If the light that in you is darkness how great is the darkness. How darkness can be light? What is the meaning?

I'll explain this using Jewish metaphors. Here is the entire quote with a couple verses added before for context:

Mat 6:19 ¶ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

Mat 6:20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

Mat 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Mat 6:22 ¶ The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

Mat 6:23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great [is] that darkness!

Now, here is a clue. The metaphor for the Torah is light. However, that's a particular case. In general, it's the concepts in your mind that motivate one to behave the way they do.

The eye is generally used to signify wisdom. When it's the Torah, it's G-d's wisdom. When it's our own desires, it's called "man's wisdom."

The verses before give the choice between choosing worldly treasures or choosing supernal treasures.

So, let's paraphrase it allegorically.

If the desire that motivates you is worldly pleasures, then your body will be full of things which result from focusing on worldly pleasures.

If you take it in context from earlier in the passage where people pretend to be good in order to get approval from others when in reality they are just acting.

In any lesson, I try to bring it to a personal level. There are events in my life that sometimes grab my attention that are really unimportant. They occupy my mind for awhile until I displace them with Torah lessons which are more important.

Shalom,

Gershon

Quite a good question and from what perspective I wonder.

Light and dark are ever with us hence night and day sun and moon, the physical and the spiritual sides of our human nature. i would say that we are living in both light and dark all the time since we are all sons of God here to do His Divine works. we go about each day either trying to do good or harm to each other and for how much longer? when does the killing stop and the light of reason return?

Swords into ploughshares NOW please. there can be no more wars or recalling of such wars, so say goodbye to poppies etc and leave the old ideas to rot down and let the new age come about. this is not for you as a person but the world at large so pass it on.

If you have money, education, wealth, people around you, everything but without peace of mind, then your in light which is darkness. If you have nothing as wealth, earning daily for the bread, but have a peace of mind, then you are in light which may look like darkness to others.

Because their deeds were evil. An allusion to robbers and cut-throats, who practise their abominations in the night season, for fear of being detected. The sun is a common blessing to the human race-it shines to all, envies none, and calls all to necessary labour. If any one choose rather to sleep by day, that he may rob and murder in the night season, he does this to his own peril, and has no excuse:-his punishment is the necessary consequence of his own unconstrained actions. So will the punishment of ungodly men be. There was light-they refused to walk in it. They chose to walk in the darkness, that they might do the works of darkness-they broke the Divine law, refused the mercy offered to them, are arrested by Divine justice, convicted, condemned, and punished. Whence, then, does their damnation proceed? From THEMSELVES.

Not to understand is darkness, but when one understands that it is impossible to understand every feature of existence and meaning, that is a type of light. Arrogance (thinking that one can understand everything) is darkness; humility (admitting that one is ignorant about final causes) is inner light.

Here light is God; darkness means we are not seeing the God

In darkness, God is there. So, Darkness, i.e., God is great