Spirituality & Light - What/Why the connection?

I mentioned the Golden Chain in relation to philosophy in this other thread, but an excerpt for the Chain's specific relation to Light:

In the Athenian school of Syrianus and Proclus, the Homeric image of the Golden Chain (seire chruseie, Iliad VIII.18), stretching from Heaven to Earth, was used to describe both the unbroken ver­tical connection with the first principles (noetic sources of the demiurgic descent, as well as paradigms of the revealed wisdom), and the horizontal, or historical, succession of the qualified masters and interpreters—a succession which was not always based exclu­sively on direct physical relations. In fact, the Golden Chain is the same as the Hermaic Chain. This chain was both the chain of theo­phany, manifestation, or descent (demiourgike seira), and the ladder of ascent. This imagery of the Golden Chain was inseparable from the metaphysics of light and solar symbolism. Socrates also regard­ed the Homeric Golden Rope as referring to the Sun. It signified that “so long as the Heavens and the Sun continue to move round, all things in Heaven and Earth are kept going, whereas if they were bound down and brought to a stand, all things would be destroyed and the world, as they say, turned upside down” (Plato, Theaet. 153c8–d5). Thus, the Emperor Julian’s claimed descent from the Sun (Helios) meant his vertical (or inner) relationship with the divine Intellect which was the source of illumination and manifes­tation of the logos, or logismos—including the power of reasoning in general.

Excerpt from Irreducible Mind regarding Frederic Myer's views of consciousness:

To illustrate this view of our ordinary self as a "segment" of a larger Self, Myers used an analogy with the electromagnetic spectrum. Specifi­cally, he suggested that the Individuality or larger Self can be thought of as analogous to a ray of light which, when filtered through a prism, appears as a continuum, or spectrum, of colors. Our ordinary waking consciousness corresponds only to that small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the naked eye (and varies from species to species); but just as the electromagnetic spectrum extends in either direction far beyond the small portion normally visible to us, so human consciousness extends in either direction beyond the small portion of which we are ordinarily aware. In the "infrared" region of consciousness are older, more primitive pro­cesses-processes that are unconscious, automatic, and primarily physi­ological. Thus, "at the red end (so to say) consciousness disappears among the organic processes" (Myers, 1894-1895, p. 197). Sleep, for example, and its associated psychophysiological processes are an important manifesta­tion of an older, more primitive state (Myers, 1892e; HP, chap. 4). In con­trast, in the "ultraviolet" region of the spectrum are all those mental capaci­ties that remain latent because they have not yet emerged at a supraliminal level through adaptive evolutionary processes. In the "ultraviolet" region, therefore, are those new modes of functioning that appear-rarely, fitfully, and briefly. They are the "super-conscious operations" that are "not below the threshold-but rather above the upper horizon of consciousness" (Myers, l886b, p. 285), supernormal phenomena that "indicate a higher evolution­ary level. .. above the norm of man rather than outside his nature" (Myers, l896a, p. 174; see also l885b, p. 30n). Such latent, "ultraviolet" capacities include telepathy, the inspirations of creative genius, mystical perceptions, and other such phenomena that occasionally emerge.

I saw the Earth covered by a single great Tree whose multiple roots fed on the Inner Sun of gold, the lumen naturae. It was a tree whose limbs were made of light and the branches were lovingly entangled so that it made of itself a network of beauteous love.

And is seemed as if it were lifting itself out of the broken seeds of many, countless egos who had now allowed the One Self to break forth. And when one beheld this, the sun and the moon and the planets turned out to be something quite, quite other than one had thought.

From what I could make out, the Lord himself was the Alchemist, and out of collective swarming and suffering, ignorance and pollution, He was "trying" the gold.

 -Alice O. Howell

Physicist Ulrich Morhroff's review and commentary of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee's Alchemy of Light

Our Higher Self carries a light that belongs to God. When we are born, we carry a spark of  this  light  into  our  human  incarnation;  it  illuminates  the  experiences  of  our  early  childhood, showing us a world that is fully alive, full of magic and wonder. But slowly, as the  adult  world  closes  around  us,  the  spark  of  our  Higher  Self  gets  covered  over  by  the  dust and debris of the world, of our conditioning, our desires, our concern with success and failure, our need to compete; it “fades into the common light of day.” It might reap-pear briefly, as the light of conscience that tries to point us in the right direction or the spark  of  intuition  that  comes  unbidden  into  our  consciousness.  But  mostly  it  is  hidden,  forgotten  like  the  wonder  of  the  world  we  saw  as  children.  We  no  longer  see  the  world  by the bright light of what is real; we see “through a glass darkly,” through the shadowy, distorting light of the ego. 

