I was reading The Riddle of Joy and was struck by one of the essayists thoughts on CS Lewis. Lewis had a friend who was driven to insanity by strange inward mental/spiritual focusses. After this Lewis never dwelt nor dabbled into the realm of focussing inward.
It drove me to an epiphany (and I'm sure there is a pity and clever way to state it) - the inner light is only a reflection of the outer lightsource.
I was digging into the depths of that thought and checked what my buddy may have said regarding these new waters. It turns out that GK Chesterton had sounded the depths before:
Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
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