Illumination

Physical illumination refers to lighting and light. Metaphysical illumination refers to the supernal Light, which creates intellectual and spiritual enlightenment.

Illumination is an absolute and an abstract principle, and a law of being. Illumination is the soul faculty attained when Light penetrates and permeates every cell of the body until you can "see" and "know" truth. Illumination is the faculty most closely aligned with the Wisdom principle.

Edna Lister on Illumination

Humanity may be humanly intelligent, humanly creative, humanly brilliant, but it lacks spiritual illumination. We lack spiritual illumination because for centuries of separation from the spiritual world, we focused our intelligence primarily on material and mental subjects. – Edna Lister, God as Consciousness Appears as Form, 1933.

The first step to great illumination is to give up outer possession of personality — insisting that others do it your way or that they be as you desire them to be. This is the only way to gain command of your own physical heart, your soul's heart of being, or to command the Power from the heart of God, in whom we live, move and dwell. – Edna Lister, February 1, 1936.

Let nothing of darkness or self hold back your full vision and illumination. – Edna Lister, August 19, 1938.

The full use of joy will be your complete illumination forever. – Edna Lister, September 6, 1938.

Only illumination from a high Source can dissolve the "mists of matter" that lie between earth and the different Realms of Heaven. – Edna Lister, A Design for Ascension, 1942.

Full knowledge can enlighten our so-great darkness in seven great steps, only in this order — acceptance, surrender, sacrifice, repentance, praise, exaltation, illumination. – Edna Lister, November 10, 1944.

With the first marriage of the Lamb — the mating of desire and will with wisdom and love — will becomes illumination with its seat in the pineal gland, and desire becomes the seat of intuition in the pituitary gland. – Edna Lister, December 9, 1946.

From soul consciousness, you surrender to God's desire for you, which is love, imagination that builds energy, and His will, which is wisdom. Then the pineal and pituitary glands open to illumination and intuition. – Edna Lister, November 13, 1947.

Light can lead you to the high place, but you cannot enter therein without intuition and illumination supreme. – Edna Lister, December 13, 1947.

The greater the illumination, the less the nosiness, the slower the finger on the trigger. – Edna Lister, June 5, 1948.

Light flows in as an electrical charge, which agitates lime deposits and discharges poisons. Electronic activity of ascension of consciousness stirs the glands and organs, and they sometimes cast off toxins. The higher the illumination, the greater the disturbance within an individual. Imagine a circle or a sphere of light rotating clockwise over your head. Under the vibration of law, every atom in your whole body rotates clockwise in health. – Edna Lister, The Twelve Tribes, June 22, 1948.

Extreme fear of moving through an illumination and refusal to assume responsibility to become law causes inner blindness. – Edna Lister, August 4, 1949.

If the illumination from your Oversoul Star becomes too bright, say, "Here I am, Lord," instead of going to bed to escape, saying, "I am unworthy," or expecting a soft place. – Edna Lister, August 4, 1949.

When you live under the laws of expansion, you hear, accept and ascend to gain comprehension, which is illumination, an act of God. – Edna Lister, July 27, 1951.

Self waits until you pass from illumination to the intellectual viewpoint to shoot out its bitterness, criticism, etc. – Edna Lister, November 19, 1951.

Your antennae take just that portion of illumination from divine Mind for whatever you think about in your prayers (health, wealth, home, or land) and the rest flows over your head. – Edna Lister, Success Through Prayer, July 7, 1953.

Christ consciousness always guides you as intuition and illumination. – Edna Lister, Your Life's Plan, May 16, 1954.

Apperception enters through the crown of the head when you live ruled fully by intuition and illumination. – Edna Lister, The Golden Silence, June 18, 1954.

You are reborn as often as you have a new idea or illumination. – Edna Lister, Inspiration, June 24, 1956.

If you use concentration as surrender, you get only dribbles of illumination. – Edna Lister, August 4, 1956.

Intuition and illumination are the higher soul octaves of logic, reason, discernment, discrimination and discretion. – Edna Lister, October 22, 1956.

Illumination and intuition are our precision instruments, our production tools. Our power tools are desire, our emotional life, thinking, and imagination. – Edna Lister, The Life, Your Practice, October 28, 1956.

God created us to express Light through intuition and illumination. – Edna Lister, The Light, Your Expression, November 4, 1956.

We all seem to go in the direction of our deepest need, hence the tremendous variety of illumination that will be ours one day, when we compare all notes. Hasten the day. – Edna Lister, February 20, 1957.

