The human in the spotlight
On Pentecost, Christianity celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit. The Bible, Acts 2:1-4, mentions that tongues of fire appeared, which settled on each of the apostles. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And that seems like an excellent opportunity to bring up the theme of ‘subtle forces’ as one of the possible ‘worldviews’.
In the 1960s, I trained as a teacher at the Pius X Institute in Antwerp. We had quite a few excellent teachers there. One of them has stayed in my memory in particular: Roger Broddin, the physics teacher. He managed to spark my interest in optics—you know: lenses, mirrors, interference, and the surprising properties of light.
Later, I attended the HIVO, the Higher Institute for Educational Sciences, in the same buildings on Olympiadelaan in Antwerp. Father T’Jampens taught philosophy there. His lessons fascinated me so much that I continued to attend them until the HIVO finally closed its doors in 2000. Father T’Jampens was known not only for his vast erudition and exceptional mediumistic giftedness, but also as a paranormal healer. He repeatedly stated that the power, the energy, or ‘the fine matter’ required for such healings did not come from him, but from the Holy Trinity. He felt that he himself was merely a modest link in this chain. I was allowed to elaborate on this somewhat further in ‘Fact 098’ on the Pius X seniors’ website.
His method occasionally led to disagreements with Ludo Docx. This priest taught catechism, both at the teacher training college and at the HIVO, but had some reservations about the world of the paranormal. According to him, religion could only maintain its credibility if it presented itself in as scientific a manner as possible. This view primarily emphasizes the material and sensory nature of reality. According to this view, the miracles described in the Gospels did not literally happen, but grew out of folk tales to give the faith more color.
Pastor T’Jampens, however, argued that finite science, with its material and sensory presuppositions, condemns itself to a partial science of total reality. The domain of religion is much broader and encompasses everything that exists in any way, including the paranormal and the subtle. It was precisely in this that he saw the core of a dynamically understood Christian religion.
Gradually, Ludo Docx became impressed by the extraordinary way in which Pastor T’Jampens could heal people. When I handed him the book “‘Homo Religiosus’, religion as experiential reality” a few years ago, he compared Mr. T’Jampens to the prophets of the Old Testament. Those were indeed very telling words…
Let us delve deeper into the theme of ‘fine matter’, which, incidentally, is as old as humanity itself. All primitive, ancient, and classical cultures are or were familiar with it. We find it, for example, among the ancient Greek thinkers, including the Milesians, and in Christianity—the two most important pillars of our Western culture.
In the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul writes that man is composed of threefold: he has a biological body, he ‘is’ essentially an immaterial spirit, and, as far as we are concerned here, he possesses a subtle soul. Thus, Jesus asks in Luke 8:43-48: “Who touched me, for I felt power go out from me?” It then turned out that a woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years was healed by Jesus. Or rather, she healed herself by briefly holding his garment. She believed that his robe shared in his miraculous power. The Bible mentions that she was indeed healed by it.
That subtle power, and the way in which Pastor T’Jampens was able to make one feel and harness its energy, has always continued to intrigue me. However, his healing work had to be done in silence and far from the public eye. Indeed, we have laws in our country prohibiting such practices, even when medical science is at its wits' end.
Our largest and most powerful telescopes explore the boundaries of the universe. The best microscopes show us the individual atoms. But as soon as you dare to bring up the possibility of scientific research into that fine matter, you almost always receive—to put it mildly—a skeptical and highly questionable reaction. This is also, and especially, the case from the scientific community: “You shouldn’t come to us with that!” is the refrain. “Science has serious matters to concern itself with.” And apparently, a subtle soul does not belong to that.
That is not very logical. Surely, anything that can exist deserves to be investigated. Or have we not quite left the mentality of the year 1633 behind us yet? Back then, Galileo claimed that not the Earth, but the Sun, stands at the center of the solar system. Rather than verifying his assertion in his telescope, the government at the time condemned him for being a ‘heretic’.
Shall we let the experiment decide, not prejudice?
Although the subtle soul, for the clairvoyant, reveals itself primarily through an objective ‘imagination’ of this reality—as opposed to a purely subjective ‘imagination’—it nevertheless also possesses a much more modest optical aspect.
We wish to address the latter here. Specifically: what would become visible if we were to put not the stars, nor the atoms, but man himself ‘in the spotlight’? Would it be conceivable that we could then literally bring something of this reality ‘to the light’?
Suppose we throw two stones into the water at the same time. At the point where each stone touches the water, expanding concentric circles are formed that later gradually merge into one another. Where two wave crests coincide, a higher crest is formed. Where two wave troughs coincide, a deeper trough is formed. When a crest and a trough coincide, they neutralize each other. A cork located in such a place remains motionless, while a cork right next to it dances up and down with the waves.
The point we want to emphasize is that two waves can reinforce or weaken each other, and, if we choose the right location, they can even neutralize each other. Let us generalize that a movement added to a similar but opposite movement can lead to… stillness.
Let us reason further. We are all familiar with ‘sound-canceling’ headphones. Such a device produces a similar but opposite wave when a sound wave is present, causing both to neutralize each other. Generally speaking, it sounds like: a sound wave added to a similar but opposite sound wave gives us… silence.
