Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Chemistry
& Physics:
Light:
Hyatt
Carter:
The
Path of Light & Levity
What is it about the nature of light that causes a great mystic to say,
"There is no more worthy, more glorious, or more potent work, than to work with
light."
Why is it that Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman felt an enchantment that would
last for a lifetime when he heard his high-school physics teacher say: "Light always
follows the path of the beautiful"?
What is it about the nature of light that prompted Albert Einstein, early in his
career, to say, "For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!"?
Why is it, throughout human history, that the divine presence has so often been
imaged as light?
What is it about light that makes it the most enduring metaphor for the divine
presence,
and so natural a metaphor that we image God in countless ways as light, and these
images of light find constant and pervasive expression in all sacred literature?
Why is it that God seems so at home in the light?
Why do we sometimes hear the great mystics say, "God is light"?
Mysticism and Light
From the very beginning, the theme of light intertwines with the history of mysticism,
and a vision of light often forms the central luminous core of the mystical experience
whereby the mystics himself is transformed and illuminated. The chief exemplification of
this can perhaps be seen in the Transfiguration of Jesus.
All the great mystics are photophiles, lovers of light, and they never tire of
celebrating and singing the praise of light.
Unity with the Light of the divine presence has been called the very signature of
mysticism, and descriptions of this event by mystics tell of their feeling of unity,
oneness, and a feeling of the inter-connectivity of the many and the one, a feeling of
what Gregory Bateson has called "the pattern that connects"— the pattern
that connects all things to one another and also to the One in whom we live, move, and
have our being.
And this is a feeling, not an ocular perception, but an experience that, like dreams,
usually happens behind closed eyes, and is thus a non-rational and a non-sensory feeling
of, a grasping of, what is somehow there within revealing its numinous presence.
According to great mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Dionysius the Areopagite, and
Thomas Aquinas, simultaneous with the appearance of first light as described in Genesis
was the creation of the consciousness of angels. Hildegard says that angels are living
light. Does this suggest that the consciousness of angels may be equated with light, or at
least that consciousness may be somehow light-mediated?
Cosmic consciousness, with its epiphany of light, (theophany?) suggests a
light-mediated consciousness. And indeed it is difficult, well nigh impossible, to talk
about even ordinary human consciousness without talking about light, or using metaphors of
light, for the mind, consciousness, is somehow irreducibly luminous.
Earlier I mentioned the pattern that connects. What is this pattern?
At a fundamental level it is light, the electromagnetic force, light, as the messenger
photons, that mediates relations and change on all levels except for gravitation and the
strong force that binds the elementary particles together in the atomic nucleus.
This Light constitutes not only what we experience but also how we
experience it, the internal EMI transaction whereby the experience unfolds.
Analogy & Metaphor
When the mystic tells us that God is light, are we to take him literally, or is there a
better interpretation? In his excellent book Electromagnetism and the Sacred,
physicist Lawrence W. Fagg provides a helpful distinction. God is not light, he suggests,
nor is electromagnetism God, but light, or the EMI, is an analogue for the immanence of
the divine presence.
"This hypothesis is based essentially on how the EMI at the physical level
can be seen to be analogous to God’s immanence at the spiritual level. First, they
both share in the property of ubiquity: both are all-pervasive in our world. Second, they
have analogous ranges of intensity from the most subtle and sensitive of experiences and
perceptions to the most powerful and awesome. Third, they are analogous because light is
so often used as a sign, symbol, or metaphor for God’s presence. Light, however, is
electromagnetic radiation. Just as God’s light extends far beyond what we can sense,
so analogously the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation extends far beyond what is
visible. Fourth . . . just as the speed of electromagnetic radiation is constant, so is
the abiding, eternal constancy of God’s light; the ubiquity, the range of intensity,
the invisibility, and the constancy relate to each other at each level, the physical and
the divine, in an analogically proportional way."1
How analogy can be a portal of discovery is beautifully illustrated in the life of
Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf from birth. You probably all remember how her
teacher, Anne Sullivan, brought Helen into contact with water in many different and
various contexts, and each time, using her fingertip, traced the word "water" on
Helen’s palm. Nothing happened for a long time, but one day Helen finally got it. In
an intuitive flash, she suddenly saw the similarity in all the many different experiences
of water. The many experiences became subsumed under one category: water. She saw unity in
all the variety she had experienced. This too is the way of analogy.
(Through the process of analogy, she saw unity in all the variety she had experienced.)
Physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman was one of the most creative minds of the
twentieth century, and a recent biography you may have seen in bookstore is aptly, and
simply, called Genius. What was it about physics that fascinated Feynman, and kept
that fascination vibrantly (exuberantly) alive over a long lifetime? It seems to stem from
a lovely and luminous idea that his high-school physics teacher invited him to meditate
on, that "light always follows the path of the beautiful."
(The idea that light may somehow be equated with beauty is an invitation to the path of
analogical thinking and perception.)
The Electromagnetic Interaction
The quest of science is for elegance and simplicity in mathematical equations that
describe how the physical world works; to encompass more phenomena under as few formulas
as possible, to do more, with less and less. Einstein’s famous equation beautifully
exemplifies this. Buckminster Fuller, a genius if ever there was one, calls this process
of doing more with less "ephemeralization," and had this to say about Einstein’s
equation: "Emerson said the great poet put the most in the fewest words. By that test
the greatest poem is Einstein’s E = mc2, which says everything in six
syllables."
This quest for universality is like the mystic’s quest for unity with the Oneness
of the divine presence. Note that I said "like" and not "is the same
as."
It is also the quest for an ever higher synthesis as illustrated in the evolution of
thought concerning electricity, magnetism, and light which, not so long ago, were thought
to be entirely separate categories.
And then along came Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell who showed that these three—electricity,
magnetism, and light—like the three persons of the trinity, were really one, or
better, manifestations of one underlying force: electromagnetism, which includes light.
