gratitude, harmony, truthfulness, beauty, humility, kindness, patience, hope, compassion, courage and generosity: these are divine qualities. Anger, hate, fear, shame, arrogance, self-pity, greed, contempt and resentment are destructive qualities. When we exercise our divine potential, we experience divine outcomes.26
Like Dhritarashtra, I realized I am prone to exercise my destructive potential. It’s not surprising, therefore, that my life is a battlefield, a place of inner conflict. I am easily caught up in fear, lamentation and confusion. Like the sightless emperor, I am alone in my palace. I have created my own Kurukshetra war.
Thinking about this, I wept. Like Dhritarashtra, I was born blind. This was my true dark night, beyond any crisis or confusion I may experience in my life. I was eager to understand how to cross this underlying dark night of the soul.
If we can overcome the underlying dark night, if we can attain an enlightened state of being, we eradicate all forms of crisis in our life. We may face difficulties externally, but these events no longer affect us in the same way. We awaken our inborn prowess as a warrior on the field of life.
At the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Sanjaya tells Dhritarashtra the results of applying Krishna’s yoga teachings: good fortune, unusual triumph, strength, and abiding wise conduct.27
Good fortune, unusual triumph, strength, and abiding wise conduct. Who would not welcome these?
These are the fruits of one who overcomes Dhritarashtra’s condition, the dark night of avidya. These are the results of the yoga of despair. In counselling Arjuna, Krishna not only helps him through his specific one-off crisis; he helps him cross the underlying dark night of the soul from which all crises spring.
Thinking about this, my heart began to race. The natural results of the yoga of despair annul the four symptoms of the dark night of the soul! Fear, lamentation and confusion disappear, leading to one’s good fortune. A strong impulse to retreat from life gives way to unusual triumph, complete helplessness is replaced by strength, and the revealing of our dark side leads to abiding wise conduct.
The opening verse of the Bhagavad Gita describes the perspective of blindness and attachment. The closing verse of the Gita describes the perspective of enlightenment. Thus, the opening and closing verses are in fact antithetical, serving to define not only what we are, but what we might become.28
This sacred text, I realized, takes us on a journey of discovery: a journey from darkness to illumination, from sightlessness to enlightenment. It’s a yoga text that specifically explains how to cross the dark night of the soul.