Light also travels via waves. Would it be possible to build a kind of ‘light-canceling’ viewer as well—an instrument in which light waves can cancel each other out, so that light added to light leads to… darkness? However, two thousand (!) light waves fit into a single millimeter. A field in which light would be completely extinguished by destructive interference would likely be difficult to realize, but it would also become extremely unstable. The slightest disturbance can break such a subtle balance and allow light to pass through again.
In all ages and places, experts state that man, among others, is surrounded by a subtle aura—the subtle soul, as the Apostle Paul called it. For those who can perceive this, it manifests as a series of increasingly ethereal layers around the body. The first, let us call it the most ‘material’ ethereal layer, is located right around the biological body and is usually only a few millimeters thick.
The question then is whether such a subtle layer could disturb the fragile balance of destructive interference. For suppose that this nebulous substance effectively forms an obstacle to the passing light, and that this light is thereby slowed down by even a fraction of a wavelength; then that obstacle will counteract the destruction and thereby actually become visible. That, at least, is the hypothesis.
With that thought in mind, I converted my Newtonian telescope into a kind of ‘black viewer’; an instrument that extinguishes the light almost completely through destructive interference. My primary mirror has a diameter of 155 millimeters. The mathematical and technical difficulties I had to overcome during its construction are certainly not insignificant, but I will leave those aside here. When the viewer was finally finished, I brought my hand—or rather, just the index finger—into the image.
Naturally, I had a pattern of expectations. He who does not know what he or she is looking for, knows neither what he or she will find. Let us compare it, for example, with an ultrasound or an X-ray of a diseased body part. Someone who knows nothing about it can hardly or not at all interpret the image. The “seeing is believing” adage is only one side of the coin in such studies. The reverse, the “believing is seeing” adage, applies equally: you must first have a theory you believe in, and then, based on that, test and refine this theory through experimentation. There is a continuous interplay. The theory shapes the experiment, and the results achieved further refine your theory.
I have been able to capture what then appears in my viewfinder in the photo below.
I was also able to film the event. You can see the result by clicking the link below. The video lasts about thirty seconds.
The video first shows a few colorful wisps of rising air. My hand is indeed warmer than the surrounding air, causing it to rise. You can see that happening.
Then I switch to destructive interference. The image suddenly turns dark. The colorful wisps disappear as well. There are reasons for this, but it is not so easy to explain in this short text. Next, I hold both index fingers in front of my mirror and move them gently up and down. Let us pay particular attention to the somewhat defined luminous band right around the index fingers.
How to interpret all this now? There is hardly any room for debate regarding the facts. The answer to the question of whether ‘something’ is showing itself seems to be a resounding ‘yes’. What I had expected, and what is also immediately noticeable, is that the luminous band follows the up-and-down movement of the finger with a slight delay. A bit like the flame of a burning match lingering when you gently move the match back and forth. Seers tell us that the image of that band around the finger, and its slowing down with a faster movement, corresponds with what they perceive clairvoyantly.
Yet, as already stated, this image would be merely an extremely minute aspect of the aura. True aura-seeing, we learn, requires strong concentration of thought, is much richer, and can be done just as well, or sometimes even better, with the eyes closed. Thus, it is clear that, for example, ‘looking’ into the past or the future, or examining what manifests itself in other places clairvoyantly, cannot be an optical process at all.
Let us therefore minimize the importance of this experiment. As suggested above, observing that luminous band in itself, without situating it within a worldview or a religious-philosophical tradition, does not really make us much wiser.
However, if we do place it in this perspective, it could become the starting point of a completely different story. It could once again be an indication of the objective and even scientific existence of the subtle body, of our aura, and of the forces inherent to it. That seems like quite something to me, and in my view, it justifies any further research in that direction.
However, let us allow everyone their own opinion on all of this. Even those who see nothing more in all of this than rising warm air. That is, incidentally, not entirely unjustified. Seers tell us that fine dust is constantly escaping from the aura, a bit like the scent a flower emits, or like the body heat our body gives off. One can indeed delineate that first luminous band of the aura to some extent, but what exactly belongs to it and what does not seems, given the lack of a strict definition, not evident. Moreover, this research - as far as we know - is still in its early stages and is naturally open to discussion.
May we nevertheless hope that people will approach the phenomenon described here with an open mind? “Subtle matter must not exist! It cannot exist!” some proclaim. And this even before they have been informed of this experiment. They probably much prefer to stick to a strictly materialistic and sensory view of reality. It is indeed quite a challenge to choose a more holistic path.
And let us remain extremely humble for ourselves. It remains a tinkering project by a do-it-yourselfer who is not always the most skilled.
As mentioned, it would undoubtedly be fascinating to continue such experiments with larger mirrors and at a professional scientific level. The precision required for such setups and the price tag of the components quickly exceed the capabilities of an interested tinkerer. Further scientific research is certainly something to look forward to. However, it is less simple than it seems. Large telescopes have parabolically ground mirrors, whereas mirrors suitable for causing destructive interference must be spherical. Nevertheless, other solutions are conceivable here as well. However, explaining this would take us too far in this introductory text. We will return to this later.
So much for some reflections on subtle forces and – referring to the Pentecost event – on a philosophy of life that wishes to do justice to such data.
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