GodLight: Illuminate your Mind, Illuminate your Life

The universe is defined as all of space and time and their contents including planets, stars, galaxies and all forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of our universe. The universe is often defined as "the totality of existence", or everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. Two other approaches that are being studied to explain the universe are string theory and wormholes.

In contrast, most spiritual and religious practitioners do not disagree on what or who created the universe, the universe and the subsequent world was created by God or is God.

The Big Bang singularity is universally accepted as the scientific birth of the universe. According to theoretical models based on the general theory of relativity as well as a limited amount of empirical evidence, the energy and matter initially present in the singularity became less dense very quickly and the universe began to expand.

All of the major philosophies and religions have a creation story. Hindus believe that the universe was created by Brahma, the creator who made the universe out of himself. For Christians, Genesis is the story of creation. The Judaic creation story has several versions that are slightly different from the Christian version. The Islamic Creation story comes from the Qur’an, which states that "Allah created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them, in six days". Regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs, most human beings believe that something created the world, generally describing that something as God.

Light Is electromagnetic radiation that can be described by its wavelength or its frequency. It occurs over an extremely wide range of wavelengths from gamma rays with wavelengths less than 10 trillionth of a meter to radio waves with wavelengths in meters. In the physical world, the broad spectrum of light has allowed human beings to use light from radio waves to communicate, light years (the distance that light travels in one year) to measure huge distances, infrared and microwave light to heat objects and visible light to see objects. Light, because of its electromagnetic wave properties, can be absorbed, reflected, refracted, scattered, diffracted, enhanced, dispersed and transformed. One of the counterintuitive properties of light is that it also has a particle-like nature.

References to spiritual Light abound in all religions and philosophies. Whether in spiritual readings, ceremonies or prayers, Light is mentioned many times. The Old Testament cites “light” over two hundred times and the New Testament over one hundred times. Other than God or Lord, it’s one of the most mentioned words in the Bible.

In science, a model that has been verified with a significant amount of real data and that consistently correctly predicts the outcome or behavior of an event is usually accepted as valid. SpaceTime is such a model which fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four dimensional geometry. While the discovery of SpaceTime by Einstein changed the world of physics, it also changed the way that the universe is viewed.

On Earth, it has become very productive to characterize an object by its space dimensions at a particular time. The position (x,y,z) of a particular sight or city on a map or a spherical reproduction of the earth can be very precise. But the space dimensions of any object change with time. Religious stories and beliefs are perfect examples of the separation of these space and time dimensions.

The universe is mainly composed of dark matter, dark energy and ordinary matter. The universe also contains electromagnetic radiation, as well as antimatter. The percentages of all types of matter and energy have changed over the history of the universe. 95% of the mass-energy of the universe is unknown or dark and less than one-tenth of the remaining 5% of ordinary matter is observable. The observable physical world, which we often treat with great certainty, amounts to less than 0.03% of the universe, the other 99.7% is a mystery.

Spiritual and religious beliefs have always been full of mystery. Almost everything was mysterious to early humans. Egyptian, Roman, Greek and Middle Eastern religions often assigned these mysteries to the workings of gods. While the development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam consolidated the gods into one God, God is still the great mystery of most modern religions.

One of the most interesting phenomena in the universe, black holes are regions of SpaceTime where gravity is so strong that nothing, no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light, can escape. The theory of of general relativity predicts that a compact mass can deform SpaceTime to form a black hole. Black holes of stellar mass form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings.

At present, the universe continues to expand, as it has since the beginning of time and space. There is no indication that the universe will not continue to expand. If so, SpaceTime will continue to increase and the universe may have no end, that is, it may exist forever and ever. A universe that never ends is hard to fathom but certainly reasonable since the universe has existed for 14 billion years.

Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that there is an afterlife and every believer hopes that after they die, they end up in Heaven. Hindus and Buddhists believe in a form of Heaven where souls go for a time but may come back to earth either at a higher level of consciousness or a lower level, sometimes as animals. As the reincarnated Hindu and Buddhist returns to earth, the goal is to live a better life and through various reincarnation to achieve Nirvana.

