The Chamber Within

There is a chamber you have carried with you all your life.

You carried it through childhood, through every city you have entered, through love, fear, and the nights when sleep would not come. You have looked for answers in the world surrounding it. You have rarely turned to enter it.

Its entrance is closer than your next thought.

Before we enter, look once more at the images that have brought so many seekers to this threshold. A circle of gold surrounds a saint’s head. A Hindu devotee places a sacred mark upon the brow. The Egyptian eye watches from an amulet. A crown, a flame, a lotus, and a sun appear where the human face opens toward the world.

They speak through different religious languages. As companions to this journey, they draw us toward an extraordinary possibility: the human being can become inwardly illuminated.

We have become accustomed to imagining illumination as something approaching from far away. Heaven is pictured above the clouds. Higher worlds become distant territories. The more extraordinary the destination, the farther we place it from the life we are actually living.

Let that outward search become quiet for a moment.

A telescope can extend sight across immense distances. It cannot, by extending distance alone, reveal the consciousness through which its images are known. That threshold opens in another direction.

The temple we will enter has been built from the materials of your own experience. Its walls are the boundaries you have taken for granted. Its chambers are the capacities through which your life becomes a world. Its deepest sanctuary concerns the relationship between the one who knows and the Source of knowing.

Anatomy gives this journey its living landscape. Sacred stories give it a language. Attention opens its doors.

For a moment, let your eyes close.

The room disappears from view. Its sounds remain: a passing vehicle, a movement nearby, the faint rhythm of your breathing. Then another world begins to make itself known. A face appears in memory. A sentence repeats. Something you have not finished returns to ask for your attention.

You have crossed the first threshold.

The journey we are about to take follows the brain inward, entering the mind through the architecture of an ancient temple. Its courts and chambers will give shape to the interior world. Egyptian sanctuaries, the yogic subtle body, the Tree of Life, and the castles of contemplative prayer will illuminate the passage.

We are going toward the innermost room.