Something magical happens when we acknowledge that there is something more we have to give to our world. We might call it love, but love is everything, is it not? When we love, it motivates us to serve others in all kinds of ways. So when we use the word love as a verb, we are not just talking about a particular band of human expression. We are talking about everything—the very heartbeat of all life expression.

This is the abstract of a study, “Visible Light Radiated from the Heart with Heart Rhythm Meditation.”

Research at the University of Kassel in Witzenhausen, Germany, in 1997, showed that it is possible to produce visible light from the chest area under certain conditions. The first condition is that the meditation technique must be heart-centered, not transcendent. Secondly, a specific person with an actual need must be identified as a receiver of the transmitted light. Under these conditions, a sustained light emission of 100,000 photons per second was measured, where only the background count of 20 photons per second was observed without meditation.

I did the math. One hundred thousand photons per second are 5,000 times as many as 20. So there is this dramatic difference that they found in the emanation of light from the chest of a human being under certain conditions. At that rate, it would take less than 2 million people out of the world population to equal the current emission of light from the entire human race. That is only two one-hundredths of a percent of all of humankind.

I am not in position to scientifically verify the results of the study. However, I can corroborate the findings from my own experience, as perhaps you might be able to do. It reminds me a lot of the experience of sharing an Attunement.

On one occasion, I was leading Healing Chant in Voss, Norway. We had someone sit in the middle of the circle while the rest of us chanted and then shared healing radiation through our hands with that person. A woman offered a connection point to her son, who had a severe lung condition. There came a moment when I became aware of this young man’s lungs in a way that was almost shocking to me. It was as if he was right there. There was energy pouring out of me to the great need that he had. When I read this article on visible light, it reminded me of that experience.

Religious icons sometimes portray the phenomena reported on by the study. Think of paintings of Mother Mary with light emanating from the center of her chest. The artists hadn’t read the report of this study in Germany. But somehow, they had an intuitive sense of the human potential to radiate light which they attributed to Mother Mary.

There are two conditions necessary for a highly elevated emanation of light, as cited by the study. The first requirement is a particular kind of meditation practice—a “heart meditation,” they called it.

What I know from my own experience is that an opening of the emotional body can lead to an energetic outpouring. No opening of the heart, no outpouring. But while an open heart is instrumental to the whole process it is not just about an emotional outpouring. It’s just that without an openness of heart, the rest is not on. There is not a change of state without it.

The study found that Transcendental Meditation did not create the highly elevated radiation of light. The meditation had to move from the head down into the heart center in the chest. Doesn’t that correlate with your experience? If a person is totally in their head, without heart engagement, their emanation to the world is not the same.

This tells us something about what we might view as extraordinary states of the radiation of light. But it might also tell us something about living: there is a radiation of light in living because a previously ungiven love is now being given. There is an openness of heart to it, and it is coming through.

The other factor mentioned in the article had to do with the person receiving the light:

Secondly, a specific person with an actual need must be identified as a receiver of the transmitted light.

Why would it be that when we know a person is in need, we realize a potentiality of light emanating from the chest 5,000 times as much as the standing state of an ordinary person?

In that experience of Healing Chant I had in Norway, I felt great compassion for the young man that I had never met. As I looked upon his mother and knew what she was feeling for him, my heart split open. I thought, If there is anything I can do that would be a blessing to this young man, I want to do it. And as I had those thoughts and feelings, I felt a power pouring out of me at a level I had never felt before.

When we realize that another person is in need, and that the ungiven love in us could help them, it can all come together in our psyche. And it can open up a dynamic in which there is incredible radiation.

This is the power of compassion. It sets up a dynamic through which energy can move in a relationship. Put simply, open-hearted compassion for another person elevates the radiation of light.

For electrical current, there must be a positive and a negative pole. Likewise, there has got to be that same principle of polarity between people if light is to flow from one to another. Imagine someone sitting alone thinking I want to emanate light to the world. But if that experience is not in relation to someone else, they are not in a dynamic that lets it flow. So the possibility of bringing light remains a potentiality but not a realized experience. When there is an energy loop that is specific, then spiritual energy has a chance to flow in that dynamic. The light is received. It is grounded.

These same principles are at work in our relationship with the invisible source of light within ourselves. Just as our light doesn’t come powerfully into the world until it has a point of reception in another person, the power of light in the invisible source of Being doesn’t come into us until it has a negative pole.

For us to be that human grounding point for light, that relationship has to become real. We have to connect and allow our human heart to open to that relationship. It has to become real for us to receive the love and the light that we have yet to receive.

Think of celestial navigation for a sailor. To navigate away from landmarks on shore, sailors steer by the sun or at night in the Northern Hemisphere by the North Star. They do not navigate by all the stars in the sky. They’re all there—the Pleiades, Orion, the Big Dipper, and all the rest. But at night, a sailor sails by the North Star, and by day, the sun.

And is that not a metaphor for how it is with the cosmic reality? It is all there, yet there is an immediate point of orientation and relationship available to every one of us. We do not have to try to orient to it all—not to all the angels of heaven. But there is that immediate source of love and light available to us, with whom we have the opportunity to have a powerful exchange. And in the same way that we might emit light to another person, feeling their need and knowing that we have the power to do something about it, do you think that source of love and light might have that same compassion? And that when we expose the needs of our own human life to that reality of Being, our prayers are answered?

When we establish our polarity with the invisible source of love and light, the flow to us is many times over what it might be for the average human being. Perhaps 5,000 times more?

Learning how to find that reality is finding the North Star within ourselves. For a sailor to find the North Star, a little study is probably helpful. They might study a map of the heavens, locate the North Star on the map, and then in the night sky.

A sailor might use a sextant to determine their location relative to the sun or the North Star. Finding the invisible point of orientation which is the source of power for us, we use a different instrument—the human heart. We have to use our spiritual perception to find our North Star, which requires that our heart is open.

Having tuned in, we find it—the vibration of the highest love: Ah, there it is! There is the Cosmic Christ. Not the Christ of religion, not simply a man who came on earth 2,000 years ago, though I acknowledge the wonder of who he was and what he brought to the world. There is the focus of love in Being. And knowing that source and knowing that vibration, we have it to give. And when faced with the very great needs of the people around us, we offer a love that transcends who we are simply as a human being. We feel the elevation of our stature and our Beingness. We know that we have the power of love and the power of light to offer that fills the spiritual needs of the world.