The Medicine of the Inner and Outer Light in the Human Photocell
By Bernard Fleury
That the human body is a living photocell, energized and controlled by light entering the eyes is one of Liberman's basic and innovative assumptions. 1 Once this light enters the body it has a profound effect on both our physiological and emotional functioning as well as the development of our awareness. Our lives are truly dependent on the sun and the small portion of electromagnetic waves that reach our planet. The approximately one percent of these waves which reach us and are visible, are essential to proper human functioning and evolution.
Liberman repeats physicist David Bohm's postulate that "all matter is frozen light." Light is all in all, the basic stuff of the universe that manifests itself in a variety of forms. He joins Teilhard de Chardin and Arthur Zajonc in asking whether the evolution of humans both individually and collectively, has basically been dependent on our ability to receive and to make use of both the inner and outer lights, the "within" and the "without", the spiritual and physical. As both Teilhard and Arthur Zajonc have stated, the inner light is crucial because it gives meaning to what we physically see.
Liberman describes the eyes as the windows of the soul because our eyes provide the means for the interrelationship of the world without and the world within. We meet persons and objects and show how we feel with our eyes. Our eyes reflect our physical and emotional health by serving as an index of many different physical health functions or conditions, and are accurate indicators of mental states and styles of operation.
The eyes serve as the major gateways through which light enters and affects the body's total functioning including consciousness. The Gospel of Luke relates: "The light of the body is your eye, when your eye is clear, your whole body is clear, your whole body is also full of light; but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness." (Luke 11:34) The present-day clinical science of iridology, which many still consider psuedoscience, is based on the assumption that the iris of the eye is a real map of the body; that each section of the iris correlates with a specific part/organ of the body. Liberman cites the findings of a group of Russian scientists, reported in 1989, that found a one-hundred-percent correlation between the diagnosis of their iridodiagnostic technique and the actual physical conditions of their subjects. 2
It is very interesting to note that the principal conveyors of light to us are really extensions of our brains, the most complex (most parts) of any currently known human system. Brain and eye weight is two percent of our total weight but they require a quarter of our nutritional energy, a major part of our oxygen, Vitamin C, and zinc intakes. Our eyes contain seventy percent of the body's sense receptors, and except in the case of totally blind persons, provide access for approximately ninety percent of all we learn in our lifetime. (16)
As we have already noted, modern science is looking at the eyes as the "gateways of the mind." Liberman believes that specific mental patterns are directly related to the functioning or dysfunctioning of the physical eye, and light has a direct effect on our mental states.(18) Light is the principal nurturer of our bodies having a vital effect on our physical and emotional functions. Although hypothesized and tested since the late 1800's, it wasn't until the early 1970's that it was finally proven definitively, that when light entered the eyes, it just didn't only affect seeing, but also affected the brain's hypothalamus, which in turn is the coordinator and regulator of most of our life-support functions. It also initiates and directs our reactions and adaptations to stress. (22-25) The Greeks and other ancient civilizations knew this and practiced it in their medicine. Now we have scientifically confirmed that the nervous and endocrine systems are directly stimulated and regulated by light to an extent not accepted, until recently by modern science. (22)
Ebdnotes
1 Jacob Liberman, Light-Medicine of the Future (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear and Company, 1991)
p. xxv. This and subsequent direct references from this work are reprinted by permission of Inner
Traditions International, Rochester, Vermont.
2 Liberman, op.cit., p. 14.
Bernard J. Fleury, B.A. History and Classical Languages, Ed. D. Philosophy, Government, and Administration, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Educational Administration. Dr. Fleury's 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 - The Light: God, is clearly evident in his book Called into Life by the Light (website: http://intolifebylight.com).
