Why do you go to the Darkness Retreat and what happens to you there? Saskia John has been in the dark room three times – and still hasn’t had enough.
BRIGITTE: You spent 62 days of your life in a dark room. Why do you do this?
Saskia John: When staying in the dark, you can become aware of completely different inner worlds than in everyday life, where there are many distractions and to-dos. Many years ago I came across an article by Holger Kalweit that introduced the Darkness Retreat to Germany. The idea fascinated me on the one hand and frightened me on the other. I carried this conflict around with me for a year, then I called Holger. He took my fears away and in 2003 I agreed to my first twelve days.
The fear is understandable, the dark confinement is also a method of torture.
If you do it voluntarily, it’s a completely different thing. But of course the fears of the dark still surface, they’re inside us. I was really afraid of going insane or seeing ghosts – instead I had many deep, beautiful and touching experiences with myself.
First of all: How should we imagine such a dark room?
My last retreat took place in the house of the nature therapist Gertrud Niehaus, who accompanied me. I had a room with a bed, a table, a meditation cushion and a mat, a bathroom and a hallway. Everything was completely blacked out with thick, heavy curtains. Every day Gertrud came to see me for a one-hour conversation. I was able to get feedback from her when I no longer knew where I was in myself.
Have you ever been tempted to lift the curtains?
On the contrary: If light had come in somewhere, I would have gone to close the gap. In the first retreat I tried unsuccessfully until I realized: These are my inner lights.
Have you discovered “inner lights” in the dark?
Not so strong in the first and second retreat. It was all about cleaning up the basement of my inner house. I also did that very intensively.
Are the dark sides of the past stored there?
Exactly. Even what the ancestors suppressed ends up in our collective basement. For example, in the dark room I could understand why I had such a difficult relationship with my mother. She was cut off from her feelings because she grew up in the terror of World War II and couldn’t process it. With my openness I came up against their closedness, and if as a child I can’t establish any connection with the mother, then a fear of death arises in me, which I can only suppress myself. That’s what I mean by clearing up basement: that I approach these fears and get in touch with the child in me that had these fears. Then the child can relax and let go, and I feel that in my whole body. What I put out as a child can come back in and I am more complete in myself again.
So you took care of your inner child in the dark.
I turned on the lights floor by floor. The first floors of my inner house are the basement floors of my childhood, and at a certain point where I have no more memories, the floors are dark. The fact that the light went out has to do with painful moments: I switch off, I go dark, I don’t feel anything anymore, and because I don’t feel anything anymore, I can somehow go on living, but I’m just functioning. As a child, I had to “turn off” my feelings because there was no one there to accompany me emotionally, my parents were blocked themselves. In the dark retreat I was again confronted with the painful feelings of my inner child, I was able to hold it and process what I had repressed afterwards. That’s the moment when the light is on again on the floor, and then it’s on to the next. This is how you can heal.
And then at the last retreat everything was enlightened?
It was then a lot about the light-filled levels. So about the higher qualities of being that I didn’t even know existed because I didn’t have access to them yet.
What do you have to imagine by “light-filled levels”?
These are emotionally warm, quiet, sublime, incredibly peaceful, powerful levels, a feeling of: Here I am deeply at home, here is unconditional love, here I am accepted with every fiber of my being. I don’t have to do anything to be loved. There is an expanse, an openness, a truthfulness, an infinite goodness, a wisdom and a creative glory. It may all be words, but it is all tangible. And it’s very nice to be able to feel that.
Were you able to transfer what you experienced into everyday life?
I keep immersing myself in the inner processes and am able to increasingly anchor them in my everyday consciousness. What I worked out in the dark room in the deep layers of my personality is there – even if I should forget it in everyday life. The light-filled levels are like a resource that carries me through life. It gives me support and security even in difficult moments, until I have mastered them and grown as a result. I have the feeling that inner growth never ends.
Does that mean you want to head back into the dark?
Yes, next time I want to spend 49 days in the dark like the Tibetan monks. I would like to experience even deeper levels of being, and for that I needed a very long phase of withdrawal from everyday life.
© Reichel Verlag
To person: Saskia John was born in 1961 in the former GDR and studied veterinary medicine there. After reunification, she completed training as a non-medical practitioner and has had her own practice since 1994. She spent a total of 62 days in Darkness Retreat and has written several books about her experiences. Her latest book is called “In the Darkness Retreat – 26 Days of Darkness – A Consciousness Experiment” (19.90 euros, Reichel Verlag). More info at www.saskiajohn.de.