Luminous Life. Jacob Israel Liberman

by light. According to German writer and politician Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “All life originates and develops under the influence of. . .light.” This becomes obvious when we experimentally place plants, animals, or humans in darkened environments and notice that their vitality and well-being gradually diminish, bringing their lives to a halt. Without light, there is no will to live. We are literally robbed of the spark that propels our spirit.

      With such recognitions, the artificial distinctions we have between science, health care, and spirituality are dissolving, and each is being traced back to light. Mystics, scientists, and healers now agree, in their respective terms, that light holds the secret to human awakening, healing, and transformation. Yet we still do not understand what light is.

      Light is made up of photons, and it is believed that subatomic particles are composed of photons, which are the fundamental building blocks of what we call matter or reality. Photons are formless, invisible, and without attributes. They have no mass, weight, or electrical charge, and thus cannot be directly perceived or measured.

      That is why we never truly see light. And yet everything we see, hear, smell, and touch is made of photons. According to American polymath and author Walter Russell, not only is seeing “a sensation of feeling light waves through our eyes,” but “hearing is a sensation of feeling light waves through our ears. Tasting and smelling are sensations of feeling light waves reacting upon mouth and nostrils.”

      David Bohm took things a step further when he stated, “All matter is frozen light.” The quantum reality Bohm describes is founded on a simple principle: light and life are the same energy in two different states of existence, form (matter) and formlessness (light). In its formed or frozen state, light energy composes all the matter in the universe — everything we see, touch, and measure. Bohm’s statement refers to the transformation of light into matter — how light becomes life, its potential energy, described by Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2. What is just as important, however, is how life or matter can, once again, become light.

      You might be able to more easily picture the seamless interplay between the form and the formless if you think of plants and how they are guided and transformed by light throughout their life cycle.

      First, a plant “sees” where light is emanating and naturally positions itself to be in optimal alignment with it. This ability to sense different qualities and quantities of light is crucial to a plant’s survival, as it ensures the leaves are in prime position to collect sunlight with the least effort while guiding the roots toward soil with its ideal moisture.

      This miraculous process of a plant being in the right place at the right time facilitates the process of photosynthesis, whereby sunlight bonds carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂O) to create sugar, the essential fuel that powers organic systems. When humans and animals consume plants, that bond is dissolved once again, dividing sugar into carbon dioxide and water. The carbon dioxide is then eliminated via the lungs, and the water via perspiration and urination, leaving only light within the organism.

      In essence, we live on sunlight. Plants absorb the formless energy of light from the sun and store it in their leaves. When we eat those plants, we literally ingest frozen light, use it, and what remains is its formless essence. . .light.

      In the second edition of his book Opticks, published in 1717, Sir Isaac Newton says, “Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.”

      We respond to light like plants, continuously moving toward greater alignment with the light and the consciousness that underlies it, while interacting with the qualities and quantities of light that best support our physical, emotional, and spiritual development. We are all creatures of light.

      How Light Guides Us

      In this very moment, light is guiding your eyes to these words, illuminating meaning and creating a connection between you and this book. That connection is called presence. Without light you would not be able to see these words. They simply would not appear to your eyes. Light literally brings the words to you, creating a sense of inseparability between perception and meaning. The light that brings you the words you read also brings “to light” the people, situations, and opportunities required to spur your evolution. It takes you by the hand and leads you where you need to be and when you need to be there. And light’s guidance has no side effects. However, we must remember how to recognize it.

      It is the same with everything we see. Light — from the sun, from lamps, from fire — reflects off objects and interacts with our eyes, releasing energy and information about those objects, which are then magically transformed into an image that appears full of light. But, it is not actually light. It is just a mental interpretation that we experience as brightness.

      Many people think of the eyes as two cameras mounted on the face, but in reality they are elaborate and complex extensions of the brain, and each of these extensions is designed to both absorb and emit light. Each eye contains 126 million photoreceptors. Approximately 95 percent of these receptors (called rods) are distributed spaciously throughout the retina. The other 5 percent (called cones) are primarily compacted into a tiny area called the macula. Rods are extremely sensitive, functioning under low-level light conditions and responding to motion. Cones are less sensitive, adapted to color perception and high-resolution vision.

      Based on their design, rods seem to be able to sense things before our conscious mind registers their form. In fact, researchers from Rockefeller University and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Austria recently demonstrated that the human eye can detect a single photon of light. Since a photon is the smallest undividable unit of energy, this discovery clearly confirms that our eyes are designed to operate at the quantum level of reality, and our vision has been honed by evolution to function at its maximum potential.

      Yet photons are technically invisible. They do not create an image that the brain can see, yet this minute amount of light still “calls” the eye, giving new meaning to eighteenth-century essayist Jonathan Swift’s statement, “Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.” In response to this infinitesimally subtle invitation, the eye reflexively moves toward that which is calling it, and it does this without our conscious awareness. According to Alipasha Vaziri, the study’s lead researcher, “The most amazing thing is that it’s not like seeing light. It’s almost a feeling, at the threshold of imagination.”

      Cones inspect things carefully when the situation demands it but require significantly brighter light to do so. So when your optometrist asks you which is better, number one or number two, your cones allow you to know the difference. As you can see, vision is primarily a global process that continuously aligns us with the greater whole and zeros in on details only when necessary. Our life experiences are primarily the result of the ongoing interaction that links our eyes with light.

      The process of vision — our response to what we see — begins within a few quadrillionths of a second after light enters the eye, enabling the information encoded in light to be transmitted to, and interpreted by, the brain and all systems connected to it at light speed. We might think, “Look at that car.” In reality, light bounced off the car, attracted our eye, entered our brain, and sent signals down various nerve endings long before the thought “Look at that” surfaced. Hence the wisdom behind the expression “It caught my eye.” Yet rarely do we ask what the “it” is to which we are referring. My sense is that this “it” is the same light the Bible refers to as “God,” and quantum physicists describe as the formless bedrock of consciousness guiding every step of our lives — the intelligence of life.

      Light guides more than just our eyesight. It also guides our breathing, our heartbeat, our sleep-wake cycle, and much more. The eye contains nonvisual, light-sensing cells that are developed and functioning long before the rods and cones that process light into vision are operative. In fact, these cells may be present at birth, confirming that light entering the eyes directs our body’s homeodynamic process from the earliest stages of life.

      When