One of the big questions of existence – in the West but virtually nowhere else – is whether the spiritual world is a reality. Put another way, whether matter created mind or more accurately whether mind 'evolved' from matter; or, as all significant religions hold, mind created matter. The word most often used for 'mind', of course, is God, but Consciousness will do, as will the Tao, the One, the Self.
The 'matter' first camp, including all atheists, materialists, Evolutionists (with a capital E, for in a more limited sense there clearly is 'evolution'), and many, but not all, scientists, like to pretend that their view is objective, is scientific, and that there is no evidence for the spirit, despite the universal testimony and experience of mankind from the beginning, and despite what Socrates saw as the proof which is represented by the existence of the human soul. Naturally, materialists aren't keen on the concept of the soul either, so that too is dismissed from discussions about the nature of reality.
However, the truth is not easily suppressed, and certainly cannot long be done so by human beings, because as Dr Johnson observed long ago: 'The mind can only repose upon the stability of truth', and where there is falsehood there is unease. Thus it is that everywhere we look we find traces, glimpses, of the glory that is the One – that is the Spirit, which we also experience within if we care to look. What are these traces, these glimpses?
One of my favourite is the curious set of parallels that exist between our 'real' material world, which we absolutely seem to know exists, and this 'ideal' spiritual world whose existence seems so problematic and controversial to materialists. And it is this: that in the world that we know – of space-time – there are two elements which seem peculiarly disconnected: matter and light.
Light is an absolute – all observers of light, whatever speed they travel at, find that the speed of light relative to them is the same; of course, that is not true of matter. Light does not exist in time; matter does. Light can be divided but is not diminished thereby; matter is. I could go on, but what is this like? It's like the difference between the body and our consciousness. In a strange way matter-light represents a series of parallels to body-consciousness (or spirit).
Peter Russell in his fascinating book, The White Hole in Time, makes a series of fascinating comparisons between light and consciousness. Light and consciousness have several things in common, he says, including: they exist solely in the present moment, they share the same experience of now, neither is an object or thing or part of the physical world, neither exists in the space-time we know, both are immaterial.
And this is why, of course, light features so prominently in the major religions: the creation of light is a metaphor for consciousness itself, for spirit itself. We see light with our sight, but we cannot see consciousness or spirit with our sight – no, we see it indirectly, obliquely, with insight. This is why the hunger to experience God – the spirit – directly is so strong: to get beyond the indirection and experience the 'true light', as Jesus called it, as it really 'shines' – for that is its 'Glory'.
So, we see from this the absurdity of those people who like to parody heaven as a place where people sit around playing harps and singing inconsequential hymns. No, if heaven exists then it would be no-place at all, in no-time at all, and where consciousness more directly moved into its own conscious perceptual view – where the 'light' shines. Like having been in total darkness an unendurably long time, and then the sun rises on the eastern rim, and one stares in total fascination. That is why, presumably, the ancient Egyptians saw their Pharaohs after death ascending to the stars – the very centres of light, and the very forges of creation.
The Mapping Motivation Series 