The light that is seen at the peak of pure prayer is not a physical light but a spiritual one. It radiates from the presence of Jesus Christ and enlightens our souls with His truth.
Saint Gregory Palamas writes describing the experience of Moses,
Because he was able to see, after he had surpassed himself and arrived in the darkness, he didn't see either by the senses or by the mind; so that light is self-visible and fills minds become blind in the sense of surpassing.... But when the mind is raised above all mental activity and is found without eyes in the sense of being surpassed, it is filled with a brilliance higher than all beauty; it is found in God by grace and has that self-visible light mystically and sees by the union above mind.Saint Gregory Palamas says,
Those who see it are able to penetrate by the power of Spirit in them beyond the pane of physical realities. They find themselves raised to an order of the Spirit. Their eyes are open and they seek a target somewhere outside. But this means only that the light from the order of spiritual realities has overwhelmed the surrounding realities; their senses have become full of the power of the Spirit. We might use a colorless comparison: For those who love each other, all nature is filled with the light which seems to radiate from the other.Reference: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 337 - 340
In Genesis 1, we see that God the Father speaks to God the Son as an equal. The three distinct Persons are one in nature.
ReplyDeleteMan on the other hand, while being created in the image and likeness was "divided" into male and female assuring that man's unity with God could only be realized in the undivided Person of God.
(While God created all things, all is necessarily good, exceedingly so, but man chose dwell in sin and in his separation from God all things appear to him evil).
The Divine Light is indeed infinitely more than Physical Light (which appears to us as mere shadow).