In 1905 Albert Einstein made headlines with his theory of relativity that radically
revolutionized human thought about very big things such as solar systems, galaxies, and
the universe itself.
Further revolution came quickly through the minds of such men as Max Planck, Niels
Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli as human consciousness is ushered into the
strange and paradoxical world of very small things such as atoms and the elementary
particles described by quantum mechanics. As without, so within.
Next, about halfway through the last century, we have the culmination of the work of
Richard Feynman, Julian Swinger, and Sin-itiro Tomonaga who put the final touches on the
field theory of quantum electrodynamics, for which these three men were awarded the Nobel
prize in physics in 1965. With this, there is an even higher synthesis that unifies
electromagnetism, relativity, and quantum mechanics into a single force: the
electro-magnetic interaction, or EMI. Light, as the carrier of this force, is the central
player.
It is this force, the EMI, that is so pervasive in the workings of nature, secret and
otherwise, as to be virtually omnipresent. How omnipresent, you might ask?
Atoms, molecules, and clusters of molecules (such as Pavlov’s dog or Schrödinger’s
cat) are elegantly held together (and apart) through the workings of the electromagnetic
force and specifically though the photon which is said to "carry" the
electromagnetic force; and any change, for better or worse, seems to me mediated and
communicated by photons in their role as "messenger" particles. Virtual photons
(what I call fauxtons) are also central players in this.
It is through the EMI that all living systems hang together from moment to moment,
cohere as a unity, as one thing: a dynamic singular, and, at death, this coherence falls
apart, and the process of bodily decomposition begins.
Levity
So associated is his name with his discovery that the very mention of Newton brings to
mind the Law of Gravity, suddenly intuited by Sir Isaac when he chanced to glimpse a
falling apple, and saw in its fall the same force that through its terrene orbit drives
the moon. John Ruskin points out that Newton’s law of gravity explains the fall of an
apple from a tree, but doesn’t even begin to explain the infinitely more complex
process by which the apple got up there in the first place. (It was another apple,
by the way, Adam’s, that caused the downfall of the human race, but that’s
another story.)
Gravity is a "down" force—a force that causes, when the time is ripe,
the fall of such things as apples, and also keeps our feet planted firmly on the ground.
Gravity is what makes as bushel of apples hard to lift. Gravity makes things heavy.
Blow on a dandelion puffball and watch the gossamer seed puffs float away in the
breeze. This is levity. (another concrete example of levity here) Levity makes things light.
Levity was once a scientific term of sorts, and the Oxford English Dictionary
defines it, with a Newtonian bias, thus: "In pre-scientific physics, regarded as a
positive property inherent in bodies in different degrees, or varying proportions, in
virtue of which they tend to rise, as bodies possessing gravity tend to sink . . . obsolete
except historically or allusively." But levity got lost in long shadows cast by
Newton’s Universal Law of Gravity.
Examples of levity abound: the lusty spring Sap rising in an apple tree or all the way
to the top of a giant redwood, water evaporating and streaming up to form clouds, a cork
submerged in water and then released, waterspouts at sea, dust devils, flames of fire
leaping up, flowers growing upward, heliotropic plants that follow the sun, helium gas
causing a balloon to expand and then float up, up, and away, radioactive elements such as
uranium . . . Comic books give us Superman while mythology offers Icarus and Pegasus.
In Scotland, at Glasgow University, there’s a scientific experiment still up and
running that was begun over a century ago by William Thomson, also know as Lord Kelvin.
Imagine a large glass jar filled with water and, situated at the mid-point in the water, a
thick slice of wax, equally dividing the upper and lowers regions of the jar. Small corks
have been place underneath the wax and metal bullets above. Over the course of a year, the
bullets will have sunk down through the wax to drop to the bottom of the jar, while the
corks, buoyant with levity, will have migrated up through the wax to rise and float on the
water’s surface. Does this not beautifully illustrate the contrasts of Gravity &
Levity?
The force of levity is not directed solely up, but also outward. Whereas gravity has to
do with contraction, cohesion, and density, levity is the force that expresses as growth,
extension, and expansion.
Levity is centrifugal; gravity, centripetal. The centrifugal lure of levity can be seen
in merry-go-rounds, carousels, and dancing round the maypole.
All light-winged creatures—birds and bees and butterflies—beautifully express
the self-surpassing spirit of levity.
This "lightness" of levity also expresses as the lightheartedness of
laughter, good humor, playfulness, frolic, and smiles on a summer night. This is light in
both senses, for have you not seen the light that sparkles in her eyes when she, the apple
of your eye, is laughing. Instead of in vino veritas, James Joyce (note the
surname) suggested in riso veritas, "in laughter there is truth."
In fire we find, perhaps, one of the purest expressions of levity. What is lighter than
a dancing flame of fire? Like a photon, that paragon of levity, fire is "light"
in both senses of the word. Fourth of July fireworks. Solar flares. Think of the billions
of galaxies, each with its billions upon billions of stars, every star expressing
beautifully the levity of flames of fire.
Levity is about "getting high," and one way to get high is simply to go high.
Some astronauts who have soared up into orbit and, while there, experienced the
weightlessness of space, have come back down to earth as mystics. Flotation tanks, which
simulate the weightless state, produce similar results. Some ocean divers report
"rapture of the deep." To such "psi" experiences as out-of-body and
near-death, perhaps we should add another: the O.G.E, or out-of-gravity experience.
You already know a lot about levity. How so, you may wonder. Think back. Did you never
as a young child with your playmates hold out both arms and spin in circles so fast that
you soon felt light-headed and dizzy and reeled round and round in peals of laughter? The
Whirling Dervishes take this up at least one level to experience religious ecstasy.
The esthetics of symmetry and the dipolar nature of things suggest the presence and
power of a force that works counter to gravity.
The sun is an exaltation, even an exultation, of levity. When young children draw a
picture of the sun, they put a smile on its face.
