Light, Page Six

Jesus told the Pharisees and Sadducees they knew how to interpret the appearance of the sky in regard to the weather, but did not know how to "interpret the signs of the times" (Mt 16,3). "Signs" are what phenomena give us as images of higher reality. The significance of the first sign in John's Gospel (Jn 2,1-11, the wedding at Cana) is explained in The Burning Bush, pp. 137-142). There we see that one cannot be satisfied with superficiality. We need to ask ourselves whether, in the light of the revelations of QED above, the theologian should perceive any "sign" in what the nuclear physicist has demonstrated? (The open mind Liderbach urges upon the scientific-minded seems here also advisable for the theologian.) It seems fairly clear that in Christ's time neither the "theologians" nor his own followers apprehended the meaning of the sign of Jonah (Mt 12,39; Lk 11,29). Nor do theologians today adequately apprehend its meaning, for they still miss the meaning of the raising of Lazarus, a "sign of Jonah" (see "Peter, James and John" in The Burning Bush, also The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved). If Christendom is to rise to the spiritual demands upon it in this new age of Michael, that insight must soon be attained.

But what about the new "signs of the times" presented by these scientific developments of the twentieth century? What is the meaning of this phenomenon at the lowest subatomic level, this coming into existence and then withdrawing again of matter before its nature can be fully defined (materialization-dematerialization)? Do we not see at this subatomic level of observable creation the analogue to the human soul, the "burning bush," the "I Am," crossing back and forth over the null point between incarnation and the discarnate state in the process of its perfection (Mt 5,48), its own coming to the light? As Job (the Prodigal Son) approached the two guardians of the threshold, before being restored to the fullness of God's presence, we read that "the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind" (Job 38,1), that is, out of the spiral (the Hebrew gll or glgl²⁸), the fire ether, and said to him (Job 38,19-21, emphasis mine):

Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
and where is the place of darkness,
that you may take it to its territory
and that you may discern the paths to its home?
You know, for you were born then,
And the number of your days is great!

What is seen in any given life is only a part of the karmic being and cannot be fully measured by any earthly standard of measurement or judgment. It is the Behemoth that can only be found under the lotus tree²⁹ and that cannot be taken by hooks or pierced in his nose with a snare: the lower guardian of the threshold (Job 40,15-24). The Heisenberg principle of uncertainty, or indeterminancy, is reflected in this passage, for certainly the minutest part "cannot be taken by hooks or pierced in its nose with a snare."

Or, if we would look further, do we not apprehend from the structure of our minutest part that we and all that we observe with our senses are far less than one percent mass and the rest is empty space—and in this are we not of the same nature in our minutest part, as well as our whole, as is the expanse of universe we look out upon? Our Sun is but one of one hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and our galaxy is itself like a star in the galaxy of the known universe. Moreover, to account for gravitational effects, there must be unaccounted for mass (or alternately suction) in the intergalactic spaces, not unlike the activity discussed above in a vacuum. In the composition of our mineral-physical bodies as well as in all we look out upon, we are but a fractal within the universal design that reaches to the limit of perception both macroscopically and microscopically. In our "likeness" we are part and parcel of the "image" of the Elohim, the Spirits of Form (Gen 1,26; see also I-6).

And relativity suggests that, from the standpoint of light, all of these lives are collapsed into the one Behemoth (karmic being) so that time as an independent phenomenon does not exist and what came after is the same as what came before ("the last will be first, and the first last"; Mt 19,30; 20,16; Mk 10,31; Lk 13,30; see also the "Alpha" and "Omega" discussions in the Creation essay). When we have reached the state of being one with Christ, it shall be so. And all creation is one and one is all, a part of a living unity (Eph 1,9-10; Rom 8,19-23).

Before leaving Fagg's presentation, it remains only to say that he demonstrates over and over that electromagnetic interaction, which he calls EMI, the phenomenon involved in all of his presentation above, is the most pervasive phenomenon in the material realm and is the most complete analogue to God's immanence that is available in the physical realm. He bases this on four similarities (p. 105): 1. Both are ubiquitous and all-pervasive in our world. 2. Both reach from the most subtle and sensitive to the most powerful and awesome experiences. 3. They both relate to, and are normally identified with, light, and extend far beyond what we can sense. 4. Both are constant in their nature. While in the final analysis EMI is not God or God's immanence, it is "the primal physical mechanism provided by God for us to have access to that immanence" (p. 109).