But the moment can come when, through the grace of God, the spark within us rekindles and  we  see  again  with  its  light.  This  is  the  most  precious  moment  in  the  life  of  a  soul,  when we reconnect with our divine nature, when the journey Home begins. 

Our  reawakening  to  this  light  can  take  many  forms:  we  might  meet  a  teacher,  be  inspired  by  a  spiritual  text,  or  in  a  sudden  unexplained  moment  of  truth  experience  our  eternal nature. Whatever the outer form, inwardly the moment is the same: the Higher Self  gives  us  an  energy  that  comes  into  our  heart  and  the  spark  of  light  that  is  our  gift  from  God  begins  to  glow.  The  light  of  the  Self  awakens  and  brings  its  divine  consciousness  into  our  life.  In  this  light  we  glimpse  our  true  nature  and  the  divine  in  life  all  around  us.  Usually  the  glimpse  lasts  just  for  a  brief  moment,  and  then  the  shadows  of  our ego, our mind, and the world close around us again. But it is enough to turn us away from life’s illusions, to draw us on the eternal search. . .

From the communicator "EK", as told to the medium Jane Sherwood

This was no earthly beauty. There was a light on things and in them so that everything proclaimed itself vividly alive. Grass, trees, and flowers were so lighted inwardly by their own beauty that the soul breathed in the miracle of perfection. . . .

I am almost at a loss to describe the heavens as I saw them from my hillside. The light radiated from no one direction, it was a glowing, universal fact, bathing everything in its soft radiance so that the sharp shadows and dark edges which define objects on earth were missing. Each thing glowed or sparkled with its own light and was lighted as well by the circumambient splendour. The sky, as I looked upward was like a vast pearl gleaming with opalescent colours. There was a suggestion of unfathomable depths of space as the shimmering colours parted their transparencies to show the infinite abyss. I was awakened from my absorption by the sound of voices. If the loveliness of tree and flower had held me spellbound my first sight of fellow beings gave me more cause to rejoice. Here was another form of life, a more complex one which also emanated its own lovely qualities in visible rays. These people were more than alive; life streamed from them, palpitating with their emotions, lit and splendid with their joy and waxing and waning with its intensity. Here, again, bodies were not defined by shadows and the softer outlines were glorious with the out-flowing life. I trembled at their approach and felt like an interloper from a lower sphere. They came toward me, greeted me and reassured me . . . now I had to realize that I was one of them and was glad to go with them and learn something of the conditions of my new life.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (pp. 300-301). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Note: All the usual concerns for safety using psychedelics apply. And recall that illegal purchases can easily be a different substance than the one you think you are getting as per the documentary "What's in my Baggie?"

Made of Bright Light: Scientist reflects on his psychedelic research

Marisa Demarco

I found that DMT reliably caused people’s consciousness to enter into an apparently freestanding independent universe made out of bright light—intensely colored, intensely saturated bright light. It was quite reliable in doing this.

Consciousness of the volunteer in that state was also disembodied. The experience to the volunteer felt as if they no longer had a body, and they were just pure consciousness entering into this world of light.

Also, it was quite a common occurrence and reported by volunteers that they encountered beings made of light who were sentient, intelligent and interacted with volunteers. Those were probably the most common things that we found. I was expecting near-death experiences to be more common, but they were quite rare. I was expecting mystical states, like the Buddhist enlightenment experience, to be quite common, and they were quite rare.

I think I’m more comfortable as thinking of it as a mediator between physical and spiritual processes. By spiritual, I don’t mean new age, I more mean things which are occurring out of our consciousness most of the time. With the aid of DMT, you can access things which were previously invisible.

On Geomancy and Light

Polyphanes

...So where do we end up?  We have a particularly beautiful attribute of the divine, “the Light”, used in the worship and reverence of God in Islam, the religious culture in which geomancy historically developed.  To be extraordinarily terse, notions of divine light fill numerous religious and philosophical traditions as being representative of divinity, especially in any Western tradition influenced by Neoplatonism, Abrahamic faiths, or Hermeticism.  This can be further stretched through a bit of numerology, connecting the word for Light to words for fire, illumination, revelation, and truth.  Calling God “the Light” is a lot more than just thinking of that which allows us to see; God is, in a more complete sense of this attribute, the sudden and revealing flash of illumination that allows us to see that which is true and real, bringing it out of darkness, forgetfulness, and ignorance  God is the quiet, true Light behind all Fire, able to spread and open doors of wisdom to us, communicating to us on an intellectual and emotional level through our sense faculties.  This Light is not just a quiet flame in a dimmed lamp that barely illuminates the shelf it sits on, but it is a fierce, conquering, undeniable, unassailable blast into the darkness, a Light that completely destroys and wipes away anything that could or would try to cover it, a Light that breaks into the cracks of any door, window, wall, or mind and fills every niche, crevice, and corner with its presence.   It is the Light of God, or even the Light that is God, that allows the unseen to be seen, the hidden to be revealed, the unknown to be known, and the forgotten to be remembered.  God is not just Light, but the Light of Light, Light within Light, and Light upon Light.

