Darkroom - The Biochemistry of Enlightenment

First off: this is a personal account of my 14-day darkroom meditation at Tao, and as such it is shaped by subjective conditions. In February 2012, I had the opportunity to fulfil my long-held wish of a darkroom retreat, or dark meditation.

Finally, the big day had come and the participants moved into their rooms in the darkroom. One of the large and spacious, two-storey apartment buildings with an inner courtyard had been made completely light-tight with black foil for this purpose. Balloons were attached at strategic points, in front of the stairs and at the water dispensers, to serve as landmarks in the dark. In addition, all corners and edges were padded with mats to prevent possible injuries.

Like some others, I made strategic explorations of the house to memorise the essentials before the light went out for me for 14 days in the evening. I counted the steps, placed my little luggage within easy reach and memorised the placement, explored the toilet and shower and memorised the location of my room and the way and steps to the stairs. All guided by certain fears of initially struggling with disorientation – fears that quickly turned out to be unfounded.

After the participants had introduced themselves and Mantak Chia had given an introduction, there was a last dinner in the light of day and then the lights were extinguished. A strange feeling set in, because after all I would not see any light for the next 14 days – this fact became very clear to me. However, there was no fear, rather a joyful curiosity about what might come. Besides, you could leave the darkroom at any time if necessary.

The first two days in the dark were surprisingly uneventful, in both a positive and negative sense: My biggest practical problem was getting the toothpaste on the brush. It was only on the third day that I was able to overcome my functional constraint and came up with the idea of putting it directly into my mouth. Eating was not a problem either, as the caring staff brought food to the darkroom at mealtimes, in bite-sized pieces and in practical stackable tins.

On the other hand, there were no noticeable major effects, apart from the fact of consistent practice and the opportunity to get a full night's sleep. The days were filled with waking up at seven in the morning, followed by the first physical exercises and breakfast. This was followed by intensive Kan&Li practice, lunch and a short break. Then it continued with Kan&Li, a break, dinner and finally, every day ended with Tao Yin, the six healing sounds and dream yoga around 9:00 pm.

At first, the programme seemed almost too much for me, but the constant activity ensured that there was no room for doubts or mind trips of dubious content. This was particularly evident on Sundays, when the programme was very limited, and without self-discipline one can easily start brooding in a negative way when the mind wanders and one does not keep oneself in the centre.

Finally, the dreams intensified significantly, with appropriate, strong and alchemical symbolism. I also had many vivid and intense dreams, but I was not granted the experience of a lucid dream.

Towards the end of the week, I experienced some unusual optical phenomena. During my rest periods, but still in a waking state, I had intense visual perceptions. One day was characterised by lush and fresh vegetation – large leaves, lianas, thick leaf veins, simply strong plant life.

The following day was dominated by insects: grasshoppers, beetles, but also spiders were seen. The next day surprised me a lot, as scenes with Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Elmer appeared in quick succession – although as a child I had almost exclusively consumed Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

These phenomena were clearly perceptible, but seemed as if they were projected onto a gauze veil at a distance of about two metres. The colours were not quite as brilliant as in my dreams and the contours were somewhat blurred. Moreover, they only appeared when the eyes and gaze were relaxed. The attempt to look closely made everything disappear. I was not flooded by the perceptions either visually or emotionally, so they were not hallucinations in the sense that I would have thought the things were real.

Another phenomenon was that the few things, especially work-related ones, that I had not been able to clarify in advance of the darkroom, pushed themselves strongly into the foreground of my consciousness. So much so that it was only in retrospect that I noticed how relaxed and calm I actually was. But sometimes thoughts went round in circles for hours, until I got a grip on them through practice and they subsided in intensity.

The first weekend was marked by a strange feeling of sinking deeper and deeper. On Friday and Saturday, I had the distinct feeling of going deeper into the experience, although the optical phenomena had ceased after the comic episode.

Instead, the depth dimensions of the exercises, especially the six healing sounds, became apparent, which could not be put into words. I grasped their systematic nature, their complexity and their personal relevance very clearly and much more deeply than through analytical understanding.

Finally, I also experienced some discomfort – severe lower back and jaw pain, which in retrospect I assume was more likely due to the deep relaxation that had set in. Nevertheless, it did spoil two or three days of the second week for me.

On the other hand, another amazing phenomenon occurred. When I went into my room one evening and closed the door behind me, I had the faint but distinct impression that it was getting darker.

It should be noted that you were supposed to wear a blindfold. This signals to the eyes and the brain that there is nothing to see. After a few days in the dark, I noticed very clearly how hungry the brain is for information when you open your eyes in the dark. It was almost physically perceptible how something reached out into the darkness in search of some kind of input.

