MAKING LIGHT OF OURSELVES I have a fascination for the quality of light. Perhaps it was because light has always been a symbol for the presence of God and the awareness of who we really are. Light was the first act of creation. Imagine, four thousand years before Einstein, the ancient Hebrews saw the relativity of light and energy. Genesis begins with an explosion of light. We began in light. Later, God would appear to Moses in fire, and the symbol of God's presence in the Temple would be the Ner Tamid, the eternal lamp. The lighting of the lamps on Hanukkah would represent God's continuing presence. It was commonly believed that when we pass over to the next life, our spiritual form will be that of light, and will be attracted to the greater light of God and that of all spiritual beings. This belief is consistent with the literature of the near-death experience where a so-called "being of light" is encountered who provides guidance and instruction. Apparently God as light is a universal archetype. The chief god of the ancient Greeks was Zeus, a sky-god, known through lightning and thunder. When Akhenaten introduced a short-lived Egyptian monotheism, the god he worshiped was Amun-Ra, the sun-god. El was the Canaanite god of light and power whose name was brought into the Hebrew culture, given a plural ending, Elohim, and used as another name for Yahweh. The magi who followed the star to Bethlehem were most likely Zoroastrian priests and devotees of Ahura Mazda, the Persian god of light. (You may remember the Mazda Corporation that manufactured light bulbs. Now it’s the name of a small car which I suppose we are to fantasize travels at the speed of light.) Lucifer, whom we equate with the devil, was a fallen angel whose name means "bearer of light." Virtually all of earth's religions, both ancient and modern, worshiped light in one form or another. Perhaps because, in a very real sense, we ourselves are light. The substance of our bodies is the product of light. Whether we are animal-eaters or vegetarians, the food we eat derives from plants produced by photosynthesis—from light. We need light to survive. There are those who suffer from seasonal affective disorders (SAD). When we are deprived of light, we enter into a winter depression with symptoms of diminished energy, increased sleep, weight gain, social withdrawal, lack of concentration, mood changes, and anxiety. Light is so critical to our physiological and psychological health that it is no wonder the ancient peoples worshiped God as pure light. When Moses asked to see God, God told him it would
be too much for him to bear. If it could be compared to anything,
it would be like looking into the explosion of a nuclear bomb or
the light from a million suns. The Tibetan Book of the Dead says
that when you die, you encounter a dazzling light that is so bright
that only the spiritually prepared can withstand it. It is only by
ridding ourselves of the things of earth, by putting off our mortality
that we can be at home in the spiritual realm. This is what the mystics
called the via negativa, the emptying process, the winnowing and
pruning by which we learn to let go and surrender to the light, to
a love-force greater than we are. Matthew Fox says in his book, The
Physics of Angels, that without this emptying, this kenosis, we can
survive only in such a world as the one we're in. There are healing modalities, such as Jyorei, that use the transmission of light to affect healing and induce harmony, and we know the many benefits of light therapy. We are indeed beings of light, emanating from the One Light. Therefore, if we would fly like the angels, we must make light of ourselves. Dr. Harry L. Serio |
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