Levity is the urge to become more, the inner impulse to stretch, to move beyond
boundaries. In one of his poems, Robert Frost says, "Something there is that doesn’t
love a wall, that sends the frozen ground-swell under it and spills the upper boulders in
the sun."
And so, to sum things up: We see in nature a universal trending toward the dipolar and
biphasal, and gravity is surely no exception, but is tempered by a counter force, levity,
so that together, in the aesthetics of mutual interaction, and these two, gravity and
levity, "moving in measure, like dancers," display their biphasal rhythm in the
dynamic and elegant balance of an ever-changing matrix of opposing tendencies.
Since it is the very nature of light to radiate in every direction, a single point of
light will, in one second, become a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles. This is levity
in its most extravagant expression.
What is the nature of this light?
In his book, Cosmic Consciousness, Bucke calls it subjective light.
Meister Eckhart calls it uncreated light
In the Bible, in First Timothy, Saint Paul calls it unapproachable light, and says that
God dwells therein.
It is a light of such luminosity that Boethius says:
He who once hath seen this light
Will not call the sunbeam bright.
In Hermetic texts as early as the third century, Jung finds mention of what is called
archetypal light.
When the Corpus Hermeticum, which probably dates from the third century,
describes God as to arcetupon fwV, the ‘archetypal
light,’ it expresses the idea that He is the prototype of all light; that is to say,
pre-existent and supraordinate to the phenomenon "light."
Hildegard of Bingen calls it living light and equates it with angels.
In books such as the highly revered Zohar, Hebrew mysticism tells of the
feminine aspect of God, the Shekina: a creative light or radiance which dwells in all
things. This divine light was experienced by Moses in his confrontation with burning bush,
wherein a fire burned but did not consume. On the night when Moses was born, the Zohar
tells us, the divine splendor of Shekina so shined in Moses that the entire house was
filled with light.
Such Stuff As Snowflakes Are Made On
Consider for a moment the beautifully patterned integrity of a single snowflake: one of
the sparkling icy stars that fall like diamonds in prodigal profusion from the skies
during any snowstorm . . . consider this tiny constellation of ice . . . this aqueous
masterpiece in miniature, this natural mandala, this crystal hieroglyph sent from on high,
this hexagonal prism of light . . . consider the purity of form of this paragon of
symmetry, elegance, complexity, and beauty . . . consider this crystal Star of David, this
frozen Flower of Life that seems to suddenly and simply appear out of thin air.
Suddenly? Not quite, for the snowflake comes trailing clouds of glory, and that glory
turns out to be our old friend, Light, for it is the EMI that mediates the step-by-step
process of crystallization, and then holds the elegant pattern in place.
Simply? On the contrary, for, in a complex process, many, many water molecules must be
orchestrated, oriented, and articulated by the EMI to form a single snowflake. If some of
you are wondering how many water molecules there are in a snowflake, the number is
"one" followed by 18 zeros. This is many magnitudes above a billion, which is
"one" followed by merely 9 zeros. That so many do indeed become one coherent
whole seems no small miracle.
To add to the complexity, it is no isolated process, but must take account of, and
adapt to, the sometimes rapidly changing conditions within a blustery storm cloud: change
of temperature, wind velocity, humidity, barometric pressure, and the changing velocity of
its own swirling fall.
In fact, the more complex the historical path a snowflake takes, the more complex,
elegant, and beautiful is its final form. Can the same not be said of ourselves?
All snowflakes are similar, variations on a sixfold theme, yet they all differ, like
our fingerprints, in that no two are alike. Not only is this unity in diversity, one of
the definitions of beauty, but it suggests that even in the inorganic world there is an
urge, an appetition, for novelty, beauty, and adventure.
For a snowflake, life begins the way our universe did:
According to he Big Bang theory, just as our universe began some 15 billion years ago
as a spherical pinpoint of inconceivably vast energy, so too does a snow crystal begin its
creative adventure as a tiny particle of dust around which water vapor condenses, freezes,
and then, in a dynamic growth process, unfolds like a flower into a complex pattern of
beauty. Does this not bring to mind an oyster forming a beautiful pearl round a grain of
sand?
And so the microcosm of snow crystal and pearl recapitulates in miniature and by
metaphor what transpired in the cosmos at the original moment of creation. As above, so
below.
This should come as no surprise since self-organization and spontaneous pattern
formation is ubiquitous in nature, and underlying it all is the EMI: mediating,
communicating, in these productions of Light.
And it is tiny spheres, such as fertilized eggs, that are the point of origin of most
higher living systems. Other much tinier spheres, such as atoms and their even tinier
constituent electrons, protons, and neutrons, make up these larger spheres. All are held
together, and their physical transactions mediated by, maybe the tiniest sphere of all:
the messenger photon, a "particle" with no mass whatsoever.
And so, whoever he was, the Biblical writer of Genesis was intuitively right in telling
us that the first creature created by God was light, for it is by the mediation of light
that all else evolves into manifestation.
Learning How To See
In order to grasp and understand the elusive inner nature of some elements of reality—such
as light—Goethe proposes that we have to cultivate and develop the cognitive
equivalent of new organs of perception.
Take, for example, a long leisurely walk in the countryside with an affable geologist
who loves his work and, before long, through a kind of creative osmosis of shared insight,
you will begin to glimpse certain hitherto "invisible" features of the landscape
with new eyes.
Every schoolchild has surely experience such moments of epiphany on field trips with a
science teacher.
While foraging the Oregon countryside for psychedelic mushrooms, Andrew Weil tells how
he was initially unable to even see them, and would walk right past the large phallic
shapes in the open pasture, unless he was walking very close to another person who was
already "attuned" to the mushrooms. Once attuned himself, he could then spot
them immediately even at great distances and under cover of foliage.
In a very real sense we learn how to see; insight and eyesight are inextricably linked
and come to be through a learned process that is, paradoxically (like light), both
creative and passive.
A congenitally blind adult can have his organs of sight surgically restored to a state
of flawless perfection and still be "blind as a bat" until he learns how to see.
