India, Oct. 20 -- Diwali is a festival of lights. A long line of gleaming lamps light up streets and courtyards, houses and huts, celebrating the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, and good over evil. But beyond those flickering lamps that illuminate our homes, there is a steady and sublime, eternal and effulgent light that shines within the human heart - always and forever.

That light is what Vidyaranya Swami's Panchadasi calls the Kutastha-deepa - the eternal lamp within. In its deeper sense, Diwali is about awakening to this inner illumination, situating ourselves in the light of this eternal consciousness.

In the Deepa-Panchaka section of Panchadasi, Vidyaranya Swami beautifully describes the layered presence ...