Hello,
Welcome.
This is a meditation on a candle.
So hopefully you're in a position where you can light a candle,
Or perhaps you can just imagine one.
And then you can gaze at the candle,
Or gaze at the candle of your mind's eye.
And listen to this meditation,
Which I'm going to give and mull over what I'm saying.
Perhaps you can stop the audio and think about something that strikes you along the way.
And then I'll end it with a short silence and a poem.
In meditating on a candle,
I want to reach the gentle realms of the soul.
The candle is common to all traditions of meditation.
In Hebrew,
The word for candle,
Neh,
And the word for lamp come to mean the same thing.
And neh can be translated either as candle or as lamp.
Perhaps because before the oil lamp,
The oldest lamps had candles inside them.
The lamp makes the candle light brighter.
The lamp is the spirit that watches over the room.
The flame is sensitive to the least breeze,
Especially the candle which is not held inside a lamp.
The flame is the symbol of the soul of our inner being and our inner sensitivity to the spirit that plays upon our inmost being.
The flame needs air to breathe,
Just as our souls need inner space,
Just as the soul needs spirit.
The spirit intercedes within us on behalf of all beings through endless time,
With sighs too deep for words.
The lamp,
The candle,
Is for the twilight time,
When the shades lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of the day is over and our work is done and the lamp vouches for the peace of evening,
For a safe lodging,
The holy rest and peace at the last.
The lamp or the candle recalls days gone by.
In its flickering flame we imagine in our mind's eye those who come to mind at this time.
We can feel the other world close by in the evening candle light.
Meditation before a flame is in the words of Paracelsus,
An exultation of two worlds,
Two worlds,
Exultatio utrisque mundi,
It's the world of the spirit and the world of the body and soul.
In the Zohar,
The book of radiance from Jewish tradition,
There's a parallel between breath and lamp.
The Zohar cites the Bible from Proverbs 20-27,
The words,
The breath of the human is the lamp of Jove Vave,
Searching all the bellies chambers.
The breath of the human is the lamp of Jove Vave,
Searching all the bellies chambers.
That's to say the breath is like a light in our inner chambers,
Moving through the bellies chambers,
The verse says,
Moving through our inner space,
Dispelling images and memories that ghost us.
But it's true in a more concrete sense as well,
This parallel between breath and the lamp.
The breath itself is a kind of combustion.
We take in air and that oxygen is consuming carbohydrates and other elements.
The oxygen consumes and combusts and breaks the carbohydrates into the components of carbon and hydrogen.
The hydrogen combines with the oxygen to become each,
To our water.
The carbon doesn't become a flame,
But becomes energy.
We have energy because of the carbon of the carbohydrates,
Which is burned up by the oxygen.
Breathing itself then is similar to the burning candle and breath,
Inhaling and exhaling are both processes of combustion.
The candle produces a flame,
Respiration produces energy.
Proverbs says the divine candle is the human breath and we meditate on the breath,
Become ourselves divine candles.
In the Zohar as well,
The blue and white colors of the candle flame,
Or the blue and yellow colors of the candle flame,
Whatever your candle looks like,
Symbolize the divine presence in the blue color and the white or yellow color.
The white or yellow color symbolizing the divine beauty that combines the masculine and feminine elements.
And both the colors are fueled by the wax,
Just as we,
Our bodies,
Our breathing bodies,
Light candles too,
Fueling our search,
Our yearning,
Our longing,
Our burning,
Our nostalgia,
Our restlessness,
Like the flickering flame on the top of the candle,
But also our stability,
Our peace,
Our steadiness,
Our fortitude.
The candle holds the flame in place.
Blazed a vegan air in his treatise on fire and salt from 1628,
A French alchemist writing in French,
Speaks also of the red fire.
So I'm just going to quote a little passage from Blazed a vegan air.
There's a double fire,
A stronger one that devours the other.
Let whoever wants to know it contemplate the flame that separates and rises from a lighted fire or a lamp or torch,
Because it never rises unless it's incorporated with some corruptible substance and united with air.
But in this flame that rises are two flames.
The one that is white shines and illuminates,
Having its blue source at the top.
And the other,
Which is red,
Is attached to the wood and to the taper that it burns.
The white rises directly into the heights and the red dwells firmly below without leaving the matter that administers whatever causes the other to blaze and give off light.
So the red fire then is really us in our bodiliness.
And the yellow and the blue fire and the red fire,
All three of these all work together.
So it's a metaphor.
The red fire is perhaps to be conceived as our heart's desire.
Consciousness and flame have the same destiny of the vertical of reaching up.
So traditions speak of transcendence.
The simple flame of a candle points clearly to its destiny.
It goes deliberately upward and returns to its proper dwelling place after having accomplished its task below without changing its glimmer to any colour other than white.
So says Blaze de Vigner.
The candle then sets us dreaming in this way like the old commentators from the Zohar,
The old alchemists from the medieval tradition.
They send us off into the land of dreams.
Secure in the light of the candle,
We can drift away,
Whether in daydreams or whether drifting off to sleep.
It's there by candlelight that memories and dreams intersect.
So let's just pause here.
Let our memories and dreams well up within us as we look at the candle.
And we can see that the candle is really an analogue of ourselves.
It's an external symbol of what we are in ourselves.
Let's just look at the candle,
Whether the candle you've lit or the one you imagine.
And let's just dwell with the candle as candles ourselves for a minute or two.
I'm going to finish our meditation.
With a very short poem by the English poet,
Francis Cornford.
It's entitled The Country Bedroom.
My rooms are square and candle lighted boat in the surrounding depths of night afloat.
My windows are portholes and the seas,
The sound of rain on the dark apple trees.
Sea monster like beneath an old horse blows a snort of darkness from its sleeping nose.
Below among drowned daisies far off hark,
Far off one owl amidst the waves of dark.
Thank you.