What Light Does
According to field theory in QED, a photon is one of the so-called
"messenger" particles that carries, or transmits, the electromagnetic force
between matter particles and is thus a primary player in how the universe holds together.
Since photons travel at the speed of light, this force, one of the fundamental four, has a
very long reach.
The many diverse interactions of light with matter, such as photosynthesis, which has
been poetically described as life "woven out of air by light." And is it not
suggestive that chlorophyll, the molecule that figures in this vital creative process
within the sap of green plants, shares a closely allied structure with the hemoglobin that
brightens our blood with the color red.
Other interactions: light and the myriad types of eyes in nature, the photoelectric
effect, photons causing "quantum jumps" by electrons, cameras, fluorescence,
heliotropic plants following the course of the sun, bioluminescence, mirrors, prisms,
rainbows.
For just one of the many aesthetics of light, imagine gemstones in all their luminous
colors, and the dazzling sparkle of diamonds that shimmer with the beauty of light. The
essence of a diamond is its interaction with light, and a diamond sparkles with light
because the many facets are cut in such a way that the rays of light enter and leave by
many different shimmering paths.
Light, remember, always follows the path of the beautiful.
Wordsworth says in one of his poems that we come "trailing clouds of glory,"
and the science of spectroscopy shows that light comes bearing news of the elements that
compose radiant bodies, and in this way, through light, we come to know the composition of
distant stars many light-years away.
Photons and the pineal gland preside over the light-mediated chemistry of the human
body.
It is through the experience of light that we learn many things: of the birth and death
of stars, that we live in a universe that is ever expanding—and the time frame of the
universe story itself, this we learn from the cosmic background radiation that has been
called the photonic spoor of the Big Bang.
During the initial moments of the Big Bang, the only elements present were light and
the "light" elements—light in terms of weight, such as hydrogen and helium—so,
in a very real sense, light itself, the light of the original incandescence, and levity
were the precursors of all that evolved afterward. "Omnia quia sunt, lumina
sunt"—Scotus Erigena.
As simple as a photon may seem at first glance, closer observation reveals both
subtlety and complexity of behavior; and thus five basic terms in optics, the science of
light, teach us that this particle of undulating energy can somehow vary its flow in such
a way as to (1) reflect from a smooth surface, (2) scatter from a surface
that is rough, (3) refract and change course or angle when passing from one medium
to another (such as from air into water), (4) disperse in rays of color when
leaving a prism, and (5) diffract or spread out when curving round an obstacle.
If optics may be called the old science of light, then the new science of light,
photonics, is finding many new practical applications for light. In the near future,
photons may supplant electrons in computers, the computation taking place without even so
much as a material medium. Is photonic technology perhaps the coming wave?
Photonics: From Electrons to Photons
A century ago the electron was as exotic an elementary particle as the photon, a
particle of light, may seem in recent times. But in the last decade or so, a new
technology has emerged, called photonics, the science of light. Just as electronics
defined much of the technology of the 20th century, photonics may define the 21st.
Instead of electrons coursing through bulky copper wires, photons, at the speed of
light, stream through microscopically slim optical fibers that make up lightguide cables.
Light can carry enormous amounts of information because it vibrates at such high
frequencies, and this enables hundreds of thousands of telephone conversations to stream
simultaneously back and forth through the transatlantic optical cable that connects the
United States and European countries.
There is a rapidly proliferating global web of optical fibers, animated by
semiconductor lasers, that carries telecommunications, the Information Superhighway, and
links computers via the Internet.
These are global systems of light, leading the way into the brave new Age of
Information.
Optical fibers are on the cutting edge of this "new" technology, and yet . .
. in the beautiful green world of vegetable life, which has graced this planet for
billions of years, scientists have recently discovered that plants use natural optical
fibers to transmit light to their underground root systems. Ain’t life grand?
In the near future, photons may supplant electrons in computers, the computation taking
place without even so much as a material medium.
As light replaces electricity, photons are outstripping what electrons can do in terms
of faster speed and more powerful communication, and in swiftly manipulating and moving
vast banks of data.
Let There Be . . . Light!
In the creation story (Genesis 1:3), God’s very first creative act was the
creation of Light.
In like manner, in the stillness of each new dawn, the sun blesses us again with First
Light, beginning the beauty of sunrise, a beauty that is new every moment as it opens out
into the full light of day. This is God Light. No wonder the birds are singing! "Then
shall thy light break forth as the morning," says the prophet Isaiah.
Light figures in the most famous equation in physics, Einstein’s E = mc2,
which tells us that Energy equals mass times the speed of light (186,000 miles per second)
squared. Early in his career, Einstein said: "For the rest of my life I will reflect
on what light is."
And one of our great contemporary mystics, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, who wrote
extensively about light, both solar and spiritual, said: "There is no more worthy,
more glorious or more potent work, than to work with light."
These two quotations suggest that we have much to learn from the contemplation of
light, and that the "path of light" can be very powerful indeed.
Mystics have all along, but more and more in this present age (or so it seems to me),
identified light with life, and light with God—seen as resplendent glory, to be sure,
but also seen with reverence, and with awe, as a sublime mystery. Scientists have been
studying light for centuries and haven’t yet figured out just exactly what it is.
Einstein, who spent his entire career trying to understand the nature of light, was, at
his own admission, no closer to solving the mystery near the end of his life than he was
when he first started out on his great intellectual adventure.
British physicist David Bohm says that "all matter is frozen light," and it
has been suggested that life and light are aspects of the same energy, in two different
states of process—life manifesting in form, and light mysterious in its formlessness
(is light a wave, or a particle, or maybe a wavicle?). Could it be that metaphysics and
physics, the mystic and the scientist, are converging, coming together "in the
light"?
