photograph by the author
Swedenborg said that all the light on the earth—and of the sun—was much, much dimmer and less glorious (my own words) that the Light of Heaven. He likened the light of our sun to darkness in comparison with the Light that is in Heaven.
Since he
practically wrote the original book on descriptions of what is now called the NDE (
Near Death Experience) we can be sure that the great Light people so often report during these moments is the Light of Heaven itself; and indeed, for those who have known such Light, they know how deeply
informed the Light is, that is, the Light has substance, meaning, presence, depth and material property that absolutely exceeds anything we know in ordinary life.
It exceeds what we understand as light by many orders of magnitude, such that the light of our sun is eclipsed when compared to it.
This Light, if it comes, may seem to be an external event or influence, but in fact this Light already lies within each human being. It simply isn't revealed, which is to say, we aren't in contact with it. The Light penetrates all Being (all of manifested reality) because it is the substance of manifest reality, that is, the material proposition of Divine Love and Wisdom. We're actually emanations of this Light; which is why the emanations of the sun can affect us: we share an identity, whether we know it or not, and that identity is a unified Being.
Only revelatory consciousness perceives this; Swedenborg and Ibn Arabi were both active mediators of this experience, which confers what Gurdjieff called understanding.
I say that such Light is
informed because the Light itself has an inwardly formed premise that precedes its existence; within it, it contains all Being and contains all possibilities.
Dreams are formed of such Light; by the time we dream them, the Light has undergone significant metamorphoses in order to convey the meaning necessary to the dream itself, but in dreams it retains the mutable and infinite property of Light itself, which is why dreams are so easily subject to extraordinary metamorphosis and details which would be quite impossible even to imagine under ordinary circumstances.
Seek within to try and understand this property of informed,
inwardly formed, Light, because it carries within it a mystery. We are in a state of bewilderment; we don't much sense true Light or its properties, so we cannot sense ourselves or our proximity to the Divine (which is always but a hair's breadth away from us at any time.)
Yet the Light is always here and forms everything; and despite the apparent solidity of matter, it is always mutable and always in a state of subtle transformation, arrested by perception, but forever working towards its next state. This explains the nature of things, which are subject to perpetual change.
The Light of Heaven is glorious; it carries within it glory itself, which means magnificence, great beauty. This property cannot ever be removed or separated from it
no matter what material circumstances appear to be. Viktor Frankl saw essential aspects of this on his way to the concentration camps in a cattle car; he saw it in the form that beauty is immutable, and always exists independent of man and his depredations. We can be confident of this, because it is inherent within God's Mercy, and we should never doubt it. It is the emanation God and of heaven; incorruptible, no matter what we do.
In a certain real sense, we already inhabit Heaven, and anything we do to violate this sacred honor is a deeply sinful action.