Illumination: A Discourse on the Power of Light

      No matter how much we think we know about light, there is always something more to learn, something confounding, something mysterious lurking somewhere.  But the fact that something as common as light can be deemed a mystery is itself something mysterious and baffling.  How can light, which makes things lucid and makes mysteries known, be elusive and mysterious? In all my studies, it appears that light has shed light on all things except itself.  Apparently, science has come up with tentative answers regarding the nature of light, the speed of light, and so forth, but those answers are not enough. We’ve made extensive progress in understanding light, but, it appears our progress is not progressive enough. We’ve harnessed the power of light to explore and solve many problems in our world, but we’ve not yet begun to explore the world of light itself.

      Light doesn’t seem so much as a mystery worth a page or two until you take out some time to reflect on its existence. Light, if you examine it carefully, is something magical. If ghosts exist, then light is one of such entities, if not the father. We can think of light, but we can’t see it. We can only see things through it. At most, what we see are the things light illuminates; the object, the background, the thing, to which it gives existence—it can be a stone, a tree, a cloud, or empty space. You can’t see it; you can’t hear its sound; you can’t touch it. It is like a perfect piece of nothingness which makes all things what they are. But you can start thinking of light this way only if you sit to reflect on its nature.  

   To many of us, light has become so common, so normal, and so bland and trite that we hardly take it into consideration. Light just “shines” and we “see” it, carry out our businesses and go our own way. But light—whatever form of light you may have in mind—is of infinite importance. Light does not merely “shine” upon things, thereby bringing them to light, it also brings things into being. What light does is more than illuminate: it pulls things out from the world of nothingness to the world of form.  Without light, life would be without beauty: the universe would be without color or form. Think of a world like ours, with great fauna, beautiful flowers, green plants, glorious heavens, and countless wondrous things; then, imagine if, in spite of all this beauty, light did not exist. Of what use would all that be without light? We should note that without light, there can be no idea of color and no real sense of form. It does not matter how beautiful a thing is, without light it is, at most, grim and horrible. In the story of creation, God, seeing the chaos in the world, declared, “Let there be light.” And I’ve always wondered, “Why light? Why not something else?” I guess I have finally come close to a reasonable answer. Without light, there is neither beauty nor order; only chaos upon chaos. Without light, the universe would be a conglomeration of sounds and shapes.

    Reality, as we know it, could not have been possible without the existence of light. Without light, not only would reality have been different: we would have had a different reality. In a sense, without light, there would be no reality at all. Our notion of reality, which is mostly visual, is made possible by the presence of light. Without light, all the shapes and forms we now know, all the beauty of life, and all the “splendor” of the universe, which some of us like to speak about so frequently, would have been unimaginable. Today, we speak of diverse colors—blue, green, yellow, and so forth—but has it ever struck you that these things would have been mere nonsensical shades without light? In fact, there would have been no shades at all. There would have been nothing. Everything would have been nothing. That is how powerful light is.

    The things that are in existence and our ability to see them are matters of little significance, if we take light out of the picture. Without light, physical reality and visual abilities are of no use. Unfortunately, we give great attention to vision, and even greater attention to things, and forget that intermediary force which make both things and sight meaningful—light! We’ve been blessed with the gift of sight, and I know we are grateful for that, but how many of us are grateful for the gift of light? How many of us thank God for “the gift of light?” as we do daily “for the gift of life?” It’s saddening how much we take something as paramount as light for granted. Our vision helps us to see that which light has already made possible for the eyes to see. Without light, there is no seeing.

    Light is of immeasurable importance for the shaping of reality and even for the formation of thought. We think of light as that which guides us; but not only does light guide us in life; light defines the things we pursue (and for which we need guidance) and defines us too. Without light, there can be no wholesome sense of direction, no real notion of right or wrong. Above all, light makes things what they truly are. And whether we speak of the light that comes from the heavens or the one that reaches the soul from the pages of a sacred book, we speak of the same thing—light. And our conclusion remains the same: that without light, without this seemingly insignificant, yet invasively crucial entity, nothing makes sense.