Thursday, March 7, 2019

Darkroom retreat, meet your deepest self


I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid
of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Darkroom retreats have been used by a variety of spiritual traditions throughout the centuries as a higher-level practice. The aspirant enters a room specially prepared to admit absolutely no light and spends some time under this sensory deprivation in order to bring about a profound shift of consciousness. The time period dedicated to dark retreat varies from a few hours to decades.

The Tao says: "When you go into the dark and this becomes total, the Darkness soon turns into light."

Master Mantak Chia:

“[Many] spiritual traditions have used darkness techniques in the pursuit of enlightenment. In Europe, the dark room often appeared in underground form as a network of tunnels, in Egypt as the Pyramids, in Rome as the catacombs, and by the Essenes, near the Dead Sea in Israel, as caves. In the Taoist tradition caves have been used throughout the ages for higher level practices. In the Tao, the cave, the Immortal Mountain, the Wu San, represents the Perfect Inner Alchemy Chamber. Meditating and fasting in the cave is the final journey of spiritual work. The caves are the Earth Mother and its energy lines. Like the hollowing bones, caves contain the earliest information of life stored inside the Earth. Caves contain the vital essence of the Earth Power.

In the Darkness, our mind and soul begin to wander freely in the vast realms of psychic and spiritual experience. When you enter this primordial state you are reunited with the true Self and Divinity within. You literally ‘conduct’ the universal energy. You may see into the past and future, understand the true meaning of existence, and begin to understand the order of things. You return to the womb, the cocoon of our material structure and Nature’s original Darkness. Complete darkness profoundly changes the sensory sensibilities of the body/brain. We are deprived of all visual reference. Sounds begin to fall away as we lose contact with the external world and turn the senses inward. The effect of darkness is to shut down major cortical centers in the brain, depressing mental and cognitivefunctions in the higher brain centers. Emotional and feeling statesare enhanced, especially the sense of smell and the finer senses of psychic perception. Dreams become more lucid, and the dream state manifests in our conscious awareness. Eventually, we awaken within ourselves the awareness of the Source, the spirit, the soul. We descend into the void, into the darkness of deep, inner space". 

The Alchemical Perspective:

“The journey into Darkness is not just a first stage, but it is the essence of the spiritual alchemical work, because without it, the individual will remain only at the superficial level of mere rational thinking and social existence, dominated by dogmas. There is an important alchemical adagio: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Occultum Lapidem (“Visit the interior of the earth; rectify what you find there, and you will discover the hidden stone.”) To describe the “descent into Darkness,” summed up in the word “vitriol,” alchemy has preserved some very ancient symbols.

The individual (actually only his/her personality) descending into its original nature will suffer a great loss. He must abandon all his old moral, social and spiritual values. Thus, he will open himself to a different order, more in tune with the Harmony of the Whole. This is what is happening in a Dark Retreat.”

“Remember that by welcoming darkness, you become a womb for light…” -Leela

In India, the retreats in darkness are usually called Kaya Kalpa Retreats. The term kalpa means “ageless” or “immortal” while kaya means “body”. Thus Kaya Kalpa is an ayurvedic treatments for rejuvenating the body calling for seclusion in darkness, meditation, along with the application of various herbal concoctions. It is even seen as a form of Yoga and ayurvedic medicine that was developed in southern India at about the same time Hatha Yoga was born.

Kaya Kalpa has the following main objectives:

  • Revealing the Supreme Self / Ultimate Reality
  • Slowing down the aging process
  • Maintaining excellent physical health and youthful vitality
  • Delaying physical death until one achieves jivamukta (spiritual liberation from the effects of karma)

“If you can love darkness, you will become unafraid of death. If you can enter into darkness – and you can enter when there is no fear – you will achieve total relaxation. If you can become one with darkness, you are dissolved, it is a surrender. Now there is no fear, because if you have become one with darkness, you have become one with death. You cannot die now, you have become deathless. Darkness is deathless. Light is born and dies. Darkness simply is. It is deathless.” -Osho

In India and China, as in the book of Genesis, the first work of Creation was the separation of light and darkness which were interfused in the beginning. A “return to the beginning of things” might therefore find expression in the resolution of this duality and the recreation of primordial unity where the rational mind dissolves.

It is an advanced practice in the Dzogchen lineages of the Nyingmapa, Bönpo, and other schools of Tibetan Buddhism which recommended a period of 49 days.

Dark retreat in the Himalayan tradition is a restricted practice only to be engaged by the senior spiritual practitioner under appropriate spiritual guidance. This practice is considered conducive for navigating the bardo at the time of death and for realising the rainbow body. The traditional dark retreat requires stability in the natural state and is only suitable for advanced practitioners.

There are historians who suggest that ancient Egyptians and Mayans practiced a form of the Dark Retreat as well, traditionally lasting ten days.

The Brain Science Behind Dark Room Therapy

Retreating into complete darkness for an extended period of time has a major effect on the brain. Shifts of consciousness can help us see that which is beyond illusion. If we take a look at the chemistry of the brain we can start to make sense of the biochemical process behind dark room techniques and their effects on the brain. 

When one experiences complete darkness the area of the brain stimulated is a gland called the pineal gland. The pineal gland is the gland in the brain associated with our third eye. Spiritual leaders around the world view the "opening of the inner eye" as a time when we can clearly see shifts in our perspective, when we open up to our intuition and our own psychic abilities and when the outer world stays the same but our inner world changes. We know that the pineal gland needs darkness in order to produce and emit melatonin. What happens during extended periods in darkness can be described by participants as a waking consciousness.

Melatonin continues to build up in the brain as you stay in complete darkness. When the melatonin stores build up to about 15-20 mg the brain begins to realize it no longer needs melatonin and begins producing pinolene. Pinolene is said to be released by the pineal gland also and is responsible for what we call "the light show". In complete darkness you may be able to see light patterns forming. These visions are connected to the internal workings of the mind. At this stage there is a letting go of the ego as we lose perception of the physical world. This process often occurs within the first 3 days of darkness.

If we look deeper at the pineal gland and its response to the dark for more extended periods we are introduced to a psychedelic substance called Dimethyltriptamine, or DMT. This substance is naturally occurring within the brain, also produced by the pineal gland, and typically only released at birth and at death. It has been nicknamed "the spirit molecule" because of the states of altered consciousness it provides and how it translates into feelings of universal compassion. This is a state where we can deeply work on healing ourselves from past traumas. 

Researcher on DMT, Terrence McKenna, believed the substance was a portal to another dimension wherein we gain access to the true nature of reality, a vibratory non-material space of loving energy and unlimited potentiality. This theory is not far from what has already been taught in ancient Eastern religions or Shamanic traditions. Extended periods of darkness is a much softer, natural way to experience conscious altering DMT without ingesting anything.

Everything we need to reach these deep conscious states is naturally within us all.

“I wish I could show you,
when you are lonely or in the darkness,
the astonishing light
of your own being”
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