Over the course of civilization, as a source of heat and light, fire has been an
intimate and important presence for humankind. The primal campfire at night as mystic
circle. The use of fire and light in religious ritual. The wonderfully abundant cornucopia
of food so lavishly provided for our enjoyment and nourishment is ultimately
"bundled" light: the fire of the sun. The inspirational fire of stars and
galaxies and constellations in the night sky where astronomical distance is measured in
light-years.
One of the paradoxes about light is that a photon, a particle of light, has no mass and
therefore no weight, and thus it may be said that a photon is "light" in more
ways than one. A particle sans mass is the very paragon of lightness!
As tiny, as diminutive, as micro-minute as it is, a photon has inexhaustible energy in
that it can propagate everlastingly—witness the photons of light that constitute the
so-called background radiation that has been around since the Big Bang fifteen billion
years ago, and wave to us in perpetual motion from the very birth of the universe itself.
Whence cometh this inexhaustible energy in so wee a wave, in so petite a particle?
Ultimately, through the process of photosynthesis by which the green leaves of plants
utilize the energy of sunlight to create carbohydrates, a process that also releases
oxygen, Father Sun, and the sunlight he so generously and unstintingly radiates in all
directions, is the source, and the sine qua non, of all the food we eat and all the air we
breathe on Mother Earth.
Did you ever stop and wonder how, or why it is, that the sun, though it is vastly
bigger, appears to be the same size as the moon when we look up and behold them in the
sky? As every schoolchild knows, this is easily explained by the fact that the sun is much
farther away—93 million miles as opposed to 250,000. Still . . . this seems a
coincidence of such Jungian proportions that I cannot resist the temptation to call it a
Synchronicity with a capital "S." The sun, or Helios, bright and shining, has
long been a symbol of our conscious mind, while the moon reflects the nighttime lunar
inscape of our unconscious. Does this equality in apparent size suggest that we are to
give equal weight to "day" and "night," light and dark, conscious and
unconscious, yin and yang, the solar and lunar phases of all things we are here to read?
Nietzsche contrasted the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
And what about the Eclipse?
Were there not this apparent equality of size, there could be no total eclipse of the
sun, those rare moments when we glimpse up to behold the magical mystery of a celestial
epiphany: the unity in diversity of sun and moon, of darkness and light. Is this not
better than the familiar yin-yang symbol. What is more numinous, more mystical, more
compelling—so compelling as to send even staid scientists scurrying to remote spots
on the globe to behold them, so startling as to be apocalyptic so some, but to provide the
deep-down shuddering thrill of good (I almost said "God") goosebumps to others.
This is Wonder, and does not spirituality begin in such holy wonder?
The pineal gland, or the pineal body as it is otherwise called, being a light-sensitive
body, may be said to be on most intimate terms with photons. Situated deep within the
center of the brain, the pineal has been called the "third eye," the "seat
of the rational soul," and the "light meter" of the body. Its many
functions (some only recently coming to light) include production of melatonin, and the
monitoring of light-related information to keep the body attuned to changing conditions of
light in the environment. When we are sound asleep, photons interact with seratonin in the
pineal to produce melatonin. In response to darkness, the pineal secretes melatonin which
seems to influence daily rhythms by informing the body as to when to rest and (in its
absence) when to be active.
As Jacob Liberman has suggested, the pineal, as part of the endocrine system, and in
harmony with the biological clock in the hypothalamus, helps to balance and synchronize
the vital inner functions of the body with the conditions of the external environment. Put
another way, this may be thought of as "becoming one with the universe." And all
this is light-driven, or light-mediated, chemistry! The human body has been called a
"body of light," and it now turns out that we have within a smaller
"body" of light: the pineal. Microcosm mirrors macrocosm—as within, so
without, as above, so below.
How often we find in the Bible the presence of light and fire announcing the presence
of divinity. The angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses (Ex. 3:2) in the form of fire:
a burning bush that burned but was not consumed. God led the Israelites out of Egypt
"by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of
fire." (Ex. 13:21) In Matthew 3-11, John the Baptist talks about how he baptizes
with water, but says that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.
The Holy Spirit appeared unto the apostles as "cloven tongues like as of fire"
(Acts 2:3) on the day of Pentecost.
If this seems rather hot, there is the "cold" light of bioluminescence seen
in insects such as fireflies or lightning bugs, plankton, and certain "magic"
mushrooms that glow in the dark. And in the halos seen around the heads of holy folk and
saints in religious paintings—instead of a mere fancy of the artist, or a convention
of art, could it be that the bodies of such folk actually become luminous and that this is
yet another instance of some form of bioluminescence?
Matthew 5:16 tells us to "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." And Goethe, perhaps the
last great Renaissance man, said: "Someday perhaps the inner light will so shine
forth from us, that we shall need no other light."
In ancient Greece, at the Eleusinian Mystery Temple, a unique form of light was
produced: human hands of light. The Eleusinian initiate, after seven years of preparation,
went down into an underground labyrinth where he would spend nine days in complete
darkness. The initiate then sat down, alone except for the venomous snakes that slithered
and hissed around him. His hands clasped together, holding seven kernels of wheat, he
began a prayer that would go uninterrupted for the entire nine days. To make these kernels
sprout and germinate in his hands, producing living grains of new wheat—this was the
task the initiate now had before him. The only protection against the snakes was his own
consciousness. He could not unclasp his hands because the warmth and moisture necessary
for the wheat’s growth came from the warmth and sweat of his palms. And the light and
energy came from his own inner light, his life energy, what the Chinese call chi,
and the Hindus call prana. This light and energy he concentrated in his hands, and,
lo, the kernels did indeed sprout and germinate, bringing forth living grains of new
wheat, not from sunlight and soil, but from the fertile life fields of his hands of light.
Is this an art forever lost? Apparently not, for much the same mystery is found in
the Navajo tradition, where the initiate goes underground in a kiva for eleven days and
corn is grown in his hands instead of wheat. As Dylan Thomas says in one of his poems,
"light breaks where no sun shines."
