Luminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living

Praise for Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman’s Work

Behind the disguise of brevity and simplicity lie pearls of distilled spiritual truths — truths to be cherished, to be shared, and, above all, to be lived.

— Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now

Jacob Liberman is one of my favorite teachers!

— Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life

The ideas that Jacob shares. . .reflect the emerging understanding. . . that awareness changes all experience without exception.

— Gary Zukav, author of The Seat of the Soul

"I love this book [Wisdom from an Empty Mind]!"

— Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God

Profound and deceptively simple insights.

— Bonnie Raitt

It was as if I was hearing my own voice.

— Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now

Jacob Liberman. . .guides us into a powerfully new view of ourselves, our relationships and our inner and outer vision.

— John Gray, PhD, author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

The sensitivity, deep humanity, and exquisite insight contained in Dr. Liberman’s wonderful work make it a manual for a whole new order of being.

— Jean Houston, author of The Possible Human

Dr. Jacob Liberman is at the cutting edge of enlightened technology, blending physics and metaphysics to their best advantage. He is one of the rare breed of people in eclectic fields who have tapped in to deep wisdom principles and applied their insights and research to provide revolutionary ‘new’ understanding for all who ‘have the eyes to see.’

— Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Jacob Liberman’s pioneer thinking takes the wonder of light and light therapy to a new level of insight by blending it with deeper health wisdom and spiritual understanding.

— Gabriel Cousens, MD, author of Spiritual Nutrition

"Dr. Liberman’s book [Light: Medicine of the Future] is a milestone forward concerning the therapeutic effect of light via the eyes."

— Fritz Hollwich, MD, author of The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and in Animal

"Light is one of the critical environmental factors for total health; indeed, ‘the eyes are the windows of the soul.’ [Light: Medicine of the Future] helps provide one of those windows."

— Norman Shealy, MD, founding president of the American Holistic Medical Association

Combining his many years of personal and clinical experience with the frequently amazing results achieved by his patients, Dr. Jacob Liberman has developed a foundational model for a new medical paradigm.

— Dr. John Ott, pioneer in the field of photobiology and author of Health and Light

"In Luminous Life, Dr. Jacob Liberman articulates truths that enhance your natural brilliance and allow the intelligence of the universe to expand your lens on life."

— Donald M. Epstein, author of The 12 Stages of Healing and founder of EpiEnergetics

Also by Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman

Light: Medicine of the Future

Take Off Your Glasses and See

Copyright © 2018 by Jacob Israel Liberman

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Illustrations by Lauren Harris, Tea Water Designs (www.teawaterdesigns.com)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Liberman, Jacob, [date]- author.

Title: Luminous life : how the science of light unlocks the art of living /Jacob Israel Liberman, OD, PhD with Gina Liberman and Erik Liberman.

Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017044309 (print) | LCCN 2017049844 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685189 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781608685172 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Light—Physiological effect—Popular works. | Vision—Physiological aspects—Popular works.

Classification: LCC QP82.2.L5 (ebook) | LCC QP82.2.L5 L53 2018 (print) | DDC 612/.01444—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044309

First printing, February 2018

ISBN 978-1-60868-517-2

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-518-9

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10987654321

My brain is only a receiver. In the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.

— NIKOLA TESLA

CONTENTS

Foreword by James L. Oschman, PhD

Introduction

Chapter One: How Light Guides Us

Chapter Two: The Light within Us

Chapter Three: Living on Light

Chapter Four: The Intelligence of Life

Chapter Five: The Light in Our Dreams

Chapter Six: Escaping the Mind Field

Chapter Seven: Discovering the Genius within Us

Chapter Eight: Awareness Is Curative

Chapter Nine: What Takes Your Breath Away

The One-Minute Breath Meditation

The One-Minute Arrow Meditation

Chapter Ten: The True Law of Attraction

Chapter Eleven: Full-Spectrum Life

The Color Dome Visualization

The Body Map Visualization

The Light Tank Visualization

Chapter Twelve: Living in a World of Technology

Chapter Thirteen: Looking Less, Seeing More

The One-Minute Magic (Brock) String Exercise

Chapter Fourteen: What’s Catching Your Eye?

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Resources

Index

About the Authors

FOREWORD

It is amazing how a simple idea can change your life. Think back on the turning points in your own personal evolution and the wonderful teachers and concepts that facilitated your awakenings to an easier, healthier, happier, and more successful life.

