Luminous Life. Jacob Israel Liberman

to guide their ten-thousand-mile yearly migrations. Despite ocean currents, the whales swim in a straight line — north to feed and south to mate — varying less than one degree longitude from year to year.

      Each fall in Antarctica, emperor penguins march, single file, on a treacherous seventy-mile journey inland to their breeding grounds. Once there, they pair off and mate. After the female lays an egg, she carefully transfers it to the feet of the male, who incubates it in the space between the base of his belly and the top of his feet. The female then returns to the ocean in search of food. For two months, the males huddle together without food, balancing the eggs on top of their feet, while temperatures descend to one hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit and wind speeds reach one hundred miles per hour. In an intricate dance, the males on the inside of the group move toward the periphery as their body temperatures rise, while those on the outside gradually move in to get warm. Later, after the females return and the chicks hatch, the penguins trek en masse seventy miles back to the sea, as if they were one organism — each one a cell in an intricately connected body of life.

      In addition to jellies, whales, and penguins, many other creatures — ranging from butterflies to songbirds — take part in extraordinary migratory journeys guided by something outside themselves that is inseparably aligned with something inside them. When we learn about such feats, we often marvel at these creatures’ amazing ability to travel from point A to point B. In the absence of maps, printed directions, and GPS technology, how do they find their way to their locations — never varying their routes, never getting lost, never second-guessing themselves, and never bickering with one another about the right route to take?

      Most of us only hear about these stories on the Discovery channel or from documentaries such as March of the Penguins. But when we come upon this phenomenon in our own lives, it stops us in our tracks and makes us realize that we miss a lot of activity happening around us.

      When I moved into a rented cottage on Maui, Hawaii, some years ago, I found a little Russian Blue cat with gray fur and yellow eyes sitting on the porch staring at me. I learned that she was feral and that my neighbor Koa called her Pepper, and that she came by around the same time every day. I bought a few cans of cat food from a nearby market, opened one, and left it on the porch. She gobbled it up, so I left food and water on the porch and each day Pepper came to eat. This went on for five months, and we began to grow friendly toward one another.

      One day I saw Koa carrying a cardboard box with Pepper inside.

      “Where are you taking her?” I asked.

      “I have a friend on the other side of the island who wants her.”

      The friend lived thirty-five miles away, and though I was fond of Pepper, I knew it was for the best as I was leaving for Europe within a few days.

      Three months later, after a friend picked me up from the airport and drove me back to the cottage, I found Pepper waiting there for me.

      Surprised, I stepped over to Koa’s cottage. “When did you bring Pepper back?”

      “I didn’t.”

      Together we walked back to my cottage. Once he saw the cat, Koa said, “Oh my God.” Then he called his friend and asked, “Why did you bring the cat back?”

      The friend replied, “I didn’t. She ran away almost as soon as you dropped her off. I never saw her again.”

      Amazed that she had found her way home at the very moment I arrived, I renamed her Lani, which means “heaven” in Hawaiian. Soon I moved to a new home and I took her with me.

      To us, such a journey sounds impossible, especially if we often find ourselves lost within an unfamiliar city or even just within a mall parking lot. In reality, we humans are equipped with the same guidance technology as jellies, whales, and these other amazing creatures. Birds, for instance, appear to have a built-in compass in their eyes, as their retinas contain high concentrations of the light-sensitive protein cryptochrome, which affords them the ability to detect the earth’s magnetic field. But cryptochrome is not unique to birds; it is a prehistoric protein found in microbes, plants, and animals that helps control daily rhythms and the detection of magnetic fields in an increasing number of species. Some researchers believe that birds can actually see these invisible fields superimposed above their normal vision.

      Humans were thought to have only five senses, while animals such as birds, whales, and turtles had a sixth sense that allows them to orient themselves during these long migrations. Recently, however, a team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that the human eye also contains high concentrations of cryptochrome. Moreover, when the human cryptochrome gene is implanted into a fruit fly, after its normal magnetic sixth sense has been altered, it restores its ability to sense magnetic fields like its normal peers. These experiments demonstrate that human cryptochrome can act as a magnetic sensor, suggesting that we too may be equipped with such a sixth sense, aligning us with the intricate navigational system of the planet.

      One obvious difference between these animals and us: they do not override their inner guidance system with thinking. They do not question the arc of the sun. They do not choose to follow or not follow it. They do not trust the light, nor do they distrust it. They merely follow the light as it leads them to their destination. But this begs the question: What is light?

      What Is Light?

      Since humanity’s first sunrise, seers have wondered about the nature of light and suspected that this mysterious and all-pervasive phenomenon must be fundamentally related to our deepest questions about God, life, and the meaning of existence. The Bible tells us that life began with the dawning of light, and virtually every spiritual tradition identifies light with the Creator, speaking of the “divine light,” the “light of God,” and describing spiritual evolution as the process of “enlightenment.”

      Health and well-being are commonly thought of as an emanation of light — or “glow” — a radiance that cannot be described. Glowing physical health is primarily a function of the power of our “inner sun,” and our glow seems to increase as our awareness expands. At full illumination, this radiance becomes visible to the naked eye, which is why great actors are often likened to “stars,” and saints are traditionally depicted as being surrounded by brilliant halos and described as “illumined.”

      Many of our verbal expressions also illustrate the countless ways in which light manifests in our everyday lives. We say that pregnant women are “glowing,” and when we feel inspired we say we have had a “flash” of insight. When someone is very smart, we say they are “brilliant”; and when they have changed their beliefs or thinking, we say they have “seen the light.” When we speak of a new idea, we might say “a light bulb went off.” When we want someone to calm down, we might suggest they “lighten up.”

      Scientists have also puzzled over the nature of light. In 1640 the Italian astronomer Galileo wrote a letter to philosopher Fortunio Liceti stating, “I have always considered myself unable to understand what light was, so much so that I would readily have agreed to spend the rest of my life in prison with only bread and water if only I could have been sure of reaching the understanding that seems so hopeless to me.” Around 1917 the physicist Albert Einstein wrote to a friend, “For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!” By 1951 he confessed that he had spent fifty years of “conscious brooding,” trying to understand the nature of light yet was no closer to the answer than when he began.

      In the process of chasing the mystery of light, however, Einstein developed the theory of relativity, establishing that at the speed of light, time ceases to exist. In addition, a photon, which has no mass, can cross the cosmos without using any energy. So for light beams, time and space do not exist.

      More recently, however, quantum physicists have described light as the foundation of reality. This is profoundly significant when we realize that quantum theory is considered the most successful scientific formulation in history and that 50 percent of our current technology is based on it. According to theoretical physicist David Bohm, “Light is energy and it’s also information, content, form, and structure. It’s the potential of everything.”

      We