Who Was Alan Lightman, the Physicist Who Experienced a Revelation?
In 2018, Lightman surprised the world with a new book, opening with the description of a spiritual experience he had one night. He describes a mystical plunge into the infinite and a feeling of unity with the universe. When he returned to his body and the boat, he had no idea how long he had been absent.
Now and then we hear about a doctor or scientist who has undergone a near-death experience and discovered faith in the afterlife.
However, physicist Prof. Alan Lightman did not undergo any near-death experience or anything similar. He actually had a very distinguished career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. His doctorate focused on theoretical physics. He headed the science panel of the National Academy of Sciences and the high-energy section of the American Astronomical Society.
His books were considered a scientific and materialistic milestone, and then, in 2018, Lightman surprised the world with a new book, which opens with the description of a spiritual experience he had one night while traveling in a motorboat to an island in Maine. He turned off the engine and lights, lay on his back, and gazed at the sky and stars. He describes a mystical plunge into the infinite and a feeling of unity with the universe. When he returned to his body and the boat, he had no idea how long he had been absent.
What can a scientist do with such a mystical experience? He begins by analyzing the human attraction to absolute, eternal, and sacred religious truths—truths that allow a person to imagine perfection—as opposed to the constantly changing, partial scientific truths that are far from complete. While the scientific perspective limits the scope of the mystical experience, this perspective itself is limited and can, as scientific experience has taught us, change.
Eternal truths cannot be refuted by science, and there is no way to connect them to the physical world: there is no way to connect earthly temporal length to eternity, or limited wisdom to the infinite wisdom of Hashem. The infinite is not just much more than the finite, he writes, but precludes the possibility of dialogue between the scientific and the spiritual in favor of a dual model that attempts to bridge the gap between them.
This process that Lightman underwent is close to what the Chazon Ish describes in his book "Faith and Trust": "If a person is of soul, and the moment is one of peace, free from carnal desires, and he marvels at the heavens above and the earth below, he is moved and astounded, for the world appears to him as an enigmatic, concealed, and wondrous mystery, which envelops his heart and mind... and his soul longs to resolve it… When human intellect merits to see the truth of His existence, an endless joy immediately fills him… and imagination consents with the intellect to behold the pleasantness of Hashem…"
Faith is not a complicated matter. One only needs to set aside distractions, coverings, and concealments for a time, and look at the world. Thus one sees the Creator through the world.
