Is Knowledge a Light?: Quantum Physics and Spiritual Reality

I felt moved to pick up The Secret of Divine Civilization for my dawn meditation with my mom and a friend—one of those rare Saturdays set aside entirely for prayer, study, and reflection.

After I read that"out of all the realities in existence He [God] has chosen the reality of man [humanity] and has honored it with intellect and wisdom, the two most luminous lights in either world," none of us had any idea that one sentence would spark a 9-hour deepening on knowledge, wisdom, spirit, and light.

My mom was inspired to ponder the role of wisdom in eloquent speech, our friend was excited to reflect on the spirit we must have when we recite the wise guidance from the holy writings, and I was struck by the imagery and the inextricable relationship between light and knowledge. 

This led me to revisit a quote from The Book of Certitude that I had first encountered two years ago but was now inspired to delve into even further, as my mind recalled the spiritual and scientific evidence pointing to the same reality:

Knowledge is a light which God casteth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth.

I looked up from the page and began thinking about what I had learned years ago about neuroscience and quantum physics. I pulled out the notes I had taken from Dr. Joe Dispenza's workshops and books, where he makes a striking claim: when there's an increase in energy in the brain, there will always be an increase in consciousness and awareness. We can't have a change in energy without a change in consciousness, or a change in frequency without a change in information. 

The following day, I continued reflecting on my own, and the connections between the spiritual and scientific kept deepening.

This led me to create this mind map:

Light is energy. Energy is information. Information shapes consciousness.

Baha'u'llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, stated that knowledge is a light. Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, stated that intuition is a light. From a Quantum physics perspective, light travels in tiny individual bundles of energy, and at the quantum level, what a particle "is" at any moment is really just a set of information—a description of its state. Dispenza, a chiropractor, educator, researcher, and bestselling author, interprets this as a field of energy and information that resembles an infinite, universal intelligence.

So, that means:

knowledge = light = energy = information = consciousness

These are more than metaphors; they’re dual ways of describing the nature of reality—one discovered through divine revelation, the other through scientific inquiry and experiments.

How Newtonian and Quantum Physics Help Explain Our Two Realities

The Baha’i writings say that humanity "is possessed of two realities, as it were: a reality connected with the senses which is shared in common with the animal, and another reality which is conscious and ideal in character."

Our two branches of physics help explain these two realities.

Newtonian physics describes how we experience this reality connected with our senses: the three-dimensional world of matter, force, and motion. It explains how matter influences other matter and how objects move through space over time in a linear and predictable way. This is the physical reality of the known, the measurable—the world we navigate through our five senses every day.

Quantum physics tells a different story. At the atomic and subatomic levels, reality stops being solid and predictable. In his 2017 book Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon, Dispenza describes the quantum world as dealing with "the unpredictable and the unseen—the world of energy, waves, frequency, information, consciousness, and all spectrums of light." 

Governing this world, he says, is an unseen constant: a single field of information called the unified field.

The Baha’i writings have their own language for this governing intelligence. Abdu'l-Baha wrote:

Likewise, look into this endless universe: a universal power inevitably existeth, which encompasseth all, directing and regulating all the parts of this infinite creation; and were it not for this Director, this Co-ordinator, the universe would be flawed and deficient.

Dispenza also refers to this loving intelligence that observes and organizes reality and light into form and order, where all potential exists as a thought. And, in modern physics, particles aren't tiny solid objects—they're more like vibrations in an invisible field of energy, the way a musical note is a vibration in air. All are different terminologies to describe the same miraculous process.

What the Atom Is Actually Made Of

The classical model of the atom (left) shows electrons in fixed orbits. The quantum model (right) reveals a luminous cloud of probability, frequency, and light.

To understand what the quantum world is showing us, we have to start with the atom—specifically, with how wrong our elementary school picture of it was.

Most of us were taught the classical model: a solid nucleus at the center with electrons orbiting around it like neat little planets around a sun. It was simple and easy to remember, but not accurate.

Electrons don't move in fixed orbits. What surrounds the nucleus is a cloud—a cloud of information, frequency, light, and energy. The electron exists within it as a wave of probability, not a fixed particle. The space inside an atom is almost incomprehensibly vast. 

Dr. Joe Dispenza explained that if the nucleus were scaled up to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, the electron would be the size of a pea—and the space that pea could potentially inhabit would be 85,000 square miles—twice the size of Cuba. What we experience as solid matter is, at its foundation, 99.9999% empty space and swirling potential.

And here's where it gets especially fascinating. In quantum physics, before measurement, the electron is described by a wave of probabilities, and when it interacts with a measuring device, that spread of possibilities collapses into a definite outcome. Dr. Joe Dispenza goes further, interpreting this to mean that the electron doesn't become a definite, localized particle until a conscious observer looks for it. In his words:

Once an observer (mind) comes along and looks for it, the act of observation (directed energy) causes all the potential energy to collapse into an electron (matter); thus it manifests from a realm of infinite possibilities (an unknown) to a known. When the observer is no longer observing it, the electron turns back into possibility—that's the wave function.

This means, from a metaphysical perspective, the number of possible experiences available to us is only limited by our imagination.

As Abdu'l-Baha said at a talk in Paris in 1911:

Our imagination can only picture that which it is able to create.

No Separation Between the Realms of the Physical and Spiritual Realities

Abdu'l-Baha also wrote that "all the members of this endless universe are linked one to another"—as inseparably as the members of the human body.

Dispenza echoes this from the quantum side:

In the quantum or unified field, there is no separation between two points of consciousness. It is the domain of oneness or unity consciousness.

This even extends to those who have passed away. When asked about souls in the next world, Abdu'l-Baha said they exist in a sphere "not removed from ours" but "sanctified from what we call 'time and place.'" 

He continued: 

Time with us is measured by the sun. When there is no more sunrise, and no more sunset, that kind of time does not exist for man. Those who have ascended have different attributes from those who are still on earth, yet there is no real separation.

The souls who have ascended and have thus been freed from the illusion of our physical reality, and those still on earth, exist simultaneously across different dimensions, where, in certain practices like praying, meditating, and dreaming, a mingling of stations can occur, where an exchange of information and energy is possible.

Dispenza uses the speed of light as a metaphor for a threshold beyond which he says only pure consciousness remains—a realm with no past or future, only an eternal now, where all possibilities exist.

In 1861/62, Baha'u'llah wrote:

In each and everything a door of knowledge hath been opened, and within every atom traces of the sun have been made manifest.

Within every atom, there are traces of the sun—light, encoded in the structure of matter. This makes me think of the holographic theory in physics, where every fragment carries traces of the whole. Knowledge is alive in the architecture of creation itself, where each being reflects the light of the Creator.

The door has always been open. Science is now finding the language to describe what it leads to.

If you enjoyed this article, read Part 2—"The Stages of Spiritual Growth and Consciousness"—to read more about frequency, consciousness, and the stages of spiritual development. 

A note on sources: Dr. Joe Dispenza is a researcher, chiropractor, educator, and author whose work draws on neuroscience, quantum physics, and consciousness studies. While much of what he references—including neuroplasticity, meditation's measurable effects on brain states, epigenetics, and the mind-body connection—is grounded in peer-reviewed science, some of his interpretations, particularly regarding quantum mechanics and consciousness, go beyond scientific consensus and represent his own metaphysical perspective. I share his insights where they resonate with and illuminate the Baha'i writings, not as established physics, but as a framework for exploring the intersection of science and spirituality.