Thresholds·9 min·2026-11-03

Light: we are nothing but light

"Let there be light." The first word of Genesis, the clear light of the Tibetans, the light met by witnesses of near-death experiences — and the faint glow our body really emits. Physics, biology, experience, symbol: four ways of saying the same thing.

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This site carries a mantra: We are nothing but light, and light is eternal.

The two books of this journey open with the same intuition. The first begins with a page titled "Light": "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3), "we live inside a universe made of light waves", "we are beings of light manifested in physical form".

At the end of this journey through the thresholds, it is time to take this sentence seriously. Not to reduce it, nor to exaggerate it. To see what it means at each level at which it can be heard.

Concentric circles around a light source, with five forms of light: visible light, biophotons, NDE light, Let there be light, Tibetan clear light — Five lights, four registers: physical, biological, lived, symbolic. Distinguishing them lets us connect them without confusing them.

Physical light

Light is an electromagnetic wave, and also a stream of particles, photons. What our eyes perceive is only a tiny band of it, between violet and red.

One of the books claims that "low-frequency light turns into matter". Stated this way, the claim is inaccurate. But it echoes a deep truth of physics: matter and energy are two forms of the same reality (E = mc²). In particle accelerators, high-energy photons can produce pairs of matter particles. And the early universe was a bath of light before matter separated from it — the oldest light still reaching us, the cosmic background radiation, dates from about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

The book also quotes Walter Russell (1871–1963), an American painter and thinker for whom "the substance of all things is light". His writings belong to personal metaphysics, not physics. But the intuition they express is not absurd.

The body's light

Here is a fact few people know: your body emits light.

All living cells produce an extremely weak emission of photons, linked to the chemical reactions of metabolism. In 2009 a Japanese team (Kobayashi et al., PLoS ONE) managed to photograph this emission on volunteers, using ultra-sensitive cameras in total darkness. The result: the human body really does glow — about a thousand times too faintly to be seen with the naked eye. The face glows more than the rest of the body, and the intensity varies through the day, lower in the morning, higher in the late afternoon.

These photons are called biophotons. Some authors attribute extraordinary properties to them (communication between cells, a "light field" of the soul). These hypotheses are not demonstrated. The basic fact is: life comes with light.

Lived light

In van Lommel's study of near-death experiences, nearly one witness in four describes communication with a light. The words always recur: a light more intense than anything known, and yet not dazzling; a light that seems conscious, loving, welcoming.

Meditators of many traditions describe similar experiences in deep states. Tibetan Buddhism speaks of the clear light (ösel), the luminous nature of mind, which can be recognised in meditation, in deep sleep, and at the moment of death. The Bardo Thödol teaches that recognising this light as one's own nature is liberation.

Explorers of out-of-body experiences and lucid dreaming also report encounters with a light of a particular quality.

These accounts do not prove a reality beyond the brain. But their convergence, across eras and cultures, is one of the most remarkable facts of human experience.

Symbolic light

Finally, light is the most universal of spiritual symbols.

"Let there be light" — the first word of creation (Genesis 1:3).
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness" (John 1:4-5).
"God is the Light of the heavens and the earth" — the famous Verse of Light of the Qur'an (24:35).
The alchemists' Fiat lux, the Buddha's enlightenment, the Enlightenment of philosophy.

In all these traditions, light means the same thing: what makes seeing possible. Not one object among others, but that through which all objects appear. Exactly as what observes is not one thought among others, but that by which all thoughts are known.

What the mantra means

We are nothing but light, and light is eternal.

At the physical level, we are made of an energy of which light is one form. At the biological level, our life is accompanied, literally, by a glow. At the level of experience, those who have approached the thresholds speak of a conscious light. At the symbolic level, light is consciousness itself, what sees.

None of these levels proves the others. But they answer one another. And perhaps that is the initiatory path: learning to hear the same sentence on every floor of one's being.

Practice: the light meditation

Lie or sit in the dark. Three slow breaths.
Imagine a small, gentle light in the centre of your chest. Don't force anything; let it be a simple impression.
With each out-breath, let it spread a little: the torso, the arms, the head, the legs.
When your whole body seems bathed in this light, let it go beyond your outline and fill the room.
Then let go of the image. Stay in what remains: the simple clarity of being conscious.
Before coming back, recall the mantra once, in silence.

You can end every session of the protocol this way, whether or not there was an exit. The last threshold is not a place to reach. It is a light to recognise.

We are nothing but light, and light is eternal.