There are two
kinds of light. There is the visible light of the sun, by whose aid we can
discern the beauties of the world around us -- without this we could see
nothing. Nevertheless, though it is the
function of this light to make things visible to us, it cannot give us the
power to see them or to understand what their various charms may be, for this
light has no intelligence, no consciousness. It is the light of the intellect
which gives us knowledge and understanding, and without this light the physical
eyes would be useless. This light of the
intellect is the highest light that exists, for it is born of the Light
Divine. The light of the intellect
enables us to understand and realize all that exists, but it is only the Divine
Light that can give us sight for the invisible things, and which enables us to
see truths that will only be visible to the world thousands of years
hence. It was the Divine Light which
enabled the prophets to see two thousand years in advance what was going to
take place and today we see the realization of their vision. Thus it is this
Light which we must strive to seek, for it is greater than any other.
(Paris Talks:68)
We often think of human consciousness
through the metaphors light and sight: the light of consciousness, the brilliant thought,
etc., and couple this image with words like insight and vision to
differentiate physical sight from something intellectual. But as there are three kinds or strata of
light, according the statement from ‘Abdu’l-Baha above, (i.e. visible light, light of the intellect, Light Divine) there are, also, three
kinds of "seeing"—looking through the eyes; looking intellectually with the mind;
God looking through us by our spiritual faculty which is true vision. This last one is possible because Baha’u’llah says: “Thy hearing is My hearing, hear thou therewith. Thy
sight is My sight, do thou see therewith…”(The Hidden Words, Arabic 44)
From the other side, each of these modes of “seeing” must possess a locus or seat.
I mean that if there exists a spiritual faculty to perceive Him, then it
would have both a biological and a psychological seat and mechanism, namely, the eyes and the intellect. Many biologists would give precedence to the material seat, or rule out any other seat altogether. But to say there is a biological seat doesn’t
mean it is only biological, or that biology is the foundation of either the mental or the spiritual. There is a separation, of
course, but to think consciousness is all biological is separation gone pathological. The equally pathological view is that all is either spiritual or psychological. Consciousness is con-scious, or sharing knowledge. It is never a thing, but always at least two "things" in relation. Every field is
an immaterial mediator, but it is also physically real.
Thought is the invisible field that
constitutes visible light, where light is the movement through a substance called the ether.
Divine thought is higher than human thought and is the field of
consciousness that constitutes human thought.
It sets the boundaries of the knowable for any age, as Baha’u’llah says:
"Knowledge
is all that is knowable; and might and power, all creation."(The
Kitab-i-Iqan:185)
It is divine thought that creates
the universe through the Creative Word. “Praise
and thanksgiving be unto Providence that out of all the realities in existence
He has chosen the reality of man and has honored it with intellect and wisdom,
the two most luminous lights in either world. Through the agency of this great
endowment, He has in every epoch cast on the mirror of creation new and
wonderful configurations. If we look objectively upon the world of being, it
will become apparent that from age to age, the temple of existence has
continually been embellished with a fresh grace, and distinguished with an
ever-varying splendor, deriving from wisdom and the power of thought.
This supreme emblem of God stands first
in the order of creation and first in rank, taking precedence over all created
things. Witness to it is the Holy Tradition, "Before all else, God created
the mind." From the dawn of creation, it was made to be revealed in the
temple of man.”(Abdu'l-Baha,
The Secret of Divine Civilization:1)
Within the universal field of the physical
creation itself there are smaller fields, like the electro-magnetic fields and
the gravitational field. The goal of the
Unified Field Theory of physics is to mathematically unite all four forces in the atom in
order to get a complete conceptual understanding of physical phenomena. But
this requires that we also understand how the laws of human thought effect the physical universe. This will be extraordinarily difficult to do because quantum physics proves that human observation
irreversibly modifies the thing observed.
But understanding human thought, in turn, requires some grasp of divine
thought—which is today the revelation of Baha’u’llah. This is so because every interconnection
of fields changes a more elementary union of order/disorder into the need for a
greater organization and coordination that we call transformation.
Now, interestingly enough, both higher
and lower orders of light and understanding are perceived as darkness. The animal’s intelligence is dark to us, and:
“The animal cannot conceive of the power of thought.” (Baha'i Scriptures: 364) Likewise, God’s thought, the divine Light
suffused throughout the creation, is dark and impenetrable to us. Traditional theology calls this darkness of
understanding the darkness of God—and T.S Eliot mentions it in his poem East
Coker. And when we are in a state of
disbelief scripture calls it “darkness.”
The universe appears mostly dark to us. But modern physics says that dark matter and
dark energy are far more plentiful than what we see of matter and energy, these
latter making up less than ten percent of known energies. If we looked spiritually all would be light!
Light connects space and time, Planck’s constant being their measured connection, for
a universal constant bridges two realms that seem incommensurable. Likewise universal Revelation brings humanity
and Divinity into relation. Electrons
are not individuals, but instances of universals, as every human being is an unique configuration of all human qualities. A particle of light is a holographic manifestation of the whole physical universe, as any one thought is the manifestation of the complete field of human thought. One metaphor in Revelation is a manifestation of the entire field of Divine thought. Elementary particles of physics possess an
identical nature, for in the beginning matter was one and gradually evolved
forms through the impact of Divine thought. The electron field
co-exists with those manifestations which are its individual electrons in
different states. These electrons and
other quanta are manifestations of a deeper level of reality—what David Bohm
calls the Implicate Order or the quantum fields of reality.
In thought, paradox is the
midwife of new vision. Like Planck's constant, it is the middle term of coordination linking realms of
perception. In language the same connection is via the symbol. Sacred symbols are lights of spiritual
knowledge, each a nodal point or nexus of power in the field of supernal Light,
as the physical stars are concretions of the universal field of natural light, and ideas are revelations of the light of the human intelligence.
A magnetic field is a torus shape. Its center is the original place or
habitation out from which radiate lines of force, both spiritual and organic, for all created things have these two origins.
Lines of force are the result of the new radiance encountering the constraints
of the existing surrounding medium, and this generation and restraint throws
the system into a state of polarization that structures the field. Entering the field of opposites transforms
that which is transcendent into polarized energies. Resonance
and interference together reflect a shared but hidden third reality.
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