Many years ago, I was living with a scientist who introduced me to a very simple way of life that has made all the difference. I noticed that she did not organize her life. Instead of thinking and planning and stressing about what to do, when she got up in the morning she simply took care of the first thing that presented itself, and then the second, and so on, throughout the day. In this way she navigated effortlessly through life’s adventures regardless of how challenging or complex they might be. There was no thinking, choosing, planning, or worrying about what might happen. While this sounds quite simple, in this book Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman explores this way of being in a much larger context.

In Luminous Life, Liberman elaborates on this relaxed and productive way of life by considering the role light plays in it: anything that catches your eye is actually looking for you. Light brings your awareness to your responsibilities, guides you from moment to moment, and creates a life filled with purpose and meaning. We need not prioritize anything, because the intelligence of life has already done that for us. Living in this space is what he refers to as presence. Not knowing. . .allows true wisdom to reveal itself. The landmark book you have in your hands documents these concepts and much more.

Liberman explains how this approach to daily life enables us to allow light — and its faithful companion, breath — to guide us and to see the inner workings of our lives with greater clarity and acceptance. He cites ancient wisdom summarized by Mahatma Gandhi: There is a force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results (chapter 4).

My current research involves documenting the science behind this force in the universe. Liberman’s writings have greatly facilitated my process of discovery. He points out that this force animates the navigational system within us that is inseparable from that which animates everything in the universe. Surrendering to pure awareness of this force can lead to miracles and profound healing. Many of our physical and emotional ailments are the result of our bodies being misdirected by ideas that are in conflict with our well-being (chapter 8).

Luminous Life will give you a totally new perspective on the many roles of light and breath in your personal evolution — on what it truly means to see. It will help you uncover your purpose or destiny and how living it brings forth your essence, changing your world and the world around you. I like to say that when you are on purpose or following your destiny, the wind will fill your sails and the tools you need will appear.

Much of Liberman’s storytelling begins with an account of an experience that led to a simple and penetrating but rarely asked question, followed by an answer that can be as startling as it is revealing. For example, he asks about the source of the light we experience in our dreams. Dreams reveal how the rainbows of our inner light interact with our subconscious mind to expose deep truths about our waking experiences, as well as our limitless nature (chapter 5). Tapping into these clues about how our stories and beliefs shape our waking actions leads us to greater clarity and more enlightened behavior.

Liberman cites the Talmud: We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are. Suspending our beliefs about who we are and what is possible creates a luminous space that allows us to open to pure awareness; to infinite potentials and possibilities; to discovering the true genius within us. Unconscious inspirations, in cooperation with conscious activities, can lead to excitation, followed by implementation, leading to creative manifestation (chapter 7). This is the true source of inspired action. As Einstein stated, to be creative imagination is more important than knowledge.

Liberman discusses the zone — a state of consciousness experienced by elite athletes, musicians, dancers, and so on when they are having a flawless performance (chapter 8). In 1992 I had an experience that brought my career into congruence with Liberman’s work with top athletes to get them into the zone more readily. I was watching the Olympic skating championships when figure skater Midori Ito took my breath away and brought me to tears with a moving and legendary performance. Despite some difficult practice sessions preceding the competition, she began her routine radiating complete calmness and control. Her program included a triple-triple jump combination and a triple axel, the first time a female figure skater accomplished these feats in an Olympic competition. This thrilling experience was the beginning of my inquiry that led to the publication of my 2003 book, Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, and to the recognition of a state of consciousness and physiology that I call systemic cooperation. In the zone all tissues and cells and molecules throughout the body work together naturally, quickly, effortlessly, and instinctually, enabling the performer to embody complete aliveness, presence, clarity, and grace. In this book, Liberman provides one-minute meditations that help all of us enter the zone and live there. What a gift!

For all parts of the body to cooperate so perfectly some form of rapid cell-to-cell communication must be taking place. Light provides the perfect communication mechanism for high-speed physiological integration because it travels at the speed of light. Recently the new multidisciplinary study of biophotonics has emerged. Liberman’s research and insights into light and vision are vital to biophoton research.

Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman is a true pioneer and visionary. His work with vision has led to valuable insights about light and sight, uncovering new ways of seeing and living. I cannot imagine a more sacred and gratifying journey than helping people maintain what is their most precious gift: their sight. Some of Liberman’s discoveries were so remarkable that he was compelled to do careful scientific research to convince himself of their validity. The result has been a series of outstanding articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, establishing him as one of the world’s most creative and highly regarded vision scientists. In Luminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living, Liberman makes his extraordinary discoveries available to all of us. This is far more than a book to read and enjoy — it is a life-changing journey.

