Once the great Mughal Emperor Akbar asked his minister, “Birbal, for a long time I have been thinking of one question. I am sure that you will be able to answer it. We see everything clearly in the sunlight but, is there anything that cannot be seen even with the help of the sunlight?”

“Yes, Your Majesty” Birbal replied. “There is something that cannot be seen in the sunlight. Even the sunlight fails to illumine it.”

“What is it Birbal?”

“Your Majesty it is the darkness of the human mind.”

Birbal’s answer is absolutely correct. The only question that Birbal may not have been in a position to answer is whether there is anything that can show us the ignorance of the human mind and illumine it. We illumine the dark, unlit, obscure, impure mind by bringing to the fore our inner sun. Our inner sun, which is infinitely brighter than the physical sun, will dispel the ignorance night of millennia.

Excerpt from “Wings of Joy” by Sri Chinmoy