The yogic concept of chakra, or body center, also sheds light on this matter. The
literal meaning of the word "chakra" is "wheel of light." Besides the
seven main chakras, there are numerous other minor chakras. Since there is an important
chakra in each palm, and a minor chakra at every joint, this means that there are no fewer
than thirty-two chakras, or "wheels of light," in the hands. That’s a lot
of light. Small wonder that one form of healing is the "laying on of hands."
Helium, as some of you might guess from its name which derives from the Greek word
"helios," meaning "sun," was first discovered not on earth but in the
atmosphere of the sun. A little reflection shows that this intimacy with the sun makes
helium, like the photon, very "light" in both senses of the word, the second
sense linking it with levity as we are reminded when we lift our gaze to glimpse colorful
balloons filled with helium gas floating up brightly, lightly, in the blue sky.
Sunlight is the source of all the wonderful colors that "light up" Nature.
Just as the universe is overflowing with the immanent but invisible presence of God, so
too does sunlight contain all hues and all colors, invisible to the eye, until the light
is shone through a prism, revealing thereby the primary colors so wonderfully hidden
within.
Let us not forget a natural prism that comes with every spring shower: that magical
mirage moment we call a rainbow. Is not a rainbow, woven in mist by rays of sunshine, a
mystical epiphany of light?
Is there anyone whose heart does not leap up when they behold a rainbow? Is there
anyone whose heart is not gladdened, who does not feel a sense of mystical delight?
Is there anyone who, glimpsing a rainbow, does not immediately point it out to others and
exclaim, "Look, there’s a rainbow!"?
What did God choose as a symbol of his covenant with humankind? In Genesis 9:13 we read
that it was a rainbow: light expressing that "beauty is truth, truth beauty," as
the poet John Keats observed.
Every sunlit day we see a "rainbow" in the sky, a rainbow that slowly unfolds
through time: stretching from the warm yellows and reds of dawn, on through the cool blue
of the highup daytime sky, and finally evanescing away in the warm reds and yellows of
evening dusk.
And recollecting that in Greek mythology the goddess Iris was the personification of
the rainbow, I feel amazement, the radical amazement of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, that there
is a rainbow in the eye that mirrors the rainbow in the sky—a ring of bright color we
call the iris. Indeed, what we are looking for, is what we are looking with.
Unity in Variety
Underlying all the multiplicity we behold in the greater cosmos, from grains of sand to
grapes and galaxies, there is one basic interaction, that between photons and electrons,
that is the physical means whereby all the amazing variety is produced and presents itself
for our wonder and our delight.
Unity in variety is seen in the universe itself, in each of you and me as individuals,
in molecules, atoms, electrons, dynamic singulars all, and perhaps most elegantly in the
least particle of all, the photon as the unity of particle and wave.
The chlorophyll molecule, the workhorse of photosynthesis, resembles a daisy, and the
daisy, which means the day’s eye, or sun, itself reveals the sun in its very pattern
of golden orb in the midst of a garland of white petals radiating outward. A snowflake
reveals a similar pattern and the poet Ezra Pound spoke of "the rose of steel
dust" seen in iron filings sprinkled round a magnet. A rainbow is a flowering of
light that we behold through the iris of our eyes. Then there are Rose Windows in Gothic
cathedrals, the Mystical Rose, the symbol knows as the flower of life, the Star of David,
and a beautiful crystal flower called fulgurite, a blossoming of electricity and silica,
sometimes created when a bolt of lightning strikes a dune of sand.
These are all instances of unity in variety, an elegant minuet of the many and the one,
mediated by omnipresence of light in all its various displays. To glimpse the similarity
amid all the differences is to see by the light of analogy.
Many In One
Any actual entity that acts as one is a subject, a singularity, a dynamic singular, a
unit not merely of energy and matter, but a unit of experience; as a subject with
sentience, it has experience of objects, feeling the feelings of others. Even a photon
acts as one, feels as one, as do atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, animals, and finally
humans who, though the marvelous efficacy of brain and nervous system, unify a vast
multicellular net of staggering complexity. The human body, as a microcosm of
unity-in-diversity, mirrors the macrocosm: the living universe, the body of God, the
all-encompassing, all-pervasive embodiment of the [aesthetic – omit?] beauty and
truth of diversity-in-unity, the evolving totality of which, in all its multiplicity, is,
in every new moment, an [unimaginable] single unitary datum in God’s experience. We
are to our cells as God is to the universe.
Rose Windows
Just like the green leaves of plants, Rose Windows, and other windows of stained glass
in cathedrals, are designed to interact with light, to play with light and color,
suffusing the interior of a sanctuary with a mystical light.
Leonardo da Vinci, who knew a thing or two about light and color, said that the power
of meditation can be enhanced tenfold if practiced in the presence of violet rays coming
through the stained glass windows of a quiet church.
And is it not interesting that violet is the color associated with the crown chakra,
the chakra considered by many to be an interface with the higher spiritual world.
Dante’s Mystic Rose
The Divine Comedy, written by the Italian poet Dante, is one of the world’s
literary treasures, and comprises a triad of books: The Inferno, The Purgatorio,
and its crowning glory: The Paradiso. In the Notes to his inspired translation of
the Dante’s masterpiece, John Ciardi tells us that "the central metaphor of the
entire Comedy is the image of God."
The Paradiso ends, in its four last cantos, with a great metaphoric symphony of
light: after his blindness is healed by immersing his face in a flowing river of light,
there blooms, in Dante’s vision, a flower of pure light, a Mystical Rose, white in
color and of galactic size; at the center: a golden corona whose splendor far outshines
any sun or star, and the white petals that radiate outward are freshened by a glorious
rainfall, not of water, but a golden shower of joyful light.
Conclusion
Just as Einstein ran joyously with light in his youth and saw the first glimmerings of
Relativity, just as the great Bulgarian mystic Aivanhov saw in rays of sunshine a light so
mystical that he called them love letters from God, just as so many for so long have been
transformed through an experience of light, so too have I been blessed and changed by
immersing myself in the study of light for these past weeks.