The spiritual senses are desire, will, intuition, illumination and aspiration. – Edna Lister, The Brain, Your Servant, October 8, 1957.

We, who are Creators, must learn to remain on the mount of illumination. – Edna Lister, The Point of No Return, December 15, 1957.

Desire must fill the pituitary to spark intuition, and will must fill the pineal for illumination. – Edna Lister, April 21, 1958.

The proportion of intuition to illumination must be three to one, three measures of intuition to one of illumination. – Edna Lister, Revelation, Four Horsemen and Six Seals, April 29, 1958.

Each illumination brings a greater responsibility to live up. – Edna Lister, May 15, 1958.

Unless you ascend for new illumination, today's ideals become tomorrow's opinions. – Edna Lister, May 30, 1958.

When you open a soul record in the neurons of the brain, you experience an illumination. – Edna Lister, August 28, 1958.

Every time you lift self-pity in yourself, you lift the veil of illusion and open the way to illumination. – Edna Lister, October 9, 1958.

If you ascend high enough, you will have a great burst of illumination. – Edna Lister, October 9, 1958.

You looked back like Lot's wife. Salt represents the crystallization of illumination. – Edna Lister, October 30, 1958.

When illumination strikes, it fills the pituitary and purifies the emotional life. – Edna Lister, Ten Plagues on Egypt, December 2, 1958.

The seventh law of expression is to live by pure illumination, the final, complete conquering of soul. – Edna Lister, The Pioneering Mystic, May 5, 1959.

The size of the Light we choose to become determines our illumination, a dim bulb or a floodlight. – Edna Lister, All Substance Is Universal, May 12, 1959.

When you are "open and waiting" for the right answer, but cannot think it, you receive the answer under illumination and intuition. – Edna Lister, August 14, 1959.

Superconscious mind functions as the faculties of intuition and illumination. – Edna Lister, What Is Healing? May 17, 1960.

Understanding, intuition and illumination are spiritual faculties or soul capacities, which depend on how greatly the individual expressed through the Oversoul in past ages. – Edna Lister, Is it Right to Ask for Myself? June 14, 1960.

The power of intuition from the Heart of Being ignites inspiration and causes the mental faculties to "look up" in fervent enthusiasm and expectancy. – Edna Lister, Is Faith Enough? June 21, 1960.

You reach soul illumination only by rejoicing. – Edna Lister, Realization Through Praise, June 26, 1960.

Love carries you from the past to a future of Power and illumination. – Edna Lister, Realization Through Praise, June 26, 1960.

Approach your studies of God's revelation with awe and a consecrated purpose, and the Light of illumination will explode within you. – Edna Lister, Consider the Lilies, May 29, 1960.

A spiritual earthquake is an illumination that loosens the bonds of self when you stand and worship God. – Edna Lister, Increase Through High Prayer, July 3, 1960.

Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning. – James 1:17. The secret of all miracles, the basis of our illumination is found in "lights." – Edna Lister, Four Faiths, September 11, 1960.

Illumination is a vibration of Light, which is the Word that was with God and was God (see John 1:1). – Edna Lister, Four Faiths, September 11, 1960.

The I AM consciousness of each soul looks up, reaches up and touches the I AM THAT I AM of God. The resulting explosion is what we call illumination. – Edna Lister, Four Faiths, September 11, 1960.

You never forget the flash and explosion of illumination you experience in a rebirth. – Edna Lister, The Gift of Discernment, December 11, 1960.

You can hold to that high point of contemplation, which is full illumination, despite anything. – Edna Lister, January 29, 1961.

Ascend into the Light and illumination will put words you never knew before on your lips. – Edna Lister, July 24, 1961.

You must ponder and speculate on truth, the good and beauty before illumination opens. – Edna Lister, April 15, 1962.

The helmet of salvation is the awakened lotus center shining and giving you a crown of glory and illumination. – Edna Lister, What Is Compassion? May 6, 1962.

Unless you reach into pure Light and a higher octave of your own chord of life, you can receive no higher illumination of any law. Reaching a higher octave to understand law is illumination. – Edna Lister, November 14, 1962.

Every illumination is an initiation to climb the Mount of Transfiguration. The first step is responsibility. When we accept, we enter a state of glory and illumination. – Edna Lister, Shekinah Splendor, December 15, 1963.

Vision reveals law, and intuition and illumination interpret what vision grasps from divine Mind. – Edna Lister, Five Keys of the Kingdom, 1964.

As you turn imagination upward and use it as soul vision instead of mere "thought pictures," it functions as intuition and illumination, which form themselves into comprehension, the combined Wisdom and Love of God in action. – Edna Lister, Five Keys of the Kingdom, 1964.