Zajonc—Science Frustrated: "For All Practical Purposes"

As he nears the conclusion of Catching the Light, Zajonc discusses the contemporary view of light (Chap. 11) pointing out quandaries that still exist. He speaks of an archetypal instance of wave-particle duality being the interference that a single photon imposes upon its own image. It travels only one path, not two, yet in interfering with its own image it acts as though it were not a particle but a wave traveling two paths instead of one. As Zajonc says, "The implications … are fundamental," constituting "an archetypal phenomenon" for which we "lack the ideas with which to see it rightly" (p. 299). And he makes the apt observation:

Goethe was right. Try though we may to split light into fundamental atomic pieces, it remains whole to the end. . . . Perhaps for light, at least, the most fundamental feature is not to be found in smallness, but rather in wholeness, its incorrigible capacity to be one and many, particle and wave, a single thing with the universe inside.

Zajonc then discusses further instances where common-sense solutions to light phenomena just don't exist. He details such an instance involving tests of "twin photons" differently polarized. He says that "only four attributes are used to define light formally; they are polarization, wavelength, direction and intensity." Yet he shows that each is ambiguous, so that "there is no truly unambiguous attribute of light!" (p. 314).

I cannot help but relate this to the Christ, who identified himself with light, yet left neither artistic nor narrative record of his physical appearance on Earth. One has to think how very unique this is for any historically significant person, but it is also of the nature of light, and seems to have been divinely ordained so that, upon reflection, humanity would realize that it was not his mineral-physical being that has any importance for our understanding of his first presence, his Resurrection, or his coming again.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of light phenomena is what is called "non-locality." Fagg does not discuss it in elaborating his thesis. Liderbach gives an excellent abbreviated illustration at pp. 103-104 where he also gives it the name "action-at-a-distance." Zajonc gives the most extensive discussion in the section of his Chapter 11 called "Entangled Light" (pp. 307-320). It seems intrinsically cognate to Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" discovered shortly after Steiner's death in 1925, but these more amazing implications had to await fuller development during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The experiment through which it emerged is known as EPR, an acronym taken from Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, who first performed it in 1935. Its implications so befuddled Einstein in his own views of rationality that he apparently balked at its revelation till the end of his days (1955). Zajonc dates the more recent developments to the period from 1975, when John Bell "proved his famous theorems" enabling physicists to successfully perform Einstein's 1935 EPR experiment.³⁰ What is it that is so amazing about "non-locality?" It is the seeming ability of one photon at one location to communicate with another photon (its twin) at another location in such manner that the latter seems to take on the previously different character of the former, and to do so instantaneously. Thus, an examination of the photon in New York instantly changes the character of the photon in London, to borrow the geographic settings from Liderbach's example. As Zajonc says (p. 309), there is no "noninvasive, to use medical terminology" way to test these delicate quantum objects, for in the very testing they are "disturbed so violently" that they change character in one's hands. There is something in this subatomic world that can only be described as "holistic." Light is "holy," and like the God who spoke to Moses (the higher "I Am," the Christ—through the Eloha Yahweh), it cannot be fully observed by normal human modes of perception yet evolved.

Zajonc first illustrates this phenomenon by describing EPR laboratory experiments in which twin photons are distinguished from one another only by the characteristic of polarization. Distant actions on one twin immediately affected the polarization of the other. There was thus "no local, realistic way of understanding polarization correlations!" As previously noted, "only four attributes are used to define light formally … polarization, wavelength, direction, and intensity." The dual path phenomena made "direction" ambiguous, and other experiments have shown wavelength and intensity to also be ambiguous; again, "there is no truly unambiguous attribute of light!" (p. 314).

To carry astonishment to an even higher level, Zajonc indicates that the EPR experiment has been performed with matter, including electrons or other atomic particles. Nor does it stop there, for it goes on up through experiments with atoms that show similar interference effects to massless photons. And a few experiments have similarly been conducted with "many-particle" subjects, where the "entangled states do not always diminish with increased numbers of particles."

Zajonc is himself attracted to a view advanced by the physicist David Bohm that is not yet widely accepted, nor has any method of proving it been yet devised. It is called "quantum potential" and postulates a source of energy within all elementary particles that does not push or pull (i.e., attract or repel) other particles but rather "informs" their motion (p. 318). If true, it would solve some of the puzzles of quantum mechanics including non-locality, but as yet it remains only an unproven and unpopular theory.