Cardinal Newman begins one of his poems, Lead, kindly Light . . . lead thou me on!
Soon after I began researching and writing this paper, I decided to follow the path of
light, trusting that the light would lead me on an illuminating journey. For me
personally, there was much exhilaration throughout the journey and, by the time I reached
what is thus far the end a few days ago, I was, and am still, experiencing many luminous
rewards.
In the exhilaration I felt a wonderful levity or lightness of sprit, and in the
luminous light I began to glimpse a marvelous interconnectivity that links all
manifestations of the many and the one, and that unity in diversity constellates a
pervasive principle as to how the universe, and everything in it, hangs beautifully
together through the sometimes secret workings of the Electromagnetic Interaction.
I hope I have been able to share some of this light and levity with you.
*******
More on the nature of light from Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh by
Matthew Fox:
· Matter is frozen light (David Bohm).
· Light and matter are ultimately interchangeable. "There
is no ultimate physical substance to matter."
· "Matter is nothing but gravitationally trapped
light."
· The afterglow of light from the original fireball of the
universe is so significant that "for every one atom of ordinary matter in the
Universe there exist 1 billion light particles."
· While most of the energy of the universe resides in matter,
almost all particles in the universe are those of light.
· For every particle of matter, there are 1 billion particles
of light. "Matter is just a minor pollutant in a Universe made of light" (Ilya
Prigogine).
· At the origin of the universe, all the light of the universe
was compressed in a volume smaller than the point of a needle.
· All the other chemical elements of our bodies (40 percent of
the atoms of our bodies) were forged in the interiors of stars. They are "recycled
star dust."
· Light is a vital ingredient in all atoms and in molecules
and life-forms (including human ones) that are made up of atoms.
· The human body stores immense amounts of light: The 100
trillion atoms in each of our 100 trillion cells together store at least 1028
photons. This is enough light to illuminate a baseball field for three hours with I
million watts of floodlights.
· All nine planets began with the same elements, spun by the
same star and burned with the same energy.
· Only Earth was the proper size so that a balance between
gravity and electromagnetic energy happened, allowing a temperature range to develop where
complex molecules could form.
· The solar cloud that eventually birthed the sun was 5
million times the diameter of the sun.
· The sun contains 99.86 percent of all the substance in the
solar system. The Earth contains only 1/332,000 of the sun’s mass. The sun is 1
million times larger than the Earth — one million Earths can fit inside the sun. The
moon’s entire orbit around the Earth can fit inside the sun.
· Flying at 500 miles per hour, it would take 21 years to
reach the sun from Earth, which is 93 million miles away.
· Ancients considered the sun eternal, but it was born about 5
billion years ago and will die in about 5 billion years.
· The sun is composed "of the same substances as the
Earth and, in fact, the Universe as a whole." An intensely hot sphere of gas, 78
percent of the sun is hydrogen and 20 percent is helium.
· The temperature on the interior of the sun is about 29
million degrees Fahrenheit.
· The sun emits more energy in one second than humankind has
consumed in the whole of its history. One second of the sun’s energy is 13 million
times the annual mean electricity consumption of the United States.
· The Earth receives only 2 parts per billion of the sun’s
total energy output — but this is 10,000 times greater than the total energy
presently consumed by the human race.
· 99.98 percent of all energy passing through the atmosphere
originates in the sun’s core. (The remainder is from starlight, cosmic rays, and
tidal and geothermal energy.)
· Wood and coal are stored-up solar energy; wind and ocean
currents originate from the sun’s radiation, as does our food.
· When coal burns, hibernating sunlight that was imprisoned
for millions of years emerges.
· Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to travel from the sun to
Earth, but previously it took 20,000 years to emerge from the sun to travel into space.
· Photons (or sunlight) take 100,000 years to cross from one
edge of the Milky Way galaxy to the other.
· The Milky Way is spiral, and in this kind of galaxy a kind
of creativity happens that is absent from elliptical galaxies. Generation after generation
of stars recycle the interstellar medium and build increasingly complex chemicals along
the way.
· Stars fill only 1 part in 100 million of the volume of
space.
· If stars were closer together than they are, invisible
high-energy radiation would kill most life-forms living within 2 or 3 light-years."
· The Milky Way is one of maybe 100 billion galaxies in the
universe and one of 30 billion spiral galaxies.
· Our sun and solar system lie about 30,000 light-years from
the center of our galaxy. A car traveling at 100 miles per hour would take 201 billion
years to drive to the center of our galaxy — which is about 20 times the age of our
galaxy.
· Every 18 days our galaxy gives birth to a new star.
· The energy of the Big Bang may have equaled the total energy
of 10 million billion quasars, each of which equals 300 billion suns in light energy
alone.
· Helium constitutes about 25 percent of the universe. With
little or no helium, the universe would have no stars, no light, and no life.
· If helium were 30 percent of the universe instead of 25
percent, our sun would be dying now; and life would not have happened on Earth. If the
intense background radiation had been less during the first second of the universe, this
would have happened.
· At the beginning of the universe, light was trapped and did
not escape for hundreds of thousands of years.
· Several hundred thousands of years after the Big Bang, the
universe cooled enough that electrons married nuclei and created little hydrogen and
helium atoms. From these were born galaxies, stars, planets, and us.
· One second after the Big Bang the radiation era began.
· At the 700,000-year mark, the radiation era ended and matter
separated from radiation and hydrogen was created. In a few billion years, hydrogen and
helium formed the first galaxies and stars.
· Hydrogen is the "blood of the universe.
· When the universe was 9.6 million years old, it was
expanding at 1.98 million miles a second or 10 times faster than the speed of light. Thus
space, not matter, was doing the expanding. A spaceship traveling this fast could get from
Earth to Pluto in less than 25 minutes.
