Divine Light?

Many religions associate spirituality with light. The “divine light” of Christianity, the “clear light” of Buddhism and the general notion of enlightenment are examples. Though the religious symbolism of light is rich and varied, the deepest sense of this “light” is something that can only be known or understood by experiencing it directly by a kind of enlightenment.

While the various religions interpret the divine light in supernatural terms, naturalism rejects that interpretation. Neuroscience shows that like everything else that goes on in our mind, such enlightenment is caused by the brain and its chemistry. A facsimile of such a state can be brought about by drugs. Mescaline, for instance, creates such an experience, as Aldous Huxley describes in his book The Doors of Perception.

In reducing the experience of enlightenment to brain chemistry, I do not wish to diminish the value of the experience. Though such an experience can be a doorway to delusion, it can also be a doorway through which one transforms his or her life into something genuinely more saintly.

In the experience of the “divine light” the ego is momentarily extinguished. To keep the divine light lit, we must learn to curb the ego. The ego always returns, which is a good thing, but to have a foothold, however small, in egolessness is, I believe, critical for spiritual growth.

The Light of Physics
One of the more interesting chapters in the history of science is the one that examines the early investigations into such phenomena as magnetism, static electricity, and light and culminates in the experiments of Michael Faraday and Maxwell’s summarizing of those discoveries in the set of equations. From Maxwell’s equation, you can derive the waveform of electromagnetic energy (EM), the speed of light and ultimately a lot of what makes up our modern technological world.

Equally interesting is the next chapter of that story. This chapter goes into the discovery of the relatively complex structure of the atom and the critical role of EM in that structure. It also delves into the quantum nature of light, including the mysterious idea that it is simultaneously a wave and a particle. It also contains the discovery that at the core of that most amazing light, our sun, is the equation E=MC2. Sunlight is energy hidden in matter. A person really familiar with this chapter will never talk about “mere matter.” 

That atoms are composed of positively and negatively charged particles allows atoms to bond with other atoms – and bond they do, forming countless different molecules. EM is what allows chemistry to happen and chemistry is what allows biology to happen. To summarize my point here: EM is an intricate and elegant phenomena; one might go as far as saying it is somewhat miraculous, practically divine. 

The Light of Awareness
What is Awareness? What is this subtle “something” that underlies all our conscious activity; that forms the base of our being – perhaps I should say is our being? Here, I want to suggest that it is ultimately of the same nature as the EM of physics, an electromagnetic phenomenon. But it is an aspect of EM that can’t quite be captured by reductive science. 

That the brain runs on EM and transmits information throughout its vast neural networks through the use of EM is well known to neuroscience. The immediate source of neural energy is glucose. Mitochondria in the brain cells, as in other bodily cells, is able to metabolize glucose to release the photons of energy that at some earlier time plants harvested from the sun. Ultimately the brain runs on sunlight. 

The experience of awareness has frequently been referred to as an experience of light. So I am suggesting here that this is not merely a metaphor or analogy. I am suggesting that in our experience of awareness (and the awareness of our experience) we are actually experiencing a mysterious aspect of EM – and that this mysterious aspect somehow gives this material world a subjective aspect, a conscious awareness. 

But I do not mean to suggest that all light is aware. Just as a radio needs a specific kind of complex circuitry to turn radio waves into the music we can hear, so the nervous system provides the specific complex circuitry that converts EM into awareness. 

This is all metaphysical speculation and only a brief sketch of the whole idea. But I would ask, if awareness is not an aspect of EM, then what else can it be? 

At any rate, I find it a beautiful idea. I am something of a Pantheist, which is to say I believe in a God that is immanent in the world, and thus immanent in each of us. But unlike the idealist Pantheism of some Eastern religions, I suggest a materialist Pantheism. God is immanent in us as awareness, and is an aspect of light. 

I have in my life tried as best I can to understand three great questions: What is the nature of the world, what is the nature of the self, and what is the interrelation of the two. What I have written here is, I believe, the deepest answer to that third question. Each of us is the inner dimension of the outer world, the subjectivity of the material world. The awareness that lights our inner world is essentially related to the light of the outer world. And essentially related to the atomic forces that hold things together and generate the world’s creativity.

Thou Art That!

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