More than that, this sacred Light of the Mind and of the Word can reach us at any place and at any time, but we can approach it too through the devout study of the mysteries of the geomantic figures, specifically in how they add up amongst themselves in their 256 different combinations.  This same illuminating Light is the fundamental impulse from which the first stirrings of knowledge can be made, and provide the seeds themselves from with the four Mothers in geomantic divination are formed, from whom the entire rest of the geomantic process can be derived.  The Light of God is the necessary existent in order for us to see and know things by geomancy.  Understanding the geomantic figures themselves to be representative of the actual combinations of the four elements amongst the elements in 4 × 4 = 16 ways, and the combinations of elements amongst themselves in 16 × 16 = 256 ways, all of the possible things that come to be in the world and all the ways in which they pass into being and pass out of being are also undergirded by the Light of God, being ways in which that same Light emanates from God into the world, condensing through the four elements from Fire to Air to Water to Earth, mixing and matching between all possible states.  All this is fundamentally Light.

I always felt that Light was important for me to focus on in a religious and spiritual sense.  It’s nice to see that all coming together in ways that the ancients themselves would appreciate, and in ways that show me new things in new combinations.  And, perhaps, to reinforce the habit of keeping a lit candle or lamp burning nearby when I do geomancy.

James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish Barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a visual artist, and author of The Mystery of the Trapped Light: Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism plus The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution. In addition, he has written two dystopian novels -- Blue Lies September, and Ireland I Don't Recognize Who She Is. His website is http://www.jamestunney.com.

Here he focuses on the distinctions between physical light and many forms of spiritual light, including magical light, Egyptian light, and divine light. He reflects on the multiple meanings of the notion of light entrapped within matter or flesh. He argues that scientism, to the extent that it denies the realities of the spirit, is a dark cultural force. He also points out the high value that spiritual traditions place upon darkness.

Augustine on Divine Illumination

Edward Feser

...For example, how could we know the Form of Triangle from experience of particular individual triangles?  For any such triangle is neither necessary nor eternal, but comes into being and passes away. It is also imperfect, lacking the perfect straightness of sides that a triangle is supposed to have given its essence.  And any sensory representations or mental images we can form of a triangle are going to have the same defects.  Whatever else we can know of a triangle through sensation and imagination, the necessity, eternity, and perfection of the Form it participates in cannot be known that way.

Now, compare such a triangle to a red object sitting in a dark room, or to a red stained glass window on a moonless night.  The redness is there in the object or the window, but you will not see it without light.  You see the red of the object when light shines on it, and the red of the window when the light shines through it.  Absent such light, the redness will be invisible, even if you can know other features of such objects (by touching them say).  But the presence of the light immediately reveals the redness to the eye.  You might even say: “Aha!  It’s red!”

Similarly, Augustine holds, something analogous to light, but coming from God – in whom exists the Form of Triangle in all its necessity, eternity, and perfection – is what reveals these properties to the “eye” of the human intellect.  You might even have a flash of understanding that yields an “Aha!”

Illuminating illumination

The analogy between divine illumination and Plato’s comparison of the Form of the Good to the sun makes the general outlines of Augustine’s idea clear enough.  But making out the details is difficult.  Exactly what does this “illumination” amount to?  Obviously it does not involve light of the ordinary sort.  But what, then?...

Light

Misha Rogov

One night, a few months after my NDE, I had a dream:

I am sitting on the couch in my apartment, my belly is ripped open, everything hurts and burns there, I am bleeding, acute torment completely takes hold of me, I am doused with cold sweat, breath heavily and realize that this is the end. Somewhere far away, as if a thousand miles away, someone is calling 911 and in a terrible voice screaming that I am dying. My gaze settles on the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its lamps glow brightly, the light is refracted in the faceted pieces of crystal, and the shining, idle and mundane, seems to be completely disproportionate to what is happening to me. Suddenly, when my suffering reaches an unbearable limit, through the electric light I begin to see a completely different — alive — light that seems as if it was always there behind a veil and now it breaks through to me, into me. The bright, quiet, and pure white Light of absolute truth, freedom, love, and beauty. Perfection. And the brighter the Light shines through the shroud of electric light, the more clearly I realize that the Light is shining from my heart, that it is my Ultimate Self. My suffering is fading away while the Light is growing brighter and brighter, everything around is dissolving in it, everything that I know about myself, what I consider to be my self is dissolving in it. And at the very last line, on the edge of dissolving in the Light completely, I suddenly realize that this is not a dream, I become terrified of losing my self forever, and the next moment I wake up.