2018-05-10, 10:00 PM
"My Body is but Wax and Wick for Flame. When the Candle Burns Out, the Light Shines elsewhere."
~ Egyptian Book of the Dead
“Life is a pure flame and we live by an Invisible Sun within us.”
~ Thomas Browne
From Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality:
~ Egyptian Book of the Dead
“Life is a pure flame and we live by an Invisible Sun within us.”
~ Thomas Browne
From Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality:
Quote:Luminosity and knowing are frequently mentioned together in mystical testimonies, which can suggest that the two have a basic connection and are not really distinct:
I lost all normal consciousness and became engulfed as it were in a great cloud of light and an ecstasy of knowing and understanding all the secrets of the Universe, and a sense of the utmost bliss in the absolute certainty of the perfection and piercing purity of goodness in the Being in whom it seemed all were finally enclosed, and yet in that enclosure utterly liberated.
(RERC No. 000514, in Beardsworth, 1977, p. 32)
The connection can be made explicitly too. Irina Starr (1991) experienced a light in the objects around her, a light that was “intelligent” in some way:
There was the luminous quality— a light which contained color in the way that a brilliant diamond refracts color, only this color seemed an integral part of the essential substance and not a form of refracted light. The one thing which was, above all, significant was that everything was literally alive; the light was living, pulsating, and in some way I could not quite grasp, intelligent. The true substance of all I could see was this living light, beautiful beyond words.
It is not just knowing that is inseparable from the light. There can be a fusion of qualities in which light, knowing, love, bliss, life, and timelessness come together. A mystical experience in natural surroundings brought a luminosity that united everything within itself:
“we flowed into, became, the great Golden Light— the rocks, trees, etc. and this ‘I’ were no longer just kindred separatenesses. We disappeared. We became the Light which is Love, Bliss. This Light was neither hot nor cold; but Love, Consciousness, Eternity, It”
(J. P. W., in Johnson, 1959, p. 66).
It seems that luminosity, knowing, love, and bliss are so integral to the mystical consciousness that they are inseparable from it and one another.
What observations can be made on the above? If mystical experiences truly are metaphysical windows, then the reports suggest that luminous quality is fundamental to reality, an intrinsic characteristic of the world at large and of consciousness at its deeper levels. Some mystical accounts indicate that the world was not only flooded with luminosity but seemed to be made of it. While the ascription of experiential light qualities to the external world goes against common scientific and philosophical opinion, there is good reason to suppose that luminosity is no mere epiphenomenal “glow” generated by and confined to brain activity. Ever since early modern thinkers revived ancient atomism and banished “secondary qualities” from the universe, including color qualities, it has become a great mystery how the brain can support experience. However, if the brain is itself an intrinsically luminous structure, part of a luminous world, there is no puzzling mind– body gap between visual experience and the brain, and the problematic dualist split of mind and matter is eased in this regard.