The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [40]
Assuming we are here to discover our basic nature as beings made from invisible aliveness, the seeming solidity of the material world provides an effective learning environment to develop our capacity for reflective wisdom. Although we are created from invisible life energy, we may not recognize this to be our true nature. We are like clouds that do not realize we are made from the sky. It is a gift of this world to provide us with innumerable opportunities to encounter ourselves with clarity so we can discover the remarkable nature of our being.
Although our core nature is ultimately beyond description, four qualities of our soulful experience are recognized by the world’s wisdom traditions and can be cultivated in our everyday lives. We turn to our soulful nature as a body of light, music, love, and knowing.
A Body of Light
Physicists have described light (photons) as the most fundamental, insubstantial, and free of all energies. Given the convertibility of matter and energy, we can say light is the most delicate form of material expression. Physicist Bernhard Haisch has written, “The solid, stable world of matter appears to be sustained at every instant by an underlying sea of quantum light.”3 The visible universe rides on the surface of this sea of quantum light. Physicist David Bohm describes matter as “condensed or frozen light.” Light is “. . . the fundamental activity in which existence has its ground.”4 Because we live in a universe of light, it is fitting to describe the soul as a body of light that has the potential to evolve into more subtle ecologies of light after the physical body dies.
Light is a common theme in the world’s wisdom traditions. From the New Testament we read, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (John 1:5). Jesus proclaims the divine light within us, saying “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). When his disciples ask Jesus to show them the place where he abides, he says to them, “There is a light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world.” Elsewhere, in The Gospel of Thomas, Jesus makes an extraordinary comment that would have pleased Einstein, who saw light as a fundamental reality in our universe. Jesus said “If they say to you, ‘Where have you come from?’ say to them, ‘We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.”5 Jesus saw the universe as a place of literal light, and each human being as a light that came into existence from light itself. Jesus speaks on behalf of the light within the universe when he says “I am the light that shines over all things. I am all. From me did all come forth, and to me all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.” In language appropriate for his time as well as for modern physics, Jesus was saying we are literally beings of light and telling “whoever has ears to hear” not to overlook this subtle but immensely important fact.
Gregory Palamas (1296—1359) was a monk and theologian who was venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church. He put forth the view that it is through light that God communicates with the world. For Palamas, the physical light that illuminates the outer world is only a pale reflection of its deeper, non-physical radiance. Light is also filled with the gnosis, or knowledge, that provides inner illumination. By directly absorbing the wisdom within light, Palamas believed we could bring transcendent insight into our lives.
The idea of inner light is central to the Quaker (Society of Friends) view of the universe. Quakers believe that every person is born with an Inner Light and they sometimes refer to themselves as “Children of the Light.”6 This light can be discovered when