Rewriting the Universe in the Language of Light

[Walter Russell's The Secret of Light]

Prologue: A Promise from Two Thousand Years Ago

"GOD IS LIGHT."

When Jesus spoke these words two thousand years ago, no one understood what He meant. Yet Walter Russell (1871-1963), through his 1947 masterwork The Secret of Light, proclaimed that the time has come for humanity to know the true meaning of those words. Within the secret of Light lies vast knowledge yet unrevealed to man, and this knowledge is the key to opening a new age.

This book is neither a mere scientific treatise nor a philosophical text. It is a penetrating insight that unifies science and spirituality, matter and mind, humanity and cosmos. It represents the crystallization of cosmic revelation received through a lifetime of meditation and intuition by Russell—a twentieth-century Renaissance man who was sculptor and painter, architect and philosopher, and cosmologist.

 

1. The Eternal Question and the Lost Answer

"Who am I?" "What am I?" "Why am I?"

These fundamental questions have been ceaselessly repeated since humanity's beginning, yet we still have not obtained clear answers. Russell identifies the reason with precision: We live in a world of EFFECT and do not see CAUSE.

We follow only phenomena and experience confusion. Because the world appears endlessly complex and fragmented, we fail to vision the one simple underlying principle that runs through all things—Balance.

According to Russell, God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence are actually centered in the consciousness of every man. Yet few there are who know of the Oneness of their Self-Soul with the Universal Self-Soul. Man requires many millennia to begin to be aware of this simple truth.

Why, then, can we not find the answer that already exists within us? Russell tells us: Because we confuse Sensation with Consciousness.

2. The Illusion of Sensation, the Reality of Consciousness

Modern man believes he thinks. But Russell makes a shocking declaration: Most of what we believe to be thinking is not actually thinking at all.

What we call our "objective human mind" is but the seat of electric sensations of our body. What we mistake for thinking is but an electric awareness of things sensed and recorded within the cells of our brain for repetitive usage through what is termed "memories." Memories have no more relation to knowledge than phonograph records are related to the source of their recordings.

Russell draws clear distinctions:

• The brain does not think. The brain is but an electrically motivated storage warehouse for recorded sensations.
• The body does not live. The body is but an electrically motivated machine which simulates life through motion.
• Only the spirit lives. The body is but a tool that manifests that spirit.

Then who are we really? Russell answers: What we call our subjective mind is our consciousness, our spiritual storehouse of all-knowledge, all-power, and all-presence. That consciousness is our Self, our ETERNAL Self, and it is our immortality.

As man gradually becomes aware of this presence within him, the all-knowing power, the all-present power, and the all-enabling power that have always been within him naturally reveal themselves.

3. One Light, Two Illusions

The core of Russell's cosmology is simple yet revolutionary: "Light is all there is; it is all we have to deal with."

God is Light. God is Universal Mind. Mind is Light. Mind knows. And Mind thinks what it knows.

Here comes the crucial distinction: 

Knowing is static and unchanging.

• God's knowing Mind is timeless and still.
• Consciousness is real.
• Stillness alone always IS.

Thinking is electric and dynamic.

• Thinking is a two-way wave extension from consciousness.
• Sensation but simulates reality.
• Motion merely seems, but does not exist.

According to Russell, God thinks in two opposed lights simultaneously projected from their centering white Light Source. This entire universe is essentially a universe of stillness. There is naught but rest in the universe. All the motion, all the change, all the matter we see are illusions that spring from stillness and return to stillness.

This is like a cinema. All the violent motion and sound on the screen would instantly cease if the still source of light from which these images are projected were turned off. Likewise, our entire pulsing universe is but an extension of One still Light of Universal Mind, projected through positive and negative light upon the universal screen of space. CAUSE is real, but EFFECT is but a simulation of reality.

4. Creator and Creation: The Dance of Idea and Form

One of the most profound insights in Russell's teaching concerns the relationship between Idea and Form.

Idea never becomes matter.

• A watch expresses the idea of time, but the watch is not time.
• The printed poem contains the idea of the poem, but the paper is not the idea.
• Music sounds from instruments, but those sounds are not the musician's inspiration.

Idea is cosmic and eternal. Idea belongs to God's still universe of knowing. Form of idea in matter is transient, but that transience is eternally repeated, following the rhythm of the spirit.

What is Creation? Russell defines it: Creation is the product of Mind-knowing expressed in form by Mind-Thinking. God's One Whole Idea is electrically expressed as countless seemingly separate forms.

Consider the sun. The sun is a crucible which melts all ideas into one. The idea of the apple, the idea of the tree, the idea of the violet, the idea of cool earth and rivers and mountains—all exist as one in the light of the sun. When they are electrically extended from the sun and projected onto earth, they appear as separate forms.

Separateness is illusion. There are no separate or separable things in the universe. There is but One Whole Simulation of the One Whole Idea. All things are parts of each other. All things are indissolubly united.

Russell expresses it beautifully: "The milkweed fluff floating lazily in the summer sky affects the balance of the whole universe of suns and galaxies."

5. Inspiration: The Language of Communion with God

How, then, can man create? Russell's answer is clear: Only inspired man can create enduring things.