A premonition comes from the outer world, but you must live by intuition held in check by illumination. – Edna Lister, The Legend of Isis and Osiris, April 14, 1964.

To discover truth requires that you must bring illumination, intuition and cosmic consciousness to bear on each situation to create balance. To slide down the pole from this high state is falling back onto the line of fate or creature nature. To live by "human nature" is to live by creature nature, not functioning as a Son or Daughter of God. When you step from fate to the Path of Destiny, you function as illumination, intuition and cosmic consciousness. Ascending in consciousness puts you on course to fulfill your mission undisturbed by outer circumstances. Fate, however, entwines you with the past. – Edna Lister, Deity and Divinity, October 6, 1964.

As awareness increases, it becomes intuition and illumination. – Edna Lister, The Good Shepherd, November 1, 1964.

Loveliness is full illumination of Light. – Edna Lister, Loveliness and Beauty, February 7, 1965.

Universal objectivity is the source of all illumination and understanding. – Edna Lister, April 5, 1965.

Every flash of illumination opens incarnation memory records. – Edna Lister, The Soul Faculties, Unfolding Full Seership and Prophecy, December 14, 1965.

Each must accept the truth for it to open the door for further and greater personal illumination. Satisfaction with your present comprehension closes the door to further, higher illumination. – Edna Lister, March 10, 1967.

Illumination comes from the Source instantly. You are not conscious of anything between. – Edna Lister, June 16, 1967.

Illumination plus intuition and common sense gives you a just appraisal. – Edna Lister, How to Make a Just Appraisal, May 14, 1968.

You can't put a quart of illumination in pint-sized consciousness. – Edna Lister, Faith Complete Now, November 15, 1970.

New Testament on Illumination

You are the light of the world. – Matthew 5:14.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. – Matthew 5:16.

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! – Matthew 6:22-23.

There is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. – Mark 4:22.

When you have lit a lamp of spiritual wisdom, set it on a lampstand, that those who enter your presence may see the light. – Luke 8:16 and Luke 11:33.

Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. – Luke 8:17.

The lamp of the body is the eye. When your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. – Luke 11:34.

Take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. If your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light. – Luke 11:35-36.

Whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops. – Luke 12:3.

In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness did not comprehend it. – John 1:4‑5.

The true Light … gives light to every soul coming into the world. – John 1:9.

He who believes in the Christ is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the Only Begotten Son of God. This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. – John 3:18‑19.

Everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. – John 3:20.

He who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. – John 3:21.

The Christ, who is the Word, is the light of the world. He who follows him shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. – John 8:12.

As long as you are in the world, you are the light of the world. – John 9:5.

Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become children of light. – John 12:35-36.

The Christ came as a light into the world, that whoever believes in him should not abide in darkness. – John 12:46.

Let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. – Romans 13:12.

God, who commanded Light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Christ. – 2 Corinthians 4:6.

Walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. Ephesians 5:8‑10.

Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. – Ephesians 5:11.

All things that are exposed are made manifest by the Light, for whatever makes manifest is light. – Ephesians 5:13.

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. – Philippians 2:14‑15.

God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all. – 1 John 1:5.

If we walk in the Light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another. – 1 John 1:7.

He who says he is in the Light, and hates his brother, is in darkness. He who loves his brother abides in the Light. He who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. – 1 John 2:9-11.

Old Testament on Illumination

The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. – Psalm 18:28.

With God is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light. – Psalm 36:9.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. – Psalm 37:5-6.

God covers Himself with light as with a garment. – Psalm 104:2.

Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness. – Psalm 112:4.

God is the Lord, and He has given us light. – Psalm 118:27.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. – Psalm 119:105.

The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. – Psalm 119:130.

The commandment is a lamp, and the law a light; reproofs of instruction are the way of life. – Proverbs 6:23.

The light of the eyes rejoices the heart. – Proverbs 15:30.

The poor man and the oppressor have this in common: The Lord gives light to the eyes of both. – Proverbs 29:13.

Illumination in Other Sacred Writings

Wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passes and goes through all things by reason of her pureness, for she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore no defiled thing can fall into her. She is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness. Being but One, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she makes all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she makes them friends of God, and prophets. – Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-27.

Wisdom is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. – Wisdom of Solomon 7:29.

Wisdom makes the doctrine of knowledge appear as the light. – Wisdom of Ben Sirach 24:27.

The love of the Lord passes all things for illumination. – Wisdom of Ben Sirach 25:11.