In science, infinity is a term that comes up primarily in mathematics. When a number, any number, is divided by zero, the result is the term infinity. When that happens, it’s usually the end of the mathematics problem because infinity cannot be described or acted upon and the term has no boundaries. Anything divided by zero is unimaginably large so infinite is now used to describe time, space, velocity and other physical parameters when they are unimaginable large.

Many religions use the word eternity to convey a forever and never ending quality, mostly applied to time. Eternity is used in many spiritual writings to convey infinite time that never ends. Often God is described as eternal, meaning that God has existed and will exist forever, without beginning or end.

Science has taught us that the planets in our solar system started as high-velocity masses sailing through the universe that were captured by the gravitational pull of our sun. Under the right conditions, these big rocks were forced into elliptical orbits that have been rotating around our sun for billions of years. We now know that there are millions, if not billions, of planets rotating around different suns in different galaxies in our huge universe. Earth happens to be in a particularly fortunate orbit around our sun that provides excellent conditions for the possibility of life.

Most spiritual readings suggest that God specifically chose our planet to build his earthly kingdom. Not surprisingly, we know more about the earth than we know about the entire universe. According to radiometric dating, earth was formed over 4.5 Billion years ago. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth are extinct. Fortunately, humans have survived and, good or bad, now dominate the planet.

Archeological evidence suggest that there were life forms on earth four billion years ago. These may have been single cell organisms that were formed in the primal waters and air of the planet. Darwin wrote convincingly that our species started with these basic life forms and evolved through various species modifications and enhancements. Most of the modifications favored species who were better able to defend themselves against predators or more adept at finding food. Complex life forms, like fish, snakes and birds, took billions of years to develop. Pre-historic Homo-Sapiens only evolved in the last 45 thousand years. From about 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, the planet experienced massive changes and the evolution to modern man only occurred about 7000-10,000 years ago.

All religions have creation stories and believe that humans were created by God (or many gods) as pure and good. In various ways, the first humans succumbed to worldly challenges and sinned. After that, life was harder and death was inevitable. Only by living a better life or improving their lives in various reincarnations are they able to join God in Heaven or Nirvana.

The soul of a person has been described in many ways. In philosophy, a soul is that immaterial essence that confers individuality and humanity on that person. In psychology, the soul is often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is defined as that part of the person which partakes of divinity and often considered to survive the death of the body. Many cultures have recognized some incorporeal aspect of human life or existence corresponding to the soul and have attributed souls to all living things.

We have come full-circle, from the GodLight that created the universe to the GodLight in our souls. The purpose of the possibilities section is to stimulate curiosity and invite new questions about the intersections of science and spirituality. By looking at both the physical and the spiritual aspects of our universe, our planet and ourselves, new possibilities arise. And these could lead to new opportunities...

Could the light and energy that created the universe be all that exists? Can we see each other more as the same rather than different? Is there an opportunity for mankind to see their role as God’s travelers in the universe?

Could we agree that God created the universe? Is there an opportunity to examine light from a spiritual perspective rather than simply a physical entity? Could SpaceTime be the missing link between life, death and after-life? Is dark matter God’s way of showing us that, despite our self-proclaimed brilliance, we know so very little? Are Black Holes a metaphor for Hell?

Is Heaven contained in the universe? Is Eternity linear or curved? Is the Earth really that special? Are there more planets with living beings? If we can admit that humans evolved from earlier species, what opportunities are there for us to grow? Are there ways for humans to collaborate and communicate from a “souls” perspective?

Since I started creating this course, I begin every day with this simple prayer: “God, let me absorb, reflect, understand and be your Light. Let me spread your Light and Love throughout the world”. It reminds me how much God loves us and how God made everything, the universe as well as us, from Light. It also helps me look at others as God’s Light and I hope that makes me love them more. – Dr. Bart Barthelemy