For true creation, there must first be inner illumination. And for inner illumination to occur, one must not add thoughts but rather stop thinking and enter the state of KNOWING.

"All sensing must cease. There is no power in thinking. Thinking but expresses the power which lies in knowing."

Russell emphasizes: We must project our Selves into the still Light of knowing to commune with God. To produce the form of an idea, we must first become one with God to conceive the idea. No concept can manifest in form without first existing.

"Great art can be created only by working moment by moment with God as co-creator. When man and God thus work together they commune one with the other as One Person. The language of their communion is the language of Light which man calls 'inspiration.'"

Russell makes it clear:

• When man works alone, his works are as the winds which blow.
• When man works with God as co-creator, his works are forever enduring.

Every great genius manifests this law: that he is One with the God-Mind, that God in him is the source of every thought, and that he is inspired by the omniscience and omnipotence within him.

6. Cosmic Consciousness: Complete Union with Light

Beyond the genius is the mystic.

The mystic is one who has attained cosmic consciousness by a complete severance of the seats of consciousness and sensation. He is then almost totally unaware of his body and is totally aware of the Light of God centering him.

Omniscience comes to him in that timeless blinding flash of light which is characteristic of complete severance. This experience was described in the illumination of St. Paul. Every timeless flash of intense inspiration which comes to any man is a partial illumination.

Of all mystics, Jesus was the outstanding example of all time. He was the only One in all history to have known complete cosmic-conscious unity with God.

Cosmic consciousness is the ultimate goal of all mankind. All will know it before the long journey of man is finished. However, this must come gradually, for complete severance is very dangerous. The ecstasy of this supreme experience is so great that one does not wish to come back.

Russell provides the way to gradually attain cosmic consciousness: Intensify one's conscious awareness through much aloneness and companionship with God while manifesting Him in every moment and in every task of life.

"Moment-by-moment companionship with God brings with it so great a realization of Oneness with Him that the transformation into that full realization of unity is apt to take place at any time."

7. Knowledge and Information: Return to the Source

Modern civilization is erected upon the foundation of empirical knowledge. The dictionary definition states: "conclusions founded upon experiment and observation alone."

Russell sharply points out the problem with this. The so-called "knowledge" upon which mankind relies is founded upon the evidence of the senses—upon the nonexistent waves of motion of a nonexistent substance.

Man is still new. During his millions of years as amoeba and in the jungle, he lived a purely sensed existence. He has had but a few thousand years since the dawn of consciousness awakened in him the slightest suspicion of his spiritual inheritance.

Russell distinguishes: Information is not knowledge.

• Information is acquired through the senses.
• Information is electrically recorded in the brain.
• Information concerns observed effects.

Knowledge knows cause.

• Knowledge is cosmic and already exists.
• Knowledge cannot be acquired by the brain from without.
• Knowledge must be "recollected" from within the consciousness of Self.

"All knowledge exists. All mankind can have it for the asking. It is within man, awaiting his awareness of its all-presence."

Gradually dawning conscious awareness is but gradual recollection of the all-knowing which has always been within man. For information to become knowledge, the information gained by motion of the senses must be returned to the stillness of the Source.

8. From Light to Darkness, and Back to Light

Russell describes humanity's journey through beautiful metaphor.

Man is forever seeking the Light. In that long tortuous road which leads from his body's jungle to the mountain top of his awakening soul, man is forever seeking the Light to guide him.

And man is forever finding that Light, and is being forever transformed as he finds it.

Many become discouraged. They feel they have not yet found anything. But Russell consoles: "They are wholly unaware that they have forever been finding it."

The Light does not come in one blinding flash. It does not come that way until one is nearing his mountain top.

"Look ye, therefore, forever upward into the High-heavens of inspiration."

To him whose eyes are in the High-heavens, the Light will forever come, and he will be forever transformed as he finds it.

In this ascent from body to spirit, the dark road from his jungle to his mountain top of glory becomes ever more illumined. It is a hard, but glorious road to climb. All must make the climb.

Epilogue: A Legacy for the New Age

Walter Russell's The Secret of Light is not merely a book. It is a declaration of a new paradigm that unifies science and religion, matter and spirit, humanity and cosmos.

Russell prophesied:

"This revelation of the nature of Light will be the inheritance of man in this coming New Age of greater comprehension. Its unfoldment will prove the existence of God by methods and standards acceptable to science and religion alike. It will lay a spiritual foundation under the present material one of science."

Today we stand before the questions Russell posed:

• Are we truly thinking, or merely sensing?
• Is the knowledge we pursue true knowing, or merely an accumulation of information?
• Are we seeing effects, or penetrating to causes?
• Are we aware of the still Light within us?

Russell's message is simple yet revolutionary: "All is Light. God is Light, and thou art Light. Thou and God are One."

To know this—not merely to understand it intellectually but to become aware of it with one's entire being—that is the essence of humanity's journey from jungle to mountain top, from darkness to Light.

And that journey is never a lonely one. Because the Light we seek is already within us. All we need to do is recollect it, become aware of it, and manifest it.

"As he finds it he gradually finds the Self of him which IS the Light."

— Walter Russell, The Secret of Light