What do we mean by Created and Uncreated Light?

Light Permeates our Darkness

One of the essential aims of the Fourth Way is to allow light to permeate darkness. The terms ‘presence,’ ‘consciousness,’ and ‘awakening’ illustrate that there is hope, that there is an opportunity for spiritual development for the ordinary man or woman. We can leave the world of petty concerns and mundane experiences, and enter an elevated world of more refined energies. We can give meaning to our experiences through self-remembering, or a heightened awareness.

Curiously, presence can come as an internal emotional impulse after a fixed set of efforts. Examples of such efforts are the six-word prayer, ‘Listen Israel^[1]’ of the Jewish religion. Other religions have  similar sequences of prayer, also. Or the emotion can come of itself, without an immediately preceding effort on behalf of the aspirant.

Efforts versus Presence

Here we will examine the characteristics of presence coming after an effort to induce it, involving created and uncreated light. We can term our efforts ‘Created Light,’ and those of presence coming on its own—‘Uncreated Light.’ 

The Fourth Way gives us methods to be able to be present to ourselves and our lives, and to examine our inner world. Using these methods, we begin to clean and transform the negativity, identification, and imagination that we find inside, whenever we are present.

Seeing Ourselves, Seeing the Lower Self

As we create light inside ourselves, we feed the inner spark of our soul, like a candle flame. As the spark grows brighter, more light can enter our inner world. This Created Light also allows us to see more of the lower inner self. From the fuel of this effort, the light strengthens, sometimes even to the point that the walls of of our individual identity begin to melt and allow little cracks.

Through these cracks, Uncreated Light can enter. Conventional religion might describe this as a direct vision or experience of God.

Here we see Christ and the Virgin Mary surrounded by hosts of saints. These saints may illustrate an inner preceding effort allowing the higher influence of uncreated light to enter.

The Role of Higher Forces

In the Fourth Way, we can think of Uncreated Light as higher influences or states entering into us. Uncreated Light can refer to our own higher centres connecting directly to our experience of a moment. Some may call this the influence of angels—conscious beings that seek to help steer our passage upwards.

When I, coming deep down from the beasts, 
longed to be instructed in mankind, 
behold, the angelic infused itself into me. 
And that is why I have overleapt the people 
and look back at them with compassion. – Rilke

The influence of Uncreated Light is always here. Through Created Light, we remove the barriers for Uncreated Light to enter within us. It is only Uncreated Light that can change our inner world in a way to make it more real. In the quote above, Rilke seems to be stressing a common result of both Created and Uncreated Light. In the light of both, at the end, we return to our life and to those around us, in a state now more loving and compassionate. 

Once, Rodney Collin asked his teacher Peter Ouspensky, for directions as to how to proceed. Ouspensky replied, “You must do all you can,” and then pointed his finger to the heavens.

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^[1] Shema Yisrael, a six word prayer, central to the Jewish religion.

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For another article by Benjamin B., see https://fourthwaytoday.org/world-6-and-world-12/.