· The oldest fossil in the universe was a fossil of radiation
discovered in 1965. Coming from every direction of the universe, it was a remnant from 1
million years after the Big Bang cataclysm.
*******
A medley of quotes from Richard Feynman on the theme of this paper:
In these lectures I want to tell you about the part of physics that we know best, the
interaction of light and electrons. Most of the phenomena you are familiar with involve
the interaction of light and electrons—all of chemistry and biology, for example. The
only phenomena that are not covered by this theory are phenomena of gravitation and
nuclear phenomena; everything else is contained in this theory.
Is there a limited number of bits and pieces that can be compounded to form all the
phenomena that involve light and electrons? Is there a limited number of
"letters" in this language of quantum electrodynamics that can be combined to
form "words" and "phrases" that describe nearly every phenomenon of
Nature? The answer is yes; the number is three. There are only three basic actions needed
to produce all of the phenomena associated with light and electrons.
—Action #1: A photon goes from place to place.
—Action #2: An electron goes from place to place.
—Action #3: An electron emits or absorbs a photon.
Thus it is that all the phenomena and the arbitrary numbers mentioned in the first two
lectures—such as partial reflection with an amplitude of 0.2, the "slowing"
of light in water and glass. and so on—are explained in more detail by just the three
basic actions—three actions that do, in fact, explain nearly everything else, too.
It is hard to believe that nearly all the vast apparent variety in Nature results from
the monotony of repeatedly combining just these three basic actions. But it does.
That means electrons, unlike photons, do not like to go to the same
place; they avoid each other like the plague—no two electrons with the same
polarization can be at the same point in space-time—it’s called the
"exclusion principle."
This exclusion principle turns out to be the origin of the great variety of chemical
properties of the atoms. One proton exchanging photons with one electron dancing around it
is called a hydrogen atom. Two protons in the same nucleus exchanging photons with two
electrons (polarized in opposite directions) is called a helium atom. You see, the
chemists have a complicated way of counting: instead of saying "one, two, three,
four, five protons," they say, "hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium,
boron."
All the atoms—more than one hundred different kinds—are made up of a certain
number of protons exchanging photons with the same number of electrons. The patterns in
which they gather are complicated and offer an enormous variety of properties: some are
metals, some are insulators, some are gases, others are crystals; there are soft things,
hard things, colored things, and transparent things—a terrific cornucopia of variety
and excitement that comes from the exclusion principle and the repetition again and again
and again of the three very simple actions P(A to B), E(A to B). and j.
You might wonder how such simple actions could produce such a complex world. It’s
because phenomena we see in the world are the result of an enormous intertwining of
tremendous numbers of photon exchanges and interferences. Knowing the three fundamental
actions is only a very small beginning toward analyzing any real situation, where
there is such a multitude of photon exchanges going on that it is impossible to calculate—experience
has to be gained as to which possibilities are more important.
Thus we invent such ideas as "index of refraction" or
"compressibility" or "valence" to help us calculate in an approximate
way when there’s an enormous amount of detail going on underneath. It’s
analogous to knowing the rules of chess— which are fundamental and simple—compared
to being able to play chess well, which involves understanding the character of each
position and the nature of various situations—which is much more advanced and
difficult.
Underneath so many of the phenomena we see every day are only three basic actions: one
is described by the simple coupling number, j; the other two by functions—P(A
to B) and E(A to B)—both of which are closely related. That’s all there is to
it, and from it all the rest of the laws of physics come.
I just wanted to remind you that the effects that we see on a large scale and the
strange phenomena we see on a small scale are both produced by the interaction of
electrons and photons, and are all described, ultimately, by the theory of quantum
electrodynamics.
. . . we’ve solved 99% of the phenomena in the world with electrons and photons.
*******
References:
The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Drunvalo Melchizedek
Awaken Healing Light of the Tao, Mantak & Maneewan Chia
The Body of Light, John Mann and Lar Short
Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind, Arthur Zajonc
The Cosmic Code, Heinz Pagels
Cosmic Consciousness, Richard Maurice Bucke
Electromagnetism and the Sacred, Lawrence W. Fagg
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
E = mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation, David
Bodanis
E = mc2: An Equation That Changed the World, Harald Fritzsch
Empire of Light, Sidney Perkowitz
Facing the Word With Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, Robert Sardello
From Science to God: The Mystery of Consciousness and the Meaning of Light, Peter
Russell
The God Particle, Leon Lederman
Gathering the Light: A Psychology of Meditation, V. Walter Odajnyk
Gravity and Levity, Alan McGlashan
The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story, Brian Swimme
The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto
The Importance of Light, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Light Is a Living Spirit, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
The Marriage of the Sun and Moon: A Quest For Unity In Consciousness, Andrew Weil
Matter and Light: The New Physics, Louis de Broglie
The Mystery of Light, Georg Feuerstein
Natural Grace, Matthew Fox & Rupert Sheldrake
One River, Many Wells, Matthew Fox
The Paradiso, Dante (Translated by John Ciardi)
Photonics: The New Science of Light, Valerie Burkig
The Physics of Angels, Matthew Fox & Rupert Sheldrake
The Pound Era, Hugh Kenner
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Richard P. Feynman
Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists, Ken
Wilbur (Ed.)
Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics, Nick Herbert
Rainbows, Halos, and Glories, Robert Greenler
Sacred Geometry, Robert Lawlor
Science, Order, and Creativity, David Bohm & F. David Peat
The Self-Organizing Universe, Erich Jantsch
The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration of Science and Philosophy, Guy Murchie
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, Matthew Fox
"The Smallest Cells Have Important Lessons To Teach," James A. Shapiro
The Splendour of Tiphareth: The Yoga of the Sun, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, F. David Peat
Toward a Solar Civilization, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Trialogues At the Edge of the West, Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, Rupert
Sheldrake
The Universe of Light, Sir William Bragg
The Universe Story, Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry
Wheels of Light, Rosalyn L. Bruyere
When Science Meets Religion, Ian G. Barbour
|