So I was wearing the blindfold and had the feeling that my field of vision would darken when I closed the door with my eyes closed. Assuming that I had been subjected to a particularly subtle and unexpected projection of knowledge about the situation, I opened and closed the door several times, but the impression remained. Finally, I left my room to look down from the gallery on the first floor to the open meeting place in the middle of the building.

To my astonishment, there was a clear impression of brightness. The columns of the room, the mattresses and other inanimate objects stood out clearly in front of the intrinsic grey of my perception. The intrinsic grey refers to the non-black impression of darkness that one feels after a considerable period of time in the absence of light. It is the result of the metabolic activity of the retina, so that one cannot actually see black in the true sense of the word.

Once again, I experienced that this perception of the so-called ‘aura of things’ disappeared when I consciously looked at it. Only a slight relaxation in the gaze and a certain ‘looking past it’ made this perception possible, analogous to the phenomenon that you can see faint stars more clearly when you look slightly past them. In Taoist terms, this experience could be described as ‘see, but don't look’.

In the following days, the phenomenon intensified to the extent that I was now able to perceive people. Interestingly, however, they appeared darker against the background of my own greyness. This went so far that I was able to perceive how many fingers someone was holding in front of my face – with a blindfold and closed eyes, mind you.

Finally, the second week was also coming to an end. It wasn't that I really wanted to get out, but I longed for a deep lungful of fresh air. That being said, the climate and the air in the darkroom were consistently pleasantly cool and odourless. But I missed a certain freshness, so I looked forward to leaving with a mixture of joy and melancholy.

It turned out that re-entering the world was something I had seriously underestimated. The Darkroom experience had been quite physically demanding and I felt quite fit. I had packed my rucksack and shouldered it, waiting for my guide to accompany me out. I left the Darkroom on Sunday evening through a five-metre-long corridor covered with plastic sheets, which felt a bit like being born.

I still had the blindfold on and my sunglasses over them. The further I went down the corridor, the more I felt my legs getting weaker. When I finally felt the first balmy evening breeze on my skin outside after 14 days, I was overcome with a feeling of vulnerable openness and weakness.

My guide first took me to an apartment where I could put my things down. I risked a quick first glance under the blind into the dark room and immediately had to struggle with the next sensory overload. I rested for a moment and then felt my way out into the wonderful garden and looked for a quiet place.

Gradually, I kept lifting the blind and realised that my eyes and sense of balance had to become reacquainted. This manifested itself in the fact that I was seized by a kind of deep, cellular dizziness. While after a glass of wine I tend to feel like I'm describing a great circle, here it felt as if every cell was rotating – interesting and unpleasant at the same time, but not so bad that I felt sick.

At the same time, I had the very concrete physical sensation of parts of my brain booting up again, especially just behind the left temporal lobe, continuing backwards to the visual cortex. The twilight of the early, but nevertheless already quite dark evening, was very accommodating to my unaccustomed eyes and allowed many things to be seen only schematically. But even here, I was particularly aware of the perception of contrasts.

The next day was an emotional rollercoaster. Since there was no longer any direct contact person in the Tao Garden or still spending the third week in the darkroom, a feeling of loneliness and being lost spread. This alternated with the joy that made me want to cry at the things I got to see. In particular, flowers, blossoms and insects enchanted me greatly.

It was interesting to experience the different levels of optical perception. Starting with the perception of static scenery, such as the rice field right next to the Tao Garden. The second level was when something or someone moved through my field of vision. In the first few days, this was also accompanied by the distinct sensation that the object was moving through my visual cortex in the opposite direction in the outside world.

The third level was finally the direct encounter and communication with people, especially the perception of faces, which held an amazing depth and significance. While the first three levels were still a passive influx into the optical system, level four was quite different. Functionalising my eyes in the sense of actively absorbing information by reading was an unexpected effort.

To this day, I still struggle with stages 5 and 6, namely television, which put me off physically for weeks, but can be easily avoided. But in particular, working at the monitor as the final stage of optical exertion was initially almost impossible for me, because I had the impression that energy and information were being forced into my brain – difficult to find a suitable way of dealing with this in today's world.

There is still a lot to be said, but all these would be unsuitable attempts to put into words things that cannot be grasped linguistically. In any case, these two weeks were among the most intense, interesting and, in terms of temporal perception, shortest 14 days of my life. I will definitely repeat the Darkroom experience, and may even try to stage it at home – knowing that a good deal of self-discipline is needed to maintain my centre.

2012 Karlheinz J. Extract from his report