Zajonc concludes his "entangled light" section with a concept of wholeness or unity that, while he does not cite it, brings to mind the unity of Paul's most exalted passages in Eph 1,9-10 and Rom 8,19-23. And he immediately follows it with a section called "The Place of Light" predicated upon Job's ancient question, "Where is the way to the dwelling of light?" (Job 38,19a). According to 4 NIB 603, nowhere else does the Bible speak of the dwelling place of light. And the "Date and Provenance" of the book of Job, according to the discussion in 4 NIB 325, has been uniquely difficult to establish and shows at p. 328 that the book is probably not of Israelite origin. See also 3 ABD 858, "Job, Book of." Few things seem more clear in anthroposophical light than that theology today still has no adequate comprehension of the meaning of this ancient book (see The Burning Bush, esp. pp. 423-429).

This question, the dwelling place of light, was posed as one that led back to the earliest beginnings, the answer to which, still evading us today, will make it possible to "discern the paths to its home" (Job 38,20b). That it could have been asked so long ago sobers us. Perhaps it came from the day when structures were built in Egypt whose construction is still a mystery to modern Egyptology, a day when the light of Ra still pervaded all, or perhaps even from the prehistoric time when the Ancient Persian Zarathustra "saw" Ahura Mazda in the Sun. The Bible indicates that it was still earlier, saying that Job should know for he was born in the days when light still dwelled in its pre-earthly abode (4 NIB 603). Anthroposophy shows that Job is each of us, and each of us is Job, for among other things the nature of Job is the same as that inherited by each of us from Cain, who, like Job, was unable to die (Gen 4,11-16; Job 2,6; cf. Ex 3,2-3).

I think scientists today would not quarrel with Goethe's statement that the eye was formed by the light for the light. And probably they would also not quarrel with Steiner's statement that our eye kills the light that enters it, or stated differently, that the photon dies when it falls upon the retina. But neither are we unaccustomed to the idea that death is a precondition to transformation. Considering the holistic nature of light, there is much to meditate insofar as light reaching the eye is concerned. But let us hold that thought until we look at what Steiner had to say. Zajonc concludes the scientific portion of his book by indicating that there is extreme frustration on the part of some physicists who are unable to accept the "bad" state of affairs, and that perhaps quantum theory does indeed carry the seeds of its own destruction in spite of its incredible accuracy in predicting consequences. The foremost response of physicists to the metaphysical implications of light is what Zajonc calls FAPP, "for all practical purposes" (p. 315). It seems to relate back to what he said earlier: "The majority of physicists by far simply do not concern themselves with the meaning of their quantum calculations. Nor do they trouble themselves about the implications of archetypal quantum experiments. Science is not, they say, concerned with truth or meaning, but only with prediction and control; it is an instrument. Nineteenth-century scientific arrogance here changes to twentieth-century cynicism" (p. 301).

Theologians must ask themselves if this is not also paralleled in seminaries and pulpits through patterned necessities that append to each of these areas of modern responsibility. Is it not FAPP easier to follow paths more or less widely recognized than to seriously search for truth in a new paradigm, outside their acceptably defined (orthodox and non-heretical) bounds? Is not heresy, as it has always been, a necessary way station on the road to truth?

In any presentation of a major field of study, which light certainly is, focus cannot rest on more than a few salient approaches calculated to develop its thesis. Each of the three writers above, Liderbach, Fagg and Zajonc—although not Nobel Prize winners nor mantled by the recognized stature of those scientific geniuses, both cited and uncited, who have brought relativity and quantum theory to its current posture of acceptability—brings into the equation a well-developed understanding of the scientific aspect together with an intense desire to connect that with what I might call the soul aspect. They have in common significant orientations in the science of modern physics and matters of the soul and a powerful impulse to amalgamate them. Liderbach and Fagg are Roman Catholic, Zajonc an anthroposophist.

As could be expected, my own views vary at least a little from each of them, though I have obviously found much in each to admire and put forth. As an anthroposophist, I cannot share any enthusiasm for the scientifically popular big bang theory adopted clearly by Fagg and maybe implicitly by Liderbach. My views are probably closest to those of Zajonc, though I do not know of specific statements by him on either evolution or the big bang and do not hereby imply his position. It is now time to look at what Rudolf Steiner had to say about light.