— James L. Oschman, PhD, author of

Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis

INTRODUCTION

Forty years ago, while practicing as an optometrist, I experienced a sudden and very significant improvement in eyesight, with no measurable change in my eyeglass prescription. The effect of that miraculous event, which has now persisted for forty years, led me to the realization that while we look with our eyes, we do not see with them. This spurred me on a mission to discover the source of our true seeing: the connection between light, vision, and consciousness. Most importantly, it led me to ask, who am I, and who is truly the seer?

These questions drew me to study quantum physics and neuroscience, which inspired me to deeply explore the state of mind that led to my profound vision improvement. So I began a real-time experiment on the workings of my mind. My hope was to uncover a portal into the state of consciousness where profound healing occurs, which in turn would allow me to teach others how to replicate my experience. What I discovered over the years transformed my life and revealed some fundamental truths about light and vision. These insights allowed me to assist thousands of patients in restoring their natural eyesight without the use of glasses, forming the basis of my first two books, Light: Medicine of the Future and Take Off Your Glasses and See.

What followed over the next twenty-five years was a profound exploration into life, consciousness, and that elusive state we call presence. My discoveries, presented herein, helped me unravel how light continually guides our life. In addition, those breakthroughs were foundational to my development in 2006 of the first patented, clinically proven, and FDA-cleared medical device that significantly improved vision performance and contributed to my induction as president of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM) in 2010.

Light’s Guidance

To better understand my findings, let’s start with light and a broader understanding of it. Light is more than waves and particles. It is a purveyor of consciousness. Light is not just out there, something we need to find in order to see. Light seeks us out and guides us in the same way it seeks out and directs a plant to grow toward it. There is something inherently alive in it. And, astonishing as it might seem, light not only enters us through our eyes and skin but also emanates from within us. Consider how babies perceive the world around them. Light ignites their awareness — unobstructed by thought, belief, or worry — and it radiates back into the world as an expression of pure presence. That is why their eyes sparkle. As we grow from babies who exist in this unfettered state into adults who are taught to look for life, love, and work, we overlook the fact that our eyes and minds are not designed to look for light but to respond to it.

Pioneering experiments have confirmed that the eyes, which contain approximately one billion working parts, not only detect single photons of light before they take shape in form but also assimilate and distribute that information to our brains at unimaginable speeds. This entire process occurs before the conscious mind thinks about it and directs us toward what to look at. In addition, researchers have found cryptochrome, the chemical sixth sense that orients animals with the earth’s electromagnetic field, at highly concentrated levels in the human eye, calibrating us with the unseen clock and compass that guides group migrations of many species and even their reproductive cycles.

Looking for Presence

Despite popular belief, attaining presence is not about thinking or trying to be here now. Rather, it is a naturally occurring state that arises when our eyes and mind, triggered by light, focus on the same place at the same time. In response to light’s invitation and guidance, our eyes begin an intricate dance of aiming, focusing, tracking, and teaming. When light first awakens us, our eyes aim toward its emanation, initiating an all-encompassing presence. Though we often relate presence to attention, it has no tension associated with it. It is not a forced voluntary process of selecting one aspect of our environment to focus on while ignoring others. Presence is an involuntary response to an invitation by life’s intelligence pointing us toward our maximum potential.

Our degree of presence is directly related to how effortlessly and accurately our eyes are able to aim. When the eyes aim effectively, making eye contact with — and thus, acknowledging — what has called to them, we experience congruence. This is a state of coming together, the perfect alignment of our outer and inner worlds, where extraneous noise around us diminishes.

I discovered this during my career as an optometrist and vision scientist. When patients came to me with vision problems, I found that most of the time their eyes would look at one spot, but their mind would be elsewhere. This incongruity between what their eyes and their mind were seeing interfered with their natural ability to experience presence. In one of my research studies, published in 1976, I found that nearly 70 percent of the participants were not looking where they thought they were looking, a sign that their eyes and mind were not converged on the same point. In addition, more than half of the subjects were looking too hard, revealing a tendency to push rather than allow things to unfold before their eyes. I also observed that the more my patients worked at seeing or understanding something, the more they held their breath and the less they actually saw. However, when their natural breathing cycle was restored, they relaxed and their vision and learning ability significantly improved.

This is why presence is so rare. When our physical eyes (which receive 80 to 90 percent of our life experience) are not aligned with our mind’s eye, it is impossible to experience presence or oneness. If you are middle-aged or older and have taken to using reading glasses, then you likely know what it feels like to try to read the small print on the label of a supplement container at the pharmacy without your reading