Does the darkness vanish gradually or at once?

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Devaraja Mudaliar wrote:

 

"Sometimes I used to console myself with thinking:

'Perhaps one day I shall suddenly find myself a completely changed man.'

And in that mood I asked Bhagavan whether improvement in a man's spiritual

condition comes about gradually and by degrees or bursts forth all of a sudden

one day.

Referring to the final improvement of realisation, Bhagavan replied:

'When you take a lighted torch into a dark cave,

does the darkness vanish gradually or at once?'"

 

(Devaraja Mudaliar: My Recollections, p. 30)