Bernard J. Fleury, Ed.D.
A number of books have been written on the various aspects of light, usually focusing on a particular aspect such as physics or medicine. The approach Fleury takes in Called into Life by the Light is that taken by Thomas Aquinas, Teilhard de Chardin and other interdisciplinary synthesizers who see science, theology, mysticism, religion, and ecology as fundamentally interrelated. Each of these areas reveals a different aspect of reality. Collectively they give us the most complete picture of reality we can attain. None of the other books on light focus on light in the comprehensive approach that Fleury’s book does as evidenced on his Contents pages.
Bernard J. Fleury, B.A. History and Classical Languages, Ed.D. Philosophy, Government, and Administration, former History, English, Latin teacher, and School Principal, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Educational Administration. His administrative/teaching career spans more than five decades and three United States and Caribbean Colleges.
He has a lifelong interest in history and a firm belief in the synthesis of faith and reason (theology and science) as two aspects of a single reality.
He has authored two trade books: Called into Life by the Light and A Bee in His Bonnet, and two academic texts: What is Man? and Reform of Schooling.
ChapterVI
One of the meanings of light to every human being is that light is already a powerful source of healing utilized in x-rays, lasers, phototherapy, the Rife Ray Tube, and other medical machines and therapies. There is a whole new attitude regarding proper, controlled, but necessary exposure to sunlight as an important ingredient to good health and proper functioning of body muscles and nerves. The complete avoidance of any exposure to sunlight except for a small number of persons with sun sensitive disorders is now considered poor medicine rather than good.
Light, in the form of electricity powers much of our industrial enterprise. It also illuminates our homes, hardens the fillings in our teeth, and entertains us with television. Our modern lives are unthinkable without the physical, outer light.
But the outer light is not the only form of light that has meaning for human life. The inner light also has meaning, in fact without the inner light we could not even see let alone comprehend the outer light.
In Book IV of the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours, St. Augustine writes:
On entering into myself I saw, as it were with the eye of the soul, what was beyond the eye of the soul, beyond my spirit: your immutable light. It was not the ordinary light perceptible to all flesh, nor was it merely something of greater magnitude but still essentially akin, shining more clearly and diffusing itself everywhere by its intensity. No, it was something entirely distinct, something altogether different from all these things; and it did not rest above my mind as oil on the surface of water, nor was it above me because it had made me. He who has come to know the truth knows this light.
….When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see but I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread. I learned that I was in a region unlike yours and far distant from you and I thought I heard your voice from on high: ‘I am the food of grown men; grow then and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be changed into me'.
…you flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.
…O Truth, you are the light of my heart. Let your light speak to me, not my own darkness.
The inner light is the most basic of the two lights (inner and outer) because it enables us to decipher, make sense out of, comprehend, the outer light. As Augustine writes in the quote just cited, "You overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light." Zajonc writes in a similar vein "Without an inner light, without a formative visual imagination, we are blind". 1
As I wrote in Chapter Three, Teilhard de Chardin would certainly agree with Augustine and Zajonc that the outer light of nature and the inner light of mind, perception, etc., are inextricably entwined. The outer light is incomprehensible to the human eye without various levels of development in the inner light of the mind. All the various concepts, explanations, etc., of the universe, of any phenomena one cares to name, including "light" are the direct result of the interaction of the inner light of the mind with stimuli that enter the mind through the various sense organs of the body. The external light (stimuli), affect the development of the inner light (mind) and the inner light shapes the ways in which the external light is received and perceived.
Light is the foundation stone of meaning; it is the key to conceptualizing, making sense out of our entire inner and outer experience.
Light is the basic Existent of the entire universe—not a something alone, but also a Someone—a something in nature, a Someone who forms and informs the human mind. The individual human mind has to be developmentally ready to both receive and perceive the light for the light to be comprehensible. This is a true state of affairs for both the light of nature and the light of mind. In Christian theology, human freedom and choice in terms of willingness to receive the light (the teachings and recognition of who Jesus is) is the essential prerequisite to Faith.
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1 Zajonc, op.cit., p. 5.
